vennes; the greater part of
Languedoc and Gascony, with the important cities of Montauban, Castres,
Castelnaudary, Beziers, Pezenas, Montpellier, Aiguesmortes, and
Nismes.[84] In northern France alone, where the number of Protestants was
small, the Huguenots obtained but a slight foothold.[85]

[Sidenote: Can iconoclasm be repressed?]

In the midst of this universal movement there was one point in the compact
made by the confederates at Orleans, which it was found impossible to
execute. How could the churches, with their altars, their statues, their
pictures, their relics, their priestly vestments, be guaranteed from
invasion? To the Huguenot masses they were the temples and instruments of
an idolatrous worship. Ought Christians to tolerate the existence of such
abominations, even if sanctioned by the government? It was hard to draw a
nice line of distinction between the overthrow of idolatry by public
authority and by personal zeal. If there were any difference in the merit
of the act, it was in favor of the man who vindicated the true religion at
the risk of his own life. Nay, the Church itself had incontrovertibly
given its sanction to this view by placing among the martyrs those
primitive Christians who had upon their own responsibility entered heathen
temples and overthrown the objects of the popular devotion. In those early
centuries there had been manifested the same reckless exposure of life,
the same supreme contempt for the claims of art in comparison with the
demands of religion. The Minerva of Phidias or Praxiteles was no safer
from the iconoclastic frenzy of the new convert from heathenism than the
rude idol of a less cultivated age. The command, "Thou shalt not make unto
thee any graven image," had not excepted from its prohibition the
marvellous products of the Greek chisel.

It was here, therefore, that the chief insubordination of the Huguenot
people manifested itself--not in licentious riot, not in bloodshed, not in
pillage. Calvin, with his high sense of law and order, might in his
letters reiterate the warnings against the irregularity which we have seen
him uttering on a previous occasion;[86] the ministers might threaten the
guilty with exclusion from the ordinances of the Church; Conde might
denounce the penalty of death. The people could not restrain themselves or
be restrained. They must remove what had been a stumbling-block to them
and might become a snare to others. They felt no more compunc