tical, they acted
as one nation confronting another nation, and labored to form a state
within state. We will borrow from the intelligent and learned _Histoire
d'Henri IV.,_ by M. Poirson, (t. ii. pp. 497-500), a picture of one of
those assemblies and its work. "After the king's abjuration, and at the
end of the year 1593, the French Huguenots renewed at Mantes their old
union, and swore to live and die united in their profession of faith.
Henry was in hopes that they would stop short at a religious
demonstration; but they made it a starting-point for a new political and
military organization on behalf of the Calvinistic party. They took
advantage of a general permission granted them by Henry, and met, not in
synod, but in general assembly, at the town of Sainte Foy, in the month
of June, 1594. Thereupon they divided all France into nine great
provinces or circles, composed each of several governments or provinces
of the realm. Each circle had a separate council, composed of from five
to seven members, and commissioned to fix and apportion the separate
imposts, to keep up a standing army, to collect the supplies necessary
for the maintenance and defence of the party. The Calvinistic republic
had its general assemblies, composed of nine deputies or representatives
from each of the nine circles. These assemblies were invested with
authority to order, on the general account, all that the juncture
required, that is to say, with a legislative power distinct from that of
the crown and nation. . . . If the king ceased to pay the sums
necessary to keep up the garrisons in the towns left to the Reformers,
the governors were to seize the talliages in the hands of the king's
receivers, and apply the money to the payment of the garrisons. And in
case the central power should attempt to repress these violent
procedures, or to substitute as commandant in those places a Catholic for
a Protestant, all the Calvinists of the locality and the neighboring
districts were to unite and rise in order to give the assistance of the
strong hand to the Protestant governors so attacked. Independently of
the ordinary imposts, a special impost was laid on the Calvinists, and
gave their leaders the disposal of a yearly sum of one hundred and twenty
thousand livres (four hundred and forty thousand francs of the present
day). The Calvinistic party had thus a territorial area, an
administration, finances, a legislative power and an executive