LETTER OF KING HENRY IV. TOUCHING THE BATTLE OF IVRY.

“It hath pleased God to grant me that which I had the most desired, to have means of giving battle to mine enemies; having firm confidence that, having got so far, God would give me grace to obtain the victory, as it hath happened this very day. You have heretofore heard how that, after the capture of the town of Honfleur, I went and made them raise the siege they were laying to the town of Meulan, and I offered them battle, which it seemed that they ought to accept, having in numbers twice the strength that I could muster. But in the hope of being able to do so with more safety, they made up their minds to put it off until they had been joined by fifteen hundred lances which the Duke of Parma was sending them; which was done a few days ago. And then they spread abroad everywhere that they would force me to fight, wheresoever I might be; they thought to have found a very favorable opportunity in coming to encounter me at the siege I was laying before the town of Dreux; but I did not give them the trouble of coming so far; for, as soon as I was advertised that they had crossed the river of Seine and were heading towards me, I resolved to put off the siege rather than fail to go and meet them. Having learned that they were six leagues from the said Dreux, I set out last Monday, the 12th of this month, and went and took up my quarters at the town of Nonancourt, which was three leagues from them, for to cross the river there. On Tuesday, I went and took the quarters which they meant to have for themselves, and where their quarter-masters had already arrived. I put myself in order of battle, in the morning, on a very fine plain, about a league from the point which they had chosen the day before, and where they immediately appeared with their whole army, but so far from me that I should have given them a great advantage by going so forward to seek them; I contented myself with making them quit a village they had seized close by me; at last, night constrained us both to get into quarters, which I did in the nearest villages.

“To-day, having had their position reconnoitered betimes, and after it had been reported to me that they had shown themselves, but even farther off than they had done yesterday, I resolved to approach so near to them that there must needs be a collision. And so it happened between ten and eleven in the morning; I went to seek them to the very spot where they were posted, and whence they never advanced a step but what they made to the charge; and the battle took place, wherein God was pleased to make known that His protection is always on the side of the right; for in less than an hour, after having spent all their choler in two or three charges which they made and supported, all their cavalry began to take its departure, leaving their infantry, which was in large numbers. Seeing which, their Swiss had recourse to my compassion, and surrendered, colonels, captains, privates, and all their flags. The lanzknechts and French had no time to take this resolution, for they were cut to pieces, twelve hundred of one and as many of the other; the rest prisoners and put to the rout in the woods, at the mercy of the peasants. Of their cavalry there are from nine hundred to a thousand killed, and from four to five hundred dismounted and prisoners; without counting those drowned in crossing the River Eure, which they crossed to Ivry for to put it between them and us, and who are a great number. The rest of the better mounted saved themselves by flight, in very great disorder, having lost all their baggage. I did not let them be until they were close to Mantes. Their white standard is in my hands, and its bearer a prisoner; twelve or fifteen other standards of their cavalry, twice as many more of their infantry, all their artillery; countless lords prisoners, and of dead a great number, even of those in command, whom I have not yet been able to find time to get identified. But I know that amongst others Count Egmont, who was general of all the forces that came from Flanders, was killed. Their prisoners all say that their army was about four thousand horse, and from twelve to thirteen thousand foot, of which I suppose not a quarter has escaped. As for mine, it may have been two thousand horse and eight thousand foot. But of this cavalry, more than six hundred horse joined me after I was in order of battle, on the Tuesday and Wednesday; nay, the last troop of the noblesse from Picardy, brought up by Sire d’Humieres, and numbering three hundred horse, came up when half an hour had already passed since the battle began.

“It is a miraculous work of God’s, who was pleased, first of all, to give me the resolution to attack them, and then the grace to be able so successfully to accomplish it. Wherefore to Him alone is the glory; and so far as any of it may, by His permission, belong to man, it is due to the princes, officers of the crown, lords, captains, and all the noblesse, who with so much ardor rushed forward, and so successfully exerted themselves, that their predecessors did not leave them more beautiful examples than they will leave to their posterity. As I am greatly content and satisfied with them, so I think that they are with me, and that they have seen that I had no mind to make use of them anywhere without I had also shown them the way. I am still following up the victory with my cousins the princes of Conti, Duke of Montpensier, Count of St. Paul, Marshal-duke of Aumont, grand prior of France, La Tremoille, Sieurs de la Guiche and de Givry, and several other lords and captains. My cousin Marshal de Biron remains with the main army awaiting my tidings, which will go on, I hope, still prospering. You shall hear more fully in my next despatch, which shall follow this very closely, the particulars of this victory, whereof I desired to give you these few words of information, so as not to keep you longer out of the pleasure which I know that you will receive therefrom. I pray you to impart it to all my other good servants yonder, and, especially, to have thanks given therefor to God, whom I pray to have you in His holy keeping.

