and forsaken, Henry III saw no other way to safety open to him than an alliance with Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots. A frightful civil war burst out afresh, but fortune was hostile to the League. Henry had already laid siege to Paris, and threatened to reduce the faithless town to a heap of ruins, when the knife of a fanatical monk put an end to his life. Henry III the last Valois, died on the first of August, 1589, after appointing Henry of Navarre and Bearn his successor.
Henry IV had still a long struggle to sustain before his head was ornamented by the crown of France. Mayenne, the brother of the murdered Guise, placed himself at the head of the League, and offered a vehement resistance to the Calvinistic claimant of the throne. Philip II sought to turn the confusion to his own advantage, and commanded his able general, Alexander of Parma, to march his forces from the Netherlands into France. Henry tried for a long time to get possession of his inheritance by the sword: he laid siege to Paris, and caused the citizens to feel all the horrors of famine; but he at length became convinced that he never could gain peaceable possession of the French throne by battles and victories. He thought the crown of France was worth a mass, and went over to the Catholic Church in the cathedral of St. Denis, and by this means destroyed the power of the League. Paris now threw open its gates, and welcomed the bringer of peace with acclamations. The pope recalled the anathema; the heads of the League concluded a treaty with him, and Philip II, a short time before his death, consented to the peace of Vervins. After foreign and domestic tranquillity had been thus restored to France, the king, by the Edict of Nantes, conferred upon the Calvinists liberty of conscience, the full rights of citizenship, and many other privileges; such as separate chambers in the courts of justice, several castles, with all their warlike munitions (La Rochelle, Montauban, Nismes, &c.) and freedom from episcopal jurisdiction. He next sought to heal the wounds that had been inflicted on the land by the war, by encouraging agriculture, trade and commerce; and had the economy of the state and the taxation admirably arranged by his friend and minister, Sully. He won for himself the warmest affections of his people by his genuine French character, and by his cordial and cheerful disposition. His solitary failing, his too great love for woman, was a merit in the eyes of the French. But fanaticism was only slumbering. Henry's tolerant disposition towards heretics awakened it. As he was meditating the vast plan (with the approval of the Dutch Union and other European powers) of founding a Christian community with equal privileges for the three Confessions, and by this means destroying the supremacy of the royal house of Hapsburg, he fell beneath the knife of Ravaillac.
THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV—RICHELIEU AND MAZARIN.
The first part of the reign of the weak Louis XIII, who only numbered nine years at the time of his father's murder, was full of mischief for France. During the time the queen-mother, Mary of Medicis, conducted the government, Italian favorites exerted a great influence upon affairs, enriched themselves at the expense of the French, and irritated the pride of the nation by their insolence. Enraged at this, the nobility took up arms, and filled the country with rebellion and the tumult of war. When
