The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 11

Chapter XIV: Henry of Navarre, First of the Bourbons (2)

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It were to be wished, for Henry’s character, that his amours had ended here. His intention was to marry; and the niece of the grand duke of Tuscany, Marie de’ Medici, had already been mentioned. But the divorce had not yet been expedited by the pope; and the inflammable temperament of Henry took fire in the meantime with a new passion. Mademoiselle d’Entragues was the object, a being lovely indeed, but wanting alike the modesty, the sweet temper, and unambitious conduct of Gabrielle. She long enticed and tormented the monarch. Her father, the count d’Entragues, affected resentment and vigilance; and Henry had recourse to such disguise as he had formerly used to gain admission to Gabrielle d’Estrées. Henrietta d’Entragues had not the same taste: she is said to have so disliked the monarch in the humble dress of a gardener that she turned him from her presence. At length she obtained from Henry a promise of marriage in case that a son was born to her within the year, and Mademoiselle d’Entragues became marquise de Verneuil. Henry showed the contract to Sully, who, without other comment, tore and cast it under his feet. The king felt bound to write another; but in consequence of a stroke of lightning which fell on the house where the marquise resided, it ultimately became void. The fright which the lightning occasioned had the effect of destroying the hopes she had entertained of fulfilling her part of the contract, a stipulation indecent and unworthy of the monarch. Henry soon after was roused to a fuller sense of his dignity and of the nation’s weal. A divorce was by this time obtained; and he espoused Marie de’ Medici in the course of the year 1600.[k]

The duke de Bellegarde, a successful rival to Henry IV in the affections of several of his mistresses, had been sent by him to Florence to fetch the bride. The Tuscan princess, already twenty-seven years of age, had shown some inclination for gallantry. Paul Giordano Orsini, her first cousin, one of the nobles who accompanied her to the French court, was said to have inspired her with love. Concino Concini, grandson of a secretary of Cosmo, a young man of wit and pleasing appearance, but who had ruined himself by his licentiousness, came also in her train in search of fortune in France. With her also went Leonora Dori, a woman of low origin, remarkable for her slenderness and pallor, the daughter of a carpenter and of a woman of ill-fame. This woman, in attendance on the princess from her earliest infancy, had obtained a complete ascendency over her. Leonora had profited by her patronage to induce the noble Florentine house of Galigaï to bestow their name upon her. Marie gave her the post of tire-woman, destined by the king for a French lady. The new queen left Florence on October 13th, took ship at Leghorn for Marseilles, and proceeded from one festivity to another, until she arrived at Lyons on December 2nd.

It was not until December 9th that Henry, posting to Lyons, saw his queen for the first time. He was not greatly pleased with her stout figure, her round face, and her large, staring eyes. The queen had nothing endearing in her manner, nor was she of a cheerful disposition; she had no liking for the king, and did not pretend to show any; she did not propose to amuse or please him; her temper was peevish and obstinate. She had been brought up entirely according to the Spanish custom, and in the husband who appeared to her old and disagreeable she still suspected the relapsed heretic. Henry was detained at Lyons by the negotiations with Savoy, but the signing of the treaty of peace taking place on January 17th, 1601, he posted to Paris the next day, to be near the marquise de Verneuil, who pleased him far more than the queen, possessing precisely the charms, vivacity, and gaiety that the latter lacked.

(1573-1642)]

[Sidenote: [1601-1602 A.D.]]

After the departure of the king, Marie de’ Medici and all her court set forth for the capital; travelling by post, she only reached Paris on February 9th. The princess of Conti (Louise Marguerite de Lorraine) relates that the day of the queen’s arrival in Paris, “the king bade the duchess de Nemours (the first lady of the household) fetch the marquise de Verneuil, and present her to the queen. The aged princess attempted to excuse herself from so doing, saying she would lose all credit with her mistress; but the king insisted, and ordered her to do his bidding, and that somewhat rudely, which was contrary to his usual courteous habits. She therefore conducted the marchioness to the queen who, greatly astonished at the sight of her, received her with much coldness; but the marquise de Verneuil, very bold naturally, talked so much and so familiarly that she finally succeeded in forcing the queen to discourse with her.

