Henry IV. perfectly understood and steadily took the measure of the
situation in which he was placed. He was in a great minority throughout
the country as well as the army, and he would have to deal with public
passions, worked by his foes for their own ends, and with the personal
pretensions of his partisans. He made no mistake about these two facts,
and he allowed them great weight; but he did not take for the ruling
principle of his policy and for his first rule of conduct the plan
of alternate concessions to the different parties and of continually
humoring personal interests; he set his thoughts higher, upon the
general and natural interests of France as he found her and saw her.
They resolved themselves, in his eyes, into the following great points:
Maintenance of the hereditary rights of monarchy, preponderance of
Catholics in the government, peace between Catholics and Protestants,
and religious liberty for Protestants. With him these points became the
law of his policy and his kingly duty as well as the nation’s right.
He proclaimed them the first words that he addressed to the lords and
principal personages of state assembled around him. On the 4th of August,
1589, in the camp at St. Cloud, the majority of the princes, dukes,
lords, and gentlemen present in the camp expressed their full adhesion
to the accession and the manifesto of the king, promising him “service
and obedience against rebels and enemies who would usurp the kingdom.”
Two notable leaders, the duke of Épernon amongst the Catholics and the
duke of La Trémoille amongst the Protestants, refused to join in this
adhesion; the former saying that his conscience would not permit him to
serve a heretic king, the latter alleging that his conscience forbade
him to serve a prince who engaged to protect Catholic idolatry. They
withdrew, D’Épernon into Angoumois and Saintonge, taking with him six
thousand foot and twelve thousand horse; and La Trémoille into Poitou,
with nine battalions of reformers. They had an idea of attempting, both
of them, to set up for themselves independent principalities. Three
contemporaries, Sully, La Force, and the bastard of Angoulême, bear
witness that Henry IV. was deserted by as many Huguenots as Catholics.
The French royal army was reduced, it is said, to one half. As a
make-weight, Sancy prevailed upon the Swiss, to the number of twelve
thousand, and two thousand German auxiliaries, not only to continue
in the service of the new king but to wait six months for their pay,
as he was at the moment unable to pay them. From the 14th to the 20th
of August, in Ile-de-France, in Picardy, in Normandy, in Auvergne, in
Champagne, in Burgundy, in Anjou, in Poitou, in Languedoc, in Orleanness,
and in Touraine, a great number of towns and districts joined in the
determination of the royal army.
* * * * *
As the government of Henry IV. went on growing in strength and extent,
the moderate Catholics were beginning, not as yet to make approaches
toward him, but to see a glimmering possibility of treating with him, and
obtaining from him such concessions as they considered necessary, at the
same time that they in their turn made to him such as he might consider
sufficient for his party and himself.
Unhappily, the new pope, Gregory XIV., elected on the 5th of December,
1590, was humbly devoted to the Spanish policy, meekly subservient
to Philip II.; that is, to the cause of religious persecution and of
absolute power, without regard for anything else. The relations of France
with the Holy See at once felt the effects of this; Cardinal Gaetani
received from Rome all the instructions that the most ardent Leaguers
could desire; and he gave his approval to a resolution of the Sorbonne
to the effect that Henry de Bourbon, heretic and relapsed, was forever
excluded from the crown, whether he became a Catholic or not. Henry IV.
had convoked the states-general at Tours for the month of March, and had
summoned to that city the archbishops and bishops to form a national
council, and to deliberate as to the means of restoring the king to
the bosom of the Catholic Church. The legate prohibited this council,
declaring, beforehand, the excommunication and deposition of any bishops
who should be present at it. The Leaguer parliament of Paris forbade, on
pain of death and confiscation, any connection, any correspondence with
Henry de Bourbon and his partisans. A solemn procession of the League
took place at Paris on the 14th of March, and, a few days afterwards, the
union was sworn afresh by all the municipal chiefs of the population. In
view of such passionate hostility, Henry IV., a stranger to any sort of
illusion, at the same time that he was always full of hope, saw that his
successes at Arques were insufficient for him, and that, if he were to
occupy the throne in peace, he must win more victories. He recommenced
the campaign by the siege of Dreux, one of the towns which it was most
important for him to possess, in order to put pressure on Paris and cause
her to feel, even at a distance, the perils and evils of war.
