He was quite willing to disconnect himself from the King of Spain, and even to incur his displeasure, but not to be actively embroiled with him and make war upon him; he could not conceal from himself that this policy, thoroughly French though it was, was considered in France too Protestant for a Catholic king.

Coligny urged him vehemently.

"If you want men," he said, "I have ten thousand at your service;" whereupon Tavannes said to the king, "Sir, whoever of your subjects uses such words to you, you ought to have his head struck off.

How is it that he offers you that which is your own?
It is that he has won over and corrupted them, and that he is a party-leader to your prejudice." Tavannes, a rough and faithful soldier, did not admit that there could be amongst men moral ties of a higher kind than political ties.

Charles IX., too weak in mind and character to think and act with independence and consistency in the great questions of the day, only sought how to elude them, and to leave time, that inscrutable master, to settle them in his place.