Being obliged to halt at Pezenas because he had a fever, he there received a deputation from Montauban, asking to have its fortifications preserved.

On the minister's formal refusal, supported by a movement in advance on the part of Marshal Bassompierre with the army, the town submitted unreservedly.

"Knowing that the cardinal had made up his mind to enter in force, they found this so bitter a pill that they could scarcely swallow it;" they, nevertheless, offered the dais to the minister, as they had been accustomed to do to the governor, but he refused it, and would not suffer the consuls to walk on foot beside his horse.

Bassompierre set guards at the doors of the meeting-house, that things might be done without interruption or scandal; it was ascertained that the Parliament of Toulouse, "habitually intractable in all that concerned religion," had enregistered the edict without difficulty; the gentlemen of the neighborhood came up in crowds, the Reformers to make their submission and the Catholics to congratulate the cardinal; on the day of his departure the pickaxe was laid to the fortifications of Montauban; those of Castres were already beginning to fall; and the Huguenot party in France was dead.

Deprived of the political guarantees which had been granted them by Henry IV., the Reformers had nothing for it but to retire into private life.