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+The Project Gutenberg EBook History of the United Netherlands, 1584-85
+#38 in our series by John Lothrop Motley
+
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+Title: History of the United Netherlands, 1584-85
+
+Author: John Lothrop Motley
+
+Release Date: January, 2004  [EBook #4838]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 2, 2002]
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF UNITED NETHERLANDS, 1584-85 ***
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+This eBook was produced by David Widger
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+
+HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
+From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609
+
+By John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, Project Gutenberg Edition, Volume 38
+
+History of The United Netherlands, 1584-1585
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+     Policy of England--Schemes of the Pretender of Portugal--Hesitation
+     of the French Court--Secret Wishes of France--Contradictory Views as
+     to the Opinions of Netherlanders--Their Love for England and
+     Elizabeth--Prominent Statesmen of the Provinces--Roger Williams the
+     Welshman Views of Walsingham, Burghley, and the Queen--An Embassy to
+     Holland decided upon--Davison at the Hague--Cautious and Secret
+     Measures of Burghley--Consequent Dissatisfaction of Walsingham--
+     English and Dutch Suspicion of France--Increasing Affection of
+     Holland for England.
+
+The policy of England towards the Provinces had been somewhat hesitating,
+but it had not been disloyal.  It was almost inevitable that there should
+be timidity in the councils of Elizabeth, when so grave a question as
+that of confronting the vast power of Spain was forcing itself day by
+day more distinctly upon the consideration of herself and her statesmen.
+It was very clear, now that Orange was dead, that some new and decided
+step would be taken.  Elizabeth was in favour of combined action by the
+French and English governments, in behalf of the Netherlands--a joint
+protectorate of the Provinces, until such time as adequate concessions on
+the religious question could be obtained from Spain.  She was unwilling
+to plunge into the peril and expense of a war with the strongest power in
+the world.  She disliked the necessity under which she should be placed
+of making repeated applications to her parliament, and of thus fostering
+the political importance of the Commons; she was reluctant to encourage
+rebellious subjects in another land, however just the cause of their
+revolt.  She felt herself vulnerable in Ireland and on the Scottish
+border.  Nevertheless, the Spanish power was becoming so preponderant,
+that if the Netherlands were conquered, she could never feel a moment's
+security within her own territory.  If the Provinces were annexed to
+France, on the other hand, she could not contemplate with complacency
+the increased power thus placed in the hands of the treacherous and
+jesuitical house of Valois.
+
+The path of the Queen was thickly strewed with peril: her advisers were
+shrewd, far-seeing, patriotic, but some of them were perhaps over
+cautious.  The time had, however, arrived when the danger was to be
+faced, if the whole balance of power in Europe were not to come to an
+end, and weak states, like England and the Netherlands, to submit to the
+tyranny of an overwhelming absolutism.  The instinct of the English
+sovereign, of English statesmen, of the English nation, taught them that
+the cause of the Netherlands was their own.  Nevertheless, they were
+inclined to look on yet a little longer, although the part of spectator
+had become an impossible one.  The policy of the English government was
+not treacherous, although it was timid.  That of the French court was
+both the one and the other, and it would have been better both for
+England and the Provinces, had they more justly appreciated the character
+of Catharine de' Medici and her son.
+
+The first covert negotiations between Henry and the States had caused
+much anxiety among the foreign envoys in France.  Don Bernardino de
+Mendoza, who had recently returned from Spain after his compulsory
+retreat from his post of English ambassador, was now established in
+Paris, as representative of Philip.  He succeeded Tasais--a Netherlander
+by birth, and one of the ablest diplomatists in the Spanish service--and
+his house soon became the focus of intrigue against the government to
+which he was accredited--the very head-quarters of the League.  His
+salary was large, his way of living magnificent, his insolence
+intolerable.
+
+"Tassis is gone to the Netherlands," wrote envoy Busbecq to the Emperor,
+"and thence is to proceed to Spain.  Don Bernardino has arrived in his
+place.  If it be the duty of a good ambassador to expend largely, it
+would be difficult to find a better one than he; for they say 'tis his
+intention to spend sixteen thousand dollars yearly in his embassy.  I
+would that all things were in correspondence; and that he were not in
+other respects so inferior to Tassis."
+
+It is, however, very certain that Mendoza was not only a brave soldier,
+but a man of very considerable capacity in civil affairs, although his
+inordinate arrogance interfered most seriously with his skill as a
+negotiator.  He was, of course, watching with much fierceness the
+progress of these underhand proceedings between the French court and the
+rebellious subjects of his master, and using threats and expostulations
+in great profusion.  "Mucio," too, the great stipendiary of Philip, was
+becoming daily more dangerous, and the adherents of the League were
+multiplying with great celerity.
+
+The pretender of Portugal, Don Antonio, prior of Crato, was also in
+Paris; and it was the policy of both the French and the English
+governments to protect his person, and to make use of him as a rod over
+the head of Philip.  Having escaped, after the most severe sufferings, in
+the mountains of Spain, where he had been tracked like a wild beast, with
+a price of thirty thousand crowns placed upon his head, he was now most
+anxious to stir the governments of Europe into espousing his cause, and
+into attacking Spain through the recently acquired kingdom of Portugal.
+Meantime, he was very desirous of some active employment, to keep himself
+from starving, and conceived the notion, that it would be an excellent
+thing for the Netherlands and himself, were he to make good to them the
+loss of William the Silent.
+
+"Don Antonio," wrote Stafford, "made a motion to me yesterday, to move
+her Majesty, that now upon the Prince of Orange's death, as it is a
+necessary thing for them to have a governor and head, and him to be at
+her Majesty's devotion, if her Majesty would be at the means to work it
+for him, she should be assured nobody should be more faithfully tied in
+devotion to her than he.  Truly you would pity the poor man's case, who
+is almost next door to starving in effect."
+
+A starving condition being, however, not the only requisite in a governor
+and head to replace the Prince of Orange, nothing came of this motion.
+Don Antonio remained in Paris, in a pitiable plight, and very much
+environed by dangers; for the Duke of Guise and his brother had
+undertaken to deliver him into the hands of Philip the Second, or those
+of his ministers, before the feast of St. John of the coming year.  Fifty
+thousand dollars were to be the reward of this piece of work, combined
+with other services; "and the sooner they set about it the better," said
+Philip, writing a few months later, "for the longer they delay it, the
+less easy will they find it."'
+
+The money was never earned, however, and meantime Don Antonio made
+himself as useful as he could, in picking up information for Sir Edward
+Stafford and the other opponents of Spanish policy in Paris.
+
+The English envoy was much embarrassed by the position of affairs.  He
+felt sure that the French monarch would never dare to enter the lists
+against the king of Spain, yet he was accurately informed of the secret
+negotiations with the Netherlands, while in the dark as to the ultimate
+intentions of his own government.
+
+"I was never set to school so much," he wrote to Walsingham (27th July,
+1584), "as I have been to decipher the cause of the deputies of the Low
+Countries coming hither, the offers that they made the King here, and the
+King's manner of dealing with them!"
+
+He expressed great jealousy at the mystery which enveloped the whole
+transaction; and much annoyance with Noel de Caron, who "kept very
+secret, and was angry at the motion," when he endeavoured to discover the
+business in which they were engaged.  Yet he had the magnanimity to
+request Walsingham not to mention the fact to the Queen, lest she should
+be thereby prejudiced against the States.
+
+"For my part," said he, "I would be glad in any thing to further them,
+rather than to hinder them--though they do not deserve it--yet for the
+good the helping them at this time may bring ourselves."
+
+Meantime, the deputies went away from France, and the King went to Lyons,
+where he had hoped to meet both the Duke of Savoy and the King of
+Navarre.  But Joyeuse, who had been received at Chambery with "great
+triumphs and tourneys," brought back only a broken wrist, without
+bringing the Duke of Savoy; that potentate sending word that the "King of
+Spain had done him the honour to give him his daughter, and that it was
+not fit for him to do any thing that might bring jealousy."
+
+Henry of Navarre also, as we have seen, declined the invitation sent him,
+M. de Segur not feeling disposed for the sudden flight out of window
+suggested by Agrippa D' Aubigne; so that, on the whole, the King and his
+mother, with all the court, returned from Lyons in marvellous ill humour.
+
+"The King storms greatly," said Stafford, "and is in a great dump."
+It was less practicable than ever to discover the intentions of the
+government; for although it was now very certain that active exertions
+were making by Des Pruneaux in the Provinces, it was not believed by the
+most sagacious that a serious resolution against Spain had been taken in
+France.  There was even a talk of a double matrimonial alliance, at that
+very moment, between the two courts.
+
+"It is for certain here said," wrote Stafford, "that the King of Spain
+doth presently marry the dowager of France, and 'tis thought that if the
+King of Spain marry, he will not live a year.  Whensoever the marriage
+be," added the envoy, "I would to God the effect were true, for if it be
+not by some such handy work of God, I am afraid things will not go so
+well as I could wish."
+
+There was a lull on the surface of affairs, and it was not easy to sound
+the depths of unseen combinations and intrigues.
+
+There was also considerable delay in the appointment and the arrival of
+the new deputies from the Netherlands; and Stafford was as doubtful as
+ever as to the intentions of his own government.
+
+"They look daily here for the States," he wrote to Walsingham (29th Dec.
+1584), "and I pray that I may hear from you as soon as you may, what
+course I shall take when they be here, either hot or cold or lukewarm in
+the matter, and in what sort I shall behave myself.  Some badly affected
+have gone about to put into the King's head, that they never meant to
+offer the sovereignty, which, though the King be not thoroughly persuaded
+of, yet so much is won by this means that the King hearkeneth to see the
+end, and then to believe as he seeth cause, and in the meantime to speak
+no more of any such matter than if it had never been moved."
+
+While his Majesty was thus hearkening in order to see more, according to
+Sir Edward's somewhat Hibernian mode of expressing himself, and keeping
+silent that he might see the better, it was more difficult than ever for
+the envoy to know what course to pursue.  Some persons went so far as to
+suggest that the whole negotiation was a mere phantasmagoria devised by
+Queen Elizabeth--her purpose being to breed a quarrel between Henry and
+Philip for her own benefit; and "then, seeing them together by the ears,
+as her accustomed manner was, to let them go alone, and sit still to look
+on."
+
+The King did not appear to be much affected by these insinuations against
+Elizabeth; but the doubt and the delay were very harrassing.  "I would to
+God," wrote the English envoy, "that if the States mean to do anything
+here with the King, and if her.  Majesty and the council think it fit,
+they would delay no time, but go roundly either to an agreement or to a
+breach with the King.  Otherwise, as the matter now sleepeth, so it will
+die, for the King must be taken in his humour when he begins to nibble at
+any bait, for else he will come away, and never bite a full bite while he
+liveth."
+
+There is no doubt that the bait, at which Henry nibbled with much
+avidity, was the maritime part of the Netherlands.  Holland and Zeeland
+in the possession of either England or Spain, was a perpetual
+inconvenience to France.  The King, or rather the Queen-Mother and her
+advisers--for Henry himself hardly indulged in any profound reflections.
+on state-affairs,--desired and had made a sine qua non of those
+Provinces.  It had been the French policy, from the beginning, to delay
+matters, in order to make the States feel the peril of their position to
+the full.
+
+"The King, differing and temporising," wrote Herle to the Queen, "would
+have them fall into that necessity and danger, as that they should offer
+unto him simply the possession of all their estates.  Otherwise, they
+were to see, as in a glass, their evident and hasty ruin."
+
+Even before the death of Orange, Henry had been determined, if possible,
+to obtain possession of the island of Walcheren, which controlled the
+whole country.  "To give him that," said Herle, "would be to turn the hot
+end of the poker towards themselves, and put the cold part in the King's
+hand.  He had accordingly made a secret offer to William of Orange,
+through the Princess, of two millions of livres in ready money, or,
+if he preferred it, one hundred thousand livres yearly of perpetual
+inheritance, if he would secure to him the island of Walcheren.  In that
+case he promised to declare war upon the King of Spain, to confirm to the
+States their privileges, and to guarantee to the Prince the earldoms of
+Holland and Zeeland, with all his other lands and titles."
+
+It is superfluous to say that such offers were only regarded by the
+Prince as an affront.  It was, however, so necessary, in his opinion; to
+maintain the cause of the reformed churches in France, and to keep up the
+antagonism between that country and Spain, that the French policy was not
+abandoned, although the court was always held in suspicion.
+
+But on the death of William, there was a strong reaction against France
+and in favour of England.  Paul Buys, one of the ablest statesmen of the
+Netherlands, Advocate of Holland, and a confidential friend of William
+the Silent up to the time of his death, now became the leader of the
+English party, and employed his most strenuous efforts against the French
+treaty-having "seen the scope of that court."
+
+With regard to the other leading personages, there was a strong
+inclination in favour of Queen Elizabeth, whose commanding character
+inspired great respect.  At the same time warmer sentiments of adhesion
+seem to have been expressed towards the French court, by the same
+individuals, than the, mere language of compliment justified.
+
+Thus, the widowed Princess of Orange was described by Des Pruneaux to his
+sovereign, as "very desolate, but nevertheless doing all in her power to
+advance his interests; the Count Maurice, of gentle hopes, as also most
+desirous of remaining his Majesty's humble servant, while Elector
+Truchsess was said to be employing himself, in the same cause, with very
+great affection."
+
+A French statesman resident in the Provinces, whose name has not been
+preserved, but who was evidently on intimate terms with many eminent
+Netherlanders, declared that Maurice, "who had a mind entirely French,
+deplored infinitely the misfortunes of France, and regretted that all the
+Provinces could not be annexed to so fair a kingdom.  I do assure you,"
+he added, "that he is in no wise English."
+
+Of Count Hohenlo, general-in-chief of the States' army under Prince
+Maurice, and afterwards his brother-in-law, the same gentleman spoke with
+even greater confidence.  "Count d'Oloc," said he (for by that ridiculous
+transformation of his name the German general was known to French and
+English), "with whom I have passed three weeks on board the fleet of the
+States, is now wholly French, and does not love the English at all.  The
+very first time I saw him, he protested twice or thrice, in presence of
+members of the States General and of the State Council, that if he had no
+Frenchmen he could never carry on the war.  He made more account," he
+said, "of two thousand French than of six thousand others, English, or
+Germans."
