Scarcely four years had rolled away since the St. Bartholomew.  In vain had been the massacre of ten thousand Protestants, according to the lowest, and of one hundred thousand, according to the highest estimates, besides nearly all the renowned chiefs of the party.  Charles IX.’s earnest prayer, “That none remain to reproach me!” was so far from accomplishment that the war between Catholicism and Protestantism recommenced in almost every part of France with redoubled passion, with a new importance of character, and with symptoms of much longer duration than at its first outbreak.  Both parties had found leaders made, both from their position and their capacity, to command them.  Admiral Coligny was succeeded by the King of Navarre, who was destined to become Henry IV.; and Duke Francis of Guise by his son Henry, if not as able, at any rate as brave a soldier, and a more determined Catholic than he.  Amongst the Protestants, Sully and Da Plessis-Mornay were assuming shape and importance by the side of the King of Navarre.  Catherine de’ Medici placed at her son’s service her Italian adroitness, her maternal devotion, and an energy rare for a woman between sixty and seventy years of age, for forty-three years a queen, and worn out by intrigue, and business, and pleasure.  Finally, to the question of religion, the primary cause of the struggle, was added a question of kingship, kept in the background, but ever present in thought and deed:  which of the three houses of Valois, Bourbon, and Lorraine should remain in or enter upon possession of the throne of France.  The interests and the ambition of families and of individuals were playing their part simultaneously with the controversies and the passions of creed.

This state of things continued for twelve years, from 1576 to 1588, with constant alternations of war, truce, and precarious peace, and in the midst of constant hesitation, on the part of Henry III., between alliance with the League, commanded by the Duke of Guise, and adjustment with the Protestants, of whom the King of Navarre was every day becoming the more and more avowed leader.  Between 1576 and 1580, four treaties of peace were concluded; in 1576, the peace called Monsieur’s, signed at Chastenay in Orleanness; in 1577, the peace of Bergerac or of Poitiers; in 1579, the peace of Nerac; in 1580, the peace of Fleix in Perigord.  In November, 1576, the states-general were convoked and assembled at Blois, where they sat and deliberated up to March, 1577, without any important result.  Neither these diplomatic conventions nor these national assemblies had force enough to establish a real and lasting peace between the two parties, for the parties themselves would not have it; in vain did Henry III. make concessions and promises of liberty to the Protestants; he was not in a condition to guarantee their execution and make it respected by their adversaries.  At heart neither Protestants nor Catholics were for accepting mutual liberty; not