The Story of Paris Part 10

[Footnote 114: Suspicions of poison were entertained by the Huguenots.

Jeanne, in a letter to the Marquis de Beauvais, complained that holes were made in her rooms and wardrobes that she might be spied upon.]

Meanwhile Catherine and Charles had differed on a matter of foreign policy. Her support of the Prince of Orange against Spain in the Netherlands was conditional on an alliance with England and the marriage of her son the Duke of Alencon with Elizabeth. But the English Queen's habitual duplicity made any reliance on her word impossible and when Marie learned that Elizabeth, while professing her inclination for the Duke and her desire to aid the Protestant cause in Flanders, was protesting to her Council that she would never marry a boy with a pock-spoiled face, and was in secret communication with Alva, to turn the situation to her own profit, she flung herself into Guise's arms and abandoned Coligny and the Huguenots: for the disastrous defeat of the Protestants at Mons and the growing fury of the Catholic fanatics at Paris, threatened to wreck the throne, and while Elizabeth was toying with these tremendous issues the furies were let loose. Charles still chivalrously determined to stand by Coligny. Catherine, terrified at the result of her own work, and resolved to regain her ascendency, conspired with her third son, the Prince of Anjou, the future Henry III., to destroy and have done with the Protestants. Coligny had often been warned of the danger he would run in Paris, but the stout old soldier knew no fear, and came to take part in the festivities of the wedding. The sounds of revelry had barely died away when Coligny, who was returning from the Louvre, by the east gate, the Porte Bourbon, to his hotel, walking slowly and reading a pet.i.tion, was fired at from a window as he pa.s.sed the cloister of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and wounded in the arm. He stopped and noted the house whence the smoke came: it was the house of the preceptor of the Duke of Guise. The king was playing at tennis when the news reached him: he flung down his racquet, exclaiming, "What! shall I never be in peace? must I suffer new trouble every day?" and went moody and pensive to his chamber. In a few moments the Prince of Conde and Henry of Navarre burst in, uttering indignant protests, and begged permission to leave Paris. Charles a.s.sured them he would do justice, and that they might safely remain: in the afternoon he went with his mother and the princes to visit the admiral. The king asked to be left alone in the wounded man's chamber, remained a long time with him, and protesting that though the wound was his friend's, the grief was his own, swore to avenge him.

Coligny once again was warned by his friends to beware of the court, but he refused to distrust Charles. Many and conflicting are the reports of what followed. We shall not be accused of any Protestant bias if we base our story mainly on that of the two learned Benedictine priests[115] who are responsible for five solid tomes of the _Histoire de la Ville de Paris_. On the morrow of the attempt on Coligny's life, the queen-mother invited Charles and his brother of Anjou to walk, after dinner, in the garden of her new palace in the Tuileries:[116] they were joined by the chief Catholic leaders, and a grand council was held. The queen dwelt on the perilous situation of the monarchy and the Catholic cause, and urged that now was the time to act: Coligny lay wounded; Navarre and Conde were in their power at the Louvre; for ten Huguenots in Paris the Catholics could oppose a thousand armed men; rid France of the Huguenot chiefs and a formidable evil were averted. Her course was approved, but the leaders shrank from including the two princes of Navarre and Conde: they were to be given their choice--recantation or death. By order of the king 12,000 arquebusiers were placed along the river and the streets, and arms were carried into the Louvre. The admiral's friends, alarmed at the sinister preparations, protested to Charles but were rea.s.sured and told to take Cosseins and fifty arquebusiers to guard his house. The provost of Paris was then summoned by the Duke of Guise and ordered to arm and organise the citizens and proceed to the Hotel de Ville at midnight. The king, Guise said, would not lose so fair an opportunity of exterminating the Huguenots. The Catholic citizens were to tie a piece of white linen on their left arm and place a white cross in their caps that they might be recognised by their friends. At midnight the windows of their houses were to be illuminated by torches, and at the first sound of the great bell at the Palais de Justice the b.l.o.o.d.y work was to begin. Meanwhile Catherine, doubtful of Charles, repaired to his chamber with Anjou and her councillors to fix his wavering purpose; she heaped bitter reproaches upon him, worked on his fears with stories of a vast Huguenot conspiracy and hinted that cowardice prevented him from seizing the fairest opportunity that G.o.d had ever offered, to free himself from his enemies. She repeated an Italian prelate's vicious epigram: "_Che pieta lor ser crudel, che crudelta lor ser pietosa_,"[117] and concluded by threatening to leave the court with the Duke of Anjou rather than witness the destruction of the Catholic cause. Charles, who had listened sullenly, and, if we may believe Anjou, for a long while angrily refused to sacrifice Coligny, was at length stung by the taunt of cowardice and broke into a delirium of pa.s.sion; he swore by _la mort dieu_ to compa.s.s the death of every Huguenot in France, that none might be left to reproach him afterwards.

