of religion as ys accordyd elzwhere. So as
the sayd admyrall doth now seame to lyke well inoughe that he shewyd by
the waye to mislyke so muche, which was the harde articles of religion
concludyd upon by the prince in his absence."[261]

On Sunday, the twenty-eighth of March, 1563--the anniversary of that
Sunday which they had kept with so much solemnity at Meaux, on the eve of
their march to Orleans--the Huguenot nobles and soldiers celebrated the
Lord's Supper, in the simple but grand forms of the Geneva liturgy, within
the walls of the church of the Holy Rood, long since stripped of its
idolatrous ornaments, and on the morrow began to disperse to the homes
from which for a year they had been separated.[262] The German reiters, at
the same time, set out on their march toward Champagne, whence they soon
after retired to their own country.

[Sidenote: Results of the war.]

The war that had just closed undoubtedly constituted a turning-point in
the Huguenot fortunes. The alliance between the persecuted reformers, on
the one hand, and the princes of the blood and the nobility of France, on
the other, had borne fruit, and it was not altogether good fruit. The
patient confessors, after manfully maintaining their faith through an
entire generation against savage attack, and gaining many a convert from
the witnesses of their constancy, had grasped the sword thrust into their
hands by their more warlike allies. In truth, it would be difficult to
condemn them; for it was in self-defence, not against rightful authority,
but against the tyranny of a foreign and hostile faction. Candidly viewing
their circumstances at the distance of three centuries, we can scarcely
see how they could have acted otherwise than as they did. Yet there was
much that, humanly speaking, was unfortunate in the conjuncture. War is a
horrible remedy at any time. Civil war super-adds a thousand horrors of
its own. And a civil war waged in the name of religion is the most
frightful of all. The holiest of causes is sure to be embraced from impure
motives by a host of unprincipled men, determined in their choice of party
only by the hope of personal gain, the lust of power, or the thirst for
revenge--a class of auxiliaries too powerful and important to be
altogether rejected in an hour when the issues of life or death are
pending, even if by the closest and calmest scrutiny they could be
thoroughly weeded out--a process beyond the power of mortal man at any