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Title: A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 5

Author: François Guizot

Illustrator: Alphonse Marie de Neuville

Translator: Robert Black

Release date: April 1, 2004 [eBook #11955]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11955

Credits: Produced by David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A POPULAR
HISTORY OF FRANCE FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES, VOLUME 5
***

HISTORY OF FRANCE

BY GUIZOT

VOLUME V.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER XXXV. HENRY IV., PROTESTANT KING. (1589-
1593.)

CHAPTER XXXVI. HENRY IV., CATHOLIC KING. (1593-
1610.)

CHAPTER XXXVII. REGENCY OF MARY DE’ MEDICI.
(1610-1617.)

CHAPTER XXXVIII. LOUIS XIII., CARDINAL
RICHELIEU, AND THE COURT.

CHAPTER XXXIX. LOUIS XIII., CARDINAL RICHELIEU,
AND THE PROVINCES.

CHAPTER XL. LOUIS XIII., RICHELIEU--CATHOLICS
AND PROTESTANTS.

CHAPTER XLI. LOUIS XIII., CARDINAL RICHELIEU,
AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS.

CHAPTER XII. LOUIS XIII., RICHELIEU, AND
LITERATURE.

CHAPTER XLIII. LOUIS XIV., THE FRONDE--CARDINAL
MAZARIN.

CHAPTER XLIV. LOUIS XIV., HIS WARS AND HIS
CONQUESTS. 1661-1697.

CHAPTER XLV. LOUIS XIV., HIS WARS AND HIS
REVERSES. (1697-1713.)

CHAPTER XLVI. LOUIS XIV. AND HOME
ADMINISTRATION.

CHAPTER XLVII. LOUIS XIV. AND RELIGION.

CHAPTER XLVIII. LOUIS XIV., LITERATURE AND ART.

ILLUSTRTIONS

Henry IV.——11
Sully——37
Henry IV. At Ivry——26
Rosny Castle——30
“Do Not Lose Sight of My White Plume.”——30
Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma——32
Charles de Lorraine, Duke of Mayenne——35
Lemaitre, Mayenne, and the Archbishop of Lyons
——53
Henry IV.‘s Abjuration——56
The Castle of Monceaux——91
The Castle of St. Germain in the Reign Of Henry IV.
—107
The Castle of Fontainbleau——124
Gabrielle D’estrees—130
Henry IV. And his Ministers——138
The Arsenal in the Reign of Henry IV.——143
Marie de Medicis——147

Concini, Leonora Galigai, and Mary De’ Medici
——149
Louis XIII. And Albert de Luynes——154
Murder of Marshal D’Ancre——155
Richelieu——180
Double Duel——188
“Tapping With his Finger-tips on the Window-
pane.”——191
Henry, Duke of Montmorency, at Castelnaudary
——199
The King and the Cardinal——204
Cinq-Mars and de Thou Going to Execution——215
The Parliament of Paris Reprimanded——217
The Barefoots——221
The Abbot of St. Cyran——234
Demolishing the Fortifications——244
The Harbor of La Rochelle—-248
The King and Richelieu at La Rochelle——250
John Guiton’s Oath——254
The Defile of Suza Pass——278
Richelieu and Father Joseph——280
Gustavus Adolphus——282
Death of Gustavus and his Page——290
The Palais-Cardinal——305

The Tomb of Richelieu——308
Descartes at Amsterdam——316
The King’s Press——323
Peter Corneille——334
The Representation of “The Cid.”——335
Corneille at the Hotel Rambouillet—-342
Louis XIV.——344
The Great Conde——348
Arrest of Broussel——352
Cardinal de Retz——352
“Ah, Wretch, if Thy Father Saw Thee!”——354
President Mole——355
The Great Mademoiselle——373
Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin——394
Death of Mazarin.——399
Fouquet——404
Colbert——405
Vaux Le Vicomte——405b
Louis XIV. Dismissing Fouquet——407
Louvois——411
William III., Prince of Orange——434
The Brothers Witt——436
Death of Turenne——443

Turenne.——444
An Exploit of John Bart’s——446
Duquesne Victorious over Ruyter—446a
Marshal Luxembourg—461
Heinsius——461
Battle of St. Vincent 465a
The Battle of Neerwinden——465
“Here is the King of Spain.”——475
News for William III.——481
Bivouac of Louis XIV.——503
The Grand Dauphin——505
Marshal Villars and Prince Eugene——512
Marly——525
Colonnade of the Louvre 525a
Versailles—526
Vauban——534
Misery of the Peasantry——543
The Torture of the Huguenots—552
Revocation of the Edict Of Nantes——556
Death of Roland the Camisard——569
Abbey of Port-Royal——580
Reading the Decree 581
Bossuet——591

Blaise Pascal——597
Fenelon and the Duke of Burgundy——610
La Rochefoucauld and his Fair Friends——629
La Bruyere——633
Corneille Reading to Louis XIV.——642
Racine——646
Boileau-Despreaux——650
La Fontaine, Boileau, Moliere, and Racine——657
Moliere——664
Death of Moliere——669
Lebrun——674
Le Poussin and Claude Lorrain——675
Lesueur——676
Mignard 677
Perrault 678

A POPULAR HISTORY OF
FRANCE

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES.

CHAPTER XXXV.

HENRY IV., PROTESTANT KING. (1589-1593.)

On the 2d of August, 1589, in the morning, upon his arrival in his
quarters at Meudon, Henry of Navarre was saluted by the Protestants King
of France. They were about five thousand in an army of forty thousand
men. When, at ten o’clock, he entered the camp of the Catholics at St.
Cloud, three of their principal leaders, Marshal d’Aumont, and Sires
d’Humieres and de Givry, immediately acknowledged him unconditionally,
as they had done the day before at the death-bed of Henry III., and they at
once set to work to conciliate to him the noblesse of Champagne, Picardy,
and Ile-de-France. “Sir,” said Givry, “you are the king of the brave; you will
be deserted by none but dastards.” But the majority of the Catholic leaders
received him with such expressions as, “Better die than endure a Huguenot
king!” One of them, Francis d’O, formally declared to him that the time had
come for him to choose between the insignificance of a King of Navarre
and the grandeur of a King of France; if he pretended to the crown, he must
first of all abjure. Henry firmly rejected these threatening entreaties, and left
their camp with an urgent recommendation, to them to think of it well
before bringing dissension into the royal army and the royal party which
were protecting their privileges, their property, and their lives against the
League. On returning to his quarters, he noticed the arrival of Marshal de
Biron, who pressed him to lay hands without delay upon the crown of
France, in order to guard it and save it. But, in the evening of that day and
on the morrow, at the numerous meetings of the lords to deliberate upon the
situation, the ardent Catholics renewed their demand for the exclusion of
Henry from the throne if he did not at once abjure, and for referring the
election of a king to the states-general. Biron himself proposed not to
declare Henry king, but to recognize him merely as captain-general of the
army pending his abjuration. Harlay de Sancy vigorously maintained the
cause of the Salic law and the hereditary rights of monarchy. Biron took

him aside and said, “I had hitherto thought that you had sense; now I doubt
it. If, before securing our own position with the King of Navarre, we
completely establish his, he will no longer care for us. The time is come for
making our terms; if we let the occasion escape us, we shall never recover
it.” “What are your terms?” asked Sancy. “If it please the king to give me
the countship of Perigord, I shall be his forever.” Sancy reported this
conversation to the king, who promised Biron what he wanted.
Though King of France for but two days past, Henry IV. had already
perfectly understood and steadily taken the measure of the situation. 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 in the first
words that he addressed to the lords and principal personages of state
assembled around him. “You all know,” said he, “what orders the late king
my predecessor gave me, and what he enjoined upon me with his dying
breath. It was chiefly to maintain my subjects, Catholic or Protestant, in
equal freedom, until a council, canonical, general, or national, had decided
this great dispute. I promised him to perform faithfully that which he bade
me, and I regard it as one of my first duties to be as good as my word. I
have heard that some who are in my army feel scruples about remaining in
my service unless I embrace the Catholic religion. No doubt they think me
weak enough for them to imagine that they can force me thereby to abjure
my religion and break my word. I am very glad to inform them here, in
presence of you all, that I would rather this were the last day of my life than
take any step which might cause me to be suspected of having dreamt of
renouncing the religion that I sucked in with my mother’s milk, before I
have been better instructed by a lawful council, to whose authority I bow in

advance. Let him who thinks so ill of me get him gone as soon as he
pleases; I lay more store by a hundred good Frenchmen than by two
hundred who could harbor sentiments so unworthy. Besides, though you
should abandon me, I should have enough of friends left to enable me,
without you and to your shame, with the sole assistance of their strong
arms, to maintain the rights of my authority. But were I doomed to see
myself deprived of even that assistance, still the God who has preserved me
from my infancy, as if by His own hand, to sit upon the throne, will not
abandon me. I nothing doubt that He will uphold me where He has placed
me, not for love of me, but for the salvation of so many souls who pray,
without ceasing, for His aid, and for whose freedom He has deigned to
make use of my arm. You know that I am a Frenchman and the foe of all
duplicity. For the seventeen years that I have been King of Navarre, I do not
think that I have ever departed from my word. I beg you to address your
prayers to the Lord on my behalf, that He may enlighten me in my views,
direct my purposes, bless my endeavors. And in case I commit any fault or
fail in any one of my duties,—for I acknowledge that I am a man like any
other,—pray Him to give me grace that I may correct it, and to assist me in
all my goings.”

On the 4th of August, 1589, an official manifesto of Henry IV.‘s
confirmed the ideas and words of this address. On the same day, 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 Epernon amongst the Catholics, and the Duke of La Tremoille
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’Epernon into Angoumois and

Saintonge, taking with him six thousand foot and twelve thousand horse;
and La Tremoille 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
Angouleme, 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, Saucy 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. The last instance of such adherence had a
special importance. At the time of Henry III.‘s rupture with the League, the
Parliament of Paris had been split in two; the royalists had followed the
king to Tours, the partisans of the League had remained at Paris. After the
accession of Henry IV., the Parliament of Tours, with the president, Achille
de Harlay, as its head, increased from day to day, and soon reached two
hundred members, whilst the Parliament of Paris, or Brisson Parliament, as
it was called from its leader’s name, had only sixty-eight left. Brisson, on
undertaking the post, actually thought it right to take the precaution of
protesting privately, making a declaration in the presence of notaries “that
he so acted by constraint only, and that he shrank from any rebellion against
his king and sovereign lord.” It was, indeed, on the ground of the heredity
of the monarchy and by virtue of his own proper rights that Henry IV. had
ascended the throne; and M. Poirson says quite correctly, in his learned
Histoire du Regne d’Henri IV. [t. i. p. 29, second edition, 1862], “The
manifesto of Henry IV., as its very name indicates, was not a contract
settled between the noblesse in camp at St. Cloud and the claimant; it was a
solemn and reciprocal acknowledgment by the noblesse of Henry’s rights to
the crown, and by Henry of the nation’s political, civil, and religious rights.
The engagements entered into by Henry were only what were necessary to
complete the guarantees given for the security of the rights of Catholics. As
touching the succession to the throne, the signataries themselves say that all
they do is to maintain and continue the law of the land.”

There was, in 1589, an unlawful pretender to the throne of France; and
that was Cardinal Charles de Bourbon, younger brother of Anthony de
Bourbon, King of Navarre, and consequently uncle of Henry IV., sole
representative of the elder branch. Under Henry III., the cardinal had
thrown in his lot with the League; and, after the murder of Guise, Henry III.
had, by way of precaution, ordered him to be arrested and detained him in
confinement at Chinon, where he still was when Henry III. was in his turn
murdered. On becoming king, the far-sighted Henry IV. at once bethought
him of his uncle and of what he might be able to do against him. The
cardinal was at Chinon, in the custody of Sieur de Chavigny, “a man of
proved fidelity,” says De Thou, “but by this time old and blind.” Henry IV.
wrote to Du Plessis-Mornay, appointed quite recently governor of Saumur,
“bidding him, at any price,” says Madame de Mornay, “to get Cardinal de
Bourbon away from Chinon, where he was, without sparing anything, even
to the whole of his property, because he would incontinently set himself up
for king if he could obtain his release.” Henry IV. was right. As early as the
7th of August, the Duke of Mayenne had an announcement made to the
Parliament of Paris, and written notice sent to all the provincial governors,
“that, in the interval until the states-general could be assembled, he urged
them all to unite with him in rendering with one accord to their Catholic
king, that is to say, Cardinal de Bourbon, the obedience that was due to
him.” The cardinal was, in fact, proclaimed king under the name of Charles
X.; and eight months afterwards, on the 5th of March, 1590, the Parliament
of Paris issued a decree “recognizing Charles X. as true and lawful king of
France.” Du Plessis-Mornay, ill though he was, had understood and
executed, without loss of time, the orders of King Henry, going bail himself
for the promises that had to be made and for the sums that had to be paid to
get the cardinal away from the governor of Chinon. He succeeded, and had
the cardinal removed to Fontenay-le-Comte in Poitou, “under the custody of
Sieur de la Boulaye, governor of that place, whose valor and fidelity were
known to him.” “That,” said Henry IV. on receiving the news, “is one of the
greatest services I could have had rendered me; M. du Plessis does business
most thoroughly.” On the 9th of May, 1590, not three months after the
decree of the Parliament of Paris which had proclaimed him true and lawful
King of France, Cardinal de Bourbon, still a prisoner, died at Fontenay,
aged sixty-seven. A few weeks before his death he had written to his
nephew Henry IV. a letter in which he recognized him as his sovereign.

The League was more than ever dominant in Paris; Henry IV. could not
think of entering there. Before recommencing the war in his own name, he
made Villeroi, who, after the death of Henry III., had rejoined the Duke of
Mayenne, an offer of an interview in the Bois de Boulogne to see if there
were no means of treating for peace. Mayenne would not allow Villeroi to
accept the offer. “He had no private quarrel,” he said, “with the King of
Navarre, whom he highly honored, and who, to his certain knowledge, had
not looked with approval upon his brothers’ death; but any appearance of
negotiation would cause great distrust amongst their party, and they would
not do anything that tended against the rights of King Charles X.”
Renouncing all idea of negotiation, Henry IV. set out on the 8th of August
from St. Cloud, after having told off his army in three divisions. Two were
ordered to go and occupy Picardy and Champagne; and the king kept with
him only the third, about six thousand strong. He went and laid the body of
Henry III. in the church of St. Corneille at Compiegne, took Meulan and
several small towns on the banks of the Seine and Oise, and propounded for
discussion with his officers the question of deciding in which direction he
should move, towards the Loire or the Seine, on Tours or on Rouen. He
determined in favor of Normandy; he must be master of the ports in that
province in order to receive there the re-enforcements which had been
promised him by Queen Elizabeth of England, and which she did send him
in September, 1589, forming a corps of from four to five thousand men,
Scots and English, “aboard of thirteen vessels laden with twenty-two
thousand pounds sterling in gold and seventy thousand pounds of
gunpowder, three thousand cannon-balls, and corn, biscuits, wine, and beer,
together with woolens and even shoes.” They arrived very opportunely for
the close of the campaign, but too late to share in Henry IV.‘s first victory,
that series of fights around the castle of Arques which, in the words of an
eye-witness, the Duke of Angouleme, “was the first gate whereby Henry
entered upon the road of his glory and good fortune.”
After making a demonstration close to Rouen, Henry IV., learning that
the Duke of Mayenne was advancing in pursuit of him with an army of
twenty-five thousand foot and eight thousand horse, thought it imprudent to
wait for him and run the risk of being jammed between forces so
considerable and the hostile population of a large city; so he struck his
camp and took the road to Dieppe, in order to be near the coast and the re-
enforcements from Queen Elizabeth. Some persons even suggested to him

that in case of mishap he might go thence and take refuge in England; but at
this prospect Biron answered, “There is no King of France out of France;”
and Henry IV. was of Biron’s opinion. At his arrival before Dieppe, he
found as governor there Aymar de Chastes, a man of wits and honor, a very
moderate Catholic, and very strongly in favor of the party of policists.
Under Henry III. he had expressly refused to enter the League, saying to
Villars, who pressed him to do so, “I am a Frenchman, and you yourself
will find out that the Spaniard is the real head of the League.” He had
organized at Dieppe four companies of burgess-guards, consisting of
Catholics and Protestants, and he assembled about him, to consider the
affairs of the town, a small council, in which Protestants had the majority.
As soon as he knew, on the 26th of August, that the king was approaching
Dieppe, he went with the principal inhabitants to meet him, and presented
to him the keys of the place, saying, “I come to salute my lord and hand
over to him the government of this city.” “Ventre-saint-gris!” answered
Henry IV., “I know nobody more worthy of it than you are!” The Dieppese
overflowed with felicitations. “No fuss, my lads,” said Henry: “all I want is
your affections, good bread, good wine, and good hospitable faces.” When
he entered the town, “he was received,” says a contemporary chronicler,
“with loud cheers by the people; and what was curious, but exhilarating,
was to see the king surrounded by close upon six thousand armed men,
himself having but a few officers at his left hand.” He received at Dieppe
assurance of the fidelity of La Verune, governor of Caen, whither, in 1589,
according to Henry III.‘s order, that portion of the Parliament of Normandy
which would not submit to the yoke of the League at Rouen, had removed.
Caen having set the example, St. Lo, Coutances, and Carentan likewise sent
deputies to Dieppe to recognize the authority of Henry IV. But Henry had
no idea of shutting himself up inside Dieppe: after having carefully
inspected the castle, citadel, harbor, fortifications, and outskirts of the town,
he left there five hundred men in garrison, supported by twelve or fifteen
hundred well-armed burgesses, and went and established himself personally
in the old castle of Arques, standing, since the eleventh century, upon a
barren hill; below, in the burgh of Arques, he sent Biron into cantonments
with his regiment of Swiss and the companies of French infantry; and he
lost no time in having large fosses dug ahead of the burgh, in front of all the
approaches, enclosing within an extensive line of circumvallation both
burgh and castle. All the king’s soldiers and the peasants that could be

picked up in the environs worked night and day. Whilst they were at work,
Henry wrote to Countess Corisande de Gramont, his favorite at that time,
“My dear heart, it is a wonder I am alive with such work as I have. God
have pity upon me and show me mercy, blessing my labors, as He does in
spite of a many folks! I am well, and my affairs are going well. I have taken
Eu. The enemy, who are double me just now, thought to catch me there; but
I drew off towards Dieppe, and I await them in a camp that I am fortifying.
Tomorrow will be the day when I shall see them, and I hope, with God’s
help, that if they attack me they will find they have made a bad bargain. The
bearer of this goes by sea. The wind and my duties make me conclude. This
9th of September, in the trenches at Arques.”
All was finished when the scouts of Mayenne appeared. But Mayenne
also was an able soldier: he saw that the position the king had taken and the
works he had caused to be thrown up rendered a direct attack very difficult.
He found means of bearing down upon Dieppe another way, and of placing
himself, says the latest historian of Dieppe, M. Vitet, between the king and
the town, “hoping to cut off the king’s communications with the sea, divide
his forces, deprive him of his re-enforcements from England, and, finally,
surround him and capture him,” as he had promised the Leaguers of Paris,
who were already talking of the iron cage in which the Bearnese would be
sent to them. “Henry IV.,” continues M. Vitet, “felt some vexation at seeing
his forecasts checkmated by Mayenne’s manoeuvre, and at having had so
much earth removed to so little profit; but he was a man of resources,
confident as the Gascons are, and with very little of pig-headedness. To
change all his plans was with him the work of an instant. Instead of
awaiting the foe in his intrenchments, he saw that it was for him to go and
feel for them on the other side of the valley, and that, on pain of being
invested, he must not leave the Leaguers any exit but the very road they had
taken to come.” Having changed all his plans on this new system, Henry
breathed more freely; but he did not go to sleep for all that: he was
incessantly backwards and forwards from Dieppe to Arques, from Arques to
Dieppe and to the Faubourg du Pollet. Mayenne, on the contrary, seemed to
have fallen into a lethargy; he had not yet been out of his quarters during
the nearly eight and forty hours since he had taken them. On the 17th of
September, 1589, in the morning, however, a few hundred light-horse were
seen putting themselves in motion, scouring the country and coming to fire
their pistols close to the fosses of the royal army. The skirmish grew warm

by degrees. “My son,” said Marshal de Biron to the young count of
Auvergne [natural son of Charles IX. and Mary Touchet], “charge: now is
the time.” The young prince, without his hat, and his horsemen charged so
vigorously that they put the Leaguers to the rout, killed three hundred of
them, and returned quietly within their lines, by Biron’s orders, without
being disturbed in their retreat. These partial and irregular encounters began
again on the 18th and 19th of September, with the same result. The Duke of
Mayenne was nettled and humiliated; he had his prestige to recover. He
decided to concentrate all his forces right on the king’s intrenchments, and
attack them in front with his whole army. The 20th of September passed
without a single skirmish. Henry, having received good information that he
would be attacked the next day, did not go to bed. The night was very dark.
He thought he saw a long way off in the valley a long line of lighted
matches; but there was profound silence; and the king and his officers
puzzled themselves to decide if they were men or glow-worms. On the 21st,
at five A. M., the king gave orders for every one to be ready and at his post.
He himself repaired to the battle-field. Sitting in a big fosse with all his
officers, he had his breakfast brought thither, and was eating with good
appetite, when a prisoner was brought to him, a gentleman of the League,
who had advanced too far whilst making a reconnaissance. “Good day,
Belin,” said the king, who recognized him, laughing: “embrace me for your
welcome appearance.” Belin embraced him, telling him that he was about to
have down upon him thirty thousand foot and ten thousand horse. “Where
are your forces?” he asked the king, looking about him. “O! you don’t see
them all, M. de Belin,” said Henry: “you don’t reckon the good God and the
good right, but they are ever with me.”
The action began about ten o’clock. The fog was still so thick that there
was no seeing one another at ten paces. The ardor on both sides was
extreme; and, during nearly three hours, victory seemed to twice shift her
colors. Henry at one time found himself entangled amongst some squadrons
so disorganized that he shouted, “Courage, gentlemen; pray, courage! Can’t
we find fifty gentlemen willing to die with their king?” At this moment
Chatillon, issuing from Dieppe with five hundred picked men, arrived on
the field of battle. The king dismounted to fight at his side in the trenches;
and then, for a quarter of an hour, there was a furious combat, man to man.
At last, “when things were in this desperate state,” says Sully, “the fog,
which had been very thick all the morning, dropped down suddenly, and the

cannon of the castle of Arques getting sight of the enemy’s army, a volley of
four pieces was fired, which made four beautiful lanes in their squadrons
and battalions. That pulled them up quite short; and three or four volleys in
succession, which produced marvellous effects, made them waver, and,
little by little, retire all of them behind the turn of the valley, out of cannon-
shot, and finally to their quarters.” Mayenne had the retreat sounded. Henry,
master of the field, gave chase for a while to the fugitives, and then returned
to Arques to thank God for his victory. Mayenne struck his camp and took
the road towards Amiens, to pick up a Spanish corps which he was
expecting from the Low Countries.

For six months, from September, 1589, to March, 1590, the war
continued without any striking or important events. Henry IV. tried to stop it
after his success at Arques; he sent word to the Duke of Mayenne by his
prisoner Belin, whom he had sent away free on parole, “that he desired
peace, and so earnestly, that, without regarding his dignity or his victory, he
made him these advances, not that he had any fear of him, but because of

the pity he felt for his kingdom’s sufferings.” Mayenne, who lay beneath the
double yoke of his party’s passions and his own ambitious projects, rejected
the king’s overtures, or allowed them to fall through; and on the 21st of
October, 1589, Henry, setting out with his army from Dieppe, moved
rapidly on Paris, in order to effect a strategic surprise, whilst Mayenne was
rejecting at Amiens his pacific inclinations. The king gained three marches
on the Leaguers, and carried by assault the five faubourgs situated on the
left bank of the Seine. He would perhaps have carried terror-stricken Paris
itself, if the imperfect breaking up of the St. Maixent bridge on the Somme
had not allowed Mayenne, notwithstanding his tardiness, to arrive at Paris
in time to enter with his army, form a junction with the Leaguers amongst
the population, and prevail upon the king to carry his arms elsewhither.
“The people of Paris,” says De Thou, “were extravagant enough to suppose
that this prince could not escape Mayenne. Already a host of idle and
credulous women had been at the pains of engaging windows, which they
let very dear, and which they had fitted up magnificently, to see the passage
of that fanciful triumph for which their mad hopes had caused them to make
every preparation—before the victory.” Henry left some of his lieutenants
to carry on the war in the environs of Paris, and himself repaired, on the
21st of November, to Tours, where the royalist Parliament, the exchequer-
chamber, the court of taxation, and all the magisterial bodies which had not
felt inclined to submit to the despotism of the League, lost no time in
rendering him homage, as the head and the representative of the national
and the lawful cause. He reigned and ruled, to real purpose, in the eight
principal provinces of the North and Centre—Ile-de-France, Picardy,
Champagne, Normandy, Orleanness, Touraine, Maine, and Anjou; and his
authority, although disputed, was making way in nearly all the other parts of
the kingdom. He made war not like a conqueror, but like a king who wanted
to meet with acceptance in the places which he occupied and which he
would soon have to govern. The inhabitants of Le Mans and of Alencon
were able to reopen their shops on the very day on which their town fell
into his hands, and those of Vendome the day after. He watched to see that
respect was paid by his soldiers, even the Huguenots, to Catholic churches
and ceremonies. Two soldiers, having made their way into Le Mans,
contrary to orders, after the capitulation, and having stolen a chalice, were
hanged on the spot, though they were men of acknowledged bravery. He
protected carefully the bishops and all the ecclesiastics who kept aloof from

political strife. “If minute details are required,” says a contemporary
pamphleteer, “out of a hundred or a hundred and twenty archbishops or
bishops existing in the realm of France not a tenth part approve of the
counsels of the League.” It was not long before Henry reaped the financial
fruits of his protective equity; at the close of 1589 he could count upon a
regular revenue of more than two millions of crowns, very insufficient, no
doubt, for the wants of his government, but much beyond the official
resources of his enemies. He had very soon taken his proper rank in Europe:
the Protestant powers which had been eager to recognize him—England,
Scotland, the Low Countries, the Scandinavian states, and Reformed
Germany—had been joined by the republic of Venice, the most judiciously
governed state at that time in Europe, but solely on the ground of political
interests and views, independently of any religious question. On the
accession of Henry IV., his ambassador, Hurault de Maisse, was received
and very well treated at Venice; he was merely excluded from religious
ceremonies: the Venetian people joined in the policy of their government;
the portrait of the new King of France was everywhere displayed and
purchased throughout Venice. Some Venetians went so far as to take service
in his army against the League. The Holy Inquisition commenced
proceedings against them for heresy; the government stopped the
proceedings, and even, says Count Daru, had the Inquisitor thrown into
prison. The Venetian senate accredited to the court of Henry IV. the same
ambassador who had been at Henry III.‘s; and, on returning to Tours, on the
21st of November, 1589, the king received him to an audience in state. A
little later on he did more; he sent the republic, as a pledge of his friendship,
his sword—the sword, he said in his letter, which he had used at the battle
of Ivry. “The good offices were mutual,” adds M. de Daru; “the Venetians
lent Henry IV. sums of money which the badness of the times rendered
necessary to him; but their ambassador had orders to throw into the fire, in
the king’s presence, the securities for the loan.”
As the government of Henry IV. went on growing in strength and extent,
two facts, both of them natural, though antagonistic, were being
accomplished in France and in Europe. The moderate Catholics were
beginning, not as yet to make approaches towards 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. It has already been remarked with what sagacity Pope Sixtus V.
had divined the character of Henry IV., at the very moment of condemning
Henry III. for making an alliance with him. When Henry IV. had become
king, Sixtus V. pronounced strongly against a heretic king, and maintained,
in opposition to him, his alliance with Philip II. and the League. “France,”
said he, “is a good and noble kingdom, which has infinity of benefices and
is specially dear to us; and so we try to save her; but religion sits nearer
than France to our heart.” He chose for his legate in France Cardinal
Gaetani, whom he knew to be agreeable to Philip II. and gave him
instructions in harmony with the Spanish policy. Having started for his post,
Gaetani was a long while on the road, halting at Lyons, amongst other
places, as if he were in no hurry to enter upon his duties. At the close of
1589, Henry IV., king for the last five months and already victorious at
Arques, appointed as his ambassador at Rome Francis de Luxembourg,
Duke of Pinei, to try and enter into official relations with the pope. On the
6th of January, 1590, Sixtus V., at his reception of the cardinals, announced
to them this news. Badoero, ambassador of Venice at Rome, leaned forward
and whispered in his ear, “We must pray God to inspire the King of
Navarre. On the day when your Holiness embraces him, and then only, the
affairs of France will be adjusted. Humanly speaking, there is no other way
of bringing peace to that kingdom.” The pope confined himself to replying
that God would do all for the best, and that, for his own part, he would wait.
On arriving at Rome, “the Duke of Luxembourg repaired to the Vatican
with two and twenty carriages occupied by French gentlemen; but, at the
palace, he found the door of the pope’s apartments closed, the sentries
doubled, and the officers on duty under orders to intimate to the French, the
chief of the embassy excepted, that they must lay aside their swords. At the
door of the Holy Father’s closet, the duke and three gentlemen of his train
were alone allowed to enter. The indignation felt by the French was mingled
with apprehensions of an ambush. Luxembourg himself could not banish a
feeling of vague terror; great was his astonishment when, on his
introduction to the pontiff, the latter received him with demonstrations of
affection, asked him news of his journey, said he would have liked to give
him quarters in the palace, made him sit down,—a distinction reserved for
the ambassadors of kings, —and, lastly, listened patiently to the French
envoy’s long recital. In fact, the receptions intra et, extra muros bore very
little resemblance one to the other, but the difference between them

corresponded pretty faithfully with the position of Sixtus V., half engaged to
the League by Gaetani’s commission and to Philip II. by the steps he had
recently taken, and already regretting that he was so far gone in the
direction of Spain.” [Sixtus V, by Baron Hubner, late ambassador of Austria
at Paris and at Rome, t. ii. pp. 280-282.]
Unhappily Sixtus V. died on the 27th of August, 1590, before having
modified, to any real purpose, his bearing towards the King of France and
his instructions to his legate. After Pope Urban VIII.‘s apparition of thirteen
days’ duration, Gregory XIV. was elected pope on the 5th of December,
1590; and, instead of a head of the church able enough and courageous
enough to comprehend and practise a policy European and Italian as well as
Catholic in its scope, there was a pope 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, was fought the battle of Ivry, a
village six leagues from Evreux, on the left bank of the Eure. “Starting from
Dreux on the 12th of March” [Poirson, Histoire du Regne d’Henri IV., t. i.
p. 180], “the royal army had arrived the same day at Nonancourt, marching
with the greatest regularity by divisions and always in close order, through
fearful weather, frost having succeeding rain; moreover, it traversed a
portion of the road during the shades of evening. The soldier was harassed
and knocked up. But scarcely had he arrived at his destination for the day,
when he found large fires lighted everywhere, and provisions in abundance,
served out with intelligent regularity to the various quarters of cavalry and
infantry. He soon recovered all his strength and daring.” The king, in
concert with the veteran Marshal de Biron, had taken these prudent
measures. All the historians, contemporary and posterior, have described in
great detail the battle of Ivry, the manoeuvres and alternations of success
that distinguished it; by rare good fortune, we have an account of the affair
written the very same evening in the camp at Rosny by Henry IV. himself,
and at once sent off to some of his principal partisans who were absent,
amongst others to M. de la Verune, governor of Caen. We will content
ourselves here with the king’s own words, striking in their precision,
brevity, and freedom from any self-complacent gasconading on the
narrator’s part, respecting either his party or himself.

LETTER OF KING HENRY IV. TOUCHING THE BATTLE OF IVRY.
“It hath pleased God to grant me that which I had the most desired, to
have means of giving battle to mine enemies; having firm confidence that,
having got so far, God would give me grace to obtain the victory, as it hath
happened this very day. You have heretofore heard how that, after the
capture of the town of Honfleur, I went and made them raise the siege they
were laying to the town of Meulan, and I offered them battle, which it
seemed that they ought to accept, having in numbers twice the strength that
I could muster. But in the hope of being able to do so with more safety, they
made up their minds to put it off until they had been joined by fifteen
hundred lances which the Duke of Parma was sending them; which was
done a few days ago. And then they spread abroad everywhere that they
would force me to fight, wheresoever I might be; they thought to have
found a very favorable opportunity in coming to encounter me at the siege I

was laying before the town of Dreux; but I did not give them the trouble of
coming so far; for, as soon as I was advertised that they had crossed the
river of Seine and were heading towards me, I resolved to put off the siege
rather than fail to go and meet them. Having learned that they were six
leagues from the said Dreux, I set out last Monday, the 12th of this month,
and went and took up my quarters at the town of Nonancourt, which was
three leagues from them, for to cross the river there. On Tuesday, I went and
took the quarters which they meant to have for themselves, and where their
quarter-masters had already arrived. I put myself in order of battle, in the
morning, on a very fine plain, about a league from the point which they had
chosen the day before, and where they immediately appeared with their
whole army, but so far from me that I should have given them a great
advantage by going so forward to seek them; I contented myself with
making them quit a village they had seized close by me; at last, night
constrained us both to get into quarters, which I did in the nearest villages.
“To-day, having had their position reconnoitered betimes, and after it had
been reported to me that they had shown themselves, but even farther off
than they had done yesterday, I resolved to approach so near to them that
there must needs be a collision. And so it happened between ten and eleven
in the morning; I went to seek them to the very spot where they were
posted, and whence they never advanced a step but what they made to the
charge; and the battle took place, wherein God was pleased to make known
that His protection is always on the side of the right; for in less than an
hour, after having spent all their choler in two or three charges which they
made and supported, all their cavalry began to take its departure, leaving
their infantry, which was in large numbers. Seeing which, their Swiss had
recourse to my compassion, and surrendered, colonels, captains, privates,
and all their flags. The lanzknechts and French had no time to take this
resolution, for they were cut to pieces, twelve hundred of one and as many
of the other; the rest prisoners and put to the rout in the woods, at the mercy
of the peasants. Of their cavalry there are from nine hundred to a thousand
killed, and from four to five hundred dismounted and prisoners; without
counting those drowned in crossing the River Eure, which they crossed to
Ivry for to put it between them and us, and who are a great number. The rest
of the better mounted saved themselves by flight, in very great disorder,
having lost all their baggage. I did not let them be until they were close to
Mantes. Their white standard is in my hands, and its bearer a prisoner;

twelve or fifteen other standards of their cavalry, twice as many more of
their infantry, all their artillery; countless lords prisoners, and of dead a
great number, even of those in command, whom I have not yet been able to
find time to get identified. But I know that amongst others Count Egmont,
who was general of all the forces that came from Flanders, was killed. Their
prisoners all say that their army was about four thousand horse, and from
twelve to thirteen thousand foot, of which I suppose not a quarter has
escaped. As for mine, it may have been two thousand horse and eight
thousand foot. But of this cavalry, more than six hundred horse joined me
after I was in order of battle, on the Tuesday and Wednesday; nay, the last
troop of the noblesse from Picardy, brought up by Sire d’Humieres, and
numbering three hundred horse, came up when half an hour had already
passed since the battle began.
“It is a miraculous work of God’s, who was pleased, first of all, to give
me the resolution to attack them, and then the grace to be able so
successfully to accomplish it. Wherefore to Him alone is the glory; and so
far as any of it may, by His permission, belong to man, it is due to the
princes, officers of the crown, lords, captains, and all the noblesse, who
with so much ardor rushed forward, and so successfully exerted themselves,
that their predecessors did not leave them more beautiful examples than
they will leave to their posterity. As I am greatly content and satisfied with
them, so I think that they are with me, and that they have seen that I had no
mind to make use of them anywhere without I had also shown them the
way. I am still following up the victory with my cousins the princes of
Conti, Duke of Montpensier, Count of St. Paul, Marshal-duke of Aumont,
grand prior of France, La Tremoille, Sieurs de la Guiche and de Givry, and
several other lords and captains. My cousin Marshal de Biron remains with
the main army awaiting my tidings, which will go on, I hope, still
prospering. You shall hear more fully in my next despatch, which shall
follow this very closely, the particulars of this victory, whereof I desired to
give you these few words of information, so as not to keep you longer out
of the pleasure which I know that you will receive therefrom. I pray you to
impart it to all my other good servants yonder, and, especially, to have
thanks given therefor to God, whom I pray to have you in His holy keeping.
“HENRY.
“From the camp at Rosny, this 14th day of March, 1590.”

History is not bound to be so reserved and so modest as the king was
about himself. It was not only as able captain and valiant soldier that Henry
IV. distinguished himself at Ivry; there the man was as conspicuous for the
strength of his better feelings, as generous and as affectionate as the king
was farsighted 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. As he
passed along the front of his own squadron, Henry halted; and,
“Comrades,” said he, “if you run my risks, I also run yours. I will conquer
or die with you. Keep your ranks well, I beg. If the heat of battle disperse
you for a while, rally as soon as you can under those three pear trees you
see up yonder to my right; and if you lose your standards, do not lose sight
of my white plume; you will always find it in the path of honor, and, I hope,
of victory too.”

Having galloped along the whole line of his army, he halted again, threw
his horse’s reins over his arm, and clasped his hands, exclaiming, “O God,
Thou knowest my thoughts, and Thou dost see to the very bottom of my
heart; if it be for my people’s good that I keep the crown, favor Thou my
cause and uphold my arms. But if Thy holy will have otherwise ordained, at
least let me die, O God, in the midst of these brave soldiers who give their
lives for me!” When the battle was over and won, he heard that Rosny had
been severely wounded in it; and when he was removed to Rosny Castle,
the king, going close up to his stretcher, said, “My friend, I am very glad to
see you with a much better countenance than I expected; I should feel still
greater joy if you assure me that you run no risk of your life or of being
disabled forever; the rumor was, that you had two horses killed under you;
that you had been borne to earth, rolled over and trampled upon by the
horses of several squadrons, bruised and cut up by so many blows that it
would be a marvel if you escaped, or if, at the very least, you were not
mutilated for life in some limb. I should like to hug you with both arms. I
shall never have any good fortune or increase of greatness but you shall
share it. Fearing that too much talking may be harmful to your wounds, I
am off again to Mantes. Adieu, my friend; fare you well, and be assured that
you have a good master.”
Henry IV. had not only a warm but an expansive heart; he could not help
expressing and pouring forth his feelings. That was one of his charms, and
also one of his sources of power.
The victory of Ivry had a great effect in France and in Europe. But not
immediately and as regarded the actual campaign of 1590. The victorious

king moved on Paris, and made himself master of the little towns in the
neighborhood with a view of investing the capital. When he took possession
of St. Denis [on the 9th of July, 1590], he had the relics and all the jewelry
of the church shown to him. When he saw the royal crown, from which the
principal stones had been detached, he asked what had become of them. He
was told that M. de Mayenne had caused them to-be removed. “He has the
stones, then,” said the king; “and I have the soil.” He visited the royal
tombs, and when he was shown that of Catherine de’ Medici, “Ah!” said he
smiling, “how well it suits her!” And, as he stood before Henry III.‘s he
said, “Ventre-saint-gris! There is my good brother; I desire that I be laid
beside him.” As he thus went on visiting and establishing all his posts
around Paris, 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.” “A true king,” says De Thou, “more anxious for the
preservation of his kingdom than greedy of conquest, and making no
distinction between his own interests and the interests of his people.” Two
famous Protestants, Ambrose Pare and Bernard Palissy, preserved, one by
his surgical and the other by his artistic genius, from the popular fury, were
still living at that time in Paris, both eighty years of age, and both pleading
for the liberty of their creed and for peace. “Monseigneur,” said Ambrose
Pare one day to the Archbishop of Lyons, whom he met at one end of the
bridge of St. Michael, “this poor people that you see here around you is
dying of sheer hunger-madness, and demands your compassion. For God’s
sake show them some, as you would have God’s shown to you. Think a
little on the office to which God hath called you. Give us peace or give us
wherewithal to live, for the poor folks can hold out no more.” The Italian
Danigarola himself, Bishop of Asti and attache to the embassy of Cardinal
Gaetani, having publicly said that peace was necessary, was threatened by
the Sixteen with being sewn up in a sack and thrown into the river if he did
not alter his tone. Not peace, but a cessation of the investment of Paris, was
brought about, on the 23d of August, 1590, by Duke Alexander of Parma,
who, 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 asks him for.” Henry in vain attempted to make the Duke of
Parma accept battle. The able Italian established himself in a strongly
intrenched 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 Compiegne, 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. We quoted
but lately the words used by the governor of Dieppe, Aymar de Chastes,
when he said to Villars, governor of Rouen, who pressed him to enter the
League, “You will yourself find out that the Spaniard is the real head of this
League.” On the 5th of August, 1590, during the investment of Paris, a
placard was pasted all over the city. “Poor Parisians,” it said, “I deplore
your misery, and I feel even greater pity towards you for being still such
simpletons. See you not that this son of perdition of a Spanish ambassador
[Bernard de Mendoza], who had our good king murdered, is making game
of you, cramming you so with pap that he would fain have had you burst
before now in order to lay hands on your goods and on France if he could?
He alone prevents peace and the repose of desolated France, as well as the
reconciliation of the king and the princes in real amity. Why are ye so tardy
to cast him in a sack down stream, that he may return the sooner to Spain?”
On the 6th of August, there was found written with charcoal, on the gate of
St. Anthony, the following eight lines:—

“Some folks, for Holy League bear more
Than the prodigal son in the Bible bore;
For he, together with his swine,
On bean, and root, and husk would dine;
Whilst they, unable to procure
Such dainty morsels, must endure
Between their skinny lips to pass
Offal and tripe of horse or ass.”

“These,” said a Latin inscription on the awnings of the butchers’ shops,
“are the rewards of those who expose their lives for Philip” [Haec sunt
munera pro iis qui vitam pro Philippo proferunt: Memoires de L’Estoile, t.
ii. pp. 73, 74]. In 1591 these public sentiments, reproduced and dilated upon

in numerous pamphlets, imported dissension into the heart of the League
itself, which 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
2d 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 sceptre of this kingdom and
reigning over us, even as we do throw ourselves right willingly into your
arms as into 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 four thousand 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 councillors of the Leaguer Parliament arrested, hanged
them to a beam and dragged the corpses to the Place de Grove, 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 two thousand 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, re-established 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. But the French League before long
found itself, in its turn, placed in a situation quite as embarrassing, if not so
provocative of odium, as that in which the Spanish League had lately been;
for it had become itself the tool of personal and unlawful ambition. The
Lorraine princes, it is true, were less foreign to France than the King of
Spain was; they had even rendered her eminent service; but they had no
right to the crown. Mayenne had opposed to him the native and lawful heir
to the throne, already recognized and invested with the kingly power by a

large portion of France, and quite capable of disputing his kingship with the
ablest competitors. By himself and with his own party alone, Mayenne was
not in a position to maintain such a struggle; in order to have any chance he
must have recourse to the prince whose partisans he had just overthrown
and chastised.

On the 11th of November, 1591, Henry IV. had laid siege to Rouen with a
strong force, and was pushing the operations on vigorously. In order to
obtain the troops and money without which he could not relieve this
important place, the leader of the French League treated humbly with the
patron of the Spanish League. “In the conferences held at La Fere and at
Lihom-Saintot, between the 10th and the 18th of January, 1592,” says M.
Poirson, “the Duke of Parma, acting for the King of Spain, and Mayenne
drew up conventions which only awaited the ratification of Philip II. to be
converted into a treaty. Mayenne was to receive four millions of crowns a
year and a Spanish army, which together would enable him to oppose Henry
IV. He had, besides, a promise of a large establishment for himself, his
relatives, and the chiefs of his party. In exchange, he promised, in his own
name and that of the princes of his house and the great lords of the League,

that Philip II.‘s daughter, the Infanta Isabella (Clara Eugenia), should be
recognized as sovereign and proprietress of the throne of France, and that
the states-general, convoked for that purpose, should proclaim her right and
confer upon her the throne. It is true,” adds M. Poirson, “that Mayenne
stipulated that the Infanta should take a husband, within the year, at the
suggestion of the councillors and great officers of the crown, that the
kingdom should be preserved in its entirety, and that its laws and customs
should be maintained. . . . It even appears certain that Mayenne purposed
not to keep any of these promises, and to emend his infamy by a breach of
faith. . . . But a conviction generally prevailed that he recognized the rights
of the Infanta, and that he would labor to place her on the throne. The lords
of his own party believed it; the legate reported it everywhere; the royal
party regarded it as certain. During the whole course of the year 1592, this
opinion gave the most disastrous assistance to the intrigues and ascendency
of Philip II., and added immeasurably to the public dangers.” [Poirson,
Histoire du Regne d’Henri IV., t. i. pp. 304-306.]
Whilst these two Leagues, 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 towards 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.” [OEconomies 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.
At the beginning of February, 1593, he sent for Rosny, one evening very
late. “And so,” says Rosny, “I found his Majesty in bed, having already
wished every one a good night; who, as soon as he saw me come in, ordered
a hassock to be brought and me to kneel thereon against his bed, and said to
me, ‘My friend, I have sent for you so late for to speak with you about the
things that are going on, and to hear your opinions thereon; I confess that I
have often found them better than those of many others who make great
show of being clever. If you continue to leave me the care of that which
concerns you, and yourself to take continual care of my affairs, we shall
both of us find it to our welfare. I do not wish to hide any longer that for a
long time past I have had my eye upon you in order to employ you
personally in my most important affairs, especially in those of my finances,
for I hold you to be honest and painstaking. For the present, I wish to speak
with you about that large number of persons of all parties, all ranks, and
different tempers, who would be delighted to exert themselves for the
pacification of the kingdom, especially if I can resolve to make some
arrangement as regards religion. I am quite resolved not to hear of any
negotiation or treaty, save on these two conditions, that some result may be
looked for tending both to the advantage of the people of my kingdom and
to the real re-establishment of the kingly authority. I know that it is your
custom, whenever I put anything before you, to ask me for time to think
well thereon before you are disposed to tell me your opinion; in three or
four days I shall send for you to tell me what has occurred to you touching
all these fine hopes that many would have me anticipate from their
interventions; all of them persons very diverse in temper, purposes,
interests, functions, and religion.”
“Whereupon,” says Rosny, “the king having dismissed me with a good
evening, he did not fail to send for me again three days afterwards, in order
that I should go and see him again in bed, near the which having made me
kneel as before, he said, ‘Come, now, tell me this moment, and quite at
leisurely length, all your foolish fancies, for so you have always called the
best counsels you have ever given me, touching the questions I put to you

the other evening. I am ready to listen to you right on to the end, without
interrupting you.’”
“Sir,” said Rosny, “I have reflected not only on what your Majesty was
pleased to tell me three days ago, but also on what I have been able to learn,
as to the same affairs, from divers persons of all qualities and religions, and
even women who have talked to me in order to make me talk, and to see if I
knew any particulars of your private intentions. . . . As it seems to me, sir,
all these goings, comings, writings, letters, journeys, interventions, parleys,
and conferences cannot be better compared than to that swarming of
attorneys at the courts, who take a thousand turns and walks about the great
hall, under pretence of settling cases, and all the while it is they who give
them birth, and would be very sorry for a single one to die off. In the next
place, not a single one of them troubles himself about right or wrong,
provided that the crowns are forthcoming, and that, by dint of lustily
shouting, they are reputed eloquent, learned, and well stocked with
inventions and subtleties. Consequently, sir, without troubling yourself
further with these treaty-mongers and negotiators, who do nothing but lure
you, bore you, perplex your mind, and fill with doubts and scruples the
minds of your subjects, I opine, in a few words, that you must still for some
time exercise great address, patience, and prudence, in order that there may
be engendered amongst all this mass of confusion, anarchy, and chimera,
that they call the holy catholic union, so many and such opposite desires,
jealousies, pretensions, hatreds, longings, and designs, that, at last, all the
French there are amongst them must come and throw themselves into your
arms, bit by bit, recognize your kingship alone as possible, and look to
nothing but it for protection, prop, or stay. Nevertheless, sir, that your
Majesty may not regard me as a spirit of contradiction for having found
nothing good in all these proposals made to you by these great negotiators, I
will add to my suggestions just one thing; if a bit of Catholicism were quite
agreeable to you, if it were properly embraced and accepted accordingly, in
honorable and suitable form, it would be of great service, might serve as
cement between you and all your Catholic subjects; and it would even
facilitate your other great and magnificent designs whereof you have
sometimes spoken to me. Touching this, I would say more to you about it if
I were of such profession as permitted me to do so with a good conscience;
I content myself, as it is, with leaving yours to do its work within you on so
ticklish and so delicate a subject.”

“I quite understand your opinions,” said the king; “they resolve
themselves almost into one single point: I must not allow the establishment
of any association or show of government having the least appearance of
being able to subsist, by itself or by its members, in any part of my
kingdom, or suffer dismemberment in respect of any one of the royal
prerogatives, as regards things spiritual as well as temporal. Such is my full
determination.”
“I answered the king,” continues Rosny, “that I was rejoiced to see him
taking so intelligent a view of his affairs, and that, for the present, I had no
advice to give him but to seek repose of body and mind, and to permit me
likewise to seek the same for myself, for I was dead sleepy, not having slept
for two nights; and so, without a word more, the king gave me good night,
and, as for me, I went back to my quarters.”
A few days before this conversation between the king and his friend
Rosny, on the 26th of January, 1593, the states-general of the League had
met in the great hall of the Louvre, present the Duke of Mayenne,
surrounded by all the pomp of royalty, but so nervous that his speech in
opening the session was hardly audible, and that he frequently changed
color during its delivery. On leaving, his wife told him that she was afraid
he was not well, as she had seen him turn pale three or four times. A
hundred and twenty-eight deputies had been elected; only fifty were present
at this first meeting. They adjourned to the 4th of February. In the interval,
on the 28th of January, there had arrived, also, a royalist trumpeter,
bringing, “on behalf of the princes, prelates, officers of the crown, and
principal lords of the Catholic faith, who were with the King of Navarre, an
offer of a conference between the two parties, for to lay down the basis of a
peace eagerly desired.” On hearing this message, Cardinal Pelleve,
Archbishop of Sens, one of the most fiery prelates of the League, said, “that
he was of opinion that the trumpeter should be whipped, to teach him not to
undertake such silly errands for the future;” “an opinion,” said somebody,
“quite worthy of a thick head like his, wherein there is but little sense.”
The states-general of the League were of a different opinion. After long
and lively discussion, the three orders decided, each separately, on the 25th
of February, to consent to the conference demanded by the friends of the
King of Navarre. On the 4th of February, when they resumed session,
Cardinal Philip de Sega, Bishop of Placencia (in Spain) and legate of Pope

Clement VIII., had requested to be present at the deliberation of the
assembly, but his request was refused; the states confined themselves to
receiving his benediction and hearing him deliver an address.
The different fate of these two proposals was a clear indication of the
feelings of the assembly; they were very diverse in the three orders which
constituted it; almost all the clergy, prelates, and popular preachers were
devoted to the Spanish League; the noblesse were not at all numerous at
these states. “The most brilliant and most active members of it,” says M.
Picot correctly, “had ranged themselves behind Henry IV.; and it covered
itself with eternal honor by having been the first to discern where to look
for the hopes and the salvation of France.” The third estate was very much
divided; it contained the fanatical Leaguers, at the service of Philip II. and
the court of Rome, the partisans, much more numerous, of the French
League, who desired peace, and were ready to accept Henry IV., provided
that he turned Catholic, and a small band of political spirits, more powerful
in talent than number.
Regularly as the deputies arrived, Mayenne went to each of them, saying
privately, “Gentlemen, you see what the question is; it is the very chiefest of
all matters (res maxima rerum agitur). I beg you to give your best attention
to it, and to so act that the adversaries steal no march on us and get no
advantage over us. Nevertheless, I mean to abide by what I have promised
them.” Mayenne was quite right: it was certainly the chiefest of all matters.
The head of the Protestants of France, the ally of all the Protestants in
Europe—should he become a Catholic and King of France? The temporal
head of Catholic Europe, the King of Spain —should he abolish the Salic
law in France, by placing upon it his daughter as queen, and dismember
France to his own profit and that of the leaders of the League, his hirelings
rather than his allies? Or, peradventure, should one of these Leaguer-chiefs
be he who should take the crown of France, and found a new dynasty there?
And which of these Leaguer-chiefs should attain this good fortune? A half-
German or a true Frenchman? A Lorraine prince or a Bourbon? And, if a
Lorraine prince, which? The Duke of Mayenne, military head of the
League, or his uterine brother, the Duke of Nemours, or his nephew the
young Duke of Guise, son of the Balafre? All these questions were mooted,
all these pretensions were on the cards, all these combinations had their
special intrigue. And in the competition upon which they entered with one
another, at the same time that they were incessantly laying traps for one

another, they kept up towards one another, because of the uncertainty of
their chances, a deceptive course of conduct often amounting to acts of
downright treachery committed without scruple, in order to preserve for
themselves a place and share in the unknown future towards which they
were moving. It was in order to have his opinion upon a position so dark
and complicated, and upon the behavior it required, that Henry IV., then at
Mantes, sent once more for Rosny, and had a second conversation, a few
weeks later, with him.
“Well! my friend,” said the king, “what say you about all these plots that
are being projected against my conscience, my life, and my kingdom? Since
the death of the Duke of Parma [on the 2d of December, 1592, in the Abbey
of St. Waast at Arras, from the consequences of a wound received in the
preceding April at the siege of Caudebec], it seems that deeds of arms have
given place to intrigues and contests of words. I fancy that such gentry will
never leave me at rest, and will at last, perhaps, attempt my liberty and my
life. I beg you to tell me your opinion freely, and what remedies, short of
cruelty and violence, I might now employ to get rid of all these hinderances
and cabals (monopoles) that are going on against the rights which have
come to me by the will of God, by birth, and by the laws of the realm.”
“Sir,” said Rosny, “I do not fancy that deferments and temporizations,
any more than long speeches, would now be seasonable; there are, it seems
to me, but two roads to take to deliver yourself from peril, but not from
anxiety, for from anxiety kings and princes, the greater they are, can the less
secure themselves if they wish to reign successfully. One of the two roads is
to accommodate yourself to the desires and wishes of those of whom you
feel distrust; the other, to secure the persons of those who are the most
powerful, and of the highest rank, and most suspected by you, and put them
in such place as will prevent them from doing you hurt; you know them
pretty nearly all; there are some of them very rich; you will be able for a
long while to carry, on war. As for advising you to go to mass, it is a thing
that you ought not, it seems to me, to expect from me, who am of the
religion; but frankly will I tell you that it is the readiest and the easiest
means of confounding all these cabals (monopoles), and causing all the
most mischievous projects to end in smoke.”
The King: “But tell me freely, I beg of you, what you would do if you
were in my place.”

