his government, his public and private life, and his person were daily
attacked, insulted, and menaced from the elevation of the pulpit and in
the public thoroughfares by qualified preachers or mob-orators. On the
16th of December, 1587, the Sorbonne voted, after a deliberation which,
it was said, was to be kept secret, “that the government might be taken
away from princes who were found not what they ought to be, just as the
administration of a property from a guardian open to suspicion.” On the
30th of December, the king summoned to the Louvre his court of Parliament
and the faculty of theology. “I know of your precious resolution of the
16th of this month,” said he to the Sorbonne; “I have been requested to
take no notice of it, seeing that it was passed after dinner. I have no
mind to avenge myself for these outrages, as I might, and as Pope Sixtus
V. did when he sent to the galleys certain Cordeliers for having dared to
slander him in their sermons. There is not one of you who has not
deserved as much, and more; but it is my good pleasure to forget all, and
to pardon you, on condition of its not occurring again. If it should, I
beg my court of Parliament, here present, to exact exemplary justice, and
such as the seditious, like you, may take warning by, so as to mind their
own business.” At their exit after this address, the Parliament and the
Sorbonne, being quite sure that the king would not carry the matter
further, withdrew smiling, and saying, “He certainly has spirit, but not
enough of it” (_habet quidem animum, sed non satis animi_). The Duke of
Guise’s sister, the Duchess of Montpensier, took to getting up and
spreading about all sorts of pamphlets against the king and his
government. “The king commanded her to quit his city of Paris; she did
nothing of the kind; and three days after she was even brazen enough to
say that she carried at her waist the scissors which would give a third
crown to brother Henry de Valois.” At the close of 1587, the Duke of
Guise made a trip to Rome, “with a suite of five; and he only remained
three days, so disguised that he was not recognized there, and discovered
himself to nobody but Cardinal Pelleve, with whom he was in communication
day and night.” [_Journal de L’Estoile,_ t. i. p. 345.] Eighteen months
previously, the cardinal had given a very favorable reception to a case
drawn up by an advocate in the Parliament of Paris, named David, who
maintained that, “although the line of the Capets had succeeded to the
temporal administration of the kingdom of Charlemagne, it had not
succeeded to the apostolic benediction, which appertained to none but the
posterity of the said Charlemagne, and that, the line of Capet being some
of them possessed by a spirit of giddiness and stupidity, and others
heretic and excommunicated, the time had come for restoring the crown to
the true heirs,” that is to say, to the house of Lorraine, which claimed
to be issue of Charlemagne. This case was passed on, it is said, from
Rome to Philip II., King of Spain, and M. de Saint-Goard, ambassador of
France at Madrid, sent Henry III. a copy of it. [_Memoires de la Ligue,_
t. i. pp. 1-7.]
Whatever may have been the truth about this trip to Rome on the part of
the Duke of Guise, and its influence upon what followed, the chiefs of
the Leaguers resolved to deal a great blow. The Lorraine princes and
their intimate associates met at Nancy in January, 1588, and decided that
a petition should be presented to the king; that he should be called upon
to join himself more openly and in good earnest to the League, and to
remove from offices of consequence all the persons that should be pointed
out to him; that the Holy Inquisition should be established, at any rate
in the good towns; that important places should be put into the hands of
specified chiefs, who should have the power of constructing
fortifications there; that heretics should be taxed a third, or at the
least, a fourth of their property as long as the war lasted; and, lastly,
that the life should be spared of no enemy taken prisoner, unless upon
his swearing and finding good surety to live as a Catholic, and upon
paying in ready money the worth of his property if it had not already
been sold. These monstrous proposals, drawn up in eleven articles, were
immediately carried to the king. He did not reject them, but he demanded
and took time to discuss them with the authors. The negotiation was
prolonged; the ferment in Paris was redoubled; the king, it was said,
meant to withdraw; his person must be secured; the Committee of Sixteen
took measures to that end; one of its members got into his hands the keys
of the gate of St. Denis. From Soissons, where he was staying, the Duke
of Guise sent to Paris the Count of Brissac, with four other captains of
the League, to hold themselves in readiness for any event, and he ordered
his brother the Duke of Aumale to stoutly maintain his garrisons in the
places of Picardy, which the king, it was said, meant to take from him.
“If the king leaves Paris,” the duke wrote to Bernard de Mendoza, Philip
II.’s ambassador in France, “I will make him think about returning
thither before he has gone a day’s march towards the Picards.” Philip
II. made Guise an offer of three hundred thousand crowns, six thousand
lanzknechts, and twelve hundred lances, as soon as he should have broken
with Henry III. “The abscess will soon burst,” wrote the ambassador to
the king his master.
On the 8th of May, 1588, at eleven P. M., the Duke of Guise set out from
Soissons, after having commended himself to the prayers of the convents
in the town. He arrived the next morning before Paris, which he entered
about midday by the gate of St. Martin. The Leaguers had been expecting
him for several days. Though he had covered his head with his cloak, he
was readily recognized and eagerly cheered; the burgesses left their
houses and the tradesmen their shops to see him and follow him, shouting,
“Hurrah! for Guise; hurrah! for the pillar of the church!” The crowd
increased at every step. He arrived in front of the palace of Catherine
de’ Medici, who had not expected him, and grew pale at sight of him.
“My dear cousin,” said she to him, “I am very glad to see you, but I
should have been better pleased at another time.” “Madame, I am come to
clear myself from all the calumnies of my enemies; do me the honor to
conduct me to the king yourself.” Catherine lost no time in giving the
king warning by one of her secretaries. On receipt of this notice, Henry
III., who had at first been stolid--and silent, rose abruptly from his
chair. “Tell my lady mother that, as she wishes to present the Duke of
Guise to me, I will receive him in the chamber of the queen my wife.”
The envoy departed. The king, turning to one of his officers, Colonel
Alphonso Corso, said to him, “M. de Guise has just arrived at Paris,
contrary to my orders. What would you do in my place?” “Sir, do you
hold the Duke of Guise for friend or enemy?” The king, without speaking,
replied by a significant gesture. “If it please your, Majesty to give me
the order, I will this very day lay the duke’s head at your feet.” The
three councillors who happened to be there cried out. The king held his
peace. During this conversation at the Louvre, the Duke of Guise was
advancing along the streets, dressed in a doublet of white damask, a
cloak of black cloth, and boots of buffalo-hide; he walked on foot,
bareheaded, at the side of the queen-mother in a sedan-chair. He was
tall, with fair clustering hair and piercing eyes; and his scar added to
his martial air. The mob pressed upon his steps; flowers were thrown to
him from the windows; some, adoring him as a saint, touched him with
chaplets which they afterwards kissed; a young girl darted towards him,
and, removing her mask, kissed him, saying, “Brave prince, since you are
here, we are all saved.” Guise, with a dignified air, “saluted and
delighted everybody,” says a witness, “with eye, and gesture, and
speech.” “By his side,” said Madame de Retz, “the other princes are
commoners.” “The Huguenots,” said another, “become Leaguers at the very
sight of him.” On arriving at the Louvre, he traversed the court between
two rows of soldiers, the archers on duty in the hall, and the forty-five
gentlemen of the king’s chamber at the top of the staircase. “What
brings you hither?” said the king, with difficulty restraining his anger.
