While the war was going on in the west and centre of France, the League was strengthening its organisation and perfecting its plans. It had become more and more hostile to Henry III., and had become a secret revolutionary society. It drafted a complete programme for the immediate future. The cities and districts of France which felt themselves specially threatened by the Huguenots were to beseech the King to raise levies for their protection. If he refused or procrastinated, they were to raise the troops themselves, to be commanded by officers in whom the League had confidence. They could then compel the King to place himself at the head of this army of the Leaguers, or show himself to be their open enemy by refusing. If the King died childless, the partisans of the League were to gather at Orléans and Paris, and were there to elect the Cardinal de Bourbon as the King of France. The Pope and the King of Spain were to be at once informed, when it had been arranged that His Holiness would send his benediction, and that His Majesty would assist them with troops and supplies. A new form of oath was imposed on all the associates of the League. They were to swear allegiance to the King so long as he should show himself to be a good Catholic and refrained from favouring heretics. These instructions were sent down from the mother-society in Paris to the provinces, and the affiliated societies were recommended to keep in constant communication with Paris. Madame de Montpensier, sister to the Guises, at the same time directed the work of a band of preachers whose business it was to inflame the minds of the people in the capital and the provinces against the King and the Huguenots. She boasted that she did more work for the cause than her brothers were doing by the sword. The Guises, with this force behind them, tried to force the King to make new concessions--to publish the decisions of the Council of Trent in France (a thing that had not been done); to establish the Inquisition in France; to order the execution of all Huguenot prisoners who would not promise to abjure their religion; and to remove from the armies all officers of whom the League did not approve. The mother-society in Paris prepared for his refusal by organising a secret revolutionary government for the city. It was called "The Sixteen," being one for each of the sixteen sections of Paris. This government was under the orders of Guise, who communicated with them through an agent of his called Mayneville. Plot after plot was made to get possession of the King's person; and but for the activity and information of Nicholas Poulain, an officer of police who managed to secure private information, they would have been successful. § 18. _The Day of Barricades._[225]