was, that Pope Sixtus V. himself, though all the while upholding the unity and authority of the Roman church, was bent upon not submitting to the yoke of Spain, and upon showing a favorable disposition towards France.  “France is a very noble kingdom,” he said to the Venetian ambassador Gritti; “the church has always obtained great advantages from her.  We love her beyond measure, and we are pleased to find that the Signiory shares our affection.”  Another day he expressed to him his disapprobation of the League.  “We cannot praise, indeed we must blame, the first act committed by the Duke of Guise, which was to take up arms and unite with other princes against the king; though he made religion a pretext, he had no right to take up arms against his sovereign.”  And again:  “The union of the King of France with the heretics is no longer a matter of doubt; but, after all, Henry of Navarre is worth a great many of Henry III.; this latter will have the measure he meted to the Guises.”  So much equity and mental breadth on the pope’s part was better suited for the republic of Venice than for the King of Spain.  “We have but one desire,” wrote the Doge Cicogna to Badoero, his ambassador at Rome, “and that is to keep the European peace.  We cannot believe that Sixtus V., that great pontiff, is untrue to his charge, which is to ward off from the Christian world the dangers that threaten it; in imitation of Him whom he represents on earth, he will show mercy, and not proceed to acts which would drive the King of France to despair.”  During the great struggle with which Europe was engaged in the sixteenth century, the independence of states, religious tolerance, and political liberty thus sometimes found, besides their regular and declared champions, protectors, useful on occasion although they were timid, even amongst the habitual allies of Charles V.’s despotic and persecuting successor.

On arriving before Paris towards the end of July, 1589, the two kings besieged it with an army of forty-two thousand men, the strongest and the best they had ever had under their orders.  “The affairs of Henry III.,” says De Thou, “had changed face; fortune was pronouncing for him.”  Quartered in the house of Count de Retz, at St. Cloud, he could thence see quite at his ease his city of Paris.  “Yonder,” said he, “is the heart of the League; it is there that the blow must be struck.  It was great pity to lay in ruins so beautiful and goodly a city.  Still, I must settle accounts with the rebels who are in it, and who ignominiously drove me away.”  “On Tuesday, August 1, at eight A. M., he was told,” says L’Estoile, “that a monk desired to speak with him, but that his guards made a difficulty about letting him in.  ‘Let him in,’ said the king:  ’if he is refused, it will be said that I drive monks away and will not see them.’  Incontinently entered the monk, having in his sleeve a knife unsheathed.  He made a profound reverence to the king, who had