Part 9

When the civil war broke out Henri of Navarre took the lead with furious energy on the Protestant side; and it was then that he won his reputation for soldiering and for romance. The white plume of Navarre has been an oriflamme for many a novelist ever since. And it was more than romance, though treated romantically by Macaulay in his _Battle of Ivry_. Henry had bound upon his head a great plume of white peacock feathers just before the battle. “Should the standards fall,” he cried, “rally round the white plume of Navarre. I promise you that it shall be found in the thickest of the fighting.” He made good his boast, for he charged the Catholics two horses’ lengths ahead of his followers, and fought furiously until his sword was beaten out of shape and his right arm swelled with over-exertion—I suppose the lymphatics of the arm became somehow obstructed, but I confess I do not quite understand the pathological condition; still, the incident made a great impression upon his soldiers and gave Henri of Navarre a name for immense courage and enterprise. As a result of many hours’ fierce fighting the Protestants swept the field, partly because the Swiss mercenaries, finding that the League had not paid their wages, surrendered incontinently. “Pas d’argent—pas de Suisse,” was their excellent motto, which the League should have remembered. If Henri had swept on to Paris the opinion is that he might have entered it with very little trouble. But he had no money, he had fired away all his ammunition, and the roads were made impassable by recent rains; moreover, even if Paris had opened her gates to him the Pope would never have ceased his hostility to a Protestant king of France; and once more the old spectre of civil war, interminable, bloodthirsty, and dreadful, would have arisen. And, after all, the majority of Frenchmen were Catholic; and the mighty power of Spain waited just over the Pyrenees to help the Pope if indeterminate civil war should occur. Paris lay, weakly defended, ready for assault; but it would have been a terrible crime for Henri to give the word, and to subject his capital to a worse than St. Bartholomew. So he agreed to “receive instruction,” saying before he did so that his religion was that of all brave men. Paris, strictly invested, suffered the worst horrors of famine. Soldiers killed and ate stray children, and a woman even salted down and ate her own babies who had died of starvation. It is said that the poor creature went “melancholy” from this Thyestian feast, and who can wonder? The great Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma, was arriving from the Netherlands with a relieving army of Spaniards; he outmanœuvred Henri, and opened navigation to the beleaguered city. Henri could neither pay his men nor would he permit them to pay themselves by the sack of the city, so naturally they went home. Henri and a few faithful friends and horse soldiers retired to watch and hope. Thus was fulfilled the prophecy of his great, though somewhat thrifty, ally, Elizabeth of England, that “if God shall, by His merciful grace, grant you victory, I swear to you that it will be more than your carelessness deserves.” Kipling, in an unforgettable phrase, has told us all about the “female of the species”; and in many ways, Elizabeth was the female of the species to which Henri Quatre belonged. The daughter of Henry VIII would have had no mercy if her own ends had been at stake. And yet, I don’t know. Tilly a few years afterwards showed at Magdeburg the horrors that could be perpetrated by religious enthusiasts; and one hates to think that Elizabeth’s famous patriotism could ever have allowed her to sacrifice London for a point of belief. Henri Quatre had not only allowed friends in Paris to be fed while he was supposed to be investing it savagely, but he had allowed it to slip through his fingers when he might have captured it, all through a tender-heartedness that would spare its citizens the horrors of a Magdeburgian sack. It is no wonder that with all his faults he is one of the heroes of France. Then Parma, finding that the Parisians hated Spanish pride more than they hated French Protestants, went away with his invincible army; and as soon as his back was turned Henri resumed the siege. Parma had proved, if nothing more, that he was a better strategist than Henri Quatre; but Paris returned to the old misery of starvation and disease, a misery that it has so often braved nobly.

