Volume V Part 3 (1/2)

Henry IV. accomplished all that, when he wrote to Rosny, he had showed himself resolved to undertake. External circ.u.mstances became favorable to him. Since his conversion to Catholicism, England and her queen, Elizabeth, had been colder in the cause of the French alliance. When, after his declaration of war against Philip II., Henry demanded in London the support on which he had believed that he might rely, Elizabeth answered by demanding in her turn the cession of Calais as the price of her services. Quite determined not to give up Calais to England, Henry, without complaining of the demand, let the negotiation drag, confining himself to saying that he was looking for friends, not for masters. When in April, 1596, it was known in London that Calais had been taken by the Spaniards, Elizabeth sent word to Henry, then at Boulogne, that she would send him prompt a.s.sistance if he promised, when Calais was recovered from the Spaniards, to place it in the hands of the English. ”If I must be despoiled,” answered Henry, ”I would rather it should be by my enemies than by my friends. In the former case it will be a reverse of fortune, in the latter I might be accused of poltroonery.” Elizabeth a.s.sured the French amba.s.sador, Harlay de Sancy, ”that it had never been her intention to keep Calais, but simply to take care that, in any case, this important place should not remain in the hands of the common enemy whilst the king was engaged in other enterprises; anyhow,” she added, ”she had ordered the Earl of Ess.e.x, admiral of the English fleet raised against Spain, to arm promptly in order to go to the king's a.s.sistance.” There was anxiety at that time in England about the immense preparations being made by Philip for the invasion he proposed to attempt against England, and for the putting to sea of his fleet, the Grand Armada. In conversation with the high treasurer, Lord Burleigh, Elizabeth's chief minister, Sancy found him even colder than his queen; Burleigh laid great stress upon all that the queen had already done for France, and on the one million five hundred thousand gold crowns she had lent to the king. ”It would be more becoming,” he said, ”in the king's envoys to thank the queen for the aid she had already furnished than to ask for more; by dint of drawing water the well had gone dry; the queen could offer the king only three thousand men, on condition that they were raised at his own expense.” ”If the king,” replied Sancy, ”must expect neither alliance nor effectual aid on your part, he will be much obliged to the queen to let him know what course she takes, because he, on his side, will take that which will be most expedient for his affairs.” Some of the king's councillors regarded it as possible that he should make peace with the King of Spain, and did not refrain from letting as much be understood. Negotiations in London seemed to be broken off; the French amba.s.sadors had taken leave of Elizabeth. The news that came from Spain altered the tone of the English government; threats of Spanish invasion became day by day more distinct and the Grand Armada more dreaded. Elizabeth sent word to the amba.s.sadors of France by some of her confidants, amongst others Sir Robert Cecil, son of the high treasurer, that she was willing to give them a last audience before their departure. The result of this audience was the conclusion of a treaty of alliance offensive and defensive between France and England against the King of Spain, with a mutual promise not to make, one without the other, either peace or truce, with precise stipulations as to the number and pay of the troops which the Queen of England should put in the field for the service of the King of France, and, further, with a proviso establis.h.i.+ng freedom of trade between the two states. The treaty was drawn up in London on the 24th of May, 1596, ratified at Rouen by Henry IV. on the 19th of October following, and on the 31st of October the States-General of Holland acceded to it, whilst regulating, accordingly, the extent of their engagements.

Easy as to the part to be played by his allies in the war with Spain, Henry IV. set to work upon the internal reforms and measures of which he strongly felt the necessity. They were of two kinds; one administrative and financial, the other political and religious; he wished at one and the same time to consolidate the material forces of his government and to give his Protestant subjects, lately his own brethren, the legal liberty and security which they needed for their creed's sake, and to which they had a right.

