Chapter XIV: Henry of Navarre, First of the Bourbons (1)

It is my wish that every peasant may have meat for dinner every
day of the week, and a fowl in his pot on Sundays.--HENRY IV.

HENRY’S STRUGGLE FOR THE CROWN

[Sidenote: [1589-1610 A.D.]]

Jacques Clément in killing Henry III, whom he found not Catholic enough, opened to a Huguenot the road to the throne. This was Henry, king of Navarre, to be known in future as Henry IV of France.[b]

Henry IV has been compared to Francis I. His face has, in fact, the same large outlines, the same sensual mouth and brilliant eye, the same smile full of an attraction that is sometimes deceptive, the same expression of countenance whose openness is not always that of sincerity. But we must not be misled. This quick, ardent eye sometimes looks within to depths unattainable to Francis I; and above these projecting eyebrows, a sign, as with the Valois, of quickness of perception, rises instead of the low forehead of Francis I the vast brow of genius. Though Henry too pushed voluptuousness to the point of license, he nevertheless had tenderness if not constancy of heart. Though his language has too much of the unstable levity with which his Gascon race is reproached, though the confinement of his youth in the most depraved of courts and later the infinite difficulties of his position changed the cordial spontaneity of his nature, he nevertheless has a reserve of true and strong feeling that Francis I never knew. Apparently selfish, he was able in reality to associate his interests and his glory with the idea of the welfare of France and the interest of humanity. Infinitely superior in essential things to the Valois and the Guises, he is their inferior in elegance, in external dignity. Compared with the other two Henrys he has the air of a soldier of fortune before princes, but he redeems this inferiority of manners by a singular charm; he attracts the imagination and the heart by an irresistible mixture of shrewdness and good nature, of tenderness and sharp raillery, of ardour and calculation, of gaiety and heroism, of authority and the comradeship of the soldier. After two centuries and a half he is still irresistible when we see him act and hear him speak in history, when we follow him almost day by day in the truly unique monument of his prodigious correspondence. The most severe, whether historians or moralists, after many and too often deserved reproaches, almost always end, if they are French, by extending their hands to the most French of the kings of France.

We shall witness the stubborn struggle in which he fought for his throne; after the struggle we shall see what his work was as re-organiser of domestic peace and founder of foreign politics. The immediate effects of the death of the last Valois in the rebellious capital and in the besieging army announced only too forcibly to the first of the Bourbons the immense tasks and the immense perils that confronted him. The news of the death of Henry III was spread in Paris after the morning of the 2nd of August; all doubts were dissipated when the duchesses de Nemours and de Montpensier were seen driving through the city in their coaches and crying out on all the squares: “Good news, my friends--good news! The tyrant is dead! There is no more a Henry of Valois in France!” The mother of the Guises, mad with joy and vengeance, mounted the steps of the high altar of the church of the Cordeliers to harangue the crowd. Her daughter distributed everywhere scarfs of green, the colour of hope and joy, instead of black scarfs. In a few moments the multitude passed from consternation to frenzy. There was nothing but “laughter and singing,” tables set in the streets, feasts in the open air. In the evening bonfires burned on all the squares. Everywhere resounded the praises of the “new martyr” who had given his life for the good of the people. The blessed Jacques Clément was honoured in the pulpits, sung in the streets, invoked as a saint. Images of him, painted and sculptured, were set in the place of honour in private houses, in public places, in churches, and even on the altars! His old mother was brought to Paris, loaded with presents and shown to the people “as a wonder,” who had borne in her bosom the liberator of the church.[c]

[Sidenote: [1589-1590 A.D.]]

When the intelligence reached Rome, the rejoicings were still more revolting. Sixtus pronounced the assassin’s praises in full consistory, and compared his achievement in usefulness and self-sacrifice to the incarnation and crucifixion. In Germany and England the deed was differently viewed. Elizabeth got ready troops to be landed in Normandy in aid of the new king. Lutherans and Swiss came pouring into France. Yet Henry’s position was dangerous and undefined. The nobles who commanded his armies were Catholics as zealous as the enemy. Before the corpse of the late king was cold, they proposed to his successor a retraction of his Huguenot errors, and conformity to the church. “You don’t know what you ask,” replied Henry. “You require a change which would argue no sincerity either in one faith or the other. If you think to terrify me to so sudden an alteration, you know neither my courage nor my conscience.” “Sire,” cried the gallant Givry, and kneeled at his feet, “you are the true king of the brave, and none but a coward would desert you.”

The others, however, hung back. The spirit and principles of the league remained unbroken. The cardinal De Bourbon was even proclaimed by Mayenne under the name of Charles X. All the victories which made Henry’s name distinguished had been gained over Catholic foes. If full powers were conveyed to him, would his policy of depressing the leaguers not be continued? Henry came to an agreement. He consented to accept a conditional allegiance, binding himself to study the doctrines of the Catholic faith; to summon a states-general at Tours; to restore to the churches the goods of which they had been despoiled; and to limit the privileges of the reformers to the places in which they at present existed. These things were all to be done within six months. In reliance on these terms, he was recognised sole sovereign of France, and entitled to the obedience of all.