[Footnote 115: Felibien and Lobineau, 1725.]

[Footnote 116: Catherine was accustomed to treat of important state matters requiring absolute secrecy in her new garden. The _pourparlers_ between her and Lord Buckhurst, relative to the proposed marriage of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou, took place under the trees in the Tuileries garden.]

[Footnote 117: "That to show pity was to be cruel to them: to be cruel to them was to show pity."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CATHERINE DE' MEDICI.

_French School, 16th Century._]

Catherine gave him no time for farther vacillation. The great bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois was rung, and at two in the morning of Sunday, St. Bartholomew's Day, 24th August 1572, the Duke of Guise and his followers issued forth to do their Sabbath morning's work. Cosseins saw his leader coming and knew what was expected of him. Guise, who believed the blood of his murdered father lay on Coligny's head, made sure of his vengeance. The admiral's door was forced, his servants were poignarded, and Besme, a German in the service of Guise, followed by others, burst into his room. The old man stood erect in his _robe de chambre_, facing his murderers. "Art thou the admiral?"

demanded Besme. "I am he," answered Coligny with unfaltering voice and, gazing steadily at the naked sword pointed at his breast, added, "Young man, thou shouldst show more respect to my white hairs; yet canst thou shorten but little my brief life." For answer he was pierced by Besme's sword and stabbed to death by his companions. Guise stood waiting in the street below and the body was flung down to him from the window. He wiped the blood from the old man's face, looked at it, and said, "It is he!" Spurning the body with his foot he cried, "Courage, soldiers! we have begun well; now for the others, the king commands it." Meanwhile the bell of the Palais de Justice, answering that of St. Germain, was booming forth its awful summons, and the citizens hastened to perform their part.

All the Huguenot n.o.bles dwelling near the admiral were pitilessly murdered, and a similar carnage took place at the Louvre. Marguerite, the young bride of Navarre, in her Memoirs, tells of the horrors of that morning, how, when half-asleep, a wounded Huguenot n.o.bleman rushed into her chamber, pursued by four archers, and flung himself on her bed imploring protection, followed by a captain of the guard from whom she gained his life. She entreated the captain to lead her to her sister's room, and as she fled thither, more dead than alive, another fugitive was hewn down by a hallebardier only three paces from her; she fell fainting in the captain's arms. Meanwhile Charles, the queen-mother, and Anjou, after the violent scene in the king's chamber, had lain down for two hours' rest and then went to a window which overlooked the _ba.s.se-cour_ of the Louvre, to see the "beginning of the executions." If we may believe Henry's story, they had not been there long before the sound of a pistol shot filled them with dread and remorse, and a messenger was sent to bid Guise spare the admiral and stay the whole undertaking; but the n.o.bleman who had been sent returned saying that Guise had told him it was too late: the admiral was dead, and the executions had begun all over the city. A dozen Protestant n.o.bles of the suites of Conde and Navarre, who at the king's invitation had taken up their quarters in the Louvre, were seized; one was even dragged from a sick-bed: all were taken to the courtyard and hewn in pieces by the Swiss guards under the eyes of Charles, who cried: "Let none escape." Meantime the Catholic leaders had been scouring the streets on horseback, shouting to the people that a Huguenot conspiracy to murder the king had been discovered, and that it was the king's wish that all the Huguenots should be destroyed.

A list of the Huguenots in Paris had been prepared and all their houses marked. None was spared. Old and young, women and children, were pitilessly butchered. All that awful Sunday the orgy of slaughter and pillage went on; every gate of the city had been closed and the keys brought to the king. Night fell and the carnage was not stayed.

