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secured. To-morrow morning you will see a fine to-do and the policists
much surprised." During all the first part of the night between the 21st
and 22d of March, Brissac went his rounds of the city and the guards he
had posted, "with an appearance of great care and solicitude." He had
some trouble to get rid of certain Spanish officers, "whom the Duke of
Feria had sent him to keep him company in his rounds, with orders to
throw themselves upon him and kill him at the first suspicious movement;
but they saw nothing to confirm their suspicions, and at two A. M.,
Brissac brought them back much fatigued to the duke's, where he left
them." Henry IV., having started on the 21st of March from Senlis, where
he had mustered his troops, and arrived about midnight at St. Denis,
immediately began his march to Paris. The night was dark and stormy;
thunder rumbled; rain fell heavily; the king was a little behind time.
At three A. M.. the policists inside Paris had taken arms and repaired to
the posts that had been assigned to them. Brissac had placed a guard
close to the quarters of the Spanish ambassador, and ordered the men to
fire on any who attempted to leave. He had then gone in person, with
L'Huillier, the provost of tradesmen, to the New Gate, which he had
caused to be unlocked and guarded. Sheriff Langlois had done the same at
the gate of St. Denis. On the 22d of March, at four A. M., the king had
not yet appeared before the ramparts, nor any one for him. Langlois
issued from the gate, went some little distance to look out, and came in
again, more and more impatient. At last, between four and five o'clock,
a detachment of the royal troops, commanded by Vitry, appeared before the
gate of St. Denis, which was instantly opened. Brissac's brother-in-law,
St. Luc, arrived about the same time at the New Gate, with a considerable
force. The king's troops entered Paris. They occupied the different
districts, and met with no show of resistance but at the quay of L'Ecole,
where an outpost of lanzknechts tried to stop them; but they were cut in
pieces or hurled into the river. Between five and six o'clock Henry IV.,
at the head of the last division, crossed the drawbridge of the New Gate.
Brissac, Provost L'Huillier, the sheriffs, and several companies of
burgesses advanced to meet him. The king embraced Brissac, throwing his
own white scarf round his neck, and addressing him as "Marshal." "Render
unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," said Brissac, as he called
upon the provost of tradesmen to present to the king the keys of the
city. "Yes," said L'Huillier, "render them, not sell them." The king
went forward with his train, going along Rue St. Honore to the market of
the Innocents and the bridge of Notre-Dame; the crowd increased at every
step. "Let them come near," said Henry; "they hunger to see a king." At
every step, too, at sight of the smallest incident, the character of
Henry, his natural thoughtful and lovable kindliness, shone forth. He
asked if his entry had met with resistance anywhere; and he was told that
about fifty lanzknechts had been killed at the quay of L'Ecole. "I would
willingly give fifty thousand crowns," said he, "to be able to say that I
took Paris without costing the life of one single man." As he marched
along the Rue St. Honore, he saw a soldier taking some bread by force
from a baker's; he rushed at him, and would have struck him with his
sword. As he passed in front of the Innocents, he saw at a window a man
who was looking at him, and pointedly keeping his hat on; the man
perceived that the king' observed him, and withdrew, shutting down the
window. Henry said, "Let nobody enter this house to vex or molest any
one in it." He arrived in front of Notre-Dame, followed by five or six
hundred men-at-arms, who trailed their pikes "in token of a victory that
was voluntary on the people's part," it was said. There was no uproar,
or any hostile movement, save on the left bank of the Seine, in the
University quarter, where the Sixteen attempted to assemble their
partisans round the gate of St. Jacques; but they were promptly dispersed
by the people as well as by the royal troops. On leaving Notre-Dame,
Henry repaired to the Louvre, where he installed royalty once more.
At ten o'clock he was master of the whole city; the districts of
St. Martin, of the Temple, and St. Anthony alone remained still in the
power of three thousand Spanish soldiers under the orders of their
leaders, the Duke of Feria and Don Diego d'Ibarra. Nothing would have
been easier for Henry than to have had them driven out by his own troops
and the people of Paris, who wanted to finish the day's work by
exterminating the foreigners; but he was too judicious and too
far-sighted to embitter the general animosity by pushing his victory
beyond what was necessary. He sent word to the Spaniards that they must
not move from their quarters and must leave Paris during the day, at the
same time promising not to bear arms any more against him, in France.
They eagerly accepted these conditions. At three o'clock in the
afternoon, ambassador, officers, and soldiers all evacuated Paris, and
set out for the Low Countries. The king, posted at a window over the
gate of St. Denis, witnessed their departure. They, as they passed,
saluted him respectfully; and he returned their salute, saying, "Go,
gentlemen, and commend me to your master; but return no more."
After his conversion to Catholicism, the capture of Paris was the most
decisive of the issues which made Henry IV. really King of France. The
submission of Rouen followed almost immediately upon that of Paris; and
the year 1594 brought Henry a series of successes, military and civil,
which changed very much to his advantage the position of the kingship as
well as the general condition of the kingdom. In Normandy, in Picardy,
in Champagne, in Anjou, in Poitou, in Brittany, in Orleanness, in
Auvergne, a multitude of important towns, Havre, Honfleur, Abbeville,
Amiens, Peronue, Montdidier, Poitiers, Orleans, Rheims, Chateau-Thierry,
Beauvais, Sens, Riom, Morlaix, Laval, Laon, returned to the king's
authority, some after sieges and others by pacific and personal
arrangement, more or less burdensome for the public treasury, but very
effective in promoting the unity of the nation and of the monarchy. In
the table drawn up by Sully of expenses under that head, he estimated
them at thirty-two millions, one hundred and forty-two thousand, nine
hundred and eighty-one livres, equivalent at the present day, says M.
