Abroad the policy of Henry IV. was as judicious and far sighted as it was just and sympathetic at home.  There has been much writing and dissertation about what has been called his grand design.  This name has been given to a plan for the religious and political organization of Christendom, consisting in the division of Europe amongst three religions, the Catholic, the Calvinistic, and the Lutheran, and into fifteen states, great and small, monarchical or republican, with equal rights, alone recognized as members of the Christian confederation, regulating in concert their common affairs, and pacifically making up their differences, whilst all the while preserving their national existence.  This plan is lengthily and approvingly set forth, several times over, in the OEconomies royales, which Sully’s secretaries wrote at his suggestion, and probably sometimes at his dictation.  Henry IV. was a prince as expansive in ideas as he was inventive, who was a master of the art of pleasing, and himself took great pleasure in the freedom and unconstraint of conversation.  No doubt the notions of the grand design often came into his head, and he often talked about them to Sully, his confidant in what he thought as well as in what he did.  Sully, for his part was a methodical spirit, a regular downright putter in practice, evidently struck and charmed by the richness and grandeur of the prospects placed before his eyes by his king, and feeling pleasure in shedding light upon them whilst giving them a more positive and more complete shape than belonged to their first and original appearance.  And thus came down to us the grand design, which, so far as Henry IV. was concerned, was never a definite project.  His true external policy was much more real and practical.  He had seen and experienced the evils of religious hatred and persecution.  He had been a great sufferer from the supremacy of the house of Austria in Europe, and he had for a long while opposed it.  When he became the most puissant and most regarded of European kings, he set his heart very strongly on two things—­toleration for the three religions which had succeeded in establishing themselves in Europe and showing themselves capable of contending one against another, and the abasement of the house of Austria, which, even after the death of Charles V. and of Philip II., remained the real and the formidable rival of France.  The external policy of Henry from the treaty of Vervins to his death, was religious peace in Europe and the alliance of Catholic France with Protestant England and Germany against Spain and Austria.  He showed constant respect and deference towards the papacy, a power highly regarded in both the rival camps, though much fallen from the substantial importance it had possessed in Europe during the middle ages.  French policy striving against Spanish policy, such was the true and the only serious characteristic of the grand design.