Volume V Part 2 (1/2)

Floquet, t. iii. pp. 611-617.] Henry IV. commissioned Rosny to negotiate with him; and Rosny went into Normandy, to Louviers first and then to Rouen itself. The negotiation seemed to be progressing favorably, but a distrustful whim in regard to Villars, and the lofty pretensions he put forward, made Rosny hang back for a while, and tell the whole story to the king, at the same time asking for his instructions. Henry replied,--

”My friend, you are an a.s.s to employ so much delay and import so many difficulties and manoeuvres into a business the conclusion of which is of so great importance to me for the establishment of my authority and the relief of my people. Do you no longer remember the counsels you have so many times given to me, whilst setting before me as an example that given by a certain Duke of Milan to King Louis XI., at the time of the war called that of the Common Weal? It was to split up by considerations of private interest all those who were leagued against him on general pretexts. That is what I desire to attempt now, far preferring that it should cost twice as much to treat separately with each individual as it would to arrive at the same results by means of a general treaty concluded with a single leader, who, in that way, would be enabled to keep up still an organized party within my dominions. You know plenty of folks who wanted to persuade me to that. Wherefore, do not any longer waste your time in doing either so much of the respectful towards those whom you wot of, and whom we will find other means of contenting, or of the economical by sticking at money. We will pay everything with the very things given up to us, the which, if they had to be taken by force, would cost us ten times as much. Seeing, then, that I put entire trust in you and love you as a good servant, do not hesitate any longer to make absolute and bold use of your power, which I further authorize by this letter, so far as there may be further need for it, and settle as soon as possible with M. de Villars. But secure matters so well that there may be no possibility of a slip, and send me news thereof promptly, for I shall be in constant doubt and impatience until I receive it. And then, when I am peaceably king, we will employ the excellent manoeuvres of which you have said so much to me; and you may rest a.s.sured that I will spare no travail and fear no peril in order to raise my glory and my kingdom to the height of splendor. Adieu, my friend. Senlis, this 18th day of March, 1594.”

Amongst the pretensions made by Villars there was one which could not be satisfied without the consent of a man still more considerable than he, and one with whom Henry IV. was obliged to settle--Biron. Villars had received from Mayenne the t.i.tle and office of admiral of France, and he wished, at any price, to retain them on pa.s.sing over to the king's service. Now Henry IV. had already given this office to Biron, who had no idea of allowing himself to be stripped of it. It was all very fine to offer him in exchange the baton of a marshal of France, but he would not be satisfied with it. ”It was necessary,” says M. Floquet [_Histoire du Parlement de Normandie,_ t. iii. pp. 613-616], ”for the king's sister (Princess Catherine) to intervene. At last, a promise of one hundred and twenty thousand crowns won Biron over, though against the grain.” But he wanted solid securities. Attention was then turned to the Parliament of Caen, always so ready to do anything and sacrifice anything. Saldaigne d'Incarville, comptroller-general of finance, having been despatched to Caen, went straight to the palace and reported to the Parliament the proposals and conditions of Villers and Biron. ”The king,” said he, ”not having been able to bring Rouen to reason by process of arms, and being impatient to put some end to these miseries, wishes now to try gentle processes, and treat with those whom he has not yet been able to subdue; but co-operation on the part of the sovereign bodies of the provinces is necessary.” ”To that which is for the good of our service is added your private interest,” wrote Henry IV. to the Parliament of Caen; and his messenger D'Incarville added, ”I have left matters at Rouen so arranged as to make me hope that before a fortnight is over you will be free to return thither and enter your homes once more.” At the first mention of peace and the prospect of a reconciliation between the royalist Parliament of Caen and the leaguer Parliament of Rouen, the Parliament, the exchequer-chamber, and the court of taxation, agreed to a fresh sacrifice and a last effort. The four presidents of the Parliament lost no time in signing together, and each for all, an engagement to guarantee the hundred and twenty thousand crowns promised to Biron. . . . The members of the body bound themselves all together to guarantee the four presidents, in their turn, in respect of the engagement they were contracting, and a letter was addressed on the spot to Henry IV., ”to thank the monarch for his good will and affection, and the honor he was doing the members of his Parliament of Normandy, by making them partic.i.p.ators in the means and overtures adopted for arriving at the reduction of the town of Rouen.” [M. Floquet, _Histoire du Parlement de Normandi,_ t. iii. pp. 613-616.]

