(1553-1610)
[Illustration: Henry IV. [TN]]
Henry IV., the most celebrated, the most beloved, and perhaps, in
spite of his many faults, the best of the French monarchs, was born at
Pau, the capital of Bearn, in 1553. His parents were Antoine de
Bourbon, Duke of Vendome, and in right of his wife, titular king of
Navarre, and Jeanne d'Albert, the heiress of that kingdom. On the
paternal side he traced his descent to Robert of Clermont, fifth son
of Louis IX., and thus, on the failure of the elder branches, became
heir to the crown of France. Educated by a Protestant mother in the
Protestant faith, he was for many years the rallying point and leader
of the Huguenots. In boyhood the prince of Bearn displayed sense and
spirit above his years. Early inured to war, he was present and
exhibited strong proofs of military talent at the battle of Jarnac,
and that of Moncontour, both fought in 1569. In the same year he was
declared chief of the Protestant League. The treaty of St. Germain,
concluded in 1570, guaranteed to the Huguenots the civil rights for
which they had been striving; and, in appearance, to cement the union
of the two parties, a marriage was proposed between Henry, who, by the
death of his mother, had just succeeded to the throne of Navarre, and
Margaret of Valois, sister of Charles IX. This match brought Conde,
Coligni, and all the leaders of their party, to Paris. The ceremony
took place August 17, 1572, and a week later came the massacre of St.
Bartholomew. For three years afterward Henry, who to save his life had
conformed to the established religion, was kept as a kind of
state-prisoner. He escaped in 1576, and put himself at the head of the
Huguenot party. In the war which ensued, with the sagacity and fiery
courage of the high-born general, he showed the indifference to
hardships of the meanest soldier. Content with the worst fare and
meanest lodging, in future times the magnificent monarch of France
could recollect when his wardrobe could not furnish him with a change
of linen. He shared all fortunes with his followers, and was rewarded
by their unbounded devotion.
Upon the extinction of the house of Valois, by the assassination of
Henry III. in 1589, Henry of Navarre became the rightful owner of the
French throne. But his religion interfered with his claims. The League
was strong in force against him: he had few friends, few fortresses,
no money, and a small army. But his courage and activity made up for
the scantiness of his resources. With five thousand men he withstood
the Duc de Mayenne, who was pursuing him with twenty-five thousand,
and gained the battle of Arques, in spite of the disparity. This
extraordinary result may probably be ascribed in great measure to the
contrast of personal character in the two generals. Mayenne was slow
and indolent. Of Henry it was said, that he lost less time in bed than
Mayenne lost at table; and that he wore out very little broad-cloth,
but a great deal of boot-leather. A person was once extolling the
skill and courage of Mayenne in Henry's presence. "You are right,"
said Henry, "he is a great captain, but I have always five hours'
start of him." Henry got up at four in the morning, and Mayenne about
ten.
The battle of Arques was fought in the year of his accession. In the
following year, 1590, he gained a splendid victory at Ivri, over the
Leaguers commanded by Mayenne, and a Spanish army superior in numbers.
On this occasion he made that celebrated speech to his soldiers before
the battle: "If you lose sight of your standards, rally round my white
plume; you will always find it in the path of honor and glory." Nor is
his exclamation to his victorious troops less worthy of record: "Spare
the French!"
Paris was soon blockaded, but the Parliament swore on the Gospels, in
the presence of the Legate and the Spanish Ambassador, to refuse all
proposals of accommodation. The siege was pushed to such extremities,
and the famine became so cruel, that bread was made of human bones
ground to powder. That Henry did not then master the capital, where
two hundred thousand men were maddened with want, was owing to his own
lenity. He declared that he had rather lose Paris, than gain
possession of it by the death of so many persons. He gave a free
passage through his lines to all who were not soldiers, and allowed
his own troops to send in refreshments to their friends. By this
paternal kindness he lost the fruit of his labors to himself; but he
also prolonged the civil war, and the calamities of the kingdom at
large.
The approach of the Duke of Parma with a Spanish army obliged Henry to
raise the siege of Paris. It was not the policy of the Spanish court
to render the Leaguers independent of its assistance, and the duke,
satisfied with having relieved the metropolis, avoided an engagement,
and returned to his government in the Low Countries, followed by Henry
as far as the frontiers of Picardy. In 1591 Henry received succors
from England and Germany, and laid siege to Rouen; but his prey was
again snatched from him by the Duke of Parma. Again battle was offered
and declined; and the retiring army passed the Seine in the night on a
bridge of boats; a retreat the more glorious, as Henry believed it to
be impossible. The duke once said of his adversary, that other
generals made war like lions or wild boars; but that Henry hovered
over it like an eagle.
