Amid the fierce agitation which fell upon France in the sixteenth century, for a while we find but few traces of the employment of caricature by either party. The religious reformation there was rather aristocratic than popular, and the reformers sought less to excite the feelings of the multitude, which, indeed, went generally in the contrary direction. There was, moreover, a character of gloom in the religion of Calvin, which contracted strongly with the joyousness of that of the followers of Luther; and the factions in France sought to slaughter, rather than to laugh at, each other. The few caricatures of this period which are known, are very bitter and coarse. As far as I am aware, no early Huguenot caricatures are known, but there are a few directed against the Huguenots. It was, however, with the rise of the Ligue that the taste for political caricature may be said to have taken root in France, and in that country it long continued to flourish more than anywhere else. The first caricatures of the ligueurs were directed against the person of the king, Henri de Valois, and possess a brutality almost beyond description. It was now an object to keep up the bitterness of spirit of the fanatical multitude. In one of these caricatures a demon is represented waiting on the king to summon him to a meeting of the "Estates" in hell; and in the distance we see another demon flying away with him. Another relates to the murder of the Guises, in 1588, which the ligueurs professed to ascribe to the councils of M. d'Epernon, one of his favourites, on whom they looked with great hatred. It is entitled, "Soufflement et Conseil diabolique de d'Epernon à Henri de Valois pour faccager les Catholiques." In the middle of the picture stands the king, and beside him D'Epernon, who is blowing into his ear with a bellows. On the ground before them lie the headless corpses of the _deux frères Catholiques_, the duke of Guise, and his brother the cardinal, while the executioner of royal vengeance is holding up their heads by the hair. In the distance is seen the castle of Blois, in which this tragedy took place; and on the left of the picture appear the cardinal de Bourbon, the archbishop of Blois, and other friends of the Guises, expressing their horror at the deed. Henri III. was himself murdered in the year following, and the caricatures against him became still more brutal during the period in which the ligueurs tried to set up a king of their own in his place. In one caricature, which has more of an emblematical character than most of the others, he is pictured as "Henri le Monstrueux;" and in others, entitled "Les Hermaphrodites," he is exhibited under forms which point at the infamous vices with which he was charged. [Illustration: _No. 173. The Assembly of Apes._]