And now began Henri’s more serious troubles with women. For a long time he had an affair with one Madame de Grasmont, whom he called Corisande. To her he wrote the most passionate of letters. Anybody would think to read them that he really loved her; but even as he besieged Paris he had fallen in love with the abbesses of Poissy and Montmartre, whose profession should have taught them wisdom if not virtue. Now came a more serious affair. In 1590 he met a Gabrielle d’Estrees, with whom he fell violently in love while he was “carrying on” with the other three ladies. She already had a beautiful lover; but that did not matter to Henri Quatre. Probably it only caused him to admire her the more. He slipped through detachments of the enemy dressed as a woodcutter with a bundle of straw on his head to visit her: a nice romantic and undignified action for a king; but we shall see later, as he grew older, how he could stoop even lower. For the present the problem was how to gain possession of Gabrielle, get rid of Corisande, and set up a nominal possessor who should not be a rival in Gabrielle’s heart. He got her father to marry Gabrielle to a M. de Liancourt, an aged widower with eleven children, while Henri IV enjoyed the _droits de seigneur_. Corisande, growing old, dropped out of the picture.

Then came a fierce struggle for Rouen, with Parma hovering ready to give battle. Again he showed his superiority to Henri Quatre as a strategist by transporting his army secretly across the Seine and escaping Henri’s threatened attack. Henri had a much larger army than Parma’s, and it was only Parma’s extraordinary skill that saved him from destruction. But now came the end of the long war; for Parma died and Henri turned Catholic. “Paris is well worth a Mass!” as he did not say. We have always been taught to consider this as an act of shameless cynicism; but there was a great deal to be said in Henri’s favour: certainly from the point of view of the twentieth century his action was the only thing that could have brought peace to his country. Though Parma was dead, Spain was still powerful and vengeful; the Catholic priests called Henri heretic, relapsed miscreant, devil and bastard, whom the soldiers knew to be a kind and generous friend, always smiling and ready to help. Gabrielle—“charmante Gabrielle,” who has given her name to a song that Henri wrote in her honour—urged him to turn Catholic, that the Pope might perhaps divorce Marguerite and let him marry Gabrielle. So Henri yielded, threw his scruples to the winds, and embraced the Old Religion; though his embrace was probably not so ardent as those which he gave to the abbesses, who more corporeally represented the faith to which he yielded.

An amusing sidelight on his character is thrown by his message to Queen Elizabeth by the mouth of her supposed lover Essex, whom she had been rating soundly because he had lost too many Englishmen in Henri’s wars. The irate Virgin was so flattered by Henri’s praise of her beauty and charm that it needed all her caution and frugality to keep England from plunging single-handed into yet another great war with Spain on his behalf. Happily for us she had sense enough to keep out of it; and before her help became necessary Henri had gone to Mass. When Henri fell so shamelessly in love with Gabrielle he was thirty-five years of age, and perhaps the ordinary neurasthenia of middle age began to trouble him—that cause of so much marital unhappiness and so many divorces. But, if any one woman could be said to have captured his heart, it was undoubtedly Gabrielle. I once read an account of her written by a lady, possibly unmarried. Anyhow, none would have guessed from this extremely proper description that she was Henri’s official mistress; the good lady seems never to have heard of a man being anything but a woman’s husband. Gabrielle was rather ample of figure—Henri seems to have liked his women fat—and had deep blue eyes and golden hair. Her face was kind and smiling, her manner gentle; before she fell in love with Henri her morals had been, to say the least, unconventional; after she admitted the king to her friendship she continued her relations with the lover who had innocently introduced her to this more enterprising king. She was extravagant, and the king loaded her with jewels at a time when he said he was penniless; created her Marchioness of Monceaux and Duchess of Beaufort. He was as faithful to her as it was possible for him to be to any woman, which is not saying very much. At any rate his _amours_ were henceforth conducted with a certain amount of decency and discretion. When she died the only book found in her possession was her “book of hours.” Except for her easy morals it would be impossible to find a greater contrast than that between her and Marguerite, who could wrap herself in learned books, play the lute, and write like a novelist. It would seem impossible for even “Aunt Tabitha” of a lady’s newspaper to give to Marguerite de Valois any hints on the art of managing a husband; but it is clear that she did not go the right way about it with Henri of Navarre; and Gabrielle d’Estrees was evidently much more to his taste, for he remained approximately, though not bigotedly, faithful to her till she died. In justice to Marguerite it is only fair to say that she never liked him; she was forced by mother and brother into marrying him; and probably even a sixteenth-century princess had her preferences. The ultimate result was that Gabrielle became a sort of idol among the people, who overlooked her unusual position for the sake of her wide-set blue eyes and kind smile; and a few years after she died she was already a legend. To this day she and Henri Quatre are greeted with a kindly smile among the French when one mentions them, and “charmante Gabrielle” is still a well-known song.

