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Occupying nearly four columns, appeared in the New York Tribune of Dec. 30th, 1879, from which the following is extracted. "It embraces the time from the accession of Francis I. in 1515, to the death of Charles IX. in 1574, at which epoch the doctrines of the Reformation had become well-grounded in France, and the Huguenots had outgrown the feebleness of infancy and stood as a distinct and powerful body before the religious world. In preparing the learned and elaborate work, which will give the

FROM THE EDICT OF JANUARY (1562) TO THE DEATH OF CHARLES THE NINTH (1574). THE FIRST CIVIL WAR. The Edict of January was on its very face a compromise, and as such rested on no firm foundation. Inconsistent with itself, it fully satisfied neither Huguenot nor Roman Catholic. The latter objected to the toleration which the edict extended; the former demanded the unrestricted freedom of worship which it denied. If the existence of two diverse religions was compatible with the welfare of the state,

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The period of about half a century with which these volumes are concerned may properly be regarded as the formative age of the Huguenots of France. It included the first planting of the reformed doctrines, and the steady growth of the Reformation in spite of obloquy and persecution, whether exercised under the forms of law or vented in lawless violence. It saw the gathering and the regular organization of the reformed communities, as well as their consolidation into one of the most orderly and z

When, on the first day of the year 1515, the young Count of Angoulême succeeded to the throne left vacant by the death of his kinsman and father-in-law, Louis the Twelfth, the country of which he became monarch was already an extensive, flourishing, and well-consolidated kingdom. The territorial development of France was, it is true, far from complete. On the north, the whole province of Hainault belonged to the Spanish Netherlands, whose boundary line was less than one hundred miles distant fro

From Meaux, Leclerc, forced to leave his home, retired first to Rosoy, and thence to Metz. [186] Here, while supporting himself by working at his humble trade, he lost none of his missionary spirit. Not content with communicating a knowledge of the doctrines of the Reformation to all with whom he conversed, his impatient zeal led him to a new and startling protest against the prevalent, and, in his view, idolatrous worship of images. Learning that on a certain day a solemn procession was to be m

Francis the First and his sister, Margaret of Angoulême, were destined to exercise so important an influence in shaping the history of the French Reformation during the first half of the sixteenth century, that a glance at their personal history and character seems indispensable. Francis Was in his twenty-first year when, by the extinction of the elder line of the house of Orleans, the crown came to him as the nearest heir of Louis the Twelfth. [212] He was tall, but well proportioned, of a fair

The year 1525 was critical as well in the religious as in the political history of France. On the twenty-fourth of February, in consequence of the disaster at Pavia, Francis fell into the hands of his rival—Charles, by hereditary descent King of Spain, Naples, and Jerusalem, sovereign, under various titles, of the Netherlands, and by election Emperor of Germany—a prince whose vast possessions in both hemispheres made him at once the wealthiest and most powerful of living monarchs. With his unfor

It appears almost incredible that, so late as in the year 1534, the hope of reuniting the discordant views of the partisans of reform and the adherents of the Roman Church should have been seriously entertained by any considerable number of reflecting minds, for the chasm separating the opposing parties was too wide and deep to be bridged over or filled. There were irreconcilable differences of doctrine and practice, and tendencies so diverse as to preclude the possibility of harmonious action.

In the initial stage of great enterprises a point may sometimes be distinguished at which circumstances, in themselves trivial, have shaped the entire future. Such a point in the history of the Huguenots is marked by the appearance of the "Placards" of 1534. The pusillanimous retreat of Bishop Briçonnet from the advanced post he had at first assumed, robbed Protestantism of an important advantage which might have been retained had the prelate proved true to his convictions. But the "Placards," w

That part of Provence, the ancient Roman Provincia, which skirts the northern bank of the Durance, formerly contained, at a distance of between twenty and fifty miles above the confluence of the river with the Rhône near Avignon, more than a score of small towns and villages inhabited by peasants of Waldensian origin. The entire district had been desolated by war about a couple of centuries before the time of which we are now treating. Extensive tracts of land were nearly depopulated, and the fe

On the thirty-first of March, 1547, Francis the First died, leaving the throne to his only surviving son. With whatever assiduity the poets and scholars of whom the late king had been a munificent patron, and the courtiers who had basked in the sunshine of his favor, might apply themselves to the celebration of his resplendent merits, posterity, less blind to his faults, has declined to confirm the title of "great" affixed to his name by contemporaries. The candid historian, undazzled by the gli

The plans carefully matured by Henry for the suppression of the reformed doctrines were disarranged by his sudden death. The expected victims of the Spanish Inquisition, which he was to have established in France, breathed more freely. It was not wonderful that the "Calvinists," according to an unfriendly historian, preached of the late monarch's fate as miraculous, and magnified it to their advantage; [729] for they saw in it an interposition of the Almighty in their behalf, as signal as any il

The tempest which had threatened to overwhelm the Guises at Amboise had been successfully withstood; but quiet had not returned to the minds of those whose vices were its principal cause. The air was still thick with noxious vapors, and none could tell how soon or in what quarter the elements of a new and more terrible convulsion would gather. [847] The recent commotion had disclosed the existence of a body of malcontents, in part religious, in part also political, scattered over the whole kingd

That it was no personal fear which had occasioned Beza's delay was soon proved. Antoine had written on the twelfth of August; on the sixteenth, without waiting for a safe-conduct, the reformer was already on his way to St. Germain, acting upon the principle laid down by Calvin: "If it be not yet God's pleasure to open a door , it is our duty to creep in at the windows , or to penetrate through the smallest crevices , rather than allow the opportunity of effecting a happy arrangement to escape us

On Tuesday, the ninth of September, 1561, the long-expected conference was to be opened. That morning, at ten o'clock, a procession of ministers and delegates of the Reformed churches left St. Germain-en-Laye on horseback for the village of Poissy. The ministers, twelve in number, were men of note: Théodore de Bèze, or Beza, with whom the reader is already well acquainted; Augustin Marlorat, a native of Lorraine, formerly a monk, but now famous in the Protestant ranks, and the leading pastor in