“HENRY.

“From the camp at Rosny, this 14th day of March, 1590.”

History is not bound to be so reserved and so modest as the king was about himself. It was not only as able captain and valiant soldier that Henry IV. distinguished himself at Ivry; there the man was as conspicuous for the strength of his better feelings, as generous and as affectionate as the king was farsighted and bold. When the word was given to march from Dreux, Count Schomberg, colonel of the German auxiliaries called reiters, had asked for the pay of his troops, letting it be understood that they would not fight if their claims were not satisfied. Henry had replied harshly, “People don’t ask for money on the eve of a battle.” At Ivry, just as the battle was on the point of beginning, he went up to Schomberg. “Colonel,” said he, “I hurt your feelings. This may be the last day of my life. I can’t bear to take away the honor of a brave and honest gentleman like you. Pray forgive me and embrace me.” “Sir,” answered Schomberg, “the other day your Majesty wounded me, to-day you kill me.” He gave up the command of the reiters in order to fight in the king’s own squadron, and was killed in action. As he passed along the front of his own squadron, Henry halted; and, “Comrades,” said he, “if you run my risks, I also run yours. I will conquer or die with you. Keep your ranks well, I beg. If the heat of battle disperse you for a while, rally as soon as you can under those three pear trees you see up yonder to my right; and if you lose your standards, do not lose sight of my white plume; you will always find it in the path of honor, and, I hope, of victory too.”

Having galloped along the whole line of his army, he halted again, threw his horse’s reins over his arm, and clasped his hands, exclaiming, “O God, Thou knowest my thoughts, and Thou dost see to the very bottom of my heart; if it be for my people’s good that I keep the crown, favor Thou my cause and uphold my arms. But if Thy holy will have otherwise ordained, at least let me die, O God, in the midst of these brave soldiers who give their lives for me!” When the battle was over and won, he heard that Rosny had been severely wounded in it; and when he was removed to Rosny Castle, the king, going close up to his stretcher, said, “My friend, I am very glad to see you with a much better countenance than I expected; I should feel still greater joy if you assure me that you run no risk of your life or of being disabled forever; the rumor was, that you had two horses killed under you; that you had been borne to earth, rolled over and trampled upon by the horses of several squadrons, bruised and cut up by so many blows that it would be a marvel if you escaped, or if, at the very least, you were not mutilated for life in some limb. I should like to hug you with both arms. I shall never have any good fortune or increase of greatness but you shall share it. Fearing that too much talking may be harmful to your wounds, I am off again to Mantes. Adieu, my friend; fare you well, and be assured that you have a good master.”

Henry IV. had not only a warm but an expansive heart; he could not help expressing and pouring forth his feelings. That was one of his charms, and also one of his sources of power.

