was to take up arms and unite with other princes against the king; though he made religion a pretext, he had no right to take up arms against his sovereign.” And again: “The union of the King of France with the heretics is no longer a matter of doubt; but, after all, Henry of Navarre is worth a great many of Henry III.; this latter will have the measure he meted to the Guises.” So much equity and mental breadth on the pope’s part was better suited for the republic of Venice than for the King of Spain. “We have but one desire,” wrote the Doge Cicogna to Badoero, his ambassador at Rome, “and that is to keep the European peace. We cannot believe that Sixtus V., that great pontiff, is untrue to his charge, which is to ward off from the Christian world the dangers that threaten it; in imitation of Him whom he represents on earth, he will show mercy, and not proceed to acts which would drive the King of France to despair.” During the great struggle with which Europe was engaged in the sixteenth century, the independence of states, religious tolerance, and political liberty thus sometimes found, besides their regular and declared champions, protectors, useful on occasion although they were timid, even amongst the habitual allies of Charles V.’s despotic and persecuting successor.
On arriving before Paris towards the end of July, 1589, the two kings besieged it with an army of forty-two thousand men, the strongest and the best they had ever had under their orders. “The affairs of Henry III.,” says De Thou, “had changed face; fortune was pronouncing for him.” Quartered in the house of Count de Retz, at St. Cloud, he could thence see quite at his ease his city of Paris. “Yonder,” said he, “is the heart of the League; it is there that the blow must be struck. It was great pity to lay in ruins so beautiful and goodly a city. Still, I must settle accounts with the rebels who are in it, and who ignominiously drove me away.” “On Tuesday, August 1, at eight A. M., he was told,” says L’Estoile, “that a monk desired to speak with him, but that his guards made a difficulty about letting him in. ‘Let him in,’ said the king: ‘if he is refused, it will be said that I drive monks away and will not see them.’ Incontinently entered the monk, having in his sleeve a knife unsheathed. He made a profound reverence to the king, who had just got up and had nothing on but a dressing-gown about his shoulders, and presented to him despatches from Count de Brienne, saying that he had further orders to tell the king privately something of importance. Then the king ordered those who were present to retire, and began reading the letter which the monk had brought asking for a private audience afterwards; the monk, seeing the king’s attention taken up with reading, drew his knife from his sleeve and drove it right into the king’s small gut, below the navel, so home that he left the knife in the hole; the which the king having drawn out with great exertion struck the monk a blow with the point of it on his left eyebrow, crying, ‘Ah! wicked monk! he has killed me; kill him!’ At which cry running quickly up, the guards and others, such as happened to be nearest, massacred this assassin of a Jacobin who, as D’Aubigne says, stretched out his two arms against the wall, counterfeiting the crucifix, whilst the blows were dealt him. Having been dragged out dead from the king’s chamber, he was stripped naked to the waist, covered with his gown and exposed to the public.”
Whilst Henry de Valois was thus struck down at St. Cloud, Henry of Navarre had moved with a good number of troops to the Pre-aux-Clercs; and seeing Rosny, who was darting along, pistol in hand, amongst the foremost, he called one of his gentlemen and said, “Maignan, go and tell M. de Rosny to come back; he will get taken or wounded in that rash style.” “I should not care to speak so to him,” answered Maignan. “I will tell him that your Majesty wants him.” Meanwhile up came a gentleman at a gallop, who said three or four words in the King of Navarre’s ear. “My friend,” said Henry to Rosny, “the king has just been wounded with a knife in the stomach; let us go and see about it; come with me.” Henry took with him five and twenty gentlemen. The king received him affectionately, exhorted him to change his religion for his salvation’s sake in another world and his fortunes in this; and, addressing the people of quality who thronged his chamber, he said, “I do pray you as my friends, and as your king I order you, to recognize after my death my brother here. For my satisfaction and as your bounden duty, I pray you to swear it to him in my presence.” All present took the oath. Henry III. spoke in a firm voice; and his wound was not believed to be mortal. Letters were sent in his name to the queen, to the governors of the provinces and to the princes allied to the crown, to inform them of the accident that had happened to the king, “which, please God, will turn out to be nothing.” The King of Navarre asked for some details as to the assassin. James Clement was a young Dominican who, according to report, had been a soldier before he became a monk. He was always talking of waging war against Henry de Valois, and he was called “Captain Clement.” He told a story about a vision he had of an angel, who had bidden him “to put to death the tyrant of France, in return for which he would have the crown of martyrdom.” Royalist writers report that he had been placed in personal communication with the friends of Henry de Guise, even with his sister the Duchess of Montpensier, and his brother the Duke of Mayenne. When well informed of the facts, the King of Navarre returned to his quarters at Meudon, and Rosny to his lodging at the foot of the castle. Whilst Rosny was at supper, his secretary came and said to him, “Sir, the King of Navarre, peradventure the King of France, wants you. M. d’Orthoman writes to him to make haste and come to St. Cloud if he would see the king alive.” The King of Navarre at once departed. Just as he arrived at St. Cloud, he heard in the street cries of “Ah! my God, we are lost!” He was told that the king was dead. Henry III., in fact, expired on the 2d of August, 1589, between two and three in the morning. The first persons Henry of Navarre encountered as he entered the Hotel de Retz were the officers of the Scottish guard, who threw themselves at his feet, saying, “Ah! sir, you are now our king and our master.”
[Illustration: Henry of Navarre and the Scotch Guard—-448]
END OF VOLUME IV.