Henry M. Baird · 195 of 379

CHAPTER IX · The convocation of the States General.

The religious grievances thus ran parallel with the political, and could scarcely be distinguished in the great aggregate of the intolerable oppression to which France was subjected. The legislation of which such grave complaint was made, it must be admitted, was sometimes sufficiently whimsical. The resources of the royal treasury, for instance, being inadequate to meet the demands of creditors, it was necessary to silence their importunity. An inhuman decree was accordingly published, enjoining upon all petitioners who had come to Fontainebleau, where the king was sojourning, to solicit the payment of debts or pensions, to leave the court within twenty-four hours, on pain of the halter! A gallows newly erected in front of the castle was a significant warning as to the serious character of the threat. In order to provide against uprisings such as the violent course taken was well calculated to occasion, the people must be disarmed. Accordingly, an edict was published, within a fortnight after the accession of Francis, strictly forbidding all persons from carrying pistols and other firearms, and the prohibition was more than once repeated during this brief reign. While thus seeking to repress the display of the popular displeasure in acts of violence and sedition, the Guises resolved to prevent the overthrow of their usurped authority by legitimate means. The convocation of the States General was the safety-valve through which, in accordance with a wise provision, the overheated passions of the people were wont to find vent. But the assembling of the representatives of the three orders would be equivalent to signing the death-warrant of the Guises; while to Catharine, the queen mother, it would betoken an equally dreaded termination of long-cherished hopes. Both Catharine and the Guises, therefore, gave out that whoever talked of convening the States was a mortal enemy of the king, and made himself liable to the pains of treason. Every precaution had been taken to make the boiler tight, and to render impossible the escape of the scalding waters and the steam; it only remained to be seen whether the structure was proof against an explosion.