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for his brethren in creed his triumph was a benefit secured, for it was
an end of persecution and a first step towards liberty. There is no
measuring accurately how far ambition, personal interest, a king's
egotism, had to do with Henry's IV.'s abjuration of his religion; none
would deny that those human infirmities were present; but all this does
not prevent the conviction that patriotism was uppermost in Henry's soul,
and that the idea of his duty as king towards France, a prey to all the
evils of civil and foreign war, was the determining motive of his
resolution. It cost him a great deal. To the Huguenot gentry and
peasantry who had fought with him he said, "You desire peace; I give it
you at my own expense; I have made myself anathema for the sake of all,
like Moses and St. Paul." He received with affectionate sadness the
Reformed ministers and preachers who came to see him. "Kindly pray to
God for me," said he to them, "and love me always; as for me, I shall
always love you, and I will never suffer wrong to be done to you, or any
violence to your religion." He had already, at this time, the Edict of
Nantes in his mind, and he let a glimpse of it appear to Rosny at their
first conversation. When he discussed with the Catholic prelates the
conditions of his abjuration, he had those withdrawn which would have
been too great a shock to his personal feelings and shackled his con duct
tod much in the government, as would have been the case with the promise
to labor for the destruction of heresy. Even as regarded the Catholic
faith, he demand of the doctors who were preparing him for it some
latitude for his own thoughts, and "that he should not have such violence
done to his conscience as to be bound to strange oaths, and to sign and
believe rubbish which he was quite sure that the majority of them did not
believe." [_Memoires de L'Estoile,_ t. ii. p. 472.] The most passionate
Protestants of his own time reproached him, and some still reproach him,
with having deserted his creed and having repaid with ingratitude his
most devoted comrades in arms and brothers in Christ. Perhaps there is
some ingratitude also in forgetting that after four years of struggling
to obtain the mastery for his religious creed and his political rights
simultaneously, Henry IV., convinced that he could not succeed in that,
put a stop to religious wars, and founded, to last for eighty-seven
years, the free and lawful practice of the Reformed worship in France,
by virtue of the Edict of Nantes, which will be spoken of presently.
Whilst this great question was thus discussed and decided between Henry
IV. in person and his principal advisers, the states-general of the
League and the conference of Suresnes were vainly bestirring themselves
in the attempt to still keep the mastery of events which were slipping
away from them. The Leaguer states had an appearance of continuing to
wish for the absolute proscription of Henry IV., a heretic king, even on
conversion to Catholicism, so long as his conversion was not recognized
and accepted by the pope; but there was already great, though timidly
expressed, dissent as to this point in the assembly of the states and
amongst the population in the midst of which it was living. Nearly a
year previously, in May, 1592, when he retired from France after having
relieved Rouen from siege and taken Caudebec, the Duke of Parma, as
clear-sighted a politician as he was able soldier, had said to one of the
most determined Leaguers, "Your people have abated their fury; the rest
hold on but faintly, and in a short time they will have nothing to do
with us." Philip II. and Mayenne perceived before long the urgency and
the peril of this situation: they exerted themselves, at one time in
concert and at another independently, to make head against this change in
the current of thoughts and facts. Philip sent to Paris an ambassador
extraordinary, the Duke of Feria, to treat with the states of the League
and come to an understanding with Mayenne; but Mayenne considered that
the Duke of Feria did not bring enough money, and did not introduce
enough soldiers; the Spanish army in France numbered but four thousand
three hundred men, and Philip had put at his ambassador's disposal but
two hundred thousand crowns, or six hundred thousand livres of those
times; yet had he ordered that, in respect of the assembly, the pay
should not come until after the service was rendered, i.e. after a vote
was given in favor of his election or that of his daughter the Infanta
Isabella to the throne. It was not the states-general only who had to be
won over; the preachers of the League were also, at any rate the majority
of them, covetous as well as fiery; both the former and the latter soon
saw that the Duke of Feria had not wherewith to satisfy them. "And such
as had come," says Villeroi, "with a disposition to favor the Spaniards
and serve them for a consideration, despised them and spoke ill of them,
seeing that there was nothing to be gained from them." The artifices of
Mayenne were scarcely more successful than the stingy presents of
Philip II.; when the Lorrainer duke saw the chances of Spain in the
ascendant as regarded the election of a King of France and the marriage
of the Infanta Isabella, he at once set to work--and succeeded without
much difficulty--to make them a failure; at bottom, it was always for the
house of Lorraine, whether for the marriage of his nephew the Duke of
Guise with the Infanta Isabella or for the prolongation of his power,
that Mayenne labored; he sometimes managed to excite, for the promotion
of this cause, a favorable movement amongst the states-general or a blast
of wrath on the part of the preachers against Henry IV.; but it was
nothing but a transitory and fruitless effort; the wind no longer sat in
the sails of the League; on the 27th of May, 1593, a deputation of a
hundred and twenty burgesses, with the provost of tradesmen at their
head, repaired to the house of Count de Belin, governor of Paris, begging
him to introduce them into the presence of the Duke of Mayenne, to whom
they wished to make a demand for peace, and saying that their request
would, at need, be signed by ten thousand burgesses. Next day, two
colonels of the burgess-militia spoke of making barricades; four days
afterwards, some of the most famous and but lately most popular preachers
of the League were hooted and insulted by the people, who shouted at them
as they passed in the streets that drowning was the due of all those
deputies in the states who prevented peace from being made. The
conference assembled at Suresnes, of which mention has already been
made, had been formed with pacific intentions, or, at any rate, hopes;
accordingly it was more tranquil than the states-general, but it was not
a whit more efficacious. It was composed of thirteen delegates for the
League and eight for the king, men of consideration in the two parties.
