rotestantism by the
fear of losing his present position.[573] Finding himself not only
stripped of all influence, and compelled to witness the enactment of
measures repugnant to his very nature, but an object of hatred to his
associates, Michel de l'Hospital withdrew from a council board where, as
he asserted, even Charles himself did not dare to express his opinions
freely.[574] Subsequently retiring altogether from the court to his
country-seat of Vignai, not far from Etampes, he surrendered his insignia
of office to a messenger of Catharine, who came to recommend him, in the
king's name, to take that rest which his advanced years demanded. Monsieur
de Morvilliers succeeded him, with the title of keeper of the seals, but
the full powers of chancellor.[575] In quiet retirement, the venerable
judge and legislator lingered more than four years, unhappy only in being
spared to see the melancholy results of the rejection of his prudent
counsels, the desolation of his native land, and the transformation of an
amiable king into a murderer of his own subjects. Few days in this
eventful reign were more lasting in their consequences than that which
beheld the final removal from all direct influence upon the court of the
only leading politician or statesman who could have forestalled the
horrors of a generation of inhuman wars.

[Sidenote: The plot.]

[Sidenote: Marshal Tavannes its author.]

The crisis now rapidly approached. The Huguenot chiefs were widely
separated from each other--Montgomery in Normandy, Genlis and Mouy in
Picardy, Rochefoucauld at Angouleme, D'Andelot in Brittany, Conde and
Coligny in Burgundy. The royal court, now entirely in the interest of the
Guises, resolved to execute the plan which the Roman Catholic nobles of
this faction had sketched to Alva three years before at Bayonne, by the
seizure of five or six of the leaders, as a measure preliminary to the
total suppression of Protestantism in France. Gaspard de Tavannes was
entrusted with the execution of the most important part of the scheme--the
arrest of the prince and the admiral. Fourteen companies of gens-d'armes
and as many ensigns of infantry stood under his orders, and Noyers was
closely beset on all sides.[576] It was at this moment, when secrecy was
all important to the success of the plot, that the tidings of the
threatening storm reached its destined victims. It has long been believed
and reported that Tavannes, unwilling to lend himself to