Such was the treaty of Cateau Cambresis.  Thus was a termination put to a war between France and Spain, which had been so wantonly undertaken.

Marshal Monluc wrote that a treaty so disgraceful and disastrous had never before been ratified by a French monarch.  It would have been difficult to point to any one more unfortunate upon her previous annals; if any treaty can be called unfortunate, by which justice is done and wrongs repaired, even under coercion.  The accumulated plunder of years, which was now disgorged by France, was equal in value to one third of that kingdom.  One hundred and ninety-eight fortified towns were surrendered, making, with other places of greater or less importance, a total estimated by some writers as high as four hundred.  The principal gainer was the Duke of Savoy, who, after so many years of knight-errantry, had regained his duchy, and found himself the brother-in-law of his ancient enemy.

The well-known tragedy by which the solemnities of this pacification were abruptly concluded in Paris, bore with it an impressive moral.  The monarch who, in violation of his plighted word and against the interests of his nation and the world, had entered precipitately into a causeless war, now lost his life in fictitious combat at the celebration of peace.  On the tenth of July, Henry the Second died of the wound inflicted by Montgomery in the tournament held eleven days before.  Of this weak and worthless prince, all that even his flatterers could favorably urge was his great fondness for war, as if a sanguinary propensity, even when unaccompanied by a spark of military talent, were of itself a virtue.  Yet, with his death the kingdom fell even into more pernicious hands, and the fate of Christendom grew darker than ever.  The dynasty of Diane de Poitiers was succeeded by that of Catharine de Medici; the courtesan gave place to the dowager; and France during the long and miserable period in which she lay bleeding in the grasp of the Italian she-wolf and her litter of cowardly and sanguinary princes—­might even lament the days of Henry and his Diana.  Charles the Ninth, Henry the Third, Francis of Alencon, last of the Valois race—­how large a portion of the fearful debt which has not yet been discharged by half a century of revolution and massacre was of their accumulation.

The Duchess of Valentinois had quarrelled latterly with the house of Guise, and was disposed to favor Montmorency.  The King, who was but a tool in her hands, might possibly have been induced, had he lived, to regard Coligny and his friends with less aversion.  This is, however, extremely problematical, for it was Henry the Second who had concluded that memorable arrangement with his royal brother of Spain, to arrange for the Huguenot chiefs throughout both realms, a “Sicilian Vespers,” upon the first favorable occasion.  His death and the subsequent policy of the Queen-Regent deferred the execution of the great scheme till fourteen years later.