“I entreat your Majesty to believe in my fidelity, and not allow yourself
to go by the reports of my enemies.” “Did I not command you not to come
at this season so full of suspicions, but to wait yet a while?”
“Sir, I was not given to understand that my coming would be disagreeable
to you.” Catherine drew near, and, in a low tone, told her son of the
demonstrations of which the duke had been the object on his way. Guise
was received in the chamber of the queen, Louise de Vaudemont, who was
confined to her bed by indisposition; he chatted with her a moment, and,
saluting the king, retired without being attended by any one of the
officers of the court. Henry III. confined himself to telling him that
results should speak for the sincerity of his words.
Guise returned to his house in the Faubourg St. Antoine, still
accompanied by an eager and noisy crowd, but somewhat disquieted at heart
both by the king’s angry reception and the people’s enthusiastic welcome.
Brave as he was, he was more ambitious in conception than bold in
execution, and he had not made up his mind to do all that was necessary
to attain the end he was pursuing. The committee of Sixteen, his
confidants, and all the staff of the League, met at his house during the
evening and night between the 9th and 10th of May, preparing for the
morrow’s action without well knowing what it was to be, proposing various
plans, collecting arms, and giving instructions to their agents amongst
the populace. An agitation of the same sort prevailed at the Louvre; the
king, too, was deliberating with his advisers as to what he should do on
the morrow: Guise would undoubtedly present himself at his morning levee;
should he at once rid himself of him by the poniards of the five and
forty bravoes which the Duke of Epernon had enrolled in Gascony for his
service? Or would it be best to summon to Paris some troops, French and
Swiss, to crush the Parisian rebels and the adventurers that had hurried
up from all parts to their aid? But on the 10th of May, Guise went to
the Louvre with four hundred gentlemen well armed with breastplates and
weapons under their cloaks. The king did nothing; no more did Guise.
The two had a long conversation in the queen-mother’s garden; but it led
to no result. On the 11th of May, in the evening, the provost of
tradesmen, Hector de Perreuse, assembled the town-council and those of
the district-colonels on whom he had reliance to receive the king’s
orders. Orders came to muster the burgher companies of certain
districts, and send them to occupy certain positions that had been
determined upon. They mustered slowly and incompletely, and some not at
all; and scarcely had they arrived when several left the posts which had
been assigned to them. The king, being informed of this sluggishness,
sent for the regiment of the French Guards, and for four thousand Swiss
cantoned in the outskirts of Paris; and he himself mounted his horse, on
the 12th of May, in the morning, to go and receive them at the gate of
St. Honord. These troops “filed along, without fife or drum, towards the
cemetery of the Innocents.” The populace regarded them as they passed
with a feeling of angry curiosity and uneasy amazement. When all the
corps had arrived at the appointed spot, “they put themselves in motion
towards different points, now making a great noise with their drums and
fifes, which marvellously astonished the inhabitants of the quarter.”
Noise provokes noise. “In continently,” says L’Estoile, “everybody
seizes his arms, goes out on guard in the streets and cantons; in less
than no time chains are stretched across and barricades made at the
corners of the streets; the mechanic leaves his tools, the tradesman his
business, the University their books, the attorneys their bags, the
advocates their bands; the presidents and councillors themselves take
halberds in hand; nothing is heard but shouts, murmurs, and the seditious
speeches that heat and alarm a people.” The tocsin sounded everywhere;
barricades sprang up in the twinkling of an eye; they were made within
thirty paces of the Louvre. The royal troops were hemmed in where they
stood, and deprived of the possibility of moving; the Swiss, being
attacked, lost fifty men, and surrendered, holding up their chaplets and
exclaiming that they were good Catholics. It was thought sufficient to
disarm the French Guards. The king, remaining stationary at the Louvre,
sent his marshals to parley with the people massed in the thoroughfares;
the queen-mother had herself carried over the barricades in order to go
to Guise’s house and attempt some negotiation with him. He received her
coldly, demanding that the king should appoint him lieutenant-general of
the kingdom, declare the Huguenot princes incapacitated from succeeding
to the throne, and assemble the states-general. At the approach of
evening, Guise determined to go himself and assume the conqueror’s air by
putting a stop to the insurrection. He issued from his house on
horseback, unarmed, with a white wand in his hand; he rode through the
different districts, exhorting the inhabitants to keep up their
barricades, whilst remaining on the defensive and leaving him to complete
their work. He was greeted on all sides with shouts of “Hurrah! for
Guise!” “You wrong me, my friends,” said he; “you should shout, ‘Hurrah!
for the king!’” He had the French Guards and the Swiss set at liberty;
and they defiled before him, arms lowered and bareheaded, as before their
preserver. Next morning, May 13, he wrote to D’Entragues, governor of
Orleans, “Notify our friends to come to us in the greatest haste
possible, with horses and arms, but without baggage, which they will
easily be able to do, for I believe that the roads are open hence to you.
I have defeated the Swiss, and cut in pieces a part of the king’s guards,
and I hold the Louvre invested so closely that I will render good account
of whatsoever there is in it. This is so great a victory that it will be
remembered forever.” That same day, the provost of tradesmen and the
royalist sheriffs repaired to the Louvre, and told the king that, without
great and immediate concessions, they could not answer for anything; the
Louvre was not in a condition of defence; there were no troops to be
depended upon for resistance, no provisions, no munitions; the investment
was growing closer and closer every hour, and the assault might commence
at any instant. Henry III. sent his mother once more to the Duke of
Guise, and himself went out about four o’clock, dressed in a country suit
and scantily attended, as if for a walk in the Tuileries. Catherine
found the duke as inflexible as he had been the day before. He
peremptorily insisted upon all the conditions he had laid down already,
the lieutenant-generalship of the kingdom for himself, the unity of the
Catholic faith, forfeiture on the part of the King of Navarre and every
other Huguenot prince as heir to the throne, perpetual banishment of the
king’s favorites, and convocation of the states-general. “The king,” he
said, “purposes to destroy all the grandees of the kingdom and to harry
all those who oppose his wishes and the elevation of his minions; it is
my duty and my interest to take all the measures necessary for my own
preservation and that of the people.” Catherine yielded on nearly every
point, at the same time, however, continually resuming and prolonging the
discussion. One of the duke’s most trusty confidants, Francis de
Mainville, entered and whispered in his ear. “Madame,” cried the duke,
“whilst your Majesty has been amusing me here, the king is off from Paris
to harry me and destroy me!” Henry III., indeed, had taken horse at the
Tuileries, and, attended by his principal councillors, unbooted and
cloakless, had issued from the New gate, and set out on the road to St.
Cloud. Equipping him in haste, his squire, Du Halde, had put his spur on
wrong, and would have set it right, but, “That will do,” said the king;
“I am not going to see my mistress; I have a longer journey to make.” It
is said that the corps on guard at the Nesle gate fired from a distance a
salute of arquebuses after the fugitive king, and that a crowd assembled
on the other bank of the river shouted insults after him. At the height
of Chaillot Henry pulled up, and turning round towards Paris, “Ungrateful
city,” he cried, “I have loved thee more than my own wife; I will not
enter thy walls again but by the breach.”
