Protestantism would have been the established religion of France, as it was of England under Elizabeth.  Henry as a Protestant king would have had no more enemies, or difficulties, or embarrassments than had the Virgin Queen, who on her accession found only one bishop willing to crown her.  He had all the prestige of a conqueror, and was personally beloved, besides being a man of ability.  His prime minister, Sully, was as able a man as Burleigh, and as good a Protestant; and the nation was enthusiastic.  The Huguenots had deeper convictions, and were more logical in their creed, than the English Episcopalians.  Leagued with England and Holland and Germany, France could have defied other Catholic powers,—­could have been more powerful politically.  Protestantism would have had the ascendency in Europe.

But it was not to be.  To the mind of the King he had nothing before him but protracted war, unless he became a Catholic; and as all the Huguenots ever struggled for was religious toleration, he would, as king, grant this toleration, and satisfy all parties.  He either had no deep religious convictions, like Coligny and Dandelot, or he preferred an undisturbed crown to the ascendency of the religion for which he had so bravely fought.  What matter, the tempter said, whether he reigned as a Catholic or Protestant monarch, so long as religious liberty was given to his subjects?  Could he have reigned forever, could he have been assured of the toleration of his successors, this plea might have had some force; but it was the dictate of expediency, and no man can predict its ultimate results.  He was not a religious man, although he was the leader of the Protestant party.  He was far from being even moral in his social relations; still less had he the austerity of manners and habits that then characterized the Huguenots, for they were Calvinists and Presbyterians.  He was gallant, brave, generous, magnanimous, and patriotic,—­the model of a gentleman, the impersonation of chivalry, the charm of his friends, the idol of his army, the glory of his country; but there his virtues stopped.  He was more of a statesman than the leader of a party.  He wanted to see France united and happy and prosperous more than he wanted to see the ascendency of the Huguenots.  He was now not the King of Navarre,—­a small country, scarcely thirty miles long,—­but the King of France, ruling, as he aspired, from the Pyrenees to the Rhine.  So it is not strange that he was governed by the principles of expediency, as most monarchs are.  He wished to aggrandize his monarchy; that aim was dearer to him than the reformed faith.  Coligny would have fought to the bitter end to secure the triumph of the Protestant cause; but Henry was not so lofty a man as the Admiral,—­he had not his religious convictions, or stern virtues, or incorruptible life.  He was a gallant monarch, an able general, a far-reaching statesman, yet fond of pleasure and of the glories of a court.