The duke of Guise made a triumphal entry into Paris. The priests urged on the multitude to crowd the path of the man of Vassy, whilst comparing him to Judas Maccabæus, and awarding to him the glorious name of _defender of the faith_. Catherine de Medicis was offended at this triumph both in her pride as queen-mother, and in her right as regent; but the duke left her no time to concert a league with the Calvinists. Encouraged by the support of the king of Navarre, of Anne of Montmorency, and of the Marshal de Saint André, he carried off Charles IX. and Catherine herself, and dragged them from Fontainebleau to Melun, from Melun to Vincennes, and from Vincennes to Paris. These were the days of the 5th and 6th October of the triumvirate. Where legitimate authority now rested was unknown. The sovereignty was floating about at hap-hazard. The Reformed were in some sort placed beyond the law by the enterprises of the man, who had recently massacred their brethren; they found themselves thrown into an attitude of personal defence. So, from one end of France to the other, without preliminary concert, they flew to arms, just as one would do when he sees his house broken into at midnight by a band of robbers. “It is ever to be remembered,” says an historian of the sixteenth century, “that so long as the Reformed were put to death under any form of justice, however iniquitous and cruel, they held out their necks, and offered no resistance. But when public authority, in the person of the magistracy, wearied of burnings, flung the knife into the hands of the people, and the tumults and enormous massacres of France had torn away the venerable aspect of justice, and had made neighbour to slaughter neighbour at the sound of trumpet and drum, who could forbid the wretched to oppose arm to arm, steel to steel, and to catch from a fury without justice the contagion of a just fury?... Let foreign nations judge which of the two parties have their foreheads stained with the crime of war!”[42] The queen-mother seemed to authorize the Huguenots’ resort to arms, and even to solicit it in the name of Charles IX. “My cousin,” she wrote to the prince of Condé, “you will take care to preserve the children and the mother, and the kingdom for him whom it concerns, by whom you may rest assured it will never be forgotten. If I die before I have an opportunity of showing my gratitude, as I wish to do, I will leave instructions to my children. I see so many things which grieve me, that were it not for the confidence I feel in you, that you will aid me in preserving this kingdom and the authority of the king, my son, in spite of those who would lose all, I should be yet more grieved.” These letters, communicated to the gentry of the religion, strengthened them in their projects: for they believed they were upholding not only their own cause, but that of the crown.