eligious creed, and to reduce them to a condition of
subjection in the state whilst leaving them free, as Christians, in the
church. A fundamentally contradictory problem; for the different
liberties are closely connected, one with another, and have need to be
security one for another; but, at the commencement of the seventeenth
century, people were not so particular in point of consequence, and it
was thought possible to give religious liberty its guarantees whilst
refusing them to general political liberty. That is what the Duke of
Luynes attempted to do; to all the towns to which Henry IV. had bound
himself by the edict of Nantes, he made a promise of preserving to them
their religious liberties, and he called upon them at the same time to
remain submissive and faithful subjects of the sovereign kingship. La
Rochelle, Montauban, Saumur, Sancerre, Charite-sur-Loire, and St. Jean
d'Angely were in this category; and it was to Montauban, as one of the
most important of those towns, that Louis XIII. first addressed his
promise and his appeal, inconsistent one with the other.

Some years previously, in May, 1610, amidst the grief and anxiety
awakened by the assassination of Henry IV. by Ravaillac, the population
of Montauban had maintained and testified a pacific and moderate
disposition. The synod was in assembly when the news of the king's death
arrived there. We read in the report of the town-council, under date of
May 19, 1610,

"The ecclesiastics (Catholic) having come to the council, the consuls
gave them every assurance for their persons and property, and took them
under the protection and safeguard of the king and the town, without
suffering or permitting any hurt, wrong, or displeasure to be done them.
. . . The ecclesiastics thanked them, and protested their desire to
live and die in that town, as good townsmen and servants of the king . ."
On the 22d of May, in a larger council-general, the council gives notice
to the Parliament of Toulouse that everything shall remain peaceable.
. . . Consul Beraud moves that "every one take forthwith the oath of
fidelity we owe to his Majesty, and that every one also testify, by
acclamation, his wishes and desires for the prosperity and duration of
his reign."

Ten years later, in 1620, the disposition of the Protestants was very
much changed; distrust and irritation had once more entered into their
hearts. Henry IV. was no longer there to appease them or hold th