July, 1573.  Liberty of creed and worship was recognized in the three towns of La Rochelle, Montauban, and Nimes.  They were not obliged to receive any royal garrison, on condition of giving hostages to be kept by the king for two years.  Liberty of worship throughout the extent of their jurisdiction continued to be recognized in the case of lords high-justiciary.  Everywhere else the Reformers had promises of not being persecuted for their creed, under the obligation of never holding an assembly of more than ten persons at a time.  These were the most favorable conditions they had yet obtained.

Certainly this was not what Charles IX. had calculated upon when he consented to the massacre of the Protestants.  “Provided,” he had said, “that not a single one is left to reproach me.”  The massacre had been accomplished almost without any resistance but that offered by certain governors of provinces or towns, who had refused to take part in it.  The chief leader of French Protestantism, Coligny, had been the first victim.  Far more than that, the Parliament of Paris had accepted the royal lie which accused Coligny of conspiring for the downfall of the king and the royal house; a decree, on that very ground, sentenced to condemnation the memory, the family, and the property of Coligny, with all sorts of rigorous, we should rather say atrocious, circumstances.  And after having succeeded so well against the Protestants, Charles IX. saw them recovering again, renewing the struggle with him, and wresting from him such concessions as he had never yet made to them.  More than ever might he exclaim, “Then I shall never have rest!” The news that came to him from abroad was not more calculated to satisfy him.

[Illustration:  The St. Bartholomew——­383]

The St. Bartholomew had struck Europe with surprise and horror; not only amongst the princes and in the countries that were Protestant, in England, Scotland, and Northern Europe, but in Catholic Germany itself, there was a very strong feeling of reprobation; the Emperor Maximilian II. and the Elector Palatine Frederic III., called the Pious, showed it openly; when the Duke of Anjou, elected King of Poland, went through Germany to go and take possession of his kingdom, he was received at Heidelberg with premeditated coolness.  When he arrived at the gate of the castle, not a soul went to meet him; alone he ascended the steps, and found in the hall a picture representing the massacre of St. Bartholomew; the elector called his attention to the portraits of the principal victims, amongst others that of Coligny, and at table he was waited upon solely by French Protestant refugees.  At Rome itself, in the midst of official satisfaction and public demonstrations of it exhibited by the pontifical court, the truth came out, and Pope Gregory XIII. was touched by it when certain of my lords the cardinals who were beside him “asked wherefore he wept and was sad at so goodly a despatch of those wretched