Remonstrance of the Prince of Condé

enemies, to know what they are brewing against him under the cover and pretext of such an exception: as it is also easy to judge by the missive letters sent by the Bailiwicks, in which he is included in general with the others.

Now, so that it may appear that the crime of rebellion must fall upon those who, of their own authority, have taken up arms to break the King’s Edicts and disturb the peace of the entire Kingdom, and not upon the others who have armed themselves to stand against and oppose such a pernicious enterprise, we will repeat here in brief what is amply discoursed in our previous writings.

Everyone knows that the Edict of January The Edict of January 1562 granted limited religious freedom to Huguenots, a significant moment in the French Wars of Religion. had brought such peace to all of France that it seemed the state of this Kingdom, previously agitated by infinite troubles and storms, had arrived at a happy and tranquil port, when the Sieur de Guise Francis, Duke of Guise, a leader of the Catholic faction., by the massacre he committed at Vassy The Massacre of Vassy on March 1, 1562, is considered the spark that ignited the French Wars of Religion., openly gave it to be known that he had sworn war both against the state of the King and against the welfare and peace of all his people. This was rightly found strange by the said Lord Prince, who, due to the position he holds, has a duty to conserve and maintain the authority and greatness of the King, which the said Sieur de Guise has at all times made a profession of wishing to bring to an extreme ruin. This, I say, was found miraculously strange, that a subject had dared to break so openly an Edict of his Prince, indeed an Edict made following the deliberation of the