Vacillation of Henry IV.

15

history of France, if Henry IV. had held firm to the faith of his childhood? The time-serving resolution which he adopted from motives of expediency, has rendered him the idol of France, and the hero of Voltaire's Henriade. His resolution for a time restored peace to a distracted country, and his plausible sophistry secured him an undisputed reign of seventeen years; but he perished by the hand of the assassin, and the dark fatality, which, like the curse of the Stuarts, pursued every member of the House of Bourbon, seemed to vindicate the sacred obligations of truth from that wisdom which is merely human, and to prove that the path of unswerving integrity is, even in this life, that of the truest safety. Henry of Navarre satisfied his conscience by the fact that his intermediate course enabled him to promulgate the Edict of Nantes; and thus he thought to serve his faithful followers better by his apostasy than by his truth. But it must be remembered that this 'perpetual and irrevocable' law was revoked by a grandson of his own. The banished Jesuits returned only maddened by oppression, whilst the revocation of Henry IV.'s Protestant charter furnished the means for a more complete extermination of the Protestant faith than ever could have been imagined in his days. Thus the glorious reign of Henry did nothing for the future liberties of France. The States-General remained as powerless as ever; and the Roman Catholic centralization continued as absolute and complete. His reign was like the interval of a storm; the thunder-claps were over for a time, and the treacherous sun came out. People, at such times, are apt to be oblivious of the future; and, thankful for a period of repose, are ready to vest all their rights in a virtuous prince, forgetting that a good king does not make a good constitution, and that a Henry IV. may be succeeded by a Louis XIV.

The

Meanwhile the old centralization was gaining more and more strength in France. France was becoming a country in which, however separated by distinctions of caste, there were few varieties in the characters of the men themselves. passiveness of the French peasants, who seemed scarcely more alive than the hovels they inhabited, was becoming more and more remarkable. The struggles between the King and the Parliament became less active as all men sank down to one level of thought and opinion. The deadness of the provinces, whilst Paris was the only city of political importance, was becoming fatal to the liberties of the people. The equilibrium of independence was already disturbed. The minorities were becoming of less importance; and, out of Paris, (which was the stronghold of centralization,) France itself had ceased to exist.

The nobility were sharing in the general degradation, forgetting their important vocation to limit the power of the monarchy. They became brilliant and frivolous in their lives, the degraded servants of the King, re-enacting the tyranny of their master by taking vengeance on their own dependents. Louis XI. governed his kingdom by slaves like an eastern despot; and from his time the bourgeois and the noble had each some grievances in common. Democracy was already secretly flourishing in the midst of an absolute government, whilst the word 'individuality' was still unknown in the French language.

The

Meanwhile the fatal tendencies of society were spreading more or less to the Reformed Church. The Calvinistic discipline had always been antagonistic to the lightness and frivolity of the French mind, and was, after a time, thrown off as intolerable. The Church soon departed from her original purity. dangerous seductions of the court of Catharine proved more fatal to the integrity of the Huguenot nobles than all the horrors of St. Bartholomew; whilst the sanguinary habits they had contracted by constant war were little calculated to strengthen their moral vigour.

Posterity looks upon Henry of Navarre as a worldly-wise man who, wearied by the controversies of parties, had learnt to accommodate his conscience to the exigencies of prudence, and who carried on the game of ambition under the name of religion. The Protestantism of England was, humanly speaking, decided by a fortuitous marriage; but we tremble even now to think of the probable consequences, had an heir of Philip II. been seated on the throne of our land. In like manner it may be said that the tide was turned in favour of Roman Catholicism in France through the double-dealing of a prince who thought himself wiser than the Eternal. It has been universally acknowledged by the historians of all parties, that the national faith of France ran imminent peril, before the vows by which Henry bound himself at the solemn engagement of St. Denis. The establishment of a Protestant dynasty in Paris would have been equivalent to a decisive victory of Reform in France. But the policy of Henry came in time to save the ancient centralization.

Yet the efforts of the League must not be undervalued in the momentous struggle. In determining doggedly to combat to the last for the interests of the Papal religion, the burgesses of this celebrated union had banded themselves together on a general principle, independent of private interest, and had determined to merge their own cause in what they supposed to be that of the country at large. The excitement and fanaticism

Efforts of the League, and Plots of the Guises.

17

Under

of these men rivalled that of the ancient Crusades.* the auspices of the Church, if the League had triumphed, it might have been impossible to prevent the establishment of a new dynasty sustained by the efforts of the Tiers Etát. The house of Guise might have constituted a popular monarchy on the vast base of municipal federation. Such a result would have been an improvement in one respect,-that such a dynasty must have been constructed on a contrary principle to that exaggerated centralization which had prevailed in the Capetian line, and which provided Richelieu with a plan for his fatal and exclusive system. In the contest of the sixteenth century men of all ranks were for the first time apparently drawn together in the fraternity of the same faith, and under the banner of the same party. The League dissolved only after the seeming victory of the Tiers Etat, and after developing a sentiment of obstinacy and power in the burgesses, which they transmitted as a natural heritage to their children. Yet even Thierry and Carné admit that this event had its fatal side in the excessive preponderance which the royal power afterwards obtained; transferring to itself the praise of a victory which had been the achievement of national power.

