Protestantism had penetrated into France from French Switzerland, as the very name of Hugonots indicates. The religious wars in France broke out much later than in Germany; and the religious disputes in that country had this distinctive character; that the Princes and noble leaders of the Opposition, the factious among the high aristocracy, and the contending parties at Court, made the Protestants (who formed indeed only the minority among the people, and still more in the state, but yet a very important and powerful minority), the tools and instruments of their own political designs and intrigues. It is this peculiar combination of circumstances which has stamped the character of the French religious wars, and which distinguishes them from those of Germany. The religious wars in the former country were not of such long and uninterrupted duration, nor were they of so destructive and desolating a character as the thirty years' war. On the other hand, the treaties of religious pacification were of much shorter duration, and were renewed even five or six times, for they were ever followed by new insurrections. Even the edict of Nantes, which was destined to terminate this long anarchy, did not prevent the recurrence of troubles after the assassination of Henry IV., and was itself totally repealed at a subsequent period. The various political intrigues of discontented nobles, and of factious leaders of the Opposition, gave a very hateful complexion to the religious wars in France; and that disposition to vindictive retaliation, which swayed parties in the various alternations of power, presented formidable, and almost insurmountable obstacles to the establishment of a permanent religious peace. That odious character in the religious wars of France, appears in England under equally revolting colours in the despotism of the eighth Henry, in the crafty policy of Elizabeth, in the great anarchical and regicide rebellion, and in the tyranny of Cromwell, and has been often and strongly pourtrayed by the national historians. It is extremely worthy of remark, as the fact serves to explain many posterior events in history, that the struggle in France remained undecided, partook from first to last of an uncertain and fluctuating character, and led neither to the establishment of a free Constitution, as in England; nor to the foundation of a firm, lasting, and irrevocable religious pacification, as in Germany. But this struggle remained an unsolved problem of state-policy, like the religious dispute itself--a dispute whose contagion infected the Catholics themselves, inoculated that portion of the population, and continued to rage among their descendants. In France, the Protestants were in a decided minority, and it was by other and subordinate causes that they acquired a temporary power and importance in the first religious wars; but in England they probably became the majority at a very early period, though not such an overwhelming majority as they form at the present day.