The time was a peculiarly propitious one. With the prince of Condé out of the way[251] she counted upon the vacillation and hesitancy of the king of Navarre to keep the Huguenots from overt action, while the prospect of the coming States-General, which had grown out of the assembly at Fontainebleau, as the bishop of Valence had predicted,[252] filled the Guises with dismay, so much so that when the demand for the summons of that body began to grow, they had endeavored to persuade the King to ordain that whoever spoke of their convocation should be declared guilty of _lèse-majesté_.[253] The reason of their alarm is not far to seek. The demand for the States-General was the voice of France, speaking through the noblesse and the bourgeoisie. crying out for a thorough inquiry into the administration of the Guises and reformation of the governmental system of both state and church; as such it was a menace to the cardinal and his brother and in alignment with the demands of the political Huguenots. The costly wars of Henry II, the extravagance of the court; the burdensome taxation; the venality of justice; the lawlessness and disorder prevailing everywhere; the impoverishment of many noble families, and the rise of new nobles out of the violence of the wars in Picardy and Italy, more prone to license and less softened by the social graces that characterized the old families;[254] the dilapidation of ancestral fortunes and the displacements of wealth; the religious unrest; the corruption of the church—all these grievances, none of which was wholly new, were piling up with a cumulative force, whose impending attack the Guises regarded with great apprehension.[255] The administration of the cardinal of Lorraine and his ducal brother had not mended matters, but in justice to them it should be said that their ministry was quite as much the _occasion_ as the _cause_ of the popular outcry for reform. The evils of the former reign were reaching a climax which their haughtiness and ambition served to accentuate.[256] Misappropriation of public moneys, exorbitant taxation, denial of justice, spoliation of the crown lands, especially the forests, the dilapidation of church property, and the corruption of manners, were undoubtedly the deepest popular grievances. In the demand for redress of these grievances all honest men were united. In 1560 the cry of the Huguenots for freedom of worship was the voice of a minority of them only. Most Huguenots at this time were political and not religious Huguenots, who simply used the demand of the new religionists as a vehicle of expression; this sentiment also for local risings to rescue arrested Calvinists, the participants in many cases being actuated more by the desire to make a demonstration against the government than by sympathy with the Calvinist doctrines.[257]