+
+Yet all these distinguished persons--the widowed Princess of Orange,
+Count Maurice, ex-elector Truchsess, Count Holenlo--were described to
+Queen Elizabeth by her confidential agent, then employed in the
+Provinces, as entirely at that sovereign's devotion.
+
+"Count Maurice holds nothing of the French, nor esteems them," said
+Herle, "but humbly desired me to signify unto your Majesty that he had in
+his mind and determination faithfully vowed his service to your Majesty,
+which should be continued in his actions with all duty, and sealed with
+his blood; for he knew how much his father and the cause were beholden
+ever to your Highness's goodness."
+
+The Princess, together with her sister-in-law Countess Schwartzenburg,
+and the young daughters of the late Prince were described on the same
+occasion "as recommending their service unto her Majesty with a most
+tender affection, as to a lady of all ladies."  "Especially," said Herle,
+"did the two Princesses in most humble and wise sort, express a certain
+fervent devotion towards your Majesty."
+
+Elector Truchsess was spoken of as "a prince well qualified and greatly
+devoted to her Majesty; who, after many grave and sincere words had of
+her Majesty's virtue, calling her 'la fille unique de Dieu, and le bien
+heureuse Princesse', desired of God that he might do her service as she
+merited."
+
+And, finally, Count Hollock--who seemed to "be reformed in sundry things,
+if it hold" (a delicate allusion to the Count's propensity for strong
+potations), was said "to desire humbly to be known for one that would
+obey the commandment of her Majesty more than of any earthly prince
+living besides."
+
+There can be no doubt that there was a strong party in favour of an
+appeal to England rather than to France.  The Netherlanders were too
+shrewd a people not to recognize the difference between the king of a
+great realm, who painted his face and wore satin petticoats, and the
+woman who entertained ambassadors, each in his own language, on gravest
+affairs of state, who matched in her wit and wisdom the deepest or the
+most sparkling intellects of her council, who made extemporaneous Latin
+orations to her universities, and who rode on horseback among her
+generals along the lines of her troops in battle-array, and yet was only
+the unmarried queen of a petty and turbulent state.
+
+"The reverend respect that is borne to your Majesty throughout these
+countries is great," said William Herle.  They would have thrown
+themselves into her arms, heart and soul, had they been cordially
+extended at that moment of their distress; but she was coy, hesitating,
+and, for reasons already sufficiently indicated, although not so
+conclusive as they seemed, disposed to temporize and to await the issue
+of the negotiations between the Provinces and France.
+
+In Holland and Zeeland especially, there was an enthusiastic feeling in
+favour of the English alliance.  "They recommend themselves," said Herleo
+"throughout the country in their consultations and assemblies, as also in
+their common and private speeches, to the Queen of England's only favour
+and goodness, whom they call their saviour, and the Princess of greatest
+perfection in wisdom and sincerity that ever governed.  Notwithstanding
+their treaty now on foot by their deputies with France, they are not more
+disposed to be governed by the French than to be tyrannized over by the
+Spaniard; concluding it to be alike; and even 'commutare non sortem sed
+servitutem'."
+
+Paul Buys was indefatigable in his exertions against the treaty with
+France, and in stimulating the enthusiasm for England and Elizabeth.  He
+expressed sincere and unaffected devotion to the Queen on all occasions,
+and promised that no negotiations should take place, however secret and
+confidential, that were not laid before her Majesty.  "He has the chief
+administration among the States," said Herle, "and to his credit and
+dexterity they attribute the despatch of most things.  He showed unto me
+the state of the enemy throughout the provinces, and of the negotiation
+in France, whereof he had no opinion at all of success, nor any will of
+his own part but to please the Prince of Orange in his life-time."
+
+It will be seen in the sequel whether or not the views of this
+experienced and able statesman were lucid and comprehensive.  It will
+also be seen whether his strenuous exertions in favour of the English
+alliance were rewarded as bountifully as they deserved, by those most
+indebted to him.
+
+Meantime he was busily employed in making the English government
+acquainted with the capacity, disposition, and general plans of the
+Netherlanders.
+
+"They have certain other things in consultation amongst the States to
+determine of," wrote Herle, "which they were sworn not to reveal to any,
+but Buys protested that nothing should pass but to your liking and
+surety, and the same to be altered and disposed as should seem good to
+your Highness's own authority; affirming to me sincerely that Holland and
+Zeeland, with the rest of the provinces, for the estimation they had of
+your high virtue and temperancy, would yield themselves absolutely to
+your Majesty and crown for ever, or to none other (their liberties only
+reserved), whereof you should have immediate possession, without
+reservation of place or privilege."
+
+The important point of the capability of the Provinces to defend
+themselves, about which Elizabeth was most anxious to be informed, was
+also fully elucidated by the Advocate.  "The means should be such,
+proceeding from the Provinces," said he, "as your Majesty might defend
+your interest therein with facility against the whole world."  He then
+indicated a plan, which had been proposed by the States of Brabant to the
+States General, according to which they were to keep on foot an army of
+15,000 foot and 5000 horse, with which they should be able, "to expulse
+the enemy and to reconquer their towns and country lost, within three
+months."  Of this army they hoped to induce the Queen to furnish 5000
+English footmen and 500 horse, to be paid monthly by a treasurer of her
+own; and for the assistance thus to be furnished they proposed to give
+Ostend and Sluys as pledge of payment.  According to this scheme the
+elector palatine, John Casimir, had promised to furnish, equip, and pay
+2000 cavalry, taking the town of Maestricht and the country of Limburg,
+when freed from the enemy, in pawn for his disbursements; while Antwerp
+and Brabant had agreed to supply 300,000 crowns in ready money for
+immediate use.  Many powerful politicians opposed this policy, however,
+and urged reliance upon France, "so that this course seemed to be lame in
+many parts."--[Letter of Herle].
+
+Agents had already been sent both to England and France, to procure, if
+possible, a levy of troops for immediate necessity.  The attempt was
+unsuccessful in France, but the Dutch community of the reformed religion
+in London subscribed nine thousand and five florins.  This sum, with
+other contributions, proved sufficient to set Morgan's regiment on foot,
+which soon after began to arrive in the Netherlands by companies.  "But
+if it were all here at once," said Stephen Le Sieur, "'t would be but a
+breakfast for the enemy."
+
+The agent for the matter in England was De Griyse, formerly bailiff of
+Bruges; and although tolerably successful in his mission, he was not
+thought competent for so important a post, nor officially authorised for
+the undertaking.  While procuring this assistance in English troops he
+had been very urgent with the Queen to further the negotiations between
+the States and France; and Paul Buys was offended with him as a mischief-
+maker and an intriguer.  He complained of him as having "thrust himself
+in, to deal and intermeddle in the affairs of the Low Countries
+unavowed," and desired that he might be closely looked after.
+
+After the Advocate, the next most important statesman in the provinces
+was, perhaps, Meetkerk, President of the High Court of Flanders, a man of
+much learning, sincerity, and earnestness of character; having had great
+experience in the diplomatic service of the country on many important
+occasions.  "He stands second in reputation here," said Herle, "and both
+Buys and he have one special care in all practises that are discovered,
+to examine how near anything may concern your person or kingdom, whereof
+they will advertise as matter shall fall out in importance."
+
+John van Olden-Barneveldt, afterwards so conspicuous in the history of
+the country, was rather inclined, at this period, to favour the French
+party; a policy which was strenuously furthered by Villiers and by Sainte
+Aldegonde.
+
+Besides the information furnished to the English government, as to the
+state of feeling and resources of the Netherlands, by Buys, Meetkerk, and
+William Herle, Walsingham relied much upon the experienced eye and the
+keen biting humour of Roger Williams.
+
+A frank open-hearted Welshman, with no fortune but his sword, but as true
+as its steel, he had done the States much important service in the hard-
+fighting days of Grand Commander Requesens and of Don John of Austria.
+With a shrewd Welsh head under his iron morion, and a stout Welsh heart
+under his tawny doublet, he had gained little but hard knocks and a dozen
+wounds in his campaigning, and had but recently been ransomed, rather
+grudgingly by his government, from a Spanish prison in Brabant.  He was
+suffering in health from its effects, but was still more distressed in
+mind, from his sagacious reading of the signs of the times.  Fearing that
+England was growing lukewarm, and the Provinces desperate, he was
+beginning to find himself out of work, and was already casting about him
+for other employment.  Poor, honest, and proud, he had repeatedly
+declined to enter the Spanish service.  Bribes, such as at a little later
+period were sufficient to sully conspicuous reputations and noble names,
+among his countrymen in better circumstances than his own, had been
+freely but unsuccessfully offered him.  To serve under any but the
+English or States' flag in the Provinces he scorned; and he thought the
+opportunity fast slipping away there for taking the Papistical party in
+Europe handsomely by the beard.  He had done much manful work in the
+Netherlands, and was destined to do much more; but he was now
+discontented, and thought himself slighted.  In more remote regions of
+the world, the, thrifty soldier thought that there might be as good
+harvesting for his sword as in the thrice-trampled stubble of Flanders.
+
+"I would refuse no hazard that is possible to be done in the Queen's
+service," he said to Walsingham; "but I do persuade myself she makes no
+account of me.  Had it not been for the duty that nature bound me towards
+her and my country, I needed not to have been in that case that I am in.
+Perhaps I could have fingered more pistoles than Mr. Newell, the late
+Latiner, and had better usage and pension of the Spaniards than he.  Some
+can tell that I refused large offers, in the misery of Alost, of the
+Prince of Parma.  Last of all, Verdugo offered me very fair, being in
+Loccum, to quit the States' service, and accept theirs, without treachery
+or betraying of place or man."
+
+Not feeling inclined to teach Latin in Spain, like the late Mr. Newell,
+or to violate oaths and surrender fortresses, like brave soldiers of
+fortune whose deeds will be afterwards chronicled, he was disposed to
+cultivate the "acquaintance of divers Pollacks," from which he had
+received invitations.  "Find I nothing there," said he, "Duke Matthias
+has promised me courtesy if I would serve in Hungary.  If not, I will
+offer service to one of the Turk's bashaws against the Persians."
+
+Fortunately, work was found for the trusty Welshman in the old fields.
+His brave honest face often reappeared; his sharp sensible tongue uttered
+much sage counsel; and his ready sword did various solid service, in
+leaguer, battle-field, and martial debate, in Flanders, Holland, Spain,
+and France.
+
+For the present, he was casting his keen glances upon the negotiations in
+progress, and cavilling at the general policy which seemed predominant.
+
+He believed that the object of the French was to trifle with the States,
+to protract interminably their negotiations, to prevent the English
+government from getting any hold upon the Provinces, and then to leave
+them to their fate.
+
+He advised Walsingham to advance men and money, upon the security of
+Sluys and Ostend.
+
+"I dare venture my life," said he, with much energy, "that were Norris,
+Bingham, Yorke, or Carlisle, in those ports, he would keep them during
+the Spanish King's life."
+
+But the true way to attack Spain--a method soon afterwards to be carried
+into such brilliant effect by the naval heroes of England and the
+Netherlands--the long-sighted Welshman now indicated; a combined attack,
+namely, by sea upon the colonial possessions of Philip.
+
+"I dare be bound," said he, "if you join with Treslong, the States
+Admiral, and send off, both, three-score sail into his Indies, we will
+force him to retire from conquering further, and to be contented to let
+other princes live as well as he."
+
+In particular, Williams urged rapid action, and there is little doubt,
+that had the counsels of prompt, quick-witted, ready-handed soldiers like
+himself, and those who thought with him, been taken; had the stealthy but
+quick-darting policy of Walsingham prevailed over the solemn and stately
+but somewhat ponderous proceedings of Burghley, both Ghent and Antwerp
+might have been saved, the trifling and treacherous diplomacy of
+Catharine de' Medici neutralized, and an altogether more fortunate aspect
+given at once to the state of Protestant affairs.
+
+"If you mean to do anything," said he, "it is more than time now.  If you
+will send some man of credit about it, will it please your honour, I will
+go with him, because I know the humour of the people, and am acquainted
+with a number of the best.  I shall be able to show him a number of their
+dealings, as well with the French as in other affairs, and perhaps will
+find means to send messengers to Ghent, and to other places, better than
+the States; for the message of one soldier is better than twenty boors."
+
+It was ultimately decided--as will soon be related--to send a man of
+credit to the Provinces.  Meantime, the policy of England continued to be
+expectant and dilatory, and Advocate Buys, after having in vain attempted
+to conquer the French influence, and bring about the annexation of the
+Provinces to England, threw down his office in disgust, and retired for a
+time from the contest.  He even contemplated for a moment taking service
+in Denmark, but renounced the notion of abandoning his country, and he
+will accordingly be found, at a later period, conspicuous in public
+affairs.
+
+The deliberations in the English councils were grave and anxious, for it
+became daily more obvious that the Netherland question was the hinge upon
+which the, whole fate of Christendom was slowly turning.  To allow the
+provinces to fall back again into the grasp of Philip, was to offer
+England herself as a last sacrifice to the Spanish Inquisition.  This was
+felt by all the statesmen in the land; but some of them, more than the
+rest, had a vivid perception of the danger, and of the necessity of
+dealing with it at once.
+
+To the prophetic eye of Walsingham, the mists of the future at times
+were lifted; and the countless sails of the invincible Armada, wafting
+defiance and destruction to England, became dimly visible.  He felt that
+the great Netherland bulwark of Protestantism and liberty was to be
+defended at all hazards, and that the death-grapple could not long be
+deferred.
+
+Burghley, deeply pondering, but less determined, was still disposed to
+look on and to temporize.
