The rapid rise and fall of French Protestantism has never been an easy phenomenon to chart or explain. The international audience is made aware that the French Protestant community recognises the concept of mutual interest: the Count is so missed by Chandieu's allies that a translation is necessary, to succour the grieving French he leaves behind. The French Protestants had solicited the aid of the German princes citing common religious aims. The middle years of the French Wars of Religion saw Calvinism change from a thriving militant movement confident enough to raise an army and take on the royal forces to a shrunken vestige of its former self, in many areas leaderless and without hope. In Chandieu's theological and poetical works, he expressed sorrow, outrage, anger, contempt, a whole range of emotions that one might expect from one who understood his vocation to be that of a man of God whose efforts are thwarted by force.