Note 103 — Chapter I

After the failure of the conspiracy, during the course of the investigation set on foot by the government, the constable was accused of complicity in the affair but vigorously denied it in a remonstrance laid before the Parlement (La Place, 37, gives a part of the text; Castelnau, Book II, chap, xi), and while condemning the conspiracy artfully contrived to imply that the Guises were to be blamed for much (La Planche, 269). De Thou, II, 778, perhaps reproduces the actual language of the constable before the Parlement, his father having been president of the body at this time. But in the early winter Montmorency had visited his lands in Poitou and Angoumois, and his daughter, Madame de la Tremouille, having quitted his usual place of residence at Chantilly, and traveled in those quarters of France which, it will be observed, are identical with those wherein the conspiracy of Amboise was hatched (La Place, 32). Is it reasonable to believe that a man of his political acumen and state of feeling at the time toward the Guises could have been unaware of at least something of what was in preparation? The strongest evidence in favor of the innocence of the constable is the fact that his two nephews, the cardinal de Châtillon and the admiral Coligny were undoubtedly without knowledge of the plot. See the proofs in Delaborde, Vie de Coligny, I, 391-414; D’Aubigné, ed. De Ruble, I, 263, n. 6; Paillard, “Additions critiques à l’histoire de la conjuration d’Amboise,” Rev. hist., XIV (1880), 70, 71. It is hard, however, to believe that the constable had no information at all of what was on foot, considering his politics and his movements during the winter.