Engraved by W. Holl.
SULLY.
From the original Picture by an unknown Artist in the private collection of Louis Philippe, King of the French.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge
London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East.
SULLY
The Duc de Sully is celebrated as the companion, minister, and historian of Henry IV., the most popular of French monarchs. Eminent among his contemporaries both as a soldier and as a financier, it is his especial glory that he laboured to promote the welfare of the industrious classes, when other statesmen regarded them but as the fount from which royal extravagance was to be supplied.
Maximilian, son of François de Bethune, Baron de Rosny, and of Charlotte Dauvet, daughter of a President of the Chamber of Accounts at Paris, was born at Rosny in the year 1559. His family was ancient, illustrious, and once wealthy, but his paternal grandfather had almost ruined it by his extravagance, his maternal grandfather disinherited him because he embraced the reformed religion; and with a slight annual allowance young Rosny had to seek his own fortune in the extravagant profession of arms. By a sage economy and order he, however, supported himself, and escaped the dependence and dishonour consequent on extravagance in a poor man. When thirteen years of age he was presented by his father to the young Prince of Navarre, who was only seven years older than himself, and who at once conceived that affection for him which was destined to cease only with his own life.
On the memorable day of St. Bartholomew, Rosny was in Paris, engaged in the prosecution of his studies. A known member of the Protestant Church, his life was in jeopardy: his servant and his tutor fell victims to the rage of the Papists, and he himself, obliged to quit his chambers for a safer hiding-place, and exposed to imminent dangers in traversing the streets, owed his deliverance more than once to a union of courage and coolness not very common in a youth of thirteen. After this event he, as well as his patron and friend Henry of Navarre, conformed for a time to the observances of the Roman Catholic religion; but in 1576, when Henry escaped from the thraldom in which he had been held, abjured Catholicism and placed himself at the head of a Protestant army, Rosny was the companion of his flight, and first began to carry arms in his service. His noble birth, and the favour of his master, would at once have secured him military rank, but Rosny preferred to serve as a simple volunteer, in order, as he said, to learn the art of war by its elements.
At the surprise of Réde, at the siege of Villefranche, at the taking of Eause and Cahors, at the battle of Marmande, and in all the dangerous affairs in which Henry engaged, Rosny was always at his side. His good services, and the affection borne him by his master, did not, however, prevent a quarrel, which, it must be said, was provoked by his own imprudence and aggravated by his own pride. In spite of the commands of the Prince of Navarre, who had wisely prohibited the practice of referring private quarrels to the arbitrement of the sword, Rosny acted as second in a duel, in which one of the principals was desperately wounded. The Prince’s anger at the breach of discipline was exasperated by a strong personal regard for the wounded man. He sent for Sully, rebuked him in harsh terms, and said that he deserved to lose his head for what he had done. The pride of the young soldier was touched; he replied that he was neither vassal nor subject of Navarre, and would henceforth seek the service of a more grateful master. The Prince rejoined in severe terms and turned his back on him; and Rosny was quitting the court, when the Queen, who knew his value, interfered, and reconciled him with her son.
Not long after he quitted Henry’s service, alleging that he had pledged his word to accompany the Duc d’Alençon, afterwards Duc d’Anjou, brother of Henry III., in his contest for the sovereignty of Flanders; where, in case of success, he was to be put in possession of the estates which had belonged to his maternal grandfather. In this campaign he gained neither honour nor profit, and soon returned to his original master. Henry received him with open arms, and, as if to prove that absence had not affected his confidence and esteem, sent him a few days after on an important mission to Paris.
In the troubled times which followed, Rosny was unshaken in devotion to the cause which he had espoused. He accompanied Henry, when that prince, with only nineteen followers, threw himself, as a last resource, into La Rochelle. He undertook an embassy from that city to Henry III., then almost as much persecuted by the League as the King of Navarre himself. In his Memoirs he has left a striking description of the degraded condition of that sovereign, who had entirely abandoned himself to favourites and menials of the court. “His Majesty was in his cabinet; he had his sword by his side, a hood thrown over his shoulders, a little bonnet on his head, and a basket full of little dogs hung round his neck by a broad riband.” He listened to Rosny with vacant stupidity, neither moving his feet, his hands, nor his head. When he spoke, he complained of the audacity and insults of the League—said that nothing would go well in France until the King of Navarre went to mass—but agreed, finally, that Rosny might treat with the envoys of the Protestant Cantons of Switzerland, in his name as well as the King of Navarre’s, for the raising of twenty thousand Swiss troops, to be employed between the two sovereigns.