But Paris still resisted, and riots and massacres were continually renewed under pretence of religious fears, till Mayenne himself was glad to leave that city of contention and misrule, and take the field against the Man of Béarn, as he was insultingly called. The quality and composition of the contending forces had greatly changed. Mayenne, at the head of preponderating numbers, besieged Henry in Arques, and was only repelled by the union, which his great rival displayed, of the courage of despair and the calmness of military skill. With a mixed army of English, French, Germans, and Swiss, he found it difficult to keep them together, as his purse was low, and the diversity of tongues and nations prevented the unity of the force. To fight was the only way to combine those discordant elements; and on the 13th of March, 1590, the battle of Ivry took place.[d]

_The Battle of Ivry_

The plain on which the king desired to offer battle to the leaguers extends to the west of the river Eure, between Anet and Ivry; neither bank, hedge, nor any natural obstacle intersects it, but in the middle the ground slopes almost imperceptibly, so that the royal army, protected on the one side by the village of St. André, and on the other by that of Turcanville, could not be reached by the enemy’s artillery. Henry IV, having seen to the rest and refreshment of his forces, occupied this position on Tuesday, March 13th; his cavalry, which was almost entirely composed of nobles, and upon which he consequently placed most reliance as being more dependable in point of honour, he divided into seven divisions, each of them supported by two regiments of infantry. Marshal D’Aumont, the duke de Montpensier, the grand-prior assisted by Givry, the baron de Biron, the king, the marshal De Biron, and Schomberg, commandant of the _reiters_ (German troopers), were at the head of the seven divisions.

Whilst the army was taking up its position, it was joined successively by Duplessis, De Muy, La Trémouille, Humières, and Rosny, who, with two or three hundred horse, came from Poitou, Picardy, and the Île-de-France to take part in this much desired engagement. The last comers were nearly all Huguenots; up to now but very few had been numbered among the army.

The duke of Mayenne did not suppose that Henry wished to await him, but flattered himself he would overtake him in crossing some river in his retreat upon Lower Normandy, so hurried on his march in expectation of this, not without exposing his own forces to that disorder in which he expected to find the enemy. But on reaching the plain of Ivry, on the afternoon of March 13th, he beheld before him the royalists awaiting him, drawn up in order of battle with the advantage of position. He slackened his march to restore order to his forces, and did not come within range of the enemy until evening, when it was too late to contemplate beginning hostilities. The weather was very unfavourable, and the soldiers of the league, wearied by the cold rain they had experienced throughout their march, were forced to sleep in the open, only a few officers succeeding in pitching their tents, whilst the royalists established themselves for the night in the villages of St. André and Turcanville.

On the morning of Wednesday, March 14th, the royal army occupied the same position as on the previous day. The two armies were not ranged in order of battle until ten o’clock. D’Aubigné[e] relates that whilst putting on his helmet Henry addressed these words to his companions-in-arms: “My friends, God is for us! Behold his enemies and our own! Behold your king! At the enemy! If your ensigns fail you, rally round my white feather. You will find it in the path that leads to victory and honour!” These words were received with a universal cry of “God save the king!” and the battle began.

The royalist artillery directed their fire full upon the leaguers, who were exposed upon the rising ground; that of the league, on the contrary, was unable to reach the royalists, sheltered as they were in their hollow. Count Egmont, stationed at the extreme right of Mayenne’s army, would not wait for a third discharge from this artillery, and fell furiously upon the light cavalry of the grand-prior, which was opposite him and which he overthrew. With the same impetuosity he came up to the cannon of the king, which had cut up his company. “Friends,” cried he, “I will show you how the weapons of cowards and heretics should be served,” and, turning his horse at the same moment, he backed it up against the royalist guns. Not one of his warriors but wished he could boast of having done as much. They lost not only their time in this extraordinary manœuvre, but all Egmont’s cavalry fell into disorder. No longer carried forward by that impetus which constituted its strength, it was attacked simultaneously by Marshal d’Aumont, the baron de Biron, the grand-prior, and Givry. Egmont and his chief officers were killed, all his followers routed and cut to pieces.

In another part of the line the duke of Brunswick, who led the leaguers’ reiters, was also killed. These reiters were accustomed after each charge to pass through gaps left for the purpose between each battalion to form again behind the line; but the viscount de Tavannes, to whom Mayenne had intrusted the drawing up of his army in battle array, was so short-sighted that he mistook the interval that should be left between the corps, so that there was not sufficient space left for this manœuvre. Thus the reiters returning from the charge, bore down upon the duke of Mayenne’s squadron of lancers, and threw it into disorder. The duke was forced to repulse them at the point of the lance, for there was no room to manœuvre his horses, and whilst striving in vain to restore order, he was violently charged by the king, who perceived his predicament; he was routed and forced to fly to the woods. Soon all the cavalry of the league shared the same disastrous fate, the battalions of infantry, hitherto covered by the cavalry, now found themselves alone in the middle of the plain, and attacked on all sides by the king’s forces.