Rosny: “I can assure you honestly, sir, that I have never thought about
what I should feel bound to do for to be king, it having always seemed to
me that I had not a head able or intended to wear a crown. As to your
Majesty it is another affair; in you, sir, that desire is not only laudable, but
necessary, as it does not appear now this realm can be restored to its
greatness, opulence, and splendor but by the sole means of your eminent
worth and downright kingly courage. But whatever right you have to the
kingdom, and whatever need it has of your courage and worth for its
restoration, you will never arrive at complete possession and peaceable
enjoyment of this dominion but by two sole expedients and means. In case
of the first, which is force and arms, you will have to employ strong
measures, severity, rigor, and violence, processes which are all utterly
opposed to your temper and inclination: you will have to pass through an
infinity of difficulties, fatigues, pains, annoyances, perils, and labors, with a
horse perpetually between your legs, harness [halecret, a species of light
cuirass] on back, helmet on head, pistol in fist, and sword in hand. And,
what is more, you will have to bid adieu to repose, pleasure, pastime, love,
mistress, play, hunting, hawking, and building; for you will not get out of
such matters but by multiplicity of town-takings, quantity of fights, signal
victories, and great bloodshed. By the other road, which is to accommodate
yourself, as regards religion, to the wish of the greatest number of your
subjects, you will not encounter so many annoyances, pains, and difficulties
in this world, but as to the next, I don’t answer for you; it is for your
Majesty to take a fixed resolution for yourself, without adopting it from any
one else, and less from me than from any other, as you well know that I am
of the religion, and that you keep me by you not as a theologian and
councillor of church, but as a man of action and councillor of state, seeing
that you have given me that title, and for a long space employed me as
such.”
The king burst out laughing, and, sitting up in his bed, said, after
scratching his head several times, to Rosny,—
“All you say to me is true; but I see so many thorns on every side that it
will go very hard but some of them will prick me full sore. You know well
enough that my cousins, the princes of the blood, and ever so many other
lords, such as D’Epernon, Longueville, Biron, d’O, and Vitry, are urging me
to turn Catholic, or else they will join the League. On the other hand, I
know for certain that Messieurs de Turenne, de la Tremoille, and their lot,

are laboring daily to have a demand made, if I turn Catholic, on behalf of
them of the religion, for an assembly to appoint them a protector and an
establishment of councils in the provinces; all things that I could not put up
with. But if I had to declare war against them to prevent it, it would be the
greatest annoyance and trouble that could ever happen to me: my heart
could not bear to do ill to those who have so long run my risks, and have
employed their goods and their lives in my defence.”
At these last words, Rosny threw himself upon his knees, with his eyes
full of tears, and, kissing the king’s hands, he said, “Sir, I am rejoiced
beyond measure to see you so well disposed towards them of the religion. I
have always been afraid that, if you came to change your religion, as I see
full well that you will have to do, you might be persuaded to hate and
maltreat those of us others, of the towns as well as of the noblesse, who will
always love you heartily and serve you faithfully. And be assured that the
number thereof will be so great that, if there rise up amongst them any
avaricious, ambitious, and factious, who would fain do the contrary, these
will be constrained by the others to return to their duty. What would, in my
opinion, be very necessary, would be to prevail upon the zealous Catholics
to change that belief which they are so anxious to have embraced by all the
rest, to wit, that they of the religion are all damned. There are certainly,
also, some ministers and other obtrusive spirits amongst the Huguenots who
would fain persuade us of the same as regards Catholics; for my own part, I
believe nothing of the kind; I hold it, on the contrary, as indisputable that, of
whatever religion men make outward profession, if they die keeping the
Decalogue and believing in the Creed (Apostles’), if they love God with all
their heart and are charitable towards their neighbor, if they put their hopes
in God’s mercy and in obtaining salvation by the death, merits, and justice
of Jesus Christ, they cannot fail to be saved, because they are then no longer
of any erroneous religion, but of that which is most agreeable to God. If you
were pleased to embrace it and put it in practice all the days of your life, not
only should I have no doubt of your salvation, but I should remain quite
assured that, not regarding us as execrable and damned, you would never
proceed to the destruction or persecution of those of our religion who shall
love you truly and serve you faithfully. From all such reflections and
discourse I conclude that it will be impossible for you ever to reign in peace
so long as you make outward profession of a religion which is held in such
great aversion by the majority of both great and small in your kingdom, and

that you cannot hope to raise it to such general splendor, wealth, and
happiness as I have observed you often projecting. Still less could you
flatter yourself with the idea of ever arriving at the accomplishment of your
lofty and magnificent designs for the establishment of a universal most
Christian republic, composed of all the kings and potentates of Europe who
profess the name of Christ; for, in order to bring about so great a blessing,
you must needs have tranquil possession of a great, rich, opulent, and
populous kingdom, and be in a condition to enter into great and trustworthy
foreign associations.” [OEconomies royales, or Memoires de Sully, t. ii. pp.
81-100.] One is inclined to believe that, even before their conversations,
Henry IV. was very near being of Rosny’s opinion; but it is a long stride
from an opinion to a resolution. 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 Bearnese. Even for his brethren in
creed his triumph was a benefit secured, for it was an end of persecution
and a first step towards liberty. There is no measuring accurately how far
ambition, personal interest, a king’s egotism, had to do with Henry’s 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 towards
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. To the Huguenot gentry
and peasantry who had fought with him he said, “You desire peace; I give it
you at my own expense; I have made myself anathema for the sake of all,
like Moses and St. Paul.” He received with affectionate sadness the
Reformed ministers and preachers who came to see him. “Kindly pray to
God for me,” said he to them, “and love me always; as for me, I shall
always love you, and I will never suffer wrong to be done to you, or any

violence to your religion.” He had already, at this time, the Edict of Nantes
in his mind, and he let a glimpse of it appear to Rosny at their first
conversation. When he discussed with the Catholic prelates the conditions
of his abjuration, he had those withdrawn which would have been too great
a shock to his personal feelings and shackled his con duct tod much in the
government, as would have been the case with the promise to labor for the
destruction of heresy. Even as regarded the Catholic faith, he demand of the
doctors who were preparing him for it some latitude for his own thoughts,
and “that he should not have such violence done to his conscience as to be
bound to strange oaths, and to sign and believe rubbish which he was quite
sure that the majority of them did not believe.” [Memoires de L’Estoile, t. ii.
p. 472.] The most passionate Protestants of his own time reproached him,
and some still reproach him, with having deserted his creed and having
repaid with ingratitude his most devoted comrades in arms and brothers in
Christ. Perhaps there is some ingratitude also in forgetting that after four
years of struggling to obtain the mastery for his religious creed and his
political rights simultaneously, Henry IV., convinced that he could not
succeed in that, put a stop to religious wars, and founded, to last for eighty-
seven years, the free and lawful practice of the Reformed worship in
France, by virtue of the Edict of Nantes, which will be spoken of presently.
Whilst this great question was thus discussed and decided between Henry
IV. in person and his principal advisers, the states-general of the League and
the conference of Suresnes were vainly bestirring themselves in the attempt
to still keep the mastery of events which were slipping away from them.
The Leaguer states had an appearance of continuing to wish for the absolute
proscription of Henry IV., a heretic king, even on conversion to
Catholicism, so long as his conversion was not recognized and accepted by
the pope; but there was already great, though timidly expressed, dissent as
to this point in the assembly of the states and amongst the population in the
midst of which it was living. Nearly a year previously, in May, 1592, when
he retired from France after having relieved Rouen from siege and taken
Caudebec, the Duke of Parma, as clear-sighted a politician as he was able
soldier, had said to one of the most determined Leaguers, “Your people
have abated their fury; the rest hold on but faintly, and in a short time they
will have nothing to do with us.” Philip II. and Mayenne perceived before
long the urgency and the peril of this situation: they exerted themselves, at
one time in concert and at another independently, to make head against this

change in the current of thoughts and facts. Philip sent to Paris an
ambassador extraordinary, the Duke of Feria, to treat with the states of the
League and come to an understanding with Mayenne; but Mayenne
considered that the Duke of Feria did not bring enough money, and did not
introduce enough soldiers; the Spanish army in France numbered but four
thousand three hundred men, and Philip had put at his ambassador’s
disposal but two hundred thousand crowns, or six hundred thousand livres
of those times; yet had he ordered that, in respect of the assembly, the pay
should not come until after the service was rendered, i.e. after a vote was
given in favor of his election or that of his daughter the Infanta Isabella to
the throne. It was not the states-general only who had to be won over; the
preachers of the League were also, at any rate the majority of them,
covetous as well as fiery; both the former and the latter soon saw that the
Duke of Feria had not wherewith to satisfy them. “And such as had come,”
says Villeroi, “with a disposition to favor the Spaniards and serve them for a
consideration, despised them and spoke ill of them, seeing that there was
nothing to be gained from them.” The artifices of Mayenne were scarcely
more successful than the stingy presents of Philip II.; when the Lorrainer
duke saw the chances of Spain in the ascendant as regarded the election of a
King of France and the marriage of the Infanta Isabella, he at once set to
work—and succeeded without much difficulty—to make them a failure; at
bottom, it was always for the house of Lorraine, whether for the marriage of
his nephew the Duke of Guise with the Infanta Isabella or for the
prolongation of his power, that Mayenne labored; he sometimes managed to
excite, for the promotion of this cause, a favorable movement amongst the
states-general or a blast of wrath on the part of the preachers against Henry
IV.; but it was nothing but a transitory and fruitless effort; the wind no
longer sat in the sails of the League; on the 27th of May, 1593, a deputation
of a hundred and twenty burgesses, with the provost of tradesmen at their
head, repaired to the house of Count de Belin, governor of Paris, begging
him to introduce them into the presence of the Duke of Mayenne, to whom
they wished to make a demand for peace, and saying that their request
would, at need, be signed by ten thousand burgesses. Next day, two colonels
of the burgess-militia spoke of making barricades; four days afterwards,
some of the most famous and but lately most popular preachers of the
League were hooted and insulted by the people, who shouted at them as
they passed in the streets that drowning was the due of all those deputies in

the states who prevented peace from being made. The conference
assembled at Suresnes, of which mention has already been made, had been
formed with pacific intentions, or, at any rate, hopes; accordingly it was
more tranquil than the states-general, but it was not a whit more efficacious.
It was composed of thirteen delegates for the League and eight for the king,
men of consideration in the two parties. At the opening of its sessions, the
first time the delegates of the League repaired thither, a great crowd shouted
at them, “Peace! Peace! Blessed be they who procure it and demand it!
Malediction and every devil take all else!” In the villages they passed
through, the peasantry threw themselves upon their knees, and, with clasped
hands, demanded of them peace. The conference was in session from the
4th of May to the 11th of June, holding many discussions, always
temperately and with due regard for propriety, but without arriving at any
precise solution of the questions proposed. Clearly neither to this
conference nor to the states-general of the League was it given to put an end
to this stormy and at the same time resultless state of things; Henry IV.
alone could take the resolution and determine the issue which everybody
was awaiting with wistfulness or with dread, but without being able to
accomplish it. D’Aubigne ends his account of the conference at Suresnes
with these words: “Those who were present at it reported to the king that
there were amongst the Leaguers so many heart-burnings and so much
confusion that they were all seeking, individually if not collectively, some
pretext for surrendering to the king, and consequently, that one mass would
settle it entirely.” [Histoire Universelle, bk. iii. chap. xx. p. 386.]
Powers that are conscious of their opportuneness and utility do not like to
lose time, but are prompt to act. Shortly after his conversations with Rosny,
whose opinion was confirmed by that of Chancellor de Chiverny and Count
Gaspard de Schomberg, Henry IV. set to work. 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 towards a levy of four thousand
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. Next day, the 17th,
the Archbishop of Bourges announced it to the conference at Suresnes. 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. Finally, on this same day, the Parliament of Paris, all
chambers assembled, issued a decree known by the name of the decree of
President Lemaitre, who had the chief hand in it, and conceived as follows:
—
“The court, having, as it has always had, no intention but to maintain the
Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion, and the state and crown of France,
under the protection of a most Christian, Catholic, and French king, hath
ordained and doth ordain that representations shall be made, this afternoon,
by President Lemaitre, assisted by a proper number of councillors of the
said court, to the Duke of Mayenne, lieutenant-general of the state and
crown of France, to the end that no treaty be made for the transfer of the
crown to the hands of foreign princes or princesses, and that the
fundamental laws of the realm be observed. . . . And from the present
moment, the said court hath declared and doth declare all treaties made or
hereafter to be made for the setting up of foreign prince or princess null and
of no effect or value, as being made to the prejudice of the Salic law and
other fundamental laws of this realm.”
It was understood that this decree excluded from the crown of France not
only Philip II., the Infanta Isabella, Archduke Ernest, and all the Spanish
and Austrian princes, but also all the princes of the house of Guise,
“because the qualification of foreigners applied to all the princes who were

not of the blood royal and who were issue of foreign houses, even though
they might have been born in France and were regnicoles.”
Mayenne refused, it is not known on what pretext, to receive the
communication of this decree on the same day on which it was voted by the
Parliament. When President Lemaitre presented it to him the next day
before a large attendance, Mayenne kept his temper, and confined himself
to replying gruffly, “My first care has always been to defend the Catholic
religion and maintain the laws of the realm. It seems now that I am no
longer necessary to the state, and that it will be easy to do without me. I
could have wished, considering my position, that the Parliament had not
decided anything in a matter of such importance without consulting me.
However, I will do all that I find possible for me and that appears
reasonable as to the two points of your representations.” On the following
day, 30th of June, Mayenne was dining with the Archbishop of Lyons, Peter
d’Espinac; President Lemaitre was sent for, and the wrath of the lieutenant-
general burst forth. “The insult put upon me is too palpable for me to be
quiet under it; since I am played fast and loose with in that way, I have
resolved to quash the decree of the Parliament. The Archbishop of Lyons is
about to explain to you my feelings and my motives.”

The archbishop spoke long and bitterly, dwelling upon the expression
that “the Parliament had played fast and loose” with the prince. President
Lemaitre interrupted him. “I cannot unmoved hear you repeating, sir, that to
which my respect made me shut my eyes when the prince spoke. Looking
upon me as an individual, you might speak to me in any way, you thought
proper; but so soon as the body I represent here is injured by insulting
terms, I take offence, and I cannot suffer it. Know then, sir, that the
Parliament does not deceive or play fast and loose with anybody, and that it
renders to every man his due.” The conversation was continued for some
moments in this warm and serious tone; but the quarrel went no further;
from the account they received of it, the Parliament applauded the premier
president’s firmness, and all the members swore that they would suffer
anything rather than that there should be any change in the decree. It
remained intact, and Mayenne said no more about it.

During these disputes amongst the civil functionaries, and continuing all
the while to make proposals for a general truce, Henry IV. vigorously
resumed warlike operations, so as to bring pressure upon his adversaries
and make them perceive the necessity of accepting the solution he offered
them. He besieged and took the town of Dreux, of which the castle alone
persisted in holding out. He cut off the provisions which were being
brought by the Marne to Paris. He kept Poitiers strictly invested.
Lesdiguieres defeated the Savoyards and the Spaniards in the valleys of
Dauphiny and Piedmont. Count Mansfeld was advancing with a division
towards Picardy; but at the news that the king was marching to encounter
him, he retired with precipitation. From the military as well as the political
point of view, there is no condition worse than that of stubbornness mingled
with discouragement. And that was the state of Mayenne and the League.
Henry IV. perceived it, and confidently hurried forward his political and
military measures. The castle of Dreux was obliged to capitulate. Thanks to
the four thousand Swiss paid for him by the Grand Duke of Florence, to the
numerous volunteers brought to him by the noblesse of his party, “and to
the sterling quality of the old Huguenot phalanx, folks who, from father to
son, are familiarized with death,” says D’Aubigne, Henry IV. had
recovered, in June, 1593, so good an army that “by means of it,” he wrote to
Ferdinand de’ Medici, “I shall be able to reduce the city of Paris in so short
a time as will cause you great contentment.” But he was too judicious and
too good a patriot not to see that it was not by an indefinitely prolonged war
that he would be enabled to enter upon definitive possession of his crown,
and that it was peace, religious peace, that he must restore to France in
order to really become her king. He entered resolutely, on the 15th of July,
1593, upon the employment of the moral means which alone could enable
him to attain this end; he assembled at Mantes the conference of prelates
and doctors, Catholic and Protestant, which he had announced as the
preface to his conversion. He had previously, on the 13th of May, given
assurance to the Protestants as to their interests by means of a declaration
on the part of eight amongst the principal Catholic lords attached to his
person who undertook, “with his Majesty’s authorization, that nothing
should be done in the said assemblies to the prejudice of friendly union
between the Catholics who recognized his Majesty and them of the religion,
or contrary to the edicts of pacification.” On the 21st of July, the prelates
and doctors of the conference transferred themselves from Mantes to St.

Denis. On Friday, July 23, in the morning, Henry wrote to Gabriel le
d’Estrees, “Sunday will be the day when I shall make the summerset that
brings down the house” (le, saut perilleux). A few hours after using such
flippant language to his favorite, he was having a long conference with the
prelates and doctors, putting to them the gravest questions about the
religion he was just embracing, asking them for more satisfactory
explanations on certain points, and repeating to them the grounds of his
resolution. “I am moved with compassion at the misery and calamities of
my people; I have discovered what they desire; and I wish to be enabled,
with a safe conscience, to content them.” At the end of the conference,
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I this day commit my soul to your keeping; I pray
you, take heed to it, for, wheresoever you are causing me to enter, I shall
never more depart till death; that I swear and protest to you;” and, in a voice
of deep emotion, his eyes dim with tears, “I desire no further delay; I wish
to be received on Sunday and go to mass; draw up the profession of faith
you think I ought to make, and bring it to me this evening;” when the
Archbishop of Bourges and the Bishops of Le Mans and Evreux brought it
to him on the Saturday morning, he discussed it apart with them,
demanding the cutting out of some parts which struck too directly at his
previous creed and life; and Chancellor de Chiverny and two presidents of
the Parliament, Harlay and Groulart, used their intervention to have him
satisfied. The profession of faith was modified. Next day, Sunday, the 25th
of July, before he got up, Henry conversed with the Protestant minister
Anthony de la Faye, and embraced him two or three times, repeating to him
the words already quoted, “I have made myself anathema for the sake of all,
like Moses and St. Paul.” A painful mixture of the frivolous and the serious,
of sincerity and captious reservations, of resolution and weakness, at which
nobody has any right to be shocked who is not determined to be pitiless
towards human nature, and to make no allowance in the case of the best
men for complication of the facts, ideas, sentiments, and duties, under the
influence of which they are often obliged to decide and to act.

On Sunday the 25th of July, 1593, Henry IV. repaired in great state to the
church of St. Denis. On arriving with all his train in front of the grand
entrance, he was received by Reginald de Beaune, Archbishop of Bourges,
the nine bishops, the doctors and the incumbents who had taken part in the
conferences, and all the brethren of the abbey. “Who are you?” asked the
archbishop who officiated. “The king.” “What want you?” “To be received
into the bosom of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church.” “Do you
desire it?” “Yes, I will and desire it.” At these words the king knelt and
made the stipulated profession of faith. The archbishop gave him absolution
together with benediction; and, conducted by all the clergy to the choir of
the church, he there, upon the gospels, repeated his oath, made his
confession, heard mass, and was fully reconciled with the church. The
inhabitants of Paris, dispensing with the passports which were refused them
by Mayenne, had flocked in masses to St. Denis and been present at the
ceremony. The vaulted roof of the church resounded with their shouts of
Hurrah for the king! There was the same welcome on the part of the
dwellers in the country when Henry repaired to the valley of Montmorency
and to Montmartre to perform his devotions there. Here, then, was religious
peace, a prelude to political reconciliation between the monarch and the
great majority of his subjects.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

HENRY IV., CATHOLIC KING. (1593-1610.)

During the months, weeks, nay, it might be said, days immediately
mediately following Henry IV.‘s abjuration, a great number of notable
persons and important towns, and almost whole provinces, submitted to the
Catholic king. Henry was reaping the fruits of his decision; France was
flocking to him. But the general sentiments of a people are far from
satisfying and subduing the selfish passions of the parties which have taken
form and root in its midst. Religious and political peace responded to and
sufficed for the desires of the great majority of Frenchmen, Catholic and
Protestant; but it did not at all content the fanatics, Leaguer or Huguenot.
The former wanted the complete extirpation of heretics; the latter the
complete downfall of Catholicism. Neither these nor those were yet
educated up to the higher principle of religious peace, distinction between
the civil and the intellectual order, freedom of thought and of faith
guaranteed by political liberty. Even at the present day, the community of
France, nation and government, all the while that they proclaim this great
and salutary truth, do not altogether understand and admit its full bearing.
The sixteenth century was completely ignorant of it; Leaguers and
Huguenots were equally convinced that they possessed, in the matter of
religion, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and that they
were in their right to propagate its empire at any price. Thence arose, in
respect of religious peace, and of Henry IV., who naturally desired it as the
requirement and the wish of France, a great governmental difficulty.
It is honorable to human nature that it never submits freely and sincerely
to anything but what it considers not only useful, but essentially true and
just; its passions bow to principles only; wherever the higher principle is
wanting, there also is wanting the force that compels respect from passion.
Now the fanatics, Leaguer and Huguenot, had a fixed principle; with the
former, it was the religious sovereignty of the pope, as representative and

depositary of the unity of the Christian church; with the others, it was the
negation of this sovereignty and the revindication of the free regimen of the
primitive Christian church. To these fixed and peremptory principles the
government of Henry IV. had nothing similar to oppose; it spoke in the
name of social interests, of the public peace, and of mutual toleration; all
excellent reasons, but with merits consisting in their practical soundness,
not in their logical connection with the superior principle to which the
sixteenth century had not yet attained. It was all very well for Henry IV. to
maintain the cause and to have the support of the great majority in France;
but outside of this majority he was incessantly encountering and incessantly
having to put down or to humor two parties, or rather factions, full of
discontent and as irreconcilable with him as among themselves, for it was
not peace and tolerance that they demanded of him, but victory and
supremacy in the name of absolute right.
This, then, was the scene; on one side a great majority of Catholics and
Protestants favorable for different practical reasons to Henry IV. turned
Catholic king; on the other, two minorities, one of stubborn Catholics of the
League, the other of Protestants anxious for their creed and their liberty;
both discontented and distrustful. Such, after Henry IV.‘s abjuration, was
the striking feature in the condition of France and in the situation of her
king. This triple fact was constantly present to the mind of Henry IV., and
ruled his conduct during all his reign; all the acts of his government are
proof of that.
His first embarrassments arose from the faction of Catholics to the
backbone. After his abjuration just as much as at his accession, the League
continued to exist and to act against him. The legate, Gaetani, maintained
that the bishops of France had no right, without the pope’s approval, to give
an excommunicated prince absolution; he opposed the three months’ truce
concluded by Mayenne, and threatened to take his departure for Rome.
Mayenne, to appease him and detain him, renewed the alliance between the
League and Spain, prevailed upon the princes and marshals to renew also
the oath of union, caused the states-general of the League to vote the
adoption of the Council of Trent, and, on proroguing them, August 8, 1593,
received from them a promise to return at the expiration of the truce. For
the members of that assembly it was not a burdensome engagement;
independently of the compensation they had from their provinces, which
was ten livres (thirty-six francs, sixty centimes) a day during each session,

they received from the King of Spain a regular retainer, which raised it, for
the five months from June to October, to seventy-two thousand one hundred
and forty-four francs, which they divided between themselves. “It was
presumed,” said Jehan l’Huillier, provost of tradesmen, to one of his
colleagues who was pressing him to claim this payment from the
ambassador of Spain, “that the money came from M. de Mayenne, not from
foreigners;” but honest people, such as Du Vair and Thielement, did not
content themselves with this presumption, and sent to the Hotel-Dieu, for
maintenance of the poor, the share which was remitted to them. [Poirson,
Histoire du Regne de Henry IV., t. i. p. 463. Picot, Histoire des Etats
generaux, t. iii. p. 249.]
The states-general of the League did not appear again; their prorogation
was their death. The year 1594, which came after them, was for Henry IV. a
year of home conquests, some pacific and due to the spontaneous
movement of the inhabitants, others obtained after resistance and purchased
with gold. The town of Lyons set the example of the first. A rumor spread
that the Spaniards were preparing an expedition against it; some burgesses
met to consult, and sent a private message to Alphonse d’Ornano, who was
conducting the war for the king in Dauphiny, pressing him to move
forward, on a day appointed, to the faubourg de la Guillotiere. A small force
sent by Ornano arrived, accordingly, on the 7th of February, about
daybreak, at the foot of the bridge over the Rhone, in the faubourg, and,
after a stubborn resistance, dislodged the outpost on duty there. At sound of
the fighting, excitement broke out in the town; and barricades were thrown
up, amidst shouts of “Hurrah for French liberty!” without any mention of
the king’s name. The archbishop, Peter d’Espignac, a stanch Leaguer, tried
to intimidate the burgesses, or at any rate to allay the excitement. As he
made no impression, he retired into his palace. The people arrested the
sheriffs and seized the arsenal. The king’s name resounded everywhere.
“The noise of the cheering was such,” says De Thou, “that there was no
hearing the sound of the bells. Everybody assumed the white scarf with so
much zeal that by evening there was not a scrap of white silk left at the
tradesmen’s. Tables were laid in the streets; the king’s arms were put up on
the gates and in the public thoroughfares.” Ornano marched in over the
barricades; royalist sheriffs were substituted for the Leaguer sheriffs, and
hastened to take the oath of allegiance to the king, who had nothing to do
but thank the Lyonnese for having been the first to come over to him

without constraint or any exigency, and who confirmed by an edict all their
municipal liberties. At the very moment when the Lyonnese were thus
springing to the side of their king, there set out from Lyons the first assassin
who raised a hand against Henry IV., Peter Parriere, a poor boatman of the
Loire, whom an unhappy passion for a girl in the household of Marguerite
de Valois and the preachings of fanatics had urged on to this hateful design.
Assassin we have called him, although there was not on his part so much as
an attempt at assassination; but he had, by his own admission, projected and
made preparations for the crime, to the extent of talking it over with
accomplices and sharpening the knife he had purchased for its
accomplishment. Having been arrested at Melun and taken to Paris, he was
sentenced to capital punishment, and to all the tortures that ingenuity could
add to it. He owned to everything, whilst cursing those who had assured
him that “if he died in the enterprise, his soul, uplifted by angels, would
float away to the bosom of God, where he would enjoy eternal bliss.”
Moved by his torments and his repentance, the judge who presided at his
execution took upon himself to shorten it by having him strangled. The
judge was reported to the king for this indulgence. Henry praised him for it,
adding that he would have pardoned the criminal if he had been brought
before him. Thus commenced, at the opening of his reign, the series of
attempts to which he was destined to succumb, after seventeen years of
good, able, generous, and mild government.
In Normandy, at Rouen, the royalist success was neither so easy nor so
disinterested as it had been at Lyons. Andrew de Brancas, Lord of Villars,
an able man and valiant soldier, was its governor; he had served the League
with zeal and determination; nevertheless, “from the month of August,
1593, immediately after the king’s conversion, he had shown a disposition
to become his servant, and to incline thereto all those whom he had in his
power.” [Histoire du Parlement de Normandi, by M. Floquet, t. iii. pp. 611-
617.] Henry IV. commissioned Rosny to negotiate with him; and Rosny
went into Normandy, to Louviers first and then to Rouen itself. The
negotiation seemed to be progressing favorably, but a distrustful whim in
regard to Villars, and the lofty pretensions he put forward, made Rosny
hang back for a while, and tell the whole story to the king, at the same time
asking for his instructions. Henry replied,—
“My friend, you are an ass to employ so much delay and import so many
difficulties and manoeuvres into a business the conclusion of which is of so

great importance to me for the establishment of my authority and the relief
of my people. Do you no longer remember the counsels you have so many
times given to me, whilst setting before me as an example that given by a
certain Duke of Milan to King Louis XI., at the time of the war called that
of the Common Weal? It was to split up by considerations of private interest
all those who were leagued against him on general pretexts. That is what I
desire to attempt now, far preferring that it should cost twice as much to
treat separately with each individual as it would to arrive at the same results
by means of a general treaty concluded with a single leader, who, in that
way, would be enabled to keep up still an organized party within my
dominions. You know plenty of folks who wanted to persuade me to that.
Wherefore, do not any longer waste your time in doing either so much of
the respectful towards those whom you wot of, and whom we will find
other means of contenting, or of the economical by sticking at money. We
will pay everything with the very things given up to us, the which, if they
had to be taken by force, would cost us ten times as much. Seeing, then, that
I put entire trust in you and love you as a good servant, do not hesitate any
longer to make absolute and bold use of your power, which I further
authorize by this letter, so far as there may be further need for it, and settle
as soon as possible with M. de Villars. But secure matters so well that there
may be no possibility of a slip, and send me news thereof promptly, for I
shall be in constant doubt and impatience until I receive it. And then, when
I am peaceably king, we will employ the excellent manoeuvres of which
you have said so much to me; and you may rest assured that I will spare no
travail and fear no peril in order to raise my glory and my kingdom to the
height of splendor. Adieu, my friend. Senlis, this 18th day of March, 1594.”
Amongst the pretensions made by Villars there was one which could not
be satisfied without the consent of a man still more considerable than he,
and one with whom Henry IV. was obliged to settle—Biron. Villars had
received from Mayenne the title and office of admiral of France, and he
wished, at any price, to retain them on passing over to the king’s service.
Now Henry IV. had already given this office to Biron, who had no idea of
allowing himself to be stripped of it. It was all very fine to offer him in
exchange the baton of a marshal of France, but he would not be satisfied
with it. “It was necessary,” says M. Floquet [Histoire du Parlement de
Normandie, t. iii. pp. 613-616], “for the king’s sister (Princess Catherine) to
intervene. At last, a promise of one hundred and twenty thousand crowns

won Biron over, though against the grain.” But he wanted solid securities.
Attention was then turned to the Parliament of Caen, always so ready to do
anything and sacrifice anything. Saldaigne d’Incarville, comptroller-general
of finance, having been despatched to Caen, went straight to the palace and
reported to the Parliament the proposals and conditions of Villers and Biron.
“The king,” said he, “not having been able to bring Rouen to reason by
process of arms, and being impatient to put some end to these miseries,
wishes now to try gentle processes, and treat with those whom he has not
yet been able to subdue; but co-operation on the part of the sovereign
bodies of the provinces is necessary.” “To that which is for the good of our
service is added your private interest,” wrote Henry IV. to the Parliament of
Caen; and his messenger D’Incarville added, “I have left matters at Rouen
so arranged as to make me hope that before a fortnight is over you will be
free to return thither and enter your homes once more.” At the first mention
of peace and the prospect of a reconciliation between the royalist
Parliament of Caen and the leaguer Parliament of Rouen, the Parliament,
the exchequer-chamber, and the court of taxation, agreed to a fresh sacrifice
and a last effort. The four presidents of the Parliament lost no time in
signing together, and each for all, an engagement to guarantee the hundred
and twenty thousand crowns promised to Biron. . . . The members of the
body bound themselves all together to guarantee the four presidents, in their
turn, in respect of the engagement they were contracting, and a letter was
addressed on the spot to Henry IV., “to thank the monarch for his good will
and affection, and the honor he was doing the members of his Parliament of
Normandy, by making them participators in the means and overtures
adopted for arriving at the reduction of the town of Rouen.” [M. Floquet,
Histoire du Parlement de Normandi, t. iii. pp. 613-616.]
Here is the information afforded, as regards the capitulation of Villars to
Henry IV., by the statement drawn up by Sully himself, of “the amount of
all debts on account of all the treaties made for the reduction of districts,
towns, places, and persons to obedience unto the king, in order to the
pacification of the realm.”
“To M. Villars, for himself, his brother, Chevalier d’Oise, the towns of
Rouen and Havre and other places, as well as for compensation which had
to be made to MM. de Montpensier, Marshal de Biron, Chancellor de
Chiverny, and other persons included in his treaty . . . three millions four

hundred and forty-seven thousand eight hundred livres.” [Poirson, Histoire
du Regne de Henry IV., t. i. p. 667.]
These details have been entered into without hesitation because it is
important to clearly understand by what means, by what assiduous efforts,
and at what price Henry IV. managed to win back pacifically many
provinces of his kingdom, rally to his government many leaders of note,
and finally to confer upon France that territorial and political unity which
she lacked under the feudal regimen, and which, in the sixteenth century,
the religious wars all but put it beyond her power to acquire. To the two
instances just cited of royalist reconciliation—Lyons and the spontaneous
example set by her population, and Rouen and the dearly purchased
capitulation of her governor Villars—must be added a third, of a different
sort. Nicholas de Neufville, Lord of Villeroi, after having served Charles
IX. and Henry III., had become, through attachment to the Catholic cause, a
member of the League, and one of the Duke of Mayenne’s confidants.
When Henry IV. was King of France, and Catholic king, Villeroi tried to
serve his cause with Mayenne, and induce Mayenne to be reconciled with
him. Meeting with no success, he made up his mind to separate from the
League, and go over to the king’s service. He could do so without treachery
or shame; even as a Leaguer and a servant of Mayenne’s he had always
been opposed to Spain, and devoted to a French, but, at the same time, a
faithfully Catholic policy. He imported into the service of Henry IV. the
same sentiments and the same bearing; he was still a zealous Catholic, and
a partisan, for king and country’s sake, of alliance with Catholic powers. He
was a man of wits, experience, and resource, who knew Europe well and
had some influence at the court of Rome. Henry IV. saw at once the
advantage to be gained from him, and, in spite of the Protestants’
complaints, and his sister Princess Catherine’s prayers, made him, on the
25th of September, 1594, secretary of state for foreign affairs. This
acquisition did not cost him so dear as that of Villars: still we read in the
statement of sums paid by Henry IV. for this sort of conquest,
“Furthermore, to M. de Villeroi, for himself, his son, the town of Pontoise,
and other individuals, according to their treaty, four hundred and seventy-
six thousand five hundred and ninety-four livres.” It is quite true that this
statement was drawn up by Sully, the unwavering supporter of Protestant
alliances in Europe, and, as such, Villeroi’s opponent in the council of
Henry IV.; but the other contemporary documents confirm Sully’s assertion.

Villeroi was a faithful servant to Henry, who well repaid him by stanchness
in supporting him against the repeated attacks of violent Reformers. In
1594, when he became minister of foreign affairs, the following verse was
in vogue at the Louvre:—

“The king could never beat the League;
‘Twas Villeroi who did the thing;
So well he managed his intrigue,
That now the League hath got the king.”

It is quite certain, however, that Henry IV. was never of the opinion
expressed in that verse; for, ten years later, in 1604, Villeroi having found
himself much compromised by the treachery of a chief clerk in his
department, who had given up to the Spanish government some important
despatches, the king, though very vexed at this mishap, “the consequences
of which rankled in his heart far more than he allowed to appear openly,
nevertheless continued to look most kindly on Villeroi, taking the trouble to
call upon him, to console and comfort him under this annoyance, and not
showing him a suspicion of mistrust because of what had happened, any
more than formerly; nay, even less.” [Journal de L’Estoile, t. iii. pp. 85-
441.] Never had prince a better or nobler way of employing confidence in
his proceedings with his servants, old or new, at the same time that he made
clear-sighted and proper distinctions between them.
Henry IV., with his mind full of his new character as a Catholic king,
perceived the necessity of getting the pope to confirm the absolution which
had been given him, at the time of his conversion, by the French bishops. It
was the condition of his credit amongst the numerous Catholic population
who were inclined to rally to him, but required to know that he was at peace
with the head of their church. He began by sending to Rome non-official
agents, instructed to quietly sound the pope, amongst others Arnold d’Ossat,
a learned professor in the University of Paris, who became, at a later period,
the celebrated cardinal and diplomat of that name. Clement VIII.
[Hippolytus Aldobrandini] was a clever man, moderate and prudent to the
verge of timidity, and, one who was disinclined to take decisive steps as to
difficult questions or positions until after they had been decided by events.
He refused to have any communication with him whom he still called the
Prince of Bearn, and only received the agents of Henry IV. privately in his

closet. But whilst he was personally severe and exacting in his behavior to
then, he had a hint given them by one of his confidants not to allow
themselves to be rebuffed by any obstacle, for the pope would, sooner or
later, welcome back the lost child who returned to him. At this report, and
by the advice of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand de’ Medici, Henry
IV. determined to send a solemn embassy to Rome, and to put it under the
charge of a prince of Italian origin, Peter di Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers. But
either through the pope’s stubborn resolve or the ambassador’s somewhat
impatient temper, devoted as he was, however, to the Holy See, the embassy
had no success. The Duke of Nevers could not obtain an official reception
as ambassador of the King of France. It was in vain that he had five
confidential audiences of the pope; in vain that he represented energetically
to him all the progress Henry IV. had already made, all the chances he had
of definitive success, all the perils to which the papacy exposed itself by
rejecting his advances; Clement VIII. persisted in his determination. Philip
II. and Mayenne still reigned in his ideas, and he dismissed the Duke of
Nevers on the 13th of January, 1594, declaring once more that he refused to
the Navarrese absolution at the inner bar of conscience, absolution at the
outer bar, and confirmation in his kingship.
Henry IV. did not put himself out, did not give himself the pleasure of
testifying to Rome his discontent; he saw that he had not as yet sufficiently
succeeded—sufficiently vanquished his enemies, or won to himself his
kingdom with sufficient completeness and definitiveness—to make the
pope feel bound to recognize and sanction his triumph. He set himself once
more to work to grow still greater in France, and force the gates of Rome
without its being possible to reproach him with violence or ill temper.
He had been absolved and crowned at St. Denis by the bishops of France;
he had not been anointed at Rheims, according to the religious traditions of
the French monarchy. At Rheims he could not be; for it was still in the
power of the League. Researches were made, to discover whether the
ceremony of anointment might take place elsewhere; numerous instances
were found, and in the case of famous kings: Pepin the Short had been
anointed first of all at Mayence, Charlemagne and Louis the Debonnair at
Rome, Charles the Bald at Mayence, several emperors at Aix-la-Chapelle
and at Cologne. The question of the holy phial (ampoule) was also
discussed; and it was proved that on several occasions other oils, held to be
of miraculous origin, had been employed instead. These difficulties thus

removed, the anointment of Henry IV. took place at Chartres on the 27th of
February, 1594; the Bishop of Chartres, Nicholas de Thou, officiated, and
drew up a detailed account of all the ceremonies and all the rejoicings;
thirteen medals, each weighing fifteen gold crowns, were struck, according
to custom; they bore the king’s image, and for legend, Invia virtuti nulla est
via (To manly worth no road is inaccessible). Henry IV., on his knees before
the grand altar, took the usual oath, the form of which was presented to him
by Chancellor de Chiverny. With the exception of local accessories, which
were acknowledged to be impossible and unnecessary, there was nothing
wanting to this religious hallowing of his kingship.
But one other thing, more important than the anointment at Chartres, was
wanting. He did not possess the capital of his kingdom the League were still
masters of Paris. Uneasy masters of their situation; but not so uneasy,
however, as they ought to have been. The great leaders of the party, the
Duke of Mayenne, his mother the Duchess of Nemours, his sister the
Duchess of Montpensier, and the Duke of Feria, Spanish ambassador, were
within its walls, a prey to alarm and discouragement. “At breakfast,” said
the Duchess of Montpensier, “they regale us with the surrender of a hamlet,
at dinner of a town, at supper of a whole province.” The Duchess of
Nemours, who desired peace, exerted herself to convince her son of all their
danger. “Set your affairs in order,” she said;—“if you do not begin to make
your arrangements with the king before leaving Paris, you will lose this
capital. I know that projects are already afoot for giving it up, and that those
who can do it, and in whom you have most confidence, are accomplices and
even authors of the plot.” Mayenne himself did not hide from his confidants
the gravity of the mischief and his own disquietude. “Not a day,” he wrote
on the 4th of February, 1594, to the Marquis of Montpezat, “but brings
some trouble because of the people’s yearning for repose, and of the
weakness which is apparent on our side. I stem and stop this forment with
as much courage as I can; but the present mischief is overwhelming; the
King of Navarre will in a few days have an army of twenty thousand men,
French as well as foreigners. What will become of us, if we have not
wherewithal not only to oppose him, but to make him lose the campaign? I
can tell you of a verity that, save for my presence, Paris would have already
been lost because of the great factions there are in it, which I take all the
pains in the world to disperse and break up, and also because of the small
aid, or rather the gainsaying, I meet with from the ministers of the King of

Spain.” Mayenne tried to restore amongst the Leaguers both zeal and
discipline; he convoked on the 2d of March, a meeting of all that remained
of the faction of the Sixteen; he calculated upon the presence of some
twelve hundred; scarcely three hundred came; he had an harangue delivered
to them by the Rev. John Boucher, charged them to be faithful to the old
spirit of the League, promised them that he would himself be faithful even
to death, and exhorted them to be obedient in everything to Brissac, whom
he had just appointed governor of the city, and to the provost of tradesmen.
On announcing to them his imminent departure for Soissons, to meet some
auxiliary troops which were to be sent to him by the King of Spain, “I leave
to you,” he said, “what is dearest to me in the world—my wife, my
children, my mother, and my sister.” But when he did set out, four days
afterwards, on the 6th of March, 1594, he took away his wife and his
children; his mother had already warned him that Brissac was
communicating secretly, by means of his cousin, Sieur de Rochepot, with
the royalists, and that the provost of tradesmen, L’Huillier, and three of the
four sheriffs were agreed to bring the city back to obedience to the king.
When the Sixteen and their adherents saw Mayenne departing with his wife
and children, great were their alarm and wrath. A large band, with the
incumbent of St. Cosmo (Hamilton) at their head, rushed about the streets
in arms, saying, “Look to your city; the policists are brewing a terrible
business for it.” Others, more violent, cried, “To arms! Down upon the
policists! Begin! Let us make an end of it!” The policists, that is, the
burgesses inclined to peace, repaired on their side to the provost of
tradesmen to ask for his authority to assemble at the Palace or the Hotel de
Ville, and to provide for security in case of any public calamity. The provost
tried to elude their entreaties by pleading that the Duke of Mayenne would
think ill of their assembling. “Then you are not the tradesmen’s but M. de
Mayenne’s provost?” said one of them. “I am no Spaniard,” answered the
provost; “no more is M. de Mayenne; I am anxious to reconcile you to the
Sixteen.” “We are honest folks, not branded and defamed like the Sixteen;
we will have no reconciliation with the wretches.” The Parliament grew
excited, and exclaimed against the insolence and the menaces of the
Sixteen. “We must give place to these sedition-mongers, or put them
down.” A decree, published by sound of trumpet on the 14th of March,
1594, throughout the whole city, prohibited the Sixteen and their partisans
from assembling on pain of death. That same day, Count de Brissac,

governor of Paris, had an interview at the abbey of St. Anthony, with his
brother-in-law, Francis d’Epinay, Lord of St. Luc, Henry IV.‘s grand-master
of the ordnance; they had disputes touching private interests, which they
wished, they said, to put right; and on this pretext advocates had appeared at
their interview. They spent three hours in personal conference, their minds
being directed solely to the means of putting the king into possession of
Paris. They separated in apparent dudgeon. Brissac went to call upon the
legate Gaetani, and begged him to excuse the error he had committed in
communicating with a heretic; his interest in the private affairs in question
was too great, he said, for him to neglect it. The legate excused him
graciously, whilst praising him for his modest conduct, and related the
incident to the Duke of Feria, the Spanish ambassador. “He is a good
fellow, M. de Brissac,” said the ambassador; “I have always found him so;
you have only to employ the Jesuits to make him do all you please. He
takes little notice, otherwise, of affairs; one day, when we were holding
council in here, whilst we were deliberating, he was amusing himself by
catching flies.” For four days the population of Paris was occupied with a
solemn procession in honor of St. Genevieve, in which the Parliament and
all the municipal authorities took part. Brissac had agreed with his brother-
in-law D’Epinay that he would let the king in on the 22d of March, and he
had arranged, in concert with the provost of tradesmen, two sheriffs, and
several district captains, the course of procedure. On the 21st of March, in
the evening, some Leaguers paid him a visit, and spoke to him warmly
about the rumors current on the subject in the city, calling upon him to look
to it. “I have received the same notice,” said Brissac, coolly; “and I have
given all the necessary orders. Leave me to act, and keep you quiet, so as
not to wake up those who will have to be secured. To-morrow morning you
will see a fine to-do and the policists much surprised.” During all the first
part of the night between the 21st and 22d of March, Brissac went his
rounds of the city and the guards he had posted, “with an appearance of
great care and solicitude.” He had some trouble to get rid of certain Spanish
officers, “whom the Duke of Feria had sent him to keep him company in his
rounds, with orders to throw themselves upon him and kill him at the first
suspicious movement; but they saw nothing to confirm their suspicions, and
at two A. M., Brissac brought them back much fatigued to the duke’s, where
he left them.” Henry IV., having started on the 21st of March from Senlis,
where he had mustered his troops, and arrived about midnight at St. Denis,

immediately began his march to Paris. The night was dark and stormy;
thunder rumbled; rain fell heavily; the king was a little behind time. At
three A. M.. the policists inside Paris had taken arms and repaired to the
posts that had been assigned to them. Brissac had placed a guard close to
the quarters of the Spanish ambassador, and ordered the men to fire on any
who attempted to leave. He had then gone in person, with L’Huillier, the
provost of tradesmen, to the New Gate, which he had caused to be unlocked
and guarded. Sheriff Langlois had done the same at the gate of St. Denis.
On the 22d of March, at four A. M., the king had not yet appeared before
the ramparts, nor any one for him. Langlois issued from the gate, went
some little distance to look out, and came in again, more and more
impatient. At last, between four and five o’clock, a detachment of the royal
troops, commanded by Vitry, appeared before the gate of St. Denis, which
was instantly opened. Brissac’s brother-in-law, St. Luc, arrived about the
same time at the New Gate, with a considerable force. The king’s troops
entered Paris. They occupied the different districts, and met with no show
of resistance but at the quay of L’Ecole, where an outpost of lanzknechts
tried to stop them; but they were cut in pieces or hurled into the river.
Between five and six o’clock Henry IV., at the head of the last division,
crossed the drawbridge of the New Gate. Brissac, Provost L’Huillier, the
sheriffs, and several companies of burgesses advanced to meet him. The
king embraced Brissac, throwing his own white scarf round his neck, and
addressing him as “Marshal.” “Render unto Caesar the things that are
Caesar’s,” said Brissac, as he called upon the provost of tradesmen to
present to the king the keys of the city. “Yes,” said L’Huillier, “render them,
not sell them.” The king went forward with his train, going along Rue St.
Honore to the market of the Innocents and the bridge of Notre-Dame; the
crowd increased at every step. “Let them come near,” said Henry; “they
hunger to see a king.” At every step, too, at sight of the smallest incident,
the character of Henry, his natural thoughtful and lovable kindliness, shone
forth. He asked if his entry had met with resistance anywhere; and he was
told that about fifty lanzknechts had been killed at the quay of L’Ecole. “I
would willingly give fifty thousand crowns,” said he, “to be able to say that
I took Paris without costing the life of one single man.” As he marched
along the Rue St. Honore, he saw a soldier taking some bread by force from
a baker’s; he rushed at him, and would have struck him with his sword. As
he passed in front of the Innocents, he saw at a window a man who was

looking at him, and pointedly keeping his hat on; the man perceived that the
king’ observed him, and withdrew, shutting down the window. Henry said,
“Let nobody enter this house to vex or molest any one in it.” He arrived in
front of Notre-Dame, followed by five or six hundred men-at-arms, who
trailed their pikes “in token of a victory that was voluntary on the people’s
part,” it was said. There was no uproar, or any hostile movement, save on
the left bank of the Seine, in the University quarter, where the Sixteen
attempted to assemble their partisans round the gate of St. Jacques; but they
were promptly dispersed by the people as well as by the royal troops. On
leaving Notre-Dame, Henry repaired to the Louvre, where he installed
royalty once more. At ten o’clock he was master of the whole city; the
districts of St. Martin, of the Temple, and St. Anthony alone remained still
in the power of three thousand Spanish soldiers under the orders of their
leaders, the Duke of Feria and Don Diego d’Ibarra. Nothing would have
been easier for Henry than to have had them driven out by his own troops
and the people of Paris, who wanted to finish the day’s work by
exterminating the foreigners; but he was too judicious and too far-sighted to
embitter the general animosity by pushing his victory beyond what was
necessary. He sent word to the Spaniards that they must not move from
their quarters and must leave Paris during the day, at the same time
promising not to bear arms any more against him, in France. They eagerly
accepted these conditions. At three o’clock in the afternoon, ambassador,
officers, and soldiers all evacuated Paris, and set out for the Low Countries.
The king, posted at a window over the gate of St. Denis, witnessed their
departure. They, as they passed, saluted him respectfully; and he returned
their salute, saying, “Go, gentlemen, and commend me to your master; but
return no more.”
After his conversion to Catholicism, the capture of Paris was the most
decisive of the issues which made Henry IV. really King of France. The
submission of Rouen followed almost immediately upon that of Paris; and
the year 1594 brought Henry a series of successes, military and civil, which
changed very much to his advantage the position of the kingship as well as
the general condition of the kingdom. In Normandy, in Picardy, in
Champagne, in Anjou, in Poitou, in Brittany, in Orleanness, in Auvergne, a
multitude of important towns, Havre, Honfleur, Abbeville, Amiens,
Peronue, Montdidier, Poitiers, Orleans, Rheims, Chateau-Thierry, Beauvais,
Sens, Riom, Morlaix, Laval, Laon, returned to the king’s authority, some

after sieges and others by pacific and personal arrangement, more or less
burdensome for the public treasury, but very effective in promoting the
unity of the nation and of the monarchy. In the table drawn up by Sully of
expenses under that head, he estimated them at thirty-two millions, one
hundred and forty-two thousand, nine hundred and eighty-one livres,
equivalent at the present day, says M. Poirson, to one hundred and eighteen
millions of francs. The rendition of Paris, “on account of M. de Brissac, the
city itself and other individuals employed on his treaty,” figures in this sum
total at one million, six hundred and forty-five thousand, four hundred
livres. Territorial acquisitions were not the only political conquests of this
epoch; some of the great institutions which had been disjointed by the
religious wars, for instance, the Parliaments of Paris and Normandy,
recovered their unity and resumed their efficacy to the advantage of order,
of the monarchy, and of national independence; their decrees against the
League contributed powerfully to its downfall. Henry IV. did his share in
other ways besides warfare; he excelled in the art of winning over or
embarrassing his vanquished foes. After the submission of Paris, the two
princesses of the house of Lorraine who had remained there, the Duchesses
of Nemours and of Montpensier, one the mother and the other the sister of
the Duke of Mayenne, were preparing to go and render homage to the
conqueror; Henry anticipated them, and paid them the first visit. As he was
passing through a room where hung a portrait of Henry de Guise, he halted
and saluted it very courteously. The Duchess of Montpensier, who had so
often execrated him, did not hesitate to express her regret that “her brother
Mayenne had not been there to let down for him the drawbridge of the gate
by which he had entered Paris.” “Ventre-saint-gris,” said the king, “he
might have made me wait a long while; I should not have arrived so early.”
He knew that the Duchess of Nemours had desired peace, and when she
allowed some signs of vexation to peep out at her not having been able to
bring her sons and grandsons to that determination, “Madame,” said he,
“there is still time if they please.” At the close of 1594, he imported
disorganization into the household of Lorraine by offering the government
of Provence to the young Duke Charles of Guise, son of the Balafre; who
eagerly accepted it; and he from that moment paved the way, by the agency
of President Jeannin, for his reconciliation with Mayenne, which he brought
to accomplishment at the end of 1595.

