King Henry the Fourth

John Abbott

• Publisher: Ozymandias Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781531265632
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

While France was deluged with the blood of a civil war, young Henry was busily pursuing his studies in college. He could have had but little affection for his father, for the stern soldier had passed most of his days in the tented field, and his son had hardly known him. From his mother he had long been separated; but he cherished her memory with affectionate regard, and his predilections strongly inclined him toward the faith which he knew that she had so warmly espoused. It was, however, in its political aspects that Henry mainly contemplated the question. He regarded the two sects merely as two political parties struggling for power. For some time he did not venture to commit himself openly, but, availing himself of the privilege of his youth, carefully studied the principles and the prospects of the contending factions, patiently waiting for the time to come in which he should introduce his strong arm into the conflict...

The Assassination of the Duke of Guise and of Henry III.

1589

The war, again resumed, was fiercely prosecuted. Henry III. remained most of the time in the gilded saloons of the Louvre, irritable and wretched, and yet incapable of any continued efficient exertion. Many of the zealous Leaguers, indignant at the pusillanimity he displayed, urged the Duke of Guise to dethrone Henry III. by violence, and openly to declare himself King of France. They assured him that the nation would sustain him by their arms. But the duke was not prepared to enter upon so bold a measure, as he hoped that the death of the king would soon present to him a far more favorable opportunity for the assumption of the throne. Henry III. was in constant fear that the duke, whose popularity in France was almost boundless, might supplant him, and he therefore forbade him to approach the metropolis.

Notwithstanding this prohibition, the haughty duke, accompanied by a small party of his intrepid followers, as if to pay court to his sovereign, boldly entered the city. The populace of the capital, ever ripe for excitement and insurrection, greeted him with boundless enthusiasm. Thousands thronged the broad streets through which he passed with a small but brilliant retinue. Ladies crowded the windows, waving scarfs, cheering him with smiles, and showering flowers at his feet. The cry resounded along the streets, penetrating even the apartments of the Louvre, and falling appallingly upon the ear of the king:

“Welcome—welcome, great duke. Now you are come, we are safe.”

Henry III. was amazed and terrified by this insolence of his defiant subject. In bewilderment, he asked those about him what he should do.

“Give me the word,” said a colonel of his guard, “and I will plunge my sword through his body.”

“Smite the shepherd,” added one of the king’s spiritual counselors, “and the sheep will disperse.”

But Henry feared to exasperate the populace of Paris by the assassination of a noble so powerful and so popular. In the midst of this consultation, the Duke of Guise, accompanied by the queen-mother Catharine, whom he had first called upon, entered the Louvre, and, passing through the numerous body-guard of the king, whom he saluted with much affability, presented himself before the feeble monarch. The king looked sternly upon him, and, without any word of greeting, exclaimed angrily,

“Did I not forbid you to enter Paris?”

“Sire,” the duke replied, firmly, but with affected humility, “I came to demand justice, and to reply to the accusations of my enemies.”

The interview was short and unrelenting. The king, exasperated almost beyond endurance, very evidently hesitated whether to give the signal for the immediate execution of his dreaded foe. There were those at his side, with arms in their hands, who were eager instantly to obey his bidding. The Duke of Guise perceived the imminence of his danger, and, feigning sudden indisposition, immediately retired. In his own almost regal mansion he gathered around him his followers and his friends, and thus placed himself in a position where even the arm of the sovereign could not venture to touch him.

There were now in Paris, as it were, two rival courts, emulating each other in splendor and power. The one was that of the king at the Louvre, the other was that of the duke in his palace. It was rumored that the duke was organizing a conspiracy to arrest the king and hold him a captive. Henry III., to strengthen his body-guard, called a strong force of Swiss mercenaries into the city. The retainers of the duke, acting under the secret instigation of their chieftain, roused the populace of Paris to resist the Swiss. Barricades were immediately constructed by filling barrels with stones and earth; chains were stretched across the streets from house to house; and organized bands, armed with pikes and muskets, threatened even the gates of the Louvre.

A conflict soon ensued, and the Swiss guard were defeated by the mob at every point. The Duke of Guise, though he secretly guided all these movements, remained in his palace, affecting to have no share in the occurrences. Night came. Confusion and tumult rioted in the city. The insurgent populace, intoxicated and maddened, swarmed around the walls of the palace, and the king was besieged. The spiritless and terrified monarch, disguising himself in humble garb, crept to his stables, mounted a fleet horse,and fled from the city. Riding at full speed, he sought refuge in Chartres, a walled town forty miles southeast of Paris.

The flight of the king before an insurgent populace was a great victory to the duke. He was thus left in possession of the metropolis without any apparent act of rebellion on his own part, and it became manifestly his duty to do all in his power to preserve order in the capital thus surrendered to anarchy. The duke had ever been the idol of the populace, but now nearly the whole population of Paris, and especially the influential citizens, looked to him as their only protector.

