It was the rich burghers of the towns, in combination with the smaller nobles, which composed the Protestant party in France.
And although the impelling cause of the great movement was religious, political wrongs had become a powerful contributing cause; as is always the case, the discontented and aggrieved, for whatever reason, casting in their lot with those who had a deeper grievance and a more sacred purpose.
Whether the conversion of the Bourbon prince was of that nature or not, who can say?
But the movement swelled, and France was divided into two hostile camps: one under the Protestant banner of Antony de Bourbon, father of Henry of Navarre, and the other under that of the Catholic, Francis, Duke of Guise; and two children were on the throne of France while the ground was trembling beneath their feet with a coming revolution.
Francis I.had been too much occupied with his own plans to take in hand systematically and seriously the prevailing heresy.

Henry II., son of Francis, had also temporized with the religious revolt, probably not realizing the powerful element it contained.

Now, with the Guises firmly in power, there would be no more half-way measures.
But a crisis was at hand which would change the whole situation.

The discovery of a plot to seize the person of the young king and place a Bourbon prince upon the throne, led to a general slaughter.

Fresh relays of executioners in Paris stood ready to relieve each other when exhausted, and the Seine was black with the bodies of the drowned.
During this preliminary storm the frail young king, Francis II., suddenly died.