[Sidenote: La Boétie, 1530-63]
Not relying exclusively on their own talents the Huguenots were able to press into the ranks of their army of pamphleteers some notable Catholics. In 1574 they published as a fragment, and in 1577 entire, The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, commonly called the Contr'un, by Stephen de la Boétie. This gentleman, dying at the age of thirty-three, had left all his manuscripts to his bosom friend Montaigne. The latter says that La Boétie composed the work as a prize declamation at the age of sixteen or eighteen. [Sidenote: 1546-8] But along with many passages in the pamphlet, which might have been suggested by Erasmus, are several {600} allusions that seem to point to the character of Henry III—in 1574 king of Poland and in 1577 king of France—and to events just prior to the time of publication. According to an attractive hypothesis, not fully proved, these passages were added by Montaigne himself before he gave the work to one of his several Huguenot friends or kinsmen. La Boétie, at any rate, appealed to the passions aroused by St. Bartholomew in bidding the people no longer to submit to one man, "the most wretched and effeminate of the nation," who has only two hands, two eyes, and who will fall if unsupported. And yet, he goes on rhetorically, "you sow the fruits of the earth that he may waste them; you furnish your houses for him to pillage them; you rear your daughters to glut his lust and your sons to perish in his wars; . . . you exhaust your bodies in labor that he may wallow in vile pleasures."
As Montaigne and La Boétie were Catholics, it is pertinent here to remark that tyranny produced much the same effect on its victims, whatever their religion. The Sorbonne, [Sidenote: The Sorbonne] consulted by the League, unanimously decided that the people of France were freed from their oath of allegiance to Henry III and could with a good conscience take arms against him. One of the doctors, Boucher, wrote to prove that the church and the people had the right to depose an assassin, a perjurer, an impious or heretical prince, or one guilty of sacrilege or witchcraft. A tyrant, he concluded, was a wild beast, whom it was lawful for the state as a whole or even for private individuals, to kill.
So firmly established did the doctrine of the contract between prince and people become that towards the end of the century one finds it taken for granted. The Mémoires of the Huguenot soldier, poet and historian Agrippa d'Aubigné are full of republican sentiments, as, for example, "There is a binding obligation {601} between the king and his subjects," and "The power of the prince proceeds from the people."
But it must not be imagined that such doctrines passed without challenge. The most important writer on political science after Machiavelli, John Bodin, [Sidenote: Bodin, 1530-96] was on the whole a conservative. In his writings acute and sometimes profound remarks jostle quaint and abject superstitions. He hounded the government and the mob on witches with the vile zeal of the authors of the Witches' Hammer; and he examined all existing religions with the coolness of a philosopher. He urged on the attention of the world that history was determined in general by natural causes, such as climate, but that revolutions were caused partly by the inscrutable will of God and partly by the more ascertainable influence of planets.
His most famous work, The Republic, [Sidenote: 1576] is a criticism of Machiavelli and an attempt to bring politics back into the domain of morality. He defines a state as a company of men united for the purpose of living well and happily; he thinks it arose from natural right and social contract. For the first time Bodin differentiates the state from the government, defining sovereignty (majestas) as the attribute of the former. He classifies governments in the usual three categories, and refuses to believe in mixed governments. Though England puzzles him, he regards her as an absolute monarchy. This is the form that he decidedly prefers, for he calls the people a many-headed monster and says that the majority of men are incompetent and bad. Preaching passive obedience to the king, he finds no check on him, either by tyrannicide or by constitutional magistrates, save only in the judgment of God.
It is singular that after Bodin had removed all effective checks on the tyrant in this world, he should lay it down as a principle that no king should levy {602} taxes without his subjects' consent. Another contradiction is that whereas he frees the subject from the duty of obedience in case the monarch commands aught against God's law, he treats religion almost as a matter of policy, advising that, whatever it be, the statesman should not disturb it. Apart from the streak of superstition in his mind, his inconsistencies are due to the attempt to reconcile opposites—Machiavelli and Calvin. For with all his denunciation of the former's atheism and immorality, he, with his chauvinism, his defence of absolutism, his practical opportunism, is not so far removed from the Florentine as he would have us believe.
[Sidenote: Dutch republicans]
The revolution that failed in France succeeded in the Netherlands, and some contribution to political theory can be found in the constitution drawn up by the States General in 1580, when they recognized Anjou as their prince, and in the document deposing Philip in 1581. Both assume fully the sovereignty of the people and the omnicompetence of their elected representatives. As Oldenbarnevelt commented, "The cities and nobles together represent the whole state and the whole people." The deposition of Philip is justified by an appeal to the law of nature, and to the example of other tortured states, and by a recital of Philip's breaches of the laws and customs of the land.
[Sidenote: Knox]