LOUIS XI died in 1483. The Turks had taken Constantinople in 1453. At almost exactly that same time Gutenberg at Mainz had produced the first printed book. Columbus was to discover America in 1492. Luther was to nail up his famous theses and to commence the Protestant Reformation in 1517. Manifestly, therefore, Europe, and with Europe of course France, was on the eve of that great transition in men's activities and ideas which we call the beginning of "Modern Times."
In this first "modern" movement, France was not to be precisely a leader. The reasons for this were several. She had recovered from the Hundred Years' War amply in the sense that the burned hamlets and cities had been rebuilt, but the progress of French culture had been stunted. French architects, poets, sculptors, troubadours, philosophers, and churchmen were no longer giving the example to the artistic and intellectual life of Europe as they had done in the thirteenth century.
Another and very serious reason was that another great monarchy had arisen on the Continent. At first it did not openly threaten to destroy France, as had the English peril, but for a long time it certainly overshadowed France, humiliated her, and mingled most ruinously in her affairs. This power was Spain, for a long time a congeries of weak, turbulent small kingdoms, now at last united in a powerful military monarchy under the famous Ferdinand and Isabella; and then (following 1516) under the power of the Austrian Hapsburg dynasty, which had come into the old Burgundian heritage of the Low Countries along with the Austrian lands in Germany; and likewise for much of the time into possession of the crown of the "Holy Roman Empire" itself. From the days of Hugh Capet, France had never had such a dangerous foreign rival to her east and south. All this, of course, meant that her destinies were clouded until the Hapsburg-Spanish menace waned.
In addition to this must be restated the obvious fact that under a real monarchy, the prosperity of the country depends to a perilous extent upon the character of the monarch. Charles VII, in his later days, and Louis XI had been highly efficient kings, and their country had reaped the reward, but from 1483 to 1589 it is not too much to say that not one of the monarchs of France deserves more than very stinted praise, and the majority can only be condemned as weaklings or tyrants. The kingdom was to pay the full penalty for the worthlessness of every king; this fact constituting, of course, one of the standard miseries of autocracy.
The years between 1483 and 1610 constitute a very well- defined chapter in French history. At the beginning of this epoch France had lived down the dangers of the Hundred Years' War, but was hardly strong enough as yet to adventure herself in schemes to dominate Europe; at the end of this time the Spanish menace was fading, and if only France could have great kings or great ministers she was certainly well able to play the part of the first power in Western civilization. Within the long period there are three well-defined divisions: (1) from 1483 to 1559, the time of so-called "Italian Wars," when the French kings vainly and foolishly strove to annex at least a large portion of Italy; (2) from 1559 to 1589, while all France was racked by religious wars between Protestant and Catholic; (3) from 1589 to 1610, when a great king, Henry IV (the famous "Henry of Navarre"), terminated the religious wars, repelled Spanish intervention, healed the domestic griefs, and put his kingdom again on the road to prosperity.
Barring this last sovereign, all the monarchs of France during this time are mediocrities or worse. There is often no need of dwelling on their particular "reigns" because they usually were the creatures of forces more powerful than themselves. It is much clearer to dwell upon the different issues of this age without overmuch reference to the royal actors.
Louis XI left a full treasury, an obedient kingdom, and a powerful army. It was too much to ask that his successors should remain peacefully at home, busy themselves with internal improvements, and not proceed forthwith to fish in the very troubled international waters of their day. The condition of Italy at the end of the fifteenth century was a constant invitation to an invader.
The Italian people were now enjoying the apogee of their wonderful Renaissance – that revival of the Græco-Roman art, letters, and learning, which had begun not long after 1300. Florence, Milan, Rome, Venice, Perugia, Siena, and dozens of smaller cities were the centers of a progress in painting, architecture, and sculpture as well as in all varieties of literature and erudition with which France had little to compare. The southern peninsula, too, was very wealthy. Italian craftsmen were the most skilled technically in the world. Their cities were full of refinements and luxuries unknown north of the Alps. Along with all this magnificence, however, went a lack of political unity that was lamentable. Milan had its own independent prince, or better, "despot." Venice was an aristocratic republic. Florence was a nominal republic controlled by the great Medici family. The Popes dominated central Italy as extremely "secular" princes. The south was held by the King of Naples. There were a number of smaller and weaker states. These petty governments were constantly at war, and were perfectly willing to invite the foreigner to help them crush their unfriendly neighbors. Italy was thus liable to prompt conquest by any great outside power. The only real question was whether it would be by France or Spain.
It is difficult not to express moral detestation for these "Italian Wars." They were entirely without serious provocation, and they were conducted almost exclusively for the "glory" of the various contending monarchs: but the ethics of 1500 were not those of twentieth-century America.
Charles VIII (1483-98), the light-headed and impolitic son of Louis XI, invaded Italy with a splendidly equipped army in 1495. He had been invited in by a usurper over the Duchy of Milan, and he had also vague claims to inherit the crown of Naples. During the first advance of his magnificent army, Charles easily conquered Naples, but he soon found that the North Italian powers were arming against him. His retreat and return to France were even more precipitate than his advance. The native princes and Ferdinand, the canny King of Spain, who soon intervened, drove out the last French garrisons beyond the Alps. Charles died of an accident in 1498. Nothing seemed left of his startling campaign save a memory, but the indirect results were considerable. The effects of the Italian Renaissance were now brought home to Charles's subjects. The French had been brought in direct contact with a civilization far more advanced and artificial than their own. Italian architects, artists, cooks, tailors, mountebanks, Greek and Latin professors – all alike streamed north of the Alps, in far greater numbers than before, to receive a warm welcome at the King's court, at the great noblemen's châteaux, at the University of Paris, and almost everywhere else. The culture of France was profoundly modernized.
Louis XII (1498-1515), the next king, was a much worthier person, but not much wiser in his foreign policy. Considered merely as a ruler at home he was one of the best monarchs France ever enjoyed. Taxes were lightened, honest measures taken to increase the prosperity of the lower classes, and the expenses of the court were largely confined to the income of the King's private estates. There was a general cutting-down of needless pensions and of other extravagances. "I would rather," proclaimed the King, "see the courtiers laughing at my avarice than the people weeping at my extravagance"; and in 1513 he declared in an ordinance, "On no account will we lay further burdens upon our poor people, knowing the hardships of their life and the heavy burdens, whether in the shape of tailles [direct taxes] or otherwise, which they have hitherto borne and still bear, to our great regret and grief." There is also excellent testimony that this benevolent home policy had its proper reward. "For one rich and prosperous merchant [it was written] that you could find in the days of Louis XI at Paris, Rouen, Lyons, or any other of the great cities of the realm, you may find in this reign more than fifty." Indeed, the national prosperity was so great that the royal income nearly doubled, even when the taxes were abated. The general wealth of France thus made Louis XII the envy of other kings.
Unfortunately he threw away all this just glory by his fatuous Italian policy. His whole reign was one succession of treacherous intrigues, alliances, counter-alliances, wars, truces, and renewed wars to gain possessions in Italy, especially the Duchy of Milan. He fought with the Pope, with Ferdinand of Spain, with Maximilian the Emperor, with Venice, and finally with Henry VIII of England, who had made alliance with Spain. More by bad luck and by the incapacity of his generals than because of the feebleness of his armies, Louis XII failed all along the line. For a time he held Milan, then was ousted from it, and finally, to fend off an English attack, he had to promise Henry VIII the city of Tournai and one hundred thousand crowns to boot (1514). When he died France had no more footing in Italy than it possessed after the unlucky Charles VIII. Louis's undertakings had devoured vast sums of money, and cost the lives of tens of thousands of Frenchmen, while his foes, especially Spain, seemed stronger than ever. The next monarch was a distant cousin of Louis, Francis I (1515-47). His foreign policy was on the whole no better, and his internal policy was much worse. Francis was a showy, pretentious man who, by his patronage of artists, architects, and poets trained in the Italian school, did much to advance French culture. He was also ready to dip into the treasury for ambitious building schemes, and he encouraged his rich nobles to do likewise. This was therefore the epoch for the erection of many elegant châteaux – stately residences and palaces, not mere comfortless, frowning castles as in the now departed "Middle Ages." The region around Tours is to this day dotted with the magnificent buildings which recall a stately and luxurious age. Chambord, Chénonceaux, and Blois are merely random examples of the famous châteaux which were either erected or remodeled in the days of this splendor-loving king. For wise heed for the weal of his subjects, however, it was useless to look toward Francis. He was immoral, extravagant, and selfish in his person, and the riches of France, so far as they were not squandered on a court full of glittering parasites, were spent still more uselessly on a series of wars for power in Italy; wars which in the end brought little more than defeat and desolation.
Early in Francis's reign the Hapsburg-Austrian House saw its heart's desire when the venerable crown of the German Empire, and the more valuable personal lordship over the Austrian lands, the Low Countries, and the entire Kingdom of Spain, all passed to the single prince who is known in history as Charles V (of Germany). This ruler was a far steadier and more adroit man than Francis; he also wielded much greater resources if they had been concentrated. Practically the whole of Francis's reign was taken up with a great duel with Charles, directly for the domination of Italy, less immediately to settle the question whether Austrian or French royalty was to seize the leadership of Europe. There followed a weary succession of invasions of Italy by Francis or his generals, leagues and treaties with the Pope or against the Pope, as the secular interest of the Holy See was now pro-French and now pro-Spanish, occasional victories for Francis, but on the whole far more of defeats.