The Swiss, though as yet not routed, held up their arms in token of surrender, and were immediately given quarter by the marshal de Biron; the lansquenets, encouraged by this example, and at the same time weakened by this defection, also held up their arms, declaring that they surrendered. But Henry and his soldiers held them in particular abhorrence. Several of them had been already concerned in the treachery of Arques, where they had feigned to give themselves up; several, engaged by the Protestant princes to reinforce the royal army, had gone over to the enemy; the king declared that they had transgressed against martial honour, and that he would give them no quarter. The massacre lasted a whole hour, but whilst they were being killed without resistance, the king cried, “Spare the French and put the foreigners to the sword!” And, as a fact, after the _mêlée_ no more French were killed.

The fugitives of the league sought refuge, some in Chartres, some at Mantes. The bridge of Ivry, by which they made their escape, gave way, and the king’s cavalry, in order to pursue them, was forced to go by a longer route and to cross the Eure at Anet. The losses of the army of the league were nevertheless very considerable. Davila[f] reckons them at six thousand men; D’Aubigné,[e] calculating the armies as being weaker by one-half than his estimate, also reduces the loss of the leaguers by the same amount, namely one-half. Since the beginning of the civil wars no such brilliant victory had yet been won. Henry IV, victor at Coutras, victor at Arques, victor at Ivry, seemed to surpass his rivals both in military ability and good fortune, and the people rejoiced as much in his good luck as in his skill.[g]

After this a new power displayed itself, which had never played a part in the quarrels of a nation before. It was the brilliancy of the sayings of the new king, which spread all through France, the land of all others in Europe where a brilliant saying has most weight. After the combat of Arques, where he had been foremost in the attack, he wrote to his friend the duke de Crillon, “Hang yourself, brave Crillon; we have fought at Arques, and you weren’t there.” At supper, on the night before the battle of Ivry, he had spoken harshly to an old German of the name of Schomberg; and while he was marshalling the troops before the charge, he stopped his horse. “Colonel,” he said, “we have work before us, and it may chance I don’t survive; but I must not carry with me the honour of a gentleman like you. I beg your pardon for what I said last night, and declare you a brave and honourable man.” He embraced the colonel. “Ah! sire,” said the German in his broken language, “you kill me with your words, for now there is nothing for it but to die in your defence.” Schomberg did so. He rode up to the rescue of the king in the hottest of the fight, and fell before Henry’s eyes.[d]

_The Duke of Parma and the Spaniards_

The change that came over public opinion after the battle of Ivry raised the hopes of the royalists. Henry was no longer a contestant but the logical master of the realm. This feeling of the people caused Henry to move but half-heartedly against Paris where the strength of his opponents lay. He besieged the city, but he did not forget that the inhabitants were his own people. He permitted Mayenne to send out the useless people, said to number some six thousand.[a] Henry fed them, and soothed their fears. Some peasants were brought before him for having introduced provisions into the beleaguered town, and expected to be hanged for aiding the rebels. He gave them all the money he had in his purse. “The Man of Béarn is poor,” he said; “if he were richer, he would give you more.”

Compared to these actions and words of Henry, the conduct of his opponents was not only unchivalrous but unpopular. Divisions raged high among the leaders of the league. Mayenne wished to be king; the duke of Lorraine wished his son to be king; and when Henry of Guise, the son of Balafré, escaped from his prison of Tours, and joined the garrison of Paris, he also wished to be king. The infanta, or daughter of Spain, wished to be queen; and it did not need half the quickness which is always found in the French to perceive that, compared with any or all of his competitors, the man of the white plume and the generous spirit was the fittest occupant of the throne.

But a rigorous pontiff filled the Roman chair. Sixtus V would hear of no accommodation with a heretic, and Henry would hear of no recantation when his motives might be suspected. “Master first, disciple afterwards,” was his motto, and the war went on. The Sixteen, as the sections of Paris called themselves, were in the pay of Spain. Availing themselves of the absence of Mayenne, they encouraged the brutal populace to break out into a riot; they tore the more moderate of the judges from their seats and hung them, with their president, above the doorway of the court. Mayenne came back. Great was his fear of Henry, but greater his wrath against the Sixteen. He hanged four of them from lamp-posts in the street, and restored the ordinary municipal officers to their authority. But regular authority dislikes rebellion, and the now pacified city looked kindly on the legitimate heir.

Other opponents were driven over to his side by the injudicious aid his enemies received. Alessandro Farnese, duke of Parma, was the most famous general of the time, and had been chosen to bring the legions of Spain and the chains of the Inquisition over to France in the year of the Armada, 1588. He was now selected to head the same legions to support the fantastic claim of his master’s daughter. Henry was driven to extremities, for Alessandro was unluckily the most cautious of commanders, and always refused a battle. The daring gallantry of the royalists, with Henry at their head, fell back like sparkles of foam before the imperturbable solidity of the Spanish lines. They would not fight--they would not retreat--they solemnly performed the work assigned to them, the protection of a border or the relief of a town, but they would do nothing more. Alessandro of Parma had nothing of the hero in him except his courage, and trusted nothing to chance. Against policy like this the Man of Béarn had no defence. His allies were not united in their desires. The English wished to drive the Spaniards from the shores of Brittany and Normandy, where they would have been dangerous neighbours to Elizabeth; Henry wished to drive them from the middle of France and send them to the shore, where they could do least harm to himself. He could raise no taxes by the legal machinery of parliament and council, and would not lay hard contributions on the districts he held.

