King Henry Of Navarre
For the first time in its history France had a Protestant king. Henry
III. had died by the knife of an assassin. Henry of Navarre was named by
him as his successor. But the Catholic chiefs of France, in particular
the leaders of the League which had been banded against Henry III., were
bitterly opposed to the reign of a Huguenot in a realm that had always
been governed by Catholic kings, and it was evident that only by the
The League held Paris and much of France. Henry's army was too weak to
face them. He fell back on Dieppe, that he might be near the coast, and
in position to receive reinforcements and supplies promised him by Queen
Elizabeth. The Duke of Mayenne pursued him with an army of some
thirty-five thousand men. Such was the situation at the date of the
opening of our story.
Henry III. had been killed on the 1st of August, 1589. Henry IV. was
proclaimed king on the 2d of August. On the 26th of the same month he
reached Dieppe, where he was met by the governor, Aymar de Chastes, and
the leading citizens, who brought him the keys of the place.
"I come to salute my lord and hand over to him the government of this
city," said Aymar, who was a Catholic noble.
"Ventre-saint-gris!" cried Henry, with his favorite exclamation; "I know
none more worthy of it than you are."
The citizens crowded round the king, profuse in their expressions of
loyalty.
"No fuss, my lads," said Henry, who was the embodiment of plain common
sense; "all I want is your affection, good bread, good wine, and good
hospitable faces."
Within the town he was received with loud cheers, and the population
seemed enthusiastic in his favor. But the shrewd soldier had no idea of
shutting himself up in a walled town, to be besieged there by Mayenne.
So, after carefully inspecting its fortifications, he left five hundred
men within the town, assisted by a garrison of burgesses, and
established his camp on a neighboring hill, crowned by the old castle of
Arques, where he put all his men and all the peasants that could be
found busily to work digging like beavers, working night and day to
fortify the camp. He set the example himself in the use of the spade.
"It is a wonder I am alive with such work as I have," he wrote at the
time. "God have pity upon me and show me mercy, blessing my labors, as
He does in spite of many folks. I am well, and my affairs are going
well. I have taken Eu. The enemy, who are double me just now, thought to
catch me there; but I drew off towards Dieppe, and I await them in a
camp that I am fortifying. To-morrow will be the day when I shall see
them, and I hope, with God's help, that if they attack me they will
find they have made a bad bargain."
The enemy came, as Henry had said, saw his preparations, and by a
skilful manoeuvre sought to render them useless. Mayenne had no fancy
for attacking those strong works in front. He managed, by an
unlooked-for movement, to push himself between the camp and the town,
"hoping to cut off the king's communications with the sea, divide his
forces, deprive him of his reinforcements from England, and, finally,
surround him and capture him, as he had promised the Leaguers of Paris,
who were already talking of the iron cage in which the Bearnese would be
sent to them."
But Henry IV. was not the man to be caught easily in a trap. Much as had
been his labor at digging, he at once changed his plans, and decided
that it would not pay him to await the foe in his intrenchments. If they
would not come to him, he must go to them, preserving his communications
at any cost. Chance, rather than design, brought the two armies into
contact. A body of light-horse approached the king's intrenchments. A
sharp skirmish followed.
"My son," said Marshal de Biron to the young Count of Auvergne, "charge;
now is the time."
The young soldier--a prince by birth--obeyed, and so effectively that he
put the Leaguers to rout, killed three hundred of them, and returned to
camp unobstructed. On the succeeding two days similar encounters took
place, with like good fortune for Henry's army. Mayenne was annoyed.
His prestige was in danger of being lost. He determined to recover it by
attacking the intrenchments of the king with his whole army.
The night of the 20th of September came. It was a very dark one. Henry,
having reason to expect an attack, kept awake the whole night. In
company with a group of his officers, he gazed over the dark valley
within which lay Mayenne's army. The silence was profound. Afar off
could be seen a long line of lights, so flickering and inconstant that
the observers were puzzled to decide if they were men or glow-worms.
At five in the morning, Henry gave orders that every man should be at
his post. He had his breakfast brought to him on the field, and ate it
with a hearty appetite, seated in a fosse with his officers around him.
While there a prisoner was brought in who had been taken during a
reconnoissance.
"Good-morning, Belin," said the king, who knew him. "Embrace me for your
welcome appearance."
Belin did so, taking the situation philosophically.
"To give you appetite for dinner," he said, "you are about to have work
to do with thirty thousand foot and ten thousand horse. Where are your
forces?" he continued, looking around curiously.
"You don't see them all, M. de Belin," answered Henry. "You don't reckon
the good God and the good right, but they are ever with me."
Belin had told the truth. About ten o'clock Mayenne made his attack. It
was a day ill-suited for battle, for there lay upon the field so thick
a fog that the advancing lines could not see each other at ten paces
apart. Despite this, the battle proceeded briskly, and for nearly three
hours the two armies struggled, now one, now the other, in the
ascendant.
