Condé was still a fugitive in Germany when the news of his bereavement reached him. It can scarcely have failed to cause him pain, for, notwithstanding her relations with Henri III., he had remained attached to his wife; but the reflection that now that her royal admirer had reappeared upon the scene, she would, had she lived, most certainly have brought fresh scandal upon his name, must have served to temper his grief. In the previous July, he had been proclaimed chief of the confederates by a Huguenot-Politique assembly which had met at Milhaud; but he made no attempt to return to France, but wandered about Germany and Switzerland, negotiating with the Protestant princes and enlisting soldiers. With the aid of English gold, he finally succeeded in raising a small army, and, in the early autumn of 1575, he despatched part of it, under the command of Montmorency-Thoré, to the assistance of Alençon, who had just succeeded in effecting his escape from the Court and had placed himself at the head of the confederates.[103] But this force was too weak to effect anything, and was defeated by the Duc de Guise at Dormans.[104] Having levied fresh troops to replace those he had lost, in the following April, Condé himself re-entered France, after an absence of two years, crossed the Loire, near La Charité, and effected a junction with the troops of Alençon in the Bourbonnais. Henri III. and Catherine were obliged to negotiate, and on 6 May another hollow peace--the “_Paix de Monsieur_”--was signed at Beaulieu. The Protestants obtained greater concessions than any which they had yet enjoyed; the Massacre of St. Bartholomew was formally disavowed and the property of Coligny and other prominent victims restored to their heirs; and eight fortresses were handed over to the Reformers, as security for the due observance of the treaty. Alençon received the addition to his appanage of Anjou, Berry, Touraine and Maine, and assumed the title of Duc d’Anjou, which had been that of Henri III. before his accession to the throne; while the King of Navarre was confirmed in his government of Guienne and Condé in that of Picardy. The last-named prince was also guaranteed Péronne as a place of surety and a _gratification_. But, so far as he was concerned, the treaty remained a dead-letter: he never saw a sol of the money, nor was his authority ever acknowledged in Picardy, where Jacques d’Humières, governor of Péronne, a friend of the Guises, refused to deliver that fortress into his hands and formed a confederacy between the partisans of the Guises and the bigoted Catholics to oppose him.