council of state; in 1594 he had appointed the last a member of the council of finance; Soffray de Colignon, La Force, Lesdiguieres, and Sancy were summoned to the most important functions; Turenne, in 1594, was raised to the dignity of marshal of France; and in 1595 La Tremoille was made duke and peer.  They were all Protestants.  Their number and their rank put the matter beyond all dispute; it was a natural consequence of the social condition of France; it became an habitual practice with the government.

Nevertheless the complaints and requirements of the malcontent Protestants continued, and became day by day more vehement; in 1596 and 1597 the assemblies of Saumur, Loudun, and Vendome became their organs of expression; and messengers were sent with them to the camp before La Fere, which Henry IV. was at that time besieging.  He deferred his reply.  Two of the principal Protestant leaders, the Dukes of Bouillon and La Tremoille, suddenly took extreme measures; they left the king and his army, carrying off their troops with them, one to Auvergne and the other to Poitou.  The deputies from the assembly of Loudun started back again at the same time, as if for the purpose of giving the word to arm in their provinces.  Du Plessis-Mornay and his wife, the most zealous of the Protestants who were faithful at the same time to their cause and to the king, bear witness to this threatening crisis.  “The deputies,” says Madame du Mornay in her Memoires, “returned each to his own province, with the intention of taking the cure of their evils into their own hands, whence would infallibly have ensued trouble enough to complete the ruin of this state had not the king, by the management of M. du Plessis, been warned of this imminent danger, and by him persuaded to send off and treat in good earnest with the said assembly.”  “These gentry, rebuffed at court,” says Du Plessis-Mornay himself in a letter to the Duke of Bouillon, “have resolved to take the cure into their own hands; to that end they have been authorized, and by actions which do not seem to lead them directly thither they will find that they have passed the Rubicon right merrily.”  It was as it were a new and a Protestant League just coming to a head.  Henry IV. was at that time engaged in the most important negotiation of his reign.  After a long and difficult siege he had just retaken.  Amiens.  He thought it a favorable moment at which to treat for peace with Spain, and put an end to an onerous war which he had been for so long sustaining.  He informed the Queen of England of his intention, “begging her, if the position of her affairs did not permit her to take part in the treaty he was meditating with Spain, to let him know clearly what he must do to preserve amity and good understanding between the two crowns, for he would always prefer an ally like her to reconciled foes such as the Spaniards.”  He addressed the same notification to the Dutch government.  Elizabeth on one hand and the states-general on the