‘Sir,’ said Bassompierre, ’it is for us to cause this oath to be taken by others; we have no need to be exhorted thereto;’ Sully turned his eyes upon him, he adds, and then went and shut himself up in the Bastille, sending out to ’seize and carry off all the bread that could be found in the market and at the bakers’.  He also despatched a message in haste to M. de Rohan, his son-in-law, bidding him face about with six thousand Swiss, whose colonel-general he was, and march on Paris.”  Henry IV. being dead, it was for France and for the kingship that Sully felt alarm and was taking his precautions.

[Illustration:  The Louvre——­145]

CHAPTER XXXVII.——­REGENCY OF MARY DE’ MEDICI. (1610-1617.)

On the death of Henry IV. there was extreme disquietude as well as grief in France.  To judge by appearances, however, there was nothing to justify excessive alarm.  The edict of Nantes (April 13, 1598) had put an end, so far as the French were concerned, to religious wars.  The treaty of Vervins (May 2, 1598) between France and Spain, the twelve years’ truce between Spain and the United Provinces (April 9, 1609), the death of Philip II. (September 13, 1598), and the alliance between France and England seemed to have brought peace to Europe.  It might have been thought that there remained no more than secondary questions, such as the possession of the marquisate of Saluzzo and the succession to the duchies of C1eves and Juliers.  But the instinct of peoples sees further than the negotiations of diplomats.  In the public estimation of Europe Henry IV. was the representative of and the security for order, peace, national and equitable policy, intelligent and practical ideas.  So thought Sully when, at the king’s death, he went, equally alarmed and disconsolate, and shut himself up in the arsenal; and the people had grounds for being of Sully’s opinion.  Public confidence was concentrated upon the king’s personality.  Spectators pardoned, almost with a smile, those tender foibles of his which, nevertheless, his proximity to old age rendered still more shocking.  They were pleased at the clear-sighted and strict attention he paid to the education of his son Louis, the dauphin, to whose governess, Madame de Montglas, he wrote, “I am vexed with you for not having sent me word that you have whipped my son, for I do wish and command you to whip him every time he shows obstinacy in anything wrong, knowing well by my own case that there is nothing in the world that does more good than that.”  And to Mary de’ Medici herself he added, “Of one thing I do assure you, and that is, that, being of the temper I know you to be of, and foreseeing that of your son, you stubborn, not to say headstrong, madame, and he obstinate, you will verily have many a tussle together.”

[Illustration:  Marie de Medicis——­147]