To this effect he possessed himself of the strongest places in the city, of the Temple, of the Palace, of the town-house, of the two Chastelets, of the gates where he set guards, of the arsenal, and of the Bastille, which was surrendered to him too easily by the governor Testu; the government of which he gave to Bussy Le Clerc, the most audacious of the sixteen. He obliged the magistrates to proceed in the courts of judicature as formerly; he made a new provost of merchants, and sheriffs, a lieutenant civil, colonels, and captains of the several wards, all devoted to the League, in the room of those whom he suspected; he retook, without much trouble, all the places both above and below on the river, that the passages for provisions might be free; he wrote at last to the king, to the towns, and to his particular friends, and drew up manifests (or declarations) in a style, which had nothing in it but what was great and generous; while he endeavoured to justify his proceedings, and at the same time to preserve the respect which was owing to the king, protesting always that he was most ready to pay him an entire obedience, and that he proposed nothing to himself, but that provision should be made for the safety of religion, and of good Catholics, which were designed to be oppressed through the pernicious counsels of such as held intelligence with heretics, and projected nothing but the ruin of religion and the state. These letters, together with those which the Parisians wrote to the other towns, exhorting all men to combine with them for their common preservation in the Catholic faith, and those of the king, which on the contrary were written in too soft a style, and where there appeared more of fear and of excuse than of resentment and just complaint for so sacrilegious an attempt, had this effect, that the greatest part of the people, far from being scandalized at the barricades, approved them, loudly praising the conduct of the Duke of Guise, whom they believed to be full of zeal for the Catholic faith, for the good of the kingdom, and for the service of the king. And as he desired nothing so much as to confirm them in that opinion, he was willing that the body of the city should send their deputies to the king, humbly to beseech his majesty, that he would forget what was passed, and return to his good town of Paris, where his most loyal subjects were ready to give him all the highest demonstrations of their obedience and devotion to his service.