The victory of Ivry had a great effect in France and in Europe. But not immediately and as regarded the actual campaign of 1590. The victorious king moved on Paris, and made himself master of the little towns in the neighborhood with a view of investing the capital. When he took possession of St. Denis [on the 9th of July, 1590], he had the relics and all the jewelry of the church shown to him. When he saw the royal crown, from which the principal stones had been detached, he asked what had become of them. He was told that M. de Mayenne had caused them to-be removed. “He has the stones, then,” said the king; “and I have the soil.” He visited the royal tombs, and when he was shown that of Catherine de’ Medici, “Ah!” said he smiling, “how well it suits her!” And, as he stood before Henry III.‘s he said, “Ventre-saint-gris! There is my good brother; I desire that I be laid beside him.” As he thus went on visiting and establishing all his posts around Paris, the investment became more strict; it was kept up for more than three months, from the end of May to the beginning of September, 1590; and the city was reduced to a severe state of famine, which would have been still more severe if Henry IV. had not several times over permitted the entry of some convoys of provisions and the exit of the old men, the women, the children, in fact, the poorest and weakest part of the population. “Paris must not be a cemetery,” he said; “I do not wish to reign over the dead.” “A true king,” says De Thou, “more anxious for the preservation of his kingdom than greedy of conquest, and making no distinction between his own interests and the interests of his people.” Two famous Protestants, Ambrose Pare and Bernard Palissy, preserved, one by his surgical and the other by his artistic genius, from the popular fury, were still living at that time in Paris, both eighty years of age, and both pleading for the liberty of their creed and for peace. “Monseigneur,” said Ambrose Pare one day to the Archbishop of Lyons, whom he met at one end of the bridge of St. Michael, “this poor people that you see here around you is dying of sheer hunger-madness, and demands your compassion. For God’s sake show them some, as you would have God’s shown to you. Think a little on the office to which God hath called you. Give us peace or give us wherewithal to live, for the poor folks can hold out no more.” The Italian Danigarola himself, Bishop of Asti and attache to the embassy of Cardinal Gaetani, having publicly said that peace was necessary, was threatened by the Sixteen with being sewn up in a sack and thrown into the river if he did not alter his tone. Not peace, but a cessation of the investment of Paris, was brought about, on the 23d of August, 1590, by Duke Alexander of Parma, who, in accordance with express orders from Philip II., went from the Low Countries, with his army, to join Mayenne at Meaux and threaten Henry IV. with their united forces if he did not retire from the walls of the capital.

Henry IV. offered the two dukes battle, if they really wished to put a stop to the investment; but “I am not come so far,” answered the Duke of Parma, “to take counsel of my enemy; if my manner of warfare does not please the King of Navarre, let him force me to change it, instead of giving me advice that nobody asks him for.” Henry in vain attempted to make the Duke of Parma accept battle. The able Italian established himself in a strongly intrenched camp, surprised Lagny, and opened to Paris the navigation of the Marne, by which provisions were speedily brought up. Henry decided upon retreating; he dispersed the different divisions of his army into Touraine, Normandy, Picardy, Champagne, Burgundy, and himself took up his quarters at Senlis, at Compiegne, in the towns on the banks of the Oise. The Duke of Mayenne arrived on the 18th of September at Paris; the Duke of Parma entered it himself with a few officers, and left it on the 13th of November with his army on his way back to the Low Countries, being a little harassed in his retreat by the royal cavalry, but easy, for the moment, as to the fate of Paris and the issue of the war, which continued during the first six months of the year 1591, but languidly and disconnectedly, with successes and reverses see-sawing between the two parties and without any important results.

Then began to appear the consequences of the victory of Ivry and the progress made by Henry IV., in spite of the check he received before Paris and at some other points in the kingdom. Not only did many moderate Catholics make advances to him, struck with his sympathetic ability and his valor, and hoping that he would end by becoming a Catholic, but patriotic wrath was kindling in France against Philip II. and the Spaniards, those fomenters of civil war in the mere interest of foreign ambition. We quoted but lately the words used by the governor of Dieppe, Aymar de Chastes, when he said to Villars, governor of Rouen, who pressed him to enter the League, “You will yourself find out that the Spaniard is the real head of this League.” On the 5th of August, 1590, during the investment of Paris, a placard was pasted all over the city. “Poor Parisians,” it said, “I deplore your misery, and I feel even greater pity towards you for being still such simpletons. See you not that this son of perdition of a Spanish ambassador [Bernard de Mendoza], who had our good king murdered, is making game of you, cramming you so with pap that he would fain have had you burst before now in order to lay hands on your goods and on France if he could? He alone prevents peace and the repose of desolated France, as well as the reconciliation of the king and the princes in real amity. Why are ye so tardy to cast him in a sack down stream, that he may return the sooner to Spain?” On the 6th of August, there was found written with charcoal, on the gate of St. Anthony, the following eight lines:—

