Embarrassment of the Leaguers.
The League had demanded the assembling of the States-General, a body somewhat resembling the Congress of the United States. The king immediately summoned them to meet. They declared war against the Protestants. The king adopted the declaration as his own decree, and called loudly for supplies to prosecute the war with vigor. He outleagued the most violent of the Leaguers in denunciations of the Protestants, in declaring that but one religion should be tolerated in France, and in clamoring for arms and munitions of war, that heresy might be utterly extirpated. The Leaguers thus found, to their great perplexity, the weapon which they had forged wrested from their hands and wielded against them. They had organized to drive the imbecile Henry III. from the throne. He had seized upon that organization, and was using it to establish himself more firmly there.
Excommunication of Henry IV.
The situation of Henry of Navarre was now extremely critical. Pope Sextus V., besides giving the League his Papal blessing, had fulminated against the King of Navarre the awful thunders of excommunication.
The bull of excommunication was exceedingly coarse and vulgar in its denunciatory terms, calling the King of Navarre "this bastard and detestable progeny of Bourbons."
Henry replied to this assault in accents intrepid and resolute, which caused Catholic Europe to stand aghast.
Bold retort.
"Henry," said this bold document, "by the grace of God King of Navarre, sovereign prince of Bearn, first peer and prince of France, resists the declaration and excommunication of Sextus V., self-styled Pope of Rome, asserts it to be false, and maintains that Mr. Sextus, the self-styled Pope, has falsely and maliciously lied; that he himself is heretic, which he will prove in any full and free council lawfully assembled; to which if he does not consent and submit, as he is bound by the canons, he, the King of Navarre, holds and pronounces him to be anti-Christ and heretic, and in that quality declares against him perpetual and irreconcilable war."
This energetic protest was placarded in most of the towns of France, and by some fearless followers of the prince was even attached to the walls of the Vatican. The Pope, though at first much irritated, had the magnanimity to express his admiration of the spirit manifested by Henry.
"There are but two princes in Europe," said he, "to whom I could venture to communicate the grand schemes revolving in my mind, Henry of Navarre and Elizabeth of England; but, unfortunately, they are both heretics."