The reformers had now no leaders, and their situation seemed as perilous as that of their co-religionists in the Netherlands; while the sieges of La Rochelle and Leiden, the enforced exile of the prince of Orange, and the conversion under pain of death of Henry of Navarre and the prince of Cond, made the common danger more obvious.
There were the friends of the Montmorency partyDamville at their head; Colignys relations; the king of Navarre; Cond; and a prince of the blood, Catherine de Medicis third son, the duke of Alencon, tired of being kept in the background.
The compact was concluded at Millau; Cond becoming a Protestant once more in order to treat with Damville, Mootmorencys brother.
By a stroke of the pen he suppressed Protestantism, while Pope Sixtus V., who had at first been unfavourable to the treaty of Joinville as a purely political act, though he eventually yielded to the solicitations of the League, excommunicated the two Bourbons, Henry and Cond.
When the succession of Cleves and of Julich, so long expected and already discounted by the treaty of Halle (1610), was opened up in Germany, the great war was largely due to an access of senile passion for the charms of the princesse de Cond.
