The Bourbon Kings of France (4 page)

Amiens surrendered on 25 September. Elsewhere the Spaniards were failing. The Dutch, still fighting the Spanish, were increasingly successful. Another Spanish Armada, destined for Ireland, was destroyed by storms. In March even Mercoeur surrendered. King Philip, in failing health, despaired and, on 2 May 1598 a treaty was signed at Vervins, by which France retained the frontiers of 1559 and regained any towns occupied by the Spaniards. (Queen Elizabeth of England was so furious that she called Henri the Anti-Christ of ingratitude.)

Henri had also taken steps to ensure peace at home. The Edict of Nantes, promulgated in April 1598, gave the Huguenots liberty of conscience and guaranteed their safety with 200 fortified towns maintained at the Crown’s expense, though defended by their own Protestant garrisons. The Edict was not quite the triumph of common sense over bigotry that it seems to modern eyes. In reality it was little more than an armed truce. Protestant France could muster 25,000 troops led by 3,500 noblemen who constituted an experienced and highly professional officer corps. An English observer, Sir Robert Dallington, noted: ‘But as for warring any longer for religion, the Frenchman utterly disclaims it; he is at last grown wise—marry, he hath bought it somewhat dear!’ France could simply not afford another civil war. Even so Henri had to bully the Parlements into registering the Edict.

Henri IV was now undisputed King of a France which was at peace for the first time for nearly half a century. At last he was able to enjoy Paris. He acquired new friends, like the fabulously rich tax farmer, Sebastien Zamet, an Italian from Lucca, who had begun his career as Catherine de Medici’s shoemaker and then made his fortune as court money-lender. The King often dined and gambled or gave little supper parties for his mistresses in Zamet’s hôtel in the Marais. Gabrielle became a familiar figure in the capital. She accompanied the King everywhere; they rode together hand in hand, she riding astride like a man, resplendent in her favourite green, her golden hair studded with diamonds; she presided over the court like a Queen. As tactful and kindly in manners as she was warm-hearted and generous by nature, Gabrielle had the miraculous gift of making no enemies. She had born Henri several children, notably César whom the King made Duc de Vendôme. Gabrielle was given increasingly greater rank, eventually becoming a Peeress of France. Henri’s love deepened every day. Eventually he decided to marry her. In token of betrothal he gave her his coronation ring, a great square-cut diamond.

Henri left her briefly in April 1598, when she was again big with child. Her labour began on Maundy Thursday, accompanied by convulsions. On Good Friday, her stillborn child was cut out of her; she suffered such agony that her face turned black. She died the following day, of puerperal fever. Henri buried her with the obsequies of a Queen of France—for a week he wore black, and then the violet of half-mourning. He wrote to his sister, ‘The roots of love are dead within me and will never revive.’

Perhaps fortunately for his sanity, he was soon busy with Savoy. Its Duke, Charles Emmanuel, who dreamt of restoring the ancient Kingdom of Arles, delayed the surrender of Saluzzo and intrigued with Henri’s courtiers; there was even a plot to poison the King. In late 1600 Henri invaded the Duchy. Snow made it a difficult campaign and Henri complained of the hardship—‘France owes a lot to me, for what I suffer on her behalf.’ By the peace of Lyons, signed in January 1601, Henri gained Savoyard territories on the Rhône which all but blocked communications between the Spanish Netherlands and Spain’s possessions in northern Italy. It was the end of Henri’s career as a soldier. Few monarchs have handled a pike or pistolled their way through a cavalry mêlée with such gusto.

He now had the task of rebuilding his ruined kingdom, a land of deserted villages and overgrown fields, of roads infested by highwaymen. Henri has been criticized for not giving France a new system of government and for restoring the traditional structure, the
Ancien Régime
which went down in 1789. But this is to ask that he should have been a man before his time. His education and outlook were those of the later Renaissance, not of the Enlightenment, and the Renaissance always looked to the past.

His chief minister was Maximilien de Béthune, Baron de Rosny, whom he made Duc de Sully and a Peer of France. Born in 1560, Sully belonged to the lesser nobility of Picardy and was a Huguenot. Bald, with a long beard like a patriarch, eccentric, avaricious and ill-mannered, he was also tireless in his master’s service. He and he alone was able to work the archaic taxation system.