Poirson, to one hundred and eighteen millions of francs. The rendition
of Paris, "on account of M. de Brissac, the city itself and other
individuals employed on his treaty," figures in this sum total at one
million, six hundred and forty-five thousand, four hundred livres.
Territorial acquisitions were not the only political conquests of this
epoch; some of the great institutions which had been disjointed by the
religious wars, for instance, the Parliaments of Paris and Normandy,
recovered their unity and resumed their efficacy to the advantage of
order, of the monarchy, and of national independence; their decrees
against the League contributed powerfully to its downfall. Henry IV.
did his share in other ways besides warfare; he excelled in the art of
winning over or embarrassing his vanquished foes. After the submission
of Paris, the two princesses of the house of Lorraine who had remained
there, the Duchesses of Nemours and of Montpensier, one the mother and
the other the sister of the Duke of Mayenne, were preparing to go and
render homage to the conqueror; Henry anticipated them, and paid them the
first visit. As he was passing through a room where hung a portrait of
Henry de Guise, he halted and saluted it very courteously. The Duchess
of Montpensier, who had so often execrated him, did not hesitate to
express her regret that "her brother Mayenne had not been there to let
down for him the drawbridge of the gate by which he had entered Paris."
"Ventre-saint-gris," said the king, "he might have made me wait a long
while; I should not have arrived so early." He knew that the Duchess of
Nemours had desired peace, and when she allowed some signs of vexation to
peep out at her not having been able to bring her sons and grandsons to
that determination, "Madame," said he, a there is still time if they
please." At the close of 1594, he imported disorganization into the
household of Lorraine by offering the government of Provence to the young
Duke Charles of Guise, son of the Balafre; who eagerly accepted it; and
he from that moment paved the way, by the agency of President Jeannin,
for his reconciliation with Mayenne, which he brought to accomplishment
at the end of 1595.
The close of this happy and glorious year was at hand. On the 27th of
September, between six and seven P.M., a deplorable incident occurred,
for the second time, to call Henry IV.'s attention to the weak side of
his position. He was just back from Picardy, and holding a
court-reception at Schomberg House, at the back of the Louvre. John
Chastel, a young man of nineteen, son of a cloth-merchant in the city,
slipped in among the visitors, managed to approach the king, and dealt
him a blow with a knife just as he was stooping to raise and embrace
Francis de la Grange, Sieur de Montigny, who was kneeling before him.
The blow, aimed at the king's throat, merely slit his upper lip and broke
a tooth. "I am wounded!" said the king. John Chastel, having dropped
his knife, had remained on the spot, motionless and confused. Montigny,
according to some, but, according to others, the Count of Soissons, who
happened to be near him, laid hands upon him, saying, "Here is the
assassin, either he or I." Henry IV., always prone to pass things over,
pooh-poohed the suspicion, and was just giving orders to let the young
man go, when the knife, discovered on the ground close to Chastel, became
positive evidence. Chastel was questioned, searched, and then handed,
over to the grand provost of the household, who had him conveyed to
prison at For-l'Eveque. He first of all denied, but afterwards admitted
his deed, regretting that he had missed his aim, and saying he was ready
to try again for his own salvation's sake and that of religion. He
declared that he had been brought up amongst the Jesuits in Rue St.
Jacques, and he gave long details as to the education he had received
there and the maxims he had heard there. The rumor of his crime and of
the revelations he had made spread immediately over Paris and caused
passionate excitement. The people filled the churches and rendered
thanks to God for having preserved the king. The burgesses took up arms
and mustered at their guard-posts. The mob bore down on the college of
Jesuits in Rue St. Jacques with threats of violence. The king and the
Parliament sent a force thither; Brizard, councillor in the high chamber,
captain of the district, had the fathers removed, and put them in
security in his own house. The inquiry was prosecuted deliberately and
temperately. It brought out that John Chastel had often heard repeated
at his college "that it was allowable to kill kings, even the king
regnant, when they were not in the church or approved of by the pope."
The accused formally maintained this maxim, which was found written out
and dilated upon under his own hand in a note-book seized at his
father's. "Was it necessary, pray," said Henry IV., laughing, "that the
Jesuits should be convicted by my mouth?" John Chastel was sentenced to
the most cruel punishment; and he underwent it on the 20th of December,
1594, by torch-light, before the principal entrance of Notre-Dame,
without showing any symptom of regret. His mother and his sisters were
set at liberty. His father, an old Leaguer, had been cognizant of his
project, and had dissuaded him from it, but without doing anything to
hinder it; he was banished from the kingdom for nine years, and from
Paris forever. His house was razed to the ground; and on the site was
set up a pyramid with the decree of the Parliament inscribed upon it.
The proceedings did not stop there. At the beginning of this same year,
and on petition from the University of Paris, the Parliament had
commenced a general prosecution of the order of Jesuits, its maxims,
tendencies, and influence. Formal discussions had taken place; the
prosecution and the defence had been conducted with eloquence, and a
decree of the court had ordained that judgment should be deferred.
