CHAPTER 4

A THEATRE OF MISERY

‘La voici l’heureuse journée

Que Dieu a faite à plein desir

Par nous soit ioye demenée

Et prenons en elle plaisir.

   O Dieu eternel, ie te prie

Ie te prie ton Roy maintient

O Dieu, ie te prie & reprie

Sauve ton Roy & l’entretien…’

The Huguenot Battle Psalm, tr. Marot¹

‘Ce venin Espagnol’

Agrippa d’Aubigné²

In 1592 Sir Francis Bacon wrote that

The Kingdom of France which by reason of the seat of the empire of the west was wont to have the precedence of Europe is now fallen into those calamities, that, as the prophet saith, ‘From the crown of the head to the sole of the foot there is no whole place.’ The divisions are so many and so intricate, of Protestants and Catholics, Royalists and Leaguers, Bourbonists and Lorainists, Patriots and Spanish, as it seemeth God hath some great work to bring to pass upon that nation; yea the nobility divided from the third state and the towns from the fields. All of which miseries, truly to speak, have been wrought by Spain and the Spanish faction.³

Elsewhere he had spoken, with dry compassion, of France ‘which is now a theatre of misery’.⁴ Though the country had already suffered pitifully, the years which followed Henri III’s death would be among the most terrible in her history.

Heralds might cry ‘Le Roy est mort! Vive le Roy!’ but Henri of Navarre had become Henri IV in name alone and soon twenty thousand troops had left the royal camp at St Cloud. The new King had issued an edict on 4 August in which he promised to maintain the Roman Church and innovate nothing in matters of religion until a national assembly could meet to settle the problem; meanwhile the Reform would receive no more than the freedom of worship granted by earlier edicts. As Catholics the overwhelming majority of Frenchmen dared not trust him; only thirty years before England had been ruthlessly torn from the Roman fold by a schismatic Queen. It was plainly impossible that a Protestant Prince who could not be sacramentally consecrated should incarnate the ancient monarchy and become the Eldest Son of the Church. Montaigne may have been justified in suspecting that Henri had always been ready to return to the Old Faith but to do so now would mean political suicide; the League would treat his conversion as a lie while he would lose his loyal Huguenots, those formidable supporters ‘whose souls were of iron like their armour’, many of them stern old veterans who had in old days ridden with Coligny. As it was the Vicomte de la Trémouille refused to fight for a King who protected idolators, and marched off with nine regiments. Henri’s sole course was to fight on under the Politique banner.

Only a sixth of France supported Henri IV. Besides the territory controlled by the League many areas were neutral, including such big cities as Bordeaux and the great Politique fiefs of d’Ornano in Dauphiné and of Damville in Languedoc. Twenty years before, the Sieur François de la Noue, old Bras de Fer who despite his age was still one of Henri’s most formidable generals, had written in his memoirs of the early Wars of Religion that to attack Paris was a sure means of ending a civil war; ‘pour obtenir la paix il faut aporter la guere pres de cette puissante cité.’⁵ The King shared the Iron Arm’s opinion, realizing that however scanty his resources he must continue to threaten the capital; a withdrawal to Gascony would cost him his throne. So in mid-August 1589, with an army which had now shrunk to seven thousand men he marched into Normandy where he could control the districts of the Eure and the Oise on which Paris depended for much of her food; though he would be cruelly outnumbered the battle could at least be fought on ground of his own choosing.

The position of the King of France was perilous; the odds were desperate and a single serious defeat meant final ruin. And if small his army was not altogether trustworthy. The Catholics were as numerous as the Huguenots whose prayer meetings angered them and with whom they bickered; despite Henri’s assurances of toleration Protestant zealots still expected that his victory would mean the Reform’s triumph. While Baron de Givry might fling himself at Henri’s feet crying ‘You are the King for real men—only cowards will desert you’,⁶ all too many Papists followed him from the purest self interest like the battered old Marshal de Biron or Marshal d’O, ‘a debauchee and a spendthrift and consequently of few scruples’.⁷ In the event of failure the Politiques would desert; their lack of fanaticism did not necessarily make for loyalty. Yet Henri’s faith in his destiny was absolute; he knew that he was King, that he alone could give his Kingdom peace. Also he had the inestimable advantage of a Gascon temperament and throughout the coming struggle would show all the qualities with which Balzac, no mean observer, credited that amazing race: ‘the Gascon character, bold, brave, adventurous, prone to exaggerate the good and belittle the bad aspects of a situation if there is anything to be gained by it, laughing at vice when it serves as a stepping stone.’⁸

The League now reached its zenith, ruling the north and east of France and most cities while thousands flocked to its banners, not merely ‘the fiercer and more violent sort of Papists’ but moderate Catholics too. It proclaimed the Cardinal de Bourbon King as ‘Charles X’, issuing edicts and striking coins in his name even if he was Henri’s prisoner in the grim custody of Agrippa d’Aubigné. The Sainte Union could make an excellent pretence at being the country’s lawful government.

The feeble old Cardinal King was only an interim figurehead and Leaguers had good cause to believe that the Crown would soon belong to one of their two great champions, the young Duc de Guise—also Henri’s prisoner—or his uncle the Duc de Mayenne. The latter was the League’s acknowledged chief, excessively fat and breathlessly ambitious but dangerous enough. There had been thirteen Valois Kings of France, beginning with that Philippe VI whom Edward III had defeated at Crécy, so that while Henri was the admitted heir in blood and a direct descendant of Robert de Clermont, sixth son of St Louis, a Bourbon dynasty would be hardly less a break with tradition than a Guise dynasty. However, despite his much vaunted ‘Carolingian’ pedigree, as yet ‘the false Mayenne’ did not quite dare to seize the throne.

There were enemies outside France. Disregarding the Salic Law, which restricted the royal succession to the direct male descent, the Dukes of Lorraine and Savoy made a bid for the French Crown. More alarmingly, so did Philip II of Spain, whose ferocious pikemen could outfight any troops that ‘the Man from Béarn’ might muster. King Philip was ageing and had seen many of his plans come to nothing; a year ago his Great Armada against England had been destroyed as though by act of God while he had failed humiliatingly in trying to overcome the seemingly endless rebellion in the Low Countries. Indeed the total collapse of her economy would soon put an end to Spain’s dominance and though final disaster would be staved off for another fifty years a relentless economic anaemia was already sapping her strength. Yet Philip II remained as coldly determined as always and saw the French succession as a gift from heaven; a Spanish King of France or a client King would recompense him for all his losses, besides setting his yoke firmly on the Dutch neck. He therefore inundated the grateful League with arms and money; later his captains would follow, with tercios of pikemen.

This was a war which the French would not be allowed to fight by themselves: it was a battle between Reformation and Counter-Reformation which involved all Europe, just as in the 1930s the Spanish Civil War would become an international conflict between Fascism and Communism. Of the Catholic powers Spain and Rome were bound to come to the League’s help as also were small neighbour states like Savoy and Lorraine whose rulers naturally hoped for large territorial gains if the throne was beyond their reach. Among Protestants the Dutch Calvinists of the United Provinces understood very well that a France ruled from Madrid would be their doom. However it was England which gave Henri most assistance. Queen Elizabeth, Philip’s wily old enemy, realized just how desperate was the French King’s situation and forgetting her usual parsimony sent £200,000 in silver, 70,000 lbs of powder and ammunition and provisions; troops would follow, though her money and munitions were better value than the lamentable English soldiery of the period. England’s short term objective was to keep the Norman and Breton ports out of Spanish hands.