[Sidenote: [1590-1593 A.D.]]

He was the poorest of gentlemen, this most lovable of kings; and hints are given that his majesty’s apparel was not altogether free from darns, or his boots from holes in the leather. Nothing kept its gloss but the plume of white feathers which swayed above his head, and his bright sword and imperturbable good-humour.[d] But even this left him as he faced the almost certain defeat which a battle would mean. In August he wrote to Gabrielle d’Estrées: “The issue is with God. If I lose the battle thou wilt never see me again, for I am not one to flee nor to retreat.”

But Parma’s masterly generalship was more than a match for the king’s chivalric courage. He relieved Paris after it had been reduced to the most awful straits. Two hundred thousand are said to have perished of hunger and disease. There were rumours that mothers devoured their own children; the Protestants had made merry over the fact that the one cheap thing in Paris was sermons; but such fanaticism was yet bound to conquer the king. The relief of Paris was a victory for the Spanish party which was growing stronger in the capital. In 1592 the same story was repeated at Rouen. Once more Parma outmanœuvred the king. But a wound in the hand received before Candebec was destined to prove fatal to the great Italian, and the conqueror of Antwerp withdrew to the Netherlands, and, then turning back, died in the harness at Arras, December 3rd, 1592.

Henry’s fortunes revived with the fall of this redoubtable adversary.[a] He gathered all his forces for a last attempt upon Paris, and his enemies as usual played into his hands. Philip of Spain, who had united all classes and creeds of Englishmen in favour of Elizabeth by his insolent Armada, now was the creator of French union by his domineering conduct in France. Mayenne summoned a states-general at his request, and Philip there in no courteous terms stated his royal will; it was very short and very decisive--they were to accept his daughter as queen, that was all. A compromise was attempted; they would declare the duke of Guise king, and he should marry the infanta. Philip refused; his daughter should be queen in her own right, and then would marry Guise. Mayenne, who saw, whether it was king or queen, his pretensions were at an end, procured a resolution of the parliament of Paris, that “any sentence, decree, or declaration contrary to the Salic law, should be void and of non-effect.” Whatever strengthened the Salic law and the direct succession was a vote on the side of Henry of Navarre.[d]

_Henry IV and the League_

The league was now divided into two parties, the Spanish League and the French League, who conspired incessantly, sometimes together, sometimes against one another, to promote their personal interests. But meantime the great national instinct was gradually winning France over to Henry’s cause; men’s eyes turned to him as the only one able to put an end to war at home and abroad, and to bring about national unity. The burning question of the day was, would Henry turn Catholic? Rumours were rife; the question was openly discussed. Such being the case, it was only to be expected that Henry would boldly face the question himself and lose no time in finding an answer.

[Sidenote: [1593-1594 A.D.]]

And this he found most puzzling, notwithstanding his broad and independent mind. It is M. Guizot’s opinion that Henry’s religious creed was not based on mature or deep conviction, but was rather the result of first claims of his having been born in the reformed faith; and that it was a feeling of patriotism, a desire to save France from all the horrors of civil and religious wars, that decided him to abjure his religion. However that may be, he did so decide, and on the 16th of May, 1593, announced to his council his intention of becoming a Catholic. On July 15th, 1593, he assembled a conference of Catholic and Protestant divines at Mantes, and ten days after, on Sunday, July 25th, he solemnly abjured his Protestant creed at the church of St. Denis. Here then, says M. Guizot, was religious peace, a prelude to political reconciliation between the monarch and the great majority of his subjects. And now the Catholic Henry was crowned king of France,[81] the 27th of February, 1594.[a]

France has known few periods which can be compared to this time of Henry IV; few periods when she has been nearer to ruin and yet has raised herself from a state of terrible disturbance to one of glorious peace. A kingdom only just relieved from the exhaustion of prolonged strife, and threatened with downfall by the new religious doctrines; feuds which stir up struggles whose annals are stained by murder, and which are destined to end in a huge massacre; a crown rendered insecure by the claims of rival houses, and in turn making use of criminal measures as a means of vengeance or finding in them its own punishment; a prince whose birth seems to call him to the throne while his beliefs seem likely to deprive him of it forever; poverty, famine, the growing claims of the foreigner whose pretensions increase in proportion to the misfortunes of France; and in the midst of all these vicissitudes a nation which does not know where to look for help, nor in whose hands to trust its fate--what scenes! what years! what memories full of dark heroic grandeur!

The importance of contemporary events and the sombre majesty which seems to preside over all the actions of the league, make it difficult to pass judgment on it. It presents, both as regards things and men, such striking contrasts, it has passed through so many different phases, and has included under one name so many motives entirely opposed to one another, that it would be impossible to criticise it from only one point of view. And yet what contrary opinions it has elicited! Some have praised, while others have condemned everything connected with it. It has been handed down as entirely faultless or utterly blameworthy.

