ormers had made at the Colloquy of
Poissy.[554]

[Sidenote: Remonstrance of the three marshals.]

[Sidenote: Catharine's intrigues.]

There had been a desperate struggle in the royal council ever since the
conclusion of the peace. The extreme Roman Catholics, recognizing the
instability of Catharine, had long since begun to base their hopes upon
Henry of Anjou's influence. Their opponents accepted the issue, and
resolved to circumscribe the duke's inordinate powers. Three of the
marshals of France--Montmorency, his brother Damville, and
Vieilleville--presented themselves at a meeting of the royal council held
in the queen mother's sick-chamber (on the second of May, 1568), to
remonstrate against Anjou's retaining the office of lieutenant-general.
Even Cardinal Bourbon supported their movement, and, sinking for the time
his extreme religious partisanship, threatened to leave the court, and
give the world to understand how much he had at heart the honor of his
house and the welfare of his friends. The object of the marshals could not
be mistaken: it was nothing less than the overthrow of the Cardinal of
Lorraine, who sought supreme power under cover of Anjou's name. The end of
the war, remarked the ambassador, Sir Henry Norris, had brought no end to
the mortal hatred between the houses of Guise and Montmorency. The
prospect of permanent peace was dark. The king was easy to be seduced, his
mother bent upon maintaining these divisions in the court, and Anjou so
much under the cardinal's influence that it was to be feared that the
Huguenots would in the end be forced to have recourse once more to arms.
In the midst of these perils, the queen mother had been exercising her
ingenuity in playing off one party against the other; now giving
countenance to the Guises, now to the Montmorencies. At one time she used
Limoges, at another Morvilliers or Sens, in her secret intrigues.
Presently she resorted to Lorraine, and, when jealous of his too great
forwardness, would turn to the chancellor himself, "undoing in one day
what the cardinal had intended long afore." Besides these prominent
statesmen, she had not scrupled to take up with meaner tools--men whose
elevation boded no good to the commonwealth, and with whom she conferred
about the imposition of those onerous taxes which had cost her the
forfeiture of the good-will of the people. To add to the confusion, the
jealousy between the king and his brother Anjou had reappeared, an