Savonarola did in Florence, but he did not have as liberal ideas as the
Florentine reformer about the political liberties of the people. He made
his faith the dearest thing a man could have, to be defended unto death
in the face of the most unrelenting persecution. It was the tenacity to
defend the reformed doctrines, of which, next to Luther, Calvin was the
greatest champion, which kindled opposition to civil rulers. And it was
opposition to civil rulers who proved themselves tyrants which led to
the struggle for civil liberty; not democratic ideas of right. These may
have been the sequence of agitations and wars, but not their animating
cause,--like the ideas of Rousseau on the French revolutionists. The
original Puritans were not democratic; the Presbyterians of Scotland
were not, even when Cromwell led the armies, but not the people, of
England. The Huguenots had no aspirations for civil rights; they only
aspired for the right of worshipping God according to the dictates of
conscience. There was nothing popular in their notions of government
when Henry IV. headed the forces of the Huguenots; he only aimed at the
recognition of religious rights. The Huguenots never rallied around
popular leaders, but rather under the standards of princes and nobles
fighting for the right of worshipping God according to the dictation or
ideas of Calvin. They would preserve their schools, their churches,
their consistories, and their synods; they would be unmolested in their
religious worship.

Now, at the time when Henry IV. was born, in the year 1553, when Henry
II. was King of France and Edward VI. was King of England, the ideas of
the Reformation, and especially the doctrines of Calvin, had taken a
deep and wide hold of the French people. The Calvinists, as they were
called, were a powerful party; in some parts of France they were in a
majority. More than a third of the whole population had enthusiastically
accepted the reformed doctrines. They were in a fair way toward triumph;