A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times | Page 2

the crown, he must
first of all abjure. Henry firmly rejected these threatening entreaties,

and left their camp with an urgent recommendation, to them to think of
it well before bringing dissension into the royal army and the royal
party which were protecting their privileges, their property, and their
lives against the League. On returning to his quarters, he noticed the
arrival of Marshal de Biron, who pressed him to lay hands without
delay upon the crown of France, in order to guard it and save it. But, in
the evening of that day and on the morrow, at the numerous meetings
of the lords to deliberate upon the situation, the ardent Catholics
renewed their demand for the exclusion of Henry from the throne if he
did not at once abjure, and for referring the election of a king to the
states-general. Biron himself proposed not to declare Henry king, but to
recognize him merely as captain-general of the army pending his
abjuration. Harlay de Sancy vigorously maintained the cause of the
Salic law and the hereditary rights of monarchy. Biron took him aside
and said, I had hitherto thought that you had sense; now I doubt it. If,
before securing our own position with the King of Navarre, we
completely establish his, he will no longer care for us. The time is
come for making our terms; if we let the occasion escape us, we shall
never recover it." "What are your terms?" asked Sancy. "If it please the
king to give me the countship of Perigord, I shall be his forever." Sancy
reported this conversation to the king, who promised Biron what he
wanted.
Though King of France for but two days past, Henry IV. had already
perfectly understood and steadily taken the measure of the situation. He
was in a great minority throughout the country as well as the army, and
he would have to deal with public passions, worked by his foes for their
own ends, and with the personal pretensions of his partisans. He made
no mistake about these two facts, and he allowed them great weight;
but he did not take for the ruling principle of his policy and for his first
rule of conduct the plan of alternate concessions to the different parties
and of continually humoring personal interests; he set his thoughts
higher, upon the general and natural interests of France as he found her
and saw her. They resolved themselves, in his eyes, into the following
great points: maintenance of the hereditary rights of monarchy,
preponderance of Catholics in the government, peace between
Catholics and Protestants, and religious liberty for Protestants. With

him these points became the law of his policy and his kingly duty, as
well as the nation's right. He proclaimed them in the first words that he
addressed to the lords and principal personages of state assembled
around him. "You all know," said he, "what orders the late king my
predecessor gave me, and what he enjoined upon me with his dying
breath. It was chiefly to maintain my subjects, Catholic or Protestant, in
equal freedom, until a council, canonical, general, or national, had
decided this great dispute. I promised him to perform faithfully that
which he bade me, and I regard it as one of my first duties to be as
good as my word. I have heard that some who are in my army feel
scruples about remaining in my service unless I embrace the Catholic
religon. No doubt they think me weak enough for them to imagine that
they can force me thereby to abjure my religion and break my word. I
am very glad to inform them here, in presence of you all, that I would
rather this were the last day of my life than take any step which might
cause me to be suspected of having dreamt of renouncing the religion
that I sucked in with my mother's milk, before I have been better
instructed by a lawful council, to whose authority I bow in advance. Let
him who thinks so ill of me get him gone as soon as he pleases; I lay
more store by a hundred good Frenchmen than by two hundred who
could harbor sentiments so unworthy. Besides, though you should
abandon me, I should have enough of friends left to enable me, without
you and to your shame, with the sole assistance of their strong arms, to
maintain the rights of my authority. But were I doomed to see myself
deprived of even that assistance, still the God who has preserved me
from my infancy, as if by His own hand, to sit upon the throne, will not
abandon me. I nothing doubt that He will uphold me where He has
placed me, not for love of me, but