By degrees, many even of the Romish nobility, penetrated with admiration at the manner in which the heir of the crown combated for his rights, joined his standard, in the secret hope that when he came to the throne he would revert to the faith of the majority of his subjects. He won all hearts, even in the enemy's ranks, by his generosity, humanity, and heroic spirit. The soldiers worshipped the hero who shared all their hardships, and whose greatest pleasure was ever to be the first in advancing into the enemy's fire; the officers were filled with enthusiasm for the prince who treated them all with the hearty courtesy of the camp, and claimed no distinction save that which all felt to be due to pre-eminent valour and never-failing capacity. Even his weaknesses augmented the general interest in his character; and when it was known that the leader whose exploits riveted the attention of all Europe, not unfrequently stole from the council-board or the tent to pursue some fugitive fair one through a forest, or subdue the obduracy of high-born beauty, by watching all night before her castle walls, the age of romance seemed to have returned to the earth, and all hearts were interested in the hero who appeared to unite the greatness of ancient patriotism with the spirit of modern chivalry.
Nor did Henry's conduct, when he had taken Paris and conquered the throne, belie the expectations formed by this brilliant dawn of his career. He proved not merely a warrior, but the father of his people. Great projects of amelioration were set on foot—greater still were in preparation, when he perished by the hand of Ravaillac. His celebrated saying, that he "hoped to see the time when every peasant should have his fowl in his pot," reveals the paternal spirit of his government. It is vain to say these were the acts of his ministers; that Sully was the real sovereign. The answer of Queen Elizabeth, when the success of her reign was imputed to the capacity of her ministers, "Did you ever know a fool choose a wise one?" affords the decisive reply to all such depreciatory attempts. Under his beneficent rule, industry was protected, commerce revived; canals, roads, and bridges penetrated the country in every direction; and, most marvellous of all, religious schisms were healed and religious fury stilled. The abjuration by the successful monarch of the faith in which he had been bred, and the warriors of which had combated for him, was unquestionably a measure called for, in a temporal view, by the interest of his dominions at the time, not less than by his own tenure of the throne. When it is recollected that the Huguenots did not at that period exceed two millions, among twenty which France contained, it becomes at once apparent, that, in a country so recently convulsed by the passions of religious and civil dissension, conformity with the faith of the great majority was the sole condition on which tranquillity could have been restored, discord appeased, a stable government established, or the crown transmitted to the descendants of the reigning monarch. And, while his biographer must lament the necessity to which he was subjected, of bending religious conviction to political expedience, all must admire the wisdom of the Edict of Nantes, which, without shocking the prejudices of the Catholics, secured liberty of conscience and just immunities to the Protestants; and which, if adhered to by succeeding monarchs, on the equitable spirit in which it had been conceived by its author, would probably have left the direct heirs of Henry IV. still on the throne of France, and averted all the bloodshed and horrors of the Revolution.
Henry IV., however, was not a perfect character; had he been so, he would not have been a child of Adam. He had the usual proportion of the weaknesses, some of the faults, of humanity. They were, for the most part, however, of that kind which are nearly allied to virtues, and to which heroic characters have, in every age, in a peculiar manner been subject. Heroism, love, and poetry, ever have and ever will be found united: they are, in truth, as Lamartine has expressed it, twin sisters of each other; they issued at a single birth from the same parents. We may regret that it is so; but if we do, we had better extend our regrets a little farther, and lament that we are not all immaculate as our First Parents were in the bowers of Paradise. His irregularities are universally known, and have, perhaps, rendered him as celebrated in France as his warlike exploits or pacific virtues; for they fell in with the prevailing passion of the nation, and were felt by all to be some excuse for their own indulgences. They are celebrated even in the well-known air which has become, in a manner, the National Anthem:—
"Vive Henri IV.!
Vive le roi vaillant!
Ce Diable à quatre
A le triple talent
De boire et de battre,
Et d'être vert galant."
