Notwithstanding the insinuations of Cardinal Santa Croce, that “she would pacify every thing in a few hours whenever she pleased,”[333] there does not appear to be any reason to doubt Catherine’s sincerity. It was her interest to pacify the country in a sense very different from that intended by the papal envoy: she had something more to fear than the hostility of the Huguenots. Spain was looking on, eager to take advantage of the distresses of France, and a continuation of the war could bring nothing but disaster whichever side prevailed. Less than a year of civil strife had been sufficient to exhaust the finances of the country, to accumulate an immense debt, to destroy commerce, and to throw half the land out of cultivation. Castelnau’s testimony in this matter is indisputable: “Agriculture was abandoned; multitudes of towns and villages, pillaged and burned, were deserted, and the poor laborers, driven from their homes, dispoiled of their furniture and cattle, robbed to-day by one party, to-morrow by another, fled like wild beasts, leaving all they had to the mercy of those who were without mercy. Commerce was quite given up: no one was secure of his property or life.... Thus the war, undertaken for religion, annihilated religion and piety.”[334] “The Catholics,” adds Claude Haton, “were as great thieves and brigands as the Huguenots.” The husbandman, no longer able to till his fields in safety, either joined the army or turned robber--a difference more in name than in reality. In many parts they banded together to protect themselves, but they soon became little better than brigands, attacking travelers, and ransoming the smaller towns and villages. In the Vendomois they were so violent that the gentlemen of the province united to repress their excesses and restore order, putting at their head the poet Ronsard, a gentleman and also a parish priest. “There are too many people in France,” shouted the leader of one of the wild gangs called Barefeet (_Pieds-Nus_); “we will kill a lot of them and make bread cheap.”[335] These ruffians committed horrible atrocities in Champagne, sacking the houses of rich and poor alike, killing the men and reserving the women for a worse fate. At Céant-en-Othe, inhabited chiefly by Protestants, they burned the villagers alive in their cottages. A poor girl, after enduring unutterable barbarities, was covered with straw and roasted alive, as they would have scorched a dead pig. One man was tied to a post and used as a target for their arquebuses.