prodigies of courage and miracles of strategy. At last, without
soldiers, without ammunition, without money, he still appeared to
Richelieu to be so redoubtable that all the conditions of surrender he
demanded were granted. The maintenance of the Edict of Nantes was
guaranteed, all the places of worship were to be restored to the
Reformers, and a general amnesty granted to himself and his partisans.
Furthermore, he obtained what was an unheard-of thing until then, an
indemnity of 300,000 livres for his expenses during the rebellion; of
which sum he allotted 240,000 livres to his co-religionists--that is to
say, more than three-quarters of the entire amount--and kept, for the
purpose of restoring his various chateaux and setting his domestic
establishment, which had been destroyed during the war, again on foot,
only 60,000 livres. This treaty was signed on July 27th, 1629.

The Duc de Richelieu, to whom no sacrifice was too great in order to
attain his ends, had at last reached the goal, but the peace cost him
nearly 40,000,000 livres; on the other hand, Saintonge, Poitou, and
Languedoc had submitted, and the chiefs of the houses of La Tremouille,
Conde, Bouillon, Rohan, and Soubise had came to terms with him; organised
armed opposition had disappeared, and the lofty manner of viewing matters
natural to the cardinal duke prevented him from noticing private enmity.
He therefore left Nimes free to manage her local affairs as she pleased,
and very soon the old order, or rather disorder, reigned once more within
her walls. At last Richelieu died, and Louis XIII soon followed him, and
the long minority of his successor, with its embarrassments, left to
Catholics and Protestants in the South more complete liberty than ever to
carry on the great duel which down to our own days has never ceased.

But from this period, each flux and reflux bears more and more the
peculiar character of the party which for the moment is triumphant; when