The dukes de Rohan and de Soubise, attacked in their personal liberty after the treaty of 1622, took up arms in Languedoc and Saintonge. The war was one of partisans only; nothing more than sieges of villages or strong castles, and devastations took place. The royal troops committed great ravages round Montauban and Castres. “At night,” say the memoirs of the time, “one might behold a thousand fires along the plain. Crops, orchards, vines, and houses were the aliments of the flames.... The destruction was so well executed that there was not left a tree or a house standing, a blade of corn, or the shoot of a vine.” The majority of the Huguenots remained at their hearths, and the Duke de Rohan complained of this with sorrow. “It was more difficult,” he says, “to combat the cowardice, the irreligion, and infidelity of the Reformers, than the hatred of their enemies.” In the beginning of the new troubles, a national synod had been convoked at Charenton. It was opened on the 1st of September, 1623. The place was convenient for the court, as the proximity of Paris guaranteed to it the docility of the assembly. An order was given to the synod to admit a royal officer to its meetings. Although this commissioner, named Galland, was of the Reformed religion, his mandate caused him to be suspected. The deputies of the churches, relying upon the letter of the treaties, and refusing to the crown the right of establishing so important a novelty by a simple ordinance, made many objections; but they were forced to obey, and to content themselves with inscribing on the minutes of their proceedings the following declaration: “This synod, desirous of marking clearly and unmistakably its dutifulness and fidelity to the king, admitted the said Seigneur Galland among the deputies ... under the assurance that his majesty would in his royal goodness re-establish us in our ancient privileges and liberties.” A second article, less explicable than the foregoing, was that the king expressed his displeasure on the subject of the oath that the national synod of Alais had caused to be taken, three years before, to the doctrine of Dordrecht. The deputies were again obliged to temporize; they answered, that this doctrine was only conformable to that of their confession of faith, and that the synod of Alais had no other design than to establish the perfect union of the Reformers of France with those of the Netherlands. A third injunction concerned the foreign pastors, who had been admitted to exercise their office in the kingdom. The king wrote, that he would permit this no longer, and required the immediate return of Primrose and Cameron, both natives of Scotland, and ministers at Bordeaux; “not so much because they are foreigners,” said Louis XIII., “but particularly for reasons regarding our service.”