ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book shows that urban centres were pivotal to sectarian fortunes in the south-west during the 1550s and 1560s. Catholics were able to maintain authority within the region only because militants secured control of Bordeaux, Agen and Toulouse, had these bastions succumbed to Protestant assault, the surrounding Catholic communities would have fallen inexorably as a consequence. The book states that the Protestant failure to take Bordeaux in 1562 weakened their position in Guyenne. At Bordeaux, Catholic militants defied intense Protestant sorties and the best efforts of moderates to censor their activities to achieve political and military parity by 1563. Grass roots' activism played an important role in bolstering Catholicism across the region, as embodied in the bitter conflict between basochiens and the emerging evangelical movement on the streets of Bordeaux and Toulouse throughout the 1540s and 1550s.
