The King of Navarre, weak and irresolute though brave enough, wavered between Catholicism and the Reformation, inclining rather in his heart to the cause of the Reformation, to which the queen his wife, who at first showed indifference, had before long become Passionately attached.

His brother, the Prince of Conde, young, fiery, and often flighty and rash, put himself openly at the head of the Reformed party.

The house of Bourbon held itself to be the rival perforce of the house of Lorraine.
It had amongst the high noblesse of France two allies, more fitted than any others for fighting and for command, Admiral de Coligny and his brother, Francis d'Andelot, both of them nephews of the Constable Anne de Montmorency, both of them already experienced and famous warriors, and both of them devoted, heart and soul, to the cause of the Reformation.
Thus, at the accession of Francis II., whilst the Catholic party, by means of the Guises, and with the support of the majority of the country, took in hand the government of France, the reforming party ranged themselves round the King of Navarre, the Prince of Conde, and Admiral de Coligny, and became, under their direction, though in a minority, a powerful opposition, able and ready, on the one hand, to narrowly watch and criticise the actions of those who were in power, and on the other to claim for their own people, not by any means freedom as a general principle in the constitution of the state, but free manifestation of their faith, and free exercise of their own form of worship.
Apart from--we do not mean to say above-these two great parties, which were arrayed in the might and appeared as the representatives of the national ideas and feelings, the queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici, was quietly laboring to form another, more independent of the public, and more docile to herself, and, above all, faithful to the crown and to the interests of the kingly house and its servants; a party strictly Catholic, but regarding as a necessity the task of humoring the Reformers and granting them such concessions as might prevent explosions fraught with peril to the state; a third party (tiers part), as we should say nowadays, politic and prudent, somewhat lavish of promises without being sure of the power to keep them, not much embarrassed at having to change attitude and language according to the shifting phases of the moment, and anxious above everything to maintain public peace and to put off questions which it could not solve pacifically.

In the sixteenth century, as at every other time, worthy folks of moderate views and nervous temperaments, ambitious persons combining greed with suppleness, old servants of the crown, and officials full of scruples and far from bold in the practical part of government, were the essential elements of this party.

The Constable de Montmorency sometimes issued forth from Chantilly to go and aid the queen-mother, in whom he had no confidence, but whom he preferred to the Guises.