There were in all four set wars between Francis and Charles. In the first war, Francis invaded Italy, but was defeated and taken prisoner at the battle of Pavia (1525). "All is lost save honor," he wrote back to his mother, the Queen Regent. The King purchased his freedom by a very disadvantageous treaty of peace, which he made haste to repudiate as soon as he was at liberty. The later three wars were less disastrous. Whenever Charles tried to throw his Spanish and German armies across the French frontiers, they were roundly repulsed. Henry VIII of England sometimes appeared as Charles's ally, but he was on the point of breaking with the Catholic Church (which Charles stoutly championed) and did not prove a very steady foe to France. Charles was handicapped also by the constant hostility of the then formidable Turks, and by the extreme disaffection of the new party of "Protestant" princes of Germany who bitterly resisted his efforts to restore the old Church. When Francis I died (1547) the great debate between Valois-Capetian and Hapsburg was not ended, but the map greatly favored the latter. Spanish viceroys were ruling firmly in both Naples and Milan, while there was hardly a French garrison left beyond the Alps.
Under Henry II (1547-59), the son of Francis, although the King was no whit better personally than his father, the struggle with the Hapsburgs took a turn for the better. Taking advantage of the civil wars in Germany between the Emperor and the Protestant princes, the French seized the three great frontier cities of Toul, Metz, and Verdun (1552). Charles made a desperate effort to recover them, and besieged Metz with sixty thousand men. The Duke of Guise, Henry's governor, however, made a gallant and skillful defense. Forty thousand cannon-shot (an unprecedented number for the old-style artillery) were fired into the town in the course of a two months' investment; but still the city held out, and Charles, having lost two thirds of his army, was fain to raise the siege. "I see plainly," he cried bitterly, "Fortune is a woman. She favors a young king more than an old emperor!"
In 1556, Charles V abdicated in favor of his son Philip II of Spain. Philip had married Mary the Catholic, daughter of Henry VIII, and thus brought England again into collision with France. In 1558, by a very sudden attack the Duke of Guise caught the small English garrison in Calais quite off its guard, and easily took this gateway to France. Peace was made in 1559. The Spaniards had won a considerable battle near St. Quentin, but Philip was anxious to have his hands free to crush Protestantism wherever it lifted its head. He therefore made easy terms with Henry, who retained alike Verdun, Toul, and Metz, likewise Calais – notwithstanding the humiliated rage of the English.
Henry II hardly survived the treaty. At a court tournament he was accidentally wounded by the broken lance of his guard captain, the Scottish knight, Montgomery. The great religious wars were about to rack and harry all France, but there is not the least evidence that Henry II had any abilities to cope with the situation.
The Reformation movement in France is harder to analyze than that of Germany, England, or elsewhere. It began assuredly as a sincere protest against the usages and dogmas of the Catholic Church, but before it gathered full strength a political element intruded, perhaps more markedly than in any other country that was touched by those great convulsions which began with the posting of Martin Luther's "Ninety-five theses" at Wittenberg, Saxony, in 1517.
At that time the French Church was being subjected to the same general criticism of worldliness, degeneracy, and false doctrine which Catholicism had to face almost everywhere outside of its strongholds in Italy and Spain; and with probably about the same degree of justice or injustice. As early as 1520 there was a group of radical theologians at Meaux, a small city on the Marne, near Paris, which translated the New Testament and taught unsettling doctrines. The strong arm of the Government heresy-hunters soon made malcontents to scatter. But the greatest of French Reformers did his work elsewhere: Jean Calvin, born in 1509 in Noyon, the quiet little Picard city which was to see so much bloody history in 1917-18. He spent most of his life as the pastor, public prophet, and uncrowned ruler of the Swiss city-republic of Geneva, on the confines of France, but not under the King's control. His was assuredly one of the mightiest intellects that ever came out of France. To-day his "Institutes of the Christian Religion" may seem cold, nay, repellent enough, as a theological document, but in its generation this famous book, clever in its appeal and irresistible in its logic, was to send armies to battle, to make men die cheerfully on the scaffold, and to array kingdom against kingdom. Between 1541 and 1565, Calvin lived in Geneva, sending thence a perfect host of eloquent disciples, trained in the most robust and aggressive type of Protestantism, and able (thanks to their French connection) to obtain much more acceptance in France than the followers of Luther's strictly German type of propaganda.
Under such stimulus Protestantism grew rapidly during the reigns of Francis I and Henry II. Both kings, especially the latter, furbished up the old heresy laws, and did not spare with the rack, fagots and stake. There were a considerable number of executions for religious belief, and a prominent member of the High Court (Parlement of Paris), Anne Dubourg, who ventured to plead the cause of the persecuted to Henry II, was himself put to death. Nevertheless, the number of dissidents multiplied far beyond the ordinary means of repression. Great numbers of the lesser nobility joined the "Reformed Religion," and they were presently reinforced by some of the greatest princes of the blood – especially the powerful Prince of Condé, by Coligny the High Admiral of France, and other magnates on the very footsteps of the throne. By 1560 matters were quite ready to come to a climax.
