No reliable estimate can be made of the proportion between Catholics and Huguenots in the sixteenth century. A remonstrance of 1562 to the Pope declared that one-fourth of France was separate from the communion of Rome.[806] The Venetian ambassador thought “hardly a third part of the people heretical” in 1567.[807] The _échevins_ of Amiens declared three-quarters of the inhabitants of Amiens were Protestant in the same year.[808] Charles IX in a remonstrance to Pius IV asserted that a fourth part of France was Protestant.[809] Montluc, no mean observer, estimated that one-tenth of the population of Guyenne was Protestant.[810] If this proportion be applied to France at large, the Huguenots would have numbered something like 1,600,000. Beza, who presided over the synod of La Rochelle in 1571, claimed that the Huguenots had 2,150 congregations, some of them very large, as in the case of the church of Orleans, which was said to have 7,000 members. At the time of the Colloquy of Poissy, Normandy was said to have 305 pastors, Provence 60.[811] But the number of Huguenots in Normandy, Provence, or the Orléannais was exceptionally large. The average congregation must have been small. If we assume that the population of France was sixteen millions[812] and that one-tenth of the people were Calvinist, we would have a total of 1,600,000 Protestants for all France, which would give an average of about 750 members to each congregation on the basis of Beza’s statement as to the number of the Huguenot churches. This is certainly much too high a figure. Personally I believe the average was less than half of this. If the congregation averaged 400 members each, on Beza’s calculation there would have been 860,000 Huguenots in France. A Venetian source of the year 1562 sets the number at 600,000.[813] This may be too low, but all things considered, I believe it not far from the truth. The total Protestant population of France I do not believe to have exceeded three-quarters of a million before 1572, and after that date it is often difficult to distinguish between Huguenots and Politiques. Such was the state of things when the first civil war came to an end. CHAPTER X THE TOUR OF THE PROVINCES.[814] THE BAYONNE EPISODE “I am always _en voyage_,” wrote the Venetian ambassador to the senate. “Since the beginning of my embassy the King has not staid more than fifteen days in any one place. He goes from Lorraine to Poitou, and then to Normandy and the edge of Belgium, back again to Normandy, then to Paris, Picardy, Champagne, Burgundy.”[815] Dr. Dale wrote in the same strain to Lord Burghley: “The Spanish ambassador has a saying that ambassadors in France are eaten up by their horses, since they are constrained to keep so many because of the habit of the court of moving from place to place continually.”[816]