History of the United Netherlands, 1584-1609 Part 85

he wrote to the beautiful Gabrielle, "and was importuned with 'G.o.d save you' till bed-time. In regard to the Leaguers I am of the order of St.

Thomas. I am beginning to-morrow morning to talk to the bishops, besides those I told you about yesterday. At this moment of writing I have a hundred of these importunates on my shoulders, who will make me hate Saint Denis as much as you hate Mantes. 'Tis to-morrow that I take the perilous leap. I kiss a million times the beautiful hands of my angel and the mouth of my dear mistress."

A truce--renewed at intervals--with the Leaguers lasted till the end of the year. The Duke of Nevers was sent on special mission to Rome to procure the holy father's consent to the great heretic's reconciliation to the Church, and he was instructed to make the king's submission in terms so wholesale and so abject that even some of the life-long papists of France were disgusted, while every honest Protestant in Europe shrank into himself for shame. But Clement, overawed by Philip and his amba.s.sador, was deaf to all the representations of the French envoy. He protested that he would not believe in the sincerity of the Bearne's conversion unless an angel from Heaven should reveal it to him. So Nevers left Rome, highly exasperated, and professing that he would rather have lost a leg, that he would rather have been sewn in a sack and tossed into the Tiber, than bear back such a message. The pope ordered the prelates who had accompanied Nevers to remain in Rome and be tried by the Inquisition for misprision of heresy, but the duke placed them by his side and marched out of the Porta del Popolo with them, threatening to kill any man who should attempt to enforce the command.

Meantime it became necessary to follow up the St. Denis comedy with a still more exhilarating popular spectacle. The heretic had been purified, confessed, absolved. It was time for a consecration. But there was a difficulty. Although the fever of loyalty to the ancient house of Bourbon, now redeemed from its wors.h.i.+p of the false G.o.ds, was spreading contagiously through the provinces; although all the white silk in Lyons had been cut into scarves and banners to celebrate the reconciliation of the candid king with mother Church; although that ancient city was ablaze with bonfires and illuminations, while its streets ran red, with blood no longer, but with wine; and although Madam League, so lately the object of fondest adoration, was now publicly burned in the effigy of a grizzly hag; yet Paris still held for that decrepit beldame, and closed its gates to the Bearnese.

The city of Rheims, too, had not acknowledged the former Huguenot, and it was at Rheims, in the church of St. Remy, that the Holy Bottle was preserved. With what chrism, by what prelate, should the consecration of Henry be performed? Five years before, the League had proposed in the estates of Blois to place among the fundamental laws of the kingdom that no king should be considered a legitimate sovereign whose head had not been anointed by the bishop at Rheims with oil from that holy bottle. But it was now decided that to ascribe a monopoly of sanct.i.ty to that prelate and to that bottle would be to make a schism in the Church.

Moreover it was discovered that there was a chrism in existence still more efficacious than the famous oil of St. Remy. One hundred and twelve years before the baptism of Clovis, St. Martin had accidentally tumbled down stairs, and lay desperately bruised and at the point of death. But, according to Sulpicius Severus, an angel had straightway descended from heaven, and with a miraculous balsam had anointed the contusions of the saint, who next day felt no farther inconveniences from his fall. The balsam had ever since been preserved in the church of Marmoutier near Tours. Here, then, was the most potent of unguents brought directly from heaven. To mix a portion thereof with the chrism of consecration was clearly more judicious than to make use of the holy bottle, especially as the holy bottle was not within reach. The monks of Marmoutier consented to lend the sacred phial containing the famous oil of St. Martin for the grand occasion of the royal consecration.

Accompanied by a strong military escort provided by Giles de Souvri, governor of Touraine, a deputation of friars brought the phial to Chartres, where the consecration was to take place. Prayers were offered up, without ceasing, in the monastery during their absence that no mishap should befal the sacred treasure. When the monks arrived at Chartres, four young barons of the first n.o.bility were a.s.signed to them as hostages for the safe restoration of the phial, which was then borne in triumph to the cathedral, the streets through which it was carried being covered with tapestry. There was a great ceremony, a splendid consecration; six bishops, with mitres on their heads and in gala robes, officiating; after which the king knelt before the altar and took the customary oath.