At the opening of its sessions, the first time the delegates of the
League repaired thither, a great crowd shouted at them, "Peace! Peace!
Blessed be they who procure it and demand it! Malediction and every
devil take all else!" In the villages they passed through, the peasantry
threw themselves upon their knees, and, with clasped hands, demanded of
them peace. The conference was in session from the 4th of May to the
11th of June, holding many discussions, always temperately and with due
regard for propriety, but without arriving at any precise solution of the
questions proposed. Clearly neither to this conference nor to the
states-general of the League was it given to put an end to this stormy
and at the same time resultless state of things; Henry IV. alone could
take the resolution and determine the issue which everybody was awaiting
with wistfulness or with dread, but without being able to accomplish it.
D'Aubigne ends his account of the conference at Suresnes with these
words: "Those who were present at it reported to the king that there were
amongst the Leaguers so many heart-burnings and so much confusion that
they were all seeking, individually if not collectively, some pretext for
surrendering to the king, and consequently, that one mass would settle it
entirely." [_Histoire Universelle,_ bk. iii. chap. xx. p. 386.]
Powers that are conscious of their opportuneness and utility do not like
to lose time, but are prompt to act. Shortly after his conversations
with Rosny, whose opinion was confirmed by that of Chancellor de Chiverny
and Count Gaspard de Schomberg, Henry IV. set to work. On the 26th of
April, 1593, he wrote to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand de' Medici,
that he had decided to turn Catholic "two months after that the Duke of
Mayenne should have come to an agreement with him on just and suitable
terms;" and, foreseeing the expense that would be occasioned to him by
"this great change in his affairs," he felicitated himself upon knowing
that the grand duke was disposed to second his efforts towards a levy of
four thousand Swiss, and advance a year's pay for them. On the 28th of
April, he begged the Bishop of Chartres, Nicholas de Thou, to be one of
the Catholic prelates whose instructions he would be happy to receive on
the 15th of July, and he sent the same invitation to several other
prelates. On the 16th of May, he declared to his council his resolve to
become a convert. Next day, the 17th, the Archbishop of Bourges
announced it to the conference at Suresnes. This news, everywhere spread
abroad, produced a lively burst of national and Bourbonic feeling even
where it was scarcely to be expected; at the states-general of the
League, especially in the chamber of the noblesse, many members protested
"that they would not treat with foreigners, or promote the election of a
woman, or give their suffrages to any one unknown to them, and at the
choice of his Catholic Majesty of Spain." At Paris, a part of the
clergy, the incumbents of St. Eustache, St. Merri, and St. Sulpice, and
even some of the popular preachers, violent Leaguers but lately, and
notably Guincestre, boldly preached peace and submission to the king if
he turned Catholic. The principal of the French League, in matters of
policy and negotiation, and Mayenne's adviser since 1589, Villeroi,
declared "that he would not bide in a place where the laws, the honor of
the nation, and the independence of the kingdom were held so cheap;" and
he left Paris on the 28th of June. Finally, on this same day, the
Parliament of Paris, all chambers assembled, issued a decree known by the
name of the decree of President Lemaitre, who had the chief hand in it,
and conceived as follows:--
"The court, having, as it has always had, no intention but to maintain
the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion, and the state and crown of
France, under the protection of a most Christian, Catholic, and French
king, hath ordained and doth ordain that representations shall be made,
this afternoon, by President Lemaitre, assisted by a proper number of
councillors of the said court, to the Duke of Mayenne, lieutenant-general
of the state and crown of France, to the end that no treaty be made for
the transfer of the crown to the hands of foreign princes or princesses,
and that the fundamental laws of the realm be observed. . . . And
from the present moment, the said court hath declared and doth declare
all treaties made or hereafter to be made for the setting up of foreign
prince or princess null and of no effect or value, as being made to the
prejudice of the Salic law and other fundamental laws of this realm."
It was understood that this decree excluded from the crown of France not
only Philip II., the Infanta Isabella, Archduke Ernest, and all the
Spanish and Austrian princes, but also all the princes of the house of
Guise, "because the qualification of foreigners applied to all the
princes who were not of the blood royal and who were issue of foreign
houses, even though they might have been born in France and were
regnicoles."
Mayenne refused, it is not known on what pretext, to receive the
communication of this decree on the same day on which it was voted by the
Parliament. When President Lemaitre presented it to him the next day
before a large attendance, Mayenne kept his temper, and confined himself
to replying gruffly, "My first care has always been to defend the
Catholic religion and maintain the laws of the realm. It seems now that
I am no longer necessary to the state, and that it will be easy to do
without me. I could have wished, considering my position, that the
Parliament had not decided anything in a matter of such importance
without consulting me. However, I will do all that I find possible for
me and that appears reasonable as to the two points of your
representations." On the following day, 30th of June, Mayenne was dining
with the Archbishop of Lyons, Peter d'Espinac; President Lemaitre was
sent for, and the wrath of the lieutenant-general burst forth. "The
insult put upon me is too palpable for me to be quiet under it; since I
am played fast and loose with in that way, I have resolved to quash the
decree of the Parliament. The Archbishop of Lyons is about to explain to
you my feelings and my motives."
