the time originally appointed when the King conversed with the States'
ambassadors. On the following Sunday was to be the splendid and solemn
entrance of the crowned Queen. On the Monday, Henry, postponing likewise
for two days his original plan of departure, would leave for the army.
Meantime there were petty annoyances connected with the details of the
coronation. Henry had set his heart on having his legitimatized
children, the offspring of the fair Gabrielle, take their part in the
ceremony on an equal footing with the princes of the blood. They were
not entitled to wear the lilies of France upon their garments, and the
King was solicitous that "the Count"--as Soissons, brother of Prince
Conti and uncle of Conde, was always called--should dispense with those
ensigns for his wife upon this solemn occasion, and that the other
princesses of the blood should do the same. Thus there would be no
appearance of inferiority on the part of the Duchess of Vendome.
The Count protested that he would have his eyes torn out of his head
rather than submit to an arrangement which would do him so much shame.
He went to the Queen and urged upon her that to do this would likewise be
an injury to her children, the Dukes of Orleans and of Anjou. He refused
flatly to appear or allow his wife to appear except in the costume
befitting their station. The King on his part was determined not to
abandon his purpose. He tried to gain over the Count by the most
splendid proposals, offering him the command of the advance-guard of the
army, or the lieutenancy-general of France in the absence of the King,
30,000 crowns for his equipment and an increase of his pension if he
would cause his wife to give up the fleurs-de-lys on this occasion.
The alternative was to be that, if she insisted upon wearing them,
his Majesty would never look upon him again with favourable eyes.
The Count never hesitated, but left Paris, refusing to appear at the
ceremony. The King was in a towering passion, for to lose the presence
of this great prince of the blood at a solemnity expressly intended as a
demonstration against the designs hatching by the first of all the
princes of the blood under patronage of Spain was a severe blow to his
pride and a check to his policy.'
Yet it was inconceivable that he could at such a moment commit so
superfluous and unmeaning a blunder. He had forced Conde into exile,
intrigue with the enemy, and rebellion, by open and audacious efforts to
destroy his domestic peace, and now he was willing to alienate one of his
most powerful subjects in order to place his bastards on a level with
royalty. While it is sufficiently amusing to contemplate this proposed
barter of a chief command in a great army or the lieutenancy-general of a
mighty kingdom at the outbreak of a general European war against a bit of
embroidery on the court dress of a lady, yet it is impossible not to
recognize something ideal and chivalrous from his own point of view in
the refusal of Soissons to renounce those emblems of pure and high
descent, those haughty lilies of St. Louis, against any bribes of place
and pelf however dazzling.
The coronation took place on Thursday, 13th May, with the pomp and
glitter becoming great court festivals; the more pompous and glittering
the more the monarch's heart was wrapped in gloom. The representatives
of the great powers were conspicuous in the procession; Aerssens, the
Dutch ambassador, holding a foremost place. The ambassadors of Spain and
Venice as usual squabbled about precedence and many other things, and
actually came to fisticuffs, the fight lasting a long time and ending
somewhat to the advantage of the Venetian. But the sacrament was over,
and Mary de' Medici was crowned Queen of France and Regent of the Kingdom
during the absence of the sovereign with his army.
Meantime there had been mysterious warnings darker and more distinct than
the babble of the soothsayer Thomassin or the ravings of the lunatic
Pasithea. Count Schomberg, dining at the Arsenal with Sully, had been
called out to converse with Mademoiselle de Gournay, who implored that a
certain Madame d'Escomans might be admitted to audience of the King.
That person, once in direct relations with the Marchioness of Verneuil,
the one of Henry's mistresses who most hated him, affirmed that a man
from the Duke of Epernon's country was in Paris, agent of a conspiracy
seeking the King's life.
The woman not enjoying a very reputable character found it impossible to
obtain a hearing, although almost frantic with her desire to save her
sovereign's life. The Queen observed that it was a wicked woman, who was
accusing all the world, and perhaps would accuse her too.
