was, systematically and at any price, on the score of what he regarded as the divine right of the Catholic church and of his own kingship, the patron of absolute power in Europe.

Earnest and sincere in his faith, licentious without open scandal in his private life, unscrupulous and pitiless in the service of the religious and political cause he had embraced, he was capable of any lie, one might almost say of any crime, without having his conscience troubled by it.
A wicked man and a frightful example of what a naturally cold and hard spirit may become when it is a prey to all the temptations of despotism and to two sole passions, egotism and fanaticism.
After the death of Philip II.

and during the first years of the reign of his son Philip III., war continued between Spain on one side, and England, the United Provinces, and the German Protestants on the other, but languidly and without any results to signify.

Henry IV.

held aloof from the strife, all the while permitting his Huguenot subjects to take part in it freely and at their own risks.