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+The Project Gutenberg EBook History of United Netherlands, 1584-86, Entire
+#47 in our series by John Lothrop Motley
+
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+Title: History of the United Netherlands, 1584-86, Entire
+
+Author: John Lothrop Motley
+
+Release Date: January, 2004  [EBook #4847]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 2, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY UNITED NETHERLANDS, 1584-86 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
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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 47
+
+History United Netherlands, 1584-1586, Complete
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+The indulgence with which the History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic
+was received has encouraged me to prosecute my task with renewed
+industry.
+
+A single word seems necessary to explain the somewhat increased
+proportions which the present work has assumed over the original design.
+The intimate connection which was formed between the Kingdom of England
+and the Republic of Holland, immediately after the death of William the
+Silent, rendered the history and the fate of the two commonwealths for a
+season almost identical.  The years of anxiety and suspense during which
+the great Spanish project for subjugating England and reconquering the
+Netherlands, by the same invasion, was slowly matured, were of deepest
+import for the future destiny of those two countries, and for the cause
+of national liberty.  The deep-laid conspiracy of Spain and Rome against
+human rights deserves to be patiently examined, for it is one of the
+great lessons of history.  The crisis was long and doubtful, and the
+health--perhaps the existence--of England and Holland, and, with them, of
+a great part of Christendom, was on the issue.
+
+History has few so fruitful examples of the dangers which come from
+superstition and despotism, and the blessings which flow from the
+maintenance of religious and political freedom, as those afforded by the
+struggle between England and Holland on the one side, and Spain and Rome
+on the other, during the epoch which I have attempted to describe.  It is
+for this reason that I have thought it necessary to reveal, as minutely
+as possible, the secret details of this conspiracy of king and priest
+against the people, and to show how it was baffled at last by the strong
+self-helping energy of two free nations combined.
+
+The period occupied by these two volumes is therefore a short one, when
+counted by years, for it begins in 1584 and ends with the commencement of
+1590.  When estimated by the significance of events and their results for
+future ages, it will perhaps be deemed worthy of the close examination
+which it has received.  With the year 1588 the crisis was past; England
+was safe, and the new Dutch commonwealth was thoroughly organized.  It is
+my design, in two additional volumes, which, with the two now published,
+will complete the present work, to carry the history of the Republic down
+to the Synod of Dort.  After this epoch the Thirty Years' War broke out
+in Germany; and it is my wish, at a future day, to retrace the history of
+that eventful struggle, and to combine with it the civil and military
+events in Holland, down to the epoch when the Thirty Years' War and the
+Eighty Years' War of the Netherlands were both brought to a close by the
+Peace of Westphalia.
+
+The materials for the volumes now offered to the public were so abundant
+that it was almost impossible to condense them into smaller compass
+without doing injustice to the subject.  It was desirable to throw full
+light on these prominent points of the history, while the law of
+historical perspective will allow long stretches of shadow in the
+succeeding portions, in which less important objects may be more slightly
+indicated.  That I may not be thought capable of abusing the reader's
+confidence by inventing conversations, speeches, or letters, I would take
+this opportunity of stating--although I have repeated the remark in the
+foot-notes--that no personage in these pages is made to write or speak
+any words save those which, on the best historical evidence, he is known
+to have written or spoken.
+
+A brief allusion to my sources of information will not seem superfluous:
+I have carefully studied all the leading contemporary chronicles and
+pamphlets of Holland, Flanders, Spain, France, Germany, and England; but,
+as the authorities are always indicated in the notes, it is unnecessary
+to give a list of them here.  But by far my most valuable materials are
+entirely unpublished ones.
+
+The archives of England are especially rich for the history of the
+sixteenth century; and it will be seen, in the course of the narrative,
+how largely I have drawn from those mines of historical wealth, the State
+Paper Office and the MS. department of the British Museum.  Although both
+these great national depositories are in admirable order, it is to be
+regretted that they are not all embraced in one collection, as much
+trouble might then be spared to the historical student, who is now
+obliged to pass frequently from the one place to the other, in order to,
+find different portions of the same correspondence.