“The king, tired of going two or three times a day to see the marquise, on perceiving that the queen had softened towards her, desired her to come to the Louvre where he had an apartment made ready for her. This, after some time, roused the jealousy of the queen, who had been entertained by several people with sayings of the marquise de Verneuil; who in truth, spoke of her freely enough and with little respect. The queen and the marquise were both enceinte, and the king seemed as if he did not know how to be on good terms with them both. He showed that respect to the queen to which her rank entitled her, but he was happier in the society of the marquise. Everyone wishing to please the king visited the latter, which was taken very ill by the queen. They dwelt so near one another as to be unable to avoid each other, and continual misunderstandings were the result.”[g] Sully was more than once called in to quiet their domestic broils. The birth of a son, afterwards Louis XIII, occurred at Fontainebleau in 1601 to allay the fears of a disputed succession, and also contributed to bind Henry to his queen.[k]

The king, though so well-wishing, never thought of cutting down the expenses of the court. Yet the desolation of the country, due to the civil wars, was appalling. The highways were lost in weeds and brambles, and wolves preyed on the country in great bands. Taxes could not be raised, so that finally the king gave up trying to collect arrears and in 1598 he gave up the taxes of 1594 and 1595.[a]

INTRIGUES OF DE BIRON

Another obstacle to the security and happiness of the monarch lay in the intrigues of his grandees. The people gave him little trouble; the turbulence of the civic class was over: they were ashamed, as well as weary, of the long disorders of the league, and in no way sought to renew them. Satisfied by the mild and economical management of the revenue by Sully, they applauded so beneficent a power, and forgot, or regretted not, that it was absolute. None clamoured for the states-general; they made loyalty a part of their religion; and abandoned all doctrines of liberty and republicanism to the hated Huguenots, who professed them.

The nobles, who were the contemporaries of Henry, could not find the same repose: they had lived a life of turbulence and war; they had been bred in intrigue, and in all the excitement of contending parties; peace could not content them. Then the life of a camp had placed them on a kind of equality with their monarch, who had terminated the war by yielding up the administering authority in the provinces to the several grandees. He had compounded with them, as much as conquered them; and the Protestant nobles had taken a position of equal independence with that of the Catholics. The high aristocracy, in fact, that Francis I so prudently kept down, had reconstituted itself in the subsequent reigns. They now made a covert, but not less serious proposal to Henry, choosing the duke de Montpensier, a stripling and a prince of the blood, to be their spokesman on the occasion. This demand was no less than to re-establish the old feudal system, by allowing the present governors of provinces to hold them in fief, and transmit them to their descendants. Henry was not a monarch to tolerate such a demand; and his angry reply struck young Montpensier with terror. The grandees determined to win by union and force what gentler means could not obtain. They conspired, leagued with Spain, with the duke of Savoy, and even with England, endeavouring to excite a malcontent party. Protestants as well as Catholics joined in this: the duke de Bouillon at the head of one, the proud Épernon representing the other. Such, however, was Henry’s power, and such his character for courage as well as promptitude, such, too, was the vigilance of Sully, that this intrigue could never be matured into a conspiracy. Henry’s frank and amiable temper won over many; and he never proceeded to punish the guilty until he had used every gentle means to admonish, to pardon, and recall them to duty.

The marshal De Biron was almost the only one of his nobles who still persisted in treasonable views. The king, on one occasion, had summoned him, charged him seriously, but not severely, with the crime, and showed him that he was well informed of his intrigues. Biron fell on his knees, confessed his weakness, but vowed that he would never more forsake the path of loyalty. Henry pardoned and embraced him. But Biron, vain and fickle, jealous even of his monarch’s fame, was weak enough to listen once more to the insinuations of Spain. The duke of Savoy, on a visit to Henry, manifested every sign of admiration for the king, while he occupied himself in corrupting the French courtiers, and in fomenting a party. He was ably seconded by the Spanish count de Fuentes. Biron was fascinated by the mighty promises of these intriguers: he was to have Burgundy as an independent state. The constable de Bourbon himself never received more magnificent promises. Nothing more displays the baseness and declension of the Spanish monarchy than its recourse to such weak and dishonourable machinations.

