deplorable.

We can understand how a government may find it necessary to use force
against its own subjects in order to crush out factions which would
weaken the authority of the throne and the national strength; but that
it should murder its citizens to compel them to say their prayers in
French or Latin, or to recognize the supremacy of a foreign pontiff, is
difficult of conception. Never was a king more to be pitied than Louis
XIV., who persecuted a million of industrious Protestants, who had put
upon the throne his own Protestant ancestor. Wars of fanaticism are
horrible when mingled with exterior wars, and they are also frightful
when they are family quarrels. The history of France in the times of the
League should be an eternal lesson for nations and kings. It is
difficult to believe that a people so noble and chivalrous in the time
of Francis I. should in twenty years have fallen into so deplorable a
state of brutality.

To give maxims in such wars would be absurd. There is one rule upon
which all thoughtful men will be agreed: that is, to unite the two
parties or sects to drive the foreigners from the soil, and afterward to
reconcile by treaty the conflicting claims or rights. Indeed, the
intervention of a third power in a religious dispute can only be with
ambitious views.

Governments may in good faith intervene to prevent the spreading of a
political disease whose principles threaten social order; and, although
these fears are generally exaggerated and are often mere pretexts, it is
possible that a state may believe its own institutions menaced. But in
religious disputes this is never the case; and Philip II. could have had
no other object in interfering in the affairs of the League than to