The Frog Blog of<br>Louis la Vache: Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully, Minister to Henri IV

Maximilien de Béthune, duke de Sully Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully was born on le 13 décembre 1560 in Mantes. He was the doughty soldier, French minister, staunch Huguenot (Calvinist Protestant) and faithful right-hand man who enabled Henri IV of France to accomplish so much. He was born at the château of Rosny near Mantes-la-Jolie of a noble family of Flemish descent and was brought up in the Reformed faith, a Huguenot. Still a boy, Maximilien was presented to Henri de Navarre in 1571 and remained permanently attached to the future king of France. The young baron de Rosny was taken to Paris by his patron and was studying at the College of Bourgogne at the time of the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre, from which he escaped by discreetly carrying a Book of Hours under his arm. The notorious Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy was a wave of Catholic mob violence against the Huguenots instigated by the regent of France, Catherine de Medici, the mother of King Charles IX. Starting on le 24 août 1572, with the assassination of a prominent Huguenot, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, the massacres spread throughout Paris and later to other cities and the countryside and lasted for several months, during which as many as 70,000 may have been killed. The massacres marked a turning-point in the French Wars of Religion by stiffening Huguenot intransigence. The religious wars of Catholics against Huguenots continued for some thirty years. Louis la Vache's ancestral family, the Sarchets, on his mother's side had been Huguenots in Normandie. Most of the Sarchets were murdered. In 1599 the surviving Sarchets stole a boat and sailed across la Manche, the English Channel, to Guernsey Isle. After his studies at the College of Bourgogne, Rosny then studied mathematics and history at the court of Henri of Navarre. On the outbreak of civil war in 1575 he enlisted in the Protestant army. In 1576 he accompanied the duke of Anjou on an expedition into the Netherlands in order to regain the former Rosny estates, but being unsuccessful he attached himself for a time to the Prince of Orange. Later rejoining Henri of Navarre in Guienne, he displayed bravery in the field and particular ability as a military engineer. In 1583 he was Henri's special agent in Paris, and during a respite in the Wars of Religion he married an heiress who died five years later. On the renewal of civil war Rosny again joined Henri of Navarre, and at the battle of Ivry (1590) was seriously wounded. He counselled Henri IV's conversion to Roman Catholicism in order for Henri to become king, now Henri IV, but steadfastly refused himself to become a Roman Catholic. As soon as Henri's power was established, the faithful and trusted Rosny received his reward in the shape of numerous estates and dignities. From 1596, when he was added to Henri's finance commission Rosny introduced some order into France's economic affairs. Acting as sole superintendent of finances (officially) so at the end of 1601, he authorized the free exportation of grain and wine, reduced legal interest, established a special court to try cases of peculation (embezzlement), forbade provincial governors to raise money on their own authority, and otherwise removed many abuses of tax-collecting. Rosny abolished several offices, and by his honest, rigorous conduct of the country's finances was able to save for the crown between 1600 and 1610 an average of a million livres (the currency at the time) a year. His achievements were by no means solely financial. In 1599 he was appointed grand commissioner of highways and public works, superintendent of fortifications and grand master of artillery; in 1602 governor of Nantes and of Jargeau, captain-general of the Queen's gens d'armes and governor of the Bastille; in 1604 he was governor of Poitou; and in 1606 made duke of Sully, ranking next to princes of the blood. He declined the office of constable because he would not become a Roman Catholic.

La Bastille was a fort and prison located on the east end of rue-Saint-Antoine in Paris. The eastern wall of the city passed on either side, and one of the city's eastern gates was by it. The storming of la Bastille on le 14 juillet 1789 marked the beginning of the French Revolution. Sully encouraged agriculture, urged the free circulation of produce, promoted stock-raising, forbade the destruction of the forests, drained swamps, built roads and bridges, planned a vast system of canals. He strengthened the French military establishment; under his direction Evrard began the construction of a great line of defences on the frontiers. The public works projects of Henri IV and Sully did much to modernise Paris, the most that had been done until Napoléon III and Haussmann two hundred forty years later. Among their projects were le pont Neuf and Place des Vosges. In 1635, Sully bought the hôtel, mansion, on rue-Saint-Antione in what is now the 4 ème arrondissement that now bears his name. This hôtel's garden opens onto Place des Vosges. (See the post below). Abroad, Sully opposed the king's colonial policy as inconsistent with French interests, and likewise showed little favor to industrial pursuits, although on the urgent solicitation of the king he established a few silk factories. He fought in company with Henri IV in Savoie, Savoy, (1600-1601) and negotiated the treaty of peace in 1602; in 1603 he represented Henri at the court of James I of England; and throughout the reign he helped the king to put down insurrections of the nobles, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant. It was Sully, too, who arranged the marriage between Henri IV and Marie de Medici. The political role of Sully practically ended with the assassination of Henri IV on le 14 mai 1610. Although a member of the Queen's council of regency, his colleagues were not disposed to brook his domineering leadership, and after a stormy debate he resigned as superintendent of finances on le 26 janvier 1611, and retired to private life. The queen mother gave him 300,000 livres for his long services and confirmed him in possession of his estates. He attended the meeting of the Estates-General in 1614, and on the whole was in sympathy with the policy and government of his successor as minister, Richelieu. The baton of Marshal of France was conferred on him on le 18 septembre 1634. The last years of his life were spent chiefly at Villebon, Rosny and Sully. He died at Villebon on le 22 décembre 1641. By his first wife Sully had one son, Maximilien, marquis de Rosny (1587-1634), who led a life of dissipation and debauchery. By his second wife, Rachel de Cochefilet, widow of the lord of Chateaupers, whom he married in 1592 and who turned Protestant to please him, he had nine children, of whom six died young, and one daughter married in 1605 Henri de Rohan. Sully was not popular. He was hated by most Roman Catholics because he was a Protestant, by most Protestants because he was faithful to the king, and by all because he was a favorite, and selfish, obstinate and rude. He amassed a large personal fortune, and his jealousy of all other ministers and favorites was extravagant. Nevertheless he was an excellent man of business, inexorable in punishing malversation and dishonesty on the part of others, and opposed to the ruinous court expenditure which was the bane of almost all European monarchies in his day. He was gifted with executive ability, with confidence and resolution, with fondness for work, and above all with deep devotion to Henri IV. He was implicitly trusted by the king and proved himself Henri's most able assistant in dispelling the chaos into which the religious and civil wars had plunged France. To Sully, next to Henri IV, belongs the credit for the happy transformation in France between 1598 and 1610, by which agriculture and commerce were benefited and foreign peace and internal order were reestablished. Sully left a collection of memoirs written in the second person very valuable for the history of the time and as an autobiography, in spite of the fact that they contain many fictions, such as a mission undertaken by Sully to Queen Elizabeth in 1601. Perhaps among his most famous works was the idea of a Europe comprised of 15 roughly equal States, under the direction of a "Very Christian Council of Europe", charged with resolving differences and disposing of a common army. This famous "Grand Design," a Utopian plan for a Christian republic, is often cited as one of the first grand plans and ancestors for the European Union. Two folio volumes of the memoirs were splendidly printed, nominally at Amsterdam, but really under Sully's own eye, at his chateau in 1638; two other volumes appeared posthumously in Paris in 1662. More Reading: