It may be also that the memory of her desertion by the Church, once her only friend and champion, gave such intensity to the welcome of a "Reformation" by the people.

At all events, whatever the explanation, a religious war was at hand which was going to stain the fair name of France more even than the treacheries of her civil war.
The question at issue was deeper than any one knew.

Neither Luther nor Leo X.understood the revolution they had precipitated.

Protestants and Papists alike failed to comprehend the true nature of the struggle, which was not for supremacy of Romanist or Protestant; not whether this dogma or that was true, and should prevail; but an assertion of the right of every human soul to choose its own faith and form of worship.
The great battle for human liberty had commenced; the struggle for religious liberty was but the prelude to what was to follow.

There was abundant proof later that Protestants no less than Papists needed only opportunity and power to be as cruel and intolerant as their persecutors had been.