once released Conde, and favoured the Bourbons and the Huguenots to keep down the Guises, even permitting conferences to see whether the French Church could be reformed so as to satisfy the Calvinists.  Proposals were sent by Guise’s brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine, to the council then sitting at Trent, for vernacular services, the marriage of the clergy, and other alterations which might win back the Reformers.  But an attack by the followers of Guise on a meeting of Calvinists at Vassy, of whose ringing of bells his mother had complained, led to the first bloodshed and the outbreak of a civil war.

5.  The Religious War.—­To trace each stage of the war would be impossible within these limits.  It was a war often lulled for a short time, and often breaking out again, and in which the actors grew more and more cruel.  The Reformed influence was in the south, the Catholic in the east.  Most of the provincial cities at first held with the Bourbons, for the sake of civil and religious freedom; though the Guise family succeeded to the popularity of the Burgundian dukes in Paris.  Still Catherine persuaded Antony of Bourbon to return to court just as his wife, Queen Jeanne of Navarre, had become a staunch Calvinist, and while dreaming of exchanging his claim on Navarre for the kingdom of Sardinia, he was killed on the Catholic side while besieging Rouen.  At the first outbreak the Huguenots seemed to have by far the greatest influence.  An endeavour was made to seize the king’s person, and this led to a battle at Dreux.  While it was doubtful Catherine actually declared, “We shall have to say our prayers in French.”  Guise, however, retrieved the day, and though Montmorency was made prisoner on the one side, Conde was taken on the other.  Orleans was the Huguenot rallying-place, and while besieging it Guise himself was assassinated.  His death was believed by his family to be due to the Admiral de Coligny.  The city of Rochelle, fortified by Jeanne of Navarre, became the stronghold of the Huguenots.  Leader after leader fell—­Montmorency, on the one hand, was killed at Montcontour; Conde, on the other, was shot in cold blood after the fight of Jarnac.  A truce followed, but was soon broken again, and in 1571 Coligny was the only man of age and standing at the head of the Huguenot party; while the Catholics had as leaders Henry, Duke of Anjou, the king’s brother, and Henry, Duke of Guise, both young men of little more than twenty.  The Huguenots had been beaten at all points, but were still strong enough to have wrung from their enemies permission to hold meetings for public worship within unwalled towns and on the estates of such nobles as held with them.