Sully, MAXIMILIEN DE BETHUNE, DUKE OF, the famous minister of Henry IV. of France, was the second of the four sons of François, Baron de Rosny, and was born at the château of Rosny near Mantes, 13th December 1560. At an early age he was committed to the care of Henry of Navarre, head of the Huguenot party, narrowly escaped the St Bartholomew massacre (1572), and accompanied Henry in his flight from court (1576). He took an active part in the war, had command of the artillery at Coutras (1587), and helped materially to decide the victory. He reached Ivry but an hour and a half before the battle, but was fortunate enough, though severely wounded, to capture the white standard with black crosses of Mayenne. He approved of the king's politic conversion, and throughout the whole of the reign remained his most trusted counsellor. His first task was to repair the ruinous finances of the realm, and to this gigantic labour he gave himself with an energy and persistence that entitle him to rank with Richelieu and Colbert among the few great ministers of France. Before his time not half the nominal sum raised from taxes reached the treasury, the whole administration being an organised system of pillage; but Rosny made a tour through the provinces armed with absolute authority, personally examined the accounts, discovered the actual delinquents, and dismissed or suspended them, besides compelling them to disgorge their ill-gotten gains into the treasury. All this he effected with iron rigidity and persistence, heedless of the clamour and hatred of all the army of dishonest tax-gatherers and revenue-farmers, however high in station. In 1596, according to Henri Martin, the disposable revenue of the state was but nine millions of livres; in 1609 it was no less than about twenty millions, with a surplus as great in the treasury, and the arsenals and fleet besides in an excellent state of equipment. He brought actual order out of chaos, and would have done yet more for France but for the vast expenditure of the pleasure-loving king and his mistresses. Yet Sully was no far-seeing or philosophical financier, but only a dexterous master of expedients. He made no great innovations, but, if not a genius of creation, he was undoubtedly one of order. He distrusted manufactures as a source of prosperity, his main economic ideas summed up in his well-known aphorism, 'Labourage et pâture sont les deux mamelles qui nourrissent la France.' His own honesty has been impugned by hasty writers, but, even if he himself grew rich in his years of office, there is absolutely no proof that he ever robbed his master.
In February 1601 he became grand-master of the artillery, and in March 1606 he was created Duke of Sully. After the assassination of his master he was forced to resign the superintendence of finance, but was allowed to retain the care of the woods and the artillery, and was even presented by Marie de Médicis with a reward of 300,000 livres. But his reign was at an end, and ere long he retired to his estate, surviving till December 22, 1641. In his retirement his Memoirs were compiled by his secretaries, and submitted to him, being actually composed in the awkward and tedious fashion of a narrative addressed to himself. Here naturally his own actions are put in the most favourable light; yet, although the judicious student will by no means accept the whole as completely historical, the work remains a document of priceless value for the reign of Henry IV. Chapter vi., treating of the remorse of Charles IX. after St Bartholomew, was copied from an earlier MS., doubtless entirely Sully's own work, and is an admirable example of direct and vigorous writing. The first and second folio volumes were printed under Sully's own eye (undated, but really in 1634); the third and fourth volumes were printed at Paris in 1662. These last contain the famous scheme of the countries of Europe, with the exception of Russia and Turkey, grouped into a grand Christian republic of fifteen states, kept in equilibrium by the magnificent chimera of an international Amphictyonic Assembly, with a rational rearrangement of boundaries and toleration for different faiths. The scheme is no doubt a dream of Sully's rather than Henry's brain, although it may well be that its germ may have been found in the careless talk of the king with his trusted minister as they paced together the broad walk of the Arsenal gardens.
Sully was a harsh and unamiable man, of vast self-esteem and little humour; but his unpopularity was a natural enough fruit of his inflexibility of principle, and his devotion to the interests of France and the person of his king it is absolutely impossible to gainsay.
The full title of his work is its best description: 'Mémoires des sages et royales Économies d'État, domestiques, politiques et militaires de Henri le Grand, l'exemplaire des rois, le prince des vertus, des armes, et des lois, et le père en effet de ses peuples français; Et des Servitudes utiles, obéissances convenables et administrations loyales de Maximilien de Béthune, l'un des plus confidents familiers et utiles soldats et serviteurs du grand Mars des Français; Dédiés à la France, à tous les bons soldats et tous peuples français.'
Marbault, secretary of Sully's chief rival, Du Plessis-Mornay, wrote a severe criticism on the Mémoires—the foundation of the unhistorical and calumnious article on Sully in the Historiettes of Tallemant des Réaux. The singular form in which the Mémoires was cast proved so intolerable to the 18th century that the Abbé de l'Écluse in 1745 re-edited the whole in ordinary form of narrative, but modernised and spoiled the work. The original text may be found in the collection of Michaud and Poujoulat (vols. xvi.-xvii.). See Sainte-Beuve's Causeries du Lundi, vol. viii.; also the books by Legouvé (1873), Gourdault (3d ed. 1877), Bouvet de Cressé (1878), Dusieux (1887), and Chailley (1888); also Ritter's study of the Memoirs (Munich, 1871).