François Guizot

“ Never was man more dumbfounded than King Henry, who said to King Francis, ‘Brother, you have done me a better turn than ever man did to another, and you show me the great trust I ought to have in you. I yield myself your prisoner from this moment, and I proffer you my parole.’ He undid from his neck a collar worth fifteen thousand angels, and begged the King of France to take it and wear it that very day for his prisoner’s sake. ”

“ The Constable de Bourbon, being informed of his wound, came to him, saying, “Bayard, my friend, I am sore distressed at your mishap; there is nothing for it but patience; give not way to melancholy; I will send in quest of the best surgeons in this country, and, by God’s help, you will soon be healed.” “My lord,” answered Bayard, “there is no pity for me; I die having done my duty; but I have pity for you, to see you serving against your king, your country, and your oath.” Bourbon withdrew without a word. The Marquis of Pescara came passing by. ”

“ We are now in France, in the land and amidst the language of France, in the region of genuine French wit, no longer that of the boor, or of the student, or of the burgess, but of the court and good society. Good society, in poesy, was born with Marot, with Francis I., and his sister Marguerite, with the Renaissance: much will still have to be done to bring it to perfection, but it exists and will never cease again. ”

“ In spite of the stateliness of its ceremonies and the charm of its traditions, paganism had never been, in plain truth, a religion; faith and piety had held but a paltry place in it; instead of a God, the creator and acting sovereign of the world, its gods were of human invention and human nature: their adventures and the parts they played were pleasing to the imagination, but gave no sort of satisfaction to the deep instincts and higher aspirations of the soul. Christianity is God hovering over, watching over, and descending to earth ”

“ I am not downhearted because the violence of the wicked has snatched from me the seals of the kingdom. I have not done as sluggards and cowards do, who hide themselves at the first show of danger, and obey the first impulses of fear. As long as I was strong enough, I held my own. Deprived of all support, even that of the king and the queen, who dared no longer defend me, I retired, deploring the unhappy condition of France. ”

“ Shocked at so rude an admonition, Henry III. answered, “It is God who made me king; and as I bear the title of Most Christian King, I have ever been very zealous for the preservation of the Catholic religion. . . . It appertains to me alone to decide, according to my discernment, what may contribute to the public weal, to make laws for to procure it, to interpret those laws, to change them, and to abolish them, just as I find it expedient. ”

“ And this confused mass of Reformers and Reformed had to face an old, a powerful, and a strongly constituted church, which looked upon the innovators as rebels over whom it had every right as much as against them it had every arm. In each of the two camps prevailed errors of enormous magnitude, and fruitful of fatal consequences; Catholics and Protestants both believed themselves to be in exclusive possession of the truth, of all religious truth, and to have the right of imposing it by force upon their adversaries the moment they had the power. ”

“ The weak and undecided government of Catherine de’ Medici tried several times, but in vain, to prevent or repress these savage explosions of passion and strife amongst the people; the sterling moderation of Chancellor de l’Hospital was scarcely more successful than the hypocritical and double-faced attentions paid by Catherine de’ Medici to both the Catholic and the Protestant leaders; the great maladies and the great errors of nations require remedies more heroic than the adroitness of a woman, the wisdom of a functionary, or the hopes of a philosopher. ”

“ And what was Henry III., King of France, doing whilst two great parties and two great men were thus carrying on, around his throne and in his name, so passionate a war, on the one side to maintain the despotic unity of Catholic Christianism, and on the other to win religious liberty for Christian Protestantism? We will borrow here the words of the most enlightened and most impartial historian of the sixteenth century, M. de Thou; if we acted upon our own personal impressions alone, there would be danger of appearing too severe towards a king whom we profoundly despise. ”

“ So much equity and mental breadth on the pope’s part was better suited for the republic of Venice than for the King of Spain. “We have but one desire,” wrote the Doge Cicogna to Badoero, his ambassador at Rome, “and that is to keep the European peace. We cannot believe that Sixtus V., that great pontiff, is untrue to his charge, which is to ward off from the Christian world the dangers that threaten it; in imitation of Him whom he represents on earth, he will show mercy, and not proceed to acts which would drive the King of France to despair.” ”

“ Thanks to sociability of manners, vivacity of intellect, and fickleness of taste, light and ephemeral poesy has obtained more success and occupied more space in France than in any other country; but there are successes which give no title to enter into a people’s history; quality and endurance of renown are even more requisite in literature than in politics; and many a man whose verses have been very much relished and cried up in his lifetime has neither deserved nor kept in his native land the beautiful name of poet. ”

“ Queen, princes, admiral, and military leaders of all ranks stripped themselves of all the diamonds, jewels, and precious stones which they possessed, and which Elizabeth, the Queen of England, took in pledge for the twenty thousand pounds sterling she lent him. The Queen of Navarre reviewed the army, which received her with bursts of pious and warlike enthusiasm; and leaving to Coligny her two sons, as she called them, she returned alone to La Rochelle, where she received a like reception from the inhabitants, “rough and loyal people,” says La Noue, “and as warlike as mercantile.” ”

