The king confirmed the Edict of Nantes, ordered the re-establishment of the two religions in the localities where they had been before exercised, authorized the meetings of the consistories, conferences, and synods for affairs purely ecclesiastical, but forbade the holding of any political assembly without his express permission. The fortifications of Montpellier were to be demolished, and the town governed by four consuls, to be named by the king. The Calvinists retained two places of safety, Montauban and La Rochelle. This last town had been attacked several times during the war, and had vigorously defended itself. It prolonged the struggle some time after the new edict of peace, but ended by accepting it with the stipulation that its liberties should be maintained. Thus, after torrents of blood had been shed and several provinces of the kingdom had been desolated, everything remained nearly the same as when the war first began. V. The treaty of 1622 was, like many of its predecessors, nothing else than a dead letter; and to explain fully the new recourse to arms, which terminated by the Edict of Grace in 1629, we must state at some length the false position into which the maxims of intolerance, put in force from the death of Henry IV., had placed both sides. The Calvinists, continually disturbed in the exercise of their religion, forced to carry arms to the very doors of their churches, and threatened with the loss of all the rights they had obtained by the Edict of Nantes, had become embittered against royalty. They suspected it of concealed thoughts and perfidious projects. They accused it of encouraging, at least by its inertness, the Jesuits, the monks, the bishops, the violent magistrates, and the populace, who not only heaped upon them numberless vexations, but loudly announced the approaching extirpation of heresy. It necessarily resulted from this, that from being a simple religious communion, the French Reformation became every day more and more a political party, and thus from the very nature of things, as the struggle was prolonged, the ideas and passions of the Reformers were led into increased hostility against the crown. The spirit of independence had grown among the Huguenots with the persecutions, with which they were stricken, and with the menaces of destruction that were held over their heads, and many fostered the thought of a republican establishment. They therefore constituted a considerable party in the first years of the reign of Louis XIII., relying for support, within the kingdom, upon the malcontents of all kinds;—without, upon Protestant Europe. They communicated by La Rochelle with England, by Sédan with Germany, by Geneva with the Swiss cantons, and seemed ever ready to divide the strength of the state.