41. Henry IV. —(continued)
CHAPTER XLI. Henry IV. —(continued) 1598-1610
As soon as Henry was on the throne as a Roman Catholic king, one town after another gave itself up to him. Towards the end of the year even Paris came over to his side; and he went to hear mass, which is the Roman Catholic service, in Notre Dame, or Our Lady, one of the most beautiful churches in Paris. This was a great event, and the people in the streets looked on with much interest and cries of "Long live the king !" The Spanish troops went away out of the capital the same day. Henry saw them pass out by one of the gates with such pleasure that he could hardly control himself. "I am beside myself," he said to some one who came to talk to him of business at his palace; "I do not know what you are saying or what I am answering." From this time Henry's reign may be said to have begun; his life of constant fighting was now over, and though he still had other wars before him, yet they did not after this take up all his time so that he could think of nothing else. The towns all over France (went on giving themselves up) to him; and he made peace separately with each of his chief enemies, making them all presents of money or land, or giving them anything else they specially wanted, so that they might be his friends for the future. But with the Spanish king Henry knew he could never be friends. There had been no declared war between them, but Philip had helped Henry's subjects against him privately ever since the death of Henry III., and now would never treat Henry as king, but was trying to make some plan by which his own daughter might be Queen of France. Henry saw that his reign would never be peaceful till Philip's interference was stopped, and nothing would put an end to it but war. He therefore declared war against Spain, and it began at once; it lasted for three years, and then peace was made, with an agreement that the Spaniards should give back to the French all that they had won in the war, so that, on the whole, Henry had been successful.
He had had much to do and to think of besides the war. There were continual troubles still in France between the Protestants and Roman Catholics, though, now that the king was a sincere friend of both, there was no more fear of such troubles and honors as there had been under Catherine of Medicis and her sons.
King Henry was always trying to make the Roman Catholics his friends, by giving them places and favours of all kinds; and to the Huguenots, who he knew were his friends already, he gave less. This made the Huguenots very angry, and they said that he was ungrateful to his old friends and servants who had stood by him in his troubles, and helped him to win his crown. They did not see how great his difficulties were, and perhaps did not enough consider how important it was for them that he should please the Roman Catholics, so as to be able to keep himself on the throne and help the Huguenots as he was doing.
They could never have expected such a friend in another Roman Catholic king; still, what they said seems to have had a great deal of truth in it. Kind and charming in his manners to every one, both friends and enemies, the king cared little for any one who was not close at hand, and if his friends were away from him or died, soon (left off) thinking about them. He treated all his old enemies very generously, as soon as they seemed to wish to be his friends. The Duke of Mayenne, who had been the head of them all, came over to Henry's side soon after the Pope had sent his absolution or solemn forgiveness to the king for having been a heretic. He had refused to grant this for some time, and when he did grant it, many of the Catholics came over at once to Henry, the Duke of Mayenne among them.
The first time that the king met with the duke, he was walking in a park with his chief minister, the Duke of Sully, Mayenne came up, and falling on one knee, promised fidelity to Henry. Henry received him very kindly, and asked him to come and see some new improvements which he had made in the park. He then set off walking so fast that Mayenne, who was fat and lame, could hardly keep up with him. He puffed and panted, till at last the king stopped and asked whether he were going too fast. Mayenne answered that he was almost dead, at which Henry clapped him on the shoulder and said, cheerfully, "That, my friend, is all the vengeance I shall ever take upon you;" and so sent him away. Of all the king's friends, old or new, the most important for himself and France was the minister with whom he had been walking when this meeting with Mayenne happened, the Duke of Sully. This great man was a Protestant; he had been a servant of Henry in the old times of trouble and war, and he stayed with him after he had become king, and after the change of religion which made many of his Protestant friends leave him.
Sully's family name was Bethune; he was made Duke of Sully by the king, and it is the name by which he is usually known. He was a proud man, harsh and vain, but a faithful friend of Henry, working always for his good and the welfare of France; industrious and honest. In particular, he understood more about money than any other Frenchman of that time.
