XIV. HENRY OF NAVARRE, FIRST OF THE BOURBONS…

XIV. HENRY OF NAVARRE, FIRST OF THE BOURBONS

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.]]

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.

[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.

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

=Louis IX= | +--------------+---------------------------+ | | =Phillip III= Robert, c. of Clarmont, m. Beatrix, heiress of Bourbon | Louis, d. of Bourbon, 1541 | +---------------------------------------+ | | Peter, d. of Bourbon, James, c. de la Marche, 1356 1362 | | Louis, d. of Bourbon, John, c. de la Marche, 1393 1410 m. Catherine, heiress of Vendôme | | John, d. of Bourbon, +-----------+----------+ 1488 | | | James, c. de la Marche, | | 1438 | +--------------------------------+ | | | | Charles, d. of Bourbon, Louis, c. of | 1456 Montpensier | | | | +-------+----+---------+ | | | | | | | John II Charles Peter II | | 1488 1488 | | Gilbert, c. of Montpensier, | 1496 | | | +------------------------------+ | | | | Charles, Constable of France, 1527, Francis, 1525 | d. without male issue | | Louis, c. of Vendôme, 1446 | John, c. of Vendôme, 1478 | Francis, c. of Vendôme, 1495 | Charles, d. of Vendôme, 1537 | +-------------------+--------------+--------------+----+ | | | | Antoine, d. of Vendôme, Francis, Charles, Louis, m. Jeanne d’Albert, d. of Enghlên Cardinal Bourbon Prince of Condé q. of Navarre, 1562 (Charles X) | =Henry IV=, 1610 m. (1) Margaret, d. of Henry II m. (2) Mary de’ Medici

[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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XV. THE LITERARY PROGRESS OF FRANCE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

“It is in Rabelais, in the satire of Ménippée, and in Montaigne that we shall find principles of social justice, ideas of reformation, expressed with as much profundity as eloquence; in these writers they are scattered, hidden under buffoonery in Rabelais, tempered by philosophical insouciance in Montaigne; but they bear witness to the extent to which the study of antiquity, the religious struggles, and the civil war had set political ideas in motion. The great history of the President de Thou marked in the highest degree the spirit of legal freedom under the monarchy. Calvin had been the despotic legislator of a democracy, yet the Reformation everywhere raised the questions of civil liberty involved in the question of religious liberty; and as the governments of the Middle Ages owed their origin to the church the political innovators owed theirs to dissenting theologians.”--VILLEMAIN.[b]

While we have followed the fortunes of Henry of Navarre another century has been rounded out. Almost a hundred years have passed since Francis I came to the throne; more than half a hundred since that monarch laid down the sceptre. It has been a troublous epoch for France as we have seen: a time of foreign and civil wars that would have disrupted a less stable civil organisation. Yet the new forces of the Renaissance and the Reformation were making themselves felt throughout this period, and, as so often happens, the time of military strife has been also a time of social development. Some phases of this development we have studied, particularly in connection with the reign of Francis I; it remains to mention in some detail the work of three great writers who made this century memorable in French literary annals. We have already cited a comment of Villemain on the retardation of the French literary Renaissance. How marked this retardation was will be even more evident when we reflect that the century which has just been rounded out saw Italian culture in its decadence, and that the immediate period of Henry IV is precisely contemporary with the age of Elizabeth in England,--the time of Bacon, Ben Jonson, and Shakespeare; whereas French literature is only at its beginnings. Notable beginnings these are however, for the names that we now have to chronicle are those of Rabelais, of Calvin, and of Montaigne. It is true that Stephen, whom we quote now somewhat in extenso, cites this trio as the second great literary triumvirate of France; having named Joinville, Froissart, and Comines as the great triumvirate of an earlier period. In the widest view this classification no doubt is just; yet it can hardly be asserted that these earlier chroniclers are classic in the same sense as are Rabelais and Montaigne. The earlier writers are preserved more for their method than for their manner; and it is only work in which literary form takes precedence over mere fact that can be classified on the highest plane of art. According to this standard, the work of Calvin scarcely belongs beside that of Rabelais and Montaigne; yet a study of French literary development in the sixteenth century from which that work was omitted would be obviously incomplete. Let us glance then at the work of these three greatest French writers of the sixteenth century, between whom, as Sir James Stephen asserts “the parallelisms are as remarkable as the contradictions.” Taking them in the order of time we have first to consider the great humourist Rabelais, mention of whose work has already been made when we were speaking of the French Renaissance of the middle of the century.[a]

Rabelais, the son of an innkeeper at Chinon, was born at that place in the year 1483.[83] He became a Franciscan friar, a deacon, and a priest in holy orders; and then, at the mature age of forty-two, commenced the study of medicine in the college at Montpellier. Various medical treatises were the fruit of those labours; and the reputation derived from them was sufficient to obtain for him the office of physician to the public hospital at Lyons. But his professional books proving unsaleable, Rabelais, to indemnify his bookseller, wrote and published his Pantagruel, or Chronique Gargantuine, of which (as he says) more copies were sold in two months than of the Bible in ten years. Having thus discovered the secret of his power, he next produced the Gargantua; the work which has secured for him the admiration of all subsequent ages, though the reverence of none. It is a romance in which Rabelais may be considered as depicting the habits, opinions, errors, crimes, and follies of that age of religious and intellectual revolutions, in the centre of which he lived. Yet the critics have doubted, and must ever continue to doubt--whether Gargantua and his son Pantagruel are actual portraits of those who led the armaments (literary, theological, or military) of those times, or are mere impersonations of those abstract qualities by which the world was then governed--whether Panurge and Friar John had any living prototypes amongst the men of the sixteenth century--or whether the one is but a name for mediocrity, ceasing to be honest as it becomes conspicuous; and the other a name for sensuality, rescued from contempt by a shrewd and jovial spirit. But why investigate these and such other riddles, proposed by their author in avowed defiance of any such attempt? Why, indeed, read at all a book of which not only the general scope, but almost every page is enigmatical? Why squander time and patience on a writer who, of set purpose, makes his readers dependent on the guidance of some dull and doubtful commentator? For those passages which do reward the toil of the student are separated from each other, not only by this profound obscurity, but by foul abysses of impurity, which no skill or caution can always succeed in overleaping. I know not how to describe them in terms at once accurate and decorous, except by borrowing Mr. Carlyle’s denunciation of a work of Diderot’s, and saying with him, or in words resembling his, that he who, even undesignedly, shall come into contact with these parts of Rabelais’ great work, should forthwith plunge into running waters, and regard himself, for the rest of the day, as something more than ceremonially unclean.

Yet he whose business, or whose determination, it is to appreciate aright the civil, and therefore the literary, history of France, must needs pay this heavy price of knowledge. For, in that history, the romance of Gargantua is an indispensable link. From the revival of heathen antiquity, Rabelais had gathered a mass of learning resembling the diet of his own Pantagruel, who had 4,600 cows milked every morning for his breakfast. From the revival of Christian antiquity, he had learned to despise the authority and the superstitions of the church of Rome; without, at the same time, learning to reverence the authority and the doctrines of the Gospel. He thus traversed the boundless expanse of human knowledge. He traversed it under the guidance of his own wit, sagacity, and humour, a wit, vaulting at a bound, from the arctic to the antarctic poles of thought; a sagacity embracing all the higher questions of man’s social existence, and many of the deeper problems of his moral constitution; and a humour which fairly baffles all attempts to analyse or to describe it. For it was the result, not of natural temperament alone, but also of the most assiduous and severe studies. The language of Greece had become as familiar to him as his mother-tongue; and, while he learned from Galen and Hippocrates to investigate the properties of living or of inert matter, he was trained, by Plato, to spiritual meditation, and by Lucian to a scepticism and a buffoonery, alike audacious and unintermitted. From the union of such a disposition and of such discipline, emerged the strange phenomenon of a philosopher in his revels. In contemplating it one knows not, as it has been well said, “whether to wonder most that such wisdom should ever assume the mask of folly, or that such folly should permit the growth and development of any true wisdom.” It is, however, an apparent, rather than a real, difficulty. The wisdom is never sublime, and the folly but seldom abject. Each is but a different aspect of a nature, of which the parts are, indeed, inharmonious, but not incompatible--of a genuine Epicurean gifted with gigantic powers, but of cold affections, and of debased appetites; ever worshipping and obeying his one idol, pleasure, though at one time she bids him soar to the empyrean, and at another commands him to wallow in the sty.

Rabelais was wise in the sense in which any man may be so who delights in the strenuous exercise of a powerful understanding, and loves thinking for thinking’s sake. He was wise to detect popular fallacies, and to discern unpopular truths. He was wise to see how the young might be better educated, laws better made, nations better governed, wars more vigorously conducted, and peace more securely maintained. He was wise to call down both theology and philosophy from the skies above to the earth beneath us. And he was not more wise than eloquent; sometimes arraying truth in the noblest forms of speech, though more frequently enhancing her beauty by enveloping and contrasting her with the homeliest. At his prolific touch his native tongue germinated into countless new varieties of expression; and the mines of wealth, both intellectual and verbal, which he bequeathed to future ages, after being wrought by multitudes in each, still appear inexhaustible.

The wisdom of Rabelais, was, however, of the world, worldly. It never ascended to the eternal fountains of light, nor descended to illuminate the dark places of the earth. It neither sought to interpret the awful mysteries of our nature, nor bowed down to adore in the contemplation of them. It aimed at no exalted ends, nor did it ever lead the way through any rugged and self-denying paths. It expressed neither sympathy for the wretchedness, nor pity for the sorrows, of mankind; but was satisfied to be shrewd, and witty, and comical upon them all. To the keen gaze of Rabelais, the frauds, and follies, and ignorance, and licentiousness of the papal court and priesthood afforded endless matter of scorn and merriment; but to his last hour he lived in their outward garb and communion. To that penetrating eye had been clearly revealed the majesty of the truth which the Reformers taught, and the majesty of the sufferings which they endured in its defence; but not one glow of enthusiasm could they ever kindle in his bosom, as they toiled in indigence, and died in martyrdom, to evangelise the world. Secure in the absolution of Clement VII for whatever he had done and written against the church, and secure in the license of Francis I, to publish whatever else he might please, Rabelais delighted to assume the character of a chartered libertine, or, as it might almost be said, of an intellectual debauchee. And yet, voluptuary, scoffer, and sceptic as he was, his laughter was so hearty, his glee so natural, his frolic so riotous, and his buffoonery so irresistible, that he became, not merely the tolerated, but the favoured and privileged, Momus of his times. He became also a proof to all later times, that, by the great mass of mankind, anything will be forgiven or permitted to genius, when, abandoning its native supremacy, it condescends to undertake the strangely inappropriate office of master of the revels.[c]

“In the works of Rabelais,” says Michelet,[f] “the French language appeared in a greatness it never possessed before nor since. What Dante accomplished for Italian, Rabelais did for French. He employed and blended every dialect, the elements of every period and province developed in the Middle Age, adding the while a wealth of technical expression furnished by art and science. Another man would have been overwhelmed by this immense variety, but he,--he harmonised everything. Antiquity, especially the Greek genius, and a knowledge of all modern languages permitted him to envelop and master that of France.” Saintsbury[e] declares that the only two men who can be compared to him in character of work and force of genius combined are Lucian and Swift, adding: “He is much less of a mere mocker than Lucian, and he is entirely destitute, even when he deals with monks or pedants, of the ferocity of Swift. He neither sneers nor rages; the rire immense which distinguishes him is altogether good-natured; but he is nearer to Lucian than to Swift, and Lucian is perhaps the author whom it is most necessary to know in order to understand him rightly.”[a]

CALVIN

One cannot better show how contrarieties are related than by the immediate transition from Francis Rabelais to John Calvin;[84] for, probably, no two men of commanding minds were ever more curiously contrasted with each other, as certainly no two minds were ever enshrined in bodies more dissimilar. To look upon, Rabelais was a drunken Silenus, Calvin a famished Ugolino. The one emptied his bottle before he wrote, while he was writing, and after he had written; the other contented himself with a repast of bread and water once in each six-and-thirty hours. Reposing in his easy chair, the merry doctor was hailed as lord of misrule by all the jovial spirits of his age; enthroned in the consistory of Geneva, the inexorable divine was dreaded as the disciplinarian of himself and of the whole subject city. The witty physician was L’Allegro, the austere minister Il Penseroso, of their generation. The reader of the Gargantua yields by turns to disgust, to admiration, and to merriment; but Democritus himself would not have found matter for one passing smile throughout the whole of the Christian Institute. To Rabelais, human life appeared a farce as broad as the knights of Aristophanes; to Calvin, a tragedy more dismal than the Agamemnon of Æschylus. And as they wrote, so they also lived. The traditional stories about Rabelais, if true, attest his love, and, even if untrue, they attest his reputed love, of that kind of wit which is called practical; all the traditions of Calvin represent him as a man at whose appearance mirth instantly took flight.