Here is the information afforded, as regards the capitulation of Villars to Henry IV., by the statement drawn up by Sully himself, of ”the amount of all debts on account of all the treaties made for the reduction of districts, towns, places, and persons to obedience unto the king, in order to the pacification of the realm.”

”To M. Villars, for himself, his brother, Chevalier d'Oise, the towns of Rouen and Havre and other places, as well as for compensation which had to be made to MM. de Montpensier, Marshal de Biron, Chancellor de Chiverny, and other persons included in his treaty . . . three millions four hundred and forty-seven thousand eight hundred livres.”

[Poirson, _Histoire du Regne de Henry IV.,_ t. i. p. 667.]

These details have been entered into without hesitation because it is important to clearly understand by what means, by what a.s.siduous efforts, and at what price Henry IV. managed to win back pacifically many provinces of his kingdom, rally to his government many leaders of note, and finally to confer upon France that territorial and political unity which she lacked under the feudal regimen, and which, in the sixteenth century, the religious wars all but put it beyond her power to acquire.

To the two instances just cited of royalist reconciliation--Lyons and the spontaneous example set by her population, and Rouen and the dearly purchased capitulation of her governor Villars--must be added a third, of a different sort. Nicholas de Neufville, Lord of Villeroi, after having served Charles IX. and Henry III., had become, through attachment to the Catholic cause, a member of the League, and one of the Duke of Mayenne's confidants. When Henry IV. was King of France, and Catholic king, Villeroi tried to serve his cause with Mayenne, and induce Mayenne to be reconciled with him. Meeting with no success, he made up his mind to separate from the League, and go over to the king's service. He could do so without treachery or shame; even as a Leaguer and a servant of Mayenne's he had always been opposed to Spain, and devoted to a French, but, at the same time, a faithfully Catholic policy. He imported into the service of Henry IV. the same sentiments and the same bearing; he was still a zealous Catholic, and a partisan, for king and country's sake, of alliance with Catholic powers. He was a man of wits, experience, and resource, who knew Europe well and had some influence at the court of Rome. Henry IV. saw at once the advantage to be gained from him, and, in spite of the Protestants' complaints, and his sister Princess Catherine's prayers, made him, on the 25th of September, 1594, secretary of state for foreign affairs. This acquisition did not cost him so dear as that of Villars: still we read in the statement of sums paid by Henry IV. for this sort of conquest, ”Furthermore, to M. de Villeroi, for himself, his son, the town of Pontoise, and other individuals, according to their treaty, four hundred and seventy-six thousand five hundred and ninety-four livres.” It is quite true that this statement was drawn up by Sully, the unwavering supporter of Protestant alliances in Europe, and, as such, Villeroi's opponent in the council of Henry IV.; but the other contemporary doc.u.ments confirm Sully's a.s.sertion. Villeroi was a faithful servant to Henry, who well repaid him by stanchness in supporting him against the repeated attacks of violent Reformers. In 1594, when he became minister of foreign affairs, the following verse was in vogue at the Louvre:--

”The king could never beat the League; 'Twas Villeroi who did the thing; So well he managed his intrigue, That now the League hath got the king.”

It is quite certain, however, that Henry IV. was never of the opinion expressed in that verse; for, ten years later, in 1604, Villeroi having found himself much compromised by the treachery of a chief clerk in his department, who had given up to the Spanish government some important despatches, the king, though very vexed at this mishap, ”the consequences of which rankled in his heart far more than he allowed to appear openly, nevertheless continued to look most kindly on Villeroi, taking the trouble to call upon him, to console and comfort him under this annoyance, and not showing him a suspicion of mistrust because of what had happened, any more than formerly; nay, even less.” [_Journal de L'Estoile,_ t. iii. pp. 85-441.] Never had prince a better or n.o.bler way of employing confidence in his proceedings with his servants, old or new, at the same time that he made clear-sighted and proper distinctions between them.

