[1609-1610 A.D.]

honour, carried her off from the court by stealth, first to Picardy, whence, on receiving a summons from the king to return, he made a second flight, and gained the Low Countries. The king showed himself strangely affected by this incident: the discovery of Biron's conspiracy did not cause him more trouble. Sully was called up in the night; and the whole court was roused by the agitation of the monarch, who was pacing and stamping up and down the chamber of the queen, while the courtiers stood "pasted to the walls," says Sully, lest they should interrupt the monarch's passion. The flight of the first prince of the blood, and his taking refuge with the Spaniards, was certainly a grave question, love and jealousy being set aside. The king demanded Sully's advice, who hesitated, but being forced, advised him to "do nothing." Nothing!" said Henry; "call you that advice?" Sully replied that the escape of the prince was a matter of little importance, unless the king chose to make it important by raising a clamour, and showing that he took an interest concerning it. Henry, however, was not in a humour to treat the matter thus slightly and thus wisely: he instructed his ambassador to demand of the archduke to deliver up the prince and princess of Condé ; and, as Sully foresaw, the court of Brussels, in refusing, filled Europe with calumnies against Henry; asserting that he wanted to take by force the wife of the first prince of the realm and of the blood. When Henry, immediately afterwards, menaced war, the outcry was that Europe was about to be deluged in blood for another Helen.

66

It was, indeed, unfortunate that Henry, who had remained so many years at peace, no doubt preparing and amassing the materials and resources of war, and cautiously awaiting fit pretext and proper reason, should now draw the sword for a cause at once criminal and absurd.

Grand Design of Henry IV; His Death

At home the rest of Henry's reign was perhaps monotonous; but it was none the less momentous, for on the ruins of France the Bourbon monarchy was already building up the centralised absolutism which it was the work of Richelieu to perfect and Louis XIV to wield. But in foreign affairs the schemes of Henry were not less far reaching. France was to become the centre of European politics, the dictator of Germany. In Sully's Economies Royales we may read of the details of the great scheme which anticipated that of Napoleon by two centuries. But such details are the work of subsequent addition and the plan of making Europe into a grand republic of fifteen states with well-balanced interests, etc., was perhaps not so clearly conceived even by Sully as historians have been accustomed to state. some such design was undoubtedly behind the foreign policy which Henry was inaugurating at his death. He possibly intended to unite with France the Flemish, Dutch, and North German states in a movement that would overthrow Spain and Austria. His own statements make this plain.a

But

Henry IV had expressed on many occasions and had incessantly repeated in his diplomacy the end which he had in view. His object was to restore the cities and states of the empire to their former rights and liberties, to assure the liberty of the United Provinces, to base the politics of France upon the alliance of the secondary states, in the north the United Provinces, Denmark, Sweden, and the German principalities, in the south, Switzerland, Savoy, and the Italian principalities; finally to extend his system of religious tolerance so as to guarantee liberty everywhere to the dissenters from the established cult, whether these dissenters might be Catholics, Lutherans, or

[1610 A.D.] Calvinists; and to prevent religious wars or religious pretexts assigned to purely political wars and enterprises. He had long since declared to all the courts of Europe that he had ended the era of civil war in France and wished to end it everywhere else.

However it may be as to these observations, France, according to him, must pursue a double end in her foreign relations, lay the foundations of perpetual peace, and drive the Turks from Europe. In order to bring about perpetual peace it would be necessary to reduce the possessions of Austria, establish a certain balance of power, and create periodical diets or congresses, either for this or that category of states or for all Europe, with federal armies and fleets to execute the decisions made in common.b

He now resolved to realise his dream but this, which had been a vision of heroism and philanthropy, was now degraded and sullied by the immediate motive. Henry, who was passionately fond of glory, saw the stain that was to rob his achievements of their brightness and purity. The accusation of the Spaniards troubled him: perhaps there was even truth in the reproach that the love of a sexagenarian king for a princess, and a married princess of twenty, was the only cause and pretext for convulsing Europe and shedding its best blood. This weighed upon Henry, and fretted him: his gaiety disappeared. Remorse and mortification came to cloud the heaven of his declining days. A dark presentiment, similar to that which had forewarned his loved Gabrielle of her fate, now gathered around Henry: he could not shake it off.

He intended leaving the queen as regent during his absence at the head of his army; and her previous coronation, a ceremony that had not yet taken place, was considered requisite. This detained him in the capital; and Marie de' Medici, fond of state and ceremony, insisted on it, and delighted in it. Henry was annoyed and fretted: he frequently said he should never leave Paris alive, and he longed to contradict his presentiment. The coronation of the queen at length took place. On the following day, the 14th of May, 1610, he manifested strong feelings of despondency. Despatches brought him word that his enemies were making no preparations for defence, and that they gave out that the delivery of the prince and princess of Condé would at once allay his choler and arrest his schemes. This increased his ill humour: he called for Sully; but learning that his minister was ill at the arsenal, the king's coach was ordered to convey him thither. Seven of the suite occupied with the king his ample carriage. The duke d'Épernon was in one corner, and Henry next to him. The vehicle proceeded, but was stopped in the narrow rue de la Ferronnerie by two loaded carts. This was the moment chosen by an assassin, Ravaillac, who, mounting on the step, and leaning full into the carriage, struck the king with a poniard, first in the stomach, and then in the breast. One of these stabs pierced the heart of the noble Henry.