“These,” said a Latin inscription on the awnings of the butchers’ shops, “are the rewards of those who expose their lives for Philip” [Haec sunt munera pro iis qui vitam pro Philippo proferunt: Memoires de L’Estoile, t. ii. pp. 73, 74]. In 1591 these public sentiments, reproduced and dilated upon in numerous pamphlets, imported dissension into the heart of the League itself, which split up into two parties, the Spanish League and the French League. The Committee of Sixteen labored incessantly for the formation and triumph of the Spanish League; and its principal leaders wrote, on the 2d of September, 1591, a letter to Philip II., offering him the crown of France, and pledging their allegiance to him as his subjects. “We can positively assure your Majesty,” they said, “that the wishes of all Catholics are to see your Catholic Majesty holding the sceptre of this kingdom and reigning over us, even as we do throw ourselves right willingly into your arms as into those of our father, or at any rate establishing one of your posterity upon the throne.” These ringleaders of the Spanish League had for their army the blindly fanatical and demagogic populace of Paris, and were, further, supported by four thousand Spanish troops whom Philip II. had succeeded in getting almost surreptitiously into Paris. They created a council of ten, the sixteenth century’s committee of public safety; they proscribed the policists; they, on the 15th of November, had the president, Brisson, and two councillors of the Leaguer Parliament arrested, hanged them to a beam and dragged the corpses to the Place de Grove, where they strung them up to a gibbet with inscriptions setting forth that they were heretics, traitors to the city and enemies of the Catholic princes. Whilst the Spanish League was thus reigning at Paris, the Duke of Mayenne was at Laon, preparing to lead his army, consisting partly of Spaniards, to the relief of Rouen, the siege of which Henry IV. was commencing. Being summoned to Paris by messengers who succeeded one another every hour, he arrived there on the 28th of November, 1591, with two thousand French troops; he armed the guard of Burgesses, seized and hanged, in a ground-floor room of the Louvre, four of the chief leaders of the Sixteen, suppressed their committee, re-established the Parliament in full authority, and, finally, restored the security and preponderance of the French League, whilst taking the reins once more into his own hands. But the French League before long found itself, in its turn, placed in a situation quite as embarrassing, if not so provocative of odium, as that in which the Spanish League had lately been; for it had become itself the tool of personal and unlawful ambition. The Lorraine princes, it is true, were less foreign to France than the King of Spain was; they had even rendered her eminent service; but they had no right to the crown. Mayenne had opposed to him the native and lawful heir to the throne, already recognized and invested with the kingly power by a large portion of France, and quite capable of disputing his kingship with the ablest competitors. By himself and with his own party alone, Mayenne was not in a position to maintain such a struggle; in order to have any chance he must have recourse to the prince whose partisans he had just overthrown and chastised.

On the 11th of November, 1591, Henry IV. had laid siege to Rouen with a strong force, and was pushing the operations on vigorously. In order to obtain the troops and money without which he could not relieve this important place, the leader of the French League treated humbly with the patron of the Spanish League. “In the conferences held at La Fere and at Lihom-Saintot, between the 10th and the 18th of January, 1592,” says M. Poirson, “the Duke of Parma, acting for the King of Spain, and Mayenne drew up conventions which only awaited the ratification of Philip II. to be converted into a treaty. Mayenne was to receive four millions of crowns a year and a Spanish army, which together would enable him to oppose Henry IV. He had, besides, a promise of a large establishment for himself, his relatives, and the chiefs of his party. In exchange, he promised, in his own name and that of the princes of his house and the great lords of the League, that Philip II.‘s daughter, the Infanta Isabella (Clara Eugenia), should be recognized as sovereign and proprietress of the throne of France, and that the states-general, convoked for that purpose, should proclaim her right and confer upon her the throne. It is true,” adds M. Poirson, “that Mayenne stipulated that the Infanta should take a husband, within the year, at the suggestion of the councillors and great officers of the crown, that the kingdom should be preserved in its entirety, and that its laws and customs should be maintained. . . . It even appears certain that Mayenne purposed not to keep any of these promises, and to emend his infamy by a breach of faith. . . . But a conviction generally prevailed that he recognized the rights of the Infanta, and that he would labor to place her on the throne. The lords of his own party believed it; the legate reported it everywhere; the royal party regarded it as certain. During the whole course of the year 1592, this opinion gave the most disastrous assistance to the intrigues and ascendency of Philip II., and added immeasurably to the public dangers.” [Poirson, Histoire du Regne d’Henri IV., t. i. pp. 304-306.]

