Independently of the general oppression and perils under which these latter labored, they were liable to meet everywhere, at the corners of the streets, men posted on the lookout, who insulted them and denounced them to the magistrates if they did not uncover themselves before the madonnas set up in their way, or if they did not join in the litanies chanted before them.

A repetition of petty requisitions soon becomes an odious tyranny.

An understanding was established between very different sorts of malcontents; they all said and spread abroad that the Guises were the authors of these oppressive and unjustifiable acts.

They made common cause in seeking for means of delivering themselves, at the same time drawing an open distinction between the Guises and the king, the latter of whom there was no idea of attacking.

The inviolability of kings and the responsibility of ministers, those two fundamental maxims of a free monarchy, had already become fixed ideas; but how were they to be taken advantage of and put in practice when the institutions whereby political liberty exerts its powers and keeps itself secure were not in force?
The malcontents, whether Reformers or Catholics, all cried out for the states-general.