To paint the rage and despair of the people would be impossible. The once detested Henry had won every heart; and the general grief for him partook of the character of madness. Tears were the least tokens of sorrow; many died on learning the catastrophe, amongst others the brave De Vic, the comrade of Henry. The lifeless body was borne to the Louvre, whilst Ravaillac, who made no attempt to escape, was taken, brandishing his dagger, and only preserved by the guards from being instantly torn in pieces. He had been a monk, strongly imbued with the king-killing principles that the Jesuits had broached. His crime had long been meditated by him; but no proof exists that he had been instigated either by Spain or by any knot

(1589-1610 A.D.]

of malcontent courtiers. Suspicion, indeed, has scattered its stain on all with an unsparing hand. Épernon, the queen, Concini, and many others, were accused as being privy to the deed; and the record of Ravaillac's trial having been destroyed, whilst these personages possessed the chief influence, gives some colour to the charge. But the tortured culprit might idly or malevolently cast imputation on the powerful, as indeed he menaced to do. For when some one pressed him to name his accomplices, Ravaillac answered, "Suppose I name you." The seed of his crime was the diabolical maxim to which the fanaticism of the league had given birth, and which it had rendered popular. It had germinated and grown in the dark solitude of a rancorous and fanatic spirit.k

CHARACTER AND POLICY OF HENRY IV

There are two Henry IV's; the Henry of tradition and the Henry of history. The one more heroic and, thanks to Voltaire, more popular; the other, underneath his crafty good nature, much more able and, with his pliant character, much better fitted to raise a falling edifice than a simple character would have been. Henry of Navarre had the most brilliant bravery, a quality common to the warriors of that time and of all times. But it is pleasing in a prince, and the chief who is ever ready to offer his life to the sword point is sure to win his soldiers' hearts. Reared among the mountaineers of the Pyrenees, he possessed an agility equal to theirs and a body incapable of fatigue. The vicissitudes through which he had passed had made his religion uncertain. Charles IX said to him, "Death or the mass ! He took the mass; later he abjured, and this abjuration was not to be the last. So he felt no anger against those who professed a different doctrine; his nature made fanaticism odious to him, and his position imposed tolerance upon him. Furthermore, he was a good comrade, showing the same face to good or to ill fortune. He bent under misfortune but did not break, and found resources in the most desperate situations. He loved pleasure, but not as it was loved by Henry III. He was kind through good nature as well as experience of life. He had friends who, it is true, got from his friendship more good words than good results; but his heart was open if his hand was closed, because he was for twenty years the chief of a party obliged to give much and to take nothing except from the enemy.

One night when D'Aubignée and La Force were sleeping not far from the king, the former complained bitterly to the latter of their master's stinginess. La Force, overcome by fatigue, did not listen. "Don't you hear?" asked D'Aubigné. La Force roused himself and asked what he was saying. "Why, he is telling you," cried the king, who heard everything, "that I am a harsh, miserly fellow and the most ungrateful mortal on the face of the earth." 66 He did not treat me worse on account of it," adds D'Aubigné, "but he did not give me a quarter of a crown more."

His forced residence at the court of the Valois had been fatal to his morals. For several years he forgot his rôle and his fortune. After the death of the duke of Anjou, Duplessis-Mornay wrote to him: "Pastimes are no longer in season. It is time for you to make love to France." Henry felt this rebuke; he gave up his pleasures and put on his cuirass."

In Sully's Mémoires we find this description of him1: "Such was the tragical end of a prince, on whom Nature, with a lavish profusion, had

[1It must be recalled that Sully's estimate is that of a comrade in arms and a counsellor. It is a flattering tribute rather than a calmly judicious one.]

H. W. VOL. XI. 2 E

[1589-1610 A.D.] bestowed all her advantages, except that of a death such as he merited. I have already observed that his stature was so happy, and his limbs formed with such proportion, as constitutes not only what is called a well-made man, but indicates strength, vigour, and activity; his complexion was animated; all the lineaments of his face had that agreeable liveliness which forms a sweet and happy physiognomy, and perfectly suited to that engaging easiness of manners which, though sometimes mixed with majesty, never lost the graceful affability and easy gaiety so natural to that great prince. With regard to the qualities of his heart and mind, I shall tell the reader nothing new by saying that he was candid, sincere, grateful, compassionate, generous, wise, penetrating.