Whilst these two Leagues, one Spanish and the other French, were conspiring thus persistently, sometimes together and sometimes one against the other, to promote personal ambition and interests, at the same time national instinct, respect for traditional rights, weariness of civil war, and the good sense which is born of long experience, were bringing France more and more over to the cause and name of Henry IV. In all the provinces, throughout all ranks of society, the population non-enrolled amongst the factions were turning their eyes towards him as the only means of putting an end to war at home and abroad, the only pledge of national unity, public prosperity, and even freedom of trade, a hazy idea as yet, but even now prevalent in the great ports of France and in Paris. Would Henry turn Catholic? That was the question asked everywhere, amongst Protestants with anxiety, but with keen desire, and not without hope, amongst the mass of the population. The rumor ran that, on this point, negotiations were half opened even in the midst of the League itself, even at the court of Spain, even at Rome, where Pope Clement VIII., a more moderate man than his predecessor, Gregory XIV., “had no desire,” says Sully, “to foment the troubles of France, and still less that the King of Spain should possibly become its undisputed king, rightly judging that this would be laying open to him the road to the monarchy of Christendom, and, consequently, reducing the Roman pontiffs to the position, if it were his good pleasure, of his mere chaplains.” [OEconomies royales, t. ii. p. 106.] Such being the existing state of facts and minds, it was impossible that Henry IV. should not ask himself roundly the same question, and feel that he had no time to lose in answering it.

At the beginning of February, 1593, he sent for Rosny, one evening very late. “And so,” says Rosny, “I found his Majesty in bed, having already wished every one a good night; who, as soon as he saw me come in, ordered a hassock to be brought and me to kneel thereon against his bed, and said to me, ‘My friend, I have sent for you so late for to speak with you about the things that are going on, and to hear your opinions thereon; I confess that I have often found them better than those of many others who make great show of being clever. If you continue to leave me the care of that which concerns you, and yourself to take continual care of my affairs, we shall both of us find it to our welfare. I do not wish to hide any longer that for a long time past I have had my eye upon you in order to employ you personally in my most important affairs, especially in those of my finances, for I hold you to be honest and painstaking. For the present, I wish to speak with you about that large number of persons of all parties, all ranks, and different tempers, who would be delighted to exert themselves for the pacification of the kingdom, especially if I can resolve to make some arrangement as regards religion. I am quite resolved not to hear of any negotiation or treaty, save on these two conditions, that some result may be looked for tending both to the advantage of the people of my kingdom and to the real re-establishment of the kingly authority. I know that it is your custom, whenever I put anything before you, to ask me for time to think well thereon before you are disposed to tell me your opinion; in three or four days I shall send for you to tell me what has occurred to you touching all these fine hopes that many would have me anticipate from their interventions; all of them persons very diverse in temper, purposes, interests, functions, and religion.”

“Whereupon,” says Rosny, “the king having dismissed me with a good evening, he did not fail to send for me again three days afterwards, in order that I should go and see him again in bed, near the which having made me kneel as before, he said, ‘Come, now, tell me this moment, and quite at leisurely length, all your foolish fancies, for so you have always called the best counsels you have ever given me, touching the questions I put to you the other evening. I am ready to listen to you right on to the end, without interrupting you.’”

“Sir,” said Rosny, “I have reflected not only on what your Majesty was pleased to tell me three days ago, but also on what I have been able to learn, as to the same affairs, from divers persons of all qualities and religions, and even women who have talked to me in order to make me talk, and to see if I knew any particulars of your private intentions. . . . As it seems to me, sir, all these goings, comings, writings, letters, journeys, interventions, parleys, and conferences cannot be better compared than to that swarming of attorneys at the courts, who take a thousand turns and walks about the great hall, under pretence of settling cases, and all the while it is they who give them birth, and would be very sorry for a single one to die off. In the next place, not a single one of them troubles himself about right or wrong, provided that the crowns are forthcoming, and that, by dint of lustily shouting, they are reputed eloquent, learned, and well stocked with inventions and subtleties. Consequently, sir, without troubling yourself further with these treaty-mongers and negotiators, who do nothing but lure you, bore you, perplex your mind, and fill with doubts and scruples the minds of your subjects, I opine, in a few words, that you must still for some time exercise great address, patience, and prudence, in order that there may be engendered amongst all this mass of confusion, anarchy, and chimera, that they call the holy catholic union, so many and such opposite desires, jealousies, pretensions, hatreds, longings, and designs, that, at last, all the French there are amongst them must come and throw themselves into your arms, bit by bit, recognize your kingship alone as possible, and look to nothing but it for protection, prop, or stay. Nevertheless, sir, that your Majesty may not regard me as a spirit of contradiction for having found nothing good in all these proposals made to you by these great negotiators, I will add to my suggestions just one thing; if a bit of Catholicism were quite agreeable to you, if it were properly embraced and accepted accordingly, in honorable and suitable form, it would be of great service, might serve as cement between you and all your Catholic subjects; and it would even facilitate your other great and magnificent designs whereof you have sometimes spoken to me. Touching this, I would say more to you about it if I were of such profession as permitted me to do so with a good conscience; I content myself, as it is, with leaving yours to do its work within you on so ticklish and so delicate a subject.”

