As soon as the Spanish troops had crossed the frontier and entered the Netherlands, it was expected that the royal army would be disbanded; but, instead of that, it was marched to the neighborhood of Paris. This was of itself quite enough to excite the alarm of the Huguenot leaders, who were farther startled by information of a plot to seize both Condé and the admiral; to imprison the former for life, and put the other to death; and to place garrisons in the towns favorable to the Reformed religion, the exercise of which was to be prohibited all over the kingdom.[386] The heads of the Huguenot party immediately took council with the admiral at his castle of Chatillon. Their deliberations were long and serious. No doubt seems to have been entertained regarding the truth of the report. The suspicions aroused by the Bayonne meeting, corroborated by stories of the projected massacre at Moulins, which failed only because the Huguenots were present in too great number, were strengthened by the insolence of Anjou and the queen-mother’s insincerity. The edicts of toleration had not been fairly brought into operation; new interpretation edicts were continually encroaching upon the privileges of the Reformed; Alva was at hand in Flanders to assist in carrying out the scheme he had suggested only a few months before. Men in a panic never reason fairly, never indeed examine into the truth of the rumors by which their alarm has been roused. It was so in the present instance when the more violent party said: “Shall we tarry until they come and bind us hand and foot, and so draw us unto their scaffold at Paris, there by our shameful deaths to glut others’ cruelty? Do we not see the foreign enemy marching armed toward us, and threatening to be revenged on us for Dreux? Have we forgotten that about 3000 of our religion have, since the peace, endured violent deaths, for whom we can have no redress? If it were our king’s will we should be thus injured, we might perhaps the better bear it; but shall we bear the insolence of those who shroud themselves under his name and try to alienate his good-will from us? For more than forty years our fathers professed the true religion in secret, and endured all sorts of tortures and injuries with patience inexhaustible. If we who are so numerous, and who are able to profess our religion openly, should betray a righteous cause by a disgraceful silence and unseasonable moderation, we should fall into an apostasy unworthy of the two goodly titles of Christian and gentleman. We should be wanting not only to ourselves but to God, and besides losing our own souls should be the cause of ruin to others.”[387] Coligny advised them to be patient: “I see clearly how we may rekindle the fire,” he said; “but not where we may find water to quench it.” His brother Andelot was for more vigorous measures: “If we wait until we are shut up in prison, what will our patience avail us? If we give our enemies the advantage of striking