But through all this confusion one thing is clear, and sums up the whole matter--namely, that the conversion of Henry IV was the triumph of the league and the ruin of its members. The law of France was not entirely on the side of Henry IV nor wholly in favour of his adversaries; it was divided. The accession of the king of Navarre placed in opposition two principles which had hitherto been united: hereditary monarchy, whose claims this prince represented; and the national religion, whose doctrines he did not profess. Can it be denied, unless we bring to bear on the examination of this period ideas which belong to a different age, that the union of monarchy and Catholicism had become a part of the constitution just as monarchy itself had? And had not the country some right to insist on the maintenance of this union, which was one of the first laws imposed on the sovereign? One thing remains certain, and that is that after the league this union was re-established, and peace along with it; that Henry IV, when he became king, recognised its existence by promising to be instructed in the faith; that, with rare exceptions, the best of the royalists, the bishops, those hundred bishops who so firmly supported him, the chief generals of his army, and his parliaments, continually referred to and called upon the king to remember this promise, either in the hope of attracting to him the members of the league, or of inducing him to embrace their religion; in short that France, exhausted, a prey to the horrors of civil war, and in danger of the Spanish yoke, did not rally round Henry IV till after his abjuration, but, that abjuration once pronounced, she unanimously declared in his favour.

Who can be astonished at this? Who could fail to understand that a nation accustomed to mingle its faith and its history, finding amongst its Catholic princes its greatest kings, and knowing nothing of the Protestants but the unhappy dissensions which were the result of persecution on the one side and revenge on the other, must hate the idea of seeing on the throne, which was the centre to which its dearest traditions clung, a representative of that belief which was destroying those very traditions? Was the promise of Henry IV to respect the Catholic religion a sufficient guarantee at that time, when party strife ran so high, when political law was on all sides confounded with religious law and had everywhere followed the vicissitudes of the latter, and when an instance of a king professing a different religion from that of the nation he ruled was unknown? And, as if to emphasise the apprehensions of the leaguers, did not England furnish them with an example of a nation which had changed its religion three times to suit the pleasure of three successive monarchs? This resolution to maintain the Catholic religion on the throne of St. Louis, regardless of all political considerations, was not the predominant idea of one party only: the whole of France was strongly imbued with it.

The league was responsible for more than this. How can we forget that besides inculcating the principle which it succeeded in rendering triumphant, the league was the moving spirit of many excesses, that it abolished beliefs, or used them as means to an end, as best suited its purpose; that it was responsible for the frenzied actions of the famous faction known as the Sixteen, of which the very name is sufficient; that it appealed in turn to revolutionary and tyrannical theories; that it menaced the monarchy even before it had been threatened by the reform party; and that the result of this violent party feeling was to place before the nation the alternative that France must either have a Catholic king who was not legitimate or a legitimate king who was not a Catholic?

Of course the union of the two principles which constituted the monarchy found partisans and opponents in both camps. In both also there were many of those turbulent spirits who war against peace, who elevate hatred into a duty, and encourage strife on principle. Some of these exaggerated the rights of the king, others those of the pope; though they compromised the former by their violence, and disavowed their support of the latter by rising in rebellion when the king and the pope were reconciled to each other. In both camps also, wise and moderate men with a true understanding of religion and of France were advancing by different paths towards the same goal. Jeannin, Villeroi, and perhaps at certain moments the duke of Mayenne, were approaching the same goal as Luxemburg, the duke of Nevers, the bishop of Paris and the archbishop of Bourges. But the royalists had the good fortune to possess as their leader a prince who, personifying one of the two great principles, was soon to submit to the other; whilst the members of the league, divided against themselves, having no recognised head, in revolt against monarchic authority and yet having no special right to be considered as the representatives of the Catholic religion, lost ground by the want of consistency in their claims.[h]

The extravagant enthusiasm of the league had evaporated; in part it had been reasoned down by the mild and rational philosophy promulgated in the _Essays_ of Montaigne,[i] and in part scouted by the poignant ridicule of the _Satire Ménippée_.[j] These are the two chief literary works of the epoch--the former sufficiently known to every reader, the latter one of the finest specimens of political satire to be found in any language. It proved to the leaguers what Hudibras proved to the English Puritans--it exposed the absurdity and hidden selfishness of fanaticism, and showed that ridicule might be made a more effectual weapon than the sword.[k]

Henry, in his negotiations with the clergy, had ignored the ultramontanes, who leaned on Spain, but dealt with the patriotic national clergy. Whether Henry said that Paris was worth a mass or not,--and the saying was in accord with his wit and his sincerity,--he had left off conversion until he could deal with effect directly with the people, and not play over into the hands of the high Catholic party. France was ready for the act. By the end of 1593 the most of the kingdom had declared for Henry; the centres which had been in opposition, Meaux, Orleans, and Bourges, and finally Lyons gave in, and in the winter of 1594 he was crowned at Chartres,--Rheims not having yet declared for him. The papal absolution had not yet arrived and the higher clergy was mostly hostile still. But in March Paris opened its gates and Henry went to mass at Notre Dame amid the riotous joy of the citizens.[a]