Several of the most respected functionaries, notably President Augustin
de Thou, had pronounced against this decree, considering the question so
grave and so urgent that the Parliament should make it their duty to
decide upon the point at issue. When sentence had to be pronounced upon
John Chastel, President de Thou took the opportunity of saying, "When I
lately gave my opinion in the matter of the University and the Jesuits, I
never hoped, at my age and with my infirmities, that I should live long
enough to take part in the judgment we are about to pass to-day. It was
that which led me, in the indignation caused me by the course at that
time adopted, to lay down an opinion to which I to-day recur with much
joy. God be praised for having brought about an occasion whereon we have
nothing to do but felicitate ourselves for that the enterprise which our
foes did meditate against the state and the life of the king hath been
without success, and which proves clearly at the same time how much the
then opinion of certain honest men was wiser than that of persons who,
from a miserable policy, were in favor of deferment!" The court,
animated by the same sentiments as President do Thou, "declared the
maxims maintained in the Jesuits' name to be rash, seditious, contrary to
the word of God, savoring of heresy and condemned by the holy canons; it
expressly forbade them to be taught publicly or privately, on pain, in
case of contraveners, of being treated as guilty of treason against God
and man. It decreed, further, that the priests of the college in Rue St.
Jacques, their pupils, and, generally, all members of that society,
should leave Paris and all the towns in which they had colleges three
days after this decree had been made known to them, and the kingdom
within a fortnight, as corrupters of youth, disturbers of the public
peace, and enemies of the king and of the state. In default of obedience
on their part, their property, real and personal, should be confiscated
and employed for pious purposes. The court, besides, prohibited all
subjects of the king from sending their children as students to any
Jesuits out of the kingdom, on pain of being declared enemies of the
state." This decree was issued on the 29th of December, 1594. And as if
to leave no doubt about the sense and bearing of this legislation, it was
immediately applied in the case of a Jesuit father, John Guignard, a
native of Chartres; his papers were examined, and there were found in his
handwriting many propositions and provocatives of sedition, such as,
"That a great mistake had been made at the St. Bartholomew in not having
opened the basilic vein, that is, in not having murdered Henry IV. and
the Prince of Conde, who were of the blood royal; 2. That the crown
might have been, and ought to have been, transferred to a family other
than that of the Bourbons; 3. That the Bearnese, in spite of his
pretended conversion, ought to consider himself only too lucky if it were
considered sufficient to shave his head and shut him up in a convent to
do penance there; that if the crown could not betaken from him without
war, then war must be made on him; and that if the state of things did
not admit of making war on him, he ought to be got rid of at any price
and in any way whatsoever." For having, not published, but thought and
with his own hand written out all this, and probably taught it to his
pupils, Father Guignard was obliged to retract, and was afterwards hanged
in the Place de Greve on the 7th of January, 1595.
The task of honest men and of right minds is greater and more difficult
in our day than it was in the sixteenth century, for we have to reconcile
the laws and the requirements of moral and social order with far broader
principles and sentiments, as regards right and liberty, than were those
of President Augustin de Thou and the worthy functionaries of his time.
It was one of Henry IV.'s conspicuous qualities that no event, auspicious
or inauspicious, affected the correctness of his judgment, and that he
was just as much a stranger to illusion or intoxication in the hour of
good fortune as to discouragement in the hour of ill. He had sense
enough to see, in any case, things as they really were, and to estimate
at the proper value the strength they brought or the obstacles they
formed to his government. He saw at a glance all the importance there
was for him in the submission of Paris, and what change in his conduct
was required by that in his position. Certain local successes of the
Spaniards at some points in his kingdom, the efforts of Mayenne to
resuscitate the dying League, and John Chastel's attempt at assassination
did not for a moment interfere with his confidence in his progress, or
cause him to hesitate as to the new bearing he had to assume. He wrote
on the 17th of December, 1594, to the estates of Artois and Hainault,
"I have hitherto lacked neither the courage nor the power to repel the
insults offered me, and to send recoiling upon the head of the King of
Spain and his subjects the evils of which he was the author. But just as
were the grounds I had for declaring war against him, motives more
powerful and concerning the interests of all Christendom restrained me.
At the present time, when the principal leaders of the factious have
returned to their duty and submitted to my laws, Philip still continues
his intrigues to foster troubles in the very heart of my kingdom. After
maturely reflecting, I have decided that it is time for me to act.
Nevertheless, as I cannot forget the friendship my ancestors always felt
for your country, I could not but see with pain that, though you have
taken no share in Philip's acts of injustice, on you will fall the first
blows of a war so terrible, and I thought it my duty to warn you of my
purpose before I proceed to execute it. If you can prevail upon the King
of Spain to withdraw the army which he is having levied on the frontier,
and to give no protection for the future to rebels of my kingdom, I will
not declare war against him, provided that I have certain proof of your
good intentions, and that you give me reasonable securities for them
before the 1st of January in the approaching year." [_Lettres missives
de Henri IV,_ p. 280--De Thou, _Histoire universelle,_ t. xii. pp. 328-
342.]
These letters, conveyed to Arras by one of the king's trumpeters,
received no answer. The estates of Flanders, in assembly at Brussels,
somewhat more bold than those of Artois and Hainault, in vain represented
to their Spanish governor their plaints and their desires for peace; for
two months Henry IV. heard not a word on the subject. Philip II.
persisted in his active hostility, and continued to give the King of
France no title but that of Prince of Bearn. On the 17th of January,
1595, Henry, in performance of what he had proclaimed, formally declared
war against the King of Spain, forbade his subjects to have any com merce
with him or his allies, and ordered them to make war on him for the
future just as he persisted in making it on France. This able and worthy
resolve was not approved of by Rosny, by this time the foremost of
Henry's IV.'s councillors, although he had not yet risen in the
government, or, probably, in the king's private confidence, to the
superior rank that he did attain by the eminence of his services and the
courageous sincerity of his devotion. In his _OEconomies royales_ it is
to interested influence, on the part of England and Holland, that he
attributes this declaration of war against Philip II., "into which," he
says, "the king allowed himself to be hurried against his own feelings."