He began, about the middle of October, 1596, by bringing Rosny into the council of finance, saying to him, ”You promise me, you know, to be a good manager, and that you and I shall lop arms and legs from _Madame Grivelee,_ as you have so often told me could be done.” _Madame Grivelee (Mrs. Pickings)_ was, in the language of the day, she who presided over illicit gains made in the administration of the public finances. Rosny at once undertook to accomplish that which he had promised the king. He made, in person, a minute examination of four receiver-generals' offices, in order, with that to guide him, to get a correct idea of the amount derived from imposts and the royal revenues, and of what became of this amount in its pa.s.sage from collection to employment for the defrayal of the expenses of the state. ”When he went on his inspection, the treasurers of France, receivers, accountants, comptrollers, either absented themselves or refused to produce him any register; he suspended some, frightened others, surmounted the obstacles of every kind that were put in his way, and he proved, from the princ.i.p.al items of receipt and expenditure at these four general offices, so much and such fraudulence that he collected five hundred thousand crowns (one million five hundred thousand livres of those times, and about five million four hundred and ninety thousand francs of the present date), had these sums placed in seventy carts, and drove them to Rouen, where the king was and where the a.s.sembly of Notables had just met.”

It was not the states-general properly so called that Henry IV. had convoked; he had considered that his authority was still too feebly const.i.tuted, and even too much disputed in a portion of the kingdom, to allow him to put it to such a test; and honest and sensible patriots had been of the same opinion D'Aubigne himself, the most independent and fault-finding spirit amongst his contemporaries, expressly says, ”The troubles which were not yet extinguished in France did not admit of a larger convocation; the hearts of the people were not yet subdued and kneaded to obedience, as appeared from the excitement which supervened.”

[_Histoire universelle,_ t. iii. p. 526.] Besides, Henry himself acknowledged, in the circular which he published on the 25th of July, 1596, at this juncture, the superior agency of the states-general.

”We would gladly have brought them together in full a.s.sembly,” he said, ”if the armed efforts of our enemies allowed of any longer delay in finding a remedy for the plague which is racking us so violently; our intent is, pending the coming of the said states, to put a stop to all these disorders in the best and quickest way possible.” ”The king, moreover,” says Sully, ”had no idea of imitating the kings his predecessors in predilection for, and appointment of, certain deputies for whom he had a particular fancy; but he referred the nomination thereof to them of the church, of the n.o.blesse, and of the people; and when they were a.s.sembled, he prescribed to them no rules, forms, or limits, but left them complete freedom of their opinions, utterances, suffrages, and deliberations.” [OEconomies royales, t. iii. p. 29.]

The notables met at Rouen to the number of eighty, nine of the clergy, nineteen of the n.o.blesse, fifty-two of the third estate. The king opened the a.s.sembly on the 4th of November, 1596, with these words, full of dignity, and powerful in their vivid simplicity: ”If I desired to win the t.i.tle of orator, I would have learned by rote some fine, long speech, and would deliver it to you with proper gravity. But, gentlemen, my desire prompts me towards two more glorious t.i.tles, the names of deliverer and restorer of this kingdom. In order to attain whereto I have gathered you together. You know to your cost, as I to mine, that when it pleased G.o.d to call me to this crown, I found France not only all but ruined, but almost entirely lost to Frenchmen. By the divine favor, by the prayers and the good counsels of my servants who are not in the profession of arms, by the sword of my brave and generous n.o.blesse, from whom I single out not the princes, upon the honor of a gentleman, as the holders of our proudest t.i.tle, and by my own pains and labors, I have preserved her from perdition. Let us now preserve her from ruin. Share, my dear subjects, in this second triumph as you did in the first. I have not summoned you, like my predecessors, to get your approbation of their own wills. I have had you a.s.sembled in order to receive your counsels, put faith in them, follow them, in short, place myself under guardians.h.i.+p in your hands; a desire but little congenial to kings, graybeards, and conquerors. But the violent love I feel towards my subjects, and the extreme desire I have to add those two proud t.i.tles to that of king, make everything easy and honorable to me.”

