HISTORY OF FRANCE

BY M. GUIZOT



VOLUME V.


LIST OF STEEL ENGRAVINGS:

CASTLE OF PAU  FRONTISPIECE.

GABRIELLE D'ESTREES  130

MARIE DE MEDICI.  147

RICHELIEU.   180

LOUIS XIV.   344

TURENNE.  444



LIST OF WOOD-CUT ILLUSTRATIONS.

Henry IV.  11

Henry IV. at Ivry   26

"Do not lose Sight of my White Plume."    30

Rosny Castle 30

Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma 32

Charles de Lorraine, Duke of Mayenne 35

Sully   37

Lemaitre, Mayenne, and the Archbishop of Lyons   53

Henry IV.'s Abjuration    56

The Castle of Monceaux  91

The Castle of St. Germain in the Reign of Henry IV.  107

The Castle of Fontainbleau   124

Henry IV. and his Ministers   138

The Arsenal in the Reign of Henry IV.  143

The Louvre  145

Concini, Leonora Galigai, and Mary de' Medici  149

Louis XIII. and Albert de Luynes   154

Murder of Marshal d'Ancre  155

Double Duel   188

"Tapping with his Finger-tips on the Window-pane."  191

Henry, Duke of Montmorency, at Castelnaudary   199

The King and the Cardinal   204

Cinq-Mars and De Thou going to Execution   215

The Parliament of Paris reprimanded   217

The Barefoots   221

The Abbot of St. Cyran   234

Demolishing the Fortifications   244

The Harbor of La Rochelle   248

The King and Richelieu at La Rochelle  250

John Guiton's Oath  254

The Defile of Suza Pass  278

Richelieu and Father Joseph  280

Gustavus Adolphus  282

Death of Gustavus and his Page  290

The Palais-Cardinal   305

The Tomb of Richelieu   308

Descartes at Amsterdam   316

The King's Press  323

Peter Corneille  334

The Representation of "the Cid."    335

Corneille at the Hotel Rambouillet  342

The Great Conde  348

Arrest of Broussel  352

Cardinal de Retz  352

"Ah, Wretch, if thy Father saw thee!"   354

President Mole  355

The Great Mademoiselle  373

Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin  394

Death of Mazarin.  399

Fouquet   404

Vaux le Vicomte   405a

Colbert   405

Louis XIV. dismissing Fouquet  407

Louvois  411

William III., Prince of Orange  434

The Brothers Witt  436

Death of Turenne  443

An Exploit of John Bart's  446

Duquesne victorious over Ruyter  446

Marshal Luxembourg  461a

Heinsius  461

Battle of St. Vincent  465a

The Battle of Neerwinden  465

"Here is the King of Spain."   475

News for William III.  481

Bivouac of Louis XIV.  503

The Grand Dauphin  505

Marshal Villars and Prince Eugene  512

Marly  525

Colonnade of the Louvre  525a

The Louvre and the Tuileries  525b

Versailles  526

Vauban  534

The Torture of the Huguenots  552

Revocation of the Edict of Nantes  556

Death of Roland the Camisard  569

Abbey of Port-Royal  580

Reading the Decree  581

Bossuet  591

Blaise Pascal  597

Fenelon and the Duke of Burgundy  610

La Rochefoucauld and his fair Friends  629

La Bruyere  633

Corneille reading to Louis XIV.  642

Racine   646

Boileau-Despreaux  650

La Fontaine, Boileau, Moliere, and Racine  657

Moliere  664

Death of Moliere  669

Lebrun  674

Le Poussin and Claude Lorrain  675

Lesueur  676

Mignard  677

Perrault  678





A POPULAR HISTORY OF FRANCE FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES.