It was assuredly in accordance with his own feelings and of his own free
will that Henry acted in this important decision; he had a political
order of mind greater, more inventive, and more sagacious than Rosny's
administrative order of mind, strong common sense and painstaking
financial abilities. To spontaneously declare war against Philip after
the capitulation of Paris and the conquest of three quarters of France
was to proclaim that the League was at death's door, that there was no
longer any civil war in France, and that her king had no more now than
foreign war to occupy him. To make alliance, in view of that foreign
war, with the Protestant sovereigns of England, Holland, and Germany,
against the exclusive and absolutist patron of Catholicism, was on the
part of a king but lately Protestant, and now become resolutely Catholic,
to separate openly politics from religion, and to subserve the temporal
interests of the realm of France whilst putting himself into the hands of
the spiritual head of the church as regarded matters of faith. Henry
IV., moreover, discovered another advantage in this line of conduct; it
rendered possible and natural the important act for which he was even
then preparing, and which will be spoken of directly, the edict of Nantes
in favor of the Protestants, which was the charter of religious tolerance
and the securities for it, pending the advent of religious liberty and
its rights, that fundamental principle, at this day, of moral and social
order in France. Such were Henry IV.'s grand and premonitory instincts
when, on the 17th of January, 1595, he officially declared against Philip
II. that war which Philip had not for a moment ceased to make on him.
The conflict thus solemnly begun between France and Spain lasted three
years and three months, from the 17th of January, 1595, to the 1st of
May, 1598, from Henry IV.'s declaration of war to the peace of Vervins,
which preceded by only four months and thirteen days the death of Philip
II. and the end of the preponderance of Spain in Europe. It is not worth
while to follow step by step the course of this monotonous conflict,
pregnant with facts which had their importance for contemporaries, but
are not worthy of an historical resurrection. Notice will be drawn only
to those incidents in which the history of France is concerned, and which
give a good idea of Henry IV.'s character, the effectiveness of his
government, and the rapid growth of his greatness in Europe, contrasted
with his rival's slow decay.
Four months and a half after the declaration of war, and during the
campaign begun in Burgundy between the French and the Spaniards, on the
5th of June, 1595, near Fontaine-Francaise, a large burgh a few leagues
from Dijon, there took place an encounter which, without ending in a
general battle, was an important event, and caused so much sensation that
it brought about political results more important than the immediate
cause of them. Henry IV. made up his mind to go and reconnoitre in
person the approaches of Dijon, towards which the enemy were marching.
He advanced, with about a hundred and fifty men-at-arms and as many
mounted arquebusiers, close up to the burgh of Saint-Seine; from there he
sent the Marquis of Mirebeau with fifty or sixty horse to "go," says
Sully, "and take stock of the enemy;" and he put himself on the track of
his lieutenant, marching as a simple captain of light-horse, with the
purpose of becoming better acquainted with the set of the country, so as
to turn it to advantage if the armies had to encounter. But he had not
gone more than a league when he saw Mirebeau returning at more than a
foot-pace and in some disorder; who informed him "that he had been
suddenly charged by as many as three or four hundred horse, who did not
give him leisure to extend his view as he could have desired, and that he
believed that the whole army of the Constable of Castille was marching in
a body to come and quarter themselves in the burgh of Saint-Seine."
Marshal de Biron, who joined the king at this moment, offered to go and
look at the enemy, and bring back news that could be depended upon; but
scarcely had he gone a thousand paces when he descried, on the top of a
little valley, some sixty horse halted there as if they were on guard; he
charged them, toppled them over, and taking their ground, discovered the
whole Spanish army marching in order of battle and driving before them a
hundred of the king's horse, who were flying in disorder. Biron halted
and showed a firm front to the enemy's approach; but he was himself hard
pressed at many points, and was charged with such impetuosity that he was
obliged to begin a retreat which changed before long to a sort of flight,
with a few sword-cuts about the ears. Thus he arrived within sight of
the king, who immediately detached a hundred horse to support Biron and
stop the fugitives; but the little re-enforcement met with the same fate
as those it went to support; it was overthrown and driven pell-mell right
up to the king, who suddenly found himself with seven or eight hundred
horse on his hands, without counting the enemy's main army, which could
already be discerned in the distance. Far from being dumbfounded, the
king, "borrowing," says Sully, "increase of judgment and courage from the
greatness of the peril," called all his men about him, formed them into
two squadrons of a hundred and fifty men each, gave one to M. de la
Tremoille with orders to go and charge the Spanish cavalry on one flank,
put himself at the head of the other squadron, and the two charges of the
French were "so furious and so determined," says Sully, the king mingling
in the thickest of the fight and setting an example to the boldest, "that
the Spanish squadrons in dismay tumbled one over another, and retired
half-routed to the main body of Mayenne's army; who, seeing a dash made
to the king's assistance by some of his bravest officers with seven or
eight hundred horse, thought all the royal army was there, and, fearing
to attack those gentry of whose determination he had just made proof, he
himself gave his troops the order to retreat, Henry going on in pursuit
until he had forced them to recross the Sane below Gray, leaving Burgundy
at his discretion."
