At the end of the following year, Marguerite de Valois joined her husband at Nérac. Catherine, whom the King left free to intrigue as she pleased, accompanied her daughter, bringing with her her “squadron,” whose charms wrought much havoc among the gentlemen of Henri’s little Court. She remained there several months, but the results of her visit fell very far short of her expectations, and, on her return to Paris, she made overtures to Condé, who, since the last war, had been on far from cordial terms with the King of Navarre. With a view to separating him entirely from his cousin, she offered him the hand of the Queen’s sister, Mlle. de Vaudémont, together with a considerable pension and the restoration of his government of Picardy. Condé declined the marriage, on the plea of difference in religion, and the next thing Catherine heard about him was that he had made his way in disguise into Picardy, and seized the town of La Fère, by means of a stratagem (November, 1579).
The prince was left in peaceable possession of La Fère for some months, though his efforts to extend his influence through the rest of the province were unsuccessful. But when, in the spring of 1580, the “Lovers’ War” broke out, he was compelled to abandon his conquest and take refuge in the Netherlands. From there he crossed to England and endeavoured to obtain assistance from Elizabeth; but, failing in this, returned to the Netherlands, and, after taking part in the defence of Ghent, in which he exhibited great courage, made his way into Germany and concluded a treaty with the Elector Palatine, but on such disadvantageous terms that the French Protestants promptly repudiated it. He then began a little war on his own account in the Cevennes; but in November the King of Navarre made peace with the Court at Fleix, and obliged him to suspend his somewhat futile operations.
The Treaty of Fleix was followed by four years of anarchic peace, which were passed by Condé chiefly at Saint-Jean-d’Angely. He had been reconciled to the King of Navarre, and the two cousins visited one another on several occasions; but this reconciliation was never really sincere, for Condé was not a little jealous of the military reputation which Henri had acquired in the last war, and he and the more fanatical section of the Protestants disapproved of the moderation shown by the young king, and sometimes endeavoured to compel him to adopt measures which his good sense condemned.
On 11 June, 1584, the Duc d’Anjou died of consumption at Château-Thierry. His death made the King of Navarre heir-presumptive to the French crown, and, as Henri III. had, for some time past, abandoned all hope of leaving children behind him, the question of the succession at once became of paramount importance. But the accession of a heretic to the throne was repugnant to the whole Catholic population, and was certain to be violently opposed by a considerable section of it. For the intimate connexion of the State and the orthodox Church was held to be a fundamental law of the monarchy; and even men of moderate views, who were willing enough that the Huguenots should be tolerated, were alarmed at the prospect of their domination.
Very intelligent, whenever he could contrive to free himself for a time from his idle and voluptuous habits, Henri III. had foreseen this, and, about the middle of May—that is to say, about three weeks before Anjou’s death—had despatched one of his favourites, the Duc d’Épernon, to the King of Navarre, “bearing him letters in which he admonished, exhorted, and entreated him, seeing that the life of the Duc d’Anjou, his brother, was despaired of, to come to Court and go to Mass, because he desired to recognize him as his true heir and successor, and to give him such rank and dignity near his person as his qualification of brother-in-law and heir to the throne deserved.” The Protestants testified the greatest uneasiness at these overtures, and began to approach Condé, with a view to his adoption as the leader of the party, in the event of the King of Navarre again renouncing their faith. But their alarm was groundless, for, though Henri held but lightly by his creed, and all the Catholics about him besought him to remove the one obstacle to his succession, he felt that the time had not come when he could afford to offend the Huguenots. And so, with many protestations of gratitude and loyalty, he declared himself unable to accede to his Majesty’s wishes.
The fact that the legitimate heir to the throne was a heretic made the renewal of the civil war inevitable, and, on the death of Anjou, the Guises and the League at once began to organize their forces for the coming struggle. The wretched, vacillating King was intimidated into giving them his countenance and support; and, on 15 July, 1585, signed the Treaty of Nemours, which promised the revocation of all the edicts in favour of toleration, and placed at the disposal of the League all the resources of the Crown. Having secured the assistance of the temporal power, they next summoned the spiritual to their aid, and persuaded the new Pope, Sixtus V., to launch against the two princes a Bull of Excommunication, wherein he declared them “degraded from their fiefs and baronies, and incapacitated from succession to the Crown of France.” The cousins issued a scornful response, a copy of which was posted up even in Rome itself, and war began.
Condé again received the command of the Huguenot forces in Poitou and Saintonge, and found himself opposed by the Duc de Mercœur. The prince’s army was inferior in numbers to that of the Catholics, but he contrived to surprise the enemy in their camp near Fontenay, and drove them in confusion across the Loire; after which, strengthened by the arrival of reinforcements for La Rochelle, he laid siege to Brouage.
Condé’s attention was not, however, entirely absorbed by military matters at this juncture. Notwithstanding the rather unfortunate outcome of his first matrimonial venture, he had for some time past been desirous of marrying again; and, shortly before the renewal of hostilities, he had decided to propose for the hand of Charlotte Catherine de la Trémoille, only daughter of Louis III., Duc de Thouars, Prince de Tarente and de Talmont, and Jeanne de Montmorency.
Charlotte de la Trémoille’s father, who, by the way, had been a fanatical Catholic and a determined opponent of Condé in Poitou, of which province he was lieutenant-general, had died some years before, since which the girl had lived with her mother at the Château of Thouars, in Anjou. She was now seventeen, very pretty, very intelligent, and of a highly romantic disposition, for the Duchesse de Thouars, who appears to have had little affection for her daughter, had left her very much to her own devices, and she was accustomed to spend a good deal of her time in the perusal of the “Amadis” and other fashionable works of imagination.
Condé despatched one of his officers to the Duchesse de Thouars to make the first overtures on his behalf. They were favourably received, and the duchess hastened to send her daughter to the Château of Taillebourg, a fortress of some importance on the banks of the Charente, whither she intended to follow her, so that his Highness might have an opportunity of paying his addresses to the young lady, and she of discussing with him the financial side of the affair. The alliance of the first Prince of the Blood, one of the leaders of the Huguenots, was very flattering to the pride of the La Trémoilles, who did not share the prejudices of the late head of the family; indeed, the young Duc de Thouars, although a Catholic, had taken up arms for Condé.