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

On the 2d of August, 1589, in the morning, upon his arrival in his
quarters at Meudon, Henry of Navarre was saluted by the Protestants King
of France.  They were about five thousand in an army of forty thousand
men.  When, at ten o'clock, he entered the camp of the Catholics at St.
Cloud, three of their principal leaders, Marshal d'Aumont, and Sires
d'Humieres and de Givry, immediately acknowledged him unconditionally, as
they had done the day before at the death-bed of Henry III., and they at
once set to work to conciliate to him the noblesse of Champagne, Picardy,
and Ile-de-France.  "Sir," said Givry, "you are the king of the brave;
you will be deserted by none but dastards."  But the majority of the
Catholic leaders received him with such expressions as, "Better die than
endure a Huguenot king!"  One of them, Francis d'O, formally declared to
him that the time had come for him to choose between the insignificance
of a King of Navarre and the grandeur of a King of France; if he
pretended to the crown, he must first of all abjure.  Henry firmly
rejected these threatening entreaties, and left their camp with an urgent
recommendation, to them to think of it well before bringing dissension
into the royal army and the royal party which were protecting their
privileges, their property, and their lives against the League.  On
returning to his quarters, he noticed the arrival of Marshal de Biron,
who pressed him to lay hands without delay upon the crown of France, in
order to guard it and save it.  But, in the evening of that day and on
the morrow, at the numerous meetings of the lords to deliberate upon the
situation, the ardent Catholics renewed their demand for the exclusion of
Henry from the throne if he did not at once abjure, and for referring the
election of a king to the states-general.  Biron himself proposed not to
declare Henry king, but to recognize him merely as captain-general of the
army pending his abjuration.  Harlay de Sancy vigorously maintained the
cause of the Salic law and the hereditary rights of monarchy.  Biron took
him aside and said, I had hitherto thought that you had sense; now I
doubt it.  If, before securing our own position with the King of Navarre,
we completely establish his, he will no longer care for us.  The time is
come for making our terms; if we let the occasion escape us, we shall
never recover it."  "What are your terms?" asked Sancy.  "If it please
the king to give me the countship of Perigord, I shall be his forever."
Sancy reported this conversation to the king, who promised Biron what he
wanted.

Though King of France for but two days past, Henry IV. had already
perfectly understood and steadily taken the measure of the situation.  He
was in a great minority throughout the country as well as the army, and
he would have to deal with public passions, worked by his foes for their
own ends, and with the personal pretensions of his partisans.  He made no
mistake about these two facts, and he allowed them great weight; but he
did not take for the ruling principle of his policy and for his first
rule of conduct the plan of alternate concessions to the different
parties and of continually humoring personal interests; he set his
thoughts higher, upon the general and natural interests of France as he
found her and saw her.  They resolved themselves, in his eyes, into the
following great points: maintenance of the hereditary rights of monarchy,
preponderance of Catholics in the government, peace between Catholics and
Protestants, and religious liberty for Protestants.  With him these
points became the law of his policy and his kingly duty, as well as the
nation's right.  He proclaimed them in the first words that he addressed
to the lords and principal personages of state assembled around him.
"You all know," said he, "what orders the late king my predecessor gave
me, and what he enjoined upon me with his dying breath.  It was chiefly
to maintain my subjects, Catholic or Protestant, in equal freedom, until
a council, canonical, general, or national, had decided this great
dispute.  I promised him to perform faithfully that which he bade me, and
I regard it as one of my first duties to be as good as my word.  I have
heard that some who are in my army feel scruples about remaining in my
service unless I embrace the Catholic religon.  No doubt they think me
weak enough for them to imagine that they can force me thereby to abjure
my religion and break my word.  I am very glad to inform them here, in
presence of you all, that I would rather this were the last day of my
life than take any step which might cause me to be suspected of having
dreamt of renouncing the religion that I sucked in with my mother's milk,
before I have been better instructed by a lawful council, to whose
authority I bow in advance.  Let him who thinks so ill of me get him gone
as soon as he pleases; I lay more store by a hundred good Frenchmen than
by two hundred who could harbor sentiments so unworthy.  Besides, though
you should abandon me, I should have enough of friends left to enable me,
without you and to your shame, with the sole assistance of their strong
arms, to maintain the rights of my authority.  But were I doomed to see
myself deprived of even that assistance, still the God who has preserved
me from my infancy, as if by His own hand, to sit upon the throne, will
not abandon me.  I nothing doubt that He will uphold me where He has
placed me, not for love of me, but for the salvation of so many souls who
pray, without ceasing, for His aid, and for whose freedom He has deigned
to make use of my arm.  You know that I am a Frenchman and the foe of all
duplicity.  For the seventeen years that I have been King of Navarre, I
do not think that I have ever departed from my word.  I beg you to
address your prayers to the Lord on my behalf, that He may enlighten me
in my views, direct my purposes, bless my endeavors.  And in case I
commit any fault or fail in any one of my duties,--for I acknowledge that
I am a man like any other,--pray Him to give me grace that I may correct
it, and to assist me in all my goings."

