PARIS OF HENRY IV
Henry IV (1589-1598), came to the throne after a career of strife which
by no means ended at his accession. His family were ardent Protestants.
Henry was born in the country and received an outdoor training which
made him hardy and vigorous in wide contrast to the debauched youths who
sat upon the throne in Paris. The religious wars were seething all
through his boyhood. When he was but fifteen his mother, Jeanne
d’Albret, a woman of exceptional courage and address, presented him to
the Protestant army and he was made general-in-chief, with Admiral
Coligny as his adviser. When he was nineteen he agreed to the marriage
with Marguerite of Valois which was to reunite the contending
parties--or to serve as a bait to entice the chief Protestants of the
country to Paris, according as one interprets Catherine de Medicis.
Breaking harshly in upon the wedding festivities the bell of Saint
Germain l’Auxerrois clanged its awful knell, and when the horror was
over Protestant Henry was lucky still to be alive. It behooved him to be
prudent, and he accepted Charles IX’s commanding invitation to stay in
Paris. Here he was under surveillance, and here he learned the ways of
the most corrupt court that France had known up to that time, immoral,
deceitful, treacherous, the women in every way as bad as the men.
During these years Henry diplomatically declared himself a convert to
Catholicism, but it was a change for the moment; he had reverted long
before the monk’s dagger made him King by slaying Henry III.
This murder meant an accession of hard work for Henry of Navarre for the
League under the Duke of Mayenne and supported by Spain and Savoy was
determined to accept no Protestant as ruler. Henry won a brilliant
victory at Arques and another at Ivry.
Oh, how our hearts were beating, when at the dawn of day,
We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array,
With all its priest-led citizens and all its rebel peers
And Appenzell’s stout infantry, and Egmont’s Flemish spears.
There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land;
And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand;
And as we looked on them, we thought of Seine’s empurpled flood,
And good Coligny’s hoary hair all dabbled with his blood;
And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of War,
To fight for his own holy name and Henry of Navarre.
Then the “burghers of Saint Genevieve” were indeed forced to “Keep watch
and ward” for Henry marched upon Paris without which he could not call
his crown his own. At his approach the people from the suburbs crowded
into the city till it held some 200,000. Henry had no trouble in taking
the chief of the outer settlements and in controlling the town’s food
supply. The resulting famine drove the Parisians to straits such as they
had not known since the days of Sainte Geneviève and were not to know
again until the Franco-Prussian War. The usual meat soon gave out and
when all the horses and all the mules were eaten, any stray dog or cat
was pursued by the populace and when caught, cooked and devoured in the
open street. From dead men’s bones was made a sort of pasty bread, and
mothers knew the taste of the flesh of their own children whose strength
had not availed against the greater force of hunger.
Touched by the suffering of the city which he regarded as his own, Henry
offered to let the besieged leave the town, but so earnest was the
League, so inspiring the preaching of the priests that not more than
3000 took advantage of the opportunity.
The League was not at peace with itself, however. Mayenne disposed by
death of the Leaguers whose importance threatened his power and there
was stirring that feeling in favor of Henry which found voice a little
later in the “Satire Ménippée,” the essays which rallied Catholics to
the support of their monarch. The papers were written by a canon of the
Sainte Chapelle and half a dozen friends in the form of a burlesque
report of a meeting of the States General. The following selection gives
an idea of the spirit of unrest that was troubling Paris and of the lack
of approval of Henry III’s assassination felt by the moderate party.
“O Paris who are no longer Paris but a den of ferocious beasts, a
citadel of Spaniards, Walloons and Neapolitans, an asylum and safe
retreat for robbers, murderers and assassins, will you never be
cognizant of your dignity and remember who you have been and what you
are; will you never heal yourself of this frenzy which has engendered
for you in place of one lawful and gracious King fifty saucy kinglets
and fifty tyrants? You are in chains, under a Spanish Inquisition a
thousand times more intolerable and harder to endure by spirits born
free and unconstrained as the French are than the cruelest deaths which
the Spaniards could devise. You did not tolerate a slight increase of
taxes and of offices and a few new edicts which did not concern you at
all, yet you endure that they pillage houses, that they ransom you with
blood, that they imprison your senators, that they drive out and banish
your good citizens and counselors: that they hang and massacre your
principal magistrates; you see it and endure it but you approve it and
praise it and you would not dare or know how to do otherwise. You have
given little support to your King, good-tempered, easy, friendly, who
behaved like a fellow-citizen of your town which he had enriched and
embellished with handsome buildings, fortified with strong and haughty
ramparts, honored with privileges and favorable exemptions. What say I?