Henry soon after, wearied with the bad faith and subtle subterfuges of the duke of Savoy, made war on that prince. Biron was intrusted with the command, and in conducting it his treachery became manifest. One day, when Sully rode with him to view the siege of a fortress belonging to the duke, the former could perceive that the fire from the ramparts slackened, and was directed from them. Sully took the same ride alone on the following day, and was received with a heavy and well-directed cannonade. It afterwards appeared that the marshal had intended to entice the king into an ambuscade, where the fire of the enemy would have certainly proved fatal. The duke of Savoy, worsted by the arms of Henry, made his submission, and obtained peace. Biron continued his intrigues with Spain, in concert with the duke de Bouillon, with the count d’Auvergne, bastard of Charles IX, and probably with Épernon, and the whole body of the malcontent noblesse.

(1562-1602)]

The king was perfectly aware of these intrigues. Biron was betrayed by his chief counsellor and instigator, a person named Lafin. Henry saw Biron once talking with Lafin, and warned him, saying, “I know that man; he will lead you into evil.” But the marshal was deaf to advice. Henry did not at first place much credit in the revelations of Lafin, who accused Sully himself among others of the court. But the informer produced written documents, proofs of Biron’s connection with Spain. Biron was summoned to court. It was the king’s intention to reproach his ancient comrade, to endeavour to awaken his loyalty, shame him into a confession of his treason, and again pardon him. Sully received instructions to pursue the same conduct, and to try every means short of letting the marshal know that Lafin had confessed all. Biron and the count d’Auvergne came to court boldly. Henry drew the traitor apart, led him into familiar conversation, showed himself open, frank, forgiving, yet suspicious. Biron betrayed no misgivings, no repentance, no wish to remove his sovereign’s distrust. At last, as they arrived before an equestrian statue of Henry lately erected, which was ornamented with trophies, the king asked, “What would the king of Spain say were he to see me thus?” Biron, who felt that this was meant to try him, insolently replied, “Sire, he scarcely fears you.” Then correcting himself, he stammered out, “I mean in that statue, not in this, your person.” Henry smiled sorrowfully, and gave up his merciful and friendly purpose. Sully, on his side, exerted himself to the same effect, but in vain. Biron was hardened. It was only then that Henry gave orders for his arrest, and that of the count d’Auvergne. As they left the king’s chamber, their swords were demanded. They were conveyed by water to the arsenal. Biron was tried before the parliament, condemned, and executed. He evinced the greatest rage on the scaffold; it amounted to frenzy, and was excited by his horror of so disgraceful a death. The executioner was obliged to hide his sword, and strike off the head of the culprit unawares.

THE LAST YEARS OF HENRY’S REIGN

[Sidenote: [1602-1609 A.D.]]

The last years of Henry’s reign are scarcely marked by any important incidents. The few that did take place, such as the conspiracy of the family D’Entragues, and the weaknesses into which Henry’s amorous disposition led him, are exaggerated in importance, and narrated by historians with a detail they little merit. The punishment of Biron, which Henry meant as a warning to his discontented nobles, succeeded in keeping them in awe. If they intrigued, it was in fear, and with a caution that marred all progress or purpose. The count d’Auvergne alone, though pardoned for being implicated with Biron, renewed his schemes in conjunction with the marquise de Verneuil; this mistress treated the king with the capriciousness and severity which a wronged beauty might use towards a gallant more advanced in years; the monarch construed her caprice into infidelity; and a loving quarrel grew to be a serious misunderstanding. Henry withdrew the written document of the promise of marriage. The father and daughter, joined by the count d’Auvergne, plotted against the king, it was said against his life; and, as usual, they found support in a Spanish emissary. They were all three arrested, tried, and condemned to death; but Henry pardoned his mistress, as well as her relatives, and commuted their punishment into exile. The restless and false D’Auvergne was confined permanently in the Bastille.