+
+The Queen, far-seeing and anxious, but somewhat hesitating, still clung
+to the idea of a joint protectorate.  She knew that the reestablishment
+of Spanish authority in the Low Countries would be fatal to England, but
+she was not yet prepared to throw down the gauntlet to Philip.  She felt
+that the proposed annexation of the Provinces to France would be almost
+as formidable; yet she could not resolve, frankly and fearlessly, to
+assume, the burthen of their protection.  Under the inspiration of
+Burghley, she was therefore willing to encourage the Netherlanders
+underhand; preventing them at every hazard from slackening in their
+determined hostility to Spain; discountenancing, without absolutely
+forbidding, their proposed absorption by France; intimating, without
+promising, an ultimate and effectual assistance from herself.  Meantime,
+with something of feline and feminine duplicity, by which the sex of the
+great sovereign would so often manifest itself in the most momentous
+affairs, she would watch and wait, teasing the Provinces, dallying with
+the danger, not quite prepared as yet to abandon the prize to Henry or
+Philip, or to seize it herself.
+
+The situation was rapidly tending to become an impossible one.
+
+Late in October a grave conference was held council, "upon the question
+whether her Majesty should presently relieve the States of the Low
+Countries."
+
+It was shown, upon one side, that the "perils to the Queen and to the
+realm were great, if the King of Spain should recover Holland and
+Zeeland, as he had the other countries, for lack of succour in seasonable
+time, either by the French King or the Queen's Majesty."
+
+On the other side, the great difficulties in the way of effectual
+assistance by England, were "fully remembered."
+
+"But in the end, and upon comparison made," said Lord Burghley, summing
+up, "betwixt the perils on the one part, and the difficulties on the
+other," it was concluded that the Queen would be obliged to succumb to
+the power of Spain, and the liberties of England be hopelessly lost, if
+Philip were then allowed to carry out his designs, and if the Provinces
+should be left without succour at his mercy.
+
+A "wise person" was accordingly to be sent into Holland; first, to
+ascertain whether the Provinces had come to an actual agreement with the
+King of France, and, if such should prove to be the case, to enquire
+whether that sovereign had pledged himself to declare war upon Philip.
+In this event, the wise person was to express her Majesty's satisfaction
+that the Provinces were thus to be "relieved from the tyranny of the King
+of Spain."
+
+On the other hand, if it should appear that no such conclusive
+arrangements had been made, and that the Provinces were likely to fall
+again victims to the "Spanish tyranny," her Majesty would then "strain
+herself as far as, with preservation of her own estate, she might, to
+succour them at this time."
+
+The agent was then to ascertain "what conditions the Provinces would
+require" upon the matter of succour, and, if the terms seemed reasonable,
+he would assure them that "they should not be left to the cruelties of
+the Spaniards."
+
+And further, the wise person, "being pressed to answer, might by
+conference of speeches and persuasions provoke them to offer to the Queen
+the ports of Flushing and Middelburg and the Brill, wherein she meant not
+to claim any property, but to hold them as gages for her expenses, and
+for performances of their covenants."
+
+He was also to make minute inquiries as to the pecuniary resources of the
+Provinces, the monthly sums which they would be able to contribute, the
+number of troops and of ships of war that they would pledge themselves to
+maintain.  These investigations were very important, because the Queen,
+although very well disposed to succour them, "so nevertheless she was to
+consider how her power might be extended, without ruin or manifest peril
+to her own estate."
+
+It was also resolved, in the same conference, that a preliminary step of
+great urgency was to "procure a good peace with the King of Scots."
+Whatever the expense of bringing about such a pacification might be, it
+was certain that a "great deal more would be expended in defending the
+realm against Scotland," while England was engaged in hostilities with
+Spain.  Otherwise, it was argued that her Majesty would be "so impeached
+by Scotland in favour of the King of Spain, that her action against that
+King would be greatly weakened."
+
+Other measures necessary to be taken in view of the Spanish war were also
+discussed.  The ex-elector of Cologne, "a man of great account in
+Germany," was to be assisted with money to make head against his rival
+supported by the troops of Philip.
+
+Duke Casimir of the Palatinate was to be solicited to make a diversion
+in Gelderland.
+
+The King of France was to be reminded of his treaty with England for
+mutual assistance in case of the invasion by a foreign power of either
+realm, and to be informed "not only of the intentions of the Spaniards
+to invade England, upon their conquest of the Netherlands, but of their
+actual invasion of Ireland."
+
+It was "to be devised how the King of Navarre and Don Antonio of
+Portugal, for their respective titles, might be induced to offend and
+occupy the King of Spain, whereby to diminish his forces bent upon the
+Low Countries."
+
+It was also decided that Parliament should be immediately summoned, in
+which, besides the request of a subsidy, many other necessary, provisions
+should be made for her Majesty's safety.
+
+"The conclusions of the whole," said Lord Burghley, with much
+earnestness, "was this.  Although her Majesty should hereby enter into a
+war presently, yet were she better to do it now, while she may make the
+same out of her realm, having the help of the people of Holland, and
+before the King of Spain shall have consummated his conquests in those
+countries, whereby he shall be so provoked with pride, solicited by the
+Pope, and tempted by the Queen's own subjects, and shall be so strong by
+sea, and so free from all other actions and quarrels,--yea, shall be so
+formidable to all the rest of Christendom, as that her Majesty shall no
+wise be able, with her own power, nor with aid of any other, neither by
+sea nor land, to withstand his attempts, but shall be forced to give
+place to his insatiable malice, which is most terrible to be thought of,
+but miserable to suffer."
+
+Thus did the Lord Treasurer wisely, eloquently, and well, describe the
+danger by which England was environed.  Through the shield of Holland the
+spear was aimed full at the heart of England.  But was it a moment to
+linger?  Was that buckler to be suffered to fall to the ground, or to be
+raised only upon the arm of a doubtful and treacherous friend?  Was it an
+hour when the protection of Protestantism and of European liberty against
+Spain was to be entrusted to the hand of a feeble and priest-ridden
+Valois?  Was it wise to indulge any longer in doubtings and dreamings,
+and in yet a little more folding of the arms to sleep, while that
+insatiable malice, so terrible to be thought of, so miserable to feel,
+was bowing hourly more formidable, and approaching nearer and nearer?
+
+Early in December, William Davison, gentleman-in-ordinary of her
+Majesty's household, arrived at the Hague; a man painstaking, earnest,
+and zealous, but who was fated, on more than one great occasion, to be
+made a scape-goat for the delinquencies of greater personages than
+himself.
+
+He had audience of the States General on the 8th December.  He then
+informed that body that the Queen had heard, with, sorrowful heart, of
+the great misfortunes which the United Provinces had sustained since the
+death of the Prince of Orange; the many cities which they had lost, and
+the disastrous aspect of the common cause.  Moved by the affection which
+she had always borne the country, and anxious for its preservation, she
+had ordered her ambassador Stafford to request the King of France to
+undertake, jointly with herself, the defence of the provinces against the
+king of Spain.  Not till very lately, however, had that envoy succeeded
+in obtaining an audience, and he had then received "a very cold answer."
+It being obvious to her Majesty, therefore, that the French government
+intended to protract these matters indefinitely, Davison informed the
+States that she had commissioned him to offer them "all possible
+assistance, to enquire into the state of the country, and to investigate
+the proper means of making that assistance most useful."  He accordingly
+requested the appointment of a committee to confer with him upon the
+subject; and declared that the Queen did not desire to make herself
+mistress of the Provinces, but only to be informed how she best could aid
+their cause.
+
+A committee was accordingly appointed, and a long series of somewhat
+concealed negotiations was commenced.  As the deputies were upon the eve
+of their departure for France, to offer the sovereignty of the Provinces
+to Henry, these proceedings were necessarily confused, dilatory, and at
+tines contradictory.
+
+After the arrival of the deputies in France, the cunctative policy
+inspired by the Lord Treasurer was continued by England.  The delusion of
+a joint protectorate was still clung to by the Queen, although the
+conduct of France was becoming very ambiguous, and suspicion growing
+darker as to the ultimate and secret purport of the negotiations in
+progress.
+
+The anxiety and jealousy of Elizabeth were becoming keener than ever.  If
+the offers to the King were unlimited; he would accept them, and would
+thus become as dangerous as Philip.  If they were unsatisfactory, he
+would turn his back upon the Provinces, and leave them a prey to Philip.
+Still she would not yet renounce the hope of bringing the French King
+over to an ingenuous course of action.  It was thought, too, that
+something might be done with the great malcontent nobles of Flanders,
+whose defection from the national cause had been so disastrous, but who
+had been much influenced in their course, it was thought, by their
+jealousy of William the Silent.
+
+Now that the Prince was dead, it was thought probable that the Arschots,
+and Havres, Chimays, and Lalaings, might arouse themselves to more
+patriotic views than they had manifested when they espoused the cause of
+Spain.
+
+It would be desirable to excite their jealousy of French influence, and,
+at the same time, to inspire throughout the popular mind the fear of
+another tyranny almost as absolute as that of Spain.  "And if it be
+objected," said Burghley, "that except they shall admit the French King
+to the absolute dominion, he will not aid them, and they, for lack of
+succour, be forced to yield to the Spaniard, it may be answered that
+rather than they should be wholly subjected to the French, or overcome
+by the Spaniard, her Majesty would yield unto them as much as, with
+preservation of her estate, and defence of her own country, might be
+demanded."
+
+The real object kept in view by the Queen's government was, in short, to
+obtain for the Provinces and for the general cause of liberty the
+greatest possible amount of assistance from Henry, and to allow him to
+acquire in return the least possible amount of power.  The end proposed
+was a reasonable one, but the means employed savoured too much of
+intrigue.
+
+"It may be easily made probable to the States," said the Lord Treasurer,
+"that the government of the French is likely to prove as cumbersome and
+perilous as that of the Spaniards; and likewise it may probably be
+doubted how the French will keep touch and covenants with them, when any
+opportunity shall be offered to break them; so that her Majesty thinketh
+no good can be looked for to those countries by yielding this large
+authority to the French.  If they shall continue their title by this
+grant to be absolute lords, there is no end, for a long time, to be
+expected of this war; and, contrariwise, if they break off, there is an
+end of any good composition with the King of Spain."
+
+Shivering and shrinking, but still wading in deeper and deeper, inch by
+inch, the cautious minister was fast finding himself too far advanced to
+retreat.  He was rarely decided, however, and never lucid; and least of
+all in emergencies, when decision and lucidity would have been more
+valuable than any other qualities.
+
+Deeply doubting, painfully balancing, he at times drove the unfortunate
+Davison almost distraught.  Puzzled himself and still more puzzling to
+others, he rarely permitted the Netherlanders, or even his own agents, to
+perceive his drift.  It was fair enough, perhaps, to circumvent the
+French government by its own arts, but the Netherlanders meanwhile were
+in danger of sinking into despair.
+
+"Thus," wrote the Lord Treasurer to the envoy, "I have discoursed to you
+of these uncertainties and difficulties, things not unknown to yourself,
+but now being imparted to you by her Majesty's commandment, you are, by
+your wisdom, to consider with whom to deal for the stay of this French
+course, and yet, so to use it (as near as you may) that they of the
+French faction there be not able to charge you therewith, by-advertising
+into France.  For it hath already appeared, by some speeches past between
+our ambassador there and Des Pruneaux, that you are had in some jealousy
+as a hinderer of this French course, and at work for her Majesty to have
+some entrance and partage in that country.  Nevertheless our ambassador;
+by his answer, hath satisfied them to think the contrary."
+
+They must have been easily satisfied, if they knew as much of the
+dealings of her Majesty's government as the reader already knows.  To
+inspire doubt of the French, to insinuate the probability of their not
+"keeping touch and covenant," to represent their rule as "cumbersome and
+perilous," was wholesome conduct enough towards the Netherlanders--and
+still more so, had it been accompanied with frank offers of assistance
+--but it was certainly somewhat to "hinder the courses of the French."
+
+But in truth all parties were engaged for a season in a round game of
+deception, in which nobody was deceived.
+
+Walsingham was impatient, almost indignant at this puerility.  "Your
+doings, no doubt of it," he wrote to Davison, "are observed by the French
+faction, and therefore you cannot proceed so closely but it will be
+espied.  Howsoever it be, seeing direction groweth from hence, we cannot
+but blame ourselves, if the effects thereof do not fall out to our
+liking."
+
+That sagacious statesman was too well informed, and too much accustomed
+to penetrate the designs of his antagonists, to expect anything from the
+present intrigues.
+
+To loiter thus, when mortal blows should be struck, was to give the
+Spanish government exactly that of which it was always most gluttonous--
+time; and the Netherlanders had none of it to spare.  "With time and
+myself, there are two of us," was Philip II.'s favourite observation; and
+the Prince of Parma was at this moment sorely perplexed by the parsimony
+and the hesitations of his own government, by which his large, swift and
+most creative genius was so often hampered.
+
+Thus the Spanish soldiers, deep in the trenches, went with bare legs and
+empty stomachs in January; and the Dutchmen, among their broken dykes,
+were up to their ears in mud and water; and German mercenaries, in the
+obedient Provinces, were burning the peasants' houses in order to sell
+the iron to buy food withal; while grave-visaged statesmen, in
+comfortable cabinets, wagged their long white beards at each other from a
+distance, and exchanged grimaces and protocols which nobody heeded.
+
+Walsingham was weary of this solemn trifling.  "I conclude," said he to
+Davison, "that her Majesty--with reverence be it spoken--is ill advised,
+to direct you in a course that is like to work so great peril.  I know
+you will do your best endeavour to keep all things upright, and yet it is
+hard--the disease being now come to this state, or, as the physicians
+term it, crisis--to carry yourself in such sort, but that it will, I
+fear, breed a dangerous alteration in the cause."
+
+He denounced with impatience, almost with indignation, the insincerity
+and injustice of these intolerable hesitations.  "Sorry am I," said he,
+"to see the course that is taken in this weighty cause, for we will
+neither help those poor countries ourselves, nor yet suffer others to
+do it.  I am not ignorant that in time to come the annexing of these
+countries to the crown of France may prove prejudicial to England, but
+if France refuse to deal with them, and the rather for that we shall
+minister some cause of impediment by a kind of dealing underhand, then
+shall they be forced to return into the hands of Spain, which is like to
+breed such a present peril towards her Majesty's self, as never a wise
+man that seeth it, and loveth her, but lamenteth it from the bottom of
+his heart."
+
+Walsingham had made up his mind that it was England, not France, that
+should take up the cause of the Provinces, and defend them at every
+hazard.  He had been overruled, and the Queen's government had decided to
+watch the course of the French negotiation, doing what it could,
+underhand, to prevent that negotiation from being successful.  The
+Secretary did not approve of this disingenuous course.  At the same time
+he had no faith in the good intentions of the French court.