Two days yet and two nights the city was a prey to the ministers of death, and some Catholics, denounced by personal enemies, were involved in the ma.s.sacre. The resplendent August sun, the fair sky and serene atmosphere were held to be a divine augury, and a white thorn in the cemetery of the Innocents blooming out of season was hailed as a miracle and a visible token from G.o.d that the Catholic religion was to blossom again by the destruction of the Huguenots. The murders did not wholly cease until September. Various were the estimates of the slain--20,000, 5,000, 2,000. A goldsmith named Cruce went about displaying his robust arm and boasting that he had accounted for 400 Huguenots. The streets, the front of the Louvre, the public places were blocked by dead bodies; tumbrils[118] were hired to throw them into the Seine, which literally for days ran red with blood.

[Footnote 118: The munic.i.p.ality gave presents of money to the archers who had taken part in the ma.s.sacre, to the watermen who prevented the Huguenots from crossing the Seine, and to grave-diggers for having buried in eight days about 1,100 bodies.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PEt.i.tE GALERIE OF THE LOUVRE.]

The princes of Navarre and Conde saw the privacy of their chambers violated by a posse of archers on St. Bartholomew's morning; they were forced to dress and were haled before the king, who with a fierce look and glaring eyes, swore at them, reproached them for waging war upon him, and ordered them to change their religion. On their refusal he grew furious with rage, and by dint of threats wrung from them a promise to go to ma.s.s.

Charles is said to have stood at a window in the Pet.i.te Galerie of the Louvre and to have fired across the river with a long arquebus on some Huguenots who, being lodged on the southern side, in the Huguenot quarter, known as _la pet.i.te Geneve_, had escaped ma.s.sacre, and were riding up to learn what was pa.s.sing. The statement is much canva.s.sed by authorities. It is at least permissible to doubt the a.s.sertion, since the first floor[119] of the Pet.i.te Galerie, where the king is traditionally believed to have placed himself, was not in existence before the time of Henry IV. If the ground floor be meant, a further difficulty arises from the fact that the southern end was not furnished with a window in Charles IX.'s time.

[Footnote 119: Now known as the Galerie d'Apollon.]

On the 26th of August the king was forced to avow responsibility before the Parlement for measures which he alleged had been necessary to suppress a Huguenot insurrection aiming at the a.s.sa.s.sination of himself and the royal family and the destruction of the Catholic religion in France. The ears of the Catholic princes of Europe and of the pope were abused by this specious lie; they believed that the Catholic cause had been saved from ruin; the so-called victory was hailed with transports of joy, and a medal was struck in Rome to celebrate the defeat of the Huguenots.[120]

[Footnote 120: _Ugonottorum strages._ Inscription on the obverse of the medal.]

Such was the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew in Paris. The death-roll of the victims is known to the Recording Angel alone. It was a tremendous folly no less than an indelible crime, for it steeled the heart of every Protestant to avenge his slaughtered brethren. To "take Paris justice" became synonymous with a.s.sa.s.sination all over Protestant Europe.

Many of the Huguenot leaders escaped from Paris while the soldiers sent to despatch them were pillaging, and the flames of civil strife burst forth fiercer than ever. The court had prepared for ma.s.sacre, not for war; and while the king was receiving the felicitations of the courts of Spain and Rome, he was forced by the Peace of La Roch.e.l.le to concede liberty of conscience to the Protestants and to restore their sequestered estates and offices. After two years of agony of mind and remorse, Charles IX. lay dying of consumption, abandoned by all save his faithful Huguenot nurse. The blood flowing from his nostrils seemed a token of G.o.d's wrath; and moaning "Ah! _ma mie_, what bloodshed! what murders! I am lost! I am lost!" the poor crowned wretch pa.s.sed to his account. He had not yet reached his twenty-fourth year.

CHAPTER XIII

_Henry III.--The League--Siege of Paris by Henry IV.--His Conversion, Reign and a.s.sa.s.sination_

When the third of Catherine's sons, having resigned the sovereignty of Poland, was being consecrated at Rheims, the crown is said to have twice slipped from his head, the insentient diadem itself shrinking in horror from the brow of a prince destined to pollute it with deeper shame. Treacherous and b.l.o.o.d.y, Henry mingled grovelling piety with debauchery, and made of the court at Paris a veritable Alsatia, where paid a.s.sa.s.sins who stabbed from behind and _mignons_ who struck to the face, were part of the train of every prince. The king's minions with their insolent bearing, their extravagant and effeminate dress, their hair powdered and curled, their neck-ruffles so broad that their heads resembled the head of John the Baptist on a charger,--gambling, blaspheming swashbucklers--were hateful alike to Huguenot and Catholic. On 29th April 1578 three of them fought out a famous quarrel with three of the Guises' bullies at the horse market subsequently converted into the Place Royale. The duel began at five o'clock in the morning and was fought so furiously that three of the combatants lost their lives. Quelus, the king's favourite minion, with fifteen wounds, lingered for thirty-three days, Henry constantly at his bedside and offering in vain large sums of money to the surgeons to save him.