From the outset the French Protestants, however, labored under a heavy handicap. All sides admit that both in Germany and in England the desire of the local princes or king to get control of the church offices and particularly of the church wealth was a very moving factor in inducing many rulers to listen favorably to the Protestant theologians. In France this was never the case. In 1516, Francis I had signed at Bologna with Pope Leo X a famous concordat (treaty with the Papacy) whereby in return for an assurance to the Pope of a considerable share of the income of the French clergy, the appointment and general control of that clergy, including large financial claims on the same, were remitted to the King. The King thus disposed of both the great offices and much of the wealth of the French Church like so much secular patronage – of course a matter of incalculable advantage to the royal power. This concordat reflected little credit on Pope Leo, who thus sacrificed much of the spiritual freedom of the French Church for a mess of financial pottage sent directly to Rome; but the King on his part now had such a firm grasp upon the Church that there was nothing in the temporal way for him to gain by risking his soul and embracing a new religion!
The "Wars of Religion" began in France in 1562 and cannot be said to have ended until 1598. They form a period troubled, confused, and one which brought misery to many parts of the nation; on the other hand, there were always considerable districts which remained in comparative peace. The Protestant party speedily gained the name of "Huguenots," alleged to have been a corruption of the German term Eidgenossen ("Confederates"). Its main strength was in the South Country, but the new religion had also scattered strongholds in the North. Particularly the Huguenots gained and kept La Rochelle, an important seaport town on the Bay of Biscay. This harbor sometimes enabled them to get reinforcements from the Protestants in England and Holland. They also (when they had money) were able to hire mercenaries in the Lutheran parts of Germany. Their great strength, however, was in their dashing cavalry supplied by the swarms of petty nobles who had embraced the new religion. Their standing weakness was the fact that, besides being continually at odds with the King, court, and of course the whole formidable organization of the Church, especially with the admirably directed Jesuit order, the Huguenots were not able as a whole to make a deep impression on the peasantry and bourgeoisie of France. In some few districts the lower population accepted the new religion, but only a few. The city of Paris also remained fanatically loyal to Catholicism. A Protestant service, even in times of legal toleration, could not be held openly within its walls.
Under these circumstances it was plain the chances of Protestant victory were at best dubious. After 1560 the new religion made few new converts. The question was whether it could win reasonable toleration alongside of the Catholic majority. Whether if it had continued as a strictly religious movement it could thus have secured a legal place is uncertain: the fact is, however, that the Huguenot nobles soon began mixing with their religious zeal a distinct animus against the royal authority. Sympathy with their religious cause or admiration for the high character of some of their leaders should not prevent moderns from realizing that the Huguenots often represented a movement for strictly political disintegration which menaced the strength and happiness of France. It was all too frequently another part of the long duel between central authority and expiring feudalism. If the Huguenots could have won over the King and the lower population well and good; if not, they certainly added a political to a religious schism in the nation.
Between 1559 and 1589 the Kings of France were successively three sons of Henry II. Each of these rulers died without leaving a son himself. All three were selfish men of luxurious and debauched habits, without the least pretense to statesmanship or even to ordinary political intelligence. The true ruler of France was more frequently their mother, the Italian Princess, Catherine de' Medici, a woman of no morals, but of considerable low shrewdness, who now lied, now conceded, now was clement, now was cruel or perfidious, all to keep the royal power intact in a time of infinite peril to the same. The reign of Francis II extended only from 1559 to 1560; that of Charles IX, his brother, from 1560 to 1574; that of Henry III, a third brother and probably the worst of the trio, from 1574 to 1589. During this time there were no less than eight civil wars, all nominally between the King and the Protestants, but often under conditions that made the royal family almost as dissatisfied with victory as with defeat.
The facts were that, thanks to the weakness of the kings, two great princely houses were putting forth their hands toward the
throne. On the Protestant side was the powerful House of Bourbon and Condé. Antoine of Bourbon married Queen Jeanne of the little Kingdom of Navarre. He was thus something more than an ordinary "Prince of the Blood"; but the most important item was that his son, "Henry of Navarre," would by right of inheritance be heir to the throne of France if the reigning Valois dynasty ran out – as there was every chance it might do. Young Henry was being brought up a Protestant, to the infinite horror and anxiety, of course, of many pious Catholics. On the other side were the formidable Dukes of Guise. They had not the same direct expectations of the crown, but as time went on their ambitions very clearly pointed toward the supreme office. They were ultra-Catholic. The weak Valois kings (who really were often more interested in preventing ruinous civil wars than in suppressing heresy) were seldom orthodox enough for them. The Guises put themselves at the head of the extreme Church party, backed, of course, by the indefatigable Jesuits, and presently, as the movement spread, by the money and influence of the King of Spain. The Guises in fact deliberately traded on their orthodoxy. Their relations with their royal "masters," in whose alleged behalf they fought and won many battles, were often the worst. They aimed to put the kings in complete leading-strings, and even the feeble Valois were acute enough to realize this fact. Finally, in the later period of these wars, the Guises organized the ultra-Catholics into a Holy League, under the patronage of Philip II of Spain, for the avowed purpose of annihilating the Protestants, and for the hardly concealed purpose of setting a Guise on the throne of Hugh Capet.
