A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times | Page 7

Henry,
master of the field, gave chase for a while to the fugitives, and then
returned to Arques to thank God for his victory. Mayenne struck his
camp and took the road towards Amiens, to pick up a Spanish corps
which he was expecting from the Low Countries.
[Illustration: Sully----37]
For six months, from September, 1589, to March, 1590, the war
continued without any striking or important events. Henry IV. tried to
stop it after his success at Arques; he sent word to the Duke of
Mayenne by his prisoner Belin, whom he had sent away free on parole,
"that he desired peace, and so earnestly, that, without regarding his
dignity or his victory, he made him these advances, not that he had any
fear of him, but because of the pity he felt for his kingdom's
sufferings." Mayenne, who lay beneath the double yoke of his party's
passions and his own ambitious projects, rejected the king's overtures,
or allowed them to fall through; and on the 21st of October, 1589,
Henry, setting out with his army from Dieppe, moved rapidly on Paris,
in order to effect a strategic surprise, whilst Mayenne was rejecting at
Amiens his pacific inclinations. The king gained three marches on the
Leaguers, and carried by assault the five faubourgs situated on the left
bank of the Seine. He would perhaps have carried terror-stricken Paris
itself, if the imperfect breaking up of the St. Maixent bridge on the
Somme had not allowed Mayenne, notwithstanding his tardiness, to
arrive at Paris in time to enter with his army, form a junction with the
Leaguers amongst the population, and prevail upon the king to carry his
arms elsewhither." The people of Paris," says De Thou, "were
extravagant enough to suppose that this prince could not escape
Mayenne. Already a host of idle and credulous women had been at the
pains of engaging windows, which they let very dear, and which they
had fitted up magnificently, to see the passage of that fanciful triumph
for which their mad hopes had caused them to make every
preparation--before the victory." Henry left some of his lieutenants to
carry on the war in the environs of Paris, and himself repaired, on the
21st of November, to Tours, where the royalist Parliament, the
exchequer-chamber, the court of taxation, and all the magisterial bodies

which had not felt inclined to submit to the despotism of the League,
lost no time in rendering him homage, as the head and the
representative of the national and the lawful cause. He reigned and
ruled, to real purpose, in the eight principal provinces of the North and
Centre--Ile-de-France, Picardy, Champagne, Normandy, Orleanness,
Touraine, Maine, and Anjou; and his authority, although disputed, was
making way in nearly all the other parts of the kingdom. He made war
not like a conqueror, but like a king who wanted to meet with
acceptance in the places which he occupied and which he would soon
have to govern. The inhabitants of Le Mans and of Alencon were able
to reopen their shops on the very day on which their town fell into his
hands, and those of Vendome the day after. He watched to see that
respect was paid by his soldiers, even the Huguenots, to Catholic
churches and ceremonies. Two soldiers, having made their way into Le
Mans, contrary to orders, after the capitulation, and having stolen a
chalice, were hanged on the spot, though they were men of
acknowledged bravery. He protected carefully the bishops and all the
ecclesiastics who kept aloof from political strife. "If minute details are
required," says a contemporary pamphleteer, "out of a hundred or a
hundred and twenty archbishops or bishops existing in the realm of
France not a tenth part approve of the counsels of the League." It was
not long before Henry reaped the financial fruits of his protective
equity; at the close of 1589 he could count upon a regular revenue of
more than two millions of crowns, very insufficient, no doubt, for the
wants of his government, but much beyond the official resources of his
enemies. He had very soon taken his proper rank in Europe: the
Protestant powers which had been eager to recognize him--England,
Scotland, the Low Countries, the Scandinavian states, and Reformed
Germany--had been joined by the republic of Venice, the most
judiciously governed state at that time in Europe, but solely on the
ground of political interests and views, independently of any religious
question. On the accession of Henry IV., his ambassador, Hurault de
Maisse, was received and very well treated at Venice; he was merely
excluded from religious ceremonies: the Venetian people joined in the
policy of their government; the portrait of the new King of France was
everywhere displayed and purchased throughout Venice. Some
Venetians went