During the siege of Paris, some conferences had been held between the chiefs of the two parties, which ended in a kind of accommodation. The Catholics of the King’s party began to complain of his perseverance in Calvinism; and some influential men who were of the latter persuasion, especially his confidential friend and minister Rosny, represented to him the necessity of a change. Even some of the reformed ministers softened the difficulty, by acknowledging salvation to be possible in the Roman church. In 1593 the ceremony of abjuration was performed at St. Denys, in presence of a multitude of the Parisians. If, as we cannot but suppose, the monarch’s conversion was owing to political motives, the apostacy must be answered for at a higher than any human tribunal: politically viewed, it was perhaps one of the most beneficial steps ever taken towards the pacification and renewal of prosperity of a great kingdom. In the same year he was crowned at Chartres, and in 1594 Paris opened her gates to him. He had but just been received into the capital, where he was conspicuously manifesting his beneficence and zeal for the public good, when he was wounded in the throat by John Châtel, a young fanatic. When the assassin was questioned, he avowed the doctrine of tyrannicide, and quoted the sermons of the Jesuits in his justification. That society therefore was banished by the Parliament, and their librarian was executed on account of some libels against the King, found in his own hand-writing among his papers.
For two years after his ostensible conversion, the King was obliged daily to perform the most humiliating ceremonies, by way of penance; and it was not till 1595 that he was absolved by Clement VIII. The Leaguers then had no further pretext for rebellion, and the League necessarily was dissolved. Its chiefs exacted high terms for their submission; but the civil wars had so exhausted the kingdom, that tranquillity could not be too dearly purchased; and Henry was faithful to all his promises, even after his authority was so firmly established, that he might have broken his word with safety to all but his own conscience and honour. Although the obligations which he had to discharge were most burdensome, he found means to relieve his people, and make his kingdom prosper. The Duc de Mayenne, in Burgundy, and the Duke de Mercœur, in Britanny, were the last to protract an unavailing resistance; but the former was reduced in 1596, and the latter in 1598, and thenceforth France enjoyed almost uninterrupted peace till Henry’s death. But the Protestants gave him almost as much uneasiness as the Catholic Leaguers. He had granted liberty of conscience to the former; a measure which was admitted to be necessary by the prudent even among the latter. Nevertheless, either from vexation at his having abjured their religion, from the violence of party zeal, or disgust at being no longer the objects of royal preference, the Calvinists preferred their demands in so seditious a tone, as stopped little short of a rebellious one. While on the road to Britanny, he determined to avoid greater evils by timely compromise. The edict of Nantes was then promulgated, authorizing the public exercise of their religion in several towns, granting them the right of holding offices, putting them in possession of certain places for eight years, as pledges for their security, and establishing salaries for their ministers. The clergy and preachers demurred, but to no purpose; the Parliament ceased to resist the arguments of the Prince, when he represented to them as magistrates, that the peace of the state and the prosperity of the church must be inseparable. At the same time he endeavoured to convince the bigots among the priesthood on both sides, that the love of country and the performance of civil and political duties may be completely reconciled with difference of worship.
But it would be unjust to attribute these enlightened views to Henry, without noticing that he had a friend as well as minister in Rosny, best known as the Duc de Sully, who probably suggested many of his wisest measures, and at all events superintended their execution, and did his best to prevent or retrieve his sovereign’s errors by uncompromising honesty of advice and remonstrance. The allurements of pleasure were powerful over the enthusiastic and impassioned temperament of Henry: it was love that most frequently prevailed over the claims of duty. The beautiful Gabrielle d’Estrées became the absolute mistress of his heart; and he entertained hopes of obtaining permission from Rome to divorce Margaret de Valois, from whom he had long lived in a state of separation. Had he succeeded time enough, he contemplated the dangerous project of marrying the favourite; but her death saved him both from the hazard and disgrace. It is not by anecdotes of his amours, that we would be prone to illustrate the life of this remarkable sovereign; but the following may deserve notice as highly characteristic. Shortly after the peace with Spain, concluded by the advantageous treaty of Vervins in 1598, Henry, on his return from hunting, in a plain dress as was usual with him, and with only two or three persons about him, had to cross a ferry. He saw that the ferryman did not know him, and asked what people said about the peace. “Faith,” said the man, “I know nothing about this fine peace; every thing is still taxed, even to this wretched boat, by which I can scarcely earn a livelihood.” “Does not the King intend,” said Henry, “to set all this taxation to rights?” “The King is good kind of man enough,” answered the sturdy boatman; “but he has a mistress, who wants so many fine gowns, and so many trumpery trinkets, and we have to pay for all that. Besides, that is not the worst: if she were constant to him, we would not mind; but people do say that the jade has other gallants.” Henry, much amused with this conversation, sent for the ferryman next day, and extorted from him all that he had said the evening before, in presence of the object of his vituperation. The enraged lady insisted on his being hanged forthwith. “How can you be such a fool?” said the King; “this poor devil is put out of humour only by his poverty: for the time to come, he shall pay no tax for his boat, and then he will sing for the rest of his days, Vive Henri, vive Gabrielle.”
