Excerpt from The New EmpireSimilarly the French, in emergency, have always resorted to massacre to overcome obstruction, from the crusades against the Albigenses in the thirteenth century to the Commune of Paris in the nineteenth. It was not only Saint Bartholomew, and the persecu tions which followed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which brought about the Terror of I 793, it was rather a thousand nameless butcheries like those which occurred during the reign of Louis XIV. The incapacity of the French to ameliorate their fiscal system generated an unequal taxation which pro voked revolt, and revolt caused repression frightful in ferocity. At Rennes in 167 5, as a punishment for insubordination, the town was given up to pillage, and la Rue Haute, the main street, was destroyed. The inhabitants, Old men, women, and children, were driven forth into the fields without a refuge, with out food, and without a place to sleep. They perished from exposure and want.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.