The politiques, as the supporters of religious tolerance and an energetic repression of faction were called, offered their alliance to the Huguenots, but these, having formed themselves, by means of the Protestant Union, into a sort of republic within the kingdom, hesitated to accept. It is, however, easy to bring about an understanding between people in whom religious fury has been extinguished either by patriotism or by ambition, like that of the duke of Alençon, who had now escaped from the Louvre where he had been confined on account of his intrigues. The compact was concluded at Millau; Condé becoming a Protestant once more in order to treat with Damville, Montmorency's brother. Henry of Navarre escaped from Paris. The new king, Henry III., vacillating and vicious, and Catherine herself, eager for war as she was, had no means of separating the Protestants and the _politiques_. Despite the victory of Guise at Dormans, the agreement between the duke of Alençon and John Casimir's German army obliged the royal party to grant all that the allied forces demanded of them in the "peace of Monsieur," signed at Beaulieu on the 6th of May 1576, the duke of Alençon receiving the appanage of Anjou, Touraine and Berry, the king of Navarre Guienne, and Condé Picardy, while the Protestants were granted freedom of worship in all parts of the kingdom except Paris, the rehabilitation of Coligny and the other victims of St Bartholomew, their fortified towns, and an equal number of seats in the courts of the parlements.
This was going too fast; and in consequence of a reaction against this too liberal edict a fourth party made its appearance, that of the Catholic League, under the Guises--Henry le Balafré, duke of Guise, and his two brothers, Charles, duke of Mayenne, and Louis, archbishop of Reims and cardinal. With the object of destroying Calvinism by effective opposition, they imitated the Protestant organization of provincial associations, drawing their chief supporters from the upper middle class and the lesser nobility. It was not at first a demagogy maddened by the preaching of the irreconcilable clergy of Paris, but a union of the more honest and prudent classes of the nation in order to combat heresy. Despite the immorality and impotence of Henry III. and the Protestantism of Henry of Navarre, this party talked of re-establishing the authority of the king; but in reality it inclined more to the Guises, martyrs in the good cause, who were supported by Philip II. of Spain and Pope Gregory XIII. A sort of popular government was thus established to counteract the incapacity of royalty, and it was in the name of the imperilled rights of the people that, from the States of Blois onward, this Holy League demanded the re-establishment of Catholic unity, and set the religious right of the nation in opposition to the divine right of incapable or evil-doing kings (1576).