by Will Durant
Thousands of voices, in both camps, denounced him as a hypocrite. The Jesuits repudiated his conversion, and the League leaders continued to resist. But the deaths of the Duke of Parma and Cardinal de Bourbon had weakened the League, and the Sixteen had lost standing with French patriots by supporting Philip’s plan to have his daughter made queen of France. Many of the nobility inclined to Henry as a general who could keep Philip in check, and as a humane ruler who could restore health to a land disordered to the verge of dismemberment. A clever periodical, Satyre Ménippée (1593–94), voiced the sentiments of the Politiques and the bourgeoisie, ridiculed with wit and irony the Jesuits and the League, and declared, “There is no peace so unjust that it is not worth more than the most just war.”18 Even fanatical Paris was crying for peace. Minor hostilities continued for eight months more, but on March 22, 1594, Henry marched into Paris and hardly a man hindered him; such crowds acclaimed him that when he wished to enter Notre Dame he had to be lifted over the heads of the multitude. Established as king in the same Louvre where, twenty-two years before, he had been a prisoner and near death, he surrendered himself to joy, and issued, in his buoyant way, an amnesty to all, even to the Guises and the Sixteen. Some enemies he brought over by ready forgiveness and gallant courtesy; some he bribed with borrowed funds.
Not all were won over. At Lyon Pierre Barrière bought a knife, had it sharpened, and started out for Paris proclaiming his intent to assassinate the King. He was arrested at Melun and summarily strangled. “Alas,” said Henry, “if I had known it I would have pardoned him.” Pope Clement VIII sent the King absolution, but the Jesuits continued to preach against him. On December 27 Jean Châtel, aged nineteen, struck at the King with a dagger, but inflicted only a cut lip and a broken tooth. Again Henry proposed to pardon the fanatic, but the authorities subjected Châtel to all the tortures required by the law against regicides. He proudly admitted his desire to kill the King as a dangerous heretic, and professed his readiness to make another attempt for his own salvation’s sake. He confessed that he was a pupil of the Jesuits, but would not further implicate them in his enterprise. The Spanish Jesuit Juan de Mariana (whom we shall meet again) was quoted as having approved the assassination of bad kings, of Henry III especially; and the French Jesuit Jean Guignard was found to have written that Henry IV should have been killed in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and that he ought now to be got rid of “at any price and in any way whatsoever.”19 Early in 1595 the Parlement of Paris, on petition of the secular clergy of the Sorbonne, ordered the Jesuits to leave France.
IV. THE CREATIVE KING: 1594–1610
Henry found the task of reconstruction more arduous than the conquest of power. Thirty-two years of “religious” wars had left France almost as devastated and chaotic as after the Hundred Years’ War the century before. The French merchant marine had practically vanished from the seas. Three hundred thousand homes had been destroyed. Hatred had declared a moratorium on morals and had poisoned France with the lust for revenge. Demobilized soldiers harried the roads and villages with robbery and murder. The nobles plotted to exact, as the price of their loyalty, a return to feudal seignorial sovereignties; the provinces, long left to their own resources, were dividing France into autonomous states; and the Huguenots were clamoring for political independence as well as religious liberty. The League still had a hostile army in the field; Henry bought its leader, Mayenne, to truce and finally to peace (January 1596). The terms having been signed, Henry walked the fat Duke into panting exhaustion, and then assured him that this was the only revenge he would take.20 When one of his own generals, Charles de Gontaut, Duke of Biron, led a conspiracy against him, Henry offered him pardon for a confession; this being refused, Henry had him tried, convicted, and beheaded (1602). By this time France realized that Navarre was King. The people of France, tired of anarchy, allowed him—the business classes begged him—to make the new Bourbon monarchy absolute. Royal absolutism, which was the cause of civil war in England, was the effect of civil war in France.
