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 countr;y; 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. Rosseeuw 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 LomLnie, 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 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 king dom. 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 Crsqui; 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 Csrisy, 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."