The defection of the king of Navarre, lending weight to the triumvirate, bore the fruit which the (Roman) Catholic party expected. Coligny and his brothers, seeing that they were treated with mistrust, withdrew from court. The prince of Condé, who had hitherto been kept at a distance, went and fixed himself at Paris; and the Guises thus had full liberty to commit acts, which in more settled times would have been esteemed as high treason against the chief of the state. They concluded an alliance with the king of Spain and the duke of Savoy, and undertook to open to them the gates of the kingdom for the extermination of heretics. At the same time, they tore up the Edict of January at the sword’s point, by the massacre of Vassy. Vassy was a small, but strong town in the county of Champagne. It contained about three thousand inhabitants, the third of whom, without counting the surrounding villages, professed the Reformed faith. This change of religion irritated the Lorraines, who were established near the town, in their dominion of Joinville, and in particular a very aged lady, the dowager-duchess of Guise, who could not understand why the Huguenots had not already been put an end to. She pretended that the inhabitants of Vassy had no right, as vassals of her grand-daughter Mary Stuart, to choose a new religion without her permission. She therefore threatened them with a terrible vengeance, and as they gave no heed to her violence, she invited her son, the duke Francis of Guise, to make a striking example of such insolent rebels. On the 28th of February, 1562, the duke, having received from the king of Navarre an invitation to return to Paris to suppress the Huguenots, left the Château of Joinville with an escort of several gentlemen, and two hundred horsemen. Arriving the next morning at Brousseval, a village a quarter of a league distant from Vassy, he heard the sound of the bells. “What is that?” he asked of one of his attendants. “That is for the service of the Huguenots.” “By the mort-Dieu!” exclaimed the duke, “we will Huguenot them presently after a different fashion.” On Sunday, the 1st of March, on entering Vassy, he was joined by sixty horsemen and bowmen. He dismounted in front of the hall, and sent for the prior and the provost—both bitter enemies of the new doctrine. During this time the Reformed had assembled, to the number of about twelve hundred, in a barn, and were celebrating their worship under the protection of the Edict of January. Not one of them was armed, with the exception of two strangers, probably gentlemen, who had their swords.