Henry was so poor before he was crowned king, that he sometimes had to invite himself to dinner with one of his officers, because he had no food in his larder. After he was master of Paris and of the royal treasure, it was not very much better. The people of the country had been made poor by the wars, and were not able to pay so many as usual of the taxes upon which the king depended for money, but still they paid quite enough for Henry to have been tolerably well off, if the money had ever reached him. But a great deal of it never did. The people who were employed to collect it, and who ought to have paid it to the royal treasury, often kept it for themselves, or sometimes it was collected so carelessly that there was not near so much as there ought to (be). Sully put a stop both to the carelessness and the dishonesty. He took great pains himself to find out how much money ought to come from each tax in a certain time, and then made the men who collected it show him accounts of how much had (come), and of what they had done with it. Some had no accounts to show. and some had very incomplete ones. Sully turned out of their places all the men who seemed to have been acting dishonestly, and some of them who had grown very rich by stealing the king's money were tried in a court of law and fined, that is, made to pay a large sum of money, so that the king got back part of what, by rights, belonged to him. Sully next made fresh rules about the payment of the taxes, and saw that they were carried out; and as he was perfectly honest himself, Henry soon began to find his treasury filling again, and each year, as the people grew richer and richer in the long peace, Henry had more and more money to spend.
The king and the minister were not always quite agreed as to the best way of spending this money. Sully thought nothing so important as a good army of soldiers; he knew that Henry still had many enemies, and was always expecting that some day another war would break out and the king would want to gather together a large army. Sully kept a large store of treasure set aside for this particular purpose. Henry also looked upon his soldiers as very important, but he cared for many other matters as well, which Sully looked upon as waste or even worse. He was vexed when Henry spent in building, hunting, or gambling the money which he had gathered together with so much difficulty. He was not pleased either if the king spent it in encouraging manufactures, that is, the making of all kinds of goods, or on agriculture, which means improving the land for growing seed of all kinds; though every one now agrees with Henry that these ways of using money were much for the good of the country. Sully, besides being so useful as a minister, was a real friend to Henry. The king would consult with him over what he was going to do, and Sully gave him much good advice, and was sometimes able to prevent him from doing things which would have brought great trouble upon him if not upon his people.
When Henry became a Roman Catholic he promised his old Huguenot friends that he would always protect the Huguenots and their religion. When he found that they were growing angry at his not seeming to care about them, and that they felt he was breaking his word to them, he resolved to do something which should show his friendship (for them). He made an edict or royal order, which is known as the Edict of Nantes, and which was meant to settle the question that had never been settled yet, of how the Protestants were to be treated in France, how far they might worship in their own way without being disturbed by their neighbours, and whether they might be employed like Roman Catholics in the business of the country.
Treaties had often been made to settle all these matters, but they had never been observed for more than a short time, and often, in parts of the country where the Roman Catholics were strong, they had not been observed at all. The king's edict was to last as a law for ever, and it really did last for nearly ninety years, so that the Protestants had time to feel its good results. The decree gave the Huguenots a right to have services undisturbed in most of the towns of France, and also in the private houses of many of the chief nobles, where the people who lived in the country far from a town might hear the Huguenot service. They were allowed — like the Catholics — to send their children to any schools or colleges they wished, or might, if they liked, set up schools and colleges for themselves, and they might hold offices in the State. The Huguenots, from this time, were able to live comfortably in the country; many families who would have been driven over to England or other Protestant countries, if some change had not been made in the laws about Protestants, now settled down in France, and as they were specially honest, prudent, and industrious, they soon became some of the most prosperous of Henry's subjects, and France grew richer through their industry. Henry's reign lasted for about twelve years after the Edict of Nantes, and they were years of peace for him, and of (riches) and quiet for France. Henry, with Sully to advise him, made improvements of all kinds in the country; edicts were made on every subject that has to do with land; about marshes to be drained, forests to be cut down, lakes to be made, rivers which were to have their courses improved, or bridges built over them. Many new grains and plants were brought into France and grown there. Among other things Henry was specially interested in was the mulberry tree, which some of his subjects, after much difficulty, had succeeded in transplanting to France. The mulberry is a tree on which silkworms find their food, and when the trees became flourishing, silkworms were brought to live upon them, so that silk might be produced cheaply in France.
Still Henry was not able to give himself up entirely to these peaceful matters. He had at one time to go to war with a prince who had a small country at the southeast corner of France, the Duke of Savoy, who was rash enough to quarrel with Henry. The king and Sully marched against him with a strong army, and were successful, as might have been expected.
