It gave a shape to vague terrors and an outlet for uneasiness to blame all the evils of France on the Huguenots, and to make a desperate minority, fighting for its existence, into a menacing conspiracy about to overwhelm the kingdom. It was reassuring to the insecure to hear themselves clamouring for the blood of the heretics, as if one more act of aimless violence could cure a world whose malady was aimless violence.

Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish A…, loc. 90