Thus the champion of the fierce Huguenots, the well-beloved of the dead La Noue and the living Duplessis Mornay, the devoted knight of the heretic Queen Elizabeth, the sworn ally of the stout Dutch Calvinists, was pompously reconciled to that Rome which was the object of their hatred and their fear.

The admirably arranged spectacles of the instruction at St. Denis and the consecration at Chartres were followed on the day of the vernal equinox by a third and most conclusive ceremony:

A secret arrangement had been made with De Cosse-Brissac, governor of Paris, by the king, according to which the gates of Paris were at last to be opened to him. The governor obtained a high price for his services--three hundred thousand livres in hard cash, thirty thousand a year for his life, and the truncheon of marshal of France. Thus purchased, Brissac made his preparations with remarkable secrecy and skill. Envoy Ybarra, who had scented something suspicious in the air, had gone straight to the governor for information, but the keen Spaniard was thrown out by the governor's ingenuous protestations of ignorance. The next morning, March 22nd, was stormy and rainy, and long before daylight Ybarra, still uneasy despite the statements of Brissac, was wandering about the streets of Paris when he became the involuntary witness of an extraordinary spectacle.

Through the wind and the rain came trampling along the dark streets of the capital a body of four thousand troopers and lansquenettes. Many torch-bearers attended on the procession, whose flambeaux threw a lurid light upon the scene.

There, surrounded by the swart and grizzly bearded visages of these strange men-at-arms, who were discharging their arquebuses, as they advanced upon any bystanders likely to oppose their progress; in the very midst of this sea of helmed heads, the envoy was enabled to recognise the martial figure of the Prince of Bearne. Armed to the teeth, with sword in hand and dagger at side, the hero of Ivry rode at last through the barriers which had so long kept him from his capital. "'Twas like enchantment," said Ybarra. The first Bourbon entered the city through the same gate out of which the last Valois had, five years before, so ignominiously fled. It was a midnight surprise, although not fully accomplished until near the dawn of day. It was not a triumphal entrance; nor did Henry come as the victorious standard-bearer of a great principle. He had defeated the League in many battle-fields, but the League still hissed defiance at him from the very hearthstone of his ancestral palace. He had now crept, in order to conquer, even lower than the League itself; and casting off his Huguenot skin at last, he had soared over the heads of all men, the presiding genius of the holy Catholic Church.

Twenty-one years before, he had entered the same city on the conclusion of one of the truces which had varied the long monotony of the religious wars of France. The youthful son of Antony Bourbon and Joan of Albret had then appeared as the champion and the idol of the Huguenots. In the same year had come the fatal nuptials with the bride of St. Bartholomew, the first Catholic conversion of Henry and the ma.s.sacre at which the world still shudders.

Now he was chief of the "Politicians," and sworn supporter of the Council of Trent. Earnest Huguenots were hanging their heads in despair.

He represented the principle of national unity against national dismemberment by domestic treason and foreign violence. Had that principle been his real inspiration, as it was in truth his sole support, history might judge him more leniently. Had he relied upon it entirely it might have been strong enough to restore him to the throne of his ancestors, without the famous religious apostacy with which his name is for ever a.s.sociated. It is by no means certain that permanent religious toleration might not have been the result of his mounting the throne, only when he could do so without renouncing the faith of his fathers. A day of civilization may come perhaps, sooner or later, when it will be of no earthly cousequence to their fellow creatures to what creed, what Christian church, what religious dogma kings or humbler individuals may be partial; when the relations between man and his Maker shall be undefiled by political or social intrusion. But the day will never come when it will be otherwise than damaging to public morality and humiliating to human dignity to forswear principle for a price, and to make the most awful of mysteries the subject of political legerdemain and theatrical buffoonery.

The so-called conversion of the king marks an epoch in human history. It strengthened the Roman Church and gave it an indefinite renewal of life; but it sapped the foundations of religious faith. The appearance of Henry the Huguenot as the champion of the Council of Trent was of itself too biting an epigram not to be extensively destructive. Whether for good or ill, religion was fast ceasing to be the mainspring of political combinations, the motive of great wars and national convulsions. The age of religion was to be succeeded by the age of commerce.

But the king was now on his throne. All Paris was in rapture. There was Te Deum with high ma.s.s in Notre Dame, and the populace was howling itself hoa.r.s.e with rapture in honour of him so lately the object of the general curse. Even the Sorbonne declared in favour of the reclaimed heretic, and the decision of those sages had vast influence with less enlightened mortals. There was nothing left for the Duke of Feria but to take himself off and make Latin orations in favour of the Infanta elsewhere, if fit audience elsewhere could be found. A week after the entrance of Henry, the Spanish garrison accordingly was allowed to leave Paris with the honours of war.

"We marched out at 2 P.M.," wrote the duke to his master, "with closed ranks, colours displayed, and drums beating. First came the Italians and then the Spaniards, in the midst of whom was myself on horseback, with the Walloons marching near me. The Prince of Bearne"--it was a solace to the duke's heart, of which he never could be deprived, to call the king by that t.i.tle--"was at a window over the gate of St. Denis through which we took our departure. He was dressed in light grey, with a black hat surmounted by a great white feather. Our displayed standards rendered him no courteous salute as we pa.s.sed."

Here was another solace!

Thus had the game been lost and won, but Philip as usual did not acknowledge himself beaten. Mayenne, too, continued to make the most fervent promises to all that was left of the confederates. He betook himself to Brussels, and by the king's orders was courteously received by the Spanish authorities in the Netherlands. In the midst of the tempest now rapidly destroying all rational hopes, Philip still clung to Mayenne as to a spar in the s.h.i.+pwreck. For the king ever possessed the virtue, if it be one, of continuing to believe himself invincible and infallible, when he had been defeated in every quarter, and when his calculations had all proved ridiculous mistakes.

When his famous Armada had been shattered and sunk, have we not seen him peevishly requiring Alexander Farnese to construct a new one immediately and to proceed therewith to conquer England out of hand? Was it to be expected that he would renounce his conquest of France, although the legitimate king had entered his capital, had reconciled himself to the Church, and was on the point of obtaining forgiveness of the pope? If the Prince of Bearne had already destroyed the Holy League, why should not the Duke of Mayenne and Archduke Ernest make another for him, and so conquer France without further delay?

But although it was still possible to deceive the king, who in the universality of his deceptive powers was so p.r.o.ne to delude himself, it was difficult even for so accomplished an intriguer as Mayenne to hoodwink much longer the shrewd Spaniards who were playing so losing a game against him.

"Our affairs in France," said Ybarra, "are in such condition that we are losing money and character there, and are likely to lose all the provinces here, if things are not soon taken up in a large and energetic manner. Money and troops are what is wanted on a great scale for France.

The king's agents are mightily discontented with Mayenne, and with reason; but they are obliged to dissimulate and to hold their tongues. We can send them no a.s.sistance from these regions, unless from down yonder you send us the cloth and the scissors to cut it with."

And the Archduke Ernest, although he invited Mayenne to confer with him at Brussels, under the impression that he could still keep him and the Duke of Guise from coming to an arrangement with Bearne, hardly felt more confidence in the man than did Feria or Ybarra. "Since the loss of Paris," said Ernest, "I have had a letter from Mayenne, in which, deeply affected by that event, he makes me great offers, even to the last drop of his blood, vowing never to abandon the cause of the League. But of the intentions and inner mind of this man I find such vague information, that I don't dare to expect more stability from him than may be founded upon his own interest."

And so Mayenne came to Brussels and pa.s.sed three days with the archduke.

"He avows himself ready to die in our cause," said Ernest. "If your Majesty will give men and money enough, he will undertake so to deal with Bearne that he shall not think himself safe in his own house." The archduke expressed his dissatisfaction to Mayenne that with the money he had already received, so little had been accomplished, but he still affected a confidence which he was far from feeling, "because," said he, "it is known that Mayenne is already treating with Bearne. If he has not concluded those arrangements, it is because Bearne now offers him less money than before." The amount of dissimulation, politely so-called, practised by the grandees of that age, to say nothing of their infinite capacity for pecuniary absorption, makes the brain reel and enlarges one's ideas of the human faculties as exerted in certain directions. It is doubtful whether plain Hans Miller or Hans Baker could have risen to such level.