It is said that on hearing of the Duke of Guise’s sudden arrival at
Paris, Pope Sixtus V. exclaimed, “Ah! what rashness! To thus go and put
himself in the hands of a prince he has so outraged!” And some days
afterwards, on the news that the king had received the Duke of Guise and
nothing had come of it, “Ah, dastard prince! poor creature of a prince,
to have let such a chance escape him of getting rid of a man who seems
born to be his destruction!” [_De Thou,_ t. x. p. 266.]
When the king was gone, Guise acted the master in Paris. He ordered the
immediate delivery into his hands of the Bastille, the arsenal, and the
castle of Vincennes. Ornano, governor of the Bastille, sent an offer to
the king, who had arrived at Chartres, to defend it to the last
extremity. “I will not expose to so certain a peril a brave man who may
be necessary to me elsewhere,” replied the king. Guise caused to be
elected at Paris a new town-council and a new provost of tradesmen, all
taken from amongst the most ardent Leaguers. He at the same time exerted
himself to restore order; he allowed all royalists who wished to depart
to withdraw to Chartres; he went in person and pressed the premier
president of Parliament, Achille de Harlay, to resume the course of
justice. “It is great pity, sir,” said Harlay, “when the servant drives
out the master; this assembly is founded (seated) on the fleur-de-lis;
being established by the king, it can act only for his service. We will
all lose our lives to a man rather than give way a whit to the contrary.”
“I have been in many battles,” said Guise, as he went out, “in assaults
and encounters the most dangerous in the world; and I have never been so
overcome as at my reception by this personage.” At the same time that he
was trying to exercise authority and restore order, unbridled violence
and anarchy were making head around him; the Sixteen and their friends
discharged from the smallest offices, civil or religious, whoever was not
devoted to them; they changed all the captains and district-officers of
the city militia; they deposed all the incumbents, all the ecclesiastics
whom they termed Huguenots and policists; the pulpits of Christians
became the platforms of demagogues; the preachers Guiticestre, Boucher,
Rose, John Prevost, Aubry, Pigenat, Cueilly, Pelletier, and a host of
others whose names have fallen into complete obscurity, were the popular
apostles, the real firebrands of the troubles of the League, says
Pasquier; there was scarcely a chapel where there were not several
sermons a day. “You know not your strength,” they kept repeating to
their auditors: “Paris knows not what she is worth; she has wealth enough
to make war upon four kings. France is sick, and she will never recover
from that sickness till she has a draught of French blood given her.
. . . If you receive Henry de Valois into your towns, make up your
minds to see your preachers massacred, your sheriffs hanged, your women
violated, and the gibbets garnished with your members.” One of these
raving orators, Claude Trahy, provincial of the Cordeliers, devoted
himself to hounding on the populace of Auxerre against their bishop,
James Amyot, the translator of Plutarch, whom he reproached with “having
communicated with Henry III. and administered to him the eucharist;”
brother John Moresin, one of Trahy’s subalterns, went about brandishing a
halberd in the public place at Auxerre, and shouting, “Courage, lads!
messire Amyot is a wicked man, worse than Henry de Valois; he has
threatened to have our master Trahy hanged, but he will repent it;” and,
“at the voice of this madman, there hurried up vine-dressers, boatmen,
and marchandeaux (costermongers), a whole angry mob, who were for having
Amyot’s throat cut, and Trahy made bishop in his stead.”
Whilst the blind passions of fanatics and demagogues were thus let loose,
the sensible and clear-sighted spirits, the earnest and moderate
royalists, did not all of them remain silent and motionless. After the
appearance of the letters written in 1588 by the Duke of Guise to explain
and justify his conduct in this crisis, a grandson of Chancellor de
l’Hospital, Michael Hurault, Sieur du Fay, published a document, entitled
Frank and Free Discourse upon the Condition of France, one of the most
judicious and most eloquent pamphlets of the sixteenth century, a
profound criticism upon the acts of the Duke of Guise, their causes and
consequences, and a true picture of the falsehoods and servitude into
which an eminent man may fall when he makes himself the tool of a popular
faction in the hope of making that faction the tool of his personal
ambition. But even the men who were sufficiently enlightened and
sufficiently courageous to tell the League and its leader plain truths
spoke only rather late in the day, and at first without giving their
names; the document written by L’Hospital’s grandson did not appear until
1591, after the death of Henry III. and Henry de Guise, and it remained
anonymous for some time. One cannot be astonished at such timidity;
Guise himself was timid before the Leaguers, and he always ended by
yielding to them in essentials, after having attempted to resist them
upon such and such an incidental point. His own people accused him of
lacking boldness; and his sister, the Duchess of Montpensier, openly
patronized the most violent preachers, whilst boasting that she wielded
more influence through them than her brother by his armies. Henry III.,
under stress of his enemies’ zeal and his own servants’ weakness,
Catherine de’ Medici included, after having fled from Paris and taken
refuge at Chartres to escape the triumph of the Barricades, once more
began to negotiate, that is, to capitulate with the League; he issued at
Rouen, on the 19th of July, 1588, an edict in eleven articles, whereby he
granted more than had been demanded, and more than he had promised in
1585 by the treaty of Nemours; over and above the measures contained in
that treaty against the Huguenots, in respect of the present and the
future, he added four fresh surety-towns, amongst others Bourges and
Orleans, to those of which the Leaguers were to remain in possession.
He declared, moreover, “that no investigation should be made into any
understandings, associations, and other matters into which our Catholic
subjects might have entered together; inasmuch as they have given us to
understand and have informed us that what they did was but owing to the
zeal they felt for the preservation and maintenance of the Catholic
religion.” By thus releasing the League from all responsibility for the
past, and by giving this new treaty the name of edict of union, Henry
III. flattered himself, it is said, that he was thus putting himself at
the head of a new grand Catholic League which would become royalist
again, inasmuch as the king was granting it all it had desired. The
edict of union was enregistered at the Parliament of Paris on the 21st of
July. The states-general were convoked for the 15th of October
following. “On Tuesday, August 2, his Majesty,” says L’Estoile, “being
entertained by the Duke of Guise during his dinner, asked him for drink,
and then said to him, ‘To whom shall we drink?’ ‘To whom you please,
sir,’ answered the duke; ‘it is for your Majesty to command.’ ‘Cousin,’
said the king, ‘drink we to our good friends the Huguenots.’ ‘It is well
said, sir,’ answered the duke. ‘And to our good barricaders,’ said the
king; ‘let us not forget them.’ Whereupon the duke began to laugh a
little,” adds L’Estoile, “but a sort of laugh that did not go beyond the
knot of the throat, being dissatisfied at the novel union the king was
pleased to make of the Huguenots with the barricaders.” What must have
to some extent reassured the Duke of Guise was, that a Te Deum was
celebrated at Notre-Dame for the King of Navarre’s exclusion from all
right to the crown, and that, on the 14th of August Henry de Guise was
appointed generalissimo of the royal armies.
