ons made by the Catholics ought to be accepted. The majority
of the Reformed pastors and theologians cried out against the
insufficiency of the concessions, and were astonished that there should
be so much hurry to make peace when the Catholics had just lost their
most formidable captain. Coligny, moderate in his principles, but always
faithful to his church when she made her voice heard, showed
dissatisfaction at the selfishness of the nobles. "To confine the
religion to one town in every bailiwick," he said, "is to ruin more
churches by a stroke of the pen than our enemies could have pulled down
in ten years; the nobles ought to have recollected that example had been
set by the towns to them, and by the poor to the rich." Calvin, in his
correspondence with the Reformed churches of France, severely handled
Conde on this occasion. At the moment when peace was made, the pacific
were in the right; the death of the Duke of Guise had not prevented the
battle of Dreux from being a defeat for the Reformers; and, when war had
to be supported for long, it was especially the provincial nobles and the
people on their estates who bore the burden of it. But when the edict of
Amboise had put an end to the first religious war, when the question was
no longer as to who won or lost battles, but whether the conditions of
that peace to which the Catholics had sworn were loyally observed, and
whether their concessions were effective in insuring the modest amount of
liberty and security promised to the Protestants, the question changed
front, and it was not long before facts put the malcontents in the right.
Between 1563 and 1567 murders of distinguished Protestants increased
strangely, and excited amongst their families anxiety accompanied by a
thirst for vengeance. The Guises and their party, on their side,
persisted in their outcries for proceedings against the instigators,
known or presumed, of the murder of Duke Francis. It was plainly against
Admiral de Coligny that these cries were directed; and he met them by a
second declaration, very frank as a denial of the deed which it was
intended to impute to him, but more hostile than ever to the Guises and
their party. "The late duke," said he, "was of the whole army the man I
had most looked out for on the day of the last battle; if I could have
brought a gun to bear upon him to kill him, I would have done it; I would
have ordered ten thousand arquebusiers, had so many been under my