Exactly as the early organization of the Huguenots has been overemphasized, so has the republican nature of the early Huguenot movement been exaggerated. Apart from whatever religious motives may have actuated them, the Protestant nobles were influenced by political ambition; the bourgeoisie by the hope of administrative and economic reform; the masses by the general spirit of discontent. The Huguenots did not present a united front until after St. Bartholomew, when the fusion of the political Huguenots with the Politiques reduced the “religious” Huguenots to a left-wing minority. Before 1572 the political ideas of the Reformed, if not still inchoate, were not harmonized into one homogeneous cause, backed up by a compact and highly organized political system. Individual political theorists or fanatic devotees, of course, were to be found in the Huguenot ranks, but there was no systematic political philosophy to guide their conduct before the massacre of St. Bartholomew. It was this catastrophe that crystallized Huguenot opinion and organized combination on a large scale.[1121] In Guyenne, alone, where, as has been said, the Huguenot organization was most completely developed at an early date, does any clear republican idea seem to have early obtained.[1122] CHAPTER XII THE SECOND CIVIL WAR (1567-68) In this wise, after a respite of four years, the second civil war was precipitated. There was an exodus of Huguenots at once from Paris, some repairing to the prince of Condé, some to the duke de Rohan, others to Montgomery in Lower Normandy where a war of the partisans began at once.[1123] The capital was in a furious mood and the King’s presence alone prevented the Parisians from massacring the Protestants there and the Montmorencys.[1124] [Illustration: PARIS AND ITS FAUBOURGS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY]