is not the gold which represents it but the toil which creates it.

Philip II. died in 1598 of that hideous disease phthiri-
asis. He left behind him one of the most terrible examples
of the fatal influence of despotism upon the life of nations. A
century later the Marquis de Torcy said of Spain: "It is a
soulless body." Philip had made of her, as we already
said, a living corpse. To-day this corpse is becoming re-
animate, but so profound had been the deadly influence that
respectable people were there, as recently as 1862, con-
demned to the galleys for having read a Protestant Bible.

England had just passed through a terrible crisis. But
the menaces of Philip II. and the plots of the Catholics re-
Pros erit of su ^ te( ^ m exalting English patriotism, the
England and popularity and power of the queen, and in fine
the ardor of the Anglican faith. As England
came forth victorious from the struggle she found herself
raised in the opinion of her children and of Europe by all
the height which Spain descended. To ward off her perils
a dictatorship had been necessary; it existed after the danger
was averted, and the royal authority remained so absolute that
the historian Hume could say that the English government
resembled an Oriental despotism. It resembled it by its
force and, moreover, by its acts. Elizabeth persecuted not
only the Catholics but also the Non-conformists, Puritans or



24 2 THE CATHOLIC RESTORATION. [BOOK IV.

Independents, who, going beyond the point where the queen
desired to arrest the Reform, rejected the episcopal hierarchy,
the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts, and the ceremonies
of the faith. Against them all, that is, against the sanctuary
of conscience, which must always remain free, Elizabeth
promulgated an appalling mass of laws which form an odious
code, and were justified by the threadbare excuse of every
tyranny political necessity. And what was the result of
this arbitrariness and of these violences? Read the follow-
ing testimony of a Protestant : "The Church was not left by
Elizabeth in a situation which could demand praises for the
policy of its chiefs. After forty years of persecutions con-
stantly aggravated against the Non-conformists their numbers
had increased, their popularity had become unquestioned,
their hostility to the established order was more irrecon-
cilable." A revolution existed in the germ; the second
successor of Elizabeth was to behold it accomplished
against himself.

This religious tyranny served political despotism ; for to
better attack the Catholics, their common adversaries, the
fanatics of both parties, Anglican and Puritan, allowed full
latitude to the crown in violating the laws. The Star
Chamber cited before it the jurors when they had acquitted
some accused person whom the court wished to destroy, and
condemned those jurors to enormous fines or to prison with-
out fixed period; hence trial by jury, the most precious of
English guarantees, no longer existed. So the writer whom
we quoted a little while ago could say without exceeding
the truth, "In the trials for high treason our courts of jus-
tice differed little from veritable caverns of assassins. ' ' The
Privy Council, sometimes a single one of its members, in its
own name inflicted arbitrary imprisonments; the ministers
employed all the rigors of martial law without discrimination,
even repressing with severity petty disturbances caused by
a few noisy apprentices.

Though the jury was almost suppressed, Parliament still
existed. Elizabeth tolerated no remonstrance on its part.
In 1581 the Commons having ordered a. fast and public
prayers, they were compelled to beg pardon. Whoever
freely raised his voice in either House was cast into prison.
Despite her luxury, attested by the 3000 dresses found at
her death, Elizabeth elsewhere ruled with an economy that
often dispensed her from demanding subsidies. She hus-



CHAP. XVI.] CONSEQUENCES OF THE WARS. 243

banded the purse of her subjects to the great profit of her
power. Let us add that at times she knew how to yield
advantageously. In 1601 she had conceded a number of
monopolies. The price of everything rose; a formidable
riot began. The queen withdrew what she had granted
and thanked the Commons for having warned her in
season.

Besides, posterity forgets Parliament and its rights when
the queen appears to us between Shakspere and Bacon, sur-
rounded by statesmen like Burleigh and mariners like Drake,
Hawkins, Frobisher, Raleigh, and Davis. Drake was the
first captain who circumnavigated the globe, Magellan
having died on the way, and the first to double Cape Horn,
of which he should be considered the discoverer. When he
reached England Elizabeth went on board his vessel to
herself dub him knight. Hawkins, relative of Drake, is
specially celebrated for the development which he gave to
the slave traffic, a commerce which did not then carry with
it the odium justly attached to it since. Frobisher was the
first English sailor, subsequent to Sebastian Cabot, who in
order to reach China sought the Northwest Passage, which
has just been discovered after three centuries of effort and
heroism. Davis discovered the strait which bears his name.
Gilbert planted some colonists in Newfoundland. Raleigh
led others to that part of North America to which in honor
of the virgin queen he gave the name of Virginia, and
imported into England the potato, assuredly the most
precious of all his discoveries. He also was the first to
transplant the cherry to Ireland. The colonists whom he
had left in Virginia adopted the habit of smoking, which
from there passed over to England.

Manufactures under Elizabeth made prodigious progress.
Numerous Flemish emigrants, fleeing the Spanish yoke,
established themselves at various points of the English terri-
tory, especially in Lancashire, married there, and placing
their industry at the service of the country where they had
found an asylum, increased the already considerable activity
in woolen manufactures. Also Flemings at the same period
replaced the humble stalls in London, where till then had
been sold only pottery and brushes, by vast magazines
where were displayed the products of all the world. Let
us not forget that Elizabeth in person inaugurated (January
25, 1571) the Royal Exchange at London, founded by the



244 THE CA THOLIC RESTORA TION. [BOOK IV.

munificence of the banker Thomas Gresham when the pre-
cious system of commercial insurance began.

Elizabeth, however, ended her glorious reign in sadness.
The presumptuous Earl of Essex, who had succeeded the
Earl of Leicester in her affection, finally exhausted the
patience of the queen and was disgraced. Because he had
seen the court at his feet he believed himself strong enough
to expel the ministers, and (February 8, 1601) he appeared in
the streets of London, sword in hand, followed by two or
three hundred partisans, and called upon the people to
revolt. The people did not stir. The earl was taken
prisoner, condemned to death, and as he obstinately refused
to sue for pardon, executed. But after that day Elizabeth
only languished. She died April 3, 1603, aged seventy
years. She had done two things which had contributed
much to the greatness of England. She had thrown it irrev-
ocably into the ways of Protestantism at the same time that
she had shown it the scepter of the ocean which it might
seize; by recognizing the King of Scotland as her successor
she had hastened the union of that country with England.

Under Elizabeth lived two great men who belong rather
to humanity than to their native land, Shakspere and Bacon.
Yet no poet was more national than Shakspere: he is the
English genius personified in its free and haughty bearing,
its ruggedness, its depth, and its melancholy. The literary
creations of Shakspere form a monument unique in modern
history. Even to-day he is the writer whom England can
oppose with pride to everything admirable which ancients
and moderns have produced in dramatic art. Born in 1564,
he died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two. His principal works
are "Othello," "Hamlet," "Macbeth," "King Lear,"
"Richard III.," "Romeo and Juliet," "The Merchant
ofVenice," "Csesar," and "The Tempest." Far below him
but holding an honorable rank are placed Philip Sidney, a
great lord, who was poet and diplomat; Spenser, author of
"The Faerie Queene;" and Ben Jonson, a comic poet and
satirist, who was the friend of Shakspere.

Francis Bacon, born in 1561, is one of the founders of
modern philosophy. In his "De Augmentis Scientiarum,"
published in 1623, and in his" Novum Organum," published
in 1620, he opened a new path to the sciences, freeing them
both from routine and venturesome hypotheses by the sub-
stitution of patient observation and repeated experiment.



CHAP. XVI.] CONSEQUENCES OF THE WARS. 245

Unhappily he degraded his character by unbridled cupidity.
He was appointed in 1619 Lord High Chancellor of England,
and later this man of transcendent genius was sent to prison;
condemned for peculation.

The republic of the United Provinces had neither poet
nor philosopher; she had not yet reached that luxury of
great communities which have become settled and tranquil;
but the terrible struggle she had just endured had increased,
not crippled, her strength. Her soil, half submerged, which
nature defends so well, had become the battlefield of reli-
gious liberty against intolerance. All men in Europe who
fled the stake or persecution flocked under the flag of the
United Provinces. Thus its army was always full without
agriculture and the marine ever lacking the necessary hands.
The provinces of Holland and Zealand alone counted 70,000
sailors. While Ostend sustained a siege of thirty-nine
months (1601-04) which cost the life of 60,000 confederates
but also of 80,000 Spaniards, the Batavians covered the sea
with their ships. During the very year in which the heroic
city yielded to Spinola its crumbled ramparts the fishermen
poured into the public treasury by the one tax imposed
upon their industry the enormous sum of 5,000,000 florins;
.and a Dutch fleet through the conquest of the Moluccas
laid at the extremities of the world the foundations of a new
colonial empire.

