The prisoners confessed that in all the neighboring towns, viz., Blois, Orleans, Chartres, Chateaudun, and others, a great supply of arms had been made in secret, most especially of arquebuses, one of the men who were hanged having revealed that in one single house at Blois there were six large chests full of these. During the next three days nothing was attended to but fortifying the castle, repairing the weakest places around it, and making a trench in front of the principal gate, which opened on the country, in which some arquebuses and three or four small pieces of artillery found accidentally and brought there from neighboring places, were fixed. Round the town, besides cutting the bridges which were at its gates, except the principal bridge over the Loire, the moats were cleansed and restored, leaving but one gate open.[124] Scouting parties were daily sent out, and on March 19 a company of five fell in with an equal number of insurgents; after a long and stout fight the posse at length killed their commander and two of his men and made the other two prisoners. One of those killed proved to be La Renaudie.[125] But the Guises did not stop with these acts of punishment near by. Besides sending letters of authority to all bailiffs and seneschals ordering the arrest of all men, whether on foot or on horseback, to be found in the country surrounding Amboise,[126] Tavannes, on April 12,1560, was ordered to do the like in Dauphiné, being actually armed with _lettres de cachet_ issued in blank.[127] Few other disturbances developed except at Lyons, and in Provence and Dauphiné[128] but the government was anxious with regard to Gascony and Normandy, “their populations being much more daring,”[129] “The whole of Normandy is filled with Huguenotism,” wrote the Venetian ambassador, “the people by thousands sing every night until ten o’clock the Psalms of David and the men-at-arms dare not touch them. The people of Dieppe every night in the market-place sing psalms and some days have sermons preached to them in the fields; in most towns in Normandy and many other places they do the same thing.”[130] In consequence of this state of things, the marshal de Termes was appointed with royal authority and full and absolute powers throughout the province summarily to confiscate, imprison, condemn and put to death whomsoever he pleased.[131] In the end the government sent 1,200 of those implicated in the conspiracy of Amboise or under suspicion to execution. A morbid desire to witness the shedding of blood seized upon society, and it became a customary thing for the ladies and gentlemen of the court to witness the torture of those condemned after the manner of the _auto da fé_ in Spain.[132] D’Aubigné[133] the eminent historian of the French Reformation, was an eye-witness of such incidents, and though but ten years of age, swore like young Hannibal before his father, to devote his life to vengeance of such atrocities.[134] CHAPTER II