The Catholics, if less prompt, were not less vigorous in their proceedings. In 1561 the citizens of Paris had been disarmed as a measure of precaution; now every member of the “ancient Catholic religion,” capable of bearing arms, was ordered to procure them and attend drill.[286] By this means fifteen corps of infantry, amounting to the almost incredible number[287] of 30,000 men (others say 24,000), were placed at the disposal of the Triumvirate for the protection of the capital. By another order, issued by Marshal Brissac, who had succeeded Montmorency as governor, all persons, “notoriously famed as being of the new religion,” were ordered to leave the city within twenty-four hours, or they would be hanged; as for such as were “suspected” only, they were required to get a certificate of confession.[288] The populace did not fail to take advantage of the opportunity thus placed within their reach, by informing against those whom, from any personal or other motive, they wanted to turn out of their houses; and if the Huguenots did not go, they were plundered and ill-used. And now began a war of manifestoes and remonstrances. The walls of the capital were covered with placards in which the Huguenots declared that they had taken up arms in self-defense and not for plunder, and the Catholics replied in terms that exhausted the vocabulary of abuse. The Lorraine party, or the Triumvirate, was the Ultramontane or foreign party; the Protestant party was especially that of national independence. The Huguenots, like the English Parliamentarians of 1642, represented the middle classes, and were (perhaps unconsciously) democratic in their tendencies; the Royalists (as we may call them, since they held the king’s person, although they were not more loyal than their opponents) were supported by the clergy, the ignorant rural population, and the poverty of the towns. Both parties sought political power to carry out their views. It may be said that, if ever there was a time when Christians were justified in resorting to the sword, it was the present. The laws in favor of the Huguenots were constantly and systematically broken. The massacre at Vassy was only the first of a series of outrages equally barbarous. At Sens in Burgundy, a Huguenot having insulted a Catholic procession, the tocsin was rung, and there was a general onslaught upon the Reformed, without regard either to age or sex. The bodies of the victims, stripped and fastened to planks, were thrown into the river and floated down to Paris, twenty leagues distant. One of them, that of a Gascon officer, was dragged through the streets by boys leaping and shouting: “Take care of your pigs, for we have got the pigkeeper.” The fanatic populace destroyed every thing, even rooting up the vines in the Calvinist vineyards. For three days the hideous carnival of murder went on, and ceased only from want of victims.[289]