The details of these wars are confused and very uninteresting. The fighting was now here, now there, in almost any part of France where the Huguenots chanced to have some strongholds. There were vain attempts by moderate men to promote toleration and conciliation. The Chancellor L'Hôpital, one of the few real statesmen of his time, in 1560 made a noble appeal at the States General at Blois for tolerance. "Let us attack heresy," he urged, "with the arms of charity, prayer, persuasion, and the words of God that apply to such a contest. Kindness will do more than severity. . . . Let us drop the wicked names of [our] factions. Let us content ourselves with the title of Christians."
Such high-souled words were lost on the contending passions of the day. The wars ran their course, broken by ill-kept truces. The Huguenots lost most of the pitched battles, but, until 1572, they had in Admiral de Coligny a leader of admirable firmness in adversity and skill in averting the worst consequences of a defeat. Repeatedly the Queen-Mother Catherine granted them a "peace" which permitted large elements of toleration, mainly because the final defeat of the Huguenots would have left the royal power at the complete mercy of the Guises.
In 1579, came one of the most melancholy incidents in French history, and one that has left an abiding stain upon the names of Valois and Guise. In that year not merely was there again a temporary "peace," but the Royalists and the Huguenots were showing marked signs of reconciliation, at least in political matters. Coligny was in Paris and seemed to have won great influence over the unsteady King, Charles IX. Many Protestant noblemen had flocked to the capital in the train of their leader. Great schemes were on foot for the healing of home quarrels by a general attack on the national foe, King Philip of Spain. But at the last moment the Queen-Mother Catherine seems to have recoiled. She dreaded a decisive struggle with Spain. She dreaded still more having Coligny take the place of Guise as the dominator of the royal counsels. By a curious reaction she swung temporarily back to the party of Guise, convinced the young King that he must escape from Protestant tutelage, and joined in the most sanguinary advice. The Huguenots, it was urged, must be removed by a general massacre. Charles IX, weakling that he was, hesitated at the proposed crime. At last he gave way, saying angrily: "If you must kill them, kill them all, that no one may be left to reproach me."
On the night of August 23-24, 1572 (the ill-fated St. Bartholomew's Night), a general massacre took place of the Protestants in Paris. Coligny was stabbed in his bed. The city was full of fanatics who were delighted to execute the commands of Guise. "Comrades," announced the Duke joyously, "continue your work, the King orders it!" The slaughter continued systematically for three days in Paris. At least two thousand Huguenots were slain there in cold blood; then the massacre extended to the provinces, where, by the lowest estimate eight thousand Protestants also perished.
The Huguenots were, of course, staggered by the blow, but they were not exterminated. On the contrary, they soon made such desperate resistance that they again gained temporary edicts of toleration. But no lasting settlement was possible while the question of the royal succession was open, and while the Guises and the Holy League were demanding the physical extermination of every heretic. In 1584 died the last Valois prince who might be expected to follow upon the throne, and by every law of France the heir was Henry of Navarre, a Huguenot. The Holy League and its adherents, who absolutely controlled Paris, were frantic. The Guises brought extreme pressure upon the feeble Henry III (probably the worst and weakest as well as last of his line) to make him submit to their disloyal policy, and they even schemed at last to dethrone him outright on the ground that he could not be relied upon to resist the claims of "Navarre." Henry III, however, after many humiliations, turned like a beast at bay. At Blois in 1588 he caused the Duke of Guise and his brother the Cardinal Louis to be brutally assassinated. He then made alliance with the nominal rebel, Navarre, and marched to besiege Paris.
The fanatics of the League soon struck back in true sixteenthcentury fashion, and avenged their champions. A young friar, Jacques Clément, made his way into the King's presence, pretending he had "secret matters of great importance to communicate," and drove a dagger into Henry III's abdomen. All was over with the last of the degenerate Valois. Catherine de' Medici, the old Queen-Mother, the center of much intrigue and much evil, had died a little earlier. The House of Bourbon now was to grasp the crown of France.
