ours, in 1484, under Charles VIII.,
had left behind them a momentous and an honored memory. But the Guises
and their partisans energetically rejected this cry. "They told the king
that whoever spoke of convoking the states-general was his personal enemy
and guilty of high treason; for his people would fain impose law upon him
from whom they ought to take it, in such sort that there would be left to
him nothing of a king but the bare title. The queen-mother, though all
the while giving fair words to the malcontents, whether Reformers or
others, was also disquieted at their demands, and she wrote to her
son-in-law, Philip II., King of Spain, 'that they wanted, by means of the
said states, to reduce her to the condition of a maid-of-all-work.'
Whereupon Philip replied 'that he would willingly employ all his forces
to uphold the authority of the king his brother-in-law and of his
ministers, and that he had forty thousand men all ready in case anybody
should be bold enough to attempt to violate it.'"

In their perplexity, the malcontents, amongst whom the Reformers were
becoming day by day the most numerous and the most urgent, determined to
take the advice of the greatest lawyers and most celebrated theologians
of France and Germany. They asked whether it would be permissible, with
a good conscience and without falling into the crime of high treason, to
take up arms for the purpose of securing the persons of the Duke of Guise
and the Cardinal of Lorraine, and forcing them to render an account of
their administration. The doctors, on being consulted, answered that it
would be allowable to oppose by force the far from legitimate supremacy
of the Guises, provided that it were done under the authority of princes
of the blood, born administrators of the realm in such cases, and with
the consent of the orders composing the state, or the greatest and
soundest portion of those orders. A meeting of the princes who were
hostile to the Guises were held at Vendome to deliberate as to the
conduct to be adopted in this condition of opinions and parties;
the King of Navarre and his brother the Prince of Conde, Coligny,
D'Andelot, and some of their most intimate friends took part in it;
and D'Ardres, confidential secretary to the Constable de Montmorency, was
present. The Prince of Conde was for taking up arms at once and swoop
down upon the Guises, taking them by surprise. Coligny formally opposed
this plan; the king, at his majori