[Illustration: Henry IV.----11]

On the 4th of August, 1589, an official manifesto of Henry IV.'s
confirmed the ideas and words of this address.  On the same day, in the
camp at St. Cloud, the majority of the princes, dukes, lords, and
gentlemen present in the camp expressed their full adhesion to the
accession and the manifesto of the king, promising him "service and
obedience against rebels and enemies who would usurp the kingdom."  Two
notable leaders, the Duke of Epernon amongst the Catholics, and the Duke
of La Tremoille amongst the Protestants, refused to join in this
adhesion; the former saying that his conscience would not permit him to
serve a heretic king, the latter alleging that his conscience forbade him
to serve a prince who engaged to protect Catholic idolatry.  They
withdrew, D'Epernon into Angoumois and Saintonge, taking with him six
thousand foot and twelve thousand horse; and La Tremoille into Poitou,
with nine battalions of Reformers.  They had an idea of attempting, both
of them, to set up for themselves independent principalities.  Three
contemporaries, Sully, La Force, and the bastard of Angouleme, bear
witness that Henry IV. was deserted by as many Huguenots as Catholics.
The French royal army was reduced, it is said, to one half.  As a
make-weight, Saucy prevailed upon the Swiss, to the number of twelve
thousand, and two thousand German auxiliaries, not only to continue in
the service of the new king, but to wait six months for their pay, as he
was at the moment unable to pay them.  From the 14th to the 20th of
August, in Ile-de-France, in Picardy, in Normandy, in Auvergne, in
Champagne, in Burgundy, in Anjou, in Poitou, in Languedoc, in Orleanness,
and in Touraine, a great number of towns and districts joined in the
determination of the royal army.  The last instance of such adherence had
a special importance.  At the time of Henry III.'s rupture with the
League, the Parliament of Paris had been split in two; the royalists had
followed the king to Tours, the partisans of the League had remained at
Paris.  After the accession of Henry IV., the Parliament of Tours, with
the president, Achille de Harlay, as its head, increased from day to day,
and soon reached two hundred members, whilst the Parliament of Paris, or
Brisson Parliament, as it was called from its leader's name, had only
sixty-eight left.  Brisson, on undertaking the post, actually thought it
right to take the precaution of protesting privately, making a
declaration in the presence of notaries "that he so acted by constraint
only, and that he shrank from any rebellion against his king and
sovereign lord."  It was, indeed, on the ground of the heredity of the
monarchy and by virtue of his own proper rights that Henry IV. had
ascended the throne; and M. Poirson says quite correctly, in his learned
_Histoire du Regne d'Henri IV._  [t. i.  p. 29, second edition, 1862],
"The manifesto of Henry IV., as its very name indicates, was not a
contract settled between the noblesse in camp at St. Cloud and the
claimant; it was a solemn and reciprocal acknowledgment by the noblesse
of Henry's rights to the crown, and by Henry of the nation's political,
civil, and religious rights.  The engagements entered into by Henry were
only what were necessary to complete the guarantees given for the
security of the rights of Catholics.  As touching the succession to the
throne, the signataries themselves say that all they do is to maintain
and continue the law of the land."