Given little support? Far worse: you have driven him from his city, his
house, his very bed! Driven him? you have pursued him. Pursued him? You
assassinated him, canonized the assassin and made joyful over his death.
And now you see how much this death profited you.”
Henry of Navarre became king of Paris as well as of the rest of France
though it required a considerable concession to achieve that position.
Still it was not the first time that he had made a mental somersault, so
when he found that Paris was stubborn in spite of more than three years
and a half of hunger, sickness and death, and that his enemies outside
of the city were strong enough to inflict upon him a defeat of some
moment, he yielded to the urging of his counselors, admitted with a
shrug “So fair a city is well worth a mass” and declared his willingness
to turn Catholic. After suitably prolonged disputations with theologians
he declared himself convinced of the error of his belief, and on a
Sunday in July, 1593, he appeared at Saint Denis where an imposing body
of prelates was arrayed before the great door, and professed his new
faith. Then he was allowed to enter the building and to repeat his
profession before the altar.
Paris was not sorry to have an excuse for submitting and in the
following March when Henry’s troops entered the city in the grayness of
dawn one day toward the end of the month there was no opposition. On his
way to Notre Dame to hear mass, Henry, resplendent in velvet,
gold-embroidered, mounted on a handsome gray charger and constantly
doffing his white-plumed helmet, was greeted with cries of “Long live
the king” and “Hail to peace.” When the Provost of the Merchants and
some of the principal citizens the day after his entry brought him a
gift of sweetmeats, the king, though not fully dressed, for his
subjects’ ardor had brought them at an unduly early hour, accepted the
offering graciously, saying, “Yesterday I received your hearts; to-day I
receive your comfits no less willingly.”
A Spanish troop had been called in by the League to assist them in
holding the city against Henry. He allowed them to leave unmolested,
contenting himself with watching them from a window as they passed
through the Porte Saint Denis, and calling to them with cheerful
insolence, “Gentlemen, my regards to your master--and never come back
here!”
In the calm that succeeded the nation began a career of prosperity which
it had not known for two generations. With cheerful severity Henry
caused a gallows to be erected near the Porte Saint Antoine “Whereon to
hang any person of either religion who should be found so bold as to
attempt anything against the public peace.” He was determined that every
peasant in the kingdom should have a chicken in the pot for his Sunday
dinner, and he used intelligent methods of bringing about that result.
Not only was he a man of practical good sense himself, but he was able
to recognize that quality in others, and he chose men of prudence and
intelligence as his advisers, chief of them the Duke of Sully. He
encouraged agriculture, introduced new industries, permitted religious
toleration through the Edict of Nantes, made himself the friend alike
of peasant and of noble. France throve as she had not had a chance to do
for many a decade--and the power of the crown became stronger than ever.
Henry’s early life had taught him to be active, and he lost no time in
winning Paris to his friendship in various ways. He did not treat it
like an enemy but as a returned prodigal, and the citizens lost none of
their old privileges while they gained the civic improvements about
which their new monarch busied himself promptly. He began the rebuilding
of the city with the high roofed structures of brick and stone combined
which showed that the classic outlines of the Renaissance were on the
wane and which prefaced the Italian forms of the next reign.
In the place des Vosges of to-day may be seen the best extant examples
of this style. Catherine de Medicis had made Henry II’s death at the
Hôtel des Tournelles an excuse to leave a building damp and malodorous
from the ill-drained marsh on which it was built. For a long time it
housed only some of Charles IX’s pet animals, and then it was torn down
except for a wing where Henry IV installed some of the silk workers whom
he introduced into France that his people might learn a new industry.
The palace park was used as a horse market, and finally all memory of
the past was cleared away and Henry IV caused to be laid out the Place
Royale now called the Place des Vosges. “The spear-thrust of
Montgomery,” said Victor Hugo, “was the origin of the Place Royale.”
The king built at his own expense several of the houses along the south
side and gave the remainder of the land to people who would finish the
remainder of the quadrangle in harmonious style. An arcade runs about
the whole square whose north and south entrances are under pavilions
which break the monotony of the architecture. The effect is wonderfully
pleasing even to-day when most of the houses show signs of dilapidation
and the park which they enclose is noisy with the overflow of children
from the old and crowded streets round about. In the days of its prime
it must have been extremely dignified and handsome.
Many great names are connected with this square. Richelieu lived here,
Madame de Sévigné was born here, and here in the house where Victor Hugo
had an apartment is the museum where Paris has collected mementoes of
the man the people loved. Backing against the southern houses of the
square still stands the house which Sully built for himself, its once
imposing façade whose windows show signs of occupation by many small
businesses, looking down upon a disheveled courtyard.
