This discourse made so strong an impression, that many, who had taken the advice of Condé, would have wished that the whole matter were to be done over again. But the prince answered that he had received private promises, and that when he was lieutenant-general of the kingdom, all would go on well. Coligny had to give way. Orleans was restored to the king’s troops, and the Huguenots aided them in retaking Hâvre from the English. Such was the end of the first religious war, if such a word can be used to designate a simple suspension of arms, adopted on each side with mental reservations. No one was or could be satisfied. The ardent (Roman) Catholics complained no less than the Calvinists. Politicians could not understand those categories, which surrendered to a few what was refused to the masses. No principle had dictated the Edict of Pacification, and France, covered with blood, had not even time to apply the first dressing to her grievous wounds. VIII. Having set forth the course of general affairs, it is now necessary to cast a glance at what had been going on in the provinces. War was waged not only between party chiefs and regular armies; it also broke out in a thousand forms throughout the kingdom. It was a great and fearful struggle of province against province, town against town, house against house, and man against man. Never was it so clearly seen that the worst of all wars are civil wars, and of all civil wars the wars of religion. The excesses of the revolution would convey but a faint idea [of the then state of things]. Fanaticism had converted France into a band of cannibals, and the gloomiest imagination may be defied to conceive all the kinds of refined, revolting, execrable, and obscene punishments which were then practised. But there is in this spectacle a great lesson to be learned: it is that the principle of religious liberty is one of the most precious possessions of humanity. A detailed recital of these horrors is not here to be expected. They fill a volume of Theodore de Bèze. Jacques de Thou devotes to them several books of his history. Crespin, Jean de Serres, the memoirs of Montluc, of Tavanes, of Condé, of Lanoue, and of fifty others are full of them. Whoever wishes to investigate the details may seek for them there. Were we to attempt the task, the pen would again and again fall from our hand.