which it is necessary for our purpose to mention is the assassination of the Duke of Guise by a Huguenot nobleman in 1563, while the Duke was laying siege to Orleans, then in the hands of the Protestants. This act met with no countenance from the Protestant leaders. It was condemned by Calvin. It was said that the assassain when stretched on the rack, avowed that the deed was done with the connivance of Coligny. But he was subjected to no fair examination, and there was no reason to doubt the assertion of the Admiral that he had no agency in it. He admitted that for six months, since he had learned that Guise was plotting his own destruction and that of his brothers, he had made no exertions to save that nobleman's life. Innocent though Coligny was of all participation in this deed, it planted seeds of implacable hostility in the minds of Guise's family, the fruits of which eventually appeared. Another event, which it specially concerns us to notice, was the insurrection of the Huguenots which they set on foot several years later, in anticipation of a projected attack upon them, and which resulted in their extorting from Charles IX., in 1568, the Peace of Longjumeau. The King was exasperated at being obliged to treat with his subjects in arms. This humiliating event was skilfully used afterwards to goad him on to a measure to which he was not spontaneously inclined.

At this time the foundations of the Catholic League were laid. The extreme Catholics began to band themselves together, instigated by the spirit of the Catholic Reaction which, through its mouthpiece, the Pope, and its secular head, Philip II., breathed out fire and slaughter against all heretics. Between this bigoted faction, which became more and more furious as time went on, and the Huguenots, were the Moderates the Politiques, as they were called-Catholics who deplored the continuance of civil war, deprecated the undue ascendency of Spain, and were in favor of an accommodation with the Protestants. The treachery of Catherine de Medici broke the treaty of Longjumeau; but her plan to entrap and destroy the Huguenot leaders failed. Their defeat at Jarnac, where Condé perished, and at Moncontour, with the military triumph of her favorite son, the Duke of Anjou, did not bring to her content. The defeated forces of the Protestants, under

the masterly lead of Coligny, found a refuge within the walls of Rochelle, where the Queen of Navarre established her Court, and whence Coligny, with his cavalry, and with the young princes, Henry of Navarre and Henry of Condé at his side, was soon able to sally forth and take the offensive. The Queen Mother was now eager for peace. The atmosphere of intrigue and diplomacy was always more pleasing to her than the clash of arms. The King's treasury was exhausted. He did not relish the military successes of Anjou. The Huguenots sprang up from their defeats with indomitable courage. Moreover, Catherine, the King, the whole party of Moderates, saw that the continuance of the strife could only redound to the profit of Philip, who lent aid, or withheld it, with sole reference to his own ambitious projects. If the war was to go on between the King and his Protestant subjects, the latter would get help from England and Germany, and the government, forced to fall back upon the support of Spain, would come into practical subservience to Philip. To this the Queen Mother was not at all inclined. At the Conference of Bayonne in 1565, both she and Charles IX. had disappointed Alva by refusing to enter into his plan for a common crusade against the heretical subjects of France and Spain. Thus, in 1570, the Peace of St. Germains was concluded. The Huguenots, who could not longer be expected to trust the King's word, were put in possession of four fortified towns for the space of two years. They were to be given up to Henry of Navarre, Henry of Condé, and twenty Huguenot gentlemen. The Lorraine faction, the Guises and their followers, acquiesced in the treaty.

Observe, now, the political situation. The policy of the Court was turned in the anti-Spanish direction. The power of Philip was becoming too formidable. The Duke of Alva had begun his bloody career in the Netherlands in 1567 with the execution of Egmont and Horn, and numerous other judicial murders. Now, his tyranny was at its height. Philip had planned a marriage between his half-brother, Don John of Austria, and Mary Stuart, which would give him, as he hoped, control over Scotland and England both. He was already supreme in Italy. His wish was to marry his sister to Charles IX., and to unite with him in an anti-Protestant coalition.

The Queen

Then all Europe would lie at his feet, and France be practically a Spanish province. On the 25th of February, 1570, Pius V., an untiring and unpitying instigator of persecution, issued his bull of excommunication against Elizabeth. A year after, the brilliant victory of Spain over the Turks at Lepanto still further raised the prestige of Philip, and left him more free to pursue his ambitious schemes in Western Europe. Mother loved power too well for herself and her children, to fall into the snare which Philip was setting. She entered warmly into the project of a marriage between her second son, the Duke of Anjou, and Elizabeth, which was first suggested by the brother of Coligny. When Anjou, seduced by the Spanish Court, and by the offer of 100,000 crowns from the Pope's Nuncio, drew back from a match with a heretic so much older than himself, Catherine was eager to substitute for him his younger brother Alençon; and indulged, also, the chimerical hope that Anjou might secure the hand of Mary Queen of Scots. This policy of the Court could not be otherwise than satisfactory to the Huguenots. War with Spain, to be fought out in the Netherlands, in alliance with England and Germany, but with due care for French interests, appealed at once to their patriotic feeling and their religious enthusiasm. The government and the Huguenot party were thus drawn towards each other. A marriage between Henry of Navarre and Margaret of Valois, the daughter of Catherine, had been spoken of long before, prior to the death of Henry II., when both Navarre and Margaret were children. The idea was now revived from the side of the Moderates, by a son of Montmorenci. It was heartily favored by Catherine, warmly supported by the King, who was personally fond of Henry, and was struck with the expediency of a marriage which would thus unite the contending parties; and it obtained at length the consent of the hightoned Queen of Navarre, with whom worldly distinction for her son was of far less account than honor and religious conviction. Coligny and the other Huguenot leaders lent their cordial approval to the plan.

