any even among the Protestants acknowledged it to be
an act of supreme political wisdom.

Peace was restored, and the Edict of Nantes, which quickly followed,
proved to his old friends, the Huguenots, that they were not forgotten.
The Protestants, with disabilities removed, shared equal privileges
with the Catholics throughout the kingdom, and the first victory for
religious liberty was splendidly won.

An era of unexampled prosperity dawned. Never had the kingdom been so
wisely and beneficently governed. Sincerity, simplicity, and sympathy
had taken the place of dissimulation, craft, and cruelty. Uplifting
agencies were everywhere at work, reaching even to the peasantry, that
forgotten element in the nation.

The formal abjuration of the Protestant faith was made by the King in
the Church of St. Denis in 1593. This church also witnessed the
marriage of Henry with Marie de' Medici, after his release from her
debased relative, Margaret of Valois, daughter of Catharine de' Medici.
Henry IV., great although he was, was not above the ordinary weaknesses
of humanity, and, captivated by the beauty of Marie, was a willing
party to the Italian marriage which was urged upon him, which marriage
was the one mistake of a great reign.

It was not to be expected that any minister would rise to the full
stature of Henry IV. at this time. But in the Duke of Sully he had a
wise and efficient instrument for his plan, which was out of the chaos
left by the devastation of thirty years of religious wars, to evolve
peace and prosperity; and to create economic conditions upon a
foundation insuring growth and permanence.

The royal authority, impaired by the successors of Francis, must first
be restored. And to that end all political elements, including the
States General, must be held firmly down; and that body, representing
the _Tiers Etat_, was never summoned after France was well in hand by
the king who was _par excellence_ the friend of the people!

It is the Edict of Nantes which stands preeminent among the events of
this reign, and which is Henry's monument in the annals of France. His
foreign policy was controlled by a desire to check the preponderance of
the Hapsburgs; that being, in fact, the dominant sentiment in Europe at
that time. But a remarkable proof of the breadth of his treatment of
this subject is the plan he formulated of a European tribunal composed
of the five great powers, which should insist upon the main