HENRI IV.'s "GREAT DESIGN."* Tnis is one of those excellent
contributions to history peculiar to the French genius. It interests us in the obscure bat pregnant period of European history which lies between the revolt of Luther and the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648. The lucidity of M. de Meaux's style, and his thoughtful generalisa- tions, enable us to disentangle the issues of a most perplexing revolution, and give startling actuality to the problems of the sixteenth century, some of which have yet to be solved. He uses fairly the researches of their own historians when he sketches the condition of foreign States, and judging from his account of the Tudor Reformation, he appears in accord with the best opinions; but his work is strongest and most original when he uses the materials supplied by French and Italian archives. These are specially instructive to us, who are for the most part ignorant of Papal policy, or judge of it much as Robertson or Russell, for instance, did, with some fresh Tnis is one of those excellent contributions to history peculiar to the French genius. It interests us in the obscure bat pregnant period of European history which lies between the revolt of Luther and the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648. The lucidity of M. de Meaux's style, and his thoughtful generalisa- tions, enable us to disentangle the issues of a most perplexing revolution, and give startling actuality to the problems of the sixteenth century, some of which have yet to be solved. He uses fairly the researches of their own historians when he sketches the condition of foreign States, and judging from his account of the Tudor Reformation, he appears in accord with the best opinions; but his work is strongest and most original when he uses the materials supplied by French and Italian archives. These are specially instructive to us, who are for the most part ignorant of Papal policy, or judge of it much as Robertson or Russell, for instance, did, with some fresh
• L Itlfer.nc at la Politique Fraticaiee en Europe, Par le Vicomte de Meaux. Pane; Perrin at Cie. 1889. doubt, did at one period rim at speeds not inferior to those flashes of Macaulay's to mislead us. M. de Meaux's hero is reached last year, but for short distances only. The famous Henry IV., and his work has for its central interest the "great West Shore run, from East Buffalo to New York, is not so design" of that greatest of French statesmen,—a far-seeing phenomenal after all ; it was done under exceptional circum- scheme of politics which, maimed as it was by the crime of stances, and, in fact, barely reaches the express Midland speed Ravaillac, laid the basis of the new Europe on which Richelieu to Glasgow. So the palm still remains with English lines. And knew how to fashion the pre-eminence of France, and, um- now some may well ask : What is to be the end of these fortunately for her internal condition, the absolutism of her high speeds ? The question is, one would say, definitely Monarchy. Each chapter of this book might give materials answered. After showing the world what could be done, the for a separate review. We can but mark its most salient Companies have kept things much as they were before. points, and perhaps first of them is its witness to the People, indeed, travel quite quick enough, and are satisfied if dominant share civil considerations had in what we have their trains keep time. What the "race to Edinburgh " showed honoured by the name of religious struggle after truth. The was not so much the pace at which a train could go, as the Singular surrender of conscience to the Tudor claim of dog- perfection of detail shown by the signalling system, and the matic infallibility resulted probably from the exhaustion of the smoothness of the permanent way. Not, indeed, that the English people after the Wars of the Roses, and of the clergy, lesson conveyed by the exhibition of the power of steam who had never recovered the ravages of the Black Death, was less striking. To the artistic sense of many, the which reduced their colleges to skeletons, and obliged mere railway-engine may not appeal; but at least it has the boys to fill the ranks of the priesthood. The domestic cir- elements of utility and strength combined to such a degree as camstances of England drew her apart from the rest of must appeal to those who see beauty in the just proportions Europe, but she moved on the same lines until the Rebellion. of a perfected machine. Few of us can see one of Mr. .As abroad, the makeweights and restraints of the civil powers Stirling's "eight-foot driving-wheel singles" without a thrill were swept away by the new doctrines which made Princes of admiration ; nor watch the great wheel, first quickly, then arbiters of their subjects' faith. The doctrine of divine right slowly, revolve, without feeling something of the force, the became tenable, and creeds were held not because of their energy, and the enormous strength which drags with so little truth, but because they were patriotic. The Channel stood effort so heavy a load. These monarchs of metal seem, by- England in good stead by isolating her struggle. The state- the-way, to have a long life. The Cornwall,' on the London craft of the first Stuarts, the patriotism evoked by the State and North-Western, still runs its fifty miles an hour ; and the Church, the persecutions which ensued, roused in us a 'Iron Duke,' on the Great Western, doubtless runs with all political vigour which was not wasted or coerced by Con- its old dash. As Mr. Acworth says, "no passenger, unless he tinental interference. All that is familiar to us; but while should also happen to be a shareholder, will see without a recognising that by compromise rather than by dogma we pang the stately Iron Duke,' the Tartar,' and the 'Swallow' are what we are, it is interesting to see in M. de Meaux's disappear from the road which has known them for forty panorama how little creeds had to do with the contentions of years." One grief will always remain, to which there can be the day, though the rupture of theoretic unity had political no reserve, the death of the great coaching traffic. "A few results further-reaching than any dreamt of by Luther or years since," said a writer in 1842, "ninety-four coaches ran Calvin. Entirely new problems of society had to be solved, through St. Albans daily. On Saturday last, the Sleepy and it was difficult to recompose relations with Rome, and at Leeds,' which has been on the road upwards of a hundred the same time to assume an uncontrolled nationality, or to years, ceased running." We can hardly realise now what this re-create political unity in States such as France, where there
