of Paris. It was not the policy of the Spanish court
to render the Leaguers independent of its assistance, and the duke,
satisfied with having relieved the metropolis, avoided an engagement,
and returned to his government in the Low Countries, followed by Henry
as far as the frontiers of Picardy. In 1591 Henry received succors
from England and Germany, and laid siege to Rouen; but his prey was
again snatched from him by the Duke of Parma. Again battle was offered
and declined; and the retiring army passed the Seine in the night on a
bridge of boats; a retreat the more glorious, as Henry believed it to
be impossible. The duke once said of his adversary, that other
generals made war like lions or wild boars; but that Henry hovered
over it like an eagle.

During the siege of Paris, some conferences had been held between the
chiefs of the two parties, which ended in a kind of accommodation. The
Catholics of the king's party began to complain of his perseverance in
Calvinism; and some influential men who were of the latter persuasion,
especially his confidential friend and minister Rosny, represented to
him the necessity of a change. Even some of the reformed ministers
softened the difficulty, by acknowledging salvation to be possible in
the Roman Church. In 1593 the ceremony of abjuration was performed at
St. Denis, in presence of a multitude of the Parisians. If, as we
cannot but suppose, the monarch's conversion was owing to political
motives, the apostacy must be answered for at a higher than any human
tribunal; politically viewed, it was perhaps one of the most
beneficial steps ever taken toward the pacification and renewal of
prosperity of a great kingdom. In the same year he was crowned at
Chartres, and in 1594 Paris opened her gates to him. He had just been
received into the capital, where he was conspicuously manifesting his
beneficence and zeal for the public good, when he was wounded in the
throat by John Chatel, a young fanatic. When the assassin was
questioned, he avowed the doctrine of tyrannicide, and quoted the
sermons of the Jesuits in his justification. That society therefore
was banished by the Parliament.

For two years after his ostensible conversion, the king was obliged
daily to perform the most humiliating ceremonies, by way of penance;
and it was not till 1594 that he was absolved by Clement VIII. The
Leaguers then had no further pretext for rebellion, and the League
necessarily was dissolved. Its