+
+From the royal archives of Holland I have obtained many most important,
+entirely unpublished documents, by the aid of which I have endeavoured to
+verify, to illustrate, or sometimes to correct, the recitals of the elder
+national chroniclers; and I have derived the greatest profit from the
+invaluable series of Archives and Correspondence of the Orange-Nassau
+Family, given to the world by M. Groen van Prinsterer.  I desire to renew
+to that distinguished gentleman, and to that eminent scholar M. Bakhuyzen
+van den Brink, the expression of my gratitude for their constant kindness
+and advice during my residence at the Hague.  Nothing can exceed the
+courtesy which has been extended to me in Holland, and I am deeply
+grateful for the indulgence with which my efforts to illustrate the
+history of the country have been received where that history is best
+known.
+
+I have also been much aided by the study of a portion of the Archives of
+Simancas, the originals of which are in the Archives de l'Empire in
+Paris, and which were most liberally laid before me through the kindness
+of M. le Comte de La Borde.
+
+I have, further; enjoyed an inestimable advantage in the perusal of the
+whole correspondence between Philip II., his ministers, and governors,
+relating to the affairs of the Netherlands, from the epoch at which this
+work commences down to that monarch's death.  Copies of this
+correspondence have been carefully made from the originals at Simancas by
+order of the Belgian Government, under the superintendence of the eminent
+archivist M. Gachard, who has already published a synopsis or abridgment
+of a portion of it in a French translation.  The translation and
+abridgment of so large a mass of papers, however, must necessarily occupy
+many years, and it may be long, therefore, before the whole of the
+correspondence--and particularly that portion of it relating to the epoch
+occupied by these volumes sees the light.  It was, therefore, of the
+greatest importance for me to see the documents themselves unabridged and
+untranslated.  This privilege has been accorded me, and I desire to
+express my thanks to his Excellency M. van de Weyer, the distinguished
+representative of Belgium at the English Court, to whose friendly offices
+I am mainly indebted for the satisfaction of my wishes in this respect.
+A letter from him to his Excellency M. Rogier, Minister of the Interior
+in Belgium--who likewise took the most courteous interest in promoting my
+views--obtained for me the permission thoroughly to study this
+correspondence; and I passed several months in Brussels, occupied with
+reading the whole of it from the year 1584 to the end of the reign of
+Philip II.
+
+I was thus saved a long visit to the Archives of Simancas, for it would
+be impossible conscientiously to write the history of the epoch without a
+thorough examination of the correspondence of the King and his ministers.
+I venture to hope, therefore--whatever judgment may be passed upon my own
+labours--that this work may be thought to possess an intrinsic value; for
+the various materials of which it is composed are original, and--so far
+as I am aware--have not been made use of by any historical writer.
+
+I would take this opportunity to repeat my thanks to M. Gachard,
+Archivist of the kingdom of Belgium, for the uniform courtesy and
+kindness which I have received at his-hands, and to bear my testimony to
+the skill and critical accuracy with which he has illustrated so many
+passages of Belgian and Spanish history.
+
+31, HERTFORD-STREET, MAY-FAIR,
+November llth 1860.
+
+
+
+
+THE UNITED NETHERLANDS.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     Murder of Orange--Extension of Protestantism--Vast Power of Spain--
+     Religious Origin of the Revolt--Disposal of the Sovereignty--Courage
+     of the Estates of Holland--Children of William the Silent--
+     Provisional Council of State--Firm attitude of Holland and Zeeland--
+     Weakness of Flanders--Fall of Ghent--Adroitness of Alexander
+     Farnese.
+
+WILLIAM THE SILENT, Prince of Orange, had been murdered on the 10th of
+July, 1534.  It is difficult to imagine a more universal disaster than
+the one thus brought about by the hand of a single obscure fanatic.  For
+nearly twenty years the character of the Prince had been expanding
+steadily as the difficulties of his situation increased.  Habit,
+necessity, and the natural gifts of the man, had combined to invest him
+at last with an authority which seemed more than human.  There was such
+general confidence in his sagacity, courage, and purity, that the nation
+had come to think with his brain and to act with his hand.  It was
+natural that, for an instant, there should be a feeling as of absolute
+and helpless paralysis.