The close of this happy and glorious year was at hand. On the 27th of
September, between six and seven P.M., a deplorable incident occurred, for
the second time, to call Henry IV.‘s attention to the weak side of his
position. He was just back from Picardy, and holding a court-reception at
Schomberg House, at the back of the Louvre. John Chastel, a young man of
nineteen, son of a cloth-merchant in the city, slipped in among the visitors,
managed to approach the king, and dealt him a blow with a knife just as he
was stooping to raise and embrace Francis de la Grange, Sieur de Montigny,
who was kneeling before him. The blow, aimed at the king’s throat, merely
slit his upper lip and broke a tooth. “I am wounded!” said the king. John
Chastel, having dropped his knife, had remained on the spot, motionless
and confused. Montigny, according to some, but, according to others, the
Count of Soissons, who happened to be near him, laid hands upon him,
saying, “Here is the assassin, either he or I.” Henry IV., always prone to
pass things over, pooh-poohed the suspicion, and was just giving orders to
let the young man go, when the knife, discovered on the ground close to
Chastel, became positive evidence. Chastel was questioned, searched, and
then handed, over to the grand provost of the household, who had him
conveyed to prison at For-l’Eveque. He first of all denied, but afterwards
admitted his deed, regretting that he had missed his aim, and saying he was
ready to try again for his own salvation’s sake and that of religion. He
declared that he had been brought up amongst the Jesuits in Rue St.
Jacques, and he gave long details as to the education he had received there
and the maxims he had heard there. The rumor of his crime and of the
revelations he had made spread immediately over Paris and caused
passionate excitement. The people filled the churches and rendered thanks
to God for having preserved the king. The burgesses took up arms and
mustered at their guard-posts. The mob bore down on the college of Jesuits
in Rue St. Jacques with threats of violence. The king and the Parliament
sent a force thither; Brizard, councillor in the high chamber, captain of the
district, had the fathers removed, and put them in security in his own house.
The inquiry was prosecuted deliberately and temperately. It brought out that
John Chastel had often heard repeated at his college “that it was allowable
to kill kings, even the king regnant, when they were not in the church or
approved of by the pope.” The accused formally maintained this maxim,
which was found written out and dilated upon under his own hand in a note-
book seized at his father’s. “Was it necessary, pray,” said Henry IV.,

laughing, “that the Jesuits should be convicted by my mouth?” John Chastel
was sentenced to the most cruel punishment; and he underwent it on the
20th of December, 1594, by torch-light, before the principal entrance of
Notre-Dame, without showing any symptom of regret. His mother and his
sisters were set at liberty. His father, an old Leaguer, had been cognizant of
his project, and had dissuaded him from it, but without doing anything to
hinder it; he was banished from the kingdom for nine years, and from Paris
forever. His house was razed to the ground; and on the site was set up a
pyramid with the decree of the Parliament inscribed upon it.
The proceedings did not stop there. At the beginning of this same year,
and on petition from the University of Paris, the Parliament had
commenced a general prosecution of the order of Jesuits, its maxims,
tendencies, and influence. Formal discussions had taken place; the
prosecution and the defence had been conducted with eloquence, and a
decree of the court had ordained that judgment should be deferred. Several
of the most respected functionaries, notably President Augustin de Thou,
had pronounced against this decree, considering the question so grave and
so urgent that the Parliament should make it their duty to decide upon the
point at issue. When sentence had to be pronounced upon John Chastel,
President de Thou took the opportunity of saying, “When I lately gave my
opinion in the matter of the University and the Jesuits, I never hoped, at my
age and with my infirmities, that I should live long enough to take part in
the judgment we are about to pass to-day. It was that which led me, in the
indignation caused me by the course at that time adopted, to lay down an
opinion to which I to-day recur with much joy. God be praised for having
brought about an occasion whereon we have nothing to do but felicitate
ourselves for that the enterprise which our foes did meditate against the
state and the life of the king hath been without success, and which proves
clearly at the same time how much the then opinion of certain honest men
was wiser than that of persons who, from a miserable policy, were in favor
of deferment!” The court, animated by the same sentiments as President do
Thou, “declared the maxims maintained in the Jesuits’ name to be rash,
seditious, contrary to the word of God, savoring of heresy and condemned
by the holy canons; it expressly forbade them to be taught publicly or
privately, on pain, in case of contraveners, of being treated as guilty of
treason against God and man. It decreed, further, that the priests of the
college in Rue St. Jacques, their pupils, and, generally, all members of that

society, should leave Paris and all the towns in which they had colleges
three days after this decree had been made known to them, and the kingdom
within a fortnight, as corrupters of youth, disturbers of the public peace, and
enemies of the king and of the state. In default of obedience on their part,
their property, real and personal, should be confiscated and employed for
pious purposes. The court, besides, prohibited all subjects of the king from
sending their children as students to any Jesuits out of the kingdom, on pain
of being declared enemies of the state.” This decree was issued on the 29th
of December, 1594. And as if to leave no doubt about the sense and bearing
of this legislation, it was immediately applied in the case of a Jesuit father,
John Guignard, a native of Chartres; his papers were examined, and there
were found in his handwriting many propositions and provocatives of
sedition, such as, “That a great mistake had been made at the St.
Bartholomew in not having opened the basilic vein, that is, in not having
murdered Henry IV. and the Prince of Conde, who were of the blood royal;
2. That the crown might have been, and ought to have been, transferred to a
family other than that of the Bourbons; 3. That the Bearnese, in spite of his
pretended conversion, ought to consider himself only too lucky if it were
considered sufficient to shave his head and shut him up in a convent to do
penance there; that if the crown could not betaken from him without war,
then war must be made on him; and that if the state of things did not admit
of making war on him, he ought to be got rid of at any price and in any way
whatsoever.” For having, not published, but thought and with his own hand
written out all this, and probably taught it to his pupils, Father Guignard
was obliged to retract, and was afterwards hanged in the Place de Greve on
the 7th of January, 1595.
The task of honest men and of right minds is greater and more difficult in
our day than it was in the sixteenth century, for we have to reconcile the
laws and the requirements of moral and social order with far broader
principles and sentiments, as regards right and liberty, than were those of
President Augustin de Thou and the worthy functionaries of his time.
It was one of Henry IV.‘s conspicuous qualities that no event, auspicious
or inauspicious, affected the correctness of his judgment, and that he was
just as much a stranger to illusion or intoxication in the hour of good
fortune as to discouragement in the hour of ill. He had sense enough to see,
in any case, things as they really were, and to estimate at the proper value
the strength they brought or the obstacles they formed to his government.

He saw at a glance all the importance there was for him in the submission
of Paris, and what change in his conduct was required by that in his
position. Certain local successes of the Spaniards at some points in his
kingdom, the efforts of Mayenne to resuscitate the dying League, and John
Chastel’s attempt at assassination did not for a moment interfere with his
confidence in his progress, or cause him to hesitate as to the new bearing he
had to assume. He wrote on the 17th of December, 1594, to the estates of
Artois and Hainault, “I have hitherto lacked neither the courage nor the
power to repel the insults offered me, and to send recoiling upon the head of
the King of Spain and his subjects the evils of which he was the author. But
just as were the grounds I had for declaring war against him, motives more
powerful and concerning the interests of all Christendom restrained me. At
the present time, when the principal leaders of the factious have returned to
their duty and submitted to my laws, Philip still continues his intrigues to
foster troubles in the very heart of my kingdom. After maturely reflecting, I
have decided that it is time for me to act. Nevertheless, as I cannot forget
the friendship my ancestors always felt for your country, I could not but see
with pain that, though you have taken no share in Philip’s acts of injustice,
on you will fall the first blows of a war so terrible, and I thought it my duty
to warn you of my purpose before I proceed to execute it. If you can prevail
upon the King of Spain to withdraw the army which he is having levied on
the frontier, and to give no protection for the future to rebels of my
kingdom, I will not declare war against him, provided that I have certain
proof of your good intentions, and that you give me reasonable securities
for them before the 1st of January in the approaching year.” [Lettres
missives de Henri IV, p. 280—De Thou, Histoire universelle, t. xii. pp. 328-
342.]
These letters, conveyed to Arras by one of the king’s trumpeters, received
no answer. The estates of Flanders, in assembly at Brussels, somewhat more
bold than those of Artois and Hainault, in vain represented to their Spanish
governor their plaints and their desires for peace; for two months Henry IV.
heard not a word on the subject. Philip II. persisted in his active hostility,
and continued to give the King of France no title but that of Prince of
Bearn. On the 17th of January, 1595, Henry, in performance of what he had
proclaimed, formally declared war against the King of Spain, forbade his
subjects to have any commerce with him or his allies, and ordered them to
make war on him for the future just as he persisted in making it on France.

This able and worthy resolve was not approved of by Rosny, by this time
the foremost of Henry’s IV.‘s councillors, although he had not yet risen in
the government, or, probably, in the king’s private confidence, to the
superior rank that he did attain by the eminence of his services and the
courageous sincerity of his devotion. In his OEconomies royales it is to
interested influence, on the part of England and Holland, that he attributes
this declaration of war against Philip II., “into which,” he says, “the king
allowed himself to be hurried against his own feelings.” It was assuredly in
accordance with his own feelings and of his own free will that Henry acted
in this important decision; he had a political order of mind greater, more
inventive, and more sagacious than Rosny’s administrative order of mind,
strong common sense and painstaking financial abilities. To spontaneously
declare war against Philip after the capitulation of Paris and the conquest of
three quarters of France was to proclaim that the League was at death’s
door, that there was no longer any civil war in France, and that her king had
no more now than foreign war to occupy him. To make alliance, in view of
that foreign war, with the Protestant sovereigns of England, Holland, and
Germany, against the exclusive and absolutist patron of Catholicism, was
on the part of a king but lately Protestant, and now become resolutely
Catholic, to separate openly politics from religion, and to subserve the
temporal interests of the realm of France whilst putting himself into the
hands of the spiritual head of the church as regarded matters of faith. Henry
IV., moreover, discovered another advantage in this line of conduct; it
rendered possible and natural the important act for which he was even then
preparing, and which will be spoken of directly, the edict of Nantes in favor
of the Protestants, which was the charter of religious tolerance and the
securities for it, pending the advent of religious liberty and its rights, that
fundamental principle, at this day, of moral and social order in France. Such
were Henry IV.‘s grand and premonitory instincts when, on the 17th of
January, 1595, he officially declared against Philip II. that war which Philip
had not for a moment ceased to make on him.
The conflict thus solemnly begun between France and Spain lasted three
years and three months, from the 17th of January, 1595, to the 1st of May,
1598, from Henry IV.‘s declaration of war to the peace of Vervins, which
preceded by only four months and thirteen days the death of Philip II. and
the end of the preponderance of Spain in Europe. It is not worth while to
follow step by step the course of this monotonous conflict, pregnant with

facts which had their importance for contemporaries, but are not worthy of
an historical resurrection. Notice will be drawn only to those incidents in
which the history of France is concerned, and which give a good idea of
Henry IV.‘s character, the effectiveness of his government, and the rapid
growth of his greatness in Europe, contrasted with his rival’s slow decay.
Four months and a half after the declaration of war, and during the
campaign begun in Burgundy between the French and the Spaniards, on the
5th of June, 1595, near Fontaine-Francaise, a large burgh a few leagues
from Dijon, there took place an encounter which, without ending in a
general battle, was an important event, and caused so much sensation that it
brought about political results more important than the immediate cause of
them. Henry IV. made up his mind to go and reconnoitre in person the
approaches of Dijon, towards which the enemy were marching. He
advanced, with about a hundred and fifty men-at-arms and as many
mounted arquebusiers, close up to the burgh of Saint-Seine; from there he
sent the Marquis of Mirebeau with fifty or sixty horse to “go,” says Sully,
“and take stock of the enemy;” and he put himself on the track of his
lieutenant, marching as a simple captain of light-horse, with the purpose of
becoming better acquainted with the set of the country, so as to turn it to
advantage if the armies had to encounter. But he had not gone more than a
league when he saw Mirebeau returning at more than a foot-pace and in
some disorder; who informed him “that he had been suddenly charged by as
many as three or four hundred horse, who did not give him leisure to extend
his view as he could have desired, and that he believed that the whole army
of the Constable of Castille was marching in a body to come and quarter
themselves in the burgh of Saint-Seine.” Marshal de Biron, who joined the
king at this moment, offered to go and look at the enemy, and bring back
news that could be depended upon; but scarcely had he gone a thousand
paces when he descried, on the top of a little valley, some sixty horse halted
there as if they were on guard; he charged them, toppled them over, and
taking their ground, discovered the whole Spanish army marching in order
of battle and driving before them a hundred of the king’s horse, who were
flying in disorder. Biron halted and showed a firm front to the enemy’s
approach; but he was himself hard pressed at many points, and was charged
with such impetuosity that he was obliged to begin a retreat which changed
before long to a sort of flight, with a few sword-cuts about the ears. Thus he
arrived within sight of the king, who immediately detached a hundred horse

to support Biron and stop the fugitives; but the little re-enforcement met
with the same fate as those it went to support; it was overthrown and driven
pell-mell right up to the king, who suddenly found himself with seven or
eight hundred horse on his hands, without counting the enemy’s main army,
which could already be discerned in the distance. Far from being
dumbfounded, the king, “borrowing,” says Sully, “increase of judgment and
courage from the greatness of the peril,” called all his men about him,
formed them into two squadrons of a hundred and fifty men each, gave one
to M. de la Tremoille with orders to go and charge the Spanish cavalry on
one flank, put himself at the head of the other squadron, and the two
charges of the French were “so furious and so determined,” says Sully, the
king mingling in the thickest of the fight and setting an example to the
boldest, “that the Spanish squadrons in dismay tumbled one over another,
and retired half-routed to the main body of Mayenne’s army; who, seeing a
dash made to the king’s assistance by some of his bravest officers with
seven or eight hundred horse, thought all the royal army was there, and,
fearing to attack those gentry of whose determination he had just made
proof, he himself gave his troops the order to retreat, Henry going on in
pursuit until he had forced them to recross the Sane below Gray, leaving
Burgundy at his discretion.”
A mere abridgment has been given of the story relating to this brilliant
affair as it appears in the OEconomies Royales of Sully [t. ii. pp. 377-387],
who was present and hotly engaged in the fight. We will quote word for
word, however, the account of Henry IV. himself, who sent a report four
days afterwards to his sister Catherine and to the Constable Anne de
Montmorency. To the latter he wrote on the 8th of June, 1595, from Dijon,
“I was informed that the Constable of Castile, accompanied by the Duke of
Mayenne, was crossing the River Sane with his army to come and succor
the castle of this town. I took horse the day after, attended by my cousin
Marshal de Biron and from seven to eight hundred horse, to go and observe
his plans on the spot. Whence it happened that, intending to take the same
quarters without having any certain advices about one another, we met
sooner than we had hoped, and so closely that my cousin the marshal, who
led the first troop, was obliged to charge those who had advanced, and I to
support him. But our disadvantage was, that all our troops had not yet
arrived and joined me, for I had but from two to three hundred horse,
whereas the enemy had all his cavalry on the spot, making over a thousand

or twelve hundred drawn up by squadrons and in order of battle. However,
my said cousin did not haggle about them; and, seeing that they were
worsting him, because the game was too uneven, I determined to make one
in it, and joined in it to such a purpose and with such luck, thank God,
together with the following I had, that we put them to the rout. But I can
assure you that it was not at the first charge, for we made several; and if the
rest of my forces had been with me, I should no doubt have defeated all
their cavalry, and perhaps their foot who were in order of battle behind the
others, having at their head the said Constable of Castile. But our forces
were so unequal that I could do no more than put to flight those who would
not do battle, after having cut in pieces the rest, as we had done; wherein I
can tell you, my dear cousin, that my said cousin Marshal de Biron and I
did some good handiwork. He was wounded in the head by a blow from a
cutlass in the second charge, for he and I had nothing on but our cuirasses,
not having had time to arm ourselves further, so surprised and hurried were
we. However, my said cousin did not fail, after his wound, to return again to
the charge three or four times, as I too did on my side. Finally we did so
well that the field and their dead were left to us to the number of a hundred
or six score, and as many prisoners of all ranks. Whereat the said Constable
of Castile took such alarm that he at once recrossed the Sane; and I have
been told that it was not without reproaching the Duke of Mayenne with
having deceived him in not telling him of my arrival in this country.”
The day before, June 7, Henry had written to his sister Catherine de
Bourbon, “My dear sister, the more I go on, the more do I wonder at the
grace shown me by God in the fight of last Monday, wherein I thought to
have defeated but twelve hundred horse; but they must be set down at two
thousand. The Constable of Castile was there in person with the Duke of
Mayenne; and they both of them saw me and recognized me quite well;
they sent to demand of me a whole lot of Italian and Spanish captains of
theirs, the which were not prisoners. They must be amongst the dead who
have been buried, for I requested next day that they should be. Many of our
young noblemen, seeing me with them everywhere, were full of fire in this
engagement, and showed a great deal of courage; amongst whom I came
across Gramont, Termes, Boissy, La Curse, and the Marquis of Mirebeau,
who, as luck would have it, found themselves at it without any armor but
their neck-pieces and gaillardets (front and back plates), and did marvels.
There were others who did not do so well, and many who did very ill.

Those who were not there ought to be sorry for it, seeing that I had need of
all my good friends, and I saw you very near becoming my heiress.”
[Lettres missives de Henri IV., t. iv. pp. 363-369; in the Collection des
Documents inedits sur l’Histoire de France.]
This fight, so unpremeditated, at Fontaine-Francaise, and the presence of
mind, steady quicksightedness, and brilliant dash of Henry IV., led off this
long war gloriously. Its details were narrated and sought after minutely;
people were especially struck with the sympathetic attention that in the very
midst of the strife the king bestowed upon all his companions in arms,
either to give them directions or to warn them of danger. “At the hottest of
the fight,” says the contemporary historian Peter Matthieu, “Henry, seizing
Mirebeau by the arm, said, ‘Charge yonder!’ which he did: and that troop
began to thin off and disappear.” A moment afterwards, seeing one of the
enemy’s men-at-arms darting down upon the French, Henry concluded that
the attack was intended for Gilbert, de la Cure, a brave and pious Catholic
lord, whom he called familiarly Monsieur le Cure, and shouted to him from
afar, “Look out, La Curee!” which warned him and saved his life. The
roughest warriors were touched by this fraternal solicitude of the king’s,
and clung to him with passionate devotion.
It was at Rome, and in the case of an ecclesiastical question that Henry
IV.‘s steady policy, his fame for ability as well as valor, and the glorious
affair of Fontaine-Francaise bore their first fruits. Mention has already been
made of the formal refusal the king had met with from Pope Clement VIII.
in January, 1594, when he had demanded of him, by the embassy
extraordinary of the Duke of Nevers, confirmation of the absolution granted
him by the French bishops after his conversation at St. Denis and his
anointment at Chartres. The pope, in spite of his refusal, had indirectly
given the royal agents to understand that they were not to be discouraged;
and the ablest of them, Arnold d’Ossat, had remained at Rome to conduct
this delicate and dark commission. When Clement VIII. saw Henry IV.‘s
government growing stronger and more extensive day by day, Paris
returned to his power, the League beaten and the Gallican church upheld in
its maxims by the French magistracy, fear of schism grew serious at Rome,
and the pope had a hint given by Cardinal de Gondi to Henry that, if he
were to send fresh ambassadors, they might be favorably listened to. Arnold
d’Ossat had acquired veritable weight at the court of Rome, and had paved
the way with a great deal of art towards turning to advantage any favorable

chances that might offer themselves. Villeroi, having broken with the
League, had become Henry IV.‘s minister of foreign affairs, and obtained
some confidence at Rome in return for the good will he testified towards the
papacy. By his councillor’s advice, no doubt, the king made no official stir,
sent no brilliant embassy; D’Ossat quietly resumed negotiations, and alone
conducted them from the end of 1594 to the spring of 1595; and when a
new envoy was chosen to bring them to a conclusion, it was not a great
lord, but a learned ecclesiastic, Abbot James du Perron, whose ability and
devotion Henry IV. had already, at the time of his conversion, experienced,
and whom he had lately appointed Bishop of Evreux. Even when Du Perron
had been fixed upon to go to Rome and ask for the absolution which
Clement VIII. had seven or eight months before refused, he was in no hurry
to repair thither, and D’Ossat’s letters make it appear that he was expected
there with some impatience. He arrived there on the 12th of July, 1595, and,
in concert with D’Ossat, he presented to the pope the request of the king,
who solicited the papal benediction, absolution from any censure, and
complete reconciliation with the Roman church. Clement VIII., on the 2d of
August, assembled his consistory, whither went all the cardinals, save two
partisans of Spain who excused themselves on the score of health. Parleys
took place as to the form of the decree which must precede the absolution.
The pope would have liked very much to insert two clauses, one revoking
as null and void the absolution already given to the king by the French
bishops at the time of his conversion, and the other causing the absolution
granted by the pope to be at the same time considered as re-establishing
Henry IV. in his rights to the crown, whereof it was contended that he was
deprived by the excommunication and censures of Sixtus V. and Gregory
XIV., which this absolution was to remove. The two French negotiators
rejected these attempts, and steadily maintained the complete independence
of the king’s temporal sovereignty, as well as the power of intervention of
the French episcopate in his absolution. Clement VIII. was a judicious and
prudent pope; and he did not persist. The absolution was solemnly
pronounced on the 17th of September, 1595, by the pope himself, from a
balcony erected in St. Peter’s Square, and in presence of the population.
The gates of the church were thrown open and a Te Deum was sung. A
grand ceremony took place immediately afterwards in the church of St.
Louis of the French. Rome was illuminated for three days, and, on the 7th

of November following, a pope’s messenger left for Paris with the bull of
absolution drawn up in the terms agreed upon.
Another reconciliation, of less solemnity, but of great importance, that
between the Duke of Mayenne and Henry IV., took place a week after the
absolution pronounced by the pope. As soon as the civil war, continued by
the remnants of the dying League, was no more than a disgraceful auxiliary
to the foreign war between France and Spain, Mayenne was in his soul both
grieved and disgusted at it. The affair of Fontaine-Francaise gave him an
opportunity of bringing matters to a crisis; he next day broke with the
Constable of Castile, Don Ferdinand de Velasco, who declined to follow his
advice, and at once entered into secret negotiations with the king. Henry
wrote from Lyons to Du Plessis-Mornay, on the 24th of August, 1595, “The
Duke of Mayenne has asked me to allow him three months for the purpose
of informing the enemy of his determination in order to induce them to join
him in recognizing me and serving me. So doing, he has also agreed to bind
himself from this present date to recognize me and serve me, whatever his
friends may do.” On the 23d of September following, Henry IV., still at
Lyons, sent to M. de la Chatre:—
“I forward you the articles of a general truce which I have granted to the
Duke of Mayenne at his pressing instance, and on the assurance he has
given me that he will get it accepted and observed by all those who are still
making war within my kingdom, in his name or that of the League.” This
truce was, in point of fact, concluded by a preliminary treaty signed at
Chalons, and by virtue of which Mayenne ordered his lieutenants to give up
to the king the citadel of Dijon. The negotiations continued, and, in January,
1596, a royal edict, signed at Folembray, near Laon, regulated, in thirty-one
articles and some secret articles, the conditions of peace between the king
and Mayenne. The king granted him, himself and his partisans, full and
complete amnesty for the past, besides three surety-places for six years, and
divers sums, which, may be for payment of his debts, and may be for his
future provision, amounted to three million five hundred and eighty
thousand livres at that time (twelve million eight hundred and eighty-eight
thousand francs of the present day). The Parliament of Paris considered
these terms exorbitant, and did not consent to enregister the edict until April
9, 1596, after three letters jussory from the king. Henry IV. nobly expressed,
in the preamble of the edict, the motives of policy that led to his generous
arrangements; after alluding to his late reconciliation with the pope, “Our

work,” he said, “would have been imperfect, and peace incomplete, if our
most dear and most beloved cousin, the Duke of Mayenne, chief of his
party, had not followed the same road, as he resolved to do so soon as he
saw that our holy father had approved of our reunion. This hath made us to
perceive better than heretofore the aim of his actions, to accept and take in
good part all that he hath exhibited against us of the zeal he felt for religion,
and to commend the anxiety he hath displayed to preserve the kingdom in,
its entirety, whereof he caused not and suffered not the dismemberment
when the prosperity of his affairs seemed to give him some means of it; the
which he was none the more inclined to do when he became weakened, but
preferred to throw himself into our arms rather than betake himself to other
remedies, which might have caused the war to last a long while yet, to the
great damage of our people. This it is which hath made us desire to
recognize his good intent, to love him and treat him for the future as our
good relative and faithful subject.” [Memoires de la Ligue, t. vi. p. 349.]

To a profound and just appreciation of men’s conduct Henry IV. knew
how to add a winning grace and the surprising charm of a familiar manner.
After having signed the edict of Folembray, he had gone to rest a while at
Monceaux. Mayenne went to visit him there on the 31st of January, 1596.
There is nothing to be added to or taken from the account given by Sully of
their interview. “The king, stepping forward to meet Mayenne, embraced
him thrice, assuring him that he was welcome, and that he embraced him as
cordially as if there had never been anything between them. M. de Mayenne
put one knee on the ground, embraced the king’s thigh, and assured him that
he was his very humble servant and subject, saying that he considered
himself greatly bounden to him, as well for having with so much, of
gentleness, kindness, and special largesses restored him to his duty, as for
having delivered him from Spanish arrogance and Italian crafts and wiles.
Then the king, having raised him up and embraced him once more, told him
that he had no doubt at all of his honor and word, for a man of worth and of
good courage held nothing so dear as the observance thereof. Thereupon he
took him by the hand and began to walk him about at a very great pace,
showing him the alleys and telling all his plans and the beauties and
conveniences of this mansion. M. de Mayenne, who was incommoded by a
sciatica, followed as best he could, but some way behind, dragging his
limbs after him very heavily. Which the king observing, and that he was
mighty red, heated, and was puffing with thickness of breath, he turned to
Rosny, whom he held, with the other hand, and said in his ear, ‘If I walk
this fat carcass here about much longer, then am I avenged without much
difficulty for all the evils he hath done us, for he is a dead man.’ And

thereupon pulling up, the king said to him, ‘Tell the truth, cousin, I go a
little too fast for you; and I have worked you too hard.’ ‘By my faith, sir,’
said M. de Mayenne, slapping his hand upon his stomach, ‘it is true; I swear
to you that I am so tired and out of breath that I can no more. If you had
continued walking me about so fast, for honor and courtesy did not permit
me to say to you, “Hold! enough!” and still less to leave you, I believe that
you would have killed me without a thought of it.’ Then the king embraced
him, clapped him on the shoulder, and said with a laughing face, open
glance, and holding out his hand, ‘Come, take that, cousin, for, by God, this
is all the injury and displeasure you shall ever have from me; of that I give
you my honor and word with all my heart, the which I never did and never
will violate.’ ‘By God, sir,’ answered M. de Mayenne, kissing the king’s
hand and doing what he could to put one knee upon the ground, ‘I believe it
and all other generous things that may be expected from the best and
bravest prince of our age. And you said it, too, in so frank a spirit and with
so kindly a grace that my feelings and my obligations are half as deep
again. However, I swear to you over again, sir, by the living God, on my
faith, my honor, and my salvation, that I will be to you, all my life long,
loyal subject and faithful servant; I will never fail you nor desert you; I will
have while I live no desires or designs of importance which are not
suggested by your Majesty himself; nor will I ever be cognizant of them in
the case of others, though they were my own children, without expressly
opposing them and giving you notice of them at once.’ ‘There, there,
cousin,’ rejoined the king, ‘I quite believe it; and that you may be able to
love me and serve me long, go rest you, refresh you, and drink a draught at
the castle. I have in my cellars some Arbois wine, of which I will send you
two bottles, for well I know that you do not dislike it. And here is Rosny,
whom I will lend you to accompany you, to do the honors of the house and
to conduct you to your chamber: he is one of my oldest servants, and one of
those who have been most rejoiced to see that you would love me and serve
me cordially.’” [OEconomies royales, t. iii. pp. 7-10.]
Mayenne was as good as his word. After the edict of Folembray, he lived
fourteen years at the court of Henry IV., whom he survived only about
sixteen months [for he died on the 4th of October, 1611, and Henry IV. was
assassinated by Ravaillac on the 13th of May, 1610], and during all that
time he was loyal and faithful to him, never giving him any but good
counsels and sometimes rendering him useful services. A rare example of a

party-chief completely awakened and tamed by experience: it made him
disgusted with fanaticism, faction, civil war, and complicity with the
foreigner. He was the least brilliant but the most sensible, the most honest,
and the most French of the Guises. Henry IV., when seriously ill at
Fontainebleau in 1608, recommended him to Queen Mary de’ Medici as one
of the men whom it was most important to call to the councils of state; and,
at the approach of death, Mayenne, weary and weak in the lap of repose,
could conscientiously address those who were around him in such grand
and Christian language as this: “It is no new thing to know that I must die;
for twelve years past my lingering and painful life has been for the most
part an apprenticeship thereto. My sufferings have so dulled the sting of
death that I rather count upon it than dread it; happy to have had so long a
delay to teach me to make a good end, and to rid me of the things which
formerly kept me from that knowledge. Happy to meet my end amongst
mine own people and to terminate by a peaceful death the sufferings and
miseries of my life. I formerly sought death amidst arms; but I am better
pleased, for my soul’s salvation, to meet it and embrace it on my bed than if
I had encountered it in battle, for the sake of the glory of the world.”
Let, us return to Henry IV. Since his declaration of war against Philip II.
he had gained much ground. He had fought gloriously, in his own person,
and beaten the Spaniards at Fontaine-Francaise. He had obtained from Pope
Clement VIII. the complete and solemn absolution which had been refused
to him the year before. Mayenne had submitted to him, and that submission
had been death to the League. Some military reverses were intermingled
with these political successes. Between the 25th of June, 1595, and the 10th
of March, 1597, the Spanish armies took, in Picardy and Artois, Le Catelet,
Doullens, Cambrai, Ardres, Ham, Guines and two towns of more
importance, Calais, still the object of English ambition and of offers on the
part of Queen Elizabeth to any one who could hand it over to her, and
Amiens, one of the keys to France on the frontier of the north. These checks
were not without compensation. Henry invested and took the strong place
of La Fere; and he retook Amiens after a six months’ struggle. A Spanish
plot for getting possession of Marseilles failed; the young Duke of Guise,
whom Henry had made governor of Provence, entered the city amidst
shouts of Hurrah for the king! “Now I am king!” cried Henry, on receiving
the news, so generally was Marseilles even then regarded as the queen of
the Mediterranean. The Duke of Epernon, who had attempted to make of

Provence an independent principality for himself, was obliged to leave it
and treat with the king, ever ready to grant easy terms to those who could
give up to him or sell him any portion of his kingdom. France was thus
being rapidly reconstituted. “Since the month of January, 1596, Burgundy,
parts of Forez, Auvergne, and Velay, the whole of Provence, half
Languedoc, and the last town of Poitou had been brought back to their
allegiance to the king. French territory and national unity had nothing more
to wait for, to complete their re-establishment, than a portion of Brittany
and four towns of Picardy still occupied by the Spaniards.” [Poirson,
Histoire du Regne de Henri IV., t. ii. p. 159.]
But these results were only obtained at enormous expense and by means
of pecuniary sacrifices, loans, imposts, obligations of every sort, which left
the king in inextricable embarrassment, and France in a condition of
exhaustion still further aggravated by the deplorable administration of the
public finances. On the 15th of April, 1596, Henry IV. wrote from Amiens
to Rosny, “My friend, you know as well as any of my servants what
troubles, labors, and fatigues I have had to go through to secure my life and
my dignity against so many sorts of enemies and perils. Nevertheless I
swear to you that all these traverses have not caused me so much affliction
and bitterness of spirit as the sorrow and annoyance I now feel at finding
thyself in continual controversies with those most in authority of my
servants, officers, and councillors of state, when I would fain set about
restoring this kingdom to its highest splendor, and relieving my poor
people, whom I love as my dear children (God having at present granted me
no others), from so many talliages, subsidies, vexations, and oppressions
whereof they daily make complaints to me. . . . Having written to them who
are of my council of finance how that I had a design of extreme importance
in hand for which I had need of a fund of eight hundred thousand crowns,
and therefore I begged and conjured them, by their loyalty and sincere
affection towards me and France, to labor diligently for the certain raising
of that sum, all their answers, after several delays, excuses, and reasons
whereof one destroyed another, had finally no other conclusion than
representations of difficulties and impossibilities. Nay, they feared not to
send me word that so far from being able to furnish me with so notable a
sum, they found great trouble in raising the funds to keep my household
going. . . . I am resolved to know truly whether the necessities which are
overwhelming me proceed from the malice, bad management, or ignorance

of those whom I employ, or, good sooth, from the diminution of my
revenues and the poverty of my people. And to that end, I mean to convoke
the three orders of my kingdom, for to have of them some advice and aid,
and meanwhile to establish among those people some loyal servant of mine,
whom I will put in authority little by little, in order that he may inform me
of what passes in my council, and enlighten me as to that which I desire to
know. I have, as I have already told you, cast my eyes upon you to serve me
in this commission, not doubting at all that I shall receive contentment and
advantage from your administration. And I wish to tell you the state to
which I am reduced, which is such that I am very near the enemy, and have
not, as you may say, a horse to fight on or a whole suit of harness to my
back. My shirts are all torn, my doublets out at elbows; my cupboard is
often bare, and for the last two days I have been dining and supping with
one and another; my purveyors say they have no more means of supplying
my table, especially as for more than six months they have had no money.
Judge whether I deserve to be so treated, and fail not to come. I have on my
mind, besides, two or three other matters of consequence on which I wish to
employ you the moment you arrive. Do not speak of all this to anybody
whatsoever, not even to your wife. Adieu, my friend, whom well I love.”
Henry IV. accomplished all that, when he wrote to Rosny, he had showed
himself resolved to undertake. External circumstances became favorable to
him. Since his conversion to Catholicism, England and her queen,
Elizabeth, had been colder in the cause of the French alliance. When, after
his declaration of war against Philip II., Henry demanded in London the
support on which he had believed that he might rely, Elizabeth answered by
demanding in her turn the cession of Calais as the price of her services.
Quite determined not to give up Calais to England, Henry, without
complaining of the demand, let the negotiation drag, confining himself to
saying that he was looking for friends, not for masters. When in April,
1596, it was known in London that Calais had been taken by the Spaniards,
Elizabeth sent word to Henry, then at Boulogne, that she would send him
prompt assistance if he promised, when Calais was recovered from the
Spaniards, to place it in the hands of the English. “If I must be despoiled,”
answered Henry, “I would rather it should be by my enemies than by my
friends. In the former case it will be a reverse of fortune, in the latter I
might be accused of poltroonery.” Elizabeth assured the French ambassador,
Harlay de Sancy, “that it had never been her intention to keep Calais, but

simply to take care that, in any case, this important place should not remain
in the hands of the common enemy whilst the king was engaged in other
enterprises; anyhow,” she added, “she had ordered the Earl of Essex,
admiral of the English fleet raised against Spain, to arm promptly in order
to go to the king’s assistance.” There was anxiety at that time in England
about the immense preparations being made by Philip for the invasion he
proposed to attempt against England, and for the putting to sea of his fleet,
the Grand Armada. In conversation with the high treasurer, Lord Burleigh,
Elizabeth’s chief minister, Sancy found him even colder than his queen;
Burleigh laid great stress upon all that the queen had already done for
France, and on the one million five hundred thousand gold crowns she had
lent to the king. “It would be more becoming,” he said, “in the king’s
envoys to thank the queen for the aid she had already furnished than to ask
for more; by dint of drawing water the well had gone dry; the queen could
offer the king only three thousand men, on condition that they were raised
at his own expense.” “If the king,” replied Sancy, “must expect neither
alliance nor effectual aid on your part, he will be much obliged to the queen
to let him know what course she takes, because he, on his side, will take
that which will be most expedient for his affairs.” Some of the king’s
councillors regarded it as possible that he should make peace with the King
of Spain, and did not refrain from letting as much be understood.
Negotiations in London seemed to be broken off; the French ambassadors
had taken leave of Elizabeth. The news that came from Spain altered the
tone of the English government; threats of Spanish invasion became day by
day more distinct and the Grand Armada more dreaded. Elizabeth sent word
to the ambassadors of France by some of her confidants, amongst others Sir
Robert Cecil, son of the high treasurer, that she was willing to give them a
last audience before their departure. The result of this audience was the
conclusion of a treaty of alliance offensive and defensive between France
and England against the King of Spain, with a mutual promise not to make,
one without the other, either peace or truce, with precise stipulations as to
the number and pay of the troops which the Queen of England should put in
the field for the service of the King of France, and, further, with a proviso
establishing freedom of trade between the two states. The treaty was drawn
up in London on the 24th of May, 1596, ratified at Rouen by Henry IV. on
the 19th of October following, and on the 31st of October the States-

General of Holland acceded to it, whilst regulating, accordingly, the extent
of their engagements.
Easy as to the part to be played by his allies in the war with Spain, Henry
IV. set to work upon the internal reforms and measures of which he strongly
felt the necessity. They were of two kinds; one administrative and financial,
the other political and religious; he wished at one and the same time to
consolidate the material forces of his government and to give his Protestant
subjects, lately his own brethren, the legal liberty and security which they
needed for their creed’s sake, and to which they had a right.
He began, about the middle of October, 1596, by bringing Rosny into the
council of finance, saying to him, “You promise me, you know, to be a good
manager, and that you and I shall lop arms and legs from Madame Grivelee,
as you have so often told me could be done.” Madame Grivelee (Mrs.
Pickings) was, in the language of the day, she who presided over illicit
gains made in the administration of the public finances. Rosny at once
undertook to accomplish that which he had promised the king. He made, in
person, a minute examination of four receiver-generals’ offices, in order,
with that to guide him, to get a correct idea of the amount derived from
imposts and the royal revenues, and of what became of this amount in its
passage from collection to employment for the defrayal of the expenses of
the state. “When he went on his inspection, the treasurers of France,
receivers, accountants, comptrollers, either absented themselves or refused
to produce him any register; he suspended some, frightened others,
surmounted the obstacles of every kind that were put in his way, and he
proved, from the principal items of receipt and expenditure at these four
general offices, so much and such fraudulence that he collected five
hundred thousand crowns (one million five hundred thousand livres of
those times, and about five million four hundred and ninety thousand francs
of the present date), had these sums placed in seventy carts, and drove them
to Rouen, where the king was and where the Assembly of Notables had just
met.”
It was not the states-general properly so called that Henry IV. had
convoked; he had considered that his authority was still too feebly
constituted, and even too much disputed in a portion of the kingdom, to
allow him to put it to such a test; and honest and sensible patriots had been
of the same opinion D’Aubigne himself, the most independent and fault-

finding spirit amongst his contemporaries, expressly says, “The troubles
which were not yet extinguished in France did not admit of a larger
convocation; the hearts of the people were not yet subdued and kneaded to
obedience, as appeared from the excitement which supervened.” [Histoire
universelle, t. iii. p. 526.] Besides, Henry himself acknowledged, in the
circular which he published on the 25th of July, 1596, at this juncture, the
superior agency of the states-general. “We would gladly have brought them
together in full assembly,” he said, “if the armed efforts of our enemies
allowed of any longer delay in finding a remedy for the plague which is
racking us so violently; our intent is, pending the coming of the said states,
to put a stop to all these disorders in the best and quickest way possible.”
“The king, moreover,” says Sully, “had no idea of imitating the kings his
predecessors in predilection for, and appointment of, certain deputies for
whom he had a particular fancy; but he referred the nomination thereof to
them of the church, of the noblesse, and of the people; and when they were
assembled, he prescribed to them no rules, forms, or limits, but left them
complete freedom of their opinions, utterances, suffrages, and
deliberations.” [OEconomies royales, t. iii. p. 29.] The notables met at
Rouen to the number of eighty, nine of the clergy, nineteen of the noblesse,
fifty-two of the third estate. The king opened the assembly on the 4th of
November, 1596, with these words, full of dignity, and powerful in their
vivid simplicity: “If I desired to win the title of orator, I would have learned
by rote some fine, long speech, and would deliver it to you with proper
gravity. But, gentlemen, my desire prompts me towards two more glorious
titles, the names of deliverer and restorer of this kingdom. In order to attain
whereto I have gathered you together. You know to your cost, as I to mine,
that when it pleased God to call me to this crown, I found France not only
all but ruined, but almost entirely lost to Frenchmen. By the divine favor, by
the prayers and the good counsels of my servants who are not in the
profession of arms, by the sword of my brave and generous noblesse, from
whom I single out not the princes, upon the honor of a gentleman, as the
holders of our proudest title, and by my own pains and labors, I have
preserved her from perdition. Let us now preserve her from ruin. Share, my
dear subjects, in this second triumph as you did in the first. I have not
summoned you, like my predecessors, to get your approbation of their own
wills. I have had you assembled in order to receive your counsels, put faith
in them, follow them, in short, place myself under guardianship in your

hands; a desire but little congenial to kings, graybeards, and conquerors.
But the violent love I feel towards my subjects, and the extreme desire I
have to add those two proud titles to that of king, make everything easy and
honorable to me.”
L’Estoile relates that the king’s favorite, Gabrielle d’Estrees, was at the
session behind some tapestry, and that, Henry IV. having asked what she
thought of his speech, she answered, “I never heard better spoken; only I
was astonished that you spoke of placing yourself under guardianship.”
“Ventre saint-gris,” replied the king, “that is true; but I mean with my sword
by my side.” [Journal de Pierre l’Estoile, t. iii. p. 185.]
The assembly of notables sat from November 4, 1596, to January 29,
1597, without introducing into the financial regimen any really effective
reforms; the rating board (conseil de raison), the institution of which they
had demanded of the king, in connection with the fixing of imposts and
employment of public revenues, was tried without success, and was not
long before, of its own accord, resigning its power into the king’s hands; but
the mere convocation of this assembly was a striking instance of the
homage paid by Henry IV. to that fundamental maxim of free government,
which, as early as under Louis XI., Philip de Commynes expressed in these
terms: “There is no king or lord on earth who hath power, over and above
his own property, to put a single penny on his subjects without grant and
consent of those who have to pay, unless by tyranny and violence.” The
ideas expressed and the counsels given by the assembly of notables were
not, however, without good effect upon the general administration of the
state; but the principal and most salutary result of its presence and influence
was the personal authority which Sully drew from it, and of which he did
not hesitate to make full use. Having become superintendent-general of
finance and grand master of the ordnance, he exerted all his power to put in
practice, as regarded the financial department, a system of receipts and
expenses, and as regarded materials for the service of war, the reforms and
maxims of economy, accountability, and supervision, which were suggested
to him by his great good sense, and in which Henry IV. supported him with
the spirit of one who well appreciated the strength they conferred upon his
government, civil and military.
His relations with the Protestants gave him embarrassments to surmount
and reforms to accomplish of quite a different sort, and more difficult still.

At his accession, their satisfaction had not been untinged by disquietude;
they foresaw the sacrifices the king would be obliged to make to his new
and powerful friends the Catholics. His conversion to Catholicism threw
into more or less open opposition the most zealous and some of the
ambitious members of his late church. It was not long before their feelings
burst forth in reproaches, alarms, and attacks. In 1597, a pamphlet, entitled
The Plaints of the Reformed Churches of France [Memoires de la Ligue, t.
vi. pp. 428-486], was published and spread prodigiously. “None can take it
ill,” said the anonymous author, “that we who make profession of the
Reformed religion should come forward to get a hearing for our plaints
touching so many deeds of outrage, violence, and injustice which are daily
done to us, and done not here or there, but in all places of the realm; done at
a time, under a reign in which they seemed less likely, and which ought to
have given us better hopes. . . . We, sir, are neither Spaniards nor Leaguers;
we have had such happiness as to see you, almost born and cradled, at any
rate brought up, amongst us; we have employed our properties, our lives, in
order to prevent the effects of ill will on the part of those who, from your
cradle, sought your ruin; we have, with you and under your wise and valiant
leadership, made the chiefest efforts for the preservation of the crown,
which, thank God, is now upon your head. . . . We do beseech you, sir, to
give us permission to have the particulars of our grievances heard both by
your Majesty and all your French, for we do make plaint of all the French.
Not that in so great and populous a kingdom we should imagine that there
are not still to be found some whose hearts bleed to see indignities so
inhuman; but of what avail to us is all they may have in them of what is
good, humane, and French? A part of them are so soft, so timorous, that
they would not so much as dare to show a symptom of not liking that which
displeases them; and if, when they see us so maltreated, they do summon up
sufficient boldness to look another way, and think that they have done but
their duty, still do they tremble with fear of being taken for favorers of
heretics.”
The writer then enters upon an exposition of all the persecutions, all the
acts of injustice, all the evils of every kind that the reformers have to suffer.
He lays the blame of them, as he has just said, upon the whole French
community, the noblesse, the commons, the magistracy, as well as the
Catholic priests and monks; he enumerates a multitude of special facts in
support of his plaints. “Good God!” he cries, “that there should be no class,

no estate in France, from which we can hope for any relief! None from
which we may not fear lest ruin come upon us!” And he ends by saying,
“Stem, then, sir, with your good will and your authority, the tide of our
troubles. Direct your counsels towards giving us some security. Accustom
your kingdom to at least endure us, if it will not love us. We demand of
your Majesty an edict which may give us enjoyment of that which is
common to all your subjects, that is to say, of far less than you have granted
to your enemies, your rebels of the League.”
We will not stop to inquire whether the matters stated in these plaints are
authentic or disputable, accurate or exaggerated; it is probable that they
contain a great deal of truth, and that, even under Henry IV., the Protestants
had many sufferings to endure and disregarded rights to recover. The
mistake they made and the injustice they showed consisted in not taking
into, account all the good that Henry IV. had done them and was daily doing
them, and in calling upon him, at a moment’s notice, to secure to them by
an edict all the good that it was not in his power to do them. We purpose
just to give a brief summary of the ameliorations introduced into their
position under him, even before the edict of Nantes, and to transfer the
responsibility for all they still lacked to the cause indicated by themselves
in their plaints, when they take to task all the French on the Catholic side,
who, in the sixteenth century, disregarded in France the rights of creed and
of religious life, just as the Protestants themselves disregarded them in
England so far as the Catholics were concerned.
One fact immediately deserves to be pointed out; and that is the number
and the practical character of meetings officially held at this period by the
Protestants: an indisputable proof of the liberty they enjoyed. These
meetings were of two sorts; one, the synods, were for the purpose of
regulating their faith, their worship, their purely religious affairs. Between
1594 and 1609, under the sway of Henry IV., Catholic king, seven national
synods of the Protestant church in France held their sessions in seven
different towns, and discussed with perfect freedom such questions of
religious doctrine and discipline as were interesting to them. At the same
epoch, between 1593 and 1608, the French Protestants met at eleven
assemblies, specially summoned to deliberate, not in these cases upon
questions of faith and religious discipline, but upon their temporal and
political interests, upon their relations towards the state, and upon the
conduct they were to adopt under the circumstances of their times. The

principle to which minds, and even matters, to a certain extent, have now
attained, the deep-seated separation between the civil and the religious life,
and their mutual independence, this higher principle was unknown to the
sixteenth century; the believer and the citizen were then but one, and the
efforts of laws and governments were directed towards bringing the whole
nation entire into the same state of unity. And as they did not succeed
therein, their attempts produced strife instead of unity, war instead of peace.
When the French Protestants of the sixteenth century met in the assemblies
which they themselves called political, they acted as one nation confronting
another nation, and labored to form a state within state. We will borrow
from the intelligent and learned Histoire d’Henri IV., by M. Poirson, (t. ii.
pp. 497-500), a picture of one of those assemblies and its work. “After the
king’s abjuration, and at the end of the year 1593, the French Huguenots
renewed at Mantes their old union, and swore to live and die united in their
profession of faith. Henry was in hopes that they would stop short at a
religious demonstration; but they made it a starting-point for a new political
and military organization on behalf of the Calvinistic party. They took
advantage of a general permission granted them by Henry, and met, not in
synod, but in general assembly, at the town of Sainte Foy, in the month of
June, 1594. Thereupon they divided all France into nine great provinces or
circles, composed each of several governments or provinces of the realm.
Each circle had a separate council, composed of from five to seven
members, and commissioned to fix and apportion the separate imposts, to
keep up a standing army, to collect the supplies necessary for the
maintenance and defence of the party. The Calvinistic republic had its
general assemblies, composed of nine deputies or representatives from each
of the nine circles. These assemblies were invested with authority to order,
on the general account, all that the juncture required, that is to say, with a
legislative power distinct from that of the crown and nation. . . . If the king
ceased to pay the sums necessary to keep up the garrisons in the towns left
to the Reformers, the governors were to seize the talliages in the hands of
the king’s receivers, and apply the money to the payment of the garrisons.
And in case the central power should attempt to repress these violent
procedures, or to substitute as commandant in those places a Catholic for a
Protestant, all the Calvinists of the locality and the neighboring districts
were to unite and rise in order to give the assistance of the strong hand to
the Protestant governors so attacked. Independently of the ordinary imposts,

a special impost was laid on the Calvinists, and gave their leaders the
disposal of a yearly sum of one hundred and twenty thousand livres (four
hundred and forty thousand francs of the present day). The Calvinistic party
had thus a territorial area, an administration, finances, a legislative power
and an executive power independent of those of the country; or, in other
words, the means of taking resolutions contrary to those of the mass of the
nation, and of upholding them by revolt. All they wanted was a Huguenot
stadtholder to oppose to the King of France, and they were looking out for
one.”
Henry IV. did not delude himself as to the tendency of such organization
amongst those of his late party. “He rebuffed very sternly (and wisely),”
says L’Estoile, “those who spoke to him of it. ‘As for a protector,’ he told
them, ‘he would have them to understand that there was no other protector
in France but himself for one side or the other; the first man who should be
so daring as to assume the title would do so at the risk of his life; he might
be quite certain of that.’” Had Henry IV. been permitted to read the secrets
of a not so very distant future, he might have told the Huguenots of his day
that the time was not so far off when their pretension to political
organization and to the formation of a state within the state, would
compromise their religious liberty and furnish the absolute government of
Louis XIV. with excuses for abolishing the protective edict which Henry
IV.‘s sympathy was on the point of granting them, and which, so far as its
purely religious provisions went, was duly respected by the sagacity of
Cardinal Richelieu.
After his conversion to Catholicism, and during the whole of his reign, it
was one of Henry IV.‘s constant anxieties to show himself well-disposed
towards his old friends, and to do for them all he could do without
compromising the public peace in France, or abdicating in his own person
the authority he needed to maintain order and peace. Some of the edicts
published by his predecessors during the intervals of civil war, notably the
edict of Poitiers issued by Henry III., had granted the Protestants free
exercise of their worship in the castles of the Calvinistic lords who had
jurisdiction, to the number of thirty-five hundred, and in the faubourgs of
one town or borough of each bailiwick of the realm, except the bailiwick of
Paris. Further, the holding of properties and heritages, union by marriage
with Catholics, and the admission of Protestants to the employments,
offices, and dignities of the realm, were recognized by this edict. These

rights, in black and white, had often been violated by the different
authorities, or suspended during the wars; Henry IV. maintained them or put
them in force again, and supported the application of them or decreed the
extension of them. It was calculated that there were in France eight hundred
towns and three hundred bailiwicks or seneschalties; the treaties concluded
with the League had expressly prohibited the exercise of Protestant worship
in forty towns and seventeen bailiwicks; Henry IV. tolerated it everywhere
else. The prohibition was strict as regarded Paris and ten leagues round; but,
as early as 1594, three months after his entry into Paris, Henry aided the
Reformers in the unostentatious celebration of their own form in the
Faubourg St. Germain; and he authorized the use of it at court for religious
ceremonies, especially for marriages. Three successive edicts, two issued at
Mantes in 1591 and 1593, and the third at St. Germain in 1597, confirmed
and developed these signs of progress in the path of religious liberty.

