![organising a secret revolutionary government for the city. It was
called “The Sixteen,” being one for each of the sixteen sections of
Paris. This government was under the orders of Guise, who
communicated with them through an agent of his called Mayneville.
Plot after plot was made to get possession of the King’s person; and
but for the activity and information of Nicholas Poulain, an officer of
police who managed to secure private information, they would have
been successful.
§ 18. The Day of Barricades.[225]
The King redoubled his guards, and ordered four thousand Swiss
troops which he had stationed at Lagny into the suburbs of Paris.
The Parisian Leaguers in alarm sent for the Duke of Guise; and
Guise, in spite of a prohibitive order from the King, entered the city.
When he was recognised he was received with acclamations by the
Parisian crowd. The Queen-Mother induced the King to receive him,
which he did rather ungraciously. Officers and men devoted to the
League crowded into Paris. The King, having tried in vain to prevent
the entry of all suspected persons, at last ordered the Swiss into
Paris (May 12th, 1588). The citizens flew to arms, and converted
Paris into a stronghold. It was “the day of Barricades.” Chains were
stretched across the streets, and behind them were piled beams,
benches, carts, great barrels filled with stones or gravel. Houses
were loop-holed and windows protected. Behind these defences men
were stationed with arquebuses; and the women and children were
provided with heaps of stones. Guise had remained in his house, but
his officers were to be seen moving through the crowds and
directing the defence. The Swiss troops found themselves caught in
a trap, and helpless. Henry III. was compelled to ask Guise to
interfere in order to save his soldiers. The King had to undergo
further humiliation. The citizens proposed to attack the Louvre and
seize the King’s person. Guise had to be appealed to again. He had
an interview with the King on the 13th, at which Henry III. was
forced to agree to all the demands of the League, and to leave the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16352250-250514151152-e345f339/85/Python-Advanced-Predictive-Analytics-Kumar-Ashish-57-320.jpg)
![The news of the completeness of the destruction of the Armada had
been filtering through France; the fear of Spain was to some extent
removed, and England might help the King if he persisted in a policy
of tolerating his Protestant subjects. It is probable that he confided
his project of getting rid of Guise to some of his more intimate
councillors, and that they assured him that it would be impossible to
remove such a powerful subject by legal means. The Duke and his
brother the Cardinal of Guise were summoned to a meeting of the
Council. They had scarcely taken their seats when they were asked
to see the King in his private apartments. There Guise was
assassinated, and the Cardinal arrested, and slain the next day.[226]
The Cardinal de Bourbon and the young Prince de Joinville (now
Duke of Guise by his father’s death) were arrested and imprisoned.
Orders were given to arrest the Duchess of Nemours (Guise’s
mother), the Duke and Duchess of Elbœuf, the Count de Brissac,
and other prominent Leaguers. The King’s guards invaded the
sittings of the States General to carry out these orders. The bodies
of the two Guises were burnt, and the ashes thrown into the Loire.
The news of the assassination raised the wildest rage in Paris. The
League proclaimed itself a revolutionary society. The city organised
itself in its sections. A council was appointed for each section to
strengthen the hands of the “Sixteen.” Preachers caused their
audiences to swear that they would spend the last farthing in their
purses and the last drop of blood in their bodies to avenge the
slaughtered princes. The Sorbonne in solemn conclave declared that
the actions of Henry III. had absolved his subjects from their
allegiance. The “Sixteen” drove from Parlement all suspected
persons; and, thus purged, the Parlement of Paris ranged itself on
the side of the revolution. The Duke of Mayenne, the sole surviving
brother of Henry of Guise, was summoned to Paris. An assembly of
the citizens of the capital elected a Council General of the Union of
Catholics to manage the affairs of the State and to confer with all
the Catholic towns and provinces of France. Deputies sent by these
towns and provinces were to be members of the Council. The Duke
of Mayenne was appointed by the Council the Lieutenant-General of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16352250-250514151152-e345f339/85/Python-Advanced-Predictive-Analytics-Kumar-Ashish-59-320.jpg)
![crucifix, and received without flinching his deathblow from La Guesle
and other attendants (Aug. 1st, 1589).[227]
The King lingered until the following morning, and then expired,
commending Henry of Navarre to his companions as his legitimate
successor.
The news of the assassination was received in Paris with wild
delight. The Duchess de Nemours, the mother of the Guises, and the
Duchess de Montpensier, their sister, went everywhere in the streets
describing “the heroic act of Jacques Clément.” The former mounted
the steps of the High Altar in the church of the Cordeliers to
proclaim the news to the people. The citizens, high and low, brought
out their tables into the streets, and they drank, sang, shouted and
danced in honour of the news. They swore that they would never
accept a Protestant king[228] and the Cardinal de Bourbon, still a
prisoner, was proclaimed as Charles x.
At Tours, on the other hand, the fact that the heir to the throne was
a Protestant, threw the Roman Catholic nobles into a state of
perplexity. They had no sympathy with the League, but many felt
that they could not serve a Protestant king. They pressed round the
new King, beseeching him to abjure his faith at once. Henry refused
to do what would humiliate himself, and could not be accepted as an
act of sincerity. On the other hand, the nobles of Champagne,
Picardy, and the Isle of France sent assurances of allegiance; the
Duke of Montpensier, the husband of the Leaguer Duchess, promised
his support; and the Swiss mercenaries declared that they would
serve for two months without pay.
§ 20. The Declaration of Henry IV.[229]
Thus encouraged, Henry published his famous declaration (Aug. 4th,
1589). He promised that the Roman Catholic would remain the
religion of the realm, and that he would attempt no innovations. He
declared that he was willing to be instructed in its tenets, and that](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16352250-250514151152-e345f339/85/Python-Advanced-Predictive-Analytics-Kumar-Ashish-62-320.jpg)
![CHAPTER V.
THE REFORMATION IN THE NETHERLANDS.
[230]
§ 1. The Political Situation.
It was not until 1581 that the United Provinces took rank as a
Protestant nation, notwithstanding the fact that the Netherlands
furnished the first martyrs of the Reformation in the persons of
Henry Voes and John Esch, Augustinian monks, who were burnt at
Antwerp (July 31st, 1523).
“As they were led to the stake they cried with a loud voice that
they were Christians; and when they were fastened to it, and
the fire was kindled, they rehearsed the twelve articles of the
Creed, and after that the hymn Te Deum laudamus, which each
of them sang verse by verse alternately until the flames
deprived them both of voice and life.”[231]
The struggle for religious liberty, combined latterly with one for
national independence from Spain, lasted therefore for almost sixty
years.
When the lifelong duel between Charles the Bold of Burgundy and
Louis XI. of France ended with the death of the former on the
battlefield under the walls of Nancy (January 4th, 1477), Louis was
able to annex to France a large portion of the heterogeneous
possessions of the Dukes of Burgundy, and Mary of Burgundy carried
the remainder as her marriage portion (May 1477) to Maximilian of
Austria, the future Emperor. Speaking roughly, and not quite
accurately, those portions of the Burgundian lands which had been](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16352250-250514151152-e345f339/85/Python-Advanced-Predictive-Analytics-Kumar-Ashish-69-320.jpg)
![fiefs of France went to Louis, while Mary and Maximilian retained
those which were fiefs of the Empire. The son of Maximilian and
Mary, Philip the Handsome, married Juana (August 1496), the
second daughter and ultimate heiress of Isabella and Ferdinand of
Spain, and their son was Charles V., Emperor of Germany (b.
February 24th, 1500), who inherited the Netherlands from his father
and Spain from his mother, and thus linked the Netherlands to Spain.
Philip died in 1506, leaving Charles, a boy of six years of age, the
ruler of the Netherlands. His paternal aunt, Margaret, the daughter
of the Emperor Maximilian, governed in the Netherlands during his
minority, and, owing to Juana’s illness (an illness ending in
madness), mothered her brother’s children. Margaret’s regency
ended in 1515, and the earlier history of the Reformation in the
Netherlands belongs either to the period of the personal rule of
Charles or to that of the Regents whom he appointed to act for him.
The land, a delta of great rivers liable to overflow their banks, or a
coast-line on which the sea made continual encroachment, produced
a people hardy, strenuous, and independent. Their struggles with
nature had braced their faculties. Municipal life had struck its roots
deeply into the soil of the Netherlands, and its cities could vie with
those of Italy in industry and intelligence. The southern provinces
were the home of the Trouvères.[232] Jan van-Ruysbroec, the most
heart-searching of speculative Mystics, had been a curate of St.
Gudule’s in Brussels. His pupil, Gerard Groot, had founded the lay-
community of the Brethren of the Common Lot for the purpose of
spreading Christian education among the laity; and the schools and
convents of the Brethren had spread through the Netherlands and
central Germany. Thomas à Kempis, the author of the Imitatio
Christi, had lived most of his long life of ninety years in a small
convent at Zwolle, within the territories of Utrecht. Men who have
been called “Reformers before the Reformation,” John Pupper of
Goch and John Wessel, both belonged to the Netherlands. Art
flourished there in the fifteenth century in the persons of Hubert and
Jan van Eyck and of Hans Memling. The Chambers of Oratory
(Rederijkers) to begin with probably unions for the performance of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16352250-250514151152-e345f339/85/Python-Advanced-Predictive-Analytics-Kumar-Ashish-70-320.jpg)
![miracle plays or moralities, became confraternities not unlike the
societies of meistersänger in Germany, and gradually acquired the
character of literary associations, which diffused not merely culture,
but also habits of independent thinking among the people.
Intellectual life had become less exuberant in the end of the
fifteenth century; but the Netherlands, nevertheless, produced
Alexander Hegius, the greatest educational reformer of his time, and
Erasmus the prince of the Humanists. Nor can the influence of the
Chambers of Oratory have died out, for they had a great effect on
the Reformation movement.[233]
When Charles assumed the government of the Netherlands, he
found himself at the head of a group of duchies, lordships, counties,
and municipalities which had little appearance of a compact
principality, and he applied himself, like other princes of his time in
the same situation, to give them a unity both political and territorial.
He was so successful that he was able to hand over to his son, Philip
II. of Spain, an almost thoroughly organised State. The divisions
which Charles largely overcame reappeared to some extent in the
revolt against Philip and Romanism, and therefore in a measure
concern the history of the Reformation. How Charles made his
scattered Netherland inheritance territorially compact need not be
told in detail. Friesland was secured (1515); the acquisition of
temporal sovereignty over the ecclesiastical province of Utrecht
(1527) united Holland with Friesland; Gronningen and the lands
ruled by that turbulent city placed themselves under the government
of Charles (1536); and the death of Charles of Egmont (1538),
Count of Gueldres, completed the unification of the northern and
central districts. The vague hold which France kept in some of the
southern portions of the country was gradually loosened. Charles
failed in the south-east. The independent principality of Lorraine lay
between Luxemburg and Franche-Comté, and the Netherland
Government could not seize it by purchase, treaty, or conquest. One
and the same system of law regulated the rights and the duties of
the whole population; and all the provinces were united into one](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16352250-250514151152-e345f339/85/Python-Advanced-Predictive-Analytics-Kumar-Ashish-71-320.jpg)
![1477[234]. Small tracts against Indulgences, founded probably on
the reasonings of Pupper and Wessel, had been in circulation before
Luther had nailed his Theses to the door of All Saints’ church in
Wittenberg. Hendrik of Zutphen, Prior of the Augustinian Eremite
convent at Antwerp, had been a pupil of Staupitz, a fellow student
with Luther, and had spread Evangelical teaching not only among his
order, but throughout the town.[235] It need be no matter for
surprise, then, that Luther’s writings were widely circulated in the
Netherlands, and that between 1513 and 1531 no fewer than
twenty-five translations of the Bible or of the New Testament had
appeared in Dutch, Flemish, and French.
