and Henry de Guise, and it remained anonymous for some time.

One cannot be astonished at such timidity; Guise himself was timid before the Leaguers, and he always ended by yielding to them in essentials, after having attempted to resist them upon such and such an incidental point.

His own people accused him of lacking boldness; and his sister, the Duchess of Montpensier, openly patronized the most violent preachers, whilst boasting that she wielded more influence through them than her brother by his armies.

Henry III., under stress of his enemies' zeal and his own servants' weakness, Catherine de' Medici included, after having fled from Paris and taken refuge at Chartres to escape the triumph of the Barricades, once more began to negotiate, that is, to capitulate with the League; he issued at Rouen, on the 19th of July, 1588, an edict in eleven articles, whereby he granted more than had been demanded, and more than he had promised in 1585 by the treaty of Nemours; over and above the measures contained in that treaty against the Huguenots, in respect of the present and the future, he added four fresh surety-towns, amongst others Bourges and Orleans, to those of which the Leaguers were to remain in possession.
He declared, moreover, "that no investigation should be made into any understandings, associations, and other matters into which our Catholic subjects might have entered together; inasmuch as they have given us to understand and have informed us that what they did was but owing to the zeal they felt for the preservation and maintenance of the Catholic religion." By thus releasing the League from all responsibility for the past, and by giving this new treaty the name of edict of union, Henry III.

flattered himself, it is said, that he was thus putting himself at the head of a new grand Catholic League which would become royalist again, inasmuch as the king was granting it all it had desired.