But when the edict of Amboise had put an end to the first religious war, when the question was no longer as to who won or lost battles, but whether the conditions of that peace to which the Catholics had sworn were loyally observed, and whether their concessions were effective in insuring the modest amount of liberty and security promised to the Protestants, the question changed front, and it was not long before facts put the malcontents in the right.
Between 1563 and 1567 murders of distinguished Protestants increased strangely, and excited amongst their families anxiety accompanied by a thirst for vengeance.

The Guises and their party, on their side, persisted in their outcries for proceedings against the instigators, known or presumed, of the murder of Duke Francis.

It was plainly against Admiral de Coligny that these cries were directed; and he met them by a second declaration, very frank as a denial of the deed which it was intended to impute to him, but more hostile than ever to the Guises and their party.

"The late duke," said he, "was of the whole army the man I had most looked out for on the day of the last battle; if I could have brought a gun to bear upon him to kill him, I would have done it; I would have ordered ten thousand arquebusiers, had so many been under my command, to single him out amongst all the others, whether in the field, or from over a wall, or from behind a hedge.

In short, I would not have spared any of the means permitted by the laws of war in time of hostility to get rid of so great an enemy as he was for me and for so many other good subjects of the king." After three years of such deadly animosity between the two parties and the two houses, the king and the queen-mother could find no other way of stopping an explosion than to call the matter on before the privy council, and cause to be there drawn up, on the 29th of January, 1566, a solemn decree, "declaring the admiral's innocence on his own affirmation, given in the presence of the king and the council as before God himself, that he had not had anything to do with or approved of the said homicide.