The gay doctor is made in these tales to play off his tricks on the graduates in medicine, on the chancellor du Prât, on the king and queen of France, and even on the mule of the pope himself; while the solemn theologian makes his domiciliary visits to ascertain that no dinner table at Geneva was rendered the pretext for levity of discourse, or for excess of diet.

What, then, is the congruity on which to found any comparison between these most incongruous minds? The answer is (to borrow an expressive word), that they were both devoted ergoists, each of them being at once a mighty master, and a submissive slave, of logic.[c] With the religious significance of Calvin’s teaching we have no present concern. We shall have occasion to see something more of this in the course of our study of the Reformation. Here we are concerned rather with Calvin the writer--the author of the Institution Chrétienne.

Published in 1536 this book was received with unbounded delight.[a] We may, indeed, reject the story, that a thousand editions of it were sold in his own lifetime; but we cannot dispute that, during a century and a half, it exercised an unrivalled supremacy over a large part of Protestant Europe. For that dominion it was indebted, in part, to the novelty and comprehensiveness of the design it accomplished,--to the vast compass of learning, scriptural, patristic, and historical, which it embraced,--to the depth and the height of the morality which it inculcated,--and to the calm but energetic keenness with which it exposed the errors of his adversaries. But the popularity and the influence of this remarkable book is also, in part, to be ascribed to its literary merits. Calvin has been described as the Bossuet of his age. Of all the French authors whom France had as yet produced, he was the most philosophical when he speculated, the most sublime when he adored, the most methodical and luminous in the development of truth, the most acute in the refutation of error, and the most obedient to that law or spirit of his nation, which demands symmetry in the proportions, harmony in the details, and concert in all the parts of every work of art, whether it be wrought by the pen, the pencil, or the chisel. In the ninth chapter of Bossuet’s Histoire des Variations may, indeed, be found the best, as it is a very reluctant, eulogy on the literary excellence of his great rival and predecessor. Even in the haughty gloom which the bishop of Meaux discovers in the style and tone of the reformer of Geneva, there is a not inappropriate interest. The beautiful lake of that city, and the mountains which encircle it, lay before his eyes as he wrote; but they are said to have suggested to his fancy no images, and to have drawn from his pen not so much as one transient allusion. With his mental vision ever directed to that melancholy view of the state and prospects of our race, which he had discovered in the book of life, it would, indeed, have been incongruous to have turned aside to depict any of those glorious aspects of the creative benignity which were spread around him in the book of nature.

MONTAIGNE

The immediate effect of the servitude into which Calvin had subdued the minds of his disciples was to provoke a formidable revolt. When he was giving his latest touches to his Institution Chrétienne, Michel de Montaigne,[85] then in his twenty-second year, had just taken his seat in the Parliament of Bordeaux. That he afterwards became a deputy in the states-general of Blois, though maintained by no inconsiderable authorities, seems to me impossible; but it is clear that his early manhood was devoted to public, and especially to judicial, affairs. He was thus brought into contact with the busy world at the moment of a greater agitation of human society than had occurred since the overthrow of the Roman Empire. Marvellous revolutions, and discoveries still more marvellous, in the world of letters, of politics, of geography, and of religion,--the welfare of inappeasable passions,--the working of whatever is most base, and of whatever is most sublime, in our common nature,--and calamities which might seem to have fulfilled the most awful of the apocaliptic visions, had passed in rapid succession before the eyes of this acute and curious observer. It was an unwelcome and repulsive spectacle. He turned from it to seek the shelter and the repose of his hereditary mansion. In that retirement he indulged, or cherished, a spirit inflexibly opposed to the spirit by which his native country was convulsed. The age was idolatrous of novelties; and, therefore, Montaigne lived in the retrospect of a remote antiquity. It was an age of restless ambition; and, therefore, he passively committed himself and his fortunes to the current of events. The minds of other men were exploring the foundations, and criticising the superstructure, of every social polity; and, therefore, his mind was averted altogether from the affairs of the commonwealth. Because his neighbours yielded themselves to every gust of passion, he must be passionless. Because the times were treacherous, he must punctiliously cherish his personal honour. Because they were inhuman, he cultivated all the amenities of life. Because calamity swept over the world, he was enamoured of epicurean ease. Heroism was the boast of not a few, and to their virtues he paid the homage of an incredulous obeisance. Dogmatism was the habit of very many; and, therefore, Montaigne must surrender himself to an almost universal scepticism.

The contrast was as captivating as it was complete. With a temper easily satisfied,--with affections as tranquil as they were kindly,--with a curiosity ever wakeful, but never impetuous,--with competency, health, friends, books, and leisure, Montaigne had all the means of happiness which can be brought within the reach of those to whom life is not a self-denying existence, but a pleasant pastime. Yet, with him, it was the pastime of an active, enlightened, and amiable mind. The study of man as a member of society was his chosen pursuit, but he conducted it in a mode altogether his own. The individual man, Michel Montaigne, such as he would be in every imaginable relation and office of society, was the subject of his daily investigation. He became, of all egotists, the most pleasant, versatile, and comprehensive. He produced complete sketches of himself with an air of the most unreserved frankness, and in a tone frequently passing from quiet seriousness to graceful badinage. He describes his tastes, his humours, his opinions, his frailties, his pursuits, and his associates with the most exuberant fertility of invention, and has wrought out a general delineation of our common humanity from the profound knowledge of a single member of it. And, as the variety is boundless, so is the unity well sustained. His essays are a mirror in which every reader sees his own image reflected, but in which he also sees the image of Montaigne reflecting it. There he is, ever changing, and yet ever the same. He looks on the world with a calm indifference, which would be repulsive were it not corrected by his benevolent curiosity about its history and its prospects. He has not one malignant feeling about him, except it be towards the tiresome, and especially towards such of them as provoke his yawns and his resentment by misplaced and by commonplace wisdom. He has a quick relish for pleasure, but with a preference for such pleasures as are social, inoffensive, and easily procured. He has a love for virtue, but chiefly, if not exclusively, when she exacts no great effort, nor any considerable sacrifice. He loves his fellow-men, but does not much, or seriously, esteem them. He loves study and meditation, but stipulates that they shall expose him to no disagreeable fatigue. He cherishes every temper which makes life pass sociably and pleasantly. He takes things as he finds them in perfect good humour, makes the best of them all, and never burdens his mind with virtuous indignation, unattainable hopes, or profitless regrets. In short, as exhibited in his own self-portraiture, he is an Epicurean, who knows how to make his better dispositions tributary to his comfort, and also knows how to prevent his evil tempers from troubling his repose.

The picture of himself, which Montaigne thus holds up to his readers as a representation of themselves, is not sublime, nor is it beautiful; but it is a striking and a masterly likeness. It is drawn with inimitable grace and freedom, and with the most transparent perspicuity; and they who are best entitled to pronounce such a judgment, admire in his language a richness and a curious felicity unknown to any preceding French writers. Even they to whom his tongue is not native, can perceive that his style is the easy, the luminous, and the flexible vehicle of his thoughts, and never degenerates into a mere apology for the want of thought; and that his imagination, without ever disfiguring his ideas, however abstract, and however subtle they may be, habitually clothes them with the noblest forms and the most appropriate colouring.

But our more immediate object is, to notice the relation in which Montaigne stands to the other great moral teachers of his native land, and to those habits of thought by which France is, and has so long been, characterised. The antagonist in everything of the spirit of his times, he seems to have regarded with peculiar aversion the peremptory confidence by which the great controversy of his age was conducted, both by the adherents of Rome and by the founder of Calvinism. Because they would admit no doubt whatever, every form of doubt found harbour with him. Because they were dogmatists, he must be a sceptic.

In M. Faugère’s edition of Pascal’s Thoughts will be found the famous dialogue on the scepticism of Montaigne, between Pascal and De Sacy,--a delineation so exquisite, that it seems mere folly to attempt any addition to it. The genius of Port Royal, however, exhibits there its severity, not less than its justice; and a few words may not be misplaced in the attempt to mitigate a little of the rigour of the condemnation. Montaigne was a sceptic (as very many are), because his sagacity and diligence were buoyant enough to raise his mind to the clouds which float over our heads, but were not buoyant enough to elevate him to the pure regions of light which lie beyond them. His learning was various rather than recondite. It was drawn chiefly from Latin authors, and from the Latin authors of a degenerating age; not from Cicero or Virgil, but from Seneca and Pliny. Of Greek he knew but little, though he was profoundly conversant with the translation of Plutarch, with which Amyot had lately rendered all French readers familiar. From such masters Montaigne did not learn, and could not have learned, the love of truth. They taught him rather to content himself with loose historical gossip, and with half-formed notions in philosophy. They taught him not how to resolve, but how to amuse himself with the great problems of human existence. They encouraged his characteristic want of seriousness and earnestness of purpose. From such studies, and from the events of his life and times, he learned to flutter over the surface of things, and to traverse the whole world of moral, religious, and political inquiry, without finding, and without seeking, a resting-place. His aimless curiosity and versatile caprice form at once the fascination and the vice of his writings, though not indeed their only vice, for the name of Montaigne belongs to that melancholy roll of the great French sceptical writers--Rabelais, Montesquieu, Bayle, Voltaire, and Diderot--who, not content to assault the principles of virtue, have so far debased themselves, as laboriously to stimulate the disorderly appetites of their readers.

