.

Into the throne of France climbed wearily a feeble youth always under
the influence of his mother, Catherine de Medici; and then it was
filled by two other incapable and final Orleans monarchs, until at
last by virtue of inheritance and sword, it became the seat of that
grand and faulty Henri IV, King of Navarre. By fighting he got his
place, and the habit being strong upon him, he was in eternal
conflict. Some there be who are developed by sympathy, but Henri IV
was developed by opposition, and thus it was that although opposed in
the matter by his Prime Minister, Sully, he established factories for
the weaving of tapestries in both high and low warps.

With the desire to see the arts of peace instead of evidences of war
throughout his kingdom just rescued from conflict, he took all means
to set his people in the ways of pleasing industry. The indefatigable
Sully was plucking the royal sleeve to follow the path of the plough,
to see man's salvation, material and moral, in the ways of
agriculture. But Henri favoured townspeople as well as country
people, and with the Edict of Nantes, releasing from the bondage of
terror a large number of workers, he showed much industry in
encouraging tapestry factories in and near Paris, and as these all
lead to Gobelins we will consider them.

[Illustration: TRIUMPH OF THE GODS (DETAIL)

Gobelins, Seventeenth Century]

[Illustration: TRIUMPH OF THE GODS (DETAIL)

Gobelins Tapestry]

Henri IV, notwithstanding his Prime Minister Sully's opposition to
what he considered a favouring of vicious luxury, began to occupy
himself in tapestry factories as early in his reign as his people
could rise from the wounds of war. Taking his movements
chronologically we will begin with his establishment in 1597 (eight
years after this first Bourbon took the throne) of a high-warp
industry in the house of the Jesuits in the Faubourg St. Antoine,
associating here Du Bourg of La Trinite and Laurent, equally renowned,
and the composer of the St. Merri tapestries.[14]

Flemish workers in Paris were at this same time, about 1601,
encouraged by the king and under protection of his steward. These
Flemings were the nucleus of a great industry, for it was over them
that two famous masters governed, namely, Francois de la Planche and
Marc Comans or Coomans. In 1607 Henri IV established the looms which
these men were called upon to direct.

These two Flemings, great in their art, were men