The Dutch being able to obtain almost nothing from
their soil for exportation, became ocean carriers and harvest-
ers of the sea. Their hardy fishermen, in constant pursuit of
the booty which the fruitful waters bestowed, furnished with
salt provisions almost all Europe, even the Catholic coun-
tries, where weekly abstinence from meat made them a neces-
sity. It was a truthful saying that Holland exchanged her
tons of herrings for tons of gold. Besides, her merchants did
business on commission. With their ships they went to take
at a low price commodities where they abounded and to
carry them where they were wanting. Every year two or
three thousand Dutch vessels entered the French harbors to
carry away French grain, wines, and brandy, and more than
400 under a foreign flag entered even the ports of Spain,
which with the treasures of the New World paid those rebels
for the grain of Poland and the northern products which
Spain lacked.

Philip II. closed Lisbon to them in 1594, In the follow-



246 THE CA THOLIC RESTORA TION. [BOOK IV.

ing year they formed the Company of Distant Countries, in
order to go for spices to the very place of production; and
the rapid success of this society brought about the creation
in 1602 of the great East India Company, which, utilizing
the hatred excited by the Portuguese, established factories
and fortresses at Java, Amboyna, Tidor, Formosa, in the
island of Ceylon, and at Malacca. In thirteen years it
armed 800 ships and captured from the enemy 545, the hulls
and cargoes of which brought in 180,000,000 livres. The
dividends of the stockholders were never less than twenty
per cent., and sometimes rose to fifty per cent. Those fair
days have passed away, but so much wealth was amassed in
the hands of the "Beggars' " descendants that Holland still
remains one of the countries where capital most abounds,
and Amsterdam is one of the great financial markets of the
world.

Henry had paid dearly for the submission of the chiefs
of the league: by the edict of Nantes he left the Protestants

a respectable political existence. He meant,
tion C of g 1^rance however, that there should be in France only
by Henry iv. one will, his own. On coming out from so

terrible wars the country needed repose, order,
and security. Henry wished to give it these conditions of
social existence. Leaguers and Protestants wished to es-
tablish the working of society only by a party. Above all
the individual passions the king set up the force and intelli-
gence of a government absolute but indifferent to the animos-
ities of the past and solicitous for national interests and
greatness.

The financial disorder was extreme. The public debt was
estimated at 345,000,000 francs, or about 1,300,000,000
francs money of to-day. France paid annually 170,000,000
francs, without reckoning seignorial dues and feudal forced
labor. The net revenue amounted hardly to 30,000,000
francs, from which 19,000,000 francs were to be deducted
to meet the liabilities of the state. Almost all the
royal domain was alienated. From top to bottom of the
financial administration through all the degrees there
was peculation. The state did not know exactly what it
ought to receive, nor even what it did receive, so much that
was paid in disappeared on the way. Henry IV. in
1599 appointed Sully, one of his old companions in arms,
superintendent of the finances. The new minister wished



CHAP. XVI.] CONSEQUENCES OF THE WARS. 247

to make himself acquainted with everything. A chamber
of justice prosecuted unfaithful agents; the collectors were
bound to keep exact accounts with confirmatory proofs. He
forbade the governors to levy arbitrary imposts upon the
provinces, revised all the credits, annulled many, and raised
the leases of the public farms. Many useless offices, fraudu-
lent annuities, and illegal immunities were suppressed and
others diminished. Many people who had conferred nobility
on themselves re-entered the class of the tax payers. He-
redity of offices, officially constituted in 1604 by the annual
right of paulette,* was a measure less honorable than the
preceding, but it aided the royal treasury.

To exactitude in the receipts corresponded a wise economy
in expenses. So at the close of the reign of Henry IV. his
government had paid debts amounting to 147,000,000 francs,
had ransomed domains to the amount of 80,000,000, had
extinguished 8,000,000 of annuities, and had reduced the
impost from 30,000,000 to 26,000,000, of which 22,000,000
entered clear into the treasury, employed 40,000,000 in for-
tifications or public works, made secure the service of the
current year, and amassed a reserve of 20,000,000.

