d; they quite mistook their man. In 1579
"the Gallants' War" broke out; the Leaguers had it all their own way; but
Henri III., not too friendly to them, and urged by his brother Anjou, to
whom had been offered sovereignty over the seven united provinces in
1580, offered the insurgents easy terms, and the Treaty of Fleix closed
the seventh war. Anjou in the Netherlands could but show his weakness;
nothing went well with him; and at last, having utterly wearied out his
friends, he fled, after the failure of his attempt to secure Antwerp,
into France. There he fell ill of consumption and died in 1584.

This changed at once the complexion of the succession question. Hitherto,
though no children seemed likely to be born to him, Henri III. was young
and might live long, and his brother was there as his heir. Now, Henri
III. was the last Prince of the Valois, and Henri of Navarre in
hereditary succession was heir presumptive to the throne, unless the
Salic law were to be set aside. The fourth son of Saint Louis, Robert,
Comte de Clermont, who married Beatrix, heiress of Bourbon, was the
founder of the House of Bourbon. Of this family the two elder branches
had died out: John, who had been a central figure in the War of the
Public Weal, in 1488; Peter, husband of Anne of France, in 1503; neither
of them leaving heirs male. Of the younger branch Francois died in 1525,
and the famous Constable de Bourbon in 1527. This left as the only
representatives of the family, the Comtes de La Marche; of these the
elder had died out in 1438, and the junior alone survived in the Comtes
de Vendome. The head of this branch, Charles, was made Duc de Vendome by
Francois I. in 1515; he was father of Antoine, Duc de Vendome, who, by
marrying the heroic Jeanne d'Albret, became King of Navarre, and of
Louis, who founded the House of Conde; lastly, Antoine was the father of
Henri IV. He was, therefore, a very distant cousin to Henri III; the
Houses of Capet, of Alencon, of Orleans, of Angouleme, of Maine, and of
Burgundy, as well as the elder Bourbons, had to fall extinct before Henri
of Navarre could become heir to the crown. All this, however, had now
happened; and the Huguenots greatly rejoiced in the prospect of a
Calvinist King. The Politique party showed no ill-will towards him; both
they and the Court party declared that if he would become once more a
Catholic they would rally to him; the Guises and the League were
naturally all the m