Conviction, Ambition and the Genesis of Sully's Économies royales

Abstract

Although Maximilien de Béthune, duke of Sully (1559–1641), held many high offices under Henry IV (superintendent of finances, grand voyer, grand master of artillery, among others), he never held the realm's highest military post, constable of France. Sully once had the chance to acquire the position, he tells us in his memoirs, the famous Économies royales, but turned it down. The occasion came when Henry IV offered Sully succession to the office held by the aged duke of Montmorency if Sully and his son would convert to Catholicism (Sully's son Maximilien II was to receive Henry's illegitimate daughter Mlle de Vendôme in marriage). Sully thanked the king but claimed he already held sufficient offices and declined to convert. When pressed further, the duke agreed to consider the offer for a month, at the end of which time he informed the king that his Calvinist convictions forbade a conversion’. Henry ‘showed great regret that you remained so firm in that resolution’, Sully's secretaries wrote, ‘and told you that he saw that you no longer loved him, and that since you were more attached to the Huguenots than to him, he would speak to you no more of it…’ This, Sully wished posterity to believe, was all there was to the episode. Since historians of the duke have credited his version of the affair, his wish prevailed. A close scrutiny of the episode and its aftermath reveals, however, that Sully's account concealed far more than it revealed. Henry's offer was far more than just a great ‘temptation.’ What really happened was that Sully tried to secure the ‘great elevation’ without converting. Henry grew angry when Sully refused to yield to his will and briefly threatened him with disgrace. In the end the king acclaimed his minister's firmness of will and forgot his pique. Sully did not, however, and decided that even if his master refused to reward him sufficiently for his contributions to Henry and France, posterity would learn of them. Thus was born the idea of, and very possibly a first draft of, Sully's famous Économies royales.

The choice of Hercules: Henry IV as hero

“…Sully refused to convert, and Henry withdrew his offer. 113 But another war would give Sully the opportunity to demonstrate to Henry once more his worth in the field, and might convince the king to extend the offer again. Certainly, the constable Montmorency, at seventy-six, was not going to ride to the Spanish Netherlands in the van of the royal armies.…”