Squabbles with his queen, Marie de’ Medici, on account of her Italian favourites, Concini and his wife; distrust of Sully, excited by the envious courtiers; these, with national improvements, negotiations, festivals, and hunting parties, bring the reign of Henry IV nearly to its close.

In 1609, its happy and glorious monotony was varied by the enthusiastic admiration which the aged monarch conceived for Mademoiselle de Montmorency, the young and lovely daughter of the constable, who had just appeared at court and eclipsed all its beauties. There is some difference of opinion as to the nature of Henry’s admiration: the memoir writers of the age saw scandal in every connection; and certainly Henry’s past life and his known failings incline to the worst side. Bassompierre,[o] then a young man, relates that he himself became a suitor for the beauty’s hand, and that he was induced by the entreaties or commands of the enamoured king to desist. Bassompierre was a babbler, however, whose vanity breaks out in the arrogance of the mere pretension. The young prince of Condé was also smitten, but shrank back from so formidable a rival as the monarch. What belies the account of Bassompierre is that Henry came forward, and assured Condé that he might woo in all confidence, and that he had nothing to fear on that score from his king. If Henry had licentious views, Bassompierre, and not Condé, would have been the convenient husband of Mademoiselle de Montmorency.

Condé was the successful suitor, and the marriage was celebrated at court with unusual splendour. Henry, having given his word to the prince, indulged his predilection for the lovely bride by showering presents and favours upon her and her husband. The court, full of the malevolent, amongst whom the followers of the jealous queen were not the least forward, construed all these symptoms to be the homage of a guilty passion: they poured this in the prince’s ear; and Condé, alarmed for his wife’s honour, carried her off from the court by stealth, first to Picardy, whence, on receiving a summons from the king to return, he made a second flight, and gained the Low Countries. The king showed himself strangely affected by this incident: the discovery of Biron’s conspiracy did not cause him more trouble. Sully was called up in the night; and the whole court was roused by the agitation of the monarch, who was pacing and stamping up and down the chamber of the queen, while the courtiers stood “pasted to the walls,” says Sully, lest they should interrupt the monarch’s passion. The flight of the first prince of the blood, and his taking refuge with the Spaniards, was certainly a grave question, love and jealousy being set aside. The king demanded Sully’s advice, who hesitated, but being forced, advised him to “do nothing.” “Nothing!” said Henry; “call you that advice?” Sully replied that the escape of the prince was a matter of little importance, unless the king chose to make it important by raising a clamour, and showing that he took an interest concerning it. Henry, however, was not in a humour to treat the matter thus slightly and thus wisely: he instructed his ambassador to demand of the archduke to deliver up the prince and princess of Condé; and, as Sully foresaw, the court of Brussels, in refusing, filled Europe with calumnies against Henry; asserting that he wanted to take by force the wife of the first prince of the realm and of the blood. When Henry, immediately afterwards, menaced war, the outcry was that Europe was about to be deluged in blood for another Helen.

It was, indeed, unfortunate that Henry, who had remained so many years at peace, no doubt preparing and amassing the materials and resources of war, and cautiously awaiting fit pretext and proper reason, should now draw the sword for a cause at once criminal and absurd.[k]

_Grand Design of Henry IV; His Death_

[Sidenote: [1609-1610 A.D.]]

At home the rest of Henry’s reign was perhaps monotonous; but it was none the less momentous, for on the ruins of France the Bourbon monarchy was already building up the centralised absolutism which it was the work of Richelieu to perfect and Louis XIV to wield. But in foreign affairs the schemes of Henry were not less far reaching. France was to become the centre of European politics, the dictator of Germany. In Sully’s _Economies Royales_ we may read of the details of the great scheme which anticipated that of Napoleon by two centuries. But such details are the work of subsequent addition and the plan of making Europe into a grand republic of fifteen states with well-balanced interests, etc., was perhaps not so clearly conceived even by Sully as historians have been accustomed to state. But some such design was undoubtedly behind the foreign policy which Henry was inaugurating at his death. He possibly intended to unite with France the Flemish, Dutch, and North German states in a movement that would overthrow Spain and Austria. His own statements make this plain.[a]