The Parliaments had in general refused to enregister these decrees a fact
which gave them an incomplete and provisional character; but equitable and
persistent measures on the king’s part prevailed upon the Parliament of
Paris to enregister the edict of St. Germain; and the Parliament of Dijon and
nearly all the other Parliaments of the kingdom followed this example. One
of the principal provisions of this last edict declared Protestants competent
to fill all the offices and dignities of the kingdom. It had many times been
inserted in preceding edicts, but always rejected by the Parliaments or
formally revoked. Henry IV. brought it into force and credit by putting it
extensively in practice, without entering upon discussion of it and without
adding any comment upon it. In 1590 he had given Palleseuil the

government of Neuchatel in Normandy; he had introduced Hurault Dufay,
Du Plessis-Mornay and Rosny into the council of state; in 1594 he had
appointed the last a member of the council of finance; Soffray de Colignon,
La Force, Lesdiguieres, and Sancy were summoned to the most important
functions; Turenne, in 1594, was raised to the dignity of marshal of France;
and in 1595 La Tremoille was made duke and peer. They were all
Protestants. Their number and their rank put the matter beyond all dispute;
it was a natural consequence of the social condition of France; it became an
habitual practice with the government.
Nevertheless the complaints and requirements of the malcontent
Protestants continued, and became day by day more vehement; in 1596 and
1597 the assemblies of Saumur, Loudun, and Vendome became their organs
of expression; and messengers were sent with them to the camp before La
Fere, which Henry IV. was at that time besieging. He deferred his reply.
Two of the principal Protestant leaders, the Dukes of Bouillon and La
Tremoille, suddenly took extreme measures; they left the king and his army,
carrying off their troops with them, one to Auvergne and the other to
Poitou. The deputies from the assembly of Loudun started back again at the
same time, as if for the purpose of giving the word to arm in their
provinces. Du Plessis-Mornay and his wife, the most zealous of the
Protestants who were faithful at the same time to their cause and to the
king, bear witness to this threatening crisis. “The deputies,” says Madame
du Mornay in her Memoires, “returned each to his own province, with the
intention of taking the cure of their evils into their own hands, whence
would infallibly have ensued trouble enough to complete the ruin of this
state had not the king, by the management of M. du Plessis, been warned of
this imminent danger, and by him persuaded to send off and treat in good
earnest with the said assembly.” “These gentry, rebuffed at court,” says Du
Plessis-Mornay himself in a letter to the Duke of Bouillon, “have resolved
to take the cure into their own hands; to that end they have been authorized,
and by actions which do not seem to lead them directly thither they will
find that they have passed the Rubicon right merrily.” It was as it were a
new and a Protestant League just coming to a head. Henry IV. was at that
time engaged in the most important negotiation of his reign. After a long
and difficult siege he had just retaken. Amiens. He thought it a favorable
moment at which to treat for peace with Spain, and put an end to an onerous
war which he had been for so long sustaining. He informed the Queen of

England of his intention, “begging her, if the position of her affairs did not
permit her to take part in the treaty he was meditating with Spain, to let him
know clearly what he must do to preserve amity and good understanding
between the two crowns, for he would always prefer an ally like her to
reconciled foes such as the Spaniards.” He addressed the same notification
to the Dutch government. Elizabeth on one hand and the states-general on
the other tried to dissuade him from peace with Spain, and to get him
actively re-engaged in the strife from which they were not disposed to
emerge. He persisted in his purpose whilst setting before them his reasons
for it, and binding himself to second faithfully their efforts by all pacific
means. A congress was opened in January, 1598, at Vervins in Picardy,
through the mediation of Pope Clement VIII., anxious to become the
pacificator of Catholic Europe. The French plenipotentiaries, Pomponne de
Bellievre and Brulart de Silleri, had instructions to obtain the restoration to
the king of all towns and places taken by the Spaniards from France since
the treaty of peace of Cateau-Cambresis, and to have the Queen of England
and the United Provinces, if they testified a desire for it, included in the
treaty, or, at any rate, to secure for them a truce. After three months’
conferences the treaty of peace was concluded at Vervins on the 2d of May,
1598, the principal condition being, that King Philip II. should restore to
France the towns of Calais, Ardres, Doullens, Le Catelet, and Blavet; that
he should re-enter upon possession of the countship of Charolais; and that,
if either of the two sovereigns had any claims to make against one of the
states their allies in this treaty, “he should prosecute them only by way of
law, before competent judges, and not by force, in any manner whatever.”
The Queen of England took no decisive resolution. When once the treaty
was concluded, Henry IV., on signing it, said to the Duke of Epernon, “With
this stroke of my pen I have just done more exploits than I should have
done in a long while with the best swords in my kingdom.”
A month before the conclusion of the treaty of peace at Vervins with
Philip II., Henry IV. had signed and published at Paris on the 13th of April,
1598, the edict of Nantes, his treaty of peace with the Protestant
malcontents. This treaty, drawn up in ninety-two open and fifty-six secret
articles, was a code of old and new laws regulating the civil and religious
position of Protestants in France, the conditions and guarantees of their
worship, their liberties, and their special obligations in their relations
whether with the crown or with their Catholic fellow-countrymen. By this

code Henry IV. added a great deal to the rights of the Protestants and to the
duties of the state towards them. Their worship was authorized not only in
the castles of the lords high-justiciary, who numbered thirty-five hundred,
but also in the castles of simple noblemen who enjoyed no high-justiciary
rights, provided that the number of those present did not exceed thirty. Two
towns or two boroughs, instead of one, had the same religious rights in each
bailiwick or seneschalty of the kingdom. The state was charged with the
duty of providing for the salaries of the Protestant ministers and rectors in
their colleges or schools, and an annual sum of one hundred and sixty-five
thousand livres of those times (four hundred and ninety-five thousand
francs of the present day) was allowed for that purpose. Donations and
legacies to be so applied were authorized. The children of Protestants were
admitted into the universities, colleges, schools, and hospitals, without
distinction between them and Catholics. There was great difficulty in
securing for them, in all the Parliaments of the kingdom, impartial justice;
and a special chamber, called the edict-chamber, was instituted for the trial
of all causes in which they were interested. Catholic judges could not sit in
this chamber unless with their consent and on their presentation. In the
Parliaments of Bordeaux, Toulouse, and Grenoble, the edict-chamber was
composed of two presidents, one a Catholic and the other a Reformer, and
of twelve councillors, of whom six were Reformers. The Parliaments had
hitherto refused to admit Reformers into their midst; in the end the
Parliament of Paris admitted six, one into the edict-chamber and five into
the appeal-chamber (enquetes). The edict of Nantes retained, at first for
eight years and then for four more, in the hands of the Protestants the towns
which war or treaties had put in their possession, and which numbered, it is
said, two hundred. The king was bound to bear the burden of keeping up
their fortifications and paying their garrisons; and Henry IV. devoted to that
object five hundred and forty thousand livres of those times, or about two
million francs of our day. When the edict thus regulating the position and
rights of Protestants was published, it was no longer on their part, but on
that of the Catholics, that lively protests were raised. Many Catholics
violently opposed the execution of the new law; they got up processions at
Tours to excite the populace against the edict, and at Le Mans to induce the
Parliament of Normandy to reject it. The Parliament of Paris put in the way
of its registration retardations which seemed to forebode a refusal. Henry
summoned to the Louvre deputies from all the chambers. “What I have

done,” he said to them, “is for the good of peace. I have made it abroad; I
wish to make it at home. Necessity forced me to this decree. They who
would prevent it from passing would have war. You see me in my closet. I
speak to you, not in royal robe, or with sword and cape, as my predecessors
did, nor as a prince receiving an embassy, but as a father of a family in his
doublet conversing familiarly with his children. It is said that I am minded
to favor them of the religion; there is a mind to entertain some mistrust of
me. . . . I know that cabals have been got up in the Parliament, that seditious
preachers have been set on. . . . The preachers utter words by way of
doctrine for to build up rather than pull down sedition. That is the road
formerly, taken to the making of barricades, and to proceeding by degrees to
the parricide of the late king. I will cut the roots of all these factions; I will
make short work of those who foment them. I have scaled the walls of
cities; you may be sure I shall scale barricades. You must consider that what
I am doing is for a good purpose, and let my past behavior go bail for it.”
Parliaments and Protestants, all saw that they had to do not only with a
strong-willed king, but with a judicious and clearsighted man, a true French
patriot, who was sincerely concerned for the public interest, and who had
won his spurs in the art of governing parties by making for each its own
place in the state. It was scarcely five years ago that the king who was now
publishing the edict of Nantes had become a Catholic; the Parliaments
enregistered the decree. The Protestant malcontents resigned themselves to
the necessity of being content with it. Whatever their imperfections and the
objections that might be raised to them, the peace of Vervins and the edict
of Narrtes were, amidst the obstacles and perils encountered at every step
by the government of Henry IV., the two most timely and most beneficial
acts in the world for France.
Four months after the conclusion of the treaty of Vervins, on the 13th of
September, 1598, Philip II. died at the Escurial, “prison, cloister, and tomb
all in one,” as M. Rosseau St. Hilaire very well remarks [Histoire
d’Espagne, t. x. pp. 335-363], situated eight leagues from Madrid. Philip
was so ill, and so cruelly racked by gout and fever, that it was doubted
whether he could be removed thither; “but a collection of relics, amassed by
his orders in Germany, had just arrived at the Escurial, and the festival of
consecration was to take place within a few days. ‘I desire that I be borne
alive thither where my tomb already is,’ said Philip.” He was laid in a litter
borne by men who walked at a snail’s pace, in order to avoid all shaking.

Forced to halt every instant, he took six days to do the eight leagues which
separated him from his last resting-place. There he died in atrocious
agonies, and after a very painful operation, endured with unalterable
courage and calmness; he had ordered to be placed in front of his bed the
bier in which his body was to lie and the crucifix which his father, Charles
V., at his death in the monastery of Yuste, had held in his hand. During a
reign of forty-two years Philip II. was, systematically and at any price, on
the score of what he regarded as the divine right of the Catholic church and
of his own kingship, the patron of absolute power in Europe. Earnest and
sincere in his faith, licentious without open scandal in his private life,
unscrupulous and pitiless in the service of the religious and political cause
he had embraced, he was capable of any lie, one might almost say of any
crime, without having his conscience troubled by it. A wicked man and a
frightful example of what a naturally cold and hard spirit may become when
it is a prey to all the temptations of despotism and to two sole passions,
egotism and fanaticism.
After the death of Philip II. and during the first years of the reign of his
son Philip III., war continued between Spain on one side, and England, the
United Provinces, and the German Protestants on the other, but languidly
and without any results to signify. Henry IV. held aloof from the strife, all
the while permitting his Huguenot subjects to take part in it freely and at
their own risks. On the 3d 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. Besides,
she combined with the exigencies of a king’s position the instincts of a
woman; she had the vanities rather than the weaknesses of one; she would
fain have inspired and responded to the passions natural to one; but policy
always had the dominion over her sentiments without extinguishing them,
and the proud sovereign sent to the block the overweening and almost rebel
subject whom she afterwards grievously regretted. These inconsistent
resolutions and emotions caused Elizabeth’s life to be one of agitation,
though without warmth, and devoid of serenity as of sweetness. And so,

when she grew old, she was disgusted with it and weary of it; she took no
pleasure any more in thing or person; she could no longer bear herself,
either in her court or in her bed or elsewhere; she decked herself out to lie
stretched upon cushions and there remain motionless, casting about her
vague glances which seemed to seek after that for which she did not ask.
She ended by repelling her physicians and even refusing nourishment.
When her ministers saw her thus, almost insensible and dying, they were
emboldened to remind her of what she had said to them one day at White-
Hall, “My throne must be a king’s throne.” At this reminder she seemed to
rouse herself, and repeated the same words, adding, “I will not have a rascal
(vaurien) to succeed me.” Sir Robert Cecil asked her what she meant by
that expression. “I tell you that I must have a king to succeed me; who can
that be but my cousin of Scotland?” After having indicated the King of
Scotland, James Stuart, son of the fair rival whom she had sent to the block,
Elizabeth remained speechless. The Archbishop of Canterbury commenced
praying, breaking off at intervals; twice the queen signed to him to go on.
Her advisers returned in the evening, and begged her to indicate to them by
signs if she were still of the same mind; she raised her arms and crossed
them above her head. Then she seemed to fall into a dreamy state. At three
o’clock, during the night, she quietly passed away. Some few hours
afterwards, her counsellors in assembly resolved to proclaim James Stuart,
King of Scotland, King of England, as the nearest of kin to the late queen,
and indicated by her on her death-bed.
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. The conversation of an independent
thinker like Montaigne had, at the least, as much attraction for him as that
of his comrades in arms. Long before Henry IV. was King of France, on the
19th of December, 1584, Montaigne, wrote, “The King of Navarre came to
see me at Montaigne where he had never been before, and was there two
days, attended by my people without any of his own officers; he permitted
neither tasting (essai) nor state-banquet (couvert), and slept in my bed.” On
the 24th of October, 1587, after winning the battle of Contras, Henry
stopped to dine at Montaigne’s house, though its possessor had remained
faithful to Henry III., whose troops had just lost the battle; and on the 18th
of January, 1590, when the King of Navarre, now become King of France,
besieged and took the town of Lisieux, Montaigne wrote to him, “All the
time through, sir, I have observed in you this same fortune that is now
yours; and you may remember that even when I had to make confession
thereof to my parish-priest I did not omit to regard your successes with a
kindly eye. Now, with more reason and freedom, I hug them to my heart.
Yonder they do you service by effects; but they do you no less service here
by reputation. The report goes as far as the shot. We could not derive from
the justice of your cause arguments so powerful in sustaining or reducing
your subjects as we do from the news of the prosperity of your enterprises.”
Abroad the policy of Henry IV. was as judicious and far sighted as it was
just and sympathetic at home. There has been much writing and dissertation
about what has been called his grand design. This name has been given to a
plan for the religious and political organization of Christendom, consisting
in the division of Europe amongst three religions, the Catholic, the
Calvinistic, and the Lutheran, and into fifteen states, great and small,
monarchical or republican, with equal rights, alone recognized as members
of the Christian confederation, regulating in concert their common affairs,
and pacifically making up their differences, whilst all the while preserving
their national existence. This plan is lengthily and approvingly set forth,
several times over, in the OEconomies royales, which Sully’s secretaries
wrote at his suggestion, and probably sometimes at his dictation. Henry IV.

was a prince as expansive in ideas as he was inventive, who was a master of
the art of pleasing, and himself took great pleasure in the freedom and
unconstraint of conversation. No doubt the notions of the grand design
often came into his head, and he often talked about them to Sully, his
confidant in what he thought as well as in what he did. Sully, for his part
was a methodical spirit, a regular downright putter in practice, evidently
struck and charmed by the richness and grandeur of the prospects placed
before his eyes by his king, and feeling pleasure in shedding light upon
them whilst giving them a more positive and more complete shape than
belonged to their first and original appearance. And thus came down to us
the grand design, which, so far as Henry IV. was concerned, was never a
definite project. His true external policy was much more real and practical.
He had seen and experienced the evils of religious hatred and persecution.
He had been a great sufferer from the supremacy of the house of Austria in
Europe, and he had for a long while opposed it. When he became the most
puissant and most regarded of European kings, he set his heart very strongly
on two things—toleration for the three religions which had succeeded in
establishing themselves in Europe and showing themselves capable of
contending one against another, and the abasement of the house of Austria,
which, even after the death of Charles V. and of Philip II., remained the real
and the formidable rival of France. The external policy of Henry from the
treaty of Vervins to his death, was religious peace in Europe and the alliance
of Catholic France with Protestant England and Germany against Spain and
Austria. He showed constant respect and deference towards the papacy, a
power highly regarded in both the rival camps, though much fallen from the
substantial importance it had possessed in Europe during the middle ages.
French policy striving against Spanish policy, such was the true and the
only serious characteristic of the grand design.
Four men, very unequal in influence as well as merit, Sully, Villeroi, Du
Plessis-Mornay, and D’Aubigne, did Henry IV. effective service, by very
different processes and in very different degrees, towards establishing and
rendering successful this internal and external policy. Three were
Protestants; Villeroi alone was a Catholic. Sully is beyond comparison with
the other three. He is the only one whom Henry IV. called my friend; the
only one who had participated in all the life and all the government of
Henry IV., his evil as well as his exalted fortunes, his most painful
embarrassments at home as well as his greatest political acts; the only one

whose name has remained inseparably connected with that of a master
whom he served without servility as well as without any attempt to
domineer. There is no idea of entering here upon his personal history; we
would only indicate his place in that of his king. Maximilian de Bethune-
Rosny, born in 1559, and six years younger than Henry of Navarre, was
barely seventeen when in 1576 he attended Henry on his flight from the
court of France to go and recover in Navarre his independence of position
and character. Rosny was content at first to serve him as a volunteer, “in
order,” he said, “to learn the profession of arms from its first rudiments.”
He speedily did himself honor in several actions. In 1580 the King of
Navarre took him as chamberlain and counsellor. On becoming King of
France, Henry IV., in 1594, made him secretary of state; in 1596, put him
on the council of finance; in 1597, appointed him grand surveyor of France,
and, in 1599, superintendent-general of finance and master of the ordnance.
In 1602 he was made Marquis de Rosny and councillor of honor in the
Parliament; then governor of the Bastille, superintendent of fortifications,
and surveyor of Paris; in 1603, governor of Poitou. Lastly, in 1606, his
estate of Sully-sur-Loire was raised to a duchy-peerage, and he was living
under this name, which has become his historical name, when, in 1610, the
assassination of Henry IV. sent into retirement, for thirty-one years, the
confidant of all his thoughts and the principal minister of a reign which,
independently of the sums usefully expended for the service of the state and
the advancement of public prosperity, had extinguished, according to the
most trustworthy evidence, two hundred and thirty-five millions of debts,
and which left in the coffers of the state, in ready money or in safe
securities, forty-three million, one hundred and thirty-eight thousand, four
hundred and ninety livres.
Nicholas de Neufville, Lord of Villeroi, who was born in 1543, and
whose grandfather had been secretary of state under Francis I., was, whilst
Henry III. was still reigning, member of a small secret council at which all
questions relating to Protestants were treated of. Though a strict Catholic,
and convinced that the King of France ought to be openly in the ranks of the
Catholics, and to govern with their support, he sometimes gave Henry III.
some free-spoken and wise counsels. When he saw him spending his time
with the brotherhoods of penitents whose head he had declared himself,
“Sir,” said he, “debts and obligations are considered according to dates, and
therefore old debts ought to be paid before new ones. You were King of

France before you were head of the brotherhoods; your conscience binds
you to render to the kingship that which you owe it rather than to the
fraternity that which you have promised it. You can excuse yourself from
one, but not from the other. You only wear the sackcloth when you please,
but you have the crown always on your head.” When the wars of religion
broke out, when the League took form and Henry de Guise had been
assassinated at Blois, Villeroi, naturally a Leaguer and a moderate Leaguer,
became the immediate adviser of the Duke of Mayenne. After Henry III.‘s
death, as soon as he heard that Henry IV. promised to have himself
instructed in the Catholic religion, he announced his intention of
recognizing him if he held to this engagement; and he held to his own, for
he was during five years the intermediary between Henry IV. and Mayenne,
incessantly laboring to reconcile them, and to prevent the estates of the
League from giving the crown of France to a Spanish princess. Villeroi was
a Leaguer of the patriotically French type. And so Henry IV., as soon as he
was firm upon his throne, summoned him to his councils, and confided to
him the direction of foreign affairs. The late Leaguer sat beside Sully, and
exerted himself to give the prevalence, in Henry IV.‘s external policy, to
Catholic maxims and alliances, whilst Sully, remaining firmly Protestant in
the service of his king turned Catholic, continued to be in foreign matters
the champion of Protestant policy and alliances. There was thus seen,
during the sixteenth century, in the French monarchy, a phenomenon which
was to repeat itself during the eighteenth in the republic of the United States
of America, when, in 1789, its president, Washington, summoned to his
cabinet Hamilton and Jefferson together, one the stanchest of the
aristocratic federalists and the other the warm defender of democratic
principles and tendencies. Washington, in his lofty and calm impartiality,
considered that, to govern the nascent republic, he had need of both; and he
found a way, in fact, to make both of service to him. Henry IV. had
perceived himself to be in an analogous position with France and Europe
divided between Catholics and Protestants, whom he aspired to pacificate.
He likewise succeeded. An incomplete success, however, as generally.
happens when the point attained is an adjournment of knotty questions
which war has vainly attempted to cut, and the course of ideas and events
has not yet had time to unravel.
Henry IV. made so great a case of Villeroi’s co-operation and influence,
that, without loving him as he loved Sully, he upheld him and kept him as

secretary of state for foreign affairs to the end of his reign. He precisely
defined his peculiar merit when he said, “Princes have servants of all values
and all sorts; some do their own business before that of their master; others
do their master’s and do not forget their own; but Villeroi believes that his
master’s business is his own, and he bestows thereon the same zeal that
another does in pushing his own suit or laboring at his own vine.” Though
short and frigidly written, the Memoires of Villeroi give, in fact, the idea of
a man absorbed in his commission and regarding it as his own business as
well as that of his king and country.
Philip du Plessis-Mornay occupied a smaller place than Sully and Villeroi
in the government of Henry IV.; but he held and deserves to keep a great
one in the history of his times. He was the most eminent and also the most
moderate of the men of profound piety and conviction of whom the
Reformation had made a complete conquest, soul and body, and who placed
their public fidelity to their religious creed above every other interest and
every other affair in this world. He openly blamed and bitterly deplored
Henry IV.‘s conversion to Catholicism, but he did not ignore the weighty
motives for it; his disapproval and his vexation did not make him forget the
great qualities of his king or the services he was rendering France, or his
own duty and his earlier feelings towards him. This unbending Protestant,
who had contributed as much as anybody to put Henry IV. on the throne,
who had been admitted further than anybody, except Sully, to his intimacy,
who ever regretted that his king had abandoned his faith, who braved all
perils and all disgraces to keep and maintain his own, this Mornay,
malcontent, saddened, all but banished from court, assailed by his friends’
irritation and touched by their sufferings, never took part against the king
whom he blamed, and of whom he thought he had to complain, in any
faction or any intrigue; on the contrary, he remained unshakably faithful to
him, incessantly striving to maintain or re-establish in the Protestant church
in France some little order and peace, and between the Protestants and
Henry IV. some little mutual confidence and friendliness. Mornay had made
up his mind to serve forever a king who had saved his country. He remained
steadfast and active in his creed, but without falling beneath the yoke of any
narrow-minded idea, preserving his patriotic good sense in the midst of his
fervent piety, and bearing with sorrowful constancy his friends’ bursts of
anger and his king’s exhibitions of ingratitude. Between 1597 and 1605
three incidents supervened which put to the proof Henry IV.‘s feelings

towards his old and faithful servant. In October, 1597, Mornay, still
governor of Saumur, had gone to Angers to concert plans with Marshal de
Brissac for an expedition which, by order of the king, they were to make
into Brittany against the Duke of Mercoeur, not yet reduced to submission.
As he was passing along the street with only three or four of his men, he
was unexpectedly attacked by one Sieur de Saint-Phal, who, after calling
upon him to give some explanation as to a disagreement that had taken
place between them five months before, brutally struck him a blow on the
head with a stick, knocked him down, immediately mounted a horse that
was held all ready on the spot, and fled in haste, leaving Mornay in the
hands of ten or a dozen accomplices, who dealt him several sword-thrusts
as he was rising to defend himself, and who, in their turn, fled. Some
passers-by hurried up; Mornay’s wounds were found to be slight; but the
affair, which nobody hesitated to call murder, made a great noise; there was
general indignation; the king was at once informed of it; and whilst the
question was being discussed at Saumur whether Mornay ought to seek
reparation by way of arms or by that of law, Henry IV. wrote to him in his
own hand on the 8th of November, 1597:—
“M. du Plessis: I am extremely displeased at the outrage you have met
with, wherein I participate both as king and as your friend. As the former I
will do you justice and myself too. If I bore only the second title, you have
none whose sword would be more ready to leap from its scabbard than
mine, or who would put his life at your service more cheerfully than I. Take
this for granted, that, in effect, I will render you the offices of king, master,
and friend. And on this truthful assurance, I conclude, praying God to have
you in His holy keeping.”
Saint-Phal remained for a long while concealed in the very district,
amongst his relatives; but on the 12th of January, 1599, he was arrested and
put in the Bastille; and, according to the desire of Mornay himself, the king
decided that he should be brought before him, unarmed, should place one
knee on the ground, should ask his pardon, and then, assuming his arms,
should accordingly receive that pardon, first of all from Mornay, whom the
king had not permitted to exact in another way the reparation due to him,
and afterwards from the mouth of the king himself, together with a severe
admonition to take heed to himself for the future. The affair having thus
terminated, there was no more heard of Saint-Phal, and Mornay returned to

Saumur with a striking mark of the king’s sympathy, who, in his own
words, had felt pleasure “in avenging him as king and as friend.”
The second incident was of more political consequence, and neither the
king nor Mornay conducted themselves with sufficient discretion and
dignity. In July, 1598, Mornay published a treatise on the institution of the
eucharist in the Christian church, how and by what degrees the mass was
introduced in its place. It was not only an attack upon the fundamental
dogma and cult of the Catholic church; the pope was expressly styled
Antichrist in it. Clement VIII. wrote several times about it to Henry IV.,
complaining that a man of such high standing in the government and in the
king’s regard should treat so insultingly a sovereign in alliance with the
king, and head of the church to which the king belonged. The pope’s
complaint came opportunely. Henry IV. was at this time desirous of
obtaining from the court of Rome annulment of his marriage with
Marguerite de Valois, that he might be enabled to contract another; he did
not as yet say with whom. Mornay’s book was vigorously attacked, not only
in point of doctrine, but in point of fact; he was charged with having built
his foundation upon a large number of misquotations; and the Bishop of
Evreux, M. du Perron, a great friend of the king’s, whom he had always
supported and served, said that he was prepared to point out as such nearly
five hundred. The dispute grew warm between the two theologians; Mornay
demanded leave to prove the falsehood of the accusation; the bishop
accepted the challenge. For all his defence of his book and his erudition,
Mornay did not show any great hurry to enter upon the contest; and, on the
other hand, the bishop reduced the number of the quotations against which
he objected. The sum total of the quotations found fault with was fixed at
sixty. A conference was summoned to look into them, and six
commissioners, three Catholic and three Protestant, were appointed to give
judgment; De Thou and Pithou amongst the former, Dufresne la Canaye and
Casaubon amongst the latter. Erudition was worthily represented there, and
there was every probability of justice. The conference met on the 4th of
May, 1600, at Fontainebleau, in presence of the king and many great lords,
magistrates, ecclesiastics, and distinguished spectators.

Mornay began by owning that “out of four thousand quotations made by
him it was unlikely that some would not be found wherein he might have
erred, as he was human, but he was quite sure that it was never in bad
faith.” He then said that, being pressed for time, he had not yet been able to
collate more than nineteen out of the sixty quotations specially attacked. Of
these nineteen nine only were examined at this first conference, and nearly
all were found to be incorrect. Next day, Mornay was taken “with a violent
seizure and repeated attacks of vomiting, which M. de la Riviere, the king’s
premier physician, came and deposed to.” The conference was broken off,
and not resumed afterwards. The king congratulated himself beyond
measure at the result, and even on the part which he had taken. “Tell the
truth,” said he to the Bishop of Evreux, “the good right had good need of
aid;” and he wrote, on the 6th of May to the Duke of Epernon, “The diocese
of Evreux has beaten that of Saumur. The bearer was present, and will tell
you that I did wonders. Assuredly it is one of the greatest hits for the church
of God that have been made for some time.” He evidently had it very much
at heart that the pope should be well informed of what had taken place, and
feel obliged to him for it. “Haven’t you wits to see that the king, in order to
gratify the pope, has been pleased to sacrifice my father’s honor at his
feet?” said young Philip de Mornay to some courtiers who were speaking to
him about this sad affair. This language was reported to the king, who
showed himself much hurt by it. “He is a young man beside himself with
grief,” they said, “and it is his own father’s case.” “Young he is not,”
replied the king; “he is forty years old, twenty in age and twenty from his
father’s teaching.” The king’s own circle and his most distinguished

servants gladly joined in his self-congratulation. “Well,” he said to Sully,
“what think you of your pope?” “I think, sir,” answered Sully, “that he is
more pope than you suppose; cannot you see that he gives a red hat to M.
d’Evreux? Really, I never saw a man so dumbfounded, or one who
defended himself so ill. If our religion had no better foundation than his
crosswise legs and arms (Mornay habitually kept them so), I would
abandon it rather to-day than to-morrow.” [OEconomies royales, t. iii. p.
346.]
Sully desired nothing better than to find Mornay at fault, and to see the
king fully convinced of it. Jealousy is nowhere more wide-awake and more
implacable than at courts. However, amongst the grandees present at the
conference of Fontainebleau there were some who did not share the general
impression. “I saw there,” said the Duke of Mayenne as he went away from
it, “only a very old and very faithful servant very badly paid for so many
services;” and, in spite of the king’s letter, the Duke of Epernon sent word
to Mornay that he still took him for a gentleman of honor, and still
remained his friend. Henry IV. himself, with his delicate and ready tact, was
not slow to perceive that he had gone too far and had behaved badly. Being
informed that Mornay was in deep suffering, he sent to him M. de Lomenie,
his cabinet-secretary, to fully assure him that the king would ever be his
good master and friend. “As for master,” said Mornay, “I am only too
sensible of it; as for friend, he belongs not to me: I have known men to
make attempts upon the king’s life, honor, and state, nay, upon his very bed;
against them, the whole of them, he never displayed so much severity as
against me alone, who have done him service all my life.” And he set out on
his way back to Saumur without seeing the king again.
He returned thither with all he had dearest in the world, his wife,
Charlotte Arbaleste de la Borde, his worthy partner in all his trials— trials
of prosperity as well as adversity. She has full right to a few lines in this
History, for it was she who preserved to us, in her Memoires, the picture, so
salutary to contemplate, of the life and character of Mornay, in the midst of
his friends’ outbursts of passion and his adversaries’ brutal exhibitions of
hatred. As intelligent as she was devoted, she gave him aid in his
theological studies and labors as well as in the confronting of public events.
“During this expedition to Fontainebleau, I had remained,” she says, “at
Paris, in extreme apprehension, recently recovered from a severe illness,
harassed by the deadlock in our domestic affairs. And, as for all that, I felt it

not in comparison with the inevitable mishap of this expedition. I had found
for M. du Plessis all the books of which he might possibly have need,
hunted up, with great diligence considering the short time, in the libraries of
all our friends, and I got them into his hands, but somewhat late in the day,
because it was too late in the day when he gave me the commission.” The
private correspondence of these two noble persons is a fine example of
conjugal and Christian union, virtue, and affection. In 1605, their only son,
Philip de Mornay, a very distinguished young man, then twenty-six years of
age, obtained Henry IV.‘s authority to go and serve in the army of the
Prince of Orange, Maurice of Nassau, at deadly war with Spain. He was
killed in it on the 23d of October, at the assault upon the town of Gueldres.
On receiving news of his death, “I have now no son,” said his father;
“therefore I have now no wife.” His sorrowful prediction was no delusion;
six mouths after her son’s death Madame de Mornay succumbed, unable
any longer to bear the burden she was supporting without a murmur. Her
Memoires concludes with this expression: “It is but reasonable that this my
book should end with him, as it was only undertaken to describe to him our
pilgrimage in this life. And, since it hath pleased God, he hath sooner gone
through, and more easily ended his own. Wherefore, indeed, if I feared not
to cause affliction to M. du Plessis, who, the more mine grows upon me,
makes me the more clearly perceive his affection, it would vex me
extremely to survive him.”
On learning by letter from Prince Maurice that the young man was dead,
Henry IV. said, with emotion, to those present, “I have lost the fairest hope
of a gentleman in my kingdom. I am grieved for the father. I must send and
comfort him. No father but he could have such a loss.” “He despatched on
the instant,” says Madame de Mornay herself, “Sieur Bruneau, one of his
secretaries, with very gracious letters to comfort us; with orders,
nevertheless, not to present himself unless he were sure that we already
knew of it otherwise, not wishing to be the first to tell us such sad news.”
[Memoires, t. ii. p. 107.] This touching evidence of a king’s sympathy for a
father’s grief effaced, no doubt, to some extent in Mornay’s mind his
reminiscences of the conference at Fontainebleau; one thing is quite certain,
that he continued to render Henry IV., in the synods and political assemblies
of the Protestants, his usual good offices for the maintenance or re-
establishment of peace and good understanding between the Catholic king
and his malcontent former friends.

A third Protestant, Theodore Agrippa d’Aubigne, grandfather of Madame
de Maintenon, has been reckoned here amongst not the councillors,
certainly, but the familiar and still celebrated servants of Henry IV. He held
no great post, and had no great influence with the king; he was, on every
occasion, a valiant soldier, a zealous Protestant, an indefatigable lover and
seeker of adventure, sometimes an independent thinker, frequently an
eloquent and bold speaker, always a very sprightly companion. Henry IV. at
one time employed him, at another held aloof from him, or forgot him, or
considered him a mischief-maker, a faction-monger who must be put in the
Bastille, and against whom, if it seemed good, there would be enough to put
him on his trial. Madame de Chatillon, who took an interest in D’Aubigne,
warned him of the danger, and urged him to depart that very evening. “I
will think about it, madame,” said he; “I will implore God’s assistance, and
I will see what I have to do.” . . . “The inspiration that came to me,” says
he, “was to go next morning very early to see his Majesty, and, after having
briefly set before him my past services, to ask him for a pension, which up
to that time I had not felt inclined to do. The king, surprised, and at the
same time well pleased to observe a something mercenary behind all my
proud spirit, embraced me, and granted on the spot what I asked of him.”
The next day D’Aubigne went to the Arsenal; Sully invited him to dinner,
and took him to see the Bastille, assuring him that there was no longer any
danger for him, but only since the last twenty-four hours. [La France
Protestante, by MM. Haag, t. i. p. 170.] If D’Aubigne had not been a writer,
he would be completely forgotten by this time, like so many other
intriguing and turbulent adventurers, who make a great deal of fuss
themselves, and try to bring everything about them into a fuss as long as
they live, and who die without leaving any trace of their career. But
D’Aubigne wrote a great deal both in prose and in verse; he wrote the
Histoire universelle of his times, personal Memoires, tales, tragedies, and
theological and satirical essays; and he wrote with sagacious, penetrating,
unpremeditated wit, rare vigor, and original and almost profound talent for
discerning and depicting situations and characters. It is the writer which has
caused the man to live, and has assigned him a place in French literature
even more than in French history. We purpose to quote two fragments of
his, which will make us properly understand and appreciate both the writer
and the man. During the civil war, in the reign of Henry III., D’Aubigne had
made himself master of the Island of Oleron, had fortified it, and considered

himself insufficiently rewarded by the King of Navarre, to whom he had
meant to render, and had, in fact, rendered service. After the battle of
Coutras, in 1587, he was sleeping with a comrade named Jacques de
Caumont la Force, in the wardrobe of the chamber in which the King of
Navarre slept. “La Force,” said D’Aubigne to his bed-fellow, “our master is
a regular miser, and the most ungrateful mortal on the face of the earth.”
“What dost say, D’Aubigne?” asked La Force, half asleep. “He says,”
repeated the King of Navarre, who had heard all, “that I am a regular miser,
and the most ungrateful mortal on the face of the earth.” D’Aubigne,
somewhat disconcerted, was mum. “But,” he adds, “when daylight
appeared, this prince, who liked neither rewarding nor punishing, did not
for all that look any the more black at me, or give me a quarter-crown
more.” Thirty years later, in 1617, after the collapse of the League and after
the reign of Henry IV., D’Aubigne, wishing to describe the two leaders of
the two great parties, sums them up in these terms: “The Duke of Mayenne
had such probity as is human, a good nature and a liberality which made
him most pleasant to those about him; his was a judicious mind, which
made good use of experience, took the measure of everything by the card; a
courage rather steady than dashing; take him for all in all, he might be
called an excellent captain. King Henry IV. had all this, save the liberality;
but to make up for that item, his rank caused expectations as to the future to
blossom, which made the hardships of the present go down. He had,
amongst his points of superiority to the Duke of Mayenne, a marvellous gift
of promptitude and vivacity, and far beyond the average. We have seen him,
a thousand times in his life, make pat replies without hearing the purport of
a request, and forestall questions without committing himself. The Duke of
Mayenne was incommoded by his great bodily bulk, which could not
support the burden either of arms or of fatigue duty. The other, having
worked all his men to a stand-still, would send for hounds and horses for to
begin a hunt; and when his horses could go no farther, he would run down
the game afoot. The former communicated his heaviness and his maladies
to his army, undertaking no enterprise that he could not support in person;
the other communicated his own liveliness to those about him, and his
captains imitated him from complaisance and from emulation.”

These politicians, these Christians, these warriors had, in 1600, a grave
question to solve for Henry IV., and grave counsel to give him. He was
anxious to separate from his wife, Marguerite de Valois, who had, in fact,
been separated from him for the last fifteen years, was leading a very
irregular life, and had not brought him any children. But, in order to obtain
from the pope annulment of the marriage, it was first necessary that
Marguerite should consent to it, and at no price would she consent so long
as the king’s favorite continued to be Gabrielle d’Estrees, whom she
detested, and by whom Henry already had several children. The question
arose in 1598, in connection with a son lately born to Gabrielle, who was
constantly spreading reports that she would be the king’s wife. To give
consistency to this report she took it into her head to have her son presented
at baptism as a child of France, and an order was brought to Sully “to pay
what was right to the heralds, trumpeters, and hautbois players who had
performed at the baptism of Alexander, Monsieur, child of France.” After
looking at the order, Sully detained it, and had another made out, which
made no mention of Alexander. The men complained, saying, “Sir, the sum
we ought to have for our attendance at the baptism of children of France has
for a long while been fixed.” “Away, away!” said Sully, in a rage; “I’ll do

nothing of the sort; there are no children of France.” And he told the king
about it, who said, “There’s malice in that, but I will certainly stop it; tear
up that order.” And turning to some of his courtiers, “See the tricks that
people play, and the traps they lay for those who serve me well and after my
own heart. An order hath been sent to M. de Rosny, with the design of
offending me if he honored it, or of offending the Duchess of Beaufort if he
repudiated it. I will see to it. Go to her, my friend,” he said to Rosny; “tell
her what has taken place; satisfy her in so far as you can. If that is not
sufficient, I will speak like the master, and not like the man.” Sully went to
the cloister of St. Germain, where the Duchess of Beaufort was lodged, and
told her that he came by the king’s command to inform her of what was
going on. “I am aware of all,” said Gabrielle, “and do not care to know any
more; I am not made as the king is, whom you persuade that black is
white.” “Ho! ho! madame,” replied Sully, “since you take it in that way, I
kiss your hands, and shall not fail to do my duty for all your furies.” He
returned to the Louvre and told the king. “Here, come with me,” said
Henry; “I will let you see that women have not possession of me, as certain
malignant spirits spread about that they have.” He got into Sully’s carriage,
went with him to the Duchess of Beaufort’s, and, taking her by the hand,
said, “Now, madame, let us go into your room, and let nobody else enter
except you, and Rosny, and me. I want to speak to you both, and teach you
to be good friends together.” Then, having shut the door quite close, and
holding Gabrielle with one hand and Rosny with the other, he said, “Good
God! madame, what is the meaning of this? So you would vex me for sheer
wantonness of heart in order to try my patience? By God, I swear to you
that, if you continue these fashions of going on, you will find yourself very
much out in your expectations. I see quite well that you have been put up to
all this pleasantry in order to make me dismiss a servant whom I cannot do
without, and who has always served me loyally for five and twenty years.
By God, I will do nothing of the kind, and I declare to you that if I were
reduced to such a necessity as to choose between losing one or the other, I
could better do without ten mistresses like you than one servant like him.”
Gabrielle stormed, was disconsolate, wept, threw herself at the king’s
feet, and, “seeing him more strong-minded than had been supposed by those
who had counselled her to this escapade, began to calm herself,” says Sully,
“and everything was set right again on every side.”

But Sully was not at the end of his embarrassments or of the sometimes
feeble and sometimes sturdy fancies of his king. On the 10th of April, 1599,
Gabrielle d’Estrees died so suddenly that, according to the bias of the times,
when, in the highest ranks, crimes were so common that they were always
considered possible and almost probable, she was at first supposed to have
been poisoned; but there seemed to be no likelihood of this. The consent of
Marguerite de Valois to the annulment of her marriage was obtained; and
negotiations were opened at Rome by Arnold d’Ossat, who was made a
cardinal, and by Brulart de Sillery, ambassador ad hoc. But a new difficulty
supervened; not for the negotiators, who knew, or appeared to know,
nothing about it, but for Sully. In three or four weeks after the death of
Gabrielle d’Estrees Henry IV. was paying court to a new favorite. One
morning, at Fontainebleau, just as he was going out hunting, he took Sully
by the hand, led him into the first gallery, gave him a paper, and, turning the
other way as if he were ashamed to see it read by Sully, “Read that,” said
he, “and then tell me your opinion of it.” Sully found that it was a promise
of marriage given to Mdlle. Henriette d’Entraigues, daughter of Francis de
Balzac, Lord of Entraigues, and Marie Touchet, favorite of Charles IX.
Sully went up to the king, holding in his hand the paper folded up.
“What do you think of it?” said the king. “Now, now, speak freely; your
silence offends me far more than your most adverse expressions could. I
misdoubt me much that you will not give me your approval, if it were only
for the hundred thousand crowns that I made you hand over with so much
regret; I promise you not to be vexed at anything you can possibly say to
me.” “You mean it, sir, and you promise not to be angry with me, whatever
I may say or do?” “Yes, yes; I promise all you desire, since for anything you
say it will be all the same, neither more nor less.” Thereupon, taking that
written promise as if he would have given it back to the king, Sully, instead
of that, tore it in two, saying, a “There, sir, as you wish to know, is what I
think about such a promise.” “Ha! morbleu, what are you at? Are you
mad?” “It is true, sir; I am a madman and fool; and I wish I were so much
thereof as to be the only one in France.” “Very well, very well: I understand
you,” said the king, “and will say no more, in order to keep my word to
you; but give me back that paper.” “Sir,” replied Sully, “I have no doubt
your Majesty is aware that you are destroying all the preparatives for your
dismarriage, for, this promise once divulged,—and it is demanded of you
for no other purpose,—never will the queen, your wife, do the things

necessary to make your dismarriage valid, nor indeed will the pope bestow
upon it his Apostolic blessing; that I know of my own knowledge.”
The king made no answer, went out of the gallery, entered his closet,
asked for pen and ink, remained there a quarter of an hour, wrote out a
second paper like that which had just been torn up, mounted his horse
without saying a word to Sully whom he met, went hunting, and, during the
day, deposited the new promise of marriage with Henriette d’Entraigues,
who kept it or had it kept in perfect secrecy till the 2d of July, the time at
which her father, the Count of Entiaigues, gave her up to, the king in
consideration of twenty thousand crowns cash.
In the teeth of all these incidents, known or voluntarily ignored, the
negotiations for the annulment of the marriage of Henry IV. and Marguerite
de Valois were proceeded with at Rome by consent of the two parties.
Clement VIII. had pronounced on the 17th of December, 1599, and
transmitted to Paris by Cardinal de Joyeuse the decree of annulment. 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 2d 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. Mary
de’ Medici was beautiful in 1592, when she had first been talked about, and
her portrait at that time had charmed the king; but in 1600 she was twenty-
seven, tall, fat, with round, staring eyes and a forbidding air, and ill dressed.
She knew hardly a word of French; and Henriette d’Entraigues, whom the
king had made Marquise do Verneuil, could not help exclaiming when she
saw her, “So that is the fat bankeress from Florence!”

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 moment
the king, after the annulment of his marriage with Marguerite de Valois, saw
his new wife, Mary de’ Medici, at Lyons, she had disgusted him, and she
disgusted him more every day by her cantankerous and headstrong temper;
but on the 27th of September, 1601, she brought him a son, who was to be
Louis XIII. Henry used to go for distraction from his wife’s temper to his
favorite, Henriette d’Entraigues, who knew how to please him at the same
time that she was haughty and exacting towards him. He set less store upon
the peace of his household than upon that of his kingdom; he had
established his favorite at the Louvre itself, close beside his wife; and, his
new marriage once contracted, he considered his domestic life settled, as
well as his political position.
He was mistaken on both points; he was not at the end of either his
political dangers or his amorous fancies. Since 1595, his principal
companion in arms, or rather his camp-favorite, Charles de Gontaut, Baron
de Biron, whom he had made admiral, duke, and marshal of France, was, all
the while continuing to serve him in the field, becoming day by day a
determined conspirator against him. He had begun by being a reckless
gamester; and in that way he lost fifteen hundred thousand crowns, about
six millions (of francs) of our day. “I don’t know,” said he, “whether I shall
die on the scaffold or not; but I will never come to the poorhouse.” He
added, “When peace is concluded, the king’s love-affairs, the scarcity of his
largesses, and the discontent of many will lead to plenty of splits, more than

are necessary to embroil the most peaceful kingdoms in the world. And,
should that fail, we shall find in religion more than we want to put the most
lukewarm Huguenots in a passion and the most penitent Leaguers in a
fury.” Henry IV. regarded Biron with tender affection. “I never loved
anybody as I loved him,” he used to say; “I would have trusted my son and
my kingdom to him. He has done me good service; but he cannot say that I
did not save his life three times. I pulled him out of the enemy’s hands at
Fontaine-Francaise so wounded and so dazed with blows, that, as I had
acted soldier in saving him, I also acted marshal as regarded the retreat.”
Biron nevertheless prosecuted his ambitious designs; the independent
sovereignty of Burgundy was what he aspired to, and any alliance, any plot,
was welcome as a stepping-stone. “Caesar or nothing,” he would say. “I
will not die without seeing my head on a quarter-crown piece.” He entered
into flagrant conspiracy with the King of Spain, with the Duke of Savoy,
with the French malcontents, the Duke of Bouillon, and the Count of
Auvergne. Henry IV. knew it, and made every effort to appear ignorant of it,
to win Biron back to him; he paid his debts; he sent him on an embassy he
tempted him to confessions which should entitle him to a full pardon. “Let
him weep,” he would say, “and I will weep with him; let him remember
what he owes me, and I will not forget what I owe him. I were loath that
Marshal de Biron should be the first example of my just severity, and that
my reign, which has hitherto been calm and serene, should be charged all at
once with thunder and lightning.” He employed Rosily to bring Biron to
confess. “My friend,” said he, “here is an unhappy man, the marshal. It is a
serious case. I am anxious to spare him. I cannot bring myself to harm a
man who has courage, who has served me so long and been so familiar with
me. My fear is that, though I spare him, he will not spare me or my
children, or my kingdom. He would never confess anything to me; he
behaves to me like a man who has some mischief in his heart. I beg you to
see him. If he is open with you, assure him that he may come to me and I
will forgive him with all my heart.” Rosny tried and failed. “It is not I who
want to destroy this man,” said the king; “it is he who wants to destroy
himself. I will myself tell him that, if he lets himself be brought to justice,
he has no mercy whatever to expect from me.” He saw Biron at
Fontainebleau, received him after dinner, spoke to him with his usual
familiarity, and pointing to his own equestrian statue in marble which was
on the mantelpiece, said, “What would the King cf Spain say if he saw me

like that, eh?” “He would not be much afraid of you,” answered Biron.
Henry gave him a stern look. The marshal tried to take back his words: “I
mean, sir, if he were to see you in that statue yonder, and not in your own
person.” The retreat was not successful; the shot had taken effect; Henry left
the room, went back into his closet, and gave orders to his captain of the
guard to arrest him. Then he returned to the room and said, “Marshal,
reflect upon what I have said to you.” Biron preserved a frigid silence.
“Adieu, Baron de Biron!” said the king, thus by a single word annulling all
his dignities, and sending him before his proper judges to answer for his
treasons. On the 18th of June, 1602, he brought the marshal before the court
of Parliament. The inquiry lasted three weeks. Biron was unanimously
condemned to death by a hundred and twenty-seven judges “for
conspiracies against the king’s person, attempts upon his kingdom, and
treasons and treaties with the enemies of the kingdom.” The king gave to
this sentence all the alleviations compatible with public interests. He
allowed Biron to make his will, remitted the confiscation of his property,
and ordered that the execution should take place at the Bastille, in the
presence of certain functionaries, and not on the Place de Greve and before
the mob. When Biron found himself convicted and sentenced, he burst into
a fury, loaded his judges with insults, and roared out that “if he were driven
to despair and frenzy, he would strangle half of those present and force the
other half to kill him.” The executioner was obliged to strike him unawares.
Those present withdrew dumbfounded at the crime, the prisoner’s rage, the
execution, and the scene.
When the question of conspiracies and conspirators—with Spain against
France and her king had thus been publicly raised and decided, it entailed
another: had the Spanish monks, the Jesuits, to call them by their own
name, taken part therein? Should proceedings accordingly be taken against
them? They were no longer in France; they had been banished on the 29th
of December, 1594, by a solemn decree of Parliament, after John Chatel’s
attempt. They were demanding their return. The pope was demanding it for
them. “If at other times,” they said, “the society had shown hostility to
France and her king, it was because, though well received everywhere else,
especially in the dominions of the King of Spain, they had met in France
with nothing but persecutions and insults. If Henry would be pleased to
testify good will towards them, he would soon find them devoted to his

person and his throne.” The question was debated at the king’s council, and
especially between Henry IV. and Sully when they were together.

