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 VII.] THE RELIGIOUS IVARS. 115 Leaguers took an oath that no heretic should reign ; but they could not put forward either Guise or his cousin the Duke of Lorraine, without offending Phihp of Spain, whose help they needed. For as his wife Ehzabeth had been the eldest daughter of Henry II., he claimed the crown for her only child, Isabel Clara Eugenia. To gain time the Leaguers recognized as heir Charles, Cardinal of Bourbon, uncle of the King of Navarre, intending after him to give the crown to one of the house of Lorraine, and to marry him to the Spanish princess. Mean- while the revolted Netherlanders were begging Henry III. to accept their sovereignty and support them against Philip II., and his trafficking with these Reformers brought the rage of the Leaguers on him. One of his tnignons, the Duke ofjoyeuse, advised him to make friends with the League and accept their terms ; another, the Duke of Epernon, would have had him throw himself for aid on the King of Navarre and the Huguenots. He preferred this last counsel, for he liked the boon companion of his youth, and he hated Guise, who had always scorned and tyrannized over him, and was in effect what he was called in joke, King of Paris. Guise was marching against Henry with 12,000 men, when Catharine de' Medici, old, sick, and feeble as she was, once more came to the front. She met Guise at Nemours, agreed to all his demands except the disinheriting of the King of Navarre, who invited the king to come to his camp, where he would find only loyal subjects. In return Henry III. entreated his cousin to return to the Catholic Church, and so satisfy all parties. This correspondence made the League conjure the pope to render reconciliation impossible. Sixtus V. was thus forced by Spanish power, against his own inclination, to excommunicate the two Bourbon cousins, and declare them incapable of inheriting the crown, to release the King of Navarre's dominions from their allegiance, and to call on the King of France to expel the relapsed heretics. In return Henry of Navarre caused a paper to be affixed to the gates of the Vatican declaring that " Monsieur Sixtus," calling himself'pope, had lied, appeal- ing from him to a general council, and demanding support from all Christian kings. Meantime the war of the three Henries went on without much result, till on the 20th of October, 1587, the Bourbon princes met Joyeuse and the king at Coutras, at the junction of the rivers Isle and Droune. The Huguenots had 6,500 men, the Royalists 1 2