A mere abridgment has been given of the story relating to this brilliant
affair as it appears in the (_OEconomies Royales_ of Sully [t. ii.
pp. 377-387], who was present and hotly engaged in the fight. We will
quote word for word, however, the account of Henry IV. himself, who sent
a report four days afterwards to his sister Catherine and to the
Constable Anne de Montmorency. To the latter he wrote on the 8th of
June, 1595, from Dijon, "I was informed that the Constable of Castile,
accompanied by the Duke of Mayenne, was crossing the River Sane with his
army to come and succor the castle of this town. I took horse the day
after, attended by my cousin Marshal de Biron and from seven to eight
hundred horse, to go and observe his plans on the spot. Whence it
happened that, intending to take the same quarters without having any
certain advices about one another, we met sooner than we had hoped, and
so closely that my cousin the marshal, who led the first troop, was
obliged to charge those who had advanced, and I to support him. But our
disadvantage was, that all our troops had not yet arrived and joined me,
for I had but from two to three hundred horse, whereas the enemy had all
his cavalry on the spot, making over a thousand or twelve hundred drawn
up by squadrons and in order of battle. However, my said cousin did not
haggle about them; and, seeing that they were worsting him, because the
game was too uneven, I determined to make one in it, and joined in it to
such a purpose and with such luck, thank God, together with the following
I had, that we put them to the rout. But I can assure you that it was
not at the first charge, for we made several; and if the rest of my
forces had been with me, I should no doubt have defeated all their
cavalry, and perhaps their foot who were in order of battle behind the
others, having at their head the said Constable of Castile. But our
forces were so unequal that I could do no more than put to flight those
who would not do battle, after having cut in pieces the rest, as we had
done; wherein I can tell you, my dear cousin, that my said cousin Marshal
de Biron and I did some good handiwork. He was wounded in the head by a
blow from a cutlass in the second charge, for he and I had nothing on but
our cuirasses, not having had time to arm ourselves further, so surprised
and hurried were we. However, my said cousin did not fail, after his
wound, to return again to the charge three or four times, as I too did on
my side. Finally we did so well that the field and their dead were left
to us to the number of a hundred or six score, and as many prisoners of
all ranks. Whereat the said Constable of Castile took such alarm that he
at once recrossed the Sane; and I have been told that it was not without
reproaching the Duke of Mayenne with having deceived him in not telling
him of my arrival in this country."
The day before, June 7, Henry had written to his sister Catherine de
Bourbon, "My dear sister, the more I go on, the more do I wonder at the
grace shown me by God in the fight of last Monday, wherein I thought to
have defeated but twelve hundred horse; but they must be set down at two
thousand. The Constable of Castile was there in person with the Duke of
Mayenne; and they both of them saw me and recognized me quite well; they
sent to demand of me a whole lot of Italian and Spanish captains of
theirs, the which were not prisoners. They must be amongst the dead who
have been buried, for I requested next day that they should be. Many of
our young noblemen, seeing me with them everywhere, were full of fire in
this engagement, and showed a great deal of courage; amongst whom I came
across Gramont, Termes, Boissy, La Curse, and the Marquis of Mirebeau,
who, as luck would have it, found themselves at it without any armor but
their neck-pieces and _gaillardets_ (front and back plates), and did
marvels. There were others who did not do so well, and many who did very
ill. Those who were not there ought to be sorry for it, seeing that I
had need of all my good friends, and I saw you very near becoming my
heiress." [_Lettres missives de Henri IV.,_ t. iv. pp. 363-369; in the
_Collection des Documents inedits sur l'Histoire de France_.]
This fight, so unpremeditated, at Fontaine-Francaise, and the presence of
mind, steady quicksightedness, and brilliant dash of Henry IV., led off
this long war gloriously. Its details were narrated and sought after
minutely; people were especially struck with the sympathetic attention
that in the very midst of the strife the king bestowed upon all his
companions in arms, either to give them directions or to warn them of
danger. "At the hottest of the fight," says the contemporary historian
Peter Matthieu, "Henry, seizing Mirebeau by the arm, said, 'Charge
yonder!' which he did: and that troop began to thin off and disappear."
A moment afterwards, seeing one of the enemy's men-at-arms darting down
upon the French, Henry concluded that the attack was intended for
Gilbert, de la Cure, a brave and pious Catholic lord, whom he called
familiarly _Monsieur le Cure,_ and shouted to him from afar, "Look out,
La Curee!" which warned him and saved his life. The roughest warriors
were touched by this fraternal solicitude of the king's, and clung to him
with passionate devotion.