Henry IV., with his mind full of his new character as a Catholic king, perceived the necessity of getting the pope to confirm the absolution which had been given him, at the time of his conversion, by the French bishops. It was the condition of his credit amongst the numerous Catholic population who were inclined to rally to him, but required to know that he was at peace with the head of their church. He began by sending to Rome non-official agents, instructed to quietly sound the pope, amongst others Arnold d'Ossat, a learned professor in the University of Paris, who became, at a later period, the celebrated cardinal and diplomat of that name. Clement VIII. [Hippolytus Aldobrandini] was a clever man, moderate and prudent to the verge of timidity, and, one who was disinclined to take decisive steps as to difficult questions or positions until after they had been decided by events. He refused to have any communication with him whom he still called the Prince of Bearn, and only received the agents of Henry IV.

privately in his closet. But whilst he was personally severe and exacting in his behavior to then, he had a hint given them by one of his confidants not to allow themselves to be rebuffed by any obstacle, for the pope would, sooner or later, welcome back the lost child who returned to him. At this report, and by the advice of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand de' Medici, Henry IV. determined to send a solemn emba.s.sy to Rome, and to put it under the charge of a prince of Italian origin, Peter di Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers. But either through the pope's stubborn resolve or the amba.s.sador's somewhat impatient temper, devoted as he was, however, to the Holy See, the emba.s.sy had no success. The Duke of Nevers could not obtain an official reception as amba.s.sador of the King of France. It was in vain that he had five confidential audiences of the pope; in vain that he represented energetically to him all the progress Henry IV. had already made, all the chances he had of definitive success, all the perils to which the papacy exposed itself by rejecting his advances; Clement VIII. persisted in his determination. Philip II. and Mayenne still reigned in his ideas, and he dismissed the Duke of Nevers on the 13th of January, 1594, declaring once more that he refused to the Navarrese absolution at the inner bar of conscience, absolution at the outer bar, and confirmation in his kings.h.i.+p.

Henry IV. did not put himself out, did not give himself the pleasure of testifying to Rome his discontent; he saw that he had not as yet sufficiently succeeded--sufficiently vanquished his enemies, or won to himself his kingdom with sufficient completeness and definitiveness--to make the pope feel bound to recognize and sanction his triumph. He set himself once more to work to grow still greater in France, and force the gates of Rome without its being possible to reproach him with violence or ill temper.

He had been absolved and crowned at St. Denis by the bishops of France; he had not been anointed at Rheims, according to the religious traditions of the French monarchy. At Rheims he could not be; for it was still in the power of the League. Researches were made, to discover whether the ceremony of anointment might take place elsewhere; numerous instances were found, and in the case of famous kings: Pepin the Short had been anointed first of all at Mayence, Charlemagne and Louis the Debonnair at Rome, Charles the Bald at Mayence, several emperors at Aix-la-Chapelle and at Cologne. The question of the holy phial (ampoule) was also discussed; and it was proved that on several occasions other oils, held to be of miraculous origin, had been employed instead. These difficulties thus removed, the anointment of Henry IV. took place at Chartres on the 27th of February, 1594; the Bishop of Chartres, Nicholas de Thou, officiated, and drew up a detailed account of all the ceremonies and all the rejoicings; thirteen medals, each weighing fifteen gold crowns, were struck, according to custom; they bore the king's image, and for legend, _Invia virtuti nulla est via_ (To manly worth no road is inaccessible). Henry IV., on his knees before the grand altar, took the usual oath, the form of which was presented to him by Chancellor de Chiverny. With the exception of local accessories, which were acknowledged to be impossible and unnecessary, there was nothing wanting to this religious hallowing of his kings.h.i.+p.

But one other thing, more important than the anointment at Chartres, was wanting. He did not possess the capital of his kingdom the League were still masters of Paris. Uneasy masters of their situation; but not so uneasy, however, as they ought to have been. The great leaders of the party, the Duke of Mayenne, his mother the d.u.c.h.ess of Nemours, his sister the d.u.c.h.ess of Montpensier, and the Duke of Feria, Spanish amba.s.sador, were within its walls, a prey to alarm and discouragement. ”At breakfast,” said the d.u.c.h.ess of Montpensier, ”they regale us with the surrender of a hamlet, at dinner of a town, at supper of a whole province.” The d.u.c.h.ess of Nemours, who desired peace, exerted herself to convince her son of all their danger. ”Set your affairs in order,” she said;--if you do not begin to make your arrangements with the king before leaving Paris, you will lose this capital. I know that projects are already afoot for giving it up, and that those who can do it, and in whom you have most confidence, are accomplices and even authors of the plot.”

Mayenne himself did not hide from his confidants the gravity of the mischief and his own disquietude. ”Not a day,” he wrote on the 4th of February, 1594, to the Marquis of Montpezat, ”but brings some trouble because of the people's yearning for repose, and of the weakness which is apparent on our side. I stem and stop this forment with as much courage as I can; but the present mischief is overwhelming; the King of Navarre will in a few days have an army of twenty thousand men, French as well as foreigners. What will become of us, if we have not wherewithal not only to oppose him, but to make him lose the campaign? I can tell you of a verity that, save for my presence, Paris would have already been lost because of the great factions there are in it, which I take all the pains in the world to disperse and break up, and also because of the small aid, or rather the gainsaying, I meet with from the ministers of the King of Spain.” Mayenne tried to restore amongst the Leaguers both zeal and discipline; he convoked on the 2d of March, a meeting of all that remained of the faction of the Sixteen; he calculated upon the presence of some twelve hundred; scarcely three hundred came; he had an harangue delivered to them by the Rev. John Boucher, charged them to be faithful to the old spirit of the League, promised them that he would himself be faithful even to death, and exhorted them to be obedient in everything to Brissac, whom he had just appointed governor of the city, and to the provost of tradesmen. On announcing to them his imminent departure for Soissons, to meet some auxiliary troops which were to be sent to him by the King of Spain, ”I leave to you,” he said, ”what is dearest to me in the world--my wife, my children, my mother, and my sister.” But when he did set out, four days afterwards, on the 6th of March, 1594, he took away his wife and his children; his mother had already warned him that Brissac was communicating secretly, by means of his cousin, Sieur de Rochepot, with the royalists, and that the provost of tradesmen, L'Huillier, and three of the four sheriffs were agreed to bring the city back to obedience to the king. When the Sixteen and their adherents saw Mayenne departing with his wife and children, great were their alarm and wrath. A large band, with the inc.u.mbent of St. Cosmo (Hamilton) at their head, rushed about the streets in arms, saying, ”Look to your city; the policists are brewing a terrible business for it.” Others, more violent, cried, ”To arms! Down upon the policists! Begin! Let us make an end of it!” The policists, that is, the burgesses inclined to peace, repaired on their side to the provost of tradesmen to ask for his authority to a.s.semble at the Palace or the Hotel de Ville, and to provide for security in case of any public calamity. The provost tried to elude their entreaties by pleading that the Duke of Mayenne would think ill of their a.s.sembling. ”Then you are not the tradesmen's but M. de Mayenne's provost?” said one of them. ”I am no Spaniard,” answered the provost; ”no more is M. de Mayenne; I am anxious to reconcile you to the Sixteen.”

”We are honest folks, not branded and defamed like the Sixteen; we will have no reconciliation with the wretches.” The Parliament grew excited, and exclaimed against the insolence and the menaces of the Sixteen. ”We must give place to these sedition-mongers, or put them down.” A decree, published by sound of trumpet on the 14th of March, 1594, throughout the whole city, prohibited the Sixteen and their partisans from a.s.sembling on pain of death. That same day, Count de Brissac, governor of Paris, had an interview at the abbey of St. Anthony, with his brother-in-law, Francis d'Epinay, Lord of St. Luc, Henry IV.'s grand-master of the ordnance; they had disputes touching private interests, which they wished, they said, to put right; and on this pretext advocates had appeared at their interview. They spent three hours in personal conference, their minds being directed solely to the means of putting the king into possession of Paris. They separated in apparent dudgeon.

