Henry M. Baird · 260 of 379

CHAPTER X · He is found guilty and sentenced to be beheaded.

A commission, consisting of Chancellor L'Hospital, President De Thou, Counsellors Faye and Viole, and a few others, was appointed, on the thirteenth of November, to conduct the trial. Condé refused to plead before them, taking refuge in his privilege, as a prince, to be tried only before the king and by his peers. His appeals, however, were rejected by the privy council, and he was commanded, in the king's name, to answer, under pain of being held a traitor. In view of the known desire and intention of the king and his chief advisers, the trial was likely to be expeditious and not over-scrupulous. The most innocent expressions of disapproval of the violent executions at Amboise were perverted into open approval of a plot against the king. The prosecution sought to establish the heresy of the prince, in order to furnish some ground for finding him guilty of treason against Divine as well as royal authority. Nor was this difficult. A priest, in full officiating vestments, was introduced, as by royal command, to say mass in Condé's presence. But the young Bourbon drove him out with rough words, declaring "that he had come to his Majesty with no intention of holding any communion with the impieties and defilements of the Roman Antichrist, but solely to relieve himself of the false accusations that had been made against him." Before so partial a court the trial could have but one issue. Condé was found guilty, and condemned to be beheaded on a scaffold erected before the king's temporary residence, at the opening of the States General. The sentence was signed not only by the judges to whom the investigation had been entrusted, but by members of the privy council, by the members of the Order of St. Michael, and by a large number of less important dignitaries, without even a formal examination into the merits of the case—so anxious were the Guises to involve as many influential persons as possible in the same responsibility with themselves. Of the privy councillors, Du Mortier and Chancellor de l'Hospital alone refused to append their signatures without a longer term for reflection, and endeavored to ward off the blow by procrastination.