On Wednesday, the 14th of March, 1590, the two armies met on the plains
of Ivry, a village six leagues from Evreux, on the left bank of the Eure.
A battle ensued in which, although the resources of modern warfare were
brought into operation, the decisive force consisted, as of old, in the
cavalry. It appeared as if Henry IV. must succumb to the superior force
of the enemy; further and further backward was his white banner seen to
retire, and the great mass appeared as if they designed to follow it. At
length Henry cried out that those who did not wish to fight against the
enemy might at least turn and see him die, and immediately plunged into
the thickest of the battle. It appeared as if the royalist gentry had
felt the old martial fire of their ancestry enkindled by these words, and
by the glance that accompanied them. Raising one mighty shout to God,
they threw themselves upon the enemy, following their king, whose plume
was now their banner. In this there might have been some dim principle
of religious zeal, but that devotion to personal authority, which is so
powerful an element in war and in policy, was wanting. The royalist and
religious energy of Henry’s troops conquered the Leaguers. The cavalry
was broken, scattered, and swept from the field, and the confused manner
of their retreat so puzzled the infantry that they were not able to
maintain their ground; the German and French were cut down; the Swiss
surrendered. It was a complete victory for Henry IV.
It was not only as able captain and valiant soldier that Henry IV.
distinguished himself at Ivry; there the man was conspicuous for the
strength of his better feelings, as generous and as affectionate as
the king was far-sighted and bold. When the word was given to march
from Dreux, Count Schomberg, colonel of the German auxiliaries called
Reiters, had asked for the pay of his troops, letting it be understood
that they would not fight, if their claims were not satisfied. Henry had
replied harshly, “People don’t ask for money on the eve of a battle.”
At Ivry, just as the battle was on the point of beginning, he went up
to Schomberg: “Colonel,” said he, “I hurt your feelings. This may be
the last day of my life. I can’t bear to take away the honor of a brave
and honest gentleman like you. Pray forgive me and embrace me.” “Sir,”
answered Schomberg, “the other day your majesty wounded me, to-day you
kill me.” He gave up the command of the Reiters in order to fight in the
king’s own squadron, and was killed in action.
The victory of Ivry had a great effect in France and in Europe, though
not immediately, and as regarded the campaign of 1690. The victorious
king moved on Paris and made himself master of the little towns in the
neighborhood with a view of besieging the capital. The investment became
more strict; it was kept up for more than three months, from the end of
May to the beginning of September, 1590; and the city was reduced to
a severe state of famine, which would have been still more severe if
Henry IV. had not several times over permitted the entry of some convoys
of provisions and the exit of the old men, the women, the children, in
fact, the poorest and weakest part of the population. “Paris must not
be a cemetery,” he said: “I do not wish to reign over the dead.” In the
meantime, Duke Alexander of Parma, in accordance with express orders
from Philip II., went from the Low Countries, with his army, to join
Mayenne at Meaux, and threaten Henry IV. with their united forces if he
did not retire from the walls of the capital. Henry IV. offered the two
dukes battle, if they really wished to put a stop to the investment; but
“I am not come so far,” answered the duke of Parma, “to take counsel of
my enemy; if my manner of warfare does not please the king of Navarre,
let him force me to change it instead of giving me advice that nobody
asked him for.” Henry in vain attempted to make the duke of Parma accept
battle. The able Italian established himself in a strongly entrenched
camp, surprised Lagny and opened to Paris the navigation of the Marne, by
which provisions were speedily brought up. Henry decided upon retreating;
he dispersed the different divisions of his army into Touraine, Normandy,
Picardy, Champagne, Burgundy, and himself took up his quarters at Senlis,
at Compiègne, in the towns on the banks of the Oise. The duke of Mayenne
arrived on the 18th of September at Paris; the duke of Parma entered it
himself with a few officers and left it on the 13th of November, with his
army on his way back to the Low Countries, being a little harassed in his
retreat by the royal cavalry, but easy, for the moment, as to the fate
of Paris and the issue of the war, which continued during the first six
months of the year 1591, but languidly and disconnectedly, with successes
and reverses see-sawing between the two parties and without any important
results.