Yet the scepticism of Montaigne was not altogether such as theirs is. He has none of their dissolute revelry in confounding the distinctions of truth and falsehood, of good and evil. He does not, like some of them, delight in the darkness with which he believes the mind of man to be hopelessly enveloped. He rather placidly and contentedly acquiesces in the conviction that truth is beyond his reach. He could amuse himself with doubt, and play with it. With few positive and no dearly cherished opinions, he had no ardour for any opinion, and had not the slightest desire to make proselytes to his own Pyrrhonism. He was, on the contrary, to the last degree, tolerant of dissent from his own judgment; and, in the lack of other opponents, was prompt, and even glad, to contradict himself. Of all human infirmities, dulness, and obscurity, and vehemence, are those from which he was most exempt. Of all human passions, the zeal which fires the bosom of a missionary is that from which he was the most remote. We associate with him as one of the most pleasant of all our illustrious companions, and quit him as one of the least impressive of all our eminent instructors.[c]

Montaigne’s fame has passed through several very different phases. Among his own contemporaries it grew without overstepping a somewhat restricted circle of enlightened minds. After that, the main current of French thought took a direction opposite to that of Montaigne’s. Dogmatism returned and the seventeenth century in general adhered to it. Pascal launched anathemas at Montaigne. But the sumptuous edifice of the age of Louis XIV soon crumbled away, and Montaigne came forward again, hailed as a glorious ancestor by the entire age of Voltaire and Rousseau. To-day he has ceased to arouse any tempests, but he occupies his uncontested place in the national pantheon. He will live as a writer as long as French literature exists, for like the other great sixteenth century writers, men of strong individualities like Rabelais and Calvin, he had his own language as well as his own thought--a language sovereignly free, eternally young, inimitable, and above all a fertile source of rejuvenation for the whole language. He will live as a philosopher as long as men practise the axiom of the Essays, “Know thyself.”[d]

FOOTNOTES

[83] [The date of Rabelais’ birth is not certain, although most authorities place it about 1483. Of his early years very little is known, but from 1519 his history is more definite. He was educated at a convent school and, after his entrance into the Franciscan order, devoted himself to serious study. In 1524 he became a Benedictine, this change of order and dwelling-place being attributed by some to a disgust with the cloister. Six years later he is found studying medicine in Montpellier and afterwards practising in Lyons. John du Bellay, bishop of Paris, took him with him to Rome in 1534 as physician. Rabelais died at Paris in 1553.]

[84] [John Calvin, the celebrated Protestant reformer and theologian, was born at Noyon, Picardy, France, in 1509, and died at Genoa, May 27th, 1564. His father, Gerard Calvin, was a notary-apostolic and procurator-fiscal for the lordship of Noyon, besides holding other ecclesiastical offices. His early years are obscure, but from childhood he showed great religious feeling and an intense earnestness. He studied at Paris, Orleans, and Bourges, and although brought up with the intention of entering the priesthood, after close study of the Bible, he embraced the Reformation. In 1532 Calvin published his first work, an edition of Seneca’s De Clementia with an elaborate commentary. In 1533, on account of speeches in opposition to the court, he was banished from Paris and it is said it was during his retirement at Saintonge that he made his first sketch of his Institution Chrétienne. His other works are all of a religious nature, mostly controversial. A great many of these are of an exegetical character, of which his expository comments or homilies on the books of Scripture are by some considered the most valuable of his works. (For a further account of Calvin, see the history of the Reformation movement, volume xiii.)]

[85] Lacépède, referring to Montaigne’s Essays, says: “In a work that one reads again with delight and self-improvement, Michel de Montaigne has given a new glory to France.” Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, was born at Périgord, of an ancient and noble family, in 1533. Perhaps the finish of his Essays, his principal work, is due to his early training, his father having so managed his education, that at the age of five he spoke the purest Latin, and, as an old book gives it, “was also taught Greek by way of recreation.” He was married at the age of thirty-three. He lived at the court of Francis II and Henry VIII. He became mayor of Bordeaux in 1581 and in 1592; according to one old chronicle, “he died a constant and philosophic death, when he was some months short of sixty.” His Essays were first published in 1580; the edition of 1588 was the last to be published in the author’s lifetime.

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XVI. THE EARLY YEARS OF LOUIS XIII AND THE RISE OF RICHELIEU

THE REGENCY OF MARIE DE’ MEDICI

[Sidenote: [1610-1628 A.D.]]

The terrible instability of the monarchical government is revealed upon the death of Henry IV, who left as his successor a child of eight years. What follows is the opposite of what he desired; France turned inside out like a glove.

The treasure that Sully had amassed and protected is squandered in a moment, the domain that he cleared of debt is remortgaged, the possessions of the state are sold. All the institutions of this reign are abandoned, buildings are interrupted, canals given up. The manufactories of silk and of glass, the Savonnerie and the Gobelins are closed and the workmen discharged. The Louvre, which was to be degraded by lodging great inventors--the Louvre is left to the courtiers. Adieu to the museum of trades and the Jardin des Plantes; these hobbies of the king, and a thousand others sleep on the charts of Sully. At the Tuileries, at the arsenal, Henry’s favourite trees, his mulberries, are removed. But for fear of the people his monuments would be torn down. By an unexpected change the people discover that they loved Henry IV. The legend begins the day of his death; it will go on increasing by comparison of what is, with what was.

Paris at this moment was dominated by an extraordinary terror. The people believed themselves lost. Women tore their hair, less from grief than from fear. It was the same everywhere. The terror of the league returned to people’s minds and caused them to tremble. Hence there was a surprising, or rather a striking calm. For this great wisdom stuck to one thing--that is, that France, having neither idea, nor passion, nor moral interest, should no longer have a feeling of life. It was entirely identified with the king, with a man who had been killed; and what remained? A boy of eight who on the 15th of May surrendered the kingdom to his mother and on the 29th got a flogging.[b]

The last dispositions of Henry, on his intended departure to head his army, had appointed his queen, Marie de’ Medici, regent: this was strongly in her favour as dowager; and she now found little difficulty in assuming the same authority. The duke d’Épernon, her partisan, summoned the parliament, and procured their acquiescence, not, however, without having made some show of menace. This seemed unnecessary: of the princes of the blood, three in number, who could alone have pretended to the regency, Condé was absent in the Netherlands, his brother of Conti was imbecile, whilst their uncle, the count de Soissons, also absent, was at enmity with every influential personage.

[Sidenote: [1610-1614 A.D.]]

It was to Sully that Henry’s death came as the greatest blow. Sully was panic-struck; he saw in the murder a Catholic plot, and dreaded a renewal of the massacres of St. Bartholomew’s eve; he accordingly shut himself up with his followers in the Bastille, which he hastily provisioned by carrying off all the bread from the bakers’ shops around. By the morrow, however, his suspicions had subsided, and he appeared at the court of the regent. [He was cordially received; a reconciliation was effected, and the queen got what she was after,--the treasure that Sully had stored up in the Bastille.]

Marie de’ Medici was of a weak character; she was simple womanhood, unenforced by either firmness or sagacity. She had come to France a stranger; and wanting both charms and wit, she had never acquired any influence either with her husband or amongst the followers of his court. Marie, therefore, shrank back into her private circle, and made confidants and counsellors of her two Italian domestics, the woman, Leonora Galigaï, and Concini, the husband of Leonora. These upstart personages, full of all the meanness and narrowness of their calling, had frequently fanned the petty jealousies of the queen against Henry; and now it was to be feared their influence would be perniciously felt. Marie, however, was as yet too conscious of her weakness and inability. She had a vague idea of the justice of the late king’s policy in keeping down the noblesse, that now pressed around her, and terrified her with their pretensions and their quarrels. She therefore had recourse to those best fitted to guide her--the ministers of the late monarch, Villeroi the secretary, Sillery the chancellor, the president Jeannin, and Sully, superintendent of finances: these, except Sully, had none of the pretensions and haughty bearing of the noblesse; and Marie felt no loss of her will and authority in being guided by them.

It would prove a wearisome task either to narrate or to peruse an account of the cabals, quarrels, duels, and claims of the personages and princes amongst each other, and with or against the regent, during the three years which followed Henry’s death. They formed a repetition of the conspiracies and alliances of the aristocracy against Catherine de’ Medici half a century previous, except that at that time there were at least some noble characters and some serious aims. Whatever might be said of Châtillon or of Guise, they were animated by high views; but the political puppets who occupied the scene during Marie de’ Medici’s regency, wanted not courage--indeed they were quite as ready as their predecessors to slay each other in duels--but purpose, at least other purpose than immediate greed, they had none. There were some examples of ferocity in Louis XIII’s early days, which reminded one of Charles IX--the chevalier de Guise, meeting the baron de Luz and running him through the body, and being universally censured for the act until he redeemed the murder by slaying the young De Luz, son of the baron, in a fiercely-contested duel. This spirit, which showed itself in private broils, never rose into a public sentiment. One would have thought that in the army which Henry had formed, and amongst the officers whom he had honoured with his patronage and friendship, there might have been some who burned to distinguish themselves in prosecuting that war against the house of Austria which the monarch had planned. Not one noble opposed the peace; not one soldier of note raised his voice in behalf of the spirited policy of the late king; scarcely even a Huguenot. For Bouillon was immersed in the intrigues of Concini, and Lesdiguières was tempted by the title of duke and peer, as he afterwards was by that of constable.

Disgrace of Sully

As long, however, as the rigid Sully held the finances under his care, there was a check to spoliation, as well as a generous voice in the council to support the sage, the firm, and yet conciliating measures of the late monarch. He was at first retained, indeed, for the sake of the stern negative which he was wont to put on the demands of the greedy courtiers, as well as from fear or respect of his influence with the Huguenots. But his economical temper became soon a disagreeable restraint upon the queen herself; and the duke de Bouillon, an indefatigable votary of intrigue, offering to effect more than even Sully in conciliating and quieting the Huguenots, this old and upright minister of the great Henry, was dismissed. Despite his probity, his able administration, and the esteem of Henry, a cloud would rest on the character of Sully but for the honest and simple exculpation contained in his own memoirs. His austere and rude manners made him many enemies. Most of his contemporaries unite in accusing him; and, strange to say, the only family, beyond his own, whose friendship and good-will he preserved in his retreat, was that of Guise.

The disgrace of Sully left the treasure of the late king completely at the regent’s disposal, who dissipated it by bribing prince and noble to remain quiet. The favour of Leonora Galigaï and her husband Concini, now Marshal d’Ancre, became more apparent. The avarice of these foreigners knew no bounds: not content with the purchase of a marquisate, and the dignity of marshal, Concini contrived to get some of the principal fortresses of the kingdom in his possession--Péronne amongst others, and the citadel of Amiens. Épernon, on his side, secured Metz; whilst the count de Soissons and the prince of Condé, despite their pensions and their submission, by turns thwarted the court, and threw it into disorder by their private quarrels. Although the marshal d’Ancre and his wife were the chief favourites of the queen-regent, Villeroi was nevertheless the counsellor whose views, in matters of serious policy, she principally adopted. Villeroi, say the Mémoires attributed to Richelieu,[e] bred in the civil wars, had imbibed their virulence, which he repressed during the life of Henry. Instead of now recommending that monarch’s conciliating policy, which Sully upheld, Villeroi said that there were but two parties in the state, Catholic and Protestant, and that the government must necessarily embrace one or the other. He leaned to the Catholic side, and supported the project of strengthening it by marrying the young king to a daughter of Spain, rather than to a princess of Lorraine or Savoy, as had been the advice of Henry. The prince of Condé, however, urged by the duke de Bouillon, opposed the ministry in this, for no reason, apparently, except the sake of making opposition. And for the time, Louis XIII being as yet but nine years of age, the project was allowed to slumber.[d]

First Revolt of the Lords (1614 A.D.)

The pretensions of the nobles grew with the weakness of the government. “The presents of the queen,” said Richelieu, “stilled the great hunger of their avarice and ambition; but it was by no means extinct. The treasury and the coffers of the Bastille were exhausted; then they aspired to so great things that royal authority could not possibly give them the increase of power which they demanded.” What they wanted in fact was governorships for themselves and their families, places of surety, and the dismemberment of France. Épernon was governor of Metz, but Henry, being afraid of that proud noble, had imposed a lieutenant upon him, who occupied the citadel and corresponded directly with the ministers. The very day of the king’s death Épernon hastened an order to take possession of the lieutenant and the citadel. He had a strong place at that time only two steps from the Spaniards, which people called “his kingdom of Austrasia.” Many lords at the news of the assassination had thus thrown themselves into the cities with which they had an understanding, and some did not wish to ever come out again or wished at any rate to return. “The time of kings is past,” they said, “that of the nobles is come.” The first refusal of the regent brought about a civil war. Condé took up arms and published a manifesto in which he accused the court of having debased the nobility, ruined the finances, and taxed the poor--singular reproaches in the mouth of a prince who with his friends had received the best part of this money of the poor. He concluded according to custom by demanding the convocation of the states-general to work at the reform of existing abuses.