[Illustration: Lemaitre, Mayenne, and the Archbishop of Lyons----53]
The archbishop spoke long and bitterly, dwelling upon the expression that
"the Parliament had played fast and loose " with the prince. President
Lemaitre interrupted him. "I cannot unmoved hear you repeating, sir,
that to which my respect made me shut my eyes when the prince spoke.
Looking upon me as an individual, you might speak to me in any way, you
thought proper; but so soon as the body I represent here is injured by
insulting terms, I take offence, and I cannot suffer it. Know then, sir,
that the Parliament does not deceive or play fast and loose with anybody,
and that it renders to every man his due." The conversation was
continued for some moments in this warm and serious tone; but the quarrel
went no further; from the account they received of it, the Parliament
applauded the premier president's firmness, and all the members swore
that they would suffer anything rather than that there should be any
change in the decree. It remained intact, and Mayenne said no more about
it.
During these disputes amongst the civil functionaries, and continuing all
the while to make proposals for a general truce, Henry IV. vigorously
resumed warlike operations, so as to bring pressure upon his adversaries
and make them perceive the necessity of accepting the solution he offered
them. He besieged and took the town of Dreux, of which the castle alone
persisted in holding out. He cut off the provisions which were being
brought by the Marne to Paris. He kept Poitiers strictly invested.
Lesdiguieres defeated the Savoyards and the Spaniards in the valleys of
Dauphiny and Piedmont. Count Mansfeld was advancing with a division
towards Picardy; but at the news that the king was marching to encounter
him, he retired with precipitation. From the military as well as the
political point of view, there is no condition worse than that of
stubbornness mingled with discouragement. And that was the state of
Mayenne and the League. Henry IV. perceived it, and confidently hurried
forward his political and military measures. The castle of Dreux was
obliged to capitulate. Thanks to the four thousand Swiss paid for him by
the Grand Duke of Florence, to the numerous volunteers brought to him by
the noblesse of his party, "and to the sterling quality of the old
Huguenot phalanx, folks who, from father to son, are familiarized with
death," says D'Aubigne, Henry IV. had recovered, in June, 1593, so good
an army that "by means of it," he wrote to Ferdinand de' Medici, "I shall
be able to reduce the city of Paris in so short a time as will cause you
great contentment." But he was too judicious and too good a patriot not
to see that it was not by an indefinitely prolonged war that he would be
enabled to enter upon definitive possession of his crown, and that it was
peace, religious peace, that he must restore to France in order to really
become her king. He entered resolutely, on the 15th of July, 1593, upon
the employment of the moral means which alone could enable him to attain
this end; he assembled at Mantes the conference of prelates and doctors,
Catholic and Protestant, which he had announced as the preface to his
conversion. He had previously, on the 13th of May, given assurance to
the Protestants as to their interests by means of a declaration on the
part of eight amongst the principal Catholic lords attached to his person
who undertook, "with his Majesty's authorization, that nothing should be
done in the said assemblies to the prejudice of friendly union between
the Catholics who recognized his Majesty and them of the religion, or
contrary to the edicts of pacification." On the 21st of July, the
prelates and doctors of the conference transferred themselves from Mantes
to St. Denis. On Friday, July 23, in the morning, Henry wrote to Gabriel
le d'Estrees, "Sunday will be the day when I shall make the summerset
that brings down the house" (_le, saut perilleux_). A few hours after
using such flippant language to his favorite, he was having a long
conference with the prelates and doctors, putting to them the gravest
questions about the religion he was just embracing, asking them for more
satisfactory explanations on certain points, and repeating to them the
grounds of his resolution. "I am moved with compassion at the misery and
calamities of my people; I have discovered what they desire; and I wish
to be enabled, with a safe conscience, to content them." At the end of
the conference, "Gentlemen," he said, "I this day commit my soul to your
keeping; I pray you, take heed to it, for, wheresoever you are causing me
to enter, I shall never more depart till death; that I swear and protest
to you;" and, in a voice of deep emotion, his eyes dim with tears, "I
desire no further delay; I wish to be received on Sunday and go to mass;
draw up the profession of faith you think I ought to make, and bring it
to me this evening; "when the Archbishop of Bourges and the Bishops of Le
Mans and Evreux brought it to him on the Saturday morning, he discussed
it apart with them, demanding the cutting out of some parts which struck
too directly at his previous creed and life; and Chancellor de Chiverny
and two presidents of the Parliament, Harlay and Groulart, used their
intervention to have him satisfied. The profession of faith was
modified. Next day, Sunday, the 25th of July, before he got up, Henry
conversed with the Protestant minister Anthony de la Faye, and embraced
him two or three times, repeating to him the words already quoted,
"I have made myself anathema for the sake of all, like Moses and St.
Paul." A painful mixture of the frivolous and the serious, of sincerity
and captious reservations, of resolution and weakness, at which nobody
has any right to be shocked who is not determined to be pitiless towards
human nature, and to make no allowance in the case of the best men for
complication of the facts, ideas, sentiments, and duties, under the
influence of which they are often obliged to decide and to act.