[Illustration: The Castle of Blois----428]
The states-general met at Blois on the 16th of October, 1588. They
numbered five hundred and five deputies; one hundred and ninety-one of
the third estate, one hundred and eighty of the noblesse, one hundred and
thirty-four of the clergy. The king had given orders “to conduct each
deputy as they arrived to his cabinet, that he might see, hear, and know
them all personally.” When the five hundred and five deputies had taken
their places in the hall, the Duke of Guise went to fetch the king, who
made his entry attended by the princes of the blood, and opened the
session with the dignity and easy grace which all the Valois seemed to
have inherited from Francis I. The Duke of Guise, in a coat of white
satin, was seated at the king’s feet, as high steward of his household,
scanning the whole assembly with his piercing glance, as if to keep watch
over those who were in his service. “He seemed,” says a contemporary,
“by a single flash of his eye to fortify them in the hope of the
advancement of his designs; his fortunes, and his greatness, and to say
to them, without speaking, I see you.” The king’s speech was long, able,
well delivered, and very much applauded, save by Guise himself and his
particular friends; the firmness of tone had displeased them, and one
sentence excited in them a discontent which they had found difficulty in
restraining: certain grandees of my kingdom have formed such leagues and
associations as, in every well-ordered monarchy, are crimes of high
treason, without the sovereign’s permission. But, showing my wonted
indulgence, I am quite willing to let bygones be bygones in this respect.
Guise grew pale at these words. On leaving the royal session, he got his
private committee to decide that the Cardinal of Guise and the Archbishop
of Lyons should go to see the king, and beg him to abandon the printing
of his speech, and meanwhile Guise himself sent to the printer’s to stop
the immediate publication. Discussion took place next day in the king’s
cabinet; and a threat was held out to him that a portion of the deputies
would quit the meeting of states. The queen-mother advised her son to
compromise. The king yielded, according to his custom, and gave
authority for cutting out the strongest expressions, amongst others those
just quoted. “The correction was accordingly made,” says M. Picot, the
latest and most able historian of the states-general, “and Henry III.
had to add this new insult to all that were rankling at the bottom of his
heart since the affair of the Barricades.”
This was, for the Duke of Guise, a first trial of his power, and great
was his satisfaction at this first success. On leaving the opening
session of the states-general, he wrote to the Spanish ambassador
Mendoza, “I handled our states so well that I made them resolve to
require confirmation of the edict of union (of July 21 preceding) as
fundamental law of the state. The king refused to do so, in rather sharp
terms, to the deputies who brought the representation before him, and
from that it is presumed that he inclines towards a peace with the
heretics. But, at last, he was so pressed by the states, the which were
otherwise on the point of breaking up, that he promised to swear the
edict and have it sworn before entering upon consideration of any
matter.”
The next day but one, in fact, on the 18th of October, at the second
session of the states-general, “the edict of July 21 was read and
published with the greatest solemnity; the king swore to maintain it in
terms calculated to dissipate all anxieties on the part of the Catholics.
The deputies swore after him. The Archbishop of Bourges delivered an
address on the sanctity of oaths, and those present began to think the
session over, when the king rose a second time to recommend the deputies
not to leave Blois before the papers were drawn up and the ordinances
made. He reminded them that at the last assembly of the states the
suggestions and counsels of the three estates had been so ill carried out
that, instead of a reformation and an establishment of good laws,
everything had been thrown into confusion. Accordingly the king added to
this suggestion a solemn oath that he would not budge from the city until
he had made an edict, sacred and inviolable. The enthusiasm of the
deputies was at its height; a rush took place to the church of St.
Sauveur to chant a Te Deum. All the princes were there to give thanks to
God. Never were king, court, and people so joyous.” The Duke of Guise
wrote to the Spanish ambassador, “At length we have, in full assembly of
the states, had our edict of union solemnly sworn and established as
fundamental law of this realm, having surmounted all the difficulties and
hinderances which the king was pleased to throw in the way; I found
myself four or five times on the point of rupture: but I was verily
assisted by so many good men.”
After as well as before the opening of the states-general, the friends of
the Duke of Guise were far from having, all of them, the same confidence
that he had in his position and in his success. “Stupid owl of a
Lorrainer!” said Sieur de Vins, commanding, on behalf of the League, in
Dauphiny, on reading the duke’s despatches, “has he so little sense as to
believe that a king whose crown he, by dissimulating, has been wanting to
take away, is not dissimulating in turn to take away his life?” “As they
are so thick together,” said M. de Vins’ sister, when she knew that the
Duke of Guise was at Blois with the king, “you will hear, at the very
first opportunity, that one or the other has killed his fellow.” Guise
himself was no stranger to this idea. “We are not without warnings from
all quarters that there is a design of attempting my life,” he wrote on
the 21st of September, 1588: “but I have, thank God, so provided against
it, both by the gathering I have made of a good number of my friends, and
in having, by presents and money, secured a portion of those whose
services are relied upon for the execution of it, that, if once things
begin, I shall finish more roughly than I did at Paris.”
After the opening of the states-general and the success he obtained
thereat, Guise appeared, if not more anxious, at any rate more attentive
to the warnings he received. On the 10th of December, 1588, he wrote to
Commander Moreo, confidential agent from the King of Spain to him, “You
cannot imagine what alarms have been given me since your departure. I
have so well provided against them that my enemies have not seen their
way to attempting anything. . . . But expenses have grown upon me to
such an extent that I have great need of your prompt assistance. . . .
I have now so much credit with this assembly that I have hitherto made it
dance to my tune, and I hope that as to what remains to be decreed I
shall be quite able to maintain the same authority.” Some of his
partisans advised him to go away for a while to Orleans; but he
absolutely refused, repeating, with the Archbishop of Lyons, “He who
leaves the game loses it.” One evening, in a little circle of intimates,
on the 21st of December, a question arose whether it would not be
advisable to prevent the king’s designs by striking at his person. The
Cardinal of Guise begged his brother to go away, assuring him that his
own presence would suffice for the direction of affairs: but, “They are
in such case, my friend,” said the Balafre, “that, if I saw death coming
in at the window, I would not consent to go out by the door to avoid it.”
His cousin, the Duke of Elbeuf, paid him a visit at night to urge him to
withdraw himself from the plot hatched against him. “If it were
necessary to lose my life in order to reap the proximate fruits of the
states’ good resolution,” said Guise, “that is what I have quite made up
my mind to. Though I had a hundred lives, I would devote them all to the
service of God and His church, and to the relief of the poor people for
whom I feel the greatest pity;” then, touching the Duke of Elbeuf upon
the shoulder, he said, “Go to bed, cousin;” and, taking away his hand and
laying it upon his own heart, he added, “Here is the doublet of
innocence.” On the evening of the 22d of December, 1588, when Charlotte
de Semblancay, Marchioness of Noirmoutiers, to whom he was tenderly
attached, pressed him to depart, or at any rate not to be present at the
council next day, the only answer he made her was to hum the following
ditty, by Desportes, a poet of the day:--
“My little Rose, a little spell
Of absence changed that heart of thine;
And I, who know the change full well,
Have found another place for mine.
No more such fair but fickle she
Shall find me her obedient;
And, flighty shepherdess, we’ll see
Which of the twain will first repent.”
