The state of affairs after the accession of Charles IX., was as follows: Condé was released from prison, the King of Navarre was in favour with the Queen-mother, the Bourbons and Guises affected mutual friendship, the Colignys and the Constable were continually at the palace; the star of the Bourbon party was in the ascendant. But those were the days of political and religious renegades, and a very short time produced wonderful changes in the composition of the two great parties. Soon we find the King of Navarre going over to the Church of Rome, and the Constable abandoning the cause of his nephews to assist at the germination of the celebrated _League_, into which the Guises and other great Catholic chiefs afterwards entered for the suppression of Protestantism, and for the overthrow of the party headed by Condé and Coligny.
It is a matter of extreme difficulty to form a correct opinion of the character of the Duke of Guise, diversely represented as it has been by the party writers of the time. M. de Bouillé has endeavoured, with patience and industry, to sift the truth from the mass of conflicting evidence; and if he is not completely successful, it is because such contradictory testimony as he has to deal with defies reconciliation. His zeal for truth leads him into researches and disquisitions through which not all of his readers perhaps will have patience to follow him, although they are doubtless essential to the completeness of a work which is eminently what the French term _un ouvrage sérieux_. With an evident desire for strict impartiality, he leans a little, as it appears to us, to the Catholic party--no unnatural bias in a writer of that religion. We, on the other hand, as Protestants, have to guard ourselves against the strong interest and sympathy inspired by the faith, the valour, and the sufferings of the French Huguenots: and we cannot but admit the justice of M. de Bouillé's conclusion, that although, amongst these, many were martyrs for religion's sake, many others assumed the Protestant badge from motives of political convenience as much as from conscientious conviction. As regards the second Duke of Guise, however, we find difficulty in always coinciding with his present historian, who makes him out a better man than previous reading had taught us to believe him. All the three Dukes of Guise were moral giants--men of extraordinary qualities, who towered far above their cotemporaries. All three were valiant, sagacious, and skilful in no common degree; but they were also ambitious and unscrupulous--the son more so than the father, the grandson more than either. In estimating their qualities and actions, M. de Bouillé justly makes much allowance for the prevalent fanaticism of the time; but he sometimes goes too far towards the adoption of the opinions of Catholic writers, who find extenuating circumstances in the conduct of the arch-butcher, Henry of Lorraine, on the night of St Bartholomew, and who acquit his father of sanctioning that barbarous massacre at Vassy, which was the spark to the powder--the actual commencement of the wars of religion.