Henri’s first concern was to tame the nobility, and he waged merciless war on the robber barons who plagued France. It took a full scale cavalry battle to defeat ‘Captain Guillery’s’ band of outlaw noblemen in 1604. In 1607 the King lent cannon to a gentleman whose daughter had been abducted by a neighbour, so that he could batter down the walls of her kidnapper’s château. He forbade nobles to ride over ripening crops. Formerly, provincial governorships had been tantamount to semi-independent fiefs, but Henri insisted on appointing every town governor and garrison commander. To the Duc d’Epernon who objected he wrote, ‘Your letter is that of an angry man—I am not so yet and I pray you don’t make me.’ Fear of the over-mighty subject also dictated his harsh treatment of his sister, Catherine, now an eccentric old maid who had clung stubbornly to her Protestant faith, and still hoped to marry her cousin, the Comte de Soissons. Henri forced her to marry the Duke of Lorraine, who refused to allow her to practise her religion. Poor Catherine died three years later, ‘of sadness and melancholy’.

In 1599, he met the last of his three great concubines, Henriette d’Entragues, daughter of the Governor of Orléans. A slim brunette, with a disturbing bosom and flashing black eyes, she at once infatuated Henri with her provoking airs and savage wit. She was a girl who knew just how to exploit the King’s wild jealousies. He had been ready to marry Gabrielle d’Estrées, so she saw no reason why he should not make her his Queen instead. She blew hot and cold until at last Henri, frantic with lust, literally bought her from her father with the title of Marshal (although the man had never seen a battle), a large down payment in cash and a written promise that, should Henriette have a son by him, he would marry her as soon as he was divorced. A furious Sully sent the money in silver—it took many cartloads to deliver it.

However, Henri was just as capable of playing a double game in love as in war. When Rome obligingly annulled his marriage to Marguerite, he sought the hand of Marie de Medici, the twenty-seven-year-old daughter of the late Grand Duke Francesco I of Tuscany. In June 1600, Henriette, far gone with child, was resting in her bedchamber at Fontainebleau when the room was struck by lightning which actually passed under her bed. Terror made her miscarry. The King now regarded his promise as invalid, even if Mme de Verneuil (he had made Henriette a Marquise) did not. In October 1600 he married Marie by proxy.

From a political point of view Marie de Medici was thoroughly desirable—her uncle Grand Duke Ferdinand, was anti-Spanish and fabulously rich. Personally she was less desirable, a large, fat, stupid blonde with a vile temper. However, during the consummation of the marriage at Lyons she performed so well that afterwards the King boasted of her prowess. After a month’s marital bliss he lovingly rejoined Henriette in Paris. When his wife arrived at the capital, the King insisted on presenting Henriette to her, saying, ‘She has been my mistress—now she is going to be your most biddable and obedient servant.’ Henriette refused to curtsey and the King had to push her on to her knees before the infuriated Queen. He continued to sleep with both. On 27 September 1601 the Queen gave birth to a Dauphin.

Meanwhile Sully laboured tirelessly. When he became Superintendent of Finances he found the Crown in debt to the sum of £3 million. By 1608 he had paid off nearly half the debt, by redeeming mortgaged Crown revenues and increasing the yield from taxation. The principal direct tax was the
taille
, an arbitrarily assessed percentage of farm income or a specified percentage of a man’s actual property. The chief indirect tax was the
gabelle
, an exorbitant duty on salt which caused much resentment. There were also duties on wine, besides customs levied at internal as well as external frontiers. Much of Sully’s success was due to his reduction of profiteering by the tax farmers and of corruption in general.

As the nobility and clergy were exempt from taxation and many bourgeois purchased exemption, the taxes fell mainly on the peasantry, causing much hardship. Yet Henri cared for his peasants. In 1600 he told the Duke of Savoy, ‘Should God let me live longer I will see that no peasant in my realm is without the means to have a chicken in his pot.’ This wish for a chicken in every pot every Sunday is one of the most enduring of the legends about him. In the eighteenth century Henri IV was described as the only French King whose memory was kept green by the poor.

Another source of revenue was the
paulette
(named after a lawyer called Paulet). This was the sale of offices and titles in return for an annual payment of one-sixtieth of the purchase price. An office conferred nobility, including tax exemption, and in consequence a new aristocracy was created to balance the old feudal nobility. Before the Revolution almost every rich self-made man bought a title.

