On the night of the 11th May a force of Royal Guards and 4000 Swiss mercenaries entered Paris, but the Parisians, with that genius for insurrection which has always characterised them, were equal to the occasion. The sixteen sections of the city met; in the morning the people were under arms; and barricades and chains blocked the streets. The St. Antoine section, ever to the front, stood up to the king’s Guards and to the Swiss advancing to occupy their quarter, defeated them, and with exultant cries rushed to threaten the Louvre itself. Henry was forced to send his mother to treat with the duke; she returned with terms that meant a virtual abdication. Henry took horse and fled, vowing he would come back only through a breach in the walls. But Guise was supreme in Paris, and the pitiful monarch was soon forced to yield; he signed the terms of his own humiliation, and went to Blois to meet Guise and the States-General with bitterness in his heart, brooding over his revenge. Visitors to Blois will recall the scene of the tragic end of Guise, the incidents of which the official guardians of the château are wont to recite with dramatic gesture. Fearless and impatient of warnings, the great captain fell into the trap prepared for him; he was done to death in the king’s chamber, like a lion caught in the toils. Henry, who had heard mass and prayed that God would be gracious to him and permit the success of his enterprise, hastened to his mother, now aged and dying. “Madame,” said he, “I have killed the king of Paris and am become once more king of France.”[118] The Cardinal of Lorraine, separated from the king’s chamber only by a partition, paled as he heard his nephew’s struggles. “Yes,” said his warder, “the king has some accounts to settle with you.” Next morning the old cardinal was led out and hacked to pieces. The two bodies were burnt and the ashes scattered to the winds to prevent their being worshipped as relics. It was Christmas Eve of 1588.
The stupid crime brought its inevitable consequences—
“Revenge and hate bring forth their kind,
Like the foul cubs their parents are.”
Paris and the Leaguers were stung to fury; the Sorbonne declared the king deposed; the pope banned him and a popular preacher called for another bloodletting. Henry, in a final act of shame and despair, flung himself into the king of Navarre’s arms, and on the 30th July 1589, the two Henrys encamped at St. Cloud and threatened Paris with an army of 40,000 men. On the morrow Jacques Clement, a young Dominican friar, after preparing himself by fasting, prayer and holy communion, left Paris with a forged letter for the king, reached the camp and asked for a private interview. While Henry was reading the letter the friar snatched a dagger from his sleeve and mortally stabbed him. He lingered until 2nd August, and after pronouncing Henry of Navarre his lawful successor and bidding his Council swear allegiance to the new dynasty, the last of the thirteen Valois kings passed to his doom. Catherine de’ Medici had already preceded him, burdened with the anathemas of the Cardinal of Bourbon. The people of Paris swore that if her body were brought to St. Denis they would fling it to the shambles or into the Seine, and a famous theologian, preaching at St. Bartholomew’s church, declared to the faithful that he knew not if it were right to pray God for her soul, but that if they cared to give her in charity a Pater or an Ave they might do so for what it was worth. This was the reward of her thirty years of devoted toil, of vigils and of plots to further the Catholic cause. Not until a quarter of a century had passed were her ashes laid beside those of her husband in the rich Renaissance tomb, which still exists, in the royal church of St. Denis. When the news of the king’s death reached Paris, the Duchess of Montpensier, whom he had threatened to burn alive when he entered, leapt into her carriage and drove through the streets crying, “Good news, friends! Good news! The tyrant is dead!” Jacques Clement, who had been cut to pieces by the king’s Guards, was worshipped as a martyr, and his mother rewarded for having given birth to the saviour of France.
Henry of Navarre, unable to carry on the siege with a divided army, directed his course for Normandy. The exultant Parisians proclaimed the Cardinal of Bourbon king, under the title of Charles X., and the Duke of Mayenne, with a large army, marched forth to give battle to Henry. So confident were the Leaguers of victory, that their leaders hired windows along the Rue St. Antoine, to witness the return of the duke bringing the “Bearnais”[119] dead or a prisoner. Henry did indeed return, but it was after a victorious campaign. He captured the Faubourg St. Jacques, and fell upon the abbey of St. Germain des Prés while the astonished monks were preparing to sing mass. Henry seized the monastery, climbed the steeple of the church and gazed on Paris. He refreshed his troops, suffered them to pillage the city south of the Seine, and turned to the west to fix his capital at Tours. In 1590 he won at Ivry on the Eure, about fifty miles south of Rouen, the brilliant victory over the armies of the League and of Spain which Macaulay has popularised in a stirring poem. The village ever since has been known as Ivry-la-Bataille.
The road to Paris was now open, and the city endured another and most terrible siege. The Leaguers fought and suffered with the utmost constancy. Reliquaries were melted down for money, church bells for cannon. The clergy and religious orders were caught by the military enthusiasm. The bishop of Senlis and the prior of the Carthusians, two valiant Maccabees, were seen, crucifix in one hand, and a pike in the other, leading a procession of armed priests, monks and scholars through the streets. Friars from the mendicant orders were among them, their habits tucked up, hoods thrown back, casques on their heads and cuirasses on their breasts. All marched sword by side, dagger in girdle, musket on shoulder, the strangest army of the church militant ever seen. As they passed the Pont Notre Dame the papal legate was crossing in his carriage, and was asked to stop and give his blessing. After this benediction a salvo of musketry was called for, and some of the host of the Lord, forgetting that their muskets were loaded with ball, killed a papal officer and wounded a servant of the ambassador of Spain.