"Better that we all perish a hundred times," Calvin wrote to Coligny in 1561.

Protestants, therefore, if they would resist in arms, had to put themselves in order, and though Knox had no doubt that to exterminate idolaters was thoroughly in order, the leaders of his party were obliged to pay deference to European opinion.
By a singular coincidence they adopted precisely the same device as the more militant French Protestants laid before Calvin in August 1559-March 1560.

The Scots and the Protestant French represented that they were illegally repressed by foreigners: in Scotland by Mary of Guise with her French troops; in France by the Cardinal and Duc de Guise, foreigners, who had possession of the persons and authority of the "native prince" of Scotland, Mary, and the "native prince" of France, Francis II., both being minors.

The French idea was that, if they secured the aid of a native Protestant prince (Conde), they were in order, as against the foreign Guises, and might kill these tyrants, seize the King, and call an assembly of the Estates.

Calvin was consulted by the chief of the conspiracy, La Renaudie; he disapproved; the legality lent by one native prince was insufficient; the details of the plot were "puerile," and Calvin waited to see how the country would take it.