Jean Bodin had gone to the University of Toulouse to study civil law in 1551 and remained there as a student and later as a teacher until 1561, when he abandoned the teaching of law for its practice and returned to Paris as avocat du roi (French: “king's advocate”) just as the civil wars between Roman Catholics and Huguenots were beginning.

He had in 1571 entered the household of the king's brother, François, duc d'Alençon, as master of requests and councilor.

He appears only once on the public scene, as deputy of the third estate for Vermandois in 1576 at the Estates-General of Blois.

Henry III has resumed the war against the Huguenots, but the Estates-General is weary of Henry's extravagance and refuses to grant him the necessary subsidies.

Bodin opposes the projected resumption of war on the Huguenots in favor of negotiation, and he also opposes the suggested alienation, or sale, of royal domains by Henry III as damaging to the monarchy.

His uninterested conduct on this occasion loses him royal favor.

Bodin's principal writing, The Six Bookes of a Commonweale (1576), win him immediate fame and will remain influential in western Europe into the seventeenth century.

The bitter experience of civil war and its attendant anarchy in France have turned Bodin's attention to the problem of how to secure order and authority.

Bodin thinks that the secret lies in recognition of the sovereignty of the state and argues that the distinctive mark of the state is supreme power.

This power is unique; absolute, in that no limits of time or competence can be placed upon it; and self-subsisting, in that it does not depend for its validity on the consent of the subject.

Bodin assumes that governments command by divine right because government is instituted by providence for the well-being of humanity.

Government consists essentially of the power to command, as expressed in the making of laws.

In a well-ordered state, this power is exercised subject to the principles of divine and natural law; in other words, the Ten Commandments are enforced, and certain fundamental rights, chiefly liberty and property, are extended to those governed.

But should these conditions be violated, the sovereign still commands and may not be resisted by his subjects, whose whole duty is obedience to their ruler.

Bodin distinguishes only three types of political systems—monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy—according to whether sovereign power rests in one person, in a minority, or in a majority.

Bodin himself prefers a monarchy that is kept informed of the peoples' needs by a parliament or representative assembly.

Widely credited with introducing the concept of sovereignty into legal and political thought, his exposition of the principles of stable government is widely influential in Europe at a time when medieval systems are giving way to centralized states.

The French Wars of Religion continue during the reign of Henry III.

His brother Hercule-François, Duke (duc) d'Alençon, the fourth and youngest son of Henry II of France and Catherine de Médicis, is small and swarthy, ambitious and devious, but as a leader of the moderate Roman Catholic faction called the Politiques, he secures in the general Treaty of Beaulieu (May 6, 1576) a group of territories that makes him Duke d'Anjou.

Henry agrees to the Peace of Monsieur, named after the style of his brother François, but his concession to the Huguenots in the Edict of Beaulieu angers the Roman Catholics.

The peace pleases no one.

The house of Guise forms the ultra-Catholic Holy League to oppose a peace they deem favorable to the Protestants.

Henri I de Bourbon, second prince de Condé, who had invaded France with a horde of mercenaries to collaborate with Alençon, is disappointed at the terms which the Duke has made with the government.

The goldsmith and miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard, recently married, had left in 1576 for France, despite the royal patronage, "with no other intent than to increase his knowledge by this voyage, and upon hope to get a piece of money of the lords and ladies here for his better maintenance in England at his return", carefully reported the English Ambassador in Paris, Sir Amyas Paulet, with whom Hilliard is to stay for much of the time.

Francis Bacon is attached to the embassy, and Hilliard had done a miniature of him in Paris.

He appears in the papers of the duc d'Alençon, a suitor of Queen Elizabeth, under the name of "Nicholas Belliart, peintre anglois" in 1577, receiving a stipend of two hundred livres.

Orange, who in January 1578 is commissioned to act as lieutenant general for the incapable and unreliable Matthias, is now at the zenith of his career, but his triumph is to prove as short-lived as is the general union of the provinces.

The external threat to the newly won unity is accompanied by internal violations of the document's religious clauses.

His Calvinist supporters, especially, have forcibly introduced popular and intolerant regimes on large areas of Flanders and Brabant.

Catholic faith in the union has thus been seriously undermined.

The Catholic but still anti-Spanish reaction makes itself felt first in the southern, French-speaking provinces.

When seeking for help, their thoughts had naturally turned to France, but it is on the Prince of Orange's advice that the States General in August adopt the Catholic Duke d'Anjou, brother of Henry III of France, as “Defender of the Liberty of the Netherlands.” Soon afterward, the formation of specific unions by smaller groups of provinces begins to compromise the general union.

Hilliard remains at the French court until 1578-79, mixing in the artistic circles round the court, staying with Germain Pilon and George of Ghent, respectively the Queen's sculptor and painter, and meeting Ronsard, who perhaps paid him the rather double-edged compliment later quoted by Hilliard: "the islands indeed seldom bring forth any cunning man, but when they do it is in high perfection".

The miniature of Madame de Sourdis, certainly the work of Hilliard, is dated 1577, in which year she was a maid of honor at the French court; and other portraits which are his work are believed to represent Gabrielle d'Estrées (niece of Madame de Sourdis), la princesse de Condé, and Madame de Montgomery.

Francis, Duc d’Anjou, assuming a position once held by his brother Henri, now the reigning king of France, has for the past seven years actively courted Elizabeth, who is now in her mid-forties.

On yet another a wooing visit to London in 1579, Francis succeeds in negotiating with her a marriage contract.

Orange is outlawed by Philip II on March 15, 1580, and a reward is offered for his assassination.

He answers the charges of treason with a vehement Apologie, written for him by his court chaplain, and he continues to put his trust in France.

Against much Protestant opposition, he persuades the States General in 1580 to give the Duke d'Anjou the hereditary sovereignty of the Netherlands.

Independence does not become William's objective even after the proclamation of the Act of Abjuration.

Because William had in 1580 turned to the duke d'Anjou, who has agreed to take over the “lordship” of the Low Countries, Archduke Matthias returns home in 1581.

The prince hopes for assistance from the duke's brother, King Henry III of France, and considers the “lordship” of Anjou as only a kind of limited, constitutional “sovereignty” like that which the rebels had hoped to impose on Philip II at the beginning of their rising.

Anjou, however, sees the lordship as a means to total dominion over the Netherlands and, seeking to exploit the unsettled conditions here, in 1581 proclaims himself duke of Brabant and count of Flanders, but the titles remain fictitious.

The Netherlanders have continued to recognize Spanish rule after the Union of Utrecht.

The Union contributes, however, to the deterioration in the relationship between the provinces and their lord, and the States General in 1581 solemnly renounce their allegiance to the king of Spain in the Oath of Abjuration, thus creating the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands (or "of the Seven United Low Countries") (Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden/Provinciën).

The provinces of Holland and Zeeland, unwilling to grant the French prince any direct authority, meanwhile plan to create Orange their hereditary count.

Anjou, however, far from aiding the cause of liberty, has added to the prevailing confusion.

Orange, with great difficulty, effects his reconciliation with the States General.