Brought up in the Catholic faith, although born of a Protestant family, Condé hoped to rally both parties to his cause. A large number of lords came to take their places under his standard, at their head the dukes de Vendôme, de Longueville, de Luxemburg, de Mayenne, de Nevers, de Retz, etc. The Calvinists refused to be associated in this rising in arms. “We have all the liberty for our consciences,” said they, “which we could desire, and we do not wish to abandon our wives and our houses to satisfy the appetite of some factious persons.” The Catholics did not take fire either. Since the estates of the league, popular passions had been greatly appeased. The party of tolerant politicians born with L’Hôpital, and come to power under Henry IV, now counted nearly all members of the cloth and bourgeoisie. The experience which had been so cruelly bought by the civil war was not lost. The nation compared the twelve years of prosperity it had enjoyed, with those thirty-eight years of massacres and pillaging, and held close to the throne; leaving the great lords to exercise their sterile ambition in space. “The people,” wrote Malherbe at that moment, “remain obedient everywhere, and without them nothing can be done.” Let a firm hand take the rudder and even the most turbulent will return to the quiet in which Henry IV had held them. Some of Henry IV’s old ministers, Villeroi, Jeannin, counselled the queen to act with vigour. She preferred to make terms at Ste. Menehould (May 15th, 1614). The prince of Condé received 450,000 livres in cash; the duke of Mayenne 300,000 “to get married”; M. de Longueville 100,000 livres pension, etc. But the court, wanting to gain on one side what it had lost on the other, did not pay the stockholders of the Hôtel-de-Ville in that year. That was what was done for “the poor.”[f] And the court assented to the call of the states-general.

Last Assembly of the States-General

The states-general, assembled at Paris in 1614, demands especial attention, not only as the last of these national assemblies previous to the Revolution (at the commencement of which it was continually referred to as affording precedent), but as a scene in which the political feelings and views of the age were completely developed. We have an ample account of the sittings and discussions of the commons or third order, written by Florimond Rapine,[g] a member, one of the king’s advocates. From this we learn that the majority of the lower chamber were lawyers, and a considerable portion nobles, almost all the king’s lieutenant-generals being elected by their several governments. The most important consideration in the eyes of all was evidently the respective dignity of persons and classes. The first two months were consumed in disputes of precedence, in ceremonials, in mutual compliments between the orders at first, and afterwards in mutual abuse. Miron, provost of the merchants of the city of Paris, was elected president. The address of the commons to the king was spoken by this magistrate on his knees; the deputies were clothed in simple black, whilst priests and nobles shone in gold, and an attempt of the president to wear his city robes of red and blue in a procession was looked upon as a monstrous piece of ambition.

The grievance most odious to the nation was the enormity of pensions granted to the princes and chief officers. Against these the commons and the clergy joined in lifting up their voice. The next demand was to abolish the venality of the judicature, and the right of the paulette, a kind of annual fine, paid by the officers of parliament, in consideration of which their offices were considered hereditary. This demand the chamber of the commons could not in decency oppose; but being principally lawyers and provincial governors, it was their interest to preserve the paulette, and they therefore slurred over the question, and laid greater stress on the necessity of abating the taille, which pressed upon the people. Thus, the nobles insisting on abolishing the hereditary right to their offices held by the legists, the legists or commons retaliated by demanding the retrenchment of pensions; and a struggle ensued between them. Savaron, an orator of eloquence in the tiers, exclaimed against the mercenary spirit of the noblesse, which, he said, had forsaken the pursuit of honour for the worship of the goddess Pecune, and bartered even its fidelity for a price. The nobles were indignant at this, and demanded an apology. De Mesme, another member of the tiers, was deputed to explain, and he made matters infinitely worse. “France,” said he, “had three children: The clergy, if not the eldest born, had at least, like Jacob, got the heritage and the blessing, and therefore were to be considered the eldest. Next came the noblesse, the second son--fiefs, counties, and commands, were its share. The youngest born was the commons, whose portion was the offices of the judicature. But,” concluded the orator, “let not the noblesse presume too much over the tiers; since it often happens that the cadets of a great family restore to it that honour and illustration which has been thrown away by the elder brethren.”

[Sidenote: [1614-1615 A.D.]]

The difference of interest between the states rendered their meeting productive of no effect. The regent would willingly have reduced the pensions of the great, and destroyed the paulette, or hereditary right of the legists to their offices; but she feared to outrage the princes by the first, whilst uncertain of the support of the commons. Nothing accordingly was decided on. The cahiers or remonstrances of the states were presented, were smilingly received, and slept in the king’s hands. The assembly was dissolved. The queen took her own inactivity and inability for prudence. It proved the contrary. The party of the princes leagued with that of the legists, the union being effected by the exertions and intrigues of the duke de Bouillon. As the assembly of the states had proved an empty ceremony, all its advice and remonstrance being disregarded, the legists of the parliament were urged to put themselves forward as the popular representatives, and finish the work that the states had vainly attempted. The chambers of parliament accordingly assembled, and began by summoning the great peers to join them, and form a court of peers for taking into consideration the affairs of the kingdom.

This bold act was the inspiration of Bouillon. The court was terrified, and with good cause; but the parliament itself was almost equally intimidated by its own boldness, and showed but hesitation when the queen put forth her authority. Nevertheless, the peers being forbidden to join the parliament,--an injunction that Condé had the weakness to obey,--the legists prepared their remonstrances; amongst which were not only all the demands of the states, but also a claim that no act of the king should have force unless freely registered by the parliament, and that the parliament should have the right of summoning a court of peers and great officers, when occasion required. These remonstrances they insisted on reading in public before the young king, who showed a favourable and benign countenance, whilst that of the regent was convulsed with anger. But this bold attempt to put a check on the royal authority utterly failed: an edict of the king reproved the audacity of the parliament; and the latter who had been urged on more by the intrigues of the princes than by any conscientious or firm love of liberty and the public good, yielded pusillanimously, when affairs began to assume the appearance of an open rupture. Condé acted pusillanimously, also, in not declaring himself, and taking his place in the parliament, to which his secret promises of support could not impart sufficient confidence. It ended by the court obtaining the upper hand, and in the consequent revolt of Condé; the queen resolving, at the same time, to fulfil the project of the double marriage with Spain.

MAJORITY OF LOUIS XIII; MARRIAGE WITH ANNE OF AUSTRIA

[Sidenote: [1615-1616 A.D.]]

Marie de’ Medici, with the young king, set out for Bordeaux, to meet his future spouse. It was a military enterprise rather than a nuptial procession, the court marching at the head of an army, whilst it was pursued by Condé with an equal force. Both sides avoided an action. The king arrived at Bordeaux, despatched his sister Elizabeth, who was to espouse the infante of Spain, to the Pyrenees, and received in return Anne of Austria, a young and not unlovely princess of fifteen. The marriage was celebrated at Bordeaux in November, 1615. Louis XIII was now of age; the possession of a wife gave him the consciousness of manhood, and he began accordingly to feel and to express a will of his own that disquieted and constrained the queen-mother, no longer regent.

One of the young monarch’s most dominant tastes was falconry, and as he was not allowed to follow it in the fields, he kept a number of these birds of prey in his apartments. A young man, of the name of De Luynes, charged with the care of them, interested the king by his knowledge and conversation on such subjects. He soon became a favourite. And Marie de’ Medici, who discovered the rising sun, made repeated offers to resign her authority, which Louis was not prepared to accept. She then sought to conciliate Luynes, but he, ambitious and desirous of full power, held aloof, and continued in the king’s presence to criticise the feeble administration of Marie and the prodigal folly of Concini.

Feeling her influence undermined, and humouring the impatience of the young monarch and his queen, who longed to visit Paris, she concluded a new accommodation with Condé, greatly to the advantage of that prince. He was allowed to participate in the government, and to sign the decrees of the council. The queen objected to granting this power, but she was overruled by Villeroi, who observed that this would put the prince always in the king’s power, by bringing him to the Louvre.

“There is no danger,” said he, “in trusting the pen to a hand, the arm of which you hold.” The duke de Longueville superseded the marshal D’Ancre in the government of Picardy. The Huguenots, who had armed for Condé, had also their recompense. The court and royal authority was, in fact, at the feet of this young chief of the noblesse.

RICHELIEU APPEARS

The queen-dowager saw the condition to which her weakness had reduced her. The marshal D’Ancre was her only friend, and, from the general odium borne to him, he proved more a weight than a support. Another counsellor indeed she had, a man attached both to her and D’Ancre, and who was well capacitated to counsel her in this extremity. This was Armand du Plessis Richelieu, bishop of Luçon, who had somewhat distinguished himself in the states-general of 1614.[d]

A painter who was remarkably faithful and conscientious in art and in life--the Fleming, Philip de Champagne--has left us a true representation of the fine, strong, and spare figure of the cardinal De Richelieu. This Jansenist painter would have disdained to relieve or enrich the gray image with a ray of light, as Rubens or Murillo would have done. That would have been changing the nature of the grave, unpromising subject. The eye would have been pleased and art better satisfied, but it would not have been true to history. It must be remembered that this was the epoch of the monochrome, when plain glass was replacing the stained glass of the sixteenth century. In France especially the taste for colour was dead.

Gray everywhere. Literary gray in Malherbe. Religious gray in Berulle and the Oratory. The new-born Port-Royal aims at dullness, one might almost say at mediocrity. Pascal will appear in thirty years. The colour is very good here, but moderate in very truth, neither too much nor too little. A learned master among masters, the good Philip nevertheless stuck so closely to nature and went so deeply into it that he satisfies both the conceptions of history and the popular impression. History recognises in this gray-bearded phantom with its lustreless gray eye and its fine spare hands the grandson of the prevost of Henry III who assassinated Guise. He comes towards you, and you do not feel reassured. That personage has indeed the appearance of life, but is it truly a man, a soul? Yes, an intellect certainly, strong, clear, and shall we say luminous, or dark and sinister? If he would take a few steps further we should be face to face. He does not inspire anxiety, but one fears that this strong head has nothing in its breast, neither heart nor vitals. In trials of witchcraft there have been too many of these evil spirits that will not remain in the lower regions, but return and disturb the world.

What contrasts in him--so hard, so yielding; so complete, so broken! By how many tortures he must have been moulded, formed, and unformed, let us say rather disarticulated, to have become that eminently artificial thing which goes without going, advances without appearing, and noiselessly, as though gliding over a deadened carpet--then, having arrived, overthrows everything. He looks at you from the depths of his mystery, this red-robed sphinx; one dare not say from the depths of his craftiness. For, in contrast with the ancient sphinx, which dies if one divines it, this one seems to say: “Whoever divines me shall die.” If one should be densely and profoundly ignorant of Richelieu,[e] one must read his Mémoires. All the people of this race, Sulla, Tiberius, and others, have written memoirs or caused them to be written, in order to render history difficult, to baffle men, to disconcert the public, and above all to connect the beginning of their lives with the end and to disguise somewhat the terrible contradictions of their different periods.