When Aleander was in the Netherlands, before attending the Diet of
Worms he secured the burning of eighty Lutheran and other books
at Louvain;[236] and when he came back ten months later, he had
regular literary auto-da-fés. On Charles’ return from the Diet of
Worms, he issued a proclamation to all his subjects in the
Netherlands against Luther, his books and his followers, and
Aleander made full use of the powers it gave. Four hundred
Lutheran books were burnt at Antwerp, three hundred of them
seized by the police in the stalls of the booksellers, and one hundred
handed over by the owners; three hundred were burnt at Ghent,
“part of them printed here and part in Germany,” says the Legate;
and he adds that “many of them were very well bound, and one
gorgeously in velvet.” About a month later he is forced to confess
that these burnings had not made as much impression as he had
hoped, and that he wishes the Emperor would “burn alive half a
dozen Lutherans and confiscate their property.” Such a proceeding
would make all see him to be the really Christian prince that he is.
[237]
Next year (1522) Charles established the Inquisition within the
seventeen provinces. It was a distinctively civil institution, and this
was perhaps due to the fact that there was little correspondence
between the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions in the Netherlands;
but it must not be forgotten that the Kings of Spain had used the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16352250-250514151152-e345f339/85/Python-Advanced-Predictive-Analytics-Kumar-Ashish-73-320.jpg)
![Holy Office for the purpose of stamping out political and local
opposition, and also that the civil courts were usually more energetic
and more severe than the ecclesiastical. The man appointed was
unworthy of any place of important trust. Francis van de Hulst,
although he had been the Prince’s counsellor in Brabant, was a man
accused both of bigamy and murder, and was hopelessly devoid of
tact. He quarrelled violently with the High Court of Holland; and the
Regent, Margaret of Austria, who had resumed her functions, found
herself constantly compromised by his continual defiance of local
privileges. He was a “wonderful enemy to learning,” says Erasmus.
His colleague, Nicolas van Egmont, a Carmelite monk, is described
by the same scholar as “a madman with a sword put into his hand
who hates me worse than he does Luther.” The two men discredited
the Inquisition from its beginning. Erasmus affected to believe that
the Emperor could not know what they were doing.
The first victim was Cornelius Graphæus, town clerk of Antwerp, a
poet and Humanist, a friend of Erasmus; and his offence was that he
had published an edition of John Pupper of Goch’s book, entitled the
Liberty of the Christian Religion, with a preface of his own. The
unfortunate man was set on a scaffold in Brussels, compelled to
retract certain propositions which were said to be contained in the
preface, and obliged to throw the preface itself into a fire kindled on
the scaffold for the purpose. He was dismissed from his office,
declared incapable of receiving any other employment, compelled to
repeat his recantation at Antwerp, imprisoned for two years, and
finally banished.[238]
The earliest deaths were those of Henry Voes and John Esch, who
have already been mentioned. Their Prior, Hendrik of Zutphen,
escaped from the dungeon in which he had been confined. Luther
commemorated them in a long hymn, entitled A New Song of the
two Martyrs of Christ burnt at Brussels by the Sophists of Louvain:
“Der erst recht wol Johannes heyst,
So reych an Gottes hulden
Seyn Bruder Henrch nach dem geyst,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16352250-250514151152-e345f339/85/Python-Advanced-Predictive-Analytics-Kumar-Ashish-74-320.jpg)
![Eyn rechter Christ on schulden:
Vonn dysser welt gescheyden synd,
Sye hand die kron erworben,
Recht wie die frumen gottes kind
Fur seyn wort synd gestorben,
Sein Marter synd sye worden.”[239]
Charles issued proclamation after proclamation, each of increasing
severity. It was forbidden to print any books unless they had been
first examined and approved by the censors (April 1st, 1524). “All
open and secret meetings in order to read and preach the Gospel,
the Epistles of St. Paul, and other spiritual writings,” were forbidden
(Sept. 25th, 1525), as also to discuss the Holy Faith, the
Sacraments, the Power of the Pope and Councils, “in private houses
and at meals.” This was repeated on March 14th, 1526, and on July
17th there was issued a long edict, said to have been carefully
drafted by the Emperor himself, forbidding all meetings to read or
preach about the Gospel or other holy writings in Latin, Flemish, or
Walloon. In the preamble it is said that ignorant persons have begun
to expound Scripture, that even regular and secular clergy have
presumed to teach the “errors and sinister doctrines of Luther and
his adherents,” and that heresies are increasing in the land. Then
followed edicts against unlicensed books, and against monks who
had left their cloisters (Jan. 28th, 1528); against the possession of
Lutheran books, commanding them upon pain of death to be
delivered up (Oct. 14th, 1529); against printing unlicensed books—
the penalties being a public whipping on the scaffold, branding with
a red-iron, or the loss of an eye or a hand, at the discretion of the
judge (Dec. 7th, 1530); against heretics “who are more numerous
than ever,” against certain books of which a long list is given, and
against certain hymns which increase the zeal of the heretics (Sept.
22nd, 1540); against printing and distributing unlicensed books in
the Italian, Spanish, or English languages (Dec. 18th, 1544);
warning all schoolmasters about the use of unlicensed books in their
schools, and giving a list of those only which are permitted (July
31st, 1546). The edict of 1546 was followed by a long list of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16352250-250514151152-e345f339/85/Python-Advanced-Predictive-Analytics-Kumar-Ashish-75-320.jpg)
![It may therefore be presumed that the severe edicts were not
enforced with undue stringency by either Margaret of Austria or by
the widowed Queen of Hungary. There is also evidence to show that
these proclamations denouncing and menacing the unfortunate
Protestants of the Netherlands were not looked on with much favour
by large sections of the population. Officials were dilatory,
magistrates were known to have warned suspected persons to
escape before the police came to arrest them; even to have given
them facilities for escape after sentence had been delivered. Passive
resistance on the part of the inferior authorities frequently
interposed itself between the Emperor and the execution of his
bloodthirsty proclamations. Yet the number of Protestant martyrs
was large, and women as well as men suffered torture and death
rather than deny their faith.
The edicts against conventicles deterred neither preachers nor
audience. The earliest missioners were priests and monks who had
become convinced of the errors of Romanism. Later, preachers were
trained in the south German cities and in Geneva, that nursery of
daring agents of the Reformed propaganda. But if trained teachers
were lacking, members of the congregation took their place at the
peril of their lives. Brandt relates how numbers of people were
accustomed to meet for service in a shipwright’s yard at Antwerp to
hear a monk who had been “proclaimed”:
“The teacher, by some chance or other, could not appear, and one of
the company named Nicolas, a person well versed in Scripture,
thought it a shame that such a congregation, hungering after the
food of the Word, should depart without a little spiritual
nourishment; wherefore, climbing the mast of a ship, he taught the
people according to his capacity; and on that account, and for the
sake of the reward that was set upon the preacher, he was seized by
two butchers and delivered to the magistrates, who caused him to
be put into a sack and thrown into the river, where he was
drowned.”[240]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16352250-250514151152-e345f339/85/Python-Advanced-Predictive-Analytics-Kumar-Ashish-77-320.jpg)
![§ 3. The Anabaptists.
The severest persecutions, however, before the rule of Philip II.,
were reserved for those people who are called the Anabaptists.[241]
We find several edicts directed against them solely. In February 1532
it was forbidden to harbour Anabaptists, and a price of 12 guilders
was offered to informants. Later in the same year an edict was
published which declared “that all who had been rebaptized, were
sorry for their fault, and, in token of their repentance, had gone to
confession, would be admitted to mercy for that time only, provided
they brought a certificate from their confessor within twenty-four
days of the date of the edict; those who continued obdurate were to
be treated with the utmost rigour of the laws” (Feb. 1533).
Anabaptists who had abjured were ordered to remain near their
dwelling-places for the space of a year, “unless those who were
engaged in the herring fishery” (June 1534). In 1535 the severest
edict against the sect was published. All who had “seduced or
perverted any to this sect, or had rebaptized them,” were to suffer
death by fire; all who had suffered themselves to be rebaptized, or
who had harboured Anabaptists, and who recanted, were to be
favoured by being put to death by the sword; women were “only to
be buried alive.”[242]
To understand sympathetically that multiform movement which was
called in the sixteenth century Anabaptism, it is necessary to
remember that it was not created by the Reformation, although it
certainly received an impetus from the inspiration of the age. Its
roots can be traced back for some centuries, and its pedigree has at
least two stems which are essentially distinct, and were only
occasionally combined. The one stem is the successions of the
Brethren, a mediæval, anti-clerical body of Christians whose history
is written only in the records of Inquisitors of the mediæval Church,
where they appear under a variety of names, but are universally said
to prize the Scriptures and to accept the Apostles’ Creed.[243] The
other existed in the continuous uprisings of the poor—peasants in](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/16352250-250514151152-e345f339/85/Python-Advanced-Predictive-Analytics-Kumar-Ashish-78-320.jpg)
Python Advanced Predictive Analytics Kumar Ashish
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- 6. Table of Contents Python: Advanced Predictive Analytics Credits Preface What this learning path covers What you need for this learning path Who this learning path is for Reader feedback Customer support Downloading the example code Errata Piracy Questions 1. Module 1 1. Getting Started with Predictive Modelling Introducing predictive modelling Scope of predictive modelling Ensemble of statistical algorithms Statistical tools Historical data Mathematical function Business context Knowledge matrix for predictive modelling Task matrix for predictive modelling Applications and examples of predictive modelling LinkedIn's "People also viewed" feature What it does? How is it done? Correct targeting of online ads How is it done? Santa Cruz predictive policing How is it done? Determining the activity of a smartphone user using accelerometer data How is it done? Sport and fantasy leagues How was it done? Python and its packages – download and installation Anaconda Standalone Python Installing a Python package Installing pip Installing Python packages with pip Python and its packages for predictive modelling IDEs for Python Summary 2. Data Cleaning
- 7. Reading the data – variations and examples Data frames Delimiters Various methods of importing data in Python Case 1 – reading a dataset using the read_csv method The read_csv method Use cases of the read_csv method Passing the directory address and filename as variables Reading a .txt dataset with a comma delimiter Specifying the column names of a dataset from a list Case 2 – reading a dataset using the open method of Python Reading a dataset line by line Changing the delimiter of a dataset Case 3 – reading data from a URL Case 4 – miscellaneous cases Reading from an .xls or .xlsx file Writing to a CSV or Excel file Basics – summary, dimensions, and structure Handling missing values Checking for missing values What constitutes missing data? How missing values are generated and propagated Treating missing values Deletion Imputation Creating dummy variables Visualizing a dataset by basic plotting Scatter plots Histograms Boxplots Summary 3. Data Wrangling Subsetting a dataset Selecting columns Selecting rows Selecting a combination of rows and columns Creating new columns Generating random numbers and their usage Various methods for generating random numbers Seeding a random number Generating random numbers following probability distributions Probability density function Cumulative density function Uniform distribution Normal distribution Using the Monte-Carlo simulation to find the value of pi Geometry and mathematics behind the calculation of pi Generating a dummy data frame Grouping the data – aggregation, filtering, and transformation Aggregation Filtering Transformation
- 8. Miscellaneous operations Random sampling – splitting a dataset in training and testing datasets Method 1 – using the Customer Churn Model Method 2 – using sklearn Method 3 – using the shuffle function Concatenating and appending data Merging/joining datasets Inner Join Left Join Right Join An example of the Inner Join An example of the Left Join An example of the Right Join Summary of Joins in terms of their length Summary 4. Statistical Concepts for Predictive Modelling Random sampling and the central limit theorem Hypothesis testing Null versus alternate hypothesis Z-statistic and t-statistic Confidence intervals, significance levels, and p-values Different kinds of hypothesis test A step-by-step guide to do a hypothesis test An example of a hypothesis test Chi-square tests Correlation Summary 5. Linear Regression with Python Understanding the maths behind linear regression Linear regression using simulated data Fitting a linear regression model and checking its efficacy Finding the optimum value of variable coefficients Making sense of result parameters p-values F-statistics Residual Standard Error Implementing linear regression with Python Linear regression using the statsmodel library Multiple linear regression Multi-collinearity Variance Inflation Factor Model validation Training and testing data split Summary of models Linear regression with scikit-learn Feature selection with scikit-learn Handling other issues in linear regression Handling categorical variables Transforming a variable to fit non-linear relations Handling outliers Other considerations and assumptions for linear regression Summary
