and of the bigoted Roman Catholics when he
said that "it contained articles sufficiently terrible to make France and
the king's faithful servants tremble, seeing that the Huguenots were
reputed as faithful servants, and what they had done held by the king to
be agreeable."[788] It was not astonishing, therefore, that, although the
publication of the edict was effected without delay under the eyes of the
court at Paris, it gave rise in Rouen to a serious riot.[789] The Papal
Nuncio and the Spanish ambassador were indignant. Both Pius and Philip had
bitterly opposed the negotiations of the early part of the year. Now their
ambassadors made a fruitless attempt to put off the evil day of peace; the
Spanish ambassador not only offering three thousand horse and six thousand
foot to extirpate the Huguenots, but affirming that "there were no
conditions to which he was not ready to bind himself, provided that the
king would not make peace with the heretics and rebels."[790]

[Sidenote: "The limping and unsettled peace."]

For the first time in their history, the relations of the Huguenots of
France to the state were settled, not by a royal declaration which was to
be of force until the king should attain his majority, or until the
convocation of a general council of the Church, but by an edict which was
expressly stated to be "_perpetual and irrevocable_." Such the
Protestants, although with many misgivings, hoped that it might prove. It
was not, however, an auspicious circumstance that the popular wit, laying
hold of the fact that one of the Roman Catholic commissioners that drew up
its stipulations--Biron--was lame, while the other--Henri de Mesmes--was
best known as Lord of Malassise, conferred upon the new compact the
ungracious appellation of "_the limping and unsettled peace_"--"la paix
boiteuse et mal-assise."[791]

FOOTNOTES:

[587] Memoires d'Agrippa d'Aubigne (Ed. Buchon), 475.

[588] Jean de Serres, iii. 247.

[589] Mem. de Claude Haton, ii. 541; De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 145.

[590] The text of the edict is given by Jean de Serres, iii. 272-281. See
also De Thou, iv. (liv. xliv.) 145, 146; Castelnau, liv. vii., c. ii. La
Fosse (Journal d'un cure ligueur, 98), gives the correct date: "Septembre.
_La veille du Saint Michel_ (i.e., _Sept._ 28th) fut rompu l'esdict de
janvier, et publie dedans le palais esdict au contraire;" while the
ambassador La Mothe Fenelon alludes to it in a despatch to Catharine as
"votr