Less than four years after St. Bartholomew the Peace of 1576 gave the Huguenots all they had ever demanded or hoped for. In 1582 died the Duke of Alencon, Catherine's last surviving son and heir to the throne; Henry, in spite of a pilgrimage on foot by himself and his queen to Notre Dame de Clery from which they returned with blistered feet, gave no hope of posterity and the Catholic party were confronted by the possibility of the sceptre of St. Louis descending to a relapsed heretic. A tremendous wave of feeling ran through France, and a Holy League was formed to meet the danger, with the Duke of Guise as leader. The king tried in vain to win some of the Huguenot and League partisans by the solemn inst.i.tution of the Order of the Holy Ghost,[121] in the church of the Augustinians, to commemorate his elevation to the thrones of Poland and France on the day of Pentecost.

The people were equally recalcitrant. When Henry entered Paris after the campaign of 1587, they shouted for their idol, the Balafre,[122]

crying, "Saul has slain his thousands but David his tens of thousands." The king in his jealousy and disgust forbade Guise to enter Paris; Guise coolly ignored the command, and a few months later arrived at the head of a formidable train of n.o.bles, amid the joyous acclamation of the people, who greeted him with chants of "_Hosannah, Filio David!_" Angry scenes followed. The duke sternly called his master to duty, and warned him to take vigorous measures against the Huguenots or lose his crown; the king, pale with anger, dismissed him and prepared to strike.

[Footnote 121: Examples of magnificent costumes of the order may be seen in the Cluny Museum.]

[Footnote 122: The Duke of Guise was so called from his face being scarred by a wound received at the battle of Dolmans.]

On the night of the 11th May a force of Royal Guards and 4,000 Swiss mercenaries entered Paris, but the Parisians, with that genius for insurrection which has always characterised them, were equal to the occasion. The sixteen sections into which the communal government of the city was divided met; in the morning the people were under arms; and barricades and chains blocked the streets. The St. Antoine section, ever to the front, stood up to the king's Guards and to the Swiss advancing to occupy their quarter, defeated them, and with exultant cries rushed to threaten the Louvre itself. Henry was forced to send his mother to treat with the duke; she returned with terms that meant a virtual abdication. Henry took horse and fled, vowing he would come back only through a breach in the walls. But Guise was supreme in Paris, and the pitiful monarch was soon forced to yield; he signed the terms of his own humiliation, and went to Blois to meet Guise and the States-General with bitterness in his heart, brooding over his revenge. Visitors to the chateau of Blois, which has the same thrilling interest for the traveller as the palace of Holyrood, will recall the scene of the tragic end of Guise, the incidents of which the official guardians are wont to recite with dramatic gesture.

Fearless and impatient of warnings, the great captain fell into the trap prepared for him and was done to death in the king's chamber, like a lion caught in the toils. Henry, who had heard ma.s.s and prayed that G.o.d would be gracious to him and permit the success of his enterprise, hastened to his mother, now aged and dying. "Madame," said he, "I have killed the king of Paris and am become once more king of France." The Cardinal of Lorraine, separated from the king's chamber only by a part.i.tion, paled as he heard his nephew's struggles. "_Ne bougez pas_," said the Marshal of Aumont putting his hand to his sword, "the king has some accounts to settle with you too." Next morning the old cardinal was led out and hewn in pieces. The two bodies were burnt and the ashes scattered to the winds to prevent their being wors.h.i.+pped as relics: it was Christmas Eve of 1588.

The stupid crime brought its inevitable consequences--

"Revenge and hate bring forth their kind, Like the foul cubs their parents are."