- 9. 6. Logistic Regression with Python Linear regression versus logistic regression Understanding the math behind logistic regression Contingency tables Conditional probability Odds ratio Moving on to logistic regression from linear regression Estimation using the Maximum Likelihood Method Likelihood function: Log likelihood function: Building the logistic regression model from scratch Making sense of logistic regression parameters Wald test Likelihood Ratio Test statistic Chi-square test Implementing logistic regression with Python Processing the data Data exploration Data visualization Creating dummy variables for categorical variables Feature selection Implementing the model Model validation and evaluation Cross validation Model validation The ROC curve Confusion matrix Summary 7. Clustering with Python Introduction to clustering – what, why, and how? What is clustering? How is clustering used? Why do we do clustering? Mathematics behind clustering Distances between two observations Euclidean distance Manhattan distance Minkowski distance The distance matrix Normalizing the distances Linkage methods Single linkage Compete linkage Average linkage Centroid linkage Ward's method Hierarchical clustering K-means clustering Implementing clustering using Python Importing and exploring the dataset Normalizing the values in the dataset Hierarchical clustering using scikit-learn
- 10. K-Means clustering using scikit-learn Interpreting the cluster Fine-tuning the clustering The elbow method Silhouette Coefficient Summary 8. Trees and Random Forests with Python Introducing decision trees A decision tree Understanding the mathematics behind decision trees Homogeneity Entropy Information gain ID3 algorithm to create a decision tree Gini index Reduction in Variance Pruning a tree Handling a continuous numerical variable Handling a missing value of an attribute Implementing a decision tree with scikit-learn Visualizing the tree Cross-validating and pruning the decision tree Understanding and implementing regression trees Regression tree algorithm Implementing a regression tree using Python Understanding and implementing random forests The random forest algorithm Implementing a random forest using Python Why do random forests work? Important parameters for random forests Summary 9. Best Practices for Predictive Modelling Best practices for coding Commenting the codes Defining functions for substantial individual tasks Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 Avoid hard-coding of variables as much as possible Version control Using standard libraries, methods, and formulas Best practices for data handling Best practices for algorithms Best practices for statistics Best practices for business contexts Summary A. A List of Links 2. Module 2 1. From Data to Decisions – Getting Started with Analytic Applications Designing an advanced analytic solution Data layer: warehouses, lakes, and streams Modeling layer
- 11. Deployment layer Reporting layer Case study: sentiment analysis of social media feeds Data input and transformation Sanity checking Model development Scoring Visualization and reporting Case study: targeted e-mail campaigns Data input and transformation Sanity checking Model development Scoring Visualization and reporting Summary 2. Exploratory Data Analysis and Visualization in Python Exploring categorical and numerical data in IPython Installing IPython notebook The notebook interface Loading and inspecting data Basic manipulations – grouping, filtering, mapping, and pivoting Charting with Matplotlib Time series analysis Cleaning and converting Time series diagnostics Joining signals and correlation Working with geospatial data Loading geospatial data Working in the cloud Introduction to PySpark Creating the SparkContext Creating an RDD Creating a Spark DataFrame Summary 3. Finding Patterns in the Noise – Clustering and Unsupervised Learning Similarity and distance metrics Numerical distance metrics Correlation similarity metrics and time series Similarity metrics for categorical data K-means clustering Affinity propagation – automatically choosing cluster numbers k-medoids Agglomerative clustering Where agglomerative clustering fails Streaming clustering in Spark Summary 4. Connecting the Dots with Models – Regression Methods Linear regression Data preparation Model fitting and evaluation Statistical significance of regression outputs Generalize estimating equations
- 12. Mixed effects models Time series data Generalized linear models Applying regularization to linear models Tree methods Decision trees Random forest Scaling out with PySpark – predicting year of song release Summary 5. Putting Data in its Place – Classification Methods and Analysis Logistic regression Multiclass logistic classifiers: multinomial regression Formatting a dataset for classification problems Learning pointwise updates with stochastic gradient descent Jointly optimizing all parameters with second-order methods Fitting the model Evaluating classification models Strategies for improving classification models Separating Nonlinear boundaries with Support vector machines Fitting and SVM to the census data Boosting – combining small models to improve accuracy Gradient boosted decision trees Comparing classification methods Case study: fitting classifier models in pyspark Summary 6. Words and Pixels – Working with Unstructured Data Working with textual data Cleaning textual data Extracting features from textual data Using dimensionality reduction to simplify datasets Principal component analysis Latent Dirichlet Allocation Using dimensionality reduction in predictive modeling Images Cleaning image data Thresholding images to highlight objects Dimensionality reduction for image analysis Case Study: Training a Recommender System in PySpark Summary 7. Learning from the Bottom Up – Deep Networks and Unsupervised Features Learning patterns with neural networks A network of one – the perceptron Combining perceptrons – a single-layer neural network Parameter fitting with back-propagation Discriminative versus generative models Vanishing gradients and explaining away Pretraining belief networks Using dropout to regularize networks Convolutional networks and rectified units Compressing Data with autoencoder networks Optimizing the learning rate
- 13. The TensorFlow library and digit recognition The MNIST data Constructing the network Summary 8. Sharing Models with Prediction Services The architecture of a prediction service Clients and making requests The GET requests The POST request The HEAD request The PUT request The DELETE request Server – the web traffic controller Application – the engine of the predictive services Persisting information with database systems Case study – logistic regression service Setting up the database The web server The web application The flow of a prediction service – training a model On-demand and bulk prediction Summary 9. Reporting and Testing – Iterating on Analytic Systems Checking the health of models with diagnostics Evaluating changes in model performance Changes in feature importance Changes in unsupervised model performance Iterating on models through A/B testing Experimental allocation – assigning customers to experiments Deciding a sample size Multiple hypothesis testing Guidelines for communication Translate terms to business values Visualizing results Case Study: building a reporting service The report server The report application The visualization layer Summary Bibliography Index
- 15. Python: Advanced Predictive Analytics Copyright © 2017 Packt Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this course may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews. Every effort has been made in the preparation of this course to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this course is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this course. Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this course by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information. Published on: December 2017 Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
- 16. Livery Place 35 Livery Street Birmingham B3 2PB, UK. ISBN 978-1-78899-236-7 www.packtpub.com
- 17. Credits Authors Ashish Kumar Joseph Babcock Reviewers Matt Hollingsworth Dipanjan Deb Content Development Editor Cheryl Dsa Production Coordinator Melwyn D'sa
- 18. Preface Social Media and the Internet of Things have resulted in an avalanche of data. Data is powerful but not in its raw form - It needs to be processed and modeled, and Python is one of the most robust tools out there to do so. It has an array of packages for predictive modeling and a suite of IDEs to choose from. Using the Python programming language, analysts can use these sophisticated methods to build scalable analytic applications to deliver insights that are of tremendous value to their organizations.This course is your guide to getting started with Predictive Analytics using Python. You will see how to process data and make predictive models from it. We balance both statistical and mathematical concepts, and implement them in Python using libraries such as pandas, scikit-learn, and numpy. Later you will learn the process of turning raw data into powerful insights. Through case studies and code examples using popular open-source Python libraries, this course illustrates the complete development process for analytic applications and how to quickly apply these methods to your own data to create robust and scalable prediction services. Covering a wide range of algorithms for classification, regression, clustering, as well as cutting-edge techniques such as deep learning, this book illustrates not only how these methods work, but how to implement them in practice. You will learn to choose the right approach for your problem and how to develop
- 19. engaging visualizations to bring the insights of predictive modeling to life. Finally, you will see the best practices in predictive modeling, as well as the different applications of predictive modeling in the modern world. What this learning path covers Module 1, Learning Predictive Analytics with Python, is your guide to getting started with Predictive Analytics using Python. You will see how to process data and make predictive models from it. It is the perfect balance of both statistical and mathematical concepts, and implementing them in Python using libraries such as pandas, scikit-learn, and numpy. Module 2, Mastering Predictive Analytics with Python, will show you the process of turning raw data into powerful insights. Through case studies and code examples using popular open-source Python libraries, this course illustrates the complete development process for analytic applications and how to quickly apply these methods to your own data to create robust and scalable prediction services.
- 20. What you need for this learning path Module 1: In order to make the best use of this module, you will require the following: All the datasets that have been used to illustrate the concepts in various chapters. These datasets can be downloaded from this URL: https://goo.gl/zjS4C6. There is a sub-folder containing required datasets for each chapter. Your computer should have any of the Python distribution installed. The examples in the module have been worked upon in IPython Notebook. Following the examples will be much easier if you use IPython Notebook.This comes with Anaconda distribution that can be installed from https://www.continuum.io/downloads. The Python packages which are used widely, for example, pandas, matplotlib, scikit-learn, NumPy, and so on, should be installed. If you install Anaconda these packages will come pre-installed. One of the best ways to use this module will be to take the dataset used to illustrate concepts and flow along with the chapter. The concepts will be easier to understand if the reader works hands on the examples. A basic aptitude for mathematics is expected. It is beneficial to understand the mathematics behind the algorithms before applying them. Prior experience or knowledge of coding will be an added advantage. But, it is not a pre-requisite at all. Similarly, knowledge of statistics and some algorithms will be beneficial, but it is not a pre-requisite. An open mind curious to learn the tips and tricks of a subject that is
- 21. going to be an indispensable skillset in the coming future. Module 2: You'll need latest Python version and PySpark version installed, along with the Jupyter notebook.
- 22. Who this learning path is for This course is designed for business analysts, BI analysts, data scientists, or junior level data analysts who are ready to move from a conceptual understanding of advanced analytics to an expert in designing and building advanced analytics solutions using Python. If you are familiar with coding in Python (or some other programming/statistical/scripting language) but have never used or read about Predictive Analytics algorithms, this course will also help you.
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- 26. Errata section of that title. To view the previously submitted errata, go to https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/support and enter the name of the course in the search field. The required information will appear under the Errata section. Piracy Piracy of copyrighted material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy. Please contact us at <[email protected]> with a link to the suspected pirated material. We appreciate your help in protecting our authors and our ability to bring you valuable content. Questions If you have a problem with any aspect of this course, you can contact us at <[email protected]>, and we will do our best to address the problem.
