They should remember that they were dealing with "a great, powerful monarch, who was putting his realm in jeopardy, and not with a Duke of Anjou, who had every thing to gain and nothing to lose." All the Huguenots, with whom the envoys conversed, were excessively sanguine.

Could the King be once brought they said, to promise the Netherlands his protection, there was not the least fear but that he would keep his word.

He would use all the means within his power; "yea, he would take the crown from his head," rather than turn back.

Although reluctant to commence a war with so powerful a sovereign, having once promised his help, he would keep his pledge to the utmost, "for he was a King of his word," and had never broken and would never break his faith with those of the reformed religion.
Thus spoke the leading Huguenots of France, in confidential communication with the Netherland envoys, not many months before the famous edict of extermination, published at Nemours.
At that moment the reformers were full of confidence; not foreseeing the long procession of battles and sieges which was soon to sweep through the land.

Notwithstanding the urgency of the Papists for their extirpation, they extolled loudly the liberty of religious worship which Calvinists, as well as Catholics, were enjoying in France, and pointed to the fact that the adherents of both religions were well received at court, and that they shared equally in offices of trust and dignity throughout the kingdom.
The Netherland envoys themselves bore testimony to the undisturbed tranquillity and harmony in which the professors of both religions were living and worshipping side by side "without reproach or quarrel" in all the great cities which they had visited.