L'Estoile relates that the king's favorite, Gabrielle d'Estrees, was at the session behind some tapestry, and that, Henry IV. having asked what she thought of his speech, she answered, ”I never heard better spoken; only I was astonished that you spoke of placing yourself under guardians.h.i.+p.” ”Ventre saint-gris,” replied the king, ”that is true; but I mean with my sword by my side.” [_Journal de Pierre l'Estoile,_ t. iii. p. 185.]

The a.s.sembly of notables sat from November 4, 1596, to January 29, 1597, without introducing into the financial regimen any really effective reforms; the rating board (_conseil de raison_), the inst.i.tution of which they had demanded of the king, in connection with the fixing of imposts and employment of public revenues, was tried without success, and was not long before, of its own accord, resigning its power into the king's hands; but the mere convocation of this a.s.sembly was a striking instance of the homage paid by Henry IV. to that fundamental maxim of free government, which, as early as under Louis XI., Philip de Commynes expressed in these terms: ”There is no king or lord on earth who hath power, over and above his own property, to put a single penny on his subjects without grant and consent of those who have to pay, unless by tyranny and violence.” The ideas expressed and the counsels given by the a.s.sembly of notables were not, however, without good effect upon the general administration of the state; but the princ.i.p.al and most salutary result of its presence and influence was the personal authority which Sully drew from it, and of which he did not hesitate to make full use.

Having become superintendent-general of finance and grand master of the ordnance, he exerted all his power to put in practice, as regarded the financial department, a system of receipts and expenses, and as regarded materials for the service of war, the reforms and maxims of economy, accountability, and supervision, which were suggested to him by his great good sense, and in which Henry IV. supported him with the spirit of one who well appreciated the strength they conferred upon his government, civil and military.

His relations with the Protestants gave him embarra.s.sments to surmount and reforms to accomplish of quite a different sort, and more difficult still. At his accession, their satisfaction had not been untinged by disquietude; they foresaw the sacrifices the king would be obliged to make to his new and powerful friends the Catholics. His conversion to Catholicism threw into more or less open opposition the most zealous and some of the ambitious members of his late church. It was not long before their feelings burst forth in reproaches, alarms, and attacks. In 1597, a pamphlet, ent.i.tled _The Plaints of the Reformed Churches of France_ [_Memoires de la Ligue,_ t. vi. pp. 428-486], was published and spread prodigiously. ”None can take it ill,” said the anonymous author, ”that we who make profession of the Reformed religion should come forward to get a hearing for our plaints touching so many deeds of outrage, violence, and injustice which are daily done to us, and done not here or there, but in all places of the realm; done at a time, under a reign in which they seemed less likely, and which ought to have given us better hopes. . . . We, sir, are neither Spaniards nor Leaguers; we have had such happiness as to see you, almost born and cradled, at any rate brought up, amongst us; we have employed our properties, our lives, in order to prevent the effects of ill will on the part of those who, from your cradle, sought your ruin; we have, with you and under your wise and valiant leaders.h.i.+p, made the chiefest efforts for the preservation of the crown, which, thank G.o.d, is now upon your head. . . . We do beseech you, sir, to give us permission to have the particulars of our grievances heard both by your Majesty and all your French, for we do make plaint of all the French. Not that in so great and populous a kingdom we should imagine that there are not still to be found some whose hearts bleed to see indignities so inhuman; but of what avail to us is all they may have in them of what is good, humane, and French? A part of them are so soft, so timorous, that they would not so much as dare to show a symptom of not liking that which displeases them; and if, when they see us so maltreated, they do summon up sufficient boldness to look another way, and think that they have done but their duty, still do they tremble with fear of being taken for favorers of heretics.”

The writer then enters upon an exposition of all the persecutions, all the acts of injustice, all the evils of every kind that the reformers have to suffer. He lays the blame of them, as he has just said, upon the whole French community, the n.o.blesse, the commons, the magistracy, as well as the Catholic priests and monks; he enumerates a mult.i.tude of special facts in support of his plaints. ”Good G.o.d!” he cries, ”that there should be no cla.s.s, no estate in France, from which we can hope for any relief! None from which we may not fear lest ruin come upon us!”

