Note 817 — Chapter IX

The uniform statement of the contemporary authorities from whom our accounts of the "Tumult" are derived, is to the effect that the blow was to be struck at Blois, but that, on discovering their peril, the Guises hastily removed the court, for greater safety, to the castle of Amboise. And yet the correspondence of the English commissioners discloses the fact that the time of the removal had been decided upon on the 28th of January, several days before the Nantes assembly. See Ranke, Am. ed., 176. "The Frenche King, as it is said, the 5th of February removeth hens towardes Amboise; and will be fifteen dayes in going thither." Despatch of Killigrew and Jones, from Blois, January 28, 1559/60, Forbes, State Papers, i. 315. In fact, the general outline of the royal progress was indicated by the Spanish ambassador, Perrenot Chantonnay, to Philip II., so far back as December 2, 1559: "La cour, lui avait-il écrit, a le projet de passer le curéme à Amboise, de se rendre en Guyenne au printemps, en passant par Poitiers, Bordeaux, Bayonne, d'aller ensuite à Toulouse, de demeurer l'hiver suivant en Provence et en Languedoc, et d'agir vigoureusement contre les hérétiques." Mignet, Journal des Savants, 1857, 419, from Simancas MSS. The Spanish ambassador saw so much that appalled him in the rapid progress of the Reformation in every part of France, that he feared alike for the North and the South, when the king was not present to check its growth.