“I quite understand your opinions,” said the king; “they resolve themselves almost into one single point: I must not allow the establishment of any association or show of government having the least appearance of being able to subsist, by itself or by its members, in any part of my kingdom, or suffer dismemberment in respect of any one of the royal prerogatives, as regards things spiritual as well as temporal. Such is my full determination.”

“I answered the king,” continues Rosny, “that I was rejoiced to see him taking so intelligent a view of his affairs, and that, for the present, I had no advice to give him but to seek repose of body and mind, and to permit me likewise to seek the same for myself, for I was dead sleepy, not having slept for two nights; and so, without a word more, the king gave me good night, and, as for me, I went back to my quarters.”

A few days before this conversation between the king and his friend Rosny, on the 26th of January, 1593, the states-general of the League had met in the great hall of the Louvre, present the Duke of Mayenne, surrounded by all the pomp of royalty, but so nervous that his speech in opening the session was hardly audible, and that he frequently changed color during its delivery. On leaving, his wife told him that she was afraid he was not well, as she had seen him turn pale three or four times. A hundred and twenty-eight deputies had been elected; only fifty were present at this first meeting. They adjourned to the 4th of February. In the interval, on the 28th of January, there had arrived, also, a royalist trumpeter, bringing, “on behalf of the princes, prelates, officers of the crown, and principal lords of the Catholic faith, who were with the King of Navarre, an offer of a conference between the two parties, for to lay down the basis of a peace eagerly desired.” On hearing this message, Cardinal Pelleve, Archbishop of Sens, one of the most fiery prelates of the League, said, “that he was of opinion that the trumpeter should be whipped, to teach him not to undertake such silly errands for the future;” “an opinion,” said somebody, “quite worthy of a thick head like his, wherein there is but little sense.”

The states-general of the League were of a different opinion. After long and lively discussion, the three orders decided, each separately, on the 25th of February, to consent to the conference demanded by the friends of the King of Navarre. On the 4th of February, when they resumed session, Cardinal Philip de Sega, Bishop of Placencia (in Spain) and legate of Pope Clement VIII., had requested to be present at the deliberation of the assembly, but his request was refused; the states confined themselves to receiving his benediction and hearing him deliver an address.

The different fate of these two proposals was a clear indication of the feelings of the assembly; they were very diverse in the three orders which constituted it; almost all the clergy, prelates, and popular preachers were devoted to the Spanish League; the noblesse were not at all numerous at these states. “The most brilliant and most active members of it,” says M. Picot correctly, “had ranged themselves behind Henry IV.; and it covered itself with eternal honor by having been the first to discern where to look for the hopes and the salvation of France.” The third estate was very much divided; it contained the fanatical Leaguers, at the service of Philip II. and the court of Rome, the partisans, much more numerous, of the French League, who desired peace, and were ready to accept Henry IV., provided that he turned Catholic, and a small band of political spirits, more powerful in talent than number.

