her two daughters, were allowed to escape by boat to Hyères.
We are vastly mistaken if we regard the parties in the Wars of Religion as all Lamb on one side, and all Wolf on the other. As a matter of fact, except in the Cevennes, the Reform was favoured only by the lesser nobility, not out of religious conviction, but out of a spirit of turbulence bred by the long disorders of the English occupation of Aquitaine, and the riots of the Free Companies. They resented the firm hand imposed on them by the Crown, and they hoped to get pickings out of Church estates.
The people generally were not touched by the negatives of Calvinism. After that Henry IV. joined the Church, most of the nobility and country gentry followed his example—again, not from conviction, but because they saw that the game of resistance was up.
At present, in the department of Var there are 1,500 Protestants out of a population of 310,000. In Alpes Maritimes they number 1,000 out of nearly 294,000, and most of these sectaries are foreign importations. If there had been deep-rooted convictions, these would not have been dissipated so certainly. In the Cevennes, Calvinism holds on notwithstanding persecution in the past, and in Ireland is a reverse instance.
But to return to Susanne de Villeneuve.
In 1592 the Duke of Savoy was at Grasse, and resolved on chastising this Susanne as a capital influence among the Razats. Actually two women at this period fomented the fury and bloodshed of internecine strife. The Baron de Vins, head of the Leaguers, had been killed in 1589 outside Grasse. The Countess Christine de Sault, his sister-in-law, had been the headpiece, as he
