A History of France, Vol. 2 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A History of France, Vol. 2<br><br>State of France, - In 1598 Henry IV. had driven out the foreigners, reconciled Catholics and Protestants, and established peace in the interior and on the frontiers. It was now necessary to heal all the wounds that France had received. A contemporary estimated that since 1580 eight hundred thousand persons had perished by war and massacre; that nine cities had been levelled with the ground, two hundred and fifty villages burned, and one hundred and twenty-eight thousand houses destroyed. And since that period, which preceded the formation of the League, how numerous were the ruins of another sort! Workmen without work, commerce interrupted, agriculture desolated, robbery everywhere; and from the midst of all this desolation Henry IV. must endeavor to resuscitate France. The nobility had proposed one way out of the difficulty; they offered him all the money necessary for the government and for the maintenance of the army, on condition of a virtual restoration of feudalism. This was far from according with Henry's designs.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.