She arrested Alencon, Montmorency, and Henri of Navarre, together with some lesser chiefs; in the midst of it all Charles IX. died (1574), in misery, leaving the ill-omened crown to Henri of Anjou, King of Poland, his next brother, his mother’s favourite, the worst of a bad breed.  At the same time the fifth civil war broke out, interesting chiefly because it was during its continuance that the famous League was actually formed.

Henri III., when he heard of his brother’s death, was only too eager to slip away like a culprit from Poland, though he showed no alacrity in returning to France, and dallied with the pleasures of Italy for months.  An attempt to draw him over to the side of the Politiques failed completely; he attached himself on the contrary to the Guises, and plunged into the grossest dissipation, while he posed himself before men as a good and zealous Catholic.  The Politiques and Huguenots therefore made a compact in 1575, at Milhaud on the Tarn, and chose the Prince de Conde as their head; Henri of Navarre escaped from Paris, threw off his forced Catholicism, and joined them.  Against them the strict Catholics seemed powerless; the Queen-mother closed this war with the Peace of Chastenoy (May, 1576), with terms unusually favourable for both Politiques and Huguenots:  for the latter, free worship throughout France, except at Paris; for the chiefs of the former, great governments, for Alencon a large central district, for Conde, Picardy, for Henri of Navarre, Guienne.

To resist all this the high Catholic party framed the League they had long been meditating; it is said that the Cardinal de Lorraine had sketched it years before, at the time of the later sittings of the Council of Trent.  Lesser compacts had already been made from time to time; now it was proposed to form one great League, towards which all should gravitate.  The head of the League was Henri, Duc de Guise the second, “Balafre,” who had won that title in fighting against the German reiters the year before, when they entered France under Condo.  He certainly hoped at this time to succeed to the throne of France, either by deposing the corrupt and feeble Henri III., “as Pippin dealt with Hilderik,” or by seizing the throne, when the King’s debaucheries should have brought him to the grave.  The Catholics of the more advanced type, and specially the Jesuits, now in the first flush of credit and success, supported him warmly.  The headquarters of the movement were in Picardy; its first object, opposition to the establishment of Conde as governor of that province.  The League was also very popular with the common folk, especially in the towns of the north.  It soon found that Paris was its natural centre; thence it spread swiftly across the whole natural France; it was warmly supported by Philip of Spain.  The States General, convoked at Blois in 1576, could bring no rest to France; opinion was just as much divided there as in the country; and the year 1577 saw another