Then began to appear the consequences of the victory of Ivry and the
progress made by Henry IV., in spite of the check he received before
Paris and at some other points in the kingdom. Not only did many moderate
Catholics make advances to him, struck with his sympathetic ability
and his valor, and hoping that he would end by becoming a Catholic,
but patriotic wrath was kindling in France against Philip II. and the
Spaniards, those fomenters of civil war in the mere interest of foreign
ambition.
The League was split up into two parties, the _Spanish League_ and the
_French League_. The committee of _Sixteen_ labored incessantly for
the formation and triumph of the _Spanish League_; and its principal
leaders wrote, on the 2nd of September, 1591, a letter to Philip II.,
offering him the crown of France and pledging their allegiance to him
as his subjects: “We can positively assure your Majesty,” they said,
“that the wishes of all Catholics are to see your Catholic Majesty
holding the scepter of this kingdom and reigning over us, even as we
do throw ourselves right willingly into your arms as in to those of
our father, or at any rate establishing one of your posterity upon the
throne.” These ringleaders of the Spanish League had for their army the
blindly fanatical and demagogic populace of Paris, and were, further,
supported by 4,000 Spanish troops whom Philip II. had succeeded in
getting almost surreptitiously into Paris. They created a _council of
ten_, the sixteenth century’s committee of public safety; they proscribed
the _policists_; they, on the 15th of November, had the president,
Brisson, and two councilors of the Leaguer parliament arrested, hanged
them to a beam and dragged the corpses to the Place de Grève, where
they strung them up to a gibbet with inscriptions setting forth that
they were heretics, traitors to the city and enemies of the Catholic
princes. Whilst the _Spanish League_ was thus reigning at Paris, the duke
of Mayenne was at Laon, preparing to lead his army, consisting partly
of Spaniards, to the relief of Rouen, the siege of which Henry IV. was
commencing. Being summoned to Paris by messengers who succeeded one
another every hour, he arrived there on the 28th of November, 1591, with
2,000 French troops; he armed the guard of burgesses, seized and hanged,
in a ground-floor room of the Louvre, four of the chief leaders of the
Sixteen, suppressed their committee, reëstablished the parliament in full
authority and, finally, restored the security and preponderance of the
_French League_, whilst taking the reins once more into his own hands.
Whilst these two Leagues, the one Spanish and the other French, were
conspiring thus persistently, sometimes together and sometimes one
against the other, to promote personal ambition and interests, at the
same time national instinct, respect for traditional rights, weariness
of civil war, and the good sense which is born of long experience, were
bringing France more and more over to the cause and name of Henry IV.
In all the provinces, throughout all ranks of society, the population
non-enrolled amongst the factions were turning their eyes toward him as
the only means of putting an end to war at home and abroad, the only
pledge of national unity, public prosperity, and even freedom of trade,
a hazy idea as yet, but even now prevalent in the great ports of France
and in Paris. Would Henry turn Catholic? That was the question asked
everywhere, amongst Protestants with anxiety, but with keen desire and
not without hope amongst the mass of the population. The rumor ran
that, on this point, negotiations were half opened even in the midst of
the League itself, even at the court of Spain, even at Rome where Pope
Clement VIII., a more moderate man than his predecessor, Gregory XIV.,
“had no desire,” says Sully, “to foment the troubles of France, and still
less that the king of Spain should possibly become its undisputed king,
rightly judging that this would be laying open to him the road to the
monarchy of Christendom, and, consequently, reducing the Roman pontiffs
to the position, if it were his good pleasure, of his mere chaplains”
[_Œconomies royales_, t. ii. p. 106]. Such being the existing state
of facts and minds, it was impossible that Henry IV. should not ask
himself roundly the same question and feel that he had no time to lose in
answering it.
