Note 799 — Chapter IX

Correspondance de Catherine de Médicis, I, 552, col. 2. At the same time Catherine wrote to certain members of the Parlement of Bordeaux. Montluc’s reply, both the personal letter he wrote to the queen mother (April 11), and the more official remonstrance he forwarded to the King, is a palpable lie. He wrote to the queen “Je vous puis asseurer ... que despuis la nouvelle de la paix, il n’y a eu traicté d’association aucune; que, au moindre mot que j’en ay dict, tout ne soit cessé comme s’il n’en avoit jamais esté parle.”—Commentaires et lettres, IV, 206. Cf. his similar declaration to Charles IX, on p. 214. The clergy of Bordeaux sustained Montluc in this deception, and when the queen’s suspicion continued, justified the association on the ground of religion. Corresp. de Catherine de Méd., I, 552, note. Candalle in a letter of May 20, 1563, still evaded the truth in writing to the queen (F. Fr., 15,876, fol. 495), and Catherine, upon more suspicious information from d’Escars, determined to satisfy herself of certain facts, and sent two commissioners to Guyenne to secure better information (Commentaires et lettres de Montluc, IV, 270, note). Unfortunately for the government, the Parlement of Bordeaux resented their coming as an invasion of their jurisdiction, and the inquiry degenerated into a quarrel between the Parlement and the commissioners (ibid., IV, 292, n. 1; Corresp. de Catherine de Médicis, II, 114, 115).