Henry M. Baird · 379 of 379

CHAPTER XII · The Huguenots no longer outlaws.

Such were the most important features of a law the promulgation of which marks the termination of the first great period in the history of the Huguenots of France—the period of persecution inflicted mainly according to cruel legal ordinances and under the forms of judicial procedure. From the moment of the publication of this charter—imperfect and inadequate as it manifestly was—the Huguenots ceased to be outlaws, and became, in the eye of the law, at least, a class entitled within certain limits to the protection of the ministers of justice. Unhappily for France, the solemn recognition of Protestant rights was scarcely conceded by representatives of the entire nation before an attempt was made by a desperate faction to annul and overturn it by intrigue and violence. The next act in this remarkable drama is, therefore, the inauguration of the period of Civil War, or of oppression exercised in defiance of acknowledged rights and of the accepted principles of equity—a lamentable period, in which every bloody contest originated in the determination of the one party to circumscribe or destroy, and of the other to maintain in its integrity the fundamental basis of toleration laid down in the Edict of January.