- 27. Part 1. Module 1 Learning Predictive Analytics with Python Gain practical insights into predictive modelling by implementing Predictive Analytics algorithms on public datasets with Python
- 28. Chapter 1. Getting Started with Predictive Modelling Predictive modelling is an art; its a science of unearthing the story impregnated into silos of data. This chapter introduces the scope and application of predictive modelling and shows a glimpse of what could be achieved with it, by giving some real-life examples. In this chapter, we will cover the following topics in detail: Introducing predictive modelling Applications and examples of predictive modelling Installing and downloading Python and its packages Working with different IDEs for Python Introducing predictive modelling Did you know that Facebook users around the world share 2,460,000 pieces of content every minute of the day? Did you know that 72-hours worth of new video content is uploaded on YouTube in the same time and, brace yourself, did you know that everyday around 2.5 exabytes (10^18) of data is created by us humans? To give you a perspective on how much data that is, you will need a million 1 TB (1000 GB) hard disk drives every
- 29. day to store that much data. In a year, we will outgrow the US population and will be north of five times the UK population and this estimation is by assuming the fact that the rate of the data generation will remain the same, which in all likelihoods will not be the case. The breakneck speed at which the social media and Internet of Things have grown is reflected in the huge silos of data humans generate. The data about where we live, where we come from, what we like, what we buy, how much money we spend, where we travel, and so on. Whenever we interact with a social media or Internet of Things website, we leave a trail, which these websites gleefully log as their data. Every time you buy a book at Amazon, receive a payment through PayPal, write a review on Yelp, post a photo on Instagram, do a check-in on Facebook, apart from making business for these websites, you are creating data for them. Harvard Business Review (HBR) says "Data is the new oil" and that "Data Scientist is the sexiest job of the 21st century". So, why is the data so important and how can we realize the full potential of it? There are broadly two ways in which the data is used: Retrospective analytics: This approach helps us analyze history and glean out insights from the data. It allows us to learn from mistakes and adopt best practices. These insights and learnings become the torchbearer for the purpose of devising better strategy. Not surprisingly, many experts have been claiming that data is the new middle manager. Predictive analytics: This approach unleashes the might of data. In short, this approach allows us to predict the future. Data science
- 30. algorithms take historical data and spit out a statistical model, which can predict who will buy, cheat, lie, or die in the future. Let us evaluate the comparisons made with oil in detail: Data is as abundant as oil used to be, once upon a time, but in contrast to oil, data is a non-depleting resource. In fact, one can argue that it is reusable, in the sense that, each dataset can be used in more than one way and also multiple number of times. It doesn't take years to create data, as it takes for oil. Oil in its crude form is worth nothing. It needs to be refined through a comprehensive process to make it usable. There are various grades of this process to suit various needs; it's the same with data. The data sitting in silos is worthless; it needs to be cleaned, manipulated, and modelled to make use of it. Just as we need refineries and people who can operate those refineries, we need tools that can handle data and people who can operate those tools. Some of the tools for the preceding tasks are Python, R, SAS, and so on, and the people who operate these tools are called data scientists. A more detailed comparison of oil and data is provided in the following table: Data Oil It's a non-depleting resource and also reusable. It's a depleting resource and non- reusable. Data collection requires some infrastructure or system in place. Once the system is in place, the data generation happens seamlessly. Drilling oil requires a lot of infrastructure. Once the infrastructure is in place, one can keep drawing the oil until the stock dries up. It needs to be cleaned and modelled. It needs to be cleaned and processed. The time taken to generate data varies from fractions of second to months and years. It takes decades to generate.
- 31. The worth and marketability of different kinds of data is different. The worth of crude oil is same everywhere. However, the price and marketability of different end products of refinement is different. The time horizon for monetization of data is smaller after getting the data. The time horizon for monetizing oil is longer than that for data. Scope of predictive modelling Predictive modelling is an ensemble of statistical algorithms coded in a statistical tool, which when applied on historical data, outputs a mathematical function (or equation). It can in-turn be used to predict outcomes based on some inputs (on which the model operates) from the future to drive a goal in business context or enable better decision making in general. To understand what predictive modelling entails, let us focus on the phrases highlighted previously. ENSEMBLE OF STATISTICAL ALGORITHMS Statistics are important to understand data. It tells volumes about the data. How is the data distributed? Is it centered with little variance or does it varies widely? Are two of the variables dependent on or independent of each other? Statistics helps us answer these questions. This book will expect a basic understanding of basic statistical terms, such as mean, variance, co-variance, and correlation. Advanced terms, such as hypothesis testing, Chi-Square tests, p-values, and so on will be explained as and when required. Statistics are the cog in
- 32. the wheel called model. Algorithms, on the other hand, are the blueprints of a model. They are responsible for creating mathematical equations from the historical data. They analyze the data, quantify the relationship between the variables, and convert it into a mathematical equation. There is a variety of them: Linear Regression, Logistic Regression, Clustering, Decision Trees, Time-Series Modelling, Naïve Bayes Classifiers, Natural Language Processing, and so on. These models can be classified under two classes: Supervised algorithms: These are the algorithms wherein the historical data has an output variable in addition to the input variables. The model makes use of the output variables from historical data, apart from the input variables. The examples of such algorithms include Linear Regression, Logistic Regression, Decision Trees, and so on. Un-supervised algorithms: These algorithms work without an output variable in the historical data. The example of such algorithms includes clustering. The selection of a particular algorithm for a model depends majorly on the kind of data available. The focus of this book would be to explain methods of handling various kinds of data and illustrating the implementation of some of these models. STATISTICAL TOOLS There are a many statistical tools available today, which are laced with inbuilt methods to run basic statistical chores. The arrival of open-source robust tools like R
- 33. and Python has made them extremely popular, both in industry and academia alike. Apart from that, Python's packages are well documented; hence, debugging is easier. Python has a number of libraries, especially for running the statistical, cleaning, and modelling chores. It has emerged as the first among equals when it comes to choosing the tool for the purpose of implementing preventive modelling. As the title suggests, Python will be the choice for this book, as well. HISTORICAL DATA Our machinery (model) is built and operated on this oil called data. In general, a model is built on the historical data and works on future data. Additionally, a predictive model can be used to fill missing values in historical data by interpolating the model over sparse historical data. In many cases, during modelling stages, future data is not available. Hence, it is a common practice to divide the historical data into training (to act as historical data) and testing (to act as future data) through sampling. As discussed earlier, the data might or might not have an output variable. However, one thing that it promises to be is messy. It needs to undergo a lot of cleaning and manipulation before it can become of any use for a modelling process. MATHEMATICAL FUNCTION
- 34. Most of the data science algorithms have underlying mathematics behind them. In many of the algorithms, such as regression, a mathematical equation (of a certain type) is assumed and the parameters of the equations are derived by fitting the data to the equation. For example, the goal of linear regression is to fit a linear model to a dataset and find the equation parameters of the following equation: The purpose of modelling is to find the best values for the coefficients. Once these values are known, the previous equation is good to predict the output. The equation above, which can also be thought of as a linear function of Xi's (or the input variables), is the linear regression model. Another example is of logistic regression. There also we have a mathematical equation or a function of input variables, with some differences. The defining equation for logistic regression is as follows: Here, the goal is to estimate the values of a and b by fitting the data to this equation. Any supervised algorithm will have an equation or function similar to that of the model above. For unsupervised algorithms, an underlying mathematical function or criterion (which can
- 35. be formulated as a function or equation) serves the purpose. The mathematical equation or function is the backbone of a model. BUSINESS CONTEXT All the effort that goes into predictive analytics and all its worth, which accrues to data, is because it solves a business problem. A business problem can be anything and it will become more evident in the following examples: Tricking the users of the product/service to buy more from you by increasing the click through rates of the online ads Predicting the probable crime scenes in order to prevent them by aggregating an invincible lineup for a sports league Predicting the failure rates and associated costs of machinery components Managing the churn rate of the customers The predictive analytics is being used in an array of industries to solve business problems. Some of these industries are, as follows: Banking Social media Retail Transport Healthcare Policing Education Travel and logistics
- 36. E-commerce Human resource By what quantum did the proposed solution make life better for the business, is all that matters. That is the reason; predictive analytics is becoming an indispensable practice for management consulting. In short, predictive analytics sits at the sweet spot where statistics, algorithm, technology and business sense intersect. Think about it, a mathematician, a programmer, and a business person rolled in one. Knowledge matrix for predictive modelling As discussed earlier, predictive modelling is an interdisciplinary field sitting at the interface and requiring knowledge of four disciplines, such as Statistics, Algorithms, Tools, Techniques, and Business Sense. Each of these disciplines is equally indispensable to perform a successful task of predictive modelling. These four disciplines of predictive modelling carry equal weights and can be better represented as a knowledge matrix; it is a symmetric 2 x 2 matrix containing four equal-sized squares, each representing a discipline.
- 37. Fig. 1.1: Knowledge matrix: four disciplines of predictive modelling Task matrix for predictive modelling The tasks involved in predictive modelling follows the Pareto principle. Around 80% of the effort in the modelling process goes towards data cleaning and wrangling, while only 20% of the time and effort goes into implementing the model and getting the prediction. However, the meaty part of the modelling that is rich with almost 80% of results and insights is undoubtedly the implementation of the model. This information can be better represented as a matrix, which can be called a task matrix that will look something similar to the following figure:
- 38. Fig. 1.2: Task matrix: split of time spent on data cleaning and modelling and their final contribution to the model Many of the data cleaning and exploration chores can be automated because they are alike most of the times, irrespective of the data. The part that needs a lot of human thinking is the implementation of a model, which is what makes the bulk of this book.
- 39. Applications and examples of predictive modelling In the introductory section, data has been compared with oil. While oil has been the primary source of energy for the last couple of centuries and the legends of OPEC, Petrodollars, and Gulf Wars have set the context for the oil as a begrudged resource; the might of data needs to be demonstrated here to set the premise for the comparison. Let us glance through some examples of predictive analytics to marvel at the might of data. LinkedIn's "People also viewed" feature If you are a frequent LinkedIn user, you might be familiar with LinkedIn's "People also viewed" feature. WHAT IT DOES? Let's say you have searched for some person who works at a particular organization and LinkedIn throws up a list of search results. You click on one of them and you land up on their profile. In the middle-right section of the screen, you will find a panel titled "People Also Viewed"; it is essentially a list of people who either work at the same organization as the person whose profile you are
- 40. currently viewing or the people who have the same designation and belong to same industry. Isn't it cool? You might have searched for these people separately if not for this feature. This feature increases the efficacy of your search results and saves your time. HOW IS IT DONE? Are you wondering how LinkedIn does it? The rough blueprint is as follows: LinkedIn leverages the search history data to do this. The model underneath this feature plunges into a treasure trove of search history data and looks at what people have searched next after finding the correct person they were searching for. This event of searching for a particular second person after searching for a particular first person has some probability. This will be calculated using all the data for such searches. The profiles with the highest probability of being searched (based on the historical data) are shown in the "People Also Viewed" section. This probability comes under the ambit of a broad set of rules called Association Rules. These are very widely used in Retail Analytics where we are interested to know what a group of products will sell together. In other words, what is the probability of buying a particular second product given that the consumer has already bought the first product? Correct targeting of online ads If you browse the Internet, which I am sure you must be doing frequently, you must have encountered online ads, both on the websites and smartphone apps. Just like the ads in the newspaper or TV, there is a publisher and an advertiser for online ads too. The publisher in this case is
- 41. the website or the app where the ad will be shown while the advertiser is the company/organization that is posting that ad. The ultimate goal of an online ad is to be clicked on. Each instance of an ad display is called an impression. The number of clicks per impression is called Click Through Rate and is the single most important metric that the advertisers are interested in. The problem statement is to determine the list of publishers where the advertiser should publish its ads so that the Click Through Rate is the maximum. HOW IS IT DONE? The historical data in this case will consist of information about people who visited a certain website/app and whether they clicked the published ad or not. Some or a combination of classification models, such as Decision Trees, and Support Vector Machines are used in such cases to determine whether a visitor will click on the ad or not, given the visitor's profile information. One problem with standard classification algorithms in such cases is that the Click Through Rates are very small numbers, of the order of less than 1%. The resulting dataset that is used for classification has a very sparse positive outcome. The data needs to be downsampled to enrich the data with positive outcomes before modelling. The logistical regression is one of the most standard classifiers for situations with binary outcomes. In banking, whether a person will default on his loan or not can be predicted using logistical regression given his credit history.