Regularly as the deputies arrived, Mayenne went to each of them, saying privately, “Gentlemen, you see what the question is; it is the very chiefest of all matters (res maxima rerum agitur). I beg you to give your best attention to it, and to so act that the adversaries steal no march on us and get no advantage over us. Nevertheless, I mean to abide by what I have promised them.” Mayenne was quite right: it was certainly the chiefest of all matters. The head of the Protestants of France, the ally of all the Protestants in Europe—should he become a Catholic and King of France? The temporal head of Catholic Europe, the King of Spain —should he abolish the Salic law in France, by placing upon it his daughter as queen, and dismember France to his own profit and that of the leaders of the League, his hirelings rather than his allies? Or, peradventure, should one of these Leaguer-chiefs be he who should take the crown of France, and found a new dynasty there? And which of these Leaguer-chiefs should attain this good fortune? A half-German or a true Frenchman? A Lorraine prince or a Bourbon? And, if a Lorraine prince, which? The Duke of Mayenne, military head of the League, or his uterine brother, the Duke of Nemours, or his nephew the young Duke of Guise, son of the Balafre? All these questions were mooted, all these pretensions were on the cards, all these combinations had their special intrigue. And in the competition upon which they entered with one another, at the same time that they were incessantly laying traps for one another, they kept up towards one another, because of the uncertainty of their chances, a deceptive course of conduct often amounting to acts of downright treachery committed without scruple, in order to preserve for themselves a place and share in the unknown future towards which they were moving. It was in order to have his opinion upon a position so dark and complicated, and upon the behavior it required, that Henry IV., then at Mantes, sent once more for Rosny, and had a second conversation, a few weeks later, with him.

“Well! my friend,” said the king, “what say you about all these plots that are being projected against my conscience, my life, and my kingdom? Since the death of the Duke of Parma [on the 2d of December, 1592, in the Abbey of St. Waast at Arras, from the consequences of a wound received in the preceding April at the siege of Caudebec], it seems that deeds of arms have given place to intrigues and contests of words. I fancy that such gentry will never leave me at rest, and will at last, perhaps, attempt my liberty and my life. I beg you to tell me your opinion freely, and what remedies, short of cruelty and violence, I might now employ to get rid of all these hinderances and cabals (monopoles) that are going on against the rights which have come to me by the will of God, by birth, and by the laws of the realm.”

“Sir,” said Rosny, “I do not fancy that deferments and temporizations, any more than long speeches, would now be seasonable; there are, it seems to me, but two roads to take to deliver yourself from peril, but not from anxiety, for from anxiety kings and princes, the greater they are, can the less secure themselves if they wish to reign successfully. One of the two roads is to accommodate yourself to the desires and wishes of those of whom you feel distrust; the other, to secure the persons of those who are the most powerful, and of the highest rank, and most suspected by you, and put them in such place as will prevent them from doing you hurt; you know them pretty nearly all; there are some of them very rich; you will be able for a long while to carry, on war. As for advising you to go to mass, it is a thing that you ought not, it seems to me, to expect from me, who am of the religion; but frankly will I tell you that it is the readiest and the easiest means of confounding all these cabals (monopoles), and causing all the most mischievous projects to end in smoke.”

The King: “But tell me freely, I beg of you, what you would do if you were in my place.”

Rosny: “I can assure you honestly, sir, that I have never thought about what I should feel bound to do for to be king, it having always seemed to me that I had not a head able or intended to wear a crown. As to your Majesty it is another affair; in you, sir, that desire is not only laudable, but necessary, as it does not appear now this realm can be restored to its greatness, opulence, and splendor but by the sole means of your eminent worth and downright kingly courage. But whatever right you have to the kingdom, and whatever need it has of your courage and worth for its restoration, you will never arrive at complete possession and peaceable enjoyment of this dominion but by two sole expedients and means. In case of the first, which is force and arms, you will have to employ strong measures, severity, rigor, and violence, processes which are all utterly opposed to your temper and inclination: you will have to pass through an infinity of difficulties, fatigues, pains, annoyances, perils, and labors, with a horse perpetually between your legs, harness [halecret, a species of light cuirass] on back, helmet on head, pistol in fist, and sword in hand. And, what is more, you will have to bid adieu to repose, pleasure, pastime, love, mistress, play, hunting, hawking, and building; for you will not get out of such matters but by multiplicity of town-takings, quantity of fights, signal victories, and great bloodshed. By the other road, which is to accommodate yourself, as regards religion, to the wish of the greatest number of your subjects, you will not encounter so many annoyances, pains, and difficulties in this world, but as to the next, I don’t answer for you; it is for your Majesty to take a fixed resolution for yourself, without adopting it from any one else, and less from me than from any other, as you well know that I am of the religion, and that you keep me by you not as a theologian and councillor of church, but as a man of action and councillor of state, seeing that you have given me that title, and for a long space employed me as such.”

