"Whether the King of Navarre did or did not imagine, as has been asserted, that such unusual treatment of a newborn infant would ensure to his grandson a hardy and a vigorous constitution, it certainly indicated the course of education which he wished to be pursued; and nothing was left undone that could strengthen the corporeal frame of the young prince, and prepare him for the hardships and exertions of a military career. Though a strong and powerful child, some difficulty was at first found in rearing him; and, perhaps, too high a degree of anxiety in regard to his health, caused the frequent change of nurses, which was of course detrimental to the infant.
"Great rejoicings took place on the occasion of his baptism; and his grandfather displayed all the splendour of the little court of Navarre, which the Emperor Charles V. once declared, had received him in his passage through France with greater magnificence than any other court he had visited. His godfathers were Henry II. of France and Henry d'Albret of Navarre; and the rite, which was performed according to the usages of the Church of Rome, was administered by the Cardinal of Armagnac, Vice-legate of Avignon.
"From the castle of Pau the prince was speedily removed to that of Coarasse, situated nearly at the mouth of the beautiful valley of Lourdes; and there, under the immediate superintendence of his grandfather and a distant relation, Susannah de Bourbon, Baroness de Miossens, commenced that hardy education which lasted till after the death of the King of Navarre. That monarch, we are told by a contemporary author, 'reproached his daughter and son-in-law with having lost several of their children by French delicacies; and in fact,' the same writer goes on to say, 'he brought up his grandson after the fashion of Bearn, with naked feet and head, very often with as little refinement as peasants' children are nurtured.' No rich clothing, no playthings were given to him; and Henry d'Albret especially commanded that he should neither be flattered nor treated as a prince, but fed upon the ordinary diet of the country, and dressed in the simplest manner. He was allowed to climb the rocks and mountains, and try his limbs in robust exercises from the earliest period of life; and all that could be done to invigorate mind or body, appears to have been strictly attended to in his years of infancy."
At a subsequent period, when he had attained the era, and was engaged in the studies of youth, his character and pursuits are thus described.
"We learn that he was at this time a very lively, quick, and beautiful boy, full of vigour and activity of mind and body, apt to receive instruction, and giving every promise of attaining great proficiency in letters. La Gaucherie took every pains to render the study of the learned languages agreeable to him; not teaching him in the ordinary method, by filling his mind with long and laborious rules, difficult to remember, and still more difficult to apply, but following more the common course by which we acquire our maternal language; and storing his mind with a number of Greek and Latin sentences, which the Prince afterwards wrote down and analysed. The first work which he seems to have translated regularly was Cæsar's Commentaries; a version of several books of which was seen by the biographer of the Duke of Nevers in his own handwriting; and his familiarity with the Greek was frequently shown in the sports and pastimes of the court where mottoes in the learned languages were frequently required.
"It is customary for the historians and eulogists of great men to point out, after their acts have rendered them famous those slight indications which sometimes in youth give promise of future eminence; and thus, we are told the favourite motto, of Henry in his boyhood was, ἤ νικαν ἤ ἀποθανειν, to conquer or to die. The fact, however, is worthy of remark, not so much perhaps because it showed the boy's aspirations for military glory, as because his frequent use of this sentence seems to have created some uneasiness in the mind of Catherine de Medicis, who forbade his masters to teach him such apophthegms for the future, saying that they were only calculated to render him obstinate.
"It is not probable that the Queen-mother would have taken notice of such a sentence on the lips of any ordinary child; but it is evident, not only from the accounts of those biographers, whose works were composed after the Prince of Bearn had risen into renown as King of France, but by letters written while he was yet in extreme youth, that there was something in his whole manner and demeanour which impressed all those who knew him with a conviction of his future greatness. We shall have hereafter to cite several of these epistles, which give an accurate picture of the Prince at the age of thirteen years; but before that time he had undergone a long course of desultory instruction. At one period his education was carried on in the chateau of Vincennes, where he remained for more than a year with the royal children; and at another we find him studying in the college of Navarre, together with the Duke of Anjou, who afterwards became King under the name of Henry III., and with Henry, eldest son of the Duke of Guise, against whom he was destined to take so prominent a part in arms. At this early age, however, no enmity or rivalry was apparent between the three Princes; but on the contrary, to use the words of the memoirs of Nevers, the three Henrys had the same affection and the same pleasures, and always displayed for one another so uncommon a degree of complaisance, that not the slightest dispute took place between them during the whole time they were at the college. In regard to the course of instruction pursued with the Prince of Bearn we have no farther information, and only know that he acquired a sufficient knowledge of the Latin language to translate with ease all the best writers of Rome; and that he applied himself, though apparently with no great perseverance, to the art of drawing, in which he displayed a considerable degree of talent—the Duke of Nevers, or his biographer, having seen an antique vase which he had sketched in pen and ink with a masterly hand, and under which he had written, Opus principis otiosi."
The Massacre of St Bartholomew, which has given an infamous immortality to the name of Charles IX., was unquestionably the great cause of reviving the religious wars which in the early part of his reign seemed to have been in a great measure stilled. Mr James does not add much to the information on the subject already furnished by the French historians, but he sums it up in a dramatic and interesting manner.
Our space will not permit of our quoting the entire passage, and we shall rather proceed to the period when the assassination of Henry III. opened to the King of Navarre the throne of France. The situation of the monarch, when this brilliant but perilous succession opened to him, is thus justly described by Mr James:—
"The situation of Henry IV., on his accession to the throne, was probably the most perilous in which a new monarch was ever placed. The whole kingdom was convulsed, from end to end, by factions, the virulence of which against each other had been nourished during many years of civil war, and not one element of discord and confusion seemed wanting to render the state of turbulence and anarchy which existed of long duration. Not only the fierce and relentless spirit of religious fanaticism, not only the grasping cupidity of selfish and unprincipled nobles, not only the ambition of powerful and distinguished leaders entered as ingredients into the strange mass of contending passions which the country presented, but the long indulgence of lawless courses, the habits of strife and bloodshed, the want of universally recognised tribunals, the annihilation of external commerce, and the utter destitution of financial resources on all parts, seemed to place insurmountable obstacles in the way of any speedy restoration of order and prosperity.