Some, however, with great heroism, still adhered to the cause of the king. The Duke of Guise sent for Achille de Harlai, President of the Council, and endeavored to win him over to his cause, that he might thus sanction his usurpation by legal forms; but De Harlai, fixing his eyes steadfastly upon the duke, fearlessly said,

“‘Tis indeed pitiable when the valet expels his master. As for me, my soul belongs to my Maker, and my fidelity belongs to the king. My body alone is in the hands of the wicked. You talk of assembling the Parliament. When the majesty of the prince is violated, the magistrate is without authority.” The intrepid president was seized and imprisoned.

The followers of Henry III. soon gathered around him at Chartres, and he fortified himself strongly there. The Duke of Guise, though still protesting great loyalty, immediately assumed at Paris the authority of a sovereign. He assembled around him strong military forces, professedly to protect the capital from disturbance. For a month or two negotiations were conducted between the two parties for a compromise, each fearing the other too much to appeal to the decisions of the sword. At last Henry III. agreed to appoint the Duke of Guise lieutenant general of France and high constable of the kingdom. He also, while pledging himself anew to wage a war of extermination against the Protestants, promised to bind the people of France, by an oath, to exclude from the succession to the throne all persons suspected even of Protestantism. This would effectually cut off the hopes of Henry of Navarre, and secure the crown to the Duke of Guise upon the death of the king.

Both of the antagonists now pretended to a sincere reconciliation, and Henry, having received Guise at Chartres with open arms, returned to Paris, meditating how he might secure the death of his dreaded and powerful rival. Imprisonment was not to be thought of, for no fortress in France could long hold one so idolized by the populace. The king applied in person to one of his friends, a brave and honest soldier by the name of Crillon, to assassinate the duke.

“I am not an executioner,” the soldier proudly replied, “and the function does not become my rank. But I will challenge the duke to open combat, and will cheerfully sacrifice my life that I may take his.”

This plan not meeting with the views of the king, he applied to one of the commanders of his guard named Lorgnac. This man had no scruples, and with alacrity undertook to perform the deed. Henry, having retired to the castle of Blois, about one hundred miles south of Paris, arranged all the details, while he was daily, with the most consummate hypocrisy, receiving his victim with courteous words and smiles. The king summoned a council to attend him in his cabinet at Blois on the 23d of December. It was appointed at an early hour, and the Duke of Guise attended without his usual retinue. He had been repeatedly warned to guard against the treachery of Henry, but his reply was,

“I do not know that man on earth who, hand to hand with me, would not have his full share of fear. Besides, I am always so well attended that it would not be easy to find me off my guard.”

The duke arrived at the door of the cabinet after passing through long files of the king’s body-guard. Just as he was raising the tapestry which veiled the entrance, Lorgnac sprang upon him and plunged a dagger into his throat. Others immediately joined in the assault, and the duke dropped, pierced with innumerable wounds, dead upon the floor.

Henry, hearing the noise and knowing well what it signified, very coolly stepped from his cabinet into the ante-chamber, and, looking calmly upon the bloody corpse, said,

“Do you think he is dead, Lorgnac?”

“Yes, sire,” Lorgnac replied, “he looks like it.”

“Good God, how tall he is!” said the king. “He seems taller dead than when he was living.” Then giving the gory body a kick, he exclaimed, “Venomous beast, thou shalt cast forth no more venom.”

In the same manner the duke had treated the remains of the noble Admiral Coligni, a solemn comment upon the declaration, “With what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again.”

Cardinal Guise, the brother of the duke, was immediately arrested by order of the king, and sent to prison, where he was assassinated. Henry III. soon after repaired to the bedside of Catharine his mother, who was lying sick in one of the chambers of the castle. Nothing can show more clearly the character of the times and of the personages than the following laconic dialogue which ensued:

“How do you do, mother, this morning?” inquired the king.

“I am better than I have been,” she replied.

“So am I,” Henry rejoined, gayly, “for I have made myself this morning King of France by putting to death the King of Paris.”

“Take care,” this hardened woman exclaimed, “that you do not soon find yourself king of nothing. Diligence and resolution are now absolutely necessary for you.”

She then turned upon her pillow without the slightest apparent emotion. In twelve days from this time, this wretched queen, deformed by every vice, without one single redeeming virtue, breathed her last, seventy years of age. She was despised by the Catholics, and hated by the Protestants.

These acts of violence and crime roused the League to the most intense energy. The murder of the Duke of Guise, and especially the murder of his brother, a cardinal in the Church, were acts of impiety which no atonement could expiate. Though Henry was a Catholic, and all his agents in these atrocious murders were Catholics, the death of the Duke of Guise increased vastly the probability that Protestant influences might become dominant at court. The Pope issued a bull of excommunication against all who should advocate the cause of Henry III. The Sorbonne published a decree declaring that the king had forfeited all right to the obedience of his subjects, and justifying them in taking up arms against him. The clergy, from the pulpit, refused communion, absolution, and burial in holy ground to every one who yielded obedience to “the perfidious apostate and tyrant; Henry of Valois.”