And he ends by saying, ”Stem, then, sir, with your good will and your authority, the tide of our troubles. Direct your counsels towards giving us some security. Accustom your kingdom to at least endure us, if it will not love us. We demand of your Majesty an edict which may give us enjoyment of that which is common to all your subjects, that is to say, of far less than you have granted to your enemies, your rebels of the League.”

We will not stop to inquire whether the matters stated in these plaints are authentic or disputable, accurate or exaggerated; it is probable that they contain a great deal of truth, and that, even under Henry IV., the Protestants had many sufferings to endure and disregarded rights to recover. The mistake they made and the injustice they showed consisted in not taking into, account all the good that Henry IV. had done them and was daily doing them, and in calling upon him, at a moment's notice, to secure to them by an edict all the good that it was not in his power to do them. We purpose just to give a brief summary of the ameliorations introduced into their position under him, even before the edict of Nantes, and to transfer the responsibility for all they still lacked to the cause indicated by themselves in their plaints, when they take to task all the French on the Catholic side, who, in the sixteenth century, disregarded in France the rights of creed and of religious life, just as the Protestants themselves disregarded them in England so far as the Catholics were concerned.

One fact immediately deserves to be pointed out; and that is the number and the practical character of meetings officially held at this period by the Protestants: an indisputable proof of the liberty they enjoyed.

These meetings were of two sorts; one, the synods, were for the purpose of regulating their faith, their wors.h.i.+p, their purely religious affairs.

Between 1594 and 1609, under the sway of Henry IV., Catholic king, seven national synods of the Protestant church in France held their sessions in seven different towns, and discussed with perfect freedom such questions of religious doctrine and discipline as were interesting to them. At the same epoch, between 1593 and 1608, the French Protestants met at eleven a.s.semblies, specially summoned to deliberate, not in these cases upon questions of faith and religious discipline, but upon their temporal and political interests, upon their relations towards the state, and upon the conduct they were to adopt under the circ.u.mstances of their times. The principle to which minds, and even matters, to a certain extent, have now attained, the deep-seated separation between the civil and the religious life, and their mutual independence, this higher principle was unknown to the sixteenth century; the believer and the citizen were then but one, and the efforts of laws and governments were directed towards bringing the whole nation entire into the same state of unity. And as they did not succeed therein, their attempts produced strife instead of unity, war instead of peace. When the French Protestants of the sixteenth century met in the a.s.semblies which they themselves called political, they acted as one nation confronting another nation, and labored to form a state within state. We will borrow from the intelligent and learned _Histoire d'Henri IV.,_ by M. Poirson, (t. ii. pp. 497-500), a picture of one of those a.s.semblies and its work. ”After the king's abjuration, and at the end of the year 1593, the French Huguenots renewed at Mantes their old union, and swore to live and die united in their profession of faith.

Henry was in hopes that they would stop short at a religious demonstration; but they made it a starting-point for a new political and military organization on behalf of the Calvinistic party. They took advantage of a general permission granted them by Henry, and met, not in synod, but in general a.s.sembly, at the town of Sainte Foy, in the month of June, 1594. Thereupon they divided all France into nine great provinces or circles, composed each of several governments or provinces of the realm. Each circle had a separate council, composed of from five to seven members, and commissioned to fix and apportion the separate imposts, to keep up a standing army, to collect the supplies necessary for the maintenance and defence of the party. The Calvinistic republic had its general a.s.semblies, composed of nine deputies or representatives from each of the nine circles. These a.s.semblies were invested with authority to order, on the general account, all that the juncture required, that is to say, with a legislative power distinct from that of the crown and nation. . . . If the king ceased to pay the sums necessary to keep up the garrisons in the towns left to the Reformers, the governors were to seize the talliages in the hands of the king's receivers, and apply the money to the payment of the garrisons. And in case the central power should attempt to repress these violent procedures, or to subst.i.tute as commandant in those places a Catholic for a Protestant, all the Calvinists of the locality and the neighboring districts were to unite and rise in order to give the a.s.sistance of the strong hand to the Protestant governors so attacked. Independently of the ordinary imposts, a special impost was laid on the Calvinists, and gave their leaders the disposal of a yearly sum of one hundred and twenty thousand livres (four hundred and forty thousand francs of the present day). The Calvinistic party had thus a territorial area, an administration, finances, a legislative power and an executive power independent of those of the countr;y; or, in other words, the means of taking resolutions contrary to those of the ma.s.s of the nation, and of upholding them by revolt. All they wanted was a Huguenot stadtholder to oppose to the King of France, and they were looking out for one.”

