These and other public services showed his humane nature and his enlightened mind, until, after a glorious reign of twenty-one years, he was cut off, in the prime of his life and in the midst of his usefulness, by the assassin’s dagger, May, 1610, in the fifty-eighth year of his age,—­the greatest of all the French kings,—­leaving five children by his second wife, Marie de Medicis, four of whom became kings or queens.

But to consider particularly Henry’s connection with the Huguenots.  If he deserted their ranks, he did not forget them.  He gave them religious toleration,—­all they originally claimed.  In 1598 was signed the memorable edict of Nantes, by which the Protestants preserved their churches, their schools, their consistories, and their synods; and they retained as a guarantee several important cities and fortresses,—­a sort of imperium in imperio.  They were made eligible to all offices.  They were not subjected to any grievous test-act.  They enjoyed social and political equality, as well as unrestricted religious liberty, except in certain cities.  They gained more than the Puritans did in the reign of Charles II.  They were not excluded from universities, nor degraded in their social rank, nor annoyed by unjust burial laws.  The two religions were placed equally under the protection of the government.  By this edict the Huguenots gained all that they had struggled for.

Still, the abjuration of Henry IV. was a great calamity to them.  They lost their prestige; they were in a minority; they could count no longer on the leadership of princes.  They were deprived gradually of the countenance of powerful nobles and all the potent influences of fashion; and when a reaction against Calvinism took place in the seventeenth century, the Huguenots had dwindled to a comparatively humble body of unimportant people.  They lost heart and men of rank to defend them when the persecution of Richelieu overtook them in the next reign.  They were then unfit to contend successfully with that centralized monarchy of which Henry IV. had laid the foundation, and which Richelieu cemented by fraud and force.  Louis XIV., educated by the Jesuits and always under their influence, repealed the charter which Henry IV. had given them.  The persecution they suffered under Louis XIV. was more dreadful than that they suffered under Charles IX., since they had neither arms, nor organization, nor leaders, nor fortresses.  Under the persecution of the Valois princes they had Conde and the King of Navarre and Coligny for leaders; they were strong enough to fight for their liberties,—­they had enthusiasm and prestige and hope.  Under the iron and centralized government of Louis XIV. they were completely defenceless, like lambs before wolves; they had no hopes, they could make no defence; they were an obnoxious, slandered, unimportant, unfashionable people, and their light had gone out.  They had no religious enthusiasm even; they were small farmers and tradesmen and servants, and worshipped God in dingy chapels.  No great men arose among them, as among the Puritans of England.  They were still evangelical in their creed, but not earnest in defending it; so persecution wiped them out—­was terribly successful.  Eight hundred thousand of them perished in prisons and galleys or on scaffolds, and there was no help.