At the beginning of the seventeenth century Henry IV. was the only one remaining of the three great sovereigns who, during the sixteenth, had disputed, as regarded religion and politics, the preponderance in Europe.  He had succeeded in all his kingly enterprises; he had become a Catholic in France without ceasing to be the prop of the Protestants in Europe; he had made peace with Spain without embroiling himself with England, Holland, and Lutheran Germany.  He had shot up, as regarded ability and influence, in the eyes of all Europe.  It was just then that he gave the strongest proof of his great judgment and political sagacity; he was not intoxicated with success; he did not abuse his power; he did not aspire to distant conquests or brilliant achievements; he concerned himself chiefly with the establishment of public order in his kingdom and with his people’s prosperity.  His well-known saying, “I want all my peasantry to have a fowl in the pot every Sunday,” was a desire worthy of Louis XII.  Henry IV. had a sympathetic nature; his grandeur did not lead him to forget the nameless multitudes whose fate depended upon his government.

He had, besides, the rich, productive, varied, inquiring mind of one who took an interest not only in the welfare of the French peasantry, but in the progress of the whole French community, progress agricultural, industrial, commercial, scientific, and literary.  The conversation of an independent thinker like Montaigne had, at the least, as much attraction for him as that of his comrades in arms.  Long before Henry IV. was King of France, on the 19th of December, 1584, Montaigne, wrote, “The King of Navarre came to see me at Montaigne where he had never been before, and was there two days, attended by my people without any of his own officers; he permitted neither tasting (essai) nor state-banquet (couvert), and slept in my bed.”  On the 24th of October, 1587, after winning the battle of Contras, Henry stopped to dine at Montaigne’s house, though its possessor had remained faithful to Henry III., whose troops had just lost the battle; and on the 18th of January, 1590, when the King of Navarre, now become King of France, besieged and took the town of Lisieux, Montaigne wrote to him, “All the time through, sir, I have observed in you this same fortune that is now yours; and you may remember that even when I had to make confession thereof to my parish-priest I did not omit to regard your successes with a kindly eye.  Now, with more reason and freedom, I hug them to my heart.  Yonder they do you service by effects; but they do you no less service here by reputation.  The report goes as far as the shot.  We could not derive from the justice of your cause arguments so powerful in sustaining or reducing your subjects as we do from the news of the prosperity of your enterprises.”