[Illustration: Henry IV.'s Abjuration----56]
On Sunday the 25th of July, 1593, Henry IV. repaired in great state to
the church of St. Denis. On arriving with all his train in front of the
grand entrance, he was received by Reginald de Beaune, Archbishop of
Bourges, the nine bishops, the doctors and the incumbents who had taken
part in the conferences, and all the brethren of the abbey. "Who are
you?" asked the archbishop who officiated. "The king." "What want you?"
"To be received into the bosom of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman
Church." "Do you desire it?" "Yes, I will and desire it." At these
words the king knelt and made the stipulated profession of faith. The
archbishop gave him absolution together with benediction; and, conducted
by all the clergy to the choir of the church, he there, upon the gospels,
repeated his oath, made his confession, heard mass, and was fully
reconciled with the church. The inhabitants of Paris, dispensing with
the passports which were refused them by Mayenne, had flocked in masses
to St. Denis and been present at the ceremony. The vaulted roof of the
church resounded with their shouts of Hurrah for the king! There was the
same welcome on the part of the dwellers in the country when Henry
repaired to the valley of Montmorency and to Montmartre to perform his
devotions there. Here, then, was religious peace, a prelude to political
reconciliation between the monarch and the great majority of his
subjects.
CHAPTER XXXVI.----HENRY IV., CATHOLIC KING. (1593-1610.)
During the months, weeks, nay, it might be said, days immediately
mediately following Henry IV.'s abjuration, a great number of notable
persons and important towns, and almost whole provinces, submitted to the
Catholic king. Henry was reaping the fruits of his decision; France was
flocking to him. But the general sentiments of a people are far from
satisfying and subduing the selfish passions of the parties which have
taken form and root in its midst. Religious and political peace
responded to and sufficed for the desires of the great majority of
Frenchmen, Catholic and Protestant; but it did not at all content the
fanatics, Leaguer or Huguenot. The former wanted the complete
extirpation of heretics; the latter the complete downfall of Catholicism.
Neither these nor those were yet educated up to the higher principle of
religious peace, distinction between the civil and the intellectual
order, freedom of thought and of faith guaranteed by political liberty.
Even at the present day, the community of France, nation and government,
all the while that they proclaim this great and salutary truth, do not
altogether understand and admit its full bearing. The sixteenth century
was completely ignorant of it; Leaguers and Huguenots were equally
convinced that they possessed, in the matter of religion, the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and that they were in their right
to propagate its empire at any price. Thence arose, in respect of
religious peace, and of Henry IV., who naturally desired it as the
requirement and the wish of France, a great governmental difficulty.
It is honorable to human nature that it never submits freely and
sincerely to anything but what it considers not only useful, but
essentially true and just; its passions bow to principles only; wherever
the higher principle is wanting, there also is wanting the force that
compels respect from passion. Now the fanatics, Leaguer and Huguenot,
had a fixed principle; with the former, it was the religious sovereignty
of the pope, as representative and depositary of the unity of the
Christian church; with the others, it was the negation of this
sovereignty and the revindication of the free regimen of the primitive
Christian church. To these fixed and peremptory principles the
government of Henry IV. had nothing similar to oppose; it spoke in the
name of social interests, of the public peace, and of mutual toleration;
all excellent reasons, but with merits consisting in their practical
soundness, not in their logical connection with the superior principle to
which the sixteenth century had not yet attained. It was all very well
for Henry IV. to maintain the cause and to have the support of the great
majority in France; but outside of this majority he was incessantly
encountering and incessantly having to put down or to humor two parties,
or rather factions, full of discontent and as irreconcilable with him as
among themselves, for it was not peace and tolerance that they demanded
of him, but victory and supremacy in the name of absolute right.
This, then, was the scene; on one side a great majority of Catholics and
Protestants favorable for different practical reasons to Henry IV.
turned Catholic king; on the other, two minorities, one of stubborn
Catholics of the League, the other of Protestants anxious for their creed
and their liberty; both discontented and distrustful. Such, after Henry
IV.'s abjuration, was the striking feature in the condition of France and
in the situation of her king. This triple fact was constantly present to
the mind of Henry IV., and ruled his conduct during all his reign; all
the acts of his government are proof of that.
His first embarrassments arose from the faction of Catholics to the
backbone. After his abjuration just as much as at his accession, the
League continued to exist and to act against him. The legate, Gaetani,
maintained that the bishops of France had no right, without the pope's
approval, to give an excommunicated prince absolution; he opposed the
three months' truce concluded by Mayenne, and threatened to take his
departure for Rome. Mayenne, to appease him and detain him, renewed the
alliance between the League and Spain, prevailed upon the princes and
marshals to renew also the oath of union, caused the states-general of
the League to vote the adoption of the Council of Trent, and, on
proroguing them, August 8, 1593, received from them a promise to return
at the expiration of the truce. For the members of that assembly it was
not a burdensome engagement; independently of the compensation they had
from their provinces, which was ten livres (thirty-six francs, sixty
centimes) a day during each session, they received from the King of Spain
a regular retainer, which raised it, for the five months from June to
October, to seventy-two thousand one hundred and forty-four francs, which
they divided between themselves. "It was presumed," said Jehan
l'Huillier, provost of tradesmen, to one of his colleagues who was
pressing him to claim this payment from the ambassador of Spain, "that
the money came from M. de Mayenne, not from foreigners; "but honest
people, such as Du Vair and Thielement, did not content themselves with
this presumption, and sent to the Hotel-Dieu, for maintenance of the
poor, the share which was remitted to them. [Poirson, _Histoire du Regne
de Henry IV.,_ t. i. p. 463. Picot, _Histoire des Etats generaux,_
t. iii. p. 249.]
