He showed constant respect and deference towards the papacy, a power highly regarded in both the rival camps, though much fallen from the substantial importance it had possessed in Europe during the middle ages.

French policy striving against Spanish policy, such was the true and the only serious characteristic of the grand design.
Four men, very unequal in influence as well as merit, Sully, Villeroi, Du Plessis-Mornay, and D'Aubigne, did Henry IV.

effective service, by very different processes and in very different degrees, towards establishing and rendering successful this internal and external policy.
Three were Protestants; Villeroi alone was a Catholic.

Sully is beyond comparison with the other three.

He is the only one whom Henry IV.
called my friend; the only one who had participated in all the life and all the government of Henry IV., his evil as well as his exalted fortunes, his most painful embarrassments at home as well as his greatest political acts; the only one whose name has remained inseparably connected with that of a master whom he served without servility as well as without any attempt to domineer.