+
+Whatever his technical attributes in the polity of the Netherlands--and
+it would be difficult to define them with perfect accuracy--there is no
+doubt that he stood there, the head of a commonwealth, in an attitude
+such as had been maintained by but few of the kings, or chiefs, or high
+priests of history.  Assassination, a regular and almost indispensable
+portion of the working machinery of Philip's government, had produced, in
+this instance, after repeated disappointments, the result at last which
+had been so anxiously desired.  The ban of the Pope and the offered gold
+of the King had accomplished a victory greater than any yet achieved by
+the armies of Spain, brilliant as had been their triumphs on the blood-
+stained soil of the Netherlands.
+
+Had that "exceeding proud, neat, and spruce"  Doctor of Laws, William
+Parry, who had been busying himself at about the same time with his
+memorable project against the Queen of England, proved as successful as
+Balthazar Gerard, the fate of Christendom would have been still darker.
+Fortunately, that member of Parliament had made the discovery in time--
+not for himself, but for Elizabeth--that the "Lord was better pleased
+with adverbs than nouns;" the well-known result being that the traitor
+was hanged and the Sovereign saved.
+
+Yet such was the condition of Europe at that day.  A small, dull,
+elderly, imperfectly-educated, patient, plodding invalid, with white hair
+and protruding under jaw, and dreary visage, was sitting day after day;
+seldom speaking, never smiling, seven or eight hours out of every twenty-
+four, at a writing table covered with heaps of interminable despatches,
+in a cabinet far away beyond the seas and mountains, in the very heart of
+Spain.  A clerk or two, noiselessly opening and shutting the door, from
+time to time, fetching fresh bundles of letters and taking away others--
+all written and composed by secretaries or high functionaries--and all
+to be scrawled over in the margin by the diligent old man in a big
+schoolboy's hand and style--if ever schoolboy, even in the sixteenth
+century, could write so illegibly or express himself so awkwardly;
+couriers in the court-yard arriving from or departing for the uttermost
+parts of earth-Asia, Africa America, Europe-to fetch and carry these
+interminable epistles which contained the irresponsible commands of this
+one individual, and were freighted with the doom and destiny of countless
+millions of the world's inhabitants--such was the system of government
+against which the Netherlands had protested and revolted.  It was a
+system under which their fields had been made desolate, their cities
+burned and pillaged, their men hanged, burned, drowned, or hacked to
+pieces; their women subjected to every outrage; and to put an end to
+which they had been devoting their treasure and their blood for nearly
+the length of one generation.  It was a system, too, which, among other
+results, had just brought about the death of the foremost statesman of
+Europe, and had nearly effected simultaneously the murder of the most
+eminent sovereign in the world.  The industrious Philip, safe and
+tranquil in the depths of the Escorial, saying his prayers three times
+a day with exemplary regularity, had just sent three bullets through the
+body of William the Silent at his dining-room door in Delft.  "Had it
+only been done two years earlier," observed the patient old man, "much
+trouble might have been spared me; but 'tis better late than never."  Sir
+Edward Stafford, English envoy in Paris, wrote to his government--so soon
+as the news of the murder reached him--that, according to his information
+out of the Spanish minister's own house, "the same practice that had been
+executed upon the Prince of Orange, there were practisers more than two
+or three about to execute upon her Majesty, and that within two months."
+Without vouching for the absolute accuracy of this intelligence, he
+implored the Queen to be more upon her guard than ever.  "For there is no
+doubt," said the envoy, "that she is a chief mark to shoot at; and seeing
+that there were men cunning enough to inchant a man and to encourage him
+to kill the Prince of Orange, in the midst of Holland, and that there was
+a knave found desperate enough to do it, we must think hereafter that
+anything may be done.  Therefore God preserve her Majesty."