Since the first necessity of government is money, Henry collected taxes. The existing Council of Finance emitted more than the normal odor of corruption; Henry made the fearless Sully superintendent of finance, and gave him a free hand to clear the air and the road between taxes paid and those received. Maximilien de Béthune, Baron of Rosny, Duke of Sully, had been Henry’s faithful friend for a quarter of a century, had fought at his side for fourteen years; now (1597), still only thirty-seven, he attacked embezzlers and incompetents with such uncompromising energy that he became the most valuable and unpopular member of the royal Council. His portrait, by Dumonstier, hangs in the Louvre: large head, massive brow, sharp suspicious eyes; here was the practical genius needed to check the romantic spirit of a king who was too busy as Casanova to be quite Charlemagne. Sully made himself the watchdog of the administration. As superintendent of finance, highways, communications, public buildings, fortifications, and artillery, as governor of the Bastille and surveyor general of Paris, he was everywhere, supervised everything, insisted on efficiency, economy, and integrity. He worked through every waking hour, lived austerely in a simple room bearing pictures of Luther and Calvin on the walls. He guarded the interests of his fellow Huguenots. He stabilized the currency, reorganized and disciplined the bureaucracy, and forced thieving officials to disgorge. He reclaimed for the state all property and revenues that had been appropriated by individuals during the wars. He compelled 40, 000 tax dodgers to pay their taxes. He had found the national treasury in debt by 296,000,000 livres; he paid off these obligations, balanced the budget, and gathered a surplus of 13,000,000 livres. He protected and encouraged all phases of economic life; built roads and bridges, planned the great canals that were to join the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, the Seine and the Loire;21 he declared all navigable rivers to be part of the royal domain, forbade obstructions in them, and renewed the flow of goods through the land.
With the help of such wisely chosen ministers Henry proceeded to recreate France. He restored to the courts and the parlements their lawful functions and authority; and if he allowed the bureaucratic officials, for a price, to transmit their positions to their sons, it was not merely to raise money, but to ensure stability of administration and to raise up the middle classes—in particular the legal fraternity, or noblesse de la robe—as offsets and balances to the hostile aristocracy. Usually too eager for life and work to read a book, the King studied carefully Olivier de Serres’ Les Théâtre d’agriculture (1600), which suggested more scientific methods of farming; he established these improvements on the crown lands as examples and prods to the vegetative peasantry; he longed, as he said, to see la poule an pot, a chicken in every pot on Sunday.22 He forbade nobles to ride over vineyards or cornfields on their hunts; he suppressed the ravages of troops on peasant lands. He canceled twenty million livres of tax arrears owed by the peasants (perhaps because he knew he could never collect them), and lowered the poll tax from twenty to fourteen million livres. Anticipating Colbert, he protected existing industries with tariffs, and introduced new industries like the making of fine pottery and glass, and the culture of silk; he planted mulberry trees in the gardens of the Tuileries and Fontainebleau and required that ten thousand should be planted in every diocese. He helped and enlarged the tapestry works of the Gobelins. To evade the restrictive policies of the masters in the guilds, he reorganized French industry on a corporative basis—employers and employees united in each craft and subject to regulation by the state. Poverty continued, partly because of war, pestilence, and taxes, partly because the natural inequality of ability, amid the general equality of greed, ensures in each generation that the majority of goods will be absorbed by a minority of men. The King himself lived economically, extravagant only with his mistresses. To occupy the unemployed and clear the countryside of idle and voracious veterans, he financed a large variety of public works: streets were broadened and paved, canals were dug, trees were planted along the highways
; parks and squares—like the Place Royale (now the Place des Vosges) and the Place Dauphine—were opened to let Paris breathe. For the disabled destitute the King founded the Hôpital de la Charité. Not all these reforms matured before his sudden death, but by the end of his reign the country was enjoying such prosperity as it had not known since Francis I.