Henri captured Dieppe, where he set up his headquarters. Here he could organize the reduction of Normandy and stay within easy reach of England. But Mayenne was following him, slowly yet purposefully, with 33,000 men. The King was outnumbered by more than three to one and had insufficient supplies and no money until the arrival of the English cargo. Most of his staff counselled flight to England. Instead, like Wellington at Torres Vedras, he prepared an impregnable position between Dieppe and the nearby village and castle of Arques on the road from Paris.

The King was an excellent tactician. The bayonet had not yet been invented so infantry consisted of square formations of armoured pikemen who were flanked by musketeers, the former protecting the latter during the lengthy and laborious ritual of reloading. In addition musketeers known asenfants perdus were placed well in front, hidden behind hedges or in broken ground to snipe at the advancing enemy. As there was no horse artillery, cavalry were the chief means of breaking enemy squares. Generally the French still favoured lancers who charged in widely spaced lines en haiebut Henri preferred ‘cuirassed pistoleers’ like the German Reiters. These wore three-quarters armour—helmet, breast-and-back, thigh and arm plates and high leather jackboots—and carried wheel-lock pistols instead of lances. In most countries they rode in dense squadrons up to the enemy squares where they wheeled their horses in a half turn en caracole, fired their pistols at point blank range, and then retired to reload. However, in France it was the practice for them to charge home and use their swords in the ensuing mêlée. Almost invariably such cuirassiers proved superior to lancers, both in hand to hand combat and in smashing enemy formations. Nonetheless a fight was won or lost by the pikemen; one side would eventually wear down its adversaries who were then swept off the field ‘by push of pike’.

Henri was a sufficiently good judge of ground to know that he could even the odds in the defile at Arques. Here the road from the south crossed a narrow marshy gap between two hillsides and was commanded by the castle’s cannon. Henri dug in on the hillside, guarded the approaches with well placed trenches, earthworks and palisades, and mounted another battery in a chapel by the roadside. Some troops had to be left to man the walls of Dieppe but he made the most of his scanty forces; his pikemen, mainly Swiss, occupied the trenches together with the musketeers while his cavalry were drawn up behind them.

Mayenne appeared on 13 September and finding, after a very leisurely reconnaisance, that Dieppe and its suburbs were strongly fortified decided to batter his way in at Arques by dint of sheer numbers. Over a week after his arrival, on 21 September, the Duke launched his first onslaught when the morning mist prevented the castle’s guns from firing. Some of his German pikemen pretended to desert, shouting to the King’s Swiss that they could not fight fellow Protestants; as soon as they were let in they treacherously attacked, overruning the front line trenches. The royalist foot began to panic and the chapel battery was lost. Seeing that his front was on the point of disintegrating, Henri, who was fortunately well forward, rode up yelling to his cavalry, ‘Are there not fifty noblemen of France who will come and die with their King?’ By now Mayenne’s horse was attacking on both flanks where a confused sword and pistol mêlée ensued. The royal pikemen rallied while their musketeers fired steadily into the dense mass of enemy cavalry. Suddenly the mist lifted whereupon the castle batteries opened up, scything great gaps in the Leaguer ranks. As the Papist cavalry hastily withdrew the King charged with his infantry, retaking all the lost ground.

Mayenne now recognized that he could not make use of superior numbers on such a narrow front, though he had suffered hardly more than six hundred casualties. He tried threatening Dieppe from the west, without result, made another half-hearted attempt at Arques and finally withdrew on 6 October. During these three weeks of skirmishes, assaults and counter-marches Henri had shown that despite his love of the charge he knew how to fight a defensive campaign.

He had taken the measure of his chief opponent, of the ‘sluggishness of the Duc de Mayenne who set about everything very slowly. His flatterers called it gravity. This fault was mainly due to his disposition and was made worse not only by the size of his body, big and fat in dimensions, which in consequence needed plenty of food and plenty of sleep, but also by coldness, and by the torpor resulting from a certain illness which he had contracted in Paris some days after the death of Henri III which, so people say, he had wanted to celebrate in an unseemly way.’⁹ Copying their master, his officers were ‘tardy, careless and lazy and, however urgent the circumstances, would allow nothing to interfere with their comforts and amusements. The story is told that his First Secretary once left an important dispatch unopened for four whole days.’¹⁰ This sort of leadership and the failure at Arques disheartened his men who began to desert in large numbers.

Mayenne’s withdrawal was due to the imminent arrival of La Noue with another Royalist army. In addition four thousand English troops under Peregrine Bertie, Lord Willoughby d’Eresby, had landed at Dieppe together with a Scots regiment. All told the King now had fifteen thousand men. True to old Bras-de-Fer’s precept he decided to give Paris a fright. Neither the capital nor Mayenne would expect an attack which, conceivably, might just succeed and which if it did not would at least show the League that it could never afford to disregard Henri.

Even in the sixteenth century Paris bewitched Frenchmen. Montaigne wrote:

I will not forget this, that I can never mutinie so much against France, but I must needes looke on Paris with a favourable eye: It hath my hart from my infancy, whereof it hath befalne me as of excellent things: the more other faire and stately cities I have seene since, the more hir beauty hath power and doth still usurpingly gaine upon my affection. I love that Citie for her own sake, and more in her onely subsisting and owne being, then when it is full fraught and embellished with forraine pompe and borrowed garish ornaments: I love her so tenderly, that even hir spotts, her blemishes and hir warts are deare unto me. I am no perfect Frenchman but by this great-matchlesse Citie, great in people, great in regard of the felicitie of her situation; but above al, great and incomparable in varitie and diversitie of commodities: The glory of France, and one of the noblest and chiefe ornaments of the world….¹¹

A man from the Midi like Montaigne, Henri understood very well the sway his capital exercised over the provinces.

Marching with desperate speed the royal army reached Paris ahead of Mayenne on 31 October, storming and sacking the faubourgs on the left bank the following day. ‘This All Saints’ Day the King, having a desire to see his city of Paris, climbed to the top of the tower of St Germain des Prés, where a monk conducted him. When he got down he confessed to Marshal Biron that an apprehension had seized him, alone up there with the monk, remembering the knife of Brother Clément, and that never again would he do such a thing without having the monk searched for weapons beforehand.’¹² However, the Seine was impassable, in spite of fierce old La Noue who was nearly drowned trying to ford it, and by 2 November Mayenne and twenty thousand troops had entered to reassure the great city ‘which saw itself within two fingers of ruin’. Next day Henri withdrew having tried in vain to engage the Duke in battle. Yet though the gamble had failed it had done his prestige good service.

He returned to conquer Normandy where most of the towns soon submitted save for Rouen and Le Havre while elsewhere in France cities and magnates began to declare for him, among the great Politique feudatories—d’Ornano in Dauphiné, Damville in Languedoc and La Valette in Provence. The winter of 1589–90 was spent in consolidating a position which had been miraculously transformed since that grim march from St Cloud in the autumn. Even so he had insufficient troops. The fearsome campaigning and the need to live off the country had been too much for the ill-equipped English contingent, all but a thousand of whom, true to the inglorious record of Elizabethan expeditionary forces, had died not in battle but of cold and hunger; their commander, Lord Willoughby, had gone home with the broken remnant, writing to Burghley that, ‘In my life nothing ever grieved me more but I must endure God’s will.’¹³ There was no respite for Henri who lived in the saddle or the muddy trenches directing siege after siege. His closest escape was near Meulan where having climbed a church steeple to examine the enemy lines a cannon ball hurtled between his legs, smashing the staircase so that he had to descend by a rope. Yet with all this Herculean striving victory was as far away as ever.

