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Old Touraine, the Life and History of the Chateaux of the Loire
Old Touraine the Life and History of the Chateaux of the Loire Author:Theodore Andrea Cook Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XVI AMBOISE THE CONSPIRACY " Ne presche plus en France une Evangile armee, Un Christ empistole, tout noirci de fumee, Protant un morion en teste, e... more »t dans sa main Un large coutelas rouge de sang humain." Diane De Poitiers does not seem to have cared much for Amboise, so the reign of Henry II. does not come into its story, but with the boy who followed Henry the throne begins the most from the ch,,teau terrible scene in the historv of of Amboise. the castle. In November 15 59, Marie Stuart was riding into Amboise with her young husband, Francis II., barely fifteen years of age, beneath the bright crisp sunshine of a winter in Touraine, through gaily-decorated streets filled with a crowd of men and women cheering the new King and his northern bride. Five months afterwards Marie Stuart rode through the same; VOL. II F WEATHERcoCK WITH THE ROYAL ARMS, streets again, with none to watch her but armed men, the doors and windows of the houses closed, and only here and there a gibbet or a corpse by way of decoration. For the little town had suddenly become the centre of a widespread movement — a movement which had begun many years ago, and gradually gathered force almost unseen and unappreciated by the Court, until at last it broke suddenly and terribly into view with the conspiracy of Amboise. The strangely new doctrines of Calvin had begun to penetrate Touraine soon after Francis I. had brought the Italian Renaissance into France, and the queer cave dwellings in the rocks of St. Georges and Rochecorbon already concealed hermits with tendencies too revolutionary and unorthodox to be sheltered in ordinary resting-places. But the full consequences of the spread of the new doctrines did not become apparent until later, and it was not until the accession of ...« less