At last the Reformation had really great leaders, men who had power and were experienced in the affairs of the world; it was becoming a political party as well as a religious conviction; and the French Reformers were henceforth in a condition to make war as well as die at the stake for their faith.
Hitherto they had been only believers and martyrs; they became the victors and the vanquished, alternately, in a civil war.
A new position for them, and as formidable as it was grand.

It was destined to bring upon them cruel trials and the worth of them in important successes; first, the Saint-Bartholomew, then the accession of Henry IV.

and the edict of Nantes.

At a later period, under Louis XIII.
and Louis XIV., the complication of the religious question and the political question cost them the advantages they had won; the edict of Nantes disappeared together with the power of the Protestants in the state.

They were no longer anything but heretics and rebels.