There was more even than this untoward change to occupy the thoughts and hands of Elizabeth’s first minister. The war had raged in France between the Huguenots and the Catholics from September 1567 till the clever management of Catharine had beguiled the Protestants to accept the hollow peace of Longjumeau (March 1568). Hans Casimir and his mercenary Germans went home; the Huguenots laid down their arms; and then again the Catholic pulpits thundered forth that it was godly to break faith with heretics, and that the blood shed of unbelievers sent up sweet incense to heaven. Nearly 10,000 Huguenots were treacherously slain in three months, and no punishment could be obtained against the murderers. Condé and Coligny fled to the stronghold of La Rochelle, there to be joined by the Queen of Navarre with 4000 men-at-arms, and all that was strong and warlike on the side of the Huguenots. Elizabeth in the autumn was making a progress through the valley of the Thames when she heard that Cardinal Chatillon[282] had escaped from Tréport, and had arrived in England and desired an audience. Lord Cobham, Warden of the Cinque Ports, made much of him when he landed; Gresham entertained him; the French Ambassador, himself inclined to be a Huguenot, honoured him as if he were a prince; and as soon as the Queen’s answer was received, Chatillon hurried down to Newbury to prefer his request to the Queen. He looked little of a cardinal or a churchman, for he dressed in cape, hat, and sword, and his wife joined him, but that perhaps made him all the more welcome. Throgmorton voices the general idea in a letter to Cecil. “I think,” he says, “with you, that it is a special favour of God to preserve this realm from calamities by their neighbours’ troubles.… If her Majesty suffer the Low Countries and France to be weeded of the members of the Church whereof England is also a portion, I see no other thing can happen but a more grievous accident to us than to those whom we have suffered to be destroyed.”[283]