Henry IV. did not delude himself as to the tendency of such organization amongst those of his late party. ”He rebuffed very sternly (and wisely),” says L'Estoile, ”those who spoke to him of it. 'As for a protector,' he told them, 'he would have them to understand that there was no other protector in France but himself for one side or the other; the first man who should be so daring as to a.s.sume the t.i.tle would do so at the risk of his life; he might be quite certain of that.'” Had Henry IV. been permitted to read the secrets of a not so very distant future, he might have told the Huguenots of his day that the time was not so far off when their pretension to political organization and to the formation of a state within the state, would compromise their religious liberty and furnish the absolute government of Louis XIV. with excuses for abolis.h.i.+ng the protective edict which Henry IV.'s sympathy was on the point of granting them, and which, so far as its purely religious provisions went, was duly respected by the sagacity of Cardinal Richelieu.

After his conversion to Catholicism, and during the whole of his reign, it was one of Henry IV.'s constant anxieties to show himself well-disposed towards his old friends, and to do for them all he could do without compromising the public peace in France, or abdicating in his own person the authority he needed to maintain order and peace. Some of the edicts published by his predecessors during the intervals of civil war, notably the edict of Poitiers issued by Henry III., had granted the Protestants free exercise of their wors.h.i.+p in the castles of the Calvinistic lords who had jurisdiction, to the number of thirty-five hundred, and in the faubourgs of one town or borough of each bailiwick of the realm, except the bailiwick of Paris. Further, the holding of properties and heritages, union by marriage with Catholics, and the admission of Protestants to the employments, offices, and dignities of the realm, were recognized by this edict. These rights, in black and white, had often been violated by the different authorities, or suspended during the wars; Henry IV. maintained them or put them in force again, and supported the application of them or decreed the extension of them.

It was calculated that there were in France eight hundred towns and three hundred bailiwicks or seneschalties; the treaties concluded with the League had expressly prohibited the exercise of Protestant wors.h.i.+p in forty towns and seventeen bailiwicks; Henry IV. tolerated it everywhere else. The prohibition was strict as regarded Paris and ten leagues round; but, as early as 1594, three months after his entry into Paris, Henry aided the Reformers in the unostentatious celebration of their own form in the Faubourg St. Germain; and he authorized the use of it at court for religious ceremonies, especially for marriages. Three successive edicts, two issued at Mantes in 1591 and 1593, and the third at St. Germain in 1597, confirmed and developed these signs of progress in the path of religious liberty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Castle of St. Germain in the Reign of Henry IV.--107]

The Parliaments had in general refused to enregister these decrees a fact which gave them an incomplete and provisional character; but equitable and persistent measures on the king's part prevailed upon the Parliament of Paris to enregister the edict of St. Germain; and the Parliament of Dijon and nearly all the other Parliaments of the kingdom followed this example. One of the princ.i.p.al provisions of this last edict declared Protestants competent to fill all the offices and dignities of the kingdom. It had many times been inserted in preceding edicts, but always rejected by the Parliaments or formally revoked. Henry IV. brought it into force and credit by putting it extensively in practice, without entering upon discussion of it and without adding any comment upon it.

