XXVII. liberties, but much which they had audaciously CHAP usurped during the civil war. In great cities, where there was a governor and a parliament, one species of authority counteracted the other, but in towns not so situated, such, for example, as Amiens or Marseilles, the burgesses formed a kind of republic, refusing to receive a royal garrison, and scarcely respecting the royal edicts.* The civil and religious wars of the sixteenth century in France were thus not immediately destructive of liberties, many and various of which they not only allowed to survive, but strengthened. The misfortune was that these liberties were not linked together, and secured in a common bond. The king aimed at the establishment of political unity, because in it he saw the chief strength of the nation against the foreign foe. But social unity the statesmen of the day thought neither attainable nor desirable. In this respect the king's ideas were not advanced beyond those of the fifteenth century. He considered the military strength of the country to exist in the courage of its gentry, who mustering an army upon summons, were to be exempt from taxation. For revenue, the state was to look exclusively to the non-noble. Hence it became the duty and interest of the government to separate the classes, to narrow that which did not contribute to the revenue, and rigidly prevent the wealthy ignoble from becoming noble even by purchase. Thus the two great divisions of the nation, instead of being allowed to mingle and efface sharp and invidious lines of demarcation, were kept apart in different camps, the * Vilipended as is the reign of Henry the Third, and in many respects deservedly, the French statute book is still full of many liberal edicts and regulations issued in his reign, and as the result of the estates, especially in favour of municipal liberties. La Conference des Ordonnances, Fre- XXVII. CHAP. legists and magistrates coming to form an intermediate but perfectly distinct one. In a similar way the two religions were parked off in separate territories and towns, each lord, and more than lord, where it predominated, thus making intolerance a law, and placing the two religions in permanent antagonism, instead of bringing them into gradual accord. At the same time a general representative assembly of the nation was avoided which might have brought the jarring elements together, compelled them to respect each other's privileges, and taught them to seek in common those rights which would be profitable to all. Instead of this, each was taught to stand upon its defence against the other, which soon established a state of truce, not peace, certain to lead at no distant day to a struggle, in which might must absorb right, and which terminated, as history shows, by the French crown subjugating every class or creed that dared to resist or differ from it. It would be unjust to make Henry the Fourth answerable for the result, accomplished for the most part after his time. His policy was merely practical, his aim that of dealing with things as they were according to the ideas of his age. And whilst each class and sect asked him for their separate privileges, he can scarcely be blamed for granting them. None petitioned for the convocation of the states-general, not even the Protestants, who felt they would be in a minority, and as such harshly treated. The nobles disliked a mode of assembly, in which the tiers, or commonalty, at first rivalled and then eclipsed them. Sully gives his own reasons for eschewing representative assemblies, which could be but the instruments of powerful kings, exaggerating their intolerance and their tyranny, and the dominators of weak monarchs, introducing anarchy and turbulence into the government, and permanent factions in the state. These XXVII. objections were not unfounded, and were naturally CHAP. enough suggested to those who had seen England under the Tudors, and France under the Valois. The true virtue of representative assemblies and government lay in the seed and in the future. And Providence alone can be considered to have been able at this period to appreciate the hidden, and yet to be developed, value of such institutions. However strong had been the general reasons for the king's conversion, that immediate urgency which drew him so precipitately to the foot of the altar at St. Denis was not so great as he fancied. Neither the estates nor Mayenne, as has been seen, were prepared to close with the Spanish proposals, or to elect Guise, without money for themselves, and the reinforcements requisite to defend the citizens of Paris from siege and famine. The members of the estates were merely anxious to get away, the Spaniards being no longer able to pay them. The truce therefore for three months was voted by them, and assented to by Mayenne, not in consideration of what passed at St. Denis, but from their own desire and necessity. The Spanish envoys and the Papal legate threatened to abandon the League and Paris altogether. To prevent this, and keep up the semblance of a party, Mayenne and the estates took an oath to maintain the union, resist heresy, and uphold the decrees of Trent, which forbade all toleration. In addition to this public engagement, the duke took a private one at the Augustins, swearing to the Spaniards that he would never recognise Henry until the Pope did so. The Spaniards agreed in return to support him with 14,000 men.' ** After giving this last proof of devotion to their principal and paymaster, the * Mem. of Villars Houdan, and the correspondence in the MSS. de Mesmes. Memoirs of Villeroy, VOL. III. X which state, that the king became XXVII. CHAP. members of the estates separated, putting an end to one of the vilest representative assemblies that ever disgraced a nation. Greedy merely for gold, and not true even to the hand that gave it, they had not the excuse of bigotry to cover the crime of selling their country to the stranger. If they failed to do so, it was not patriotism that forbade, but disappointed greed. The entire party of the League, citizens and nobles, were quite ready to sell themselves for a price. It is difficult to imagine that a prince of firm and honest conviction, whatever that might be, could not have triumphed over a pretended orthodoxy which was the merest selfishness, meanness, and corruption.* Had Philip the Second been prepared with money and with troops, Henry's conversion would not have saved him; but the stores of bigotry were exhausted. The Pope, indeed, held out, and in obedience to the Spanish king, refused all the supplications of the Duc de Nevers, whom Henry had sent to Rome. The Church party at the same time vainly suborned a man named Barrere to assassinate the prince whom it so much dreaded. The regicide was seized at Melun, and broken on the wheel; no punishment however seems to have been inflicted on the ecclesiastical power which had encouraged and suborned him.§ But the lay portion of the League at least gave proofs of its despair to uphold what had become a merely personal and selfish enmity. The governors of provinces had cause of fear, lest the citizens and magistrates, in the prospect of a renewal of the civil war, might return to their allegiance without them, and the principal amongst these accordingly *The estates of the Ligue are sufficiently gibbeted in the Satire Menippée. † Philip's envoy, the Duke of Sessa, threatened to starve Rome, and proceed to all extremities against the Pope if he absolved Henry. MSS. Colbert, f. 14. Discours de ce que fit M. de Nevers. § He was executed August 30, 1593. Sully. XXVII. began to negotiate with the king, under pretext of a CHAP. truce. Vitry was the first. He surrendered Meaux upon Christmas eve.* Villeroy treated for himself and his son, Alincourt, who held Pontoise. He wrote to Mayenne in the first days of January, entreating that chief to make offers to Henry, and to make them openly, secresy having been his bane.† Mayenne was well aware of his danger, but could not shake off the ties which bound him to Spain. His hold of Paris was uncertain‡, being equally mistrusted by the judges and chief citizens now anxious to make their peace with the king, and redeem their past enmity to him, and by the Spaniards, who were supported by the armed democracy, and the survivors of the Sixteen.§ All that Mayenne could do was to hold the balance between them and play one against the other, allowing the moderates to choose city officers in their interest, and to fortify themselves with a burgess guard||; at the same time, to please the Spaniards, he consented to change the governor, Belin, and to replace him by Cossé Brissac. These foreigners also demanded power for the new governor to exile the chiefs of the moderates, their objections to Belin being that he would not go this length. The alarmed magistrates protested, and the parliament passed an arrêt on the 14th of January, ordering the Spanish troops to quit Paris, and Belin to remain, for "if he went, the good burgesses would go with him." La Châtre, in the meantime, surrendered Orleans, notwithstanding the letters and exhortations of the legate.** The Duc de Nemours had sought to make himself master of Lyons by erecting a citadel: but its archbishop, Epinac, joined in a plot with the citizens against his |