The Reformed of Montauban drew up, on the 24th August, a year after the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, energetic remonstrances, day by day, in which they re-demanded all that had been accorded them by the treaty of 1570, and three noblemen undertook to present this petition to Charles IX. The king, whom they met at Villers-Coterets, contrary to his usual habit, listened to the reading of the memorial without giving utterance to a word. But Catherine exclaimed, in an irritated tone of voice, “If your prince Condé were still alive, and if he were in the heart of France with twenty thousand cavalry and fifty thousand infantry, he could not demand one-half of what these people have the insolence to propose to us.” This was haughty language; but pride tells badly after infamous assassinations, and Catherine de Medicis was in no position to speak in so high a tone. There was nothing but trouble and anarchy throughout the kingdom; and even in the royal family division and disorder prevailed. The queen-mother feared the eldest of her sons, despised the youngest, loved only the second, who was on the point of starting for Poland, and was distrusted by all of them. The three brothers were enemies, and their sister Margaret of Valois was stained with adultery and incest. The party of the _Politicians_, or the Third Estate, was growing. It was composed of those, who had retained some remembrance of ancient national honour, and who felt profound disgust for a court filled with hired assassins, poisoners, astrologers, and prostitutes. The three sons of the Constable, François de Montmorency, Damville, and Thoré, the marshals Cossé and Biron, several provincial governors, magistrates, and members even of the privy council, were among the number of these politicians or malcontents. Their chief was the Duke d’Alençon, since known under the name of Duke d’Anjou, the last of Queen Catherine’s sons. His position as the king’s brother gave him credit; but this prince, then in his twentieth year, was wanting both in mental and bodily vigour, he was fickle, presumptuous, faithless to his word, and ready to throw himself into great enterprises, which he was incapable of carrying out to a successful issue. He even circulated among the citizens new maxims of law and political liberty. It was at this period that La Boëtie published his treatise on _Voluntary Servitude_, which even now astonishes us by its boldness; and François Hotman his _Franco-Gallia_, in which he maintained that the States-General might depose bad princes, and appoint their successors.