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

these several municipalities met together, and
constituted a supreme council. This council had
power to impose taxes, to administer justice, and,
when threatened with violence by the government,
to raise soldiers and carry on war. This was a State
within a State. The propriety of the step is open to
question, but it is not to be hastily condemned. The
French Government had abdicated its functions. It
neither respected the property nor defended the
lives of the Huguenots. It neither executed the laws
of the State in their behalf, nor fulfilled a moment
longer than it had the power to break them the
special treaties into which it had entered. So far
from redressing their wrongs, it was the foremost
party to inflict wrong and outrage upon them. In
short, society in that unhappy country was
dissolved, and in so unusual a state of things, it
were hard to deny the Protestants the fight to make
the best arrangements they could for the defense of
their natural and social rights.
At the court even there now arose a party that
threw its shield over the Huguenots. That party was
known as the Politiques or Tiers Parti.[4] It was
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