that would seal the peace. Several days after the marriage, an assassin would make an attempt on Coligny's life, wounding him in the shoulder, but non fatally. The Huguenot nobility exploded in anger at what they assumed was the work of the Guise if not Catherine herself. With the nobles threatening bloody retribution on the Guise, a royal council meeting was held, in which it was agreed to liquidate the Huguenot leadership on the pretext that they were about to send their troops into Paris for more extensive reprisals. On the morning of 24 August hit teams fanned out to execute the various Huguenot leaders, killing Coligny in his bedroom. When word of these hits got out, the population joined in against the general Huguenot population of the city, massacring 3–5000. The massacres then spread to other parts of France. Further edict modification While the king maintained his support for the peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye during both the assassination attempt on Coligny and the resulting massacre, it was further eroded as the king took the opportunity to ban Protestants from serving in the royal court and suspended assemblies. The Protestant cities in the south, furious at the betrayal of the assassinations and what they took to be a royal ordered nationwide massacre, entered rebellion. This began the fourth war of religion with the failed royal siege of La Rochelle. Assessment by contemporaries More militant Catholics regarded the peace terms agreed with abject horror. Monluc despondently remarked that the Huguenots had "won by writing what they lost by fighting." Lorraine too remarked on the peace that the "articles in it are bad and pernicious but what is still more annoying is the despair." The baron de Gordes lieutenant governor of Dauphiné opined that the peace should not have been published until Huguenots were disarmed and removed from their occupation of towns. The Parlement of Toulouse bemoaned to the king in June 1572 that the provision of amnesty in the peace was causing much disorder, due to criminals falsely claiming themselves to be religious prisoners. The Huguenot aristocracy remained more cautious in their appraisal of the peace, approving many of its terms but fearful that they might be betrayed at any moment. As a result, most Huguenot aristocrats stayed on their estates, where they could be confident of their security, only departing in August 1572 to attend the marriage of Henri and Marguerite.