In 1606, after many brief quarrels between him and his master, caused chiefly by the intrigues of Henry’s mistresses and worthless courtiers, Rosny was created Duc de Sully and a Peer of France.
The licentiousness of the King, and the power he allowed his mistresses to obtain over him, had continually thwarted Sully and undone much of the good they had together proposed and executed. The minister’s remonstrances were frequent, bold, and at times even violent; indeed, his whole life had been distinguished by an honest bluntness; but the propensities of the amorous monarch were incurable, and his faithful servant had the mortification of seeing him disgrace the last years of his life by an infatuation for the Princess of Condé. Henry had already determined on a war with his old enemies the Spaniards, when the flight of this lady with her husband, who took refuge in the states of the house of Austria, induced him to hurry on his preparations to attack both the Emperor and the King of Spain. Sully, at this time, had amassed forty millions of livres in the treasury of the state, and he engaged moreover to increase this sum to sixty or to seventy millions without laying on any new taxes. He had also provided the most numerous and magnificent corps of artillery that had ever been seen in Europe. But in the midst of these grand preparations Henry’s mind was agitated by his insane passion for the Princess of Condé, and oppressed by a presentiment of his fate. He was indeed told on every hand that plots were laid against his life; his romantic courage forsook him, he became absent and suspicious, and at last distrusted even his faithful minister.
Sully now no longer saw his master except at short intervals, and lived, retired from the court, at the Arsenal, his official residence as Grand Master of the Artillery.
The naturally confident and noble nature of Henry, and his old attachment for the sharer in all his fortunes, triumphed however over his weaknesses and illusions, and he determined to pay Sully a visit and to excuse himself for his late coldness. With these amiable intentions the King left his palace, and was on his way to the Arsenal in an open carriage, when he was stabbed to the heart by the fanatic Ravaillac.
On the death of Henry IV. Sully would have continued his valuable services under the Queen-widow, Mary de’ Medici, who was appointed Regent, but that Princess resigning herself and the government of the state to intriguing Italians, headed by the unpopular Concini, the honest and indignant minister quitted office and the court for ever, and retired to his estates.
The life Sully led in his retreat was most rational and dignified. Unmoved by the ingratitude of the court, of which he was continually receiving fresh proofs, he continued to love the country he had so long governed; and though a zealous Protestant to the last, he would never join in the intrigues of the Hugonots, which he dreaded might renew the horrors of civil war. To find occupation for his active mind he dictated his Memoirs to four secretaries, whom, for many years, he retained in his service, and who, in the ‘Economies Royales,’ better known under the title of ‘Mémoires de Sully,’ preserved not only the most interesting details of the life of their noble master and of Henry IV., but the fullest account of the history and policy, manners and customs, of the age in which Sully lived. Neither the occupations of war nor of politics, in which he had been absorbed for thirty-four years, had eradicated his original taste for polite literature; and in his retirement he composed many pieces not only in prose but in verse. One of his poetical compositions, which is a parallel between Henry IV. and Julius Cæsar, was translated into Latin and much admired throughout Europe.
After having lived thirty years in this retirement, the great Sully expired at his Château of Villebonne, in the eighty-second year of his age, on the 22d December, 1641—the same year in which Lord Strafford, the minister of Charles I., was beheaded in London, and in which the grave closed over the widow of Henry IV., Mary de’ Medici, who died at Cologne in obscurity and great poverty.
It is to be regretted that no author has yet produced a life of Sully worthy of the subject. The ‘Economies Royales’ is the great storehouse of information, but its prolixity and singularity of style render it little attractive to the general reader. The following works, however, may be consulted:—’Les Vies des Hommes Illustres de la France,’ by M. D’Auvigny, and the memoir in the ‘Biographie Universelle.’