Henry IV (1589-1610), or "Henry of Navarre," as he was familiarly called long after his accession even, is one of the most sympathetic as well as most honored figures in all the long list of French royalty. His had been a most turbulent youth. His position as Prince of the Blood had made him the chief of the Huguenots' party, and his years had been spent in almost incessant warfare. The petty Kingdom of Navarre had given him little more than a royal title and a standing above ordinary uncrowned princes. His mother had been a devout Protestant, and had had him educated in the religion of Calvin, but surely there was little enough real devotion on his part to the abstract principles of that iron theologian. Henry IV has been characterized as "affable to the point of familiarity, quick-witted, a true Gascon [Southlander], good-hearted, indulgent, yet skilled in reading the characters of those around him," and, when the need came, severe and unyielding. In battle he was personally brave to rashness. He was not a great strategist, but assuredly he was an admirable field captain. He knew how to draw competent advisers around him, to command their affectionate loyalty, and to profit by their counsels. As for his private morals, they were anything but "Calvinistic." The story of his irregular love-affairs is more interesting than edifying; and he had several bastard children by his principal mistress, the famous Gabrielle d'Estrées. Such peccadilloes did not count seriously against a king in the sixteenth century. The Parisians were horrified, not at his morals, but only at his theology!
The day after Henry III died, Henry IV proclaimed that he would not attempt to use his power to undermine Catholicism in favor of Protestantism; but no such simple announcement satisfied the frantic nobles and Jesuits of the League. They made haste to proclaim a superannuated old ecclesiastic Cardinal Bourbon as "Charles X." The Cardinal was childless and obviously would soon die; by that time the Leaguers, headed now by another member of the Guise family, the Duke of Mayenne, hoped to upset the line of succession altogether. Philip II of Spain gave them steady support with men and money, although not entirely because he was everywhere the avowed champion of Catholicism. Philip had himself arguable claims of inheritance to the French crown, if the Bourbon line could be eliminated, and he was biding his time to press them. In fact, had the hated "Navarre" once been ruined or slain, Mayenne's candidacy and the hopes of Philip might have clashed in open battle. Thus the extreme Catholic party was divided in ultimate aims, yet their power was great enough to make the position of Henry IV almost desperate.
At first be held only about one sixth of France, a city here and a district there. Not all the remainder sided with the League. A good many provinces and powerful nobles remained studiously neutral, trying to keep the ravages of war at arm's length and waiting to see how the issues would presently lie. Of course, Henry could reckon on the Huguenots, but they were probably less than ten per cent of the nation. He also received certain succor from Elizabeth, the Protestant Queen of England, but his best hope was in his own sound legal title to the throne (which fact presently brought many moderate Catholics over to his side) and in his good right arm which had never failed him. At the beginning his forces were heavily outnumbered by those of Mayenne, who for three weeks long attacked him at Arques in Normandy, striving to break his fortified lines, but the Leaguers were roundly repulsed. Henry delighted in the mere joy of manly battle. "Go hang yourself, brave Crillon," he wrote to an absent general; "we fought at Arques, and you were not there!" Mayenne had to shrink back into Picardy discomfited. In 1590, Henry had gathered an army large enough to march eastward, and at Ivry, about fifty miles west of Paris, he confronted the host of the League. The insurgents had fully fifteen thousand men against his eleven thousand, but the King was never daunted. His followers were maddened at the sight of Spanish auxiliaries ranged under the rebel banner. "My friends," ordered the King, "keep your ranks in good order. If you lose your ensigns, the white plume that you see in my helmet will lead you always on the road to honor and glory." There was bloody fighting, lance against lance, between the horsemen, but finally Henry's gallant cavalry forced the line, and the Leaguers broke in flight. "Quarter for the French," ordered the King, "but death to all the foreigners!" The road to Paris was now open, and he advanced straight to the walls of his capital.
The Jesuit preachers had worked the Parisians up to the last pitch of enthusiasm to resist the heretic. The city-folk were told that he who died opposing Henry was worthy of the martyr's palm. For four months Paris held out, the King ever drawing his blockading lines tighter, while within horses, asses, and all manner of unclean animals were devoured, and the tale ran that starving soldiers were stealing children for the barrack kettles. At last, when the famine had almost passed the point of endurance, the Spanish Governor of Belgium, the Duke of Parma, appeared with a relieving army, and skillfully forced his way through the royal lines, throwing in provisions and compelling Henry to raise the siege. In 1591, Henry in turn besieged Rouen, but again in the nick of time Parma, who was possibly the first strategist of his age, succeeded in saving that city.
The King's prospects accordingly seemed again very discouraging. He had won open battles, but he could not take great towns, and his army of mercenaries and Huguenot volunteers was very hard to keep together. His enemies, however, were quarreling among themselves. Philip clearly wished to have the Salic Law set aside and to have the States General elect his daughter Isabella as Queen of France. Many violent Catholic leaders never- theless repudiated the idea of thus humbling the country before the foreigners. Mayenne also made enemies by his high-handed government in Paris, where he committed many bloody acts of tyranny in the name of religion. The moderate Catholic party, the Politiques, as their name ran, grew ever more powerful, and presently they were greatly strengthened by the King's change in religion.