Brissac went to call upon the legate Gaetani, and begged him to excuse the error he had committed in communicating with a heretic; his interest in the private affairs in question was too great, he said, for him to neglect it. The legate excused him graciously, whilst praising him for his modest conduct, and related the incident to the Duke of Feria, the Spanish amba.s.sador. ”He is a good fellow, M. de Brissac,” said the amba.s.sador; ”I have always found him so; you have only to employ the Jesuits to make him do all you please. He takes little notice, otherwise, of affairs; one day, when we were holding council in here, whilst we were deliberating, he was amusing himself by catching flies.”

For four days the population of Paris was occupied with a solemn procession in honor of St. Genevieve, in which the Parliament and all the munic.i.p.al authorities took part. Brissac had agreed with his brother-in-law D'Epinay that he would let the king in on the 22d of March, and he had arranged, in concert with the provost of tradesmen, two sheriffs, and several district captains, the course of procedure. On the 21st of March, in the evening, some Leaguers paid him a visit, and spoke to him warmly about the rumors current on the subject in the city, calling upon him to look to it. ”I have received the same notice,” said Brissac, coolly; ”and I have given all the necessary orders. Leave me to act, and keep you quiet, so as not to wake up those who will have to be secured. To-morrow morning you will see a fine to-do and the policists much surprised.” During all the first part of the night between the 21st and 22d of March, Brissac went his rounds of the city and the guards he had posted, ”with an appearance of great care and solicitude.” He had some trouble to get rid of certain Spanish officers, ”whom the Duke of Feria had sent him to keep him company in his rounds, with orders to throw themselves upon him and kill him at the first suspicious movement; but they saw nothing to confirm their suspicions, and at two A. M., Brissac brought them back much fatigued to the duke's, where he left them.” Henry IV., having started on the 21st of March from Senlis, where he had mustered his troops, and arrived about midnight at St. Denis, immediately began his march to Paris. The night was dark and stormy; thunder rumbled; rain fell heavily; the king was a little behind time.

At three A. M.. the policists inside Paris had taken arms and repaired to the posts that had been a.s.signed to them. Brissac had placed a guard close to the quarters of the Spanish amba.s.sador, and ordered the men to fire on any who attempted to leave. He had then gone in person, with L'Huillier, the provost of tradesmen, to the New Gate, which he had caused to be unlocked and guarded. Sheriff Langlois had done the same at the gate of St. Denis. On the 22d of March, at four A. M., the king had not yet appeared before the ramparts, nor any one for him. Langlois issued from the gate, went some little distance to look out, and came in again, more and more impatient. At last, between four and five o'clock, a detachment of the royal troops, commanded by Vitry, appeared before the gate of St. Denis, which was instantly opened. Brissac's brother-in-law, St. Luc, arrived about the same time at the New Gate, with a considerable force. The king's troops entered Paris. They occupied the different districts, and met with no show of resistance but at the quay of L'Ecole, where an outpost of lanzknechts tried to stop them; but they were cut in pieces or hurled into the river. Between five and six o'clock Henry IV., at the head of the last division, crossed the drawbridge of the New Gate.