Henry fought as vigorously as any of his men, all being so confusedly
mingled in the fog that there was little distinction between officers
and soldiers. At one time he found himself so entangled in a medley of
disorganized troopers that he loudly shouted,--
"Courage, gentlemen; pray, courage! Are there not among you fifty
gentlemen willing to die with their king?"
The confusion was somewhat alleviated by the arrival, at this juncture,
of five hundred men from Dieppe, whose opportune coming the king gladly
greeted. Springing from his horse, he placed himself beside Chatillon,
their leader, to fight in the trenches. The battle, which had been hot
at this point, now grew furious, and for some fifteen minutes there was
a hand-to-hand struggle in the fog, like that of two armies fighting in
the dead of night.
Then came a welcome change. For what followed we may quote Sully. "When
things were in this desperate state," he says, "the fog, which had been
very thick all the morning, dropped down suddenly, and the cannon of the
castle of Arques, getting sight of the enemy's army, a volley of four
pieces was fired, which made four beautiful lanes in their squadrons and
battalions. That pulled them up quite short; and three or four volleys
in succession, which produced marvellous effects, made them waver, and,
little by little, retire all of them behind the turn of the valley, out
of cannon-shot, and finally to their quarters."
Mayenne was defeated. The king held the field. He pursued the enemy for
some distance, and then returned to Arques to return thanks to God for
the victory. Immediately afterwards, Mayenne struck camp and marched
away, leaving Henry master of the situation. The king of Navarre had
scored a master-point in the contest for the throne of France.
During the ensuing year the cause of the king rapidly advanced. More and
more of France acknowledged him as the legitimate heir to the throne. A
year after the affair at Dieppe he marched suddenly and rapidly on
Paris, and would have taken it had not Mayenne succeeded in throwing his
army into the city when it was half captured. In March, 1590, the two
armies met again on the plain of Ivry, a village half-way between Mantes
and Dreux, and here was fought one of the famous battles of history, a
conflict whose final result was to make Henry IV. king of all France.
On this notable field the king was greatly outnumbered. Mayenne had
under his command about four thousand horse and twenty thousand foot,
while Henry's force consisted of three thousand horse and eight thousand
foot. But the king's men were much better disciplined, and much more
largely moved by patriotism, Mayenne's army being in considerable part
made up of German and Swiss auxiliaries. The king's men, Catholics and
Protestants alike, were stirred by a strong religious enthusiasm. In a
grave and earnest speech to his men, Henry placed the issue of the day
in the hands of the Almighty. The Catholics of his army crowded to the
neighboring churches to hear mass. The Huguenots, much fewer in number,
"also made their prayers after their sort."
The day of battle dawned,--March 14, 1590. Henry's army was drawn up
with the infantry to right and left,--partly made up of German and Swiss
auxiliaries,--the cavalry, under his own command, in the centre. In this
arm, in those days of transition between ancient and modern war, the
strength of armies lay, and those five lines of horsemen were that day
to decide the fate of the field.
In the early morning Henry displayed a winning instance of that generous
good feeling for which he was noted. Count Schomberg, colonel of the
German auxiliaries, had, some days before, asked for the pay of his
troops, saying that they would not fight if not paid. Henry, indignant
at this implied threat, had harshly replied,--
"People do not ask for money on the eve of a battle."
He now, just as the battle was about to begin, approached Schomberg with
a look of contrition on his face.
"Colonel," he said, "I have hurt your feelings. This may be the last day
of my life. I cannot bear to take away the honor of a brave and honest
gentleman like you. Pray forgive me and embrace me."
"Sir," answered Schomberg, with deep feeling, "the other day your
Majesty wounded me; to-day you kill me."
He gave up the command of the German reiters that he might fight in the
king's own squadron, and was killed in the battle.
As the two armies stood face to face, waiting for the signal of onset,
Henry rode along the front of his squadron, and halted opposite their
centre.
"Fellow-soldiers," he said, "you are Frenchmen; behold the enemy! If
to-day you run my risks, I also run yours. I will conquer or die with
you. Keep your ranks well, I pray you. If the heat of battle disperse
you for a while, rally as soon as you can under those pear-trees you see
up yonder to my right; and if you lose sight of your standards, do not
lose sight of my white plume. Make that your rallying point, for you
will always find it in the path of honor, and, I hope, of victory also."
And Henry pointed significantly to the snow-white plume that ornamented
his helmet, while a shout of enthusiastic applause broke from all those
who had heard his stirring appeal. Those words have become famous. The
white plume of Henry of Navarre is still one of the rallying points of
history. It has also a notable place in poetry, in Macaulay's stirring
ode of "Ivry," from which we quote:
"'And if my standard-bearer fall,
As fall full well he may;
For never saw I promise yet
Of such a bloody fray;
Press where ye see my white plume shine
Amidst the ranks of war,
And be your oriflamme to-day
The helmet of Navarre.'"