His ill-fortune forced him to have merit early. He was the youngest of three brothers. His family was not rich, and had intermarried with plebeians. The eldest brother, who was at court, spent everything. The second, who held the bishopric of Luçon, became a Carthusian; and as this bishopric did not leave the family, the third, our Richelieu, had to become a churchman, in spite of his military taste. The eldest brother was killed in a duel, too late for his cadet, who would have taken his place and would never have become a priest. He perhaps was not born ill-natured, but he became so. The contradiction between his character and his robe gave him that rich fund of ill humour to which is due his great strength--“the bitterness of blood, which alone makes him win battles.” His battles as priest could only be theological. He promptly transmitted his theses with great ostentation to the Sorbonne, dedicating them to Henry IV, and offering himself to the king for important services. Then he went to Rome to be consecrated, to offer himself to the pope. Neither the king nor the pope responded to the impatience of the ardent young politician.

Then he sadly fell back upon his bishopric of Luçon, which was poor enough and in a country of disputes, near to La Rochelle and the Huguenots. This nearness caused him annoyance; in spite of violent headaches, he wrote against them. He is not without talent. His pen is a sword, short and keen, well-fitted for disputation. He does not dwell dully upon the absurd. If he writes nonsense he does not do it like a fool. He has a happy insolence and bold turns of thought; and retreats haughtily, and by this means he makes a very good showing.

For all that, he would have remained in his obscurity at Luçon if he had had nothing but his controversy. But he was a handsome fellow, a fine porcelain creature. Concini was of faience. The handsome Bellegarde, a beau since the time of Henry III, was getting worn out. These considerations influenced the queen-mother, and she took him as her almoner.[b]

[Sidenote: [1616-1617 A.D.]]

It was the 30th of November, 1616, that Richelieu entered the ministry for the first time. The Spanish ambassador, the duke of Monteleone, showed keen satisfaction at his accession and wrote to Madrid that there was “no better than he in France for the service of God, of the crown of Spain, and of the public good”--of the public good, as the heirs of Philip II understood it! This diplomat had not the gift of divination!

The majestic drama of the ministry of the great Richelieu thus opens as a comedy of intrigue. It is by no means probable that he began his career by deceiving the pope in order to obtain his bishop’s bull, but it seems certain that he got into power by deceiving Spain and preparing to deceive and supplant Concini. He was determined to gain power at any price; he felt himself necessary; an irresistible force was driving him forward! In this feverish need of action by which he is devoured he passes over all obstacles, perhaps even over those of conscience and personal dignity as over others. He flatters those who despise him, caresses those who hate him, and lowers to vain mediocrity that brow which was made for empire. He hides at the bottom of his soul all his nobler and better feelings, as one would conceal criminal tendencies. Unfortunate novitiate of political greatness! There will always be very different opinions of Richelieu according to whether one studies the end or the means, the public man or the private man. Richelieu never was false to the duties of the statesman toward his country’s greatness, but he was unfortunately less faithful to the laws of morality and of humanity.[h]

Marie was not aware of the merit of this personage; yet it may have been by his bold counsel that she ventured a stroke of policy, of boldness unusual to her, in arresting Condé in the Louvre, and sending him to the Bastille. The noblesse, his partisans, instantly fled to raise their followers. The Parisian mob collected, and showed its humour by pillaging the hôtel of the marshal D’Ancre; there, however, its fury subsided. The queen was victorious, and the fugitive partisans of Condé were reduced to impotent exclamation of vengeance and rage. Their cause, however, was not lost. The young king had joined his mother in the project for getting rid of Condé; but in delivering himself from one master, Louis was mortified to find that he had given himself another. The marshal D’Ancre now ruled uncontrolled at court and in council; and the pride of Louis was even more hurt by the ascendency of the upstart Concini than by that of Condé. Luynes, his favourite, and the young nobles who composed his court, flattered the monarch’s pride, and fanned his resentment. Marie de’ Medici deemed this knot of striplings to be occupied in pleasure, whilst they meditated a plot. The arrest of Condé was a precedent and example.[d]

ASSASSINATION OF MARSHAL D’ANCRE

It was well to have arrested the prince de Condé, said Richelieu; one might have done as much for Concini. Strange forgetfulness of circumstances; the king had no one, and his man Vitry, captain of the guards, did not have the guards with him. Concini on the contrary never went anywhere unless surrounded by thirty gentlemen. Vitry collected fifteen with great difficulty, hid them, and armed them with pistols under their coats.

They chose the moment when Concini came to make his usual morning visit to the queen. He was on the Louvre bridge with his large escort. Vitry was so frightened that he passed without seeing him, having him before his eyes. When told, he returned. “I arrest you!” “A mi!” (“to my aid!”) cried Concini. He had not finished when three or four pistol shots went off and blew his brains out. “It is by order of the king,” said Vitry. Only one of Concini’s men had put his hand to his sword (April 24th, 1617).

The Corsican Ornano took the king, raised him in his arms, and showed him at the window. The people did not understand. It was first said that Concini had wounded the king. But when it was known it was he on the contrary who had been killed, there was an explosion of joy throughout the whole city. The queen-mother was very much frightened. Her one cry was “Poveretta di me!” However, what had she to fear? Whatever antipathy her son might feel for her he could not dream of bringing her to judgment. He was satisfied with removing her guards. The doors of her apartments were walled up, save one. She showed no pity for Concini or his widow. When someone said to her: “Madame, your majesty alone can inform her of the death of her husband”--“Ah, I have many other things to do! If you can’t tell it to her, sing it to her; cry in her ears: L’Hanno ammazzato.” Terrible word; it was the very same that Concini had used to the queen the day of Henry IV’s death, when he told her the news that she knew only too well. Leonora tremblingly sought refuge with her. She refused it. Then that woman to whom the queen had confided her crown diamonds (as a resource in case of misfortune) undressed and went to bed, hiding her diamonds under her. She was pulled from her bed; everything was ransacked; the room was pillaged. She was taken to the Conciergerie. Paris was in a state of celebration. The crowd hunted and disinterred her husband’s body, which was solemnly burned in front of Henry IV’s statue in token of expiation. It was said that a madman had bitten out the heart and eaten a piece of it.

The life of the queen-mother hung by a thread. Among the murderers, several would have liked to kill her, thinking that she might arise later and avenge the death of her lover. But Luynes would have dared neither to counsel the royal child to do such a thing nor to do it without orders. He saved her by surrounding her with the king’s guards. The Capuchin Travail, Père Hilaire, who had formerly intrigued against the marriage of Marie de’ Medici, and who was actor and executor in the murder of her favourite, thought that nothing was accomplished unless she perished. He applied to a man of her party who had access to her at will, her equerry Bressieux, trying to get him to kill her. The equerry refused. “Never mind,” said Travail, “I will bring it about that the king goes to Vincennes; and then I will have her torn in pieces by the people.” Luynes, who had promised the Capuchin the archbishopric of Bourges if he aided in killing Concini, did not wish to keep his word when the deed had been done. Instead he profited by some sanguinary words which this chatterer had uttered, out of folly and bravado, to have him judged and broken on the wheel.

The king had caused parliament to be informed that he had ordered the arrest of Concini, who, having resisted, had been killed. He spoke of his mother only with respect, saying that he had prayed his lady and mother to approve of his taking the rudder of state. Parliament came to congratulate him. The action which could so easily be brought against Concini and his wife was skilfully stifled and turned from the true issue. A case of sorcery was made out of it. That was, moreover, the custom of the century. The libidinous tyrannies practised by priests in women’s convents, when by chance they came to light, were changed into sorcery, and the devil was charged with everything. Leonora herself thought the devil was in her body and had herself exorcised in the church of the Augustines by priests who had come from Italy at her request. As she suffered terribly in her head, Montalte, her Jewish physician, killed a cock, and applied it to her head still warm, which was interpreted as a sacrifice to hades. An astrological document was also found in her rooms, the nativity of the queen and her children. It is not at all improbable that when losing her influence she tried to keep her hold on the queen by magic. It was the general folly of the age. Luynes believed in it also. Richelieu says that he had two Piedmontese magicians come to find him powders which he might put in the king’s garments, and herbs for his shoes.

However much of truth there may have been in Leonora’s sorcery, it did not deserve death, and her thefts even, her brazen-faced sales of places and orders, would have merited only the whip. Court tradition, which was very favourable to such people, as enemies of Henry IV, has not failed to invent, to place in the mouth of Leonora proud and insolently daring words--for example: “My charm was that of a mind set on folly.” She was beheaded at the Grève and then burned.[b]

THE MINISTRY OF LUYNES (1617-1621 A.D.)

The position of the queen-mother was mortifying and distressing. She had been deceived by the boy-king; stripped of her power; her dearest friends had perished. Of the band of courtiers who so lately hung upon her smile, Richelieu alone evinced a determination to adhere to the fortunes of his mistress. Marie de’ Medici besought an interview with her son. This favour was long denied. Luynes feared a mother’s influence over a being so young and so weak as Louis. Marie was allowed to retire to Blois, whither Richelieu accompanied her.

The wealth as well as the influence of Concini fell to the share of Luynes, who was, however, neither a foreigner nor so rash and avaricious as his predecessor. Louis XIII, from his very first moment of grasping power, showed the same incapacity of wielding it that ever distinguished him. The love of the chase was the only active quality the young monarch seemed to have inherited from his father Henry. Luynes became hence sole master of the state. He found two parties aspiring to influence--that of the prince of Condé, and that of the queen-mother. One was in prison, and the other exiled; so that Luynes found no difficulty in flattering and giving hopes alternately to both, whilst he permitted neither the liberation of the prince nor the return of Marie de’ Medici. The body of the noblesse, who had flown to arms upon Condé’s arrest, and who had returned on learning Concini’s fall, thought it a more serious step to rebel against the king than against his mother and her favourite. The young court, too, had charms; and the prince of Condé was now but ill supported by that aristocratic band that had shared his envy and hatred towards the family of Ancre.

Marie de’ Medici bore her disgrace with impatience. For some time she lulled herself with the hope that Luynes was sincere in his promises of allowing her to return. She expected in vain; and at length resolved to work her deliverance by leaguing with the prince of Condé and her former enemies. These intrigues coming to light, Richelieu, who was considered to be the source of them, was ordered to quit Blois, where the queen resided, and retire to his bishopric. But Marie had already profited by the advice of this able counsellor. She kept up an active correspondence with the duke d’Épernon, who was master of Metz, and through him with such of the nobility as were envious of Luynes. Having by these means formed a party, Marie escaped by night from the château of Blois; was met by Épernon at the head of an armed body of gentlemen; and, retreating south, soon found herself at the head of a party strong enough to defy her enemies. There cannot be a stronger example of the overgrown power of the nobles, and of the manner in which they absorbed the whole force of the crown, than the authority wielded by Épernon at this time against his sovereign. The duke had no less than five governments, viz., the provinces of Saintonge, Auxerrois, the Limousin, the Bourbonnais, and the Three Bishoprics. Add to these Metz, the bulwark of the kingdom adjoining Lorraine; Loches, the strongest fortress of Touraine, which he held, together with the command of all the French infantry, as colonel-general; and it can be no longer a wonder that the defection of such a grandee should have immediately reduced Louis and his favourite to treat with the queen-mother.

[Sidenote: [1617-1620 A.D.]]

Richelieu was recalled from his diocese, and employed to effect an accommodation, which took place. Marie de’ Medici was the principal gainer: she obtained the government of Anjou, and the towns of Angers, Chinon, and Pont-de-Cé, as fortresses of surety. The king promised to restore Marie de’ Medici to his confidence, and to her place at court. But this was postponed for the time. An interview took place betwixt Louis and his mother. A light remark on one side, answered by a cold compliment on the other, is all that is recorded of the meeting. “How your majesty has grown!” exclaimed Marie. “Grown for your service, madame,” was the young monarch’s reply. The queen-mother remained at Angers, whilst the court returned to Paris. Épernon received a written pardon for his rebellion, from which he had derived no advantage; a circumstance that caused him to be taxed with folly by his contemporaries. Disinterestedness was inconceivable to the age.

