Henri IV - An unfinished reign

An idea lives on

"No doubt the idea of perpetual peace seems an absurd project today, but give us back a Henri IV and a Sully, and perpetual peace would once again become a reasonable project" (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1760).

The Grand Design was bold and ambitious, but it was above all completely utopian! It would have involved considerable upheaval, in which the Habsburgs would have had the most to lose. The House of Austria would have lost Alsace, the Tyrol and Franche-Comté (which were attached to the Helvetic Republic), while Madrid would have had to cede Milan, the kingdom of Naples, Sicily and its sovereignty over the Southern Netherlands that, together with the United Provinces, formed the Republic of the Belgians. The Habsburgs would thus have been definitively sacrificed at the altar of the Grand Design – which was entirely in line with Henri IV's views, as well as, later, those of his son Louis XIII and Richelieu.

Although the project seems completely unrealistic for the period in which Sully published his Œconomies royales – Europe was mired in the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) – the idea persisted, no doubt due to the prestige it accrued from being attributed to Henri IV. Richelieu mentioned it in his Mémoires, and the following century it was taken up by such thinkers as Abbé de Saint-Pierre, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jacques Necker and Emmanuel Kant. The Grand Design was even given as an example at the opening of the Congress of Panama in 1826. The world had to wait until the 20^th century, however, for the idea of a supranational body for the preservation to peace to come to fruition, with the creation of the League of Nations (1919), the United Nations (1945) and the European Union.

Related multimedia

Title: Full-length portrait of Sully

Caption:: Full-length portrait of Sully, drawing, French School, 17th century. Département des estampes et de la photographie de la BNF, Na 22 rés. Boîte 24 RC-B-11879

Title: "Épitome du théâtre du monde"

Maps of the book "Épitome du théâtre du monde"

Caption:: Épitome du théâtre du monde (Anvers, Imprimerie Plantienne, 1598. Imprimé, 118 pages de commentaires et de cartes). Musée national du château de Pau, Inv. P. BP. 1469.