The negotiations were short.  The war had been going on for two years.  The two parties, victorious and vanquished by turns, were both equally sick of it.  In vain did Philip II., King of Spain, offer Charles IX. an aid of nine thousand men to continue it.  In vain did Pope Pius V. write to Catherine de’ Medici, “As there can be no communion between Satan and the children of the light, it ought to be taken for certain that there can be no compact between Catholics and heretics, save one full of fraud and feint.”  “We have beaten our enemies,” says Montluc, “over and over again; but notwithstanding that, they had so much influence in the king’s council that the decrees were always to their advantage.  We won by arms, but they won by those devils of documents.”  Peace was concluded at St. Germain-en-Laye on the 8th of August, 1570, and it was more equitable and better for the Reformers than the preceding treaties; for, besides a pretty large extension as regarded free exercise of their worship and their civil rights in the state, it granted “for two years, to the princes of Navarre and Conde and twenty noblemen of the religion, who were appointed by the king, the wardenship of the towns of La Rochelle, Cognac, Montauban, and La Charite, whither those of the religion who dared not return so soon to their own homes might retire.”  All the members of the Parliament, all the royal and municipal officers, and the principal inhabitants of the towns where the two religions existed were further bound over on oath “to maintenance of the edict.”

Peace was made; but it was the third in seven years, and very shortly after each new treaty civil war had recommenced.  No more was expected from the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye than had been effected by those of Amboise and Longjumeau, and on both sides men sighed for something more stable and definitive.  By what means to be obtained and with what pledges of durability?  A singular fact is apparent between 1570 and 1572; there is a season, as it were, of marriages and matrimonial rejoicings.  Charles IX. went to receive at the frontier of his kingdom his affianced bride, Archduchess Elizabeth of Austria, daughter of the emperor, Maximilian II., who was escorted by the Archbishop of Treves, chancellor of the empire; the nuptials were celebrated at Mezieres, on the 26th of November, 1570; the princes and great lords of the Protestant party were invited; they did not think it advisable to withdraw themselves from their asylum at La Rochelle; but Coligny wrote to the queen-mother to excuse himself, whilst protesting his forgetfulness of the past and his personal devotion.  Four months afterwards, Coligny himself married again; it was three years since he had lost his noble wife, Charlotte de Laval, and he had not contemplated anything of the kind, when, in the concluding weeks of 1570, he received from the castle of St. Andre de Briord, in Le Bugey, a letter from a great lady, thirty years