At first things seemed to brighten a little. The Queen Regent sent such urgent messages to Sully that he left his stronghold of the Bastille and went to the palace. She declared to him before the assembled court that he must govern France still. With tears she gave the young King into his arms, telling Louis that Sully was his father's best friend, and bidding him pray the old statesman to serve the state yet longer.
But soon this good scene changed. Mary had a foster-sister, Leonora Galligai, and Leonora was married to an Italian adventurer, Concini. These seemed a poor couple, worthless and shiftless, their only stock in trade Leonora's Italian cunning; but this stock soon came to be of vast account, for thereby she soon managed to bind and rule the Queen Regent—managed to drive Sully into retirement in less than a year—managed to make herself and her husband the great dispensers at court of place and pelf. Penniless though Concini had been, he was in a few months able to buy the Marquisate of Ancre, which cost him nearly a half a million livres; and, soon after, the post of first gentleman of the bedchamber, and that cost him nearly a quarter of a million; and, soon after that, a multitude of broad estates and high offices at immense prices. Leonora also was not idle; among her many gains was the bribe of three hundred thousand livres to screen certain financiers under trial for fraud.
Next came the turn of the great nobles. For ages the nobility of France had been the worst among her many afflictions. From age to age attempts had been made to curb them. In the fifteenth century Charles VII had done much to undermine their power, and Louis XI had done much to crush it. But strong as was the policy of Charles, and cunning as was the policy of Louis, they had made one omission, and that omission left France, though advanced, miserable. For these monarchs had not cut the root of the evil. The French nobility continued practically a serf-holding nobility.
Despite, then, the curb put upon many old pretensions of the nobles, the serf-owning spirit continued to spread a network of curses over every arm of the French government, over every acre of the French soil, and, worst of all, over the hearts and minds of the French people. Enterprise was deadened, invention crippled. Honesty was nothing, honor everything. Life was of little value. Labor was the badge of servility; laziness the very badge and passport of gentility. The serf-owning spirit was an iron wall between noble and not noble—the only unyielding wall between France and prosperous peace.
But the serf-owning spirit begat another evil far more terrible: it begat a substitute for patriotism—a substitute which crushed out patriotism just at the very emergencies when patriotism was most needed. For the first question which in any state emergency sprang into the mind of a French noble was not, How does this affect the welfare of the nation? but, How does this affect the position of my order? The serf-owning spirit developed in the French aristocracy an instinct which led them in national troubles to guard the serf-owning class first and the nation afterward, and to acknowledge fealty to the serf-owning interest first and to the national interest afterward.
So it proved in that emergency at the death of Henry. Instead of planting themselves as a firm bulwark between the state and harm, the Duke of Épernon, the Prince of Condé, the Count of Soissons, the Duke of Guise, the Duke of Bouillon, and many others, wheedled or threatened the Queen into granting pensions of such immense amounts that the great treasury filled by Henry and Sully with such noble sacrifices, and to such noble ends, was soon nearly empty.
But as soon as the treasury began to run low the nobles began a worse work. Mary had thought to buy their loyalty, but when they had gained such treasures their ideas mounted higher. A saying of one among them became their formula, and became noted: "The day of kings is past; now is come the day of the grandees."
Every great noble now tried to grasp some strong fortress or rich city. One fact will show the spirit of many. The Duke of Épernon had served Henry as governor of Metz, and Metz was the most important fortified town in France; therefore Henry, while allowing D'Épernon the honor of governorship, had always kept a royal lieutenant in the citadel, who corresponded directly with the ministry. But on the very day of the King's death D'Épernon despatched commands to his own creatures at Metz to seize the citadel, and to hold it for him against all other orders.
But at last even Mary had to refuse to lavish more of the national treasure and to shred more of the national territory among these magnates. Then came their rebellion.
Immediately Condé and several great nobles issued a proclamation denouncing the tyranny and extravagance of the court—calling on the Catholics to rise against the Regent in behalf of their religion—calling on the Protestants to rise in behalf of theirs—summoning the whole people to rise against the waste of their state treasure.