Henry III. was scarcely less disturbed, but in quite a different way,
than the Duke of Guise. For a long time past he had been thinking about
getting rid of the latter, just as he had thought for a long time, twenty
years before, about getting rid of Admiral de Coligny; but since the date
of his escape from the popular rising on the day of the Barricades, he
had hoped that, thanks to the adoption of the edict of union and to the
convocation of the states-general, he would escape the yoke of the Duke
of Guise. He saw every day that he had been mistaken; the League, and
consequently the Duke of Guise, had more power than he with the
states-general; in vain had the king changed nearly all his ministers; in
vain had he removed his principal favorite, the Duke of Epernon, from the
government of Normandy to that of Provence; he did not obtain from the
states-general what he demanded, that is, the money he wanted; and the
states required of him administrative reforms, sound enough at bottom,
but suggested by the Duke of Guise with an interested object, and
calculated to shackle the kingly authority even more than could be done
by Guise himself directly. At the same time that Guise was urging on the
states-general in this path, he demanded to be made constable, not by the
king any longer, but by the states themselves. The kingship was thus
being squeezed between the haughty supremacy of the great lords,
substitutes for the feudal regimen, and the first essays of that free
government which is nowadays called the parliamentary regimen. Henry
III. determined with fear and trembling to disembarrass himself of his
two rivals, of the Duke of Guise by assassination, and of the
states-general by packing them off home. He did not know how intimately
the two great questions of which the sixteenth century was the great
cradle, the question of religious liberty and that of political liberty,
were connected one with the other, and would be prosecuted jointly or
successively in the natural progress of Christian civilization, or
through what trials kings and people would have to pass before
succeeding in any effectual solution of them.
On the 18th of December, 1588, during an entertainment given by Catherine
de’ Medici on the marriage of her niece, Christine de Lorraine, with
Ferdinand de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Henry III. summoned to his
cabinet three of his most intimate and safest confidants, Marshal
d’Aumont, Nicholas d’Angennes, Lord of Rambouillet, and Sieur de Beauvais
Nangis. After having laid before them all the Duke of Guise’s intrigues
against him and the perils of the position in which they placed him,
“What ought I to do?” he said; “help me to save myself by some speedy
means.” They asked the king to give them twenty-four hours to answer in.
Next day, the 19th, Sieur de Maintenon, brother of Rambouillet, and
Alphonso Corso d’Ornano Were added to the party; only one of them was of
opinion that the Duke of Guise should at once be arrested and put upon
his trial; the four others were for a shorter and a surer process, that
of putting the duke to death by a sudden blow. He is evidently making
war upon the king, they said; and the king has a right to defend himself.
Henry III., who had his mind made up, asked Crillon, commandant of the
regiment of guards, “Think you that the Duke of Guise deserves death?”
“Yes, sir.” “Very well; then I choose you to give it him.” “I am ready
to challenge him.” “That is not what is wanted; as leader of the
League, he is guilty of high treason.” “Very well, sir; then let him be
tried and executed.” “But, Crillon, nothing is less certain than his
conviction in a court of law; he must be struck down unexpectedly.”
“Sir, I am a soldier, not an assassin.” The king did not persist, but
merely charged Crillon, who promised, to keep the proposal secret. At
this very time Guise was requesting the king to give him a constable’s
grand provost and archers to form his guard in his quality of
lieutenant-general of the kingdom. The king deferred his reply.
Catherine de’ Medici supported the Lorrainer prince’s request. “In two
or three days it shall be settled,” said Henry. He had ordered twelve
poniards from an armorer’s in the city; on the 21st of December he told
his project to Loignac, an officer of his guards, who was less
scrupulous than Crillon, and undertook to strike the blow, in concert
with the forty-five trusty guards. At the council on the 22d of
December, the king announced his intention of passing Christmas in
retreat at Notre-Dame de Cleri, and he warned the members of the council
that next day the session would take place very early in order to
dispose of business before his departure. On the evening of the 22d, the
Duke of Guise, on sitting down at table, found under his napkin a note
to this effect: “The king means to kill you.” Guise asked for a pen,
wrote at the bottom of the note, “He dare not,” and threw it under the
table. Next day, December 23, Henry III., rising at four A. M., after a
night of great agitation, admitted into his cabinet by a secret
staircase the nine guards he had chosen, handed them the poniards he had
ordered, placed them at the post where they were to wait for the meeting
of the council, and bade Charles d’Entragues to go and request one of
the royal chaplains “to say mass, that God might give the king grace to
be able to carry out an enterprise which he hoped would come to an issue
within an hour, and on which the safety of France depended.” Then the
king retired into his closet. The members of the council arrived in
succession; it is said that one of the archers on duty, when he saw the
Duke of Guise mounting the staircase, trod on his foot, as if to give
him warning; but, if he observed it, Guise made no account of it, any
more than of all the other hints he had already received. Before
entering the council-chamber, he stopped at a small oratory connected
with the chapel, said his prayer, and as he passed the door of the
queen-mother’s apartments, signified his desire to pay his respects and
have a few words with her. Catherine was indisposed, and could not
receive him. Some vexation, it is said, appeared in Guise’s face, but
he said not a word. On entering the council-chamber he felt cold, asked
to have some fire lighted, and gave orders to his secretary, Pericard,
the only attendant admitted with him, to go and fetch the silver-gilt
shell he was in the habit of carrying about him with damsons or other
preserves to eat of a morning. Pericard was some time gone; Guise was
in a hurry, and, “Be kind enough,” he said to M. de Morfontaines, “to
send word to M. de Saint-Prix [first groom of the chamber to Henry
III.], that I beg him to let me have a few damsons or a little preserve
of roses, or some trifle of the king’s.” Four Brignolles plums were
brought him; and he ate one. His uneasiness continued; the eye close to
his scar became moist; according to M. de Thou, he bled at the nose. He
felt in his pocket for a handkerchief to use, but could not find one.
“My people,” said he, “have not given me my necessaries this morning:
there is great excuse for them; they were too much hurried.” At his
request, Saint-Prix had a handkerchief brought to him. Pericard passed
his bonbon-box to him, as the guards would not let him enter again. The
duke took a few plums from it, threw the rest on the table, saying,
“Gentlemen, who will have any?” and rose up hurriedly upon seeing the
secretary of state Revol, who came in and said to him, “Sir, the king
wants you; he is in his old cabinet.”
As soon as he knew that the Duke of Guise had arrived, and whilst these
little incidents were occurring in the council-chamber, Henry III. had in
fact given orders to his secretary Revol to go on his behalf and summon
the duke. But Nambu, usher to the council, faithful to his instructions,
had refused to let anybody, even the king’s secretary, enter the hall.
Revol, of a timid disposition, and impressed, it is said, with the
sinister importance of his commission, returned to the cabinet with a
very troubled air. The king, in his turn, was troubled, fearing lest his
project had been discovered. “What is the matter, Revol?” said he; “what
is it? How pale you are! You will spoil all. Rub your cheeks; rub your
cheeks.” “There is nothing wrong, sir: only M. de Nambu would not let
me in without your Majesty’s express command.” Revol entered the
council-chamber and discharged his commission. The Duke of Guise pulled
up his cloak as if to wrap himself well in it, took his hat, gloves, and
his sweetmeat-box, and went out of the room, saying, “Adieu, gentlemen,”
with a gravity free from any appearance of mistrust. He crossed the
king’s chamber contiguous to the council-hall, courteously saluted, as he
passed, Loignac and his comrades, whom he found drawn up, and who,
returning him a frigid obeisance, followed him as if to show him respect.
