Protestantism in France From Death of Francis I to Edict of Nantes - James Aitken Wylie

further, while these two hundred or so of
Romanists were murdered, the Huguenots were
perishing in tens of thousands by every variety of
cruel death, and of shocking and shameful outrage.
There was no justice in the land. The crew that
occupied the Louvre, and styled themselves the
Government, were there, as the Thug is in his den,
to entrap and dispatch his victim. There were men
in France doubtless who reasoned that, although
the laws of society had fallen, the laws of nature
were still in force.
Matters were brought to a head by the
discovery of a plot which was to be immediately
executed. At a council in the Louvre, it was
resolved to seize the two Protestant chiefs, the
Prince of Conde and Admiral Coligny-- and put
them out of the way, by consigning the first to a
dungeon for life, and sending the second to the
scaffold. The moment they were informed of the
plot, the prince and the admiral fled with their
wives and children to La Rochelle. The road was
long and the journey toilsome. They had to traverse
three hundred miles of rough country, obstructed
262