Feria wrote a despatch to the king, denouncing Mayenne as false, pernicious to the cause of Spain and of catholicism, thoroughly self-seeking and vile, and as now most traitorous to the cause of the confederacy, engaged in surrendering its strong places to the enemy, and preparing to go over to the Prince of Bearne.

"If," said he, "I were to recount all his base tricks, I should go on till midnight, and perhaps till to-morrow morning."

This letter, being intercepted, was sent with great glee by Henry IV., not to the royal hands for which it was destined, but to the Duke of Mayenne. Great was the wrath of that injured personage as he read such libellous truths. He forthwith fulminated a scathing reply, addressed to Philip II., in which he denounced the Duke of Feria as "a dirty ignoramus, an impudent coward, an impostor, and a blind thief;" adding, after many other unsavoury epithets, "but I will do him an honour which he has not merited, proving him a liar with my sword; and I humbly pray your Majesty to grant me this favour and to pardon my just grief, which causes me to depart from the respect due to your Majesty, when I speak of this impostor who has thus wickedly torn my reputation."

His invectives were, however, much stronger than his arguments in defence of that tattered reputation. The defiance to mortal combat went for nothing; and, in the course of the next year, the injured Mayenne turned his back on Philip and his Spaniards, and concluded his bargain with the Prince of Bearne. He obtained good terms: the government of Burgundy, payment of his debts, and a hundred and twenty thousand crowns in hard cash. It is not on record that the man of his word, of credit, and of truth, ever restored a penny of the vast sums which he had received from Philip to carry on the business of the League.

Subsequently the duke came one very hot summer's-day to Monceaux to thank the king, as he expressed it, for "delivering him from Spanish arrogance and Italian wiles;" and having got with much difficulty upon his knees, was allowed to kiss the royal hand. Henry then insisted upon walking about with him through the park at a prodigious rate, to show him all the improvements, while the duke panted, groaned, and perspired in his vain efforts to keep pace with his new sovereign.

"If I keep this fat fellow walking about in the sun much longer,"

whispered the king to De Bethune, who was third in the party, "I shall be sufficiently avenged for all the mischief he has done us."

At last, when the duke was forced to admit himself to be on the point of expiring with fatigue, he was dismissed to the palace with orders to solace himself with a couple of bottles of excellent wine of Arbois, expressly provided for him by the king's direction. And this was all the punishment ever inflicted by the good-humoured monarch on the corpulent conspirator.

The Duke of Guise made his arrangements with the ex-Huguenot on even better terms and at a still earlier day; while Joyeuse and Mercoeur stood out a good while and higgled hard for conditions. "These people put such a high price on themselves," said one of Henry's diplomatists, "that one loses almost more than one gains in buying them. They strip and plunder us even in our nakedness, and we are obliged, in order to conciliate such harpies, to employ all that we can sc.r.a.pe out of our substance and our blood. I think, however, that we ought to gain them by whatever means and at whatever price."

Thus Henry IV., the man whom so many contemporary sages had for years been rebuking or ridiculing for his persistency in a hopeless attempt to save his country from dismemberment, to restore legitimate authority, and to resist the "holy confederacy" of domestic traitors, aided by foreign despots and sympathizers, was at last successful, and the fratricidal war in France was approaching its only possible conclusion.

But, alas! the hopes of those who loved the reformed Church as well as they loved their country were sadly blasted by the apostasy of their leader. From the most eminent leaders of the Huguenots there came a wail, which must have penetrated even to the well-steeled heart of the cheerful Gascon. "It will be difficult," they said, "to efface very soon from your memory the names of the men whom the sentiment of a common religion, a.s.sociation in the same perils and persecutions, a common joy in the same deliverance, and the long experience of so many faithful services, have engraved there with a pencil of diamond. The remembrance of these things pursues you and accompanies you everywhere; it interrupts your most important affairs, your most ardent pleasures, your most profound slumber, to represent to you, as in a picture, yourself to yourself: yourself not as you are to-day, but such as you were when, pursued to the death by the greatest princes of Europe, you went on conducting to the harbour of safety the little vessel against which so many tempests were beating."