The king burst out laughing, and, sitting up in his bed, said, after scratching his head several times, to Rosny,—

“All you say to me is true; but I see so many thorns on every side that it will go very hard but some of them will prick me full sore. You know well enough that my cousins, the princes of the blood, and ever so many other lords, such as D’Epernon, Longueville, Biron, d’O, and Vitry, are urging me to turn Catholic, or else they will join the League. On the other hand, I know for certain that Messieurs de Turenne, de la Tremoille, and their lot, are laboring daily to have a demand made, if I turn Catholic, on behalf of them of the religion, for an assembly to appoint them a protector and an establishment of councils in the provinces; all things that I could not put up with. But if I had to declare war against them to prevent it, it would be the greatest annoyance and trouble that could ever happen to me: my heart could not bear to do ill to those who have so long run my risks, and have employed their goods and their lives in my defence.”

At these last words, Rosny threw himself upon his knees, with his eyes full of tears, and, kissing the king’s hands, he said, “Sir, I am rejoiced beyond measure to see you so well disposed towards them of the religion. I have always been afraid that, if you came to change your religion, as I see full well that you will have to do, you might be persuaded to hate and maltreat those of us others, of the towns as well as of the noblesse, who will always love you heartily and serve you faithfully. And be assured that the number thereof will be so great that, if there rise up amongst them any avaricious, ambitious, and factious, who would fain do the contrary, these will be constrained by the others to return to their duty. What would, in my opinion, be very necessary, would be to prevail upon the zealous Catholics to change that belief which they are so anxious to have embraced by all the rest, to wit, that they of the religion are all damned. There are certainly, also, some ministers and other obtrusive spirits amongst the Huguenots who would fain persuade us of the same as regards Catholics; for my own part, I believe nothing of the kind; I hold it, on the contrary, as indisputable that, of whatever religion men make outward profession, if they die keeping the Decalogue and believing in the Creed (Apostles’), if they love God with all their heart and are charitable towards their neighbor, if they put their hopes in God’s mercy and in obtaining salvation by the death, merits, and justice of Jesus Christ, they cannot fail to be saved, because they are then no longer of any erroneous religion, but of that which is most agreeable to God. If you were pleased to embrace it and put it in practice all the days of your life, not only should I have no doubt of your salvation, but I should remain quite assured that, not regarding us as execrable and damned, you would never proceed to the destruction or persecution of those of our religion who shall love you truly and serve you faithfully. From all such reflections and discourse I conclude that it will be impossible for you ever to reign in peace so long as you make outward profession of a religion which is held in such great aversion by the majority of both great and small in your kingdom, and that you cannot hope to raise it to such general splendor, wealth, and happiness as I have observed you often projecting. Still less could you flatter yourself with the idea of ever arriving at the accomplishment of your lofty and magnificent designs for the establishment of a universal most Christian republic, composed of all the kings and potentates of Europe who profess the name of Christ; for, in order to bring about so great a blessing, you must needs have tranquil possession of a great, rich, opulent, and populous kingdom, and be in a condition to enter into great and trustworthy foreign associations.” [OEconomies royales, or Memoires de Sully, t. ii. pp. 81-100.] One is inclined to believe that, even before their conversations, Henry IV. was very near being of Rosny’s opinion; but it is a long stride from an opinion to a resolution. In spite of the breadth and independence of his mind, Henry IV. was sincerely puzzled. He was of those who, far from clinging to a single fact and confining themselves to a single duty, take account of the complication of the facts amidst which they live, and of the variety of the duties which the general situation or their own imposes upon them. Born in the Reformed faith, and on the steps of the throne, he was struggling to defend his political rights whilst keeping his religious creed; but his religious creed was not the fruit of very mature or very deep conviction; it was a question of first claims and of honor rather than a matter of conscience; and, on the other hand, the peace of France, her prosperity, perhaps her territorial integrity, were dependent upon the triumph of the political rights of the Bearnese. Even 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.”