Above all, Henry ended the Religious Wars, and taught Catholics and Protestants to live in peace. Not in amity, for no thoroughgoing Catholic would admit the right of a Huguenot to exist, and no fervent Huguenot could view the Catholic worship as anything but pagan idolatry. Taking his life in his hands, Henry issued (April 13, 1598) the historic Edict of Nantes, authorizing the full exercise of the Protestant faith, and freedom of the Protestant press, in all of the eight hundred towns of France except seventeen, in which (as in Paris) Catholicism was overwhelmingly predominant. The eligibility of Huguenots to public offices was confirmed; two were already in the Council of State, and the Huguenot Turenne was to be a marshal of France. The government was to pay the salaries of Protestant ministers and of the rectors of Protestant schools. Protestant children were to be admitted, on an equality with Catholics, to all schools, colleges, universities, and hospitals. Towns already controlled by the Huguenots—such as La Rochelle, Montpellier, and Montauban—were to remain so, and their garrisons and forts were to be maintained by the state. The religious liberty so granted was still imperfect; it included only Catholics and Protestants; but it constituted the most advanced religious toleration in Europe. It took a man of doubtful faith to turn “His Most Christian Majesty” into a Christian.
Catholics throughout France cried out against the edict as a betrayal of Henry’s promise to support their creed. Pope Clement VIII condemned it as “the most accursed that can be imagined, whereby liberty of conscience is granted to everybody, which is the worst thing in the world.”23 Catholic writers proclaimed anew that a heretic king might justly be deposed or slain; and Protestant authors like Hotman, who under Henry III had defended popular sovereignty, now praised the virtues of absolutism—in a Protestant king.24 The Parlement of Paris long refused to give the edict that official registration without which, according to custom, no royal decree could become accepted law. Henry summoned the members and explained that what he had done was indispensable to peace and the reconstruction of France. The Parlement yielded, and it received six Huguenots into its membership.
Perhaps to quiet the Catholic opposition and placate the Pope, Henry allowed the Jesuits to return to France (1603). Sully argued stoutly against the move. The Jesuits, he urged, were “men of genius, but full of cunning and artifice”; they were committed to the cause of the Hapsburgs, therefore of France’s enemies, Spain and Austria; they were pledged and in clined to unconditionally obey the pope, who was a geographical prisoner and financial dependent of the Hapsburgs; they would sooner or later dictate Henry’s policies, or, failing therein, they would persuade some fanatic to “take away your life by poison or other means.” Henry replied that the support of the Jesuits would be a great help to him in unifying France, and their continued exile and hostility would be more dangerous to his life and policies than their re-entry into France.I He accepted the Jesuit Pierre Coton as his confessor, found him likable and faithful, and devoted himself to the administration of France and the turbulence of love.
V. THE SATYR
In the Condé Museum at Chantilly there is a delectable portrait, by Frans Pourbus the Younger, showing Henry in full maturity of power and pride: lithe of build, simply dressed in baggy breeches and black doublet and hose, left arm akimbo, a ruff under his gray beard, a majestic nose, a firm mouth, eyes alert, skeptical, and humane. His many years of campaigning had given him the bearing, morals, and odor of a soldier: strong, active, tireless, too busy to indulge in cleanliness or to duly change his clothes; sometimes, said a friend, “he stank like a corpse.”25 After a day of marching or fighting he would alarm his aides by organizing a hunt. He was a paragon of courage, but he had a tendency to diarrhea when battle neared,26 and in his final seven years he suffered from dysentery, dysuria, and gout. His mind was as mettlesome and resilient as his body. He saw through buncombe readily, seized the essence of matters at once, wrote letters still quick with life, and brightened France and history with his wit. When he named La Vieuville to an office and the grateful recipient said, Biblically, “Lord, I am not worthy,” Henry replied, “I know it quite well, but my nephew asked me to appoint you.”27 Once, on his way to dinner, he was stopped by a petitioner who began pompously, “Sire, Agesilaus, King of Lacedaemon—” “Ventre saint-gris!” moaned Henry. “I have heard of him; but he had dined, and I haven’t.”28 “He was,” says a French historian, “the most intelligent of French kings.”29
He was also the most beloved. Not yet the most popular; half of France still accepted him grudgingly. But those who knew him closely were ready to go to the stake for him, some inclusively. He was the most approachable of rulers, unpretentious, natural, good-natured, not quick to take offense, never tardy to forgive. His court complained of his unwillingness to put on the majesty of a king. He allowed poets and playwrights to make fun of him, though he liked it better when Malherbe made him a god of virtue and charm. He went to see the farces that satirized him, and he dulled their barbs with his laughter. He took no revenge on those who had opposed him by deed or speech—”All the forests in my kingdom would not provide enough gibbets if all who have written or preached against me were to be hanged.”30 He was as sensitive as a poet, and felt the poverty of the people almost as keenly as the beauty of women. He was no stoic; control of his emotions was not among his virtues. He had many faults. He could be thoughtlessly rude and gaily coarse. He had a Rabelais in him—he enjoyed risqué stories and told them beyond compare. He gambled too much at cards, lost heavily, cheated often, but always restored his lawless gains.31 He neglected the pursuit of a retreating enemy to pursue a retreating woman.