Indeed France was beginning to disintegrate. Among the vultures the Duke of Lorraine hoped for the Three Bishoprics—Metz, Toul and Verdun—and the Duke of Savoy had designs on Provence and Dauphiné. The Duc de Nevers, the Duc de Nemours, the Duc de Mercoeur, all plotted to set up their own independent principalities. Philip II demanded that he be given the title ‘Protector of the Kingdom’ in recognition of his daughter’s claim to the Valois throne as a granddaughter of Henri II. Fortunately neither Philip nor Mayenne were strong enough to triumph. The latter’s position was threatened not only by the Spanish interest but by divisions within the League at Paris, between the Catholic lords and haute bourgeoisie on the one hand and on the other the mob and the popular preachers who wanted neither King nor nobility but a new social order. This disunity was the salvation of Henri IV.

He was determined to bring Mayenne to battle for by doing so he would challenge not only a rival but the entire Catholic opposition. He deliberately laid siege to Dreux and Mayenne took the bait. On 14 March 1590 the Leaguers engaged the Royalists on the plain of St André between Nonaincourt and Ivry. Mayenne, with his Spanish and Walloon allies under Comte d’Egmont, mustered fifteen thousand foot and four thousand horse, many of the latter being heavy lancers. Henri had eight thousand infantry, his pikemen mainly Swiss veterans, and three thousand cavalry all of whom were pistoleers including a regiment of German Reiters. Both sides drew up their formations in a straight line facing each other and the Leaguers, determined to exploit their numerical superiority, did not even bother to mount a reserve.

The Germans’ colonel, Dietrich Schomberg, asked the King to settle his men’s arrears of pay whereupon Henri sneered that no brave man asked for money before a battle. However, he later begged the colonel’s pardon for such an insult, moving him to tears and protestations of loyalty.

Forgetting his Gascon swagger Henri prayed before his men, like Cromwell at Naseby.

O God, Thou knowest my mind and seest my heart. If it be to my people’s good that I should possess the Crown, then do Thou prosper my cause and direct mine arms. But, Lord, if it hath pleased Thee to ordain otherwise or if Thou foreseest that I must be counted among the number of those Kings whom Thou givest in Thy wrath, then take away my life and my Crown; grant that today I may be the victim of Thy holy will so that my death may deliver France from the calamities of war and my blood be the last shed in this quarrel.

Then the Calvinist gave place to the paladin:

My comrades, do you prosper my fortune today so will I do the same for yours. I mean to conquer or die with you. Keep your ranks I beg of you. Should the heat of combat make you fall out, remember to close up at once—that is how battles are won. You must charge between those three trees up there on the right and should you lose sight of ensign, standard or pennon, do not lose sight of my white plume—you will always find it on the road to honour and to victory!¹⁴

The troopers noticed how he spoke with a laughing face.

The combat was of the sort in which Henri excelled, a cavalry battle where infantry and artillery played little part. The few cannon fired several desultory salvoes and then the horsemen on both sides rode forward. The King, near the centre, found himself opposite Mayenne into whose picked squadrons he led his own crack troopers after riding down some Spanish arquebusiers; the Royalist pistoleers charged home with the sword, crashing into the Duke’s lancers who found their clumsy weapons useless. Henri was lost sight of in the general mêlée where, shouting ‘we must use our pistols—the more against us the more the glory’, his white plume did indeed become the Royal battle flag when his standard bearer was shot down; eventually his little phalanx cut right through Mayenne’s horse which then disintegrated. After some final confused swordplay the enemy cavalry who had been driven back all along the line by the charge of the Royalist horse turned and fled while arquebusiers fired volley after volley into their pikemen. Fleeing, Mayenne ordered the bridge at Ivry to be broken down behind him so that many of his infantry, who were now running, lost their lives. Henri ordered his exultant troops to spare Frenchmen but to kill foreigners—‘sauvez les François, et main basse sur l’Etranger’—and about three thousand foot and eight hundred cavalry died in all, among them Egmont. The King suffered few casualties though they included the gallant Schomberg. He had taken nearly a hundred standards and in two hours had wiped out the League’s entire army.

Shortly afterwards he sent the good news to La Noue, writing with his usual terse grace: ‘Our victory has been absolute; the enemy quite broken, reiters half destroyed, infantry surrendered (Burgundians badly led), ensign and guns taken, and a pursuit to the very gates of Mantes.’¹⁵ Nonetheless if he loved battle and gloried in his victory Henri genuinely hated having to kill Frenchmen.

Paris was defenceless and only thirty-five miles away. It is difficult to understand why Henri did not advance to seize his capital as he had tried to do after Arques. It may have been a mistress who kept him yet he returned to campaign energetically in Normandy for several weeks before laying siege to the great city. Possibly he was taken aback by so complete a victory or he distrusted his Huguenots, some of them grey-headed veterans who had ridden with the martyred Coligny and who were still burning to avenge the massacre of St Bartholomew. Perhaps, always cautious in politics despite his recklessness on the battlefield, he was waiting for the situation to become clearer. Whatever the reason he would later regret bitterly his waste of such an opportunity.

At last the Royalist army, fifteen thousand strong, invested Paris in mid-May 1590. Despite Henri’s delay the city was ill prepared for a siege, even if Pantagruel’s view—that a cow’s wind could overthrow six fathoms of its walls—was no longer applicable. The League’s field force had been annihilated and the discredited M. de Mayenne dared not enter, so that the only Catholic magnates in Paris were his young half-brother, the Duc de Nemours, and his sister, that virago Mme de Montpensier. Their garrison numbered no more than eight thousand men and the city’s stock of food for a population of three hundred thousand was only sufficient for five weeks. The Spaniards were too busy in the Low Countries for any hope of speedy relief. Nonetheless a new army sprang up, of fanatic citizens of the same mould as those who would repulse the Revolution’s enemies in 1793. Other, stranger troops swelled their ranks. ‘The Feuillants, Capuchins, and other friars appeared in arms led by the Bishop of Senlis (who according to the moderates is crazed in the head) … marching around the city bearing a crucifix and a statue of Our Lady as their banners.’¹⁶ Though these thirteen hundred tonsured storm troopers proved more formidable than expected Henri could have fought his way in with ease. However, as Tallemant des Réaux observed, ‘Henri IV understood very well that to destroy Paris would be, as one says, to cut off his nose to spite his face.’¹⁷ He knew that his zealous Huguenots were only too keen to take the city by storm and cut the throat of every Catholic inside. ‘Furthermore he believed he might be destroying a town whose ruin, like a wound in the heart, could prove mortal for all France.’ Wisely the King decided to starve his capital into submission. He spent the siege on the heights which overlook Paris. Here according to a scandalous but probably well-founded tradition he passed the time debauching two young nuns whom he afterwards made abbesses.

Henri IV as a young man, by Antoine Caron

Henri IV in about 1600

The Duchesse de Villars and Gabrielle d’Estrées in the bath

The rich Politique lawyer Pierre de L’Estoile who was in Paris thoughout the siege left a grim record in his diary. By 15 June the Spanish ambassador had proposed grinding the bones of the dead to make flour and by 9 July the poor were chasing dogs and eating the grass which grew in the streets. On 15 August L’Estoile found a man dying of hunger at his door with a child who died in his arms. On one occasion he saw a woman eat the skin of a dog. At the end of August ‘you could see the poor, dying, eating dead dogs on the street; some ate garbage thrown into the river or rats or the flour made from bones …’ This latter was known as ‘the bread of Mme de Montpensier’ who recommended it without sampling it herself; most of those who did died in agony. The Duchess kept a little lap dog alive until the very end, for a last desperate resource. By that time there were cases of cannibalism and the diarist noted how starving wretches ‘began chasing children along the streets as well as dogs’. Thirteen thousand people died of hunger or malnutrition.

The news of this suffering caused Henri genuine distress and he gave a safe conduct to all women, children and scholars and indeed to many others who wished to leave the beleaguered city. When some peasants were caught trying to smuggle food in, instead of hanging them out of hand he rewarded them. Such inconsistency infuriated Queen Elizabeth who wrote to chide him for his lack of purpose. But Henri knew what he was doing; in time tales of mercy would stand him in good stead.

On 27 July ‘he seized the Parisians by the throat’¹⁸, capturing the faubourgs by a general midnight assault that was well calculated to cow the citizens. Sully has left a graphic account:

There was not one person who did not think that this immense city would be destroyed either by the fire of the artillery or by the mines kindled in its bowels; never was there a spectacle more capable of inspiring horror. Thick clouds of smoke, through which darted by intervals sparks of fire or long trains of flames, covered all that space of earth, which by the vicissitudes of light and darkness, seemed now plunged in thick shades of night and now swallowed up in a sea of fire. The thunder of the artillery, the clashing of arms, and the cries of the combatants, added to this object all that can be imagined terrible which was still increased by the natural horror of night.¹⁹

Yet all Henri’s efforts to subdue the people of Paris were in vain, ‘car il est merveilleusement patient …’²⁰

The Duke of Parma arrived from the Netherlands with fourteen thousand men and joined Mayenne who had another twelve thousand, and Henri was forced to raise the siege. On 7 September 1590 ‘the Duc de Mayenne and the Prince of Parma took Lagny from under the King’s beard’ so that Paris once again enjoyed free access. Henri found it impossible to bring the wily Parmesan to battle, for his pikemen dug in so quickly that it was impossible for cavalry to reach them through the trenches and earthworks. Soon Parma had organized a fleet of small boats which ferried food across the Seine to the all but stricken city. After more fruitless skirmishing the Royalists, exhausted and disheartened, withdrew to winter in northern France, whereupon Parma returned to the Netherlands.

The King had had his first encounter with the greatest soldier in Europe, ‘le plus grand Capitaine entre les Estrangers de ce siècle-là’.²¹ Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma, black bearded, sober, and of painstaking brilliance was in his mid-forties and had been governor of the Low Countries since 1578; his skill and determination had saved the southern Netherlands for Spain and Catholicism. He was almost unceasingly at war with the United Provinces so that though he had succeeded to his Duchy in 1586 Philip II would not, dared not, let his return home. Parma was nonetheless unshakeably loyal; when his troops’ pay did not arrive from Spain he sold his own jewels to find the money. With his terrible but devoted Spanish veterans who had fought under him for over a decade, with his genius for engineering and staff work, and with his instinctive grasp of all strategic and tactical possibilities, Parma was very nearly invincible. Thus Péréfixe ascribed his victories to ‘deep reasoning and judicious ordering; he kept the plan of his tactics in his head in such a way, based his movements so carefully on exact maps of the terrain, and pondered so thoroughly over what was going to happen and what he could do that his success was always assured’.²² Parma provides a yardstick by which to judge Henri’s own military abilities.

The King’s failure before Paris was a body blow, perhaps the worst reverse of his life. Many royalist squires rode home, even Huguenots. The Tiers Parti, that nascent alliance between the more worldly Papists and the former courtiers of Henri III—the politicalmignons, le pluspart athées et libertins—was beginning to take shape. Henri had to find allies to reassure his supporters whether Catholic or Politique, greedy Tiercelet or dour Huguenot. He therefore sent the Vicomte de Turenne, as a great nobleman who was also a stalwart Protestant, into England and Germany to beg for help.

The King needed to be consoled. Corisande’s sun was setting and he was pursuing the Marquise de La Roche Guyon. The lady’s marital fidelity was unconquerable, but she nonetheless inspired one of the most beautiful of his love letters, even if its elegance is hardly matched by its passion:

My mistress. I am writing this short word to you on the day before a battle. Its outcome is in the hands of God who has already ordained what must happen and what he knows to be expedient for his glory and for my people’s salvation. If I lose it you will never see me again for I am not the man to flee or give ground. I can assure you that if I die there my last thought but one will be of you and my very last of God to whom I commend you as also myself. This last of August 1590 by the hand of he who kisses yours and is your servant. Henry.²³

Her resistance delayed poor Corisande’s final congé.

However, after harrying Parma’s withdrawal, the King found consolation in Picardy of the most soothing and absorbing kind—Gabrielle d’Estrées, ‘qui estoit parfaitement belle et d’une très noble Maison’.²⁴ Thus the delicate Bishop Péréfixe. Tallemant des Réaux put it somewhat differently: ‘This Mme d’Estrées was of the de la Bourdaisière, the family most prolific of gallant ladies that has ever been in France. One counts up to 25 or 26 of them, whether nuns or married women, who all made extravagant love. Which is why people say that the arms of the de la Bourdaisière are a fistful of whore as by a pleasing chance it happens that in their arms is a hand grasping a fesse (old argot for whore).’²⁵ Like her five sisters this charmer of seventeen years was willing enough to follow the family tradition; with their brother they would one day be known in Paris as ‘the Seven Deadly Sins’. She had probably taken a lover already, the Duc de Bellegarde, who foolishly introduced the wonderful girl to his susceptible master. Henri, now thirty-seven, was at once infatuated when he met her towards the end of 1590. Despite Matthieu’s tale of the King on campaign halting at the gate of the family château and asking for bread and butter to avoid arousing her father’s suspicions, that nobleman was well pleased by the honour. Soon Henri was writing passionately to ‘la belle Gabrielle’ who was to become the second of his three great loves. After finding her the King no longer wrote to Corisande.

All contemporaries testify to Gabrielle’s beauty. Her blonde hair was compared to spun gold while men marvelled at the delicate rose of her complexion, at the softness of her blue eyes, at her chiselled features, and at her exquisite figure and shapely limbs. InLa Muse Chasseresse the old court huntsman Guillaume du Sable, who was as good a judge of women as he was of horses or hounds, credited her with ‘a mouth of cinnabar, lips of coral and teeth of ivory’ and rhapsodized over her glorious bust:

Une gorge de lys sur un beau sein d’albâtre
Ou deux fermes tetins sont assis et plantés.

He also admired ‘her beautiful double chin’ though this Renaissance perfection is not evident in an early portrait. All these pink and white charms were accompanied by a high forehead and a Roman nose and animated by a strong if very feminine personality with gifts of character rather than intellect. Obviously la belle Gabrielle was a young woman of dazzling loveliness. She even captivated Agrippa d’Aubigné who admitted that there was nothing lascivious in her ‘extreme beauté’. A besotted Henri soon found a complaisant husband to ensure her accessibility, the Sieur de Liancourt, a rich, elderly widower to whom she was married in June 1592; the marriage was never consummated. However, the skittish girl did not at first altogether relish the exacting role of royal concubine and sought for love elsewhere.

