ops. The army,
provisions, and every other necessary were in readiness. Money no
longer failed; Sully had laid up forty millions of livres in the
treasury, which were destined for this war. His alliances were already
assured, his generals had been formed by himself, and all seemed to
forebode such a storm as must probably have overwhelmed an emperor
devoted to the search after the philosopher's stone, and a king of
Spain under the dominion of the Inquisition. Henry was impatient to
join his army; but his mind had become harassed with sinister
forebodings, and his chagrin was increased by a temporary alienation
from his faithful minister. He was on his way to pay a visit of
reconciliation to Sully, when his coach was entangled as it passed
along the street. His attendants left the carriage to remove the
obstruction, and during the delay thus caused he was stabbed to the
heart by Francis Ravaillac, a native of Angouleme. This calamitous
event took place on May 14, 1610, in the fifty-seventh year of his
age. The Spaniards, who had the strongest interest in the catastrophe,
were supposed to have been the instigators; but the fear of
implicating other powers, and plunging France into greater evils than
those from which their hero had rescued them, deterred not only
statesmen, but even the judges on Ravaillac's trial, from pressing for
the names of accomplices. Hardouin de Perefixe, in his "History of
Henry the Great," says, "If it be asked who inspired the monster with
the thought, history answers that she does not know; and that in so
mysterious an affair, it is not allowable to vent suspicions and
conjectures as assured truths; that even the judges who conducted the
examinations opened not their mouths, and spoke only with their
shoulders."

The assertions of Ravaillac, as far as they have any weight,
discountenance the belief of an extended political conspiracy. The
house of Austria, Mary de Medici his wife, Henriette d'Entragues his
mistress, as well as the Duke d'Epernon, have been subjected to the
hateful conjectures of Mazarin and other historians; but he who
actually struck the blow invariably affirmed that he had no
accomplice, and that he was carried forward by an uncontrollable
instinct. If his mind were at all acted on from without, it was
probably by the epidemic fanaticism of the times, rather than by
personal influence.

Henry left three sons and three daughters by Mary de Medici. Of no
prince recorded in