Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/607

Rh her prudence and address she satisfied the German emperor, and negociated amicably with Elizabeth of England. The king was declared of age 1563, when Catherine resigned the regency, and took the tour of France with her son. At Bayonne she had an interview with her daughter, the queen of Spain, and the duke of Alva, an ambassador appointed for that purpose by Philip; but the subject of the conference remained unknown: it is supposed that Spain and France agreed to maintain an uniformity of conduct in matters religious and political. But Catherine, now entirely devoted to the Catholics, by repeated affronts and constant violations of the edicts in their favour, alarmed the minds of the Huguenots, who saw their destruction was intended. Yet the queen, by soothing them, made them the means of engaging Swiss troops to enter as her mercenaries, under pretence that she feared a foreign invasion; nor till it was too late did they perceive her craft. They, in their turn, affected tranquillity, till their plot was laid, and train ready to take fire. A fruitless attempt to seize the person of the king a second time, commenced the civil war, and after some undecisive, though bloody battles and sieges, peace was concluded, and in a short time again broken on both sides. The protestant religion was proscribed by more rigorous edicts, the leaders pursued with inveteracy, and war again commenced, but after much effusion of blood, peace was again made 1570, and a great degree of toleration, and liberty, allowed the Huguenots. A marriage was proposed between the prince of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV, and the sister of the king; alliances were sought for by the court with most