On arriving at the door of the old cabinet, and just as he leaned down to
raise the tapestry that covered it, Guise was struck five poniard blows
in the chest, neck, and reins. “God ha’ mercy!” he cried, and, though
his sword was entangled in his cloak, and he was himself pinned by the
arms and legs and choked by the blood that spurted from his throat, he
dragged his murderers, by a supreme effort of energy, to the other end of
the room, where he fell down backwards and lifeless before the bed of
Henry III., who, coming to the door of his room and asking “if it was
done,” contemplated with mingled satisfaction and terror the inanimate
body of his mighty rival, “who seemed to be merely sleeping, so little
was he changed.” “My God! how tall he is!” cried the king; “he looks
even taller than when he was alive.”
[Illustration: Henry III. and the Murder of Guise----437]
“They are killing my brother!” cried the Cardinal of Guise, when he heard
the noise that was being made in the next room; and he rose up to run
thither. The Archbishop of Lyons, Peter d’Espinac, did the same. The
Duke of Aumont held them both back, saying, “Gentlemen, we must wait for
the king’s orders.” Orders came to arrest them both, and confine them in
a small room over the council-chamber. They had “eggs, bread, wine from
the king’s cellar, their breviaries, their night-gowns, a palliasse, and
a mattress,” brought to them there; and they were kept under ocular
supervision for four and twenty hours. The Cardinal of Guise was
released the next morning, but only to be put to death like his brother.
The king spared the Archbishop of Lyons.
“I am sole king,” said Henry III. to his ministers, as he entered the
council-chamber; and shortly afterwards, going to see the queen-mother,
who was ill of the gout, “How do you feel?” he asked. “Better,” she
answered. “So do I,” replied the king: “I feel much better; this morning
I have become King of France again; the King of Paris is dead.” “You
have had the Duke of Guise killed?” asked Catherine “have you reflected
well? God grant that you become not king of nothing at all. I hope the
cutting is right; now for the sewing.” According to the majority of the
historians, Catherine had neither been in the secret nor had anything to
do with the preparations for the measure. Granted that she took no
active part in it, and that she avoided even the appearance of having any
previous knowledge of it; she was not fond of responsibility, and she
liked better to negotiate between the different parties than to make her
decisive choice between them; prudent tendencies grow with years, and in
1588 she was sixty-nine. It is difficult, however, to believe that,
being the habitual confidant of her favorite son, she was ignorant of a
design long meditated, and known to many persons many days before its
execution. The event once accomplished, ill as she was, and contrary to
the advice of her physicians, she had herself carried to the Cardinal of
Bourbon’s, who was still under arrest by the king’s orders, to promise
him speedy release. “Ah! madame,” said the cardinal, as he saw her
enter, “these are some of your tricks; you are death to us all.” However
it may be, thirteen days after the murder of the Duke of Guise, on the
5th of January, 1589, Catherine de’ Medici herself died. Nor was her
death, so far as affairs and the public were concerned, an event: her
ability was of the sort which is worn out by the frequent use made
of it, and which, when old age comes on, leaves no long or grateful
reminiscence. Time has restored Catherine de’ Medici to her proper place
in history; she was quickly forgotten by her contemporaries.
She had good reason to say to her son, as her last advice, “Now for the
sewing.” It was not long before Henry III. perceived that to be king, it
was not sufficient to have murdered his rival. He survived the Duke of
Guise only seven months, and during that short period he was not really
king, all by himself, for a single day; never had his kingship been so
embarrassed and impotent; the violent death of the Duke of Guise had
exasperated much more than enfeebled the League; the feeling against his
murderer was passionate and contagious; the Catholic cause had lost its
great leader; it found and accepted another in his brother the Duke of
Mayenne, far inferior to his elder brother in political talent and prompt
energy of character, but a brave and determined soldier, a much better
man of party and action than the sceptical, undecided, and indolent Henry
III. The majority of the great towns of France--Paris, Rouen, Orleans,
Toulouse, Lyons, Amiens--and whole provinces declared eagerly against the
royal murderer. He demanded support from the states-general, who refused
it; and he was obliged to dismiss them. The Parliament of Paris,
dismembered on the 16th of January, 1589, by the council of Sixteen,
became the instrument of the Leaguers. The majority of the other
Parliaments followed the example set by that of Paris. The Sorbonne,
consulted by a petition presented in the name of all Catholics, decided
that Frenchmen were released from their oath of allegiance to Henry III.,
and might with a good conscience turn their arms against him. Henry made
some obscure attempts to come to an arrangement with certain chiefs of
the Leaguers; but they were rejected with violence. The Duke of Mayenne,
having come to Paris on the 15th of February, was solemnly received at
Notre-Dame, amidst shouts of “Hurrah for the Catholic princes! hurrah for
the house of Lorraine!” He was declared lieutenant-general of the crown
and state of France. He organized a council-general of the League,
composed of forty members and charged with the duty of providing for all
matters of war, the finance and the police of the realm, pending a fresh
convocation of states-general. To counterbalance in some degree the
popular element, Mayenne introduced into it fourteen personages of his
own choice and a certain number of magistrates and bishops; the delegates
of the united towns were to have seats at the council whenever they
happened to be at Paris. “Never,” says M. Henry Martin [_Histoire de
France,_ t. i. p. 134] very truly, “could the League have supposed
itself to be so near becoming a government of confederated municipalities
under the directorate of Paris.”
There was clearly for Henry III. but one possible ally who had a chance
of doing effectual service, and that was Henry of Navarre and the
Protestants. It cost Henry III. a great deal to have recourse to that
party; his conscience and his pusillanimity both revolted at it equally;
in spite of his moral corruption, he was a sincere Catholic, and the
prospect of excommunication troubled him deeply. Catholicism, besides,
was in a large majority in France: how, then, was he to treat with its
foes without embroiling himself utterly with it? Meanwhile the case was
urgent. Henry was apprised by one of his confidants, Nicholas de
Rambouillet, that one of the King of Navarre’s confidants, Sully, who was
then only Sieur de Rosny, was passing by Blois on his way to his master;
he saw him and expressed to him his “desire for a reconciliation with the
King of Navarre, and to employ him on confidential service;” the
difficulty was to secure to the Protestant king and his army, then
engaged in the siege of Chatellerault, a passage across the Loire. Rosny
undertook Henry III.’s commission. He at the same time received another
from Sieur de Brigueux, governor of the little town of Beaugency, who
said to him, “I see well, sir, that the king is going the right way to
ruin himself by timidity, irresolution, and bad advice, and that
necessity will throw us into the hands of the League: for my part, I will
never belong to it, and I would rather serve the King of Navarre. Tell
him that I hold, at Beaugency, a passage over the Loire, and that if he
will be pleased to send to me you or M. de Rebours, I will admit into the
town him whom he sends to me.” Upon receiving these overtures, the King
of Navarre thought a while, scratching his head; then he said to Rosny,
“Do you think that the king has good intentions towards me, and means to
treat with me in good faith?” “Yes, sir, for the present; and you need
have no doubt about it, for his straits constrain him thereto, having
nothing to look to in his perils but your assistance.” He had some
dinner brought into his own cabinet for Rosny, and then made him post off
at once. On arriving in the evening at Tours, whither Henry III. had
fallen back, Rosny was taken to him, about midnight, at the top of the
castle; the king sent him off that very night; he consented to everything
that the King of Navarre proposed; promised him a town on the Loire, and
said he was ready to make with him not a downright peace just at first,
but “a good long truce, which, in their two hearts, would at once be an
eternal peace and a sincere reconciliation.”