Sully did not like the return of the Jesuits. “They are away,” said he; “let
them remain so. If they return, it will be all very fine for them to wish, and
all very fine for them to act; their presence, their discourse, their influence,
involuntary though it be, will be opposed to you, will heat your enemies,
will irritate your friends; hatred and mistrust will go on increasing.” The
king was of a different opinion. “Of necessity,” he said to Sully, “I must
now do one of two things: admit the Jesuits purely and simply, relieve them
from the defamation and insults with which they have been blasted, and put
to the proof all their fine sentiments and excellent promises, or use against
them all severities that can be imagined to keep them from ever coming
near me and my dominions. In which latter case, there is no doubt it would

be enough to reduce them to utter despair, and to thoughts of attempting my
life; which would render me miserable or listless, living constantly in
suspicion of being poisoned or assassinated, for these gentry have
communications and correspondence everywhere, and great dexterity in
disposing men’s minds as it seems good to them. It were better for me to be
dead, being therein of Caesar’s opinion that the pleasantest death is that
which is least foreseen and apprehended.” The king then called to
remembrance the eight projected or attempted assassinations which, since
the failure of John Chatel, from 1596 to 1603, had been, and clearly
established to have been, directed against him. Upon this, Sully at once
went over to the king’s opinion. In September, 1603, letters for the
restoration of the Jesuits were issued and referred to the Parliament of Paris.
They there met, on the 24th of December, with strong opposition and
remonstrances that have remained celebrated, the mouthpiece being the
premier president Achille de Harlay, the same who had courageously
withstood the Duke of Guise. He conjured the king to withdraw his letters
patent, and to leave intact the decree which had banished the Jesuits. This
was not, he said, the feeling of the Parliament of Paris only, but also of the
Parliaments of Normandy and Burgundy; that is, of two thirds of the
magistrates throughout the kingdom. Henry was touched and staggered. He
thanked the Parliament most affectionately; but, “We must not reproach the,
Jesuits for the League,” said he; “it was the fault of the times. Leave me to
deal with this business. I have managed others far more difficult.” The
Parliament obeyed, though with regret, and on the 2d of January, 1604, the
king’s letters patent were enregistered.
This was not the only business that Henry had at heart; he had another of
another sort, and, for him, more difficult to manage. In February, 1609, he
saw, for the first time, at the court of France, Charlotte Marguerite, third
daughter of the Constable de Montmorency, only sixteen years old. “There
was at that time,” say all contemporaries, “nothing so beautiful under
heaven, or more graceful, or more perfect.” Before presenting her at court,
her father had promised her to Francis de Bassompierre, descended from a
branch of the house of Cloves, thirty years old, and already famous for his
wit, his magnificence, and his gallantry. He was one of the principal
gentlemen of the chamber to the king. Henry IV. sent for him one morning,
made him kneel on a hassock in front of his bed, and said that, obtaining no
sleep, he had been thinking of him the night before, and of getting him

married. “As for me,” says Bassompierre, “who was thinking of nothing so
little as of what he wanted to say to me, I answered that, if it were not for
the constable’s gout, it would have already been done. ‘No,’ said he to me,
‘I thought of getting you married to Mlle. d’Aumale, and, in consequence of
that marriage, of renewing the Duchy of Aumale in your person.’ I asked
him if he wanted me to have two wives. Then he said to me with a deep
sigh, ‘Bassompierre, I will speak to thee as a friend. I have become not only
enamoured, but mad, beside myself, about Mlle. de Montmorency. If thou
wed her and she love thee, I shall hate thee; if she loved me, thou wouldst
hate me. It is better that this should not be the cause of destroying our good
understanding, for I love thee affectionately and sincerely. I am resolved to
marry her to my nephew the Prince of Conde, and keep her near my family.
That shall be the consolation and the support of the old age which is coming
upon me. I shall give my nephew, who is young and loves hunting ten
thousand times better than women, a hundred thousand francs a year to pass
his time, and I want no other favor from her but her affection, without
looking for anything more.”
Thoroughly astounded and put out as he was, Bassompierre reflected that
it was, so far as he was concerned, “an amour modified by marriage,” and
that it would be better to give way to the king with a good grace: and, “I
withdraw, sir,” he said, on very good terms as regarded Mdlle. de
Montmorency as well as himself. The king embraced him, wept, promised
to love him dearly, saw him again in the evening in company with Mdlle. de
Montmorency, who knew nothing, and conversed a long while with the
young princess. When she retired, perceiving that Bassompierre was
watching her, she shrugged her shoulders, as if to hint to him what the king
had said to her. “I lie not,” says Bassompierre: “that single action pierced
me to the heart; I spent two days in tormenting myself like one possessed,
without sleeping, drinking, or eating.” Two or three days afterwards the
Prince of Conde, announced that he intended to marry Mdlle. de
Montmorency. The court and the city talked of nothing but this romance
and the betrothal which immediately followed.
Henry IV. was fifty-six. He had been given to gallantry all his life; and he
had never been faithful or exacting in his attachments. He was not one of
those on whom ridicule fastens as fair prey; but he was so under the
dominion of his new passion that the young Princess of Conde, who had at
first exclaimed, “Jesus, my God, he is mad!” began to fancy to herself that

she would be queen before long. Mary de Medici became jealous and
uneasy. She determined to take her precautions, and demanded to be
crowned before the king set out on the campaign which, it was said, he was
about to commence against Austria in accordance with his grand design and
in concert with the Protestant princes of Germany, his allies. The Prince of
Conde had a fit of jealousy; he carried off his wife first into Picardy; and
then to Brussels, where he left her. Henry IV., in respect, first, of going to
see her, then of getting her to come back, then of threatening to go after her
out of France, took some wild and puerile steps, which, being coincident
with his warlike announcements and preparations, caused some strange
language to be used, and were injurious to his personal weight as well as to
his government’s character for steadiness. Sully grew impatient and uneasy.
Mary de’ Medici was insisting strongly upon being crowned. The prospect
of this coronation was displeasing to Henry IV., and he did not conceal it.
“Hey! my friend,” he said to Sully: “I know not what is the meaning of it,
but my heart tells me that some misfortune will happen to me.” He was
sitting on a low chair which had been made for him by Sully’s orders at the
Arsenal, thinking and beating his fingers on his spectacle-case; then all on a
sudden he jumped up, and slapping his hands upon his thighs, “By God,” he
said, “I shall die in this city, and shall never go out of it. They will kill me; I
see quite well that they have no other remedy in their dangers but my death.
Ah! accursed coronation! Thou wilt be the cause of my death.” “Jesus! Sir,”
cried Sully, “what fancy of yours is this? If it continue, I am of opinion that
you should break off this anointment and coronation, and expedition and
war; if you please to give me orders, it shall soon be done.” “Yes, break off
the coronation,” said the king: “let me hear no more about it; I shall have
my mind at rest from divers fancies which certain warnings have put into it.
To bide nothing from you, I have been told that I was to be killed at the first
grand ceremony I should undertake, and that I should die in a carriage.”
“You never told me that, sir; and so have I often been astounded to see you
cry out when in a carriage, as if you had dreaded this petty peril, after
having so many times seen you amidst cannon-balls, musketry, lance-
thrusts, pike-thrusts, and sword-thrusts; without being a bit afraid. Since
your mind is so exercised thereby, if I were you, I would go away to-
morrow, let the coronation take place without you, or put it off to another
time, and not enter Paris for a long while, or in a carriage. If you please, I
will send word to Notre-Dame and St. Denis to stop everything and to

withdraw the workmen.” “I am very much inclined,” said the king; “but
what will my wife say? For she hath gotten this coronation marvellously
into her head.” “She may say what she likes; but I cannot think that, when
she knows your opinion about it, she will persist any longer.”
Whatever Sully might say, Mary de’ Medici “took infinite offence at the
king for his alarms: the matter was disputed for three days, with high words
on all sides, and at last the laborers were sent back to work again.”
Henry, in spite of his presentiments, made no change in his plans; he did
not go away; he did not defer the queen’s coronation; on the contrary, he
had it proclaimed on the 12th of May, 1610, that she would be crowned
next day, the 13th, at St. Denis, and that on Sunday, the 16th, she would
make her entry into Paris. On Friday, the 14th, he had an idea of going to
the Arsenal to see Sully, who was ill; we have the account of this visit and
of the king’s 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 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’Epernon 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’Epernon’s side
were Marshal de Lavardin and M. de Cresqui; 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 towards
St. Innocent. On arriving at Rue de la Ferronnerie, which is at the end of
that of St. Honors 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
ironmongers’ 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 Coeur couronng perce d’une fleche,
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 armpit and the nipple,
went upwards 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 M. d’Epernon, 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 towards the Louvre. When he was at
the steps where he had got into the carriage, which are those of the queen’s
room, some wine was given him. Of course some one had already run
forward to bear the news. Sieur de Cerisy, 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.”
The grief was deep and general, at the court as well as amongst the
people, in the provinces as well as at Paris; and with the grief were mingled
surprise and alarm, and an idea, also, that the king had died unhappy and
uneasy. On the 14th of May, in the morning, before starting upon his visit to
the Arsenal, he had gone to hear mass at the Feuillants’ [order of St.
Bernard]; and on his return he said to the Duke of Guise and to
Bassompierre, who were in attendance, “You do not understand me now,
you and the rest; but I shall die one of these days, and, when you have lost
me, you will know my worth and the difference there is between me and
other kings.” “My God, sir,” said Bassompierre, “will you never cease
vexing us by telling us that you will soon die? You will live, please God,
some good, long years. You are only in the flower of your age, in perfect
bodily health and strength, full of honor more than any mortal man, in the
most flourishing kingdom in the world, loved and adored by your subjects,
with fine houses, fine women, fine children who are growing up.” Henry
sighed as he said, “My friend, all that must be left.”
These are the last words that are to be found of his in contemporary
accounts; a few hours afterwards he was smitten to death in his carriage,
brought back to the Louvre, laid out on his bed; one of his councillors of
state, M. de Vie, seated on the same bed, had put to his mouth his cross of
the order, and directed his thoughts to God; Milon, his chief physician, was
at the bedside, weeping: his surgeons wanted to dress his wounds; a sigh
died away on his lips, and “It is all over,” said the physician; “he is gone.”
Guise and Bassompierre went out to look after what was passing out of
doors; they met “M. de Sully with some forty horse, who, when he came up
to us, said to us in tearful wise, ‘Gentlemen, if the service ye vowed to the
king is impressed upon your souls as deeply as it ought to be with all good
Frenchmen, swear all of ye this moment to keep towards the king his son
and successor the same allegiance that ye showed him, and to spend your
lives and your blood in avenging his death?’ ‘Sir,’ said Bassompierre, ‘it is
for us to cause this oath to be taken by others; we have no need to be
exhorted thereto;’ Sully turned his eyes upon him, he adds, and then went
and shut himself up in the Bastille, sending out to ‘seize and carry off all the
bread that could be found in the market and at the bakers’. He also

despatched a message in haste to M. de Rohan, his son-in-law, bidding him
face about with six thousand Swiss, whose colonel-general he was, and
march on Paris.” Henry IV. being dead, it was for France and for the
kingship that Sully felt alarm and was taking his precautions.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

REGENCY OF MARY DE’ MEDICI. (1610-
1617.)

On the death of Henry IV. there was extreme disquietude as well as grief
in France. To judge by appearances, however, there was nothing to justify
excessive alarm. The edict of Nantes (April 13, 1598) had put an end, so far
as the French were concerned, to religious wars. The treaty of Vervins (May
2, 1598) between France and Spain, the twelve years’ truce between Spain
and the United Provinces (April 9, 1609), the death of Philip II. (September
13, 1598), and the alliance between France and England seemed to have
brought peace to Europe. It might have been thought that there remained no
more than secondary questions, such as the possession of the marquisate of
Saluzzo and the succession to the duchies of Cleves and Juliers. But the
instinct of peoples sees further than the negotiations of diplomats. In the
public estimation of Europe Henry IV. was the representative of and the
security for order, peace, national and equitable policy, intelligent and
practical ideas. So thought Sully when, at the king’s death, he went, equally
alarmed and disconsolate, and shut himself up in the arsenal; and the people
had grounds for being of Sully’s opinion. Public confidence was
concentrated upon the king’s personality. Spectators pardoned, almost with
a smile, those tender foibles of his which, nevertheless, his proximity to old
age rendered still more shocking. They were pleased at the clear-sighted
and strict attention he paid to the education of his son Louis, the dauphin, to
whose governess, Madame de Montglas, he wrote, “I am vexed with you
for not having sent me word that you have whipped my son, for I do wish
and command you to whip him every time he shows obstinacy in anything
wrong, knowing well by my own case that there is nothing in the world that
does more good than that.” And to Mary de’ Medici herself he added, “Of
one thing I do assure you, and that is, that, being of the temper I know you
to be of, and foreseeing that of your son, you stubborn, not to say

headstrong, madame, and he obstinate, you will verily have many a tussle
together.”
Henry IV. saw as clearly into his wife’s as into his son’s character.
Persons who were best acquainted with the disposition of Mary de’ Medici,
and were her most indulgent critics, said of her, in 1610, when she was now
thirty-seven years of age, “that she was courageous, haughty, firm, discreet,
vain, obstinate, vindictive and mistrustful, inclined to idleness, caring but
little about affairs, and fond of royalty for nothing beyond its pomp and its
honors.” Henry had no liking for her or confidence in her, and in private
had frequent quarrels with her. He had, nevertheless, had her coronation
solemnized, and had provided by anticipation for the necessities of
government. On the king’s death, and at the imperious instance of the Duke
of Epernon, 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 Bastille 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.

But Mary de’ Medici had, in her household and in her court, the
wherewithal to rapidly dissipate this double treasure. In 1600, at the time of
her marriage, she had brought from Florence to Paris her nurse’s daughter,
Leonora Galigai, and Leonora’s husband, Concino Concini, son of a
Florentine notary, both of them full of coarse ambition, covetous, vain, and
determined to make the best of their new position so as to enrich
themselves, and exalt themselves beyond measure, and at any price. Mary
gave them, in that respect, all the facilities they could possibly desire; they
were her confidants, her favorites, and her instruments, as regarded both her
own affairs and theirs. These private and subordinate servants were before
long joined by great lords, court-folks, ambitious and vain likewise,
egotists, mischief-makers, whom the strong and able hand of Henry IV. had
kept aloof, but who, at his death, returned upon the scene, thinking of
nothing whatever but their own fortunes and their rivalries. They shall just

be named here pell-mell, whether members or relatives of the royal family
or merely great lords the Condes, the Contis, the Enghiens, the Dukes of
Epernon, Guise, Elbeuf, Mayenne, Bouillon, and Nevers, great names and
petty characters encountered at every step under the regency of Mary de’
Medici, and, with their following, forming about her a court-hive, equally
restless and useless. Time does justice to some few men, and executes
justice on the ruck: one must have been of great worth indeed to deserve not
to be forgotten. Sully appeared once more at court after his momentary
retreat to the arsenal; but, in spite of the show of favor which Mary de’
Medici thought it prudent and decent to preserve towards him for some
little time, he soon saw that it was no longer the place for him, and that he
was of as little use there to the state as to himself; he sent in, one after the
other, his resignation of all his important offices, and terminated his life in
regular retirement at Rosny and Sully-sur-Loire. Du Plessis-Mornay
attempted to still exercise a salutary influence over his party.
“Let there be no more talk amongst us,” said he, “of Huguenots or
Papists; those words are prohibited by our edicts. And, though there were
no edict at all, still if we are French, if we love our country, our families,
and even ourselves, they ought henceforth to be wiped out of our
remembrance. Whoso is a good Frenchman, shall to me be a citizen, shall to
me be a brother.” This meritorious and patriotic language was not entirely
without moral effect, but it no longer guided, no longer inspired the
government; egotism, intrigue, and mediocrity in ideas as well as in feelings
had taken the place of Henry IV. Facts, before long, made evident the sad
result of this. All the parties, all the personages who walked the stage and
considered themselves of some account, believed that the moment had
arrived for pushing their pretensions, and lost no time about putting them
forward. Those persons we will just pass in review without stopping at any
one of them. History has no room for all those who throng about her gates
without succeeding in getting in and leaving traces of their stay. The
reformers were the party to which the reign of Henry IV. had brought most
conquests, and which was bound to strive above everything to secure the
possession of them by extracting from them every legitimate and
practicable consequence. Mary de’ Medici, having been declared regent,
lost no time about confirming, on the 22d of May, 1610, the edict of Nantes
and proclaiming religious peace as the due of France. “We have nothing to
do with the quarrels of the grandees,” said the people of Paris; “we have no

mind to be mixed up with them.” Some of the preachers of repute and of the
party’s old leaders used the same language. “There must be nought but a
scarf any longer between us,” Du Plessis-Mornay would say. Two great
Protestant names were still intact at this epoch: one, the Duke of Sully,
without engaging in religious polemics, had persisted in abiding by the faith
of his fathers, in spite of his king’s example and attempts to bring him over
to the Catholic faith: the other, Du Plessis-Mornay, had always striven, and
was continuing to strive, actively for the Protestant cause. These two
illustrious champions of the Reformed party were in agreement with the
new principles of national right, and with the intelligent instincts of their
people, whose confidence they deserved and seemed to possess.
But the passions, the usages, and the suspicions of the party were not
slow in reappearing. The Protestants were highly displeased to see the
Catholic worship and practices re-established in Bearn, whence Queen
Jeanne of Navarre had banished them; the rights of religious liberty were
not yet powerful enough with them to surmount their taste for exclusive
domination. As a guarantee for their safety, they had been put in possession
of several strong places in France; neither the edict of Nantes nor its
confirmation by Mary de’ Medici appeared to them a sufficient substitute
for this guarantee; and they claimed its continuance, which was granted
them for five years. After Henry IV.‘s conversion to Catholicism, his
European policy had no longer been essentially Protestant; he had thrown
out feelers and entered into negotiations for Catholic alliances; and these,
when the king’s own liberal and patriotic spirit was no longer there to see
that they did not sway his government, became objects of great suspicion
and antipathy to the Protestants. Henry had constantly and to good purpose
striven against the spirit of religious faction and civil war; anxious, after his
death, about their liberty and their political importance, the Reformers
reassumed a blind confidence in their own strength, and a hope of forming a
small special state in the midst of the great national state. Their provincial
assemblies and their national synods were, from 1611 to 1621, effective
promoters of this tendency, which before long became a formal and
organized design; at Saumur, at Tonneins, at Privas, at Grenoble, at Loudun,
at La Rochelle, the language, the movements, and the acts of the party took
more and more the character of armed resistance, and, ere long, of civil
war; the leaders, old and new.

Duke Henry of Rohan as well as the Duke of Bouillon, the Marquis of La
Force as well as the Duke of Lesdiguieres, more or less timidly urged on the
zealous Protestants in that path from which the ancient counsels of Sully
and Mornay were not successful in deterring them. On the 10th of May,
1621, in the assembly at La Rochelle, a commission of nine members was
charged to present and get adopted a, plan of military organization whereby
Protestant France, Warn included, was divided into eight circles, having
each a special council composed of three deputies at the general assembly,
under a chief who had the disposal of all the military forces; with each
army-corps there was a minister to preach; the royal moneys, talliages, aid
and gabel, were to be seized for the wants of the army; the property of the
Catholic church was confiscated, and the revenues therefrom appropriated
to the expenses of war and the pay of the ministers of the religion. It was a
Protestant republic, organized on the model of the United Provinces, and
disposed to act as regarded the French kingship with a large measure of
independence. When, after thus preparing for war, they came to actually
make it, the Protestants soon discovered their impotence; the Duke of
Bouillon, sixty-five years of age and crippled with gout, interceded for them
in his letters to Louis XIII., but did not go out of Sedan; the Duke of
Lesdiguieres, to whom the assembly had given the command of the
Protestants of Burgundy, Provence, and Dauphiny, was at that very moment
on the point of abjuring their faith and marching with their enemies. Duke
Henry of Rohan himself, who was the youngest, and seemed to be the most
ardent, of their new chiefs, was for doing nothing and breaking up. “If you
are not disposed to support the assembly,” said the Marquis of Chateauneuf,
who had been sent to him to bring him to a decision, “it will be quite able to
defend itself without you.” “If the assembly,” said Rohan, feeling his honor
touched, “does take resolutions contrary to my advice, I shall not sever
myself from the interest of our churches;” and he sacrificed his better
judgment to the popular blindness. The Dukes of La Tremoille and of
Soubise, and the Marquises of La Force and of Chatillon followed suit. As
M. de Sismondi says, to these five lords and to a small number of towns
was the strength reduced of the party which was defying the King of
France.
Thus, since the death of Henry IV., the king and court of France were
much changed: the great questions and the great personages had
disappeared. The last of the real chiefs of the League, the brother of Duke

Henry of Guise, the old Duke of Mayenne, he on whom Henry, in the hour
of victory, would wreak no heavier vengeance than to walk him to a stand-
still, was dead. Henry IV.‘s first wife, the sprightly and too facile
Marguerite de Valois, was dead also, after consenting to descend from the
throne in order to make way for the mediocre Mary de’ Medici. The
Catholic champion whom Henry IV. felicitated himself upon being able to
oppose to Du Plessis-Mornay in the polemical conferences between the two
communions, Cardinal de Perron, was at the point of death. The decay was
general, and the same amongst the Protestants as amongst the Catholics;
Sully and Mornay held themselves aloof or were barely listened to. In place
of these eminent personages had come intriguing or ambitious subordinates,
who were either innocent of or indifferent to anything like a great policy,
and who had no idea beyond themselves and their fortunes. The husband of
Leonora Galigai, Concini, had amassed a great deal of money and
purchased the Marquisate of Ancre; nay, more, he had been created Marshal
of France, and he said to the Count of Bassompiere, “I have learned to
know the world, and I am aware that a man, when he has arrived at a certain
pitch of prosperity, comes down with a greater run the higher he has
mounted. When I came to France, I was not worth a son, and I owed more
than eight thousand crowns. My marriage and the queen’s kind favor has
given me much advancement, office, and honor; I have worked at making
my fortune, and I pushed it forward as long as I saw the wind favorable. So
soon as I felt it turning, I thought about beating a retreat and enjoying in
peace the large property we have acquired. It is my wife who is opposed to
this desire. At every crack of the whip we receive from Fortune, I continue
to urge her. God knows whether warnings have been wanting. My
daughter’s death is the last, and, if we do not heed it, our downfall is at
hand.” Then he quietly made out an abstract of all his property, amounting
to eight millions, with which he purposed to buy from the pope the usufruct
of the duchy of Ferrara, and leave his son, besides, a fine inheritance. But
his wife continued her opposition; it would be cowardly and ungrateful, she
said, to abandon the queen: “So that,” cried he, “I see myself ruined without
any help for it; and, if it were not that I am under so much obligation to my
wife, I would leave her and go some whither where neither grandees nor
common folk would come to look after me.”
This modest style of language did not prevent Marshal d’Ancre from
occasionally having strange fits of domineering arrogance. “By God, sir,”

he wrote to one of his friends, “I have to complain of you; you treat for
peace without me; you have caused the queen to write to me that, for her
sake, I must give up the suit I had commenced against M. de Montbazon to
get paid what he owes me. In all the devils’ names, what do the queen and
you take me for? I am devoured to my very bones with rage.” In his dread
lest influence opposed to his own should be exercised over the young king,
he took upon himself to regulate his amusements and his walks, and
prohibited him from leaving Paris. Louis XIII. had amongst his personal
attendants a young nobleman, Albert de Luynes, clever in training little
sporting birds, called butcher-birds (pies grieches, or shrikes), then all the
rage; and the king made him his falconer and lived on familiar terms with
him. Playing at billiards one day, Marshal d’Ancre, putting on his hat, said
to the king, “I hope your Majesty will allow me to be covered.” The king
allowed it, but remained surprised and shocked. His young page, Albert de
Luynes, observed his displeasure, and being anxious, himself also, to
become a favorite, he took pains to fan it.

A domestic plot was set hatching against Marshal d’Ancre. What was its
extent and who were the accomplices in it? This is not clear. However it
may have been, on the 24th of April, 1617, M. de Vitry, captain of the guard
(capitaine de quartier) that day in the royal army which was besieging
Soissons, ordered some of his officers to provide themselves with a pistol
each in their pockets, and he himself went to that door of the Louvre by
which the king would have to go to the queenmother’s. When Marshal
d’Ancre arrived at this door, “There is the marshal,” said one of the officers;
and Vitry laid hands upon him, saying, “Marshal, I have the king’s orders to
arrest you.” “Me!” said the marshal in surprise, and attempting to resist.

The officer fired upon him, and so did several others. It was never
known, or, at any rate, never told, whose shot it was that hit him; but, “Sir,”
said Colonel d’Ornano, going up to the young king, “you are this minute
King of France: Marshal d’Ancre is dead.” And the young king, before the
assembled court, repeated with the same tone of satisfaction, “Marshal
d’Ancre is dead.” Baron de Vitry was appointed Marshal of France in the
room of the favorite whom he had just murdered. The day after the murder,
the mob rushed into the church of St. German-l’Auxerrois, where the body
of Marshal d’Ancre had been interred; they heaved up the slabs, hauled the
body from the ground, dragged it over the pavement as far as the Pont-
Neuf, where they hanged it by the feet to a gallows; and they afterwards
tore it in pieces, which were sold, burned, and thrown into the Seine. The
ferocious passions of the populace were satisfied; but court-hatred and
court-envy were not; they attacked the marshal’s widow, Leonora Galigai.

She resided at the Louvre, and, at the first rumor of what had happened, she
had sent to demand asylum with the queen-mother. Meeting with a harsh
refusal, she had undressed herself in order to protect with her body her
jewels which she had concealed in her mattresses. The moment she was
discovered, she was taken to the Bastille and brought before the Parliament.
She began by throwing all the blame upon her husband; it was he, she said,
who had prevented her from retiring into Italy, and who had made every
attempt to push his fortunes farther. When she was sentenced to death,
Leonora recovered her courage and pride. “Never,” said a contemporary,
“was anybody seen of more constant and resolute visage.” “What a lot of
people to look at one poor creature!” said she at sight of the crowd that
thronged upon her passage. There is nothing to show that her firmness at the
last earned her more of sympathy than her weaknesses had brought her of
compassion. The mob has its seasons of pitilessness. Leonora Galigai died
leaving one child, a son, who was so maltreated that he persisted in refusing
all food, and, at last, would take nothing but the sweetmeats that the young
queen, Anne of Austria, married two years before to Louis XIII., had the
kindness to send him.
We encounter in this very insignificant circumstance a trace of one of
those important events which marked the earliest years of Mary de’
Medici’s regency and the influence of her earliest favorites. Concini and his
wife, both of them, probably, in the secret service of the court of Madrid,
had promoted the marriage of Louis XIII. with the Infanta Anne of Austria,
eldest daughter of Philip III., King of Spain, and that of Philip, Infante of
Spain, who was afterwards Philip IV., with Princess Elizabeth of France,
sister of Louis XIII. Henry IV., in his plan for the pacification of Europe,
had himself conceived this idea, and testified a desire for this double
marriage, but without taking any trouble to bring it about. It was after his
death that, on the 30th of April, 1612, Villeroi, minister of foreign affairs in
France, and Don Inigo de Caderiias, ambassador of the King of Spain,
concluded this double union by a formal deed. They signed on the same
day, at Fontainebleau, between the King and Queen-regent of France on one
side and the King, of Spain on the other, a treaty of defensive alliance to the
effect “that those sovereigns should give one another mutual succor against
such as should attempt anything against their kingdoms or revolt against
their authority; that they should, in such case, send one to the other, at their
own expense for six months, a body of six thousand foot and twelve

hundred horse; that they should not assist any criminal charged with high
treason, and should even give them over into the hands of the ambassadors
of the king who claimed them.” It is quite certain that Henry IV. would
never have let his hands be thus tied by a treaty so contrary to his general
policy of alliance with Protestant powers, such as England and the United
Provinces; he had no notion of servile subjection to his own policy, but he
would have taken good care not to abandon it; he was of those, who, under
delicate circumstances, remain faithful to their ideas and promises without
systematic obstinacy and with a due regard for the varying interests and
requirements of their country and their age. The two Spanish marriages
were regarded in France as an abandonment of the national policy; France
was, in a great majority, Catholic, but its Catholicism differed essentially
from the Spanish Catholicism: it affirmed the entire separation of the
temporal power and the spiritual power, and the inviolability of the former
by the latter; it refused assent, moreover, to certain articles of the council of
Trent. It was Gallican Catholicism, determined to keep a pretty large
measure of national independence, political and moral, as opposed to
Spanish Catholicism, essentially devoted to the cause of the papacy and of
absolutist Austria. Under the influence of this public feeling, the two
Spanish marriages and the treaty which accompanied them were
unfavorably regarded by a great part of France: a remedy was desired; it
was hoped that one would be found in the convocation of the states-general
of the kingdom, to which the populace always looked expectantly; they
were convoked first for the 16th of September, 1614, at Sens; and,
afterwards, for the 20th of October following, when the young king, Louis
XIII., after the announcement of his majority, himself opened them in state.
Amongst the members there were one hundred and forty of the clergy, one
hundred and thirty-two of the noblesse, and one hundred and ninety-two of
the third estate. The clergy elected for their president Cardinal de Joyeuse
who had crowned Mary de’ Medici; the noblesse Henry de Bauffremont,
Baron of Senecey, and the third estate Robert Miron, provost of the
tradesmen of Paris.
These elections were not worth much, and have left no trace on history.
The chief political fact connected with the convocation of the, states-
general of 1614, was the entry into their ranks of the youthful Bishop of
Lucon, Armand John dot Plessis de Richelieu, marked out by the finger of
God to sustain, after the powerful reign of Henry IV. and the incapable

regency of Mary de’ Medici, the weight of the government of France. He
was in, two cases elected to the states-general, by the clergy of Loudun and
by that of Poitou. As he was born on the 5th of September, 1585, he was but
twenty-eight years old in 1614. He had not been destined for the church,
and he was pursuing a layman’s course of study at the college of Navarre,
under the name of the Marquis de Chillon, when his elder brother, Alphonse
Louis du Plessis de Richelieu, became disgusted with ecclesiastical life,
turned Carthusian, and resigned the unpretending bishopric of Lucon in
favor of his brother Armand, whom Henry IV. nominated to it in 1605,
instructing Cardinal du Perron, at that time his charge d’affaires at Rome, to
recommend to Pope Paul V. that election which he had very much at heart.
The young prelate betook himself with so much ardor to his theological
studies, that at twenty years of age he was a doctor, and maintained his
theses in rochet and camail as bishop-nominate. At Rome some objection
was still made to his extreme youth; but he hastened thither, and delivered
before the pope a Latin harangue, which scattered all objections to the
wind. After consecration at Rome, in 1607, he returned to Paris, and
hastened to take possession of his see of Lucon, “the poorest and the
nastiest in France,” as he himself said. He could support poverty, but he
also set great store by riches, and he was seriously anxious for the expenses
of his installation. “Taking after you, that is, being a little vain,” he wrote to
one of his fair friends, Madame de Bourges, with whom he was on terms of
familiar correspondence about his affairs, “I should very much like, being
more easy in my circumstances, to make more show: but what can I do? No
house; no carriage; furnished apartments are inconvenient; I must borrow a
coach, horses, and a coachman, in order to at least arrive at Lucon with a
decent turn-out.” He purchased second-hand the velvet bed of one Madame
de Marconnay, his aunt; he made for himself a muff out of a portion of his
uncle the Commander’s martenskins. Silver-plate he was very much
concerned about. “I beg you,” he wrote to Madame de Bourges, “to send me
word what will be the cost of two dozen silver dishes of fair size, as they
are made now; I should very much like to get them for five hundred crowns,
for my resources are not great. I am quite sure that for a matter of a hundred
crowns more, you would not like me to have anything common. I am a
beggar, as you know; in such sort that I cannot do much in the way of
playing the opulent; but at any rate, when I have silver dishes, my nobility
will be considerably enhanced.”

He succeeded, no doubt, in getting his silver dishes and his well-
appointed episcopal mansion; for when, in 1614, he was elected to the
states-general, he had acquired amongst the clergy and at the court of Louis
XIII. sufficient importance to be charged with the duty of speaking, in
presence of the king, on the acceptance of the acts of the council of Trent,
and on the restitution of certain property belonging to the Catholic church
in Warn. He made skilful use of the occasion for the purpose of still further
exalting and improving the question and his own position. He complained
that for a long time past ecclesiastics had been too rarely summoned to the
sovereign’s councils, “as if the honor of serving God,” he said, “rendered
them incapable of serving the king;” he took care at the same time to make
himself pleasant to the mighty ones of the hour; he praised the young king
for having, on announcing his majority, asked his mother to continue to
watch over France, and “to add to the august title of mother of the king that
of mother of the kingdom.” The post of almoner to the queen-regnant, Anne
of Austria, was his reward. He carried still further his ambitious foresight;
in February, 1615, at the time when the session of the states-general closed,
Marshal d’Ancre and Leonora Galigai were still favorites with the queen-
mother; Richelieu laid himself out to be pleasant to them, and received from
the marshal in 1616 the post of secretary of state for war and foreign affairs.
Marshal d’Ancre was at that time looking out for supports against his
imminent downfall. When, in 1617, he fell and was massacred, people were
astonished to find Richelieu on good terms with the marshal’s court-rival
Albert de Luynes, who pressed him to remain in the council at which he had
sat for only five months. To what extent was the Bishop of Lucon at that
time on terms of understanding with the victor? There is no saying; but to
accept the responsibility of the new favorite’s accession was a
compromising act. Richelieu judged it more prudent to remain Bishop of
Lucon and to wear the appearance of defeat by following Mary de’ Medici
to Blois, whither, since the fall of her favorites, she had asked leave to
retire. He would there, he said, be more useful to the government of the
young king; for, remaining at the side of Mary de’ Medici, he would be able
to advise her and restrain her. He so completely persuaded Louis XIII. and
Albert de Luynes, that he received orders to set out for Blois with the
queen-mother, which he did on the 4th of May, 1617. The Bishop of Lucon,
though still young, was already one of the ambitious sort who stake their
dignity upon the ultimate success of their fortunes, success gained no matter

at what price, by address or by hardihood, by complaisance or by
opposition, according to the requirements of facts and times. Dignity apart,
the young bishop had accurately measured the expediency of the step he
was taking in the interest of his future, high-soaring ambition.
On arriving at Blois with the queen-mother, he began by dividing his life
between that petty court in disgrace and his diocese of Lucon. He wished to
set Albert de Luynes at rest as to his presence at the court of Mary de’
Medici, the devotion he showed her, and the counsels he gave her. He had
but small success, however. The new favorite was suspicious and anxious.
Richelieu appeared to be occupied with nothing but the duties of his office;
he presided at conferences; and he published, against the Protestants, a
treatise entitled The Complete Christian (De la Perfection du Chretien).
Luynes was not disposed to believe in these exclusively religious
preoccupations; he urged upon the king that Richelieu should not live
constantly in the queen-mother’s neighborhood, and in June, 1617, he had
orders given him to retire to the courtship of Avignon. Pope Paul V.
complained that the Bishop of Lucon was exiled from his diocese. “What is
to be done about residence,” said he, “which is due to his bishopric? and
what will the world say at seeing him prohibited from going whither his
duty binds him to go?” The king answered that he was surprised at the
pope’s complaint. “An ecclesiastic,” said he, “could not possibly be in any
better place than Avignon, church territory; my lord the Bishop of Lucon is
far from finding time for nothing but the exercises of his profession; I have
discovered that he indulged in practices prejudicial to my service. He is one
of those spirits that are carried away far beyond their duty, and are very
dangerous in times of public disorder.”
Richelieu obeyed without making any objection; he passed two years at
Avignon, protesting that he would never depart from it without the consent
of Luynes and without the hope of serving him. The favor and fortune of
the young falconer went on increasing every day. He had, in 1617, married
the daughter of the Duke of Montbazon, and, in 1619, prevailed upon the
king to have the estate of Maille raised for him to a duchy-peerage under
the title of Luynes. In 1621 he procured for himself the dignity of constable,
to which he had no military claim. Louis XIII. sometimes took a malicious
pleasure in making fun of his favorite’s cupidity and that of his following.
“I never saw,” said he, “one person with so many relatives; they come to
court by ship-loads, and not a single one of them with a silk dress.” “See,”

said he one day to the Count of Bassompierre, pointing to Luynes
surrounded by a numerous following: “he wants to play the king, but I shall
know how to prevent it; I will make him disgorge what he has taken from
me.” Friends at court warned Luynes of this language; and Luynes replied
with a somewhat disdainful impertinence, “It is good for me to cause the
king a little vexation from time to time: it revives the affection he feels for
me.” Richelieu kept himself well informed of court-rumors, and was
cautious not to treat them with indifference. He took great pains to make
himself pleasant to the young constable. “My lord,” he wrote to him in
August, 1621, “I am extremely pleased to have an opportunity of testifying
to you, that I shall never have any possession that I shall not be most happy
to employ for the satisfaction of the king and yourself. The queen did me
the honor of desiring that I should have the abbey of Redon; but the
moment I knew that the king and you, my lord, were desirous of disposing
of it otherwise, I gave it up with very good cheer, in order that being in your
hands you might gratify therewith whomsoever you pleased; assuring you,
my lord, that I have more contentment in testifying to you thereby that
which you will on every occasion recognize in me, than I should have had
by an augmentation of four thousand crowns’ income. The queen is very
well, thank God. I think it will be very meet that from time to time, by
means of those who are passing, you should send her news of the king and
of you and yours, which will give her great satisfaction “ (Letters of
Cardinal Richelieu, t. i. p. 690).
Whilst Richelieu was thus behaving towards the favorite with
complaisance and modesty, Mary de’ Medici, whose mouthpiece he
appeared to be, assumed a different posture, and used different language;
she complained bitterly of the slavery and want of money to which she was
reduced at Blois; a plot, on the part of both aristocrats and domestics, were
contrived by those about her to extricate her; she entered into secret
relations with a great, a turbulent, and a malcontent lord, the Duke of
Epernon; two Florentine servants, Ruccellai and Vincenti Ludovici, were
their go-betweens; and it was agreed that she should escape from Blois and
take refuge at Angouleme, a lordship belonging to the Duke of Epernon.
She at the same time wrote to the king to plead for more liberty. He replied,
“Madame, having understood that you have a wish to visit certain places of
devotion, I am rejoiced thereat. I shall be still more pleased if you take a
resolution to move about and travel henceforward more than you have done

in the past; I consider that it will be of great service to your health, which is
extremely precious to me. If business permitted me to be of the party, I
would accompany you with all my heart.” Mary replied to him with formal
assurances of fidelity and obedience; she promised before God and His
angels “to have no correspondence which could be prejudicial to the king’s
service, to warn him of all intrigues, which should come to her knowledge,
that were opposed to his will, and to entertain no design of returning to
court save when it should please the king to give her orders to do so.” There
was between the king, the queen-mother, Albert de Luynes, the Duke of
Epernon and their agents, an exchange of letters and empty promises which
deceived scarcely anybody, and which destroyed all confidence as well as
all truthfulness between them. The Duke of Epernon protested that he had
no idea of disobeying the king’s commands, but that he thought his
presence was more necessary for the king’s service in Angoumois than at
Metz. He complained at the same time that for two years past he had
received from the court only the simple pay of a colonel at ten months for
the year, which took it out of his power to live suitably to his rank. He set
out for Metz at the end of January, 1619, saying, “I am going to take the
boldest step I ever took in my life.”
The queen-mother made her exit from Blois on the night between the
21st and 22d of February, 1619, by her closet window, against which a
ladder had been placed for the descent to the terrace, whence a second
ladder was to enable her to descend right down. On arriving at the terrace
she found herself so fatigued and so agitated, that she declared it would be
impossible to avail herself of the second ladder; she preferred to have
herself let down upon a cloak to the bottom of the terrace, which had a
slight slant. Her two equeries escorted her along the faubourg to the end of
the bridge. Some officers of her household saw her pass without
recognizing her, and laughed at meeting a woman between two men, at
night and with a somewhat agitated air. “They take me for a bona roba,”
said the queen. On arriving at the end of the faubourg of Blois, she did not
find her carriage, which was to have been waiting for her there. When she
had come up with it, there was a casket missing which contained her jewels;
there was a hundred thousand crowns’ worth in it; the casket had fallen out
two hundred paces from the spot; it was recovered, and the queen-mother
got into her carriage and took the road to Loches, where the Duke of
Epernon had been waiting for her since the day before. He came to meet her

with a hundred and fifty horsemen. Nobody in the household of Mary
de’Medici had observed her departure.
Great was the rumors when her escape became known, and greater still
when it was learned in whose hands she had placed herself. It was civil war,
said everybody. At the commencement of the seventeenth century, there
were still two possible and even probable chances of civil war in France;
one between Catholics and Protestants, and the other between what
remained of the great feudal or quasi-feudal lords and the kingship. Which
of the two wars was about to commence? Nobody knew; on one side there
was hesitation; the most contradictory moves were made. Louis XIII., when
he heard of his mother’s escape, tried first of all to disconnect her from the
Duke of Epernon. “I could never have imagined,” said be, “that there was
any man who, in time of perfect peace, would have had the audacity, I do
not say to carry out, but to conceive the resolution of making an attempt
upon the mother of his king . . . ; in order to release you from the difficulty
you are in, Madame, I have determined to take up arms to put you in
possession of the liberty of which your enemies have deprived you.” And he
marched troops and cannon to Angoumois. “Many men,” says Duke Henry
of Rohan, “envied the Duke of Epernon his gallant deed, but few were
willing to submit themselves to his haughty temper, and everybody, having
reason to believe that it would all end in a peace, was careful not to embark
in the affair merely to incur the king’s hatred, and leave to others the honors
of the enterprise.” The king’s troops were well received wherever they
showed themselves; the towns opened their gates to them. “It needs,” said a
contemporary, “mighty strong citadels to make the towns of France obey
their governors when they see the latter disobedient to the king’s. will.”
Several great lords held themselves carefully aloof; others determined to
attempt an arrangement between the king and his mother; it was known
what influence over her continued to be preserved by the Bishop of Lucon,
still in exile at Avignon; he was pressed to return; his confidant, Father
Joseph du Tremblay, was of opinion that he should; and Richelieu,
accordingly, set out. The governor of Lyons had him arrested at Vienne in
Dauphiny, and was much surprised to find him armed with a letter from the
king, commanding that he should be allowed to pass freely everywhere.
Richelieu was prepared to advise a reconciliation between king and queen-
mother, and the king was as much disposed to exert himself to that end as
the queen-mother’s friends. At Limoges the Bishop of Lucon was obliged to

carefully avoid Count Schomberg, commandant of the royal troops, who
was not at all in the secret of the negotiation. When he arrived at Angers a
fresh difficulty supervened. The most daring, of the queen-mother’s
domestic advisers, Ruccellai, had conceived a hatred of the bishop, and
tried to exclude him from the privy council. Richelieu let be, “Certain,” as
he said, “that they would soon fall back upon him.” He was one of the
patient as well as ambitious, who can calculate upon success, even afar off,
and wait for it. The Duke of Epernon supported him; Ruccellai, defeated,
left the queen-mother, taking with him some of her most warmly attached
servants. When the subordinates were gone, recourse was had, accordingly,
to Richelieu. On the 10th of August, 1619, he concluded at Angouleme
between the king and his mother a treaty, whereby the king promised to
consign to oblivion all that had passed since Blois; the queen-mother
consented to exchange her government of Touraine against that of Anjou;
and the Duke of Epernon received from the town of Boulogne fifty
thousand crowns in recompense for what he had done, and he wrote to the
king to protest his fidelity. The queen-mother still hesitated to see her son;
but, at his entreaty, she at last sent off the Bishop of Lucon from Angouleme
to make preparations for the interview, and, five days afterwards, she set out
herself, accompanied by the Duke of Epernon, who halted at the limits of
his own government, not caring to come to any closer quarters with so
recently reconciled a court. The king received his mother, according to
some, in the little town of Cousieres, and, according to others, at Tours or
Amboise. They embraced, with tears. “God bless me, my boy, how you are
grown!” said the queen. “In order to be of more service to you, mother,”
answered the king. The cheers of the people hailed their reconciliation; not
without certain signs of disquietude on the part of the favorite, Albert de
Luynes, who was an eye-witness. After the interview, the king set out for
Paris again; and Mary de’ Medici returned to her government of Anjou to
take possession of it, promising, she said, to rejoin her son subsequently at
Paris. Du Plessis-Mornay wrote to one of his friends at court, “If you do not
get the queen along with you, you have done nothing at all; distrust will
increase with absence; the malcontents will multiply; and the honest
servants of the king will have no little difficulty in managing to live
between them.”
How to live between mother and son without being committed to one or
the other, was indeed the question. A difficult task. For three months the

courtiers were equal to it; from May to July, 1619, the court and the
government were split in two; the king at Paris or at Tours, the queen-
mother at Angers or at Blois. Two eminent men, Richelieu amongst the
Catholics and Du Plessis-Mornay amongst the Protestants, advised them
strongly and incessantly to unite again, to live and to govern together.
“Apply yourself to winning the king’s good graces,” said Richelieu to the
queen-mother: “support on every occasion the interests of the public
without speaking of your own; take the side of equity against that of favor,
without attacking the favorites and without appearing to envy their
influence.” Mornay used the same language to the Protestants. “Do not
wear out the king’s patience,” he said to them: “there is no patience without
limits.” Louis XIII. listened to them without allowing himself to be
persuaded by them; the warlike spirit was striving within the young man; he
was brave, and loved war as war rather than for political reasons. The grand
provost of Normandy was advising him one day not to venture in person
into his province, saying, “You will find there nothing but revolt and
disagreeables.” “Though the roads were all paved with arms,” answered the
king, “I would march over the bellies of my foes, for they have no cause to
declare against me, who have offended nobody. You shall have the pleasure
of seeing it; you served the late king my father too well not to rejoice at it.”
The queenmother, on her side, was delighted to see herself surrounded at
Angers by a brilliant court; and the Dukes of Longueville, of La Tremoille,
of Retz, of Rohan, of Mayenne, of Epernon, and of Nemours, promised her
numerous troops and effectual support. She might, nevertheless, have found
many reasons to doubt and wait for proofs. The king moved upon
Normandy; and his quartermasters came to assign quarters at Rouen.
“Where have you left the king?” asked the Duke of Longueville. “At
Pontoise, my lord; but he is by this time far advanced, and is to sleep to-
night at Magny.” “Where do you mean to quarter him here?” asked the
duke. “In the house where you are, my lord.” “It is right that I yield him
place,” said the duke, and the very same evening took the road back to the
district of Caux. It was under this aspect of public feeling that an embassy
from the king and a pacific mission from Rome came, without any success,
to Rangers, and that on the 4th of July, 1619, a fresh civil war between the
king and the partisans of the queen-mother was declared.
It was short and not very bloody, though pretty vigorously contested. The
two armies met at Ponts de Ce; they had not, either of them, any orders or

any desire to fight; and pacific negotiations were opened at La Fleche. The
queen-mother declared that she had made up her mind to live henceforth at
her son’s court, and that all she desired was to leave honorably the party
with which she was engaged. That was precisely the difficulty. The king
also declared himself resolved to receive his mother affectionately; but he
required her to abandon the lords of her party, and that was what she could
not make up her mind to do. In the unpremeditated conflict that took place
at Ponts de Ce, the troops of the queen-mother were beaten. “They had two
hundred men killed or drowned,” says Bassompierre, “and about as many
taken prisoners.” This reverse silenced the queen’s scruples; there was
clearly no imperative cause for war between her and the king, and the
queen’s partisans could not be blind to the fact that, if the struggle were
prolonged, they would be beaten.
The kingship had the upper hand in the country, and a consent was given
to the desired arrangements. “Assure the king that I will go and see him to-
morrow at Brissac,” said the queen-mother. “I am perfectly satisfied with
him, and all I think of is to please him, and pray God for him personally,
and for the prosperity of his kingdom.” A treaty was concluded at Angers on
the 10th of August, 1620; the queen-mother returned to Paris; and the civil
war at court was evidently, not put an end to never to recur, but stricken
with feebleness and postponed.
Two men of mark, Albert de Luynes and Richelieu, came out of this
crisis well content. The favorite felicitated himself on the king’s victory
over the queen-mother, for he might consider the triumph as his own; he
had advised and supported the king’s steady resistance to his mother’s
enterprises. Besides, he had gained by it the rank and power of constable; it
was at this period that he obtained them, thanks to the retirement of
Lesdiguieres, who gave them up to assume the title of marshal-general of
the king’s camps and armies. The royal favor did not stop there for Luynes;
the keeper of the seals, Du Vair, died in 1621; and the king handed over the
seals to the new constable, who thus united the military authority with that
of justice, without being either a great warrior or a great lawyer. All he had
to do was to wait for an opportunity of displaying his double power. The
defaults of the French Protestants soon supplied one. In July, 1567, Henry
IV.‘s mother, Jeanne d’Albret, on becoming Queen of Navarre, had, at the
demand of the Estates of Bearn, proclaimed Calvinism as the sole religion
of her petty kingdom; all Catholic worship was expressly forbidden there;

religious liberty, which Protestants everywhere invoked, was proscribed in
Bearn; moreover, ecclesiastical property was confiscated there. The
Catholics complained, loudly; the Kings of France were supporters of their
plaint; it had been for a long time past repudiated or eluded; but on the 13th
of August, 1620, Louis XIII. issued two edicts for the purpose of restoring
in Bearn free Catholic worship, and making restitution of their property to
the ecclesiastical establishments. The council of Pau, which had at first
repudiated them, hastened to enregister these edicts in the hope of retarding
at least their execution; but the king said, “In two days I shall be at Pau; you
want me there to assist your weakness.” He was asked how he would be
received at Pau. “As sovereign of Warn,” said he. “I will dismount first of
all at the church, if there be one; but, if not, I want no canopy or ceremonial
entry; it would not become me to receive honors in a place where I have
never been, before giving thanks to God, from whom I hold all my
dominions and all my power.” Religious liberty was thus reestablished at
Pau. “It is the king’s intention,” said the Duke of Montmorency to the
Protestants of Villeneuve-de-Berg, who asked that they might enjoy the
liberty promised them by the edicts, “that all his subjects, Catholic or
Protestant, be equally free in the exercise of their religion; you shall not be
hindered in yours, and I will take good care that you do not hinder the
Catholics in theirs.” The Duke of Montmorency did not foresee that the son
and successor of the king in whose name he was so energetically
proclaiming religious liberty, Louis XIV., would abolish the edict of Nantes
whereby his grandfather, Henry IV., had founded it. Justice and iniquity are
often all but contemporary.
It has just been said that not only Luynes, but Richelieu too, had come
well content out of the crisis brought about by the struggle between Louis
XIII. and the queen-mother. Richelieu’s satisfaction was neither so keen nor
so speedy as the favorite’s. Pope Paul V. had announced, for the 11th of
January, 1621, a promotion of ten cardinals. At the news of this, the queen-
mother sent an express courier to Rome with an urgent demand that the
Bishop of Lucon should be included in the promotion. The Marquis of
Coeuvres, ambassador of France at Rome, insisted rather strongly, in the
name of the queen-mother and of the Duke of Luynes, from whom he
showed the pope some very pressing letters. The pope, in surprise, gave him
a letter to read in the handwriting of King Louis XIII., saying that he did not
at all wish the Bishop of Lucon to become cardinal, and begging that no

notice might be taken of any recommendations which should be forwarded
on the subject. The ambassador, greatly surprised in his turn, ceased to
insist. It was evidently the doing of the Duke of Luynes, who, jealous of the
Bishop of Lucon and dreading his influence, had demanded and obtained
from the king this secret measure. It was effectual; and, at the beginning of
the year 1621, Richelieu had but a vague hope of the hat. He had no idea,
when he heard of this check, that at the end of a few months Luynes would
undergo one graver still, would die almost instantaneously after having
practised a policy analogous to that which Richelieu was himself projecting,
and would leave the road open for him to obtain the cardinal’s hat, and once
more enter into the councils of the king, who, however, said to the queen-
mother, “I know him better than you, madame; he is a man of unbounded
ambition.”
The two victories won in 1620 by the Duke of Luynes, one over the
Protestants by the re-establishment in Warn of free worship for the
Catholics, and the other over his secret rival Richelieu, by preventing him
from becoming cardinal, had inspired him with great confidence in his good
fortune. He resolved to push it with more boldness than he had yet shown.
He purposed to subdue the Protestants as a political party whilst respecting
their religious creed, and to reduce them to a condition of subjection in the
state whilst leaving them free, as Christians, in the church. A fundamentally
contradictory problem; for the different liberties are closely connected, one
with another, and have need to be security one for another; but, at the
commencement of the seventeenth century, people were not so particular in
point of consequence, and it was thought possible to give religious liberty
its guarantees whilst refusing them to general political liberty. That is what
the Duke of Luynes attempted to do; to all the towns to which Henry IV.
had bound himself by the edict of Nantes, he made a promise of preserving
to them their religious liberties, and he called upon them at the same time to
remain submissive and faithful subjects of the sovereign kingship. La
Rochelle, Montauban, Saumur, Sancerre, Charite-sur-Loire, and St. Jean
d’Angely were in this category; and it was to Montauban, as one of the
most important of those towns, that Louis XIII. first addressed his promise
and his appeal, inconsistent one with the other.
Some years previously, in May, 1610, amidst the grief and anxiety
awakened by the assassination of Henry IV. by Ravaillac, the population of
Montauban had maintained and testified a pacific and moderate disposition.