+
+"I could wish," said he, "that the French King were carried with that
+honourable mind into the defence of these countries that her Majesty is,
+but France has not been used to do things for God's sake; neither do they
+mean to use our advice or assistance in making of the bargain.  For they
+still hold a jealous conceit that when Spain and they are together by the
+ears, we will seek underhand to work our own peace."  Walsingham,
+therefore, earnestly deprecated the attitude provisionally maintained by
+England.
+
+Meantime, early in January, (Jan. 3, 1585) the deputation from the
+Provinces had arrived in France.  The progress of their 1585 negotiation
+will soon be related, but, before its result was known, a general
+dissatisfaction had already manifested itself in the Netherlands.  The
+factitious enthusiasm which had been created in favour of France, as well
+as the prejudice against England, began to die out.  It became probable
+in the opinion of those most accustomed to read the signs of the times,
+that the French court was acting in connivance with Philip, and that the
+negotiation was only intended to amuse the Netherlanders, to circumvent
+the English, and to gain time both for France and Spain.  It was not
+believed that the character of Henry or the policy of his mother was
+likely to the cause of any substantial aid to the cause of civil liberty
+or Protestant principles.
+
+"They look for no better fruit from the commission to France," wrote
+Davison, who surveyed the general state of affairs with much keenness and
+breadth of vision, "than a dallying entertainment of the time, neither
+leaving them utterly hopeless, nor at full liberty to seek for relief
+elsewhere, especially in England, or else some pleasing motion of peace,
+wherein the French King will offer his mediation with Spain.  Meantime
+the people, wearied with the troubles, charges, and hazard of the war,
+shall be rocked asleep, the provision for their defence neglected, some
+Provinces nearest the danger seduced, the rest by their defection
+astonished, and the enemy by their decay and confusions, strengthened.
+This is the scope whereto the doings of the French King, not without
+intelligence with the Spanish sovereign, doth aim, whatever is
+pretended."
+
+There was a wide conviction that the French King was dealing falsely with
+the Provinces.  It seemed certain that he must be inspired by intense
+jealousy of England, and that he was unlikely, for the sake of those
+whose "religion, popular liberty, and rebellion against their sovereign,"
+he could not but disapprove, to allow Queen Elizabeth to steal a march
+upon him, and "make her own market with Spain to his cost and
+disadvantage."
+
+In short, it was suspected--whether justly or not will be presently
+shown--that Henry III.  "was seeking to blear the eyes of the world, as
+his brother Charles did before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew."  As the
+letters received from the Dutch envoys in France became less and less
+encouraging, and as the Queen was informed by her ambassador in Paris of
+the tergiversations in Paris, she became the more anxious lest the States
+should be driven to despair.  She therefore wrote to Davison, instructing
+him "to nourish in them underhand some hope--as a thing proceeding from
+himself--that though France should reject them, yet she would not abandon
+them."
+
+He was directed to find out, by circuitous means, what towns they would
+offer to her as security for any advances she might be induced to make,
+and to ascertain the amount of monthly contributions towards the support
+of the war that they were still capable of furnishing.  She was beginning
+to look with dismay at the expatriation of wealthy merchants and
+manufacturers going so rapidly forward, now that Ghent had fallen and
+Brussels and Antwerp were in such imminent peril.  She feared that, while
+so much valuable time had been thrown away, the Provinces had become too
+much impoverished to do their own part in their own defence; and she was
+seriously alarmed at rumours which had become prevalent of a popular
+disposition towards treating for a peace at any price with Spain.  It
+soon became evident that these rumours were utterly without foundation,
+but the other reasons for Elizabeth's anxiety were sufficiently valid.
+
+On the whole, the feeling in favour of England was rapidly gaining
+ground.  In Holland especially there was general indignation against the
+French party.  The letters of the deputies occasioned "murmur and
+mislike" of most persons, who noted them to contain "more ample report of
+ceremonies and compliments than solid argument of comfort."
+
+Sir Edward Stafford, who looked with great penetration into the heart of
+the mysterious proceedings at Paris, assured his government that no
+better result was to be looked for, "after long dalliance and
+entertainment, than either a flat refusal or such a masked embracing of
+their cause, as would rather tend to the increasing of their miseries and
+confusion than relief for their declining estate."  While "reposing upon
+a broken reed," they were, he thought, "neglecting other means more
+expedient for their necessities."
+
+This was already the universal opinion in Holland.  Men now remembered,
+with bitterness, the treachery of the Duke of Anjou, which they had been
+striving so hard to forget, but which less than two years ago had nearly
+proved fatal to the cause of liberty in the Provinces.  A committee of
+the States had an interview with the Queen's envoy at the Hague; implored
+her Majesty through him not to abandon their cause; expressed unlimited
+regret for the course which had been pursued, and avowed a determination
+"to pluck their heads out of the collar," so soon as the opportunity
+should offer.
+
+They stated, moreover, that they had been directed by the assembly to lay
+before him the instructions for the envoys to France, and the articles
+proposed for the acceptance of the King.  The envoy knew his business
+better than not to have secretly provided himself with copies of these
+documents, which he had already laid before his own government.
+
+He affected, however, to feel hurt that he had been thus kept in
+ignorance of papers which he really knew by heart.  "After some pretended
+quarrel," said he, "for their not acquainting me therewith sooner, I did
+accept them, as if.  I had before neither seen nor heard of them."
+
+This then was the aspect of affairs in the provinces during the absence
+of the deputies in France.  It is now necessary to shift the scene to
+that country.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+     Reception of the Dutch Envoys at the Louvre--Ignominious Result of
+     the Embassy--Secret Influences at work--Bargaining between the
+     French and Spanish Courts--Claims of Catharine de' Medici upon
+     Portugal--Letters of Henry and Catharine--Secret Proposal by France
+     to invade England--States' Mission to Henry of Navarre--Subsidies
+     of Philip to Guise--Treaty of Joinville--Philip's Share in the
+     League denied by Parma--Philip in reality its Chief--Manifesto of
+     the League--Attitude of Henry III. and of Navarre--The League
+     demands a Royal Decree--Designs of France and Spain against England
+     --Secret Interview of Mendoza and Villeroy--Complaints of English
+     Persecution--Edict of Nemours--Excommunication of Navarre and his
+     Reply.
+
+The King, notwithstanding his apparent reluctance, had, in Sir Edward
+Stafford's language, "nibbled at the bait."  He had, however, not been
+secured at the first attempt, and now a second effort was to be made,
+under what were supposed to be most favourable circumstances.  In
+accordance with his own instructions, his envoy, Des Pruneaux, had been
+busily employed in the States, arranging the terms of a treaty which
+should be entirely satisfactory.  It had been laid down as an
+indispensable condition that Holland and Zeeland should unite in the
+offer of sovereignty, and, after the expenditure of much eloquence,
+diplomacy, and money, Holland and Zeeland had given their consent.  The
+court had been for some time anxious and impatient for the arrival of the
+deputies.  Early in December, Des Pruneaux wrote from Paris to Count
+Maurice, urging with some asperity, the necessity of immediate action.
+
+"When I left you," he said, "I thought that performance would follow
+promises.  I have been a little ashamed, as the time passed by, to hear
+nothing of the deputies, nor of any excuse on the subject.  It would seem
+as though God had bandaged the eyes of those who have so much cause to
+know their own adversity."
+
+To the States his language was still more insolent.  "Excuse me,
+Gentlemen," he said, "if I tell you that I blush at hearing nothing from
+you.  I shall have the shame and you the damage.  I regret much the
+capture of De Teligny, and other losses which are occasioned by your
+delays and want of resolution."
+
+Thus did the French court, which a few months before had imprisoned, and
+then almost ignominiously dismissed the envoys who came to offer the
+sovereignty of the Provinces, now rebuke the governments which had ever
+since been strenuously engaged in removing all obstacles to the entire
+fulfillment of the King's demands.  The States were just despatching a
+solemn embassy to renew that offer, with hardly any limitation as to
+terms.
+
+The envoys arrived on January 3rd, 1585, at Boulogne, after a stormy
+voyage from Brielle.  Yet it seems incredible to relate, that, after all
+the ignominy heaped upon the last, there was nothing but solemn trifling
+in reserve for the present legation; although the object of both
+embassies was to offer a crown.  The deputies were, however, not kept in
+prison, upon this occasion, nor treated like thieves or spies.  They were
+admirably lodged, with plenty of cooks and lacqueys to minister to them;
+they fared sumptuously every day, at Henry's expense, and, after they had
+been six weeks in the kingdom, they at last succeeded in obtaining their
+first audience.
+
+On the 13th February the King sent five "very splendid, richly-gilded,
+court-coach-waggons" to bring the envoys to the palace.  At one o'clock
+they arrived at the Louvre, and were ushered through four magnificent
+antechambers into the royal cabinet.  The apartments through which they
+passed swarmed with the foremost nobles, court-functionaries, and ladies
+of France, in blazing gala costume, who all greeted the envoys with
+demonstrations of extreme respect: The halls and corridors were lined
+with archers, halbardiers, Swiss guards, and grooms "besmeared with
+gold," and it was thought that all this rustle of fine feathers would be
+somewhat startling to the barbarous republicans, fresh from the fens of
+Holland.
+
+Henry received them in his cabinet, where he was accompanied only by the
+Duke of Joyeuse--his foremost and bravest "minion"--by the Count of
+Bouscaige, M. de Valette, and the Count of Chateau Vieux.
+
+The most Christian King was neatly dressed, in white satin doublet and
+hose, and well-starched ruff, with a short cloak on his shoulders, a
+little velvet cap on the side of his head, his long locks duly perfumed
+and curled, his sword at his side, and a little basket, full of puppies,
+suspended from his neck by a broad ribbon.  He held himself stiff and
+motionless, although his face smiled a good-humoured welcome to the
+ambassadors; and he moved neither foot, hand, nor head, as they advanced.
+
+Chancellor Leoninus, the most experienced, eloquent, and tedious of men,
+now made an interminable oration, fertile in rhetoric and barren in
+facts; and the King made a short and benignant reply, according to the
+hallowed formula in such cases provided.  And then there was a
+presentation to the Queen, and to the Queen-Mother, when Leoninus was
+more prolix than before, and Catharine even more affectionate than her
+son; and there were consultations with Chiverny and Villeroy, and Brulart
+and Pruneaux, and great banquets at the royal expense, and bales of
+protocols, and drafts of articles, and conditions and programmes and
+apostilles by the hundred weight, and at last articles of annexation were
+presented by the envoys, and Pruneaux looked at and pronounced them "too
+raw and imperative," and the envoys took them home again, and dressed
+them and cooked them till there was no substance left in them; for
+whereas the envoys originally offered the crown of their country to
+France, on condition that no religion but the reformed religion should be
+tolerated there, no appointments made but by the States, and no security
+offered for advances to be made by the Christian King, save the hearts
+and oaths of his new subjects--so they now ended by proposing the
+sovereignty unconditionally, almost abjectly; and, after the expiration
+of nearly three months, even these terms were absolutely refused, and the
+deputies were graciously permitted to go home as they came.  The
+annexation and sovereignty were definitely declined.  Henry regretted and
+sighed, Catharine de' Medici wept--for tears were ever at her command--
+Chancellor Chiverny and Secretary Brulart wept likewise, and Pruneaux was
+overcome with emotion at the parting interview of the ambassadors with
+the court, in which they were allowed a last opportunity for expressing
+what was called their gratitude.
+
+And then, on the lath March, M. d'Oignon came to them, and presented, on
+the part of the King, to each of the envoys a gold chain weighing twenty-
+one ounces and two grains.
+
+Des Pruneaux, too--Des Pruneaux who had spent the previous summer in the
+Netherlands, who had travelled from province to province, from city to
+city, at the King's command, offering boundless assistance, if they would
+unanimously offer their sovereignty; who had vanquished by his
+importunity the resistance of the stern Hollanders, the last of all the
+Netherlanders to yield to the royal blandishments--Des Pruneaux, who had
+"blushed"--Des Pruneaux who had wept--now thought proper to assume an
+airy tone, half encouragement, half condolence.
+
+"Man proposes, gentlemen," said he "but God disposes.  We are frequently
+called on to observe that things have a great variety of times and terms.
+Many a man is refused by a woman twice, who succeeds the third time," and
+so on, with which wholesome apothegms Des Pruneaux faded away then and
+for ever from the page of Netherland history.
+
+In a few days afterwards the envoys took shipping at Dieppe, and arrived
+early in April at the Hague.
+
+And thus terminated the negotiation of the States with France.
+
+It had been a scene of elaborate trifling on the King's part from
+beginning to end.  Yet the few grains of wheat which have thus been
+extracted from the mountains of diplomatic chaff so long mouldering in
+national storehouses, contain, however dry and tasteless, still something
+for human nourishment.  It is something to comprehend the ineffable
+meanness of the hands which then could hold the destiny of mighty
+empires.  Here had been offered a magnificent prize to France; a great
+extent of frontier in the quarter where expansion was most desirable, a
+protective network of towns and fortresses on the side most vulnerable,
+flourishing, cities on the sea-coast where the marine traffic was most
+lucrative, the sovereignty of a large population, the most bustling,
+enterprising, and hardy in Europe--a nation destined in a few short years
+to become the first naval and commercial power in the world--all this was
+laid at the feet of Henry Valois and Catharine de' Medici, and rejected.
+
+The envoys, with their predecessors, had wasted eight months of most
+precious time; they had heard and made orations, they had read and
+written protocols, they had witnessed banquets, masquerades, and revels
+of stupendous frivolity, in honour of the English Garter, brought
+solemnly to the Valois by Lord Derby, accompanied by one hundred
+gentlemen "marvellously, sumptuously, and richly accoutred," during that
+dreadful winter when the inhabitants of Brussels, Antwerp, Mechlin--to
+save which splendid cities and to annex them to France, was a main object
+of the solemn embassy from the Netherlands--were eating rats, and cats,
+and dogs, and the weeds from the pavements, and the grass from the
+churchyards; and were finding themselves more closely pressed than ever
+by the relentless genius of Farnese; and in exchange for all these losses
+and all this humiliation, the ambassadors now returned to their
+constituents, bringing an account of Chiverny's magnificent banquets and
+long orations, of the smiles of Henry III., the tears of Catharine de'
+Medici, the regrets of M. des Pruneaux, besides sixteen gold chains, each
+weighing twenty-one ounces and two grains.