Henry IV., however, had more apology than most men for these frailties. He lived in an age, and had been bred up in a court, in which female virtue was so rare that it had come to pass for a chimera, and licentious indulgence so frequent that it had become a habit, and ceased to be a subject of reproach. Naturally ardent, susceptible, and impetuous, he was immersed in a society in which intrigue with high-born beauty was universally considered as the great object and chief employment of life. The poetry and romances which were in every hand inculcated nothing else. His own Queen, Margaret of Valois, gave him the first example of such irregularities, and while she set no bounds to her jealousy of his mistresses, particularly La Belle Gabrielle, who so long held the monarch captive, she had no hesitation in bestowing her own favours on successive lovers with as little scruple as the King himself. In some instances, however, he was more completely inexcusable. It is remarkable that the attachments of Henry became more violent as he advanced in life, and had attained the period when the passions are usually found to cool. In some instances they impelled him into acts of vehemence and oppression wholly unworthy of his character and heart. His passion, late in years, for the young Princess of Condé—a child of seventeen, who might have been his granddaughter—and which prompted her flight with her husband to the Low Countries, on which he was preparing war for her recovery when cut short by death, was ridiculous in one of his age, and grossly criminal to one in her circumstances. But these passions pursued him to the very last; and when his tomb was broken open, and remained exposed, by the Parisian mob during the fury of the Revolution, the nicely combed and highly perfumed beard, the scent of which filled the air, proved that the dagger of Ravaillac had struck him while still immersed in the frivolities which tarnished his heroic exploits.[20]
In truth, without detracting from the many great and good qualities of the hero of the Bourbon family, it may safely be affirmed that his fame in subsequent times has been to the full as great as he deserved. Many circumstances have contributed to this happy partiality of subsequent times. His reign was filled with great and glorious actions; and that endeared him to the heroic and the brave. His court was the abode of gallantry—his life devotion to beauty; and that won for him the applause of the fair. He did wonders, and designed still greater, for the internal improvement of his dominions and the increase of his people's happiness; and that secured for him the approbation of the philanthropic and thoughtful. He gained for the Protestants religious freedom and immunity from persecution; and that secured their eternal gratitude. He restored to the Church of Rome the religious supremacy which had been so fiercely disputed, and in so many other countries had been lost; and that shut the mouths of the Catholics. He stilled the fury of civil, and pacified the fierceness of religious discord; and that justly won for him the gratitude of all. His reign formed a bright contrast to the frightful civil wars and universal bloodshed which had preceded it. Like Napoleon, he closed the gulf of revolution; and the admiration of subsequent times was the worthy meed of the inestimable service thus rendered to humanity. They have not diminished, perhaps exaggerated, the tribute. He was the first of a race of sovereigns who for two centuries sat in the direct line on the throne of France, and the collateral descendants of whom still hold it. Family partiality, courtly panegyric, thus came to be largely mingled with the just tribute of a nation's gratitude. The writers of other countries, particularly England and Germany, joined in the chorus of applause to the prince who had secured to the Protestant faith its just rights in so important a kingdom as France. The vices or weakness of subsequent sovereigns—the feeble rule of Louis XIII.; the tyrannical conduct, the splendid talents of Louis XIV.; the corruptions of the Regent Orleans; the disgraceful sensuality of Louis XV.; the benevolent heart, but passive resignation of Louis XVI.—rose up successively in striking contrast to his heroic deeds, vigorous government, and equitable administration. But, without disregarding the influence of these circumstances in brightening the halo which still surrounds the memory of Henry IV., the sober voice of distant and subsequent history must pronounce him one of the greatest princes who have adorned modern history, and certainly the greatest, after Charlemagne and Napoleon, who ever sat on the throne of France.
But it is time to put a period to this general disquisition, to give some extracts from the work of our author, in justice both to its own merits and the character of the hero which it is intended to portray.
Mr James gives the following interesting particulars concerning the birth and early years of Henry:—
"The Duchess of Vendome was at this time with her husband in Picardy, but at her father's summons she set out for the south of France in the wintry month of November; and, displaying that hardy and vigorous constitution which she transmitted to her son, she traversed the wide extent of country which lay between the extreme frontier of France and her father's territories in the short space of eighteen days, arriving at Pau not quite a fortnight before the birth of her third child. There is reason to believe that various motives, besides that attachment to her parent which she had always displayed, induced Jeanne d'Albret to undertake so long and fatiguing a journey at so critical a period. Information had reached her, we find, that the King of Navarre had fallen under the influence of a lady of Bearn, who had employed her power over his mind, as is usual in such connexions, to enrich herself; and also that the Prince, with weakness not uncommon even in great men, had made a will in favour of his mistress, which was likely to deprive his daughter and her husband of a considerable portion of their expected inheritance. The natural anxiety of Jeanne d'Albret to see this will was communicated by some of the court to the old King, and he in reply assured her that he would place it in her hands as soon as he beheld the child she was about to bear, upon the condition that she should sing him a song in the pains of labour: 'In order,' he said, 'that thou mayest not give me a crying and a puny child.'
"The Duchess promised to perform the task, and at the moment of the birth of her son, as soon as she heard her father's foot in the chamber, she saluted him with one of the songs of her native country. When the child was shown to him, Henry d'Albret took him joyfully in his arms, and remembering the sneer of the Spaniards, he exclaimed, as if with a foresight of what he would become, 'My sheep has borne me a lion!' Then giving his will to his daughter, he continued; 'There, my child, that is for thee, but this is for me,'—and carrying the boy, wrapped in a fold of his dressing gown, into his own chamber, he rubbed his lips with a piece of garlic, and gave him from his own golden cup some drops of wine.