Another step that tended to beautify Paris was the opening of the Place
Dauphine from the western end of the palace of the Cité through the
palace garden westward. It was surrounded by houses like those on the
Place Royale. Madame Roland lived in one of them, situated where the
_place_ opens on the Pont Neuf which Henry finished. On it he planned to
place his own equestrian statue, but that ornament underwent so many
misfortunes, even to being shipwrecked on its way from Italy where it
had been cast, that Henry was dead before it was set in place. It seems
to have been fated to ill-luck, for during the Revolution it was melted
down and made into cannon, although up to that time the people had laid
their petitions at its foot. The existing statue replaced the old one in
1818.
On the northern part of the Pont Neuf Henry built the famous
“Samaritaine,” a pump which forced water to the Louvre and the
Tuileries, was crowned by a clock tower and a chime of bells, and was
decorated with statues and carving. The name is perpetuated to-day in a
department store on the right bank and in a public bath floating in the
stream. On other bridges there were several of these pumps. One on the
Pont Notre Dame was destroyed within the remembrance of people now
living.
Berthod, a seventeenth-century writer of doggerel, who describes “La
Ville de Paris” in “burlesque verses,” draws a lively picture of the
activities of Henry’s great esplanade in
THE RASCALITIES OF THE PONT-NEUF
May I be hung a hundred times--without a rope----
If ever more I go to see you,
Champion gathering of scamps,
And if ever I take the trouble
To go and see the Samaritaine,
The Pont-Neuf and that great horse
Of bronze which never misbehaves,
And is always clean though never curried
(I’ll be blamed if he isn’t a merry companion)----
Touch him as much as you like,
For he’ll never bite you;
Never has this parade horse
Either bitten or kicked.
O, you Pont-Neuf, _rendezvous_ of charlatans,
Of rascals, of confederates,
Pont-Neuf, customary field
For sellers of paints, both face and wall,
Resort of tooth-pullers,
Of old clo’ men, booksellers, pedants,
Of singers of new songs,
Of lovers’ go-betweens,
Of cut-purses, of slang users,
Of masters of dirty trades,
Of quacks and of nostrum makers,
[Illustration: THE SAMARITAINE.
From an old print.]
[Illustration: STATUE OF HENRY IV ON THE PONT NEUF.
Madame Roland lived in the house on the right.]
And of spagiric physicians,
Of clever jugglers
And of chicken venders.
“I’ve a splendid remedy, monsieur,”
One of them says to you (Heaven never helps me!)
“For what ails you.
Believe me, sir, you can
Use it without being housed.
Look, it smells of sweetest scents,
Is compounded of lively drugs,
And never did Ambroise Paré
Make up a like remedy.”
“Here’s a pretty song,”
Says another, “for a sou.”
“Hi, there, my cloak, you rascal!
Stop thief! Pickpocket!”
“Ah, by George, there is the Samaritaine.
See how it pours forth water,
And how handsome the clock is!
Hark, hark! How it strikes!
Doesn’t it sound like chimes?
Just cast your eye on that figure of a man striking the hour----
Zounds, how he’s playing the hard worker!
See, look, upon my word, won’t you remark
That he’s as fresh as a Jew’s harp!
Bless me! it’s astonishing!
He’s striking the hour with his nose!”
Let’s watch these shooters-at-a-mark,
Who, to ornament their booth
Have four or five great grotesque figures
Standing on turn-tables,
Holding in their hands an ink-horn
Made of wood or bone or ivory,
A leaden comb, a mirror
Decorated with yellow and black paper,
Shoe-horns, lacing tags,
Flexible knives, spectacles,
A comb-case, a sun-dial,
All decked out with saffron yellow;
Old books of Hours, for use of man or woman,
Half French, half Latin;
Old satin roses;
A gun adorned with matches,
Two or three old cakes of soap,
A wooden tobacco-box,
A nut-cracker,
A little group of alabaster,
Its figures whitened with plaster,
A bad castor hat
Adorned with an imitation gold cord,
A flute, a Basque drum,
An old sleeve, an ugly mask.
“Here you are, gentlemen! Take a chance!
Two shots for a farthing,”
Says this rascal in his booth
Dressed in antique costume,
And tormenting passers-by
About his unmarketable wares.
“Six balls for a sou,”
Says this merchant of boxes of balls;
“Here you are, sir! Who’ll take a shot
Before I shut up shop?
Come on, customers, take a chance;
Nobody fails in three shots!”
Two hospitals were built in Henry’s reign, one on the left bank,
l’Hôpital de Charité, and the other outside of the city on the
northeast, for contagious diseases.
Improvement of the quays was a manifold benefit to the city.
