Before the wars, proselytism was wholesale; it embraced towns and entire provinces; afterwards, proselytes were rare, being only made one by one, and with infinite trouble: so many were the corpses piled up between the two communions! So many were the bitter enmities and cruel remembrances around the two camps, forbidding communication! The destiny of the Reformed in France was truly strange and deplorable. Had they not taken arms, they would probably have been exterminated like the Albigeois. In taking up arms, they kindled the fiercest hatred, and dug a pit, which no longer permitted the (Roman) Catholics to approach them. But even these calamities might have become the source of good for both communions. The Reformed had been instructed by misfortunes. They now understood and proclaimed that two religions might exist in the same state. Resigned to being only a minority, they cited in their writings the arrangements concluded between the rival churches in Germany. They went so far as to invoke the toleration of the Roman pontiff for the Jews, and of the Turks for the Christians. They had renounced the pretension to reign; they only asked for the right to live, and (Roman) Catholicism might have given them that, without putting its ancient prerogatives in danger. A respected modern historian says upon this subject: “The experience of the edicts of toleration during the peace, and of the mutual efforts of the two parties during the war, had extinguished in them (the Reformed) many illusions as to their strength. They could no longer believe that they were the more numerous, and that fear alone held the masses in apparent conformity with the Romish church. They had, on the contrary, become convinced, that progressive opinions, which called for the exercise of the understanding and of judgment, could only be dominant among the _élite_ of the nation.”[55] It is therefore a grave error to advance either religious or political necessity in justification of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. Rome had no longer anything to fear for her supremacy, nor the crown for the maintenance of its political power. It was fanaticism, it was the resentment of the past struggles, which led to the crushing of the minority in 1572: it was no state reason. The piety and the manners of the Reformed had also suffered much from the misfortunes of the time. Without having fallen into the hideous corruption of the court of Catherine, and without giving themselves up to the irregularities, which defiled the (Roman) Catholic clergy, they had lost much of their fervid and simple faith, and of the pious severity of conduct of their earlier years. In surrendering themselves to the spirit of party, religion had been degraded; they adhered, perhaps, the more strongly to their sect; they belonged less to Christianity.