The Catholic League, led by the ultra-Roman Catholic Henri I de Lorraine, third duc de Guise, forces the moderate but devious King Henry III to ban Protestantism and attempts to exclude from the succession his brother-in-law, the Huguenot leader Henry of Bourbon, king of Navarre and heir presumptive to the French throne.

The result is the War of the Three Henrys.

Anne, the eldest son of Guillaume, Viscount de Joyeuse, when very young had been admitted to the royal court, where he had carried the title of Marquis d'Arques (after one of his father's lands).

King Henry III, having just lost his former favorites, had taken a great liking to Anne and in 1581 had created him Duke de Joyeuse with precedence over all other peers of the realm except for princes of the blood and certain sovereign families.

Henry had also made Anne admiral of France in 1582 and governor of Normandy in 1586 and married him to Marguerite de Lorraine-Vaudémont, younger sister of the queen.

A champion of Roman Catholic reaction against Henri I de Montmorency's tolerant policy toward the Huguenots in Languedoc, Anne leads an army against the Huguenots in Guyenne and ...

...massacres some of them at Mont-Saint-Éloi.

Duke Anne is recalled to court at this inopportune moment because of the intrigues of jealous rivals, and, when he marches a second time against Henry of Navarre, he is captured and killed on October 20 at the Battle of Coutras, which Henry, with English financial aid, wins.