King Henry IV of France

“ Lets fall his sword before your highness' feet,
And with submissive loyalty of heart
Ascribes the glory of his conquest got
First to my God and next unto your grace.
Kneels
KING HENRY VI Is this the Lord Talbot, uncle Gloucester,
That hath so long been resident in France?
GLOUCESTER Yes, if it please your majesty, my liege.
KING HENRY VI Welcome, brave captain and victorious lord!
When I was young, as yet I am not old,
I do remember how my father said
A stouter champion never handled sword. ”

“ They were royalists to the core, as is shown by the sacrifices they made for the sake of setting Henry IV. on the throne. It is true, however, that among themselves they formed a kind of republic which, according to the historian J. A. de Thou, had its own laws dealing with civil government, justice, war, commerce, finance. They had a president called the Protector of the Churches, an office held first by Condé and afterwards by the king of Navarre up to the day on which he became king of France as Henry IV. (1589) . ”

“ Cities were bombarded, fields of grain trampled in the mire, villages burned. Famine rioted over its ghastly victims. Hospitals were filled with miserable multitudes, mutilated and with festering wounds, longing for death. Not a ray of light pierced the gloom of this dark, black night of crime and woe. And yet, undeniably, the responsibility before God must rest with the League. Henry IV. was the lawful king of France. The Catholics had risen in arms to resist his rights, because they feared that he would grant liberty of faith and worship to the Protestants. ”

“ Henry of Navarre was now Henry IV., King of France. But never did monarch ascend the throne under circumstances of greater perplexity [Pg 241] and peril. Never was a more distracted kingdom placed in the hands of a new monarch. Henry was now thirty-four years of age. The whole kingdom was convulsed by warring factions. For years France had been desolated by all the most virulent elements of religious and political animosity. All hearts were demoralized by familiarity with the dagger of the assassin and the carnage of the battle-field. ”

“ And of such great authority in France
As his alliance will confirm our peace,
And keep the Frenchmen in allegiance.
GLOUCESTER. And so the Earl of Armagnac may do,
Because he is near kinsman unto Charles.
EXETER. Beside, his wealth doth warrant a liberal dower;
Where Reignier sooner will receive than give.
SUFFOLK. A dow'r, my lords! Disgrace not so your king,
That he should be so abject, base, and poor,
To choose for wealth and not for perfect love.
Henry is able to enrich his queen,
And not to seek a queen to make him rich. ”

“ It would not be possible to find a greater contrast than was presented between France, distracted by factions struggling for the power which a lunatic king dropped from his hands, and England, harmonious and enthusiastic, welcoming back after a brilliant victory its vigorous prince, and united in giving him all the help that he demanded. If the darling scheme of the Plantagenets, the union of the two crowns, had been within the limits of possibility, Henry would certainly have effected it. ”

“ For some time after William of Normandy seized the English throne the relations of the King of England to the King of France—it might be more correct to say, the king who reigned at Paris—were those of an over-powerful vassal to a weak suzerain. When Henry the Second actually ruled over a larger part of France than the prince who was nominally its sovereign, this reversal of the ordinary state of things, according to which the lord was the superior, the vassal the inferior, was complete. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For he that interrupts him shall not live.
KING HENRY VI Think'st thou that I will leave my kingly throne,
Wherein my grandsire and my father sat?
No: first shall war unpeople this my realm;
Ay, and their colours, often borne in France,
And now in England to our heart's great sorrow,
Shall be my winding-sheet. Why faint you, lords?
My title's good, and better far than his.
WARWICK Prove it, Henry, and thou shalt be king.
KING HENRY VI Henry the Fourth by conquest got the crown.
YORK 'Twas by rebellion against his king.
KING HENRY VI [Aside] I know not what to say ”

“ The young Dauphin Louis took the nominal lead of the national party, and ruled supreme in Paris in great ease and self-indulgence.
The year before, Henry V. had succeeded to the throne of England,—a bright and vigorous young man, eager to be stirring in the world, brave and fearless, with a stern grasp of things beneath all,—a very sheet-anchor of firmness and determined character. Almost at the very opening of his reign, the moment he had secured his throne, he began a negotiation with France which boded no good. ”

“ He joined to these essential qualities, manners that were wholly French, and mots that often recalled Henry IV. We were always saying to each other, my colleagues and I, 'If a king were made to order for France, he would not be different.' What a misfortune for France, which he loved so much, that he was not known better and more appreciated. This portrait, I protest, is in nowise flattering; if this poor Prince were still reigning, I would not say so much of him, above all in his presence; but he is persecuted and is an exile; I owe my country the truth, nothing but the truth. ”

“ Few kings have been so fortunate as Henry the Fourth in the reputation and good will they have obtained from the people. By democrats as well as monarchists his name is held in a kind of loving veneration. Much of this popularity is doubtless owing to his superiority, in disposition as well as mind, to the ferocious bigotry of his age, and to his great edict of toleration which healed for a time the horrible religious dissensions of France. Apart from his ability, however, his virtues as a king sprung rather from good-nature and benevolence, than from moral or religious principle. ”

“ The civil wars were not over, for the heat of party raged as yet unslaked; the Politiques could not all at once adopt a Huguenot King, the League party had pledged itself to resist the heretic, and Henri at first had little more than the Huguenots at his back. There were also formidable claimants for the throne. Charles II. Duc de Lorraine, who had married Claude, younger daughter of Henri IL, and who was therefore brother-in-law to Henri III., set up a vague claim ”

“ But the mass of the French people, longing for repose, gladly accepted the conversion of the king. One after another the leaders of the League gave in their adhesion to the royal cause. The Duke of Mayenne, however, held out, Paris being still in his possession, and several other important cities and fortresses being garrisoned by his troops. The Pope, at length, having vainly done every thing in his power to rouse France and Catholic Europe to resist Henry, condescended to negotiate. ”