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

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

After making a demonstration close to Rouen, Henry IV., learning that
the Duke of Mayenne was advancing in pursuit of him with an army of
twenty-five thousand foot and eight thousand horse, thought it imprudent
to wait for him and run the risk of being jammed between forces so
considerable and the hostile population of a large city; so he struck
his camp and took the road to Dieppe, in order to be near the coast and
the re-enforcements from Queen Elizabeth.  Some persons even suggested
to him that in case of mishap he might go thence and take refuge in
England; but at this prospect Biron answered, "There is no King of
France out of France;" and Henry IV. was of Biron's opinion.  At his
arrival before Dieppe, he found as governor there Aymar de Chastes, a
man of wits and honor, a very moderate Catholic, and very strongly in
favor of the party of policists.  Under Henry III. he had expressly
refused to enter the League, saying to Villars, who pressed him to do
so, "I am a Frenchman, and you yourself will find out that the Spaniard
is the real head of the League."  He had organized at Dieppe four
companies of burgess-guards, consisting of Catholics and Protestants,
and he assembled about him, to consider the affairs of the town, a small
council, in which Protestants had the majority.  As soon as he knew, on
the 26th of August, that the king was approaching Dieppe, he went with
the principal inhabitants to meet him, and presented to him the keys of
the place, saying, "I come to salute my lord and hand over to him the
government of this city." "Ventre-saint-gris!" answered Henry IV., "I
know nobody more worthy of it than you are!"  The Dieppese overflowed
with felicitations.  "No fuss, my lads," said Henry: "all I want is your
affections, good bread, good wine, and good hospitable faces."  When he
entered the town, "he was received," says a contemporary chronicler,
"with loud cheers by the people; and what was curious, but exhilarating,
was to see the king surrounded by close upon six thousand armed men,
himself having but a few officers at his left hand."  He received at
Dieppe assurance of the fidelity of La Verune, governor of Caen,
whither, in 1589, according to Henry III.'s order, that portion of the
Parliament of Normandy which would not submit to the yoke of the League
at Rouen, had removed.  Caen having set the example, St. Lo, Coutances,
and Carentan likewise sent deputies to Dieppe to recognize the authority
of Henry IV.  But Henry had no idea of shutting himself up inside
Dieppe: after having carefully inspected the castle, citadel, harbor,
fortifications, and outskirts of the town, he left there five hundred
men in garrison, supported by twelve or fifteen hundred well-armed
burgesses, and went and established himself personally in the old castle
of Arques, standing, since the eleventh century, upon a barren hill;
below, in the burgh of Arques, he sent Biron into cantonments with his
regiment of Swiss and the companies of French infantry; and he lost no
time in having large fosses dug ahead of the burgh, in front of all the
approaches, enclosing within an extensive line of circumvallation both
burgh and castle.  All the king's soldiers and the peasants that could
be picked up in the environs worked night and day.  Whilst they were at
work, Henry wrote to Countess Corisande de Gramont, his favorite at that
time, "My dear heart, it is a wonder I am alive with such work as I
have.  God have pity upon me and show me mercy, blessing my labors, as
He does in spite of a many folks!  I am well, and my affairs are going
well.  I have taken Eu.  The enemy, who are double me just now, thought
to catch me there; but I drew off towards Dieppe, and I await them in a
camp that I am fortifying.  Tomorrow will be the day when I shall see
them, and I hope, with God's help, that if they attack me they will find
they have made a bad bargain.  The bearer of this goes by sea.  The wind
and my duties make me conclude.  This 9th of September, in the trenches
at Arques."

