The chief advantage which he reaped by this diversity of success, arose from the dissensions which by that means took place among his enemies.

The inhabitants of Paris, intoxicated with admiration of Guise, and strongly prejudiced against their king, whose intentions had become suspicious to them, took to arms and obliged Henry to fly for his safety.

That prince, dissembling his resentment, entered into a negotiation with the league; and having conferred many high offices on Guise and his partisans, summoned an assembly of the states at Blois, on pretence of finding expedients to support the intended war against the Hugonots.

The various scenes of perfidy and cruelty which had been exhibited in France, had justly begotten a mutual diffidence among all parties; yet Guise, trusting more to the timidity than honor of the king, rashly put himself into the hands of that monarch, and expected, by the ascendant of his own genius, to make him submit to all his exorbitant pretensions.

Henry, though of an easy disposition, not steady to his resolutions, or even to his promises, wanted neither courage nor capacity; and finding all his subtleties eluded by the vigor of Guise, and even his throne exposed to the most imminent danger, he embraced more violent counsels than were natural to him, and ordered that prince and his brother, the cardinal of Guise, to be assassinated in his palace.
This cruel execution, which the necessity of it alone could excuse, had nearly proved fatal to the author, and seemed at first to plunge him into greater dangers than those which he sought to avoid by taking vengeance on his enemy.