The words we have quoted spoken, Henry galloped along the whole line of
his army; then halted again, threw his bridle over his arm, and said,
with clasped hands and deep feeling,--
"O God, Thou knowest my thoughts, and dost see to the very bottom of my
heart; if it be for my people's good that I keep the crown, favor Thou
my cause and uphold my arms. But if Thy holy will have otherwise
ordained, at least let me die, O God, in the midst of these brave
soldiers who give their lives for me!"
The infantry began the battle. Egmont, in command of Mayenne's right
wing, attacked sharply, but after a brief success was killed and his men
repulsed. On the king's right, Aumont, Biron, and Montpensier drove
their opponents before them. At this stage of the affray Mayenne, in
command of the powerful body of cavalry in the centre, fell upon the
king's horse with a furious charge, which for the time threatened to
carry all before it. The lines wavered and broke; knights and nobles
fell back; confusion began and was increasing; the odds appeared too
great; for a brief and perilous period the battle seemed lost. At this
critical moment Henry came to the rescue. Victory or death had been his
word to his men. His promise was now to be kept in deeds. Pointing with
his sword to the enemy, and calling in a loud voice upon all who heard
him to follow, he spurred fiercely forward, and in a moment his white
plume was seen waving in the thickest ranks of the foe.
His cry had touched the right place in the hearts of his followers.
Forgetting every thought but that of victory and the rescue of their
beloved leader, they pushed after him in a gallant and irresistible
charge, which resembled in its impetuosity that of the Black Prince at
Poitiers. Mayenne's thronging horsemen wavered and broke before this
impetuous rush. Into the heart of the opposing army rode Henry and his
ardent followers, cutting, slashing, shouting in victorious enthusiasm.
In a few minutes the forward movement of Mayenne's cavalry was checked.
His troops halted, wavered, broke, and fled, hotly pursued by their
foes. The battle was won. That rush of the white plume had carried all
before it, and swept the serried ranks of the Leaguers to the winds. Let
us quote the poetic rendition of this scene from Macaulay's ode.
"Hurrah! the foes are moving!
Hark to the mingled din
Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum
And roaring culverin!
The fiery duke is pricking fast
Across St Andre's plain,
With all the hireling cavalry
Of Gueldres and Almayne.
'Now by the lips of those ye love,
Fair gentlemen of France,
Charge for the golden lilies,
Upon them with the lance!'
A thousand spurs are striking deep,
A thousand spears in rest,
A thousand knights are pressing close
Behind a snow-white crest,
And in they burst, and on they rushed,
While, like a gliding star,
Amidst the thickest carnage blazed
The helmet of Navarre."
The enemy's cavalry being in flight and hotly pursued, Henry with a
handful of horsemen (he had but thirty at his back when he came out of
the melee) charged upon the Walloons and Swiss, who instantly broke and
fled, with such impetuous haste that they left their standards behind
them.
"Slay the strangers, but spare the French," was the king's order, as a
hot pursuit of the flying infantry began, in which the German
auxiliaries in particular were cut down mercilessly.
"And then we thought on vengeance,
And all along our van,
'Remember St. Bartholomew!'
Was passed from man to man.
But out spake gentle Henry,
'No Frenchman is my foe;
Down, down with every foreigner,
But let your brethren go.'"
The Swiss, however, ancient friends and allies of France, begged the
king's compassion and were admitted to mercy, being drafted into his
service. The flying Germans and French were severely punished, great
numbers of them falling, many more being taken, the list of prisoners
including a large number of lords and leaders of the foe. The battle had
been remarkably short. It was won by the cavalry, the infantry having
scarcely come into action. As to its effect, we may quote again from the
poem.
"Now glory to the Lord of Hosts,
From whom all glories are,
And glory to our sovereign liege,
King Henry of Navarre.
Now let there be the merry sound
Of music and of dance,
Through thy corn-fields green and sunny vines,
Oh, pleasant land of France.
Hurrah! Hurrah! a single field
Hath turned the chance of war!
Hurrah! Hurrah! for Ivry,
And Henry of Navarre!"
It "turned the chance of war" in truth, in a great measure. Paris was in
consternation. Everywhere was a great change in public opinion. Men
ceased to look on Henry as an adventurous soldier, and came to regard
him as a great prince, fighting for his own. Beyond this, however, the
effect was not immediate. Paris remained in the hands of the League. A
Spanish League was formed. The difficulties seemed to grow deeper. The
only easy solution to them was an abjuration of the Protestant faith,
and to this view Henry in the end came. He professed conversion to
Catholicism, and all opposition ceased. Henry IV. became the fully
acknowledged king of France, and for the time being all persecution of
the Huguenots was at an end.