During the siege of Paris, some conferences had been held between the
chiefs of the two parties, which ended in a kind of accommodation. The
Catholics of the king's party began to complain of his perseverance in
Calvinism; and some influential men who were of the latter persuasion,
especially his confidential friend and minister Rosny, represented to
him the necessity of a change. Even some of the reformed ministers
softened the difficulty, by acknowledging salvation to be possible in
the Roman Church. In 1593 the ceremony of abjuration was performed at
St. Denis, in presence of a multitude of the Parisians. If, as we
cannot but suppose, the monarch's conversion was owing to political
motives, the apostacy must be answered for at a higher than any human
tribunal; politically viewed, it was perhaps one of the most
beneficial steps ever taken toward the pacification and renewal of
prosperity of a great kingdom. In the same year he was crowned at
Chartres, and in 1594 Paris opened her gates to him. He had just been
received into the capital, where he was conspicuously manifesting his
beneficence and zeal for the public good, when he was wounded in the
throat by John Chatel, a young fanatic. When the assassin was
questioned, he avowed the doctrine of tyrannicide, and quoted the
sermons of the Jesuits in his justification. That society therefore
was banished by the Parliament.
For two years after his ostensible conversion, the king was obliged
daily to perform the most humiliating ceremonies, by way of penance;
and it was not till 1594 that he was absolved by Clement VIII. The
Leaguers then had no further pretext for rebellion, and the League
necessarily was dissolved. Its chiefs exacted high terms for their
submission; but the civil wars had so exhausted the kingdom, that
tranquillity could not be too dearly purchased; and Henry was faithful
to all his promises, even after his authority was so firmly
established, that he might have broken his word with safety to all but
his own conscience and honor. Although the obligations which he had to
discharge were most burdensome, he found means to relieve his people,
and make his kingdom prosper. The Duke de Mayenne, in Burgundy, and
the Duke de Mercoeur in Brittany, were the last to protract an
unavailing resistance; but the former was reduced in 1596, and the
latter in 1598, and thenceforth France enjoyed almost uninterrupted
peace till Henry's death. But the Protestants gave him almost as much
uneasiness as the Catholic Leaguers. He had granted liberty of
conscience to the former; a measure which was admitted to be
necessary by the prudent even among the latter. Nevertheless, either
from vexation at his having abjured their religion, from the violence
of party zeal, or disgust at being no longer the objects of royal
preference, the Calvinists preferred their demands in so seditious a
tone, as stopped little short of a rebellious one. While on the road
to Brittany, he determined to avoid greater evils by timely
compromise. The edict of Nantes was then promulgated, authorizing the
public exercise of their religion in several towns, granting them the
right of holding offices, putting them in possession of certain places
for eight years, as pledges for their security, and establishing
salaries for their ministers. The clergy and preachers demurred, but
to no purpose; the Parliament ceased to resist the arguments of the
Prince, when he represented to them as magistrates, that the peace of
the state and the prosperity of the Church must be inseparable. At the
same time he endeavored to convince the bigots among the priesthood on
both sides, that the love of country and the performance of civil and
political duties may be completely reconciled with difference of
worship.
But it would be unjust to attribute these enlightened views to Henry,
without noticing that he had a friend as well as minister in Rosny,
best known as the Duke de Sully, who probably suggested many of his
wisest measures, and at all events superintended their execution, and
did his best to prevent or retrieve his sovereign's errors by
uncompromising honesty of advice and remonstrance. The allurements of
pleasure were powerful over the enthusiastic and impassioned
temperament of Henry; it was love that most frequently prevailed over
the claims of duty. The beautiful Gabrielle d'Estrees became the
absolute mistress of his heart; and he entertained hopes of obtaining
permission from Rome to divorce Margaret de Valois, from whom he had
long lived in a state of separation. Had he succeeded time enough, he
contemplated the dangerous project of marrying the favorite; but her
death saved him both from the hazard and disgrace. The sentence of
divorce, so long solicited, was at last granted, and the king married
Mary de Medici, who bore Louis XIII. to him in 1601. The match,
however, contributed little to his domestic happiness.
