he prevailed against the
League, the armed citizens of Paris, the Pope, and the King of Spain.
He succeeded by the support of the Royalists and Legitimists, who
detached themselves from the theological conflict, and built up an
independent ideal of political right.

IX

HENRY THE FOURTH AND RICHELIEU

THE ARGUMENT of the following half century, from the civil wars to the
death of Richeleau, as in the English parallel from the Armada to the
Long Parliament, was the rise of political absolutism. Henry IV, the
prince who made it acceptable and national, and even popular in
France, was fitted to disarm resistance, not only by brilliant
qualities as a soldier and a statesman, but also by a charm and
gladness of character in which he has hardly a rival among crowned
heads. He succeeded in appeasing a feud which had cost oceans of
blood, and in knitting together elements which had been in conflict
for thirty years. The longing for rest and safety grew strong, and
the general instinct awarded him all the power that was requisite to
restore public order and dominate surging factions.

The Catholics held out till 1594 at Paris, and still longer in Rome.
But the League began to go to pieces when its invincible protector,
Farnese, died in 1592. Then Mayenne, the general of the League, who
was a Guise, and his brothers successor as leader of the Catholic
nobility, came to a breach with the fierce democracy of Paris. The
siege, by intensifying antagonism and passions, had produced new
combinations in politics and a wider horizon. The Parisians who,
twenty years earlier, had adopted massacre as a judicious expedient,
now adopted revolution. The agitators and preachers who managed
opinion, taught the right of armed resistance, the supremacy of the
masses, the duty of cashiering kings, the lawfulness of tyrannicide.
The blending of inquisition with revolution was a novelty.

Since the popes had become temporal sovereigns, like the of the
Gentiles, the tendency of the Church was towards conservatism and
sympathy with authority. But the Parisian clergy, when opposing
monarchy associated 'with Protestantism, endeavoured to employ the
utmost violence of popular feeling. And they had the support of Rome.
A papal legate was shut up in the capital, encouraging it to resist.
He belonged to the ancient and illustrious house of Caetani. The last
head of that family, the father of the Duke of Sermoneta, lately
minister of forei