A satirical prescription warranted to cure the plague, was quoted then
as it had been for the previous hundred years:
RECIPE FOR THE CURE OF THE EPIDEMIC
If you wish to be cured
Take--if you can find them----
Two conscientious Burgundians,
Two clean Germans,
Two meek inhabitants of Champagne,
Two Englishmen who are not treacherous,
Two men of Picardy who are not rash
With two bold Lombards,
And, to end, two worthies from Limousin.
Bray them in an oakum mortar
And then put in your soup.
If you have made a good hash
You’ll find you never had a better
Remedy to ward off the epidemic.
But no one will ever believe it.
Queen Marguerite of Valois, the wife whose wedding festivities had
precipitated the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, proved herself Catherine
de Medicis’ own daughter in point of morals. Henry’s were none of the
best and they were divorced, he to contemplate marriage with Gabrielle
d’Estrées and after her death to clinch his Italian alliance by wedding
Marie de Medicis, while Marguerite entertained herself with numerous
lovers at the Hôtel de Sens and at a new house which she built on the
left bank, finding it “piquant” to look across to the Louvre where her
successor lived. In moments of emotion, conventionality or fright she
founded several religious houses. Of the Monastery of the
Petits-Augustins there is a remnant left, the chapel, which has been
secularized and now houses the Renaissance museum of the School of Fine
Arts. Its façade is, incongruously enough, the façade of Diane de
Poitiers’ château d’Anet, mentioned above.
Henry’s devotion to Gabrielle d’Estrées, a rarely beautiful woman, made
him have her initial carved in parts of the Louvre which he built. The
letters are gone now except in one overlooked instance, and they were
erased, it is said, by the order of Marie de Medicis. If this is true
she seems to have had more feeling about this past love affair of the
king’s than about his former wife, for she is said to have been friendly
with Marguerite across the river even to the point of paying her debts.
In spite of Henry’s warlike career and his rough-and-ready manners he
was not without the ability, which many early kings cultivated, to
express his lighter emotions in verse. To-day this royal skill seems to
have left the monarchs of Europe with the exception of Carmen Sylva and
of Nicholas of Montenegro who writes and fights with equal enthusiasm.
Here is a poem addressed to
CHARMING GABRIELLE[4]
My charming Gabrielle!
My heart is pierced with woe,
When glory sounds her knell,
And forth to war I go;
Parting, perchance our last!
Day, marked unblest to prove!
O, that my life were past,
Or else my hapless love!
Bright star whose light I lose,----
O, fatal memory!
My grief each thought renews!----
We meet again or die!
Parting, perchance our last!
Day, marked unblest to prove!
O, that my life were past,
Or else my hapless love!
O, share and bless the crown
By valor given to me!
War made the prize my own,
My love awards it thee!
Parting, perchance our last!
Day, marked unblest to prove!
O, that my life were past,
Or else my hapless love!
Let all my trumpets swell,
And every echo round
The words of my farewell
Repeat with mournful sound!
Parting, perchance our last!
Day, marked unblest to prove!
O, that my life were past,
Or else my hapless love!
The most ambitious architectural work of Henry’s reign was the addition
which he made to the Louvre. Catherine de Medicis had begun a wing
extending from the right angle of Francis I and Henry II toward the
Seine, and then continued it in a gallery parallel with the river, and
intended to meet the palace of the Tuileries. Henry IV finished both and
added the story which was rebuilt in Louis XIV’s reign after a fire. It
is now called the Gallery of Apollo and contains to-day a few of the
crown jewels kept when the rest were sold twenty-five years ago. Out of
this splendid hall opens the small square room in which hung Leonardo’s
“Mona Lisa” until its unexplained disappearance two years ago.
Popular as Henry was personally the political situation was so
embroiled that he had many enemies. Soon after his triumphal entry into
Paris he was unsuccessfully attacked by a youth named Chastel, and it is
a testimony to the king’s openness of mind and tact that after a few
year’s he caused the demolition of the monument which enthusiasts raised
to commemorate his escape. As a further expression of the people’s
horror at Chastel’s act his house, opposite the Cour du Mai, was razed
and on its site the public executioner branded his victims.
A half dozen other attempts upon Henry’s life followed, and at last one
was successful. Driving in an open carriage through a narrow street (rue
de la Ferronerie) near the markets, he was stabbed by one Ravaillac who
leaped upon the wheel of the carriage as it halted in a press of
traffic. A fortnight later the assassin was tortured to death on the
Grève. The body of the most popular sovereign that France has ever known
lay in state in the Hall of the Cariatides, that huge gallery of the
Louvre which had served as a guardroom in the days of Henry II and
Catherine de Medicis. There could be no better testimony to the regard
in which the “_roi galant_” was held not only in his own time but later
than the fact that during the Revolution his body and tomb at Saint
Denis were not disturbed.