_Opposition of the Pope and Philip II_

The only two powers who now delayed the recognition of the king were the pope and Philip. The Catholic Henry availed himself of the Pragmatic which had conveyed the patronage of abbeys and bishoprics to the crown, and turned the tables on the holy father by employing the honours of the church in pacifying the state. If a zealous leaguer still held back, hesitating to believe the sincerity of the conversion, he was convinced of the Catholicism of the most Christian king by the bestowal of the revenues of a vacant stall or rich deanery. Villars Brancas, a zealous papist and gallant soldier, who was governor of Rouen against the king, never gave credit to Henry’s attachment to the church till he was presented with two or three abbacies for his own enjoyment. Rouen then opened its gates, and the military abbot did suit and service to his orthodox and discriminating patron. All the leaders were softened by the same arts, and at last Guise and Montmorency were admitted into favour. Guise, a disappointed opponent, was made governor of Provence; and Montmorency, a discontented supporter, received the constable’s staff. Hatred, doubt, and bitterness of course lay for a long time in the hearts of the fanatical and ambitious. Clement VIII, the fifth pope who within four years had sat on the Roman throne, had not pronounced the absolution of Henry’s previous unbelief, and a youth, a pupil of the Jesuits, imbued with their principles, if not incited in this instance by their advice, attempted the murder of the king. His knife slipped, and only inflicted a trifling wound; but the whole nation was awake to the indignity of the action. The university and parliament pronounced against the Jesuits, and they were ordered from the soil of France. Henry confessed the step was necessary, but it was not legal, and in a few years he revoked the sentence of banishment, and allowed the society to return.[d]

[Sidenote: [1594-1598 A.D.]]

When the papal absolution came it was the sign of the end of the league, which collapsed when Mayenne made his peace early in 1596. The only revenge which the king allowed himself being, Sully[p] tells us, to lead him on a hot, tiresome tramp around the park of Soisson, which the gouty Mayenne must acquiesce in without grimace.[a]

Meantime Philip II refused to recognise the king of France under any other title than that of Prince of Béarn, and in other ways also showed his hostility. So in January, 1595, Henry formally declared war against Spain and a conflict began which lasted for three years. It is not worth while to follow step by step this monotonous conflict, pregnant with facts which had their importance for contemporaries but which are not worthy of an historical resurrection.[l] Several battles were fought, several towns submitted; Amiens surrendered in September, 1597, after a long siege, and with the fall of Amiens fell all the knights who had been raising their heads throughout France. The Peace of Vervins was signed May 2nd, 1598, four months before the death of Philip II. So the peace was made; and in it the aged sixteenth century seems to sink to rest. It closed the wounds of all that strife of three generations which began with the Reformation as a group of purely religious wars, and, after dreary epochs of civil contest, came to an end in which nothing was said as to matters of faith, an end heralded by the great Edict of Toleration.[m] A month previous to the signing of the treaty of peace Henry had signed and published the Edict of Nantes, defined by M. Guizot[l] as his treaty of peace with the Protestant malcontents. Hitherto there had never been anything but truces or armed neutrality.[a]

THE EDICT OF NANTES

The Edict of Nantes, in common with almost all measures which have been taken to redress grievances in times of disturbance, consisted of two distinct parts: one of temporary value and intended to meet the special circumstances of the case, the other calculated to endure, and dictated by fixed principles. Much has been said about the excessive privileges granted by the Edict of Nantes to the Huguenots. This special organisation, giving them quite a peculiar position in the state; those two hundred towns, where they were to be secure from interference, and which were placed for a time in their hands; those places, strong enough to endure a siege and against which the whole of the royal forces were no more than adequate, given up to them--these, as Sully declared, were concessions quite incompatible with the security of any government, and when Cardinal Richelieu, after two civil wars, cut down these privileges without interfering with the Protestant religion, it became evident that they were not at all necessary to insure liberty of conscience.

The measures which did insure that liberty formed the very basis of the Edict of Nantes. They secured to the Huguenots the free practice of the reformed religion throughout the greater part of the kingdom, excepting certain towns belonging to the league, where the Calvinists had realised that it was better not to settle. They provided that Protestants should enjoy the same civil rights as Catholics, and the very law for depriving people of hereditary rights on account of religious opinions, which was to be formally promulgated in England against the Catholics, was as formally suspended in France with regard to the Protestants. Lastly, not to mention the less important clauses, a chamber was created in parliament called the chamber of the Edict, an allowance was granted to the Protestants for their ministers and their schools, and they were admitted to the dignities and offices of state.

The true spirit of the Edict of Nantes, temporarily obscured by the granting of the concessions which it enumerated, is contained in these latter clauses which granted toleration to the Protestants while depriving the Reformation movement of any political character whatever. At a time when sovereigns and people were in the habit of shielding their ambition and their crimes under the name of religion, Henry IV consistently tried, in his relations with foreign powers, as well as in his own kingdom, to separate the two orders, and to maintain civil unity in the midst of religious dissension; civil unity being in his eyes not only a pledge of peace, but the presage of a still higher unity.

