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Updated: May 23, 2025
L'Estoile relates that the king's favorite, Gabrielle d'Estrees, was at the session behind some tapestry, and that, Henry IV. having asked what she thought of his speech, she answered, "I never heard better spoken; only I was astonished that you spoke of placing yourself under guardianship."
He no longer retained in his room anybody but two of his servants and his nurse, "of whom he was very fond, although she was a Huguenot," says the contemporary chronicler Peter de l'Estoile. "When she had lain down upon a chest, and was just beginning to doze, hearing the king moaning, weeping, and sighing, she went full gently up to the bed.
He was then dismembered by four strong horses, which pulled for no less than an entire hour. They dismembered only a corpse. He expired," says L'Estoile, "at the second or third pull." When the executioner had to throw the limbs into the fire that the ashes, according to the sentence, might be flung to the winds, the whole crowd rushed on to claim them.
"On Tuesday, August 1, at eight A. M., he was told," says L'Estoile, "that a monk desired to speak with him, but that his guards made a difficulty about letting him in. 'Let him in, said the king: 'if he is refused, it will be said that I drive monks away and will not see them. Incontinently entered the monk, having in his sleeve a knife unsheathed.
But Olivier laughed and reminded Christophe of the saying of old Pierre de l'Estoile: It is as little in the power of all the dominions of the earth to curb the French liberty of speech, as to bury the sun in the earth or to shut it up inside a hole. Gradually Christophe grew accustomed to the air of boundless liberty.
"It is incredible," says L'Estoile, "what joy everybody felt at this interview; there was such a throng of people that, notwithstanding all efforts to preserve order, the two kings were a full quarter of an hour in the roadway of Plessis park holding out their hands to one another without being able to join them; people climbed trees to see them; all shouted with great vigor and exultation, Hurrah for the king! hurrah for the King of Navarre! hurrah for the kings!
Histoire de Thou; L'Estoile; Memoires de la Reine Marguerite; Histoire de Henri le Grand, par Madame de Genlis; Memoires de Sully; D'Aubigne; Matthien; Brantome's Vie de Charles IX.; Henri Martin's History of France; Mezerai; Perefixe; Sismondi. The Thirty Years' War, of which Gustavus Adolphus was the greatest hero, was the result of those religious agitations which the ideas of Luther produced.
'And to our good barricaders, said the king; 'let us not forget them. Whereupon the duke began to laugh a little," adds L'Estoile, "but a sort of laugh that did not go beyond the knot of the throat, being dissatisfied at the novel union the king was pleased to make of the Huguenots with the barricaders."
"On Tuesday, August 2, his Majesty," says L'Estoile, "being entertained by the Duke of Guise during his dinner, asked him for drink, and then said to him, 'To whom shall we drink? 'To whom you please, sir, answered the duke; 'it is for your Majesty to command. 'Cousin, said the king, 'drink we to our good friends the Huguenots. 'It is well said, sir, answered the duke.
"In continently," says L'Estoile, "everybody seizes his arms, goes out on guard in the streets and cantons; in less than no time chains are stretched across and barricades made at the corners of the streets; the mechanic leaves his tools, the tradesman his business, the University their books, the attorneys their bags, the advocates their bands; the presidents and councillors themselves take halberds in hand; nothing is heard but shouts, murmurs, and the seditious speeches that heat and alarm a people."
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