simple announcement meant to many people at that time. was grave religious dissidence. Spain and Italy, as the author
Mr. Acworth does not forget the other principal lines, faithfully points out, cut the knot by putting aside the new wor- though, indeed, they are not, from the point of view of speed ship; but Spain stifled freedom of thought within her borders, at least, so interesting to the general reader. He has a good and sterilised her faith. There was but a dream of national life word to say in praise of the Great Eastern, "the poor man's in Italy—a dream, indeed, always present with the Popes, and line," and it well deserves it. "A young man who took a cherished by them—and the Transmontane novelties were ticket for Cambridge at Liverpool Street" would not now be easily eliminated, while the reform and revival of Christian considered "rash," and we do not need Thackeray's assurance discipline, which had its centre at Rome, preserved a spiritual "that even a journey on the Eastern Counties must end." vitality to which the actual world bears witness. In Denmark With this Company the book concludes. The Railways of and Sweden, as in England, the new doctrines associated them- England is really a most readable volume. The writer has selves with patriotism, to be splendidly illustrated in Gustavus seized on the points most likely to interest his readers. He Adolphus as in Cromwell. In France, the old and new faiths gives but few details and no statistics, nothing to prevent met on more equal terms, and from the conflict she issued any one obtaining a clear grasp of the subject. He looks at Catholic but tolerant as was no other contemporary Power. railways from an outside point of view, and is yet acquainted It is M. de Meaux's main theme to show how, through with a variety of details and their practical working.' And, this happy tolerance, which, however, was not indifference, above all, he shows us how little we really have to complain the nation attained its legitimate preponderance in the of, and how immeasurably better off we are, both as to speed seventeenth century. Unlike the English tameness before and fares, than either the Continent, with its Orient express the Tudors, the French had sufficient energy of conviction to and the Italian " Treno lampo," or America, with her boasted impose their faith on their greatest King, who in his turn
"Cannon-Ball" train, insisted on tolerance, not only at home, but wherever his diplomacy extended. The services he rendered to English Catholics were great at a time when they were most persecuted; while no European Prince wrought more heartily to secure the independence of the Papal Power.
The author's report of Henry's foreign policy as soon as he had stayed the plague of civil war, is extremely interesting. France represented within the Catholic pale the new forces of national independence, and conferred lasting benefits on Europe by her persevering opposition to Austrian and Spanish pretensions: They aimed at founding an autocracy after the pattern of the Protestant Princes, plus the Roman sanction, but free of Roman make- weights, a design which might have irretrievably connected the Latin Church with tyranny, and have made religious schism and political liberty synonymous. Henry IV. was never greater than when he changed the issues of the European struggle by removing it from the religions to the political field. The service he rendered to the Christian Church yet bears fruit, and can hardly be exaggerated. Sainte-Benve, no enthusiast, admits that he legitimately earned his title as the "Arbiter of Christianity ;" while Richelieu, following in Henry's footsteps, could fairly claim that France was "the heart of the Christian States." It is useful to observe that Europe was not divided, as some well-meaning writers hint, into Protestant and Catholic parties, however loudly religious differences were invoked for political ends. The safeguards of the Papacy against an Imperialism which would have strangled it with all the forms of affectionate respect, were found in the French alliances with Protestant Powers. Henry's "great design" aimed at the liberty of the Vatican, to which he conceived necessary the liberty of the Italian States. Much of what is obscure in the diplomacy of the time is cleared by M. de Meaux's exposition of that "great design," unhappily checked by Ravaillac, and neglected by the incompetent Marie de Medicis, until Richelieu took it up with the vigour of his fine genius, and left it as an inheritance to be but partially achieved by Mazarin in the Peace of Westphalia. By its wisdom, and the tolerance it enforced on Europe, the splendour of Louis XIV.'s reign was acquired ; but Henry's grandson had not Henry's statesmanship. The Huguenot insisted, to use Sully's words, that, even by Governments outside their fold, • the Popes should be "great and powerful Princes, possessing all the qualities necessary to give them the position of sovereign arbiters in all differences which might arise be- tween Christian potentates and their subjects." Louis set up Gallicanism, and sheltered himself from Rome behind his courtier Bishops ; indifferent to law and custom, he practised a cruel intolerance, and the decadence of the eighteenth cen- tury was secured. To vindicate Henry's profound respect for the
Papacy, M. de Meaux writes excellent and impartial chapters
on the Italian Renaissance more sober in colouring than those picturesque caricatures of it which have been common lately in England. He obeys the law promulgated by Leo XIII., that "Catholic historians must neither conceal nor dare to falsify the truth," and he frankly confesses that the chief guardians of the Christian religion, when they should have directed the forces of the new learning, favoured with too