All was finished when the scouts of Mayenne appeared.  But Mayenne also
was an able soldier: he saw that the position the king had taken and the
works he had caused to be thrown up rendered a direct attack very
difficult.  He found means of bearing down upon Dieppe another way, and
of placing himself, says the latest historian of Dieppe, M. Vitet,
between the king and the town, "hoping to cut off the king's
communications with the sea, divide his forces, deprive him of his
re-enforcements from England, and, finally, surround him and capture him,
as he had promised the Leaguers of Paris, who were already talking of the
iron cage in which the Bearnese would be sent to them.  "Henry IV.,"
continues M. Vitet, "felt some vexation at seeing his forecasts
checkmated by Mayenne's manoeuvre, and at having had so much earth
removed to so little profit; but he was a man of resources, confident as
the Gascons are, and with very little of pig-headedness.  To change all
his plans was with him the work of an instant.  Instead of awaiting the
foe in his intrenchments, he saw that it was for him to go and feel for
them on the other side of the valley, and that, on pain of being
invested, he must not leave the Leaguers any exit but the very road they
had taken to come."  Having changed all his plans on this new system,
Henry breathed more freely; but he did not go to sleep for all that: he
was incessantly backwards and forwards from Dieppe to Arques, from Arques
to Dieppe and to the Faubourg du Pollet.  Mayenne, on the contrary,
seemed to have fallen into a lethargy; he had not yet been out of his
quarters during the nearly eight and forty hours since he had taken them.
On the 17th of September, 1589, in the morning, however, a few hundred
light-horse were seen putting themselves in motion, scouring the country
and coming to fire their pistols close to the fosses of the royal army.
The skirmish grew warm by degrees.  "My son," said Marshal de Biron to
the young count of Auvergne [natural son of Charles IX. and Mary
Touchet], "charge: now is the time."  The young prince, without his hat,
and his horsemen charged so vigorously that they put the Leaguers to the
rout, killed three hundred of them, and returned quietly within their
lines, by Biron's orders, without being disturbed in their retreat.
These partial and irregular encounters began again on the 18th and 19th
of September, with the same result.  The Duke of Mayenne was nettled and
humiliated; he had his prestige to recover.  He decided to concentrate
all his forces right on the king's intrenchments, and attack them in
front with his whole army.  The 20th of September passed without a single
skirmish.  Henry, having received good information that he would be
attacked the next day, did not go to bed.  The night was very dark.  He
thought he saw a long way off in the valley a long line of lighted
matches; but there was profound silence; and the king and his officers
puzzled themselves to decide if they were men or glow-worms.  On the
21st, at five A. M., the king gave orders for every one to be ready and
at his post.  He himself repaired to the battle-field.  Sitting in a big
fosse with all his officers, he had his breakfast brought thither, and
was eating with good appetite, when a prisoner was brought to him, a
gentleman of the League, who had advanced too far whilst making a
reconnaissance.  "Good day, Belin," said the king, who recognized him,
laughing: "embrace me for your welcome appearance."  Belin embraced him,
telling him that he was about to have down upon him thirty thousand foot
and ten thousand horse.  "Where are your forces?" he asked the king,
looking about him.  "O! you don't see them all, M. de Belin," said Henry:
"you don't reckon the good God and the good right, but they are ever with
me."

The action began about ten o'clock.  The fog was still so thick that
there was no seeing one another at ten paces.  The ardor on both sides
was extreme; and, during nearly three hours, victory seemed to twice
shift her colors.  Henry at one time found himself entangled amongst some
squadrons so disorganized that he shouted, "Courage, gentlemen; pray,
courage!  Can't we find fifty gentlemen willing to die with their king?"
At this moment Chatillon, issuing from Dieppe with five hundred picked
men, arrived on the field of battle.  The king dismounted to fight at his
side in the trenches; and then, for a quarter of an hour, there was a
furious combat, man to man.  At last, "when things were in this desperate
state," says Sully, "the fog, which had been very thick all the morning,
dropped down suddenly, and the cannon of the castle of Arques getting
sight of the enemy's army, a volley of four pieces was fired, which made
four beautiful lanes in their squadrons and battalions.  That pulled them
up quite short; and three or four volleys in succession, which produced
marvellous effects, made them waver, and, little by little, retire all of
them behind the turn of the valley, out of cannon-shot, and finally to
their quarters."  Mayenne had the retreat sounded.  Henry, master of the
field, gave chase for a while to the fugitives, and then returned to
Arques to thank God for his victory.  Mayenne struck his camp and took
the road towards Amiens, to pick up a Spanish corps which he was
expecting from the Low Countries.


[Illustration: Sully----37]