+
+Invisible as the Grand Lama of Thibet, clothed with power as extensive
+and absolute as had ever been wielded by the most imperial Caesar, Philip
+the Prudent, as he grew older and feebler in mind and body seemed to
+become more gluttonous of work, more ambitious to extend his sceptre over
+lands which he had never seen or dreamed of seeing, more fixed in his
+determination to annihilate that monster Protestantism, which it had been
+the business of his life to combat, more eager to put to death every
+human creature, whether anointed monarch or humble artizan, that defended
+heresy or opposed his progress to universal empire.
+
+If this enormous power, this fabulous labour, had, been wielded or
+performed with a beneficent intention; if the man who seriously regarded
+himself as the owner of a third of the globe, with the inhabitants
+thereof, had attempted to deal with these extensive estates inherited
+from his ancestors with the honest intention of a thrifty landlord, an
+intelligent slave-owner, it would have yet been possible for a little
+longer to smile at the delusion, and endure the practice.
+
+But there was another old man, who lived in another palace in another
+remote land, who, in his capacity of representative of Saint Peter,
+claimed to dispose of all the kingdoms of the earth--and had been willing
+to bestow them upon the man who would go down and worship him.  Philip
+stood enfeoffed, by divine decree, of all America, the East Indies, the
+whole Spanish Peninsula, the better portion of Italy, the seventeen
+Netherlands, and many other possessions far and near; and he contemplated
+annexing to this extensive property the kingdoms of France, of England,
+and Ireland.  The Holy League, maintained by the sword of Guise, the
+pope's ban, Spanish ducats, Italian condottieri, and German mercenaries,
+was to exterminate heresy and establish the Spanish dominion in France.
+The same machinery, aided by the pistol or poniard of the assassin, was
+to substitute for English protestantism and England's queen the Roman
+Catholic religion and a foreign sovereign.  "The holy league," said
+Duplessis-Mornay, one of the noblest characters of the age, "has destined
+us all to the name sacrifice.  The ambition of the Spaniard, which has
+overleaped so many lands and seas, thinks nothing inaccessible."
+
+The Netherland revolt had therefore assumed world-wide proportions.
+Had it been merely the rebellion of provinces against a sovereign, the
+importance of the struggle would have been more local and temporary.  But
+the period was one in which the geographical land-marks of countries were
+almost removed.  The dividing-line ran through every state, city, and
+almost every family.  There was a country which believed in the absolute
+power of the church to dictate the relations between man and his Maker,
+and to utterly exterminate all who disputed that position.  There was
+another country which protested against that doctrine, and claimed,
+theoretically or practically, a liberty of conscience.  The territory of
+these countries was mapped out by no visible lines, but the inhabitants
+of each, whether resident in France, Germany, England, or Flanders,
+recognised a relationship which took its root in deeper differences than
+those of race or language.  It was not entirely a question of doctrine or
+dogma.  A large portion of the world had become tired of the antiquated
+delusion of a papal supremacy over every land, and had recorded its
+determination, once for all, to have done with it.  The transition to
+freedom of conscience became a necessary step, sooner or later to be
+taken.  To establish the principle of toleration for all religions was
+an inevitable consequence of the Dutch revolt; although thus far, perhaps
+only one conspicuous man in advance of his age had boldly announced that
+doctrine and had died in its defence.  But a great true thought never
+dies--though long buried in the earth--and the day was to come, after
+long years, when the seed was to ripen into a harvest of civil and
+religious emancipation, and when the very word toleration was to sound
+like an insult and an absurdity.
