order to make himself king, undertook to
set aside his nephew's hereditary right, and forbid, absolutely,
heretical worship in France. He published on the 31st of March, 1585,
a declaration wherein he styled himself premier prince of the blood, and
conferred upon the Duke of Guise the title of lieutenant-general of the
League. By a bull of September 10, 1585, Sixtus V., but lately elected
pope, excommunicated the King of Navarre as a heretic and relapsed,
denying him any right of succession to the crown of France, and releasing
his Narvarrese subjects from their oath of fidelity. Sixtus V. did not
yet know what manner of man he was thus attacking. The King of Navarre
did not confine himself to protesting in France, on the 10th of June,
1585, against this act of the pope's: he had his protest placarded at
Rome itself upon the statues of Pasquin and Marforio, and at the very
doors of the Vatican, referring the pope, as to the question of heresy,
to a council which he claimed at an early date, and at the same time
appealing against this alleged abuse of power to the court of peers of
France, "of whom," said he, "I have the honor to be the premier." The
whole of Italy, including Sixtus V. himself, a pope of independent mind
and proud heart, was struck with this energetic resistance on the part of
a petty king. "It would be a good thing," said the pope to Marquis
Pasani, Henry III.'s ambassador, "if the king your master showed as much
resolution against his enemies as the King of Navarre shows against those
who attack him." At the first moment Henry III. had appeared to unravel
the intentions of the League and to be disposed to resist it; by an edict
of March 28, 1585, he had ordered that its adherents should be
prosecuted; but Catherine de' Medici frightened him with the war which
would infallibly be kindled, and in which he would have for enemies all
the Catholics, more irritated than ever. And Henry III. very easily took
fright. Catherine undertook to manage the recoil for him. "I care not
who likes it and who doesn't," she was wont to say in such cases. She
asked the Duke of Guise for an interview, which took place, first of all
at Epernay, and afterwards at Rheims. The hard demands of the Lorrainers
did not deter the queen-mother, and, on the 7th of July, 1585, a treaty
was concluded at Nemours between Henry III. and the League, to the effect
"that by an irrevocable edict the practice of the new religion shoul