In 1590 he had given Palleseuil the government of Neuchatel in Normandy; he had introduced Hurault Dufay, Du Plessis-Mornay and Rosny into the council of state; in 1594 he had appointed the last a member of the council of finance; Soffray de Colignon, La Force, Lesdiguieres, and Sancy were summoned to the most important functions; Turenne, in 1594, was raised to the dignity of marshal of France; and in 1595 La Tremoille was made duke and peer. They were all Protestants. Their number and their rank put the matter beyond all dispute; it was a natural consequence of the social condition of France; it became an habitual practice with the government.

Nevertheless the complaints and requirements of the malcontent Protestants continued, and became day by day more vehement; in 1596 and 1597 the a.s.semblies of Saumur, Loudun, and Vendome became their organs of expression; and messengers were sent with them to the camp before La Fere, which Henry IV. was at that time besieging. He deferred his reply.

Two of the princ.i.p.al Protestant leaders, the Dukes of Bouillon and La Tremoille, suddenly took extreme measures; they left the king and his army, carrying off their troops with them, one to Auvergne and the other to Poitou. The deputies from the a.s.sembly of Loudun started back again at the same time, as if for the purpose of giving the word to arm in their provinces. Du Plessis-Mornay and his wife, the most zealous of the Protestants who were faithful at the same time to their cause and to the king, bear witness to this threatening crisis. ”The deputies,” says Madame du Mornay in her Memoires, ”returned each to his own province, with the intention of taking the cure of their evils into their own hands, whence would infallibly have ensued trouble enough to complete the ruin of this state had not the king, by the management of M. du Plessis, been warned of this imminent danger, and by him persuaded to send off and treat in good earnest with the said a.s.sembly.” ”These gentry, rebuffed at court,” says Du Plessis-Mornay himself in a letter to the Duke of Bouillon, ”have resolved to take the cure into their own hands; to that end they have been authorized, and by actions which do not seem to lead them directly thither they will find that they have pa.s.sed the Rubicon right merrily.” It was as it were a new and a Protestant League just coming to a head. Henry IV. was at that time engaged in the most important negotiation of his reign. After a long and difficult siege he had just retaken. Amiens. He thought it a favorable moment at which to treat for peace with Spain, and put an end to an onerous war which he had been for so long sustaining. He informed the Queen of England of his intention, ”begging her, if the position of her affairs did not permit her to take part in the treaty he was meditating with Spain, to let him know clearly what he must do to preserve amity and good understanding between the two crowns, for he would always prefer an ally like her to reconciled foes such as the Spaniards.” He addressed the same notification to the Dutch government. Elizabeth on one hand and the states-general on the other tried to dissuade him from peace with Spain, and to get him actively re-engaged in the strife from which they were not disposed to emerge. He persisted in his purpose whilst setting before them his reasons for it, and binding himself to second faithfully their efforts by all pacific means. A congress was opened in January, 1598, at Vervins in Picardy, through the mediation of Pope Clement VIII., anxious to become the pacificator of Catholic Europe. The French plenipotentiaries, Pomponne de Bellievre and Brulart de Silleri, had instructions to obtain the restoration to the king of all towns and places taken by the Spaniards from France since the treaty of peace of Cateau-Cambresis, and to have the Queen of England and the United Provinces, if they testified a desire for it, included in the treaty, or, at any rate, to secure for them a truce. After three months' conferences the treaty of peace was concluded at Vervins on the 2d of May, 1598, the princ.i.p.al condition being, that King Philip II. should restore to France the towns of Calais, Ardres, Doullens, Le Catelet, and Blavet; that he should re-enter upon possession of the counts.h.i.+p of Charolais; and that, if either of the two sovereigns had any claims to make against one of the states their allies in this treaty, ”he should prosecute them only by way of law, before competent judges, and not by force, in any manner whatever.” The Queen of England took no decisive resolution. When once the treaty was concluded, Henry IV., on signing it, said to the Duke of Epernon, ”With this stroke of my pen I have just done more exploits than I should have done in a long while with the best swords in my kingdom.”

