Henri IV and his Ministers, finding persuasion of no avail with the Court of Brussels, had recourse to threats, representing that, unless the fair Charlotte were surrendered, war would follow. “Peace and war depend on whether the princess is or is not given up,” said Jeannin to Pecquius, the Archduke’s Ambassador in Paris; and the King himself reminded him that Troy fell because Priam would not surrender Helen.
The gravity of the situation was enhanced by the warlike preparations which were going on all over France for the execution of the “Great Design”: the scheme of liberating Europe from the domination of the House of Austria and of giving France her rightful place in the world which Henri IV had cherished ever since his accession to the throne. It was, however, believed by many that these formidable preparations had no other object that the forcible recovery of the Princesse de Condé, and Malherbe wrote:—
“Deux beaux yeaux sont l’empire
Pour que je soupire.”
The question of how far the course of events was influenced by Henri IV’s infatuation for the Princesse de Condé has been much discussed. The probability is that the affair did little more than determine the King to hasten by a few weeks the war so long resolved upon, and that this was due rather to his irritation against the Spaniards for their support of Condé than to the refusal of the Court of Brussels to surrender the princess. Henri had not scrupled to use the large forces assembled for quite a different purpose as a bugbear to frighten the Archduke. But when the latter refused to purchase security by a compliance inconsistent with his honour, it was not on Brussels that the French armies prepared to march. On the contrary, a few days before his death, the King in the most friendly terms requested the Archduke’s permission to lead his troops across his territory to the assistance of his German allies, a permission granted by the Archduke, notwithstanding the opposition of the Spanish party in his Council.
By the end of April France was ready to strike. Châlons, Mezières and Metz were the chief rendezvous. The King hoped to have 30,000 men on foot, to join them on May 15, and to march at their head into the duchies. A second army under Lesdiguières was to enter Piedmont, where it would effect a junction with the forces of the Duke of Savoy, and then proceed to invade the Milanese. A third army was to observe the Pyrenees. Maurice of Nassau, with 30,000 Dutch, was to join Henri IV in Clèves.
Never had Bassompierre stood higher in the royal favour than on the eve of the outbreak of war. Henri, anxious to make amends to him for the loss of Charlotte de Montmorency and her dowry, and to recompense him for the zeal and ability which he had shown in his mission to Lorraine and Germany in the previous year, overwhelmed him with benefits. He appointed him, quite unsolicited, Colonel of the Light Cavalry, made him a Counsellor of State, gave him 50 guards, and a pension of 4,000 crowns, and again proposed to marry him to the heiress of Beaupréau and revive in her favour the duchy of that name. “But,” says Bassompierre ingenuously, “I was then in the high follies of my youth, in love in so many quarters, and well received in most, that I had not the leisure to think of my advancement.”
But the sun which shone upon him with such warmth and splendour was now about to be clouded for ever. The tragic end of the first Bourbon King has been so often told that we have no intention of narrating it; but there are circumstances recorded by Bassompierre which are not to be found in the memoirs and correspondence of his contemporaries, and which afford a curious insight into the state of Henri IV’s mind just before his assassination:—
“We now entered that unhappy month of May, fatal to France, by the loss sustained therein of our good King.
“I shall relate many things touching the presentiment which the King had before his death, and which gave warning of that event. A little while before, he said to me: ‘I know not how it is, Bassompierre, but I cannot persuade myself that I am going into Germany; neither does my heart tell me that you are going into Italy.’ Several times he said to me, and to others also: ‘I believe that I shall die soon.’ And on the first day of May he returned from the Tuileries by way of the grand gallery, leaning upon M. de Guise on one side, and upon me on the other (for he always leaned on someone), and, on leaving us to enter the Queen’s cabinet, said: ‘Don’t go away; I am going to tell my wife to dress, that she may not keep me waiting for dinner.’ For he usually dined with her. While we waited, leaning on the iron balustrade overlooking the courtyard of the Louvre, the maypole which had been planted in the middle of the courtyard fell down, without being disturbed by the wind or for any apparent cause, and tumbled in the direction of the little staircase leading to the King’s chamber. Upon which I said to M. de Guise: ‘I would have given a great deal rather than this should have happened. It is a very bad omen. May God preserve the King, who is the May of the Louvre!’ ‘How can you be so foolish as to think seriously of such a thing?’ he replied. ‘In Italy and Germany,’ I rejoined, ‘they would take much more account of such an omen than we do here. May God preserve the King and all belonging to him!’
“The King, who had but stepped into the Queen’s cabinet and out again, here came up very softly to listen to us, for he imagined that we spoke of some woman; and, hearing all that I said, broke in upon our talk, saying: ‘You are fools to amuse yourselves with such prognostications. For the last thirty years all the astrologers and charlatans who pretend to be wise have predicted to me every year that I was fated to die; and in that year wherein I shall actually die, all the omens which have occurred in the course of it will be remarked and thought a great deal of, while nothing will be said of those which happened in preceding years.’