The Commune of Paris and the Leaguers were stung to fury; the Sorbonne declared the king deposed; the pope banned him and a popular preacher called for another blood-letting. Henry, in a final act of shame and despair, flung himself into the king of Navarre's arms, and on the 31st July 1589, the two Henrys encamped at St. Cloud and threatened Paris with an army of 40,000 men. On the morrow Jacques Clement, a young Dominican friar, after preparing himself by fasting, prayer and holy communion, left Paris with a forged letter for the king, reached the camp and asked for a private interview. While Henry was reading the letter the friar s.n.a.t.c.hed a knife from his sleeve and mortally stabbed him.[123] He lingered until 2nd August, and after p.r.o.nouncing Henry of Navarre his lawful successor and bidding his Council swear allegiance to the new dynasty, the last of the thirteen Valois kings pa.s.sed to his doom. Catherine de' Medici had already preceded him, burdened with the anathemas of the Cardinal of Bourbon. The people of Paris swore that if her body were brought to St. Denis they would fling it to the shambles or into the Seine, and a famous theologian, preaching at St. Bartholomew's church, declared to the faithful that he knew not if it were right to pray G.o.d for her soul, but that if they cared to give her in charity a Pater or an Ave they might do so for what it was worth. This was the reward of her thirty years of devoted toil, of vigils and of plots to further the Catholic cause.

Not until a quarter of a century had pa.s.sed were her ashes laid beside those of her husband in the rich Renaissance tomb, which still exists, in the royal church of St. Denis. Jacques Clement, who had been cut to pieces by the king's Guards, was wors.h.i.+pped as a martyr, and his mother rewarded for having given birth to the saviour of France.

[Footnote 123: The king had premonitions of a violent end. One day, after keeping Easter at Negeon with great devotion, he suddenly returned to the Louvre and ordered all the lions, bears, bulls, and other wild animals kept in the _Hotel des Lions_, reconstructed in 1570 for Charles IX., for baiting by dogs, to be shot. He had dreamt that he was set upon and eaten by wild beasts.]

Henry of Navarre, unable to carry on the siege with a divided army, directed his course for Normandy. The exultant Parisians proclaimed the Cardinal of Bourbon king, under the t.i.tle of Charles X., and the Duke of Mayenne, with a large army, marched forth to give battle to Henry. So confident were the Leaguers of victory, that their leaders hired windows along the Rue St. Antoine to witness the return of the duke bringing the "Bearnais"[124] dead or a prisoner. Henry did indeed return, but it was after a victorious campaign. He captured the Faubourg St. Jacques, and fell upon the abbey of St. Germain des Pres while the astonished monks were preparing to sing ma.s.s, climbed the steeple of the church and gazed on Paris. Having refreshed his troops, the Bearnais suffered them to pillage the city south of the Seine, and turned to the west to fix his capital at Tours. In 1590 he won the brilliant victory at Ivry over the armies of the League and of Spain which Macaulay has popularised in a stirring poem: the road to Paris was open and Henry sat down to besiege the city.

[Footnote 124: So called derisively, because he was born and brought up in the poor province of Bearn, in the Pyrenees.]

The Leaguers fought and suffered with the utmost constancy; reliquaries were melted down for money, church bells for cannon, and the clergy and religious orders were caught by the military enthusiasm. The bishop of Senlis and the prior of the Carthusians, two valiant Maccabees, were seen, crucifix in one hand, a pike in the other, leading a procession of armed priests, monks and scholars through the streets. Friars from the mendicant orders were among them, their habits tucked up, hoods thrown back, casques on their heads and cuira.s.ses on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. All marched sword by side, dagger in girdle, musket on shoulder, the strangest army of the church militant ever seen. As they pa.s.sed the Pont Notre Dame the papal legate was crossing in his carriage, and was asked to stop and give his blessing.

After this benediction a salvo of musketry was called for, and some of the host of the Lord, forgetting that their guns were loaded with ball, killed a papal officer and wounded a servant of the amba.s.sador of Spain.

Four months the Parisians endured starvation and all the attendant horrors of a siege, the incidents of which, as described by contemporaries, are so ghastly that the pen recoils from transcribing them. At length, when they were at the last extremity, the Duke of Parma arrived with a Spanish army, forced Henry to raise the siege, and revictualled the city. After war, anarchy. In November 1591 it was discovered that secret letters were pa.s.sing between Brizard, an officer in the service of the Duke of Mayenne in Paris, and a royalist at St. Denis. The sections demanded Brizard's instant execution, and on his discharge by the Parlement the _cure_ of St. Jacques fulminated against that body and declared that cold steel must be tried (_faut jouer des couteaux_). A secret revolutionary committee of ten was appointed, and a _papier rouge_ or lists of suspects in all the districts of Paris was drawn up under three categories: P. (_pendus_), those to be hanged; D. (_dagues_), those to be poignarded; C.