+
+It is worth while to go for a moment behind the scene; We have seen the
+actors, with mask and cothurn and tinsel crown, playing their well-conned
+parts upon the stage.  Let us hear them threaten, and whimper, and
+chaffer among themselves.
+
+So soon as it was intimated that Henry III. was about to grant the
+Netherland, envoys an audience, the wrath of ambassador Mendoza was
+kindled.  That magniloquent Spaniard instantly claimed an interview with
+the King, before whom, according to the statement of his colleagues,
+doing their best to pry into these secrets, he blustered and bounced, and
+was more fantastical in his insolence than even Spanish envoy had ever
+been before.
+
+"He went presently to court," so Walsingham was informed by Stafford,
+"and dealt very passionately with the King and Queen-Mother to deny them
+audience, who being greatly offended with his presumptuous and malapert
+manner of proceeding, the King did in choler and with some sharp
+speeches, let him plainly understand that he was an absolute king, bound
+to yield account of his doings to no man, and that it was lawful for him
+to give access to any man within his own realm.  The Queen-Mother
+answered him likewise very roundly, whereupon he departed for the time,
+very much discontented."
+
+Brave words, on both sides, if they had ever been spoken, or if there had
+been any action corresponding to their spirit.
+
+But, in truth, from the beginning, Henry and his mother saw in the
+Netherland embassy only the means of turning a dishonest penny.  Since
+the disastrous retreat of Anjou from the Provinces, the city of Cambray
+had remained in the hands of the Seigneur de Balagny, placed there by the
+duke.  The citadel, garrisoned by French troops, it was not the intention
+of Catharine de' Medici to restore to Philip, and a truce on the subject
+had been arranged provisionally for a year.  Philip, taking Parma's
+advice to prevent the French court, if possible, from "fomenting the
+Netherland rebellion," had authorized the Prince to conclude that truce,
+as if done on his own responsibility, and not by royal order.  Meantime,
+Balagny was gradually swelling into a petty potentate, on his own
+account, making himself very troublesome to the Prince of Parma, and
+requiring a great deal of watching.  Cambray was however apparently
+acquired for France.
+
+But, besides this acquisition, there was another way of earning something
+solid, by turning this Netherland matter handsomely to account.  Philip
+II. had recently conquered Portugal.  Among the many pretensions to that
+crown, those of Catherine de' Medici had been put forward, but had been
+little heeded.  The claim went back more than three hundred years, and to
+establish its validity would have been to convert the peaceable
+possession of a long line of sovereigns into usurpation.  To ascend to
+Alphonso III. was like fetching, as it was said, a claim from Evander's
+grandmother.  Nevertheless, ever since Philip had been upon the
+Portuguese throne, Catherine had been watching the opportunity, not
+of unseating that sovereign, but of converting her claim into money.
+
+The Netherland embassy seemed to offer the coveted opportunity.  There
+was, therefore, quite as much warmth at the outset, on the part of
+Mendoza, in that first interview after the arrival of the deputies, as
+had been represented.  There was however less dignity and more cunning on
+the part of Henry and Catherine than was at all suspected.  Even before
+that conference the King had been impatiently expecting overtures from
+the Spanish envoy, and had been disappointed.  "He told me," said Henry,
+"that he would make proposals so soon as Tassis should be gone, but he
+has done nothing yet.  He said to Gondi that all he meant was to get the
+truce of Cambray accomplished.  I hope, however, that my brother, the
+King of Spain, will do what is right in regard to madam my mother's
+pretensions.  'Tis likely that he will be now incited thereto, seeing
+that the deputies of all the Netherland provinces are at present in my
+kingdom, to offer me carte blanche.  I shall hear what they have to say,
+and do exactly what the good of my own affairs shall seem to require.
+The Queen of England, too, has been very pressing and urgent with me for
+several months on this subject.  I shall hear, too, what she has to say,
+and I presume, if the King of Spain will now disclose himself, and do
+promptly what he ought, that we may set Christendom at rest."
+
+Henry then instructed his ambassador in Spain to keep his eyes wide open,
+in order to penetrate the schemes of Philip, and to this end ordered him
+an increase of salary by a third, that he might follow that monarch on
+his journey to Arragon.
+
+Meanwhile Mendoza had audience of his Majesty.  "He made a very pressing
+remonstrance," said the King, "concerning the arrival of these deputies,
+urging me to send them back at once; denouncing them as disobedient
+rebels and heretics.  I replied that my kingdom was free, and that I
+should hear from them all that they had to say, because I could not
+abandon madam my mother in her pretensions, not only for the filial
+obedience which I owe her, but because I am her only heir.  Mendoza
+replied that he should go and make the same remonstrance to the Queen-
+Mother, which he accordingly did, and she will herself write you what
+passed between them.  If they do not act up to their duty down there I
+know how to take my revenge upon them."
+
+This is the King's own statement--his veriest words--and he was surely
+best aware of what occurred between himself and Mendoza, under their four
+eyes only.  The ambassador is not represented as extremely insolent, but
+only pressing; and certainly there is little left of the fine periods on
+Henry's part about listening to the cry of the oppressed, or preventing
+the rays of his ancestors' diadem from growing pale, with which
+contemporary chronicles are filled.
+
+There was not one word of the advancement and glory of the French nation;
+not a hint of the fame to be acquired by a magnificent expansion of
+territory, still less of the duty to deal generously or even honestly
+with an oppressed people, who in good faith were seeking an asylum in
+exchange for offered sovereignty, not a syllable upon liberty of
+conscience, of religious or civil rights; nothing but a petty and
+exclusive care for the interests of his mother's pocket, and of his own
+as his mother's heir.  This farthing-candle was alone to guide the steps
+of "the high and mighty King," whose reputation was perpetually
+represented as so precious to him in all the conferences between his
+ministers and the Netherland deputies.  Was it possible for those envoys
+to imagine the almost invisible meanness of such childish tricks?
+
+The Queen-Mother was still more explicit and unblushing throughout the
+whole affair.
+
+"The ambassador of Spain," she said, "has made the most beautiful
+remonstrances he could think of about these deputies from the
+Netherlands.  All his talk, however, cannot persuade me to anything else
+save to increase my desire to have reparation for the wrong that has been
+done me in regard to my claims upon Portugal, which I am determined to
+pursue by every means within my power.  Nevertheless I have told Don
+Bernardino that I should always be ready to embrace any course likely to
+bring about a peaceful conclusion.  He then entered into a discussion of
+my rights, which, he said, were not thought in Spain to be founded in
+justice.  But when I explained to him the principal points (of which I
+possess all the pieces of evidence and justification), he hardly knew
+what to say, save that he was astounded that I had remained so long
+without speaking of my claims.  In reply, I told him ingenuously the
+truth."
+
+The truth which the ingenuous Catharine thus revealed was, in brief, that
+all her predecessors had been minors, women, and persons in situations
+not to make their rights valid.  Finding herself more highly placed, she
+had advanced her claims, which had been so fully recognized in Portugal,
+that she had been received as Infanta of the kingdom.  All pretensions to
+the throne being now through women only, hers were the best of any.  At
+all this Don Bernardino expressed profound astonishment, and promised to
+send a full account to his master of "the infinite words" which had
+passed between them at this interview!
+
+"I desire," said Catharine, "that the Lord King of Spain should open his
+mind frankly and promptly upon the recompense which he is willing to make
+me for Portugal, in order that things may pass rather with gentleness
+than otherwise."
+
+It was expecting a great deal to look for frankness and promptness from
+the Lord King of Spain, but the Queen-Mother considered that the
+Netherland envoys had put a whip into her hand.  She was also determined
+to bring Philip up to the point, without showing her own game.  "I will
+never say," said Catharine--ingenuous no longer--"I will never say how
+much I ask, but, on the contrary, I shall wait for him to make the offer.
+I expect it to be reasonable, because he has seen fit to seize and occupy
+that which I declare to be my property."
+
+This is the explanation of all the languor and trifling of the French
+court in the Netherland negotiation.  A deep, constant, unseen current
+was running counter to all the movement which appeared upon the surface.
+The tergiversations of the Spanish cabinet in the Portugal matter were
+the cause of the shufflings of the French ministers on the subject of the
+Provinces.
+
+"I know well," said Henry a few days later, "that the people down there,
+and their ambassador here, are leading us on with words, as far as they
+can, with regard to the recompense of madam my mother for her claims upon
+Portugal.  But they had better remember (and I think they will), that out
+of the offers which these sixteen deputies of the Netherlands are
+bringing me--and I believe it to be carte blanche--I shall be able to pay
+myself.  'Twill be better to come promptly to a good bargain and a brief
+conclusion, than to spin the matter out longer."
+
+"Don Bernardino," said the Queen-Mother on the same day, "has been
+keeping us up to this hour in hopes of a good offer, but 'tis to be
+feared, for the good of Christendom, that 'twill be too late.  The
+deputies are come, bringing carte blanche.  Nevertheless, if the King of
+Spain is willing to be reasonable, and that instantly, it will be well,
+and it would seem as if God had been pleased to place this means in our
+hands."
+
+After the conferences had been fairly got under way between the French
+government and the envoys, the demands upon Philip for a good bargain and
+a handsome offer became still more pressing.
+
+"I have given audience to the deputies from the Provinces," wrote Henry,
+"and the Queen-Mother has done the same.  Chancellor Chiverny,
+Villequier, Bellievre, and Brulart, will now confer with them from day
+today.  I now tell you that it will be well, before things go any
+farther, for the King of Spain to come to reason about the pretensions of
+madam mother.  This will be a means of establishing the repose of
+Christendom.  I shall be very willing to concur in such an arrangement,
+if I saw any approximation to it on the part of the King or his
+ministers.  But I fear they will delay too long, and so you had better
+tell them.  Push them to the point as much as possible, without letting
+them suspect that I have been writing about it, for that would make them
+rather draw back than come forward."
+
+At the same time, during this alternate threatening and coaxing between
+the French and the Spanish court, and in the midst of all the solemn and
+tedious protocolling of the ministry and the Dutch envoys, there was a
+most sincere and affectionate intercourse maintained between Henry III.
+and the Prince of Parma.  The Spanish Governor-General was assured that
+nothing but the warmest regard was entertained for him and his master on
+the part of the French court.  Parma had replied, however, that so many
+French troops had in times past crossed the frontier to assist the
+rebels, that he hardly knew what to think.  He expressed the hope, now
+that the Duke of Anjou was dead, that his Christian Majesty would not
+countenance the rebellion, but manifest his good-will.
+
+"How can your Highness doubt it," said Malpierre, Henry's envoy, "for his
+Majesty has given proof enough of his good will, having prevented all
+enterprises in this regard, and preferred to have his own subjects cut
+into pieces rather than that they should carry out their designs.  Had
+his Majesty been willing merely to connive at these undertakings, 'tis
+probable that the affairs of your highness would not have succeeded so
+well as they have done."
+
+With regard to England, also, the conduct of Henry and his mother in
+these negotiations was marked by the same unfathomable duplicity.  There
+was an appearance of cordiality on the surface; but there was deep
+plotting, and bargaining, and even deadly hostility lurking below.  We
+have seen the efforts which Elizabeth's government had been making to
+counteract the policy which offered the sovereignty of the provinces to
+the French monarch.  At the same time there was at least a loyal
+disposition upon the Queen's part to assist the Netherlands, in
+concurrence with Henry.  The demeanour of Burghley and his colleagues was
+frankness itself, compared with the secret schemings of the Valois; for
+at least peace and good-will between the "triumvirate" of France, England
+and the Netherlands, was intended, as the true means of resisting the
+predominant influence of Spain.
+
+Yet very soon after the solemn reception by Henry of the garter brought
+by Lord Derby, and in the midst of the negotiations between the French
+court and the United Provinces, the French king was not only attempting
+to barter the sovereignty offered him by the Netherlanders against a
+handsome recompense for the Portugal claim, but he was actually proposing
+to the King of Spain to join with him in an invasion of England!  Even
+Philip himself must have admired and respected such a complication of
+villany on the part of his most Christian brother.  He was, however, not
+disposed to put any confidence in his schemes.
+
+"With regard to the attempt against England," wrote Philip to Mendoza,
+"you must keep your eyes open--you must look at the danger of letting
+them, before they have got rid of their rivals and reduced their
+heretics, go out of their own house and kingdom, and thus of being made
+fools of when they think of coming back again.  Let them first
+exterminate the heretics of France, and then we will look after those of
+England; because 'tis more important to finish those who are near than
+those afar off.  Perhaps the Queen-Mother proposes this invasion in order
+to proceed more feebly with matters in her own kingdom; and thus Mucio
+(Duke of Guise) and his friends will not have so safe a game, and must
+take heed lest they be deceived."
+
+Thus it is obvious that Henry and Catharine intended, on the whole, to
+deceive the English and the Netherlanders, and to get as good a bargain
+and as safe a friendship from Philip as could be manufactured out of the
+materials placed in the French King's hands by the United Provinces.
+Elizabeth honestly wished well to the States, but allowed Burghley and
+those who acted with him to flatter themselves with the chimera that
+Henry could be induced to protect the Netherlands without assuming the
+sovereignty of that commonwealth.  The Provinces were fighting for their
+existence, unconscious of their latent strength, and willing to trust to
+France or to England, if they could only save themselves from being
+swallowed by Spain.  As for Spain itself, that country was more practised
+in duplicity even than the government of the Medici-Valois, and was of
+course more than a match at the game of deception for the franker
+politicians of England and Holland.
