This request was extremely displeasing to the king, who saw but too clearly, that their intention was to give the law to him hereafter whom they had first so haughtily affronted. He therefore caused it to be examined in his council, where there was but small agreement, because the members of it were divided in their interests. There were but two methods to be taken on that subject; either for the king to join with the League against the Huguenots, as the request demanded, or to make war against the League with all his power, in conjunction with the Huguenots; for unless he espoused one of these interests, it was impossible for him to succeed. Those of the council who loved not the Duke of Espernon, who were many, and who feared that the acting of the king’s forces, in combination with the Huguenots, would prove of great prejudice to his reputation, and of greater to religion, were for the former proposition and council, that all differences should be accommodated in the best manner they could with the Duke of Guise,—which was also the desire of the queen-mother; but the rest, who, for the most part, consisted of those persons whose disgrace and banishment was demanded in the request, insisted strongly on the second, and gave their voice for a war to be made against the duke to the uttermost; fortifying their opinion by the number of forces which the king might raise promiscuously, both from Catholics and Protestants, because this was not a war of religion, but that the sovereign only armed himself to quell and chastise his rebellious subjects. It would be a matter of much difficulty to tell precisely, what was the true resolution which the king took betwixt the extremes of these different counsels; but it may be told for a certain truth, that having a long time deliberated, and that much more in his own breast than with his council, he seemed at length, all on the sudden, to pitch upon the first; whether it were, that being, as he was, a good Catholic, and hating the Huguenots, he could not yet come to a resolution of uniting himself to them; or were it, that he thought not himself at that time strong enough, even with the king of Navarre’s assistance, to destroy the League, which was grown more powerful than ever since the barricades, and headed by a man so able, so bold, and so successful, as the Duke of Guise; or lastly, as many have believed, that being strongly persuaded he should never be in safety, nor be master in his kingdom, while that prince, whom he hated mortally, was living, he took up, from that very moment, a resolution within himself to dispatch him out of the world; and, that he might draw him into the net which he was spreading for him, was willing to grant in a manner whatsoever he desired, as if it were done in contemplation of a peace.