HENRY IV. OF FRANCE 175 allowed to make any new acquisition, but should together form an association for maintaining a mutual balance, and preserving peace. This political reverie, impossible to be realized, is not likely ever to have been actually divulged, even if meditated by Henry, nor is there any trace of it to be found in the history, or among the state-papers of England, Venice, or Holland, the supposed co-op- erators in the scheme. His more rational design in arming went no further than to set bounds to the ambition and power of the house of Austria, both in Ger- many and Italy. Whatever may have been the motive, his means of success were imposing, He was to march into Germany at the head of forty thousand ex- cellent troops. 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 attend- ants 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 res- cued 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 " His- tory 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 mysteri- ous 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 fa- naticism of the times, rather than by personal influence. Henry left three sons and three daughters by Mary de Medici. Of no prince recorded in history, probably, are so many personal anecdotes related, as of Henry IV. These are for the most part well known, and of easy access. Among them stands out prominently the tale of the Spanish ambassador who to
