ART. VII.-Histoire du Règne de Henri IV. Par M. A. POIRSON, Ancien Proviseur des Lycées Saint-Louis et Charlemagne; Conseille Honoraire de l'Université. 3 Vols. 8vo. Paris: Louis Colas.

THE praises of Louis XIV. have so long been sounded that we are weary at seeing honour assiduously and blindly paid by ignorance to false greatness and mere outside show. The persecuting of true men and true women for righteousness' sake; the destruction of civil and religious liberty; moral corruption at home, with taxes and burdens increased for the purpose of keeping up the ceremonies of Versailles; abroad, a system of policy based upon perfidy and intriguea system which would end by the coalition of the whole of civilized Europe against violence, tyranny, and unscrupulous ambition. Such was that reign of seventy-five years' duration-that epoch to which the name of grand siècle has been given; and which, if the truth were plainly told, has not even a claim to the literary glory which pensioned poetasters claimed on its behalf.

All this sophistry is so sickening, all its twaddle about le grand monarque appears so thoroughly false to those who have enquired a little into the testimony of history, that we turn, with a feeling of real comfort and relief, to M. Poirson's volumes. Certainly we are far from wishing to exalt into a perfect hero

"Le seul roi dont le peuple ait gardé la mémoire ;"

nor would we seek, in the services rendered to France by the Bearnese prince, a compensation for his moral failings; but we do believe that the beginning of the seventeenth century, not the end, is the most brilliant part of French history; and it is beyond all question that the warriorstatesman, who, in the course of his short reign, succeeded in reducing into order the disturbed elements left behind by the horrors of civil war; who fought anarchy with the weapons of liberty, not of despotism,-deserves more truly the name of great than the self-willed monarch who destroyed the balance of power, to leave nothing standing but his own personality, and through his misadministration prepared the horrors of the French Revolution.

M. Poirson's "Histoire du Règne de Henri IV." has obtained the Gobert prize at the Académie Française. Such a distinction bestowed upon a work, the result of fifteen years'

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labour, honours the judges who gave it quite as much as the writer to whom it was awarded; for the book we are now reviewing is a national monument of which France may well be proud; and it is, perhaps, the better appreciated now because the spirit which has dictated it is not, unfortunately, one to which our neighbours have been accustomed during the last few years. Points for comparison naturally suggest themselves to the reader, and parallels rush spontaneously upon our mind. When we read of the Sixteen, their violence, and their crimes, we think of what certain self-styled religious journalists would be if the progress of civilization had not rendered religious autos-da-fé impossible in France. Harlay de Sancy reminds us of contemporary second-rate Talleyrands, who, fickle as the wind, give an excuse for their impudent tergiversations, that "ils devancent la justice du peuple." Such parallels are not only allowable,-they are inevitable. They are one of the conditions to which the annalist must submit; and it is on this account that so many publications have an à propos which is not generally supposed to be compatible with the only true way of writing history. This is partly why the new edition of "Saint Simon's Memoirs" has obtained such success, and why so sharp a controversy has originated with it. The duke and peer's narrative is one of the strongest evidences against despotism. His eloquent denunciations of the place-hunters and sycophants of Marly preserve all their application at the present day; and our modern Dangeaus, D'Antins, and Villeroys, feel that they too are condemned, if their predecessors in flunkeyism cannot stand at the bar of posterity.

But to return to M. Poirson. The leading idea of his work may be given in the following passage from his preface. This quotation will show better than anything else how the author has understood the character, the life-indeed, the whole reign of Henri IV.; and it will remain for us to verify whether the conclusions he has come to are borne out by the facts :

"Résumons ce qui vient d'être dit; réunissons et groupons ce qui vient d'être exposé sur ce gouvernement, et voici ce qui nous trouverons pour résultant. Dans les matières de droit international et de droit public, de politique et de religion, l'équilibre européen, la liberté de conscience, les libertés gallicanes et l'harmonie des rapports entre la société civile et la société religieuse; les libertés politiques dans leur essence et sous la forme qu'elles comportaient alors, en attendant qu'elles en prissent une autre ; la liberté de penser et de s'adresser à l'opinion publique par l'impression, telles

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furent les institutions qu'il créa ou qu'il affermit. Dans les matières et les intérêts d'administration, la nation lui dut la réforme complète, le perfectionnement, différant peu d'une création, des finances de l'armée, de la diplomatic; tous les grands développements et la liberté du commerce et de l'industrie. Ainsi, tout ce qui tient à la rupture définitive entre le moyen âge et les temps modernes, à le différence entre le monde politique et économique ancien et le monde noveau, tout ce qui constitue dans son principe l'excellence de notre société, date de ce règne et y remonte. C'est l'une des plus grandes époques, non seulement de notre histoire, mais de l'histoire de l'humanité."*

We may divide, with M. Poirson, the reign of Henri IV. into three periods, which have each its peculiar character. During the first the monarch fights his enemies, both at home and abroad. He baffles the plans of the Spaniards; succeeds in crushing the League, and in destroying the last vestiges of the extraordinary power held by the Guises. The reconstruction of the French monarchy has been discussed in the pages of our author with a completeness and an impartiality to which many modern historians have not accustomed us. Το say that M. Poirson's description of the state of parties, at the time of the death Henri III. is accurate, will be deemed no slight praise by those who have at all studied the monuments left to us by the writers and politicians of those extraordinary days. When we consider that France was split up into no less than eight distinct parties, it becomes rather difficult to analyse those coteries; to appreciate their views, and their political schemes; to examine the features which they had in common, and the trifling topics on which they separated. The classification of these parties, indeed, has puzzled many publicists, otherwise very competent; and M. Poirson has had to clear many preliminary blunders, which, although perhaps not of first-rate importance, are calculated to mislead the student, and to appear in books of some authority as premises from which wrong conclusions must necessarily follow. We cannot, within the limit of a few pages, go with M. Poirson throughout all the details of his most interesting narrative; but we shall select, here and there, a leading fact, and examine summarily what is his view of it.

