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French admiral Gaspard de Coligny and Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, both prominent Huguenot leaders, form a loose alliance with the Prince of Orange, who has begun to direct counteroffensives against the imperial Spanish forces in the Netherlands.

The Roman Catholic Guise family meanwhile increases its involvement with Spain.

Charles de Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine, regards the recently deposed Mary Stewart as a tool for unseating her cousin, England’s childless Queen Elizabeth, and installing a Catholic monarch on that throne.

Condé and Coligny are the targets of a plot hatched in 1568 by Lorraine.

Escaping to the Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle, the two leaders raise another army to wage what will be called the Third War of Religion, which breaks out in September.

Queen Mother Catherine de' Medici and her son King Charles decide to throw in their lot with the Guises.

Religious toleration is once more at an end.

Conflict between French Catholics and Huguenots having erupted into the Fifth War of Religion, Catholic troops under Henri, duc d’Guise, win the Battle of Dormans in October 1575.

The Holy League, La Sainte Ligue, an association of French Roman Catholics, is organized in 1576 under the leadership of Henri I de Lorraine, 3rd Duke of Guise, to oppose concessions granted to the Protestants (Huguenots) by King Henry III in the Edict of Beaulieu.

Although the basic reason behind the League's formation is the defense of the Catholic religion, political reasons, notably the desire to limit the king's power, are not absent.

Henri de Navarre, held for three-and-a-half years at the courts of Charles IX and then Henry II, is careful to restrain his impatience, hiding his forceful personality from his detainers.

He at last succeeds in February 1576 in escaping from the French court, whereupon he recants and joins the combined forces of Protestants and Catholic rebels against Henry III.

Once free, he displays his sharp intellect and political acumen in his role as protector of the Protestant churches.

Henri’s common sense—one of his outstanding traits, except in love affairs—manifests itself when civil war breaks out anew at the end of 1576.

The French Wars of Religion continue during the reign of Henry III.

His brother Hercule-François, Duke (duc) d'Alençon, the fourth and youngest son of Henry II of France and Catherine de Médicis, is small and swarthy, ambitious and devious, but as a leader of the moderate Roman Catholic faction called the Politiques, he secures in the general Treaty of Beaulieu (May 6, 1576) a group of territories that makes him Duke d'Anjou.

Henry agrees to the Peace of Monsieur, named after the style of his brother François, but his concession to the Huguenots in the Edict of Beaulieu angers the Roman Catholics.

The peace pleases no one.

The house of Guise forms the ultra-Catholic Holy League to oppose a peace they deem favorable to the Protestants.

Henri I de Bourbon, second prince de Condé, who had invaded France with a horde of mercenaries to collaborate with Alençon, is disappointed at the terms which the Duke has made with the government.

The Huguenots have fared badly in the Sixth War of Religion, and Henry of Navarre, evaluating the situation, is able to persuade his coreligionists to give up the struggle and accept the Treaty of Bergerac on September 17, 1577, despite the sacrifices it imposed on them.

The Huguenots lose some of their liberties by the Edict of Poitiers, and ...

...the Holy League is dissolved by the order of Henry III, who has failed at an attempt to place himself at the head of the Catholic party.

Francis Throckmorton, who comes from a staunch Roman Catholic family and is the nephew of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, a diplomat for Elizabeth, had received his education at the University of Oxford, before traveling to the Continent in 1580, where he had met Catholic exiles from England who were plotting against Elizabeth's Protestant regime.

He returns in 1583 as an agent for a conspiracy involving France and Spain.

Under the plan, England is to be invaded by a French force under Henri, duc de Guise, who is to free Elizabeth's prisoner Mary, Queen of Scots, and restore papal authority.

In London, Throckmorton occupies a house that served as a center of communication between Mary and foreign agents.

But Walsingham in November 1583 uncovers the conspiracy and Throckmorton is arrested.

Tortured on the rack, he makes a full confession.