The States of the Dutch republic, where the affair of Henry's conversion was as much a matter of domestic personal interest as it could be in France--for religion up to that epoch was the true frontier between nation and nation--debated the question most earnestly while it was yet doubtful. It was proposed to send a formal deputation to the king, in order to divert him, if possible, from the fatal step which he was about to take. After ripe deliberation however, it was decided to leave the matter "in the hands of G.o.d Almighty, and to pray Him earnestly to guide the issue to His glory and the welfare of the Churches."

The Queen of England was, as might be supposed, beside herself with indignation, and, in consequence of the great apostasy, and of her chronic dissatisfaction with the manner in which her contingent of troops had been handled in France, she determined to withdraw every English soldier from the support of Henry's cause. The unfortunate French amba.s.sador in London was at his wits' ends. He vowed that he could not sleep of nights, and that the gout and the cholic, to which he was always a martyr, were nothing to the anguish which had now come upon his soul and brain, such as he had never suffered since the b.l.o.o.d.y day of St.

Bartholomew.

"Ah, my G.o.d!" said he to Burghley, "is it possible that her just choler has so suddenly pa.s.sed over the great glory which she has acquired by so many benefits and liberalities?" But he persuaded himself that her majesty would after all not persist in her fell resolution. To do so, he vowed, would only be boiling milk for the French papists, who would be sure to make the most of the occasion in order to precipitate the king into the abyss, to the border of which they had already brought him. He so dreaded the ire of the queen that he protested he was trembling all over merely to see the pen of his secretary wagging as he dictated his despatches. Nevertheless it was his terrible duty to face her in her wrath, and he implored the lord treasurer to accompany him and to s.h.i.+eld him at the approaching interview. "Protect me," he cried, "by your wisdom from the ire of this great princess; for by the living G.o.d, when I see her enraged against any person whatever I wish myself in Calcutta, fearing her anger like death itself."

When all was over, Henry sent De Morlans as special envoy to communicate the issue to the Governments of England and of Holland. But the queen, although no longer so violent, was less phlegmatic than the States-General, and refused to be comforted. She subsequently receded, however, from her determination to withdraw her troops from France.

"Ah! what grief; ah! what regrets; ah! what groans, have I felt in my soul," she wrote, "at the sound of the news brought to me by Morlans! My G.o.d! Is it possible that any wordly respect can efface the terror of Divine wrath? Can we by reason even expect a good sequel to such iniquitous acts? He who has maintained and preserved you by His mercy, can you imagine that he permits you to walk alone in your utmost need?

'Tis bad to do evil that good may come of it. Meantime I shall not cease to put you in the first rank of my devotions, in order that the hands of Esau may not spoil the blessings of Jacob. As to your promises to me of friends.h.i.+p and fidelity, I confess to have dearly deserved them, nor do I repent, provided you do not change your Father--otherwise I shall be your b.a.s.t.a.r.d sister by the father's side--for I shall ever love a natural better than an adopted one. I desire that G.o.d may guide you in a straight road and a better path. Your most sincere sister in the old fas.h.i.+on. As to the new, I have nothing to do with it. ELIZABETH R."

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

All fellow-worms together Continuing to believe himself invincible and infallible He spent more time at table than the Bearnese in sleep Henry the Huguenot as the champion of the Council of Trent Highest were not necessarily the least slimy His invectives were, however, much stronger than his arguments History is a continuous whole of which we see only fragments Infinite capacity for pecuniary absorption Leading motive with all was supposed to be religion Past was once the Present, and once the Future Sages of every generation, read the future like a printed scroll Sewers which have ever run beneath decorous Christendom Wrath of that injured personage as he read such libellous truths

HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS

From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609

By John Lothrop Motley

History United Netherlands, Volume 66, 1594