Henry had never been a consistent practicer of Huguenot morality. Probably on general principles he preferred Protestantism to Catholicism, but what irked him most of all was that he should seem to change his religion under obvious compulsion. However, many even of his Huguenot advisers told him that it was his duty to give peace to the land, by conforming to the faith of the great majority of his subjects. In 1593 he announced that he was willing to be "instructed" by the Catholic doctors assembled at Nantes. He then announced himself "converted," knelt at the door of the church at St. Denis, and professed himself a Catholic and in 1594 was duly crowned king at the great Cathedral of Chartres.
Henry had cynically remarked that " Paris was well worth a mass!" He was entirely right. The extreme Leaguers still cried "hypocrisy," and urged the Parisians to resist a prince who had "once been" a heretic, but all the more reasonable Catholics promptly went over, especially as Henry showered their leaders with promises of pensions and favor. On March 21, 1594, the gates of Paris were opened to him, and he was greeted with cries of "Hurrah for Peace! Long live the King!" The Spanish garrison quietly capitulated. "Gentlemen," said Henry to its officers, "commend me to your master, and never come back!" It was not till 1598, after considerable hard fighting, that the King made a reasonably satisfactory treaty of peace with Spain, but already, for four years, he had been lord of his own kingdom. The "Wars of Religion" were at an end, and Henry IV was in a position to apply himself to the works of healing. At last the genial, hard-hitting "King of Navarre," the heir of desperate fortunes, was the very powerful King of France. He needed all his power for his task. Since 1580 alone it was estimated that 800,000 persons had perished by war or its accompaniments, nine cities had been razed, 250 villages burned, and 128,000 houses destroyed. Commerce and industry were of course prostrated, as well as, in many regions, all agriculture. Between the civil wars and the sheer inefficiency of the last three Valois monarchs the royal finances were naturally in terrible disorder. The public debt amounted to the then astonishing sum of about $60,000,000. This was merely one symptom of the general upheaval.
Thirty-eight years of warfare, usually of a devastating guerrilla nature, had destroyed the ordinary processes of administering justice in many districts. Not merely were certain great nobles, the Montmorencys, Guises, Birons, and D'Epernons, treating their governorships like hereditary kingdoms; the petty nobles, each in his château, were ruling like feudal lords before the days of Philip Augustus, and playing the part of irresponsible princelets. Downright brigandage had multiplied. Roads were unsafe. Merchant caravans were often plundered. In the towns industries were prostrated. All this called for wise handling, and in many instances for stern and unswerving justice. It was not until 1605 that the turbulent nobles were taught to obey the King's law and not their own. In that year Henry made a progress through the South Country dealing out Roman justice and abruptly "shortening" (with the axe!) various great trouble-makers. In Limousin alone, it was pithily written, "some ten or twelve heads flew." The unruly Duke of Bouillon was chased over the border into exile in Germany. All this was much-needed work and quite to the King's hand.
Much earlier, however, he had accomplished a capital act of healing. For the sake of peace and Paris, he had "taken the plunge" (as he himself put it) from Calvinism to Catholicism, but he did not forget his old Huguenot supporters, who were now very distrustful. In 1598 he proclaimed the "irrevocable" Edict of Nantes, giving the Huguenots more ample toleration than was then permitted to religious dissenters in any other country of Europe, and putting France far ahead of its bigoted age. The Huguenots were given liberty of worship within their own castles, in all towns where they had already established the practice, and in at least one city or town in each bailliage (district). They were given access to the universities and other seats of learning, and to public offices. Every three years they were permitted to hold general synods to present complaints to the Government. They were likewise given a share of the judges of the high courts (parlements) of Paris, Toulouse, Grenoble, and Bordeaux, for all cases where Protestants were concerned. Finally they were given the right to hold several towns with their own garrisons, as "guarantees" for their liberties, and especially to hold their beloved La Rochelle. The edict was, of course, too tolerant to please extremists. The ultra-Catholic party railed violently against it, and cast innuendoes at the sincerity of the "conversion" of the King, but Henry forced its general acceptance as a part of the law of the land. It remained a fundamental statute of France until 1685, when, in an evil hour, the great King's grandson was to repeal it to the capital detriment of his realm.
It was the glory of Henry IV and of his chief Minister and personal friend, the Duke of Sully, that, after having been constantly in harness since almost their early youth, they now, unlike so many victorious captains, were able to conduct genuine and far-reaching pacific reforms. In truth, so great have always been the recuperative powers of France, such were the personal energy, thrift, and intelligence of the run of the French people, that given ordinary conditions of mere peace, they were reasonably sure to revive and prosper. But Henry IV and Sully went far beyond this minimum. Their reforms and innovations were not spectacular, and it is far easier to summarize the result of a great battle than to describe clearly but briefly a whole series of somewhat minor administrative and economic measures, each inconsiderable in itself, but in the aggregate producing national happiness. The best thing that Sully probably did, in fact, was to introduce common honesty and efficient business methods into the royal administration. A hard-working, strictly upright man himself, who shrank from no detail, he gradually cleared up all the mass of "graft" (to use a significant American expression), extravagance, and downright peculation which had begun in the court and spread its foul tentacles out to almost every petty treasury officer.