Economy husbands wealth but does not create it. Henry
IV. and Sully sought it from agriculture, commerce, and
manufactures. Henry devoted his attention equally to these
three sources of public fortune. Sully was more exclusively
in favor of agriculture. "Cultivation and pasturage," wrote
he in his "Royal Economies," "are the two breasts that
nourish the state." Twice he traversed the provinces (1596,
1598) in order to himself study the needs of the country, and
he caused the passage of the great ordinance of 1600 which
absolved the people from arrears of taxes amounting to
20,000,000, and reduced the land tax about 1,800,000 francs.
In 1596 he renewed the ancient prohibition against seizing
the person of laborers, their tools or beasts of burden, for
public or private debt; severe ordinances decreed the
penalty of death against all military men who roamed over the
country, and against whoever was found carrying weapons

* The dues paid annually by many officers of justice and finance to the
king that they might dispose of their offices, whose revenue was to descend
to their heirs should they die before the expiration of the year. These
dues were first established in 1604 by the secretary of the king's cham-
ber, Paulet (whence the name paulette), and were fixed at one-sixtieth of
the current value of the office. ED.



248 THE CA THOLIC RESTORA TIOX. [BOOK IV.

and not in the service of the king or a gentleman At last
in 1601 Sully permitted the export of grain, a bold measure
for the period, and yet one which was destined to enrich
the country and far from causing famine. He favored the
drainage of the marshes. All land reclaimed from the
water became noble, that is to say, not subject to taxation.
Thus was formed quite a canton on the Medoc, called Little
Flanders because of the large number of Flemish workmen
who were charged with the works under the direction of
Bradley of Brabant, the master of the dikes. A Protestant
gentleman of Languedoc, Olivier de Serre, deserves to be
called father of French agriculture on account of the
maxims which he gives in his "Theater of Agriculture," and
his "Management of the Fields," which he applied himself in
a sort of model farm.

Sully said like Pliny that work in the fields makes good
soldiers "Ex agricultura strenuissimi milites." The
worthy gentleman feared that manufactures would render
the French unaccustomed to active life, to the open air which
bestows strength and health, and that by living shut up in
manufacturing establishments the population would degen-
erate. He was thus opposed to the importation of foreign
systems and foreign manufactures, and held the idea that
God had given to each country either abundance or lack of
certain things "so that by the commerce and traffic in these
things intercourse and copartnership should be maintained
between the nations." Henry IV. thought otherwise; he
endeavored to propagate in France the culture of the mul-
berry tree and the raising of silkworms. The Tuileries
and the site of the Tournelles, Place Royale, were planted
with mulberry trees; he wished to have a nursery in every
electoral seat, and he began by the communities of Paris,
Orleans, and Tours, where numerous silkworm nurseries rose
to liberate France from the tribute which for years she paid
Italy in the purchase of her silk. A like intention is revealed
in his foundation of manufactories of fine crape of Bologna,
of gold thread like that of Milan, of which there was
annually imported into France 1,200,000 crowns' worth, of
carpets of thick warp, gilded leather, glass wares, crystal
glasses, mirrors, Dutch cloths, and the like. This was a
better way to keep the gold in the kingdom than the prohibi-
tions by which Sully sought to arrest its export. In 1604
the king convoked an "Assembly of Commerce." Among



CHAP. XVI.] CONSEQUENCES OF THE WARS. 249

other things a general reformation of the guilds was pro-
posed and the foundation of studs, that France should no
longer be under the necessity of buying war horses in
Germany, Spain, Turkey, and England.

