France, which being well united, as we now behold it, under the glorious
reign of your Majesty, might give law to all the world, was upon the
point of self-destruction, by the division which was raised in it by two
fatal leagues of rebels; the one in the middle, and the other towards the
latter end, of the last age.
Heresy produced the first against the true religion;[17] ambition,
under the masque of zeal, gave birth to the second, with pretence of
maintaining what the other would have ruined: and both of them, though
implacable enemies to each other, yet agreed in this, that each of them,
at divers times, set up the standard of rebellion against our kings.
The crimes of the former I have set forth in the history of Calvinism,
which made that impious League in France, against the Lord and his
anointed; and I discover the wickedness of the latter in this work,
which I present to your Majesty, as the fruit of my exact obedience to
those commands with which you have been pleased to honour me. I have
endeavoured to perform them with so much the greater satisfaction to
myself, because I believed that, in reading this history, the falsehood
of some advantages which the Leaguers and Huguenots have ascribed
to themselves, may be easily discerned. These by boasting, as they
frequently do, even at this day, that they set the crown on the head of
King Henry IV.; those, that their League was the cause of his conversion.
I hope the world will soon be disabused of those mistakes; and that it
will be clearly seen, that they were the Catholics of the royal party,
who, next under God, produced those two effects, so advantageous to
France. We are owing for neither of them to those two unhappy Leagues,
which were the most dangerous enemies to the prosperity of the kingdom;
and it is manifest at this present time, that the glory of triumphing
over both of them, was reserved, by the Divine Providence, to our kings
of the imperial stem of Bourbon.
Henry IV. subdued and reduced the League of the false zealots, by the
invincible force of his arms, and by the wonderful attractions of his
clemency; Louis the Just disarmed that of the Calvinists, by the taking
of Rochelle, and other places, which those heretics had moulded into
a kind of commonwealth against their sovereign; and Louis the Great,
without employing other arms than those of his ardent charity and
incomparable zeal for the conversion of Protestants, accompanied by the
justice of his laws,[18] has reduced it to that low condition, that we
have reason to believe, we shall behold its ruin, by the repentance of
those, who, being deluded and held back by their ministers, continue
still in their erroneous belief, rather through ignorance than malice.
And this it is which, when accomplished, will surpass even all those
other wonders which daily are beheld, under your most auspicious
government.
Undoubtedly, Sir, your Majesty has performed, by your victorious arms,
your generous goodness, and your more than royal magnificence, all those
great and heroic actions, which will ever be the admiration of the world,
and infinitely above the commendations which future ages, in imitation
of the present, will consecrate to your immortal memory. I presume not
to undertake that subject, because it has already drained the praises of
the noblest pens, which yet have not been able to raise us to that idea
of you, which we ought justly to conceive: I shall only say, that what
you have done with so much prudence, justice, and glory, by extending
the French monarchy to its ancient bounds, and rendering it, as it is at
present, as flourishing, and as much respected by all the world, as it
ever has been, under the greatest and most renowned of all our monarchs,
is not so great in the sight of God, as what your Majesty performs daily,
with so much piety, zeal, and good success, in augmenting the kingdom of
Jesus Christ, and procuring the conversion of our Protestants, by those
gentle and efficacious means which you have used.
This, Sir, is, without exception, the most glorious of all your
conquests; and while you continue to enjoy on earth that undisputed glory
which your other actions have acquired you, is preparing an eternal
triumph for you in the heavens.
It is what is continually implored of God, in his most ardent prayers,
who, enjoying the abundant favours of your Majesty, lives at this day the
most happy of mankind, under your most powerful protection; and is most
obliged to continue all his life, with all imaginable respect and zeal,