“ This feeling was strengthened by the death of the old Cardinal de Bourbon, which reopened at once the succession question, and compelled Philip of Spain to show his hand. He now claimed the throne for his daughter Elisabeth, as eldest daughter of the eldest daughter of Henri II. All the neighbours of France claimed something; Frenchmen felt that it was either Henri IV. or dismemberment. The “Bearnais” grew in men’s minds to be the champion of the Salic law, of the hereditary principle of royalty against feudal weakness, of unity against dismemberment, of the nation against the foreigner. ”

“ He met the King of France at Montmirail on the feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 1169, and the mighty Angevin ruler bowed himself before his feebler suzerain lord to renew his homage. "On this day, my lord king, on which the three kings offered gifts to the King of kings, myself, my sons, and my land, I commend to your keeping." His continental estates were divided among his sons, to be held under his supreme authority. The eldest, Henry, who had in 1160 done homage to Louis for Normandy, now did homage for Anjou, Maine, and Britanny. ”

“ As the new sovereign entered the chamber of the deceased king, he found the corpse surrounded by many of the Catholic nobility of France. They were ostentatiously solemnizing the obsequies of the departed monarch. He [Pg 242] heard many low mutterings from these zealous partisans of Rome, that they would rather die a thousand deaths than allow a Protestant king to ascend the throne. Angry eyes glared upon him from the tumultuous and mutinous crowd, and, had not Henry retired to consult for his own safety, he also might have fallen the victim of assassination. ”

“ Will Mercœur--curse him!--be the most Christian Duke of Brittany? And Mayenne, by the grace of God, Prince of Paris and the Upper Seine? Or will the little Prince of Béarn beat them, and be Henry IV., King of France and Navarre, Protector of the Churches? Curse him too! He is thirty-six. He is my age. But he is young and strong, and has all before him. ”

“ I have forgot his name.
GOWER.
Sir John Falstaff.
FLUELLEN.
That is he. I’ll tell you there is good men porn at Monmouth.
GOWER.
Here comes his Majesty.
Alarum. Enter King Henry and forces; Warwick, Gloucester, Exeter with prisoners. Flourish.
KING HENRY.
I was not angry since I came to France
Until this instant. Take a trumpet, herald;
Ride thou unto the horsemen on yond hill.
If they will fight with us, bid them come down,
Or void the field; they do offend our sight. ”

“ The least hint to Francis of any hostile intent towards Henry would, thought Charles, be at once revealed to the English King, and the two would join in making war on himself. War he was determined to avoid, for, apart from the ruin of Flanders, which it would involve, Henry and Francis had long been intriguing with the Lutherans in Germany. A breach might easily precipitate civil strife in the Empire; and, indeed, in June, 1534, Würtemberg was wrested from the Habsburgs by Philip of Hesse with the connivance of France. ”

“ Henry III., with no energy of character, despised by his subjects, and without either money or armies, seemed to be now entirely at the mercy of the confederate princes. Henry of Navarre and the Duke of Alençon sent an embassador to the French court to propose terms to Henry III. The King of Navarre required, among other conditions, that France should unite with him in recovering from Spain that portion of the territory of Navarre which had been wrested from his ancestors by Ferdinand and Isabella. ”

“ The league between Henry and the Emperor had been hollow from the first; nor had it then been easily adjusted, the objects of the allies being entirely different. Henry had foreseen, long before he entered on it, that his Scottish policy would involve a war with France; the Emperor desired, if he could not drive the Turks out of Hungary, at least to break up the shameful alliance between them and the French King. The Pope meanwhile was urging both the Emperor and Francis to peace, so that a General Council might meet to put down heresy-that of England most of all ”

“ Henry VI, part 1: Entire Play ACT I SCENE I. Westminster Abbey.
Dead March. Enter the Funeral of KING HENRY the Fifth, attended on by Dukes of BEDFORD, Regent of France; GLOUCESTER, Protector; and EXETER, Earl of WARWICK, the BISHOP OF WINCHESTER, Heralds, & c BEDFORD Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
That have consented unto Henry's death!
King Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long!
England ne'er lost a king of so much worth. ”

“ Henry IV, after his accession to the throne of France, appointed him ambassador to Switzerland; and on his return from that country, made him sixth president, that dignity having become vacant by the death of Jean Le Maître. In 1598 he was one of the deputies by whom the peace of Vervins was concluded; and from thence he proceeded to Brussels with the Duc de Biron, to be present when the Archduke swore to the observance of the treaty. He next visited Italy as ambassador extraordinary to the Pope, where he negotiated the marriage of the King with Marie de Medicis. ”

“ Henri III., when he heard of his brother’s death, was only too eager to slip away like a culprit from Poland, though he showed no alacrity in returning to France, and dallied with the pleasures of Italy for months. An attempt to draw him over to the side of the Politiques failed completely; he attached himself on the contrary to the Guises, and plunged into the grossest dissipation, while he posed himself before men as a good and zealous Catholic. The Politiques and Huguenots therefore made a compact in 1575, at Milhaud on the Tarn, and chose the Prince de Conde as their head ”

“ Ferdinand’s ambition had o’erleaped itself, and the possession of Flanders by the King of Castile had made England’s friendship more than ever necessary thenceforward, for France was opposed to Spain now, not in Italy alone, but on long conterminous frontiers in the north, south, and east as well.
Henry VIII. at the age of eighteen was well fitting to succeed his father. All contemporary observers agree that his grace and personal beauty as a youth were as remarkable as his quickness of intellect and his true Tudor desire to stand well in the eyes of his people. ”