Besides this tolerance granted to the Protestants, there is also an evident desire to encourage where it was possible a reconciliation with the church, and to put an end simultaneously to persecutions and to religious differences. He had seen that persecution, far from destroying opposition, only tended to excite it, and that the persecution itself, by a sort of reaction, tended to become more virulent. He expressed this with striking eloquence in the parliament of Paris, saying: “After St. Bartholomew four of us who were playing with dice at a table saw drops of blood appear there, and finding that after they had been wiped away twice they returned a third time I said I would play no more; and that it was a bad omen against those who had shed it; M. de Guise was one of the party.” He had said elsewhere: “It is a clear proof of unreasonable excitement to begin the work of conversion by subversion, of instruction by destruction, by extermination, and by war, when one ought to begin by fraternity, admonition, and gentleness.” Whilst granting these liberties to the Protestants, whilst further developing the significance of the Edict by ordering it to be enforced in Béarn and in the places where Catholics were in a minority, whilst he instanced his own example in order to protect the latter from the harshness of Protestant rulers, Henry turned his attention to the church; strove to satisfy her claims, to secure her liberty, and by so doing to insure her ascendency. “I know,” he said to the clerical deputies in 1598, “that religion and justice are the pillars and the foundation of this kingdom, whose preservation depends on justice and piety; and where these do not exist I wish to establish them, but little by little, as I wish to do everything. I will, God helping me, act in such a way that the church will be in as good a state as she was a hundred years ago. I hope to satisfy you and my own conscience.”[h]

REORGANISATION OF FRANCE WITH THE AID OF SULLY

In 1598 Henry IV had driven out the foreigner, united Catholic and Protestant, and finally established peace in his domestic and in his foreign relations. It was now necessary to heal France from all the blows she had received. “I have hardly a horse on which I could fight,” wrote Henry in 1596: “my doublets have holes at the elbows and my pot is often empty.” The country was in a like condition. A contemporary estimated that, since 1580, 800,000 persons had perished by wars and massacres, that nine cities had been razed, 250 villages burned, 128,000 houses destroyed. And since the period preceding the league, what fresh ruin! Workmen without work, commerce interrupted, agriculture ruined, brigandage everywhere--that was the condition from which Henry must raise France. The nobility had proposed to him a means to get out of this distress; they offered him all the money necessary for the government and the maintenance of the army on the sole condition of a decree “that those who held governments by appointment might hold them as their property upon acknowledging them to be from the crown by simple liege homage, a thing that was formerly practised.” This thing formerly practised was precisely what royalty had incessantly been destroying piece by piece for two centuries, and Henry IV was less disposed than any of his predecessors to restore feudalism. On the contrary, it was by withdrawing France from the hands of these “tyrants” in order to govern it himself that he undertook to regenerate it.

Henry had already found the man who was to aid him in this work which was more difficult than that of the battle-field; a man of strong good sense, intrepid heart, and withal a wise mind, the Protestant Maximilian de Béthune, later duke of Sully. Born at the château of Rosny, near Mantes, in 1560, he was seven years younger than the king. At the time of St. Bartholomew he was studying at Paris. He attached himself to the king of Navarre and followed him in all his adventures and his battles, showing himself as brave as any. He was often wounded, for example at Ivry, whence he was borne apparently dying, when the king met him and “embraced him with both arms” as “a brave soldier, a true French knight.” Not a knight, however, after the paladins of romance, for though he attended well to the affairs of his master, he did not forget his own. He married a rich heiress, a Courtenay. He did not disdain the profits of war, the pillage of cities or the ransom of captives, nor even the profits of business; he bought horses at a low price in Germany and sold them in Gascony for a high price. Increasing his fortune in every honest fashion, he established order in his own house as he did in the public finances. But, devoted to the prince and to the state, this good manager cut down his forest of Rosny to take the proceeds to Henry when the latter was at the end of his resources; and the zealous Protestant advised the king to end the war by becoming a Catholic. Sully was neither a Colbert nor a Bayard; he had, however, some of the qualities of both.[n]

Sully introduced into the government the energy of a soldier, and into the prince’s household the same economy and punctuality as prevailed in his own. Having become superintendent of finances, and having assumed the supreme direction of this department, he laid the traditions of method and of that perfect efficiency which cannot exist without it. He performed a very important, very difficult, but not very brilliant work. He formed men and trained them so that they could satisfactorily carry on existing institutions. By his unfailing watchfulness, he succeeded in having the accounts systematically kept, and rendered peculation almost impossible. As most of the hereditary financial offices had gradually acquired an independence which had been fostered by the civil wars, Sully tried to reunite, as far as they were concerned, the ancient ties of centralisation, so as to secure the influence of the supreme power over them. He also wished to have the census taken regularly, and to insure an accurate statement of the budget being drawn up. He wanted to find out the exact value of the taxes, and to institute a regular system for their collection; finally he took advantage of the low rate of interest to reduce the pensions paid by the state.