When Rosny got back to Chatellerault, “there was nothing but rejoicing;
everybody ran to meet him; he was called ‘god Rosny,’ and one of his
friends said to the rest, ‘Do you see yon man? By God, we shall all
worship him, and he alone will restore France; I said so six years ago,
and Villandry was of my opinion.’”
Thus was the way paved and the beginning made, between the two kings, of
an alliance demanded by their mutual interests, and still more strongly
by the interests of France, ravaged and desolated, for nearly thirty
years past, by religious civil wars. Henry of Navarre had profound
sympathy for his country’s sufferings, an ardent desire to put a stop to
them, and at the same time the instinct to see clearly that the day had
come when the re-establishment of harmony and common action between
himself and Henry de Valois was the necessary and at the same time
possible means of attaining that great result. On the 4th of March,
1589, soon after the states of Blois had been dismissed, he set before
France, in an eloquent manifesto, the expression of his anxieties and his
counsels: “I will speak freely,” said he, “to myself first and then to
others, that we may be all of us without excuse. Let us not be puffed up
with pride on one side or another. As for me, although I have received
more favors from God in this than in all past wars, and, whilst the two
other parties (how sad that they must be so called!) are enfeebled, mine,
to all appearance, has been strengthened, nevertheless I well know that,
whenever I go beyond my duty, God will no longer bless me; and I shall do
so whenever, without reason and in sheer lightness of heart, I attack my
king and trouble the repose of his kingdom. . . . I declare, then,
first of all to those who belong to the party of the king my lord, that
if they do not counsel him to make use of me, and of the means which God
hath given me, for to make war, not on them of Lorraine, not on Paris,
Orleans, or Toulouse, but on those who shall hinder the peace and the
obedience owed to this crown, they alone will be answerable for the woes
which will come upon the king and the kingdom. . . . And as to those
who still adhere to the name and party of the League, I, as a Frenchman,
conjure them to put up with their losses as I do with mine, and to
sacrifice their quarrels, vengeance, and ambition to the welfare of
France, their mother, to the service of their king, to their own repose
and ours. If they do otherwise, I hope that God will not abandon the
king, and will put it into his heart to call around him his servants,
myself the first, who wish for no other title, and who shall have
sufficient might and good right to help him wipe out their memory from
the world and their party from France. . . . I wish these written
words to go proclaiming for me throughout the world that I am ready to
ask my lord the king for peace, for the repose of his kingdom and for my
own. . . . And finally, if I find one or another so sleepy-headed or
so ill-disposed that none is moved thereby, I will call God to my aid,
and, true servant of my king, worthy of the honor that belongs to me as
premier prince of this realm, though all the world should have conspired
for its ruin, I protest, before God and before man, that, at the risk of
ten thousand lives, I will essay--all alone--to prevent it.”
It is pleasing to think that this patriotic step and these powerful words
were not without influence over the result which was attained. The King
of Navarre set to work, at the same time with Rosny, one, of the most
eminent, and with Philip du Plessis-Mornay, the most sterling of his
servants; and a month after the publication of his manifesto, on the 3d
of April, 1589, a truce for a year was concluded between the two kings.
It set forth that the King of Navarre should serve the King of France
with all his might and main; that he should have, for the movements of
his troops on both banks of the Loire, the place of Saumur; that the
places of which he made himself master should be handed over to Henry
III., and that he might not anywhere do anything to the prejudice of the
Catholic religion; that the Protestants should be no more disquieted
throughout the whole of France, and that, before the expiration of the
truce, King Henry III. should give them assurance of peace. This
negotiation was not concluded without difficulty, especially as regarded
the town of Saumur; there was a general desire to cede to the King of
Navarre only some place of less importance on the Loire; and when, on the
15th of April, Du Plessis-Mornay, who had been appointed governor of it,
presented himself for admittance at the head of his garrison, the
royalist commandant, who had to deliver the keys to him, limited himself
to letting them drop at his feet. Mornay showed alacrity in picking them
up.
On the 29th of April, the two kings had, each on his own behalf, made
their treaty public. Henry III. sent word to the King of Navarre that he
wished to see him and have some conversation with him. Many of the King
of Navarre’s friends dissuaded him from this interview, saying, “They
are traitors; do not put yourself in their power; remember the
St. Bartholomew.” This counsel was repeated to him on the 30th of April,
at the very moment when he was stepping aboard the boat to cross the
Loire and go to pay Henry III. a visit at the castle of Plessis-les-
Tours. The King of Navarre made no account of it. “God hath bidden me
to cross and see him,” he answered: “it is not in the power of man to
keep me back, for God is guiding me and crossing with me. Of that I am
certain;” and he crossed the river. “It is incredible,” says L’Estoile,
“what joy everybody felt at this interview; there was such a throng of
people that, notwithstanding all efforts to preserve order, the two kings
were a full quarter of an hour in the roadway of Plessis park holding out
their hands to one another without being able to join them; people
climbed trees to see them; all shouted with great vigor and exultation,
Hurrah for the king! hurrah for the King of Navarre! hurrah for the
kings! At last, having joined hands, they embraced very lovingly, even
to tears. The King of Navarre, on retiring in the evening, said, ‘I
shall now die happy, since God hath given me grace to look upon the face
of my king and make him an offer of my services.’ I know not if those
were his own words; but what is certain is, that everybody at this time,
both kings and people, except fanatical Leaguers, regarded peace as a
great public blessing, and were rejoiced to have a prospect of it before
their eyes. The very day of the interview, the King of Navarre wrote to
Du Plessis-Mornay, ‘M. du Plessis, the ice is broken; not without numbers
of warnings that if I went I was a dead man. I crossed the water,
commending myself to God, who, by His goodness, not only preserved me,
but caused extreme joy to appear on the king’s countenance, and the
people to cheer so that never was the like, even shouting, Hurrah for the
kings! whereat I was much vexed.’”
Some days afterwards, during the night of May 8, the Duke of Mayenne made
an attack upon Tours, and carried for the moment the Faubourg St.
Symphorien, which gave Henry III. such a fright that he was on the point
of leaving the city and betaking himself to a distance. But the King of
Navarre, warned in time, entered Tours; and at his approach the Leaguers
fell back. “When the white scarfs appeared, coming to the king’s rescue,
the Duke of Mayenne and his troops began shouting to them, ‘Back! white
scarfs; back! Chatillon: we are not set against you, but against the
murderers of your father!’ meaning thereby that they were set against
King Henry de Valois only, and not against the Huguenots. But Chatillon,
amongst the rest, answered them, ‘You are all of you traitors to your
country: I trample under foot all vengeance and all private interests
when the service of my prince and of the state is concerned; ‘which he
said so loudly that even his Majesty heard it, and praised him for it,
and loved him for it.” The two kings determined to move on Paris and
besiege it; and towards the end of July their camp was pitched before the
walls.
