r and to consist of ten Catholic and six
Protestant judges. But a still stronger guarantee was given in their
recognition as a separately organized state within the state. The king
agreed to leave two hundred towns in their hands, some of which, like
Montpellier, Montauban, and La Rochelle, were fortresses in which they
kept garrisons and paid the governors. As they could raise 25,000
soldiers at a time when the national army in time of peace was only
10,000, their position seemed absolutely impregnable. So favorable was
the Edict to the Huguenots that it was bitterly opposed by the Catholic
clergy and by the Parlement of Paris. Only the personal insistence of
the king finally carried it.

[Sidenote: Reasons for failure of French Protestantism]

Protestantism was stronger in the sixteenth century in France than it
ever was thereafter. During the eighty-seven years while the Edict of
Nantes was in force it lost much ground, and when that Edict was
revoked by a doting king and persecution began afresh, the Huguenots
were in no condition to resist. [Sidenote: 1685] From a total
constituency at its maximum of perhaps a fifth or a sixth of the whole
population, the Protestants have now sunk to less than two per cent.
(650,000 out of 39,000,000). The history of the rise and decline of
the Huguenot movement is a melancholy record of persecution and of
heroism. How great the number of martyrs was can never be known
accurately. Apart from St. Bartholomew there were several lesser
massacres, the wear and tear of a generation of war, and {230} the
unremitting pressure of the law that claimed hundreds of victims a year.

[Sidenote: Hostility of government]

Three principal causes can be assigned for the failure of the
Reformation to do more than fight a drawn battle in France. The first
and least important of these was the steady hostility of the
government. This hostility was assured by the mutually advantageous
alliance between the throne and the church sealed in the Concordat of
Bologna of 1516. But that the opposition of the government, heavily as
it weighed, was not and could not be the decisive force in defeating
Protestantism is proved, in my judgment, by the fact that even when the
Huguenots had a king of their own persuasion they were unable to obtain
the mastery. Had their faith won the support not only of a
considerable minority, but of the actual majority of the people, they
could surely at this time