Coligny was now urgently invited to come to the Court. The King and the Queen Mother were anxious to have the benefit of his counsel. Despite the opposition of his friends,

including the Queen of Navarre, who were unwilling to see him commit himself to the hands of those who had been, in the past, his perfidious enemies, Coligny determined to comply with the invitation. He confided in Charles, he said; he would rather die at once, than live a hundred years, subject to cowardly apprehensions. He earnestly desired to bring the civil conflict to an end. He was full of ardor for the enter prise against Philip, in the Netherlands, into which he hoped to carry the King. It would give employment to the numerous mercenaries and marauders whom the cessation of the war at home had left idle. It would strike a blow, alike honorable and useful to France, and damaging to Spain. Coligny left Rochelle, escorted by fifty gentlemen, and arrived at Blois, where the Court was, on the 12th of September, 1571. He was welcomed by Catherine, and by the King, who greeted him with the title of "father," and declared that day to be the happiest of his life.

Charles was twenty-one years of age. His natural talents were above the ordinary level. He was fond of music, and his poetical compositions were not without merit. But the education which he had received was the worst possible. His nature was unhealthy, and utterly unregulated. Though not a debauchee, like his brother Anjou, his morbid impulses raged without control: his anger, when excited, bordered on frenzy. Yet there was in him a latent vein of generous feeling. He met in Coligny, almost for the first time in his life, a man whom he could revere. Coligny was fifty-four years of age. He had been a man of war from his youth up; but he had drawn the sword from a stern sense of duty; and his lofty character could not fail to impress all who were thrown in his company. He, in turu, seemed to be charmed with his young sovereign. The jealousy of Catherine was soon aroused. "He sees too much of the Admiral," she said, "and too little of me." As the veteran soldier painted the advantages that would result from going to the rescue of William of Orange, and striking a blow at Spain in the Low Countries, the sympathy of Charles was awakened, and he expressed an eager desire to enter personally into the contest.

Meantime, the project of the marriage of Henry and Marga

ret continued to be pushed. The Queen of Navarre was persuaded herself to come to Blois, in March, 1572. While there, in a letter to her son, she described the indecency of the Court, where even the women had cast off the show of modesty, and did not blush to play the part of seducers. The marriage of Henry and Margaret, the plan of a matrimonial connection. with Elizabeth, the scheme of an offensive alliance with England, and of a war with Spain, to be waged in Flanders, were all parts of a line of policy which the Huguenots urged, and which Catherine for a while favored. But she became more and more alarmed at the influence acquired by Coligny. Elizabeth was cautious, and the negotiations looking to a change of the defensive into an offensive alliance, lagged. A war with Spain, Catherine felt, would establish Coligny's ascendency over the mind of Charles. Such a war she more and more dreaded on its own account; and when the force secretly sent by Charles, under Genlis, to the support of Orange, was defeated and cut up by Alva's son, the Queen Mother declared herself vehemently against the measure on which Coligny rested all his hopes for France, and towards which the King, in his better moods, was strongly inclined. In the Council, the party opposed to the war was led by Anjou. He, with Catherine, Retz, Tavannes, and others to support him, was able to keep back the King from an absolute decision; and thus, through the spring and early summer of 1572, the question was warmly, and sometimes angrily, debated. The death of the Queen of Navarre at Paris, on the 9th of June, was one cause for the postponement of the wedding of her son to the 18th of August. The refusal of the Pope to grant a dispensation was another hindrance. The King was resolved to effect the marriage, with or without the Pope's consent. A forged letter, purporting to come from Rome, announcing the consent of Gregory XIII., the new Pope, to the nuptials, was exhibited by Charles to the Cardinal of Bourbon, who had refused to solemnize the marriage without the Papal authorization.

In subsequent years Henry IV., the Conqueror of Ivry and the Restorer of Peace to France, looked back on the 8th of July, 1572, as one of the brightest days in all his tempestuous career. On that day he made his entry into Paris, riding