“ The decree was strictly carried out.
It costs a pang to recur to these hideous exhibitions, but it must be done; for history not only has a right, but is bound to do justice upon the errors and crimes of the past, especially when the past had no idea of guilt in the commission of them. A wit of the last century, Champfort, used to say, “There is nothing more dangerous than an honest man engaged in a rascally calling.” There is nothing more dangerous than errors and crimes of which the perpetrators do not see the absurd and odious character. ”

“ We have this advantage, that we, ever full of submission to the prince, are set against none but traitors hostile to their king and their country, and so much the more dangerous in that they nestle in the very bosom of the state, and, in the name and clothed with the authority of a king who is a mere child, are attacking the kingdom and the king himself. ”

“ Massacre, we add no qualifying term to the word, was an idea, a habit, we might say almost a practice, familiar to that age, and one which excited neither the surprise nor the horror which are inseparable from it in our day. So little respect for human life and for truth was shown in the relations between man and man! Not that those natural sentiments, which do honor to the human race, were completely extinguished in the hearts of men ”

“ On the 1st of January, 1543, Francis I. entered the town in state, surrounded by his escort. The people’s advocate fell on his knees, and appealed to the king’s clemency in dealing with a revolt of which every one repented. The king, who was seated on a wooden boarding, rose up. “Speak we no more of revolt,” said he; “I desire neither to destroy your persons nor to seize your goods, as was lately done by the Emperor Charles to the Ghentese, whereby his hands are stained with blood; I long more for the hearts of my subjects than for their lives and their riches. ”

“ Now, when so many fair ladies are met together in a life of sumptuousness and gayety, a king is pretty sure to find favorites, and royal favorites rarely content themselves with pleasing the king; they desire to make their favor serviceable their family and their friends. Francis I. had made choice one, Frances de Foix, countess of Chateaubriant, beautiful ambitious, dexterous, haughty, readily venturing upon rivalry with even the powerful queen-mother. She had three brothers; Lautrec was one of the three, and she supported him in all his pretensions and all his trials of fortune. ”

“ Antony de Leyva caused to be melted down the vessels of the churches and the silvern chandeliers of the university, and even a magnificent chain of gold which he habitually wore round his neck. He feared he would have to give in at last, for want of victuals and ammunition, when, towards the end of January, 1525, he saw appearing, on the northern side, the flags of the imperial army: it was Bourbon, Lannoy, and Pescara, who were coming up with twenty thousand foot, seven hundred men-at-arms, a troop of Spanish arquebusiers, and several pieces of cannon. ”

“ Even in our own day it is not without difficulty that a beginning is being made to understand and accept that principle in its true sense and in all its bearings. Men were wonderfully far from it in 1560, at the accession of Charles IX., a child ten years old; they were entering, in blind confidence, upon a religious war, in order to arrive, only after four centuries of strife and misconception, at a vindication of religious liberty. “Woe to thee, O country, that hast a child for king!” said, in accordance with the Bible, the Venetian Michael Suriano, ambassador to France at that time. ”

“ The first amongst the literary creations of the middle ages is that of the French language itself. When we pass from the ninth to the thirteenth century, from the oath of Charles the Bald and Louis the Germanic at Strasbourg, in 842, to the account of the conquest of Constantinople in 1203, given by Geoffrey de Villehardouin, seneschal of Champagne, what a space has been traversed, what progress accomplished in the language of France! ”

“ Nothing has a greater effect upon weak and undecided minds than the firm language of men resolved to do as they say. The king gave up the idea of entering Strasbourg, and retired well pleased nevertheless, for he was in possession of Metz, Toul, Verdun, and Pont-a-Mousson, the keys for France into Germany, and at the head of an army under young commanders who were enterprising without being blindly rash. ”

“ The religious question thus set on one side, the Renaissance was a great and happy thing, which restored to light and honor the works and glories of the Greek and Roman communities, those two communities which, in history anterior to the sixteenth century, had reached the greatest prosperity and splendor under a civil regimen, in the midst of a more or less stormy but real and strong political freedom, and had attained by the mere development of human thought and human energy the highest degree of civilization yet known in Europe, and, one would be inclined to say, in the world. ”

“ The Venetian ambassador at Rome, Marino Giorgi, whose feelings were quite the other way, took, in his diplomatic capacity, a malicious pleasure in disquieting him. “Holy father,” said he, “the Most Christian King is there in person with the most warlike and best appointed of armies; the Swiss are afoot and ill armed, and I am doubtful of their gaining the day.” “But the Swiss are valiant soldiers, are they not?” said the pope. “Were it not better, holy father,” rejoined the ambassador, “that they should show their valor against the infidel?” ”

“ When the pioneers, drawn up, caught sight of Guise, “Come on, sir,” they cried, “come and let us die before Thionville; we have been expecting you this long while.” The siege lasted three weeks longer. Guise had with him two comrades of distinction, the Italian Peter Strozzi, and the Gascon Blaise do Montluc. On the 20th of June Strozzi was mortally wounded by an arquebuse-shot, at the very side of Guise, who was talking to him with a hand upon his shoulder. “Ah! by God’s head, sir,” cried Strozzi, in Italian, “the king to-day loses a good servant, and so does your excellency.” ”