It was at Rome, and in the case of an ecclesiastical question that Henry
IV.'s steady policy, his fame for ability as well as valor, and the
glorious affair of Fontaine-Francaise bore their first fruits. Mention
has already been made of the formal refusal the king had met with from
Pope Clement VIII. in January, 1594, when he had demanded of him, by the
embassy extraordinary of the Duke of Nevers, confirmation of the
absolution granted him by the French bishops after his conversation at
St. Denis and his anointment at Chartres. The pope, in spite of his
refusal, had indirectly given the royal agents to understand that they
were not to be discouraged; and the ablest of them, Arnold d'Ossat, had
remained at Rome to conduct this delicate and dark commission. When
Clement VIII. saw Henry IV.'s government growing stronger and more
extensive day by day, Paris returned to his power, the League beaten and
the Gallican church upheld in its maxims by the French magistracy, fear
of schism grew serious at Rome, and the pope had a hint given by Cardinal
de Gondi to Henry that, if he were to send fresh ambassadors, they might
be favorably listened to. Arnold d'Ossat had acquired veritable weight
at the court of Rome, and had paved the way with a great deal of art
towards turning to advantage any favorable chances that might offer
themselves. Villeroi, having broken with the League, had become Henry
IV.'s minister of foreign affairs, and obtained some confidence at Rome
in return for the good will he testified towards the papacy. By his
councillor's advice, no doubt, the king made no official stir, sent no
brilliant embassy; D'Ossat quietly resumed negotiations, and alone
conducted them from the end of 1594 to the spring of 1595; and when a new
envoy was chosen to bring them to a conclusion, it was not a great lord,
but a learned ecclesiastic, Abbot James du Perron, whose ability and
devotion Henry IV. had already, at the time of his conversion,
experienced, and whom he had lately appointed Bishop of Evreux. Even
when Du Perron had been fixed upon to go to Rome and ask for the
absolution which Clement VIII. had seven or eight months before refused,
he was in no hurry to repair thither, and D'Ossat's letters make it
appear that he was expected there with some impatience. He arrived there
on the 12th of July, 1595, and, in concert with D'Ossat, he presented to
the pope the request of the king, who solicited the papal benediction,
absolution from any censure, and complete reconciliation with the Roman
church. Clement VIII., on the 2d of August, assembled his consistory,
whither went all the cardinals, save two partisans of Spain who excused
themselves on the score of health. Parleys took place as to the form of
the decree which must precede the absolution. The pope would have liked
very much to insert two clauses, one revoking as null and void the
absolution already given to the king by the French bishops at the time of
his conversion, and the other causing the absolution granted by the pope
to be at the same time considered as re-establishing Henry IV. in his
rights to the crown, whereof it was contended that he was deprived by the
excommunication and censures of Sixtus V. and Gregory XIV., which this
absolution was to remove. The two French negotiators rejected these
attempts, and steadily maintained the complete independence of the king's
temporal sovereignty, as well as the power of intervention of the French
episcopate in his absolution. Clement VIII. was a judicious and prudent
pope; and he did not persist. The absolution was solemnly pronounced on
the 17th of September, 1595, by the pope himself, from a balcony erected
in St. Peter's Square, and in presence of the population. The gates of
the church were thrown open and a Te Deum was sung. A grand ceremony
took place immediately afterwards in the church of St. Louis of the
French. Rome was illuminated for three days, and, on the 7th of November
following, a pope's messenger left for Paris with the bull of absolution
drawn up in the terms agreed upon.
Another reconciliation, of less solemnity, but of great importance, that
between the Duke of Mayenne and Henry IV., took place a week after the
absolution pronounced by the pope. As soon as the civil war, continued
by the remnants of the dying League, was no more than a disgraceful
auxiliary to the foreign war between France and Spain, Mayenne was in his
soul both grieved and disgusted at it. The affair of Fontaine-Francaise
gave him an opportunity of bringing matters to a crisis; he next day
broke with the Constable of Castile, Don Ferdinand de Velasco, who
declined to follow his advice, and at once entered into secret
negotiations with the king. Henry wrote from Lyons to Du Plessis-Mornay,
on the 24th of August, 1595, "The Duke of Mayenne has asked me to allow
him three months for the purpose of informing the enemy of his
determination in order to induce them to join him in recognizing me and
serving me. So doing, he has also agreed to bind himself from this
present date to recognize me and serve me, whatever his friends may do."
On the 23d of September following, Henry IV., still at Lyons, sent to M.
de la Chatre:--
"I forward you the articles of a general truce which I have granted to
the Duke of Mayenne at his pressing instance, and on the assurance he has
given me that he will get it accepted and observed by all those who are
still making war within my kingdom, in his name or that of the League."
This truce was, in point of fact, concluded by a preliminary treaty
signed at Chalons, and by virtue of which Mayenne ordered his lieutenants
to give up to the king the citadel of Dijon. The negotiations continued,
and, in January, 1596, a royal edict, signed at Folembray, near Laon,
regulated, in thirty-one articles and some secret articles, the
conditions of peace between the king and Mayenne. The king granted him,
himself and his partisans, full and complete amnesty for the past,
besides three surety-places for six years, and divers sums, which, may be
for payment of his debts, and may be for his future provision, amounted
to three million five hundred and eighty thousand livres at that time
(twelve million eight hundred and eighty-eight thousand francs of the
present day). The Parliament of Paris considered these terms exorbitant,
and did not consent to enregister the edict until April 9, 1596, after
three letters jussory from the king. Henry IV. nobly expressed, in the
preamble of the edict, the motives of policy that led to his generous
arrangements; after alluding to his late reconciliation with the pope,
"Our work," he said, "would have been imperfect, and peace incomplete, if
our most dear and most beloved cousin, the Duke of Mayenne, chief of his
party, had not followed the same road, as he resolved to do so soon as he
saw that our holy father had approved of our reunion. This hath made us
to perceive better than heretofore the aim of his actions, to accept and
take in good part all that he hath exhibited against us of the zeal he
felt for religion, and to commend the anxiety he hath displayed to
preserve the kingdom in, its entirety, whereof he caused not and suffered
not the dismemberment when the prosperity of his affairs seemed to give
him some means of it; the which he was none the more inclined to do when
he became weakened, but preferred to throw himself into our arms rather
than betake himself to other remedies, which might have caused the war to
last a long while yet, to the great damage of our people. This it is
which hath made us desire to recognize his good intent, to love him and
treat him for the future as our good relative and faithful subject."
[_Memoires de la Ligue,_ t. vi. p. 349.]
[Illustration: The Castle of Monceaux----91]
To a profound and just appreciation of men's conduct Henry IV. knew how
to add a winning grace and the surprising charm of a familiar manner.