At another time one of his chief generals and oldest friends, the Marshal of Biron, made a league with the Spaniards and plotted against Henry. The plot was betrayed to the king by one of the men who had taken part in it, and he found to his great sorrow that Biron had shared in the plot. Henry sent for Biron to come to court, and when he arrived, for he did not dare refuse to obey, the king asked him questions about what he had done, and tried to persuade him to confess his guilt, by which he might have saved his life. But Biron refused to confess that he had done wrong; and was at last arrested by the king's orders and thrown into prison. He was tried, and there proved to be no doubt of his having been a traitor to the king; among other things, he had secretly been the friend of the Duke of Savoy, when he was leading the king's army against him, and had sent him word of how many men the king had, which way they were coming, and as many of Henry's secrets as he himself knew. Biron was condemned to death to his great surprise; for he had never believed that the king would make up his mind to agree to it. He was studying the stars to try and read the future when the officer came to tell him his sentence, and he was beheaded a few hours later. Henry was much distressed at this sad end of a man who had been one of his most trusted friends, and if it had not been for Sully, would probably have spared his life, though there seems no doubt that he deserved death.
The peaceful years of Henry's reign passed by with no events of much importance to the country, except the marriage of the king and the birth of a son, at which all the people of France were much delighted. He had been married before, but had agreed so ill with his wife that they had been separated and broken off their marriage. The king was not much more fortunate in his second wife. She was an Italian princess of the same family as Catherine de Medicis, ugly, grave, and sulky. She brought some of her own countrymen with her, and cared for them much more than for the king and his friends.
Henry was a friend of Queen Elizabeth of England, and they used to make plans together for resisting the power of Spain, and making some arrangement by which all the Protestant countries of Europe could join together and resist the Roman Catholics; for though Henry was a Roman Catholic king, he was always on the side of the Protestants out of his own country. Sully used to go from France to England, carrying messages from Henry, and bringing back Elizabeth's answers. She had helped Henry both with men and money in his wars, and though there had been quarrels between them, their friendship lasted till the death of Elizabeth, which happened seven years before that of Henry.
Towards the end of Henry's reign, the King of Spain, finding he was not able to conquer the people of the Netherlands, who had been fighting against him for so many years, made a truce with them for twelve years, by which they really gained all that they had been fighting for. The only country in which disputes were still going on between the Roman Catholics and Protestants was Germany. The duke of a small duchy died, and a great dispute arose as to who should be his heir; two Protestant princes were on one side, the Emperor, who was a Roman Catholic, on the other. It was so important to Henry to have friends ruling the provinces which made up this duchy, that he prepared a large army to lead to the help of the Protestant princes, and made great preparations for leaving the country himself for some time. The queen was named Regent, with a council of fifteen of the wisest men in the country to help her. She had never been crowned since she came into France, and she was very anxious that this should be done before Henry left Paris. The king had been persuaded to agree.
At this time Henry, in spite of all the success which he had won, was gloomy and unhappy. He knew that he had enemies all round him. His wife was his enemy, and many of those people who seemed to be his friends were really the friends of the King of Spain, and were longing for some opportunity for getting rid of the king, who would never let France become in any way subject to Spain. During Henry's reign it had several times happened that men had tried to murder him. He had always escaped hitherto without being even hurt, but at this particular time, when he was about to start on this war to help the Protestant princes, he considered himself in special danger, and was anxious to leave Paris as soon as possible.
The coronation passed off safely, and the king was to start in six days. The next day he was unwell, and said that he should stay at home, but his servant advised him to go out, saying that the air would refresh him. He at last made up his mind to go and pay a visit to Sully, who was ill, and he set off to drive to his house in an open carriage. He was sitting between two of his friends reading a letter, which one of them had shown to him, when the carriage was stopped for a moment by a block in the street. While it stood still, a man who had been following it for some way, sprang up on the wheel and plunged his knife twice into the king's body. Henry cried out, "I am wounded;" and then fell backward dead. One of his friends threw a cloak over him, called out that he was only wounded, and told the coachman to drive back to the palace.
The murderer, whose name was Ravaillac, was at once taken prisoner, and soon afterwards executed. He seems to have been half a madman, who had been in Paris for some time waiting for the chance of killing Henry, and telling several people what he meant to do. Of these only one lady had tried to warn the king, and she was not believed. It is probable that many of those who seemed to be Henry's friends knew of the plot, and did what they could to make it succeed. Certainly many of the courtiers and ministers were glad when they heard the news. The common people and all those of Henry's subjects who loved their country and hated Spain were deeply grieved, and felt that the loss of their king was one that never could be (repaired). In this they were right. No king of France has done so much for his country since, and the plans which Henry would have carried out had he lived, had now no one to care for them, and were heard of no more. The Protestants had no more such friends as Henry. This king is probably, of all the kings of France, the one whose memory has been the most loved by his people.
