“La tyrannie guisienne”[78] was a practical ascendency, not a mere fiction of their opponents. As uncles of Francis II, destined morally to be a minor always, owing to his weakness of will and mediocre ability, having in their hands the chief offices of state, the Guises proceeded to build up a system of government wholly their own, not only in central but in provincial affairs, to compass which the removal of the constable and the princes of the blood from the vicinity of the King was the first step. Then followed an attempt to acquire control of the provincial governments. Montmorency, the late constable, was deprived of the government of Languedoc;[79] the governments of Touraine and Orleans, in the very heart of France, were given to the duke of Montpensier and the prince de la Roche-sur-Yon. Trouble arose, though, in January, 1560, when the Guises excluded the prince of Condé from the government of Picardy and gave it to the marshal Brissac, although “the office had been faithfully administered by his predecessors.”[80] The cardinal of Lorraine’s position with reference to the finances enabled him to provide the Guise faction with the resources necessary to back up its political intentions.[81] The onerous taxation of Francis I had been increased by Henry II, both the taille and the gabelle, the collection of which had caused a fierce outbreak at Bordeaux in the middle of the last reign; loans were resorted to, “not without great suspicion of their being applied to the King’s finances;” and the wages of the soldiers in garrisons and officers withheld.[82] This condition of things naturally drew the constable[83] and his partisans toward the prince of Condé, who vainly endeavored to persuade the king of Navarre, as first prince of the blood, and therefore the natural supporter of the crown instead of the Guises, to take a firm stand, Condé especially representing to him how great a humiliation it was to the crown that the administration of the kingdom should fall so completely into the hands of the “foreigners” of Lorraine; that, considering the weakness of the King, the fact that the provincial governorships and those of the frontier fortresses and the control of finances (which enabled the Guises to subject the judiciary to their devotion) were in their hands, foreboded ill to France.