United States or Paraguay ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Although he had violently supported the measure as soon as published, secretly denouncing as traitors and demagogues, all those who lifted their voices against it, although he was the originator of the renewed edicts, although he took, daily, personal pains that this Netherland inquisition, "more pitiless than the Spanish," should be enforced in its rigor, and although he, at the last, opposed the slightest mitigation of its horrors, he was to be represented to the nobles and the people as a man of mild and unprejudiced character, incapable of injuring even his enemies.

You expose the lives of many others, without referring to your own, which seems to be full of hazard. Besides, fashions pass away, monsieur, and the fashion of duelling has passed away, without referring in any way to the edicts of his majesty which forbid it.

The Chambers being assembled the same day to examine the edicts which the King had caused to be ratified in his presence, the Queen commanded them to attend her by their deputies in the Palais Royal, and told them she was surprised that they pretended to meddle with what had been consecrated by the presence of the King. These were the very words of the Chancellor.

In earlier days they had been the haunt of robbers and assassins, the memory of whose crimes is preserved in the various edicts which the council of the city, and even the parliament of Scotland, had passed for dispersing their bands, and ensuring safety to the lieges, so near the precincts of the city.

All the officers of the kingdom were summoned to do homage to their new princess; all correspondence with Poland prohibited, and the edicts of previous monarchs against the heirs of Sigismund, confirmed by a solemn act of the nation. The alliance with the Czar of Muscovy was carefully renewed, in order, by the arms of this prince, to keep the hostile Poles in check.

The Chevalier, who was young, impetuous, and, like all the members of his house, utterly careless of the consequences of his actions, would have felt himself justified in demanding satisfaction of M. de Luz simply for the insult offered to his brothers and himself by his abrupt and unscrupulous abandonment of their interests, and the affront given to their friend and ally the Duc de Bellegarde; but when to these real or imagined injuries was superadded the fact that he had publicly boasted of the share which he had gratuitously and wantonly taken in the murder of his father, no wonder that the fiery young man, disregarding alike the royal edicts against duelling and the dictates of humanity, at once resolved to silence the vauntings of the quasi-assassin, or to perish in the attempt.

The sale of cooked food was forbidden, the camp followers were swept away, and no private soldier was allowed the use of a slave or beast of burden, whether in quarters or on the march. Other edicts of the same kind followed, and then the work of active training began.

This holiest of spots was defended from profanation by the strictest edicts of the all-pervadingtaboo,” which condemned to instant death the sacrilegious female who should enter or touch its sacred precincts, or even so much as press with her feet the ground made holy by the shadows that it cast.

I do assure you that the king's veritable intention is to have all his subjects living peaceably in the observation of his edicts, and that those who have authority in the provinces will do him service by conforming thereto." The era of liberty passed away with Henry IV.; that of tolerance, for the Reformers, began with Richelieu, pending the advent with Louis XIV. of the day of persecution.

"If," replied Count Mansfeld to his friend, who in an amicable manner had reproved him for his defection to the king, "if formerly I was of opinion that the general good made the abolition of the Inquisition, the mitigation of the edicts, and the removal of the Cardinal Granvella necessary, the king has now acquiesced in this wish and removed the cause of complaint.