- 42. Santa Cruz predictive policing Based on the historical data consisting of the area and time window of the occurrence of a crime, a model was developed to predict the place and time where the next crime might take place. HOW IS IT DONE? A decision tree model was created using the historical data. The prediction of the model will foretell whether a crime will occur in an area on a given date and time in the future. The model is consistently recalibrated every day to include the crimes that happened during that day. The good news is that the police are using such techniques to predict the crime scenes in advance so that they can prevent it from happening. The bad news is that certain terrorist organizations are using such techniques to target the locations that will cause the maximum damage with minimal efforts from their side. The good news again is that this strategic behavior of terrorists has been studied in detail and is being used to form counter-terrorist policies. Determining the activity of a smartphone user using accelerometer data The accelerometer in a smartphone measures the acceleration over a period of time as the user indulges in various activities. The acceleration is measured over the three axes, X, Y, and Z. This acceleration data can then
- 43. be used to determine whether the user is sleeping, walking, running, jogging, and so on. HOW IS IT DONE? The acceleration data is clustered based on the acceleration values in the three directions. The values of the similar activities cluster together. The clustering performs well in such cases if the columns contributing the maximum to the separation of activities are also included while calculating the distance matrix for clustering. Such columns can be found out using a technique called Singular Value Decomposition. Sport and fantasy leagues Moneyball, anyone? Yes, the movie. The movie where a statistician turns the fortunes of a poorly performing baseball team, Oak A, by developing an algorithm to select players who were cheap to buy but had a lot of latent potential to perform. HOW WAS IT DONE? Bill James, using historical data, concluded that the older metrics used to rate a player, such as stolen balls, runs batted in, and batting average were not very useful indicators of a player's performance in a given match. He rather relied on metrics like on- base percentage and sluggish percentage to be a better predictor of a player's performance. The chief statistician behind the algorithms, Bill James, compiled the data for performance of all the baseball league players and sorted them for these metrics. Surprisingly, the players who had high values for these statistics also came at cheaper prices. This way, they gathered an unbeatable team that didn't
- 44. have individual stars who came at hefty prices but as a team were an indomitable force. Since then, these algorithms and their variations have been used in a variety of real and fantasy leagues to select players. The variants of these algorithms are also being used by Venture Capitalists to optimize and automate their due diligence to select the prospective start-ups to fund.
- 45. Python and its packages – download and installation There are various ways in which one can access and install Python and its packages. Here we will discuss a couple of them. Anaconda Anaconda is a popular Python distribution consisting of more than 195 popular Python packages. Installing Anaconda automatically installs many of the packages discussed in the preceding section, but they can be accessed only through an IDE called Spyder (more on this later in this chapter), which itself is installed on Anaconda installation. Anaconda also installs IPython Notebook and when you click on the IPython Notebook icon, it opens a browser tab and a Command Prompt. NOTE NOTE Anaconda can be downloaded and installed from the following web address: http://continuum.io/downloads Download the suitable installer and double click on the .exe file and it will install Anaconda. Two of the features that you must check after the installation are: IPython Notebook Spyder IDE
- 46. Search for them in the "Start" icon's search, if it doesn't appear in the list of programs and files by default. We will be using IPython Notebook extensively and the codes in this book will work the best when run in IPython Notebook. IPython Notebook can be opened by clicking on the icon. Alternatively, you can use the Command Prompt to open IPython Notebook. Just navigate to the directory where you have installed Anaconda and then write ipython notebook, as shown in the following screenshot: Fig. 1.3: Opening IPython Notebook NOTE NOTE On the system used for this book, Anaconda was installed in the C:Usersashish directory. One can open a new Notebook in IPython by clicking on the New Notebook button on the dashboard, which opens up. In this book, we have used IPython Notebook extensively. Standalone Python You can download a Python version that is stable and is compatible to the OS on your system. The most stable version of Python is 2.7.0. So, installing this version is highly recommended. You can download it from https://www.python.org/ and install it. There are some Python packages that you need to
- 47. install on your machine before you start predictive analytics and modelling. This section consists of a demo of installation of one such library and a brief description of all such libraries. Installing a Python package There are several ways to install a Python package. The easiest and the most effective is the one using pip. As you might be aware, pip is a package management system that is used to install and manage software packages written in Python. To be able to use it to install other packages, pip needs to be installed first. INSTALLING PIP The following steps demonstrate how to install pip. Follow closely! 1. Navigate to the webpage shown in the following screenshot. The URL address is https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pip: Downloading pip from the Python's official website 2. Download the pip-7.0.3.tar.gz file and unzip in the folder where Python is installed. If you have Python v2.7.0 installed, this folder should be C:Python27:
- 48. Unzipping the .zar file for pip in the correct folder 3. On unzipping the previously mentioned file, a folder called pip- 7.0.3 is created. Opening that folder will take you to the screen similar to the one in the preceding screenshot. 4. Open the CMD on your computer and change the current directory to the current directory in the preceding screenshot that is C:Python27pip-7.0.3 using the following command: cd C:Python27pip-7.0.3. 5. The result of the preceding command is shown in the following screenshot: Navigating to the directory where pip is installed 6. Now, the current directory is set to the directory where setup file for pip (setup.py) resides. Write the following command to install pip: python setup.py install 7. The result of the preceding command is shown in the following screenshot:
- 49. Installing pip using a command line Once pip is installed, it is very easy to install all the required Python packages to get started. INSTALLING PYTHON PACKAGES WITH PIP The following are the steps to install Python packages using pip, which we just installed in the preceding section: 1. Change the current directory in the command prompt to the directory where the Python v2.7.0 is installed that is: C:Python27. 2. Write the following command to install the package: pip install package-name 3. For example, to install pandas, you can proceed as follows: Installing a Python package using a command line and pip 4. Finally, to confirm that the package has installed successfully, write the following command: python -c "import pandas" 5. The result of the preceding command is shown in the following screenshot:
- 50. Checking whether the package has installed correctly or not If this doesn't throw up an error, then the package has been installed successfully.
- 51. Python and its packages for predictive modelling In this section, we will discuss some commonly used packages for predictive modelling. pandas: The most important and versatile package that is used widely in data science domains is pandas and it is no wonder that you can see import pandas at the beginning of any data science code snippet, in this book, and anywhere in general. Among other things, the pandas package facilitates: The reading of a dataset in a usable format (data frame in case of Python) Calculating basic statistics Running basic operations like sub-setting a dataset, merging/concatenating two datasets, handling missing data, and so on The various methods in pandas will be explained in this book as and when we use them. NOTE NOTE To get an overview, navigate to the official page of pandas here: http://pandas.pydata.org/index.html NumPy: NumPy, in many ways, is a MATLAB equivalent in the Python environment. It has powerful methods to do mathematical calculations and simulations. The
- 52. following are some of its features: A powerful and widely used a N-d array element An ensemble of powerful mathematical functions used in linear algebra, Fourier transforms, and random number generation A combination of random number generators and an N-d array elements is used to generate dummy datasets to demonstrate various procedures, a practice we will follow extensively, in this book NOTE NOTE To get an overview, navigate to official page of NumPy at http://www.NumPy.org/ matplotlib: matplotlib is a Python library that easily generates high-quality 2-D plots. Again, it is very similar to MATLAB. It can be used to plot all kind of common plots, such as histograms, stacked and unstacked bar charts, scatterplots, heat diagrams, box plots, power spectra, error charts, and so on It can be used to edit and manipulate all the plot properties such as title, axes properties, color, scale, and so on NOTE NOTE To get an overview, navigate to the official page of matplotlib at: http://matplotlib.org IPython: IPython provides an environment for interactive computing. It provides a browser-based notebook that is an IDE- cum-development environment to support codes, rich media, inline plots, and model summary. These notebooks and their content can be saved and used later to demonstrate the result as it is or to save the codes
- 53. separately and execute them. It has emerged as a powerful tool for web based tutorials as the code and the results flow smoothly one after the other in this environment. At many places in this book, we will be using this environment. NOTE NOTE To get an overview, navigate to the official page of IPython here http://ipython.org/ Scikit-learn: scikit-learn is the mainstay of any predictive modelling in Python. It is a robust collection of all the data science algorithms and methods to implement them. Some of the features of scikit- learn are as follows: It is built entirely on Python packages like pandas, NumPy, and matplotlib It is very simple and efficient to use It has methods to implement most of the predictive modelling techniques, such as linear regression, logistic regression, clustering, and Decision Trees It gives a very concise method to predict the outcome based on the model and measure the accuracy of the outcomes NOTE NOTE To get an overview, navigate to the official page of scikit-learn here: http://scikit- learn.org/stable/index.html Python packages, other than these, if used in this book, will be situation based and can be installed using the method described earlier in this section.
- 54. IDEs for Python The IDE or the Integrated Development Environment is a software that provides the source-code editor cum debugger for the purpose of writing code. Using these software, one can write, test, and debug a code snippet before adding the snippet in the production version of the code. IDLE: IDLE is the default Integrated Development Environment for Python that comes with the default implementation of Python. It comes with the following features: Multi-window text-editor with auto-completion, smart-indent, syntax, and keyword highlighting Python shell with syntax highlighting IDLE is widely popular as an IDE for beginners; it is simple to use and works well for simple tasks. Some of the issues with IDLE are bad output reporting, absence of line numbering options, and so on. As a result, advanced practitioners move on to better IDEs. IPython Notebook: IPython Notebook is a powerful computational environment where code, execution, results, and media can co-exist in one single document. There are two components of this computing environment:
- 55. Discovering Diverse Content Through Random Scribd Documents
- 56. While the war was going on in the west and centre of France, the League was strengthening its organisation and perfecting its plans. It had become more and more hostile to Henry III., and had become a secret revolutionary society. It drafted a complete programme for the immediate future. The cities and districts of France which felt themselves specially threatened by the Huguenots were to beseech the King to raise levies for their protection. If he refused or procrastinated, they were to raise the troops themselves, to be commanded by officers in whom the League had confidence. They could then compel the King to place himself at the head of this army of the Leaguers, or show himself to be their open enemy by refusing. If the King died childless, the partisans of the League were to gather at Orléans and Paris, and were there to elect the Cardinal de Bourbon as the King of France. The Pope and the King of Spain were to be at once informed, when it had been arranged that His Holiness would send his benediction, and that His Majesty would assist them with troops and supplies. A new form of oath was imposed on all the associates of the League. They were to swear allegiance to the King so long as he should show himself to be a good Catholic and refrained from favouring heretics. These instructions were sent down from the mother-society in Paris to the provinces, and the affiliated societies were recommended to keep in constant communication with Paris. Madame de Montpensier, sister to the Guises, at the same time directed the work of a band of preachers whose business it was to inflame the minds of the people in the capital and the provinces against the King and the Huguenots. She boasted that she did more work for the cause than her brothers were doing by the sword. The Guises, with this force behind them, tried to force the King to make new concessions—to publish the decisions of the Council of Trent in France (a thing that had not been done); to establish the Inquisition in France; to order the execution of all Huguenot prisoners who would not promise to abjure their religion; and to remove from the armies all officers of whom the League did not approve. The mother-society in Paris prepared for his refusal by
- 57. organising a secret revolutionary government for the city. It was called “The Sixteen,” being one for each of the sixteen sections of Paris. This government was under the orders of Guise, who communicated with them through an agent of his called Mayneville. Plot after plot was made to get possession of the King’s person; and but for the activity and information of Nicholas Poulain, an officer of police who managed to secure private information, they would have been successful. § 18. The Day of Barricades.[225] The King redoubled his guards, and ordered four thousand Swiss troops which he had stationed at Lagny into the suburbs of Paris. The Parisian Leaguers in alarm sent for the Duke of Guise; and Guise, in spite of a prohibitive order from the King, entered the city. When he was recognised he was received with acclamations by the Parisian crowd. The Queen-Mother induced the King to receive him, which he did rather ungraciously. Officers and men devoted to the League crowded into Paris. The King, having tried in vain to prevent the entry of all suspected persons, at last ordered the Swiss into Paris (May 12th, 1588). The citizens flew to arms, and converted Paris into a stronghold. It was “the day of Barricades.” Chains were stretched across the streets, and behind them were piled beams, benches, carts, great barrels filled with stones or gravel. Houses were loop-holed and windows protected. Behind these defences men were stationed with arquebuses; and the women and children were provided with heaps of stones. Guise had remained in his house, but his officers were to be seen moving through the crowds and directing the defence. The Swiss troops found themselves caught in a trap, and helpless. Henry III. was compelled to ask Guise to interfere in order to save his soldiers. The King had to undergo further humiliation. The citizens proposed to attack the Louvre and seize the King’s person. Guise had to be appealed to again. He had an interview with the King on the 13th, at which Henry III. was forced to agree to all the demands of the League, and to leave the
- 58. conduct of the war against the Huguenots in the hands of the leader of the League. After the interview the King was able to escape secretly from Paris. The day of the “Barricades” had proved to Henry III. that the League was master in his capital. The meeting of the States General at Blois (Oct. 1588) was to show him that the country had also turned against him. The elections had been looked after by the Guises, and had taken place while the impression produced by the revolt of Paris was at its height. The League commanded an immense majority in all the three Estates. The business before them was grave. The finances of the kingdom were in disorder; favouritism had not been got rid of; and no one could trust the King’s word. Above all, the religious question was embittering every mind. The Estates met under the influence of a religious exaltation fanned by the priests. On the 9th of Oct. representatives of the three Estates went to Mass together. During the communion the assistant clergy chanted the well-known hymns,—Pange lingua gloriosi, O salutaris Hostia, Ave verum Corpus natum,—and the excitement was immense. The members of the Estates had never been so united. Yet the King had a moment of unwonted courage. He had resolved to denounce the League as the source of the disorders in the kingdom. He declared that he would not allow a League to exist within the realm. He only succeeded in making the leaders furious. His bravado soon ceased. The Cardinal de Bourbon compelled him to omit from the published version of his speech the objectionable expressions. The Estates forced him to swear that he would not permit any religion within the kingdom but the Roman. This done, he was received with cries of Vive le Roi, and was accompanied to his house with acclamations. But he was compelled to see the Duke of Guise receive the office of Lieutenant-General, which placed the army under his command; and he felt that he would never be “master in his own house” until that man had been removed from his path.
