As we have seen (_ante_, p. 227), La Rochelle was in 1552 the scene of the judicial murder of at least two Protestants. The constancy of one of the sufferers had been the means of converting many to the reformed doctrines, and among others Claude d'Angliers, the presiding judge, whose name may still be read at the foot of their sentence. (Arcère, i. 329.) So rapidly had those doctrines spread, that on Sunday, May 31, 1562, the Lord's Supper was celebrated according to the fashion of Geneva, not in one of the churches, but on the great square of the hay-market, in a temporary enclosure shut in on all sides by tapestries and covered with an awning of canvas. More than eight thousand persons took part in the exercises. But if the morning's services were remarkable, the sequel was not less singular. "As the disease of image-breaking was almost universal," says an old chronicler, "it was communicated by contagion to the inhabitants of this city, in such wise that, that very afternoon about three or four o'clock, five hundred men, who were under arms and had just received the same sacrament, went through all the churches and dashed the images in pieces. Howbeit it was a folly conducted with wisdom, seeing that this action passed without any one being wounded or injured." (P. Vincent, _apud_ Callot, 34, and Delmas, 61.) As usual, the whole affair was condemned by the ministers.
Although La Rochelle had steadily refused, during the earlier part of the first religious war, to declare for the Prince of Condé, and had maintained a kind of neutrality, the court was in constant fear lest the weight of its sympathies should yet draw it in that direction. It was therefore a matter of great joy when, in October, 1562, the Duke of Montpensier succeeded, by a ruse meriting the designation of treachery, in throwing himself into La Rochelle with a large body of troops. With his arrival the banished Roman Catholic mass returned, and the Protestant ministers were warned to leave at once. (Arcère, i. 339.)
For two months after the restoration of peace, the Huguenots of La Rochelle, embracing almost the entire population, held their religious services, in accordance with the terms of the Edict of Pacification, in the suburbs of the city. But, on the 9th of May, 1563, Charles the Ninth was prevailed to give directions that one or two places should be assigned to the Huguenots within the city. This gracious permission was ratified with greater solemnity in letters patent of July 14th, in which the king declared the motive to be the representations made to him of "the inconveniences and eminent dangers that might arise in our said city of La Rochelle, if the preaching and exercise of the pretended reformed religion should continue to be held outside of the said city, being, as it is, a frontier city in the direction of the English, ancient enemies of the inhabitants of that city, where it would be easy for them, by this means, to execute some evil enterprise." (Commission of Charles IX., to M. de Jarnac. This valuable MS., with other MSS., carried to Dublin at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, by M. Elie Bouhereau, and placed in the Marsh Library, has recently been restored to La Rochelle, in accordance with M. Bouhereau's written directions. Delmas, 369.)