away and joined the Huguenot army, abjuring the Catholic Church and declaring that he would never enter Paris again save as King of France. Thus united, the Huguenots and their allies were very strong. The queenmother was glad to lure back her son Alençon by giving him the duchy of Anjou, and at the same time the King of Navarre was made governor of Guienne, and freedom of conscience was promised to the Calvinists in all towns save Paris. This was called Monsieur's peace, Monsieur being the usual designation of the next brother of the reigning king.

10. The League, 1577.-The champion of the Roman Catholic Church was Philip II. of Spain, while Queen Elizabeth was looked on as the head of the Reform everywhere. But the hereditary policy of the house of Valois was enmity to Spain and alliance with England; Anjou moreover, like his brother, was a wooer of the English queen, and he accepted the invitation of the revolted Dutch Calvinists in the Netherlands to become their head and protector. The zealous Catholics took alarm, and formed a League for the protection of their faith, binding themselves to resist to the utmost any attack on the Church, and to prevent any heretic from coming to the crown. At the head of this League stood the Duke of Guise and his brothers, and it was greatly fostered by the order of Jesuits. At Paris men even began to whisper that Henry and his brother were as effete and unworthy as any old long-haired king." It was remarked moreover that their next male heirs were those relapsed heretics the Bourbon princes, and that the time might be come for hiding Henry III. in a convent; that Hugh Capet had been an usurper, while the Lorraine princes had the true blood of Charles the Great. Meantime Henry of Navarre kept court at Nérac, where he was joined by his wife, Margaret of Valois. No one guessed what was in the young king. His easy grace and kindliness won all hearts, even while his vicious habits shocked the Calvinists. As yet he seemed to be a mere pleasant trifler, like his father Antony, who might easily be set aside.

II. War of the Three Henries, 1584.-Matters were brought to a point by the death of Monsieur, unmarried, in 1584. The king was childless, and Henry of Navarre was the next male heir, though his kindred with the house of Valois in the direct male line was so distant that they had no common ancestor nearer than Saint Lewis. The

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Leaguers took an oath that no heretic should reign; but they could not put forward either Guise or his cousin the Duke of Lorraine, without offending Philip of Spain, whose help they needed. For as his wife Elizabeth had been the eldest daughter of Henry II., he claimed the crown for her only child, Isabel Clara Eugenia. To gain time the Leaguers recognized as heir Charles, Cardinal of Bourbon, uncle of the King of Navarre, intending after him to give the crown to one of the house of Lorraine, and to marry him to the Spanish princess. Meanwhile the revolted Netherlanders were begging Henry III. to accept their sovereignty and support them against Philip II., and his trafficking with these Reformers brought the rage of the Leaguers on him. One of his mignons, the Duke of Joyeuse, advised him to make friends with the League and accept their terms; another, the Duke of Epernon, would have had him throw himself for aid on the King of Navarre and the Huguenots. He preferred this last counsel, for he liked the boon companion of his youth, and he hated Guise, who had always scorned and tyrannized over him, and was in effect what he was called in joke, King of Paris. Guise was marching against Henry with 12,000 men, when Catharine de' Medici, old, sick, and feeble as she was, once more came to the front. She met Guise at Nemours, agreed to all his demands except the disinheriting of the King of Navarre, who invited the king to come to his camp, where he would find only loyal subjects. In return Henry III. entreated his cousin to return to the Catholic Church, and so satisfy all parties. This correspondence made the League conjure the pope to render reconciliation impossible. Sixtus V. was thus forced by Spanish power, against his own inclination, to excommunicate the two Bourbon cousins, and declare them incapable of inheriting the crown, to release the King of Navarre's dominions from their allegiance, and to call on the King of France to expel the relapsed heretics. In return Henry of Navarre caused a paper to be affixed to the gates of the Vatican declaring that "Monsieur Sixtus," calling himself pope, had lied, appealing from him to a general council, and demanding support from all Christian kings. Meantime the war of the three Henries went on without much result, till on the 20th of October, 1587, the Bourbon princes met Joyeuse and the king at Coutras, at the junction of the rivers Isle and Droune. The Huguenots had 6,500 men, the Royalists

above 10,000, but officered by mignons, so that the dash and bravery of Henry of Navarre gained in one hour the first complete victory ever won by his party. Joyeuse was killed and his artillery taken; but Henry then returned to Béarn, while an army of German Protestants, which was marchingt o join him, was cut off by Guise and Epernon.

12. The Barricades, 1587.—The Catholics were divided into three parties, namely, the Leaguers, who would have no Calvinist king, nor toleration for a heretic; the Royalists, who thought nothing could interfere with hereditary right; and the Montmorency party, who made common cause with the Huguenots, in hopes of restoring the ancient power of the nobility. But the fall of the Duke of Joyeuse had so weakened the Royalists that Guise, in a conference at Nancy, decided that the time was come for forcing on the king the recognition of the Cardinal of Bourbon as his heir, the acceptance of the canons of the Council of Trent, and the establishment of the Inquisition. Whatever kingly feeling remained to Henry III. was shown in his wish to do justice to his heir, and he temporized till the people of Paris grew furious. Guise hurried from Nancy, and on the 7th of May, 1587, entered the capital, where he was welcomed as the Judas Maccabæus of France, and going to the king at the Louvre, insisted on his accepting the terms of the League. Henry still delayed, and began to muster his Scottish and Swiss guards, thus giving rise to a report that there was to be a massacre of the Leaguers. The citizens, rising in arms, barricaded the streets, and in alarm Henry rode off to Blois. He was shot at as he passed the gate, and turning round he swore only to return through a breach in the walls. Still he was not out of reach of Guise, who came after him and forced him to consent to everything, and to become the mere tool of the League. The States-General were convoked at Blois, and before them Henry declared himself chief of the League, and submitted to decrees destroying the power of the

crown.