The continuing rivalry of Bellegarde, her old lover and Henri’s junior by ten years, brought the King’s passion to boiling point. Suspecting infidelity this least faithful of lovers became madly jealous, often writing twice a day to his belle ange. By mid-April 1593 he was full of reproach: ‘My beautiful love you are indeed to be admired yet why should I praise you? Up to now, aware of my passion, triumph has made you unfaithful. How the truth of all those fine words spoken with so much sweetness—at the foot of your bed on Tuesday when night was falling—has removed all my old illusions! I mention the time and place to refresh your memory … To end I will tell how sorrow at leaving you so racked my heart that throughout the night I thought I was dying and I am still in pain …’²⁶ The same day he wrote again, and the day after too, pleading ‘don’t fail, my beautiful love, to come on the day you promised. The further I go, the less am I able to bear your absence. You have bewitched me—I admit it—more than I have ever been before.’²⁷ Shortly afterwards he was writing desperately, ‘It is killing me, this dread of your delay … Jesus! I will see you the day after tomorrow. What joy!’ He added thoughtfully, ‘Sleep well, my beautiful love, so as to be plump and fresh when you arrive—I have made my own preparations.’²⁸ No doubt Henri’s ‘preparations’ had made him even more impatient for on the following day he was telling his beautiful love that ‘to-morrow I will kiss those lovely hands millions of times—already my pain is soothed by the approach of a moment which I hold dearer than my life, but if you keep me waiting a single day longer I shall die of it … to spend the month of April away from one’s mistress is not to exist’.²⁹Next day he lamented, ‘I had no news from you yesterday … it is noon and still I’ve heard nothing … when will you learn to keep faith? I don’t break my promises like this.’ Then he tried pathos: ‘The fever came this morning, before I woke. On a sudden impulse, without any real need, I took some medicine which made me so ill that I haven’t taken any more.’³⁰

In May he had recourse to verse set to music and sent her the following song:

Charmante Gabrielle,
Percé de mille dards
Quand la gloire m’apelle
A la suite de Mars,
Cruelle départye,
Malheureux jour
Que ne suis-je sans vie
Ou sans amour….

‘These verses will give you a better idea of my condition, and more agreeably, than any prose,’ said Henri in his accompanying letter.³¹ It is even just possible that he wrote them himself. The song was to become a popular Royalist anthem.

By now the King had grown so furious that to calm him an alarmed Bellegarde pretended to be in love with the young Mlle de Guise, a ruse which had some success. In June Henri could still write to Gabrielle, from the siege of Dreux: ‘Come! Come! Come! My dearest love, honour with your presence he who were he free would journey a thousand miles to throw himself at your feet and never leave them.’³² However, the relationship was beginning to go more smoothly and in the autumn of this year, 1593, Gabrielle found herself enceinte with his child, the future Duc de Vendôme. If unfaithful the King could fall very genuinely in love with his bedfellows; the secret of retaining his affections was as much one of personality as of sex. Nonetheless one is hardly inclined to pity Henri’s torments of jealousy over Gabrielle in the light of his heartless treatment of a discarded mistress, Esther Imbert, who being in need had come to St Denis to beg for help. The King was too busy to see her whereupon poor Esther took to her bed and died of sorrow.

Henri IV was formidable even with the scantiest forces and in April 1591 took Chartres, ‘the granary of Paris’. Gabrielle was present to felicitate him. Meanwhile all over France lesser campaigns, mostly independent of his direction, were going in favour of the Royalists. His star had begun to re-ascend. Furthermore Turenne had been staggeringly successful in his mission; by the summer the King had nearly twenty thousand fresh foreign troops, Germans, Dutch and English. Turenne was rewarded by a delighted Henri with the hand of the heiress to the semi-independent Duchy of Bouillon.

The English were commanded by a Welshman, Sir Roger Williams, who had been in France with the Royalist armies for over a year and was devoted to Henri. In May 1591 with only six hundred men—most of them English—he had routed two Leaguer regiments besieging Dieppe whereupon the King’s ambassador in London commented, ‘Glory to God and the said Sir Williams who has not belied by this action the good opinion that all good people of both nations have had of him this long time.’³³ In July of the same year Sir Roger was joined by the Queen’s favourite, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, young, very handsome and very incompetent, who brought four thousand English troops, mainly ill-trained infantry. They marched to join the King with whom Essex remained until January 1592, showing himself unfailingly brave and foolhardy. He used to hawk in enemy territory and challenged the governor of Rouen to a duel;³⁴ an angry Elizabeth wrote to him at the end of the year: ‘We hear besides, to our no small wonder, how little the King regards the hazard of our men and how you, our General, at all times refuse not to run with them to all service of greatest peril, but even like the forlorn hope of a battle, to bring them to the slaughter.’³⁵ Surprisingly, this spoilt and incapable young exhibitionist could do no wrong in the eyes of the King who seemed to take a great fancy to him. But Henri had too much Gallic shrewdness in matters of sex not to pamper a doting old woman’s darling boy. The Queen’s support was gratifyingly continued when Essex returned home. Indeed Dallington claimed in 1598, ‘So her Maiestie by defending the oppressed and withstanding his [Philip II’s] Forces, deserueth the Title of Protectrix of France, and Deliuerer of the Estates.’

There were many other Englishmen who fought for Henri, like Sir John Norris in Brittany or the ambassador Sir Henry Unton. Inevitably relations between the English and their hereditary enemies sometimes grew strained; when Biron rebuked Williams for his men’s slow marching pace the fiery Welshman snapped back that their ancestors had been wont to conquer France at that same pace.³⁶ Yet almost all of them took a strong liking to the King of France. Thus Sir Henry Unton wrote to Burghley in November 1591: ‘He is a most noble, brave Kinge, of greate patience and magnanymitie; not ceremonious, affable, famillier and only followed for this trewe vallour but very much hated for his relligion and threattoned by the Catholiques to forsake him if he converte not.’³⁷

Despite his Protestant faith the Royalist cause was everywhere making steady if inconclusive progress. So many bishops rallied to the King that he was able to hold a council of the Gallican Church at Chartres, his excommunication and the Papacy’s continued hostility notwithstanding. In August Henri was saddened by news of the death of La Noue, ‘the Protestant Bayard’, at an obscure siege. In November 1591 old Marshal de Biron and Essex invested Rouen, beginning a struggle which would prove another siege of Paris. This rich city was the capital of Normandy and the key to the entire province. It was defended by a fanatical garrison under a governor, Villars-Brancas, who was one of the League’s ablest and most resourceful soldiers.

Sully gives a vignette of the exhausting life which the King led on campaign; on one occasion, after dinner on the day before an assault, Henri ‘having a great desire to sleep threw himself down on a bed clothed and booted (the period’s great thigh length boots) with his weapons at his side’.³⁸Nor was he so strong as might be supposed; the English ambassador could write ‘the Kinge hath a weake body and is inclyned to a feaver natuarallie’. The same writer grumbled, ‘we never rest, but are on horsebacke almost night and daie’.³⁹ Furthermore, like the Duke of Wellington, war did not stop Henri’s hunting whenever possible.