- 59. The news of the completeness of the destruction of the Armada had been filtering through France; the fear of Spain was to some extent removed, and England might help the King if he persisted in a policy of tolerating his Protestant subjects. It is probable that he confided his project of getting rid of Guise to some of his more intimate councillors, and that they assured him that it would be impossible to remove such a powerful subject by legal means. The Duke and his brother the Cardinal of Guise were summoned to a meeting of the Council. They had scarcely taken their seats when they were asked to see the King in his private apartments. There Guise was assassinated, and the Cardinal arrested, and slain the next day.[226] The Cardinal de Bourbon and the young Prince de Joinville (now Duke of Guise by his father’s death) were arrested and imprisoned. Orders were given to arrest the Duchess of Nemours (Guise’s mother), the Duke and Duchess of Elbœuf, the Count de Brissac, and other prominent Leaguers. The King’s guards invaded the sittings of the States General to carry out these orders. The bodies of the two Guises were burnt, and the ashes thrown into the Loire. The news of the assassination raised the wildest rage in Paris. The League proclaimed itself a revolutionary society. The city organised itself in its sections. A council was appointed for each section to strengthen the hands of the “Sixteen.” Preachers caused their audiences to swear that they would spend the last farthing in their purses and the last drop of blood in their bodies to avenge the slaughtered princes. The Sorbonne in solemn conclave declared that the actions of Henry III. had absolved his subjects from their allegiance. The “Sixteen” drove from Parlement all suspected persons; and, thus purged, the Parlement of Paris ranged itself on the side of the revolution. The Duke of Mayenne, the sole surviving brother of Henry of Guise, was summoned to Paris. An assembly of the citizens of the capital elected a Council General of the Union of Catholics to manage the affairs of the State and to confer with all the Catholic towns and provinces of France. Deputies sent by these towns and provinces were to be members of the Council. The Duke of Mayenne was appointed by the Council the Lieutenant-General of
- 60. the State and Crown of France. The new Government had its seal— the Seal of the Kingdom of France. The larger number of the great towns of France adhered to this provisional and revolutionary Government. In the midst of these tumults Catherine de’ Medici died (Jan. 5th, 1589). § 19. The King takes refuge with the Huguenots. The miserable King had no resource left but to throw himself upon the protection of the Protestants. He hesitated at first, fearing threatened papal excommunication. Henry of Navarre’s bearing during these months of anxiety had been admirable. After the meeting of the States General at Blois, he had issued a stirring appeal to the nation, pleading for peace—the one thing needed for the distracted and fevered country. He now assured the King of his loyalty, and promised that he would never deny to Roman Catholics that liberty of conscience and worship which he claimed. A treaty was arranged, and the King of Navarre went to meet Henry III. at Tours. He arrived just in time. Mayenne at the head of an avenging army of Leaguers had started as soon as the provisional government had been established in Paris. He had taken by assault a suburb of the town, and was about to attack the city of Tours itself, when he found the Protestant vanguard guarding the bridge over the Loire, and had to retreat. He was slowly forced back towards Paris. The battle of Senlis, in which a much smaller force of Huguenots routed the Duke d’Aumale, who had been reinforced by the Parisian militia, opened the way to Paris. The King of Navarre pressed on. Town after town was taken, and the forces of the two kings, increased by fourteen thousand Swiss and Germans, were soon able to seize the bridge of St. Cloud and invest the capital on the south and west (July 29th, 1589). An assault was fixed for Aug. 2nd.
- 61. Since the murder of the Guises, Paris had been a caldron of seething excitement. The whole population, “avec douleur et gemissements bien grands,” had assisted at the funeral service for “the Martyrs,” and the baptism of the posthumous son of the slaughtered Duke had been a civic ceremony. The Bull “monitory” of Pope Sixtus V., posted up in Rome on May 24th, which directed Henry III. on pain of excommunication to release the imprisoned prelates within ten days, and to appear either personally or by proxy within sixty days before the Curia to answer for the murder of a Prince of the Church, had fanned the excitement. Almost every day the Parisians saw processions of students, of women, of children, defiling through their streets. They marched from shrine to shrine, with naked feet, clad only in their shirts, defying the cold of winter. Parishioners dragged their priests out of bed to head nocturnal processions. The hatred of Henry III. became almost a madness. The Cordeliers decapitated his portraits. Parish priests made images of the King in wax, placed them on their altars, and practised on them magical incantations, in the hope of doing deadly harm to the living man. Bands of children carried lighted candles, which they extinguished to cries of, “God extinguish thus the race of the Valois.” Among the most excited members of this fevered throng was a young Jacobin monk, Jacques Clément, by birth a peasant, of scanty intelligence, and rough, violent manners. His excitement grew with the perils of the city. He consulted a theologian in whom he had confidence, and got from him a guarded answer that it might be lawful to slay a tyrant. He prayed, fasted, went through a course of maceration of the body. He saw visions. He believed that he heard voices, and that he received definite orders to give his life in order to slay the King. He confided his purpose to friends, who approved of it and helped his preparations. He was able to leave the city, to pass through the beleaguering lines, and to get private audience of the King. He presented a letter, and while Henry was reading it stabbed him in the lower part of the body. The deed done, the monk raised himself to his full height, extended his arms to form himself into a
- 62. crucifix, and received without flinching his deathblow from La Guesle and other attendants (Aug. 1st, 1589).[227] The King lingered until the following morning, and then expired, commending Henry of Navarre to his companions as his legitimate successor. The news of the assassination was received in Paris with wild delight. The Duchess de Nemours, the mother of the Guises, and the Duchess de Montpensier, their sister, went everywhere in the streets describing “the heroic act of Jacques Clément.” The former mounted the steps of the High Altar in the church of the Cordeliers to proclaim the news to the people. The citizens, high and low, brought out their tables into the streets, and they drank, sang, shouted and danced in honour of the news. They swore that they would never accept a Protestant king[228] and the Cardinal de Bourbon, still a prisoner, was proclaimed as Charles x. At Tours, on the other hand, the fact that the heir to the throne was a Protestant, threw the Roman Catholic nobles into a state of perplexity. They had no sympathy with the League, but many felt that they could not serve a Protestant king. They pressed round the new King, beseeching him to abjure his faith at once. Henry refused to do what would humiliate himself, and could not be accepted as an act of sincerity. On the other hand, the nobles of Champagne, Picardy, and the Isle of France sent assurances of allegiance; the Duke of Montpensier, the husband of the Leaguer Duchess, promised his support; and the Swiss mercenaries declared that they would serve for two months without pay. § 20. The Declaration of Henry IV.[229] Thus encouraged, Henry published his famous declaration (Aug. 4th, 1589). He promised that the Roman Catholic would remain the religion of the realm, and that he would attempt no innovations. He declared that he was willing to be instructed in its tenets, and that
- 63. within six months, if it were possible, he would summon a National Council. The Roman Catholics would be retained in their governments and charges; the Protestants would keep the strongholds which were at present in their hands; but all fortified places when reduced would be entrusted to Roman Catholics and none other. This declaration was signed by two Princes of the Blood, the Prince of Conti and the Duke of Montpensier; by three Dukes and Peers, Longueville, Luxembourg-Piney, and Rohan-Montbazon; by two Marshals of France, Biron and d’Aumont; and by several great officers. Notwithstanding, the defections were serious; all the Parlements save that of Bordeaux thundered against the heretic King; all the great towns save Tours, Bordeaux, Châlons, Langres, Compiègne, and Clermont declared for the League. The greater part of the kingdom was in revolt. The royalist troops dwindled away. It was hopeless to think of attacking Paris, and Henry IV. marched for Normandy with scarcely seven thousand men. He wished to be on the sea coast in hope of succour from England. The Duke of Mayenne followed him with an army of thirty thousand men. He had promised to the Parisians to throw the “Bearnese” into the sea, or to bring him in chains to Paris, But it was not so easy to catch the “Bearnese.” In the series of marches, countermarches, and skirmishes which is known as the battle of Arques, the advantage was on the side of the King; and when Mayenne attempted to take Dieppe by assault, he was badly defeated (Sept. 24th, 1589). Then followed marches and countermarches; the King now threatening Paris and then retreating, until at last the royalist troops and the Leaguers met at Ivry. The King had two thousand cavalry and eight thousand infantry to meet eight thousand cavalry and twelve thousand infantry (including seventeen hundred Spanish troops sent by the Duke of Parma) under the command of Mayenne. The battle resulted in a surprising and decisive victory for the King. Mayenne and his cousin d’Aumale escaped only by the swiftness of their horses (March 14th, 1590). It is needless to say much about the war or about the schemes of parties. Henry invested Paris, and had almost starved it into
- 64. surrender, when it was revictualled by an army led from the Low Countries by the Duke of Parma. Henry took town after town, and gradually isolated the capital. In 1590 (May 10th) the old Cardinal Bourbon (Charles X.) died, and the Leaguers lost even the semblance of a legitimate king. The more fanatical members of the party, represented by the “Sixteen” of Paris, would have been content to place France under the dominion of Spain rather than see a heretic king. The Duke of Mayenne had long cherished dreams that the crown might come to him. But the great mass of the influential people of France who had not yet professed allegiance to Henry IV. (and many who had) had an almost equal dread of Spanish domination and of a heretic ruler. § 21. Henry IV. becomes a Roman Catholic. Henry at last resolved to conform to the Roman Catholic religion as the only means of giving peace to his distracted kingdom. He informed the loyalist Archbishop of Bourges of his intention to be instructed in the Roman Catholic religion with a view to conversion. The Archbishop was able to announce this at the conference of Suresnes, and the news spread instantly over France. With his usual tact, Henry wrote with his own hand to several of the parish priests of Paris announcing his intention, and invited them to meet him at Mantes to give him instruction. At least one of them had been a furious Leaguer, and was won to be an enthusiastic loyalist. The ceremony of the reception of Henry IV. into the Roman Catholic Church took place at Saint Denis, about four and a half miles to the north of Paris. The scene had all the appearance of some popular festival. The ancient church in which the Kings of France had for generations been buried, in which Jeanne d’Arc had hung up her arms, was decked with splendid tapestries, and the streets leading to it festooned with flowers. Multitudes of citizens had come from rebel Paris to swell the throng and to shout Vive le Roi! as Henry, escorted by a brilliant procession of nobles and guards, passed slowly to the church. The clergy, headed by the Archbishop of
- 65. Bourges, met him at the door. The King dismounted, knelt, swore to live and die in the catholic apostolic and Roman religion, and renounced all the heresies which it condemned. The Archbishop gave him absolution, took him by the hand and led him into the church. There, kneeling before the High Altar, the King repeated his oath, confessed, and communicated. France had now a Roman Catholic as well as a legitimate King. Even if it be admitted that Henry IV. was not a man of any depth of religious feeling, the act of abjuration must have been a humiliation for the son of Jeanne d’Albret. He never was a man who wore his heart on his sleeve, and his well-known saying, that “Paris was well worth a Mass,” had as much bitterness in it as gaiety. He had paled with suppressed passion at Tours (1589) when the Roman Catholic nobles had urged him to become a Romanist. Had the success which followed his arms up to the battle of Ivry continued unbroken, it is probable that the ceremony at Saint Denis would never have taken place. But Parma’s invasion of France, which compelled the King to raise the siege of Paris, was the beginning of difficulties which seemed insurmountable. The dissensions of parties within the realm, and the presence of foreigners on the soil of France (Walloon, Spanish, Neapolitan, and Savoyard), were bringing France to the verge of dissolution. Henry believed that there was only one way to end the strife, and he sacrificed his convictions to his patriotism. With Henry’s change of religion the condition of things changed as if by magic. The League seemed to dissolve. Tenders of allegiance poured in from all sides, from nobles, provinces, and towns. Rheims was still in possession of the Guises, and the anointing and crowning took place at Chartres (Feb. 27th, 1594). The manifestations of loyalty increased. On the evening of the day on which Henry had been received into the Roman Catholic Church at Saint Denis, he had recklessly ridden up to the crest of the height of Montmartre and looked down on Paris, which was still in the hands of the League. The feelings of the Parisians were also changing. The League was seamed with dissensions; Mayenne had quarrelled with the “Sixteen,” and the