The condition of France when Henri IV. came to the throne, the organization of the League, and their resistance to the claims set forward by the new monarch, are undoubtedly topics of vital moment; for the very existence of regal authority was intimately connected with them; and

Vol. i., pp. xxxvii., xxxviii.

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the position of the King of Navarre, in history, as an usurper or a legitimate prince, depends on the view we take of the pretensions and arguments adduced by the opposition. M. Poirson quotes the famous passage from M. de Châteaubriand's writings, which has served as a text for so many erroneous disquisitions on the part of Ultramontanist historians. "La Legue, coupable envers le dernier Valois, était innocente envers le premier Bourbon, à moins de soutenir qui les nations ne sont point aptes à maintenir le culte qu'elles ont choisi, et les institutions qui leur conviennent. This seems very plausible at first sight; but, on further examination, we find that M. de Châteaubriand's paragraph will not bear the light of history. It is in contradiction with the plain facts.

In the first place, the Leaguers were guilty of falsehood when they maintained that the accession of Henri IV. to the throne gave, like that of Elizabeth to the throne of England, the signal of the approaching downfall of the Roman Catholic religion. On the contrary, the declaration of Saint Cloud (August 2nd, 1589) was, as M. Poirson truly remarks," a first step, on his part, towards the creed of the majority." The new king promised, and more, to maintain within the kingdom the Catholic faith, to alter in nowise its dogmas and its discipline, to bestow benefices and all other ecclesiastical honours exclusively upon able and Roman Catholic subjects. He, moreover, renewed the promise which he had already made of summoning, at the latest within six months, a national council, and of abiding, so far as his own faith was concerned, by the decisions of that assembly. He pledged himself likewise to appoint exclusively Roman Catholics, during the same period of time, to the commands, posts, and other public offices which might happen to be vacant, and to reserve solely for them the government of all the estates taken from the Leaguers, with the exception of one in each bailliage or sénéchaussée.†

Could any person, consistently with the truth, affirm that such a plain, straight-forward declaration was a death-blow to the Roman Catholic religion? Was this giving away, as d'O. complained on the part of the Ultramontanists, "les clefs de nos vies et de nos honneurs entre les mains de ceux qui nous avons offensés par delà l'espoir de la réconcilia

"Etudes Historiques," iii., p. 564.

Poirson, tom. i., pp. 22, 23.-The text of the Saint-Cloud Declaration occurs in Isambert's "Receuil des Anciennes Lois Françaises,” xv. 3—5.

tion?" But let us go on a little, and see whether the sequel of the declaration will not throw some light upon the conduct of the Leaguers, their lamentations, and their statement of imaginary grievances.

After having established, with every possible solemnity, the privileges and rights of the majority, Henri IV., as a matter of course, proceeds to explain what his intentions are towards the Protestants, to whom he still belonged, and whose assistance had to a great extent made him the monarch. Complete liberty of conscience was guaranteed to them within their houses; the public profession of their religion in all the places which they had in their possession, and also in one town of each bailliaget or sénéchaussée taken from the Leaguers, at Saumur,‡ in the army, and wherever the king might happen to be; the enjoyment of all governments, posts, and offices in the localities where they were allowed to meet as a religious community;-such were the principal advantages accrued to the Calvinists by the Saint Cloud declaration. They were in conformity with the terms of the treaty concluded in the course of the April previous between Henri III. and Henri IV. Far from being too favourable to the Protestants, the declaration restricted the advantages which had been stipulated for them in the edict of Poictiers (1577); again, it is true that these dispositions had only a transitory character, and were merely to last till the general peace had enabled the king to settle definitively the position of the dissenters from the Roman Catholic faith within the kingdom. Liberty of conscience, however, is a principle which the Leaguers would not learn, but had the advantages secured to those whom they designated as heretics been reduced to one single clause, and that the least important, yet the free enjoyment of that would certainly have been contested. It is almost comical to see who those men were who made the loudest professions of zeal for the church, and of horror for the wickedness of heretics: Balzac d'Entraigues, Châteauvieux, and François d'O, the last-named being one of the most infamous amongst the minions of the late king.§.Threats, entreaties, they employed every means to

* Cf. Agrippa d'Aubigné. "Hist. Univ.," book xvii., cap. 23. + Districts under the authority of a bailli and a sénéchal respectively. Saumur was the principal stronghold of the Protestants, and the seat of one of their universities.

"On nous fait voir encore un contract tout nouveau, Signé du sang de d'O, son privé maquereau.'

D'Aubigné, Les Tragiques. Thuanus says that d'O died of a disease caused by his debauchery.