The fatal Friday came. Henry drove out, in his carriage to see the
preparations making for the triumphal entrance of the Queen into Paris on
the following Sunday. What need to repeat the tragic, familiar tale?
The coach was stopped by apparent accident in the narrow street de la
Feronniere, and Francis Ravaillac, standing on the wheel, drove his knife
through the monarch's heart. The Duke of Epernon, sitting at his side,
threw his cloak over the body and ordered the carriage back to the
Louvre.
"They have killed him, 'e ammazato,'" cried Concini (so says tradition),
thrusting his head into the Queen's bedchamber.
[Michelet, 197. It is not probable that the documents concerning
the trial, having been so carefully suppressed from the beginning,
especially the confession dictated to Voisin--who wrote it kneeling
on the ground, and was perhaps so appalled at its purport that he
was afraid to write it legibly--will ever see the light. I add in
the Appendix some contemporary letters of persons, as likely as any
one to know what could be known, which show how dreadful were the
suspicions which men entertained, and which they hardly ventured to
whisper to each other].
That blow had accomplished more than a great army could have done, and
Spain now reigned in Paris. The House of Austria, without making any
military preparations, had conquered, and the great war of religion and
politics was postponed for half a dozen years.
This history has no immediate concern with solving the mysteries of that
stupendous crime. The woman who had sought to save the King's life now
denounced Epernon as the chief murderer, and was arrested, examined,
accused of lunacy, proved to be perfectly sane, and, persisting in her
statements with perfect coherency, was imprisoned for life for her pains;
the Duke furiously demanding her instant execution.
The documents connected with the process were carefully suppressed. The
assassin, tortured and torn by four horses, was supposed to have revealed
nothing and to have denied the existence of accomplices.
The great accused were too omnipotent to be dealt with by humble accusers
or by convinced but powerless tribunals. The trial was all mystery,
hugger-mugger, horror. Yet the murderer is known to have dictated to the
Greflier Voisin, just before expiring on the Greve, a declaration which
that functionary took down in a handwriting perhaps purposely illegible.
Two centuries and a half have passed away, yet the illegible original
record is said to exist, to have been plainly read, and to contain the
names of the Queen and the Duke of Epernon.
Twenty-six years before, the pistol of Balthasar Gerard had destroyed the
foremost man in Europe and the chief of a commonwealth just struggling
into existence. Yet Spain and Rome, the instigators and perpetrators of
the crime, had not reaped the victory which they had the right to expect.
The young republic, guided by Barneveld and loyal to the son of the
murdered stadholder, was equal to the burthen suddenly descending upon
its shoulders. Instead of despair there had been constancy. Instead of
distracted counsels there had been heroic union of heart and hand.
Rather than bend to Rome and grovel to Philip, it had taken its
sovereignty in its hands, offered it successively, without a thought of
self-aggrandizement on the part of its children, to the crowns of France
and Great Britain, and, having been repulsed by both, had learned after
fiery trials and incredible exertions to assert its own high and foremost
place among the independent powers of the world.
And now the knife of another priest-led fanatic, the wretched but
unflinching instrument of a great conspiracy, had at a blow decapitated
France. No political revolution could be much more thorough than that
which had been accomplished in a moment of time by Francis Ravaillac.
On the 14th of May, France, while in spiritual matters obedient to the
Pope, stood at the head of the forces of Protestantism throughout Europe,
banded together to effect the downfall of the proud house of Austria,
whose fortunes and fate were synonymous with Catholicism. The Baltic
powers, the majority of the Teutonic races, the Kingdom of Britain, the
great Republic of the Netherlands, the northernmost and most warlike
governments of Italy, all stood at the disposition of the warrior-king.