(_cha.s.ses_), those to be expelled. On the night of the 15th November a meeting was held at the house of the _cure_ of St. Jacques, and in the morning the president of the Parlement, Brisson, was seized and dragged to the Pet.i.t Chatelet, where a revolutionary tribunal, in black cloaks, on which were sewn large red crosses, condemned him to death. Meanwhile two councillors of the Parlement, Larcher and Tardif, had been seized, the latter by the _cure_ of St. Cosme, and haled to the Chatelet. All three were dragged to a room, and the executioner was forced to hang them from a beam; the bodies were then stripped, an inscription was hung about their necks, and they were suspended from the gallows in the Place de Greve. The sections believed that Paris would rise: they only shocked the more orderly citizens. The Duke of Mayenne, who was at Lyons, on the receipt of the news hastened to Paris, temporised a while and, when sure of support, seized four of the most dangerous leaders of the sections and hanged them without trial in the Salle ba.s.se of the Louvre. All save the more violent partisans were now weary of the strife and the Leaguers themselves were divided. The sections aimed at a theocratic democracy; another party favoured the Duke of Mayenne; a third, the Duke of Guise; a fourth, the Infanta of Spain. It was decided to convoke the States-General at Paris in 1593, and a conference was arranged with Henry's supporters at Suresnes. Crowds flocked there, crying, "Peace, peace; blessed be they who bring it; cursed they who prevent it."

Henry knew the supreme moment was come. France was still profoundly Catholic: he must choose between his religion and France. He chose to heal his country's wounds and perhaps to save her very existence.

Learned theologians were deputed to confer with him at Paris, whom he astonished and confounded by his knowledge of Scripture; they declared that they had never met a heretic better able to defend his cause. But on 23rd July 1573, he professed himself convinced, and the same evening wrote to his mistress, Gabrielle d'Estrees, that he had spoken with the bishops, and that a hundred anxieties were making St. Denis hateful to him. "On Sunday," he adds, "I am to take the perilous leap.

_Bonjour_, my heart; come to me early to-morrow. It seems a year since I saw you. A million times I kiss the fair hands of my angel and the mouth of my dear mistress."

On Sunday, under the great portal of St. Denis, the archbishop of Bourges sat enthroned in a chair covered with white damask and embroidered with the arms of France and of Navarre. He was attended by many prelates and the prior and monks of St. Denis: the cross and the book of the Gospels were held before him. Henry drew nigh. "Who are you?" demanded the archbishop. "I am the king." "What do you ask?" "I wish to be received in the bosom of the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church." "Is it your will?" "Yes, I will and desire it." Henry then knelt and made profession of his faith, kissed the prelate's ring, received his blessing and was led to the choir, where he knelt before the high altar and repeated his profession of faith on the holy Gospels amid cries of "_Vive le roi!_"

The clerical extremists in Paris anathematised all concerned. Violent _cures_ again donned their armour, children were baptised and ma.s.s was sung by cuira.s.sed priests. The _cure_ of St. Cosme seized a partisan, and with other fanatics of the League hastened to the Latin Quarter to raise the university. But the people were heartsick of the whole business; and when Henry entered Paris after his coronation at Chartres, resplendent in velvet robes embroidered with gold and seated on his dapple grey charger, his famous helmet with its white plumes ever in his hand saluting the ladies at the windows, he was hailed with shouts of joy. Shops were reopened, the artisan took up his tools and the merchant went to his counter with a sigh of relief. A general amnesty was proclaimed, and the Spanish garrison were allowed to depart with their arms. As they filed out of the Porte St. Denis in heavy rain, three thousand strong, the king was sitting at a window above the gates. "Remember me to your master," he cried, "but do not return." On the morrow the provost and sheriffs and chief citizens came to the Louvre bearing presents of sweetmeats, sugar-plums and malmsey wine. "Yesterday I received your hearts, to-day I receive your sweets," the king remarked; all were charmed by his wit, his forbearance and generosity. The stubborn university was last to give way, but when the doctors of theology learnt that Henry had touched for the king's evil and that many had been cured, they too were convinced. Paris, "well worth a ma.s.s," was wooed and won. The memorable Edict of Nantes established liberty of wors.h.i.+p and political equality for the Protestants. The war with Spain was brought to a successful issue, and Henry, with his minister the Duke of Sully, probably the greatest financial genius France has ever known, by wise and firm statesmans.h.i.+p lifted the country from bankruptcy to prosperity and contentment.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HoTEL DE SULLY.]