The states-general of the League did not appear again; their prorogation
was their death. The year 1594, which came after them, was for Henry IV.
a year of home conquests, some pacific and due to the spontaneous
movement of the inhabitants, others obtained after resistance and
purchased with gold. The town of Lyons set the example of the first. A
rumor spread that the Spaniards were preparing an expedition against it;
some burgesses met to consult, and sent a private message to Alphonse
d'Ornano, who was conducting the war for the king in Dauphiny, pressing
him to move forward, on a day appointed, to the faubourg de la
Guillotiere. A small force sent by Ornano arrived, accordingly, on the
7th of February, about daybreak, at the foot of the bridge over the
Rhone, in the faubourg, and, after a stubborn resistance, dislodged the
outpost on duty there. At sound of the fighting, excitement broke out in
the town; and barricades were thrown up, amidst shouts of "Hurrah for
French liberty!" without any mention of the king's name. The archbishop,
Peter d'Espignac, a stanch Leaguer, tried to intimidate the burgesses,
or at any rate to allay the excitement. As he made no impression, he
retired into his palace. The people arrested the sheriffs and seized the
arsenal. The king's name resounded everywhere. "The noise of the
cheering was such," says De Thou, "that there was no hearing the sound of
the bells. Everybody assumed the white scarf with so much zeal that by
evening there was not a scrap of white silk left at the tradesmen's.
Tables were laid in the streets; the king's arms were put up on the gates
and in the public thoroughfares." Ornano marched in over the barricades;
royalist sheriffs were substituted for the Leaguer sheriffs, and hastened
to take the oath of allegiance to the king, who had nothing to do but
thank the Lyonnese for having been the first to come over to him without
constraint or any exigency, and who confirmed by an edict all their
municipal liberties. At the very moment when the Lyonnese were thus
springing to the side of their king, there set out from Lyons the first
assassin who raised a hand against Henry IV., Peter Parriere, a poor
boatman of the Loire, whom an unhappy passion for a girl in the household
of Marguerite de Valois and the preachings of fanatics had urged on to
this hateful design. Assassin we have called him, although there was not
on his part so much as an attempt at assassination; but he had, by his
own admission, projected and made preparations for the crime, to the
extent of talking it over with accomplices and sharpening the knife he
had purchased for its accomplishment. Having been arrested at Melun and
taken to Paris, he was sentenced to capital punishment, and to all the
tortures that ingenuity could add to it. He owned to everything, whilst
cursing those who had assured him that "if he died in the enterprise, his
soul, uplifted by angels, would float away to the bosom of God, where he
would enjoy eternal bliss." Moved by his torments and his repentance,
the judge who presided at his execution took upon himself to shorten it
by having him strangled. The judge was reported to the king for this
indulgence. Henry praised him for it, adding that he would have pardoned
the criminal if he had been brought before him. Thus commenced, at the
opening of his reign, the series of attempts to which he was destined to
succumb, after seventeen years of good, able, generous, and mild
government.
In Normandy, at Rouen, the royalist success was neither so easy nor so
disinterested as it had been at Lyons. Andrew de Brancas, Lord of
Villars, an able man and valiant soldier, was its governor; he had served
the League with zeal and determination; nevertheless, "from the month of
August, 1593, immediately after the king's conversion, he had shown a
disposition to become his servant, and to incline thereto all those whom
he had in his power." [_Histoire du Parlement de Normandi,_ by M.
Floquet, t. iii. pp. 611-617.] Henry IV. commissioned Rosny to negotiate
with him; and Rosny went into Normandy, to Louviers first and then to
Rouen itself. The negotiation seemed to be progressing favorably, but a
distrustful whim in regard to Villars, and the lofty pretensions he put
forward, made Rosny hang back for a while, and tell the whole story to
the king, at the same time asking for his instructions. Henry replied,--
"My friend, you are an ass to employ so much delay and import so many
difficulties and manoeuvres into a business the conclusion of which is of
so great importance to me for the establishment of my authority and the
relief of my people. Do you no longer remember the counsels you have so
many times given to me, whilst setting before me as an example that given
by a certain Duke of Milan to King Louis XI., at the time of the war
called that of the Common Weal? It was to split up by considerations of
private interest all those who were leagued against him on general
pretexts. That is what I desire to attempt now, far preferring that it
should cost twice as much to treat separately with each individual as it
would to arrive at the same results by means of a general treaty
concluded with a single leader, who, in that way, would be enabled to
keep up still an organized party within my dominions. You know plenty of
folks who wanted to persuade me to that. Wherefore, do not any longer
waste your time in doing either so much of the respectful towards those
whom you wot of, and whom we will find other means of contenting, or of
the economical by sticking at money. We will pay everything with the
very things given up to us, the which, if they had to be taken by force,
would cost us ten times as much. Seeing, then, that I put entire trust
in you and love you as a good servant, do not hesitate any longer to make
absolute and bold use of your power, which I further authorize by this
letter, so far as there may be further need for it, and settle as soon as
possible with M. de Villars. But secure matters so well that there may
be no possibility of a slip, and send me news thereof promptly, for I
shall be in constant doubt and impatience until I receive it. And then,
when I am peaceably king, we will employ the excellent manoeuvres of
which you have said so much to me; and you may rest assured that I will
spare no travail and fear no peril in order to raise my glory and my
kingdom to the height of splendor. Adieu, my friend. Senlis, this 18th
day of March, 1594."
