[98] “Les protestans de France se mettans devant les yeux l’example de leurs voisins.”—Castelnau, Book I, chap. vii.
[99] La Planche, 237.
[100] Ibid.; Castelnau, Book I, chap. viii. The Huguenots did not intend to take up arms against the person of the King or to force Francis II to change the religion of the state. The assertion that these were their purposes was an adroit stroke of the Guises (Rev. hist., XIV, 85, 101).
[101] Rel. vén., I, 525.
[102] Volrad of Mansfeldt and Grumbach, counselor of the elector palatine, but personal enemies of the cardinal of Lorraine, had been drawn by sympathy into the plan, and on March 4, through their influence, Hotman was received by the elector at Heidelberg, who gave Hotman a letter of credit to the king of Navarre and the prince of Condé. See Dareste, “Extraits de la correspondance inédite de François Hotman,” Mém. de l’Académie des sciences morales et politiques, CIV (1897), 649.
[103] After the failure of the conspiracy, during the course of the investigation set on foot by the government, the constable was accused of complicity in the affair but vigorously denied it in a remonstrance laid before the Parlement (La Place, 37, gives a part of the text; Castelnau, Book II, chap, xi), and while condemning the conspiracy artfully contrived to imply that the Guises were to be blamed for much (La Planche, 269). De Thou, II, 778, perhaps reproduces the actual language of the constable before the Parlement, his father having been president of the body at this time. But in the early winter Montmorency had visited his lands in Poitou and Angoumois, and his daughter, Madame de la Tremouille, having quitted his usual place of residence at Chantilly, and traveled in those quarters of France which, it will be observed, are identical with those wherein the conspiracy of Amboise was hatched (La Place, 32). Is it reasonable to believe that a man of his political acumen and state of feeling at the time toward the Guises could have been unaware of at least something of what was in preparation? The strongest evidence in favor of the innocence of the constable is the fact that his two nephews, the cardinal de Châtillon and the admiral Coligny were undoubtedly without knowledge of the plot. See the proofs in Delaborde, Vie de Coligny, I, 391-414; D’Aubigné, ed. De Ruble, I, 263, n. 6; Paillard, “Additions critiques à l’histoire de la conjuration d’Amboise,” Rev. hist., XIV (1880), 70, 71. It is hard, however, to believe that the constable had no information at all of what was on foot, considering his politics and his movements during the winter.
[104] La Place, 33; Le Laboureur, I, 386, says his first name was Jean.
[105] C. S. P. Ven., No. 137. He had been imprisoned for devising false evidence in a process of law (D’Aubigné, ed. De Ruble, I, 258, n. 3). La Renaudie is said even to have gone to England to see Queen Elizabeth (Haag, La France protestante, I, 259). No reference is given, but from Hotman’s correspondence (Acad. des sc. moral. et polit., CIV [1877], 645) it is evident some one was so sent. The further fact that Mundt was approached in Strasburg and French proclamations printed in England were circulated in Normandy (C. S. P. For., 954, April 6, 1560) seems to sustain this view.
[106] La Place, 41; Castelnau, Book I, chap. viii.
[107] D’Aubigné, Book II, chap, xvii; I, 259-61 gives the names of the provincial captains.