After having signed the edict of Folembray, he had gone to rest a while
at Monceaux. Mayenne went to visit him there on the 31st of January,
1596. There is nothing to be added to or taken from the account given by
Sully of their interview. "The king, stepping forward to meet Mayenne,
embraced him thrice, assuring him that he was welcome, and that he
embraced him as cordially as if there had never been anything between
them. M. de Mayenne put one knee on the ground, embraced the king's
thigh, and assured him that he was his very humble servant and subject,
saying that he considered himself greatly bounden to him, as well for
having with so much, of gentleness, kindness, and special largesses
restored him to his duty, as for having delivered him from Spanish
arrogance and Italian crafts and wiles. Then the king, having raised him
up and embraced him once more, told him that he had no doubt at all of
his honor and word, for a man of worth and of good courage held nothing
so dear as the observance thereof. Thereupon he took him by the hand and
began to walk him about at a very great pace, showing him the alleys and
telling all his plans and the beauties and conveniences of this mansion.
M. de Mayenne, who was incommoded by a sciatica, followed as best he
could, but some way behind, dragging his limbs after him very heavily.
Which the king observing, and that he was mighty red, heated, and was
puffing with thickness of breath, he turned to Rosny, whom he held, with
the other hand, and said in his ear, 'If I walk this fat carcass here
about much longer, then am I avenged without much difficulty for all the
evils he hath done us, for he is a dead man.' And thereupon pulling up,
the king said to him, 'Tell the truth, cousin, I go a little too fast for
you; and I have worked you too hard.' 'By my faith, sir,' said M. de
Mayenne, slapping his hand upon his stomach, 'it is true; I swear to you
that I am so tired and out of breath that I can no more. If you had
continued walking me about so fast, for honor and courtesy did not permit
me to say to you, "Hold! enough!" and still less to leave you, I believe
that you would have killed me without a thought of it.' Then the king
embraced him, clapped him on the shoulder, and said with a laughing face,
open glance, and holding out his hand, 'Come, take that, cousin, for, by
God, this is all the injury and displeasure you shall ever have from me;
of that I give you my honor and word with all my heart, the which I never
did and never will violate.' 'By God, sir,' answered M. de Mayenne,
kissing the king's hand and doing what he could to put one knee upon the
ground, 'I believe it and all other generous things that may be expected
from the best and bravest prince of our age. And you said it, too, in so
frank a spirit and with so kindly a grace that my feelings and my
obligations are half as deep again. However, I swear to you over again,
sir, by the living God, on my faith, my honor, and my salvation, that I
will be to you, all my life long, loyal subject and faithful servant; I
will never fail you nor desert you; I will have while I live no desires
or designs of importance which are not suggested by your Majesty himself;
nor will I ever be cognizant of them in the case of others, though they
were my own children, without expressly opposing them and giving you
notice of them at once.' 'There, there, cousin,' rejoined the kinm, 'I
quite believe it; and that you may be able to love me and serve me long,
go rest you, refresh you, and drink a draught at the castle. I have in
my cellars some Arbois wine, of which I will send you two bottles, for
well I know that you do not dislike it. And here is Rosny, whom I will
lend you to accompany you, to do the honors of the house and to conduct
you to your chamber: he is one of my oldest servants, and one of those
who have been most rejoiced to see that you would love me and serve me
cordially.'" [(OEconomies royales, t. iii. pp. 7-10.]
Mayenne was as good as his word. After the edict of Folembray, he lived
fourteen years at the court of Henry IV., whom he survived only about
sixteen months [for he died on the 4th of October, 1611, and Henry IV.
was assassinated by Ravaillac on the 13th of May, 1610], and during all
that time he was loyal and faithful to him, never giving him any but good
counsels and sometimes rendering him useful services. A rare example of
a party-chief completely awakened and tamed by experience: it made him
disgusted with fanaticism, faction, civil war, and complicity with the
foreigner. He was the least brilliant but the most sensible, the most
honest, and the most French of the Guises. Henry IV., when seriously ill
at Fontainebleau in 1608, recommended him to Queen Mary de' Medici as one
of the men whom it was most important to call to the councils of state;
and, at the approach of death, Mayenne, weary and weak in the lap of
repose, could conscientiously address those who were around him in such
grand and Christian language as this: "It is no new thing to know that I
must die; for twelve years past my lingering and painful life has been
for the most part an apprenticeship thereto. My sufferings have so
dulled the sting of death that I rather count upon it than dread it;
happy to have had so long a delay to teach me to make a good end, and to
rid me of the things which formerly kept me from that knowledge. Happy
to meet my end amongst mine own people and to terminate by a peaceful
death the sufferings and miseries of my life. I formerly sought death
amidst arms; but I am better pleased, for my soul's salvation, to meet it
and embrace it on my bed than if I had encountered it in battle, for the
sake of the glory of the world."
Let, us return to Henry IV. Since his declaration of war against Philip
II. he had gained much ground. He had fought gloriously, in his own
person, and beaten the Spaniards at Fontaine-Francaise. He had obtained
from Pope Clement VIII. the complete and solemn absolution which had been
refused to him the year before. Mayenne had submitted to him, and that
submission had been death to the League. Some military reverses were
intermingled with these political successes. Between the 25th of June,
1595, and the 10th of March, 1597, the Spanish armies took, in Picardy
and Artois, Le Catelet, Doullens, Cambrai, Ardres, Ham, Guines and two
towns of more importance, Calais, still the object of English ambition
and of offers on the part of Queen Elizabeth to any one who could hand it
over to her, and Amiens, one of the keys to France on the frontier of the
north. These checks were not without compensation. Henry invested and
took the strong place of La Fere; and he retook Amiens after a six
months' struggle. A Spanish plot for getting possession of Marseilles
failed; the young Duke of Guise, whom Henry had made governor of
Provence, entered the city amidst shouts of Hurrah for the king!
