With this date, 1598, and with the signing of the Edict of Nantes, much more than with the end of the reign, the next period of French history may be said to begin.
After the settlement effected by the Edict of Nantes the energies of Henry IV were given up, as his temperament demanded, to aggran dizement, for it is remarkable that all those who acquire power over the French are tempted in a short time after that acquisition to theories of military expansion, finding in their hands the best material in Europe for such a purpose. The plan of Henry IV was clear enough and though it has been termed immoral was none the less patriotic. He proposed a destruction of the only strong and centralized power op posed to his own, that of the house of Haps burg, and he would have accomplished this at one stroke by the use of a powerful army, after which it is just possible that he intended to assume the headship of Europe and to impose peace. In this task or ambition he was aided by the great Sully, a man avaricious in temper ament, orderly, careless of divine things, but undoubtedly courageous. The plan of the war was to help the petty German principalities in their attack upon the central power of the emperor. The greater part of these petty prin cipalities were naturally Protestant, for Prot estantism had been for them the religious aspect of their political claim. Germany was there fore supporting them against their traditional authority, whether civil or religious. All was ready for the expedition, when on 14 March 1610 Henry was stabbed by Ravaillac on his way to visit Sully at the Arsenal. Many prog and omens had foretold this mur der, the motive of which was th popular ex aggeration that Henry's plot involved a war against the Pope himself and the Catholic Church. Henry was succeeded by his son Louis, the 13th of that name, then in his minority. The queen mother, Marie of Medicis, was regent. She ruled with great. individual power and singular energy, but per haps with insufficient judgment. And the point was of importance because all Europe was then in the great settlement of the quarrel which the Renaissance and the Reformation had aroused. In England itself a great civil war
was about to break out, primarily oligarchic in its origin, that is, having for its motive the determination of the squires and the big shop keepers and merchants to govern the common people and to oust the king. But France re mained the arena. The Protestants were im mensely powerful; they had cities of their own, forming as it were a state within a state; they were still very numerous (forming perhaps a quarter, perhaps a third of the well-to-do classes), and the generation which could re member, whether in France or elsewhere, the old unity of Europe in philosophy and gov ernment was dead. The force of Protestantism in France lay of course upon the side that Prot estantism took all over Europe, against central monarchy, in favor of oligarchic theories, and of the independence of the great landowners and of the great merchants. Had the first years of Louis XIII's minority been under the hands of some one strong man, France might at once have become the one thing or the other. As it was sufficient interval was allowed for the Huguenot theories of independence to take root. It was not until 1617 that Louis XIII, now in his 17th year, began to act upon his own initiative. Much at the same moment there appears in Frenchpolitics the great personality of Richelieu (q.v.). He was of the squires family, by name du Plessis. He had been trained to the Church, was poor, but had sufficient in fluence to be made bishop at the age of 22. The meeting of the French Parliament or States General in 1614 (when he was not yet 30) had brought him into some prominence, for he was a member of the House of the Clergy. Two years later, in 1616, the queen mother, with her keen Italian eye, picked him out for the min istry. From that moment he is the principal figure in France. A quarrel which Louis XIII engaged in against his mother eclipsed Riche lieu for a moment, but when that quarrel was appeased she used her influence to have him made cardinal (in 1622), and in 1624 he entered the Council of the King, never to leave it, and to direct it during the remaining 16 years of his life with despotic power.