Brissac, Provost L'Huillier, the sheriffs, and several companies of burgesses advanced to meet him. The king embraced Brissac, throwing his own white scarf round his neck, and addressing him as ”Marshal.” ”Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's,” said Brissac, as he called upon the provost of tradesmen to present to the king the keys of the city. ”Yes,” said L'Huillier, ”render them, not sell them.” The king went forward with his train, going along Rue St. Honore to the market of the Innocents and the bridge of Notre-Dame; the crowd increased at every step. ”Let them come near,” said Henry; ”they hunger to see a king.” At every step, too, at sight of the smallest incident, the character of Henry, his natural thoughtful and lovable kindliness, shone forth. He asked if his entry had met with resistance anywhere; and he was told that about fifty lanzknechts had been killed at the quay of L'Ecole. ”I would willingly give fifty thousand crowns,” said he, ”to be able to say that I took Paris without costing the life of one single man.” As he marched along the Rue St. Honore, he saw a soldier taking some bread by force from a baker's; he rushed at him, and would have struck him with his sword. As he pa.s.sed in front of the Innocents, he saw at a window a man who was looking at him, and pointedly keeping his hat on; the man perceived that the king' observed him, and withdrew, shutting down the window. Henry said, ”Let n.o.body enter this house to vex or molest any one in it.” He arrived in front of Notre-Dame, followed by five or six hundred men-at-arms, who trailed their pikes ”in token of a victory that was voluntary on the people's part,” it was said. There was no uproar, or any hostile movement, save on the left bank of the Seine, in the University quarter, where the Sixteen attempted to a.s.semble their partisans round the gate of St. Jacques; but they were promptly dispersed by the people as well as by the royal troops. On leaving Notre-Dame, Henry repaired to the Louvre, where he installed royalty once more.

At ten o'clock he was master of the whole city; the districts of St. Martin, of the Temple, and St. Anthony alone remained still in the power of three thousand Spanish soldiers under the orders of their leaders, the Duke of Feria and Don Diego d'Ibarra. Nothing would have been easier for Henry than to have had them driven out by his own troops and the people of Paris, who wanted to finish the day's work by exterminating the foreigners; but he was too judicious and too far-sighted to embitter the general animosity by pus.h.i.+ng his victory beyond what was necessary. He sent word to the Spaniards that they must not move from their quarters and must leave Paris during the day, at the same time promising not to bear arms any more against him, in France.

They eagerly accepted these conditions. At three o'clock in the afternoon, amba.s.sador, officers, and soldiers all evacuated Paris, and set out for the Low Countries. The king, posted at a window over the gate of St. Denis, witnessed their departure. They, as they pa.s.sed, saluted him respectfully; and he returned their salute, saying, ”Go, gentlemen, and commend me to your master; but return no more.”

After his conversion to Catholicism, the capture of Paris was the most decisive of the issues which made Henry IV. really King of France. The submission of Rouen followed almost immediately upon that of Paris; and the year 1594 brought Henry a series of successes, military and civil, which changed very much to his advantage the position of the kings.h.i.+p as well as the general condition of the kingdom. In Normandy, in Picardy, in Champagne, in Anjou, in Poitou, in Brittany, in Orleanness, in Auvergne, a mult.i.tude of important towns, Havre, Honfleur, Abbeville, Amiens, Peronue, Montdidier, Poitiers, Orleans, Rheims, Chateau-Thierry, Beauvais, Sens, Riom, Morlaix, Laval, Laon, returned to the king's authority, some after sieges and others by pacific and personal arrangement, more or less burdensome for the public treasury, but very effective in promoting the unity of the nation and of the monarchy. In the table drawn up by Sully of expenses under that head, he estimated them at thirty-two millions, one hundred and forty-two thousand, nine hundred and eighty-one livres, equivalent at the present day, says M.

Poirson, to one hundred and eighteen millions of francs. The rendition of Paris, ”on account of M. de Brissac, the city itself and other individuals employed on his treaty,” figures in this sum total at one million, six hundred and forty-five thousand, four hundred livres.