Venice, who had hitherto, in the words of a veteran diplomatist, "shunned
to look a league or a confederation in the face, if there was any
Protestant element in it, as if it had been the head of Medusa," had
formally forbidden the passage of troops northwards to the relief of the
assailed power. Savoy, after direful hesitations, had committed herself
body and soul to the great enterprise. Even the Pope, who feared the
overshadowing personality of Henry, and was beginning to believe his
house's private interests more likely to flourish under the protection of
the French than the Spanish king, was wavering in his fidelity to Spain
and tempted by French promises: If he should prove himself incapable of
effecting a pause in the great crusade, it was doubtful on which side he
would ultimately range himself; for it was at least certain that the new
Catholic League, under the chieftainship of Maximilian of Bavaria, was
resolved not to entangle its fortunes inextricably with those of the
Austrian house.
The great enterprise, first unfolding itself with the episode of Cleve
and Berg and whimsically surrounding itself with the fantastic idyl of
the Princess of Conde, had attained vast and misty proportions in the
brain of its originator. Few political visions are better known in
history than the "grand design" of Henry for rearranging the map of the
world at the moment when, in the middle of May, he was about to draw his
sword. Spain reduced to the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees, but
presented with both the Indies, with all America and the whole Orient in
fee; the Empire taken from Austria and given to Bavaria; a constellation
of States in Italy, with the Pope for president-king; throughout the rest
of Christendom a certain number of republics, of kingdoms, of religions--
a great confederation of the world, in short--with the most Christian
king for its dictator and protector, and a great Amphictyonic council to
regulate all disputes by solemn arbitration, and to make war in the
future impossible, such in little was his great design.
Nothing could be more humane, more majestic, more elaborate, more
utterly preposterous. And all this gigantic fabric had passed away
in an instant--at one stroke of a broken table knife sharpened on a
carriage wheel.
Most pitiful was the condition of France on the day after, and for years
after, the murder of the King. Not only was the kingdom for the, time
being effaced from the roll of nations, so far as external relations were
concerned, but it almost ceased to be a kingdom. The ancient monarchy
of Hugh Capet, of Saint-Louis, of Henry of France and Navarre, was
transformed into a turbulent, self-seeking, quarrelsome, pillaging,
pilfering democracy of grandees. The Queen-Regent was tossed hither and
thither at the sport of the winds and waves which shifted every hour in
that tempestuous court.
No man pretended to think of the State. Every man thought only of
himself. The royal exchequer was plundered with a celerity and cynical
recklessness such as have been rarely seen in any age or country. The
millions so carefully hoarded by Sully, and exhibited so dramatically
by that great minister to the enraptured eyes of his sovereign; that
treasure in the Bastille on which Henry relied for payment of the armies
with which he was to transform the world, all disappeared in a few weeks
to feed the voracious maw of courtiers, paramours, and partisans!
The Queen showered gold like water upon her beloved Concini that he might
purchase his Marquisate of Ancre, and the charge of first gentleman of
the court from Bouillon; that he might fit himself for the government of
Picardy; that he might elevate his marquisate into a dukedom. Conde,
having no further reason to remain in exile, received as a gift from the
trembling Mary de' Medici the magnificent Hotel Gondy, where the Dutch
ambassadors had so recently been lodged, for which she paid 65,000
crowns, together with 25,000 crowns to furnish it, 50,000 crowns to pay
his debts, 50,000 more as yearly pension.
He claimed double, and was soon at sword's point with the Queen in spite
of her lavish bounty.
Epernon, the true murderer of Henry, trampled on courts of justice and
councils of ministers, frightened the court by threatening to convert
his possession of Metz into an independent sovereignty, as Balagny had
formerly seized upon Cambray, smothered for ever the process of
Ravaillac, caused those to be put to death or immured for life in
dungeons who dared to testify to his complicity in the great crime,
and strode triumphantly over friends and enemies throughout France,
although so crippled by the gout that he could scarcely walk up stairs.
There was an end to the triumvirate. Sully's influence was gone for
ever. The other two dropped the mask. The Chancellor and Villeroy
revealed themselves to be what they secretly had always been--humble
servants and stipendiaries of Spain. The formal meetings of the council
were of little importance, and were solemn, tearful, and stately; draped
in woe for the great national loss. In the private cabinet meetings in
the entresol of the Louvre, where the Nuncius and the Spanish ambassador
held counsel with Epernon and Villeroy and Jeannin and Sillery, the tone
was merry and loud; the double Spanish marriage and confusion to the
Dutch being the chief topics of consultation.
