Unable to endure the humiliation, Henri III. that same winter, assassinated the Duc and the Cardinal de Guise, and seized many leaders of the League, though he missed the Duc de Mayenne.  This scandalous murder of the “King of Paris,” as the capital fondly called the Duke, brought the wretched King no solace or power.  His mother did not live to see the end of her son; she died in this the darkest period of his career, and must have been aware that her cunning and her immoral life had brought nothing but misery to herself and all her race.  The power of the League party seemed as great as ever; the Duc de Mayenne entered Paris, and declared open war on Henri III., who, after some hesitation, threw himself into the hands of his cousin Henri of Navarre in the spring of 1589.  The old Politique party now rallied to the King; the Huguenots were stanch for their old leader; things looked less dark for them since the destruction of the Spanish Armada in the previous summer.  The Swiss, aroused by the threats of the Duke of Savoy at Geneva, joined the Germans, who once more entered northeastern France; the leaguers were unable to make head either against them or against the armies of the two Kings; they fell back on Paris, and the allies hemmed them in.  The defence of the capital was but languid; the populace missed their idol, the Duc de Guise, and the moderate party, never extinguished, recovered strength.  All looked as if the royalists would soon reduce the last stronghold of the League, when Henri III. was suddenly slain by the dagger of a fanatical half-wined priest.

The King had only time to commend Henri of Navarre to his courtiers as his heir, and to exhort him to become a Catholic, before he closed his eyes, and ended the long roll of his vices and crimes.  And thus in crime and shame the House of Valois went down.  For a few years, the throne remained practically vacant:  the heroism of Henri of Navarre, the loss of strength in the Catholic powers, the want of a vigorous head to the League,—­these things all sustained the Bourbon in his arduous struggle; the middle party grew in strength daily, and when once Henri had allowed himself to be converted, he became the national sovereign, the national favourite, and the high Catholics fell to the fatal position of an unpatriotic faction depending on the arm of the foreigner.

4.  The civil wars were not over, for the heat of party raged as yet unslaked; the Politiques could not all at once adopt a Huguenot King, the League party had pledged itself to resist the heretic, and Henri at first had little more than the Huguenots at his back.  There were also formidable claimants for the throne.  Charles II.  Duc de Lorraine, who had married Claude, younger daughter of Henri il, and who was therefore brother-in-law to Henri III., set up a vague claim; the King of Spain, Philip II., thought that the Salic law had prevailed long enough in France, and that his own wife, the elder