The First Bourbon: Henry IV of France & Navarre by Seward Desmond

Author:Seward, Desmond [Seward, Desmond]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 0094572607
Publisher: Thistle Publishing
Published: 2013-06-18T23:00:00+00:00

Indeed the historian Legrain saw Henri in a dirty white coat, worn and soiled by his armour and with ragged sleeves, and in stockings torn and in holes.13

The nobles had their own solution. They would provide a really large and well paid army on condition that their governorships should become permanent and hereditary fiefs whose possessors would owe the Crown nothing more than formal homage. It was the high watermark of French neo-feudalism. Acceptance of their offer, made in this desperate year of 1596 and supported by the entire nobility including Princes of the Blood like the Duc de Montpensier, would have reduced the King of France to a roi fainéant, his country to a mosaic of petty principalities.

After rejecting this poisoned suggestion, so terrifying in its implications, Henri knew that only Rosny could find money—if it was to be found at all in France. The financial machinery of the Kingdom was an Augean Stable, the preserve for too many years of venal officials, greedy courtiers and tax farmers of mammoth appetite, who all slandered the incorruptible Marquis with unrelenting savagery. Despite literally Herculean efforts Rosny’s success, though remarkable enough, did not produce sufficient revenue for the bottomless abyss of Henri’s needs; every sou went on war or on winning Leaguer magnates. Yet France was already groaning under terrible taxes; ‘the King’s poore people are already with these ciuill Warres so spoyled and impouerished, as there is nothing to be had’.14 To try and raise more might well break her back.

Henri dared not summon the States General whose meetings under Henri III had invariably ended in tumultuous dissension; in any case it was a purely consultative body which could do little more than voice grievances. He therefore called the old feudal Assemblée de Notables. In October they met at Rouen, nine from the clergy, nineteen from the nobility, fifty-two from the bourgeoisie, all men of genuine power and influence; the large number from the Third Estate, mostly members of the Parlements, indicates Henri’s continuing reliance on this class. His opening address made a profound impression.:

If I wanted to acquire the title of orator I would have learned some fine, long harangue and would have spoken it to you gravely enough. But, gentlemen, my desire is to attain to two more glorious titles, which are to call myself liberator and restorer of this State. For which end I have summoned you. You know to your cost, as I do to mine, that when God called me to the Crown, I found France not only almost ruined, but almost entirely lost to Frenchmen. By the grace of God, by the prayers and by the good advice of those of my servants who do not follow the soldier’s profession; by the sword of my brave and generous nobility, among whom I do not take special account of princes, but only of our finest title, the honour of a nobleman (foy de gentilhomme); by my toils and troubles, I have preserved her from this fate.

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