The Protestant nobles of Saintonge and Poitou flocked in.

A royal ally was announced; the Queen of Navarre, Jeanne d'Albret, was bringing her son Henry, fifteen years of age, whom she was training up to be Henry IV.

Conde went to meet them, and, on the 28th of September, 1568, all this flower of French Protestantism was assembled at La Rochelle, ready and resolved to commence the third religious war.
It was the longest and most serious of the four wars of this kind which so profoundly agitated France in the reign of Charles IX.

This one lasted from the 24th of August, 1568, to the 8th of August, 1570, between the departure of Conde and Coligny for La Rochelle and the treaty of peace of St.Germain-en-Laye: a hollow peace, like the rest, and only two years before the St.Bartholomew.

On starting from Noyers with Coligny, Conde had addressed to the king, on the 23d of August, a letter and a request, wherein, "after having set forth the grievances of the Reformers, he attributed all the mischief to the Cardinal of Lorraine, and declared that the Protestant nobles felt themselves constrained, for the safety of the realm, to take up arms against that infamous priest, that tiger of France, and against his accomplices." He bitterly reproached the Guises "with treating as mere policists, that is, men who sacrifice religion to temporal interests, the Catholics inclined to make concessions to the Reformers, especially the Chancellor de l'Hospital and the sons of the late Constable de Montmorency." The Guises, indeed, and their friends did not conceal their distrust of De l'Hospital, any more than he concealed his opposition to their deeds and their designs.
Whilst the peace of Longjumeau was still in force, Charles IX.