In Paris the conservative and democratic factions within the League were by now openly, and murderously, hostile to each other. Since Ivry Mayenne’s stock had sunk so low that the extremist element had been able to gain control; popular preachers urged ‘abloodletting’, attacking all moderates including the Parlement of Paris whose lawyers supported Mayenne and a strong Catholic monarchy. All through the summer tempers worsened until the outburst in November by the ‘Seize of Paris (A Councell of 16, the most seditious Burgers of the Towne) who strangled M. Brisson a President of the Parliament, the rarest man of his time, and two other lawyers, the one an Aduocate, the other a Procuror …’.⁴⁰ The Seize now drew up a list of opponents who were to be murdered or exiled; their ultimate objective was to obtain a weak King who must obey the States General—which would meet every five years—besides guaranteeing various new privileges for commons and clergy. However, Mayenne returned and in December surrounded the Bastille, beheaded four of those responsible for Brisson’s murder, dissolved the council of the Seize, and installed moderates in all political offices. But it was impossible for him to eradicate the ferocious preachers with their wild demagogy; soon there was talk of elective monarchy.

The League was now dividing into many factions, all violently inimical. The Cardinal de Bourbon, ‘Charles X’, had died in May 1590, still in captivity, since when the Leaguers had been unable to agree upon even a nominal candidate for the throne. The Cardinal de Vendôme was the next Catholic Bourbon in succession but received scant consideration. The young Duc de Guise, full of hatred, had escaped in August 1591 and, as Henri predicted, soon quarrelled with Mayenne whose position was also weakened by the ‘furious jealousy’ which existed between him and the Duc de Nemours. The foreign claimants, those of Lorraine and Spain, continued to press their claims though understandably the Spanish received most attention; they proposed Philip II’s daughter Isabella for Queen with Guise as her consort. Philip’s primary objective was to weaken France by turning her into a republic or setting up a King who would be entirely dependent upon him. However, no single faction was able to triumph and nothing could be decided until the States General had met, each party trying to postpone the assembly while consolidating its own strength. This chaotic situation was to last till 1593. The one point upon which all were agreed was the unacceptability of a heretic sovereign, a rejection only made possible by Spanish money: ‘The chiefest supporter of these Guisards; and that still gaue oyle to the fire of this rebellion, was the King of Spaine, who … stood by and looked on, following that Machiauellian maxime, or lesson, which he had learned of that other Philippe of Macedon, to suffer them to ruyne one another, as did the Cities of Greece, and then himselfe to take the aduantage and winne all …’⁴¹ From the League’s emergence under the Balafré until its demise nearly a decade later it was always a child of the Escorial. Agrippa d’Aubigné said no more than the truth when, in Les Tragiques, he spoke of ‘ce venin Espagnol’—this Spanish poison.

King Philip decided to relieve Rouen where despite repeated assaults the Royalists were making no progress against M. de Villars-Brancas’ sturdy defence. Hearing in December 1592 that Parma was on his way with twenty-three thousand foot and six thousand horse, Henri left most of his troops with Biron to carry on the siege and galloped off with six thousand cavalry and one thousand mounted musketeers so to hinder the Duke that he would not reach Rouen in time to save it. On 3 February 1592, having omitted to make a proper reconnaissance, he unexpectedly made contact with the Spaniards at Aumâle on the north-eastern border of Normandy and had to beat a hasty retreat which he covered personally with a mere handful of troopers—‘being the first at everie charge and the last at the retraict which contynued very hotely foure or five hours’⁴²—until he was wounded by a bullet in the loins whereupon his little force fled panic-stricken. Henri only stayed in the saddle with difficulty. Fortunately Parma would not waste troops in pursuit, unable to believe that the King of France would fight as a mere captain of light horse. The bullet cut through Henri’s jerkin and underclothes but did little more than penetrate the flesh even if he was in considerable pain and had to be carried in a litter for several days. After this skirmish, which might have well proved fatal for France, Parma continued to advance slowly but inexorably, shrugging off every cavalry attack.

Meanwhile at Rouen Villars-Brancas had sallied out, killing many of the besiegers and blowing up their ammunition. After much confused manœuvring Parma and Mayenne relieved Rouen on 21 April. They then advanced to take Caudebec but here Parma was badly wounded by a bullet in the arm and had to take to his bed. Digging in at Yvetot under the command of Mayenne the Catholic army was trapped by Henri, suffering three thousand casualties. It seemed as though the Spaniards and the Leaguers were doomed. ‘Vive Dieu!’ joked the King, ‘though I may have lost the Kingdom of France at least I possess that of Yvetot,’ referring to an imaginary king in a nursery rhyme. However, when all seemed lost for the Spaniards Parma rose from his bed and in an operation of real genius evacuated his troops across the Seine by night. This great general then returned to the Low Countries after reinforcing Paris. He would never again cross swords with Henri for his wound proved mortal and he died in December 1592.

One must admit that Henri IV’s calibre as a soldier was small compared to that of the Duke. The King though capable of fighting a defensive battle, as he showed at Arques, was primarily a cavalry soldier with a genius for the charge by which all his victories were won. While he had a good grasp of tactics and a reasonable understanding of strategy his instincts as a rittmeister, a captain of horse, always came before his duty as a general, perhaps because of his early years when, too poor to hire infantry, he had had to depend on the mounted Huguenot squirearchy. He was a commander after the school of Prince Rupert of the Rhine and of Murat, even of Lord Cardigan at Balaclava, not of Napoleon. The incident at Aumàle might have happened on only too many other occasions. Frequently his followers reproached him but he would answer, ‘I thus play at hazard every day of my life and endure a thousand things which try me sorely, in order to uphold my name for it is far better for me to die sword in hand than to see my Kingdom broken in pieces and I therefore entrust myself and my affairs to God.’

Referring to the near disaster at Aumâle Sir Henry Unton commented glumly, ‘… wee all wishe he were lesse valliant … His to much forwardnes doth discourage greately his servants,’ and again, ‘Her Majestie may make many praie for her if shee please to admonishe the Kinge of his to much indangeringe of himselfe’.⁴³ A few years later Dallington noted, ‘perhaps some wil taxe this hazarding of his owne person, as a matter of imputation, and better befitting a young Prince of Navarre, then a great King of France’, concluding that ‘a good and discreet Generall should dye of age’.⁴⁴Not even Henri’s greatest admirers can claim that he was a ‘discreet Generall’.

Certainly the King was a remarkable leader whose bravery and willingness to share every danger endeared him to all and helped unite a most divided and ill-paid following, but in battle he became intoxicated, for he enjoyed soldiering in much the same way as he did hunting. He loved the drama and excitement of war, the rolling kettledrums and shrilling fifes, the jangle of harness and clatter of weapons and the rattle of musketry and thunder of cannon, above all he loved the ecstatic thrill of the charge, wild-eyed horses foaming and neighing, their hooves pounding, and riders yelling with rage as they burst through the black powder smoke to crash into the enemy ranks. No doubt he could fight on foot, as at the taking of Cahors, yet here too he was in the front line rejoicing in the combat. He won many small battles and several large ones, but when faced with the science and staff work of Parma his élan was of no avail. In the final analysis Henri IV was not a really great commander. Nevertheless one must surely agree with his own troops that he was a grand fighting man and truly ‘le Roy des braves’.

