ys itself in the masses, but the masses were rarely
fanaticised, and the crimes ascribed to it were commonly due to the
calculations of dispassionate politicians. When the King of France
undertook to kill all the Protestants, he was obliged to do it by his
own agents. It was nowhere the spontaneous act of the population, and in
many towns and in entire provinces the magistrates refused to obey. The
motive of the Court was so far from mere fanaticism that the Queen
immediately challenged Elizabeth to do the like to the English
Catholics. Francis I. and Henry II. sent nearly a hundred Huguenots to
the stake, but they were cordial and assiduous promoters of the
Protestant religion in Germany. Sir Nicholas Bacon was one of the
ministers who suppressed the mass in England. Yet when the Huguenot
refugees came over he liked them so little that he reminded Parliament
of the summary way in which Henry V. at Agincourt dealt with the
Frenchmen who fell into his hands. John Knox thought that every Catholic
in Scotland ought to be put to death, and no man ever had disciples of a
sterner or more relentless temper. But his counsel was not followed.

All through the religious conflict policy kept the upper hand. When the
last of the Reformers died, religion, instead of emancipating the
nations, had become an excuse for the criminal art of despots. Calvin
preached and Bellarmine lectured, but Machiavelli reigned. Before the
close of the century three events occurred which mark the beginning of a
momentous change. The massacre of St. Bartholomew convinced the bulk of
Calvinists of the lawfulness of rebellion against tyrants, and they
became advocates of that doctrine in which the Bishop of Winchester had
led the way,[4] and which Knox and Buchanan had received, through their
master at Paris, straight from the mediaeval schools. Adopted out of
aversion to the King of France, it was soon put in practice against the
King of Spain. The revolted Netherlands, by a solemn Act, deposed Philip
II., and made themselves independent under the Prince of Orange, who had
been, and continued to be, styled his Lieutenant. Their example was
important, not only because subjects of one religion deposed a monarch
of another, for that had been seen in Scotland, but because, moreover,
it put a republic in the place of a monarchy, and forced the public law
of Europe to recognise the accomplished revolution. At the same time,
the French Catholics, rising against