Strange as it may seem, the Guises’ determination to continue the war comported with the wishes of some of their enemies—a circumstance which illustrates how singular was the alliance existing between the Huguenots and the Politiques. The religious Huguenots already, in the middle of December, had remonstrated against the terms of peace proposed on the ground that the offers made did not promise as much of advantage or security as a continuation of the war. It was argued that the truce would result in greater prejudice to them since the King would still be prepared for war and that if they now let the opportunity pass of establishing their fortune by the aid of the reiters, the result would bring calamity to them.[1732] These narrow-minded dissidents looked with ill favor upon the politic course of the duke of Alençon in avoiding the pillage of the towns he took, even of trusting to their loyalty and refraining from putting garrisons in them (some of these towns were Dreux, Romorantin, Thouars, and Loudun), and censured him for his pacific overtures to the Parlement of Paris.[1733] Accordingly they hailed with delight the escape of Henry of Navarre (February 5, 1576), and his immediate abjuration[1734] of the Catholic faith which he had been forced to confess on St. Bartholomew’s Day, and the renewed advance of the reiters into Burgundy and Auvergne and thence across the Loire into Bourbonnais, notwithstanding the fact that these mounted mercenaries “made a terrible spoil with fire and fagots” wherever they went. The reiters took the road toward Langres, crossed the Seine above Châtillon into Auxerre, making for the passage of the Loire River at La Charité, in order to effect a junction with the duke of Alençon, who was in Berry, not far from Bourges. Champagne and Brie were filled with robbers in the wake of their advance, who, pretending that they were soldiers, plundered the townspeople and robbed wayfarers and travelers. There were regular bands of these freebooters, the members of which were paid regular wages by their captains. But the anarchy in the provinces did not compel the King to stop his dallying with philosophy, or his love for mad-cap pranks. He went off on a Shrovetide frolic in March, “riding about the town to cast eggs and such other disorders,” leaving Mayenne to labor with those nobles who refused to be commanded “by a boy that never saw wars and a soldiery whose pay was a whole quarter in arrears.”[1735] Mayenne made his headquarters at Moulins to prevent the reiters uniting with Alençon and the Huguenots of Poitou and Guyenne. It required all the address of the marshal Biron to restrain the young commander from throwing himself upon them, almost careless of the outcome, for defeat could have been little worse than the daily shrinkage of his army from desertion.[1736]