- 66. partisans of these fanatics of the League had street brawls with the citizens of more moderate opinions. Parlement took courage and denounced the presence of Spanish soldiers within the capital. The loyalists opened the way for the royal troops, Henry entered Paris (March 22nd), and marched to Notre Dame, where the clergy chanted the Te Deum. From the cathedral he rode to the Louvre through streets thronged with people, who pressed up to his very stirrups to see their King, and made the tall houses re-echo with their loyalist shoutings. Such a royal entry had not been seen for generations, and took everyone by surprise. Next day the foreign troops left the city. The King watched their departure from an open window in the Louvre, and as their chiefs passed he called out gaily, “My compliments to your Master. You need not come back.” With the return of Paris to fealty, almost all signs of disaffection departed; and the King’s proclamation of amnesty for all past rebellions completed the conquest of his people. France was again united after thirty years of civil war. § 22. The Edict of Nantes. The union of all Frenchmen to accept Henry IV. as their King had not changed the legal position of the Protestants. The laws against them were still in force; they had nothing but the King’s word promising protection to trust to. The war with Spain delayed matters, but when peace was made the time came for Henry to fulfil his pledges to his former companions. They had been chafing under the delay. At a General Assembly held at Mantes (October 1593-January 1594), the members had renewed their oath to live and to die true to their confession of faith, and year by year a General Assembly met to discuss their political disabilities as well as to conduct their ecclesiastical business. They had divided France into nine divisions under provincial synods, and had the appearance to men of that century of a kingdom within a kingdom. They demanded equal civic rights with their Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, and guarantees for their protection. At length, in 1597, four delegates were appointed
- 67. with full powers to confer with the King. Out of these negotiations came the Edict of Nantes, the Charter of French Protestantism. This celebrated edict was drawn up in ninety-five more general articles, which were signed on April 13th, and in fifty-six more particular articles which were signed on May 2nd (1598). Two Brevets, dated 13th and 30th of April, were added, dealing with the treatment of Protestant ministers, and with the strongholds given to the Protestants. The Articles were verified and registered by Parlements; the Brevets were guaranteed simply by the King’s word. The Edict of Nantes codified and enlarged the rights given to the Protestants of France by the Edict of Poitiers (1577), the Convention of Nérac (1578), the treaty of Fleix (1580), the Declaration of Saint- Cloud (1589), the Edict of Mantes (1591), the Articles of Mantes (1593), and the Edict of Saint-Germain (1594). It secured complete liberty of conscience everywhere within the realm, to the extent that no one was to be persecuted or molested in any way because of his religion, nor be compelled to do anything contrary to its tenets; and this carried with it the right of private or secret worship. The full and free right of public worship was granted in all places in which it existed during the years 1596 and 1597, or where it had been granted by the Edict of Poitiers interpreted by the Convention of Nérac and the treaty of Fleix (some two hundred towns); and, in addition, in two places within every bailliage and sénéchaussée in the realm. It was also permitted in the principal castles of Protestant seigneurs hauts justiciers (some three thousand), whether the proprietor was in residence or not, and in their other castles, the proprietor being in residence; to nobles who were not hauts justiciers, provided the audience did not consist of more than thirty persons over and above relations of the family. Even at the Court the high officers of the Crown, the great nobles, all governors and lieutenants-general, and captains of the guards, had the liberty of worship in their apartments provided the doors were kept shut and there was no loud singing of psalms, noise, or open scandal.
- 68. Protestants were granted full civil rights and protection, entry into all universities, schools, and hospitals, and admission to all public offices. The Parlement of Paris admitted six Protestant councillors. And Protestant ministers were granted the exemptions from military service and such charges as the Romanist clergy enjoyed. Special Chambers (Chambres d’Édit) were established in the Parlements to try cases in which Protestants were interested. In the Parlement of Paris this Chamber consisted of six specially chosen Roman Catholics and one Protestant; in other Parlements, the Chambers were composed of equal numbers of Romanists and Protestants (mi- parties). The Protestants were permitted to hold their ecclesiastical assemblies—consistories, colloquies, and synods, national and provincial; they were even allowed to meet to discuss political questions, provided they first secured the permission of the King. They remained in complete control of two hundred towns, including La Rochelle, Montauban, and Montpellier, strongholds of exceptional strength. They were to retain these places until 1607, but the right was prolonged for five years more. The State paid the expenses of the troops which garrisoned these Protestant fortified places; it paid the governors, who were always Protestants. When it is remembered that the royal army in time of peace did not exceed ten thousand men, and that the Huguenots could raise twenty-five thousand troops, it will be seen that Henry IV. did his utmost to provide guarantees against a return to a reign of intolerance. Protected in this way, the Huguenot Church of France speedily took a foremost place among the Protestant Churches of Europe. Theological colleges were established at Sedan, Montauban, and Saumur. Learning and piety flourished, and French theology was always a counterpoise to the narrow Reformed Scholastic of Switzerland and of Holland.
- 69. CHAPTER V. THE REFORMATION IN THE NETHERLANDS. [230] § 1. The Political Situation. It was not until 1581 that the United Provinces took rank as a Protestant nation, notwithstanding the fact that the Netherlands furnished the first martyrs of the Reformation in the persons of Henry Voes and John Esch, Augustinian monks, who were burnt at Antwerp (July 31st, 1523). “As they were led to the stake they cried with a loud voice that they were Christians; and when they were fastened to it, and the fire was kindled, they rehearsed the twelve articles of the Creed, and after that the hymn Te Deum laudamus, which each of them sang verse by verse alternately until the flames deprived them both of voice and life.”[231] The struggle for religious liberty, combined latterly with one for national independence from Spain, lasted therefore for almost sixty years. When the lifelong duel between Charles the Bold of Burgundy and Louis XI. of France ended with the death of the former on the battlefield under the walls of Nancy (January 4th, 1477), Louis was able to annex to France a large portion of the heterogeneous possessions of the Dukes of Burgundy, and Mary of Burgundy carried the remainder as her marriage portion (May 1477) to Maximilian of Austria, the future Emperor. Speaking roughly, and not quite accurately, those portions of the Burgundian lands which had been
- 70. fiefs of France went to Louis, while Mary and Maximilian retained those which were fiefs of the Empire. The son of Maximilian and Mary, Philip the Handsome, married Juana (August 1496), the second daughter and ultimate heiress of Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, and their son was Charles V., Emperor of Germany (b. February 24th, 1500), who inherited the Netherlands from his father and Spain from his mother, and thus linked the Netherlands to Spain. Philip died in 1506, leaving Charles, a boy of six years of age, the ruler of the Netherlands. His paternal aunt, Margaret, the daughter of the Emperor Maximilian, governed in the Netherlands during his minority, and, owing to Juana’s illness (an illness ending in madness), mothered her brother’s children. Margaret’s regency ended in 1515, and the earlier history of the Reformation in the Netherlands belongs either to the period of the personal rule of Charles or to that of the Regents whom he appointed to act for him. The land, a delta of great rivers liable to overflow their banks, or a coast-line on which the sea made continual encroachment, produced a people hardy, strenuous, and independent. Their struggles with nature had braced their faculties. Municipal life had struck its roots deeply into the soil of the Netherlands, and its cities could vie with those of Italy in industry and intelligence. The southern provinces were the home of the Trouvères.[232] Jan van-Ruysbroec, the most heart-searching of speculative Mystics, had been a curate of St. Gudule’s in Brussels. His pupil, Gerard Groot, had founded the lay- community of the Brethren of the Common Lot for the purpose of spreading Christian education among the laity; and the schools and convents of the Brethren had spread through the Netherlands and central Germany. Thomas à Kempis, the author of the Imitatio Christi, had lived most of his long life of ninety years in a small convent at Zwolle, within the territories of Utrecht. Men who have been called “Reformers before the Reformation,” John Pupper of Goch and John Wessel, both belonged to the Netherlands. Art flourished there in the fifteenth century in the persons of Hubert and Jan van Eyck and of Hans Memling. The Chambers of Oratory (Rederijkers) to begin with probably unions for the performance of
- 71. miracle plays or moralities, became confraternities not unlike the societies of meistersänger in Germany, and gradually acquired the character of literary associations, which diffused not merely culture, but also habits of independent thinking among the people. Intellectual life had become less exuberant in the end of the fifteenth century; but the Netherlands, nevertheless, produced Alexander Hegius, the greatest educational reformer of his time, and Erasmus the prince of the Humanists. Nor can the influence of the Chambers of Oratory have died out, for they had a great effect on the Reformation movement.[233] When Charles assumed the government of the Netherlands, he found himself at the head of a group of duchies, lordships, counties, and municipalities which had little appearance of a compact principality, and he applied himself, like other princes of his time in the same situation, to give them a unity both political and territorial. He was so successful that he was able to hand over to his son, Philip II. of Spain, an almost thoroughly organised State. The divisions which Charles largely overcame reappeared to some extent in the revolt against Philip and Romanism, and therefore in a measure concern the history of the Reformation. How Charles made his scattered Netherland inheritance territorially compact need not be told in detail. Friesland was secured (1515); the acquisition of temporal sovereignty over the ecclesiastical province of Utrecht (1527) united Holland with Friesland; Gronningen and the lands ruled by that turbulent city placed themselves under the government of Charles (1536); and the death of Charles of Egmont (1538), Count of Gueldres, completed the unification of the northern and central districts. The vague hold which France kept in some of the southern portions of the country was gradually loosened. Charles failed in the south-east. The independent principality of Lorraine lay between Luxemburg and Franche-Comté, and the Netherland Government could not seize it by purchase, treaty, or conquest. One and the same system of law regulated the rights and the duties of the whole population; and all the provinces were united into one
