served was not at liberty to leave it; and adding, that he should follow the prince's example in going to mass. Though the king of Navarre had saved his life by this submission, yet in other things he was treated very indifferently; and suffered a thousand capricious insults. He was obliged, against his will, to stay some years at the court of France; he knew very well how to dissemble his chagrin; and he often diverted it by gallantries, and the lady de Sauves, wife to one of the secretaries of state, became one of his chief mistresses. But still he did not neglect such political measures as seemed practicable, and he had a hand in those that were formed to take away the government from Catharine de Medicis, and to expel the Guises from court; which that queen discovering, caused him and the duke of Alençon to be arrested, set guards upon them, and ordered them to be examined upon many heinous allegations. They were set at liberty by Henry III. for Charles IX. died, 1574, in the most exquisite torments and horrors, the massacre of St. Bartholomew's-day having been always in his mind. Sully employed his leisure in the most advantageous manner he was able. He found it impracticable in a court to pursue the study of the learned languages, or of any thing called learning; but the king of Navarre ordered him. to be taught mathematics and history, and all those exercises which give ease and gracefulness to the person; that method of educating youth, with a particular attention to the formation of the manners, being peculiar to Henry, who was himself educated in the same way.

In 1576, the king of Navarre made his escape from the court of France, while on a hunting-party near Senlis ; from whence, his guards being dispersed, he instantly passed the Seine at Poissy, and went to Tours, where he no sooner arrived than he resumed the exercise of the Protestant religion. A war was now expected; and Catharine de Medicis began to tremble in her turn: and, indeed, from that time to 1589, Henry's life presents us only with a mixture of battles, negociations, and love-intrigues, which last made no inconsiderable part of his business. Sully was one of those who attended him in his flight, and who continued to attend him to the end of his life, serving him in the different capacities of soldier and statesman, as the various conditions of his affairs required. Henry's wife, whom Catharine had brought to him in 1578, was a great impediment to him; yet by his management she was sometimes VOL. XXIX.

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of use also. There were frequent ruptures between him and the court of France; but at last Henry III. confederated with him sincerely, and in good earnest, to resist the League, which was more furious than ever, after the death of the duke of Guise and the cardinal his brother. The reconciliation and confederacy of these two kings was concluded in April 1589: their interview was at Tours the 30th of that month, attended with great demonstration of mutual satisfaction. They joined their troops some time after to lay siege to Paris: they besieged it in person, and were upon the point of conquering that great city, when the king of France was assassinated by James Clement, a Dominican friar, the 1st of August, at the village of St. Cloud. "The league," says Henault, "is perhaps the most extraordinary event in history; and Henry III. may be reckoned the weakest prince in not foreseeing, that he should render himself dependant on that party by becoming their chief. The Protestants had made war against him, as an enemy of their sect; and the leaguers murdered him on account of his uniting with the king of Navarre, the chief of the Huguenots."

Henry III. upon his death-bed declared the king of Navarre his successor, who accordingly succeeded him, but not without very great difficulties. He was acknowledged king by most of the lords, whether catholic or protestant, who happened then to be at court; but the leaguers refused absolutely to acknowledge his title till he had renounced the protestant religion; and the city of Paris persisted in its revolt till the 22d of March, 1594. He embraced the catholic religion, as the only method of putting an end to the miseries of France, by the advice of Sully, whom he had long taken into the sincerest confidence; and the celebrated Du Perron, afterwards cardinal, was made the instrument of his conversion. He attempted also to convert Sully, but in vain: "My parents bred me," said the minister, in the opinions and doctrines of the reformed religion, and I have continued constant in the profession of it; neither threatenings, promises, variety of events, nor the change even of the king my protector, joined to his most tender solicitations, have ever been able to make me renounce it."

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This change of religion in Henry IV. though it seemed to create a present satisfaction, did not secure him from continual plots and troubles; and being made upon poli

tical motives, it was natural to suppose it not sincere. Thus, Dec. 26, 1594, a scholar, named John Chastel, attempted to assassinate the king, but only wounded him in the mouth; and when he was interrogated concerning the crime, readily answered, “That he came from the college of the Jesuits," and then accused those fathers of having instigated him to it. The king, who was present at his examination, said with much gaiety, that "he had heard, from the mouths of many persons, that the society never loved him, and he was now convinced of it by his own.” Some writers have related, that this assassination was attempted when he was with the fair Gabrielle, his mistress, at the hotel d'Estrées; but Sully, who was with him, says that it was at Paris, in his apartments in the Louvre. This Gabrielle was the favourite mistress of Henry IV. and it is said that the king intended to marry her; but she died in 1599, the year that his marriage with Margaret of Valois, sister of Charles IX. was declared null and void by the pope's commissioners, with consent of both parties. He married Mary of Medicis, at Lyons, the year after, and appointed madame de Guercheville, to whom he had made love without success, to be one of her ladies of honour; saying, that "since she was a lady of real honour, she should be in that post with the queen his wife." Henry, though he was a great monarch, was not always successful in his addresses to the fair; and a noble saying is recorded by many writers of Catharine, sister to the viscount de Rohan, who replied to a declaration of gallantry from this prince, that" she was too poor to be his wife, and of too good a family to be his mistress."

