n and others of the
said religion against holding assemblies, on any account whatsoever,
until that, by the said lord the king, after having provided for the
tranquillity of his kingdom, it be otherwise ordained. And that, on pain
of confiscation of body and goods in case of disobedience."

These tardy and lying accusations officially brought against Coligny and
his friends; these promises of liberty and security for the Protestants,
renewed in the terms of the edicts of pacification, and, in point of
fact, annulled at the very moment at which they were being renewed; the
massacre continuing here and there in France, at one time with the secret
connivance and at another notwithstanding the publicly-given word of the
king and the queen-mother; all this policy, at one and the same time
violent and timorous, incoherent and stubborn, produced amongst the
Protestants two contrary effects: some grew frightened, others angry.
At court, under the direct influence of the king and his surroundings,
"submission to the powers that be" prevailed; many fled; others, without
abjuring their religion, abjured their party. The two Reformer-princes,
Henry of Navarre and Henry de Conde, attended mass on the 29th of
September, and, on the 3d of October, wrote to the pope, deploring their
errors and giving hopes of their conversion. Far away from Paris, in the
mountains of the Pyrenees and of Languedoc, in the towns where the
Reformers were numerous and confident, at Sancerre, at Montauban, at
Nimes, at La Rochelle, the spirit of resistance carried the day. An
assembly, meeting at Milhau, drew up a provisional ordinance for the
government of the Reformed church, "until it please God, who has the
hearts of kings in His keeping, to change that of King Charles IX. and
restore the state of France to good order, or to raise up such
neighboring prince as is manifestly marked out, by his virtue and by
distinguishing signs, for to be the liberator of this poor afflicted
people." In November, 1572, the fourth religious war broke out. The
siege of La Rochelle was its only important event. Charles IX. and his
councillors exerted themselves in vain to avoid it. There was everything
to disquiet them in this enterprise: so sudden a revival of the religious
war after the grand blow they had just struck, the passionate energy
manifested by the Protestants in asylum at La Rochelle, and the help they
had been led to hope for from Queen Elizabeth, whom