In spite of the breadth and independence of his mind, Henry IV. was
sincerely puzzled. He was of those who, far from clinging to a single
fact and confining themselves to a single duty, take account of the
complication of the facts amidst which they live, and of the variety of
the duties which the general situation or their own imposes upon them.
Born in the reformed faith, and on the steps of the throne, he was
struggling to defend his political rights whilst keeping his religious
creed; but his religious creed was not the fruit of very mature or
very deep conviction; it was a question of first claims and of honor
rather than a matter of conscience; and, on the other hand, the peace of
France, her prosperity, perhaps her territorial integrity, were dependent
upon the triumph of the political rights of the Béarnese. Even for his
brethren in creed his triumph was a benefit secured, for it was an end
of persecution and a first step toward liberty. There is no measuring
accurately how far ambition, personal interest, a king’s egotism had to
do with Henry IV.’s abjuration of his religion; none would deny that
those human infirmities were present; but all this does not prevent
the conviction that patriotism was uppermost in Henry’s soul, and that
the idea of his duty as king toward France, a prey to all the evils of
civil and foreign war, was the determining motive of his resolution.
It cost him a great deal. On the 26th of April, 1593, he wrote to the
grand duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand de Medici, that he had decided to turn
Catholic “two months after that the duke of Mayenne should have come to
an agreement with him on just and suitable terms;” and, foreseeing the
expense that would be occasioned to him by “this great change in his
affairs,” he felicitated himself upon knowing that the grand duke was
disposed to second his efforts toward a levy of 4000 Swiss and advance
a year’s pay for them. On the 28th of April he begged the bishop of
Chartres, Nicholas de Thou, to be one of the Catholic prelates whose
instructions he would be happy to receive on the 15th of July, and he
sent the same invitation to several other prelates. On the 16th of
May he declared to his council his resolve to become a convert. This
news, everywhere spread abroad, produced a lively burst of national and
Bourbonic feeling even where it was scarcely to be expected; at the
states-general of the League, especially in the chamber of the noblesse,
many members protested “that they would not treat with foreigners, or
promote the election of a woman, or give their suffrages to any one
unknown to them, and at the choice of his Catholic Majesty of Spain.” At
Paris, a part of the clergy, the incumbents of St. Eustache, St. Merri,
and St. Sulpice, and even some of the popular preachers, violent Leaguers
but lately, and notably Guincestre, boldly preached peace and submission
to the king if he turned Catholic. The principal of the French League,
in matters of policy and negotiation, and Mayenne’s adviser since 1589,
Villeroi, declared “that he would not bide in a place where the laws,
the honor of the nation and the independence of the kingdom were held so
cheap;” and he left Paris on the 28th of June.
* * * * *
Four months after the conclusion of the treaty of Vervins, on the 13th
of September, 1598, Philip II. died at the Escurial, and on the 3rd of
April, 1603, a second great royal personage, Queen Elizabeth, disappeared
from the scene. She had been, as regards the Protestantism of Europe,
what Philip II. had been, as regards Catholicism, a powerful and able
patron; but what Philip II. did from fanatical conviction, Elizabeth did
from patriotic feeling; she had small faith in Calvinistic doctrines and
no liking for Puritanic sects; the Catholic Church, the power of the
pope excepted, was more to her mind than the Anglican Church, and her
private preferences differed greatly from her public practices. Thus
at the beginning of the seventeenth century Henry IV. was the only one
remaining of the three great sovereigns who, during the sixteenth, had
disputed, as regarded religion and politics, the preponderance in Europe.