+
+The King of Navarre had meanwhile been looking on at a distance.  Too
+keen an observer, too subtle a reasoner to doubt the secret source of the
+movements then agitating France to its centre, he was yet unable to
+foresee the turn that all these intrigues were about to take.  He could
+hardly doubt that Spain was playing a dark and desperate game with the
+unfortunate Henry III.; for, as we have seen, he had himself not long
+before received a secret and liberal offer from Philip II., if he would
+agree to make war upon the King.  But the Bearnese was not the man to
+play into the hands of Spain, nor could he imagine the possibility of the
+Valois or even of his mother taking so suicidal a course.
+
+After the Netherland deputies had received their final dismissal from the
+King, they sent Calvart, who had been secretary to their embassy, on a
+secret mission to Henry of Navarre, then resident at Chartres.
+
+The envoy communicated to the Huguenot chief the meagre result of the
+long negotiation with the French court.  Henry bade him be of good cheer,
+and assured him of his best wishes for their cause.  He expressed the
+opinion that the King of France would now either attempt to overcome the
+Guise faction by gentle means, or at once make war upon them.  The Bishop
+of Acqs had strongly recommended the French monarch to send the King of
+Navarre, with a strong force, to the assistance of the Netherlands,
+urging the point with much fervid eloquence and solid argument.  Henry
+for a moment had seemed impressed, but such a vigorous proceeding was of
+course entirely beyond his strength, and he had sunk back into his
+effeminate languor so soon as the bold bishop's back was turned.
+
+The Bearnese had naturally conceived but little hope that such a scheme
+would be carried into effect; but he assured Calvart, that nothing could
+give him greater delight than to mount and ride in such a cause.
+
+"Notwithstanding," said the Bearnese, "that the villanous intentions of
+the Guises are becoming plainer and plainer, and that they are obviously
+supplied with Spanish dollars, I shall send a special envoy to the most
+Christian King, and, although 'tis somewhat late, implore him to throw
+his weight into the scale, in order to redeem your country from its
+misery.  Meantime be of good heart, and defend as you have done your
+hearths, your liberty, and the honour of God."
+
+He advised the States unhesitatingly to continue their confidence in the
+French King, and to keep him informed of their plans and movements;
+expressing the opinion that these very intrigues of the Guise party would
+soon justify or even force Henry III. openly to assist the Netherlands.
+
+So far, at that very moment, was so sharp a politician as the Bearnese
+from suspecting the secret schemes of Henry of Valois.  Calvart urged the
+King of Navarre to assist the States at that moment with some slight
+subsidy.  Antwerp was in such imminent danger as to fill the hearts of
+all true patriots with dismay; and a timely succour, even if a slender
+one, might be of inestimable value.
+
+Henry expressed profound regret that his own means were so limited, and
+his own position so dangerous, as to make it difficult for him to
+manifest in broad daylight the full affection which he bore the
+Provinces.
+
+"To my sorrow," said he, "your proposition is made in the midst of such
+dark and stormy weather, that those who have clearest sight are unable to
+see to what issue these troubles of France are tending."
+
+Nevertheless, with much generosity and manliness, he promised Calvart to
+send two thousand soldiers, at his own charges, to the Provinces without
+delay; and authorised that envoy to consult with his agent at the court
+of the French King, in order to obtain the royal permission for the
+troops to cross the frontier.
+
+The crownless and almost houseless King had thus, at a single interview,
+and in exchange for nothing but good wishes, granted what the most
+Christian monarch of France had refused, after months of negotiation, and
+with sovereignty as the purchase-money.  The envoy, well pleased, sped as
+swiftly as possible to Paris; but, as may easily be imagined, Henry of
+Valois forbade the movement contemplated by Henry of Navarre.
+
+"His Majesty," said Villeroy, secretary of state, "sees no occasion, in
+so weighty a business, thus suddenly to change his mind; the less so,
+because he hopes to be able ere long to smooth over these troubles which
+have begun in France.  Should the King either openly or secretly assist
+the Netherlands or allow them to be assisted, 'twould be a reason for all
+the Catholics now sustaining his Majesty's party to go over to the Guise
+faction.  The Provinces must remain firm, and make no pacification with
+the enemy.  Meantime the Queen of England is the only one to whom God has
+given means to afford you succour.  One of these days, when the proper
+time comes, his Majesty will assist her in affording you relief."
+
+Calvart, after this conference with the King of Navarre, and subsequently
+with the government, entertained a lingering hope that the French King
+meant to assist the Provinces.  "I know well who is the author of these
+troubles," said the unhappy monarch, who never once mentioned the name of
+Guise in all those conferences, "but, if God grant me life, I will give
+him as good as he sends, and make him rue his conduct."
+
+They were not aware after how many strange vacillations Henry was one day
+to wreak this threatened vengeance.  As for Navarre, he remained upon the
+watch, good humoured as ever, more merry and hopeful as the tempest grew
+blacker; manifesting the most frank and friendly sentiments towards the
+Provinces, and writing to Queen Elizabeth in the chivalrous style so dear
+to the heart of that sovereign, that he desired nothing better than to be
+her "servant and captain-general against the common enemy."
+
+But, indeed, the French King was not so well informed as he imagined
+himself to be of the authorship of these troubles.  Mucio, upon whose
+head he thus threatened vengeance, was but the instrument.  The concealed
+hand that was directing all these odious intrigues, and lighting these
+flames of civil war which were so long to make France a scene of
+desolation, was that of the industrious letter-writer in the Escorial.
+That which Henry of Navarre shrewdly suspected, when he talked of the
+Spanish dollars in the Balafre's pocket, that which was dimly visible to
+the Bishop of Acqs when he told Henry III. that the "Tagus had emptied
+itself into the Seine and Loire, and that the gold of Mexico was flowing
+into the royal cabinet," was much more certain than they supposed.
+
+Philip, in truth, was neglecting his own most pressing interests that he
+might direct all his energies towards entertaining civil war in France.
+That France should remain internally at peace was contrary to all his
+plans.  He had therefore long kept Guise and his brother, the Cardinal de
+Lorraine, in his pay, and he had been spending large sums of money to
+bribe many of the most considerable functionaries in the kingdom.
+
+The most important enterprises in the Netherlands were allowed to
+languish, that these subterranean operations of the "prudent" monarch of
+Spain should be pushed forward.  The most brilliant and original genius
+that Philip had the good fortune to have at his disposal, the genius of
+Alexander Farnese, was cramped and irritated almost to madness, by the
+fetters imposed upon it, by the sluggish yet obstinate nature of him it
+was bound to obey.  Farnese was at that moment engaged in a most arduous
+military undertaking, that famous siege of Antwerp, the details of which
+will be related in future chapters, yet he was never furnished with men
+or money enough to ensure success to a much more ordinary operation.
+His complaints, subdued but intense, fell almost unheeded on his master's
+ear.  He had not "ten dollars at his command," his cavalry horses were
+all dead of hunger or had been eaten by their riders, who were starving
+to death themselves, his army had dwindled to a "handful," yet he still
+held on to his purpose, in spite of famine, the desperate efforts of
+indefatigable enemies, and all the perils and privations of a deadly
+winter.  He, too, was kept for a long time in profound ignorance of
+Philip's designs.
+
+Meantime, while the Spanish soldiers were starving in Flanders, Philip's
+dollars were employed by Mucio and his adherents in enlisting troops in
+Switzerland and Germany, in order to carry on the civil war in France.
+The French king was held systematically up to ridicule or detestation in
+every village-pulpit in his own kingdom, while the sister of Mucio, the
+Duchess of Montpensier, carried the scissors at her girdle, with which
+she threatened to provide Henry with a third crown, in addition to those
+of France and Poland, which he had disgraced--the coronal tonsure of a
+monk.  The convent should be, it was intimated, the eventual fate of the
+modern Childeric, but meantime it was more important than ever to
+supersede the ultimate pretensions of Henry of Navarre.  To prevent that
+heretic of heretics, who was not to be bought with Spanish gold, from
+ever reigning, was the first object of Philip and Mucio.
+
+Accordingly, on the last day of the year 1584, a secret treaty had been
+signed at Joinville between Henry of Guise and his brother the Duc de
+Mayenne, holding the proxies of their brother the Cardinal and those of
+their uncles, Aumale and Elbeuf, on the one part, and John Baptist Tassis
+and Commander Moreo, on the other, as representatives of Philip.  This
+transaction, sufficiently well known now to the most superficial student
+of history, was a profound mystery then, so far as regarded the action of
+the Spanish king.  It was not a secret, however, that the papistical
+party did not intend that the Bearnese prince should ever come to the
+throne, and the matter of the succession was discussed, precisely as if
+the throne had been vacant.
+
+It was decided that Charles, paternal uncle to Henry of Navarre, commonly
+called the Cardinal Bourbon, should be considered successor to the crown,
+in place of Henry, whose claim was forfeited by heresy.  Moreover, a
+great deal of superfluous money and learning was expended in ordering
+some elaborate legal arguments to be prepared by venal jurisconsults,
+proving not only that the uncle ought to succeed before the nephew, but
+that neither the one nor the other had any claim to succeed at all.  The
+pea having thus been employed to do the work which the sword alone could
+accomplish, the poor old Cardinal was now formally established by the
+Guise faction as presumptive heir to the crown.
+
+A man of straw, a superannuated court-dangler, a credulous trifler, but
+an earnest Papist as his brother Antony had been, sixty-six years old,
+and feeble beyond his years, who, his life long, had never achieved one
+manly action, and had now one foot in the grave; this was the puppet
+placed in the saddle to run a tilt against the Bearnese, the man with
+foot ever in the stirrup, with sword rarely in its sheath.
+
+The contracting parties at Joinville agreed that the Cardinal should
+succeed on the death of the reigning king, and that no heretic should
+ever ascend the throne, or hold the meanest office in the kingdom.
+They agreed further that all heretics should be "exterminated" without
+distinction throughout France and the Netherlands.  In order to procure
+the necessary reforms among the clergy, the council of Trent was to be
+fully carried into effect.  Philip pledged himself to furnish at least
+fifty thousand crowns monthly, for the advancement of this Holy League,
+as it was denominated, and as much more as should prove necessary.  The
+sums advanced were to be repaid by the Cardinal on his succeeding to the
+throne.  All the great officers of the crown, lords and gentlemen,
+cities, chapters, and universities, all Catholics, in short, in the
+kingdom, were deemed to be included in the league.  If any foreign
+Catholic prince desired to enter the union, he should be admitted with
+the consent of both parties.  Neither his Catholic majesty nor the
+confederated princes should treat with the most Christian King, either
+directly or indirectly.  The compact was to remain strictly secret--one
+copy of it being sent to Philip, while the other was to be retained by
+Cardinal Bourbon and his fellow leaguers.
+
+And now--in accordance with this program--Philip proceeded stealthily and
+industriously to further the schemes of Mucio, to the exclusion of more
+urgent business.  Noiseless and secret himself, and delighting in
+clothing so much as to glide, as it were, throughout Europe, wrapped in
+the mantle of invisibility, he was perpetually provoked by the noise, the
+bombast, and the bustle, which his less prudent confederates permitted
+themselves.  While Philip for a long time hesitated to confide the secret
+of the League to Parma, whom it most imported to understand these schemes
+of his master, the confederates were openly boasting of the assistance
+which they were to derive from Parma's cooperation.  Even when the Prince
+had at last been informed as to the state of affairs, he stoutly denied
+the facts of which the leaguers made their vaunt; thus giving to Mucio
+and his friends a lesson in dissimulation."
+
+"Things have now arrived at a point," wrote Philip to Tassis, 15th March,
+1585, "that this matter of the League cannot and ought not to be
+concealed from those who have a right to know it.  Therefore you must
+speak clearly to the Prince of Parma, informing him of the whole scheme,
+and enjoining the utmost secrecy.  You must concert with him as to the
+best means of rendering aid to this cause, after having apprised him of
+the points which regarded him, and also that of the security of Cardinal
+de Bourbon, in case of necessity."
+
+The Prince was anything but pleased, in the midst of his anxiety and
+his almost superhuman labour in the Antwerp siege, to be distracted,
+impoverished, and weakened, in order to carry out these schemes against
+France; but he kept the secret manfully.
+
+To Malpierre, the French envoy in Brussels--for there was the closest
+diplomatic communication between Henry III. and Philip, while each was
+tampering with the rebellious subjects of the other--to Malpierre Parma
+flatly contradicted all complicity on the part of the Spanish King or
+himself with the Holy League, of which he knew Philip to be the
+originator and the chief.
+
+"If I complain to the Prince of Parma," said the envoy, "of the companies
+going from Flanders to assist the League, he will make me no other reply
+than that which the President has done--that there is nothing at all in
+it--until they are fairly arrived in France.  The President (Richardot)
+said that if the Catholic King belonged to the League, as they insinuate,
+his Majesty would declare the fact openly."
+
+And a few days later, the Prince himself averred, as Malpierre had
+anticipated, that "as to any intention on the part of himself or his
+Catholic Majesty, to send succour to the League, according to the boast
+of these gentlemen, he had never thought of such a thing, nor had
+received any order on the subject from his master.  If the King intended
+to do anything of the kind, he would do it openly.  He protested that he
+had never seen anything, or known anything of the League."
+
+Here was a man who knew how to keep a secret, and who had no scruples in
+the matter of dissimulation, however enraged he might be at seeing men
+and money diverted from his own masterly combinations in order to carry
+out these schemes of his master.
+
+Mucio, on the contrary, was imprudent and inclined to boast.  His
+contempt for Henry III, made him blind to the dangers to be apprehended
+from Henry of Navarre.  He did little, but talked a great deal.
+
+Philip was very anxious that the work should be done both secretly and
+thoroughly.  "Let the business be finished before Saint John's day," said
+he to Tassis, when sending fifty thousand dollars for the use of the
+brothers Guise.  "Tell Iniquez to warn them not to be sluggish.  Let them
+not begin in a lukewarm manner, but promise them plenty of assistance
+from me, if they conduct themselves properly.  Let them beware of
+wavering, or of falling into plans of conciliation.  If they do their
+duty, I will do mine."
+
+But the Guise faction moved slowly despite of Philip's secret promptings.
+The truth is, that the means proposed by the Spanish monarch were
+ludicrously inadequate to his plans, and it was idle to suppose that the
+world was to be turned upside down for his benefit, at the very low price
+which he was prepared to pay.
