Legends -- Pyrenees; Pyrenees -- Description and travel; Pyrenees -- History
When Henry IV came to the throne of France the care of his hereditary
dominions in Gascony was confided to his sister Catherine. In the
Castle of Pau at that time was brought up Antoine de Bourbon, Count of
Moret, Henry’s son by Jacqueline de Bueil. There he studied, but proved
a sorry scholar. In later days he ventured on criticizing the works of
Gombaud, whereupon this latter retaliated with an epigram.
“Vous chocquez la nature et l’art,
Vous qui n’êtes né que d’un crime;
Mais pensez vous que d’un bastard
Le jugement soit légitime?”
Antoine fell in the battle of Castelnaudary, in 1631. Half a century
later, there appeared in Anjou an old hermit, who called himself John
Baptist, and whose face resembled Henri Quatre markedly. Moreover, he
admitted having been in the battle of Castelnaudary, and showed himself
to be intimately acquainted with Pau and with every part of the castle;
but he would never say who he was. Louis XIV, having heard of him, sent
to demand whether he was the Antoine de Bourbon, son of Henry IV, who
had been reported dead. He refused to answer, and on his death-bed,
when again questioned on this point, returned an evasive answer.
In matters of religion Henry IV was tolerant. He wrote in 1594:--
“I have in my kingdom of Béarn two parishes separated only by a
river. In one of these there has never during my reign been any
(Calvinist) preacher; in the other, never a Mass said, yet the
inhabitants of these parishes have not wronged one another to
the value of a sou. You will see, that I will bring about such
concord in my kingdom that there will be no further squabbles.”
But before this, when in Paris, under the surveillance of Catherine
de Medici, he was obliged to send the Count de Grammont and a
commission into Béarn to restore Catholic worship. D’Aubigné relates
an incident relative to this attempt that is characteristic of the
temper of the times. When the Baron d’Arros, who had been appointed
after Montgomery, by Jeanne d’Albret, to enforce the sole exercise
of Calvinistic worship in her states, heard of the coming of De
Grammont, he happened to encounter his father, aged eighty, and
blind, coming out of the Huguenot meeting-house. The old man led his
son home, placed in his hands a drawn sword, and bade him slay and
spare not the Lord’s enemies. Arros and thirty-seven followers went
to Hagetmau, where Grammont and the commissioners were, and entered
the castle unperceived. Then they fell upon and slaughtered officers,
soldiers, and servants, indiscriminately. De Grammont alone was spared.
His wife--Corisande d’Andouins, one of the loveliest women of the
time--threw herself between her husband and Arros, and with tears
implored the latter to spare Grammont.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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