A

Helped by the subtle genius of Henry IV., and the inflexible will of Cardinal Richelieu, the monarchy was not long in restraining all independent force by its own personal caprice. What was an irreparable loss for the nobility proved still more disastrous for the Tiers Etát. The national assemblies were forgotten, and the Commons despoiled of their liberty. single force remained to the burgesses to counterbalance their losses, the force of opinion, of which Paris was the only exponent. In 1740, Montesquieu wrote, "There is nothing in France but Paris and the distant provinces, which exist only because Paris has not yet had time to devour them.' In 1750, the Marquis of Mirabeau exclaimed, speaking on the same subject, Capitals are necessary: but if the head become too large, the body is apoplectic, and all must perish;' and this force increased from day to day, through the various crises of two centuries, till it brought about the fatal explosion of 1789, when the burgesses endeavoured to regain their lost power. A violent revolution then naturally took place. The bourgeoisie was powerless for resistance, and only strong for aggres

* It must, however, be remembered that other agencies were necessary to carry on the strong machinery of the League, such as the plots of the Guises, and the secret counsels of Philip from the depths of the Escurial. Without such aids as these the enthusiasm of the burgesses might never have been roused, and their efforts would have proved futile.-See History of the United Netherlands by John L. Motley, D.C.L.

sion, whilst the force of opinion in their hands was transformed into revolutionary violence. Yet such had been the apparent magnificence of the French government, that not only did it call forth the enthusiasm of Machiavelli in the fifteenth century, but Burke was so far deluded by its outward splendour, that at a later period France appeared to him to contain all the elements of a good constitution, suspended before its completion. Judging from the testimony of experience, we reason now in a very different manner and the establishment of such an absolute government in France appears to us but a national calamity, equally fatal to all classes of society. The government, having taken the place of Providence, endeavoured to impose its laws on all dissentient individuals. Dr. Arnold has gone so far as to argue that there can be no valid objection to the moral theory of Church and State. Burke and Coleridge were advocates of the same opinion; but all have entertained doubts on points of practical detail connected with the same theory in its exaggeration. The centralized system in France found its most unfortunate exponent in the fanatical Louis XIV.

Although the House of Bourbon affected to lean exclusively to the nobility, it could not have acted in a more destructive manner to the interests of the aristocracy. On the other hand, in its dealings with the middle classes, though it behaved with apparent indifference and contempt, it could not have more effectually prepared the way for their real aggrandizement. The nobility obtained the disastrous privilege of being allowed to ruin themselves at Versailles; and were satisfied to indemnify themselves for their loss of local influence by the effeminate amusements of a degraded court, whilst a ridiculous prejudice excluded them from all industrial avocations, and all active functions in the State. Meanwhile the government, in its administrative system, encouraged the progress of new men; and these soon gained a personal importance in business matters, causing them to resent more keenly the humiliation of their position. At the same time royalty committed the fault of isolating itself from the bourgeoisie by the most rigid etiquette, throwing this party more and more on its absolute independence, and so strengthening by its policy the very men whose hearts it wounded by its disdain. The destruction of political liberty naturally followed this separation of classes. In England, the closest sympathy has ever existed between the aristocracy and their dependents. In France, the peasant hated the lord as only the first comer on the soil. Le seigneur n'est qu'un premier habitan,' was the scornful exclamation of the bourgeoisie. Thus enmity was engendered between two classes

Policy of Cardinal Richelieu.

19

which should have been mutually dependent, and the solidarité of society was destroyed.

The statesman who carried these prejudices to their utmost exaggeration was Cardinal Richelieu, who wrote, as the organ of the upper classes, to the Tiers Etát in 1614, that it was the greatest insolence to attempt to establish any sort of equality between the Tiers and the noblesse; and that there was between them as wide a difference as between a master and his valet. Yet this was the minister who delivered to obscure agents the transaction of the most important affairs of the kingdom; whilst, by his encouragement of luxury and extravagance, he was undermining corps after corps of the nobility. In establishing a marine, in organizing great industrial companies, in founding colonies and extending the public debt, Richelieu was preparing for trade and finance a manifest preponderance over the territorial nobility, before whom no career was open but that of arms, and no amusement but dissipation. It seems, as Carné remarks, as if this extraordinary man took pleasure in himself evoking all the forces which were soon to be combined against his own work. He imposed silence on the Parliament, but encouraged the drama, and founded the Gazette of France. The pitiless minister who condemned to indigence the mother of his king, loaded the most obscure writers with his largesses; and he who would not permit the nobles to be seated in his presence, commanded a poet to be covered. A certain intellectual fermentation had been existing in the nation since the sixteenth century. Lights had spread, and the materials of antiquity had been sought out: but lettered men still lived in solitude and inaction; their spirits did not inhabit the real world, and the events of the day seemed of little importance to them. But Richelieu called literature from the cloisters to exercise an influence over the State; and addresses in the vulgar tongue began to stir the hearts of the people.

Soon it appeared that that the literature of France was destined to attract the attention of the world. The writings of Balzac, Mezeray, St. Real, La Mothe, Cardinal de Retz, and others, were read with avidity; whilst Pascal, Molière, Arnauld, Racine, and Corneille, (various as was the character of their genius,) from time to time astonished the world with their productions.

A want of order and discipline had already made itself apparent in the State. The Fronde had in vain attacked everything, effecting and overturning nothing. But, according to the policy of the crafty cardinal, the court, which had become odious to the people, was quietly removed from Paris;