55 



CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS ORATORY. 



also that his unpremeditated replies to the ambassadors aud deputies whom 

 he received were much better than their set speeches. 



Henri IV. did not convoke the States- General during his reign, but he 

 found other opportunities for showing that he could speak as readily and 

 with greater sincerity than his predecessor in public assemblies. He 

 possessed the true kind of political eloquence, inasmuch as he was able to 

 persuade and stir his hearers in a few words. Take, for instance, his brief 

 unstudied speech at a meeting of the Notables of Kouen (1596) : "I have 

 not called you together, as my predecessors did, for you to ratify my will, 



Fig. 417. "How Oergean was taken." Miniature from the " Vigiles du Roi Charles VII." 

 French Manuscript of 1481 (No. 5,054). In the National Library, Paris. 



but to receive your advice, to put confidence in it and to follow it, and to 

 place myself in your hands a thing which is not often done by kings, 

 grey-headed men, or victorious soldiers." 



Henri IV. also excelled in military eloquence. In the early ages of the 

 monarchy it was not the generals who stimulated the enthusiasm of their 

 soldiers, but the soldiers who stimulated their own enthusiasm by warlike 

 songs or cries, in which were embodied the names of their respective chiefs. 

 History, however, has enregistered the speech delivered to his army by 

 Philip Augustus, before the battle of Bovines (August 27th, 1214), and there 



