The League demanded that he should declare the king of Navarre disinherited, and name the Cardinal de Bourbon as his heir, an old man of upwards of sixty years of age, of limited capacity, of feeble character, and a priest of little reputation, since he had lived in habits of effeminate and dissolute luxury. This cardinal would have made way for the duke of Guise. Henry III. was aware of this, he knew also that the Lorraines only awaited an opportunity of making him turn monk, and shutting him up in a cloister, as other do-nothing kings had been treated in times gone by. At this critical moment Henry III. displayed some courage, and refused. The kingdom was then a prey to the greatest anarchy; neither authority, government, nor law any longer existed. The Leaguers published manifestoes in the name of the Cardinal de Bourbon, and by treachery or force obtained possession of Toul, Verdun, Lyons, Châlons, Bourges, and other important towns. Henry III., who had no army to oppose to them, contracted a peace with the duke of Guise, at the expense of the Huguenots. He engaged by the treaty of Nemours, signed in 1585, to deprive them not only of the public exercise of their religion, but also of liberty of conscience. It was ordered that all the Calvinist clergy should quit the kingdom at the expiration of a month, and that all the Reformed should abjure or emigrate at the end of six months, under penalty of death and confiscation of their property. This term was shortly afterwards reduced to fifteen days, as if it were intended to take away from these abjurations even the appearance of good faith. In thus putting an end to war on one side, it again broke out on the other. It no longer originated in some wretched court quarrel, but it became a war of liberty, of religion, of fortune, and for existence itself. The Edict of Nemours was apparently intended to be so rigorously executed, that the king rejected the request of some poor women, who prayed to be permitted to live with their children in some corner of France, which it might please his majesty to assign to them. Henry III. would only promise to have them conveyed without injury or insult to England. Some women were even burned at Paris after the treaty,—the atrocious laws of Henry II. were again reverted to.