Protestantism in France From Death of Francis I to Edict of Nantes - James Aitken Wylie

Protestants had it in their power to avoid the dire
necessity of taking up arms, so long, in short, as the
certain ruin of the cause did not stare them in the
face in the way of their sitting still, they were not
justified in making their appeal to arms. But they
judged, and we think rightly, that they had now no
alternative; that the Triumvirate had decided this
question for them; and that nothing remained, if the
last remnants of conscience and liberty were not to
be trodden out, but to take their place on the battlefield.
The legitimate rule of the king had been
superseded by the usurpation of a junto, the leading
spirits of which were foreigners. The Protestants
saw treaties torn up, and soldiers enrolled for the
work of murder. They saw their brethren
slaughtered like sheep, not in hundreds only, but
literally in thousands. They saw the smoke of
burning cities and castles darkening the firmament,
unburied corpses tainting the air, and the blood of
men and women dyeing their rivers, and tinting the
seas around their coasts. They saw groups of
orphans wandering about, crying for bread, or
laying themselves down to die of hunger. The
touching words of Charlotte Laval addressed to her
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