permission to meet for worship and for consultations, and granted them
cities for the security of their rights, of which La Rochelle was the
chief. The Calvinists had been nearly exterminated in the north, but
there were still a large number in the south of France, and the burghers
of the chief southern cities were mostly Huguenot. The war had been from
the first a very horrible one; there had been savage slaughter, and
still more savage reprisals on each side. The young nobles had been
trained into making a fashion of ferocity, and practising graceful ways
of striking death-blows. Whole districts had been laid waste, churches
and abbeys destroyed, tombs rifled, and the whole population accustomed
to every sort of horror and suffering; while nobody but Henry IV.
himself, and the Duke of Sully, had any notion either of statesmanship
or of religious toleration.


11. Henry's Plans.--Just as the reign of Louis XI. had been a period
of rest and recovery from the English wars, so that of Henry IV. was one
of restoration from the ravages of thirty years of intermittent civil
war. The king himself not only had bright and engaging manners, but was
a man of large heart and mind; and Sully did much for the welfare of the
country. Roads, canals, bridges, postal communications, manufactures,
extended commerce, all owed their promotion to him, and brought
prosperity to the burgher class; and the king was especially endeared to
the peasantry by his saying that he hoped for the time when no cottage
would be without a good fowl in its pot. The great silk manufactories of
southern France chiefly arose under his encouragement, and there was
prosperity of every kind. The Church itself was in a far better state
than before. Some of the best men of any time were then living--in
especial Vincent de Paul, who did much to improve the training of the
parochial clergy, and who founded the order of Sisters of Charity, who