the Constable, and the Admiral, were in favor of peace, for they knew the condition of the kingdom.  The Duke of Guise and the Cardinal Lorraine were for a rupture, for they hoped to increase their family influence by war.  Coligny had signed the treaty of Vaucelles, and wished to maintain it, but the influence of the Catholic party was in the ascendant.  The result was to embroil the Catholic King against the Pope and against themselves.  The queen was as favorably inclined as the mistress to listen to Caraffa, for Catherine de Medici was desirous that her cousin, Marshal Strozzi, should have honorable and profitable employment in some fresh Italian campaigns.

In the mean time an accident favored the designs of the papal court.  An open quarrel with Spain resulted from an insignificant circumstance.  The Spanish ambassador at Rome was in the habit of leaving the city very often, at an early hour in the morning, upon shooting excursions, and had long enjoyed the privilege of ordering the gates to be opened for him at his pleasure.  By accident or design, he was refused permission upon one occasion to pass through the gate as usual.  Unwilling to lose his day’s sport, and enraged at what he considered an indignity, his excellency, by the aid of his attendants, attacked and beat the guard, mastered them, made his way out of the city, and pursued his morning’s amusement.  The Pope was furious, Caraffa artfully inflamed his anger.  The envoy was refused an audience, which he desired, for the sake of offering explanations, and the train being thus laid, it was thought that the right moment had arrived for applying the firebrand.  The Cardinal went to Paris post haste.  In his audience of the King, he represented that his Holiness had placed implicit reliance upon his secret treaty with his majesty, that the recently concluded truce with Spain left the pontiff at the mercy of the Spaniard, that the Duke of Alva had already drawn the sword, that the Pope had long since done himself the pleasure and the honor of appointing the French monarch protector of the papal chair in general, and of the Caraffa family in particular, and that the moment had arrived for claiming the benefit of that protection.  He assured him, moreover, as by full papal authority, that in respecting the recent truce with Spain, his majesty would violate both human and divine law.  Reason and justice required him to defend the pontiff, now that the Spaniards were about to profit by the interval of truce to take measures for his detriment.  Moreover, as the Pope was included in the truce of Vaucelles, he could not be abandoned without a violation of that treaty itself.—­ The arts and arguments of the Cardinal proved successful; the war was resolved upon in favor of the Pope.  The Cardinal, by virtue of powers received and brought with him from his holiness, absolved the King from all obligation to keep his faith with Spain.  He also gave him a dispensation from the duty of prefacing hostilities by a declaration of war.  Strozzi was sent at once into Italy, with some hastily collected troops, while the Duke of Guise waited to organize a regular army.