le to reckon, but the work was so
wholesale that none were left except those in the southern cities, where
the Huguenots had been too strong to be attacked, and in those castles
where the seigneur was of "the religion." The Catholic party thought the
destruction complete, the court went in state to return thanks for
deliverance from a supposed plot, while Coligny's body was hung on a
gibbet. The Pope ordered public thanksgivings, while Queen Elizabeth put
on mourning, and the Emperor Maximilian II., alone among Catholic
princes, showed any horror or indignation. But the heart of the unhappy
young king was broken by the guilt he had incurred. Charles IX. sank
into a decline, and died in 1574, finding no comfort save in the surgeon
and nurse he had saved.

8. The League.--His brother, _Henry III._, who had been elected King
of Poland, threw up that crown in favour of that of France. He was of a
vain, false, weak character, superstitiously devout, and at the same
time ferocious, so as to alienate every one. All were ashamed of a man
who dressed in the extreme of foppery, with a rosary of death's heads at
his girdle, and passed from wild dissipation to abject penance. He was
called "the Paris Church-warden and the Queen's Hairdresser," for he
passed from her toilette to the decoration of the walls of churches with
illuminations cut out of old service-books. Sometimes he went about
surrounded with little dogs, sometimes flogged himself walking barefoot
in a procession, and his _mignons_, or favourites, were the scandal of
the country by their pride, license, and savage deeds. The war broke out
again, and his only remaining brother, Francis, Duke of Alencon, an
equally hateful and contemptible being, fled from court to the Huguenot
army, hoping to force his brother into buying his submission; but when
the King of Navarre had followed him and begun the struggle in earnest,
he accepted the duchy of Anjou, and returned to his allegiance. Francis
was invited by the insurgent Dutch to become their chief, and spent some
time in Holland, but returned, unsuccessful and dying. As the king was
childless, the next male heir was Henry of Bourbon, King of Navarre, who
had fled from court soon after Alencon returned to the Huguenot faith,
and was reigning in his two counties of Bearn and Foix, the head of the
Huguenots. In the resolve never to permit a heretic to wear the French
crown, Guise and his party formed a Catholic league, to forc