bourgeois
heretics.

The failure to exterminate the protestant heresy corresponded with the
invincibility of the rising power of the bourgeois of that time; as this
power grew, the fight with the feudal nobles, at first pre-eminently
local, began to assume national proportions. The first great conflict
occurred in Germany, the so-called Reformation. The power of the
bourgeois was neither sufficiently strong nor sufficiently developed for
an open rebellious stand, by uniting under the standard of revolt the
city plebeians, the smaller nobility, and the peasants of the country
districts. The nobility was struck first, the peasants took up a
position which was the high-water mark of the entire revolution, the
cities left them in the lurch, and so the revolution was left to the
leaders of the country gentry who gathered the whole victory to
themselves. Thenceforth for three hundred years Germany disappeared from
the ranks of independent, energetic progressive countries. But after the
German Luther, arose the French Calvin. With natural French acuteness he
showed the bourgeois character of the revolution in the Church,
republicanised and democratised. While the Lutheran Reformation fell in
Germany and Germany declined, the Calvinistic served as a standard to
the republicans in Geneva, in Holland, in Scotland, freed Holland from
German and Spanish domination, and gave an ideological dress to the
second act of the bourgeois revolution which proceeded in England. Here
Calvinism proved itself to be the natural religious garb of the
interests of the existing rule of the bourgeois and was not realised any
further than that the revolution of 1689 was completed by a compromise
between a portion of the nobility and the middle-class. The English
Established Church was restored, but not in its earlier form with the
king for Pope, but was strongly infused with Calvinism. The
old-established Church had kept up the merry Catholic Sunday and fought
against the tedious Calvinistic one, the new bourgeois Church introduced
the latter and added thereby to the charms of England.

In France the Calvinistic minority was subdued in 1685, either made
Catholic or hunted out of the country. But what was the good? Directly
after that the free thinker Pierre Bayle was at work, and in 1694
Voltaire was born. The tyrannical rule of Louis XIV. only made it easier
for the French bourgeoisie to be able to make its revolution in the
political form finally