The war in the south, during the months of these negotiations, had gone on in its own course almost unhindered by the government. Many of the men of service had gone with Anjou into Poland and many others, especially the Swiss, were licensed. In consequence the Huguenots made themselves masters of the Rhone, even seizing Avignon, to the great anger of the Pope, who refused to receive Paul de Foix as French ambassador to Rome on the double ground that he was of the Huguenot persuasion and because the French King would not give safe-conduct to troops from Italy to go to Avignon for the purpose of recovering it.[1603] After the departure of his brother for Poland, Charles IX weakly took up the Protestant issue again, and he and his mother spent three days at Chantilly with Montmorency in consideration of the course to follow.[1604] Deputations from various provinces came to the King to petition immediate reduction of the taxes on account of the exhausted state of the country, but there was a unanimous wish against calling another session of the estates on account of the expense.[1605] As an earnest of the King’s good intentions, the prince of Condé was made governor of Picardy, an office made vacant by the timely decease of the duke of Longueville, the prince, to the chagrin of the duke of Nevers who was an aspirant for the post, having recovered from the smallpox, with which the duke of Alençon also fell ill.[1606] The King had planned to convene deputies of the Huguenots of Languedoc and Dauphiné at least at Compiègne, but fell ill of smallpox[1607] and the project came to an end.[1608] To add to embarrassments Paris and Rouen, where the populace were of the opposing religions, entered into war for the restraint of foodstuffs, Paris stopping all wine passing down the Seine and Rouen in turn preventing corn from passing up the river to Paris.[1609] The economic condition of the country gave the government great concern. Hard times and high prices still prevailed and the measures of the government only irritated things the more, though some of them were wisely meant. For example, in February, 1574, an edict of the King forbade the circulation of all foreign silver coin, as well as that which was mutilated or debased. When the merchants of Troyes learned of this condemnation of all foreign or cut coin, they sent a deputation to remonstrate with the King, saying that their town and the county of Champagne as well as all Lorraine and Burgundy abounded with this money and no other; and it was not possible to exclude these coins from the country without entailing ruin, if the edict were enforced. They further urged that the edict would act as a serious bar to traffic across the frontier. But the King refused to rescind the ordinance. In consequence, those familiar with money palmed off the forbidden currency upon the simpler folk, who found to their dismay that they had been cheated, when the King’s officers refused to accept these coins in