they had recourse to foreign assistance; and, by means of a common league,
they endeavoured to oppose a power which, singly, they were unable
to withstand.

But the strong political inducements which the German princes had
to resist the pretensions of the House of Austria, naturally did not extend
to their subjects. It is only immediate advantages or immediate evils
that set the people in action, and for these a sound policy cannot wait.
Ill then would it have fared with these princes, if by good fortune
another effectual motive had not offered itself, which roused the passions
of the people, and kindled in them an enthusiasm which might be directed
against the political danger, as having with it a common cause of alarm.

This motive was their avowed hatred of the religion which Austria protected,
and their enthusiastic attachment to a doctrine which that House
was endeavouring to extirpate by fire and sword. Their attachment was ardent,
their hatred invincible. Religious fanaticism anticipates
even the remotest dangers. Enthusiasm never calculates its sacrifices.
What the most pressing danger of the state could not gain from the citizens,
was effected by religious zeal. For the state, or for the prince,
few would have drawn the sword; but for religion, the merchant, the artist,
the peasant, all cheerfully flew to arms. For the state, or for the prince,
even the smallest additional impost would have been avoided; but for religion
the people readily staked at once life, fortune, and all earthly hopes.
It trebled the contributions which flowed into the exchequer of the princes,
and the armies which marched to the field; and, in the ardent excitement
produced in all minds by the peril to which their faith was exposed,
the subject felt not the pressure of those burdens and privations under which,
in cooler moments, he would have sunk exhausted. The terrors of
the Spanish Inquisition, and the massacre of St. Bartholomew's, procured for