He lived in constant peril. Even if, as Montaigne noted, he did not employ a food taster, assassination by poison or the knife was endemic and the League made several attempts to murder him. There was danger too, of a sort, from his very family. Though his pale, inelegant sister Catherine was fond of him, since the age of sixteen she had been in love with a Bourbon cousin of extremely doubtful loyalty, the Comte de Soissons—‘a Prince of the bloud and one of the rarest Gentlemen of France’. Corisande, to avenge her replacement by Gabrielle, encouraged both Soissons and her friend Catherine to marry in the teeth of the King’s opposition; grimly, Henri warned her, ‘I would not have thought it of you and say only this, that I will never forgive anyone who tries to set my sister against me—on this certainty I kiss your hand.’⁴⁵ For the suit of Condé’s scheming younger brother was far from disinterested; he believed that Henri would destroy himself in which case Catherine would inherit Béarn with all the lands of the d’Albret. Blindly in love, she managed somehow to extort written permission from her brother to marry his would-be heir. Suddenly, in March 1592 during the siege of Rouen, the Count fled from the Royalist camp and rode hard for Pau where Catherine had her chief residence.

The King reacted swiftly. To M. de Ravignan, President of the Council in Béarn, he wrote: ‘I am ill pleased by the journey my cousin, the Comte de Soissons, has undertaken. I have only one thing to say to you, that if anything occurs to which you agree or give your help against my wishes, your head will answer.’⁴⁶ Meanwhile he dispatched the ever reliable Rosny to Pau to retrieve poor infatuated Catherine’s permission to marry. Rosny did so by dint of soothing lies and false promises; though he despised Soissons as a shallow and treacherous schemer he could never afterwards think of this exploit without shame or pain. Understandably Henri has been reproached with ill-treating his sister but he simply could not afford to trust such broken reeds as M. de Soissons.

After Parma’s final withdrawal in May 1592 the Royalist army was exhausted and the King unable to mount a campaign on any serious scale though he continued operations in northern France. During this summer old Biron who was wearing the King’s white plumed hat for a jest had his head taken clean off his shoulders by a well aimed cannon ball, at the siege of Epernay. In the south and west Leaguers and Royalists fought it out with inconclusive results apart from the Huguenots of Dauphiné who triumphantly routed their Papist enemies and the Duke of Savoy. In fact Henri, the League and Philip II were at the end of their resources and had to accept a military stalemate.

The Tiers Parti now asserted itself. Its members were quite ready to transfer an allegiance which was not paying dividends, emerging as a distinct political grouping prepared to consider a Catholic Bourbon like the Cardinal de Vendôme if Henri would not turn Papist. It was an alternative which attracted both Politiques and moderate Leaguers; indeed the latter were actually called Politiques by their extremist colleagues. Henri’s inability to conquer by force of arms gave this solution plausibility. The throne would no longer be his should the States General agree upon such a candidate.

Politiques believed that the King must be above religious differences and their concept of monarchy could be reconciled with the emergent Gallican version of Divine Right. Yet while Henri was a declared Politique with a natural predilection for Divine Right, for many years his only completely reliable supporters had been the Huguenots who subscribed to a different philosophy based on the idea, first expressed in Calvin’s Institutes and then developed in the French Vindicia contra Tyrannos, that ultimate political authority rests with the ‘inferior magistrates’ who can guard the people against an idolatrous King; in France the Huguenot nobles had identified themselves with these ‘inferior magistrates’, an identification which explains much of French Calvinism’s aristocratic appeal. Admittedly there had always been some Huguenot Politiques, such as La Noue, but hitherto they had been rare. Now, despairing of victory, more and more Huguenots became willing to settle for a Politique monarchy and like the Tiers Parti urged their Godly Prince to turn idolater. Even the Religion’s ministers protested only half-heartedly against his proposed conversion.

Henri remained hesitant. He had been dependent on Huguenot support for so long that to entrust himself to other factions was an unnerving prospect, intellectually and emotionally if not spiritually. The pressure on him became almost unbearable when news arrived that the States General would assemble in Paris in January 1593. Again he declared his readiness to receive ‘instructions’ in the Roman faith, but he had done this several times before.

Sully gives an account of a private and most revealing conversation which took place in the King’s bedchamber at Mantes sometime in 1592. Henri was still in bed and the then M. de Rosny was sitting on his pillow. The King confided that he had not turned Papist for fear of alienating the Huguenots whom he did not want to have to fight ‘as my heart could not bear to harm the men who for so long have spent their goods and their lives in my defence, whether nobles or townsmen—it is beyond my power to keep myself from loving them’. Moved to tears by this declaration his henchman though a firm Calvinist urged Henri to let himself be converted for the sake of France, claiming that he knew several ministers who did not dispute that one could be saved in the Catholic as well as in the Protestant faith.⁴⁷ The King continued to sound Huguenot reactions: ‘What, you agree that one can be saved in the “religion” de ces Messieurs-là?’ he asked a too tactful minister, laughing somewhat cruelly that ‘prudence requires I should be of their creed, not yours, because being of theirs I can be saved according to both them and you, while being of yours I can be saved well enough according to you but not according to them. Prudence dictates that I should follow the most guaranteed road’. But Henri was still not ready, despite hints by the Tiercelets that they might desert him or pointed jokes that ‘de tous les canons le canon de la Messe estoit le meilleur pour reduire les villes de son Royaume’.

Luckily King Philip thought that France could be bought and having poured out his gold believed the game was won. In May 1593 his ambassador arrogantly nominated the Infanta Isabella as Queen, adding that her consort must be Archduke Ernst of Habsburg. Mayenne and the Guisards could hardly be expected to swallow this and all save fanatics refused assent by insisting on the Salic Law—inheritance through the direct male line. Too late the Spanish ambassador agreed that Guise might be a fit husband for ‘Queen Isabella’. The States General was hopelessly demoralized; it had already been badly shaken by the circulation of such pamphlets as the Satyre Menipée which savagely ridiculed the League’s hypocrisy and self-seeking. There was little talk of the Tiers Parti. Meanwhile Henri’s followers were loudly urging their master to be reconciled to the Church; he was told with some exaggeration by d’O, who was ‘bored at being a Financier without money’,⁴⁸ that if he did not do so the States General would elect another King of France within the week.

On 23 July Henri de Bourbon received ‘instruction’ from a select body of Catholic divines at Mantes. Two days later, clad in white satin from head to foot save for a black hat and mantle, he knelt humbly at the doors of the abbey of St Denis—the French Westminster Abbey—and begged to be taken back into the fold of the Roman Church. The doors were opened and the King entered to kneel again before the Archbishop of Bourges and seven bishops where he recanted his heresy, swearing to live and die in the true faith. Having kissed the Archbishop’s ring he was led within to attend mass and receive communion. A political earthquake ensued. As a man the Godless Tiers Parti rallied to him, within a fortnight the States General had dispersed, declaring itself incompetent to regulate the Succession, and all over France towns and lords began to declare for Henri IV. A shrewdly conceived truce of three months sharpened the whole country’s appetite for peace.