The first step of Luynes, in order to counteract the revived party of the queen-mother, was to liberate Condé from Vincennes. But his long captivity had secluded this prince from his ancient followers; and Richelieu, who saw the object of Luynes, was able to succeed in not only drawing over the whole body of the noblesse to the queen-mother, but even in exciting the Huguenots to stir in her favour. These measures of Richelieu, who was at the same time amusing Luynes by feigned friendship and communications, became ripe in 1620, when, upon a fresh refusal to admit Marie de’ Medici to court, all the great nobles, who had most of them formerly conspired against her, now espoused her cause, and quitted the court. Almost all France was in array against Louis and Luynes. Épernon armed his five governments and his many towns. Marie herself was in Anjou. The duke de Longueville held Normandy; the duke de Vendôme, Brittany; the count of Soissons, Perche and Maine; the marshal De Bois-dauphin had Poitou; De Retz, La Trémouille, Mayenne, Rouen, and Nemours held the southern provinces betwixt them, except Languedoc, where Montmorency remained neutral. The Huguenots were also against the court, as was the duke de Rohan, their principal leader, and La Rochelle, their chief town. This was owing to a decree, issued by Luynes, that the church lands of Béarn, where Henry IV had established Protestantism, should be restored to the Catholic priesthood. Thus Richelieu enlisted under the banners of his mistress these two great malcontent and independent powers in the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the reformers, which it was afterwards the great aim and achievement of his policy to crush. In thus wielding them successfully against the monarch, Richelieu became acquainted with their danger, their strength, and their secret springs.

[Sidenote: [1620-1621 A.D.]]

Condé, however, inspired Luynes this time with additional vigour. The prince himself was excited to avenge his long confinement upon the queen-mother, who had caused it; and the king, therefore, was induced to march with an army, headed by Condé, to reduce the rebels. He was successful in Normandy; the insurgents retired everywhere before the royal army, which turned southward, and drove the queen from even Angers, her principal fortress. Luynes, contented with these advantages, showed himself willing to treat, as did Richelieu, who was somewhat disgusted by the want of alacrity and resolution evinced by the noblesse, his partisans. Condé, however, pushed on the war; and although a treaty was on the eve of being concluded, he attacked the forces of Marie’s adherents, and put them to the rout at Pont-de-Cé.

This success, instead of breaking off negotiations, accelerated them; for Luynes became instantly jealous of Condé, and feared his predominance, if the queen-mother should be completely crushed. A treaty was therefore concluded on similar terms to the preceding one, with the important addition that the king should become really reconciled to his mother, and that she should reside at court. Many doubts and accusations exist as to the good faith of Richelieu in these transactions. The loss of Angers, and the defeat of Pont-de-Cé, were said to be arranged and allowed by him; and it is more than probable that, in disgust with the noblesse, who were at once domineering to their friends and feeble towards their enemies, Richelieu had conceived the project of reconciling Louis and the queen-mother, as well as their respective favourites, Luynes and himself; thus uniting the scattered elements of the government, and enabling it to set its turbulent enemies at defiance. Richelieu, by this plan, hoped to secure to himself a place in the council, where he felt confident he would soon rule such weak spirits as Louis, the queen-mother, and Luynes. But the latter had the sagacity to dread Richelieu’s superiority. Although the bishop sedulously sought the favourite’s friendship, and although an alliance took place betwixt their families, nevertheless Luynes persevered in his jealousy; prevented, by his intrigues, the cardinal’s hat stipulated for Richelieu in the late treaty, and kept the doors of the council chamber inexorably closed against him.

The Huguenot Uprising; The Siege of Montauban (1621 A.D.)

Although Luynes had risen to power as a mere favourite, he still held it with a firmer hand than Concini; nor was he without the views or the sagacity of a statesman. Even previous to his having at court so able a prompter as Richelieu, he had anticipated the future policy of that minister in endeavouring to crush the Huguenots. Luynes was determined upon restoring to the Catholic priesthood the church lands of Béarn, which had been in the hands of the Protestants since the days of Jeanne d’Albret. Louis was equally bent on rescuing from heresy the native province of his family. After the Treaty of Pont-de-Cé, the king marched into Béarn, and reduced not only the church lands to his will, but the little province itself, the privileges of which he annulled. The Huguenots were of course indignant and alarmed. This was not the only infraction of the agreements made with them. Favas, their deputy at court, declared that the government intended to reduce them altogether. They accordingly summoned a general assembly of reform at La Rochelle, despite the prohibition of the king; and their consistory published a bold decree, dividing the Protestant regions of France into circles, after the manner of Germany, uniting again those circles in a general government, and establishing the rules by which this government was to raise troops and taxes, to levy war and exercise independent jurisdiction. The scheme was a direct imitation of the United Provinces of Holland. It manifested fully the republican ideas and leanings of the Huguenots, and roused the court, and above all Richelieu, to crush them.

An army was raised by Luynes,[d] and Louis XIII left Paris accompanied by the good wishes of all zealous Catholics and those who were desirous of peace. He had re-established the tax paid by judges, magistrates, and financiers on their offices, to secure them to their sons in case of death, contracted a loan, and obtained from the clergy an extraordinary tax. On the 19th of May, 1621, he occupied Saumur, which he was able to leave to Duplessis-Mornay in spite of his neutral attitude. It was necessary to prevent all communication between the Protestants, both north and south of the Loire. He afterwards received the submission of the towns in Touraine and Poitou, with the exception of La Rochelle, and St. Jean d’Angély. This latter place belonged to the duke de Rohan, who placed a garrison there under the command of Soubise, whilst he himself went to take command in Guienne.

Lesdiguières undertook the siege of it, which lasted twenty-five days, from the 30th of May to the 25th of June, and was very murderous. Soubise, seeing the royal troops continually increase, ended by capitulating; he obtained for the garrison the honours of war, on condition of his promising always to serve the king. The fortifications of St. Jean were demolished, the trenches filled in, and its privileges suppressed. Deliberations took place as to the besieging of La Rochelle, or the advance on Guienne, where Rohan and La Force were raising arms on all sides. The taking of La Rochelle would have ended the contest; but it offered great difficulties, especially on the side next the sea, where the royal fleet would scarcely hold its own against the numerous and well-disciplined ships of the Calvinists.

Luynes wished to obtain peace by the quickest means; he believed it would be much more rapidly accomplished by dividing the enemy and gaining over the leaders. Therefore he sent Épernon with four or five thousand men to blockade La Rochelle by land, whilst he himself took the Guienne route with the king and the bulk of the army. Mayenne,[86] who commanded the first division, carried Nérac by storm on the 9th of July; the little towns hastened to throw open their gates. One of the principal Calvinist seigneurs of Guienne, De Boisse de Pardaillan, had made his submission the moment the royal troops had arrived, so as not to obey La Force. They received favourable intelligence on every side. In the north and in the centre the Protestants allowed their arms to be taken from them and the walls of their towns pulled down, without striking a blow. Condé occupied and demolished without resistance the fortress of Sancerre, in his government of Berri. They met with resistance only at Clérac, a little town upon the Lot. It took the royal army twelve days to gain possession of it; it then entered, August 5th, and inflicted the most severe punishment. The chancellor Duvair, who accompanied the king, died during this siege; Luynes did not hurry to appoint a successor, and appropriated the seals meantime. This method of monopolising all the power, all the military and civil honours, put the finishing touch to the irritation caused by his favours, and furnished an inexhaustible subject for the raillery of his enemies.

La Force was shut up at Montauban, where the minister Chamier, one of the most fanatical Calvinists, and the mayor Dupuy, who showed an equal devotion to the cause, co-operated with him most energetically. All the future of the party lay in the defence of this place. Rohan scoured Languedoc and the Cévennes to raise men, and to form a relieving army. The king had the choice of pursuing Rohan, or of besieging Montauban. He decided upon this last step, in the hopes of striking a decisive blow, and after some useless parleying, with which Sully was intrusted, the works were commenced without delay. Unfortunately they had not taken part in any other siege for a long time, except that of St. Jean d’Angély; they had fallen out of the way of taking part in real warfare, and they were even obliged to employ Italian engineers. The royal army found itself hardly sufficient for a siege of such importance. They believed in vain that they might find some partisans in the place. They attempted to surprise it, but were unsuccessful. Mayenne, who had opened the trenches August 18th, wished to rush the attack, before the works were finished. He lost many of his men, and, imprudently exposing himself, paid for his temerity with his life.

The news of Mayenne’s death caused a stir in Paris, as his name had acted as a spell on the populace, amongst whom the war against the Protestants had awakened all the ancient passions of the league. The following day, the 18th, they attempted with no better result to make a breach by aid of the cannon. On the 28th, Rohan came to the assistance of the place in spite of the vigilance of the dukes of Angoulême and Montmorency. He cut himself a passage through at the point of the sword, although losing many men, and gave to the besieged garrison the means for prolonging their resistance. The king called together all the most experienced marshals and military men. They recognised the fact that it was impossible to carry Montauban before the winter. Luynes, who had become constable without knowing how to command an army or direct a siege, incurred the responsibility of this failure, but it did not disturb him. He wished to make peace, contrary to the desires of the military men and of the earnest Catholics. He asked for an interview with Rohan, and tried to bribe him. Rohan refused to desert his party, all the more because he was unable to do so, being under the direction of ministers whose impassioned ideas allowed him very little personal freedom. The Calvinists hoped that, thanks to the resistance of Montauban, they would weary the king of his policy. They were not mistaken. A final attack, attempted the 21st of October, failed like all the previous ones. The royal army, weakened by fatigue and sickness, and decimated by little battles, rapidly diminished. They had fired uselessly twenty thousand cannon shots, an enormous total for the times. On the 2nd of November Luynes decided to raise the siege, subject to a renewal in the spring.

[Sidenote: [1621-1622 A.D.]]

The king, on retiring, made his entry into Toulouse, the most Catholic of the towns of the south, where he was received with general acclamation. He decided to limit himself during the winter to the keeping open of the communications between Toulouse and Bordeaux. Accordingly he ordered the marshal De Rouquelaure and Bassompierre to besiege the little town of Monheur, which the Calvinists occupied near Tonneins. The camp and the court were full of divisions, as always happens after great reverses. They threw on one another the responsibility for the errors that had been committed. Luynes was naturally the one whom they attacked the most. The most ardent Catholics reproached him with having desired peace too much; the military men with having attempted the siege of Montauban with insufficient forces, through avarice, some said. Father Arnoux, the king’s confessor, and Puisieux, secretary of state, began to rise up against him and tried to destroy his credit. On the 11th of December Monheur capitulated.

Death of Luynes (1621 A.D.)

