The Duke of Rohan left France and retired to Venice, where his wife and daughter were awaiting him.  He had been appointed by the Venetian senate generalissimo of the forces of the republic, when the cardinal, who had no doubt preserved some regard for his military talents, sent him an offer of the command of the king’s troops in the Valteline.  There he for several years maintained the honor of France, being at one time abandoned and at another supported by the cardinal, who ultimately left him to bear the odium of the last reverse.  Meeting with no response from the court, cut off from every resource, he brought back into the district of Gex the French troops driven out by the Grisons themselves, and then retired to Geneva.  Being threatened with the king’s wrath, he set out for the camp of his friend Duke Bernard of Saxe-Weimar; and it was whilst fighting at his side against the imperialists that he received the wound of which he died in Switzerland, on the 16th of April, 1638.  His body was removed to Geneva amidst public mourning.  A man of distinguished mind and noble character, often wild in his views and hopes, and so deeply absorbed in the interests of his party and of his church, that he had sometimes the misfortune to forget those of his country.

Meanwhile the king had set out for Paris, and the cardinal was marching on Montauban.  Being obliged to halt at Pezenas because he had a fever, he there received a deputation from Montauban, asking to have its fortifications preserved.  On the minister’s formal refusal, supported by a movement in advance on the part of Marshal Bassompierre with the army, the town submitted unreservedly.  “Knowing that the cardinal had made up his mind to enter in force, they found this so bitter a pill that they could scarcely swallow it;” they, nevertheless, offered the dais to the minister, as they had been accustomed to do to the governor, but he refused it, and would not suffer the consuls to walk on foot beside his horse.  Bassompierre set guards at the doors of the meeting-house, that things might be done without interruption or scandal; it was ascertained that the Parliament of Toulouse, “habitually intractable in all that concerned religion,” had enregistered the edict without difficulty; the gentlemen of the neighborhood came up in crowds, the Reformers to make their submission and the Catholics to congratulate the cardinal; on the day of his departure the pickaxe was laid to the fortifications of Montauban; those of Castres were already beginning to fall; and the Huguenot party in France was dead.  Deprived of the political guarantees which had been granted them by Henry IV., the Reformers had nothing for it but to retire into private life.  This was the commencement of their material prosperity; they henceforth transferred to commerce and, industry all the intelligence, courage, and spirit of enterprise that they had but lately displayed in the service of their cause, on the battle-field or in the cabinets of kings.