HENRY IV.] FRANCE 563 Burgundy, as well as the elder Bourbons, had to fall ex tinct before Henry of Navarre could become heir to the crown. All this, however, had now happened ; and the Huguenots greatly rejoiced in the prospect of a Calvinist king. The Folitique party showed no ill-will towards him ; both they and the court party declared that if he would become once more a Catholic they would rally to him ; the Guises and the League were naturally all the more firmly set against him ; and Henry of Navarre saw that he could not as yet safely endanger his influence with the Huguenots, while his conversion would not disarm the hostility of the League. They had before this put forward as heir to the throne Henry s uncle, the wretched old Cardinal Bourbon, who had all the faults and none of the good qualities of Itis brother Antony. Under cover of his name the duke of Guise hoped to secure the succession for himself; he also sold himself and his party to Philip of Spain, who was now in fullest expectation of a final triumph over his foes. He had assassinated William the Silent ; any day Elizabeth or Henry of Navarre might be found murdered ; the domina tion of Spain over Europe seemed almost secured. The pact of Joinville, signed between Philip, Guise, and May enne, gives us the measure of the aims of the high Catholic party. Paris warmly sided with them ; the new develop ment of the League, the " Sixteen of Paris," one representa tive for each of the districts of the capital, formed a vigorous organization and called for the king s deposition ; they invited Henry, duke of Guise, to Paris. Soon after this Henry III. humbled himself, and signed the treaty of Nemours (1585) with the Leaguers. He hereby became nominal head of the League, and its real slave. The eighth war, the " War of the Three Henries," that is, of Henry III. and Henry of Guise against Henry of Navarre, now broke out. The pope made his voice heard; Sixtus excommunicated the Bourbons, Henry and Cond6, and blessed the leaguers. For the first time there was some real life in one of these civil wars ; for Henry of Navarre rose nobly to the level of his troubles. At first the balance of successes was somewhat in favour of the Leaguers ; the political atmosphere grew even more threatening, and terrible things, like lightning-flashes, gleamed out now and again. Such, for example, was the execution of Mary Stewart, queen of Scots, in 1586. It was known that Philip II. was preparing to crush England. Elizabeth did what she could to support Henry of Navarre ; he had the good fortune to win the battle of Coutras, in which the duke of Joyeuse, one of the favourites of Henry III., was defeated and killed. The duke of Guise, on the other hand, was too strong for the Germans, who had inarched into France to join the Huguenots, and defeated them at Vimory and Auneau, after which lie marched in triumph to Paris, in spite of the orders and opposition of the king, who, finding himself powerless, withdrew to Chartres. Once more Henry III. was obliged to accept such terms as the Leaguers chose to impose ; and with rage in his heart he signed the "Edict of Union" (1588), in which he named the duke of Guise lieutenant-general of the king dom, and declared that no heretic could succeed to the throne. Unable to endure the humiliation, Henry III. that same winter assassinated the duke and the cardinal of Guise, and seized many leaders of the League, though he missed the duke of Mayenne. This scandalous murder of the " King of Paris," as the capital fondly called the duke, brought the wretched king no solace nor power. His mother did not live to see the end of her son ; she died in this the darkest period of his career, and must have been aware that her cunning and her immoral life had brought nothing but misery to herself and all her race. The power of the League party seemed as great as ever ; the duke of Mayenne entered Paris, and declared open war on Henry III., who, after some hesitation, threw himself into the 1589. hands of his cousin Henry of Navarre in the spring of 1580. The old Politique party now rallied to the king ; the Huguenots were staunch for their old leader ; things looked less dark for them since the destruction of the Spanish Armada in the previous summer. The Swiss, aroused by the threats of the duke of Savoy at Geneva, joined the Germans, who once more entered north-eastern France ; the Leaguers were unable to make head either against them or against the armies of the two kings ; they fell back on Paris, and the allies hemmed them in. The defence of the capital was but languid ; the populace missed their idol, the duke of Guise, and the moderate party, never extin guished, recovered strength. All looked as if the royalists would soon reduce the last stronghold of the League, when Henry III. was suddenly slain by the dagger of a fanatical half-witted priest. The king had only time to commend Henry of Navarre to his courtiers as his heir, and to exhort him to become a Catholic, before he closed his eyes, and ended the long roll of his vices and crimes. And thus in crime and shame the house of Valois went down. For a few years the throne remaind practically vacant : the hero ism of Henry of Navarre, the loss of strength in the Catholic powers, the want of a vigorous head to the League, these tilings all sustained the Bourbon in his arduous struggle ; the middle party grew in strength daily, and when once Henry had allowed himself to be converted, he became the national sovereign, the national favourite, and the high Catholics fell to the fatal position of an unpatriotic faction depending on the arm of the foreigner. 4. The civil wars were not over, for the heat of party Henry raged as yet unslaked ; the Politiques could not all at once IV. adopt a Huguenot king, the League party had pledged itself to resist the heretic, and Henry at first had little more than the Huguenots at his back. There were also formidable claimants for the throne. Charles II., duke of The Lorraine, who had married Claude, younger daughter of claim- Henry II., and who was therefore brother-in-law to Henry a " ts for IV., set up a vague claim; the king of Spain, Philip II., thought that the Salic law had prevailed long enough in France, and that his own wife, the elder daughter of Henry II., had the best claim to the throne ; the Guises, though their head was gone, still hoping for the crown, proclaimed their sham-king the cardinal of Bourbon as Charles X., and intrigued behind the shadow of his name. The duke of Mayenne, their present chief, was the most formidable of Henry s opponents ; his party called for a convocation of States-General, which should choose a king to succeed, or to replace, their feeble Charles X. During this struggle the high Catholic party, inspired by Jesuit advice, stood for ward as the admirers of constitutional principles ; they called on the nation to decide the question as to the suc cession ; their Jesuit friends wrote books on the sovereignty of the people. They summoned up troops from every side; the duke of Lorraine sent his son to resist Henry and sup port his own claim ; the king of Spain sent a body of men ; the League-princes brought what force they could. Henry of Navarre at the same moment found himself weakened by the silent withdrawal from his camp of the army of Henry III.; the Politique nobles did not care at first to throw in their lot with the Huguenot chieftain ; they offered to confer on Henry the post of commander-in ch ief, and to reserve the question as to the succession ; they let him know that they recognized his hereditary rights, and were hindered only by his heretical opinions; if he would but be converted, they were his. Henry tem porized ; his true strength, for the time, lay in his Huguenot followers, rugged and faithful fighting-men, whose belief was the motive-power of their allegiance and of their courage. If he joined the Politiques at their price, the
