It was, however, only a tragedy of statues.
Hardly as many senseless stones were victims as there were to be living Huguenots sacrificed in a single city upon a Bartholomew which was fast approaching.

In the Valenciennes massacre, not a human being was injured.
Such in general outline and in certain individual details, was the celebrated iconomachy of the Netherlands.

The movement was a sudden explosion of popular revenge against the symbols of that Church from which the Reformers had been enduring such terrible persecution.

It was also an expression of the general sympathy for the doctrines which had taken possession of the national heart.

It was the depravation of that instinct which had in the beginning of the summer drawn Calvinists and Lutherans forth in armed bodies, twenty thousand strong, to worship God in the open fields.