Great was the excitement throughout Europe as well as France, at the
courts of Madrid and Rome as well as in the park of Plessis-les-Tours.
A very serious blow for Philip II., and a very bad omen for the future
of his policy, was this alliance between Henry de Valois and Henry of
Navarre, between a great portion of the Catholics of France and the
Protestants. Philip II. had plumed himself upon being the patron of
absolute power in religious as well as political matters, and the
dominant power throughout Europe in the name of Catholicism and Spain.
In both these respects he ran great risk of being beaten by a King of
France who was a Protestant or an ally of Protestants and supported by
the Protestant influence of England, Holland, and Germany. In Italy
itself and in Catholic Europe Philip did not find the harmony and support
for which he looked. The republic of Venice was quietly but certainly
well disposed towards France, and determined to live on good terms with a
King of France, a friend of Protestants or even himself Protestant. And
what hurt Philip II. still more was, that Pope Sixtus V. himself, though
all the while upholding the unity and authority of the Roman church,
was bent upon not submitting to the yoke of Spain, and upon showing a
favorable disposition towards France. “France is a very noble kingdom,”
he said to the Venetian ambassador Gritti; “the church has always
obtained great advantages from her. We love her beyond measure, and we
are pleased to find that the Signiory shares our affection.” Another day
he expressed to him his disapprobation of the League. “We cannot praise,
indeed we must blame, the first act committed by the Duke of Guise, which
was to take up arms and unite with other princes against the king; though
he made religion a pretext, he had no right to take up arms against his
sovereign.” And again: “The union of the King of France with the
heretics is no longer a matter of doubt; but, after all, Henry of Navarre
is worth a great many of Henry III.; this latter will have the measure he
meted to the Guises.” So much equity and mental breadth on the pope’s
part was better suited for the republic of Venice than for the King of
Spain. “We have but one desire,” wrote the Doge Cicogna to Badoero, his
ambassador at Rome, “and that is to keep the European peace. We cannot
believe that Sixtus V., that great pontiff, is untrue to his charge,
which is to ward off from the Christian world the dangers that threaten
it; in imitation of Him whom he represents on earth, he will show mercy,
and not proceed to acts which would drive the King of France to despair.”
During the great struggle with which Europe was engaged in the sixteenth
century, the independence of states, religious tolerance, and political
liberty thus sometimes found, besides their regular and declared
champions, protectors, useful on occasion although they were timid, even
amongst the habitual allies of Charles V.’s despotic and persecuting
successor.
On arriving before Paris towards the end of July, 1589, the two kings
besieged it with an army of forty-two thousand men, the strongest and the
best they had ever had under their orders. “The affairs of Henry III.,”
says De Thou, “had changed face; fortune was pronouncing for him.”
Quartered in the house of Count de Retz, at St. Cloud, he could thence
see quite at his ease his city of Paris. “Yonder,” said he, “is the
heart of the League; it is there that the blow must be struck. It was
great pity to lay in ruins so beautiful and goodly a city. Still, I must
settle accounts with the rebels who are in it, and who ignominiously
drove me away.” “On Tuesday, August 1, at eight A. M., he was told,”
says L’Estoile, “that a monk desired to speak with him, but that his
guards made a difficulty about letting him in. ‘Let him in,’ said the
king: ‘if he is refused, it will be said that I drive monks away and will
not see them.’ Incontinently entered the monk, having in his sleeve a
knife unsheathed. He made a profound reverence to the king, who had just
got up and had nothing on but a dressing-gown about his shoulders, and
presented to him despatches from Count de Brienne, saying that he had
further orders to tell the king privately something of importance. Then
the king ordered those who were present to retire, and began reading the
letter which the monk had brought asking for a private audience
afterwards; the monk, seeing the king’s attention taken up with reading,
drew his knife from his sleeve and drove it right into the king’s small
gut, below the navel, so home that he left the knife in the hole; the
which the king having drawn out with great exertion struck the monk a
blow with the point of it on his left eyebrow, crying, ‘Ah! wicked monk!
he has killed me; kill him!’ At which cry running quickly up, the guards
and others, such as happened to be nearest, massacred this assassin of a
Jacobin who, as D’Aubigne says, stretched out his two arms against the
wall, counterfeiting the crucifix, whilst the blows were dealt him.
Having been dragged out dead from the king’s chamber, he was stripped
naked to the waist, covered with his gown and exposed to the public.”
Whilst Henry de Valois was thus struck down at St. Cloud, Henry of
Navarre had moved with a good number of troops to the Pre-aux-Clercs;
and seeing Rosny, who was darting along, pistol in hand, amongst the
foremost, he called one of his gentlemen and said, “Maignan, go and tell
M. de Rosny to come back; he will get taken or wounded in that rash
style.” “I should not care to speak so to him,” answered Maignan. “I
will tell him that your Majesty wants him.” Meanwhile up came a
gentleman at a gallop, who said three or four words in the King of
Navarre’s ear. “My friend,” said Henry to Rosny, “the king has just been
wounded with a knife in the stomach; let us go and see about it; come
with me.” Henry took with him five and twenty gentlemen. The king
received him affectionately, exhorted him to change his religion for his
salvation’s sake in another world and his fortunes in this; and,
addressing the people of quality who thronged his chamber, he said, “I do
pray you as my friends, and as your king I order you, to recognize after
my death my brother here. For my satisfaction and as your bounden duty,
I pray you to swear it to him in my presence.” All present took the
oath. Henry III. spoke in a firm voice; and his wound was not believed
to be mortal. Letters were sent in his name to the queen, to the
governors of the provinces and to the princes allied to the crown, to
inform them of the accident that had happened to the king, “which, please
God, will turn out to be nothing.” The King of Navarre asked for some
details as to the assassin. James Clement was a young Dominican who,
according to report, had been a soldier before he became a monk. He was
always talking of waging war against Henry de Valois, and he was called
“Captain Clement.” He told a story about a vision he had of an angel,
who had bidden him “to put to death the tyrant of France, in return for
which he would have the crown of martyrdom.” Royalist writers report
that he had been placed in personal communication with the friends of
Henry de Guise, even with his sister the Duchess of Montpensier, and his
brother the Duke of Mayenne. When well informed of the facts, the King
of Navarre returned to his quarters at Meudon, and Rosny to his lodging
at the foot of the castle. Whilst Rosny was at supper, his secretary
came and said to him, “Sir, the King of Navarre, peradventure the King of
France, wants you. M. d’Orthoman writes to him to make haste and come to
St. Cloud if he would see the king alive.” The King of Navarre at once
departed. Just as he arrived at St. Cloud, he heard in the street cries
of “Ah! my God, we are lost!” He was told that the king was dead. Henry
III., in fact, expired on the 2d of August, 1589, between two and three
in the morning. The first persons Henry of Navarre encountered as he
entered the Hotel de Retz were the officers of the Scottish guard, who
threw themselves at his feet, saying, “Ah! sir, you are now our king and
our master.”
[Illustration: Henry of Navarre and the Scotch Guard----448]
END OF VOLUME IV.