"Now I am king!" cried Henry, on receiving the news, so generally was
Marseilles even then regarded as the queen of the Mediterranean. The
Duke of Epernon, who had attempted to make of Provence an independent
principality for himself, was obliged to leave it and treat with the
king, ever ready to grant easy terms to those who could give up to him or
sell him any portion of his kingdom. France was thus being rapidly
reconstituted. "Since the month of January, 1596, Burgundy, parts of
Forez, Auvergne, and Velay, the whole of Provence, half Languedoc, and
the last town of Poitou had been brought back to their allegiance to the
king. French territory and national unity had nothing more to wait for,
to complete their re-establishment, than a portion of Brittany and four
towns of Picardy still occupied by the Spaniards." [Poirson, _Histoire
du Regne de Henri IV., t. ii. p. 159.]
But these results were only obtained at enormous expense and by means of
pecuniary sacrifices, loans, imposts, obligations of every sort, which
left the king in inextricable embarrassment, and France in a condition of
exhaustion still further aggravated by the deplorable administration of
the public finances. On the 15th of April, 1596, Henry IV. wrote from
Amiens to Rosny, "My friend, you know as well as any of my servants what
troubles, labors, and fatigues I have had to go through to secure my life
and my dignity against so many sorts of enemies and perils. Nevertheless
I swear to you that all these traverses have not caused me so much
affliction and bitterness of spirit as the sorrow and annoyance I now
feel at finding thyself in continual controversies with those most in
authority of my servants, officers, and councillors of state, when I
would fain set about restoring this kingdom to its highest splendor, and
relieving my poor people, whom I love as my dear children (God having at
present granted me no others), from so many talliages, subsidies,
vexations, and oppressions whereof they daily make complaints to me.
. . . Having written to them who are of my council of finance how that
I had a design of extreme importance in hand for which I had need of a
fund of eight hundred thousand crowns, and therefore I begged and
conjured them, by their loyalty and sincere affection towards me and
France, to labor diligently for the certain raising of that sum, all
their answers, after several delays, excuses, and reasons whereof one
destroyed another, had finally no other conclusion than representations
of difficulties and impossibilities. Nay, they feared not to send me
word that so far from being able to furnish me with so notable a sum,
they found great trouble in raising the funds to keep my household going.
. . . I am resolved to know truly whether the necessities which are
overwhelming me proceed from the malice, bad management, or ignorance of
those whom I employ, or, good sooth, from the diminution of my revenues
and the poverty of my people. And to that end, I mean to convoke the
three orders of my kingdom, for to have of them some advice and aid, and
meanwhile to establish among those people some loyal servant of mine,
whom I will put in authority little by little, in order that he may
inform me of what passes in my council, and enlighten me as to that which
I desire to know. I have, as I have already told you, cast my eyes upon
you to serve me in this commission, not doubting at all that I shall
receive contentment and advantage from your administration. And I wish
to tell you the state to which I am reduced, which is such that I am very
near the enemy, and have not, as you may say, a horse to fight on or a
whole suit of harness to my back. My shirts are all torn, my doublets
out at elbows; my cupboard is often bare, and for the last two days I
have been dining and supping with one and another; my purveyors say they
have no more means of supplying my table, especially as for more than six
months they have had no money. Judge whether I deserve to be so treated,
and fail not to come. I have on my mind, besides, two or three other
matters of consequence on which I wish to employ you the moment you
arrive. Do not speak of all this to anybody whatsoever, not even to your
wife. Adieu, my friend, whom well I love."
Henry IV. accomplished all that, when he wrote to Rosny, he had showed
himself resolved to undertake. External circumstances became favorable
to him. Since his conversion to Catholicism, England and her queen,
Elizabeth, had been colder in the cause of the French alliance. When,
after his declaration of war against Philip II., Henry demanded in London
the support on which he had believed that he might rely, Elizabeth
answered by demanding in her turn the cession of Calais as the price of
her services. Quite determined not to give up Calais to England, Henry,
without complaining of the demand, let the negotiation drag, confining
himself to saying that he was looking for friends, not for masters. When
in April, 1596, it was known in London that Calais had been taken by the
Spaniards, Elizabeth sent word to Henry, then at Boulogne, that she would
send him prompt assistance if he promised, when Calais was recovered from
the Spaniards, to place it in the hands of the English. "If I must be
despoiled," answered Henry, "I would rather it should be by my enemies
than by my friends. In the former case it will be a reverse of fortune,
in the latter I might be accused of poltroonery." Elizabeth assured the
French ambassador, Harlay de Sancy, "that it had never been her intention
to keep Calais, but simply to take care that, in any case, this important
place should not remain in the hands of the common enemy whilst the king
was engaged in other enterprises; anyhow," she added, "she had ordered
the Earl of Essex, admiral of the English fleet raised against Spain, to
arm promptly in order to go to the king's assistance." There was anxiety
at that time in England about the immense preparations being made by
Philip for the invasion he proposed to attempt against England, and for
the putting to sea of his fleet, the Grand Armada. In conversation with
the high treasurer, Lord Burleigh, Elizabeth's chief minister, Sancy
found him even colder than his queen; Burleigh laid great stress upon all
that the queen had already done for France, and on the one million five
hundred thousand gold crowns she had lent to the king. "It would be more
becoming," he said, "in the king's envoys to thank the queen for the aid
she had already furnished than to ask for more; by dint of drawing water
the well had gone dry; the queen could offer the king only three thousand
men, on condition that they were raised at his own expense." "If the
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