the trusted and consistent, though ill-starred, champion of the Protestants.
The Conspiracy of Amboise (1560).—The foregoing notice of parties and their chiefs will render intelligible the events which we now have to narrate. The harsh measures adopted against the reformers by Francis II., who of course was entirely under the influence of the Guises, led the chiefs of the persecuted party to lay a plan for wresting the government from the hands of these "new Mayors of the Palace." The Guises were to be arrested and imprisoned, and the charge of the young king given to the Prince of Conde. The plot was revealed to the Guises, and was avenged by the execution of more than a thousand of the Huguenots.
The Massacre of Vassy (1562).—After the short reign of Francis II. (1559–1560), his brother Charles came to the throne as Charles IX. He was only ten years of age, so the queen-mother assumed the government in his name. Pursuing her favorite maxim to rule by setting one party as a counterpoise to the other, she gave the Bourbon princes a place in the government, and also by a royal edict gave the Huguenots a limited toleration, and forbade their further persecution.
These concessions in favor of the Huguenots angered the Catholic chiefs, particularly the Guises; and it was the violation by the adherents of the Duke of Guise of the edict of toleration that finally caused the growing animosities of the two parties to break out in civil war. While passing through the country with a body of armed attendants, at a small place called Vassy, the Duke came upon a company of Huguenots assembled in a barn for worship. His retainers first insulted and then attacked them, killing about forty of the company and wounding many more.
Under the lead of Admiral Coligny and the Prince of Condé, the Huguenots now rose throughout France. Philip II. of Spain sent an army to aid the Catholics, while Elizabeth of England extended help to the Huguenots.
The Treaty of St. Germain (1570).—Throughout the series of