+
+Nothing less than to exterminate all the heretics in Christendom, to
+place himself on the thrones of France and of England, and to extinguish
+the last spark of rebellion in the Netherlands, was his secret thought,
+and yet it was very difficult to get fifty thousand dollars from him from
+month to month.  Procrastinating and indolent himself, he was for ever
+rebuking the torpid movements of the Guises.
+
+"Let Mucio set his game well at the outset," said he; "let him lay the
+axe to the root of the tree, for to be wasting time fruitlessly is
+sharpening the knife for himself."
+
+This was almost prophetic.  When after so much talking and tampering,
+there began to be recrimination among the leaguers, Philip was very angry
+with his subordinate.
+
+"Here is Mucio," said he, "trying to throw the blame of all the
+difficulties, which have arisen, upon us.  Not hastening, not keeping his
+secret, letting the execution of the enterprise grow cold, and lending an
+ear to suggestions about peace, without being sure of its conclusion, he
+has turned his followers into cowards, discredited his cause, and given
+the King of France opportunity to strengthen his force and improve his
+party.  These are all very palpable things.  I am willing to continue
+my friendship for them, but not, if, while they accept it, they permit
+themselves to complain, instead of manifesting gratitude."
+
+On the whole, however, the affairs of the League seemed prosperous.
+There was doubtless too much display among the confederates, but there
+was a growing uneasiness among the royalists.  Cardinal Bourbon,
+discarding his ecclesiastical robes and scarlet stockings, paraded
+himself daily in public, clothed in military costume, with all the airs
+of royalty.  Many persons thought him mad.  On the other hand, Epergnon,
+the haughty minion-in-chief, who governed Henry III., and insulted all
+the world, was becoming almost polite.
+
+"The progress of the League," said Busbecq, "is teaching the Duc
+d' Epergnon manners.  'Tis a youth of such insolence, that without
+uncovering he would talk with men of royal descent, while they were
+bareheaded.  'Tis a common jest now that he has found out where his hat
+is."
+
+Thus, for a long time, a network of secret political combinations had
+been stretching itself over Christendom.  There were great movements of
+troops throughout Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, slowly
+concentrating themselves upon France; yet, on the whole, the great mass
+of the populations, the men and women who were to pay, to fight, to
+starve, to be trampled upon, to be outraged, to be plundered, to be
+burned out of houses and home, to bleed, and to die, were merely
+ignorant, gaping spectators.  That there was something very grave in
+prospect was obvious, but exactly what was impending they knew no more
+than the generation yet unborn.  Very noiselessly had the patient manager
+who sat in the Escorial been making preparations for that European
+tragedy in which most of the actors had such fatal parts assigned them,
+and of which few of the spectators of its opening scenes were doomed to
+witness the conclusion.  A shifting and glancing of lights, a vision of
+vanishing feet, a trampling and bustling of unseen crowds, movements of
+concealed machinery, a few incoherent words, much noise and confusion
+vague and incomprehensible, till at last the tinkling of a small bell,
+and a glimpse of the modest manager stealing away as the curtain was
+rising--such was the spectacle presented at Midsummer 1585,
+
+And in truth the opening picture was effective.  Sixteen black-robed,
+long-bearded Netherland envoys stalking away, discomfited and indignant
+upon one side; Catharine de' Medici on the other, regarding them with a
+sneer, painfully contorted into a pathetic smile; Henry the King, robed
+in a sack of penitence, trembling and hesitating, leaning on the arm of
+Epergnon, but quailing even under the protection of that mighty
+swordsman; Mucio, careering, truncheon in hand, in full panoply, upon his
+war-horse, waving forward a mingled mass of German lanzknechts, Swiss
+musketeers, and Lorraine pikemen; the redoubtable Don Bernardino de
+Mendoza, in front, frowning and ferocious, with his drawn sword in his
+hand; Elizabeth of England, in the back ground, with the white-bearded
+Burghley and the monastic Walsingham, all surveying the scene with eyes
+of deepest meaning; and, somewhat aside, but in full view, silent, calm,
+and imperturbably good-humoured, the bold Bearnese, standing with a
+mischievous but prophetic smile glittering through his blue eyes and
+curly beard--thus grouped were the personages of the drama in the
+introductory scenes.
+
+The course of public events which succeeded the departure of the
+Netherland deputies is sufficiently well known.  The secret negotiations
+and intrigues, however, by which those external facts were preceded or
+accompanied rest mainly in dusty archives, and it was therefore necessary
+to dwell somewhat at length upon them in the preceding pages.
+
+The treaty of Joinville was signed on the last day of the year 1584.
+
+We have seen the real nature of the interview of Ambassador Mendoza with
+Henry III. and his mother, which took place early in January, 1585.
+Immediately after that conference, Don Bernardino betook himself to the
+Duke of Guise, and lost no time in stimulating his confederate to prompt
+but secret action.
+
+The Netherland envoys had their last audience on the 18th March, and
+their departure and disappointment was the signal for the general
+exhibition and explosion.  The great civil war began, and the man who
+refused to annex the Netherlands to the French kingdom soon ceased to be
+regarded as a king.
+
+On the 31st March, the heir presumptive, just manufactured by the Guises,
+sent forth his manifesto.  Cardinal Bourbon, by this document, declared
+that for twenty-four years past no proper measures had been taken to
+extirpate the heresy by which France was infested.  There was no natural
+heir to the King.  Those who claimed to succeed at his death had deprived
+themselves, by heresy, of their rights.  Should they gain their ends, the
+ancient religion would be abolished throughout the kingdom, as it had
+been in England, and Catholics be subjected to the same frightful
+tortures which they were experiencing there.  New men, admitted to the
+confidence of the crown, clothed with the highest honours, and laden with
+enormous emoluments, had excluded the ancient and honoured functionaries
+of the state, who had been obliged to sell out their offices to these
+upstart successors.  These new favourites had seized the finances of the
+kingdom, all of which were now collected into the private coffers of the
+King, and shared by him with his courtiers.  The people were groaning
+under new taxes invented every day, yet they knew nothing of the
+distribution of the public treasure, while the King himself was so
+impoverished as to be unable to discharge his daily debts.  Meantime
+these new advisers of the crown had renewed to the Protestants of the
+kingdom the religious privileges of which they had so justly been
+deprived, yet the religious peace which had followed had not brought with
+it the promised diminution of the popular burthens.  Never had the nation
+been so heavily taxed or reduced to such profound misery.  For these
+reasons, he, Cardinal Bourbon, with other princes of the blood, peers,
+gentlemen, cities, and universities, had solemnly bound themselves by
+oath to extirpate heresy down to the last root, and to save the people
+from the dreadful load under which they were languishing.  It was for
+this that they had taken up arms, and till that purpose was accomplished
+they would never lay them down.
+
+The paper concluded with the hope that his Majesty would not take these
+warlike demonstrations amiss; and a copy of the document was placed in
+the royal hands.
+
+It was very obvious to the most superficial observer, that the manifesto
+was directed almost as much against the reigning sovereign as against
+Henry of Navarre.  The adherents of the Guise faction, and especially
+certain theologians in their employ, had taken very bold grounds upon the
+relations between king and subjects, and had made the public very
+familiar with their doctrines.  It was a duty, they said, "to depose a
+prince who did not discharge his duty.  Authority ill regulated was
+robbery, and it was as absurd to call him a king who knew not how to
+govern, as it was to take a blind man for a guide, or to believe that a
+statue could influence the movements of living men."
+
+Yet to the faction, inspired by such rebellious sentiments, and which was
+thundering in his face such tremendous denunciations, the unhappy Henry
+could not find a single royal or manly word of reply.  He threw himself
+on his knees, when, if ever, he should have assumed an attitude of
+command.  He answered the insolence of the men, who were parading their
+contempt for his authority, by humble excuses, and supplications for
+pardon.  He threw his crown in the dust before their feet, as if such
+humility would induce them to place it again upon his head.  He abandoned
+the minions who had been his pride, his joy, and his defence, and
+deprecated, with an abject whimper, all responsibility for the unmeasured
+ambition and the insatiable rapacity of a few private individuals.  He
+conjured the party-leaders, who had hurled defiance in his face, to lay
+down their arms, and promised that they should find in his wisdom and
+bounty more than all the advantages which they were seeking to obtain by
+war.
+
+Henry of Navarre answered in a different strain.  The gauntlet had at
+last been thrown down to him, and he came forward to take it up; not
+insolently nor carelessly, but with the cold courtesy of a Christian
+knight and valiant gentleman.  He denied the charge of heresy.  He avowed
+detestation of all doctrines contrary to the Word of God, to the decrees
+of the Fathers of the Church, or condemned by the Councils.
+
+The errors and abuses which had from time to time crept into the church,
+had long demanded, in the opinion of all pious persons, some measures of
+reform.  After many bloody wars, no better remedy had been discovered to
+arrest the cause of these dire religious troubles, whether in France or
+Germany, than to permit all men to obey the dictates of their own
+conscience.  The Protestants had thus obtained in France many edicts by
+which the peace of the kingdom had been secured.  He could not himself be
+denounced as a heretic, for he had always held himself ready to receive
+instruction, and to be set right where he had erred.  To call him
+"relapsed" was an outrage.  Were it true, he were indeed unworthy of the
+crown, but the world knew that his change at the Massacre of St.
+Bartholomew had been made under duresse, and that he had returned to the
+reformed faith when he had recovered his liberty.  Religious toleration
+had been the object of his life.  In what the tyranny of the popes and
+the violence of the Spaniards had left him of his kingdom of Navarre,
+Catholics and Protestants enjoyed a perfect religious liberty.  No man
+had the right, therefore, to denounce him as an enemy of the church, or
+a disturber of the public repose, for he had ever been willing to accept
+all propositions of peace which left the rights of conscience protected.
+
+He was a Frenchman, a prince of France, a living member of the kingdom;
+feeling with its pains, and bleeding with its wounds.  They who denounced
+him were alien to France, factitious portions of her body, feeling no
+suffering, even should she be consuming with living fire.  The Leaguers
+were the friends and the servants of the Spaniards, while he had been
+born the enemy, and with too good reason, of the whole Spanish race.
+
+"Let the name of Papist and of Huguenot," he said, "be heard no more
+among us.  Those terms were buried in the edict of peace.  Let us speak
+only of Frenchmen and of Spaniards.  It is the counter-league which we
+must all unite to form, the natural union of the head with all its
+members."
+
+Finally, to save the shedding of so much innocent blood, to spare all the
+countless miseries of civil war, he implored the royal permission to
+terminate this quarrel in person, by single combat with the Duke of
+Guise, one to one, two to two, or in as large a number as might be
+desired, and upon any spot within or without the kingdom that should be
+assigned.  "The Duke of Guise," said Henry of Navarre, "cannot but accept
+my challenge as an honour, coming as it does from a prince infinitely his
+superior in rank; and thus, may God defend the right."
+
+This paper, drawn up by the illustrious Duplessis-Mornay, who was to have
+been the second of the King of Navarre in the proposed duel, was signed
+10 June 1585.
+
+The unfortunate Henry III., not so dull as to doubt that the true object
+of the Guise party was to reduce him to insignificance, and to open their
+own way to the throne, was too impotent of purpose to follow the dictates
+which his wisest counsellors urged and his own reason approved.  His
+choice had lain between open hostility with his Spanish enemy and a more
+terrible combat with that implacable foe wearing the mask of friendship.
+He had refused to annex to his crown the rich and powerful Netherlands,
+from dread of a foreign war; and he was now about to accept for himself
+and kingdom all the horrors of a civil contest, in which his avowed
+antagonist was the first captain of the age, and his nominal allies the
+stipendiaries of Philip II.
+
+Villeroy, his prime minister, and Catharine de' Medici, his mother, had
+both devoted him to disgrace and ruin.  The deputies from the Netherlands
+had been dismissed, and now, notwithstanding the festivities and
+exuberant demonstrations of friendship with which the Earl of Derby's
+splendid embassy had been greeted, it became necessary to bind Henry hand
+and foot to the conspirators, who had sworn the destruction of that
+Queen, as well as his own, and the extirpation of heresy and heretics in
+every realm of Christendom.
+
+On the 9th June the league demanded a royal decree, forbidding the
+practice of all religion but the Roman Catholic, on pain of death.  In
+vain had the clear-sighted Bishop of Acqs uttered his eloquent warnings.
+Despite such timely counsels, which he was capable at once of
+appreciating and of neglecting, Henry followed slavishly the advice of
+those whom he knew in his heart to be his foes, and authorised the great
+conspiracy against Elizabeth, against Protestantism, and against himself.
+
+On the 5th June Villeroy had expressed a wish for a very secret interview
+with Mendoza, on the subject of the invasion of England.
+
+"It needed not this overture," said that magniloquent Spaniard, "to
+engender in a person of my talents, and with the heart of a Mendoza,
+venom enough for vengeance.  I could not more desire than I did already
+to assist in so holy a work; nor could I aspire to greater honour than
+would be gained in uniting those crowns (of France and Spain) in strict
+friendship, for the purpose of extirpating heresy throughout Europe, and
+of chastising the Queen of England--whose abominations I am never likely
+to forget, having had them so long before my eyes--and of satisfying my
+just resentment for the injuries she has inflicted on myself.  It was on
+this subject," continued the ambassador, "that Monsieur de Villeroy
+wished a secret interview with me, pledging himself--if your Majesty
+would deign to unite yourself with this King, and to aid him with your
+forces--to a successful result."
+
+Mendoza accordingly expressed a willingness to meet the ingenuous
+Secretary of State--who had so recently been assisting at the banquets
+and rejoicings with Lord Derby and his companions, which had so much
+enlivened the French capital--and assured him that his most Catholic
+Majesty would be only too glad to draw closer the bonds of friendship
+with the most Christian King, for the service of God and the glory of
+his Church.
+
+The next day the envoy and the Secretary of State met, very secretly, in
+the house of the Signor Gondi.  Villeroy commenced his harangue by an
+allusion to the current opinion, that Mendoza had arrived in France with
+a torch in his hand, to light the fires of civil war in that kingdom, as
+he had recently done in England.
