Charles V, who had survived Francis, en gaged in war against that policy, but was checked by the defense of Metz. At the end of the reign, in 1559, Henry II had done little to check the growth of Protestant feeling in France itself, had powerfully aided it In Ger many and had secured for the French monarchy the district of the three bishoprics. The wife of Henry and the mother of the next three kings was a Medici—Catherine, a woman of singular courage, probably corrupt in temper and certainly in physique. The first two of her sons to succeed, Francis II and Charles IX, were not quite sane and were even more un certain in bodily health than in mental. The theory of monarchical government, which was increasing in power daily in the French mind, was weakened in practice by the spectacle of these two debilitated men. The country was in active quarrel between those great families who sided with the Reformers and those who maintained the defense of Catholicism, while the Crown was at times nothing but a pawn in the hands of either. It must not be supposed that the division really lay along philosophical lines.' Nothing was commoner than for a man to appear first upon one side and then upon the other ; but the progress of the Reformation was producing such an effect throughout Europe that its principles made a convenient line of division for warring factions. Meanwhile the
populace, whom these factions of the upper class confused, were very strongly in favor of the national tradition and consequently in creasingly hostile to the Reformers. The feel ing became acute in the town of Paris, where the adherents of the Reformation were very wealthy and powerful and into which were already beginning to crowd those who ex pected a political or diplomatic career. The natural jealousy of wealth, coupled with the indignation against the new theories. (which were openly placarded in the street, often in the form of violent insults to the popular religion) led to the explosion known to his tory as the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, a piece of bloodshed which, though it was less in extent than many, must rank in history as one of the great Parisian days of violence and takes its place beside the attack upon the Com mune and the Massacres of September. (See