The synod was in assembly when the news of the king’s death arrived there.
We read in the report of the town-council, under date of May 19, 1610,
“The ecclesiastics (Catholic) having come to the council, the consuls
gave them every assurance for their persons and property, and took them
under the protection and safeguard of the king and the town, without
suffering or permitting any hurt, wrong, or displeasure to be done them. . . .
The ecclesiastics thanked them, and protested their desire to live and die in
that town, as good townsmen and servants of the king . .” On the 22d of
May, in a larger council-general, the council gives notice to the Parliament
of Toulouse that everything shall remain peaceable. . . . Consul Beraud
moves that “every one take forthwith the oath of fidelity we owe to his
Majesty, and that every one also testify, by acclamation, his wishes and
desires for the prosperity and duration of his reign.”
Ten years later, in 1620, the disposition of the Protestants was very much
changed; distrust and irritation had once more entered into their hearts.
Henry IV. was no longer there to appease them or hold them in. The
restoration of the freedom of Catholic worship in Warn had alarmed and
offended them as a violation of their own exclusive right proclaimed by
Jeanne d’Albret. In January, 1621, during an assembly held at La Rochelle,
they exclaimed violently against what they called “the woes experienced by
their brethren of Warn.” Louis XIII. considered their remonstrances too
arrogant to be tolerated. On the 24th of April, 1621, by a formal declaration,
he confirmed all the edicts issued in favor of the liberty of Protestants, but
with a further announcement that he would put down with all the rigor of
the laws those who did not remain submissive and tranquil in the enjoyment
of their own rights. This measure produced amongst the Protestants a
violent schism. Some submitted, and their chiefs gave up to the king the
places they commanded. On the 10th of May, 1621, Saumur opened her
gates to him. Others, more hot-tempered and more obstinate, persisted in
their remonstrances. La Rochelle, Montauban, and St. Jean d’Angely took
that side. Duke Henry of Rohan and the Duke of Soubise, his brother,
supported them in their resistance. Rohan went to Montauban, and,
mounting into the pulpit, said to the assembly, “I will not conceal from you
that the most certain conjecture which can be formed from the current news
is, that in a short time the royal army will camp around your walls, since St.
Jean d’Angely is surrendered, and all that remains up to here is weakened,
broken down, and ready to receive the yoke, through the factions of certain

evil spirits. I have no fear lest the consternation and cowardice of the rest
should reach by contagion to you. In days past you swore in my presence
the union of the churches. Of a surety we will get peace restored to you
here. I pray you to have confidence in me, that on this occasion I will not
desert you, whatever happen. Though there should be but two men left of
my religion, I will be one of the two. My houses and my revenues are
seized, because I would not bow beneath the proclamation. I have my
sword and my life left. Three stout hearts are better than thirty that quail.”
The whole assembly vehemently cheered this fiery speech. The premier
consul of Montauban, Dupuy, swore to live and die in the cause of union of
the churches. “The Duke of Rohan exerted himself to place Montauban in a
position to oppose a vigorous resistance to the royal troops. Consul Dupuy,
for his part, was at the same time collecting munitions and victuals.” It was
announced that the king’s army was advancing; and reports were spread,
with the usual exaggeration, of the deeds of violence it was already
committing. At the news thereof, every nerve is strained to advance the
fortifications “there is none that shirks, of whatever age, or sex, or
condition; every other occupation ceases; night serves to render the day’s
work bigger; the inhabitants are all a-sweat, soiled with dust, laden with
earth.” Whilst the multitude was thus working pell-mell to put the town
substantially in a state of defence, the warlike population, gentlemen and
burgesses, were arming and organizing for the struggle. They had chosen
for their chief a younger son of Sully’s, Baron d’Orval, devoted to the
Protestant cause, even to the extent of rebellion, whilst his elder brother, the
Marquis of Rosny, was serving in the royal army. Their aged father, Sully,
went to Montauban to counsel peace; not that he exactly blamed the
resistance, but he said that it would be vain, and that a peace on good terms
was possible. He was listened to with respect, though he was not believed,
and though the struggle was all the while persisted in. The royal army, with
a strength of twenty thousand men, and commanded by the young Duke of
Mayenne, son of the great Leaguer, came up on the 18th of August, 1621, to
besiege Montauban, with its population of from fifteen thousand to twenty
thousand. Besiegers and besieged were all of them brave; the former the
more obstinate, the latter the more hare-brained and rash. The siege lasted
two months and a half with alternate successes and reverses. The people of
the town were directed and supported by commissions charged with the
duty of collecting meal, preparing quarters for the troops, looking after the

sick and wounded, and distributing ammunition. “Day and night, from hour
to hour, one of the consuls went to inspect these services. All was done
without confusion, without a murmur.” Ministers of the Reformed church,
to the number of thirteen, were charged to keep up the enthusiasm with
chants, psalms, and prayers. One of them, the pastor Chamier, was animated
by a zealous and bellicose fanaticism; he was never tired of calling to mind
the calamities undergone by the towns that had submitted to the royal army;
he was incessantly comparing Montauban to Bethulia, Louis XIII. to
Nabuchodonosor, the Duke of Mayenne to Holofernes, the Montalbanese to
the people of God, and the Catholics to the Assyrians. The indecision and
diversity of views in the royal camp formed a singular contrast to the firm
resolution, enthusiasm, and union which prevailed in the town. On the 16th
and 17th of August the king passed his army in review; several captains
were urgent in dissuading him from prosecuting the siege; they proposed to
build forts around Montauban, and leave there the Duke of Mayenne “to
harass the inhabitants, make them consume both their gunpowder and their
tooth-powder, and, peradventure, bring them to a composition.” But the
self-respect of the king and of the army was compromised; the Duke of
Luynes ardently desired to change his name for that of Duke of Montauban;
there was promise of help from the Prince of Conde and the Duke of
Vendome, who were commanding, one in Berry and the other in Brittany.
These personal interests and sentiments carried the day; the siege was
pushed forward with ardor, although without combined effort; the Duke of
Mayenne was killed there on the 16th of September, 1621; and, amongst the
insurgents, the preacher Chamier met, on the 17th of October, the same fate.
It was in the royal army and the government that fatigue and the desire of
putting a stop to a struggle so costly and of such doubtful issue first began
to be manifested. And, at the outset, in the form of attempts at negotiation.
The Duke of Luynes himself had a proposal made to the Duke of Rohan,
who was in residence at Castres, for an interview, which Rohan accepted,
notwithstanding the mistrust of the people of Castres, and of the majority of
his friends. The conference was held at a league’s distance from
Montauban. After the proper compliments, Luynes drew Rohan aside into
an alley alone, and, “I thank you,” he said, “for having put trust in me; you
shall not find it misplaced; your safety is as great here as in Castres. Having
become connected with you, I desire your welfare; but you deprived me,
whilst my favor lasted, of the means of procuring the greatness of your

house. You have succored Montauban in the very teeth of your king. It is a
great feather in your cap; but you must not make too much of it. It is time to
act for yourself and your friends. The king will make no general peace; treat
for them who acknowledge you. Represent to them of Montauban that their
ruin is but deferred for a few days; that you have no means of helping them.
For Castres and other places in your department, ask what you will, and you
shall obtain it. For your own self, anything you please (carte blanche) is
offered you. . . . If you will believe me, you will get out of this miserable
business with glory, with the good graces of the king, and with what you
desire for your own fortunes, which I am anxious to promote so as to be a
support to mine.”
Rohan replied, “I should be my own enemy if I did not desire my king’s
good graces and your friendship. I will never refuse from my king benefits
and honors, or from you the offices of a kind connection. I do well consider
the peril in which I stand; but I beg you also to look at yours. You are
universally hated, because you alone possess what everybody desires. Wars
against them of the religion have often commenced with great
disadvantages for them; but the restlessness of the French spirit, the
discontent of those not in the government, and the influence of foreigners
have often retrieved them. If you manage to make the king grant us peace, it
will be to his great honor and advantage, for, after having humbled the
party, without having received any check, and without any appearance of
division within or assistance from without, he will have shown that he is not
set against the religion, but only against the disobedience it covers, and he
will break the neck of other parties without having met with anything
disagreeable. But, if you push things to extremity, and the torrent of your
successes does not continue,—and you are on the eve of seeing it stopped in
front of Montauban,—every one will recover his as yet flurried senses, and
will give you a difficult business to unravel. Bethink you that you have
gathered in the harvest of all that promises mingled with threats could
enable you to gain, and that the remnant is fighting for the religion in which
it believes. For my own part, I have made up my mind to the loss of my
property and my posts; if you have retarded the effects thereof on account
of our connection, I am obliged to you for it; but I am quite prepared to
suffer everything, since my mind is made up, having solemnly promised it
and my conscience so bidding me, to hear of nothing but a general peace.”

The reply was worthy of a great soul devoted to a great cause, a soul that
would not sacrifice to the hopes of fortune either friends or creed. It was a
mark of Duke Henry of Rohan’s superior character to take account, before
everything, of the general interests and the moral sentiments of his party.
The chief of the royal party, the Duke of Luynes, was, on the contrary,
absorbed in the material and momentary success of his own personal policy;
he refused to treat for a general peace with the Protestants, and he preferred
to submit to a partial and local defeat before Montauban, rather than be
hampered with the difficulties of national pacification. At a council held on
the 26th of October, 1621, it was decided to publicly raise the siege. The
king and the royal army departed in November from the precincts of
Montauban, which they purposed to attack afresh on the return of spring:
the king was in a hurry to go and receive at Toulouse the empty
acclamations of the mob, and he ordered Luynes to go and take, on the little
town of Monheur, in the neighborhood of Toulouse, a specious revenge for
his check before Montauban. Monheur surrendered on the 11th of
December, 1621. Another little village in the neighborhood, Negrepelisse,
which offered resistance to the royal army, was taken by assault, and its
population infamously massacred. But in the midst of these insignificant
victories, on the 14th of December, 1621, the royal favorite, the constable,
interim keeper of the seals, Duke Albert of Luynes, had an attack of
malignant fever, and died in three days at the camp of Longueville. “What
was marvellously surprising, and gave a good idea of the world and its
vanity,” says his contemporary, the Marquis of Fontaine Mareuil, “was that
this man, so great and so powerful, found himself, nevertheless, to such a
degree abandoned and despised, that for two days, during which he was in
agony, there was scarcely one of his people who would stay in his room, the
door being open all the time, and anybody who pleased coming in, as if he
had been the most insignificant of men; and when his body was taken to be
interred, I suppose, to his duchy of Luynes, instead of priests to pray for
him, I saw some of his valets playing piquet on his bier whilst they were
having their horses baited.”
It was not long before magnificence revisited the favorite’s bier. “On the
11th of January, 1622, his mortal remains having arrived at Tours, all the
religious bodies went out to receive it; the constable was placed in a chariot
drawn by six horses, accompanied by pages, Swiss, and gentlemen in
mourning. He was finally laid in the cathedral-church, where there took

place a service which was attended by Marshal de Lesdiguieres, the greatest
lords of the court, the judicature, and the corporation.” It is a contemporary
sheet, the Mercure Francais, which has preserved to us these details as to
the posthumous grandeur of Albert de Luynes, after the brutal indifference
to which he had been subjected at the moment of his death.
His brothers after him held a high historical position, which the family
have maintained, through the course of every revolution, to the present day;
a position which M. Cousin took pleasure in calling to mind, and which the
last duke but one of Luynes made it a point of duty to commemorate by
raising to Louis XIII. a massive silver statue almost as large as life, the
work of that able sculptor, M. Rudde, which figured at the public exhibition
set on foot by Count d’Haussonville, in honor of the Alsace-Lorrainers
whom the late disasters of France drove off in exile to Algeria.
Richelieu, when he had become cardinal, premier minister of Louis XIII.
and of the government of France, passed a just but severe judgment upon
Albert de Luynes. “He was a mediocre and timid creature,” he said,
“faithless, ungenerous, too weak to remain steady against the assault of so
great a fortune as that which ruined him incontinently; allowing himself to
be borne away by it as by a torrent, without any foothold, unable to set
bounds to his ambition, incapable of arresting it, and not knowing what he
was about, like a man on the top of a tower, whose head goes round and
who has no longer any power of discernment. He would fain have been
Prince of Orange, Count of Avignon, Duke of Albret, King of Austrasia, and
would not have refused more if he had seen his way to it.” [Memoires de
Richelieu, p. 169, in the Petitot Collection, Series v., t. xxii.]
This brilliant and truthful portrait lacks one feature which was the merit
of the Constable de Luynes: he saw coming, and he anticipated, a long way
off and to little purpose, but heartily enough, the government of France by a
supreme kingship, whilst paying respect, as long as he lived, to religious
liberty, and showing himself favorable to intellectual and literary liberty,
though he was opposed to political and national liberty. That was the
government which, after him, was practised with a high hand and rendered
triumphant by Cardinal Richelieu to the honor, if not the happiness, of
France.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

LOUIS XIII., CARDINAL RICHELIEU, AND
THE COURT. (1622-1642.)

The characteristic of Louis XIV.‘s reign is the uncontested empire of the
sovereign over the nation, the authority of the court throughout the country.
All intellectual movement proceeded from the court or radiated about it; the
whole government, whether for war or peace, was concentrated in its hands.
Conde, Turenne, Catinat, Luxembourg, Villars, Vendome belonged, as well
as Louvois or Colbert, to the court; from the court went the governors and
administrators of provinces; there was no longer any greatness existing
outside of the court; there were no longer any petty private courts. As for
the state, the king was it.
For ages past, France had enjoyed the rare good fortune of seeing her
throne successively occupied by Charlemagne and Charles V., by St. Louis
and Louis XI., by Louis XII., Francis I. and Henry IV., great conquerors or
wise administrators, heroic saints or profound politicians, brilliant knights
or models of patriot-kings. Such sovereigns had not only governed, but also
impressed the imagination of the people; it was to them that the weak,
oppressed by the great feudal lords, had little by little learned to apply for
support and assistance; since the reign of Francis I., especially, in the midst
of the religious struggles which had caused division amongst the noblesse
and were threatening to create a state within the state, the personal position
of the grandees, and that of their petty private courts, had been constantly
diminishing in importance; the wise policy, the bold and prudent courage of
Henry IV., and his patriotic foresight had pacified hatred and stayed civil
wars; he had caused his people to feel the pleasure and pride of being
governed by a man of a superior order. Cardinal Richelieu, more stern than
Henry IV., set his face steadily against all the influences of the great lords;
he broke them down one after another; he persistently elevated the royal

authority; it was the hand of Richelieu which made the court and paved the
way for the reign of Louis XIV. The Fronde was but a paltry interlude and a
sanguinary game between parties. At Richelieu’s death, pure monarchy was
founded.

In the month of December, 1622, the work was as yet full of difficulty.
There were numerous rivals for the heritage of royal favor that had slipped
from the dying hands of Luynes. The Prince of Conde, a man of ability and
moderation, “a good managing man (homme de bon menage),” as he was
afterwards called by the cardinal, was the first to get possession of the mind
of the king, at that time away from his mother, who was residing at Paris.
“It was not so much from dislike that they opposed her,” says Richelieu, “as
from fear lest, when once established at the king’s council, she might wish
to introduce me there. They acknowledged in me some force of judgment;
they dreaded my wits, fearing lest, if the king were to take special
cognizance of me, it might come to his committing to me the principal care
of his affairs.” [Memoires de Richelieu, t. ii. p. 193.] On returning to Paris,
the king, nevertheless, could not refuse this gratification to his mother.
However, “the prince, who was in the habit of speaking very freely, and
could not be mum about what he had on his mind, permitted himself to go

so far as to say that she had been received into the council on two
conditions, one, that she should have cognizance of nothing but what they
pleased, and the other, that, though only a portion of affairs was
communicated to her, she would serve as authority for all in the minds of
the people.” [Memoires de Richelieu, t. ii. p. 194.] In fact, the queen-mother
quite perceived that she was only shown the articles in the window, and did
not enter the shop; “but, with all the prudence and patience of an Italian,
when she was not carried away by passion, she knew how to practise
dissimulation towards the Prince of Conde and his allies, Chancellor Sillery
and his son Puisieux, secretary of state.” She accompanied her son on an
expedition against the Huguenots of the South, which she had not advised,
“foreseeing quite well that, if she were separated from the king, she would
have no part either in peace or war, and that, if they got on without her for
ten months, they would become accustomed to getting on without her.” She
had the satisfaction of at last seeing the Bishop of Lucon promoted to the
cardinalship she had so often solicited for him in vain; but, at the same
time, the king called to the council Cardinal Rochefoucauld, “not through
personal esteem for the old cardinal,” says Richelieu, “but to cut off from
the new one all hope of a place for which he might be supposed to feel
some ambition.” Nevertheless, in spite of his enemies’ intrigues, in spite of
a certain instinctive repugnance on the part of the king himself, who
repeated to his mother, “I know him better than you, madame; he is a man
of unbounded ambition,” the “new cardinal” was called to the council at the
opening of the year 1624, on the instance of the Marquis of La Vieuville,
superintendent of finance and chief of the council, who felt himself
unsteady in his position, and sought to secure the favor of the queen-
mother. It was as the protege and organ of Mary de’ Medici that the cardinal
wrote to the Prince of Conde, on the 11th of May, 1624, “The king having
done me the honor to place me on his council, I pray God with all my heart
to render me worthy of serving him as I desire; and I feel myself bound
thereto by every sort of consideration. I cannot sufficiently thank you for
the satisfaction that you have been pleased to testify to me thereat.
Therefore would I far rather do so in deed by serving you than by bootless
words. And in that I cannot fail without failing to follow out the king’s
intention. I have made known to the queen the assurance you give her by
your letter of your affection, for which she feels all the reciprocity you can
desire. She is the more ready to flatter herself with the hope of its

continuance, in that she will be very glad to incite you thereto by all the
good offices she has means of rendering you with His Majesty.” [Lettres du
Cardinal de Richelieu, t. ii. p. 5.] On the 12th of August, however, M. de la
Vieuville fell irretrievably, and was confined in the castle of Amboise. A
pamphlet of the time had forewarned him of the danger which threatened
him when he introduced Richelieu into the council. “You are both of the
same temper,” it said; “that is, you both desire one and the same thing,
which is, to be, each of you, sole governor. That which you believe to be
your making will be your undoing.”
From that moment the cardinal, in spite of his modest resistance based
upon the state of his health, became the veritable chief of the council.
“Everybody knew that, amidst the mere private occupations he had hitherto
had, it would have been impossible for him to exist with such poor health,
unless he took frequent recreation in the country.” [Memoires de Richelieu,
t. ii. p. 289.] Turning his attention to founding his power and making
himself friends, he authorized the recall of Count Schomberg, lately
disgraced, and of the Duke of Anjou’s, the king’s brother’s, governor,
Colonel Ornano, imprisoned by the Marquis of La Vieuville. He, at the
same time, stood out against the danger of concentrating all the power of
the government in a single pair of hands. “Your Majesty,” he said, “ought
not to confide your public business to a single one of your councillors and
hide it from the rest; those whom you have chosen ought to live in
fellowship and amity in your service, not in partisanship and division.
Every time, and as many times as a single one wants to do everything
himself, he wants to ruin himself; but in ruining himself he will ruin your
kingdom and you, and as often as any single one wants to possess your ear
and do in secret what should be resolved upon openly, it must necessarily
be for the purpose of concealing from Your Majesty either his ignorance or
his wickedness.” [Memoires de Richelieu, t. ii. p. 349.] Prudent rules and
acute remarks, which Richelieu, when he became all-powerful, was to
forget.
Eighteen months had barely rolled away when Colonel Ornano, lately
created a marshal at the Duke of Anjou’s request, was again arrested and
carried off a prisoner “to the very room where, twenty-four years ago,
Marshal Biron had been confined.” For some time past “it had been current
at court and throughout the kingdom that a great cabal was going on,” says
Richelieu in his Memoires, “and the cabalists said quite openly that under

his ministry, men might cabal with impunity, for he was not a dangerous
enemy.” If the cabalists had been living in that confidence, they were most
woefully deceived. Richelieu was neither meddlesome nor cruel, but he was
stern and pitiless towards the sufferings as well as the supplications of those
who sought to thwart his policy. At this period, he wished to bring about a
marriage between the Duke of Anjou, then eighteen years old, and Mdlle.
de Montpensier, the late Duke of Montpensier’s daughter, and the richest
heiress in France. The young prince did not like it. Madame de Chevreuse,
it was said, seeing the king an invalid and childless, was already
anticipating his death, and the possibility of marrying his widowed queen to
his successor. “I should gain too little by the change,” said Anne of Austria
one day, irritated by the accusations of which she was the object. Divers
secret or avowed motives had formed about the Duke of Anjou what was
called the “aversion” party, who were opposed to his marriage; but the
arrest of Colonel Ornano dismayed the accomplices for a while. The Duke
of Anjou protested his fidelity to his brother, and promised the cardinal to
place in the king’s hands a written undertaking to submit his wishes and
affections to him. The intrigue appeared to have been abandoned. But the
“dreadful (epouvantable) faction,” as the Cardinal calls it in his Memoires,
conspired to remove the young prince from the court. The Duke of
Vendome, son of Henry IV. and Gabrielle d’Estrees, had offered him an
asylum in his government of Brittany; but the far-sighted policy of the
minister took away this refuge from the heir to the throne, always inclined
as he was to put himself at the head of a party. The Duke of Vendome and
his brother the Grand Prior, disquieted at the rumors which were current
about them, hastened to go and visit the king at Blois. He received them
with great marks of affection. “Brother,” said he to the Duke of Vendome,
laying his hand upon his shoulder, “I was impatient to see you.” Next
morning, the 15th of June, the two princes were arrested in bed. “Ah!
brother,” cried Vendome, “did not I tell you in Brittany that we should be
arrested?” “I wish I were dead, and you were there,” said the Grand Prior. “I
told you, you know, that the castle of Blois was a fatal place for princes,”
rejoined the duke. They were conducted to Amboise. The king, continually
disquieted by the projects of assassination hatched against his minister,
gave him a company of musketeers as guards, and set off for Nantes,
whither the cardinal was not slow to go and join him. In the interval, a fresh
accomplice in the plot had been discovered.

This time it was in the king’s own household that he had been sought and
found. Henry de Talleyrand, Count of Chalais, master of the wardrobe,
hare-brained and frivolous, had hitherto made himself talked about only for-
his duels and his successes with women. He had already been drawn into a
plot against the cardinal’s life; but, under the influence of remorse, he had
confessed his criminal intentions to the minister himself. Richelieu
appeared touched by the repentance, but he did not forget the offence, and
his watch over this “unfortunate gentleman,” as he himself calls him, made
him aware before long that Chalais was compromised in an intrigue which
aimed at nothing less, it was said, than to secure the person of the cardinal
by means an ambush, so as to rid him at need. Chalais was arrested in his
bed on the 8th of July. The Marquis la Valette, son of the Duke of Epernon
and governor or Metz had been asked to give an asylum to Monsieur in case
he decided upon flying from the court, had answered after embarrassed
fashion; the cardinal had his enemies in a trap He went to call on Monsieur;
it was in Richelieu’s own house, and under pretext of demanding hospitality
of him, that the conspirators calculated upon striking their blow. “I very
much, regret,” said the cardinal to Gaston, “that your Highness did, not
warn me that you and your friends meant to do me the honor of coming to
sup with me. I would have exerted myself, to entertain them and receive
them to the best of my ability.” [Journal de Bassompierre, t. ii.] Monsieur
seemed to be dumbfounded; he still thought of flight, but Madame de Guise
had just arrived at Nantes with her daughter, Mdlle. de Montpensier;
Madame de Chevreuse had been driven from court; the young prince’s
friends had been scared or won over; and President le Coigneux, his most
honest adviser, counselled him get the cardinal’s support with the king.
“That rascal,” said the president, “gets so sharp an edge on his wits, that it
is necessary to avail one’s self of all sorts of means to undo what he does.”
Monsieur at last gave way, and consented to married, provided that the king
would treat it as appanage. Louis XIII., in his turn, hesitated, being attracted
by the arguments of certain underlings, “folks ever welcome, as being
apparently out of the region of political interests, and seeming to have an
eye in everything to their master’s person only.” They represented to the
king that if the Duke of Anjou were to have children, he would become of
more importance in the country, which would be to the king’s detriment.
The minister, boldly demanded of the king the dismissal of “those petty
folks who insolently abused his ear.” Louis XIII., in his turn gave way; and

on the 5th of August, 1626, the cardinal celebrated the marriage of Gaston,
who became Duke of Orleans on, the occasion, with Mary of Bourbon,
Mdlle. de Montpesier. “No viols or music were heard that day and it was
said in the bridegroom’s circle that there was no occasion for having
Monsieur’s marriage stained with blood. This was reported to the king, and
to the cardinal who did not at all like it.”
When Chalais, in his prison, heard of the marriage, he undoubtedly
conceived some hope of a pardon, for he exclaimed, as the cardinal himself
says, “That is a mighty sharp trick, to have not only scattered a great
faction, but, by removing its object, to have annihilated all hopes of re-
uniting it. Only the sagacity of the king and his minister could have made
such a hit; it was well done to have caught Monsieur between touch-and-go
(entre bond et volee). The prince, when he knows of this, will be very
vexed, though he do not say so, and the count (of Soissons, nephew of
Conde) will weep over it with his mother.”
The hopes of Chalais were deceived. He had written to the king to
confess his fault. “I was only thirteen days in the faction,” he said; but those
thirteen days were enough to destroy him. In vain did his friends intercede
passionately for him; in vain did his mother write to the king the most
touching letter. “I gave him to you, sir, at eight years of age; he is a
grandson of Marshal Montluc and President Jeannin; his family serve you
daily, but dare not throw themselves at your feet for fear of displeasing you;
nevertheless, they join with me in begging of you the life of this wretch,
though he should have to end his days in perpetual imprisonment, or in
serving you abroad.” Chalais was condemned to death on the 18th of
August, 1626, by the criminal court established at Nantes for that purpose;
all the king’s mercy went no farther than a remission of the tortures which
should have accompanied the execution. He sent one of his friends to assure
his mother of his repentance. “Tell him,” answered the noble lady, “that I
am very glad to have the consolation he gives me of, his dying in God; if I
did not think that the sight of me would be too much for him, I would go to
him and not leave him until his head was severed from his body; but, being
unable to be of any help to him in that way, I am going to pray God for
him.” And she returned into the church of the nuns of Sainte-Claire. The
friends of Chalais had managed to have the executioner carried off, so as to
retard his execution; but an inferior criminal, to whom pardon had been
granted for the performance of this service, cut off the unfortunate culprit’s

head in thirty-one strokes. [Memoires d’un Favori du Duc d’ Orleans
(Archives curieuses de l’Histoire de France), 2d series, t. iii.] “The sad
news was brought to the Duke of Orleans, who was playing abbot; he did
not leave the game, and went on as if instead of death he had heard of
deliverance.” An example of cruelty which might well have discouraged the
friends of the Duke of Orleans “from dying a martyr’s death for him” like
the unhappy Chalais.
It has been said that Richelieu was neither meddlesome nor cruel, but that
he was stern and pitiless; and he gave proof of that the following year, on an
occasion when his personal interests were not in any way at stake. At the
outset of his ministry, in 1624, he had obtained from the king a severe
ordinance against duels—a fatal custom which was at that time decimating
the noblesse.

Already several noblemen, amongst others M. du Plessis-Praslin, had
been deprived of their offices or sent into exile in consequence of their
duels, when M. de Bouteville, of the house of Montmorency, who had been
previously engaged in twenty-one affairs of honor, came to Paris to fight the
Marquis of Beuvron on the Place Royale. The Marquis’s second, M. de
fussy d’Amboise, was killed by the Count of Chapelles, Bouteville’s
second. Beuvron fled to England. M. de Bouteville and his comrade had
taken post for Lorraine; they were recognized and arrested at Vitry-le-Brule
and brought back to Paris; and the king immediately ordered Parliament to
bring them to trial. The crime was flagrant and the defiance of the kings
orders undeniable; but the culprit was connected with the greatest houses in
the kingdom; he had given striking proofs of bravery in the king’s service;
and all the court interceded for him. Parliament, with regret, pronounced
condemnation, absolving the memory of Bussy d’Amboise, who was a son

of President De Mesmes’s wife, and reducing to one third of their goods the
confiscation to which the condemned were sentenced. “Parliament has
played the king,” was openly said in the queen’s ante-chamber; “if the
things proceed to execution, the king will play Parliament.”
“The cardinal was much troubled in spirit,” says he himself “it was
impossible to have a noble heart and not pity this poor gentleman, whose
youth and courage excited so much compassion.” However, whilst
expounding, according to his practice, to the king the reasons for and
against the execution of the culprits, Richelieu let fall this astounding
expression: “It is a question of breaking the neck of duels or of your
Majesty’s edicts.”
Louis XIII. did not hesitate: though less stern than his brother, he was,
more indifferent, and “the love he bore his kingdom prevailed over his
compassion for these two gentlemen.” Both died with courage. “There was
no sign of anything weak in their words or mean in their actions. They
received the news that they were to die with the same visage as they would
have that of pardon,” “in such sort that they who had lived like devils were
seen dying like saints, and they who had cared for nothing but to foment
duels serving towards the extinction of them.” [Memoires d’un Favori du
Due d’ Orleans (Archives curieuses de l’Histoire de France), t. ii.]
The cardinal had got Chalais condemned as a conspirator; he had let
Bouteville be executed as a duellist; the greatest lords bent beneath his
authority, but the power that depends on a king’s favor is always menaced
and tottering. The enemies of Richelieu had not renounced the idea of
overthrowing him; their hopes even went on growing, since, for some time
past the queen-mother had been waxing jealous of the all powerful minister,
and no longer made common cause with him. The king had returned in
triumph from the siege of La Rochelle; the queen-mother hoped to retain
him by her at court; but the cardinal, ever on the watch over the movements
of Spain, prevailed upon Louis XIII. to support his subject, the Duke of
Nevers, legitimate heir to Mantua and Montferrat, of which the Spaniards
were besieging the capital. The army began to march, but the queen
designedly retarded the movements of her son. The cardinal was appointed
generalissimo, and the king, who had taken upon himself the occupation of
Savoy, was before long obliged by his health to return to Lyons, where he
fell seriously ill. The two queens hurried to his bedside; and they were

seconded by the keeper of the seals, M. de Marillac, but lately raised to
power by Richelieu as a man on whom he could depend, and now
completely devoted to the queen-mother’s party.
At the news of the king’s danger, the cardinal quitted St. Jean de
Maurienne for a precipitate journey to Lyons; but he was soon obliged to
return to his army. During the king’s convalescence, the resentment of the
queen-mother against the minister, as well as that of Anne of Austria, had
free course; and when the royal train took the road slowly back to Paris, in
the month of October, the ruin of the cardinal had been resolved upon.
What a trip was that descent of the Loire from Roanne to Briare in the
same boat and “at very close quarters between the queen-mother and the
cardinal!” says Bassompierre. “She hoped that she would more easily be
able to have her will, and crush her servant with the more facility, the less
he was on his guard against it; she looked at him with a kindly eye,
accepted his dutiful attentions and respects as usual, and spoke to him with
as much appearance of confidence as if she had wholly given it him.”
[Memoires de Richelieu, t. iii. pp. 303-305.]
The king had requested his mother “to put off for six weeks or two
months the grand move against the cardinal, for the sake of the affairs of his
kingdom, which were then at a crisis in Italy” [Memoires de Bassompierre,
t. iii. p. 276], and she had promised him; but Richelieu “suspected
something wrong, and discovered more,” and, on the 12th of November,
1630, when mother and son were holding an early conference at the
Luxembourg, a fine palace which Mary de’ Medici had just finished, “the
cardinal arrived there; finding the door of the chamber closed, he entered
the gallery and went and knocked at the door of the cabinet, where he
obtained no answer. Tired of waiting, and knowing the ins and outs of the
mansion, he entered by the little chapel; whereat the king was somewhat
dismayed, and said to the queen in despair, ‘Here he is!’ thinking, no doubt,
that he would blaze forth. The cardinal, who perceived this dismay, said to
them, ‘I am sure you were speaking about me.’ The queen answered, ‘We
were not.’ Whereupon, he having replied, ‘Confess it, madam,’ she said yes,
and thereupon conducted herself with great tartness towards him, declaring
to the king ‘that she would not put up with the cardinal any longer, or see in
her house either him or any of his relatives and friends, to whom she
incontinently gave their dismissal, and not to them only, but even down to

the pettiest of her officers who had come to her from his hands.’”
[Memoires de Richelieu, t. iii. p. 428.]
The struggle was begun. Already the courtiers were flocking to the
Luxembourg; the keeper of the seals, Marillac, had gone away to sleep at
his country-house at Glatigny, quite close to Versailles, where the king was
expected; and he was hoping that Louis XIII. would summon him and put
the power in his hands. The king was chatting with his favorite St. Simon,
and tapping with his finger-tips on the window-pane. “What do you think of
all this?” he asked. “Sir,” was the reply, “I seem to be in another world, but
at any rate you are master.” “Yes, I am,” answered the king, “and I will
make it felt too.” He sent for Cardinal La Vallette, son of the Duke of
Epernon, but devoted to Richelieu. “The cardinal has a good master,” he
said: “go and make my compliments to him, and tell him to come to me
without delay.” [Memoires de Bassompierre, t. iii. p. 276.]

With all his temper and the hesitations born of his melancholy mind,
Louis XIII. could appreciate and discern the great interests of his kingdom
and of his power. The queen had supposed that the king would abandon the
cardinal, and “that her private authority as mother, and the pious affection
and honor the king showed her as her son, would prevail over the public
care which he ought, as king, to take of his kingdom and his people. But
God, who holds in His hand the hearts of princes, disposed things
otherwise: his Majesty resolved to defend his servant against the malice of
those who prompted the queen to this wicked design.” [Memoires de
Richelieu.] He conversed a long while with the cardinal, and when the
keeper of the seals awoke the next morning, it was to learn that the minister
was at Versailles with the king, who had lodged him in a room under his

own, that his Majesty demanded the seals back, and that the exons were at
his, Marillac’s, door to secure his person.
At the same time was despatched a courier to headquarters at Foglizzo in
Piedmont. The three marshals Schomberg, La Force, and Marillac, had all
formed a junction there. Marillac, brother of the keeper of the seals, held
the command that day; and he was awaiting with patience the news, already
announced by his brother, of the cardinal’s disgrace. Marshal Schomberg
opened the despatches; and the first words that met his eye were these,
written in the king’s own hand: “My dear cousin, you will not fail to arrest
Marshal Marillac; it is for the good of my service and for your own
exculpation.” The marshal was greatly embarrassed; a great part of the
troops had come with Marillac from the army of Champagne and were
devoted to him. Schomberg determined, on the advice of Marshal La Force,
in full council of captains, to show Marillac the postcript. “Sir,” answered
the marshal, “a subject must not murmur against his master, nor say of him
that the things he alleges are false. I can protest with truth that I have done
nothing contrary to his service. The truth is, that my brother the keeper of
the seals and I have always been the servants of the queen-mother; she must
have had the worst of it, and Cardinal Richelieu has won the day against her
and her servants.” [Memoires de Puy-Seyur.]
Thus arrested in the very midst of the army he commanded, Marshal
Marillac was taken to the castle of St. Menehould and thence to Verdun,
where a court of justice extraordinary sat upon his case. It was cleared of
any political accusation: the marshal was prosecuted for peculation and
extortion, common crimes at that time with many generals, and always
odious to the nation, which regarded their punishment with favor. “It is a
very strange thing,” said Marillac, “to prosecute me as they do; my trial is a
mere question of hay, straw, wood, stones, and lime; there is not case
enough for whipping a lackey.” There was case enough for sentencing to
death a marshal of France. The proceedings lasted eighteen months; the
commission was transferred from Verdun to Ruel, to the very house of the
cardinal. Marillac was found guilty by a majority of one only. The
execution took place on the 10th of May, 1632. The former keeper of the
seals, Michael de Marillac, died of decline at Chateaudun, three months
after the death of his brother.

Dupes’ Day was over and lost. The queen-mother’s attack on Richelieu
had failed before the minister’s ascendency and the king’s calculating
fidelity to a servant he did not like; but Mary de’ Medici’s anger was not
calmed, and the struggle remained set between her and the cardinal. The
Duke of Orleans, who had lost his wife after a year’s marriage, had not
hitherto joined his mother’s party, but all on a sudden, excited by his
grievances, he arrived at the cardinal’s, on the 30th of January, 1631, “with
a strong escort, and told him that he would consider it a strange purpose that
had brought him there; that, so long as he supposed that the cardinal would
serve him, he had been quite willing to show him amity; now, when he saw
that he foiled him in everything that be had promised, to such extent that the
way in which he, Monsieur, had behaved himself, had served no end but to
make the world believe that he had abandoned the queen his mother, he had
come to take back the word he had given him to show him affection.” On
leaving the cardinal’s house, Monsieur got into his carriage and went off in
haste to Orleans, whilst the king, having received notice from Richelieu,
was arriving with all despatch from Versailles to assure his minister “of his
protection, well knowing that nobody could wish him ill, save for the
faithful services he rendered him.” [Memoires de Richelieu, t. ii. p. 444.]
The queen-mother had undoubtedly been aware of the Duke of Orleans’
project, for she had given up to him Madame’s jewels which he had
confided to her; she nevertheless sent her equerry to the king, protesting
“that she had been much astonished when she heard of Monsieur’s
departure, that she had almost fainted on the spot, and that Monsieur had
sent her word that he was going away from court because he could no
longer tolerate the cardinal’s violent proceedings against her.
“When the king signified to her that he considered this withdrawal very
strange, and let her know that he had much trouble in believing that she
knew nothing about it, she took occasion to belch forth fire and flames
against the cardinal, and made a fresh attempt to ruin him in the king’s
estimation, though she had previously bound herself by oath to take no
more steps against him.” [Memoires de Richelieu, t. ii. p. 465.]
The cardinal either had not sworn at all or did not consider himself more
bound than the queen by oaths. Their Majesties set out for Compiegne;
there the minister brought the affair before the council, explaining with a
skilful appearance of indifference the different courses to be taken, and

ending by propounding the question of his own retirement or the queen-
mother’s. “His Majesty, without hesitation, made his own choice, taking the
resolution of returning to Paris and of begging the queen-mother to retire
for the time being to one of his mansions, particularly recommending
Moulins, which she had formerly expressed to the late king a wish to have;
and, in order that she might be the better contented with it, he offered her
the government of it and of all the province.” Next day, February 23, 1631,
before the queen-mother was up, her royal son had taken the road back to
Paris, leaving Marshal D’Estrees at Compiegne to explain to the queen his
departure and to hasten his mother’s, a task in which the marshal had but
small success, for Mary de’ Medici declared that, if they, meant to make her
depart, they would have to drag her stark naked from her bed. She kept
herself shut up in the castle, refusing to go out and complaining of the
injury the seclusion did to her health; then she fled by night from
Compiegne, attended by one gentleman only, to go and take refuge in
Flanders, whence she arrived before long at Brussels.
The cardinal’s game was definitively won. Mary de’ Medici had lost all
empire over her son, whom she was never to see again.
The Duke of Orleans meanwhile had taken the road to Lorraine, seeking
a refuge in the dominions of a prince able, crafty, restless, and hostile to
France from inclination as well as policy. Smitten, before long, with the
duke’s sister, Princess Margaret, Gaston of Orleans married her privately,
with a dispensation from the Cardinal of Lorraine, all which did not prevent
either duke or prince from barefacedly denying the marriage when the king
reproached them with having contracted this marriage without his consent.
In the month of June, 1632, the Duke of Orleans entered France again at the
head of some wretched regiments, refuse of the Spanish army, given to him
by Don Gonzalvo di Cordova. For the first time, he raised the standard of
revolt openly. For him it was of little consequence, accustomed as he was to
place himself at the head of parties that he abandoned without shame in the
hour of danger; but he dragged along with him in his error a man worthy of
another fate and of another chief. Henry, Duke of Montmorency, marshal of
France, and governor of Languedoc, was a godson of Henry IV., who said
one day to M. de Villeroy and to President Jeannin, “Look at my son
Montmorency, how well made he is; if ever the house of Bourbon came to
fail, there is no family in Europe which would so well deserve the crown of
France as, his, whose great men have always supported it, and even added

to it at the price of their blood.” Shining at court as well as in arms, kind
and charitable, beloved of everybody and adored by his servants, the Duke
of Montmorency had steadily remained faithful to the king up to the fatal
day when the Duke of Orleans entangled him in his hazardous enterprise.
Languedoc was displeased with Richelieu, who had robbed it of some of its
privileges; the duke had no difficulty in collecting adherents there; and he
fancied himself to be already wielding the constable’s sword, five times
borne by a Montmorency, when Gaston of Orleans entered France and
Languedoc sooner than he had been looked for, and with a smaller
following than he had promised. The eighteen hundred men brought by the
king’s brother did not suffice to re-establish him, with the queen his mother,
in the kingdom; the governor of Languedoc made an appeal to the Estates
then assembled at Pezenas; he was supported by the Bishop of Alby and by
that of Nimes; the province itself proclaimed revolt. The sums demanded by
the king were granted to the duke, whom the deputies prayed to remain
faithful to the interests of the province, just as they promised never to
abandon his. The Archbishop of Narbonne alone opposed this rash act; he
left the Estates, where he was president, and the duke marched out to meet
Monsieur as far as Lunel. “Troops were levied throughout the province and
the environs as openly as if it had been for the king.” But the regiments
were slow in forming; the Duke of Orleans wished to gain over some of the
towns; Narbonne and Montpellier closed their gates. The bishop’s influence
had been counted upon for making sure of Nimes, and Montmorency
everywhere tried to practise on the Huguenots; “but the Reformed ministers
of Nimes, having had advices by letter from his Majesty, whereby he
represented himself to have been advertised that the principal design of
Monsieur was to excite them of the religion styled Reformed, considered
themselves bound in their own defence to do more than the rest for the
king’s service. They assembled the consistory, resolved to die in obedience
to him, went to seek the consuls and requested them to have the town-
council assembled, in order that it might be brought to take a similar
resolution; which the consuls, gained over by M. de Montmorency,
refused.” [Memoires de Richelieu, t. iii. p. 160.] Thereupon the ministers
sent off in haste to Marshal La Force, who had already taken position at
Pont-Saint-Esprit with his army; and, he having despatched some light
horse on the 26th of July, the people cried, “Hurrah! for the king!” the
bishop was obliged to fly, and the town was kept to its allegiance.

“Beaucaire, the governor of which had been won over,” made armed
resistance. “If we beat the king’s army,” said the Duke of Montmorency on
returning to Pezenas after this incident, “we shall have no lack of towns; if
not, we shall have to go and make our court at Brussels.”
At the news of his brother’s revolt, the king, who happened to be on the
frontiers of Lorraine, had put himself in motion, but he marched at his ease
and by short stages, “thinking that the fire Monsieur would kindle would be
only a straw fire.”
He hurried his movements when he heard of Montmorency’s uprising,
and left Paris after having put the seals upon the duke’s house, who had
imprudently left five hundred and fifty thousand livres there; the money
was seized and lodged in the royal safe. The Princess of Guemene, between
whom and Montmorency there were very strong ties, went to see the
cardinal, who was in attendance on the king. “Sir,” she said to him, “you are
going to Languedoc; remember the great marks of attachment that M. de
Montmorency showed you not long ago; you cannot forget then without
ingratitude.” Indeed, when the king believed himself to be dying at Lyons,
he had recommended the cardinal to the Duke of Montmorency, who had
promised to receive him into his government. “Madam,” replied Richelieu
coldly, “I have not been the first to break off.”
Already the Parliament of Toulouse, remaining faithful to the king, had
annulled the resolutions of the Estates, the letters and commissions of the
governor; and the Parliament of Paris had just enregistered a resolution
against the servants and adherents of the Duke of Orleans, as rebels guilty
of high treason and disturbers of the common peace. Six weeks were
granted the king’s brother to put an end to all acts of hostility; else the king
was resolved to decree against him, after that interval of delay, “whatsoever
he should consider it his duty to do for the preservation of his kingdom,
according to the laws of the realm and the example of his predecessors.”
It was against Marshal Schomberg that Montmorency was advancing.
The latter found himself isolated in his revolt, shut up within the limits of
his government, between the two armies of the king, who was marching in
person against him. Calculations had been based upon an uprising of
several provinces and the adhesion of several governors, amongst others of
the aged Duke of Epernon, who had sent to Monsieur to say, “I am his very
humble servant; let him place himself in a position to be served;” but no

one moved, the king every day received fresh protestations of fidelity, and
the Duke of Epernon had repaired to Montauban to keep that restless city to
its duty, and to prevent any attempt from being made in the province.
At three leagues’ distance from Castelnaudary, Marshal Schomberg was
besieging a castle called St. Felix-de-Carmain, which held out for the Duke
of Orleans. Montmorency advanced to the aid of the place; he had two
thousand foot and three thousand horse; and the Duke of Orleans
accompanied him with a large number of gentlemen. The marshal had won
over the defenders of St. Felix, and he was just half a league from
Castelnaudary when he encountered the rebel army. The battle began almost
at once. Count de Moret, natural son of Henry IV. and Jacqueline de Bueil,
fired the first shot. Hearing the noise, Montmorency, who commanded the
right wing, takes a squadron of cavalry, and, “urged on by that impetuosity
which takes possession of all brave men at the like juncture, he spurs his
horse forward, leaps the ditch which was across the road, rides over the
musketeers, and, the mishap of finding himself alone causing him to feel
more indignation than fear, he makes up his mind to signalize by his
resistance a death which he cannot avoid.” Only a few gentlemen had
followed him, amongst others an old officer named Count de Rieux, who
had promised to die at his feet and he kept his word. In vain had
Montmorency called to him his men-at-arms and the regiment of Ventadour;
the rest of the cavalry did not budge. Count de Moret had been killed; terror
was everywhere taking possession of the men. The duke was engaged with
the king’s light horse; he had just received two bullets in his mouth. His
horse, “a small barb, extremely swift,” came down with him and he fell
wounded in seventeen places, alone, without a single squire to help him. A
sergeant of a company of the guards saw him fall, and carried him into the
road; some soldiers who were present burst out crying; they seemed to be
lamenting their general’s rather than their prisoner’s misfortune.
Montmorency alone remained as if insensible to the blows of adversity, and
testified by the grandeur of his courage that “in him it had its seat in a place
higher than the heart.” [Journal du Duc de Montmorency (Archives
curieuses de l’Histoire de France), t. iv.]