For six months, from September, 1589, to March, 1590, the war continued
without any striking or important events.  Henry IV. tried to stop it
after his success at Arques; he sent word to the Duke of Mayenne by his
prisoner Belin, whom he had sent away free on parole, "that he desired
peace, and so earnestly, that, without regarding his dignity or his
victory, he made him these advances, not that he had any fear of him, but
because of the pity he felt for his kingdom's sufferings."  Mayenne, who
lay beneath the double yoke of his party's passions and his own ambitious
projects, rejected the king's overtures, or allowed them to fall through;
and on the 21st of October, 1589, Henry, setting out with his army from
Dieppe, moved rapidly on Paris, in order to effect a strategic surprise,
whilst Mayenne was rejecting at Amiens his pacific inclinations.  The
king gained three marches on the Leaguers, and carried by assault the
five faubourgs situated on the left bank of the Seine.  He would perhaps
have carried terror-stricken Paris itself, if the imperfect breaking up
of the St. Maixent bridge on the Somme had not allowed Mayenne,
notwithstanding his tardiness, to arrive at Paris in time to enter with
his army, form a junction with the Leaguers amongst the population, and
prevail upon the king to carry his arms elsewhither."  The people of
Paris," says De Thou, "were extravagant enough to suppose that this
prince could not escape Mayenne.  Already a host of idle and credulous
women had been at the pains of engaging windows, which they let very
dear, and which they had fitted up magnificently, to see the passage of
that fanciful triumph for which their mad hopes had caused them to make
every preparation--before the victory."  Henry left some of his
lieutenants to carry on the war in the environs of Paris, and himself
repaired, on the 21st of November, to Tours, where the royalist
Parliament, the exchequer-chamber, the court of taxation, and all the
magisterial bodies which had not felt inclined to submit to the despotism
of the League, lost no time in rendering him homage, as the head and the
representative of the national and the lawful cause.  He reigned and
ruled, to real purpose, in the eight principal provinces of the North and
Centre--Ile-de-France, Picardy, Champagne, Normandy, Orleanness,
Touraine, Maine, and Anjou; and his authority, although disputed, was
making way in nearly all the other parts of the kingdom.  He made war not
like a conqueror, but like a king who wanted to meet with acceptance in
the places which he occupied and which he would soon have to govern.  The
inhabitants of Le Mans and of Alencon were able to reopen their shops on
the very day on which their town fell into his hands, and those of
Vendome the day after.  He watched to see that respect was paid by his
soldiers, even the Huguenots, to Catholic churches and ceremonies.  Two
soldiers, having made their way into Le Mans, contrary to orders, after
the capitulation, and having stolen a chalice, were hanged on the spot,
though they were men of acknowledged bravery. He protected carefully the
bishops and all the ecclesiastics who kept aloof from political strife.
"If minute details are required," says a contemporary pamphleteer, "out
of a hundred or a hundred and twenty archbishops or bishops existing in
the realm of France not a tenth part approve of the counsels of the
League."  It was not long before Henry reaped the financial fruits of his
protective equity; at the close of 1589 he could count upon a regular
revenue of more than two millions of crowns, very insufficient, no doubt,
for the wants of his government, but much beyond the official resources
of his enemies.  He had very soon taken his proper rank in Europe: the
Protestant powers which had been eager to recognize him--England,
Scotland, the Low Countries, the Scandinavian states, and Reformed
Germany--had been joined by the republic of Venice, the most judiciously
governed state at that time in Europe, but solely on the ground of
political interests and views, independently of any religious question.
On the accession of Henry IV., his ambassador, Hurault de Maisse, was
received and very well treated at Venice; he was merely excluded from
religious ceremonies: the Venetian people joined in the policy of their
government; the portrait of the new King of France was everywhere
displayed and purchased throughout Venice.  Some Venetians went so far as
to take service in his army against the League.  The Holy Inquisition
commenced proceedings against them for heresy; the government stopped the
proceedings, and even, says Count Daru, had the Inquisitor thrown into
prison.  The Venetian senate accredited to the court of Henry IV. the
same ambassador who had been at Henry III.'s; and, on returning to Tours,
on the 21st of November, 1589, the king received him to an audience in
state.  A little later on he did more; he sent the republic, as a pledge
of his friendship, his sword--the sword, he said in his letter, which he
had used at the battle of Ivry.  "The good offices were mutual," adds M.
de Daru; the Venetians lent Henry IV. sums of money which the badness of
the times rendered necessary to him; but their ambassador had orders to
throw into the fire, in the king's presence, the securities for the
loan."

As the government of Henry IV. went on growing in strength and extent,
two facts, both of them natural, though antagonistic, were being
accomplished in France and in Europe.  The moderate Catholics were
beginning, not as yet to make approaches towards him, but to see a
glimmering possibility of treating with him and obtaining from him such
concessions as they considered necessary at the same time that they in
their turn made to him such as he might consider sufficient for his party
and himself.  It has already been remarked with what sagacity Pope Sixtus
V. had divined the character of Henry IV., at the very moment of
condemning Henry III. for making an alliance with him.  When Henry IV.