Henry had made considerable progress in re-establishing his authority over a large portion of the howling wilderness to which forty years of civil war had reduced his hereditary kingdom.  There was still great danger, however, at its two opposite extremities.  Calais, key to the Norman gate of France, was feebly held; while Marseilles, seated in such dangerous proximity to Spain on the one side, and to the Republic of Genoa, that alert vassal of Spain, on the other, was still in the possession of the League.  A concerted action was undertaken by means of John Andrew Doria, with a Spanish fleet from Genoa on the outside and a well-organised conspiracy from within, to carry the city bodily over to Philip.  Had it succeeded, this great Mediterranean seaport would have become as much a Spanish ’possession as Barcelona or Naples, and infinite might have been the damage to Henry’s future prospects in consequence.  But there was a man in Marseilles; Petrus Libertas by name, whose ancestors had gained this wholesome family appellation by a successful effort once made by them to rescue the little town of Calvi, in Corsica, from the tyranny of Genoa.  Peter Liberty needed no prompting to vindicate, on a fitting occasion, his right to his patronymic.  In conjunction with men in Marseilles who hated oppression, whether of kings, priests, or renegade republics, as much as he did, and with a secret and well-arranged understanding with the Duke of Guise, who was burning with ambition to render a signal benefit to the cause which he had just espoused, this bold tribune of the people succeeded in stirring the population to mutiny at exactly the right moment, and in opening the gates of Marseilles to the Duke of Guise and his forces before it was possible for the Leaguers to admit the fleet of Doria into its harbour.  Thus was the capital of Mediterranean France lost and won.  Guise gained great favour in Henry’s eyes; and with reason; for the son of the great Balafre, who was himself the League, had now given the League the stroke of mercy.  Peter Liberty became consul of Marseilles, and received a patent of nobility.  It was difficult, however, for any diploma to confer anything more noble upon him than the name which he hade inherited, and to which he had so well established his right.

But while Henry’s cause had thus been so well served in the south, there was danger impending in the north.  The king had been besieging, since autumn, the town of La Fere, an important military and strategic position, which had been Farnese’s basis of operations during his memorable campaigns in France, and which had ever since remained in the hands of the League.