- 72. principality by the reorganisation of a States General, which met almost annually, and which had a real if vaguely defined power to regulate the taxation of the country. But although political and geographical difficulties might be more or less overcome, others remained which were not so easily disposed of. One set arose from the fact that the seventeen provinces were divided by race and by language. The Dutchmen in the north were different in interests and in sentiment from the Flemings in the centre; and both had little in common with the French-speaking provinces in the south. The other was due to the differing boundaries of the ecclesiastical and civil jurisdictions. When Charles began to rule in 1515, the only territorial see was Arras. Tournai, Utrecht, and Cambrai became territorial before the abdication of Charles. But the confusion between civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction may be seen at a glance when it is remembered that a great part of the Frisian lands were subject to the German Sees of Münster, Minden, Paderborn, and Osnabrück; and that no less than six bishops, none of them belonging to the Netherlands, divided the ecclesiastical rule over Luxemburg. Charles’ proposals to establish six new bishoprics, plans invariably thwarted by the Roman Curia, were meant to give the Low Countries a national episcopate. § 2. The Beginnings of the Reformation. The people of the Netherlands had been singularly prepared for the great religious revival of the sixteenth century by the work of the Brethren of the Common Lot and their schools. It was the aim of Gerard Groot, their founder, and also of Florentius Radevynszoon, his great educational assistant, to see “that the root of study and the mirror of life must, in the first place, be the Gospel of Christ.” Their pupils were taught to read the Bible in Latin, and the Brethren contended publicly for translations of the Scriptures in the vulgar tongues. There is evidence to show that the Vulgate was well known in the Netherlands in the end of the fifteenth century, and a translation of the Bible into Dutch was published at Delft in
- 73. 1477[234]. Small tracts against Indulgences, founded probably on the reasonings of Pupper and Wessel, had been in circulation before Luther had nailed his Theses to the door of All Saints’ church in Wittenberg. Hendrik of Zutphen, Prior of the Augustinian Eremite convent at Antwerp, had been a pupil of Staupitz, a fellow student with Luther, and had spread Evangelical teaching not only among his order, but throughout the town.[235] It need be no matter for surprise, then, that Luther’s writings were widely circulated in the Netherlands, and that between 1513 and 1531 no fewer than twenty-five translations of the Bible or of the New Testament had appeared in Dutch, Flemish, and French. When Aleander was in the Netherlands, before attending the Diet of Worms he secured the burning of eighty Lutheran and other books at Louvain;[236] and when he came back ten months later, he had regular literary auto-da-fés. On Charles’ return from the Diet of Worms, he issued a proclamation to all his subjects in the Netherlands against Luther, his books and his followers, and Aleander made full use of the powers it gave. Four hundred Lutheran books were burnt at Antwerp, three hundred of them seized by the police in the stalls of the booksellers, and one hundred handed over by the owners; three hundred were burnt at Ghent, “part of them printed here and part in Germany,” says the Legate; and he adds that “many of them were very well bound, and one gorgeously in velvet.” About a month later he is forced to confess that these burnings had not made as much impression as he had hoped, and that he wishes the Emperor would “burn alive half a dozen Lutherans and confiscate their property.” Such a proceeding would make all see him to be the really Christian prince that he is. [237] Next year (1522) Charles established the Inquisition within the seventeen provinces. It was a distinctively civil institution, and this was perhaps due to the fact that there was little correspondence between the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions in the Netherlands; but it must not be forgotten that the Kings of Spain had used the
- 74. Holy Office for the purpose of stamping out political and local opposition, and also that the civil courts were usually more energetic and more severe than the ecclesiastical. The man appointed was unworthy of any place of important trust. Francis van de Hulst, although he had been the Prince’s counsellor in Brabant, was a man accused both of bigamy and murder, and was hopelessly devoid of tact. He quarrelled violently with the High Court of Holland; and the Regent, Margaret of Austria, who had resumed her functions, found herself constantly compromised by his continual defiance of local privileges. He was a “wonderful enemy to learning,” says Erasmus. His colleague, Nicolas van Egmont, a Carmelite monk, is described by the same scholar as “a madman with a sword put into his hand who hates me worse than he does Luther.” The two men discredited the Inquisition from its beginning. Erasmus affected to believe that the Emperor could not know what they were doing. The first victim was Cornelius Graphæus, town clerk of Antwerp, a poet and Humanist, a friend of Erasmus; and his offence was that he had published an edition of John Pupper of Goch’s book, entitled the Liberty of the Christian Religion, with a preface of his own. The unfortunate man was set on a scaffold in Brussels, compelled to retract certain propositions which were said to be contained in the preface, and obliged to throw the preface itself into a fire kindled on the scaffold for the purpose. He was dismissed from his office, declared incapable of receiving any other employment, compelled to repeat his recantation at Antwerp, imprisoned for two years, and finally banished.[238] The earliest deaths were those of Henry Voes and John Esch, who have already been mentioned. Their Prior, Hendrik of Zutphen, escaped from the dungeon in which he had been confined. Luther commemorated them in a long hymn, entitled A New Song of the two Martyrs of Christ burnt at Brussels by the Sophists of Louvain: “Der erst recht wol Johannes heyst, So reych an Gottes hulden Seyn Bruder Henrch nach dem geyst,
- 75. Eyn rechter Christ on schulden: Vonn dysser welt gescheyden synd, Sye hand die kron erworben, Recht wie die frumen gottes kind Fur seyn wort synd gestorben, Sein Marter synd sye worden.”[239] Charles issued proclamation after proclamation, each of increasing severity. It was forbidden to print any books unless they had been first examined and approved by the censors (April 1st, 1524). “All open and secret meetings in order to read and preach the Gospel, the Epistles of St. Paul, and other spiritual writings,” were forbidden (Sept. 25th, 1525), as also to discuss the Holy Faith, the Sacraments, the Power of the Pope and Councils, “in private houses and at meals.” This was repeated on March 14th, 1526, and on July 17th there was issued a long edict, said to have been carefully drafted by the Emperor himself, forbidding all meetings to read or preach about the Gospel or other holy writings in Latin, Flemish, or Walloon. In the preamble it is said that ignorant persons have begun to expound Scripture, that even regular and secular clergy have presumed to teach the “errors and sinister doctrines of Luther and his adherents,” and that heresies are increasing in the land. Then followed edicts against unlicensed books, and against monks who had left their cloisters (Jan. 28th, 1528); against the possession of Lutheran books, commanding them upon pain of death to be delivered up (Oct. 14th, 1529); against printing unlicensed books— the penalties being a public whipping on the scaffold, branding with a red-iron, or the loss of an eye or a hand, at the discretion of the judge (Dec. 7th, 1530); against heretics “who are more numerous than ever,” against certain books of which a long list is given, and against certain hymns which increase the zeal of the heretics (Sept. 22nd, 1540); against printing and distributing unlicensed books in the Italian, Spanish, or English languages (Dec. 18th, 1544); warning all schoolmasters about the use of unlicensed books in their schools, and giving a list of those only which are permitted (July 31st, 1546). The edict of 1546 was followed by a long list of
- 76. prohibited books, among which are eleven editions of the Vulgate printed by Protestant firms, six editions of the Bible and three of the New Testament in Dutch, two editions of the Bible in French, and many others. Lastly, an edict of April 29th, 1550, confirmed all the previous edicts against heresy and its spread, and intimated that the Inquisitors would proceed against heretics “notwithstanding any privileges to the contrary, which are abrogated and annulled by this edict.” This was a clear threat that the terrible Spanish Inquisition was to be established in the Netherlands, and provoked such remonstrances that the edict was modified twice (Sept. 25th, Nov. 5th) before it was finally accepted as legal within the seventeen provinces. All these edicts were directed against the Lutheran or kindred teaching. They had nothing to do with the Anabaptist movement, which called forth a special and different set of edicts. It seems against all evidence to say that the persecution of the Lutherans had almost ceased during the last years of Charles’ rule in the Netherlands, and Philip II. could declare with almost perfect truth that his edicts were only his father’s re-issued. The continuous repetition and increasing severity of the edicts revealed not merely that persecution did not hinder the spread of the Reformed faith, but that the edicts themselves were found difficult to enforce. What Charles would have done had he been able to govern the country himself it is impossible to say. He became harder and more intolerant of differences in matters of doctrine as years went on, and in his latest days is said to have regretted that he had allowed Luther to leave Worms alive; and he might have dealt with the Protestants of the seventeen provinces as his son afterwards did. His aunt, Margaret of Austria, who was Regent till 1530, had no desire to drive matters to an extremity; and his sister Mary, who ruled from 1530 till the abdication of Charles in 1555, was suspected in early life of being a Lutheran herself. She never openly joined the Lutheran Church as did her sister the Queen of Denmark, but she confessed her sympathies to Charles, and gave them as a reason for reluctance to undertake the regency of the Netherlands.
- 77. It may therefore be presumed that the severe edicts were not enforced with undue stringency by either Margaret of Austria or by the widowed Queen of Hungary. There is also evidence to show that these proclamations denouncing and menacing the unfortunate Protestants of the Netherlands were not looked on with much favour by large sections of the population. Officials were dilatory, magistrates were known to have warned suspected persons to escape before the police came to arrest them; even to have given them facilities for escape after sentence had been delivered. Passive resistance on the part of the inferior authorities frequently interposed itself between the Emperor and the execution of his bloodthirsty proclamations. Yet the number of Protestant martyrs was large, and women as well as men suffered torture and death rather than deny their faith. The edicts against conventicles deterred neither preachers nor audience. The earliest missioners were priests and monks who had become convinced of the errors of Romanism. Later, preachers were trained in the south German cities and in Geneva, that nursery of daring agents of the Reformed propaganda. But if trained teachers were lacking, members of the congregation took their place at the peril of their lives. Brandt relates how numbers of people were accustomed to meet for service in a shipwright’s yard at Antwerp to hear a monk who had been “proclaimed”: “The teacher, by some chance or other, could not appear, and one of the company named Nicolas, a person well versed in Scripture, thought it a shame that such a congregation, hungering after the food of the Word, should depart without a little spiritual nourishment; wherefore, climbing the mast of a ship, he taught the people according to his capacity; and on that account, and for the sake of the reward that was set upon the preacher, he was seized by two butchers and delivered to the magistrates, who caused him to be put into a sack and thrown into the river, where he was drowned.”[240]
- 78. § 3. The Anabaptists. The severest persecutions, however, before the rule of Philip II., were reserved for those people who are called the Anabaptists.[241] We find several edicts directed against them solely. In February 1532 it was forbidden to harbour Anabaptists, and a price of 12 guilders was offered to informants. Later in the same year an edict was published which declared “that all who had been rebaptized, were sorry for their fault, and, in token of their repentance, had gone to confession, would be admitted to mercy for that time only, provided they brought a certificate from their confessor within twenty-four days of the date of the edict; those who continued obdurate were to be treated with the utmost rigour of the laws” (Feb. 1533). Anabaptists who had abjured were ordered to remain near their dwelling-places for the space of a year, “unless those who were engaged in the herring fishery” (June 1534). In 1535 the severest edict against the sect was published. All who had “seduced or perverted any to this sect, or had rebaptized them,” were to suffer death by fire; all who had suffered themselves to be rebaptized, or who had harboured Anabaptists, and who recanted, were to be favoured by being put to death by the sword; women were “only to be buried alive.”[242] To understand sympathetically that multiform movement which was called in the sixteenth century Anabaptism, it is necessary to remember that it was not created by the Reformation, although it certainly received an impetus from the inspiration of the age. Its roots can be traced back for some centuries, and its pedigree has at least two stems which are essentially distinct, and were only occasionally combined. The one stem is the successions of the Brethren, a mediæval, anti-clerical body of Christians whose history is written only in the records of Inquisitors of the mediæval Church, where they appear under a variety of names, but are universally said to prize the Scriptures and to accept the Apostles’ Creed.[243] The other existed in the continuous uprisings of the poor—peasants in
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