This change, and a better system for farming the taxes and of securing their returns enabled him to leave the ministry, having made up the deficit, and leaving several millions of savings in the cellars of the Bastille. This accumulation was very valuable at a period when there was hardly any better way of providing for future emergencies than by laying by money. Sully was the first superintendent of finance whose memory was not execrated, and even remained popular. Let us hear what is said of him in an anonymous eulogium, written probably after his death, and which, in spite of its somewhat obscure language, contains a true appreciation of his administrative powers: “He only, up to the present time, has discovered the connection between two things in the government of states, which our forefathers were not able to unite, and which they even considered incompatible: the amassing of wealth in the royal coffers, side by side with the diminution of taxation and increasing prosperity of the people: the increase of the king’s wealth simultaneously with that of private individuals.”

Sully called agriculture and cattle breeding the two feeders of France; he made a point of encouraging agriculture, the interests of which had already attracted attention in the sixteenth century, and he diminished the rates though he could not succeed in compelling the nobles to pay them in those provinces where the assemblies claimed the right of levying them. As for commerce and manufactures, he did not yet recognise their importance. He looked upon them simply as ministers to luxury, just as he saw nothing in luxury but the extravagance of individuals and the corruption of the public mind. Fortunately Henry IV, who did not share these very military prejudices, instituted an elective chamber of commerce, granted many facilities to manufactures which were taking root or seemed likely to take root in France, protecting them by fixing tariffs, commanded the most competent men to draw up memoranda on the economic interests of the country, created or rather tried to create an India company, and assumed the exclusive right of legislating in commercial matters--a right which had hitherto been claimed by the representatives of the provincial governments.

We owe to Sully the institution of two important administrations, one for public works by which many valuable enterprises were at once undertaken, such as the draining of marshy places, and the construction of canals; the other in connection with the mines, the working of which, having been granted as a monopoly to companies by Charles VI and Louis XI, had not produced very good results. His reforms extended to almost every service. In the army responsibility and discipline were re-established, the stock of ammunition, artillery, etc., was augmented, the condition of the troops ameliorated, and provision made for the wounded and for veterans. The fifteen years of this ministry were too short, though much was effected during their course; Sully could not carry out all the plans he had conceived. The most important of these were to accustom the nobility to take part in business, to form a training school for statesmen in connection with the king’s council, which would have insured the maintenance of traditions and made the carrying out of reforms much easier. He retired “satisfied,” he said in his letter to Marie de’ Medici, “with having by his industry and ingenuity succeeded in reducing to order the most terrible confusion which had ever existed in the finances of France.”[b]

AMOURS AND SECOND MARRIAGE OF HENRY IV

[Sidenote: [1597-1599 A.D.]]

Let us inspect another phase of the character of Henry of Navarre. Let us turn from the warrior and the reformer to the man and the lover.

Who has not heard of the fair Gabrielle? Henry saw her first at the château of her father, during one of his campaigns, and became enamoured. He frequently stole from his camp in disguise, and crossed the enemy’s lines to visit her. A hundred stories are told of the romantic adventures he underwent whilst wooing. He won, and was happy. Never had illegitimate love a more flattering excuse. Compelled to espouse, when a boy, the abandoned sister of Charles IX, his wedding feast had been stained with the blood of his friend, and the dissolute Marguerite led a life such as might be expected from such a race and such espousals. Henry consoled himself in the affections of Gabrielle d’Estrées, whose society he loved, and to whom he was constant. She had borne him several children.

And now the wish of Henry was to obtain a divorce from his queen, and to sanction his connection with Gabrielle by a marriage. So serious and sincere was he in this that all his courtiers applauded the determination. Sully alone looked cold. Henry consulted him, and besought his advice; and the minister represented to him all the dangers of a disputed succession, of the pretensions of the young duke de Vendôme, who could not be legitimated, and of all the obvious objections to such a step. Henry was grieved: he saw the justice of the counsel, and remained irresolute. Gabrielle broke forth in invectives against Sully, and at length demanded his dismissal. Henry brought his minister by the hand into the apartment of Gabrielle, and entreated her to be reconciled to him. She persisted in her pride and in bursts of resentment. “Know, madam,” said Henry, harsh for the first time, “that a minister like him must be dearer to me than even such a mistress as you.” Gabrielle henceforth gave herself up to grief. The king was true and kind as ever. In the spring of the year 1599 she was advanced in a state of pregnancy. Henry, about to go through the pious ceremonies of Easter at Fontainebleau, felt it decorous to separate for a few days from his mistress. She retired to Paris, weighed down by despondency and the blackest presentiment. Astrological predictions were then the mode; and some imprudent or malevolent information of this kind tormented her: “We shall never meet again,” were her words on parting from the king, and they proved true. She was taken with convulsions, delivered of a dead child, and expired in a few hours. Henry had mounted on horseback at the first news, and was halfway on the road to Paris, when he was told it was too late. The brave Henry could not support this blow: he wellnigh fainted, and was obliged to be conveyed back to Fontainebleau. There he retired, and shut himself up to indulge his grief. Sully alone was able to console him, and rouse him, after a time, to the affairs of the kingdom.

[Sidenote: [1599-1600 A.D.]]