Henry, like one of his predecessors, had of _b.a.s.t.a.r.ds et b.a.s.t.a.r.des une moult belle compagnie_, but as yet no legitimate heir. A divorce from Marguerite of Valois and a politic marriage with the pope's niece, Marie de' Medici,[125] gave him a magnificent dowry (600,000 golden crowns and a yearly income of 20,000), an additional bond to the papacy, and several children. Margot, once convinced that the divorce was not to enable Henry to marry that _baga.s.se_ Gabrielle, made small objection and soon consoled herself. In 1606 one of her discarded lovers was executed in front of her dwelling in the palace of the archbishop of Sens for having shot his rival in her affections, a young page of twenty, as he was handing her into her carriage.

[Footnote 125: Her majesty, we learn from the _Memoires_ of L'Estoile, was of a rich figure, stout, fine eyes and complexion. She used no paint, powder or other _vilanie_.]

Like all his race, Henry was susceptible to the charms of the daughters of Eve, but, unlike his descendants, he never sacrificed France to their tears and wiles. When the question of the succession was urgent and he thought of marrying Gabrielle d'Estrees, Sully opposed the union. The impatient Gabrielle used all her powers of fascination to compa.s.s the dismissal of the great minister, who was present at the interview in her room at the cloister of St. Germain, and who has left us a vivid description of the scene. Gabrielle burst into pa.s.sionate reproaches and employed in turn all the arts of feminine guile. Her eyes streaming with tears, sobbing and wailing, she seized her royal lover's hand and smothered it with kisses; she called for a poignard that by plunging it into her heart he might behold his image graven there; she appealed to his love for their children and flung herself hysterically on the bed, protesting she could live no longer seeing herself disgraced, and a servant whom so many complained of, preferred to a mistress whom all praised. It was of no avail. "Let me tell you," answered Henry, calmly, "if I must choose between you and Sully, I would sooner part with ten mistresses such as you than one faithful servant such as he."

In 1610 the king was making great preparations for a war with Austria, and, on the 14th May, desiring to consult Sully, who was unwell in his rooms at the a.r.s.enal, he determined to spare him the fatigue of travelling to the Louvre, and to drive to the a.r.s.enal. With much foreboding the king had agreed to the coronation of Marie de' Medici, which had been celebrated at St. Denis with great pomp. The ceremony was attended by two sinister incidents: the Gospel for the day, taken from Mark x., included the answer of Jesus to the Pharisees who tempted Him by asking--"Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife?"--the Gospel was hurriedly changed; and when the usual largesse of gold and silver pieces was thrown to the crowd not a voice cried, "_Vive le roi_," or "_Vive la reine_." That night the king tossed restless on his bed, pursued by evil dreams. On the morrow his counsellors begged him to defer his journey, but nineteen plots to a.s.sa.s.sinate him had already failed: he gently put aside their warnings, and repeated his favourite maxim that fear had no place in a generous heart. It was a warm day, and the king entered his open carriage, attended by the Dukes of Epernon and Montbazon and five other courtiers; a number of _valets de pied_ followed him. In the narrow Rue de la Ferronnerie the carriage was stopped by a block in the traffic, and the servants were sent round by the cemetery of the Innocents. While the king was listening to the reading of a letter by the Duke of Epernon, one Francis Ravaillac, who had been watching his opportunity for twelve months, placed his foot on a wheel of the coach, leaned forward, and plunged a knife into the king's breast.

Before he could be seized he pulled out the fatal steel and doubled his thrust, piercing him to the heart. "_Je suis blesse_," cried Henry, and never spoke again. Ravaillac was seized, and all the refined cruelties inflicted on regicides were practised upon him. He was dragged to the Place de Greve, his right hand cut off, and, with the fatal knife, flung into the flames; the flesh was torn from his arms, breast and legs; melted lead and boiling oil were poured into the wounds. Horses were then tied to each of his four limbs, the body was torn to pieces and burnt to ashes.[126] Some writers have inculpated the Jesuits for the murder, but it may more reasonably be attributed to the fury of a crazy fanatic. Certain it is that Henry's heart was given to the Jesuits for the church of their college of la Fleche, which was founded by him.