It was estimated that the "leakage" in the collection of taxes was such that when the people paid out 200,000,000 livres per year, the State barely received 50,000,000. All this iniquity Sully attacked, punished, and abolished. He did not abolish various institutions derived from the Middle Ages – for example, the peasants' taille (direct tax) – which were inherently bad, and easily opened themselves to abuses; but at least for the time he abolished most of the abuses. His economies were rigid. After twelve years as "Superintendent of the Finances" he could see the public debt reduced by one third, the needful expenses of the State honestly discharged, and in the cellars of the Bastile, the King's castle in Paris, lay a reserve of 40,000,000 livres against the day of need.
Such drastic economies and the cutting off of fine perquisites or spoils of course awakened violent outcry in powerful quarters, but Henry IV stood by his Minister. King and lieutenant alike seem to have had a real desire to benefit the lower classes, not merely because a rich peasantry would add to the royal income, but because of a genuine benevolence toward their people. Frenchmen loved to repeat the wish of the King "that soon there might be a fowl in the pot of every peasant on Sunday"; and Sully with more practical energy, used the royal precept and treasure not to maintain an extravagant court, but to build roads, to make canals, and especially to introduce better methods of agriculture, asserting that fertile fields and pastures of fat cattle were "the real mines and treasures of Peru" for France.
The one point wherein he betrayed the prejudice of an aristocrat and a soldier was when he opposed efforts to promote more extensive manufacturing in the country, declaring that the handicrafts "did not produce men fit for soldier work." But here the Minister collided with the King. Henry seconded all that Sully did to promote agriculture, but he was fain to advance French industries also. Thanks to Henry silk-culture was introduced into the kingdom – the beginning of that silk industry which was to bring such wealth and credit to France. Other industries favored and introduced by the King were those of fine textiles, of gold thread so much in demand for the country's wardrobes, of highwarp tapestries, of gilt-leather, of glass and of mirrors – articles hitherto almost monopolized by the workshops of Italy.
The King also found time to improve and beautify Paris. The capital still had great quantities of squalid houses and filthy streets with here and there an elegant palace or church. Thanks largely to Henry IV the royal city now began to develop into the best-built, most refined, and presently the most magnificent capital in Europe, and he made considerable additions to the already huge palace of the Louvre.
All these things seemed to indicate that Henry IV had ceased to remember the plumed knight of Ivry, but such was in no wise the case. Through Sully's economies the King was able to assemble a formidable army without overtaxing his subjects. In 1595 there had been only four regular regiments in the French army. In 1610 there were eleven. The artillery was greatly improved and increased, and the royal arsenals well stocked and multiplied. Large bodies of foreign mercenaries were hired. Henry confidently looked forward to the time when he could, with all the resources of a wealthy and loyal kingdom behind him, strike another blow at the old national enemy – the Hapsburg dynasts in Austria and Spain. In 1610 that time seemed to have come. The Protestants and Catholics in Germany were already involved in those bitter disputes which were soon to lead to the Thirty Years' War (1618-48). Henry prepared actively to intervene on the anti-Hapsburg (Protestant) side.
The issue was a decidedly secular one over the succession to the lands of the Duke of Cleves and Julich, but the mere fact that the King was mobilizing a great army to strike on the side of the Lutheran heretics was enough to alarm many extreme Catholics. They had never accepted his conversion for more than its face value and the favors he had shown to the Jesuits had been more than offset by the execrated Edict of Nantes. Now malignant spirits began to work upon a convenient tool for their purposes. In 1610 it was said that the King was gloomy and impressed with dire forebodings, although he was seemingly at the height of his power and prosperity. On May 14 he drove in his coach to visit his old friend Sully, who was ill. In five days Henry was to join his great army on the march to Germany. The postillions had neglected to clear the way in a narrow street. The lumbering royal car stopped an instant, when a man scrambled up by one of the hind wheels, reached into the coach, and stabbed the King twice. Henry was driven at full speed to the Louvre, but he died before any aid could be rendered. The murderer, one Francis Ravaillac, was a weak-brained fanatic, who declared "the King was going to make war on the Pope, and therefore to kill him was a good deed!" It is needless to say the wretch was executed with every refinement of post-mediæval tortures.
Henry IV was by all odds one of the worthiest kings in the whole French line, probably the worthiest since St. Louis. Looked at as a private individual one cannot, of course, commend his social morality: following the death in 1599 of his favorite mistress Gabrielle d'Estrées, "his court showed little more respect for monogamy than that of the Sultan of Turkey." He cared little enough for his lawful consort, the stupid Marie de Medici of Tuscany. But the seventeenth century judged lightly the vices of a monarch, and considered as a ruler and builder of France, Henry IV must be ranked very high, indeed. The results of his wise policy were to show themselves in the days of his grandson. Louis XIV.