e Peace of
Chastenoy (May, 1576), with terms unusually favourable for both
Politiques and Huguenots: for the latter, free worship throughout France,
except at Paris; for the chiefs of the former, great governments, for
Alencon a large central district, for Conde, Picardy, for Henri of
Navarre, Guienne.

To resist all this the high Catholic party framed the League they had
long been meditating; it is said that the Cardinal de Lorraine had
sketched it years before, at the time of the later sittings of the
Council of Trent. Lesser compacts had already been made from time to
time; now it was proposed to form one great League, towards which all
should gravitate. The head of the League was Henri, Duc de Guise the
second, "Balafre," who had won that title in fighting against the German
reiters the year before, when they entered France under Condo. He
certainly hoped at this time to succeed to the throne of France, either
by deposing the corrupt and feeble Henri III., "as Pippin dealt with
Hilderik," or by seizing the throne, when the King's debaucheries should
have brought him to the grave. The Catholics of the more advanced type,
and specially the Jesuits, now in the first flush of credit and success,
supported him warmly. The headquarters of the movement were in Picardy;
its first object, opposition to the establishment of Conde as governor of
that province. The League was also very popular with the common folk,
especially in the towns of the north. It soon found that Paris was its
natural centre; thence it spread swiftly across the whole natural France;
it was warmly supported by Philip of Spain. The States General, convoked
at Blois in 1576, could bring no rest to France; opinion was just as much
divided there as in the country; and the year 1577 saw another petty war,
counted as the sixth, which was closed by the Peace of Bergerac, another
ineffectual truce which settled nothing. It was a peace made with the
Politiques and Huguenots by the Court; it is significant of the new state
of affairs that the League openly refused to be bound by it, and
continued a harassing, objectless warfare. The Duc d'Anjou (he had taken
that title on his brother Henri's accession to the throne) in 1578
deserted the Court party, towards which his mother had drawn him, and
made friends with the Calvinists in the Netherlands. The southern
provinces named him "Defender of their liberties;" they had hopes he
might wed Elizabeth of Englan