The war marine developed by Francis I. had fallen so
low that Cardinal d'Ossat wrote in 1596 to Villeroy, "The
pettiest princes of Italy, notwithstanding that the most of
them have each only an inch of sea, nevertheless have
galleys in their naval arsenal, while a great kingdom, flanked
its whole length by two seas, has no means of defending
itself on the water against pirates and corsairs, and even
less against princes." D'Ossat disclosed at the same time
the importance of the port of Toulon. Sully had no aver-
sion to the navy, but distant colonies frightened him. The
views of Henry IV. went farther than those of his min-
isters ; to encourage commerce with North America, which
increased to such a degree that in 1578 there came to New-
foundland alone 150 French ships, he sent Champlain,
a gentleman of Saintonge, to found in Canada in 1604
Port Royal (to-day Annapolis), and later (1608) Quebec on
the St. Lawrence. The name of this mariner remains
attached to one of the great lakes of the country, but the
country itself is no longer French, though it has preserved
the language and cherishes sweet souvenirs of the mother
country. Henry thought even of creating a company of
the Indies capable of rivaling those which were formed in
England and Holland; he had not the time to realize this
project; but he signed a treaty with Turkey in which it was
stipulated that all Christian nations could carry on com-
merce freely in the Levant under the banner and protection
of France and under the orders of the foreign consuls.
That flag was the only one respected on the Barbary coasts.

One still sees here and there on the French hills a few aged
elms which the peasants call Rosnis.* They are vestiges of
highways traced by Sully, who well knew that the most
fertile country remains poor if the communications are
bad. The plans of all the great canals by which France was
afterward furrowed were then conceived. One only could
then be executed, that of Briare, which leaves the Loire and
joins the Seine at Moret, 9 kilometers from Fontaine-

* Sully was born at Rosny, and was often called Rosny or Rosni him-
self, a name commonly applied by the peasants to anything connected
with him Eu.



250 THE CA THOLIC RESTORA TION. [BOOK IV.

bleau. This is the oldest example of a canal with locks
uniting two different slopes. Its length is 55 kilometers,
its inclination is 117 meters, served by 40 locks.

The provincial legions of Francis I. and Henry II. had
not been entirely destroyed; some of their companies
remained, from which regiments were formed. There were
only four of these regiments in 1595, commanded by camp
masters. Henry raised them to eleven, Louis XIII. to
thirty. But the habit of hiring foreign troops continued.
The cavalry still formed an undue proportion of the army,
the nobility wishing to serve only there. The military house
of the king constituted a select corps. The artillery in the
hands of Sully assumed such importance that its grand
master was included among the great officers of the crown.
After 1572 no lord was permitted to keep cannon in his
castle without express permission from the king. Sully
introduced the system of monthly payments, the soldiers
being formerly paid only two or four times a year. The
superintendent of fortifications was first appointed in 1598,
that of the commissariat in 1597. These two great depart-
ments, now regulated, had formerly depended upon luck.
Sully carefully watched over them; he had a number of for-
tresses repaired, and those arsenals restocked which the civil
war had emptied. Finally, Henry IV. entertained the idea
which Louis XIV. realized so magnificently of assuring an
asylum to veteran soldiers, but his hospital of charity in the
Rue de Lourcine did not survive him.

The solicitude of Henry IV. for the prosperity of France
acquired him a legitimate popularity. His weaknesses were
forgotten; men saw only the king who promised an asylum
to the invalided soldier, and to the peasant a chicken in the
kettle every Sunday. But if the people blessed him it was
otherwise with certain parties and certain men whom his
glorious policy wounded profoundly. The favor shown
Gabrielle d'Estrees, whom he made Duchess of Beaufort,
that shown Henriette d'Entraigues, whom he created March-
ioness de Verneuil, promises forgotten, services rendered
to the King of Navarre and which the King of France could
not pay, made some murmur and excited others to plots.

The most celebrated of these conspiracies was that of
Marshal de Biron. The foreigner had his share in it. The
Duke of Savoy could not console himself for the loss of La
Bresse, nor Spain for having endured so many humiliations.



CHAP. XVI.] CONSEQUENCES OF THE WARS. 251

They endeavored to take revenge by urging the French
lords to revolt, who having seen the king so impoverished
a gentleman, obeyed him only regretfully. The able but
haughty Biron was in the front rank of those who found the
yoke of the king and of the law too heavy. The first time,
in 1600, Henry pardoned him, and he would have pardoned
him a second time if Biron had consented to make the
avowals which Henry asked him. Irritated by his obstinacy
and willing to give the nobility one of those examples which
Richelieu was to multiply, he allowed the sentence to be
executed. Biron was beheaded (1602). Another old
friend of the king, the Duke de Bouillon, was implicated in
this conspiracy, but he fled in season. The father and
brother of the Marchioness de Verneuil intrigued once
more with Spain in 1604 and were condemned to death.
The marchioness obtained commutation of the penalty.