Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/135

 1922 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 127 jol, to ladies, she saw no embarrassment in their being contradictory; Wheh her cause seemed hopelessly lost, she would continue to argue and negotiate to gain time and give fortune's wheel a chance of turning. This might result from the strong vein of imagination on which M. Mariejol insists. She saw things not as they were but as she wanted them ; in her enthusiasms she never doubted success, never saw any but favourable solutions ; all her life she dreamt dreams and saw visions. Undoubtedly conceited, she thought that she had a monopoly of. finesse, and ascribed too little to her adversaries, notably to Henry of Navarre. Sure of unravel- ling the threads of the skein of state she had no hesitation in entangling them. Notwithstanding her brave bearing, maintained to the very end, her contempt for melancholy, and her real liking for the worries of govern- ment, she had more ambition than will, more dash than force ; she was easily discouraged by obstacles which she ought to have taken by storm. Only resolute in personal and dynastic interests, she would take up greater causes, drop them, reassume them, and then definitely abandon them. In her government, as in her buildings, she never finished anything, and lived among the uncompleted. ' Elle n'a point d'esprit de suite,' concludes M. Mariejol, ' elle est femme.' She was not a calculating machine, as some historians will have it, but one ' qui, quelque maitrise qu'elle eut, avait les nerfs, le coeur et les predilections d'une femme '. Such are the author's conclusions on Catherine's character. When she died, her system of expedients was played out ; she had shown her measure both in good and evil. For thirty years she had kept the shaky monarchy on its feet in spite of most violent shocks. To judge by her power of resistance or by her success one is tempted to rank her among great sovereigns. And yet, he thinks, she does not deserve to be placed so high. With generous intentions and noble initiatives she lacked the means, and even the wish, to bring to fruition those of her efforts which went beyond the immediate ends of her day-to-day life. She was too preoccupied with the interests of her family or her own to follow a truly national policy comprising the triumph of tolerance, the maintenance of royal authority, the expansion of France. ' Pitie, regret, confiance en Dieu, gratitude personnelle, et meme orgueil familial et dynastique ne sont pas un programme d'action.' It may be admitted that Catherine was not a great sovereign, and yet but for her France and its monarchy could scarcely have stood the strain of the civil wars, which were none of her making. The nation had to pay for the sins of Francis I and Henry II and the interminable factions of her great nobles. The queen's industry and spirit of compromise, her very opportunism, did cause lulls in the religious conflict and keep the nation's boundaries intact, until a real sovereign arrived to allay the one and hold the other. It is true enough that this sovereign was none of her choosing. A woman and a foreigner, with her favourite son a hindrance, and her youngest virtually an enemy, she had but a handful of capable civil servants of no great position to assist her. It is fair to note that she had to cope with antagonists of quite first-rate ability, Henry of Guise, Henry of Navarre, Damville-Montmorency, and, in the Netherland venture, the prince of Parma. How different was the fortune of our Elizabeth in all