Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/284

 272 THE AGE OF HAPSBURG ASCENDENCY Bourbon dynasty was established on the French throne by the Peace of Vervins in 1598. Henry had before him the task of settling the religious problems, and of reorganising the government and the finances ruined by the long civil wars. The first problem was dealt with Toleration by the Edict of Nantes, which gave the Huguenots and Absolu- almost complete religious liberty. The organisa- tisra * tion of finance was placed in the hands of the able and conspicuously honest Sully. Great and successful efforts were made to revive both commerce and agriculture, and to enforce justice in the administration. But it was inevitable that under such circumstances a vigorous king should seek to concentrate power in his own hands, and Henry iv. established the Bourbon monarchy on that basis of absolutism which was to be consummated by Louis xiv. more than half a century after his death. In Germany the religious truce established at Augsburg was showing signs of breaking down some time before the close . _ of the sixteenth century. Ferdinand and his 9. Germany : J The Rival successor Maximilian 11. had both aimed not at Religions. religious unity but at mutual toleration by Catholics and Protestants. Rudolph 11., who followed them, was emphatically anti-Protestant when he did intervene, but his political activity was limited. Serious questions however arose. The Archbishop of Cologne, one of the Electors, became Protestant, and still refused to resign his see, thus transferring the Electoral majority from the Catholics to the Protestants. But because the archbishop joined not the Lutherans but the Calvinists, the Catholics were enabled to win a victory and eject the archbishop. The Catholics thus secured a majority in the Imperial chamber, and it became evident that they were going to press the advantage which they now possessed. The one hope for Protestantism lay in the union of the reformers, but Lutherans and Calvinists were hardly less The Approach opposed to each other than to the Catholics. of war. Lutheran Saxony suppressed its own Calvinists, while the Palatinate was equally emphatic in its Calvinism. In