Missions Impossible: Pomponne de Bellièvre and the Policies of Henry III

Abstract

For more than four centuries the reign of Henry III, king of France (1574-89), was characterized by historians as one of bad government. Recently several students of the king and his reign have claimed that Henry was unjustly maligned and blamed for misfortunes attributable not to his failings as ruler but to the condition of France, which was torn asunder by the Wars of Religion. We argue that Henry lacked the requisites for effective political leadership. This can be demonstrated by analysing an aspect of his reign not hitherto studied in detail, namely the diplomatic missions undertaken by Henry’s emissary Pomponne de Bellièvre. In the conduct of these missions, which the king personally directed, Henry and Bellièvre exchanged scores of letters. Examination of Henry’s instructions and follow-up directives to his minister, and of Bellièvrexs’s replies and his comments to his colleagues allow one to see how Henry made policy. Analysis of four of the best-documented examples refutes the sunnier conclusions of recent revisionist historians who concur with the diarist L’Estolle’s opinion that Henry III would have been a good prince in a better century. Whether dealing through Bellièvre with Jean Casimir of the Palatinate (1575-76), Henry of Navarre (1583-84), Elizabeth of England (1586-87), or Henry, duke of Guise (1588), the king made serious errors of political judgement. Bellièvre, a sensitive and skilled negotiator, was acutely aware of his royal master’s shortcomings. Their exchange of correspondence shows how Bellièvre strove to persuade Henry to modify his bargaining position so as to offer some possibility of a negotiated solution to the problem at hand. Henry III is revealed as a ruler whose fundamental grasp of political reality was shaky at best, and whose policy decisions constrained Bellièvre to conduct what were truly Missions Impossible.