Their lives were granted to the garrison, but the town was pillaged and burned for having given itself to the Huguenots. Three days after, on the 14th, Luynes died suddenly of fever. He was just at the pinnacle of his success. Nevertheless, Louis XIII, in spite of his caution and his ordinary dissimulation, had begun to complain of his yoke, and to lend an ear to the accusations of his adversaries. Luynes had had few friends, and his enemies, whose numbers were increasing, were already attacking him with extreme vigour. His ambition and his avidity, equally unrestrained, had turned everyone against him. The greater number of the authors who were contemporary with him, animated against him by prejudice and the strongest personal feelings, had treated him unfairly, and attributed all sorts of extravagances to him, as, for instance, wishing to see himself made prince of Avignon, or king of Austrasia. His political talents deserve more justice. Firm without illusion, and knowing how to ally moderation with energy, he had conducted the war briskly in the desire to arrive more quickly at a peace which he wished to make prompt and certain. This end he never ceased to pursue, and Richelieu, who gained it, only finished a work that had been begun.[i]

This check saved the Huguenots for the time, although it was counterbalanced by the ascendency of Guise in Poitou. The treaty was concluded in the following year at Montpellier, by which it was stipulated that affairs should be replaced as they were before the war, new conquests restored, and new fortifications demolished. One point the king gained; this was that the Huguenots should no more have a lay assembly. A synod of ecclesiastics was alone allowed them; thus obviating the revival of that republican assembly at La Rochelle, which had roused all the suspicions and energy of king and court. Louis, returning to his capital, was welcomed as a hero. The two queens rivalled each other in the brilliancy of their fêtes. But neither applause nor pleasure could prevent the king from relapsing into that state of apathy which was natural to him. Louis XIII was as completely the roi fainéant as were the last of the race of Clovis and Charlemagne. But times were altered; the tree of royalty had taken root, and stood as erect, when withered and sapless, as when in spring and leaf.

RICHELIEU’S RETURN TO THE MINISTRY

[Sidenote: [1622-1624 A.D.]]

Louis XIII had been inspired by Luynes with an aversion for Richelieu. It was with great difficulty that Marie de’ Medici obtained for him in 1622 the cardinal’s hat stipulated in a former treaty; but all her efforts in procuring him admission to the council were resisted. The marquis de la Vieuville was favourite for the moment, and he strengthened the king’s prejudice against the cardinal. Marie was persevering; and at length Louis yielded. He permitted Richelieu to take his seat at the council table, but on the express condition that he was to be without office, and that he should not consider himself a minister. The cardinal expressed himself perfectly contented with this arrangement: he took his seat; and the inefficacy of all the precautions taken against him soon appeared. They had bound the arms of a giant, who broke his bonds the instant that it pleased him to be free. From the first moment that Richelieu spoke, his genius dominated; and the monarch himself, as well as La Vieuville, cowered beneath an ascendency that they found it vain to dispute.

To secure this ascendency over the monarch, Richelieu scorned to make use of the same means which sufficed La Vieuville and Luynes. Instead of flattering Louis, and directing him in the way of pleasure, the cardinal at first strove to awaken the young king to a sense of the country’s debasement, to its true interests, and its possible glory. He pointed out the turbulent disobedience of the great, the sedition of the Huguenot assemblies, the weakness of ministers, and the disorder of the finances--the consequent poverty and misery of the kingdom, as well as the decay of its influence and dignity in its relations with foreign potentates. He pointed to the house of Austria, daily increasing its strength and extending its territories, at that very moment triumphant from the conquest of the Palatinate, and threatening to crush those Protestant states of Germany which had defied the might of Charles V. Louis listened, and was excited, not indeed to take vigorous counsels himself, but to confide in a minister who had shown himself able to conceive and execute them.[87]

The chief object then coveted by the house of Austria was the possession of the Valtelline, a strip of Alpine territory which might serve to connect the dominions of that family in Germany and in Italy. It had been in subjection to the Grisons, a Protestant race; and Spain seized this pretext to conquer it in the name of the pope. France had opposed this with the usual feebleness of her diplomacy. The first act of Richelieu was to cut short the negotiation, to defy both the pope and Spain, and to send an army under the marshal D’Estrées into the Valtelline, which expelled the Spaniards, and restored the region to its ancient masters.

Richelieu dared to show the same bold front to the Huguenots at the same time. Determined on completely reducing them, his first endeavour was to drive them from Poitou and La Rochelle, where they could at all times receive succours from England, and to circumscribe their influence to the provinces of the southeast. He refused to evacuate Montpellier; and the Huguenots were thus provoked to rebel. The cardinal at the same time deprived them of the aid of the English monarch, with whom he was negotiating the marriage of Henrietta of France, sister of Louis. Rohan, and a great number of the Protestants, thought it on this account imprudent to recommence war; but his impetuous brother, Soubise, made an attack on the port of Blavet, seized some ships that were fitting out there, and sailing thence made a descent upon the island of Ré. He was defeated, the Huguenots being neither decided nor prepared for a general insurrection. The consequence of the rash attempt of Soubise was that in the accommodation that ensued the royalists kept Fort Louis, merely promising not to annoy from it the inhabitants or shipping of La Rochelle.

CONSPIRACY OF THE COURT AGAINST RICHELIEU

[Sidenote: [1624-1626 A.D.]]

Richelieu here postponed his design of completely reducing the Huguenots. The conquest of La Rochelle could alone do this effectually, and that required a large naval force, as well as such preparations of every kind as would ensure success. Besides, for the present, the cardinal was aware that he would soon have to encounter a court intrigue, a triumph over which was more requisite to establish his power than even the subjugation of La Rochelle. The marriage of the princess Henrietta with Charles of England, which had been desired by Richelieu, as securing the previous neutrality of the latter country in a war against the Huguenots, had proved a source of difference rather than of alliance. The gallant Buckingham, who had come to demand and escort back the princess, had excited the jealousy of the cardinal. He had shown at the French court the sample of such a minister as the age esteemed--gay, liberal, handsome, looking as well as wielding command. He had admired the young queen, and had boldly expressed his admiration. His friend, Lord Holland, had paid court to the duchess de Chevreuse, the companion of the queen, and the most lovely woman of the time. Richelieu admired Madame de Chevreuse, nay, by some, is said to have pretended to the queen herself. Whatever was the truth, Richelieu and Buckingham conceived for each other a mutual hatred, which afterwards produced a rupture between their respective sovereigns. And a strong pique at the same time arose between the cardinal and the queen.

Another personage at court, now grown into importance, was Gaston, duke of Orleans, brother of the king. Louis was extremely jealous of him. A tutor, under whom the young duke improved and began to give promise of good conduct and manly virtue, was superseded by a mere courtier, calculated to give lessons in vice and dissipation. Ornano, who succeeded this man, found the prince absorbed in pleasure, and debased. He endeavoured to rouse Gaston, by explaining to him his rank, his hopes; and he did succeed in awakening his ambition. The young duke of Orleans demanded to enter the council. Richelieu, then in the commencement of his influence, replied by banishing Ornano for a time. Gaston relapsed into dissipation, and seemed little inclined to give umbrage or uneasiness to the government.

The worst part of feudal tyranny was that it interfered with the private affections of all men. Richelieu, wielding the power of Louis XIII, was not content with commanding the loyal submission of the first prince of the blood. He thought proper to impose a wife upon him, nay, to choose one. The lady selected was Mademoiselle de Montpensier, rich, lovely, allied to the crown, and heiress of the house of Guise. There could be no objection to such a bride, except the compulsion that gave her. Gaston rebelled. The projected marriage convulsed the entire court, and wellnigh the kingdom also.

Richelieu’s object was to provide an heir to the crown, which Louis seemed not destined long to wear. Anne of Austria, the little queen, as she was called, to distinguish her from the queen-mother, was on the other hand averse to Gaston’s marriage; and she joined the friends of the latter in endeavouring to thwart the cardinal’s plan. Ornano had resumed his influence and station in the prince’s household; and he it was who chiefly urged Gaston to resist. Ornano was arrested. This increased the rage of the duke of Orleans; and at length a plot was entered into and approved by him, to get rid of the domineering Richelieu in the same manner that Ancre had been removed. The cardinal then inhabited a country house at Fleury. Gaston’s servants were to betake themselves thither, under pretence that their master was to honour Richelieu on that day with his company to dinner, and the murder was to have taken place. Richelieu received warning. The count de Chalais, who was to have been the chief perpetrator, ventured to sound a friend, who expressed at once a lively abhorrence of the attempt, and threatened to denounce it. Chalais became alarmed, and, resolving to anticipate the informer, went himself to the cardinal, and made a disclosure. Gaston was astonished, in consequence, by the appearance of the cardinal in his apartment, on the morning appointed for the deed. “I am sorry,” said Richelieu, smiling, “your highness did not give me warning of your intention to make use of my residence. I should have been prepared. As it is, I abandon it to your service.” Having so said, Richelieu handed his shirt to Gaston (one of the ceremonials of etiquette observed at a prince’s levée) and then retired.

The cardinal, not content with thus confounding his enemies, was resolved to punish them and intimidate others by their example. By probing Chalais and his family, it was discovered that the nobles upon whose aid Gaston reckoned were the duke de Vendôme and his brother the grand prior, illegitimate sons of Henry IV. The former was governor of Brittany. Richelieu, dissembling his suspicions, enticed them to repair to the court at Blois, where both were instantly arrested. The imprisonment of all his friends, and the danger of some, would have roused to serious resistance a prince of more energy than Gaston. The young duke was not wanting in indignation; but Richelieu had prepossessed the monarch’s mind, and had taught Louis to believe that his royal life had been aimed at as well as his minister’s; that the young queen, Anne of Austria, was privy to the plot; and that she was to have married the duke of Orleans on his accession to the throne. These accusations hardened and enraged the mind of Louis XIII. Gaston, in the power of the court, was forced to espouse Mademoiselle de Montpensier; the count de Chalais perished on the scaffold; the queen was publicly reproached by her husband with having sought a second marriage, to which she indignantly replied that there was not so much to be gained by the change. Her friend, Madame de Chevreuse, was banished from court. Thus Richelieu, triumphant over his foes, amongst whom the queen and the king’s brother were numbered, showed how fatal it was to provoke his enmity, how fruitless to resist his power.[d]

[Sidenote: [1626-1627 A.D.]]

The Treaty of Montpellier in 1626 granted a hollow peace to the Huguenots; and a few months later, that is to say in May, peace was signed with Spain. Years before, Richelieu, then young and obscure, had often discussed with his friend Father Joseph how best to subdue the neighbouring town of La Rochelle, the stronghold of the Huguenots; and time had not softened his views on the subject. The English people, chafing under the influence of their French and Catholic queen, Henrietta Maria, longed to assert their Protestantism; Buckingham, opposed to her anti-Protestant policy, longed to provoke the French court. What then would better serve their ends than adoption of the Huguenot cause? So war was begun with France. Richelieu brought his forces up under the walls of La Rochelle, and drew a cordon of forts around the unhappy town, cutting off all approaches. To shut the city off from English aid, Richelieu constructed a wonderful mole across the mouth of the harbour. This was built of solid masonry, extending about seven yards from one shore and four hundred yards from the other, the intervening space of six hundred yards being partially blocked with sunken ships and further guarded by a half-circle of ships lashed together with their prows outward. Inside the boom a royal fleet watched against sallies, and outside another fleet watched for the English.[a]

THE SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE DESCRIBED BY SEIGNOBOS

The work of construction at first went on slowly, and the besieged could do little to hinder it. They could only fire off a few guns or post a few ambuscades in the path of the staff officers as they went from one part of the army to the other; but it was winter time, and bad weather often interrupted the work of construction. The besieged had sent to ask the king of England to help them; and the latter pledged himself “to the mayor, aldermen, peers, and citizens of La Rochelle, to help them by land and sea according to his royal power until a firm peace had been established.” As a result he promised to send an expedition to help them in the spring, and to furnish them with provisions; in the meantime he allowed a collection to be made for their benefit in his kingdom.