Since childhood Henri’s personal beliefs had been the battleground and prize of the Kingdom’s most persuasive theologians so that he had become hopelessly confused, seeing virtue in both Calvinism and Catholicism. His conversion has too often been seen as an act of cynical statesmanship, explained by the dry phrase ‘Paris vaut bien une messe’, though there is no proof he ever said it. If he did these apparently damning words were no more than Gascon buffoonery and self mockery. In fact he wept over the gravity of his step and wrote to Gabrielle—whose influence d’Aubigné believed to be decisive—that ‘to-morrow I shall make a perilous leap’⁴⁹ while to judge from reactions during the preliminary ‘instruction’ and from his later behaviour under the close scrutiny of courtiers there is excellent reason to suppose that he became a perfectly sincere if hardly sinless Catholic. One of the principal divines who ‘instructed’ him told the diarist L’Estoile that the King was astonishingly well versed in theology and able to defend his errors but that, though sceptical about the adoration of the Sacrament, purgatory and prayers for the dead, he had suddenly burst into tears and cried out to the Catholic doctors that as he was entrusting them with his immortal soul they must make sure of his salvation.⁵⁰

Henri’s religion was one of feeling. Though he had once been a convinced Calvinist, as Montaigne divined he had long been veering towards Rome, possibly under Corisande’s influence. No doubt the Roman Church’s authority, its disciplining of society and its traditional role as a prop of monarchy appealed strongly to the autocrat in Henri, yet his conversion was, in the last analysis, a matter of temperament. The fresh and vigorous spirituality of Trent had brought a gay and reassuring faith typified by such delightful saints as François de Sales with his dictum ‘always condemn the sin, but show mercy to the sinner’, a faith which was far more attuned to Henri’s warm, earthy nature than the pure but icy grandeur of the Reform. As Athos remarked to the Musketeers, during their famous siege of La Rochelle, that while respecting the Huguenots’ courage he deplored their obtuseness in not accepting Catholicism ‘that most cheerful and comforting of all religions’.

Huguenot suspicions about ce notable mutation⁵¹ were confirmed by Henri’s continuing affection for their Ministers; he even asked one to pray for him. In the late 1590s when ill he asked d’Aubigné if he thought he had committed the terrible sin against the Holy Ghost, that persistent denial of inescapable truth for which there is no forgiveness, but he soon regained his peace of mind. Other Protestants, and also agnostics, have since claimed him as a kindred spirit who never really bowed to Rome. They completely fail to understand the man. One must remember that Charles II who changed his faith from Anglican to Presbyterian, from Presbyterian to Anglican, and from Anglican to Catholic, and who lived as a sceptic and a libertine, nevertheless died a spectacularly edifying death with the piety of a Counter-Reformation saint. As always this grandson, a Gascon manqué, who shared his cynicism, his self mockery, his sexual weakness and his lack of gratitude, yet also his realism and fundamental honesty, offers a revealing parallel.

The Royalist cause continued to make progress throughout the winter of 1593–4 though Paris and a substantial part of the Kingdom remained defiant while the great lords clung tenaciously to their fiefs. The Béarnais, as his enemies still called him, decided upon a step of genius, to be crowned, even though Rheims the traditional crowning place of French Kings was in Leaguer hands; instead of waiting till his right to the Kingdom was beyond dispute he would use the Coronation as an instrument, not as a consummation. In this decision one may discern his unerring political instinct which, surprisingly, was as much that of a lawyer as of a popular leader.

Any balanced estimate of Henri’s political motives must emphasize his quite remarkable respect, indeed reverence, for the law. Before its unification in the Code Napoléon the French legal system was a disunited collection of separate jurisdictions, each one with its own Parlement or court of justice and totally independent of each other. Only royal ordonnances (edicts by the King in Council) had a universal application throughout the Kingdom and even then only after they had been registered by each Parlement. North of the Loire in the lands of the Languedoil the Loi Coutumier(traditional Common Law) prevailed, whereas south of the Loire, the lands of the Languedoc were subject to Roman Law. The practice of Roman Law makes able politicians, and notwithstanding the advent of the Code Napoléon most great French political figures have come from the Midi. In pre-Revolutionary France all Parlements whether in the Languedoc or the Languedoil wielded immense influence and prestige as custodians of the law and as champions of good government. Significantly La Robe was the means by which the bourgeoisie entered the nobility; both legal office and titles of nobility could be purchased by them. Henri took pains to cultivate this noblesse de la robe with its habitude parlementaire. As a true man of the south he himself was not only a natural politician but fully aware of the law’s strength and of the vital interdependence between theParlements and the monarchy. Hence his conscious championship of fundamental laws and the careful legality which underlay nearly all his public actions; never once did he act illegally. He therefore calculated that the impact of his coronation would be legal as well as psychological, especially in the heartland of the Loi Coutumier which was largely held by Leaguers. To put on the Crown would be both a sacramental confirmation and a seal of legality.⁵²

Not only was Rheims in Leaguer hands but so was its sacred ampulla, brought from heaven by an angel and containing the oil which had consecrated almost all French Kings since 496. Luckily the monks of St Martin at Tours produced another sainte ampoulewhich, so they claimed, was even older and just as miraculous. The ceremony took place at Chartres on 25 February 1594. No setting more sublime can be imagined than the cathedral with its soaring spire, jewelled windows and mysterious carvings. Surrounded by six spiritual and six lay peers of France, Henri de Bourbon, after devoutly kissing the sword of Charlemagne, lay prostrate before the altar naked save for a crimson satin shirt while the Bishop of Chartres prayed over him and then anointed him on the head, on the chest, between the shoulders, on the elbows and in the elbow joints, saying each time ‘ungo te in Regem’. Then he stood to be vested in the dalmatic, the tunic and the chasuble—the first two of blue velvet sewn with gold lilies, the latter of cloth of gold damascened with pomegranates—after which he knelt again to be anointed in the palms of the hands. The gloves, the violet velvet boots, the ring and the sceptre were presented to him by the great lords and finally the Bishop took the Crown from the altar and placed it on his head whereupon this glittering being was enthroned while the vast congregation shouted ‘Vive le Roy! Vive le Roy! Vive eternellement le Roy!’ Then ‘hautboys, bugles, trumpets, fifes and drums’ sounded, cannon roared out salutes, musketeers fired volley after volley, heralds threw fistfuls of gold and silver coins among the crowd, and the Te Deum was sung. There followed a Pontifical High Mass at which the King communicated. The joyous and triumphant day ended with the Coronation banquet.⁵³

Anointed like Saul, Henri was now an all but magic figure, an archetype from mythology. Heir to the God Kings of the pagan Franks he was also a sharer in the sacrificing Christian priesthood; alone of French laymen he had received Communion in both kinds and worn the chasuble in which a priest celebrates Mass. With the mentality of his period, little removed from that of the Middle Ages, the psychological impact upon him and upon all Frenchmen was profound. This splendid and awe inspiring sacrament, of which the modern English form is only a pallid shadow, had consecrated Henri’s divine election to be King no less than St Louis, than Charlemagne, than Clovis. His destiny had been made holy. He had become France herself.

It is hard to exaggerate the veneration of pre-Revolutionary Frenchmen for their ancient monarchy, that charismatic rock upon which depended all law and all society, almost as Tridentine Catholicism depended upon the Pope. Within a week the League was collapsing. It testifies to Henri’s shrewd judgement that throughout this year of 1594 those lawyers who had purchased office in districts governed by the League flocked to the King to make sure of their status. The most fanatic Leaguer sensed that something extraordinary had happened at Chartres. It was more than a hallowing, more than an affirmation of the law. Something had returned which had not been known in France for over thirty years—monarchy. No less than the landing of Charles II in England in 1660, the Coronation of Henri IV marked a Restoration.