Whilst the army of the Duke of Orleans was retiring, carrying off their
dead, nearly all of the highest rank, the king’s men were bearing away
Montnmorency, mortally wounded, to Castelnaudary. His wife, Mary
Felicia des Ursins, daughter of the Duke of Bracciano, being ill in bed at
Beziers, sent him a doctor, together with her equerry, to learn the truth
about her husband’s condition. “Thou’lt tell my wife,” said the duke, “the
number and greatness of the wounds thou hast seen, and thou’lt assure her
that it which I have caused her spirit is incomparably more painful, to me
than all the others.” On passing through the faubourgs of the town, the duke
desired that his litter should be opened, “and the serenity that shone through
the pallor of his visage moved the feelings of all present, and forced tears

from the stoutest and the most stolid.” [Journal du Due de Montmorency
(Archives curieuses de l’Histoire de France), t. iv.]
The Duke of Orleans did not lack the courage of the soldier; he would
fain have rescued Montmorency and sought to rally his forces; but the
troops of Languedoc would obey none but the governor; the foreigners
mutinied, and the king’s brother had no longer an army. “Next day, when it
was too late,” says Richelieu, “Monsieur sent a trumpeter to demand battle
of Marshal Schomberg, who replied that he would not give it, but that, if he
met him, he would try to defend himself against him.” Monsieur considered
himself absolved from seeking the combat, and henceforth busied himself
about nothing but negotiation. Alby, Beziers, and Pezenas hastened to give
in their submission. It was necessary for the Duchess of Montmorency, ill
and in despair, to quicken her departure from Beziers, where she was no
longer safe. “As she passed along the streets she heard nothing but a
confusion of voices amongst the people, speaking insolently of those who
would withdraw in apprehension.” The king was already at Lyons.
He was at Pont-Saint-Esprit when he sent a message to his brother, from
whom he had already received emissaries on the road. The first demands of
Gaston d’Orleans were still proud; he required the release of Montmorency,
the rehabilitation of all those who had served his party and his mother’s,
places of surety and money. The king took no notice; and a second envoy
from the prince was put in prison. Meanwhile, the superintendent of
finance, M. de Bullion, had reached him from the king, and “found the
mind of Monsieur very penitent and well disposed, but not that of all the
rest, for Monsieur confessed that he had been ill-advised to behave as he
did at the cardinal’s house, and afterwards leave the court; acknowledging
himself to be much obliged to the king for the clemency he had shown to
him in his proclamation, which had touched him to the heart, and that he
was bounden therefor to the cardinal, whom he had always liked and
esteemed, and believed that he also on his side liked him.” [Memoires de
Richelieu, t. viii. p. 196.]
The Duchess of Montmorency knew Monsieur, although she, it was said,
had pressed her husband to join him; and all ill as she was, had been
following him ever since the battle of Castelnaudary, in the fear lest he
should forget her husband in the treaty. She could not, unfortunately, enter
Beziers, and it was there that the arrangements were concluded. Monsieur

protested his repentance, cursing in particular Father Chanteloube,
confessor and confidant of the queen his mother, “whom he wished the king
would have hanged; he had given pretty counsel to the queen, causing her
to leave the kingdom; for all the great hopes he had led her to conceive, she
was reduced to relieve her weariness by praying to God.” [Memoires de
Richelieu, t. viii. p. 196.] As for Monsieur, he was ready to give up all
intelligence with Spain, Lorraine, and the queen his mother, “who could
negotiate her business herself.” He bound himself to take no interest “in
him or those who had connected themselves with him on these occasions
for their own purposes, and he would not complain should the king make
them suffer what they had deserved.” It is true that he added to these base
concessions many entreaties in favor of M. de Montmorency; but M. de
Bullion did not permit him to be under any delusion. “It is for your
Highness to choose,” he said, “whether or not you prefer to cling to the
interests of M. de Montmorency, displease the king and lose his good
graces.” The prince signed everything; then he set out for Tours, which the
king had assigned for his residence, receiving on the way, from town to
town, all the honors that would have been paid to his Majesty himself. M.
de Montmorency remained in prison.
“He awaited death with a resignation which is inconceivable,” says the
author of his Memoires; “never did man speak more boldly than he about it;
it seemed as if he were recounting another’s perils when he described his
own to his servants and his guards, who were the only witnesses of such
lofty manliness.” His sister, the Princess of Conde, had a memorial prepared
for his defence put before him. He read it carefully, then he tore it up,
“having always determined,” he said, “not to (chicaner) go pettifogging for
(or, dispute) his life.” “I ought by rights to answer before the Parliament of
Paris only,” said he to the commission of the Parliament of Toulouse
instructed to conduct his trial, “but I give up with all my heart this privilege
and all others that might delay my sentence.”
There was not long to wait for the decree. On arriving at Toulouse,
October 27, at noon, the duke had asked for a confessor. “Father,” said he to
the priest, “I pray you to put me this moment in the shortest and most
certain path to heaven that you can, having nothing more to hope or wish
for but God.” All his family had hurried up, but without being able to obtain
the favor of seeing the king. “His Majesty had strengthened himself in the
resolution he had taken from the first to make in the case of the said Sieur

de Montmorency a just example for all the grandees of his kingdom in the
future, as the late king his father had done in the person of Marshal Biron,”
says Richelieu in his Memoires. The Princess of Conde could not gain
admittance to his Majesty, who lent no ear to the supplications of his oldest
servants, represented by the aged Duke of Epernon, who accused himself by
his own mouth of having but lately committed the same crime as the Duke
of Montmorency. “You can retire, duke,” was all that Louis XIII. deigned to
reply. “I should not be a king if I had the feelings of private persons,” said
he to Marshal Chatillon, who pointed out to him the downcast looks and
swollen eyes of all his court.
It was the 30th of October, early: and the Duke of Montmorency was
sleeping peacefully. His confessor came and awoke him. “Surgite, eamus
(rise, let us be going),” he said, as he awoke; and when his surgeon would
have dressed his wounds, “Now is the time to heal all my wounds with a
single one,” he said, and he had himself dressed in the clothes of white
linen he had ordered to be made at Lectoure for the day of execution. When
the last questions were put to him by the judges, he answered by a complete
confession; and when the decree was made known to him, “I thank you,
gentlemen,” said he to the commissioners, “and I beg you to tell all them of
your body from me, that I hold this decree of the king’s justice for a decree
of God’s mercy.” He walked to the scaffold with the same tranquillity,
saluting right and left those whom he knew, to take leave of them; then,
having with difficulty placed himself upon the block, so much did his
wounds still cause him to suffer, he said out loud, “Domine Jesu, accipe
spiritum meum (Lord Jesus, receive my spirit)!” As his head fell, the people
rushed forward to catch his blood and dip their handkerchiefs in it.
Henry de Montmorency was the last of the ducal branch of his house, and
was only thirty-seven.
It was a fine opportunity for Monsieur to once more break his
engagements. Shame and anxiety drove him equally. He was universally
reproached with Montmorency’s death; and he was by no means easy on the
subject of his marriage, of which no mention had been made in the
arrangements. He quitted Tours and withdrew to Flanders, writing to the
king to complain of the duke’s execution, saying that the life of the latter
had been the tacit condition of his agreement, and that, his promise being
thus not binding, he was about to seek a secure retreat out of the kingdom.

“Everybody knows in what plight you were, brother, and whether you could
have done anything else,” replied the king.
“What think you, gentlemen, was it that lost the Duke of Montmorency
his head?” said Cardinal Zapata to Bautru and Barrault, envoys of France,
whom he met in the antechamber of the King of Spain. “His crimes,”
replied Bautru. “No,” said the cardinal, “but the clemency of his Majesty’s
predecessors.” Louis XIII. and Cardinal Richelieu have assuredly not
merited that, reproach in history.
So many and such terrible examples were at last to win the all-powerful
minister some years of repose. Once only, in 1636, a new plot on the part of
Monsieur and the Count of Soissons threatened not only his power, but his
life. The king’s headquarters were established at the castle of Demuin; and
the princes, urged on by Montresor and Saint-Ibal, had resolved to compass
the cardinal’s death. The blow was to be struck at the exit from the council.
Richelieu conducted the king back to the bottom of the staircase.

The two gentlemen were awaiting the signal; but Monsieur did not
budge, and retired without saying a word. The Count of Soissons dared not
go any further, and the cardinal mounted quietly to his own rooms, without
dreaming of the extreme peril he had run. Richelieu was rather lofty than
proud, and too clear-sighted to mistake the king’s feelings towards him.
Never did he feel any confidence in his position; and never did he depart
from his jealous and sometimes petty watchfulness. Any influence foreign
to his own disquieted him in proximity to a master whose affairs he
governed altogether, without ever having been able to get the mastery over
his melancholy and singular mind.

Women filled but a small space in the life of Louis XIII. Twice, however,
in that interval of ten years which separated the plot of Montmorency from
that of Cinq-Mars, did the minister believe himself to be threatened by
feminine influence; and twice he used artifice to win the monarch’s heart
and confidence from two young girls of his court, Louise de La Fayette and
Marie d’Hautefort. Both were maids of honor to the queen. Mdlle.
d’Hautefort was fourteen years old when, in 1630, at Lyons, in the languors
of convalescence, the king first remarked her blooming and at the same
time severe beauty, and her air of nobility and modesty; and it was not long
before the whole court knew that he had remarked her, for his first care, at
the sermon, was to send the young maid of honor the velvet cushion on
which he knelt for her to sit upon. Mdlle. d’Hautefort declined it, and
remained seated, like her companions, on the ground; but henceforth the
courtiers’ eyes were riveted on her movements, on the interminable
conversations in which she was detained by the king, on his jealousies, his
tiffs, and his reconciliations. After their quarrels, the king would pass the
greater part of the day in writing out what he had said to Mdlle. d’Hautefort
and what she had replied to him. At his death, his desk was found full of
these singular reports of the most innocent, but also most stormy and most
troublesome love-affair that ever was. The king was especially jealous of
Mdlle. d’Hautefort’s passionate devotion to the queen her mistress, Anne of
Austria. “You love an ingrate,” he said, “and you will see how she will
repay your services.” Richelieu had been unable to win Mdlle. d’Hautefort;
and he did his best to embitter the tiff which separated her from the king in
1635. But Louis XIII. had learned the charm of confidence and intimacy;
and he turned to Louise de La Fayette, a charming girl of seventeen, who
was as virtuous as Mdlle. d’Hautefort, but more gentle and tender than she,
and who gave her heart in all guilelessness to that king so powerful, so a-
weary, and so melancholy at the very climax of his reign. Happily for
Richelieu, he had a means, more certain than even Mdlle. d’Hautefort’s
pride, of separating her from Louis XIII.; Mdlle. de La Fayette, whilst quite
a child, had serious ideas of becoming a nun; and scruples about being false
to her vocation troubled her at court, and even in those conversations in
which she reproached herself with taking too much pleasure, Father
Coussin, her confessor, who was also the king’s, sought to quiet her
conscience; he hoped much from the influence she could exercise over the
king; but Mdlle. de La Fayette, feeling herself troubled and perplexed, was

urgent. When the Jesuit reported to Louis XIII. the state of his fair young
friend’s feelings, the king, with tears in his eyes, replied, “Though I am very
sorry she is going away, nevertheless I have no desire to be an obstacle to
her vocation; only let her wait until I have left for the army.” She did not
wait, however. Their last interview took place at the queen’s, who had no
liking for Mdlle. de La Fayette; and, as the king’s carriage went out of the
court-yard, the young girl, leaning against the window, turned to one of her
companions and said, “Alas! I shall never see him again!” But she did see
him again often for some time. He went to see her in her convent, and
“remained so long glued to her grating,” says Madame de Motteville, “that
Cardinal Richelieu, falling a prey to fresh terrors, recommenced his
intrigues to tear him from her entirely. And he succeeded.” The king’s
affection for Mdlle. d’Hautefort awoke again. She had just rendered the
queen an important service. Anne of Austria was secretly corresponding
with her two brothers, King Philip IV. and the Cardinal Infante, a
correspondence which might well make the king and his minister uneasy,
since it was carried on through Madame de Chevreuse, and there was war at
the time with Spain. The queen employed for this intercourse a valet named
Laporte, who was arrested and thrown into prison. The chancellor removed
to Val-de-Grace, whither the queen frequently retired; he questioned the
nuns and rummaged Anne of Austria’s cell. She was in mortal anxiety, not
knowing what Laporte might say or how to unloose his tongue, so as to
keep due pace with her own confessions to the king and the cardinal. Mdlle.
d’Hautefort disguised herself as a servant, went straight to the Bastille, and
got a letter delivered to Laporte, thanks to the agency of Commander de
Jars, her friend, then in prison. The confessions of mistress and agent being
thus set in accord, the queen obtained her pardon, but not without having to
put up with reproaches and conditions of stern supervision. Madame de
Chevreuse took fright, and went to seek refuge in Spain. The king’s
inclination towards Mdlle. d’Hautefort revived, without her having an idea
of turning it to profit on her own account. “She had so much loftiness of
spirit that she could never have brought herself to ask anything for herself
and her family; and all that could be wrung from her was to accept what the
king and queen were pleased to give her.”
Richelieu had never forgotten Mdlle. d’Hautefort’s airs: he feared her,
and accused her to the king of being concerned in Monsieur’s continual
intrigues. Louis XIII.‘s growing affection for young Cinq-Mars, son of

Marshal d’Effiat, was beginning to occupy the gloomy monarch; and he the
more easily sacrificed Mdlle. d’Hautefort. The cardinal merely asked him to
send her away for a fortnight. She insisted upon hearing the order from the
king’s own mouth. “The fortnight will last all the rest of my life,” she said:
“and so I take leave of your Majesty forever.” She went accompanied by the
regrets and tears of Anne of Austria, and leaving the field open to the new
favorite, the king’s “rattle,” as the cardinal called him.
M. de Cinq-Mars was only nineteen when he was made master of the
wardrobe and grand equerry of France. Brilliant and witty, he amused the
king and occupied the leisure which peace gave him. The passion Louis
XIII. felt for his favorite was jealous and capricious. He upbraided the
young man for his flights to Paris to see his friends and the elegant society
of the Marais, and sometimes also Mary di Gonzaga, daughter of the Duke
of Mantua, wooed but lately by the Duke of Orleans, and not indifferent, it
was said, to the vows of M. Le Grand, as Cinq-Mars was called. The
complaints were detailed to Richelieu by the king himself in a strange
correspondence, which reminds one of the “reports” of his quarrels with
Mdlle. d’Hautefort. “I am very sorry,” wrote Louis XIII. on the 4th of
January, 1641, “to trouble you about the ill tempers of M. Le Grand. I
upbraided him with his heedlessness; he answered that for that matter he
could not change, and that he should do no better than he had done. I said
that, considering his obligations to me, he ought not to address me in that
manner. He answered in his usual way: that he didn’t want my kindness,
that he could do very well without it, and that he would be quite as well
content to be Cinq-Mars as M. Le Grand, but, as for changing his ways and
his life, he couldn’t do it. And so, he continually knagging at me and I at
him, we came as far as the court-yard, when I said to him that, being in the
temper he was in, he would do me the pleasure of not coming to see me. I
have not seen him since. Signed, Louis.” This time the cardinal reconciled
the king and the favorite, whom he had himself placed near him, but whose
constant attendance upon the king his master he was beginning to find
sometimes very troublesome. “One day he sent word to him not to be for
the future so continually at his heels, and treated him even to his face with
so much tartness and imperiousness as if he had been the lowest of his
valets.” Cinq-Mars began to lend an ear to those who were egging him on
against the cardinal.

Then began a series of negotiations and intrigues; the Duke of Orleans
had come back to Paris, the king was ill and the cardinal more so than he;
thence arose conjectures and insensate hopes; the Duke of Bouillon, being
sent for by the king, who confided to him the command of the army of Italy,
was at the same time drawn into the plot which was beginning to be woven
against the minister; the Duke of Orleans and the queen were in it; and the
town of Sedan, of which Bouillon was prince-sovereign, was wanted to
serve the authors of the conspiracy as an asylum in case of reverse. Sedan
alone was not sufficient; there was need of an army. Whence was it to
come? Thoughts naturally turned towards Spain.
For so perilous a treaty a negotiator was required, and the grand equerry
proposed his friend, Viscount de Fontrailles, a man of wit, who detested the
cardinal, and who would have considered it a simpler plan to assassinate
him; he consented, however, to take charge of the negotiation, and he set
out for Madrid, where his treaty was soon concluded, in the name of the
Duke of Orleans. The Spaniards were to furnish twelve thousand foot and
five thousand horse, four hundred thousand crowns down, twelve thousand
crowns’ pay a month, and three hundred thousand livres to fortify the
frontier-town which was promised by the duke. Sedan, Cinq-Mars, and the
Duke of Bouillon were only mentioned in a separate instrument.
The king was then at Narbonne, on his way to his army, which was
besieging Perpignan. The grand equerry was with him. Fontrailles went to
call upon him. “I do not intend to be seen by anybody,” said he, “but to
make speedily for England, as I do not think I am strong enough to undergo
the torture the cardinal might put me to in his own room on the least
suspicion.” On the 21st of April, the cardinal was dangerously ill, and the
king left him at Narbonne a prey to violent fever, with an abscess on the
arm which prevented him from writing, whilst Cinq-Mars, ever present and
ever at work, was doing his best to insinuate into his master’s mind
suspicion of the minister, and the hopes founded upon his disgrace or death.
The king listened, as he subsequently avowed, in order to discover his
favorite’s wicked thoughts and make him tell all he had in his heart. “The
king was tacitly the head of this conspiracy,” says Madame de Motteville:
“the grand equerry was the soul of it; the name made use of was that of the
Duke of Orleans, the king’s only brother; and their counsel was the Duke of
Bouillon, who joined with them because, having belonged to the party of
M. de Soissons, he was in very ill odor at court. They all formed fine

projects touching the change that was to take place to the advantage of their
aggrandizement and fortunes, persuading themselves that the cardinal could
not live above a few days, during which he would not be able to set himself
right with the king.” Such were their projects and their hopes when the
Gazette de France, on the 21st of June, 1642, gave these two pieces of news
both together. “The cardinal-duke, after remaining two days at Arles,
embarked on the 11th of this month for Tarascon, his health becoming
better and better. The king has ordered under arrest Marquis de Cinq-Mars,
grand equerry of France.”
Great was the surprise, and still greater was the dismay, amongst the
friends of Cinq-Mars. “Your grand designs are as well known at Paris as
that the Seine flows under the Pont Neuf,” wrote Mary di Gonzaga to him a
few days previously.
Those grand designs so imprudently divulged caused a presentiment of
great peril. When left alone with his young favorite, and suddenly
overwhelmed, amidst his army, with cares and business of which his
minister usually relieved him, the king had too much wit not to perceive the
frivolous insignificance of Cinq-Mars compared with the mighty capability
of the cardinal. “I love you more than ever,” he wrote to Richelieu: “we
have been too long together to be ever separated, as I wish everybody to
understand.” In reply, the cardinal had sent him a copy of the treaty between
Cinq-Mars and Spain.
The king could not believe his eyes; and his wrath equalled his
astonishment. Together with that of the grand equerry he ordered the
immediate arrest of M. de Thou, his intimate friend; and the order went out
to secure the Duke of Bouillon, then at the head of the army of Italy. He,
caught, like Marshal Marillac, in the midst of his troops, had vainly
attempted to conceal himself; but he was taken and conducted to the castle
of Pignerol. Fontrailles had seen the blow coming. He went to visit the
grand equerry, and, “Sir,” said he, “you are a fine figure; if you were shorter
by the whole head, you would not cease to be very tall; as for me, who am
already very short, nothing could be taken off me without inconveniencing
me and making me cut the poorest figure in the world; you will be good
enough, if you please, to let me get out of the way of edged tools.” And he
set out for Spain, whence he had hardly returned.

What had become of the most guilty, if not the most dangerous, of all the
accomplices? Monsieur, “the king’s only (unique) brother,” as Madame de
Motteville calls him, had come as far as Moulins, and had sent to ask the
grand equerry to appoint a place of meeting, when he heard of his
accomplice’s arrest, and, before long, that of the Duke of Bouillon.
Frightened to death as he was, he saw that treachery was safer than flight,
and, just as the king had joined the all but dying cardinal at Tarascon, there
arrived an emissary from the Duke of Orleans bringing letters from him. He
assured the king of his fidelity; he entreated Chavigny, the minister’s
confidant, to give him “means of seeing his Eminence before he saw the
king, in which case all would go well.” He appealed to the cardinal’s
generosity, begging him to keep his letter as an eternal reproach, if he were
not thenceforth the most faithful and devoted of his friends.
Abbe de La Riviere, who was charged to implore pardon for his master,
was worthy of such a commission: he confessed everything, he signed
everything, though he “all but died of terror,” and, at the cardinal’s demand,
he soon brought all those poltrooneries written out in the Duke of Orleans’
own hand. The prince was all but obliged to appear at the trial and deliver
up his accomplices in the face of the whole world. The respect, however, of
Chancellor Seguier for his rank spared him this crowning disgrace. The
king’s orders to his brother, after being submitted to the cardinal, bore this
note in the minister’s hand: “Monsieur will have in his place of exile twelve
thousand crowns a month, the same sum that the King of Spain had
promised to give him.”
“Paralysis of the arm did not prevent the head from acting;” the dying
cardinal had dictated to the king, stretched on a couch at his side, in a
chamber of his house at Monfrin, near Tarascon, those last commands
which completed the dishonor of the Duke of Orleans and the ruin of the
favorite. Louis XIII. slowly took the road back to Fontainebleau in the
cardinal’s litter, which the latter had lent him. The prisoners were left in the
minister’s keeping, who ordered them before long to Lyons, whither he was
himself removed. The grand equerry coming from Montpellier, M. de Thou
from Tarascon, in a boat towed by that of the cardinal, and the Duke of
Bouillon from Pignerol, were all three lodged in the castle of Pierre-Encise.
Their examination was put off until the arrival of such magistrates “as
should be capable of philosophizing and perpetually thinking of the means
they must use for arriving at their ends.” That was useless, inasmuch as the

grand equerry “never ceased to say quite openly that he had done nothing to
which the king had not consented.”
Louis XIII. was, no doubt, affected by such language; for, scarcely had
he arrived at Fontainebleau, whither he had been preceded by news of the
end of the queen his mother, who had died at Cologne in exile and poverty,
when he wrote to all the parliaments of his kingdom, to the governors of the
provinces, and to the ambassadors at foreign courts, to give his own account
of the arrest of the guilty and the part he himself had played in the matter.
“The notable and visible change which had for the last year appeared in the
conduct of Sieur de Cinq-Mars, our grand equerry, made us resolve, as soon
as we perceived it, to carefully keep watch on his actions and his words, in
order to fathom them and discover what could be the cause. To this end, we
resolved to let him act and speak with us more freely than heretofore.” And
in a letter written straight to the chancellor, the king exclaims in wrath, “It
is true that having seen me sometimes dissatisfied with the cardinal,
whether from the apprehension I felt lest he should hinder me from going to
the siege of Perpignan, or induce me to leave it, for fear lest my health
might suffer, or from any other like reason, the said Sieur de Cinq-Mars left
nothing undone to chafe me against my said cousin, which I put up with so
long as his evil offices were confined within the bounds of moderation. But
when he went so far as to suggest to me that the cardinal must be got rid of,
and offered to carry it out himself, I conceived a horror of his evil thoughts,
and held them in detestation. Although I have only to say so for you to
believe it, there is nobody who can deem but that it must have been so; for,
otherwise, what motive would he have had for joining himself to Spain
against me, if I had approved of what he desired?”
The trial was a foregone conclusion; the king and his brother made
common cause in order to overwhelm the accused, “an earnest of a peace
which was not such as God announced with good will to man on Christmas
day,” writes Madame de Motteville, “but such as may exist at court and
amongst brothers of royal blood.”
The cardinal did not think it necessary to wait for the sentence. He had
arrived at his house at Lyons, in a sort of square chamber, covered with red
damask, and borne on the shoulders of eighteen guards; there, stretched
upon his couch, a table covered with papers beside him, he worked and
chatted with whomsoever of his servants he had been pleased to have as his

companion on the road. It was in the same equipage that he left Lyons to
gain the Loire and return to Paris. On his passage, it was necessary to pull
down lumps of wall and throw bridges over the fosses to make way for this
vast litter and the indomitable man that lay dying within it.
It was on the 12th of September, 1642, that the accused appeared before
the commission; there were now but two of them; the Duke of Bouillon had
made his private arrangement with the cardinal, confessing everything, and
requesting “to have his life spared in order that he might employ it to
preserve to the Catholic church five little children whom his death would
leave to persons of the opposite religion.” In consideration of this pardon, a
demand was made upon him to give up Sedan to the king, “though it were
easy to gain possession of-it by investment.” The duke consented to all, and
he awaited in his dungeon at Pierre-Encise the execution of his accomplices
who had no town to surrender. Their death was to be the signal of his
liberation.
The two accused denied nothing. M. de Thou merely maintained that he
had not been in any way mixed up with the conspiracy, proving that he had
blamed the treaty with Spain, and that his only crime was not having
revealed it. “He believed me to be his friend, his one faithful friend,” said
he, speaking of Cinq-Mars, “and I had no mind to betray him.” The grand
equerry told in detail the story of the plot, his connection with the Duke of
Orleans, who had missed no opportunity of paying court to him, the
resolutions taken in concert with the Duke of Bouillon, and the treaty
concluded with Spain, “confessing that he had erred, and had no hope but in
the clemency of the king, and of the cardinal, whose generosity would be so
much the more shown in asking pardon for him as he was the less bound to
do so.” There was not long to wait for the decree; the votes were unanimous
against the grand equerry, a single one of the judges pronouncing in favor
of M. de Thou. The latter turned towards Cinq-Mars, and said, “Ah! well,
sir; humanly speaking, I might complain of you; you have placed me in the
dock, and you are the cause of my death; but God knows how I love you.
Let us die, sir, let us die courageously, and win Paradise.”
The decree against Cinq-Mars sentenced him to undergo the question in
order to get a more complete revelation of his accomplices. “It had been
resolved not to put him to it,” says Tallemant des Reaux: “but it was
exhibited to him nevertheless; it gave him a turn, but it did not make him do

anything to belie himself, and he was just taking off his doublet, when he
was told to raise his hand in sign of telling the truth.”
The execution was not destined to be long deferred; the very day on
which the sentence was delivered saw the execution of it. “The grand
equerry showed a never-changing and very resolute firmness to the death,
together with admirable calmness and the constancy and devoutness of a
Christian,” wrote M. du Marca, councillor of state, to the secretary of state
Brionne; and Tallemant des Reaux adds, “He died with astoundingly great
courage, and did not waste time in speechifying; he would not have his eyes
bandaged, and kept them open when the blow was struck.” M. de Thou said
not a word save to God, repeating the Credo even to the very scaffold, with
a fervor of devotion that touched all present. “We have seen,” says a report
of the time, “the favorite of the greatest and most just of kings lose his head
upon the scaffold at the age of twenty-two, but with a firmness which has
scarcely its parallel in our histories. We have seen a councillor of state die
like a saint after a crime which men cannot justly pardon. There is nobody
in the world who, knowing of their conspiracy against the state, does not
think them worthy of death, and there will be few who, having knowledge
of their rank and their fine natural qualities, will not mourn their sad fate.”

“Now that I make not a single step which does not lead me to death, I am
more capable than anybody else of estimating the value of the things of the
world,” wrote Cinq-Mars to his mother, the wife of Marshal d’Effiat.
“Enough of this world; away to Paradise!” said M. de Thou, as he marched
to the scaffold. Chalais and Montmorency had used the same language. At
the last hour, and at the bottom of their hearts, the frivolous courtier and the
hare-brained conspirator, as well as the great soldier and the grave
magistrate, had recovered their faith in God.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

LOUIS XIII., CARDINAL RICHELIEU, AND
THE PROVINCES.

The story has been told of the conspiracies at court and the repeated
checks suffered by the great lords in their attempts against Cardinal
Richelieu. With the exception of Languedoc, under the influence of its
governor the Duke of Montmorency, the provinces took no part in these
enterprises; their opposition was of another sort; and it is amongst the
parliaments chiefly that we must look for it.
“The king’s cabinet and his bed-time business (petit coucher) cause me
more embarrassment than the whole of Europe causes me,” said the
cardinal in the days of the great storms at court; he would often have had
less trouble in managing the parliaments and the Parliament of Paris in
particular, if the latter had not felt itself supported by a party at court. For a
long time past a pretension had been put forward by that great body to give
the king advice, and to replace towards him the vanished states-general.
“We hold the place in council of the princes and barons, who from time
immemorial were near the person of the kings,” was the language used, in
1615, in the representations of the Parliament, which had dared, without the
royal order, to summon the princes, dukes, peers, and officers of the crown
to deliberate upon what was to be done for the service of the king, the good
of the state, and the relief of the people.
This pretension on the part of the parliaments was what Cardinal
Richelieu was continually fighting against. He would not allow the
intervention of the magistrates in the government of the state. When he took
the power into his hands, nine parliaments sat in France—Paris, Toulouse,
Grenoble, Bordeaux, Dijon, Rouen, Aix, Rennes, and Pau: he created but
one, that of Metz, in 1633, to severe in a definitive manner the bonds which

still attached the three bishoprics to the Germanic empire. Trials at that time
were carried in the last resort to Spires.
Throughout the history of France we find the Parliament of Paris bolder
and more enterprising than all the rest: and it did not belie its character in
the very teeth of Richelieu. When, after Dupes’ Day was over, Louis XIII.
declared all the companions of his brother’s escape guilty of high treason,
the Parliament of Dijon, to which the decree was presented by the king
himself, enregistered it without making any difficulty. All the other
parliaments followed the example; that of Paris alone resisted, and its
decision on the 25th of April contained a bitter censure upon the cardinal’s
administration. On the 12th of May, the decision of that Parliament was
quashed by a decree of the royal council, and all its members were
summoned to the Louvre; on their knees they had to hear the severe
reprimand delivered by Chateauneuf, keeper of the seals; and one president
and three counsellors were at the same time dismissed. When the
Parliament, still indomitable, would have had those magistrates sit in
defiance of the royal order, they were not to be found in their houses; the
soldiery had carried them off.

The trial of Marshal Marillac, before a commission, twice modified
during the course of proceedings, of the Parliament of Dijon, was the
occasion of a fresh reclamation on the part of the Parliament of Paris; and
the king’s ill-humor against the magistrates burst forth on the occasion of a
commission constituted at the Arsenal to take cognizance of the crime of
coining. The Parliament made some formal objections the king, who was at
that time at Metz with his troops, summoned President Seguier and several
counsellors. He quashed the decree of the Parliament. “You are only
constituted,” said he, “to judge between Master Peter and Master John
(between John Doe and Richard Roe); if you go on as at present, I will pare
your nails so close that you’ll be sorry for it.” Five counsellors were
interdicted, and had great trouble in obtaining authority to sit again. So
many and such frequent squabbles, whether about points of jurisdiction or
about the registration of edicts respecting finances, which the Parliament
claimed to have the right of looking into, caused between the king, inspired
by his minister, and the Parliament of Paris an irritation which reached its
height during the trial of the Duke of La Valette, third son of the Duke of
Epernon, accused, not without grounds, of having caused the failure of the
siege of Fontarabia from jealousy towards the Prince of Conde. The affair
was called on before a commission composed of dukes and peers, some
councillors of state and some members of the Parliament, which demanded
that the duke should be removed to its jurisdiction. “I will not have it,”
answered the king; “you are always making difficulties; it seems as if you
wanted to keep me in leading-strings; but I am master, and shall know how
to make myself obeyed: It is a gross error to suppose that I have not a right
to bring to judgment whom I think proper and where I please.” The king

himself asked the judges for their opinion. [Isambert, Recueil des anciennes
Lois Francaises, t. xvi.] “Sir,” replied Counsellor Pinon, dean of the grand
chamber, “for fifty years I have been in the Parliament, and I never saw
anything of this sort; M. de La Valette had the honor of wedding a natural
sister of your Majesty, and he is, besides, a peer of France; I implore you to
remove him to the jurisdiction of the Parliament.” “Your opinion!” said the
king, curtly. “I am of opinion that the Duke of La Valette be removed to be
tried before the Parliament.” “I will not have that; it is no opinion.” “Sir,
removal is a legitimate opinion.” “Your opinion on the case!” rejoined the
king, who was beginning to be angry; “if not, I know what I must do.”
President Bellievre was even bolder. “It is a strange thing,” said he to Louis
XIII.‘s face, “to see a king giving his vote at the criminal trial of one of his
subjects; hitherto kings have reserved to themselves the rights of grace, and
have removed to their officers’ province the sentencing of culprits. Could
your Majesty bear to see in the dock a nobleman, who might leave your
presence only for the scaffold? It is incompatible with kingly majesty.”
“Your opinion on the case!” bade the king. “Sir, I have no other opinion.”
The Duke of La Valette had taken refuge in England: he was condemned
and executed in effigy. The attorney-general, Matthew Mold, “did not
consider it his business to carry out an execution of that sort: “and recourse
was obliged to be had to the lieutenant-governor of convicts at the Chatelet
of Paris.
The cup had overflowed, and the cardinal resolved to put an end to an
opposition which was the more irritating inasmuch as it was sometimes
legitimate. A notification of the king’s, published in 1641, prohibited the
Parliament from any interference in affairs of state and administration. The
whole of Richelieu’s home-policy is summed up in the preamble to that
instrument, a formal declaration of absolute power concentrated in the
hands of the king. “It seemeth that, the institution of monarchies having its
foundation in the government of a single one, that rank is as it were the soul
which animates them and inspires them with as much force and vigor as
they can have short of perfection. But as this absolute authority raises states
to the highest pinnacle of their glory, so, when it happens to be enfeebled,
they are observed, in a short time, to fall from their high estate. There is no
need to go out of France to find instances of truth. . . . The fatal disorders
and divisions of the League, which ought to be buried in eternal oblivion,
owed their origin and growth to disregard of the kingly authority Henry the

Great, in whom God had put the most excellent virtues of a great prince, on
succeeding to the crown of Henry III., restored by his valor the kingly
authority which had been as it were cast down and trampled under foot.
France recovered her pristine vigor, and let all Europe see that power
concentrated in the person of the sovereign is the source of the glory and
greatness of monarchies, and the foundation upon which their preservation
rests. . . . We, then, have thought it necessary to regulate the administration
of justice, and to make known to our parliaments what is the legitimate
usage of the authority which the kings, our predecessors, and we have
deposited with them, in order that a thing which was established for the
good of the people may not produce contrary effects, as would happen if the
officers, instead of contenting themselves with that power which makes
them judges in matters of life and death and touching the fortunes of our
subjects, would fain meddle in the government of the state which appertains
to the prince only.”
The cardinal had gained the victory. Parliament bowed the head; its
attempts at independence during the Fronde were but a flash, and the yoke
of Louis XIV. became the more heavy for it. The pretensions of the
magistrates were often foundationless, the restless and meddlesome
character of their assemblies did harm to their remonstrances; but for a long
while they maintained, in the teeth of more and more absolute kingly
power, the country’s rights in the government, and they had perceived the
dangers of that sovereign monarchy which certainly sometimes raises states
to the highest pinnacle of their glory, but only to let them sink before long
to a condition of the most grievous abasement.
Though always first in the breach, the Parliament of Paris was not alone
in its opposition to the cardinal. The Parliament of Dijon protested against
the sentence of Marshal Marillac, and refused, to its shame, to bear its share
of the expenses for the defence of Burgundy against the Duke of Lorraine,
in 1636, a refusal which cost it the suspension of its premier president.
The Parliament of Brittany, in defence of its jurisdictional privileges,
refused to enregister the decree which had for object the foundation of a
company trading with the Indies, “for the general trade between the West
and the East,” a grand idea of Richelieu’s, the seat of which was to be in the
roads of Morbihan; the company, already formed, was disheartened, thanks
to the delays caused by the Parliament, and the enterprise failed. The

Parliament of Grenoble, fearing a dearth of corn in Dauphiny, quashed the
treaties of supply for the army of Italy, at the time of the second expedition
to Mantua; it went so far as to have the dealers’ granaries thrown open, and
the superintendent of finance, D’Emery, was obliged to come to terms with
the deputies of Dauphiny, “in order that they of the Parliament of Grenoble,
who said they had no interests but those of the province, might have no
reason to prevent for the future the transport of corn,” says Richelieu
himself in his Memoires.
The Parliament of Rouen had always passed for one of the most
recalcitrant. The province of Normandy was rich, and, consequently,
overwhelmed with imposts; and several times the Parliament refused to
enregister financial edicts which still further aggravated the distress of the
people. In 1637 the king threatened to go in person to Rouen and bring the
Parliament to submission, whereat it took fright and enregistered decrees
for twenty-two millions. It was, no doubt, this augmentation of imposts that
brought about the revolt of the Nu-pieds (Barefoots) in 1639. Before now,
in 1624 and in 1637, in Perigord and Rouergue, two popular risings of the
same sort, under the name of Croquants (Paupers), had disquieted the
authorities, and the governor of the province had found some trouble in
putting them down. The Nu-pieds were more numerous and more violent
still; from Rouen to Avranches all the country was a-blaze. At Coutances
and at Vire, several monopoliers and gabeleurs, as the fiscal officers were
called, were massacred; a great number of houses were burned, and most of
the receiving-offices were pulled down or pillaged. Everywhere the army of
suffering (armee de souffrance), the name given by the revolters to
themselves, made, appeal to violent passions; popular rhymes were
circulated from hand to hand, in the name of General Nu-pieds (Barefoot),
an imaginary personage whom nobody ever saw. Some of these verses are
fair enough.

TO NORMANDY.

“Dear land of mine, thou canst no more
What boots it to have served so well?
For see! thy faithful service bore
This bitter fruit—the cursed gabelle.
Is that the guerdon earned by those
Who succored France against her foes,
Who saved her kings, upheld her crown,
And raised the lilies trodden down,
In spite of all the foe could do,
In spite of Spain and England too?

“Recall thy generous blood, and show
That all posterity may know—
Duke William’s breed still lives at need:
Show that thou hast a heavier hand
Than erst came forth from Northern land;
A hand so strong, a heart so high,
These tyrants all shall beaten cry,
‘From Normans and the Norman race
Deliver us, O God of grace!’”

The tumult was more violent at Rouen than anywhere else, and the
Parliament energetically resisted the mob. It had sent two counsellors as a
deputation to Paris to inform the king about the state of affairs. “You may
signify to the gentlemen of the Parliament of Rouen,” said Chancellor
Seguier, in answer to the delegates, “that I thank them for the trouble they
have taken on this occasion; I will let the king know how they have
behaved in this affair. I beg them to go on as they have begun. I know that
the Parliament did very good service there.”
In fact, several counsellors, on foot in the street and in the very midst of
the revolters, had, at the peril of their lives, defended Le Tellier de
Tourneville, receiver-general of gabels, and his officers, whilst the whole
Parliament, in their robes, with the premier president at their head,
perambulated Rouen, amidst the angry mob, repairing at once to the points
most threatened, insomuch that the presidents and counsellors were “in
great danger and fear for their skins.” [Histoire du Parlement de Normandy,
by M. Floquet, t. iv.] It was this terror, born of tumults and the sight of an
infuriated populace, which, at a later period, retarded the Parliament in
dealing out justice, and brought down upon it the wrath of the king and of
the cardinal.
Meanwhile the insurrection was gaining ground, and the local authorities
were powerless to repress it. There was hesitation at the king’s council in
choosing between Marshal Rantzau and M. de Gassion to command the
forces ordered to march into Normandy. “That country yields no wine,” said
the king “that will not do for Rantzau, or be good quarters for him.” And
they sent Colonel Gession, not so heavy a drinker as Rantzau, a good
soldier and an inflexible character. First at Caen, then at Avranches, where
there was fighting to be done, at Coutances and at Elbeuf, Gassion’s
soldiery everywhere left the country behind them in subjection, in ruin, and
in despair. They entered Rouen on the 31st of December, 1639, and on the
2d of January, 1640, the chancellor himself arrived to do justice on the
rebels heaped up in the prisons, whom the Parliament dared not bring up for
judgment. “I come to Rouen,” he said, on entering the town, “not to
deliberate, but to declare and execute the matters on which my mind is
made up.” And he forbade all intervention on the part of the archbishop,
Francis de Harlay, who was disposed, in accordance with his office of love
as well as the parliamentary name he bore, to implore pity for the culprits,
and to excuse the backward judges. The chancellor did not give himself the

trouble to draw up sentences. “The decree is at the tip of my staff,” replied
Picot, captain of his guards, when he was asked to show his orders. The
executions were numerous in Higher and Lower Normandy, and the
Parliament received the wages of its tardiness. All the members of the body,
even the most aged and infirm, were obliged to leave Rouen. A commission
of fifteen councillors of the Parliament of Paris came to replace
provisionally the interdicted Parliament of Normandy; and, when the
magistrates were empowered at last to resume their sitting, it was only a six
months’ term: that is, the Parliament henceforth found itself divided into
two fragments, perfect strangers one to the other, which were to sit
alternately for six months. “A veritable thunderbolt for that sovereign court,
for by the six months’ term,” says M. Floquet, “there was no longer any
Parliament, properly speaking, but two phantoms of Parliament, making
war on each other, whilst the government had the field open to carve and
cut without control.”
“All obedience is now from fear,” wrote Grotius to Oxenstiern,
chancellor of Sweden; “the idea is to exorcise and annihilate hatred by
means of terror.” “This year,” wrote an inhabitant of Rouen, “there have
been no New Year’s presents [etrennes], no singing of ‘the king’s drinking-
song [le roi boit], in any house. Little children will be able to tell tales of it
when they have attained to man’s estate; for never, these fifty years past, so
far as I can learn, has it been so.” [Journal de l’Abbe de la Rue.] The
heaviest imposts weighed upon the whole province, which thus expiated the
crime of an insignificant portion of its inhabitants. “The king shall not lose
the value of this handkerchief that I hold,” said the superintendent Bullion,
on arriving at Rouen. And he kept his word: Rouen alone had to pay more
than three millions. The province and its Parliament were henceforth
reduced to submission.
It was not only the Parliaments that resisted the efforts of Cardinal
Richelieu to concentrate all the power of the government in the hands of the
king. From the time that the sovereigns had given up convoking the states-
general, the states-provincial had alone preserved the right of bringing to
the foot of the throne the plaints and petitions of subjects. Unhappily few
provinces enjoyed this privilege; Languedoc, Brittany, Burgundy, Provence,
Dauphiny, and the countship of Pau alone were states-districts, that is to
say, allowed to tax themselves independently and govern themselves to a
certain extent. Normandy, though an elections-district, and, as such, subject

to the royal agents in respect of finance, had states which continued to meet
even in 1666. The states-provincial were always convoked by the king, who
fixed the place and duration of assembly.
The composition of the states-provincial varied a great deal, according to
the districts. In Brittany all noblemen settled in the province had the right of
sitting, whilst the third estate were represented by only forty deputies. In
Languedoc, on the contrary, the nobility had but twenty-three
representatives, and the class of the third estate numbered sixty-eight
deputies. Hence, no doubt, the divergences of conduct to be remarked in
those two provinces between the Parliament and the states-provincial. In
Languedoc, even during Montmorency’s insurrection, the Parliament
remained faithful to the king and submissive to the cardinal, whilst the
states declared in favor of the revolt: in Brittany, the Parliament thwarted
Richelieu’s efforts in favor of trade, which had been enthusiastically
welcomed by the states.
In Languedoc as well as in Dauphiny the cardinal’s energy was
constantly directed towards reducing the privileges which put the imposts,
and, consequently, the royal revenues, at the discretion of the states.
Montmorency’s insurrection cost Languedoc a great portion of its liberties,
which had already been jeoparded, in 1629, on the occasion of the
Huguenots’ rising; and those of Dauphiny were completely lost; the states
were suppressed in 1628.
The states of Burgundy ordinarily assembled every three years, but they
were accustomed, on separating, to appoint “a chamber of states-general,”
whereat the nobility, clergy, and third estate were represented, and which
was charged to watch over the interests of the province in the interval
between the sessions. When, in 1629, Richelieu proposed to create, as in
Languedoc, a body of “elect” to arrange with the fiscal agents for the rating
of imposts without the concurrence of the states, the assembly proclaimed
that “it was all over with the liberties of the province if the edict passed,”
and, in the chamber of the nobility, two gentlemen were observed to draw
their swords. But, spite of the disturbance which took place at Dijon, in
1630, on occasion of an impost on wines, and which was called, from the
title of a popular ditty, la Sedition de Lanturlu, the province preserved its
liberties, and remained a states-district.

It was the same subject that excited in Provence the revolt of the
Cascaveous, or bell-bearers. Whenever there was any question of elections
or “elect,” the conspirators sounded their bells as a rallying signal, and so
numerous was the body of adherents that the bells were heard tinkling
everywhere. The Prince of Conde was obliged to march against the
revolters, and the states assembled at Tarascon found themselves forced to
vote a subsidy of one million five hundred thousand livres. At this cost the
privileges of Provence were respected.
The states of Brittany, on the contrary, lent the cardinal faithful support,
when he repaired thither with the king, in 1626, at the time of the
conspiracy of Chalais; the Duke of Vendome, governor of Brittany, had just
been arrested; the states requested the king “never to give them a governor
issue of the old dukes, and to destroy the fortifications of the towns and
castles which were of no use for the defence of the country.” The petty
noblemen, a majority in the states, thus delivered over the province to the
kingly power, from jealousy of the great lords. The ordinance, dated from
Nantes on the 31st of July, 1626, rendered the measure general throughout
France. The battlements of the castles fell beneath the axe of the
demolishers, and the masses of the district welcomed enthusiastically the
downfall of those old reminiscences of feudal oppression.
As a sequel to the systematic humiliation of the great lords, even when
provincial governors, and to the gradual enfeeblement of provincial
institutions, Richelieu had to create in all parts of France, still so diverse in
organization as well as in manners, representatives of the kingly power, of
too modest and feeble a type to do without him, but capable of applying his
measures and making his wishes respected. Before now the kings of France
had several times over perceived the necessity of keeping up a supervision
over the conduct of their officers in the provinces. The inquisitors
(enquesteurs) of St. Louis, the ridings of the revising-masters (chevauehees
des maitres des requetes), the departmental commissioners (commissaires
departis) of Charles IX., were so many temporary and travelling inspectors,
whose duty it was to inform the king of the state of affairs throughout the
kingdom. Richelieu substituted for these shifting commissions a fixed and
regular institution, and in 1637 he established in all the provinces overseers
of justice, police, and finance, who were chosen for the most part from
amongst the burgesses, and who before long concentrated in their hands the

whole administration, and maintained the struggle of the kingly power
against the governors, the sovereign courts, and the states-provincial.
At the time when the overseers of provinces were instituted, the battle of
pure monarchy was gained; Richelieu had no further need of allies, he
wanted mere subjects; but at the beginning of his ministry he had felt the
need of throwing himself sometimes for support on the nation, and this
great foe of the states-general had twice convoked the Assembly of
Notables. The first took place at Fontainebleau, in 1625-6. The cardinal was
at that time at loggerheads with the court of Rome: “If the Most Christian
King,” said he, “is bound to watch over the interests of the Catholic church,
he has first of all to maintain his own reputation in the world. What use
would it be for a state to have power, riches, and popular government, if it
had not character enough to bring other people to form alliance with it?”
These few words summed up the great minister’s foreign policy, to protect
the Catholic church whilst keeping up Protestant alliances. The Notables
understood the wisdom of this conduct, and Richelieu received their
adhesion. It was just the same the following year, the day after the
conspiracy of Chalais; the cardinal convoked the Assembly of Notables.
“We do protest before the living God,” said the letters of convocation, “that
we have no other aim and intention but His honor and the welfare of our
subjects; that is why we do conjure in His name those whom we convoke,
and do most expressly command them, without fear or desire of displeasing
or pleasing any, to give us, in all frankness and sincerity, the counsels they
shall judge on their consciences to be the most salutary and convenient for
the welfare of the commonwealth.” The assembly so solemnly convoked
opened its sittings at the palace of the Tuileries on the 2d of December,
1626. The state of the finances was what chiefly occupied those present;
and the cardinal himself pointed out the general principles of the reform he
calculated upon establishing. “It is impossible,” he said, “to meddle with
the expenses necessary for the preservation of the state; it were a crime to
think of such a thing. The retrenchment, therefore, must be in the case of
useless expenses. The most stringent rules are and appear to be, even to the
most ill-regulated minds, comparatively mild, when they have, in deed as
well as in appearance, no object but the public good and the safety of the
state. To restore the state to its pristine splendor, we need not many
ordinances, but a great deal of practical performance.”

The performance appertained to Richelieu, and he readily dispensed with
many ordinances. The Assembly was favorable to his measures; but
amongst those that it rejected was the proposal to substitute loss of offices
and confiscation for the penalty of death in matters of rebellion and
conspiracy. “Better a moderate but certain penalty,” said the cardinal, “than
a punishment too severe to be always inflicted.” It was the notables who
preserved in the hands of the inflexible minister the terrible weapon of
which he availed himself so often. The Assembly separated on the 24th of
February, 1627, the last that was convoked before the revolution of 1789. It
was in answer to its demands, as well as to those of the states of 1614, that
the keeper of the seals, Michael Marillac, drew up, in 1629, the important
administrative ordinance which has preserved from its author’s name the
title of Code Michau.
The cardinal had propounded to the Notables a question which he had
greatly at heart—the foundation of a navy. Already, when disposing, some
weeks previously, of the government of Brittany, which had been taken
away from the Duke of Vendome, he had separated from the office that of
admiral of Brittany; already he was in a position to purchase from M. de
Montmorency his office of grand admiral of France, so as to suppress it and
substitute for it that of grand master of navigation, which was personally
conferred upon Richelieu by an edict enregistered on the 18th of March,
1627.
“Of the power which it has seemed agreeable to his Majesty that I should
hold,” he wrote on the 20th of January, 1627, “I can say with truth, that it is
so moderate that it could not be more so to be an appreciable service, seeing
that I have desired no wage or salary so as not to be a charge to the state,
and I can add without vanity that the proposal to take no wage came from
me, and that his Majesty made a difficulty about letting it be so.”
The Notables had thanked the king, for the intention he had “of being
pleased to give the kingdom the treasures of the sea which nature had so
liberally proffered it, for without [keeping] the sea one cannot profit by the
sea nor maintain war.” Harbors repaired and fortified, arsenals established
at various points on the coast, organization of marine regiments, foundation
of pilot-schools, in fact, the creation of a powerful marine which, in 1642,
numbered sixty-three vessels and twenty-two galleys, that left the roads of
Barcelona after the rejoicings for the capture of Perpignan and arrived the

same evening at Toulon—such were the fruits of Richelieu’s administration
of naval affairs. “Instead,” said the bailiff of Forbin, “of having a handful of
rebels forcing us, as of late, to compose our naval forces of foreigners and
implore succor from Spain, England, Malta, and Holland, we are at present
in a condition to do as much for them if they continue in alliance with us, or
to beat them when they fall off from us.”
So much progress on every point, so many efforts in all directions,
eighty-five vessels afloat, a hundred regiments of infantry, and three
hundred troops of cavalry, almost constantly on a war footing, naturally
entailed enormous expenses and terrible burdens on the people. It was
Richelieu’s great fault to be more concerned about his object than
scrupulous as to the means he employed for arriving at it. His principles
were as harsh as his conduct. “Reason does not admit of exempting the
people from all burdens,” said he, “because in such case, on losing the mark
of their subjection, they would also lose remembrance of their condition,
and, if they were free from tribute, would think that they were from
obedience also.” Cruel words those, and singularly destitute of regard for
Christian charity and human dignity, beside which, however, must be placed
these: “If the subsidies imposed on the people were not to be kept within
moderate bounds, even when they were needed for the service of the
country, they would not cease to be unjust.” The strong common sense of
this great mind did not allow him to depart for long from a certain hard
equity. Posterity has preserved the memory of his equity less than of his
hardness: men want sympathy more than justice.

CHAPTER XL.

LOUIS XIII., CARDINAL RICHELIEU,
THE CATHOLICS AND THE PROTESTANTS.

Cardinal Richelieu has often been accused of indifference towards the
Catholic church; the ultramontanes called him the Huguenots’ cardinal; in
so speaking there was either a mistake or a desire to mislead; Richelieu was
all his life profoundly and sincerely Catholic; not only did no doubt as to
the fundamental doctrines of his church trouble his mind, but he also gave
his mind to her security and her aggrandizement. He was a believer on
conviction, without religious emotions and without the mystic’s zeal; he
labored for Catholicism whilst securing for himself Protestant alliances, and
if the independence of his mind caused him to feel the necessity for a
reformation, it was still in the church and by the church that he would have
had it accomplished.
Spirits more fervent and minds more pious than Richelieu’s felt the same
need. On emerging from the violent struggles of the religious wars, the
Catholic church had not lost her faith, but she had neglected sweetness and
light. King Henry IV.‘s conversion had secured to her the victory in France,
but she was threatened with letting it escape from her hands by her own
fault. God raised up for her some great servents who preserved her from
this danger.
The oratorical and political brilliancy of the Catholic church in the reign
of Louis XIV. has caused men to forget the great religious movement in the
reign of Louis XIII. Learned and mystic in the hands of Cardinal Berulle,
humane and charitable with St. Vincent de Paul, bold and saintly with M. de
Saint Cyran, the church underwent from all quarters quickening influences
which roused her from her dangerous lethargy.

The effort was attempted at all points at once. The priests had sunk into
an ignorance as perilous as their lukewarmness. Mid all the diplomatic
negotiations which he undertook in Richelieu’s name, and the intrigues he,
with the queen-mother, often hatched against him, Cardinal Berulle founded
the congregation of the Oratory, designed to train up well-informed and
pious young priests with a capacity for devoting themselves to the
education of children as well as the edification of the people. “It is a body,”
said Bossizet, “in which everybody obeys and nobody commands.” No vow
fettered the members of this celebrated congregation, which gave to the
world Malebranche and Massillon. It was, again, under the inspiration of
Cardinal Berulle, renowned for the pious direction of souls, that the order of
Carmelites, hitherto confined to Spain, was founded in France. The convent
in Rue St. Jacques soon numbered amongst its penitents women of the
highest rank.
The labors of Mgr. de Berulle tended especially to the salvation of
individual souls; those of St. Vincent de Paul embraced a vaster field, and
one offering more scope to Christian humanity. Some time before, in 1610,
St. Francis de Sales had founded, under the direction of Madame de
Chantal, the order of Visitation, whose duty was the care of the sick and
poor; he had left the direction of his new institution to M. Vincent, as was at
that time the appellation of the poor priest without birth and without
fortune, who was one day to be celebrated throughout the world under the
name of St. Vincent de Paul. This direction was not enough to satisfy his
zeal for charity; children and sick, the ignorant and the convict, all those
who suffered in body or spirit, seemed to summon M. Vincent to their aid;
he founded in 1617, in a small parish of Bresse, the charitable society of
Servants of the poor, which became in 1633, at Paris, under the direction of
Madame Legras, niece of the keeper of the seals Marillac, the sisterhood off
Servants of the sick poor, and the cradle of the Sisters of Charity. “They
shall not have, as a regular rule,” said St. Vincent, “any monastery but the
houses of the sick, any chapel but their parish-church, any cloister but the
streets of the town and the rooms of the hospitals, any enclosure but
obedience, any grating but the fear of God, or any veil but the holiest and
most perfect modesty.” Eighteen thousand daughters of St. Vincent de Paul,
of whom fourteen thousand are French, still testify at this day to the far-
sighted wisdom of their founder; his regulations have endured like his work
and the necessities of the poor.

