had no alternative but an alliance with Henry of Navarre. Assassination of Henry III. Thanks to this he was on the point of seizing Paris, when in his turn he was assassinated on the 1st of August 1589 by a Jacobin monk, Jacques Clément; with his dying breath he designated the king of Navarre as his successor.
Between the popular League and the menace of the Protestants it was a question whether the new monarch was to be powerless in his turn. Henry IV. had almost the whole of his kingdom to conquer. The Cardinal de Bourbon, king according to the League and proclaimed under the title The Bourbons. of Charles X., could count upon the Holy League itself, upon the Spaniards of the Netherlands, and upon the pope. Henry IV. was only supported by a certain number of the Calvinists and by the Catholic minority of the Politiques, who, however, gradually induced the rest of the nation to rally round the only legitimate prince. The nation wished for the establishment of internal unity through religious tolerance and the extinction of private organizations; it looked for the extension of France’s external power through the abasement of the house of Spain, protection of the Protestants in the Netherlands and Germany, and independence of Rome. Henry IV., moreover, was forced to take an oath at the camp of Saint Cloud to associate the nation in the affairs of the kingdom by means of the states-general. These three conditions were interdependent; and Henry IV., with his persuasive manners, his frank and charming character, and his personal valour, seemed capable of keeping them all three.
The first thing for this soldier-king to do was to conquer his
kingdom and maintain its unity. He did not waste time by
withdrawing towards the south; he kept in the neighbourhood
of Paris, on the banks of the Seine, within
reach of help from Elizabeth; and twice—at Arques
Henry IV.
(1589–1610).
and at Ivry (1589–1590)—he vanquished the duke
of Mayenne, lieutenant-general of the League. But after having
tried to seize Paris (as later Rouen) by a coup-de-main, he was
obliged to raise the siege in view of reinforcements sent to
Mayenne by the duke of Parma. Pope Gregory XIV., an
enthusiastic supporter of the League and a strong adherent
of Spain, having succeeded Sixtus V., who had been very lukewarm
towards the League, made Henry IV.’s position still
more serious just at the moment when, the old Cardinal de
Bourbon having died, Philip II. wanted to be declared the protector
of the kingdom in order that he might dismember it, and
when Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, a grandson of Francis I., and
Charles III., duke of Lorraine, a son-in-law of Henry II., were
both of them claiming the crown. Fortunately, however, the
Sixteen had disgusted the upper bourgeoisie by their demagogic
airs; while their open alliance with Philip II., and their acceptance
of a Spanish garrison in Paris had offended the patriotism
of the Politiques or moderate members of the League. Mayenne,
who oscillated between Philip II. and Henry IV., was himself
obliged to break up and subdue this party of fanatics and
theologians (December 1591). This game of see-saw between
the Politiques and the League furthered his secret ambition, but
also the dissolution of the kingdom; and the pressure of public
opinion, which desired an effective monarchy, put an end to this
temporizing policy and caused the convocation of the states-general
States-general of 1592.
in Paris (December 1592). Philip II., through
the duke of Feria’s instrumentality, demanded the
throne for his daughter Isabella, grand-daughter of
Henry II. through her mother. But who was to be her
husband? The archduke Ernest of Austria, Guise or Mayenne?
The parlement cut short these bargainings by condemning all
ultramontane pretensions and Spanish intrigues. The unpopularity
of Spain, patriotism, the greater predominance of national
questions in public opinion, and weariness of both religious
disputation and indecisive warfare, all these sentiments were
expressed in the wise and clever pamphlet entitled the Satire
Ménippée. What had been a slow movement between 1585
and 1592 was quickened by Henry IV.’s abjuration of Protestantism
at Saint-Denis on the 23rd of July 1593.
The coronation of the king at Chartres in February 1594 completed the rout of the League. The parlement of Paris declared against Mayenne, who was simply the mouthpiece of Spain, and Brissac, the governor, surrendered the capital to the king. The example of Paris and Abjuration of Henry IV., July 23, 1593. Henry IV.’s clemency rallied round him all prudent Catholics, like Villeroy and Jeannin, anxious for national unity; but he had to buy over the adherents of the League, who sold him his own kingdom for sixty million francs. The pontifical absolution of September 17, 1595, finally stultified the League, which had been again betrayed by the unsuccessful plot of Jean Chastel, the Jesuit’s pupil.
Nothing was now left but to expel the Spaniards, who under cover of religion had worked for their own interests alone. Despite the brilliant charge of Fontaine-Française in Burgundy (June 5, 1595), and the submission of the heads of the League, Guise, Mayenne, Joyeuse, and Peace of Vervins. Mercœur, the years 1595–1597 were not fortunate for Henry IV.’s armies. Indignant at his conversion, Elizabeth, the Germans, and the Swiss Protestants deserted him; while the taking of Amiens by the Spaniards compromised for the moment the future both of the king and the country. But exhaustion of each other, by which only England and Holland profited, brought about the Peace of Vervins. This confirmed the results of the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (May 2, 1598), that is to say, the decadence of Spanish power, and its inability either to conquer or to dismember France.
The League, having now no reason for existence, was dissolved; but the Protestant party remained very strong, with its political organization and the fortified places which the assemblies of Millau, Nîmes and La Rochelle (1573–1574) had established in the south and the west. Edict of Nantes, 1598. It was a republican state within the kingdom, and, being unwilling to break with it, Henry IV. came to terms by the edict of Nantes, on the 13th of April 1598. This was a compromise between the royal government and the Huguenot government, the latter giving up the question of public worship, which was only authorized where it had existed before 1597 and in two towns of each bailliage, with the exception of Paris; but it secured liberty of conscience throughout the kingdom, state payment for its ministers, admission to all employments, and courts composed equally of Catholics and Protestants in the parlements. An authorization to hold synods and political assemblies, to open schools, and to occupy a hundred strong places for eight years at the expense of the king, assured to the Protestants not only rights but privileges. In no other country did they enjoy so many guarantees against a return of persecution. This explains why the edict of Nantes was not registered without some difficulty.
Thus the blood-stained 16th century closed with a promise of religious toleration and a dream of international arbitration. This was the end of the long tragedy of civil strife and of wars of conquest, mingled with the sound of madrigals and psalms and pavanes. It had been the Results of the religious wars. golden age of the arquebus and the viol, of sculptors and musicians, of poets and humanists, of fratricidal conflicts and of love-songs, of mignons and martyrs. At the close of this troubled century peace descends upon exhausted passions; and amidst the choir of young and ardent voices celebrating the national reconciliation, the tocsin no longer sounds its sinister and persistent bass. Despite the leagues of either faith, religious liberty was now confirmed by the more free and generous spirit of Henry IV.
Why was this king at once so easygoing and so capricious? Why, again, had the effort and authority of feudal and popular resistance been squandered in the follies of the League and to further the ambitions of the rebellious Guises? Why had the monarchy been forced to purchase the obedience of the upper classes and the provinces with immunities which enfeebled it without limiting it? At all events, when the kingdom had been reconquered from the Spaniards and religious strife ended, in order to fulfil his engagements, Henry IV. need only have
