e desire for peace that the Admiral
and Conde bowed to it.
They agreed to the terms and, pending their ratification, raised
the siege of Chartres. Already their force was dwindling rapidly.
Large numbers marched away to their homes, without even asking for
leave; and their leaders soon ceased to be in a position to make
any demands for guarantees, and the peace of Lonjumeau was
therefore signed.
Its provisions gave very little more to the Huguenots than that of
the preceding arrangement of the same kind, and the campaign left
the parties in much the same position as they had occupied before
the Huguenots took up arms.
Chapter 8: The Third Huguenot War.
Before the treaty of Lonjumeau had been signed many weeks, the
Huguenots were sensible of the folly they had committed, in
throwing away all the advantages they had gained in the war, by
laying down their arms upon the terms of a treaty made by a
perfidious woman and a weak and unstable king, with advisers bent
upon destroying the reformed religion. They had seen former edicts
of toleration first modified and then revoked, and they had no
reason even to hope that the new treaty, which had been wrung from
the court by its fears, would be respected by it.
The Huguenots were not surprised to find, therefore, that as soon
as they had sent back their German auxiliaries and returned to
their homes--the ink, indeed, was scarcely dry on the paper upon
which the treaty was written--its conditions were virtually
annulled. From the pulpit of every Catholic church in France, the
treaty was denounced in the most violent language; and it was
openly declared that there could be no peace with the Huguenots.
These, as they returned home, were murdered in great numbers and,
in many of the cities, the mobs rose and massacred the defenceless
Protestants.
Heavy as had been the persecutions before the outbreak of the war,
they were exceeded by those that followed it. Some of the governors
of the provinces openly refused to carry out the conditions of the
treaty. Charles issued a proclamation that the edict was not
intended to include any of the districts that were appanages of his
mother, or of any of the royal or Bourbon princes. In the towns the
soldiers were quartered upon the Huguenots, whom they robbed and
ill treated at their pleasure; and during the six months that this
nominal peace lasted, no less than ten thousand Huguenots were
slaughtered in various parts of F
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