During the Italian Wars which resumed that year, Bourbon played a role by supporting Catherine de Medici's regency governments in France and briefly holding a lieutenant-generalship in Picardy.

The new king Henry III entrusted him with persuading the Estates General to provide money for the resumed war effort, forced on the crown by the widespread opposition to the peace.

[6] He took great interest in his Catholic nephews Soissons and Conti, sons of his brother Louis, hoping to ensure that the Norman territories the family possessed were well maintained for the princes.

[19] Though the family was denied the ascendency typical to the princes of the blood in many reigns, Charles was already Bishop of Saintes and Carcassonne in 1548 when he was granted the honour of being elevated to the Cardinalate.

[8] He received the special promotion from Pope Paul III on 9 January 1548, as a show of the Papacy's favour towards France, his cousin Charles of Lorraine had been made Cardinal not six months prior.

[25] In 1551 a council proposal was raised to elevate Charles to Patriarch of the French church, a radical response to the dispute that had engulfed Franco-Papal relations over the vacancy of the See of Marseille.

One of her first acts was to write to Charles in his capacity as governor of the city of Paris urging him to have preachers who denounced Henry's alliance with Protestant princes of the Holy Roman Empire arrested.

[29] The Italian Wars entered the province of Picardy in 1553, as Emperor Charles V sought revenge on France for the humiliation of the capture and successful defence of Metz the previous year.

[43] At this time Bourbon was close to the Guise administration, allied alongside Marshal Saint-André and Louis, Duke of Montpensier to the family, while many of the other leading nobles found themselves pushed aside.

After a considerable amount of cajoling the brothers agreed to head north for the Estates General at Orléans on 17 September, upon arrival Condé was promptly arrested and charged with treason.

The Spanish ambassador recorded that his visit was greeted by 'thousands of insults' from Protestants, who took the liberty to decorate his pulpit with a flock of geese, a traditional award given to the 'king of liars'.

However he was unable to prevent Catherine and Michel de l'Hôpital forcing through their plans for full legal toleration of Protestantism, as embodied in the Edict of January.

To avoid a repeat of this the crown tasked Cardinal Bourbon and Louis, Duke of Montpensier to oversee the Parlement's registration session in Paris, to ensure that the court didn't get any rebellious ideas.

Cardinal Bourbon reacted with fury to this choice, as did many of the more militant Catholic inhabitants, but the king was unmoved, delegating authority to either keep or change the site to Marshal Montmorency, governor of the Île de France.

[62] The abortive second civil war that was ignited by the Surprise of Meaux in 1567 and brought to a close with the Peace of Longjumeau in March 1568 would require provisions to ensure the removal of the German reiters that Condé had introduced into the country to support him against the crown.

[63] In February 1568, Bourbon chided the radical Catholic preacher Simon Vigor, who was making a name for himself in Paris for his militant opposition to Protestantism, for inflaming the population of the city against Catherine de' Medici.

Within several months the king attempted to co-opt Vigor towards royal policy by naming him prédicateur de roi, however he continued his sarcastic critiques of the administration, though more cautiously.

[66] The Protestant rebels suffered a heavy blow with the death of their commander Condé during a skirmish at Jarnac, however more German mercenaries were raised and they evaded attempted interception by the Duke of Aumale at the border.

The German army, under command of Wolfgang, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken successfully captured the important Loire town of La Charité, affording them the ability to link up with the remainder of the Protestant forces under Admiral Coligny in the west of France.

[74] The Peace of Monsieur which brought the fifth war of religion to a close, offered generous terms to the Protestants, in the hopes of re-securing the loyalty of the kings brother Alençon.

[58] The League movement would spread across France, dominating the Estates General called as a term of the peace, and pressuring Henry III to declare war on Protestantism once more.

Alençon again hammered on the notion of the nobles duty to fight, before trying to cajole the second estate into serving the king without pay for six months, with the promise that he would lead the crown's war effort in person.

[78] The war which was thus resumed would be short, concluded with the harsher Treaty of Bergerac that sated the majority of the League demands, causing the movement to fade away for the moment.

In the secret Treaty of Joinville of 31 December 1584 Bourbon was recognized by the leaders of the league and a representative of Philip II of Spain as the heir to Henry III of France.

[91] This represented a radical act in itself with the rules of succession being altered to allow princes to select who they felt should succeed the door was opened to the notion of the Estates General electing a king as they would attempt to do after the death of Bourbon.

[95] On 21 March, Guise promulgated the Manifesto of Péronne, in which he explained why Cardinal Bourbon and many of the peers of France had rejected the possibility of a Navarre succession.

In addition to the religious warnings of persecuted Catholics under a Navarre government, all taxes introduced since the reign of Charles IX were to be abolished, and Estates General meetings were to become triennial.

[96] In hopes of defending himself from Protestant accusations that he planned to make himself king, Guise instructed his cousin the Duke of Elbeuf to conduct Bourbon to Péronne, birthplace of the first Catholic League in 1576.

[102] In the wake of the Day of the Barricades in which the king was humiliated in Paris and forced to depart from the city for fear of his personal safety, he entered into new negotiations with the League.

[110] In Rouen the banners of the Penitents displayed a rendition of his face poking out from the bars of his cell, the city having quickly fallen under the authority of a League government which established a council of 12, largely composed of men who owed their careers to Bourbon or Guise.