Amongst the pretensions made by Villars there was one which could not be
satisfied without the consent of a man still more considerable than he,
and one with whom Henry IV. was obliged to settle--Biron. Villars had
received from Mayenne the title and office of admiral of France, and he
wished, at any price, to retain them on passing over to the king's
service. Now Henry IV. had already given this office to Biron, who had
no idea of allowing himself to be stripped of it. It was all very fine
to offer him in exchange the baton of a marshal of France, but he would
not be satisfied with it. "It was necessary," says M. Floquet [_Histoire
du Parlement de Normandie,_ t. iii. pp. 613-616], "for the king's sister
(Princess Catherine) to intervene. At last, a promise of one hundred and
twenty thousand crowns won Biron over, though against the grain." But he
wanted solid securities. Attention was then turned to the Parliament of
Caen, always so ready to do anything and sacrifice anything. Saldaigne
d'Incarville, comptroller-general of finance, having been despatched to
Caen, went straight to the palace and reported to the Parliament the
proposals and conditions of Villers and Biron. "The king," said he, "not
having been able to bring Rouen to reason by process of arms, and being
impatient to put some end to these miseries, wishes now to try gentle
processes, and treat with those whom he has not yet been able to subdue;
but co-operation on the part of the sovereign bodies of the provinces is
necessary." "To that which is for the good of our service is added your
private interest," wrote Henry IV. to the Parliament of Caen; and his
messenger D'Incarville added, "I have left matters at Rouen so arranged
as to make me hope that before a fortnight is over you will be free to
return thither and enter your homes once more." At the first mention of
peace and the prospect of a reconciliation between the royalist
Parliament of Caen and the leaguer Parliament of Rouen, the Parliament,
the exchequer-chamber, and the court of taxation, agreed to a fresh
sacrifice and a last effort. The four presidents of the Parliament lost
no time in signing together, and each for all, an engagement to guarantee
the hundred and twenty thousand crowns promised to Biron. . . . The
members of the body bound themselves all together to guarantee the four
presidents, in their turn, in respect of the engagement they were
contracting, and a letter was addressed on the spot to Henry IV., "to
thank the monarch for his good will and affection, and the honor he was
doing the members of his Parliament of Normandy, by making them
participators in the means and overtures adopted for arriving at the
reduction of the town of Rouen." [M. Floquet, _Histoire du Parlement de
Normandi,_ t. iii. pp. 613-616.]
Here is the information afforded, as regards the capitulation of Villars
to Henry IV., by the statement drawn up by Sully himself, of "the amount
of all debts on account of all the treaties made for the reduction of
districts, towns, places, and persons to obedience unto the king, in
order to the pacification of the realm."
"To M. Villars, for himself, his brother, Chevalier d'Oise, the towns of
Rouen and Havre and other places, as well as for compensation which had
to be made to MM. de Montpensier, Marshal de Biron, Chancellor de
Chiverny, and other persons included in his treaty . . . three
millions four hundred and forty-seven thousand eight hundred livres."
[Poirson, _Histoire du Regne de Henry IV.,_ t. i. p. 667.]
These details have been entered into without hesitation because it is
important to clearly understand by what means, by what assiduous efforts,
and at what price Henry IV. managed to win back pacifically many
provinces of his kingdom, rally to his government many leaders of note,
and finally to confer upon France that territorial and political unity
which she lacked under the feudal regimen, and which, in the sixteenth
century, the religious wars all but put it beyond her power to acquire.
To the two instances just cited of royalist reconciliation--Lyons and the
spontaneous example set by her population, and Rouen and the dearly
purchased capitulation of her governor Villars--must be added a third, of
a different sort. Nicholas de Neufville, Lord of Villeroi, after having
served Charles IX. and Henry III., had become, through attachment to the
Catholic cause, a member of the League, and one of the Duke of Mayenne's
confidants. When Henry IV. was King of France, and Catholic king,
Villeroi tried to serve his cause with Mayenne, and induce Mayenne to be
reconciled with him. Meeting with no success, he made up his mind to
separate from the League, and go over to the king's service. He could do
so without treachery or shame; even as a Leaguer and a servant of
Mayenne's he had always been opposed to Spain, and devoted to a French,
but, at the same time, a faithfully Catholic policy. He imported into
the service of Henry IV. the same sentiments and the same bearing; he was
still a zealous Catholic, and a partisan, for king and country's sake, of
alliance with Catholic powers. He was a man of wits, experience, and
resource, who knew Europe well and had some influence at the court of
Rome. Henry IV. saw at once the advantage to be gained from him, and, in
spite of the Protestants' complaints, and his sister Princess Catherine's
prayers, made him, on the 25th of September, 1594, secretary of state for
foreign affairs. This acquisition did not cost him so dear as that of
Villars: still we read in the statement of sums paid by Henry IV. for
this sort of conquest, "Furthermore, to M. de Villeroi, for himself, his
son, the town of Pontoise, and other individuals, according to their
treaty, four hundred and seventy-six thousand five hundred and
ninety-four livres." It is quite true that this statement was drawn up
by Sully, the unwavering supporter of Protestant alliances in Europe,
and, as such, Villeroi's opponent in the council of Henry IV.; but the
other contemporary documents confirm Sully's assertion. Villeroi was
a faithful servant to Henry, who well repaid him by stanchness in
supporting him against the repeated attacks of violent Reformers. In
1594, when he became minister of foreign affairs, the following verse
was in vogue at the Louvre:--
"The king could never beat the League;
'Twas Villeroi who did the thing;
So well he managed his intrigue,
That now the League hath got the king."