But the anarchy grew day by day into almost hopeless chaos. There was no
satisfying the princes of the blood nor the other grandees. Conde, whose
reconciliation with the Princess followed not long after the death of
Henry and his own return to France, was insatiable in his demands for
money, power, and citadels of security. Soissons, who might formerly
have received the lieutenancy-general of the kingdom by sacrificing the
lilies on his wife's gown, now disputed for that office with his elder
brother Conti, the Prince claiming it by right of seniority, the Count
denouncing Conti as deaf, dumb, and imbecile, till they drew poniards on
each other in the very presence of the Queen; while Conde on one
occasion, having been refused the citadels which he claimed, Blaye and
Chateau Trompette, threw his cloak over his nose and put on his hat while
the Queen was speaking, and left the council in a fury, declaring that
Villeroy and the chancellor were traitors, and that he would have them
both soundly cudgelled. Guise, Lorraine, Epernon, Bouillon, and other
great lords always appeared in the streets of Paris at the head of three,
four, or five hundred mounted and armed retainers; while the Queen in her
distraction gave orders to arm the Paris mob to the number of fifty
thousand, and to throw chains across the streets to protect herself and
her son against the turbulent nobles.
Sully, hardly knowing to what saint to burn his candle, being forced to
resign his great posts, was found for a time in strange political
combination with the most ancient foes of his party and himself. The
kaleidoscope whirling with exasperating quickness showed ancient Leaguers
and Lorrainers banded with and protecting Huguenots against the Crown,
while princes of the blood, hereditary patrons and chiefs of the
Huguenots, became partisans and stipendiaries of Spain.
It is easy to see that circumstances like these rendered the position of
the Dutch commonwealth delicate and perilous.
Sully informed Aerssens and van der Myle, who had been sent back to Paris
on special mission very soon after the death of the King, that it took a
hundred hours now to accomplish a single affair, whereas under Henry a
hundred affairs were transacted in a single hour. But Sully's sun had
set, and he had few business conferences now with the ambassadors.
Villeroy and the Chancellor had fed fat their ancient grudge to the once
omnipotent minister, and had sworn his political ruin. The old secretary
of state had held now complete control of the foreign alliances and
combinations of France, and the Dutch ambassadors could be under no
delusion as to the completeness of the revolution.
"You will find a passion among the advisers of the Queen," said Villeroy
to Aerssens and van der Myle, "to move in diametrical opposition to the
plans of the late king." And well might the ancient Leaguer and present
pensionary of Spain reveal this foremost fact in a policy of which he was
in secret the soul. He wept profusely when he first received Francis
Aerssens, but after these "useless tears," as the Envoy called them, he
soon made it manifest that there was no more to be expected of France, in
the great project which its government had so elaborately set on foot.
Villeroy was now sixty-six years of age, and had been secretary of state
during forty-two years and under four kings. A man of delicate health,
frail body, methodical habits, capacity for routine, experience in
political intrigue, he was not personally as greedy of money as many of
his contemporaries, and was not without generosity; but he loved power,
the Pope, and the House of Austria. He was singularly reserved in
public, practised successfully the talent of silence, and had at last
arrived at the position he most coveted, the virtual presidency of the
council, and saw the men he most hated beneath his feet.
