842 MODERN CIVILIZATION His adversaries could not agree upon the choice of a king to oppose him. The Leaguers wanted the young Duke of Guise, son of Henry; Philip IT. claimed the crown for his daughter, the Infanta Isabella, grand- daughter of Henry II., but through the female line, which was to renounce the salic law. The Leaguers at first hoped that Philip II. \M>uld give his daughter in marriage to the Duke of Guise, but in the Estates of 1593 his ambassadors, being urged to explain, declared that an Austrian archduke was to be the husband of the Infanta. Almost all of the Leaguers were un- willing to be governed by foreigners; the Spaniards, who were garrisoned in Paris, had made themselves hated on account of their insolence. The national sentiment was pronounced in favor of Henry IVM a French prince and a legitimate heir to the throne; his religion was the sole obstacle; he removed that by an abjuration. From that time there was no longer a place in France for a Catholic party; the League was nothing but a faction hopeless of success; the chiefs of the League, one by one, submitted, or rather con- sented, for a money consideration, to recognize the king. Henry IV. with his little army would have had great difficulty in taking from them the great cities, which they occupied, and he preferred to pur- chase them. He could then fight the Spaniards and drive them from Picardy. Edict of Nantes—In becoming a Catholic, Henry IV. had ceased to be the head of the Protestant party. The Calvinists, much dissatisfied, withdrew into the South; they no longer had a chief, but they still had an army and the control of some fortified cities; the