That is the whole cause, just as it was, of the civil war. She would never go to Orléans with the others, nor give them the king and her children, as she could have done; and she was very glad that in the hurly-burly of arms she and the king her son and her other children were in safety, as was reasonable. Moreover, she requested and held the promise of the others that whenever she should summon them to lay down their arms they would do so; which, nevertheless, they would not do when the time came, no matter what appeals she made to them, and what pains she took, and the great heat she endured at Talsy, to induce them to listen to the peace she could have made good and secured for all France had they then listened to her; and this great fire and others we have since seen lighted from this first brand would have been forever extinguished in France if they would then have trusted her. I know what I myself have heard her say, with the tears in her eyes, and with what zeal she endeavoured to do it.
This is why they cannot charge her with the first spark of the civil war, nor yet with the second, which was the day of Meaux; for at that time she was thinking only of a hunt, and of giving pleasure to the king in her beautiful house at Monceaux. The warning came that M. le Prince and others of the Religion were in arms and advancing to surprise and seize the king under colour of presenting a request. God knows who was the cause of this new disturbance, and without the six thousand Swiss then lately raised, who knows what might have happened? This levy of Swiss was only the pretext of their taking up arms, and of saying and publishing that it was done to force them to war. In fact it was they, themselves, as I know from being at Court, who requested that levy of the king and queen, on the passage of the Duke of Alba and his army, fearing that under colour of reaching Flanders he might descend upon the frontiers of France; and they urged that it was the custom to arm the frontiers whenever a neighbouring State was arming. No one can be ignorant how urgent for this they were to the king and queen by letters and embassies,--even M. le Prince himself and M. l'amiral [Coligny] coming to see the king on this subject at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where I saw them.