A month before the conclusion of the treaty of peace at Vervins with Philip II., Henry IV. had signed and published at Paris on the 13th of April, 1598, the edict of Nantes, his treaty of peace with the Protestant malcontents. This treaty, drawn up in ninety-two open and fifty-six secret articles, was a code of old and new laws regulating the civil and religious position of Protestants in France, the conditions and guarantees of their wors.h.i.+p, their liberties, and their special obligations in their relations whether with the crown or with their Catholic fellow-countrymen. By this code Henry IV. added a great deal to the rights of the Protestants and to the duties of the state towards them. Their wors.h.i.+p was authorized not only in the castles of the lords high-justiciary, who numbered thirty-five hundred, but also in the castles of simple n.o.blemen who enjoyed no high-justiciary rights, provided that the number of those present did not exceed thirty. Two towns or two boroughs, instead of one, had the same religious rights in each bailiwick or seneschalty of the kingdom. The state was charged with the duty of providing for the salaries of the Protestant ministers and rectors in their colleges or schools, and an annual sum of one hundred and sixty-five thousand livres of those times (four hundred and ninety-five thousand francs of the present day) was allowed for that purpose. Donations and legacies to be so applied were authorized. The children of Protestants were admitted into the universities, colleges, schools, and hospitals, without distinction between them and Catholics.

There was great difficulty in securing for them, in all the Parliaments of the kingdom, impartial justice; and a special chamber, called the edict-chamber, was inst.i.tuted for the trial of all causes in which they were interested. Catholic judges could not sit in this chamber unless with their consent and on their presentation. In the Parliaments of Bordeaux, Toulouse, and Gren.o.ble, the edict-chamber was composed of two presidents, one a Catholic and the other a Reformer, and of twelve councillors, of whom six were Reformers. The Parliaments had hitherto refused to admit Reformers into their midst; in the end the Parliament of Paris admitted six, one into the edict-chamber and five into the appeal-chamber (enquetes). The edict of Nantes retained, at first for eight years and then for four more, in the hands of the Protestants the towns which war or treaties had put in their possession, and which numbered, it is said, two hundred. The king was bound to bear the burden of keeping up their fortifications and paying their garrisons; and Henry IV. devoted to that object five hundred and forty thousand livres of those times, or about two million francs of our day. When the edict thus regulating the position and rights of Protestants was published, it was no longer on their part, but on that of the Catholics, that lively protests were raised. Many Catholics violently opposed the execution of the new law; they got up processions at Tours to excite the populace against the edict, and at Le Mans to induce the Parliament of Normandy to reject it. The Parliament of Paris put in the way of its registration r.e.t.a.r.dations which seemed to forebode a refusal. Henry summoned to the Louvre deputies from all the chambers. ”What I have done,” he said to them, ”is for the good of peace. I have made it abroad; I wish to make it at home. Necessity forced me to this decree.

They who would prevent it from pa.s.sing would have war. You see me in my closet. I speak to you, not in royal robe, or with sword and cape, as my predecessors did, nor as a prince receiving an emba.s.sy, but as a father of a family in his doublet conversing familiarly with his children. It is said that I am minded to favor them of the religion; there is a mind to entertain some mistrust of me. . . . I know that cabals have been got up in the Parliament, that seditious preachers have been set on. . . . The preachers utter words by way of doctrine for to build up rather than pull down sedition. That is the road formerly, taken to the making of barricades, and to proceeding by degrees to the parricide of the late king. I will cut the roots of all these factions; I will make short work of those who foment them. I have scaled the walls of cities; you may be sure I shall scale barricades. You must consider that what I am doing is for a good purpose, and let my past behavior go bail for it.”

