The position of affairs in France justified the hopes of the reformers. There were three parties in the state--the earnest Catholic party, headed by the Guises of Lorraine; the Huguenot party, directed by Calvin, with Condé in France as its future king, and Coligny as its master-spirit; and, as usual in such cases, a third party of weak men, who hampered the Catholics, and thus strengthened their opponents, by hesitation, uncertainty, and fitfulness.
The queen mother, Catharine de Medicis, disliked the house of Lorraine more than she loved Catholicity; and, jealous of the growing power of the Guises, was not disinclined to see the party of Condé counterbalance it. Hence, she generally threw her influence into the third party, in which figured the Duke d'Alençon, the Montmorencies, Cossé, Biron, and to which men like the famous Chancellor l'Hopital gave their influence. How little the true Catholic spirit, as we understand it now, prevailed among the higher nobility, may be inferred from the fact that the two great Protestant leaders, Condé and Coligny, were brothers of cardinals, their close relationship to princes of the Roman Church exerting no influence. One of these cardinals apostatized, and, after defying the pope, fled to England, to be poisoned by his valet; the other was a mere figure in the stirring scenes and times in which he lived.
Francis II., husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, on ascending the throne, placed the control of affairs in the hands of his uncles, the Cardinal of Lorraine and the Duke of Guise. This meant a firm government, not one to tolerate an _imperium in imperio_--a power able to put in the field, as Coligny boasted, one hundred and fifty thousand men.
Encouraged by the edict of January, 1560, the masses of the reformed party were, everywhere that their numbers permitted it, seizing Catholic churches and monasteries, expelling the inmates, demolishing every vestige of the ancient faith. While they were thus committing themselves, and overawing the Catholics, the leaders formed the celebrated plot of Amboise to assassinate the Guises, seize the person of the king, and, of course, the control of the government. In spite of his disavowal, made after it had failed, Calvin really approved of it at first. This White denies, (p. 82;) but the letter to Sturm, cited by Gandy, (p. 28,) is decisive; and in the very letter where he seems to condemn his followers, he says: "Had they not been opposed, in time our people would have seized many churches; ... but there, too, they yielded with the same weakness." (_Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire du Protestantisme Français_, i. p. 250.) Coligny's complicity is as evident. The ostensible leader was Bary de la Renaudie, "whose enmity to Guise," says White, "probably made him renounce his religion and join the reformers."