recovered an important part of the insurgent region. He had
succeeded, for a quarter of a century, in avoiding a breach with
Elizabeth, in spite of the expulsion of his ambassador and of Drake's
victorious piracies. If he had pursued the same cautious policy, and
had employed, under Farnese against the Dutch, the resources he wasted
against England, he might have ended his reign in triumph. The
prudence for which he was renowned deserted him when he joined the
League, and then made it subservient to the purposes of the Armada.
His object was that France should continue to be divided against
itself, and that neither Henry III nor his own confederate Guise
should prevail. While those disorders continued, and made the French
powerless abroad, the expedition of the Armada was carried out,
without interference, and failed by mismanagement.

Meantime, Henry III was supported in a half-hearted way by Protestants
and Politiques, who did not trust him, and Guise, at the head of the
population, made himself master of Paris. Henry retired to Blois.
After that outrage, refusing to acknowledge that the breach was
irremediable, the duke followed, and trusted himself, undefended, in
his enemy's hands. Then followed the only thing by which Henry III
could retain his power. He took six days to make up his mind that it
was right, and then ordered Guise to be dispatched. His brother, the
cardinal, met with the same fate. Catharine of Medici, who was in the
castle of Blois when this happened, and also had thirty years'
experience in such things, died immediately, after giving her son
warning that the merit is not in the way you cut the thread, but in
the way you sew it. He thought that he was safe at last, and the
applause of Europe followed him on his march against the capital. He
had shown so much weakness of will, such want of clearness and
resource, that nobody believed he had it in him. In the eyes of
Parisians he was guilty of the unpardonable sin, for he had killed the
popular leader and the champion of orthodoxy. As he was also an ally
of heretics and an accomplice of Navarre, a young Dominican came into
his camp and stabbed him. His name was Jacques Clement, and he became
a popular hero and martyr, and his example is cited by Mariana as the
true type of tyrannicide. The action of the crazy friar produced
effects that were not intended, for it made Henry of Navarre King of
France. A long struggle awaited him before