The king of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV. acted like Elizabeth; he excommunicated Sixtus, ‘styling himself pope,’ and Sixtus applauded this courageous resistance. But these bulls, which their author himself laughed at, did not serve the less as cause of civil wars; the fanaticism they cherished in the catholics, compelled Henry III. to persecute the calvinists the more rigorously, to command them to abjure or quit the kingdom; while, on his part, the king of Navarre found himself compelled to take severe measures against the catholics. Henry III. more than ever distracted between the two parties, had neither the skill nor the power that such a situation demanded. We behold him depriving the king of Navarre of the right of succession to the throne of France, and afterwards throwing himself into the arms of this generous prince. This reconciliation provoked a Monitory, in which Sixtus orders Henry III. to appear at Rome in person, or by Attorney, within sixty days, to give an account of his conduct, and declares him excommunicated if he do not obey. We must conquer, said the king of Navarre to Henry III. whom this anathema had terrified, we must conquer: if we are beaten we shall be excommunicated and harassed again and again. These censures had preserved so little of their ancient power, that a bishop of Chartres said, they were without force at this side of the mountains, that they froze in passing the Alps. The poignard of James Clement was more efficacious. Henry III. fell beneath the blows of the assassin: and, if we may believe the league, Sixtus V. was in an extacy at so daring an enterprise, compared it to the incarnation of the word and the resurrection of Jesus. If it were necessary to explain the policy of this pontiff we would say, that his real enemy, the rival whom he wished to overthrow, was Philip, whom he did not excommunicate, and against whom he dared not do any thing openly: circumstances did not permit it. Sixtus hoped, no doubt, that the commotions excited in England, and kept up in France by pontifical anathemas, would extend further and lead to some result fatal to Philip. This display of the papal supremacy, exhibited against the kings of Navarre and of England, more truly menaced him who, governing Spain, Portugal, Belgia, the Two Sicilies, and a part of the new world, surpassed in riches and in greatness every other potentate. To declare Great Britain a fief of the Roman church, was to renew abundantly the pretensions of the church over the kingdom of Naples; and, when the pope erected himself into a sovereign arbiter of kings, he gave it plainly to be understood, that an error or a misfortune might suffice to draw after it the fall of the most powerful. Unhappily, the catholicity of Philip was impregnable; Henry IV. was satisfied in defending himself against Spain, Queen Elizabeth preferred securing her own throne to disturbing those of others, and Sixtus finally died too soon.³⁰⁹