of Louis XIV.) rendered his task impossible or fatal. The nobility remained in debt and disaffected; and the clergy, more remarkable for wealth and breeding than for virtues, Criticism of Henry IV.’s achievement. were won over to the ultramontane ideas of the triumphant Jesuits. The rich bourgeoisie began more and more to monopolize the magistracy; and though the country-people were somewhat relieved from the burden which had been crushing them, the working-classes remained impoverished, owing to the increase of prices which followed at a distance the rise of wages. Moreover, under insinuating and crafty pretexts, Henry IV. undermined as far as he could the right of control by the states-general, the right of remonstrance by the parlements, and the communal franchises, while ensuring the impoverishment of the municipalities by his fiscal methods. Arbitrary taxation, scandalous intervention in elections, forced candidatures, confusion in their financial administration, bankruptcy and revolt on the part of the tenants: all formed an anticipation of the personal rule of Richelieu and Louis XIV.
Thus Henry IV. evinced very great activity in restoring order and very great poverty of invention in his methods. His sole original creation, the edict of La Paulette in 1604, was disastrous. In consideration of an annual payment of one-sixtieth of the salary, it made hereditary Edict of La Paulette. offices which had hitherto been held only for life; and the millions which it daily poured into the royal exchequer removed the necessity for seeking more regular and better distributed resources. Political liberty and social justice were equally the losers by this extreme financial measure, which paved the way for a catastrophe.
In foreign affairs the abasement of the house of Austria remained for Henry IV., as it had been for Francis I. and Henry II., a political necessity, while under his successors it was to become a mechanical obsession. The peace of Vervins had concluded nothing. The difference Foreign policy of Henry IV. concerning the marquisate of Saluzzo, which the duke of Savoy had seized upon in 1588, profiting by Henry III.’s embarrassments, is only worth mentioning because the treaty of Lyons (1601) finally dissipated the Italian mirage, and because, in exchange for the last of France’s possessions beyond the Alps, it added to the royal domain the really French territory of La Bresse, Bugey, Valromey and the district of Gex. The great external affair of the reign was the projected war upon which Henry IV. was about to embark when he was assassinated. The “grand design” of Sully, the organization of a “Christian Republic” of the European nations for the preservation of peace, was but the invention of an irresponsible minister, soured by defeat and wishing to impress posterity. Henry IV., the least visionary of kings, was between 1598 and 1610 really hesitating between two great contradictory political schemes: the war clamoured for by the Protestants, politicians like Sully, and the nobility; and the Spanish alliance, to be cemented by marriages, and preached by the ultramontane Spanish camarilla formed by the queen, Père Coton, the king’s confessor, the minister Villeroy, and Ubaldini, the papal nuncio. Selfish and suspicious, Henry IV. consistently played this double game of policy in conjunction with president Jeannin. By his alliance with the Grisons (1603) he guaranteed the integrity of the Valtellina, the natural approach to Lombardy for the imperial forces; and by his intimate union with Geneva he controlled the routes by which the Spaniards could reach their hereditary possessions in Franche-Comté and the Low Countries from Italy. But having defeated the duke of Savoy he had no hesitation in making sure of him by a marriage; though the Swiss might have misunderstood the treaty of Brusol (1610) by which he gave one of his daughters to the grandson of Philip II. On the other hand he astonished the Protestant world by the imprudence of his mediation between Spain and the rebellious United Provinces (1609). When the succession of Cleves and of Jülich, so long expected and already discounted by the treaty of Halle (1610), was opened up in Germany, the great war was largely due to an access of senile passion for the charms of the princesse de Condé. The stroke of Ravaillac’s knife caused a timely descent of the curtain upon this new and tragi-comic Trojan War. Thus, here as elsewhere, we see a vacillating hand-to-mouth policy, at the mercy of a passion for power or for sensual gratification. The Cornette blanche of Arques, the Poule au pôt of the peasant, successes as a lover and a dashing spirit, have combined to surround Henry IV. with a halo of romance not justified by fact.
The extreme instability of monarchical government showed itself afresh after Henry IV.’s death. The reign of Louis XIII., a perpetual regency by women, priests, and favourites, was indeed a curious prelude to the grand age of the French monarchy. The eldest son of Henry IV. The regency of Marie de’Medici. being a minor, Marie de’ Medici induced the parlement to invest her with the regency, thanks to Villeroy and contrary to the last will of Henry IV. This second Florentine, at once jealous of power and incapable of exercising it, bore little resemblance to her predecessor. Light-minded, haughty, apathetic and cold-hearted, she took a sort of passionate delight in changing Henry IV.’s whole system of government. Who would support her in this? On one side were the former ministers, Sillery and president Jeannin, ex-leaguers but loyalists, no lovers of Spain and still less of Germany; on the other the princes of the blood and the great nobles, Condé, Guise, Mayenne and Nevers, apparently still much more faithful to French ideas, but in reality convinced that the days of kings were over and that their own had arrived. Instead of weakening this aristocratic agitation by the see-saw policy of Catherine de’ Medici, Marie could invent no other device than to despoil the royal treasure by distributing places and money to the chiefs of both parties. The savings all expended and Sully fallen into disgrace, she lost her influence and became the almost unconscious instrument of an ambitious man of low birth, the Florentine Concini, who was to drag her down with him in his fall; petty shifts became thenceforward the order of the day.
Thus Villeroy thought fit to add still further to the price
already paid to triumphant Madrid and Vienna by disbanding
the army, breaking the treaty of Brusol, and abandoning
the Protestant princes beyond the Rhine and the
trans-Pyrenean Moriscos. France joined hands with
Louis XIII.
(1610–1643).
Spain in the marriages of Louis XIII. with Anne
of Austria and Princess Elizabeth with the son of Philip III.,
and the Spanish ambassador was admitted to the secret council
of the queen. To soothe the irritation of England the duc de
Bouillon was sent to London to offer the hand of the king’s
sister to the prince of Wales. Meanwhile, however, still more
was ceded to the princes than to the kings; and after a pretence
of drawing the sword against the prince of Condé, rebellious
through jealousy of the Italian surroundings of the queen-mother,
recourse was had to the purse. The peace of Sainte Menehould,
four years after the death of Henry IV., was a virtual abdication
of the monarchy (May 1614); it was time for a move in the other
direction. Villeroy inspired the regent with the idea of an
armed expedition, accompanied by the little king, into the West.
The convocation of the states-general was about to take place,
wrung, as in all minorities, from the royal weakness—this time
by Condé; so the elections were influenced in the monarchist
interest. The king’s majority, solemnly proclaimed on the 28th
of October 1614, further strengthened the throne; while owing
to the bungling of the third estate, who did not contrive to gain
the support of the clergy and the nobility by some sort of concessions,
the states-general, the last until 1789, proved like the
others a mere historic episode, an impotent and inorganic
expedient. In vain Condé tried to play with the parlement of
Paris the same game as with the states-general, in a sort of
anticipation of the Fronde. Villeroy demurred; and the
parlement, having illegally assumed a political rôle, broke with
Condé and effected a reconciliation with the court. After this
double victory Marie de’ Medici could at last undertake the
famous journey to Bordeaux and consummate the Spanish
marriages. In order not to countenance by his presence an
act which had been the pretext for his opposition, Condé rebelled
