ated against them, and which were not mere empty
threats, but were carried into execution throughout the land with
unrelenting and strenuous ferocity, we feel that if ever the right of
self-defence can make an appeal to arms justifiable, it was so in
their instance. Extermination or apostasy formed the only choice that
their rulers offered them. Mackintosh, in his "History of the English
Revolution of 1688," has truly termed the question of when subjects
are justified in making war on their sovereign, "a tremendous
problem." But the same admirable writer has bequeathed to us a full
and luminous code of the rules and principles of immutable morality,
by which this awful issue must be tried, and no one who is familiar
with these principles can hesitate in pronouncing that the war on the
part of the French Huguenots was lawful and laudable before God and
man.

Coligni is peculiarly free from the heavy imputation, which
insurrectionary leaders incur, however great their provocation, who
introduce the appeal of battle in civil controversy, and, to use the
emphatic language of Milton, "let loose the sword of intestine war,
soaking the land in her own gore," before every other possible mode of
obtaining protection from further enormous wrong has been attempted,
and attempted in vain. He was wholly unconnected with the enterprise
(known in French history as the conspiracy of Amboise) by which some
of the Protestant chiefs designed to withdraw the young king, Francis
II., forcibly from the influence of the Guises, and which may be
considered the first overt act of insurrection. Not that Conde is to
be condemned for that effort, but the Admiral's exceeding loyalty is
proved by his having kept aloof from it. Coligni continued to seek
security for his co-religionists by peaceable means, for two years
after that unsuccessful enterprise, from the savage reprisals of the
Court upon its authors. He seemed at one time to be successful in his
blameless exertions; and in the Assembly of Notables, held in January,
1562, an edict was issued, called the "Edict of Pacification," giving
a partial toleration of the Protestant creed, and suspending all penal
proceedings on the ground of religion.

This was all that Coligni strove for. He said at the time to some of
his adherents: "If we have our religion, what do we want more?" But
those who had made this concession were treacherous as they were
cruel, and the fair promise which France seemed