So much generosity and devotion, amongst the humblest as well as the most exalted ranks of the army, deserved not to be useless:  but it turned out quite differently.  Conde and Coligny led back to Paris their new army, which, it is said, was from eighteen to twenty thousand strong, and seemed to be in a condition either to take Paris itself, or to force the royal army to enter the field and accept a decisive battle.  To bring that about, Conde thought the best thing was to besiege Chartres, “the key to the granary of Paris,” as it was called, and “a big thorn,” according to La Noue, “to run into the foot of the Parisians.”  But Catherine de’ Medici had quietly entered once more into negotiations with some of the Protestant chiefs, even with Conde himself.  Charles IX. published an edict in which he distinguished between heretics and rebels, and assured of his protection all Huguenots who should lay down arms.  Chartres seemed to be on the point of capitulating, when news came that peace had just been signed at Longjumeau, on the 23d of March.  The king put again in force the edict of Amboise of 1563, suppressing all the restrictions which had been tacked on to it successively.  The Prince of Conde and his adherents were reinstated in all their possessions, offices, and honors; and Conde was “held and reputed good relative, faithful subject, and servant of the king.”  The Reformers had to disband, restore the new places they had occupied, and send away their German allies, to whom the king undertook to advance the hundred thousand gold crowns which were due to them.  He further promised, by a secret article, that he too would at a later date dismiss his foreign troops and a portion of the French.

This news caused very various impressions amongst the Protestant camp and people.  The majority of the men of family engaged in the war, who most frequently had to bear the expense of it, desired peace.  The personal advantages accruing to Conde himself—­made it very acceptable to him.  But the ardent Reformers, with Coligny at their head, complained bitterly of others being lured away by fine words and exceptional favors, and not prosecuting the war when, to maintain it, there was so good an army and the chances were so favorable.  A serious dispute took place between the pacific negotiators and the malcontents.  Chancellor de l’Hospital wrote, in favor of peace, a discourse on the pacific settlement of the troubles of the year 1567, containing the necessary causes and reasons of the treaty, together with the means of reconciling the two parties to one another, and keeping them in perpetual concord; composed by a high personage, true subject, and faithful servant of the French crown.  But, if the chancellor’s reasons were sound, the hopes he hung upon them were extravagant; the parties were at that pitch of passion at which reasoning is in vain against impressions, and promises are powerless against suspicions.  Concluded “through the vehemence of the desire to get home again,” as La Noue says, the peace of Longjumeau was none the less known as the little peace, the patched-up peace, the lame and rickety peace; and neither they who wished for it nor they who spurned it prophesied its long continuance.