Seeing so much discontent and so many threatening enterprises among the Huguenots, the queen, for safety’s sake, in the beginning of the year 1567 caused a levy of 9,000 Swiss [the actual number was 6,000] to be made under pretext that they were to be for the service of the duke of Alva in the Flemish War. The prevailing unrest and the rumors of insurrection gave the sieur de Tavannes, who penetrated the designs of the queen and the purpose of the Huguenots, the thought that a prudent man might also take precautions of his own. He reasoned that the Huguenots did not have more zeal for their cause than the Catholics for the old religion, and that those who would preserve it would give their lives and employ their last sou to succor the King; in a word, oppose league to league. He therefore organized the Confrérie du St. Esprit, which in reality was a league of the ecclesiastics and the nobility of Burgundy, with rich men from the towns, who voluntarily swore to serve in the interest of the Catholic religion against the Huguenots, sacrificing both person and property for the sake of the King. Without using coercion he gave orders for the enrolment of men-at-arms and the collection of money, created warders, spies, and messengers, in imitation of the Huguenots, in order to discover their machinations. The oath subscribed to justified this design. Each parish of Dijon paid its men for three months, and each town contributed 200 horse and 250 footmen. Burgundy could furnish 1,500 horse and 400 men on foot, paid for three months of the year. The sieur de Tavannes summoned an assembly in the Maison du Roi, ... and there caused the oath to be read. The oath began: We swear by the most holy and incomprehensible name of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in whose name we have been baptized, and we promise on our honor and the peril of our lives that, henceforth, at all times, through the chiefs and those who shall be named by the King under these articles, we will make known any enterprise that may work contrary to our said law and faith of which we have made profession in our baptism, and which we have maintained by the grace of God to the present, and also to make known every enterprise, which may clothe itself in hatred of the maintenance of the said faith, against the said royal Majesty, madame his mother, and messieurs his brothers, who rule over us by divine permission. And further on in the oath: