[Historians in the age of Louis XIV were strongly affected by the massacres of the Wars of Religion, and by the memory of the assassinations, by Catholic extremists, of two sovereigns in their recent history: Henry III in 1589, and Henry IV in 1610. After 1598 politiques and Huguenots insisted, in opposition to Catholic majoritarian doctrine, that the sovereign's first duty was not to impose one religion, but to protect all law-abiding citizens from extremist violence. Mariana, a Spanish Jesuit, had responded to the politiques in 1598 with a defence of the people's right to overthrow and replace a tyrant. Bayle's politique rejoinder in 1697 provides a clue to his caution in respect of England's Protestant Revolution of 1688. Mariana's defence of tyrannicide, he observed, could support any popular revolution whatsoever – Catholic, Protestant or pagan. The obligation to oppose tyranny could be taken for granted; the issue, however, was about defining it.]