While France was flourishing under a vigilant and paternal
administration, while her strength was beginning to keep pace with her
internal happiness, new conspiracies were incessantly formed against
the king. Henriette d'Entragues, another favorite, not only
exasperated the Queen's peevish humor against him, but was ungrateful
enough to combine with her father, the Count d'Auvergne, and the
Spanish Court, in a plot which was timely discovered. Spite of the
many virtues and conciliatory manners of Henry, the fanatics could
never pardon his former attachment to the Protestant cause. He was
continually surrounded with traitors and assassins; almost every year
produced some attempt on his life, and he fell at last by the weapon
of a misguided enthusiast.
Shortly before his untimely end, Henry is said by some historians to
have disclosed a project for forming a Christian republic. The
proposal is stated to have been, to divide Europe into fifteen fixed
powers, none of which should be allowed to make any new acquisition,
but should together form an association for maintaining a mutual
balance, and preserving peace. This political reverie, impossible to
be realized, is not likely ever to have been actually divulged, even
if meditated by Henry, nor is there any trace of it to be found in the
history, or among the state-papers of England, Venice, or Holland, the
supposed co-operators in the scheme. His more rational design in
arming went no further than to set bounds to the ambition and power of
the house of Austria, both in Germany and Italy. Whatever may have
been the motive, his means of success were imposing. He was to march
into Germany at the head of forty thousand excellent troops. The army,
provisions, and every other necessary were in readiness. Money no
longer failed; Sully had laid up forty millions of livres in the
treasury, which were destined for this war. His alliances were already
assured, his generals had been formed by himself, and all seemed to
forebode such a storm as must probably have overwhelmed an emperor
devoted to the search after the philosopher's stone, and a king of
Spain under the dominion of the Inquisition. Henry was impatient to
join his army; but his mind had become harassed with sinister
forebodings, and his chagrin was increased by a temporary alienation
from his faithful minister. He was on his way to pay a visit of
reconciliation to Sully, when his coach was entangled as it passed
along the street. His attendants left the carriage to remove the
obstruction, and during the delay thus caused he was stabbed to the
heart by Francis Ravaillac, a native of Angouleme. This calamitous
event took place on May 14, 1610, in the fifty-seventh year of his
age. The Spaniards, who had the strongest interest in the catastrophe,
were supposed to have been the instigators; but the fear of
implicating other powers, and plunging France into greater evils than
those from which their hero had rescued them, deterred not only
statesmen, but even the judges on Ravaillac's trial, from pressing for
the names of accomplices. Hardouin de Perefixe, in his "History of
Henry the Great," says, "If it be asked who inspired the monster with
the thought, history answers that she does not know; and that in so
mysterious an affair, it is not allowable to vent suspicions and
conjectures as assured truths; that even the judges who conducted the
examinations opened not their mouths, and spoke only with their
shoulders."
The assertions of Ravaillac, as far as they have any weight,
discountenance the belief of an extended political conspiracy. The
house of Austria, Mary de Medici his wife, Henriette d'Entragues his
mistress, as well as the Duke d'Epernon, have been subjected to the
hateful conjectures of Mazarin and other historians; but he who
actually struck the blow invariably affirmed that he had no
accomplice, and that he was carried forward by an uncontrollable
instinct. If his mind were at all acted on from without, it was
probably by the epidemic fanaticism of the times, rather than by
personal influence.
Henry left three sons and three daughters by Mary de Medici. Of no
prince recorded in history, probably, are so many personal anecdotes
related, as of Henry IV. These are for the most part well known, and
of easy access. Among them stands out prominently the tale of the
Spanish ambassador who to his astonishment, found Henry on the floor
playing hobby-horse for his children. "Are you a father?" asked Henry,
looking up without any apparent embarrassment. "Yes, your majesty."
"Then we will finish our game," said the king. And he did so, before
taking up his business with the ambassador.
The whole tenor of Henry's life exhibits a lofty, generous, forgiving
temper, the fearless spirit which loves the excitement of danger, and
that suavity of feeling and manners, which, above all qualities, wins
the affection of those who come within its sphere: it does not exhibit
high moral or religious principle. But his weaknesses were those which
the world most readily pardons, especially in a great man. If Henry
had emulated the pure morals and fervent piety of his noble ancestor,
Louis IX., he would have been a far better king, as well as a better
man; yet we doubt whether in that case his memory would have been
cherished with such enthusiastic attachment by his countrymen.
[Illustration: Henry IV. of France at home.]