Henry IV had expressed on many occasions and had incessantly repeated in his diplomacy the end which he had in view. His object was to restore the cities and states of the empire to their former rights and liberties, to assure the liberty of the United Provinces, to base the politics of France upon the alliance of the secondary states, in the north the United Provinces, Denmark, Sweden, and the German principalities, in the south, Switzerland, Savoy, and the Italian principalities; finally to extend his system of religious tolerance so as to guarantee liberty everywhere to the dissenters from the established cult, whether these dissenters might be Catholics, Lutherans, or Calvinists; and to prevent religious wars or religious pretexts assigned to purely political wars and enterprises. He had long since declared to all the courts of Europe that he had ended the era of civil war in France and wished to end it everywhere else.

However it may be as to these observations, France, according to him, must pursue a double end in her foreign relations, lay the foundations of perpetual peace, and drive the Turks from Europe. In order to bring about perpetual peace it would be necessary to reduce the possessions of Austria, establish a certain balance of power, and create periodical diets or congresses, either for this or that category of states or for all Europe, with federal armies and fleets to execute the decisions made in common.[b]

He now resolved to realise his dream: but this, which had been a vision of heroism and philanthropy, was now degraded and sullied by the immediate motive. Henry, who was passionately fond of glory, saw the stain that was to rob his achievements of their brightness and purity. The accusation of the Spaniards troubled him: perhaps there was even truth in the reproach that the love of a sexagenarian king for a princess, and a married princess of twenty, was the only cause and pretext for convulsing Europe and shedding its best blood. This weighed upon Henry, and fretted him: his gaiety disappeared. Remorse and mortification came to cloud the heaven of his declining days. A dark presentiment, similar to that which had forewarned his loved Gabrielle of her fate, now gathered around Henry: he could not shake it off.

He intended leaving the queen as regent during his absence at the head of his army; and her previous coronation, a ceremony that had not yet taken place, was considered requisite. This detained him in the capital; and Marie de’ Medici, fond of state and ceremony, insisted on it, and delighted in it. Henry was annoyed and fretted: he frequently said he should never leave Paris alive, and he longed to contradict his presentiment. The coronation of the queen at length took place. On the following day, the 14th of May, 1610, he manifested strong feelings of despondency. Despatches brought him word that his enemies were making no preparations for defence, and that they gave out that the delivery of the prince and princess of Condé would at once allay his choler and arrest his schemes. This increased his ill humour: he called for Sully; but learning that his minister was ill at the arsenal, the king’s coach was ordered to convey him thither. Seven of the suite occupied with the king his ample carriage. The duke d’Épernon was in one corner, and Henry next to him. The vehicle proceeded, but was stopped in the narrow rue de la Ferronnerie by two loaded carts. This was the moment chosen by an assassin, Ravaillac, who, mounting on the step, and leaning full into the carriage, struck the king with a poniard, first in the stomach, and then in the breast. One of these stabs pierced the heart of the noble Henry.

To paint the rage and despair of the people would be impossible. The once detested Henry had won every heart; and the general grief for him partook of the character of madness. Tears were the least tokens of sorrow; many died on learning the catastrophe, amongst others the brave De Vic, the comrade of Henry. The lifeless body was borne to the Louvre, whilst Ravaillac, who made no attempt to escape, was taken, brandishing his dagger, and only preserved by the guards from being instantly torn in pieces. He had been a monk, strongly imbued with the king-killing principles that the Jesuits had broached. His crime had long been meditated by him; but no proof exists that he had been instigated either by Spain or by any knot of malcontent courtiers. Suspicion, indeed, has scattered its stain on all with an unsparing hand. Épernon, the queen, Concini, and many others, were accused as being privy to the deed; and the record of Ravaillac’s trial having been destroyed, whilst these personages possessed the chief influence, gives some colour to the charge. But the tortured culprit might idly or malevolently cast imputation on the powerful, as indeed he menaced to do. For when some one pressed him to name his accomplices, Ravaillac answered, “Suppose I name you.” The seed of his crime was the diabolical maxim to which the fanaticism of the league had given birth, and which it had rendered popular. It had germinated and grown in the dark solitude of a rancorous and fanatic spirit.[k]

