The same sensible grandfather, having different views on the subject of education from those manifested by Catharine de Medici toward her children, had the boy taught to run about bareheaded and barefooted, like a peasant, among the mountains and rocks of Béarn, till he became as rugged as a young bear and as nimble as a kid. Black bread and beef and garlic were his simple fare; and he was taught by his mother and his grandfather to hate lies and liars, and to read the Bible.
When he was fifteen, the third religious war broke out. Both his father and grandfather were dead. His mother, who had openly professed the Reformed faith since the death of her husband, who hated it, brought her boy to the camp at Rochelle, where he was received as the chief of the Huguenots. His culture was not extensive. He had learned to speak the truth, to ride, to shoot, to do with little sleep and less food. He could also construe a little Latin, and had read a few military treatises; but the mighty hours of an eventful life were now to take him by the hand and to teach him much good and much evil, as they bore him onward. He now saw military treatises expounded practically by professors like his uncle Condé, and Admiral Coligny, and Lewis Nassau in such lecture rooms as Laudun, and Jarnac, and Moncontour, and never was apter scholar.
The peace of Arnay-le-Duc succeeded, and then the fatal Bartholomew marriage with the Messalina of Valois. The faith taught in the mountains of Béarn was no buckler against the demand of “The mass, or death!” thundered at his breast by the lunatic Charles, as he pointed to thousands of massacred Huguenots. Henry yielded to such conclusive arguments, and became a Catholic. Four years of court-imprisonment succeeded, and the young king of Navarre, though proof to the artifices of his gossip Guise, was not adamant to the temptations spread for him by Catharine de Medici. In the harem entertained for him in the Louvre, many pitfalls entrapped him, and he became a stock-performer in the state comedies and tragedies of that plotting age.
A silken web of palace-politics, palace-diplomacy, palace-revolutions enveloped him. Schemes and counter-schemes, stratagems and conspiracies, assassinations and poisonings; all the state machinery which worked so exquisitely in fair ladies’ chambers, to spread havoc and desolation over a kingdom, were displayed before his eyes. Now campaigning with one royal brother against Huguenots, now fighting with another on their side, now solicited by the queen-mother to attempt the life of her son, now implored by Henry III to assassinate his brother, the Bearnese, as fresh antagonisms, affinities, combinations, were developed, detected, neutralized almost daily, became rapidly an adept in Medician state-chemistry. Charles IX in his grave, Henry III on the throne, Alençon in the Huguenot camp—Henry at last made his escape. The brief war and peace of Mercœur succeeded, and the king of Navarre formally abjured the Catholic creed. The parties were now sharply defined. Guise mounted upon the League, Henry astride upon the Reformation, were prepared to do battle to the death. The temporary “war of the amorous” was followed by the peace of Fleix.
Four years of peace again—four fat years of wantonness and riot preceding fourteen hungry, famine-stricken years of bloodiest civil war. The voluptuousness and infamy of the Louvre were almost paralleled in vice, if not in splendor, by the miniature court at Pau. Henry’s Spartan grandfather would scarcely have approved the courses of the youth whose education he had commenced on so simple a scale. For Margaret of Valois, hating her husband, and living in most undisguised and promiscuous infidelity to him, had profited by her mother’s lessons. A seraglio of maids of honor ministered to Henry’s pleasures, and were carefully instructed that the peace and war of the kingdom were playthings in their hands. While at Paris royalty was hopelessly sinking in a poisonous marsh, there was danger that even the hardy nature of the Bearnese would be mortally enervated by the atmosphere in which he lived.
The unhappy Henry III, baited by the Guises, worried by the Alençon and his mother, implored the king of Navarre to return to Paris and the Catholic faith. M. de Segur, chief of Navarre’s council, who had been won over during a visit to the capital, where he had made the discovery that “Henry III was an angel, and his ministers devils,” came back to Pau, urging his master’s acceptance of the royal invitation. Henry wavered. Bold D’Aubigné, stanchest of Huguenots and of his friends, next day privately showed Segur a palace window opening on a very steep precipice over the Bayse, and cheerfully assured him that he should be flung from it did he not instantly reverse his proceedings and give his master different advice. “If I am not able to do the deed myself,” said D’Aubigné, “here are a dozen more to help me.” The chief of the council cast a glance behind him, saw a number of grim Puritan soldiers, with their hats plucked down upon their brows, looking very serious; so made his bow, and quite changed his line of conduct.
But Henry—no longer the unsophisticated youth who had been used to run barefoot among the cliffs of Coarraze—was grown too crafty a politician to be entangled by Spanish or Medician wiles. The duke of Anjou was now dead. Of all the princes who had stood between him and the throne, there was none remaining save the helpless, childless, superannuated youth who was its present occupant. The king of Navarre was legitimate heir to the crown of France. “Espoir” was now in letters of light upon his shield, but he knew that his path to greatness led through manifold dangers, and that it was only at the head of his Huguenot chivalry that he could cut his way. He was the leader of the nobles of Gascony, and Dauphiny, and Guienne, in their mountain fastnesses; of the weavers, cutlers, and artisans in their thriving manufacturing and trading towns. It was not Spanish gold, but carbines and cutlasses, bows and bills, which could bring him to the throne of his ancestors.
And thus he stood the chieftain of that great, austere party of Huguenots, the men who went on their knees before the battle, beating their breasts with their iron gantlets, and singing in full chorus a psalm of David before smiting the Philistines hip and thigh.
Their chieftain, scarcely their representative—fit to lead his Puritans on the battle-field—was hardly a model for them elsewhere. Yet, though profligate in one respect, he was temperate in every other. In food, wine, and sleep, he was always moderate. Subtle and crafty in self-defence, he retained something of his old love of truth, of his hatred for liars. Hardly generous, perhaps, he was a friend of justice; while economy in a wandering king like himself was a necessary virtue, of which France one day was to feel the beneficent action. Reckless and headlong in appearance, he was in truth the most careful of men. On the religious question most cautious of all, he always left the door open behind him, disclaimed all bigotry of opinion, and earnestly implored the papists to seek, not his destruction, but his instruction. Yet, prudent as he was by nature in every other regard, he was all his life the slave of one woman or another; and it was by good luck rather than by sagacity that he did not repeatedly forfeit the fruits of his courage and conduct in obedience to his master-passion.
Always open to conviction on the subject of his faith, he repudiated the appellation of heretic. A creed, he said, was not to be changed like a shirt, but only on due deliberation and under special advice. In his secret heart he probably regarded the two religions as his chargers, and was ready to mount alternately the one or the other, as each seemed the more likely to bear him safely in battle. The Bearnese was no Puritan, but he was most true to himself and to his own advancement. His highest principle of action was to reach his goal, and to that principle he was ever loyal. Feeling, too, that it was for the interest of France that he should succeed, he was even inspired—compared with others on the stage—by an almost lofty patriotism.