Calvin saw government where Luther saw dogma only. While the stout
beer-drinker and amorous German fought with the devil and flung an
inkbottle at his head, the man from Picardy, a sickly celibate, made
plans of campaign, directed battles, armed princes, and roused whole
peoples by sowing republican doctrines in the hearts of the burghers
--recouping his continual defeats in the field by fresh progress in
the mind of the nations.
The Cardinal de Lorraine and the Duc de Guise, like Philip the Second
and the Duke of Alba, knew where and when the monarchy was threatened,
and how close the alliance ought to be between Catholicism and
Royalty. Charles the Fifth, drunk with the wine of Charlemagne's cup,
believing too blindly in the strength of his monarchy, and confident
of sharing the world with Suleiman, did not at first feel the blow at
his head; but no sooner had Cardinal Granvelle made him aware of the
extent of the wound than he abdicated. The Guises had but one scheme,
--that of annihilating heresy at a single blow. This blow they were
now to attempt, for the first time, to strike at Amboise;
failing there they tried it again, twelve years later, at the
Saint-Bartholomew,--on the latter occasion in conjunction with
Catherine de' Medici, enlightened by that time by the flames of a
twelve years' war, enlightened above all by the significant word
"republic," uttered later and printed by the writers of the Reformation,
but already foreseen (as we have said before) by Lecamus, that type of
the Parisian bourgeoisie.
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