CHARACTER AND POLICY OF HENRY IV

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

There are two Henry IV’s; the Henry of tradition and the Henry of history. The one more heroic and, thanks to Voltaire,[q] more popular; the other, underneath his crafty good nature, much more able and, with his pliant character, much better fitted to raise a falling edifice than a simple character would have been. Henry of Navarre had the most brilliant bravery, a quality common to the warriors of that time and of all times. But it is pleasing in a prince, and the chief who is ever ready to offer his life to the sword point is sure to win his soldiers’ hearts. Reared among the mountaineers of the Pyrenees, he possessed an agility equal to theirs and a body incapable of fatigue. The vicissitudes through which he had passed had made his religion uncertain. Charles IX said to him, “Death or the mass!” He took the mass; later he abjured, and this abjuration was not to be the last. So he felt no anger against those who professed a different doctrine; his nature made fanaticism odious to him, and his position imposed tolerance upon him. Furthermore, he was a good comrade, showing the same face to good or to ill fortune. He bent under misfortune but did not break, and found resources in the most desperate situations. He loved pleasure, but not as it was loved by Henry III. He was kind through good nature as well as experience of life. He had friends who, it is true, got from his friendship more good words than good results; but his heart was open if his hand was closed, because he was for twenty years the chief of a party obliged to give much and to take nothing except from the enemy.

One night when D’Aubigné[e] and La Force were sleeping not far from the king, the former complained bitterly to the latter of their master’s stinginess. La Force, overcome by fatigue, did not listen. “Don’t you hear?” asked D’Aubigné. La Force roused himself and asked what he was saying. “Why, he is telling you,” cried the king, who heard everything, “that I am a harsh, miserly fellow and the most ungrateful mortal on the face of the earth.” “He did not treat me worse on account of it,” adds D’Aubigné, “but he did not give me a quarter of a crown more.”

His forced residence at the court of the Valois had been fatal to his morals. For several years he forgot his rôle and his fortune. After the death of the duke of Anjou, Duplessis-Mornay wrote to him: “Pastimes are no longer in season. It is time for you to make love to France.” Henry felt this rebuke; he gave up his pleasures and put on his cuirass.[n]

In Sully’s _Mémoires_ we find this description of him[82]: “Such was the tragical end of a prince, on whom Nature, with a lavish profusion, had bestowed all her advantages, except that of a death such as he merited. I have already observed that his stature was so happy, and his limbs formed with such proportion, as constitutes not only what is called a well-made man, but indicates strength, vigour, and activity; his complexion was animated; all the lineaments of his face had that agreeable liveliness which forms a sweet and happy physiognomy, and perfectly suited to that engaging easiness of manners which, though sometimes mixed with majesty, never lost the graceful affability and easy gaiety so natural to that great prince. With regard to the qualities of his heart and mind, I shall tell the reader nothing new by saying that he was candid, sincere, grateful, compassionate, generous, wise, penetrating.

“He loved all his subjects as a father, and the whole state as the head of a family; and it was this disposition that recalled him even from the midst of his pleasures to the care of rendering his people happy and his kingdom flourishing; hence proceeded his readiness in conceiving, and his industry in perfecting, a great number of useful regulations. Many I have already specified; and I shall sum up all by saying that there were no conditions, employments, or professions to which his reflections did not extend; and that with such clearness and penetration, that the changes he projected could not be overthrown by the death of their author, as it but too often happened in this monarchy. It was his desire, he said, that glory might influence his last years and make them at once useful to the world and acceptable to God; his was a mind in which the ideas of what is great, uncommon, and beautiful seemed to rise of themselves: hence it was that he looked upon adversity as a mere transitory evil, and prosperity as his natural state.

