Part 16 (1/2)
Le Grain, a contemporary, writes, ”I have seen the king with a plain doublet of white stuff, all soiled by his cuira.s.s and torn at the sleeve, and with well-worn breeches, unsewn on the side of the sword-belt.”
While the king was thus dest.i.tute, the members of the council of finance were practicing gross extortion, and living in extravagance.
The king was naturally light-hearted and gay, but the deplorable condition of the kingdom occasionally plunged him into the deepest of melancholy. A lady of the court one day remarked to him that he looked sad.
”Indeed,” he replied, ”how can I be otherwise, to see a people so ungrateful toward their king? Though I have done and still do all I can for them, and though for their welfare I would willingly sacrifice a thousand lives had G.o.d given me so many, as I have often proved, yet they daily attempt my life.”
The council insisted that it was not safe for the king to leave so many of the Leaguers in the city, and urged their banishment. The king refused, saying,
”They are all my subjects, and I wish to love them equally.”
The king now resolved, notwithstanding strong opposition from the Catholics, to place his ill.u.s.trious Protestant friend, Sully, at the head of the ministry of finance. Sully entered upon his Herculean task with shrewdness which no cunning could baffle, and with integrity which no threat or bribe could bias. All the energies of calumny, malice, and violence were exhausted upon him, but this majestic man moved straight on, heedless of the storm, till he caused order to emerge from apparently inextricable confusion, and, by just and healthy measures, replenished the bankrupt treasury of the state.
The king was now pus.h.i.+ng the siege of Amiens, which had for some time been in the hands of his enemies. During this time he wrote to his devoted friend and faithful minister of finance,
”I am very near the enemy, yet I have scarcely a horse upon which I can fight, or a suit of armor to put on. My doublet is in holes at the elbows. My kettle is often empty. For these two last days I have dined with one and another as I could. My purveyors inform me that they have no longer the means of supplying my table.”
On the twenty-fifth of June, 1597, Amiens capitulated.
One of the kings of England is said to have remarked to his son, who was eager to ascend the throne, ”Thou little knowest, my child, what a heap of cares and sorrows thou graspest at.” History does, indeed, prove that ”uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” New perplexities now burst upon the king. The Protestants, many of them irritated by his conversion, and by the tardy and insufficient concessions they received, violently demanded entire equality with the Catholics. This demand led to the famous Edict of Nantes. This ordinance, which receives its name from the place where it was published, was issued in the month of April, 1598. It granted to the Protestants full private liberty of conscience. It also permitted them to enjoy public wors.h.i.+p in all places where the right was already established. Protestant lords of the highest rank could celebrate divine service in their castles with any number of their retainers. n.o.bles of the second rank might maintain private wors.h.i.+p in their mansions, to which thirty persons could be admitted. Protestants were p.r.o.nounced to be eligible to public office. Their children were to be admitted to the schools, their sick to the hospitals, and their poor to a share of the public charities. In a few specified places they were permitted to print books. Such, in the main, was the celebrated ”Edict of Nantes.”
The Catholics considered this an enormous and atrocious concession to deadly heresy. New clamors blazed forth against Henry, as in heart false to the Church. The Catholic clergy, in one combined voice, protested against it, and Pope Clement VIII. declared the Edict of Nantes, which permitted _liberty of conscience to every one, the most execrable that was ever made_.
It has required centuries of blood and woe to teach even a few individuals the true principles of religious liberty. Even in Protestant lands, the ma.s.ses of the people have not yet fully learned that lesson. All over Catholic Europe, and all through the realms of paganism, intolerance still sways her cruel and b.l.o.o.d.y sceptre. These miserable religious wars in France, the birth of ignorance, fanaticism, and depravity, for seventy years polluted the state with gory scaffolds and blazing stakes. Three thousand millions of dollars were expended in the senseless strife, and two millions of lives were thrown away. At the close of the war, one half of the towns and the majestic castles of beautiful France were but heaps of smouldering ruins. All industry was paralyzed. The fields were abandoned to weeds and barrenness. The heart and the mind of the whole nation was thoroughly demoralized. Poverty, emaciation, and a semi-barbarism deformed the whole kingdom.
Neither the Catholics nor Protestants were satisfied with the Edict of Nantes. The Parliament of Paris, composed almost entirely of Catholics, for a long time refused its ratification. Henry called the courts before him, and insisted with kindness, but with firmness, that the edict should be verified.