13. Murder of Guise, 1588.-Guise's conduct was insolent; Henry's suite were abused, struck and wounded by the followers of the duke; and it was the common report that Guise's sister, the Duchess of Montpensier, kept a pair of gold-handled scissors with which to shave the head of the last Valois before he should be put into his convent. Henry's savage nature awakened, and with some of his guards he plotted the death of his tyrant. Warnings were

sent to Guise; but he was too proud and daring to heed them, and went as usual to the council at the palace on the 23rd of December, 1588. He was sumtnoned into the king's apartments, where eight of Henry's gentlemen fell on him and killed him on the spot. The duke's brother, the cardinal, was killed the next day. The king then spurned the body with his foot, and Henry, going to the room where Queen Catharine lay ill in bed, said, “I am King of France, the King of Paris is dead." "Take care that you are not king of nothing," she answered; "you have cut, can you sew up again?" She died a fortnight later. Henry of Guise, though a violent and very far from a virtuous man, had more honour and singleness of aim than either of the other two Henries, and his grand presence and noble manners had made him the idol of his party, as his death rendered him their martyr. All Catholic France cried out with horror, and Paris uttered roars of frenzy, tearing down the king's coats of arms, destroying his portraits, and talking of a republic. As Guise's children were infants, his brother Charles, Duke of Mayenne, became head of the League, and levied war against the murderer.

14. Murder of Henry III., 1589.-The only hope for Henry III. was in throwing himself on his brother-in-law of Navarre and owning him as his heir. The two kings were joined by all such Catholics as were unwilling to go all lengths with the Leaguers, and at the head of 40,000 men they blockaded Paris, while the Duke of Mayenne could only hover in the distance with 10,000. But the besieged, men, women, and children, were filled with passionate fury against the ally of heretics, the assassin of the champion of their faith. They were excited by the fierce appeals of the Duchess of Montpensier and the savage sermons of the Dominicans and Jesuits. At last a young Dominican monk named Jacques Clement, the day before a general assault was expected, stole out of Paris in disguise, and, presenting a letter to the king, stabbed him during the reading of it. Thus Henry III. died on the 5th of August, 1589, in his thirty-eighth year, exhorting his friends to cleave to his cousin of Navarre, In him the house of Valois became extinct. Under the kings of that house the kingdom had nearly perished, and, when its strength was restored, they had used it for wars of ambition. At last home troubles rent the kingdom, and the frivolity, falsehood, and cruelty of the sons of

Henry II., corrupted by their own mother, caused the line to end in disgrace and wretchedness. During the two centuries of their reign the country, from the general impulse which affected all Europe, had advanced in art, learning, and the like, but it had gone back in the sense of personal honour, mercy, and morality. The whole policy of Europe had been infected by Italian craft, and falsehood was viewed as the licensed weapon of statesmen. But France bore off the palm, not only of deceit, but of treachery and bloodshed, and the standard of outward decency and female virtue fell to its lowest in the courts of Catharine de' Medici and her daughter Margaret. Earnest men had gone over to Calvinism, leaving only the dregs behind them; but even religion on both sides was stained with the savage ferocity of the time. As a rule, no quarter was given, duels were common, private assassination was even more frequent, and both the Jesuit and Dominican orders were wont to deem any means justifiable which removed a foe of the Church.

15. The Battle of Ivry, 1590.-Henry of Navarre, now Henry IV. of France, had been steeped to the utmost in the profligacy of the court, and though his sweet, generous temper, keen wit, and ready courage kept him far above his unhappy cousins, his honour was not untainted, and he was a Huguenot rather by party than in faith. The South was now tranquil under Henry, and most of its cities were Huguenot; but the whole North was a field of battle, fearfully devastated alike by both parties. The Cardinal of Bourbon was proclaimed king by the League as Charles X., and troops were sent by Philip II. to his aid. But Spanish interference was sure to rouse French hatred, and Henry IV. was accepted by all the Royalist Catholics, and was aided by Elizabeth of England and the German Lutherans. In the winter he made great progress in Normandy, always respecting Catholic churches and restraining cruelties. While he was besieging Dreux, Mayenne came to relieve it, and a battle was fought in the plain of Ivry on the 14th of March, 1590. The Leaguers were blessed by a Franciscan friar, holding up a great cross, while the Huguenots sang a psalm, and Henry made one of the speeches that tell so much on the French, "Upon them! God is for us. Behold His enemies and yours! If signals fail you, follow my white plume. It shall lead the way to honour