As the years rolled by she bore him several children, and more and more took the position of his wife. He became still more infatuated with her; and she, for her part, abandoned the life of dissipation which is said to have distinguished her youth. Henri wanted to marry her; she must have had great powers of fascination to make him so faithful after so many years. The idea was to procure a divorce from Marguerite and elevate his mistress to the throne. But just before the proposed marriage Gabrielle went to Paris and stayed at the house of an Italian named Zamet. On April 7th, 1599, she became very ill, and was artificially delivered of a dead child on the 9th. She fell into violent convulsions; on the 10th she became unconscious, and that evening she died. Of course Sully, who did not like her—for even Gabrielle had her enemies—hinted that she was poisoned—such was the reputation of the Italians in Paris at that time—and Sully’s ill-natured hint has evidently influenced historians to this day, for the good lady whom I quoted above repeats it as at least probable. But is it not much more probable that she died of puerperal eclampsia? She was middle-aged; she had had several children; she was far from slight in figure. At the Royal Hospital for Women in Sydney we find that most of these women who die nowadays from eclampsia are very much like Gabrielle in age, figure, and the number of their children. Of course it is impossible to say definitely; but I should be very much surprised to find that Gabrielle’s kidneys were absolutely healthy during that last year of her life. And it is quite possible that in that last confinement Gabrielle in this way paid the penalty for her dissipation in early youth. It is at least more likely that she should die from a perfectly well-known and fatal disease such as eclampsia than that anybody should try to poison a woman so generally popular, though she had enemies who were both jealous of her and disliked the idea of a royal mistress becoming Queen of France. Kidney trouble is often caused by drink, and people at the Court of France—indeed, all over Europe—generally used to drink too much in those days. After all, it is only a speculation that could easily explain the sudden death of an apparently perfectly healthy woman just as the moment was approaching when she would achieve her ambition.

Henri was broken-hearted; he swore that never more could he see happiness again. Yet three months later he was paying court to a very different sort of woman from Gabrielle—to Henriette d’Entragues, a slim girl of eighteen with a bitter tongue. He was then about fifty years of age, and had led a very anxious and troubled life. He had been a hard rider, a famous cavalryman. At the end of a few weeks of “courtship” he induced Henriette to accept a document in which he promised to marry her if she could bear him a living son in the course of a year. Henriette agreed to try, and joyfully took her position as the mistress and promised wife of the King. But alas for Henriette! Six months later there came a terrible thunderstorm that caused her to miscarry, and released Henri of his bargain. But his ministers had already engaged him to Marie de’ Medici; and Henri probably felt that Jove’s thunderbolt had come to his assistance. By that time Marguerite had been duly divorced by an obliging Pope, who would no doubt do a great deal for the brand plucked from the burning of Protestantism. In middle age Marguerite became enormously fat, and there are many stories told about her orgies with footmen and other tall fellows. It is said that, if they died in her service, she used to carry their hearts about her in a bag, and that she used to wear a wig made from their locks of yellow hair. Indeed, imagination has exhausted itself in devising infamies for the last years of Marguerite de Valois. It is difficult to recognise this corpulent and beraddled woman in the gay young princess who danced to lute and pizzicati strings in the “Huguenots.” Reine Margot indeed had a sorrowful ending, judging by the ordinary canons of human happiness. But perhaps the stories are not true. She is always considered an amazing example of the Valois faculty for combining artistic sensibility with the grossest lust. Strange things are said to have happened in history; and one must always remember her very unhappy marriage.

