The edict of January, 1562, came at last to effect a peace. By its provisions the Protestants were to restore the churches they had seized, to cease their abuse of the Catholic ceremonies in print or discourse, and, in return, were allowed to hold meetings unarmed outside the city, but their ministers were not to go from town to town preaching. {7} The measure of toleration thus granted may not seem excessive, but it was far greater than any Protestant power then, or long subsequently, granted to such subjects as preferred not to change their creed. The measure, however, failed to produce tranquillity. The Huguenots, far from restoring what they had seized, continued their acts of violence. At Nismes the churches and convents were attacked and profaned, while in Gascony and Languedoc the reformers had established such a reign of terror that for forty leagues around no Catholic priest durst show himself. Montpellier, Montauban, and Castres beheld similar profanations of churches. Coligny, a prototype of Cromwell in apparent fanaticism, in military skill, in relentless cruelty toward the Catholic clergy, like the Puritan leader of the next century, looked beyond the Atlantic. He had projected a Protestant colony of refuge in Brazil; its failure did not prevent his renewing the attempt in Florida. In the month following that in which the edict was issued, he despatched John Ribaut to lay the foundation of a French colony in America. He seems to have been planning a retreat against sudden disaster in the war they were rapidly preparing. The fate of that colony is well known. At Vassy, in March, a Huguenot congregation came into collision with the Duke of Guise; accounts differ widely as to the details. The duke asserted that his men were attacked. On being struck in the face with a stone, he cried to his men to show no quarter, and, according to White, fifty or sixty were killed and two hundred wounded. In a moment the affair was taken up and echoed through France. It was worth an army to the cause of rebellion. The military churches rose. So complete was their organization that almost simultaneously thirty-five cities were taken, the Cevennes, the Vivarrais, and the Comté Venaissin were in revolt. Everywhere the Catholic worship was suppressed, the churches stripped, the clergy banished, while the riches torn from the shrines and altars enabled them to maintain the war. The shrine of St. Martin of Tours, venerated and enriched by the piety of France during a thousand years, gave Condé, prince of the blood, a million two thousand livres to devastate France. To add to their strength, the Huguenots then formed the treaty of Hampton Court with Elizabeth, and by it agreed to restore Calais to England.