was the link which connected them with the moderate section of the Catholic party. While their antagonists esteemed Guise and Philip II. and the pope far more than they did their king, the Huguenots were especially Frenchmen. They were loyal in the best sense of the word, as were the English Catholics, who, under a popish admiral, drove the Armada from the seas. But the “politicians,” as they are usually called, were in advance of their age: the time for moderation had not yet come. The Cardinal of Lorraine still raised his voice for extermination, and the pride of both Catherine and Charles had been deeply wounded by the undignified flight from Meaux. Philip II., who dreaded to see France at peace, continued to intrigue with the most bigoted of the king’s advisers. Alva, too, reminded the queen-mother that it was “much better to have a kingdom ruined in preserving it for God and the king by war, than to have it kept entire without war, to the profit of the devil and his heretical followers.”[415] In addition to all this, the peace had made Catherine unpopular even among those of her own religion; both she and the king were most absurdly suspected of heresy, and, adds Claude Haton, “it is certain that they were the support and prop of the rebel Huguenots.” Speaking of the Lent Sermons in this year (1568) he says, that “the clergy from the pulpits taxed the king, his mother, and the council, with being by the said peace the cause of the entire ruin of the kingdom and of the Catholic religion.” This language was reported to their majesties, who immediately ordered the clergy to preach the Gospel, and not abuse their sovereign, under pain of the severest punishment. But if the preachers moderated their tone toward the king and the queen-mother, they became more violent in their attacks upon the Huguenots. From every pulpit fanatical monks hounded on their already too eager listeners to farther deeds of blood, not only by proclaiming that faith ought not to be kept with heretics, but that it was a meritorious act to slay them. The system of forced baptisms was continued, the rights of the individual being as little regarded under Charles IX. in 1568 as under Louis XIV. at the close of the following century. At Provins, a babe six weeks old was carried to the church and christened, the mother being taken thither in the custody of the police, and the father left in the hands of the soldiers until the ceremony was over. In the municipal archives of Tallard we read: “Paid six sols to a royal sergeant sent by the deputy bailiff of Gap to publish an order that the children who had been baptized in the new religion should be rebaptized in the Catholic religion.”[416] At Dieppe, the midwives were required to make a declaration within two hours of the birth of every Huguenot infant, who was taken away and christened publicly.