CHAPTER XIII
HENRY III.—THE LEAGUE—SIEGE OF PARIS BY HENRY IV.—HIS CONVERSION, REIGN AND ASSASSINATION
WHEN the third of Catherine’s sons, having resigned the sovereignty of Poland, was being consecrated at Rheims, the crown is said to have twice slipped from his head, the insentient diadem itself shrinking in horror from the brow of a prince destined to pollute it with deeper shame. Treacherous and bloody, Henry mingled grovelling piety with debauchery, and made of the court a veritable Alsatia, where paid assassins who stabbed from behind and mignons who struck to the face, were part of the train of every prince. The king’s mignons, with their insolent bearing, their extravagant and effeminate dress, their hair powdered and curled, their neck ruffles so broad that their heads resembled the head of John the Baptist on a charger,—gambling, blaspheming swashbucklers—were hateful alike to Huguenot and Catholic.
Less than four years after St. Bartholomew the Peace of 1576 gave the Huguenots all they had ever demanded or hoped for. In 1582 died the Duke of Alençon, Catherine’s last surviving son and heir to the throne; Henry gave no hope of posterity and the Catholic party were confronted by the possibility of the sceptre of St. Louis descending to a relapsed heretic. A tremendous wave of feeling ran through France, and a Holy League was formed to meet the danger, with the Duke of Guise as leader. The king tried in vain to win some of the Huguenot and League partisans by the solemn institution of the Order of the Holy Ghost,[116] in the church of the Augustinians, to commemorate his elevation to the thrones of Poland and France on the day of Pentecost. The people were equally recalcitrant. When Henry entered Paris after the campaign of 1587, they shouted for their idol, the Balafré,[117] crying, “Saul has slain his thousands but David his tens of thousands.” The king in his jealousy and disgust forbade Guise to enter Paris; Guise coolly ignored the command, and a few months later arrived at the head of a formidable train of nobles, amid the joyous acclamation of the people, who greeted him with chants of “Hosannah, Filio David!” Angry scenes followed. The duke sternly called his master to duty, and warned him to take vigorous measures against the Huguenots or lose his crown; the king, pale with anger, dismissed him and prepared to strike.