"He loved all his subjects as a father, and the whole state as the head of a family; and it was this disposition that recalled him even from the midst of his pleasures to the care of rendering his people happy and his kingdom flourishing; hence proceeded his readiness in conceiving, and his industry in perfecting, a great number of useful regulations. Many I have already specified; and I shall sum up all by saying that there were no conditions, employments, or professions to which his reflections did not extend; and that with such clearness and penetration, that the changes he projected could not be overthrown by the death of their author, as it but too often happened in this monarchy. It was his desire, he said, that glory might influence his last years and make them at once useful to the world and acceptable to God; his was a mind in which the ideas of what is great, uncommon, and beautiful seemed to rise of themselves: hence it was that he looked upon adversity as a mere transitory evil, and prosperity as his natural state.

"I should destroy all I have now said of this great prince if, after having praised him for an infinite number of qualities well worthy to be praised, I did not acknowledge that they were balanced by faults, and those, indeed, very great. I have not concealed, or even palliated his passion for women; his excess in gaming; his gentleness often carried to weakness; nor his propensity to every kind of pleasure: I have neither disguised the faults they made him commit, the foolish expenses they led him into, nor the time they made him waste; but I have likewise observed (to do justice on both sides) that his enemies have greatly exaggerated all these errors. If he was, as they say, a slave to women, yet they never regulated his choice of ministers, decided the destinies of his servants, or influenced the deliberations of his council. As much may be said in extenuation of all his other faults. And to sum up all, in a word, what he has done is sufficient to show that the good and bad in his character had no proportion to each other; and that since honour and fame have always had power enough to tear him from pleasure, we ought to acknowledge these to have been his great and real passions."p

Martin's Estimate of Henry IV

The whole reign of Henry IV, after the Peace of Vervins, had been but a preface; the half-opened book is closed forever! All the past glory of the Béarnais would have been eclipsed by the magnificent results that his policy had prepared and that his arms were to realise. In spite of the exertions and the excesses of his life his robust constitution still promised him some years of military activity, enough without doubt to make sure if not of the complete triumph, at least of the predominance of his European system; his heirs would have done the rest! The politics of France, allied with the Protestants without being absorbed by Protestantism, triumphing by the aid

[1589-1610 A.D.]

of the entire foreign and French Reformation, would have been started beyond recall upon the paths of international equity, intellectual liberty, and religious tolerance. Henry IV would have made splendid reparation. for the faults of Francis I and himself. He would not have abjured Catholicism, but with his victorious sword he would have obliterated his coronation oath and the humiliation of Roman absolution. Germany would not have seen the Thirty Years' War, nor France the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The seventeenth century would have had all its glory without its fatal errors.

God did not grant it him! Henry IV bore to the tomb not only the European system which he intended to inaugurate but all the elements of order and power that he had given to his country. France fell from the height to which he had raised her, until the day when a powerful genius came anew to bring order into chaos and to revive in part the policy of Henry, but under much less favourable conditions. This genius was that of an individual, not that of a king, and Henry IV has remained the greatest and above all the most French of the kings of France; not again has there been seen on the throne a soul so national, an intellect so liberal. No one ever felt better than he the true destiny of France. It is not without reason that the popularity of Henry has increased with the growth of the modern spirit; it is not without reason that the eighteenth century tried to make him the epic hero of French history. The labouring classes have never forgotten the king who was to them the most sympathetic in manners and in heart, the king who occupied himself most seriously with the interests of the soil and of labour. Thinkers will never cease to honour in him the forerunner of a new Europe, the just and profound mind whose diplomatic plans are to-day in many respects the politics of the most enlightened men, and finally the champion and martyr of the most sacred of liberties, that of conscience.c

Having listened thus to a contemporary and to a modern French estimate of the great ruler, let us take a parting glance at him through the eyes of a scarcely less appreciative English historian.a

STEPHEN'S CHARACTERISATION OF HENRY IV AND HIS TIMES

It has been said of Henry IV [says Sir James Stephen], with equal truth and force, that he was l'Hôpital in arms. The principles which had been asserted by the wisdom and the eloquence of the great chancellor became triumphant by the foresight and the conquests of the great king. In an age of wild disorder and overwhelming calamity, he was raised up to restore his kingdom to affluence and to peace. He appeared to rescue his Protestant subjects from the tyranny which had so long denied to them the freedom of conscience. He came to give a firm basis to the national policy, and to open to his people at large a new direction, and a wider scope, for the martial energies by which they had hitherto been at once so highly, and so ineffectually, distinguished. For these high offices he was qualified by great talents, and by many virtues. With a capacity large enough to embrace all the social, military, and political interests of his dominions, he combined that practical good sense and flexibility of address, without which there is no safe descent from the higher regions of thought to the real business of life. The intuitive promptitude, and the enduring stability, of his resolutions attested at once his large experience in affairs, and his wide survey both of the resources at his command, and of the contingencies to which