While thus the battle of the rods was being fought in England, it raged no less hotly on the continent of Europe. Here there was religious prejudice alone at work, the political sympathies running in favour of anything coming from America. But priestly animosity by itself proved as strong an obstacle as any other to the erection of lightning conductors. Where it did not exist, they sprang up with rapidity; but wherever its influence was felt, the movement was arrested. In the most enlightened parts of Germany, the seat and home of Protestantism, the ‘Franklin rods’ early made their appearance. The first lightning conductor set up over a public building in Europe was erected early in 1769 on the steeple of the church of St. Jacob, Hamburg; and so rapid was the spread of them that, at the end of five years from this date, there were estimated to be over seven hundred conductors within a circle of ten miles of the old Hanse town. To this day they are comparatively more numerous in this district than anywhere else in Europe. In contrast with Northern Protestant Germany, the Roman Catholic South refused the ‘Franklin rods,’ and so did France, although making a hero of Franklin personally. For many years after young Robespierre pleaded the case of lightning conductors before the tribunal of St. Omer, the strongest abhorrence to them was expressed by the priests and their mob following in almost all parts of France, and the active antagonism did not cease till after the outbreak of the great revolution.