On March 30, 1560, Guido Giannetti, Elizabeth’s secret agent at Venice, wrote to Cecil, “France will have enough to do in her religious wars that have just sprung up, which will be worse than the civil war of the League of the Public Weal, in 1465 under Louis XI.”[172] The prophecy soon became true. In spite of the formidable preparations made to continue the war in Scotland,[173] the more necessary since the death of the queen dowager of Scotland, news of which reached France on June 18,[174] France—or rather the French party in Scotland—on July 6, 1560, signed the treaty of Edinburgh, which, so far as the Guises were concerned, was the renunciation on their part of aggression abroad.[175] Nothing but the grave state of home politics could have induced the Guises so to yield the cause of their niece in Scotland.[176] The Huguenot issue promised to come to a climax during the summer of 1560.[177] From all over France came reports of sedition and insurrection. The Protestants were masters of Provence.[178] The cardinal Tournon, returning from Rome, dared not bring with him the cross of the legation, for fear of its meeting with disrespect by the people of the places through which he would have to pass.[179] From another source came the report that “very free sermons have been delivered in the churches of Bayonne.”[180] The bishop of Agen wrote the council that all the inhabitants of that city were in a state of furious insurrection; that they went to the churches, destroyed all the images, and maltreated certain priests. The queen mother was mysteriously warned that unless she released certain preachers imprisoned at Troyes she would become the most unhappy princess living.[181] The Pope’s legate left Avignon in disgust at the license of the “Lutherans,”[182] and when the pontiff proposed to send thither the cardinal Farnese, who was willing to go provided a suitable escort of Italian and Swiss infantry was furnished, France refused to consent, being unwilling to allow a foreign prince to enter the kingdom on such a warlike footing.[183] At the same time the personal attack upon the Guises became more venomous.[184] The enmity between the Guises and the house of Montmorency had become so open and proceeded so far, owing to the dispute about Dammartin, that it was expected they would take up arms. To crown all, the government received information through several channels of a design against the King and his ministers of worse quality than the recent Amboise conspiracy.[185] The information that came to light caused the greatest anxiety because this time the evidence seemed strongly to compromise the vidame de Chartres,[186] and the prince of Condé.[187]