the Court party declared that if he would become once more a Catholic they would rally to him; the Guises and the League were naturally all the more firmly set against him; and Henri of Navarre saw that he could not as yet safely endanger his influence with the Huguenots, while his conversion would not disarm the hostility of the League.  They had before, this put forward as heir to the throne Henri’s uncle, the wretched old Cardinal de Bourbon, who had all the faults and none of the good qualities of his brother Antoine.  Under cover of his name the Duc de Guise hoped to secure the succession for himself; he also sold himself and his party to Philip of Spain, who was now in fullest expectation of a final triumph over his foes.  He had assassinated William the Silent; any day Elizabeth or Henri of Navarre might be found murdered; the domination of Spain over Europe seemed almost secured.  The pact of Joinville, signed between Philip, Guise, and Mayenne, gives us the measure of the aims of the high Catholic party.  Paris warmly sided with them; the new development of the League, the “Sixteen of Paris,” one representative for each of the districts of the capital, formed a vigorous organisation and called for the King’s deposition; they invited Henri, Duc de Guise, to Paris.  Soon after this Henri III. humbled himself, and signed the Treaty of Nemours (1585) with the Leaguers.  He hereby became nominal head of the League and its real slave.

The eighth war, the “War of the Three Henries,” that is, of Henri III. and Henri de Guise against Henri of Navarre, now broke out.  The Pope made his voice heard; Sixtus excommunicated the Bourbons, Henri and Conde, and blessed the Leaguers.

For the first time there was some real life in one of these civil ware, for Henri of Navarre rose nobly to the level of his troubles.  At first the balance of successes was somewhat in favour of the Leaguers; the political atmosphere grew even more threatening, and terrible things, like lightning flashes, gleamed out now and again.  Such, for example, was the execution of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, in 1586.  It was known that Philip II. was preparing to crush England.  Elizabeth did what she could to support Henri of Navarre; he had the good fortune to win the battle of Contras, in which the Duc de Joyeuse, one of the favourites of Henri III., was defeated and killed.  The Duc de Guise, on the other hand, was too strong for the Germans, who had marched into France to join the Huguenots, and defeated them at Vimroy and Auneau, after which he marched in triumph to Paris, in spite of the orders and opposition of. the King, who, finding himself powerless, withdrew to Chartres.  Once more Henri III. was obliged to accept such terms as the Leaguers chose to impose; and with rage in his heart he signed the “Edict of Union” (1588), in which he named the Duc de Guise lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and declared that no heretic could succeed to the throne.