had really great leaders, men who had power and were experienced in the affairs of the world; it was becoming a political party as well as a religious conviction; and the French Reformers were henceforth in a condition to make war as well as die at the stake for their faith. Hitherto they had been only believers and martyrs; they became the victors and the vanquished, alternately, in a civil war. A new position for them, and as formidable as it was grand. It was destined to bring upon them cruel trials and the worth of them in important successes; first, the Saint-Bartholomew, then the accession of Henry IV. and the edict of Nantes. At a later period, under Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., the complication of the religious question and the political question cost them the advantages they had won; the edict of Nantes disappeared together with the power of the Protestants in the state. They were no longer anything but heretics and rebels. A day was to come, when, by the force alone of moral ideas, and in the name alone of conscience and justice, they would recover all the rights they had for a time possessed, and more also; but in the sixteenth century that day was still distant, and armed strife was for the Reformers their only means of defence and salvation. God makes no account of centuries, and a great deal is required before the most certain and the most salutary truths get their place and their rights in the minds and communities of men. On the 29th of June, 1559, a brilliant tournament was celebrated in lists erected at the end of the street of Saint-Antoine, almost at the foot of the Bastille. Henry II., the queen, and the whole court had been present at it for three days. The entertainment was drawing to a close. The king, who had run several tilts “like a sturdy and skilful cavalier,” wished to break yet another lance, and bade the Count de Montgomery, captain of the guards, to run against him. Montgomery excused himself; but the king insisted. The tilt took place. The two jousters, on meeting, broke their lances skilfully; but Montgomery forgot to drop at once, according to usage, the fragment remaining in his hand; he unintentionally struck the king’s helmet and raised the visor, and a splinter of wood entered Henry’s eye, who fell forward upon his horse’s neck. All the appliances of art were useless; the brain had been injured. Henry II. languished for eleven days, and expired on the 10th of July, 1559, aged forty years and some months. An insignificant man, and a reign without splendor, though fraught with facts pregnant of grave consequences. [Illustration: Joust between Henri II. and Count de Montgomery----268] CHAPTER XXXII.----FRANCIS II., JULY 10, 1559--DECEMBER 5, 1560.