I must die; for twelve years past my lingering and painful life has been for the most part an apprenticeship thereto.  My sufferings have so dulled the sting of death that I rather count upon it than dread it; happy to have had so long a delay to teach me to make a good end, and to rid me of the things which formerly kept me from that knowledge.  Happy to meet my end amongst mine own people and to terminate by a peaceful death the sufferings and miseries of my life.  I formerly sought death amidst arms; but I am better pleased, for my soul’s salvation, to meet it and embrace it on my bed than if I had encountered it in battle, for the sake of the glory of the world.”

Let, us return to Henry IV.  Since his declaration of war against Philip II. he had gained much ground.  He had fought gloriously, in his own person, and beaten the Spaniards at Fontaine-Francaise.  He had obtained from Pope Clement VIII. the complete and solemn absolution which had been refused to him the year before.  Mayenne had submitted to him, and that submission had been death to the League.  Some military reverses were intermingled with these political successes.  Between the 25th of June, 1595, and the 10th of March, 1597, the Spanish armies took, in Picardy and Artois, Le Catelet, Doullens, Cambrai, Ardres, Ham, Guines and two towns of more importance, Calais, still the object of English ambition and of offers on the part of Queen Elizabeth to any one who could hand it over to her, and Amiens, one of the keys to France on the frontier of the north.  These checks were not without compensation.  Henry invested and took the strong place of La Fere; and he retook Amiens after a six months’ struggle.  A Spanish plot for getting possession of Marseilles failed; the young Duke of Guise, whom Henry had made governor of Provence, entered the city amidst shouts of Hurrah for the king!  “Now I am king!” cried Henry, on receiving the news, so generally was Marseilles even then regarded as the queen of the Mediterranean.  The Duke of Epernon, who had attempted to make of Provence an independent principality for himself, was obliged to leave it and treat with the king, ever ready to grant easy terms to those who could give up to him or sell him any portion of his kingdom.  France was thus being rapidly reconstituted.  “Since the month of January, 1596, Burgundy, parts of Forez, Auvergne, and Velay, the whole of Provence, half Languedoc, and the last town of Poitou had been brought back to their allegiance to the king.  French territory and national unity had nothing more to wait for, to complete their re-establishment, than a portion of Brittany and four towns of Picardy still occupied by the Spaniards.” [Poirson, Histoire du Regne de Henri IV., t. ii. p. 159.]