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ligion. It was the fight, not of French factions, but of Protestantism and Catholicism, that was to be fought out on the fields of France. The two warring elements of Protestantism were represented in the Huguenot camp where German Lutherans stood side by side with the French Calvinists. On the other hand the French Catholics were backed by soldiers from the Catholic cantons of Switzerland, from the Catholic states of Germany, from Catholic Italy, and from Catholic Spain. The encounter was a desperate one, but it ended in a virtual triumph for the Guises. While the German troops of Coligni clung to the Norman coast in the hope of subsidies from Elizabeth, the Duke of Guise was able to march at the opening of 1563 on the Loire, and form the siege of Orleans. [Sidenote: Mary and Protestantism.] In Scotland Mary Stuart was watching her uncle's progress with ever-growing hope. The policy of Murray had failed in the end to which she mainly looked. Her acceptance of the new religion, her submission to the Lords of the Congregation, had secured her a welcome in Scotland and gathered the Scotch people round her standard. But it had done nothing for her on the other side of the border. Two years had gone by, and any recognition of her right of succession to the English crown seemed as far off as ever. But Murray's policy was far from being Mary's only resource. She had never surrendered herself in more than outer show to her brother's schemes. In heart she had never ceased to be a bigoted Catholic, resolute for the suppression of Protestantism as soon as her toleration of it had given her strength enough for the work. It was this that made the strife between the two Queens of such terrible moment for English freedom. Elizabeth was fighting for more than personal ends. She was fighting for more than her own occupation of the English throne. Consciously or unconsciously she was struggling to avert from England the rule of a Queen who would have undone the whole religious work of the past half-century, who would have swept England back into the tide of Catholicism, and who in doing this would have blighted and crippled its national energies at the very moment of their mightiest developement. It was the presence of such a danger that sharpened the eyes of Protestants on both sides the border. However she might tolerate the reformed religion or hold out hopes of her compliance with a reformed worship, no earnest Protestant either
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