An Alternative Epilogue: Imagining What Might Have Been

Summary

Though nothing can be immortall, which mortals make; yet, if men had the use of reason they pretend to, their Commonwealths might be secured, at least, from perishing by internall diseases. For by the nature of their Institution, they are designed to live, as long as Mankind, or as the Lawes of Nature, or as Justice it selfe, which gives them life. Therefore when they come to be dissolved, not by externall violence, but intestine disorder, the fault is not in men, as they are the Matter; but as they are the Makers, and orderers of them.

—Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 29, para. 1

Was Henry's attempt to conquer France the epitome of an extravagant, vainglorious, immoral, and ultimately futile ambition, as not a few of his modern critics claim? Or could he have succeeded in achieving what his invasion began: to make good his claim to be the rightful King of France as well as of England, and by uniting the two realms end the chronic conflict between them? Why not? A bold ambition, to be sure, and doubtless difficult to accomplish. But he had at least one factor in his favour: no part of France was a republic. For all of its provincial variety, it was a nation whose various provinces—‘all her almost kingly dukedoms’—were long accustomed to princely rule. And as Machiavelli teaches:

When cities or provinces are used to living under a prince, and his bloodline is eliminated—since on the one hand they are used to obeying, and on the other they do not have the old prince—they will not agree to make one from themselves and they do not know how to live free. So they are slower to take up arms, and a prince can gain them with greater ease and secure himself against them. But in republics there is greater life, greater hatred, more desire for revenge; the memory of their ancient liberty does not and cannot let them rest.

In judging the practicality of his enterprise, one should bear in mind that the ‘reverse’ had already been done.