After these three victims, four others were sacrificed. But by this time, Protestant Europe had been stirred up by the voice of Calvin and of Farel. The Swiss cantons, the County Palatine, the elector of Saxony, the duke of Wurtemburg, the marquis of Brandenburg, interceded for the prisoners. Henry II. wanted the support of the Protestants, and granted their request. Everything in this affair was therefore to overflow with disgrace, even down to the act of amnesty wrenched from a king of France by the intervention of the foreigner. IX. Beaten without by the most violent storms, the French Reformation did not neglect anything by which it might strengthen itself within. Its organization was necessarily long defective and incomplete. At first, as we have seen, there were simple gatherings, without fixed pastors or regular administration of the sacraments. No churches then existed, in the dogmatic sense of the word, but only the seeds and scattered elements of churches. This lasted about thirty years. Then the flocks had a consistory, ministers, a stable authority, a recognised discipline. The example had been set by the faithful of Paris, in 1555. A gentleman who received them at his house, M. de la Ferrière, proposed that they should appoint a pastor. Many objections were urged; but his representations prevailed, and the meeting nominated a minister, elders, and deacons. The same organization was adopted at Poitiers, Angers, Bourges, and other places. And thus was constituted the local church or ecclesiastical community. A great step remained to be taken. The churches were isolated and independent of each other. They were to be confederated and united into one general church, whether for the maintenance of unity of belief and discipline, or to oppose a stronger barrier against the attacks of the enemy. Such was the subject of the discussion, held with his colleagues, by the pastor Antoine de Chandieu, who had come to Poitiers from Paris about the end of the year 1558. All resolved upon convoking a general synod as soon as possible at Paris, with the consent of the consistory, “not to attribute any pre-eminence or dignity to that church,” as Theodore de Bèze expressly observes, “but because it was then the most convenient town for collecting secretly a great number of ministers and elders.”[25] In face of the gibbets erected on the public places, and of the sanguinary laws that crushed the Reformers, the difficulties of executing their project were immense. The result was, that only thirteen churches sent their deputies to this synod: Paris, Saint Lô, Dieppe, Angers, Orleans, Tours, Poitiers, Saintes, Marennes, Châtellerault, Saint Jean d’Angély. These delegates assembled under the presidency of the pastor François Morel, lord of Collonges, the 25th of May, 1559.