Parliaments and Protestants, all saw that they had to do not only with a strong-willed king, but with a judicious and clearsighted man, a true French patriot, who was sincerely concerned for the public interest, and who had won his spurs in the art of governing parties by making for each its own place in the state. It was scarcely five years ago that the king who was now publis.h.i.+ng the edict of Nantes had become a Catholic; the Parliaments enregistered the decree. The Protestant malcontents resigned themselves to the necessity of being content with it. Whatever their imperfections and the objections that might be raised to them, the peace of Vervins and the edict of Narrtes were, amidst the obstacles and perils encountered at every step by the government of Henry IV., the two most timely and most beneficial acts in the world for France.

Four months after the conclusion of the treaty of Vervins, on the 13th of September, 1598, Philip II. died at the Escurial, ”prison, cloister, and tomb all in one,” as M. Rosseeuw St. Hilaire very well remarks [_Histoire d'Espagne,_ t. x. pp. 335-363], situated eight leagues from Madrid.

Philip was so ill, and so cruelly racked by gout and fever, that it was doubted whether he could be removed thither; ”but a collection of relics, ama.s.sed by his orders in Germany, had just arrived at the Escurial, and the festival of consecration was to take place within a few days. 'I desire that I be borne alive thither where my tomb already is,' said Philip.” He was laid in a litter borne by men who walked at a snail's pace, in order to avoid all shaking. Forced to halt every instant, he took six days to do the eight leagues which separated him from his last resting-place. There he died in atrocious agonies, and after a very painful operation, endured with unalterable courage and calmness; he had ordered to be placed in front of his bed the bier in which his body was to lie and the crucifix which his father, Charles V., at his death in the monastery of Yuste, had held in his hand. During a reign of forty-two years Philip II. was, systematically and at any price, on the score of what he regarded as the divine right of the Catholic church and of his own kings.h.i.+p, the patron of absolute power in Europe. Earnest and sincere in his faith, licentious without open scandal in his private life, unscrupulous and pitiless in the service of the religious and political cause he had embraced, he was capable of any lie, one might almost say of any crime, without having his conscience troubled by it.

A wicked man and a frightful example of what a naturally cold and hard spirit may become when it is a prey to all the temptations of despotism and to two sole pa.s.sions, egotism and fanaticism.

After the death of Philip II. and during the first years of the reign of his son Philip III., war continued between Spain on one side, and England, the United Provinces, and the German Protestants on the other, but languidly and without any results to signify. Henry IV. held aloof from the strife, all the while permitting his Huguenot subjects to take part in it freely and at their own risks. On the 3d of April, 1603, a second great royal personage, Queen Elizabeth, disappeared from the scene. She had been, as regards the Protestantism of Europe, what Philip II. had been, as regards Catholicism, a powerful and able patron; but, what Philip II. did from fanatical conviction, Elizabeth did from patriotic feeling; she had small faith in Calvinistic doctrines, and no liking for Puritanic sects; the Catholic church, the power of the pope excepted, was more to her mind than the Anglican church, and her private preferences differed greatly from her public practices. Besides, she combined with the exigencies of a king's position the instincts of a woman; she had the vanities rather than the weaknesses of one; she would fain have inspired and responded to the pa.s.sions natural to one; but policy always had the dominion over her sentiments without extinguis.h.i.+ng them, and the proud sovereign sent to the block the overweening and almost rebel subject whom she afterwards grievously regretted. These inconsistent resolutions and emotions caused Elizabeth's life to be one of agitation, though without warmth, and devoid of serenity as of sweetness. And so, when she grew old, she was disgusted with it and weary of it; she took no pleasure any more in thing or person; she could no longer bear herself, either in her court or in her bed or elsewhere; she decked herself out to lie stretched upon cus.h.i.+ons and there remain motionless, casting about her vague glances which seemed to seek after that for which she did not ask. She ended by repelling her physicians and even refusing nourishment. When her ministers saw her thus, almost insensible and dying, they were emboldened to remind her of what she had said to them one day at White-Hall, ”My throne must be a king's throne.”