At the first interview of Aerssens with the Queen-Regent she was drowned
in tears, and could scarcely articulate an intelligible sentence. So far
as could be understood she expressed her intention of carrying out the
King's plans, of maintaining the old alliances, of protecting both
religions. Nothing, however, could be more preposterous than such
phrases. Villeroy, who now entirely directed the foreign affairs of the
kingdom, assured the Ambassador that France was much more likely to apply
to the States for assistance than render them aid in any enterprise
whatever. "There is no doubt," said Aerssens, "that the Queen is
entirely in the hands of Spain and the priests." Villeroy, whom Henry
was wont to call the pedagogue of the council, went about sighing
dismally, wishing himself dead, and perpetually ejaculating, "Ho! poor
France, how much hast thou still to suffer!" In public he spoke of
nothing but of union, and of the necessity of carrying out the designs of
the King, instructing the docile Queen to hold the same language. In
private he was quite determined to crush those designs for ever, and
calmly advised the Dutch government to make an amicable agreement with
the Emperor in regard to the Cleve affair as soon as possible; a treaty
which would have been shameful for France and the possessory princes, and
dangerous, if not disastrous, for the States-General. "Nothing but
feverish and sick counsels," he said, "could be expected from France,
which had now lost its vigour and could do nothing but groan."
Not only did the French council distinctly repudiate the idea of doing
anything more for the princes than had been stipulated by the treaty of
Hall--that is to say, a contingent of 8000 foot and 2000 horse--but many
of them vehemently maintained that the treaty, being a personal one of
the late king, was dead with him? The duty of France was now in their
opinion to withdraw from these mad schemes as soon as possible, to make
peace with the House of Austria without delay, and to cement the
friendship by the double marriages.
Bouillon, who at that moment hated Sully as much as the most vehement
Catholic could do, assured the Dutch envoy that the government was, under
specious appearances, attempting to deceive the States; a proposition
which it needed not the evidence of that most intriguing duke to make
manifest to so astute a politician; particularly as there was none more
bent on playing the most deceptive game than Bouillon. There would be no
troops to send, he said, and even if there were, there would be no
possibility of agreeing on a chief. The question of religion would at
once arise. As for himself, the Duke protested that he would not accept
the command if offered him. He would not agree to serve under the Prince
of Anhalt, nor would he for any consideration in the world leave the
court at that moment. At the same time Aerssens was well aware that
Bouillon, in his quality of first marshal of France, a Protestant and a
prince having great possessions on the frontier, and the brother-in-law
of Prince Maurice, considered himself entitled to the command of the
troops should they really be sent, and was very indignant at the idea of
its being offered to any one else.
[Aerssens worked assiduously, two hours long on one occasion, to
effect a reconciliation between the two great Protestant chiefs, but
found Bouillon's demands "so shameful and unreasonable" that he
felt obliged to renounce all further attempts. In losing Sully from
the royal councils, the States' envoy acknowledged that the Republic
had lost everything that could be depended on at the French court.
"All the others are time-serving friends," he said, "or saints
without miracles."--Aerssens to Barneveld, 11 June, 1610. ]
He advised earnestly therefore that the States should make a firm demand
for money instead of men, specifying the amount that might be considered
the equivalent of the number of troops originally stipulated.
It is one of the most singular spectacles in history; France sinking into
the background of total obscurity in an instant of time, at one blow of a
knife, while the Republic, which she had been patronizing, protecting,
but keeping always in a subordinate position while relying implicitly
upon its potent aid, now came to the front, and held up on its strong
shoulders an almost desperate cause. Henry had been wont to call the
States-General "his courage and his right arm," but he had always
strictly forbidden them to move an inch in advance of him, but ever to
follow his lead, and to take their directions from himself. They were
a part, and an essential one, in his vast designs; but France, or he
who embodied France, was the great providence, the destiny, the all-
directing, all-absorbing spirit, that was to remodel and control the
whole world. He was dead, and France and her policy were already in a
state of rapid decomposition.
Barneveld wrote to encourage and sustain the sinking state. "Our courage
is rising in spite and in consequence of the great misfortune," he said.
He exhorted the Queen to keep her kingdom united, and assured her that My
Lords the States would maintain themselves against all who dared to
assail them. He offered in their name the whole force of the Republic to
take vengeance on those who had procured the assassination, and to defend
the young king and the Queen-Mother against all who might make any
attempt against their authority. He further declared, in language not to
be mistaken, that the States would never abandon the princes and their
cause.