Soon after fifty old age, according to Sir Humphrey Rolleston, usually touches the average man lightly on the shoulder, and his friends begin indelicately to “chaff” him, saying, “Oh, you’re not as good a man as you were ten years ago”; it is then that the average man, according to some philosophers, begins to feel happy for the first time in his life. Proverbs have been coined about this well-known fact, on the lines of the Greek “call no man happy till he is dead.” According to another school of philosophy happiness only comes with the loss of the teeth. But sometimes the aging man boasts of his prowess as if to defy time and proverbs. Such a hero is always abnormal: either the first symptoms of some nervous disease are beginning to show themselves, or some other less subtle change is occurring in his body. His position is very much like that of a lady who, after the climacteric, observes that what she thinks to be the normal periodical discharge has returned; she does not know that this is often the first sign of cancer of the womb, and that what she thinks to be rejuvenescence is really often her death-warrant. Youth never returns; the tale of years is inexorable. It is lucky for the old man if he has some faithful friend who will guard him, and, as is said euphemistically, “keep him out of mischief”—that is to say, keep him from catching syphilis, which is a terrible thing in old age, or at any age. The old man thus afflicted seems absolutely to go mad about women; dignity, honour, decency, and all else, are forgotten.

When to ordinary senility there is added the intolerable desire that accompanies such trouble as I have mentioned, all other considerations are cast to the winds. After his marriage to Marie de’ Medici Henri abandoned even the pretence of decency. Marie seems to have had to let him go his own way. As for him, he complained that she made his life a hell upon earth, and he attempted to assuage his wounded feelings with every other girl who came his way. There were many such who yielded to the king while they mocked at the elderly man with their younger lovers. Then, in 1609 he met Charlotte de Montmorency, a charming and beautiful maiden of fifteen. He saw her while she was rehearsing for a mask, dressed up as a nymph of Diana. He was passionately arrested by her beauty, but soon afterwards was laid up with an attack of gout. Alas, Charlotte was already engaged to a M. de Bassompierre; but this did not daunt the conqueror of Gabrielle d’Estrees. He had dealt with such trifles before. As he lay groaning with the gout he thought out a brilliant scheme, which he amazingly proposed to M. de Bassompierre. He sent for the young man, told him that he was frantically in love with Charlotte, and asked him to give up the idea of marrying her so that the damsel should be free to become Henri’s platonic mistress, with all her virginal beauty untouched. And de Bassompierre actually agreed to give up his bride. Naturally Charlotte was deeply aggrieved, and gave her easy-going and youthful lover such a withering glance that he retired in mortification to his own room and could not eat for three days. But that did not mean that Henri was to possess her; for, in the easy fashion of those days, he married her to the Prince de Condé, who was supposed to think only of hunting and field-sports and not at all about women. But Condé’s nature changed after marriage to a beautiful girl, as any cynic might have expected; and he became mightily annoyed when he saw the king aping the young man in silks and satins, and paying violent court to his beautiful young wife; nor was Charlotte so discreet as she might have been, for she received from him desperate love-letters and poems, and answered them erotically and foolishly. The young husband and the elderly lover quarrelled fiercely, and Henri lost what dignity he still possessed. Then Condé took her away for safety to a castle near Flanders; Henri followed, and stood by the roadside, disguised as one of his own huntsmen, with a patch over one eye that he might have the joy of gazing upon her for a moment. Seeing her at a window, he would bow and kiss his hand, placing the other hand over his heart, and assuming all the ridiculous antics of an elderly lover on the stage. The Duc de Montmorency, her father, wished Charlotte to yield that he might gain the favour of the king. When Condé heard this he thought he had better take more active measures, so the young couple hastened over the border, whither Henri could not follow them. The actual details of the next few months are not very interesting; they simply represent the frantic efforts of a man who was getting senile to gratify an adulterous passion. It is said that he even threatened war with Spain for Charlotte’s bright eyes, but this is probably not true. Henri loved his country enough to prevent him from doing anything so wicked. But if his prostate was not growing too large he showed all the mental symptoms of it so far as we can tell to-day. The incident is one of the most painful in history, and calls for all one’s sympathy with the “sorrows of a poor old man.”