”Gentlemen,” said he, in the long speech which he made upon the occasion, ”there must be no more distinction between Catholics and Protestants. All must be good Frenchmen. Let the Catholics convert the Protestants by the example of a good life. I am a shepherd-king, who will not shed the blood of his sheep, but who will seek to bring them all with kindness into the same fold.”
The Catholic Parliament, thus constrained, finally adopted the edict.
The Protestants also, perceiving clearly that this was the best that the king could do for them, after long discussion in their Consistory, which was, in reality, their Parliament, finally gave in their adhesion. The adjoining hostile powers, having no longer a party in France to join them, were thus disarmed. They sent emba.s.sadors to promote peace. Friendly treaties were speedily formed, and Henry was the undisputed monarch of a kingdom in repose.
Henry now commenced, with great energy, the promotion of the prosperity of his exhausted kingdom. To check the warlike spirit which had so long been dominant, he forbade any of his subjects, except his guards, to carry arms. The army was immediately greatly reduced, and public expenditures so diminished as materially to lighten the weight of taxation. Many of the n.o.bles claimed exemption from the tax, but Henry was inflexible that the public burden should be borne equally by all. The people, enjoying the long unknown blessings of peace, became enthusiastically grateful to their ill.u.s.trious benefactor.
In the month of October, 1598, the king was taken dangerously ill. The whole nation was in a panic. The touching demonstrations which Henry then received of the universal love and homage of his subjects affected him deeply. But few men find enough happiness in this world to lead them to cling very tenaciously to life when apparently on a dying bed. Henry at this time said to his attendants,
”I have no fear of death. I do not shrink at all from the great journey to the spirit land. But I greatly regret being removed from my beloved country before I have restored it to complete prosperity.”
Happily, the fever was subdued, and he again, with indefatigable diligence, resumed his labors. To discourage the extravagance of the n.o.bles, he set the example of extreme economy in all his personal expenses. He indulged in no gaudy equipage, his table was very frugally served, and his dress was simple in the extreme. No man in the kingdom devoted more hours to labor. He met his council daily, and in all their conferences exhibited a degree of information, shrewdness, and of comprehensive statesmans.h.i.+p which astonished the most experienced politicians who surrounded him.
It was a fierce battle which the king and his minister were compelled to fight for many years against the haughty n.o.bles, who had ever regarded the ma.s.s of the people but as beasts of burden, made to contribute to their pleasure. The demands of these proud aristocrats were incessant and inexorable. It is a singular fact that, among them all, there was not a more thorough-going aristocrat than Sully himself. He had a perfect contempt for the people as to any power of self-government. They were, in his view, but sheep, to be carefully protected by a kind shepherd. It was as absurd, he thought, to consult them, as it would be for a shepherd to ask the advice of his flock.
But Sully wished to take good care of the people, to s.h.i.+eld them from all unequal burdens, from all aristocratic usurpations, and to protect them with inflexible justice in person and in property. His government was absolute in the extreme.
The Marchioness of Verneuil, in a towering rage, bitterly reproached the duke for preventing her from receiving a monopoly from the king, which would have secured to her an income of some five hundred thousand dollars a year.
”Truly the king will be a great fool,” exclaimed the enraged marchioness, ”if he continues to follow your advice, and thus alienates so many distinguished families. On whom, pray, should the king confer favors, if not on his relatives and his influential friends?”
”What you say,” replied the unbending minister, ”would be reasonable enough if his majesty took the money all out of his own purse. But to a.s.sess a new tax upon the merchants, artisans, laborers, and country people will never do. It is by them that the king and all of us are supported, and it is enough that they provide for a master, without having to maintain his cousins and friends.”
For twelve years Henry, with his ill.u.s.trious minister, labored with unintermitted zeal for the good of France. His love of France was an ever-glowing and growing pa.s.sion for which every thing was to be surrendered. Henry was great in all respects but one. He was a slave to the pa.s.sion of love. ”And no one,” says Napoleon, ”can surrender himself to the pa.s.sion of love without forfeiting some palms of glory.” This great frailty has left a stain upon his reputation which truth must not conceal, which the genius of history with sorrow regards, and which can never be effaced. He was a great statesman. His heart was warm and generous. His philanthropy was n.o.ble and all-embracing, and his devotion to the best welfare of France was sincere and intense. Witness the following memorable prayer as he was just entering upon a great battle:
”O Lord, if thou meanest this day to punish me for my sins, I bow my head to the stroke of thy justice. Spare not the guilty. But, Lord, by thy holy mercy, have pity on this poor realm, and strike not the flock for the fault of the shepherd.”