It was to the daughters of Charity that M. Vincent confided the work in
connection with foundlings, when his charitable impulses led him, in 1638,
to take up the cause of the poor little abandoned things who were perishing
by heaps at that time in Paris. Appealing for help, on their account, to the
women of the world, one evening when he was in want of money, he
exclaimed at the house of the Duchess of Aiguillon, Cardinal Richelieu’s
niece, “Come now, ladies; compassion and charity have made you adopt
these, little creatures as your own children; you have been their mothers
according to grace, since their mothers according to nature have abandoned
them. Consider, then, whether you too will abandon them; their life and
their death are in your hands; it is time to pronounce their sentence, and
know whether you will any longer have pity upon them. They will live if
you continue to take a charitable care of them; they will die and perish
infallibly if you abandon them.” St. Vincent de Paul had confidence in
human nature, and everywhere on his path sprang up good works in
response to his appeals; the foundation of Mission-priests or Lazarists,
designed originally to spread about in the rural districts the knowledge of
God, still testifies in the East, whither they carry at one and the same time
the Gospel and the name of France, to that great awakening of Christian
charity which signalized the reign of Louis XIII. The same inspiration
created the seminary of St. Sulpice, by means of M. Olier’s solicitude, the
brethren of Christian Doctrine and the Ursulines, devoted to the education
of childhood, and so many other charitable or pious establishments, noble
fruits of devoutness and Christian sacrifice.
Nowhere was this fructuating idea of the sacrifice, the immolation of
man for God and of the present in prospect of eternity, more rigorously
understood and practised than amongst the disciples of John du Vergier de
Hauranne, Abbot of St. Cyran. More bold in his conceptions than Cardinal
Berulle and St. Vincent de Paul, of a nature more austere and at the same
time more ardent, he had early devoted himself to the study of theology.
Connected in his youth with a Fleming, Jansen, known under the name of
Jansenius and afterwards created Bishop of Ypres, he adopted with fervor
the doctrines as to the grace of God which his friend had imbibed in the
school of St. Augustin, and employing in the direction of souls that zealous
ardor which makes conquerors, he set himself to work to regenerate the
church by penance, sanctity, and sacrifice; God supreme, reigning over
hearts subdued, that was his ultimate object, and he marched towards it

without troubling himself about revolts and sufferings, certain that he would
be triumphant with God and for Him.

Victories gained over souls are from their very nature of a silent sort: but
M. de St. Cyran was not content with them. He wrote also, and his book
“Petrus Aurelius,” published under the veil of the anonymous, excited a
great stir by its defence of the rights of the bishops against the monks, and
even against the pope. The Gallican bishops welcomed at that time with
lively satisfaction, its eloquent pleadings in favor of their cause. But, at a
later period, the French clergy discovered in St. Cyran’s book free-thinking
concealed under dogmatic forms. “In case of heresy any Christian may
become judge,” said Petrus Aurelius. Who, then, should be commissioned
to define heresy? So M. de St. Cyran was condemned.
He had been already by an enemy more formidable than the assemblies
of the clergy of France. Cardinal Richelieu, naturally attracted towards
greatness as he was at a later period towards the infant prodigy of the
Pascals, had been desirous of attaching St. Cyran to himself. “Gentlemen,”
said he one day, as he led back the simple priest into the midst of a throng
of his courtiers, “here you see the most learned man in Europe.” But the
Abbot of St. Cyran would accept no yoke but God’s: he remained
independent, and perhaps hostile, pursuing, without troubling himself about

the cardinal, the great task he had undertaken. Having had, for two years
past, the spiritual direction of the convent of Port Royal, he had found in
Mother Angelica Arnauld, the superior and reformer of the monastery, in
her sister, Mother Agnes, and in the nuns of their order, souls worthy of him
and capable of tolerating his austere instructions.
Before long he had seen forming, beside Port Royal and in the solitude of
the fields, a nucleus of penitents, emulous of the hermits of the desert. M.
Le Maitre, Mother Angelica’s nephew, a celebrated advocate in the
Parliament of Paris, had quitted all “to have no speech but with God.” A
howling (rugissant) penitent, he had drawn after him his brothers, MM. de
Sacy and de Sericourt, and, ere long, young Lancelot, the learned author of
Greek roots: all steeped in the rigors of penitential life, all blindly
submissive to M. de St. Cyran and his saintly requirements. The director’s
power over so many eminent minds became too great. Richelieu had
comprehended better than the bishops the tendency of M. de St. Cyran’s
ideas and writings. “He continued to publish many opinions, new and
leading to dangerous conclusions,” says Father Joseph in his Memoires, “in
such sort that the king, being advertised, commanded him to be kept a
prisoner in the Bois de Vincennes.” “That man is worse than six armies,”
said Cardinal Richelieu; “if Luther and, Calvin had been shut up when they
began to dogmatize, states would have been spared a great deal of trouble.”
The consciences of men and the ardor of their souls are not so easily
stifled by prison or exile. The Abbot of St. Cyran, in spite of the entreaties
of his powerful friends, remained at Vincennes up to the death of Cardinal
Richelieu; the seclusionists of Port Royal were driven from their retreat and
obliged to disperse; but neither the severities of Richelieu, nor, at a later
period, those of Louis XIV., were the true cause of the ultimate
powerlessness of Jansenism to bring about that profound reformation of the
church which had been the dream of the Abbot of St. Cyran. He had wished
to immolate sinful man to God, and he regarded sanctity as the complete
sacrifice of human nature corrupt to its innermost core. Human conscience
could not accept this cruel yoke; its liberty revolted against so narrow a
prison; and the Protestant reformation, with a doctrine as austere as that of
M. de St. Cyran, but more true and more simple in its practical application,
offered strong minds the satisfaction of direct and personal relations
between God and man; it saw the way to satisfy them without crushing

them; and that is why the kingly power in France succeeded in stifling
Jansenism without having ever been able to destroy the Protestant faith.
Cardinal Richelieu dreaded the doctrines of M. de St. Cyran, and still
more those of the reformation, which went directly to the emancipation of
souls; but he had the wit to resist ecclesiastical encroachments, and, for all
his being a cardinal, never did minister maintain more openly the
independence of the civil power. “The king, in things temporal, recognizes
no sovereign save God.” That had always been the theory of the Gallican
church. “The church of France is in the kingdom, and not the kingdom in
the church,” said the jurisconsult Loyseau, thus subjecting ecclesiastics to
the common law of all citizens.
The French clergy did not understand it so; they had recourse to the
liberties of the Gallican church in order to keep up a certain measure of
independence as regarded Rome, but they would not give up their ancient
privileges, and especially the right of taking an independent share in the
public necessities without being taxed as a matter of law and obligation.
Here it was that Cardinal Richelieu withstood them: he maintained that, the
ecclesiastics and the brotherhoods not having the right to hold property in
France by mortmain, the king tolerated their possession, of his grace, but he
exacted the payment of seignorial dues. The clergy at that time possessed
more than a quarter of the property in France; the tax to be paid amounted,
it is said, to eighty millions. The subsidies further demanded reached a total
of eight millions six hundred livres.
The clergy in dismay wished to convoke an assembly to determine their
conduct; and after a great deal of difficulty it was authorized by the
cardinal. Before long he intimated to the five prelates who were most
hostile to him that they must quit the assembly and retire to their dioceses.
“There are,” said the Bishop of Autun, who was entirely devoted to
Richelieu, “some who show great delicacy about agreeing to all that the
king demands, as if they had a doubt whether all the property of the church
belonged to him or not, and whether his Majesty, leaving the ecclesiastics
wherewithal to provide for their subsistence and a moderate establishment,
could not take all the surplus.” That sort of doctrine would never do for the
clergy; still they consented to pay five millions and a half, the sum to which
the minister lowered his pretensions. “The wants of the state,” said
Richelieu, “are real; those of the church are fanciful and arbitrary; if the

king’s armies had not repulsed the enemy, the clergy would have suffered
far more.”
Whilst the cardinal imposed upon the French clergy the obligations
common to all subjects, he defended the kingly power and majesty against
the Ultramoutanes, and especially against the Jesuits. Several of their
pamphlets had already been censured by his order when Father Sanctarel
published a treatise on heresy and schism, clothed with the pope’s
approbation, and containing, amongst other dangerous propositions, the
following: “The pope can depose emperor and kings for their iniquities or
for personal incompetence, seeing that he has a sovereign, supreme, and
absolute power.” The work was referred to the Parliament, who ordered it to
be burned in Place de Greve; there was talk of nothing less than the
banishment of the entire order.
Father Cotton, superior of the French Jesuits, was summoned to appear
before the council; he gave up Father Sanctarel unreservedly, making what
excuse he best could for the approbation of the pope and of the general of
the Jesuits. The condemnation of the work was demanded, and it was signed
by sixteen French fathers. The Parliament was disposed to push the matter
farther, when Richelieu, always as prudent as he was firm in his relations
with this celebrated order, represented to the king that there are “certain
abuses which are more easily put down by passing them over than by
resolving to destroy them openly, and that it was time to take care lest
proceedings should be carried to a point which might be as prejudicial to his
service as past action had been serviceable to it.” The Jesuits remained in
France, and their college at Clermont was not closed; but they published no
more pamphlets against the cardinal. They even defended him at need.
Richelieu’s grand quarrel with the clergy was nearing its end when the
climax was reached of a disagreement with the court of Rome, dating from
some time back. The pope had never forgiven the cardinal for not having
accepted his mediation in the affair with Spain on the subject of the
Valteline; he would not accede to the desire which Richelieu manifested to
become legate of the Holy See in France, as Cardinal d’Amboise had been;
and when Marshal d’Estrees arrived as ambassador at Rome, his resolute
behavior brought the misunderstanding to a head: the pope refused the
customary funeral honors to Cardinal La Valette, who had died in battle,
without dispensation, at the head of the king’s army in Piedmont. Richelieu

preserved appearances no longer; the king refused to receive the pope’s
nuncio, and prohibited the bishops from any communication with him. The
quarrel was envenomed by a pamphlet called Optatus Gallus. The
cardinal’s enemies represented him as a new Luther ready to excite a
schism and found a patriarchate in France. Father Rabardeau, of the Jesuits’
order, maintained, in reply, that the act would not be schismatical, and that
the consent of Rome would be no more necessary to create a patriarchate in
France than it had been to establish those of Constantinople and Jerusalem.
Urban VIII. took fright; he sent to France Julius Mazarin, at that time
vice-legate, and already frequently employed in the negotiations between
the court of Rome and Cardinal Richelieu, who had taken a great fancy to
him. The French clergy had just obtained authority to vote the subsidy in an
assembly; and the pope contented himself with this feeble concession.
Mazarin put the finishing touch to the reconciliation, and received as
recompense the cardinal’s hat. In fact, the victory of the civil power was
complete, and the independence of the crown clearly established. “His
Holiness,” said the cardinal, “ought to commend the zeal shown by his
Majesty for the welfare of the church, and to remain satisfied with the
respect shown him by an appeal to his authority which his Majesty might
have dispensed with in this matter, having his Parliaments to fall back upon
for the chastisement of those who lived evilly in his kingdom.” In principle,
the supreme question between the court of Rome and the kingly power
remained undecided, and it showed wisdom on the part of Urban VIII., as
well as of Cardinal Richelieu, never to fix fundamentally and within their
exact limits the rights and pretensions of the church or the crown.
Cardinal Richelieu had another battle to deliver, and another victory,
which was to be more decisive, to gain. During his exile at Avignon, he had
written against the Reformers, violently attacking their doctrines and their
precepts; he was, therefore, personally engaged in the theological strife, and
more hotly than has been made out; but he was above everything a great
politician, and the rebellion of the Reformers, their irregular political
assemblies, their alliances with the foreigner, occupied him, far more than
their ministers’ preaching. It was state within state that the reformers were
seeking to found, and that the cardinal wished to upset. Seconded by the
Prince of Conde, the king had put an end to the war which cost the life of
the constable De Luynes, but the peace concluded at Montpellier on the
19th of November, 1622, had already received many a blow; pacific

counsels amongst the Reformers were little by little dying out together with
the old servants of Henry IV.; Du Plessis-Mornay had lately died
(November 11, 1623) at his castle of Foret-sur-Sevres, and the direction of
the party fell entirely into the hands of the Duke of Rohan, a fiery temper
and soured by misfortunes as well as by continual efforts made on the part
of his brother, the Duke of Soubise, more restless and less earnest than he.
Hostilities broke out afresh at the beginning of the year 1625. The
Reformers complained that, instead of demolishing Fort Louis, which
commanded La Rochelle, all haste was being made to complete the
ramparts they had hoped to see razed to the ground: a small royal fleet
mustered quietly at Le Blavet, and threatened to close the sea against the
Rochellese. The peace of Montpellier had left the Protestants only two
surety-places, Montauban and La Rochelle; and they clung to them with
desperation. On the 6th of January, 1625, Soubise suddenly entered the
harbor of Le Blavet with twelve vessels, and seizing without a blow the
royal ships, towed them off in triumph to La Rochelle—a fatal success,
which was to cost that town dear.
The royal marine had hardly an existence; after the capture made by
Soubise, help had to be requested from England and Holland; the marriage
of Henrietta of France, daughter of Henry IV., with the Prince of Wales,
who was soon to become Charles I., was concluded; the English promised
eight ships; the treaties with the United Provinces obliged the Hollanders to
supply twenty, which they would gladly have refused to send against their
brethren, if they could; the cardinal even required that the ships should be
commanded by French captains. “One lubber may ruin a whole fleet,” said
he, “and a captain of a ship, if assured by the enemy of payment for his
vessel, may undertake to burn the whole armament, and that the more easily
inasmuch as he would think he was making a grand sacrifice to God, for the
sake of his religion.”
Meanwhile, Soubise had broken through the feeble obstacles opposed to
him by the Duke of Vendome, and, making himself master of all the
trading-vessels he encountered, soon took possession of the Islands of Re
and Oleron and effected descents even into Medoc, whilst the Duke of
Rohan, leaving the duchess his wife, Sully’s daughter, at Castres, where he
had established the seat of his government, was scouring Lower Languedoc
and the Cevennes to rally his partisans. The insurrection was very
undecided, and the movement very irregular. Nimes, Uzes, and Alais closed

their gates; even Montauban hesitated a long while before declaring itself.
The Duke of Epernon ravaged the outskirts of that place. “At night,” writes
his secretary, “might be seen a thousand fires. Wheat, fruit trees, vines, and
houses were the food that fed the flames.” Marshal Themine did the same
all round Castres, defended by the Duchess of Rohan.
There were negotiations, nevertheless, already. Rohan and Soubise
demanded to be employed against Spain in the Valteline, claiming the
destruction of Fort Louis; parleys mitigated hostilities; the Duke of Soubise
obtained a suspension of arms from the Dutch Admiral Haustein, and then,
profiting by a favorable gust of wind, approached the fleet, set fire to the
admiral’s ship, and captured five vessels, which he towed off to the Island
of Re. But he paid dear for his treachery: the Hollanders, in their fury,
seconded with more zeal the efforts of the Duke of Montmorency, who had
just taken the command of the squadron; the Island of Re was retaken and
Soubise obliged to retreat in a shallop to Oleron, leaving for “pledge his
sword and his hat, which dropped off in his flight.” Nor was the naval fight
more advantageous for Soubise. “The battle was fierce, but the enemy had
the worst,” says Richelieu in his Memoires: “night coming on was
favorable to their designs; nevertheless, they were so hotly pursued, that on
the morrow, at daybreak, eight of their vessels were taken.” Soubise sailed
away to England with the rest of his fleet, and the Island of Oleron
surrendered.
The moment seemed to have come for crushing La Rochelle, deprived of
the naval forces that protected it; but the cardinal, still at grips with Spain in
the Valteline, was not sure of his allies before La Rochelle. In Holland all
the churches echoed with reproaches hurled by the preachers against states
that gave help against their own brethren to Catholics; at Amsterdam the
mob had besieged the house of Admiral Haustein; and the Dutch fleet had
to be recalled. The English Protestants were not less zealous; the Duke of
Soubise had been welcomed with enthusiasm, and, though Charles I., now
King of England and married, had refused to admit the fugitive to his
presence, he would not restore to Louis XIII. the vessels, captured from that
king and his subjects, which Soubise had brought over to Portsmouth.
The game was not yet safe; and Richelieu did not allow himself to be led
astray by the anger of fanatics who dubbed him State Cardinal. “The
cardinal alone, to whom God gave the blessedness of serving the king and

restoring to his kingdom its ancient lustre, and to his person the power and
authority meet for royal Majesty which is the next Majesty after the divine,
saw in his mind the means of undoing all those tangles, clearing away all
those mists, and emerging to the honor of his master from all those
confusions.” [Memoires de Richelieu, t. iv. p. 2.]
Marshal Bassompierre was returning from his embassy to Switzerland,
having secured the alliance of the Thirteen Cantons in the affair of the
Valteline, when it was noised abroad that peace with Spain was signed.
Count du Fargis, it was said, had, in an excess of zeal, taken upon himself
to conclude without waiting for orders from Paris. Bassompierre was
preparing a grand speech against this unexpected peace, but during the
night he reflected that the cardinal had perhaps been not so much astonished
as he would have made out. “I gave up my speech,” says he, “and betook
myself to my jubilee.”
The Huguenots, on their side, yielded at the entreaties of the ambassadors
who had been sent by the English to France, “with orders to beg the
Rochellese to accept the peace which the king had offered them,” and who
omitted neither arguments nor threats in order to arrive at that conclusion;
whence it came to pass that, by a course of conduct full of unwonted
dexterity, the Huguenots were brought to consent to peace for fear of that
with Spain, and the Spaniards to make peace for fear of that with the
Huguenots.
The greatest difficulty the cardinal had to surmount was in the king’s
council; he was not ignorant that by getting peace made with the
Huguenots, and showing him that he was somewhat inclined to favor their
cause with the king, he might expose himself to the chance of getting into
bad odor at Rome. But in no other way could he arrive at his Majesty’s
ends. His cloth made him suspected by the Huguenots; it was necessary,
therefore, to behave so that they should think him favorable to them, for by
so doing he found means of waiting more conveniently for an opportunity
of reducing them to the terms to which all subjects ought to be reduced in a
state, that is to say, inability to form any separate body, and liability to
accept their sovereign’s wishes.
“It was a grievous thing for him to bear, to see himself so unjustly
suspected at the court of Rome, and by those who affected the name of
zealous Catholics; but he resolved to take patiently the rumors that were

current about him, apprehending that if he had determined to clear himself
of them effectually, he might not find that course of advantage to his master
or the public.”
The cardinal, in fact, took it patiently, revising and then confirming the
treaty with Spain, and imposing on the Huguenots a peace so hard, that they
would never have accepted it but for the hope of obtaining at a later period
some assuagements, with the help of England, which refused formally to
help them to carry on the war. At the first parleys the king had said, “I am
disposed enough towards peace; I am willing to grant it to Languedoc and
the other provinces. As for La Rochelle, that is another thing.” [Memoires
de Richelieu, t. iii.] It was ultimately La Rochelle that paid the expenses of
the war, biding the time when the proud city, which had resisted eight kings
in succession, would have to succumb before Louis XIII. and his all-
powerful minister. Already her independence was threatened on all sides;
the bastions and new fortifications had to be demolished; no armed vessel
of war might be stationed in her harbor. “The way was at last open,” said
the cardinal, “to the extermination of the Huguenot party, which, for a
hundred years past, had divided the kingdom.” [Memoires de Richelieu, t.
iii. p. 17.]

The peace of 1626, then, was but a preliminary to war. Richelieu was
preparing for it by land and sea; vessels of war were being built, troops
were being levied; and the temper of England furnished a pretext for
commencing the struggle. King Charles I., at the instigation of his favorite
the Duke of Buckingham, had suddenly and unfeelingly dismissed the
French servants of the queen his wife, without giving her even time to say
good by to them, insomuch that “the poor princess, hearing their voices in
the court-yard, dashed to the window, and, breaking the glass with her head,
clung with her hands to the bars to show herself to her women and take the
last look at them. The king indignantly dragged her back with so great an
effort that he tore her hands right away.” Louis XIII. had sent Marshal
Bassompierre to England to complain of the insult done to his sister; the
Duke of Buckingham wished to go in person to France to arrange the
difference, but the cardinal refused. “Has Buckingham ever undertaken any
foreign commission without going away dissatisfied and offended with the
princes to whom he was sent?” said Cardinal Richelieu to the king. So the
favorite of Charles I. resolved to go to France “in other style and with other
attendants than he had as yet done; having determined to win back the good

graces of the Parliament and the people of England by the succor he was
about to carry to the oppressed Protestant churches,” he pledged his
property; he sold the trading-vessels captured on the coasts of France; and
on the 17th of July, 1627, he set sail with a hundred and twenty vessels,
heading for La Rochelle. Soubise was on board his ship; and the Duke of
Rohan, notified of the enterprise, had promised to declare himself the
moment the English set foot in France. Already he was preparing his
manifesto to the churches, avowing that he had summoned the English to
his legitimate defence, and that, since the king had but lately been justified
in employing the arms of the Hollanders to defeat them, much more
reasonably might he appeal to those of the English their brethren for
protection against him.
This time the cardinal was ready; he had concluded an alliance with
Spain against England, “declaring merely to the King of Spain that he was
already at open war with England, and that he would put in practice with all
the power of his forces against his own states all sorts of hostilities
permissible in honorable warfare, which his Majesty also promised to do by
the month of June, 1628, at the latest.” The king set out to go and take in
person the command of the army intended to give the English their
reception. He had gone out ill from the Parliament, where he had been to
have some edicts enregistered. “I did nothing but tremble all the time I was
holding my bed of justice,” he said to Bassompierre. “It is there, however,
that you make others tremble,” replied the marshal. Louis XIII. was obliged
to halt at Villeroy, where the cardinal remained with him, “being all day at
his side, and most frequently not leaving him at night; he, nevertheless, had
his mind constantly occupied with giving orders, taking care above
everything to let it appear before the king that he had no fear; he preferred
to put himself in peril of being blamed or ruined in well-doing, rather than,
in order to secure himself, to do anything which might be a cause of illness
to his Majesty.” In point of fact, Richelieu was not without anxiety, for
Sieur de Toiras, a young favorite of the king’s, to whom he had entrusted
the command in the Island of Re, had not provided for the defence of that
place so well as had been expected; Buckingham had succeeded in effecting
his descent. The French were shut up in the Fort of St. Martin, scarcely
finished as it was, and ill-provisioned. The cardinal “saw to it directly,
sending of his own money because that of the king was not to be so quickly
got at, and because he had at that time none to spare; he despatched Abbe

Marcillac, who was in his confidence, to see that everything was done
punctually and no opportunity lost. He did not trouble himself to make
reports of all the despatches that passed, and all the orders that were within
less than a fortnight given on the subject of this business during the king’s
illness, in order to provide for everything that was necessary, and to prepare
all things in such wise that the king and France might reap from them the
fruit which was shortly afterwards gathered in.”
Meanwhile La Rochelle had closed her gates to the English, and the old
Duchess of Rohan had been obliged to leave the town in order to bring
Soubise in with her. “Before taking any resolution,” replied the Rochellese
authorities to the entreaties of the duke, who was pressing them to lend
assistance to the English, “we must consult the whole body of the religion
of which La Rochelle is only one member.” An assembly was already
convoked to that end at Uzes; and when it met, on the 11th of September,
the Duke of Rohan communicated to the deputies from the churches the
letter of the inhabitants of La Rochelle, “not such an one,” he said, “as he
could have desired, but such as he must make the best of.” The King of
England had granted his aid and promised not to relax until the Reformers
had firm repose and solid contentment, provided that they seconded his
efforts. “I bid you thereto in God’s name,” he added, “and for my part, were
I alone, abandoned of all, I am determined to prosecute this sacred cause
even to the last drop of my blood and to the last gasp of my life.” The
assembly fully approved of their chief’s behavior, accepting “with gratitude
the King of England’s powerful intervention, without, however, loosing
themselves from the humble and inviolable submission which they owed to
their king.” The consuls of the town of Milhau were bolder in their
reservations. “We have at divers time experienced,” they wrote to the Duke
of Rohan, whilst refusing to join the movement, “that violence is no certain
means of obtaining observation of our edicts, for force extorts many
promises, but the hatred it engenders prevents them from taking effect.”
The duke was obliged to force an entrance into this small place. La
Rochelle had just renounced her neutrality and taken sides with the English,
“flattering ourselves,” they said in their proclamation, “that, having good
men for our witnesses and God for our judge, we shall experience the same
assistance from His goodness as our fathers had aforetime.”
M. de La Milliere, the agent of the Rochellese, wrote to one of his friends
at the Duke of Rohan’s quarters, “Sir, I am arrived from Villeroy, where the

English are not held as they are at Paris to be a mere chimera. Only I am
very apprehensive of the September tides, and lest the new grapes should
kill us off more English than the enemy will. I am much vexed to hear
nothing from your quarter to second the exploits of the English, being
unable to see without shame foreigners showing more care for our welfare
than we ourselves show. I know that it will not be M. de Rohan’s fault nor
yours that nothing good is done.
“I forgot to tell you that the cardinal is very glad that he is no longer a
bishop, for he has put so many rings in pawn to send munitions to the
islands, that he has nothing remaining wherewith to give the episcopal
benediction. The most zealous amongst us pray God that the sea may
swallow up his person as it has swallowed his goods. As for me, I am not of
that number, for I belong to those who offer incense to the powers that be.”
It was as yet a time when the religious fatherland was dearer than the
political; the French Huguenots naturally appealed for aid to all Protestant
nations. It was even now an advance in national ideas to call the English
who had come to the aid of La Rochelle foreigners.
Toiras, meanwhile, still held out in the Fort of St. Martin, and
Buckingham was beginning to “abate somewhat of the absolute confidence
he had felt about making himself master of it, having been so ill-advised as
to write to the king his master that he would answer for it.” The proof of
this was that a burgess of La Rochelle, named Laleu, went to see the king
with authority from the Duke of Angouleme, who commanded the army in
his Majesty’s absence, and that he proposed that the English should retire,
provided that the king would have Fort Louis dismantled. The Duke of
Angouleme was inclined to accept this proposal, but the cardinal forcibly
represented all the reasons against it: “It will be said, perhaps, that if the
Island of Re be lost, it will be very difficult to recover it;” this he allowed,
but he put forward, to counterbalance this consideration, another, that, if
honor were lost, it would never be recovered, and that, if the Island of Re
were lost, he considered that his Majesty was bound to stick to the blockade
of Rochelle, and that he might do so with success. Upon this, his Majesty
resolved to push the siege of Rochelle vigorously, and to give the command
to Mylord his brother; “but Monsieur was tardy as usual, not wanting to
serve under the king when the health of his Majesty might permit him to
return to his army, so that the cardinal wrote to President Le Coigneux, one
of the favorite counsellors of the Duke of Orleans, to say that if imaginary

hydras of that sort were often taking shape in the mind of Monsieur, he had
nothing more to say than that there would be neither pleasure nor profit in
being mixed up with his affairs. As for himself, he would always do his
duty.” Monsieur at last made up his mind to join the army, and it was
resolved to give aid to the forts in the Island of Re.

It was a bold enterprise that was about to be attempted to hold La
Rochelle invested and not quit it, and, nevertheless, to send the flower of
the force to succor a citadel considered to be half lost; to make a descent
upon an island blockaded by a large naval armament; “to expose the best
part of the army to the mercy of the winds and the waves of the sea, and of
the English cannons and vessels, in a place where there was no landing in
order and under arms.” [Memoires de Richelieu, t. iii. p. 361]; but it had to
be resolved upon or the Island of Re lost. Toiras had already sent to ask the
Duke of Buckingham if he would receive him to terms.
On the 8th of October, at eight A. M., the Duke of Buckingham was
preparing to send a reply to the fort, and he was already rejoicing “to see his
felicity and the crowning of his labors,” when, on nearing the citadel, “there
were exhibited to him at the ends of pikes lots of bottles of wine, capons,
turkeys, hams, ox-tongues, and other provisions, and his vessels were
saluted with lots of cannonades, they having come too near in the belief that
those inside had no more powder.” During the night, the fleet which was
assembled at Oleron, and had been at sea for two days past, had succeeded
in landing close to the fort, bringing up re-enforcements of troops,
provisions, and munitions. At the same time the king and the cardinal had
just arrived at the camp before La Rochelle.

Before long the English could not harbor a doubt but that the king’s army
had recovered its real heads: a grand expedition was preparing to attack
them in the Island of Re, and the cardinal had gone in person to Oleron and
to Le Brouage in order to see to the embarkation of the troops. “The
nobility of the court came up in crowds to take leave of his Majesty, and
their looks were so gay that it must be allowed that to no nation but the
French is it given to march so freely to death for the service of their king or
for their own honor as to make it impossible to remark any difference
between him that inflicts it and him that receives.” [Memoires de Richelieu,
t. iii. p. 398.] Marshal Schomberg took the road to Marennes, whence he
sent to the cardinal for boats to carry over all his troops. “This took him
greatly by surprise, and as his judgments are always followed by the effect
he intended, he thought that this great following of nobility might hinder the
said sir marshal from executing his design so promptly. However, by
showing admirable diligence, doubling both his vessels and his provisions,
he found sufficient to embark the whole.” [Siege de La Rochelle. Archives
curieuses de l’Histoire de France, t. iii. p. 76.] By this time the king’s
troops, in considerable numbers, had arrived in the island without the
English being able to prevent their disembarkation; the enemy therefore
took the resolution of setting sail, in spite of the entreaties which the Duke
of Soubise sent them on the part of the Rochellese, those latter promising
great assistance in men and provisions, more than they could afford. To
satisfy them, the Duke of Buckingham determined to deliver a general
assault before he departed.
The assault was delivered on the 5th and 6th of November, and
everywhere repulsed, exhausted as the besieged were. “Those who were
sick and laid up in their huts appeared on the bastions. There were some of

them so weak that, unable to fight, they loaded their comrades’ muskets;
and others, having fought beyond their strength, being able to do no more,
said to their comrades, ‘Friend, here are my arms for thee; prithee, make my
grave;’ and, thither retiring, there they died.” The Duke of Buckingham
wrote to M. de Fiesque, who was holding Fort La Pree, that he was going to
embark, without waiting for any more men to make their descent upon the
island; but the king, who trusted not his enemies, and least of all the
English, from whom, even when friends, he had received so many proofs of
faithlessness and falsehood, besides that he knew Buckingham for a man
who, from not having the force of character to decide on such an occasion,
did not know whether to fight or to fly, continued in his first determination
to transport promptly all those who remained, in order to encounter the
enemy on land, fight them, and make them for the future quake with fear if
it were proposed to them to try another descent upon his dominions.
Marshal Schomberg, thwarted by bad weather, had just rallied his troops
which had been cast by the winds on different parts of the coast, when it
was perceived that the enemy had sheered off. M. De Toiras, issuing from
his fortress to meet the marshal, would have pursued them at once to give
them battle; but Schomberg refused, saying, “I ought to make them a bridge
of gold rather than a barrier of iron;” and he contented himself with
following the English, who retreated to a narrow causeway which led to the
little Island of Oie. There, a furious charge of French cavalry broke the
ranks of the enemy, disorder spread amongst them, and when night came to
put an end to the combat, forty flags remained in the hands of the king’s
troops, and he sent them at once to Notre-Dame, by Claude de St. Simon,
together with a quantity of prisoners, of whom the King made a present to
his sister, the Queen of England.
“Such,” says the Duke of Rohan, in his Hemoires, “was the success of
the Duke of Buckingham’s expedition, wherein he ruined the reputation of
his nation and his own, consumed a portion of the provisions of the
Rochellese, and reduced to despair the party for whose sake he had come to
France. The Duke of Rohan first learned this bad news by the bonfires
which all the Roman Catholics lighted for it all through the countship of
Foix, and, later on, by a despatch from the Duke of Soubise, who exhorted
him not to lose courage, saying that he hoped to come back next spring in
condition to efface the affront received.” This latter prince had not covered
himself with glory in the expedition. “As recompense and consolation for

all their losses,” says the cardinal, “they carried off Soubise to England. He
has not been mentioned all through this siege, because, whenever there was
any question of negotiation, no one would apply to him, but only to
Buckingham. When there was nothing for it but to fight, he would not hear
of it. On the day the English made their descent, he was at La Rochelle;
nobody knows where he was at the time of the assault, but he was one of
the first and most forward in the rout.”
Soubise had already been pronounced guilty of high-treason by decree of
the Parliament of Toulouse; but the Duke of Rohan had been degraded from
his dignities, and “a title offered to those who would assassinate him, which
created an inclination in three or four wretches to undertake it, who had but
a rope or the wheel for recompense, it not being in any human power to
prolong or shorten any man’s life without the permission of God.” The
Prince of Conde had been commissioned to fight the valiant chief of the
Huguenots, “for that he was their sworn enemy,” says the cardinal. In the
eyes of fervent Catholics the name of Conde had many wrongs for which to
obtain pardon.
The English were ignominiously defeated; the king was now confronted
by none but his revolted subjects; he resolved to blockade the place at all
points, so that it could not be entered by land or sea; and, to this end, he
claimed from Spain the fleet which had been promised him, and which did
not arrive. “The whole difficulty of this enterprise,” said the cardinal to the
king, “lies in this, that the majority will only labor therein in a perfunctory
manner.”
His ordinary penetration did not deceive him: the great lords intrusted
with commands saw with anxiety the increasing power of Richelieu. “You
will see,” said Bassompierre, “that we shall be mad enough to take La
Rochelle.” “His Majesty had just then many of his own kingdom and all his
allies sworn together against him, and so much the more dangerously in that
it was secretly. England at open war, and with all her maritime power but
lately on our coasts; the King of Spain apparently united to his Majesty, yet,
in fact, not only giving him empty words, but, under cover of the emperor’s
name, making a diversion against him in the direction of Germany.
Nevertheless the king held firm to his resolve; and then the siege of La
Rochelle was undertaken with a will.”

The old Duchess of Rohan (Catherine de Parthenay Larcheveque) had
shut herself up in La Rochelle with her daughter Anne de Rohan, as pious
and as courageous as her mother, and of rare erudition into the bargain; she
had hitherto refused to leave the town; but, when the blockade commenced,
she asked leave to retire with two hundred women. The town had already
been refused permission to get rid of useless mouths. “All the Rochellese
shall go out together,” was the answer returned to Madame de Rohan. She
determined to undergo with her brethren in the faith all the rigors of the
siege. “Secure peace, complete victory, or honorable death,” she wrote to
her son the Duke of Rohan: the old device of Jeanne d’Albret, which had
never been forgotten by the brave chief of the Huguenots.
At the head of the burgesses of La Rochelle, as determined as the
Duchess of Rohan to secure their liberties or perish, was the president of the
board of marine, soon afterwards mayor of the town, John Gutton, a rich
merchant, whom the misfortunes of the times had wrenched away from his
business to become a skilful admiral, an intrepid soldier, accustomed for
years past to scour the seas as a corsair. “He had at his house,” says a
narrative of those days, “a great number of flags, which he used to show
one after another, indicating the princes from whom he had taken them.”
When he was appointed mayor, he drew his poniard and threw it upon the
council-table. “I accept,” he said, “the honor you have done me, but on
condition that yonder poniard shall serve to pierce the heart of whoever
dares to speak of surrender, mine first of all, if I were ever wretch enough to
condescend to such cowardice.” Of indomitable nature, of passionate and
proud character, Guiton, in fact, rejected all proposals of peace. “My friend,
tell the cardinal that I am his very humble servant,” was his answer to
insinuating speeches as well as to threats; and he prepared with tranquil
coolness for defence to the uttermost. Two municipal councillors, two
burgesses, and a clergyman were commissioned to judge and to punish
spies and traitors; attention was concentrated upon getting provisions into
the town; the country was already devastated, but reliance was placed upon
promises of help from England; and religious exercises were everywhere
multiplied. “We will hold out to the last day,” reiterated the burgesses.

It was the month of December; bad weather interfered with the siege-
works; the king was having a line of circumvallation pushed forward to
close the approaches to the city on the land side; the cardinal was having a
mole of stone-work, occupying the whole breadth of the roads, constructed;
the king’s little fleet, commanded by M. de Guise, had been ordered up to
protect the laborers; Spain had sent twenty-eight vessels in such bad
condition that those which were rolled into the sea laden with stones were
of more value. “They were employed Spanish-fashion,” says Richelieu,
“that is, to make an appearance so as to astound the Rochellese by the union
of the two crowns.” A few days after their arrival, at the rumor of assistance
coming from England, the Spanish admiral, who had secret orders to make
no effort for France, demanded permission to withdraw his ships. “It was
very shameful of them, but it was thought good to let them go without the

king’s consent, making believe that he had given them their dismissal, and
desired them to go and set about preparing, one way or another, a large
armament by the spring.” The Rochellese were rejoicing over the treaty
they had just concluded with the King of England, who promised “to aid
them by land and sea, to the best of his kingly power, until he should have
brought about a fair and secure peace.” The mole was every moment being
washed away by the sea; and, “whilst the cardinal was employing all the
wits which God had given him to bring to a successful issue the siege of La
Rochelle to the glory of God and the welfare of the state, and was laboring
to that end more than the bodily strength granted to him by God seemed to
permit, one would have said that the sea and the winds, favoring the English
and the islands, were up in opposition and thwarting his designs.”
The king was growing tired, and wished to go to Paris; but this was not
the advice of the cardinal, and “the truths he uttered were so displeasing to
the king that he fell somehow into disgrace. The dislike the king conceived
for him was such that he found fault with him about everything.” The king
at last took his departure, and the cardinal, who had attended him “without
daring, out of respect, to take his sunshade to protect him against the heat of
the sun, which was very great that day,” was on his return taken ill with
fever. “I am so downhearted that I cannot express the regret I feel at quitting
the cardinal, fearing lest some accident may happen to him,” the king had
said to one of his servants: “tell him from me to take care of himself, to
think what a state my affairs would be in if I were to lose him.” When the
king returned to La Rochelle on the 10th of April, he found his army
strengthened, the line of circumvallation finished, and the mole well
advanced into the sea; the assault was becoming possible, and the king
summoned the place to surrender. [Siege de La Rochelle. Archives eurieuses
de l’Histoire de France, t. iii. p. 102.] “We recognize no other sheriffs and
governors than ourselves,” answered the sergeant on guard to the
improvised herald sent by the king; “nobody will listen to you; away at
once!” It was at last announced that the re-enforcements so impatiently
expected were coming from England. “The cardinal, who knew that there
was nothing so dangerous as to have no fear of one’s enemy, had a long
while before set everything in order, as if the English might arrive any day.”
Their fleet was signalled at sea; it numbered thirty vessels, and had a
convoy of twenty barks laden with provisions and munitions, and it was
commanded by the Earl of Denbigh, Buckingham’s brother-in-law. The

Rochellese, transported with joy, “had planted a host of flags on the
prominent points of their town.” The English came and cast anchor at the
tip of the Island of Re. The cannon of La Rochelle gave them a royal salute.
A little boat with an English captain on board found means of breaking the
blockade; and “Open a passage,” said the envoy to the Rochellese, “as you
sent notice to us in England, and we will deliver you.” But the progress
made in the works of the mole rendered the enterprise difficult; the besieged
could not attempt anything; they waited and waited for Lord Denbigh to
bring on an engagement; on the 19th of May, all the English ships got under
sail and approached the roads. The besieged hurried on to the ramparts;
there was the thunder of one broadside, and one only; and then the vessels
tacked and crowded sail for England, followed by the gaze “of the king’s
army, who returned to make good cheer without any fear of the enemy, and
with great hopes of soon taking the town.”
Great was the despair in La Rochelle: “This shameful retreat of the
English, and their aid which had only been received by faith, as they do in
the Eucharist,” wrote Cardinal Richelieu, “astounded the Rochellese so
mightily that they would readily have made up their minds to surrender, if
Madame de Rohan, the mother, whose hopes for her children were all
centred in the preservation of this town, and the minister Salbert, a very
seditious fellow, had not regaled them with imaginary succor which they
made them hope for.” The cardinal, when he wrote these words, knew
nothing of the wicked proposals made to Guiton and to Salbert. “Couldn’t
the cardinal be got rid of by the deed of one determined man?” it was asked:
but the mayor refused; and, “It is not in such a way that God willeth our
deliverance,” said Salbert; “it would be too offensive to His holiness.” And
they suffered on.
Meanwhile, on the 24th of May, the posterns were observed to open, and
the women to issue forth one after another, with their children and the old
men; they came gliding towards the king’s encampment, but “he ordered
them to be driven back by force; and further, knowing that they had sown
beans near the counterscarps of their town, a detachment was sent out to cut
them down as soon as they began to come up, and likewise a little corn that
they had sown in some dry spots of their marshes.” Louis the Just fought
the Rochellese in other fashion than that in which Henry the Great had
fought the Parisians.

The misery in the place became frightful; the poor died of hunger, or
were cut down by the soldiery when they ventured upon shore at low tide to
look for cockles; the price of provisions was such that the richest alone
could get a little meat to eat; a cow fetched two thousand livres, and a
bushel of wheat eight hundred livres. Madame de Rohan had been the first
to have her horses killed, but this resource was exhausted, and her cook at
last “left the town and allowed himself to be taken, saying that he would
rather be hanged than return to die of hunger.” A rising even took place
amongst the inhabitants who were clamorous to surrender, but Guiton had
the revolters hanged. “I am ready,” said he, “to cast lots with anybody else
which shall live or be killed to feed his comrade with his flesh. As long as
there is one left to keep the gates shut, it is enough.” The mutineers were
seized with terror, and men died without daring to speak. “We have been
waiting three months for the effect of the excellent letters we received from
the King of Great Britain,” wrote Guiton on the 24th of August, to the
deputies from La Rochelle who were in London, “and, meanwhile, we
cannot see by what disasters it happens that we remain here in misery
without seeing any sign of succor; our men can do no more, our inhabitants
are dying of hunger in the streets, and all our families are in a fearful state
from mourning, want, and perplexity; nevertheless, we will hold out to the
last day, but in God’s name delay no longer, for we perish.” This letter
never reached its destination; the watchmaker, Marc Biron; who had offered
to convey it to England, was arrested whilst attempting to pass the royal
lines, and was immediately hanged. La Rochelle, however, still held out.
“Their rabid fury,” says the cardinal, “gave them new strength, or rather the
avenging wrath of God caused them to be supplied therewith in
extraordinary measure by his evil spirit, in order to prolong their woes; they
were already almost at the end thereof, and misery found upon them no
more substance whereon it could feed and support itself; they were
skeletons, empty shadows, breathing corpses, rather than living men.” At
the bottom of his heart, and in spite of the ill temper their resistance caused
in him, the heroism of the Rochellese excited the cardinal’s admiration.
Buckingham had just been assassinated. “The king could not have lost a
more bitter or a more idiotic enemy; his unreasoning enterprises ended
unluckily, but they, nevertheless, did not fail to put us in great peril and
cause us much mischief,” says Richelieu “the idiotic madness of an enemy
being more to be feared than his wisdom, inasmuch as the idiot does not act

on any principle common to other men, he attempts everything and
anything, violates his own interests, and is restrained by impossibility
alone.”
It was this impossibility of any aid that the cardinal attempted to impress
upon the Rochellese by means of letters which he managed to get into the
town, representing to them that Buckingham, their protector, was dead, and
that they were allowing themselves to be unjustly tyrannized over by a
small number amongst them, who, being rich, had wheat to eat, whereas, if
they were good citizens, they would take their share of the general misery.
These manoeuvres did not remain without effect: the besieged resolved to
treat, and a deputation was just about to leave the town, when a burgess
who had broken through the lines arrived in hot haste, on his return from
England; he had seen, he said, the armament all ready to set out to save
them or perish; it must arrive within a week; the public body of La Rochelle
had promised not to treat without the King of England’s participation; he
was not abandoning his allies; and so the deputies returned home, and there
was more waiting still.
On the 29th of September, the English flag appeared before St. Martin de
Re; it was commanded by the Earl of Lindsay, and was composed of a
hundred and forty vessels, which carried six thousand soldiers, besides the
crews; the French who were of the religion were in the van, commanded by
the Duke of Soubise and the Count of Laval, brother of the Duke of La
Tremoille, who had lately renounced his faith in front of La Rochelle, being
convinced of his errors by a single lesson from the cardinal. “This
armament was England’s utmost effort, for the Parliament which was then
being holden had granted six millions of livres to fit it out to avenge the
affronts and ignominy which the English nation had encountered on the
Island of Re, and afterwards by the shameful retreat of their armament in
the month of May.” But it was too late coming; the mole was finished, and
the opening in it defended by two forts; and a floating palisade blocked the
passage as well. The English sent some petards against this construction,
but they produced no effect; and when, next day, they attacked the royal
fleet, the French crews lost but twenty-eight men; “the fire-ships were
turned aside by men who feared fire as little as water.” Lord Lindsay retired
with his squadron to the shelter of the Island of Aix, sending to the king
“Lord Montagu to propose some terms of accommodation.” He demanded
pardon for the Rochellese, freedom of conscience, and quarter for the

English garrison in La Rochelle; the answer was, “that the Rochellese were
subjects of the king, who knew quite well what he had to do with them, and
that the King of England had no right to interfere. As for the English, they
should meet with the same treatment as was received by the French whom
they held prisoners.” Montagu set out for England to obtain further orders
from the king his master.
All hope of effectual aid was gone, and the Rochellese felt it; the French
who were on board the English fleet had taken, like them, a resolution to
treat; and they had already sent to the cardinal when, on the 29th of
October, the deputies from La Rochelle arrived at the camp. “Your fellows
who were in the English army have already obtained grace,” said the
cardinal to them; and when they were disposed not to believe it, the cardinal
sent for the pastors Vincent and Gobert, late delegates to King Charles I.
“they embraced with tears in their eyes, not daring to speak of business, as
they had been forbidden to do so on pain of death.”
The demands of the Rochellese were more haughty than befitted their
extreme case. “Though they were but shadows of living men, and their life
rested solely on the king’s mercy, they actually dared, nevertheless, to
propose to the cardinal a general treaty on behalf of all those of their party,
including Madame de Rohan and Monsieur de Soubise, the maintenance of
their privileges, of their governor, and of their mayor, together with the
right of those bearing arms to march out with beat of drum and lighted
match” [with the honors of war].
The cardinal was amused at their impudence, he writes in his Memoires,
and told them that they had no right to expect anything more than pardon,
which, moreover, they did not deserve. “He was nevertheless anxious to
conclude, wishing that Montagu should find peace made, and that the
English fleet should see it made without their consent, which would render
the rest of the king’s business easier, whether as regarded England or Spain,
or the interior of the kingdom.” On the 28th the treaty, or rather the grace,
was accordingly signed, “the king granting life and property to those of the
inhabitants of the town who were then in it, and the exercise of the religion
within La Rochelle.” These articles bore the signature of a brigadier-
general, M. de Marillac, the king not having thought proper to put his name
at the bottom of a convention made with his subjects.

Next day, twelve deputies issued from the town, making a request for
horses to Marshal de Bassompierre, whose quarters were close by, for they
had not strength to walk. They dismounted on approaching the king’s
quarters, and the cardinal presented them to his Majesty. “Sir,” said they,
“we do acknowledge our crimes and rebellions, and demand mercy;
promising to remain faithful for the future, if your Majesty deigns to
remember the services we were able to render to the king your father.”
The king gazed upon these suppliants kneeling at his feet, deputies from
the proud city which had kept him more than a year at her gates; fleshless,
almost fainting, they still bore on their features the traces of the haughty
past. They had kept the lilies of France on their walls, refusing to the last to
give themselves to England. “Better surrender to a king who could take
Rochelle, than to one who couldn’t succor her,” said the mayor, John
Guiton, who was asked if he would not become an English subject. “I know
that you have always been malignants,” said the king at last, “and that you
have done all you could to shake off the yoke of obedience to me; I forgive
you, nevertheless, your rebellions, and will be a good prince to you, if your
actions conform to your protestations.” Thereupon he dismissed them, not
without giving them a dinner, and sent victuals into the town; without
which, all that remained would have been dead of hunger within two days.
The fighting men marched out, “the officers and gentlemen wearing their
swords and the soldiery with bare (white) staff in hand,” according to the
conventions; as they passed they were regarded with amazement, there not
being more than sixty-four Frenchmen and ninety English: all the rest had
been killed in sorties or had died of want. The cardinal at the same time
entered this city, which he had subdued by sheer perseverance; Guiton came
to meet him with six archers; he had not appeared during the negotiations,
saying that his duty detained him in the town. “Away with you!” said the
cardinal, “and at once dismiss your archers, taking care not to style yourself
mayor any more on pain of death.” Guiton made no reply, and went his way
quietly to his house, a magnificent dwelling till lately, but now lying
desolate amidst the general ruin. He was not destined to reside there long;
the heroic defender of La Rochelle was obliged to leave the town and retire
to Tournay-Boutonne. He returned to La Rochelle to die, in 1656.
The king made his entry into the subjugated town on the 1st of
November, 1628: it was full of corpses in the chambers, the houses, the

public thoroughfares; for those who still survived were so weak that they
had not been able to bury the dead. Madame de Rohan and her daughter,
who had not been included in the treaty, were not admitted to the honor of
seeing his Majesty. “For having been the brand that had consumed this
people,” they were sent to prison at Niort; “there kept captive, without
exercise of their religion, and so strictly that they had but one domestic to
wait upon them, all which, however, did not take from them their courage
or wonted zeal for the good of their party. The mother sent word to the
Duke of Rohan, her son, that he was to put no faith in her letters, since she
might be made to write them by force, and that no consideration of her
pitiable condition should make her flinch to the prejudice of her party,
whatever harm she might be made to suffer.” [Memoires du Duc de Rohan,
t. i. p. 395.] Worn out by so much suffering, the old Duchess of Rohan died
in 1631 at her castle Du Pare: she had been released from captivity by the
pacification of the South.
With La Rochelle fell the last bulwark of religious liberties. Single-
handed, Duke Henry of Rohan now resisted at the head of a handful of
resolute men. But he was about to be crushed in his turn. The capture of La
Rochelle had raised the cardinal’s power to its height; it had,
simultaneously, been the death-blow to the Huguenot party and to the
factions of the grandees. “One of them was bold enough to say,” on seeing
that La Rochelle was lost, “Now we may well say that we are all lost.”
[Memoires de Richelieu]
Upper Languedoc had hitherto refused to take part in the rising, and the
Prince of Conde was advancing on Toulouse when the Duke of Rohan
attempted a bold enterprise against Montpellier. He believed that he was
sure of his communications with the interior of the town; but when the
detachment of the advance-guard got a footing on the draw-bridge the ropes
that held it were cut, and “the soldiers fell into a ditch, where they were shot
down with arquebuses, at the same time that musketry played upon them
from without.” The lieutenant fell back in all haste upon the division of the
Duke of Rohan, who retreated “to the best Villages between Montpellier
and Lunel, without ever a man from Montpellier going out to follow and
see whither he went.” The war was wasting Languedoc, Viverais, and
Rouergue; the Dukes of Montmorency and Ventadour, under the orders of
the Prince of Conde, were pursuing the troops of Rohan in every direction;
the burgesses of Montauban had declared for the Reformers, and were