We must not list all his loves. Three women in particular marked his road to the throne. To “La Belle Corisande” he wrote burning billets: “I devour your hands … and kiss your feet a million times … It would be a desolate spot indeed where we two would be bored together.”32 By 1589 he was bored, and he discovered Esther Ymbert de Boislambert. A year later, aged thirty-seven, and undeterred by gonorrhea,33 he lost his heart to Gabrielle d’Estrées, then a girl of seventeen, whom a poet endued with “golden hair, starry eyes, lily throat, pearly fingers, and alabaster breasts.”34 Her lover, Bellegarde, recklessly described her beauty to the King; Henry galloped twelve miles, in disguise, through enemy terrain, to see her. She laughed at his long nose; he fell at her feet; Bellegarde withdrew. She yielded to the charms of francs and royalty and bore Henry three children. He took her to court and on his hunts, caressed her in public, thought of marrying her if Margot would give him a divorce. Huguenot and Catholic preachers joined in condemning him as an arrant adulterer, and brave Sully reproached him for wasting state funds on courtesans. He begged forgiveness on the plea that, having labored so arduously in war and government, and having fared so ill in marriage, he was entitled, like a good soldier, to some recreation.35 For eight years he loved Gabrielle as uxoriously as was possible to a spirit so ondoyant et divers. But Gabrielle became fat and acquisitive. She intrigued against Sully, called him “valet”; Henry raged, told her that he valued such a minister above ten such mistresses. He relented and again talked of marrying her, but on April 10, 1599, she died in giving birth to a dead child. He mourned her bitterly and wrote, “The plant of love within me is dead.”36
It revived two months later when he met Henriette d’Entragues, daughter of that Marie Touchet who had served Charles IX. Mother, father, and half-brother forbade her to capitulate except for a wedding ring. Henry wrote her a promise of marriage, conditional on her bearing him a son; Sully tore it up before his face; Henry wrote another and delivered it with twenty thousand crowns. The lady’s conscience cleared, and she became the royal m
istress. Some of the King’s diplomats thought it time for him to settle down. They persuaded Margot to consent to a divorce, provided Henry would not marry his mistress. Clement VIII agreed to grant a divorce on the same terms, and offered as a bride Maria de’ Medici, daughter of the Grand Duke of Tuscany; the Florentine bankers proposed to cancel the huge debt France owed them if Henry made Maria his queen.37 The marriage was celebrated by proxy at Florence (October 5, 1600). Henry tore himself away from a battlefield to go as far as Lyon to greet his wife; he found her tall and fat and imperious, gave her every royal courtesy, begot Louis XIII, and returned to Mlle. d’Entragues. Periodically, however, he performed his marital duties. Marie de Médicis (as France called her) bore him seven children in ten years. Henry brought them up, together with his offspring by Gabrielle and Henriette, at St.-Germain-en-Laye.
Henriette was presented to the Queen and was lodged in a palace near the Louvre; but, having borne a son to the King, she insisted that she, not Marie, was the rightful queen. Her father and half-brother plotted to kidnap her and her son to Spain and to have Philip III acknowledge him as the true dauphin of France (1604). The plot was discovered, the brother was arrested, the father was released on returning Henry’s promise of marriage. Henry continued to pursue Henriette like a famished satyr; she returned his caresses with disgust and hatred, and accepted bribes from Philip III to serve as a spy for Spain.38