IV. vigorously
resumed warlike operations, so as to bring pressure upon his adversaries
and make them perceive the necessity of accepting the solution he offered
them. He besieged and took the town of Dreux, of which the castle alone
persisted in holding out. He cut off the provisions which were being
brought by the Marne to Paris. He kept Poitiers strictly invested.
Lesdiguieres defeated the Savoyards and the Spaniards in the valleys of
Dauphiny and Piedmont. Count Mansfeld was advancing with a division
towards Picardy; but at the news that the king was marching to encounter
him, he retired with precipitation. From the military as well as the
political point of view, there is no condition worse than that of
stubbornness mingled with discouragement. And that was the state of
Mayenne and the League. Henry IV. perceived it, and confidently hurried
forward his political and military measures. The castle of Dreux was
obliged to capitulate. Thanks to the four thousand Swiss paid for him by
the Grand Duke of Florence, to the numerous volunteers brought to him by
the noblesse of his party, "and to the sterling quality of the old
Huguenot phalanx, folks who, from father to son, are familiarized with
death," says D'Aubigne, Henry IV. had recovered, in June, 1593, so good
an army that "by means of it," he wrote to Ferdinand de' Medici, "I shall
be able to reduce the city of Paris in so short a time as will cause you
great contentment." But he was too judicious and too good a patriot not
to see that it was not by an indefinitely prolonged war that he would be
enabled to enter upon definitive possession of his crown, and that it was
peace, religious peace, that he must restore to France in order to really
become her king. He entered resolutely, on the 15th of July, 1593, upon
the employment of the moral means which alone could enable him to attain
this end; he assembled at Mantes the conference of prelates and doctors,
Catholic and Protestant, which he had announced as the preface to his
conversion. He had previously, on the 13th of May, given assurance to
the Protestants as to their interests by means of a declaration on the
part of eight amongst the principal Catholic lords attached to his person
who undertook, "with his Majesty's authorization, that nothing should be
done in the said assemblies to the prejudice of friendly union between
the Catholics who recognized his Majesty and them of the religion, or
contrary to t