great complacency its paganism. Neglecting that never- ceasing internal evolution which at once secures and witnesses to Catholic vitality, they cared more to encourage Art or verify a Greek text than to assert the Petrine authority, sole justification of their temporal power. M. de Meaux vindicates, however, the Papal policy and action from many reproaches still popular in England. He does not hide the cruelties practised in the name of orthodoxy, but he points out that they were less in Italy than in Protestant States elsewhere, while far greater pains were taken to instruct recusants. Radical purgation of the Roman system was meantime undertaken. Even to its faithful supporters, it had seemed fatally enfeebled in the middle of the sixteenth cen- tury; but before the end of it, St. Charles Borromeo and St. Philip Neri, among a host of other reformers, had renewed the discipline and revived the piety of clergy and laymen, until Baronius could say truly it was a "century of saints." The Society founded by Ignatius of Loyola, was already, to use Montaigne's words, a "nursery of great men in every variety of greatness." Spain, indeed, had contributed many well- known names to the calendar, but their examples were frus- trated by the political condition of their country, and were not fecund as those of their companions in France. There, the ardour and learning roused but wasted in the struggles and defeats of the preceding period, spent itself in a general revival of religious institutions, once peace was assured by Henry. Vocations abounded ; monastic families were brought in touch with the people outside. Education, philosophy, and science occupied laymen and clerics alike. St. Francis de Sales and St. Vincent de Paul proved how the new wine could be poured into new bottles of Roman make. Discussion enfranchised by the new tolerance, at that period best, perhaps alone, enjoyed in France, was free to examine the new bases of society, the principles of law, the reason for custom. The divine right claimed by Protestant Princes had to be formu- lated, and the relations of Catholic Kings to the Head of their Church required new adjustment. To us, who have been used to think of Huguenots as sole repre- sentatives of religion, we commend M. de Meaux's cata- logue of workers under the Catholic banner in the cause of human advance on the heights of knowledge and noble life; nor can we deny his praise of 'he tolerance and free intel- lectual growth which gave France her splendid eminence in
virtue and learning. The Roman controversialists held their own in the onward progress; and, indeed, if Louis XIV. did revoke the Edict of Nantes, it was chiefly because his Huguenot subjects had neglected their right of public assembly for discussion of their grievances, and were so obscure that the advisers of the King could persuade him that hardly any appreciable number existed.
Not even M. de Meaux, though armed with some hitherto unused papers of the Barberini family, procured for him by the kindness of the Comte de Richemont, can give interest to the obscure and perplexing drama of the Thirty Years' War. We could not expect him to lessen the central glory of Henry by setting up G-ustavus Adolphus as a second hero. The great Swede was but a Northern meteor, and the author devotes his attention to the coherent foreign policy of Richelieu, probably more profitable to his country than was the domestic coercion by which he is chiefly judged. It goes far to explain the hesitations and weakness of the Papal diplomacy to which Richelieu was not so con- siderate as would have been his master in politics, Henry. The great Cardinal and his Protestant alliances no doubt sheltered Rome from the dangerous approaches of Spain and Austria ; but Henry had broader designs and a freer hand than Richelieu, and could better gild the pill of heretic sup- port. He could also better silence the religious war-cries, and restrain the contentions of the Thirty Years' War to their true political issues. The patrimony of the Church, rather than her creed, was dismembered by Protestant and Papist Prince alike, and Papal bulls remained as inefficient in Spain as in Sweden. The great statesman would possibly have fore- seen that if the European States drifted into tyrannies, with their results of servile clergies and religious decay, his "great design" could not thrive. He would have kept the Popes from falling into that political weakness which allowed Josephism in Austria and Gallicanism in France. Henry wished the Popes to be "Presidents of the Christian Republic." Had he lived to make a three-years' war of that confused noise of battle which lasted for thirty, he would have equalised the influence of the Popes with that of the other monarchs, and would have probably averted the scandals of the eighteenth century. Certainly it would not have been true that at the time of the French Revolution there was not one Bishop in France who was not of the noble or courtier caste.
M. de Meaux has spent ten years in co-ordinating the mass of materials supplied by the historians and the archives of the sixteenth century, and his conclusions seem to us legitimate, though his point of view cannot always be ours. He describes that substitution of civil for spiritual authority which threw old Europe into confusion, with singular justice. His estimate of the Reformation in England is as fair as we should expect from a son-in-law of Montalembert's, though he chiefly relies on Lingard and the Catholic authorities, who, indeed, should be more consulted than they are, if we would be just. He links past and present by principles as true in the centenary of '89 as during the massacre of St. Bartholomew. He relieves religion of a burden of responsibilities that belong to civil and diplomatic action, and gives continuity to what we hope is truly progress, by his clear sight of the policy and the religions
temper which secured stable results not yet exhausted. We recommend the book to those who think that history began this morning with the newspapers. They will draw their own conclusions, but we think new arguments will be found in it for the independence of the Papacy, for strenuous efforts to
avert Imperialism within the European Republic, and for a lively faith in tolerance which may possibly have to be in- voked for Christian religions of every type,—if not in England, it may be in France and Italy.
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