It is quite certain, however, that Henry IV. was never of the opinion
expressed in that verse; for, ten years later, in 1604, Villeroi having
found himself much compromised by the treachery of a chief clerk in his
department, who had given up to the Spanish government some important
despatches, the king, though very vexed at this mishap, "the consequences
of which rankled in his heart far more than he allowed to appear openly,
nevertheless continued to look most kindly on Villeroi, taking the
trouble to call upon him, to console and comfort him under this
annoyance, and not showing him a suspicion of mistrust because of what
had happened, any more than formerly; nay, even less." [_Journal de
L'Estoile,_ t. iii. pp. 85-441.] Never had prince a better or nobler way
of employing confidence in his proceedings with his servants, old or new,
at the same time that he made clear-sighted and proper distinctions
between them.
Henry IV., with his mind full of his new character as a Catholic king,
perceived the necessity of getting the pope to confirm the absolution
which had been given him, at the time of his conversion, by the French
bishops. It was the condition of his credit amongst the numerous
Catholic population who were inclined to rally to him, but required to
know that he was at peace with the head of their church. He began by
sending to Rome non-official agents, instructed to quietly sound the
pope, amongst others Arnold d'Ossat, a learned professor in the
University of Paris, who became, at a later period, the celebrated
cardinal and diplomat of that name. Clement VIII. [Hippolytus
Aldobrandini] was a clever man, moderate and prudent to the verge of
timidity, and, one who was disinclined to take decisive steps as to
difficult questions or positions until after they had been decided by
events. He refused to have any communication with him whom he still
called the Prince of Bearn, and only received the agents of Henry IV.
privately in his closet. But whilst he was personally severe and
exacting in his behavior to then, he had a hint given them by one of his
confidants not to allow themselves to be rebuffed by any obstacle, for
the pope would, sooner or later, welcome back the lost child who returned
to him. At this report, and by the advice of the Grand Duke of Tuscany,
Ferdinand de' Medici, Henry IV. determined to send a solemn embassy to
Rome, and to put it under the charge of a prince of Italian origin, Peter
di Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers. But either through the pope's stubborn
resolve or the ambassador's somewhat impatient temper, devoted as he was,
however, to the Holy See, the embassy had no success. The Duke of Nevers
could not obtain an official reception as ambassador of the King of
France. It was in vain that he had five confidential audiences of the
pope; in vain that he represented energetically to him all the progress
Henry IV. had already made, all the chances he had of definitive success,
all the perils to which the papacy exposed itself by rejecting his
advances; Clement VIII. persisted in his determination. Philip II. and
Mayenne still reigned in his ideas, and he dismissed the Duke of Nevers
on the 13th of January, 1594, declaring once more that he refused to the
Navarrese absolution at the inner bar of conscience, absolution at the
outer bar, and confirmation in his kingship.
Henry IV. did not put himself out, did not give himself the pleasure of
testifying to Rome his discontent; he saw that he had not as yet
sufficiently succeeded--sufficiently vanquished his enemies, or won to
himself his kingdom with sufficient completeness and definitiveness--to
make the pope feel bound to recognize and sanction his triumph. He set
himself once more to work to grow still greater in France, and force the
gates of Rome without its being possible to reproach him with violence or
ill temper.
He had been absolved and crowned at St. Denis by the bishops of France;
he had not been anointed at Rheims, according to the religious traditions
of the French monarchy. At Rheims he could not be; for it was still in
the power of the League. Researches were made, to discover whether the
ceremony of anointment might take place elsewhere; numerous instances
were found, and in the case of famous kings: Pepin the Short had been
anointed first of all at Mayence, Charlemagne and Louis the Debonnair at
Rome, Charles the Bald at Mayence, several emperors at Aix-la-Chapelle
and at Cologne. The question of the holy phial (ampoule) was also
discussed; and it was proved that on several occasions other oils, held
to be of miraculous origin, had been employed instead. These
difficulties thus removed, the anointment of Henry IV. took place at
Chartres on the 27th of February, 1594; the Bishop of Chartres, Nicholas
de Thou, officiated, and drew up a detailed account of all the ceremonies
and all the rejoicings; thirteen medals, each weighing fifteen gold
crowns, were struck, according to custom; they bore the king's image, and
for legend, _Invia virtuti nulla est via_ (To manly worth no road is
inaccessible). Henry IV., on his knees before the grand altar, took the
usual oath, the form of which was presented to him by Chancellor de
Chiverny. With the exception of local accessories, which were
acknowledged to be impossible and unnecessary, there was nothing wanting
to this religious hallowing of his kingship.