“I should destroy all I have now said of this great prince if, after having praised him for an infinite number of qualities well worthy to be praised, I did not acknowledge that they were balanced by faults, and those, indeed, very great. I have not concealed, or even palliated his passion for women; his excess in gaming; his gentleness often carried to weakness; nor his propensity to every kind of pleasure: I have neither disguised the faults they made him commit, the foolish expenses they led him into, nor the time they made him waste; but I have likewise observed (to do justice on both sides) that his enemies have greatly exaggerated all these errors. If he was, as they say, a slave to women, yet they never regulated his choice of ministers, decided the destinies of his servants, or influenced the deliberations of his council. As much may be said in extenuation of all his other faults. And to sum up all, in a word, what he has done is sufficient to show that the good and bad in his character had no proportion to each other; and that since honour and fame have always had power enough to tear him from pleasure, we ought to acknowledge these to have been his great and real passions.”[p]

_Martin’s Estimate of Henry IV_

The whole reign of Henry IV, after the Peace of Vervins, had been but a preface; the half-opened book is closed forever! All the past glory of the Béarnais would have been eclipsed by the magnificent results that his policy had prepared and that his arms were to realise. In spite of the exertions and the excesses of his life his robust constitution still promised him some years of military activity, enough without doubt to make sure if not of the complete triumph, at least of the predominance of his European system; his heirs would have done the rest! The politics of France, allied with the Protestants without being absorbed by Protestantism, triumphing by the aid of the entire foreign and French Reformation, would have been started beyond recall upon the paths of international equity, intellectual liberty, and religious tolerance. Henry IV would have made splendid reparation for the faults of Francis I and himself. He would not have abjured Catholicism, but with his victorious sword he would have obliterated his coronation oath and the humiliation of Roman absolution. Germany would not have seen the Thirty Years’ War, nor France the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The seventeenth century would have had all its glory without its fatal errors.

God did not grant it him! Henry IV bore to the tomb not only the European system which he intended to inaugurate but all the elements of order and power that he had given to his country. France fell from the height to which he had raised her, until the day when a powerful genius came anew to bring order into chaos and to revive in part the policy of Henry, but under much less favourable conditions. This genius was that of an individual, not that of a king, and Henry IV has remained the greatest and above all the most French of the kings of France; not again has there been seen on the throne a soul so national, an intellect so liberal. No one ever felt better than he the true destiny of France. It is not without reason that the popularity of Henry has increased with the growth of the modern spirit; it is not without reason that the eighteenth century tried to make him the epic hero of French history. The labouring classes have never forgotten the king who was to them the most sympathetic in manners and in heart, the king who occupied himself most seriously with the interests of the soil and of labour. Thinkers will never cease to honour in him the forerunner of a new Europe, the just and profound mind whose diplomatic plans are to-day in many respects the politics of the most enlightened men, and finally the champion and martyr of the most sacred of liberties, that of conscience.[c]

Having listened thus to a contemporary and to a modern French estimate of the great ruler, let us take a parting glance at him through the eyes of a scarcely less appreciative English historian.[a]

STEPHEN’S CHARACTERISATION OF HENRY IV AND HIS TIMES

It has been said of Henry IV [says Sir James Stephen], with equal truth and force, that he was l’Hôpital in arms. The principles which had been asserted by the wisdom and the eloquence of the great chancellor became triumphant by the foresight and the conquests of the great king. In an age of wild disorder and overwhelming calamity, he was raised up to restore his kingdom to affluence and to peace. He appeared to rescue his Protestant subjects from the tyranny which had so long denied to them the freedom of conscience. He came to give a firm basis to the national policy, and to open to his people at large a new direction, and a wider scope, for the martial energies by which they had hitherto been at once so highly, and so ineffectually, distinguished. For these high offices he was qualified by great talents, and by many virtues. With a capacity large enough to embrace all the social, military, and political interests of his dominions, he combined that practical good sense and flexibility of address, without which there is no safe descent from the higher regions of thought to the real business of life. The intuitive promptitude, and the enduring stability, of his resolutions attested at once his large experience in affairs, and his wide survey both of the resources at his command, and of the contingencies to which he was exposed. He possessed that kind of mental instinct which advances by the shortest path to what is at once useful and possible, and which turns aside, with unhesitating decision, from any illusive and impracticable scheme. Never was a great innovator more characterised by practical wisdom; and never did such wisdom assume a more attractive aspect. His manners exhibited all the graces of his native land in their most captivating form. Delighted with his bonhommie, his gaiety, and his frankness, his subjects not only forgave his vices, but even found in them a fascination the more. They smiled at the scandalous amours of their gallant monarch as a not unbecoming tribute paid by human greatness to human infirmity. If they looked with awe on the desperate valour of his enterprises, on the inflexible rigour of his discipline, or on the soaring ambition of his political designs, they were reconciled to the stern character of the prince by the ever-flowing and genuine sensibilities of the man. If his lofty sense of his personal and ancestral dignity sometimes gave an austere aspect to his intercourse with his people, that pride of birth did but enhance the charm of his quick sympathy with the feelings and interests of the meanest of them. And, above all the rest, every Frenchman loved and admired in Henry the lover and admirer of France; and became patriotically blind to the faults of his renegade, and debauched, but still patriot, king.