Then came Ravaillac and his dagger to end Henri’s misery; and probably, to those who know the inevitable end of a man suffering possibly from enlarged prostate without modern surgery, Providence was kind to Henri in sparing him years of real misery and pain. Assassination is at least a merciful death to a man who at fifty-five has nothing to look forward to but the “labour and sorrow” of the Psalmist. People often wonder what further reforms he might have effected in France; but it is the common experience that a man does not live very long after such an incident as that with Charlotte de Montmorency. We cannot even guess at the cause of this degeneration in Henri and Marguerite. Syphilis would no doubt account for it; but so far as I know there is no reason to suspect it. He had done great work for France. Besides the merciful Edict of Nantes, which gave freedom of worship to the French Protestants for generations, he reformed her finances, organised her army, and introduced the silkworm industry which has done so much to strengthen the people of that amazing country. The French have long ago forgiven his sins against morality and decency, and taken him to their hearts as one of the greatest of Frenchmen. And now, when his wonderful personal charm has long mouldered to dust, the evil that he did is interred with his bones: only the good remains in the memory of mankind.

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The best book about the troubles of old age is _The Medical Aspects of Old Age_, by Sir Humphrey Rolleston, which, though originally written for doctors, should be read by every man and woman in the land; for perhaps it would induce in them a greater sympathy for the old men. “Enlarged prostate” must be taken symbolically. The whole subject of these senile attacks of concupiscence is still under discussion, and, just as you spared me a too close inquiry into Elizabeth’s physical attributes, I ask you to spare me the inquiry into those of an equally great, but far more lovable, sovereign, Henri Quatre. The incident of Henri Quatre and Charlotte de Montmorency seems to represent what is known as a “psychosis of involution” occurring somewhat prematurely owing to Henri’s hard life in the field.

Frederick the Great

If it be true that most great men are slightly “cracked” surely this fact is proved by the peculiarities of Frederick the Great. I propose to defend the memory of this most illustrious of Prussian soldiers and minor poets from the infamous slander that he died of syphilis. Frederick had the misfortune to win his glory in fighting against three women: the Empress Maria Theresa, the Empress Elizabeth of Russia, and Madame de Pompadour; and, most unwisely, he tried to fight them, not only with guns and bayonets, but with jibes and flouts and jeers. His father, as is well known, was King Frederick William Hohenzollern of Brandenburg, who was famous for his regiment of giants. These colossal creatures averaged well over six feet high, and to find them Europe, Asia, Africa and America were ransacked at vast expense. Frederick William must have been at heart a man of scientific mind, for he experimented in breeding with these human cattle; and doubtless his experience, had it been recorded with true Prussian accuracy, would have been the forerunner of those results of the Abbé Mendel which have laid the foundation for the science of eugenics. Unhappily his cattle were less submissive than Mendel’s peas or the Chillingham bulls, for, in spite of all the floggings and bribings to which Frederick William resorted, he was not always successful in securing his results. One day, when he was going from Potsdam to Berlin, he saw a fine strapping Saxon girl, a very giantess, whom he at once saw would be a fit wife to produce more gigantic toys if coupled with one of his guards; so he stopped her and entered into conversation with her.

“Art thou married, mädchen?” he asked her in his hearty Prussian way.

“No, kingly majesty,” she curtsied.