Conde at Saint Denis.]

The blow which the Huguenots had aimed at the tyrannical government of the
Cardinal of Lorraine had missed its mark, through premature disclosure;
but they still hoped to accomplish their design by slower means. Shut up
in Paris, the court might be frightened or starved into compliance before
the Roman Catholic forces could be assembled to relieve the capital. With
this object the Prince of Conde moved around to the north side of the
city, and took up his quarters, on the second of October, in the village
of Saint Denis. With the lower Seine, which, in one of its serpentine
coils, here turns back upon itself, and retreats from the direction of the
sea, in his immediate grasp, and within easy striking distance of the
upper Seine, and its important tributary the Marne--the chief sources of
the supply of food on which the capital depended--the Prince of Conde
awaited the arrival of his reinforcements, and the time when the hungry
Parisians should compel the queen to submit, or to send out her troops to
an open field. At the same time he burned the windmills that stretched
their huge arms on every eminence in the vicinity. It was an ill-advised
measure, as are all similar acts of destruction, unless justified by
urgent necessity. If it occasioned some distress in Paris,[446] it only
embittered the minds of the people yet more, and enabled the municipal
authorities to retaliate with some color of equity by seizing the houses
of persons known or suspected to be Huguenots, and selling their goods to
defray part of the expense incurred in defending the city.[447]

[Sidenote: The Huguenot movement alienates the king.]

The attempt "to seize the person of the king"--for such the movement was
understood to be by the Roman Catholic party--was even more unfortunate.
It produced in Charles an alienation[448] which the enemies of the
Huguenots took good care to prevent him from ever completely forgetting.
They represented the undertaking of Meaux as aimed, not at the counsellors
of the monarch, but at the "Sacred Majesty" itself, and Conde and Coligny,
with their associates, were pictured to the affrighted eyes of the
fugitive boy-king as conspirators who respected none of those rights which
are so precious in the view of royalty.

[Sidenote: Negotiations opened. The Huguenots gradually abate their
demands.]

[Sidenote: Constable Montmorency the mouthpiece of intolerance.]

Meantime Catharine was not slow