And even now, when the spell is broken, and we may look back on the life of Henry IV with judicial impartiality, and reprobate the apologies which would have elevated his crimes into virtues, we cannot conceal from ourselves the fact that he conferred on his people benefits which well entitled him to their lasting gratitude.

For, first, Henry of Navarre was the founder of religious toleration in France. Until the Edict of Nantes there had been many truces, but no real peace, between the adherents of Rome and the followers of Calvin. To compel all the fragments of the Christian church to coalesce into one body, each member of which should hold the same opinions, and worship under the same forms, had been the inflexible policy of all his predecessors. To acquiesce in their separation, and yet to maintain each section in the nearest possible approach to an equality both of civil and religious privileges, was the no less inflexible design of Henry. His charter could not, indeed, restore unity to the church, but it established, on what seemed a secure basis, the unity of the state. The two religions were thenceforward placed under ecclesiastical laws widely differing from each other, but under a civil law common to them both.

The second great praise of the first of the Bourbon line is that of having rescued France from the abyss of bankruptcy and financial ruin in which it had been involved by the improvidence of the house of Valois. For the completion of that great work the larger share of honour is, indeed, due to Sully. But from his own _Economies Royales_ we sufficiently learn that, unaided by the magnanimity, the self-denial, and the affection of the king, not even the zeal, the courage, and the sagacity of the great minister would have accomplished that herculean labour.

The third title of Henry to the place which he has ever held among the benefactors of France, has at all times been acknowledged by Frenchmen with more enthusiasm than any other of his services. He was the first of her kings who had at once the discernment to perceive how high a station belonged to her in the European commonwealth, and the energy to devise the methods by which that rank might be effectually vindicated.

It is not, however, on these grounds alone, that the reign of Henry IV occupies a memorable position in the constitutional history of his country. It was a period of great consummations and of great beginnings. Like some inland sea, which is at once the receptacle of many converging, and the source of as many diverging, streams, it was interposed between two eras strikingly contrasted with each other. It marked the close of the mediæval sovereignty, and the commencement of the modern monarchy,--the first a dominion of undefined rights, of unsettled habits, and of a fluctuating policy,--the second, a government absolute in fact and in right, severely consistent in its arbitrary principles, but elaborately adapted to the various exigencies of a civilised commonwealth. The hitherto unorganised elements of the state were now, for the first time, reduced into a political unity. The invidious distinctions of earlier times now began to give place to social equality; and the slow, though steadfast, progress of that unity and of that equality may be considered as the subject of the whole of the subsequent history of France. In the triumph of these two principles consists the peculiar distinction, and the chief boast, of the French policy, whether monarchical or republican, of later times; and, therefore, the age of Henry IV when considered as the origin of these great national characteristics, demands, and will repay, the most diligent attention.[r]

FOOTNOTES

[81] THE HOUSE OF BOURBON

[82] [It must be recalled that Sully’s estimate is that of a comrade in arms and a counsellor. It is a flattering tribute rather than a calmly judicious one.]

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The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 11Chapter XIV: Henry of Navarre, First of the Bourbons (2)

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