And now, with feelings widely different from those which had possessed them in the journey toward Lorraine--a movement too nearly akin to a flight to inspire anything but disgust--the Huguenot soldiers, over twenty thousand strong, turned their faces once more westward. Their late pursuers, no longer seeking an engagement where the result might be worse than doubtful, confined themselves to watching their progress from a safe distance. As all the cities upon their route were in the hands of the Roman Catholics, the Huguenots were forced to take more circuitous and difficult paths through the open country. But the dispositions made by Coligny are said to have been so thorough and masterly, that they travelled safely and in comfort.[480] Not that the soldiers, dispersed at night through the villages, were freed from the necessity or the temptation to pillage;[481] for the poor farmers, robbed of the fruits of their honest toil, frequently had good reason to complain that those who had recently dispensed their own treasure with so liberal a hand were even more lavish of the property of others. But they were far more merciful and considerate toward their enemies than the Roman Catholic army to its friends. Even a curate of Brie--no very great lover of the Huguenots, who relates with infinite gusto the violation of Huguenot women by Anjou's soldiers[482]--admits that, excepting in the matter of the plundering of the churches and the distressing of priests, the Roman Catholics were a little worse than the heretics.[483] [Sidenote: The "Michelade" at Nismes.]