He had succeeded in all his kingly enterprises; he had become a Catholic
in France without ceasing to be the prop of the Protestants in Europe;
he had made peace with Spain without embroiling himself with England,
Holland and Lutheran Germany. He had shot up, as regarded ability and
influence, in the eyes of all Europe. It was just then that he gave the
strongest proof of his great judgment and political sagacity; he was not
intoxicated with success; he did not abuse his power; he did not aspire
to distant conquests or brilliant achievements; he concerned himself
chiefly with the establishment of public order in his kingdom and with
his people’s prosperity. His well-known saying, “I want all my peasantry
to have a fowl in the pot every Sunday,” was a desire worthy of Louis
XII. Henry IV. had a sympathetic nature; his grandeur did not lead him to
forget the nameless multitudes whose fate depended upon his government.
He had, besides, the rich, productive, varied, inquiring mind of one who
took an interest not only in the welfare of the French peasantry, but
in the progress of the whole French community, progress agricultural,
industrial, commercial, scientific, and literary.
* * * * *
On the 6th of January, 1600, Henry IV. gave his ambassador, Brulart
de Sillery, powers to conclude at Florence his marriage with Mary de’
Medici, daughter of Francis I. de’ Medici, grand duke of Tuscany, and
Joan, archduchess of Austria and niece of the grand duke Ferdinand I.
de’ Medici, who had often rendered Henry IV. pecuniary services dearly
paid for. As early as the year 1592 there had been something said about
this project of alliance; it was resumed and carried out on the 5th of
October, 1600, at Florence, with lavish magnificence. Mary embarked at
Leghorn on the 17th, with a fleet of seventeen galleys; that of which
she was aboard, the _General_, was all covered over with jewels, inside
and out; she arrived at Marseilles on the 3d of November, and at Lyons
on the 2nd of December, where she waited till the 9th for the king, who
was detained by the war with Savoy. He entered her chamber in the middle
of the night, booted and armed, and next day, in the cathedral church of
St. John, re-celebrated his marriage, more rich in wealth than it was
destined to be in happiness.
Henry IV. seemed to have attained in his public and in his domestic
life the pinnacle of earthly fortune and ambition. He was, at one and
the same time, Catholic king and the head of the Protestant polity in
Europe, accepted by the Catholics as the best, the only possible, king
for them in France. He was at peace with all Europe, except one petty
prince, the duke of Savoy, Charles Emmanuel I., from whom he demanded
back the Marquisate of Saluzzo or a territorial compensation in France
itself on the French side of the Alps. After a short campaign, and thanks
to Rosny’s ordnance, he obtained what he desired, and by a treaty of
January 17, 1601, he added to French territory La Bresse, Le Bugey, the
district of Gex and the citadel of Bourg, which still held out after the
capture of the town. He was more and more dear to France, to which he had
restored peace at home as well as abroad, and industrial, commercial,
financial, monumental, and scientific prosperity, until lately unknown.
Sully covered the country with roads, bridges, canals, buildings and
works of public utility. The conspiracy of his old companion in arms,
Gontaut de Biron, proved to him, however, that he was not at the end of
his political dangers, and the letters he caused to be issued (September,
1603) for the return of the Jesuits did not save him from the attacks of
religious fanaticism.
The queen’s coronation had been proclaimed on the 12th of May, 1610; she
was to be crowned next day, the 13th, at St. Denis, and Sunday the 16th
had been appointed for her to make her entry into Paris. On Friday, the
14th, the king had an idea of going to the Arsenal to see Sully, who was
ill; we have the account of this visit and of the assassination given by
Malherbe, at that time attached to the service of Henry IV., in a letter
written on the 19th of May, from the reports of eye witnesses, and it is
here reproduced, word for word:
“The king set out soon after dinner to go to the Arsenal. He deliberated
a long while whether he should go out, and several times said to the
queen, ‘My dear, shall I go or not?’ He even went out two or three times
and then all on a sudden returned, and said to the queen, ‘My dear, shall
I really go?’ and again he had doubts about going or remaining. At last
he made up his mind to go, and having kissed the queen several times,
bade her adieu. Amongst other things that were remarked he said to her,
‘I shall only go there and back; I shall be here again almost directly.’
