WE have seen how dangerously short-sighted was
Catherine de Medici's policy of appeasement. With
an optimism as striking as it was foolish she had set out
to succeed where the Emperor Charles V had failed -- to effect
a compromise in religious doctrines between Catholic and
Protestant. She handled the Colloquy of Poissy in August and
September 1561 like a Court intrigue; and inevitably failed.
She merely stimulated the growth and insolence of the Huguenot
party, enraged the Catholics by the favour shown to heretics,
and thus intensified the religious passions of the country.
France emerged from the Colloquy a long step nearer civil
war.

At the same time she had made a fatal blunder in the way
she tackled the problem of Court faction. Here she had been so
busy keeping Guise and Bourbon in artificial friendship that
she had entirely neglected the middle party upon which the
independence of the monarchy ought to have been based in a
crisis -- the party of the Constable Montmorency. The con-
sequence of this neglect was that Guise and Montmorency drew
together and formed an alliance in defence of Catholicism. The
Crown was left to manœuvre without any real strength of its
own between two parties of passion.

But manœuvring was the very genius of this well-meaning
woman; and in the autumn and winter of 1561-2 she was
feverishly busy with it. She pursued her policy of a peaceful
settlement with all the obstinacy and assurance of which her
remarkable vitality was capable.

There seems little doubt that at this time she was

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