esse_ was fast becoming Huguenot. At the court
itself the nobles feasted ostentatiously on the fast days of the Church
and flocked to the Protestant preachings. The clergy themselves seemed
shaken. Bishops openly abjured the older faith. Coligni's brother, the
Cardinal of Chatillon, celebrated the communion instead of mass in his
own episcopal church at Beauvais, and married a wife. So irresistible
was the movement that Catharine saw no way of preserving France to
Catholicism but by the largest concessions; and in the summer of 1561
she called on the Pope to allow the removal of images, the
administration of the sacrament in both kinds, and the abolition of
private masses. Her demands were outstripped by those of an assembly of
deputies from the states which met at Pontoise. These called for the
confiscation of Church property, for freedom of conscience and of
worship, and above all for a national Council in which every question
should be decided by "the Word of God." France seemed on the verge of
becoming Protestant; and at a moment when Protestantism had won England
and Scotland, and appeared to be fast winning southern as well as
northern Germany, the accession of France would have determined the
triumph of the Reformation. The importance of its attitude was seen in
its effect on the Papacy. It was the call of France for a national
Council that drove Rome once more to summon the Council of Trent. It was
seen too in the policy of Mary Stuart. With France tending to Calvinism
it was no time for meddling with the Calvinism of Scotland; and Mary
rivalled Catharine herself in her pledges of toleration. It was seen
above all in the anxiety of Philip of Spain. To preserve the Netherlands
was still the main aim of Philip's policy, and with France as well as
England Protestant, a revolt of the Netherlands against the cruelties of
the Inquisition became inevitable. By appeals therefore to religious
passion, by direct pledges of aid, the Spanish king strove to rally the
party of the Guises against the system of Catharine.

[Sidenote: The Civil War.]

But Philip's intrigues were hardly needed to rouse the French Catholics
to arms. If the Guises had withdrawn from court it was only to organize
resistance to the Huguenots. They were aided by the violence of their
opponents. The Huguenot lords believed themselves irresistible; they
boasted that the churches numbered more than three hundred thousand men
fit to bear arms. But the ma