More
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Among the romantic characters of history none have attained higher celebrity than the hero of our present tale, whose remarkable adventure, often told in story, has been made immortal in Lord Byron's famous poem of "Mazeppa." Those who wish to rea... Morgan The Freebooter And The Raid On Panama
During the seventeenth century the Spanish Main was beset with a horde of freebooters or buccaneers, as they called themselves, to whose fierce attacks the treasure-ships bound for Spain were constantly exposed, and who did not hesitate to assail ... Napoleon's Return From Elba
All was quiet in Elba. Nothing was talked of at Porto-Ferrajo but the ball to be given by Pauline, the sister of Napoleon, who had exchanged his imperial dominion over half Europe for kingship over that little Mediterranean island. Evening came. The... Nobunaga And The Fall Of The Buddhists
For more than two centuries the Ashikaga lorded it over Japan, as the Hojo had done before them, and the mikados were tools in their strong hands. Then arose a man who overthrew this powerful clan. This man, Nobunaga by name, was a descendant of Kiy... Olaf Dethrones Odin And Dies A Hero
Earl Haakon was the last heathen king of Norway. Olaf, the new king, was a zealous Christian and was determined to introduce the new faith. And this was done not in the mild and gentle way in which Haakon the Good had attempted it, but with all the ... Olaf The Saint And His Work For Christ
The story of Olaf the Saint, the Norse king who comes next into our view, illustrates the barbarous character of the heathen people with whom we are dealing. Few warriors in those days died in their beds, death coming to them in some more violent fo... Oleg The Varangian
For ages and ages, none can say how many, the great plain of Russia existed as a nursery of tribes, some wandering with their herds, some dwelling in villages and tilling their fields, but all warlike and all barbarians. And over this plain at int... On The Road To Lonazep
The four knights rode onward in company until they came in sight of the castle of Lonazep, where they saw striking preparations for the tournament. For not less than four hundred tents and pavilions covered the plain outside the great circle of th... On The Track Of A Traitor
While Major Andr['e] was dying the death of a spy, General Arnold, his tempter and betrayer, was living the life of a cherished traitor, in the midst of the British army at New York. This was a state of affairs far from satisfactory to the Americ... Paez The Llanero Chief And The War For Freedom
On the 3d of June, 1819, General Morillo, the commander of the Spanish forces in Venezuela, found himself threatened in his camp by a party of one hundred and fifty daring horsemen, who had swum the Orinoco and galloped like centaurs upon his line... Patrick Henry The Herald Of The Revolution
There was a day in the history of the Old Dominion when a great lawsuit was to be tried,--a great one, that is, to the people of Hanover County, where it was heard, and to the colony of Virginia, though not to the country at large. The Church of Eng... Paul Revere's Ride
It was night at Boston, the birthnight of one of the leading events in the history of the world. The weather was balmy and clear. Most of the good citizens of the town were at their homes; many of them doubtless in their beds; for early hours wer... Pelistes The Defender Of Cordova
No sooner had Tarik defeated the Christian army on the fatal field of Sidonia than he sent out detachments of horsemen in all directions, hoping to win the leading cities of Spain before the people should recover from their terror. One of these de... Peter The Cruel And The Free Companies
About the middle of the year 1365 a formidable expedition set out from France for the invasion of Castile. It consisted of the celebrated Free Companies, marauding bands of French and English knights and archers whose allegiance was to the sword, ... Peter The Hermit
In the last decade of the eleventh century there might have been seen, wandering through every part of France and Germany, a man of singular appearance. Small of stature, almost dwarfish in size, emaciated by rigid austerities, angular and ungainly ... Philopoemen And The Fall Of Sparta
The history of Greece may well seem remarkable to modern readers, since it brings us in contact with conditions which have ceased to exist anywhere upon the earth. To gain some idea of its character, we should have to imagine each of the counties ... Pizarro And The Inca's Golden Ransom
The great expedition to the land of gold, which Vasco Nunez de Balboa had planned to make, was left by his death to be carried out by one of his companions in the discovery of the South Sea, the renowned Francisco Pizarro. It was an expedition ful... Plataea's Famous Day
On a certain day, destined to be thereafter famous, two strong armies faced each other on the plain north of the little Boeotian town of Plataea. Greece had gathered the greatest army it had ever yet put into the field, in all numbering one hundre... Ponce De Leon And The Fountain Of Youth
A golden Easter day was that of the far-away year 1513, when a small fleet of Spanish ships, sailing westward from the green Bahamas, first came in sight of a flower-lined shore, rising above the blue Atlantic waves, and seeming to smile a welcome a... Progress In Japan And China
We have in the preceding tales brought down from a remote period the history of the two oldest nations now existing on the face of the earth. There are peoples as old, but none others which have kept intact their national organization and form of go...