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Beza’s anonymous book On the Rights of Magistrates (1574) argued that public officials such as noblemen and magistrates received their authority from the people, not the king. In cases where a king or queen became a tyrant, these lesser magistrates were justified in resisting the monarch with force to preserve true religion. It is important to note that these resistance treatises were more than theoretical pieces; they provided actual justification for the Huguenot war effort against the crown in the aftermath of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.