Henri knew that if France was to prosper, something more was needed than efficient methods of taxation. The country’s chief source of wealth was crops and livestock, so he encouraged new methods of agriculture. Companies were founded to improve arable land, and Dutch experts were brought in to drain fen land. But peaceful conditions were quite sufficient for the French peasant and by 1608 France was exporting grain. Waterways and canals were dug and roads repaired. In 1601 a Chamber of Commerce was founded, which investigated and encouraged horse breeding, linen manufacture, ship building, glass blowing and many other industries. The silk industry was revived, mulberry trees and skilled weavers being imported from Italy. Other luxury industries were founded, notably the Gobelin tapestry looms, and the Savonnerie carpet factory. Mineral resources were scientifically investigated, Henri creating the office of Grand Master of the Mines. Abroad, a spectacularly profitable treaty with Turkey obtained valuable facilities in the Levant for French merchants, while there were commercial treaties with England and the German Hansa. In Canada Samuel de Champlain established a tiny but enduring settlement of fur traders at Quebec. New edicts directed at increasing the country’s prosperity were promulgated every month, edicts which the King not only read but helped to draft. Despite his hunting and whoring, Henri IV was his own first minister.

Sully, who combined the functions of Minister of Finance, Minister of the Interior, Minister of Transport and Minister of Works, was responsible for implementing all these reforms. But one must not underestimate Henri’s contribution. He did far more than merely encourage his Minister, who lacked his enthusiastic response to new ideas. It was Henri who preached agricultural revolution, whose interest was largely responsible for the re-establishment of the silk industry, who supported the Canadian enterprise.

Henri’s employment of Sully enabled him to avoid much of the odium incurred by unpopular policies. Sully’s committees of privilege examined the nobles’ rights to pensions and exemptions, to Crown lands and revenues, demanding full restitution where these had been usurped. These, together with his harshness and gauche arrogance, made him the most hated man in France. Soissons tried to dispose of him by a duel but backed down when Henri announced that he would act as Sully’s second.

By 1602 the French nobility was thoroughly disenchanted. The hub of the opposition was the Maréchal de Biron, an old comrade-in-arms of Henri. During the Savoy campaign he intrigued with the enemy, plotting the King’s murder. An atheist and a student of witchcraft, there was something Satanic about Biron. He plotted a general uprising; Spain and Savoy were to invade while the Marshal and his friends would raise disaffected areas of the kingdom. Henri discovered the plot, but was reluctant to destroy such an old friend; three times he offered Biron a pardon if he would confess his treason, but was rebuffed. During his trial Biron raved and ranted, shrieking that Henri owed his throne to him. At his execution he had to be dragged to the block. The King commented, ‘I would have given 200,000 crowns for him to have made it possible to pardon him; he did me good service though I saved his life three times.’

Then there was the conspiracy between Biron’s friend, the Comte d’Auvergne, and Henriette’s family, the d’Entragues, in 1604. Henriette had resolved to avenge herself when in the summer of 1604 her father had been ordered to surrender the Promise of Marriage (which he had concealed in a bottle). Henriette and her children were to flee to Spain, whereupon Philip III would recognize her son as King of France as soon as Henri had been assassinated. Two attempts were made on Henri’s life but failed, then her sister informed the authorities. Henriette was confined to a convent. However, the King soon forgave her, though she never quite recovered her former influence.

Potentially the most dangerous conspirator of all was the Protestant Duc de Bouillon, who tried to stir up the Huguenots. However, Henri outmanœuvred him, sending Sully to the General Assembly of the Reformed Church in 1605, where he persuaded them to accept the status quo. The King then marched into Bouillon’s lands in the Limousin, blowing up his château. In 1606 he arrived before the Duke’s stronghold of Sedan with an army and cannon, and forced him to submit.

The court of Henri IV has been described as a cross between a barracks and a bawdy house. It was certainly informal. When the court wine taster drained Henri’s glass to the last drop, instead of merely sipping it, the King complained, ‘You might have left some for me.’ He was on good terms with the Parisians, roaming the streets of his capital with little or no escort. He preferred to dress plainly, in grey satin without lace or embroidery, and was careless about washing: Henriette once told him, ‘You smell like carrion.’ (However, the legend of Henri’s chewing garlic like fruit, so that his breath felled an ox at twenty paces, is apocryphal.) His teeth were bad, stopped with lead and gold, and in later years he had to wear spectacles. He was so small that he always used a mounting block. Yet, for all these inelegancies, the English ambassador noted that the great lords of France trembled in King Henri’s presence. He could be stately enough, receiving embassies seated on his throne, surrounded by Princes of the Blood; on such occasions he dressed magnificently, wearing diamonds in his hat. Indeed, during his reign the Louvre and the Tuileries lacked neither grace nor splendour.