The King’s passions were not buried in the grave of La Belle Gabrielle: she was succeeded by another mistress, Henrietta d’Entragues, a woman of an artful, intriguing, and ambitious spirit, who inflamed his desires by refusals, until she extorted a promise of marriage. Henry showed this promise, ready signed, to Sully: the minister, in a noble fit of indignation, tore it to pieces. “I believe you are mad,” cried the King, in a rage. “It may be so,” answered Sully; “but I wish I was the only madman in France.” The faithful counsellor was in momentary expectation of an angry dismissal from all his appointments; but his monarch’s candour and justice, and long tried friendship, prevailed over his besetting weakness; and as an additional token of his favour, he conferred on Sully the office of Grand Master of the Ordnance. The sentence of divorce, so long solicited, was at length granted; and the King married Mary de Medicis, who bore Louis XIII. to him in 1601. The match, however, contributed little to his domestic happiness.
While France was flourishing under a vigilant and paternal administration, while her strength was beginning to keep pace with her internal happiness, new conspiracies were incessantly formed against the King. D’Entragues could not be his wife, but continued to be his mistress. She not only exasperated the Queen’s peevish humour against him, but was ungrateful enough to combine with her father, the Count d’Auvergne, and the Spanish Court, in a plot which was timely discovered. The criminals were arrested and condemned, but received a pardon. The Duke de Bouillon afterwards stirred up the Calvinists to take Sedan, but it was immediately restored. Spite of the many virtues and conciliatory manners of Henry, the fanatics could never pardon his former attachment to the Protestant cause. He was continually surrounded with traitors and assassins: almost every year produced some attempt on his life, and he fell at last by the weapon of a misguided enthusiast. Meanwhile, from misplaced complaisance to the Pope, he recalled the Jesuits, contrary to the advice of Sully and the Parliament.
Shortly before his untimely end, Henry is said by some historians, to have disclosed a project for forming a Christian republic. The proposal is stated to have been, to divide Europe into fifteen fixed powers, none of which should be allowed to make any new acquisition, but should together form an association for maintaining a mutual balance, and preserving peace. This political reverie, impossible to be realized, is not likely ever to have been actually divulged, even if meditated by Henry, nor is there any trace of it to be found in the history, or among the state papers of England, Venice, or Holland, the supposed co-operators in the scheme. His more rational design in arming went no further than to set bounds to the ambition and power of the house of Austria, both in Germany and Italy. His warlike preparations have, however, been ascribed to his prevailing weakness, in an infatuated passion for the Princess of Condé. Whatever may have been the motive, his means of success were imposing. He was to march into Germany at the head of forty thousand excellent troops. The army, provisions, and every other necessary were in readiness. Money no longer failed; Sully had laid up forty millions of livres in the treasury, which were destined for this war. His alliances were already assured, his generals had been formed by himself, and all seemed to forebode such a storm, as must probably have overwhelmed an emperor devoted to the search after the philosopher’s stone, and a king of Spain under the dominion of the inquisition. Henry was impatient to join his army; but his mind had become harassed with sinister forebodings, and his chagrin was increased by a temporary alienation from his faithful minister. He was in his way to pay a visit of reconciliation to Sully, when his coach was entangled as it passed along a street. His attendants left the carriage to remove the obstruction, and during the delay thus caused he was stabbed to the heart by Francis Ravaillac, a native of Angoulême. This calamitous event took place on May 14, 1610, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. The Spaniards, who had the strongest interest in the catastrophe, were supposed to have been the instigators; but the fear of implicating other powers, and plunging France into greater evils than those from which their hero had rescued them, deterred not only statesmen, but even the judges on Ravaillac’s trial, from pressing for the names of accomplices. Hardouin de Perefixe, in his History of Henry the Great, says, “If it be asked who inspired the monster with the thought? History answers that she does not know; and that in so mysterious an affair, it is not allowable to vent suspicions and conjectures as assured truths; that even the judges who conducted the examinations opened not their mouths, and spoke only with their shoulders.” There were seven courtiers in the coach when the murder took place; and the Marshal d’Estrées, in his History of the Regency of Mary de Medicis, says that the Duke d’Epernon and the Marquis de Verneuil were accused by a female servant of the latter, of having been privy to the design; but that, having failed to verify her charge before the Parliament, she was condemned to perpetual imprisonment between four walls. The circumstance that Ravaillac was of Angoulême, which was the Duke’s government, gave some plausibility to the suspicion. It was further whispered, that the first blow was not mortal; but that the Duke stooped to give facility to the assassin, and that he aimed a second which reached the King’s heart. But these rumours passed off, without fixing any well-grounded and lasting imputation on that eminent person’s character.
The assertions of Ravaillac, as far as they have any weight, discountenance the belief of an extended political conspiracy. The house of Austria, Mary de Medicis his wife, Henrietta d’Entragues his mistress, as well as the Duke d’Epernon, have been subjected to the hateful conjectures of Mazarin and other historians; but he who actually struck the blow invariably affirmed that he had no accomplice, and that he was carried forward by an uncontrollable instinct. If his mind were at all acted on from without, it was probably by the epidemic fanaticism of the times, rather than by personal influence.
Henry left three sons and three daughters by Mary de Medicis.
Of no prince recorded in history, probably, are so many personal anecdotes related, as of Henry IV. These are for the most part well known, and of easy access. The whole tenor of Henry’s life exhibits a lofty, generous, and forgiving temper, the fearless spirit which loves the excitement of danger, and that suavity of feeling and manners, which, above all qualities, wins the affections of those who come within its sphere: it does not exhibit high moral or religious principle. But his weaknesses were those which the world most readily pardons, especially in a great man. If Henry had emulated the pure morals and fervent piety of his noble ancestor Louis IX., he would have been a far better king, as well as a better man; yet we doubt whether in that case, his memory would then have been cherished with such enthusiastic attachment by his countrymen.