Territorial acquisitions were not the only political conquests of this epoch; some of the great inst.i.tutions which had been disjointed by the religious wars, for instance, the Parliaments of Paris and Normandy, recovered their unity and resumed their efficacy to the advantage of order, of the monarchy, and of national independence; their decrees against the League contributed powerfully to its downfall. Henry IV.

did his share in other ways besides warfare; he excelled in the art of winning over or embarra.s.sing his vanquished foes. After the submission of Paris, the two princesses of the house of Lorraine who had remained there, the d.u.c.h.esses of Nemours and of Montpensier, one the mother and the other the sister of the Duke of Mayenne, were preparing to go and render homage to the conqueror; Henry antic.i.p.ated them, and paid them the first visit. As he was pa.s.sing through a room where hung a portrait of Henry de Guise, he halted and saluted it very courteously. The d.u.c.h.ess of Montpensier, who had so often execrated him, did not hesitate to express her regret that ”her brother Mayenne had not been there to let down for him the drawbridge of the gate by which he had entered Paris.”

”Ventre-saint-gris,” said the king, ”he might have made me wait a long while; I should not have arrived so early.” He knew that the d.u.c.h.ess of Nemours had desired peace, and when she allowed some signs of vexation to peep out at her not having been able to bring her sons and grandsons to that determination, ”Madame,” said he, a there is still time if they please.” At the close of 1594, he imported disorganization into the household of Lorraine by offering the government of Provence to the young Duke Charles of Guise, son of the Balafre; who eagerly accepted it; and he from that moment paved the way, by the agency of President Jeannin, for his reconciliation with Mayenne, which he brought to accomplishment at the end of 1595.

The close of this happy and glorious year was at hand. On the 27th of September, between six and seven P.M., a deplorable incident occurred, for the second time, to call Henry IV.'s attention to the weak side of his position. He was just back from Picardy, and holding a court-reception at Schomberg House, at the back of the Louvre. John Chastel, a young man of nineteen, son of a cloth-merchant in the city, slipped in among the visitors, managed to approach the king, and dealt him a blow with a knife just as he was stooping to raise and embrace Francis de la Grange, Sieur de Montigny, who was kneeling before him.

The blow, aimed at the king's throat, merely slit his upper lip and broke a tooth. ”I am wounded!” said the king. John Chastel, having dropped his knife, had remained on the spot, motionless and confused. Montigny, according to some, but, according to others, the Count of Soissons, who happened to be near him, laid hands upon him, saying, ”Here is the a.s.sa.s.sin, either he or I.” Henry IV., always p.r.o.ne to pa.s.s things over, pooh-poohed the suspicion, and was just giving orders to let the young man go, when the knife, discovered on the ground close to Chastel, became positive evidence. Chastel was questioned, searched, and then handed, over to the grand provost of the household, who had him conveyed to prison at For-l'Eveque. He first of all denied, but afterwards admitted his deed, regretting that he had missed his aim, and saying he was ready to try again for his own salvation's sake and that of religion. He declared that he had been brought up amongst the Jesuits in Rue St.

Jacques, and he gave long details as to the education he had received there and the maxims he had heard there. The rumor of his crime and of the revelations he had made spread immediately over Paris and caused pa.s.sionate excitement. The people filled the churches and rendered thanks to G.o.d for having preserved the king. The burgesses took up arms and mustered at their guard-posts. The mob bore down on the college of Jesuits in Rue St. Jacques with threats of violence. The king and the Parliament sent a force thither; Brizard, councillor in the high chamber, captain of the district, had the fathers removed, and put them in security in his own house. The inquiry was prosecuted deliberately and temperately. It brought out that John Chastel had often heard repeated at his college ”that it was allowable to kill kings, even the king regnant, when they were not in the church or approved of by the pope.”

The accused formally maintained this maxim, which was found written out and dilated upon under his own hand in a note-book seized at his father's. ”Was it necessary, pray,” said Henry IV., laughing, ”that the Jesuits should be convicted by my mouth?” John Chastel was sentenced to the most cruel punishment; and he underwent it on the 20th of December, 1594, by torch-light, before the princ.i.p.al entrance of Notre-Dame, without showing any symptom of regret. His mother and his sisters were set at liberty. His father, an old Leaguer, had been cognizant of his project, and had dissuaded him from it, but without doing anything to hinder it; he was banished from the kingdom for nine years, and from Paris forever. His house was razed to the ground; and on the site was set up a pyramid with the decree of the Parliament inscribed upon it.