The inhabitants of La Rochelle, on their part, engaged themselves to provide pilots for the English, to prepare magazines and shelters on their coasts, and to equip vessels to help in the expedition. And if the king of France should attack the territories of the king of England, they would do all they could to create a diversion. It was agreed that neither the besieged nor the king of England should make any treaty without consulting the other. The king of England had wished to impose two other conditions; he asked the besieged to send him the children of their principal families as hostages, and to receive an English garrison within their walls. They only consented to receive English ships into their harbour. They accepted the king of England as an ally to help them to defend their independence, but they did not wish to have him for a master.

[Sidenote: [1627-1628 A.D.]]

The royal army encamped before La Rochelle did not suffer very much from the winter. A tax had been levied in the principal towns in France which had made it possible to provide the soldiers with good clothing. The construction of the dike provided occupation for the men, and the boats were manned by volunteers from picked regiments. Meanwhile Louis XIII was wearying of this long siege with no fighting. He declared that his health would suffer if he did not go to Paris for a time. Richelieu, fearing lest the king’s departure might have a bad effect on the troops, tried to afford him some distraction by giving false alarms; several times a sortie was announced, and the king remained on horseback all night waiting for it, but the besieged did not make any movement. At last Richelieu felt he could no longer keep the king with the army, so he wrote to him saying that he could now absent himself for a time “without any injury to his cause.”

The king immediately announced his departure. In his absence the cardinal was to be commander-in-chief, he was called “lieutenant-general of the king in the army before La Rochelle.” He had full power over all the troops, cavalry and infantry, and also over the artillery for continuing the siege, and was even empowered to receive the submission of the inhabitants and take possession of the town. The king admonished all the generals and officers to “obey him as implicitly as they would their king.”

On the 10th of February, 1628, Richelieu accompanied the king two leagues from the camp; there they separated, embracing each other at parting. Louis warned the cardinal to take good care of his health; but Richelieu, out of respect for etiquette, had not dared to take his umbrella when accompanying the king, and was very much upset by the winter sun and had five attacks of intermittent fever. After being absent two months and a half, Louis returned to the camp, where he was saluted by salvos from the forts, the batteries, and the dike. He found his army stronger and the military works considerably advanced. He had left his army reduced by illness to eighteen thousand men; but owing to the recruits who had joined from the neighbouring provinces, he now found a force twenty-five thousand strong.

The whole line of circumvallation which was to cut off La Rochelle on the land side was completed and furnished with redoubts. The shore on both sides of the harbour was provided with batteries. The dike was almost finished and was defended by a sort of floating palisade formed of ships linked together. An attempt to surprise the town had failed, owing to bad generalship. But the besieged had been unable to make any sorties or to obtain any provisions; and hunger was beginning to make itself felt in their ranks. The day after his return, on the 24th of April, Louis XIII sent an envoy to call upon the besieged citizens to surrender. According to the custom of the time the summons had to be made by a herald-at-arms, but there was not one with the army and they could not even find the insignia of the office. A tabard had therefore to be prepared in a hurry, a clerk of finance put it on and went forth to play the part of a herald. The besieged refused to receive the summons. A sort of revolution had taken place in La Rochelle. The rich citizens who had hitherto governed the town were anxious to bring the siege to an end, for it was ruining their commerce and exposing them to the wrath of their king. The sailors, who were on the side of resistance, seized the power and elected one of themselves, a captain Guiton, as mayor. Guiton was a bold corsair, of small stature, but brave and energetic. He had a splendidly furnished house, full of flags which he had taken from the ships of his enemies; he was fond of showing them and of saying from what kings and in what seas he had captured them. He was not anxious to be made mayor, but when he took possession of his office, he placed his dagger on the table in the town hall and said to his companions: “You do not know what you have done in choosing me; you had better think well about it, for it will be useless to talk to me about surrendering. If anyone mentions it I will kill him.”

Another English fleet set out to relieve the blockade of La Rochelle, or at any rate to revictual the town. This fleet consisted of thirty vessels and twenty boats laden with provisions and ammunition. It was signalled on the 11th of May by three shots fired from the forts on the island of Ré. The fleet took up its station near the point of the island, opposite to La Rochelle. The besieged fired salvos as a sign of rejoicing, and very soon their ramparts were fluttering with red, white, and blue flags. The royal fleet of thirty-eight ships was divided into four squadrons which were stationed in front of the dike; behind, on the La Rochelle side, the dike was guarded by twenty-six galleys. A light English ship succeeded in passing these batteries and in reaching the harbour; she carried a captain, a native of La Rochelle on board, and he was commissioned to ask his compatriots to open a passage before their harbour, so that the ships laden with provisions might come in. The English fleet, he said, had not come to fight. The inhabitants of La Rochelle and the Protestant refugees on board the English ships begged the admiral to force the passage; he replied that he only had orders to cross to facilitate the entrance of the convoy with provisions, and that he must spare his fleet. On the 18th of May, the English ships set sail, drew close to the harbour, fired a salute, and sailed away to the open sea. The besieged, deserted by their allies, found themselves in a very critical position. One of them proposed to sacrifice himself and save the town by assassinating Richelieu. That was the way in which Orleans had formerly escaped from the duke of Guise. But he would not commit this deed unless he was certain it was not a sin. He consulted Guiton, who replied: “In such matters as this I never give advice.” He asked the pastors what they thought; and they answered: “If God is going to save us it will not be by means of a crime.” So he gave up the idea.

The besieged were suffering much from starvation. The rich still had provisions which they kept concealed, but others were dying of hunger. On the 26th of May they decided to drive out of the town all who were unable to fight--women, children, old men, and all who were infirm. These poor creatures made for the French camp; the soldiers, by the king’s order, received them with a shower of bullets and forced them to go back to the town. The royal troops also destroyed the crops of beans which the besieged had sown at the bottom of the other side of the escarpment.

On the 1st of June some of the citizens who were anxious for peace succeeded in opening communications with Bassompierre, proposing a capitulation; but on the 10th a letter reached La Rochelle from the king of England, promising that he would see his whole fleet destroyed rather than fail to extricate the besieged from the peril they were in. They therefore broke off the negotiations and began firing again. For three months they waited for the promised help, while Richelieu continued his dike. Towards the open sea he had had long beams bound together and fixed in the ground at the bottom of the water to prevent access to the dike, and on the harbour side he had placed a line of ships anchored and chained together. Every day visitors came to the royal camp, and were entertained; and sometimes, to amuse them, a skirmish was got up at which they looked on. The king went out hunting and kept his court just as if he had been in Paris.

Within La Rochelle the famine was becoming terrible. The rich were eating horses, donkeys, dogs, and cats; and even for these they had to pay well, the price of a cat being 45 livres. The poor were no longer able to go and look for dead shellfish cast up by the tide and stranded in the mud, for the guns of the besiegers made this dangerous. They had eaten up all the green stuff and were reduced to boiling pieces of leather with fat and moist sugar. Many left the town and would have given themselves up at the outposts of the royal army; but they were sent back, so that the town might not be enabled to hold out longer by having fewer mouths to feed. The soldiers would take away their clothes and then drive them back to the town with sticks or leather thongs. A great number of the inhabitants had died from illness or privation. Even those who were defending the town were so weak with hunger that they could only walk with sticks; they could hardly drag themselves along and were quite unable to bear arms. Often in the mornings sentinels were found dead of starvation at their posts. Guiton still refused to surrender. He had some of those who wished to capitulate imprisoned, and on the 22nd of July he had three or four beheaded as traitors, and their heads placed on the gates of the town. On the 9th of August the president of the presidial, an inferior court of judicature, was imprisoned in his turn. The councillors were so alarmed that two of them took refuge in the royal camp.

Louis XIII, hearing what great distress prevailed in La Rochelle, on the 16th of August sent a herald-at-arms to call upon the town to surrender. This time it was a real herald in a tabard, cap on head, sceptre in hand. Before him rode two trumpeters bearing waving pennants. They presented themselves at one of the gates and asked to see the mayor. They were kept waiting a long time; then, instead of the mayor, appeared a troop of citizens and soldiers, whose leader told the herald with an oath to go away at once, and pointed to his men’s guns ready cocked for firing. The herald withdrew, placing on the ground two proclamations that he had brought with him. The English fleet, on the point of sailing, had been delayed by the murder of the duke of Buckingham. The longer the siege went on the stronger became the temptation to fly to the royal camp; and the chance of being killed seemed preferable to the certainty of being starved to death. To rid themselves of these obtrusive fugitives the besiegers adopted a cruel plan. They placed gibbets on the line of circumvallation surrounding the town and every time a group of fugitives arrived to give themselves up, they made them draw lots, and the one on whom the lot fell was hanged while the rest were sent back to the town.

On the 29th of August Guiton read the citizens a letter from the king of England saying that help was at hand. It was madness, he said, to hope for mercy from the king of France: if the town surrendered it would be sacked and the men massacred. They must stand firm as long as anyone remained alive to shut the gates. “As for me,” he added, “if I am left with only one other, and without food, I shall be quite willing to draw lots to decide which of us is to eat the other.” On the 3rd of September, Guiton, while speaking to the people who had assembled to hear the Sunday sermon, was interrupted by a woman crying out that her child’s nurse had not tasted food for a fortnight. Guiton to appease the crowd made a pretence of negotiating. He sent two envoys to the king, who received them fairly. But a native of La Rochelle, just arrived from England, managed to make his way into the city in broad daylight and announced that the English fleet was just setting sail; so again the negotiations were broken off. A fortnight later, on the 28th of September, an English fleet of 140 sail carrying 6,000 soldiers arrived, and taking up a position before the harbour, tried to force the passage, which was guarded by the French fleet. The French refugees asked to be allowed to manage the fire-ships which were to be sent against their king. The English wished to work them themselves, but the fire-ships proved a failure, and would not act. They waited for a favourable wind, and on the 3rd of October began firing on the fleet and batteries of the besiegers. The fighting continued for two days without much loss of life, and on the evening of the 4th the English fleet withdrew to the isle of Aix. It remained inactive for some days owing to stormy weather, and, when the wind was once more favourable, the English, instead of making an attack, sent an envoy to Richelieu.

Those inside La Rochelle, seeing they were deserted, resigned themselves to the necessity of suing for peace. Richelieu received at the same time the envoys from the town and those from the French Protestants on board the English fleet. On the 29th of October the capitulation was signed, the inhabitants of La Rochelle acknowledged the great offence of which they had been guilty, “not only in resisting the just wishes of their king, but in joining with foreigners who had taken up arms against the state.” They begged the king to pardon them for this crime, and they placed their town in his hands. The king, taking into consideration “their repentance and protestations of sorrow,” promised them an amnesty, the free exercise of their religion, and the restoration of any of their property which had been confiscated. The officers and nobles might leave the town wearing their swords, and the soldiers carrying white sticks, and they would then be free. On the 30th of October the French army entered La Rochelle and the garrison came out; they were reduced to seventy-four Frenchmen and sixty-two English.[j]

Richelieu showed himself clement towards La Rochelle; there was no vengeance taken, no victims were sacrificed. The town lost its independence, which was, indeed, incompatible with the idea of sovereignty; but its worship and its religious opinions were left free, “the only avowed and open toleration,” says Hume[c] “which at that time was granted in any European kingdom.”[d]

FOOTNOTES

[86] [Henry, duke of Mayenne, son of that duke who was at one time the head of the League.]

[87] [In Richelieu’s Mémoires, which he intended to serve as historical material for his biography, it is stated that Richelieu in a single interview dramatically placed this gigantic scheme before the young king, and that Louis from this time was obedient to the minister. This, however, is hardly in agreement with the facts. Richelieu seems hardly to have found his policy at first; and he was not sure of Louis’ constancy until after his success at La Rochelle.]

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