The religious wars of France, and 103 the revolt of the Huguenots against the reigning monarchs, can hardly be brought within the category of these popular movements; but were rather contests between factions, neither of whom had really any special principles to maintain.
In England a series of revolts took place during the reigns of the last two Henries, and into the reign of Elizabeth, which were mostly directed against fiscal oppression, the necessary result of the new bureaucratic rule. The most important of these was that led by Kett in Norfolk. They were one and all put down with various degrees of wholesale massacre and cruelty.
The middle of the sixteenth century, therefore, brings us to this, that the animating spirit of feudal society is dead, though its forms still exist, and are used for its own purposes by the bureaucratic system, which has now supplanted feudalism throughout the length and breadth of Europe. This must be considered as the beginning of the first period of modern History.
Footnotes
- Cf. the case of the late Mr. Parnell, overthrown by it in the very hour of his triumph.Back
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