The League immediately chose the Duke of Mayenne, a surviving brother of the Duke of Guise, as its head. The Pope issued his anathemas against Henry III., and Spain sent her armies to unite with the League. Henry now found it necessary to court the assistance of the Protestants. He dreaded to take this step, for he was superstitious in the extreme, and he could not endure the thought of any alliance with heretics. He had still quite a formidable force which adhered to him, for many of the highest nobles were disgusted with the arrogance of the Guises, and were well aware that the enthronement of the house of Guise would secure their own banishment from court.

The triumph of the League would be total discomfiture to the Protestants. No freedom of worship or of conscience whatever would be allowed them. It was therefore for the interest of the Protestants to sustain the more moderate party hostile to the League. It was estimated that about one sixth of the inhabitants of France were at that time Protestants.

Wretched, war-scathed France was now distracted by three parties. First, there were the Protestants, contending only in self-defense against persecution, and yet earnestly praying that, upon the death of the king, Henry of Navarre, the legitimate successor, might ascend the throne. Next came those Catholics who were friendly to the claims of Henry from their respect for the ancient law of succession. Then came, combined in the League, the bigoted partisans of the Church, resolved to exterminate from Europe, with fire and sword, the detested heresy of Protestantism.

Henry III. was now at the castle of Blois. Paris was hostile to him. The Duke of Mayenne, younger brother of the Duke of Guise, at the head of five thousand soldiers of the League, marched to the metropolis, where he was received by the Parisians with unbounded joy. He was urged by the populace and the Parliament in Paris to proclaim himself king. But he was not yet prepared for so decisive a step.

No tongue can tell the misery which now pervaded ill-fated France. Some cities were Protestant, some were Catholic; division, and war, and blood were every where. Armed bands swept to and fro, and conflagration and slaughter deluged the kingdom.

The king immediately sent to Henry of Navarre, promising to confer many political privileges upon the Protestants, and to maintain Henry’s right to the throne, if he would aid him in the conflict against the League. The terms of reconciliation were soon effected. Henry of Navarre, then leaving his army to advance by rapid marches, rode forward with his retinue to meet his brother-in-law, Henry of Valois. He found him at one of the ancient palaces of France, Plessis les Tours. The two monarchs had been friends in childhood, but they had not met for many years. The King of Navarre was urged by his friends not to trust himself in the power of Henry III. “For,” said they, “the King of France desires nothing so much as to obtain reconciliation with the Pope, and no offering can be so acceptable to the Pope as the death of a heretic prince.”

Henry hesitated a moment when he arrived upon an eminence which commanded a distant view of the palace. Then exclaiming, “God guides me, and He will go with me,” he plunged his spurs into his horse’s side, and galloped forward.

The two monarchs met, each surrounded with a gorgeous retinue, in one of the magnificent avenues which conducted to the castle. Forgetting the animosities of years, and remembering only the friendships of childhood, they cast themselves cordially into each other’s arms. The multitude around rent the air with their acclamations.

Henry of Navarre now addressed a manifesto to all the inhabitants of France in behalf of their woe-stricken country. “I conjure you all,” said he, “Catholics as well as Protestants, to have pity on the state and on yourselves. We have all done and suffered evil enough. We have been four years intoxicate, insensate, and furious. Is not this sufficient? Has not God smitten us all enough to allay our fury, and to make us wise at last?”

But passion was too much aroused to allow such appeals to be heeded. Battle after battle, with ever-varying success, ensued between the combined forces of the king and Henry of Navarre on one side, and of the League, aided by many of the princes of Catholic Europe, on the other. The storms of winter swept over the freezing armies and the smouldering towns, and the wail of the victims of horrid war blended with the moanings of the gale. Spring came, but it brought no joy to desolate, distracted, wretched France. Summer came, and the bright sun looked down upon barren fields, and upon a bleeding, starving, fighting nation. Henry of Navarre, in command of the royal forces, at the head of thirty thousand troops, was besieging Paris, which was held by the Duke of Mayenne, and boldly and skillfully was conducting his approaches to a successful termination. The cause of the League began to wane. Henry III. had taken possession of the castle of St. Cloud, and from its elevated windows looked out with joy upon the bold assaults and the ad...

Table of contents

• Childhood and Youth.
• Civil War.
• The Marriage.
• Preparations for Massacre.
• Massacre of St. Bartholomew.
• The Houses of Valois, of Guise, and of Bourbon.
• The Death of Charles IX. and the Accession of Henry III.
• The League.
• The Assassination of the Duke of Guise and of Henry III.
• War and Woe.
• The Conversion of the King.
• Reign and Death of Henry IV.