When he got to the bottom of the steps where his carriage was waiting for
him, M. de Praslin, his captain of the guard, would have attended him,
but he said to him, ‘Get you gone; I want nobody; go about your business.’
“Thus, having about him only a few gentlemen and some footmen, he got
into his carriage, took his place on the back seat, at the left hand
side, and made M. d’Épernon sit at the right. Next to him, by the
door, were M. de Montbazon and M. de la Force; and by the door on M.
d’Épernon’s side were Marshal de Lavardin and M. de Créqui; on the
front seat the marquis of Mirabeau and the first equerry. When he came
to the Croix-du-Tiroir he was asked whither it was his pleasure to go;
he gave orders to go toward St. Innocent. On arriving at Rue de la
Ferronnerie, which is at the end of that of St. Honoré on the way to
that of St. Denis, opposite the Salamandre he met a cart which obliged
the king’s carriage to go nearer to the ironmonger’s shops, which are on
the St. Innocent side, and even to proceed somewhat more slowly, without
stopping, however, though somebody, who was in a hurry to get the gossip
printed, has written to that effect. Here it was that an abominable
assassin, who had posted himself against the nearest shop, which is that
with the _Cœur couronné percé d’une flèche_, darted upon the king and
dealt him, one after the other, two blows with a knife in the left side,
one, catching him between the arm-pit and the nipple, went upward without
doing more than graze; the other catches him between the fifth and sixth
ribs, and, taking a downward direction, cuts a large artery of those
called _venous_. The king, by mishap, and as if to further tempt this
monster, had his left hand on the shoulder of M. de Montbazon, and with
the other was leaning on d’Épernon, to whom he was speaking. He uttered
a low cry and made a few movements. M. de Montbazon having asked, ‘What
is the matter, sir?’ he answered, ‘It is nothing,’ twice; but the second
time so low that there was no making sure. These are the only words he
spoke after he was wounded.
“In a moment the carriage turned toward the Louvre. When he was at the
steps where he had got into the carriage, which are those of the queen’s
rooms, some wine was given him. Of course some one had already run
forward to bear the news. Sieur de Cérisy, lieutenant of M. de Praslin’s
company, having raised his head, he made a few movements with his eyes,
then closed them immediately, without opening them again any more. He was
carried up stairs by M. de Montbazon and Count de Curzon en Quercy and
laid on the bed in his closet and at two o’clock carried to the bed in
his chamber, where he was all the next day and Sunday. Somebody went and
gave him holy water. I tell you nothing about the queen’s tears; all that
must be imagined. As for the people of Paris, I think they never wept so
much as on this occasion.”
On the king’s death—and at the imperious instance of the duke of
Épernon, who at once introduced the queen, and said in open session,
as he exhibited his sword, “It is as yet in the scabbard, but it will
have to leap therefrom unless this moment there be granted to the
queen a title which is her due according to the order of nature and of
justice”—the Parliament forthwith declared Mary regent of the kingdom.
Thanks to Sully’s firm administration, there were, after the ordinary
annual expenses were paid, at that time in the vaults of the Bastile,
or in securities easily realizable, forty-one million three hundred
and forty-five thousand livres, and there was nothing to suggest that
extraordinary and urgent expenses would come to curtail this substantial
reserve. The army was disbanded and reduced to from twelve to fifteen
thousand men, French or Swiss. For a long time past no power in France
had, at its accession, possessed so much material strength and so much
moral authority.—_Guizot._