Sully was now the first minister; and he performed all the offices of a great and good minister, while Henry performed the offices of a great and good king. He attended to every part of the government; prosecuted extortioners, and those who were guilty of embezzling the public money; and, in short, restored the kingdom, in a few years, from a most desperate to a most flourishing condition; which, however, he could not have done, if the king bad not resolutely supported him against favourite mistresses, the cabals of court, and the factions of state, which would otherwise have overwhelmed him. The king himself turned bis whole application to every thing that might be useful, or even convenient, to his kingdom, without suffering things that happened out of it to pass unobserved, as soon

as he had put an end to the civil wars of France, and had concluded a peace with Spain at Vervins, on the 2d of May, 1598. The state of the finances of France was at this time in a wretched situation, as many of the provinces were entirely exhausted, and none of them in a condition of bearing any new imposition. The standing revenues brought into the king's coffers no more than thirty millions, though an hundred and fifty millions were raised on the people: so great were the abuses of that government in raising money; and they were not less in the dispensation. of it. The whole scheme of the administration was a scheme of fraud, and all who served cheated the public, from the highest offices down to the lowest; from the commissioners of the treasury, down to the under farmers and under treasurers. Sully beheld this state of things, when he came to have the sole superintendency of affairs, with horror; he was ready to despair: but zeal for his master and for his country animated his endeavours, and he resolved to make the reformation of abuses, the reduction of expences, and a frugal management, the fund for the payment of national debts, and for all the great things he intended to do, without overcharging the people. This plan fully succeeded. The people were immediately eased, trade revived, the king's coffers were filled, a maritime power was created, and every thing necessary was prepared to put the nation in a condition of executing great designs, whenever great conjunctures should offer themselves. "Such," says Bolingbroke, "was the effect of twelve years of wise and honest administration: and this effect would have shewed itself in great enterprises against the house of Austria, more formidable in these days than the house of Bourbon has been in ours, if Henry IV. had not been stabbed by one of those assassins, into whose hands the interest of this house, and the frenzy of religion, had put the dagger more than once."

Henry was murdered the 17th of May, 1610; and, it appears, had many presages of his cruel destiny, which, Sully tells us," were indeed dreadful and surprising to the last degree." The queen was to be crowned purely to gratify her, for Henry was vehemently against the coronation; and, the nearer the moment approached, the more his terrors increased. "In this state of overwhelming horror, which," says Sully, "at first I thought an unpardonable weakness, he opened his whole heart to me: his.

own words will be more affecting than all I can say. Oh! my friend,' said he, this coronation does not please me: I know not what is the meaning of it, but my heart tells me some fatal accident will happen.' He sat down, as he spoke these words, upon a chair in my closet; and, resigning himself some time to all the horror of his melancholy apprehensions, he suddenly started up, and cried out, Par Dieu, I shall die in this city; they will murder me here; I see plainly they have made my death their only resource" for he had then great designs on foot against Spain and the house of Austria. He repeated these forebodings several times, which Sully as often treated as chimeras; but they proved realities.

After the death of his master, by which he was greatly afflicted, Sully retired from court; for, a new reign introducing new men and new measures, he was no longer regarded. The life he led in retreat was accompanied with decency, grandeur, and even majesty; yet it was, in some measure, embittered with domestic troubles, arising from the extravagance and ill conduct of his eldest son, the marquis of Rosni. He died Dec. 22, 1641, aged eighty-three, and his duchess caused a statue to be erected over his burying-place, with this inscription: "Here lies the body of the most high, most puissant, and most illustrious lord, Maximilian de Bethune, marquis of Rosni, who shared in all the fortunes of king Henry the Great; among which was that memorable battle, which gave the crown to the victor; where, by his valour, he gained the white standard, and took several prisoners of distinction. He was by that great monarch, in reward of his many virtues and distinguished merit, honoured with the diguities of duke, peer, and marshal of France, with the governments of the Upper and Lower Poitou, with the office of grand master of the ordnance; in which, bearing the thunder of his Jupiter, he took the castle of Montmelian, till then believed impregnable, and many other fortresses of Savoy. He was likewise made superintendant of the finances, which office he discharged singly, with a wise and prudent œconomy; and continued his faithful services till that unfortunate day, when the Cæsar of the French nation lost his life by the hand of a parricide. After the lamented death of that great king, he retired from public affairs, and passed the remainder of his life in ease and tranquillity. He died at the castle of Villebon, Dec. 22, 1641, aged 82.”