But one other thing, more important than the anointment at Chartres, was
wanting. He did not possess the capital of his kingdom the League were
still masters of Paris. Uneasy masters of their situation; but not so
uneasy, however, as they ought to have been. The great leaders of the
party, the Duke of Mayenne, his mother the Duchess of Nemours, his sister
the Duchess of Montpensier, and the Duke of Feria, Spanish ambassador,
were within its walls, a prey to alarm and discouragement. "At
breakfast," said the Duchess of Montpensier, "they regale us with the
surrender of a hamlet, at dinner of a town, at supper of a whole
province." The Duchess of Nemours, who desired peace, exerted herself to
convince her son of all their danger. "Set your affairs in order," she
said;--if you do not begin to make your arrangements with the king before
leaving Paris, you will lose this capital. I know that projects are
already afoot for giving it up, and that those who can do it, and in whom
you have most confidence, are accomplices and even authors of the plot."
Mayenne himself did not hide from his confidants the gravity of the
mischief and his own disquietude. "Not a day," he wrote on the 4th of
February, 1594, to the Marquis of Montpezat, "but brings some trouble
because of the people's yearning for repose, and of the weakness which is
apparent on our side. I stem and stop this forment with as much courage
as I can; but the present mischief is overwhelming; the King of Navarre
will in a few days have an army of twenty thousand men, French as well as
foreigners. What will become of us, if we have not wherewithal not only
to oppose him, but to make him lose the campaign? I can tell you of a
verity that, save for my presence, Paris would have already been lost
because of the great factions there are in it, which I take all the pains
in the world to disperse and break up, and also because of the small aid,
or rather the gainsaying, I meet with from the ministers of the King of
Spain." Mayenne tried to restore amongst the Leaguers both zeal and
discipline; he convoked on the 2d of March, a meeting of all that
remained of the faction of the Sixteen; he calculated upon the presence
of some twelve hundred; scarcely three hundred came; he had an harangue
delivered to them by the Rev. John Boucher, charged them to be faithful
to the old spirit of the League, promised them that he would himself be
faithful even to death, and exhorted them to be obedient in everything to
Brissac, whom he had just appointed governor of the city, and to the
provost of tradesmen. On announcing to them his imminent departure for
Soissons, to meet some auxiliary troops which were to be sent to him by
the King of Spain, "I leave to you," he said, "what is dearest to me in
the world--my wife, my children, my mother, and my sister." But when he
did set out, four days afterwards, on the 6th of March, 1594, he took
away his wife and his children; his mother had already warned him that
Brissac was communicating secretly, by means of his cousin, Sieur de
Rochepot, with the royalists, and that the provost of tradesmen,
L'Huillier, and three of the four sheriffs were agreed to bring the city
back to obedience to the king. When the Sixteen and their adherents saw
Mayenne departing with his wife and children, great were their alarm and
wrath. A large band, with the incumbent of St. Cosmo (Hamilton) at their
head, rushed about the streets in arms, saying, "Look to your city; the
policists are brewing a terrible business for it." Others, more violent,
cried, "To arms! Down upon the policists! Begin! Let us make an end of
it!" The policists, that is, the burgesses inclined to peace, repaired
on their side to the provost of tradesmen to ask for his authority to
assemble at the Palace or the Hotel de Ville, and to provide for security
in case of any public calamity. The provost tried to elude their
entreaties by pleading that the Duke of Mayenne would think ill of their
assembling. "Then you are not the tradesmen's but M. de Mayenne's
provost?" said one of them. "I am no Spaniard," answered the provost;
"no more is M. de Mayenne; I am anxious to reconcile you to the Sixteen."
"We are honest folks, not branded and defamed like the Sixteen; we will
have no reconciliation with the wretches." The Parliament grew excited,
and exclaimed against the insolence and the menaces of the Sixteen. "We
must give place to these sedition-mongers, or put them down." A decree,
published by sound of trumpet on the 14th of March, 1594, throughout the
whole city, prohibited the Sixteen and their partisans from assembling on
pain of death. That same day, Count de Brissac, governor of Paris, had
an interview at the abbey of St. Anthony, with his brother-in-law,
Francis d'Epinay, Lord of St. Luc, Henry IV.'s grand-master of the
ordnance; they had disputes touching private interests, which they
wished, they said, to put right; and on this pretext advocates had
appeared at their interview. They spent three hours in personal
conference, their minds being directed solely to the means of putting the
king into possession of Paris. They separated in apparent dudgeon.
Brissac went to call upon the legate Gaetani, and begged him to excuse
the error he had committed in communicating with a heretic; his interest
in the private affairs in question was too great, he said, for him to
neglect it. The legate excused him graciously, whilst praising him for
his modest conduct, and related the incident to the Duke of Feria, the
Spanish ambassador. "He is a good fellow, M. de Brissac," said the
ambassador; "I have always found him so; you have only to employ the
Jesuits to make him do all you please. He takes little notice,
otherwise, of affairs; one day, when we were holding council in here,
whilst we were deliberating, he was amusing himself by catching flies."
For four days the population of Paris was occupied with a solemn
procession in honor of St. Genevieve, in which the Parliament and all the
municipal authorities took part. Brissac had agreed with his
brother-in-law D'Epinay that he would let the king in on the 22d of
March, and he had arranged, in concert with the provost of tradesmen, two
sheriffs, and several district captains, the course of procedure. On the
21st of March, in the evening, some Leaguers paid him a visit, and spoke
to him warmly about the rumors current on the subject in the city,
calling upon him to look to it. "I have received the same notice," said
Brissac, coolly; "and I have given all the necessary orders. Leave me to
act, and keep you quiet, so as not to wake up those who will have to be
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