+
+"I do not believe," replied Mendoza, "that discreet and prudent persons
+in France attribute my actions to any such motives.  As for the ignorant
+people of the kingdom, they do not appal me, although they evidently
+imagine that I have imbibed, during my residence in England, something of
+the spirit of the enchanter Merlin, that, by signs and cabalistic words
+alone, I am thought capable of producing such commotions."
+
+After this preliminary flourish the envoy proceeded to complain bitterly
+of the most Christian King and his mother, who, after the propositions
+which they had made him, when on his way to Spain, had, since his return,
+become so very cold and dry towards him.  And on this theme he enlarged
+for some time.
+
+Villeroy replied, by complaining, in his turn, about the dealings of the
+most Catholic King, with the leaguers and the rebels of France; and
+Mendoza rejoined by an intimation that harping upon past grievances and
+suspicions was hardly the way to bring about harmony in present matters.
+
+Struck with the justice of this remark, the French Secretary of State
+entered at once upon business.  He made a very long speech upon the
+tyranny which "that Englishwoman" was anew inflicting upon the Catholics
+in her kingdom, upon the offences which she had committed against the
+King of Spain, and against the King of France and his brothers, and upon
+the aliment which she had been yielding to the civil war in the
+Netherlands and in France for so many years.  He then said that if
+Mendoza would declare with sincerity, and "without any of the duplicity
+of a minister"--that Philip would league himself with Henry for the
+purpose of invading England, in order to reduce the three kingdoms to the
+Catholic faith, and to place their crowns on the head of the Queen of
+Scotland, to whom they of right belonged; then that the King, his master,
+was most ready to join in so holy an enterprise.  He begged Mendoza to
+say with what number of troops the invasion could be made; whether Philip
+could send any from Flanders or from Spain; how many it would be well to
+send from France, and under what chieftain; in what manner it would be
+best to communicate with his most Catholic Majesty; whether it were
+desirable to despatch a secret envoy to him, and of what quality such
+agent ought to be.  He also observed that the most Christian King could
+not himself speak to Mendoza on the subject before having communicated
+the matter to the Queen-Mother, but expressed a wish that a special
+carrier might be forthwith despatched to Spain; for he might be sure
+that, on an affair of such weight, he would not have permitted himself to
+reveal the secret wishes of his master, except by his commands.
+
+Mendoza replied, by enlarging with much enthusiasm on the facility with
+which England could be conquered by the combined power of France and
+Spain.  If it were not a very difficult matter before--even with the
+jealousy between the two crowns--how much less so, now that they could
+join their fleets and armies; now that the arming by the one prince would
+not inspire the other with suspicion; now that they would be certain of
+finding safe harbour in each other's kingdoms, in case of unfavourable
+weather and head-winds, and that they could arrange from what ports to
+sail, in what direction, and under what commanders.  He disapproved,
+however, of sending a special messenger to Spain, on the ground of
+wishing to keep the matter entirely secret, but in reality--as he
+informed Philip--because he chose to keep the management in his own
+hands; because he could always let slip Mucio upon them, in case they
+should play him false; because he feared that the leaking out of the
+secret might discourage the Leaguers, and because he felt that the bolder
+and more lively were the Cardinal of Bourbon and his confederates, the
+stronger was the party of the King, his master, and the more intimidated
+and dispirited would be the mind and the forces of the most Christian
+King.  "And this is precisely the point," said the diplomatist, "at which
+a minister of your Majesty should aim at this season."
+
+Thus the civil war in France--an indispensable part of Philip's policy--
+was to be maintained at all hazards; and although the ambassador was of
+opinion that the most Christian King was sincere in his proposition to
+invade England, it would never do to allow any interval of tranquillity
+to the wretched subjects of that Christian King.
+
+"I cannot doubt," said Mendoza, "that the making of this proposal to me
+with so much warmth was the especial persuasion of God, who, hearing the
+groans of the Catholics of England, so cruelly afflicted, wished to force
+the French King and his minister to feel, in the necessity which
+surrounds them, that the offending Him, by impeding the grandeur of your
+Majesty, would be their total ruin, and that their only salvation is to
+unite in sincerity and truth with your Majesty for the destruction of the
+heretics."
+
+Therefore, although judging from the nature of the French--he might
+imagine that they were attempting to put him to sleep, Mendoza, on the
+whole, expressed a conviction that the King was in earnest, having
+arrived at the conclusion that he could only get rid of the Guise faction
+by sending them over to England.  "Seeing that he cannot possibly
+eradicate the war from his kingdom," said the envoy, "because of the
+boldness with which the Leaguers maintain it, with the strong assistance
+of your Majesty, he has determined to embrace with much fervour, and
+without any deception at all, the enterprise against England, as the only
+remedy to quiet his own dominions.  The subjugation of those three
+kingdoms, in order to restore them to their rightful owner, is a purpose
+so holy, just, and worthy of your Majesty, and one which you have had so
+constantly in view, that it is superfluous for me to enlarge upon the
+subject.  Your Majesty knows that its effects will be the tranquillity
+and preservation of all your realms.  The reasons for making the attempt,
+even without the aid of France, become demonstrations now that she is
+unanimously in favour of the scheme.  The most Christian King is
+resolutely bent--so far as I can comprehend the intrigues of Villeroy--
+to carry out this project on the foundation of a treaty with the Guise
+party.  It will not take much time, therefore, to put down the heretics
+here; nor will it consume much more to conquer England with the armies of
+two such powerful Princes.  The power of that island is of little moment,
+there being no disciplined forces to oppose us, even if they were all
+unanimous in its defence; how much less then, with so many Catholics to
+assist the invaders, seeing them so powerful.  If your Majesty, on
+account of your Netherlands, is not afraid of putting arms into the hands
+of the Guise family in France, there need be less objection to sending
+one of that house into England, particularly as you will send forces of
+your own into that kingdom, by the reduction of which the affairs of
+Flanders will be secured.  To effect the pacification of the Netherlands
+the sooner, it would be desirable to conquer England as early as
+October."
+
+Having thus sufficiently enlarged upon the sincerity of the French King
+and his prime minister, in their dark projects against a friendly power,
+and upon the ease with which that friendly power could be subjected, the
+ambassador begged for a reply from his royal master without delay.  He
+would be careful, meantime, to keep the civil war alive in France--thus
+verifying the poetical portrait of himself, the truth of which he had
+just been so indignantly and rhetorically denying--but it was desirable
+that the French should believe that this civil war was not Philip's sole
+object.  He concluded by drawing his master's attention to the sufferings
+of the English Catholics.  "I cannot refrain," he said, "from placing
+before your eyes the terrible persecutions which the Catholics are
+suffering in England; the blood of the martyrs flowing in so many kinds
+of torments; the groans of the prisoners, of the widows and orphans; the
+general oppression and servitude, which is the greatest ever endured by a
+people of God, under any tyrant whatever.  Your Majesty, into whose hands
+God is now pleased to place the means, so long desired, of extirpating
+and totally destroying the heresies of our time, can alone liberate them
+from their bondage."
+
+The picture of these kings, prime ministers, and ambassadors, thus
+plotting treason, stratagem, and massacre, is a dark and dreary one.
+The description of English sufferings for conscience' sake, under the
+Protestant Elizabeth, is even more painful; for it had unfortunately too
+much, of truth, although as wilfully darkened and exaggerated as could be
+done by religious hatred and Spanish bombast.  The Queen was surrounded
+by legions of deadly enemies.  Spain, the Pope, the League, were united
+in one perpetual conspiracy against her; and they relied on the
+cooperation of those subjects of hers whom her own cruelty was
+converting into traitors.
+
+We read with a shudder these gloomy secrets of conspiracy and wholesale
+murder, which make up the diplomatic history of the sixteenth century,
+and we cease to wonder that a woman, feeling herself so continually the
+mark at which all the tyrants and assassins of Europe were aiming--
+although not possessing perhaps the evidences of her peril so completely
+as they have been revealed to us--should come to consider every English
+Papist as a traitor and an assassin.  It was unfortunate that she was not
+able to rise beyond the vile instincts of the age, and by a magnanimous
+and sublime toleration, to convert her secret enemies into loyal
+subjects.
+
+And now Henry of Valois was to choose between league and counter-league,
+between Henry of Guise and Henry of Navarre, between France and Spain.
+The whole chivalry of Gascony and Guienne, the vast swarm of industrious
+and hardy Huguenot artisans, the Netherland rebels, the great English
+Queen, stood ready to support the cause of French nationality, and of all
+nationalities, against a threatening world-empire, of religious liberty
+against sacerdotal absolutism, and the crown of a King, whose only merit
+had hitherto been to acquiesce in a religious toleration dictated to him
+by others, against those who derided his authority and insulted his
+person.  The bold knight-errant of Christendom, the champion to the
+utterance against Spain, stood there with lance in rest, and the King
+scarcely hesitated.
+
+The League, gliding so long unheeded, now reared its crest in the very
+palace of France, and full in the monarch's face.  With a single shudder
+the victim fell into its coils.
+
+The choice was made.  On the 18th of July (1585) the edict of Nemours was
+published, revoking all previous edicts by which religious peace had been
+secured.  Death and confiscation of property were now proclaimed as the
+penalty of practising any religious rites save those of the Roman
+Catholic Church.  Six months were allowed to the Nonconformists to put
+their affairs in order, after which they were to make public profession
+of the Catholic religion, with regular attendance upon its ceremonies,
+or else go into perpetual exile.  To remain in France without abjuring
+heresy was thenceforth a mortal crime, to be expiated upon the gallows.
+As a matter of course, all Huguenots were instantaneously incapacitated
+from public office, the mixed chambers of justice were abolished, and the
+cautionary towns were to be restored.  On the other hand, the Guise
+faction were to receive certain cities into their possession, as pledges
+that this sanguinary edict should be fulfilled.
+
+Thus did Henry III. abjectly kiss the hand which smote him.  His mother,
+having since the death of Anjou no further interest in affecting to
+favour the Huguenots, had arranged the basis of this treaty with the
+Spanish party.  And now the unfortunate King had gone solemnly down to
+the Parliament of Paris, to be present at the registration of the edict.
+The counsellors and presidents were all assembled, and as they sat there
+in their crimson robes, they seemed, to the excited imagination of those
+who loved their country, like embodiments of the impending and most
+sanguinary tragedy.  As the monarch left the parliament-house a faint cry
+of 'God save the King' was heard in the street.  Henry hung his head, for
+it was long since that cry had met his ears, and he knew that it was a
+false and languid demonstration which had been paid for by the Leaguers.
+
+And thus was the compact signed--an unequal compact.  Madam League was on
+horseback, armed in proof, said a contemporary; the King was on foot, and
+dressed in a shirt of penitence.  The alliance was not an auspicious one.
+Not peace, but a firebrand--'facem, non pacem'--had the King held
+forth to his subjects.
+
+When the news came to Henry of Navarre that the King had really
+promulgated this fatal edict, he remained for a time, with amazement and
+sorrow, leaning heavily upon a table, with his face in his right hand.
+When he raised his head again--so he afterwards asserted--one side of his
+moustachio had turned white.
+
+Meantime Gregory XIII., who had always refused to sanction the League,
+was dead, and Cardinal Peretti, under the name of Sixtus V., now reigned
+in his place.  Born of an illustrious house, as he said--for it was a
+house without a roof--this monk of humble origin was of inordinate
+ambition.  Feigning a humility which was but the cloak to his pride, he
+was in reality as grasping, self-seeking, and revengeful, as he seemed
+gentle and devout.  It was inevitable that a pontiff of this character
+should seize the opportunity offered him to mimic Hildebrand, and to
+brandish on high the thunderbolts of the Church.
+
+With a flaming prelude concerning the omnipotence delegated by Almighty
+God to St. Peter and his successors--an authority infinitely superior to
+all earthly powers--the decrees of which were irresistible alike by the
+highest and the meanest, and which hurled misguided princes from their
+thrones into the abyss, like children of Beelzebub, the Pope proceeded to
+fulminate his sentence of excommunication against those children of
+wrath, Henry of Navarre and Henry of Conde.  They were denounced as
+heretics, relapsed, and enemies of God (28th Aug.1585).  The King was
+declared dispossessed of his principality of Bearne, and of what remained
+to him of Navarre.  He was stripped of all dignities, privileges, and
+property, and especially proclaimed incapable of ever ascending the
+throne of France.
+
+The Bearnese replied by a clever political squib.  A terse and spirited
+paper found its way to Rome, and was soon affixed, to the statutes of
+Pasquin and Marforio, and in other public places of that city, and even
+to the gates of the papal palace.  Without going beyond his own doors,
+his Holiness had the opportunity of reading, to his profound amazement,
+that Mr. Sixtus, calling himself Pope, had foully and maliciously lied in
+calling the King of Navarre a heretic.  This Henry offered to prove
+before any free council legitimately chosen.  If the Pope refused to
+submit to such decision, he was himself no better than excommunicate and
+Antichrist, and the King of Navarre thereby declared mortal and perpetual
+war upon him.  The ancient kings of France had known how to chastise the
+insolence of former popes, and he hoped, when he ascended the throne, to
+take vengeance on Mr. Sixtus for the insult thus offered to all the kings
+of Christendom--and so on, in a vein which showed the Bearnese to be a
+man rather amused than blasted by these papal fireworks.
+
+Sixtus V., though imperious, was far from being dull.  He knew how to
+appreciate a man when he found one, and he rather admired the cheerful
+attitude maintained by Navarre, as he tossed back the thunderbolts.  He
+often spoke afterwards of Henry with genuine admiration, and declared
+that in all the world he knew but two persons fit to wear a crown--Henry
+of Navarre and Elizabeth of England.  "'Twas pity," he said, "that both
+should be heretics."
+
+And thus the fires of civil war had been lighted throughout Christendom,
+and the monarch of France had thrown himself head foremost into the
+flames.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Hibernian mode of expressing himself
+His inordinate arrogance
+His insolence intolerable
+Humility which was but the cloak to his pride
+Longer they delay it, the less easy will they find it
+Oration, fertile in rhetoric and barren in facts
+Round game of deception, in which nobody was deceived
+'Twas pity, he said, that both should be heretics
+Wasting time fruitlessly is sharpening the knife for himself
+With something of feline and feminine duplicity
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY UNITED NETHERLANDS, 1584-85 ***
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