+
+A vast responsibility rested upon the head of a monarch, placed as Philip
+II. found himself, at this great dividing point in modern history.  To
+judge him, or any man in such a position, simply from his own point of
+view, is weak and illogical.  History judges the man according to its
+point of view.  It condemns or applauds the point of view itself.  The
+point of view of a malefactor is not to excuse robbery and murder.  Nor
+is the spirit of the age to be pleaded in defence of the evil-doer at a
+time when mortals were divided into almost equal troops.  The age of
+Philip II. was also the age of William of Orange and his four brethren,
+of Sainte Aldegonde, of Olden-Barneveldt, of Duplessis-Mornay, La Noue,
+Coligny, of Luther, Melancthon, and Calvin, Walsingham, Sidney, Raleigh,
+Queen Elizabeth, of Michael Montaigne, and William Shakspeare.  It was
+not an age of blindness, but of glorious light.  If the man whom the
+Maker of the Universe had permitted to be born to such boundless
+functions, chose to put out his own eyes that he might grope along his
+great pathway of duty in perpetual darkness, by his deeds he must be
+judged.  The King perhaps firmly believed that the heretics of the
+Netherlands, of France, or of England, could escape eternal perdition
+only by being extirpated from the earth by fire and sword, and therefore;
+perhaps, felt it his duty to devote his life to their extermination.
+But he believed, still more firmly, that his own political authority,
+throughout his dominions, and his road to almost universal empire, lay
+over the bodies of those heretics.  Three centuries have nearly past
+since this memorable epoch; and the world knows the fate of the states
+which accepted the dogma which it was Philip's life-work to enforce, and
+of those who protested against the system.  The Spanish and Italian
+Peninsulas have had a different history from that which records the
+career of France, Prussia, the Dutch Commonwealth, the British Empire,
+the Transatlantic Republic.
+
+Yet the contest between those Seven meagre Provinces upon the sand-banks
+of the North Sea, and--the great Spanish Empire, seemed at the moment
+with which we are now occupied a sufficiently desperate one.  Throw a
+glance upon the map of Europe.  Look at the broad magnificent Spanish
+Peninsula, stretching across eight degrees of latitude and ten of
+longitude, commanding the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, with a genial
+climate, warmed in winter by the vast furnace of Africa, and protected
+from the scorching heats of summer by shady mountain and forest, and
+temperate breezes from either ocean.  A generous southern territory,
+flowing with wine and oil, and all the richest gifts of a bountiful
+nature-splendid cities--the new and daily expanding Madrid, rich in the
+trophies of the most artistic period of the modern world--Cadiz, as
+populous at that day as London, seated by the straits where the ancient
+and modern systems of traffic were blending like the mingling of the two
+oceans--Granada, the ancient wealthy seat of the fallen Moors--Toledo,
+Valladolid, and Lisbon, chief city of the recently-conquered kingdom of
+Portugal, counting, with its suburbs, a larger population than any city,
+excepting Paris, in Europe, the mother of distant colonies, and the
+capital of the rapidly-developing traffic with both the Indies--these
+were some of the treasures of Spain herself.  But she possessed Sicily
+also, the better portion of Italy, and important dependencies in Africa,
+while the famous maritime discoveries of the age had all enured to her
+aggrandizement.  The world seemed suddenly to have expanded its wings
+from East to West, only to bear the fortunate Spanish Empire to the most
+dizzy heights of wealth and power.  The most accomplished generals, the
+most disciplined and daring infantry the world has ever known, the best-
+equipped and most extensive navy, royal and mercantile, of the age, were
+at the absolute command of the sovereign.  Such was Spain.
+
+Turn now to the north-western corner of Europe.  A morsel of territory,
+attached by a slight sand-hook to the continent, and half-submerged by
+the stormy waters of the German Ocean--this was Holland.  A rude climate,
+with long, dark, rigorous, winters, and brief summers, a territory, the
+mere wash of three great rivers, which had fertilized happier portions of
+Europe only to desolate and overwhelm this less-favoured land, a soil so
+ungrateful, that if the whole of its four hundred thousand acres of
+arable land had been sowed with grain, it could not feed the labourers
+alone, and a population largely estimated at one million of souls--these
+were the characteristics of the Province which already had begun to give
+its name to the new commonwealth.  The isles of Zeeland--entangled in the
+coils of deep slow-moving rivers, or combating the ocean without--and the
+ancient episcopate of Utrecht, formed the only other Provinces that had
+quite shaken off the foreign yoke.  In Friesland, the important city of
+Groningen was still held for the King, while Bois-le-Duc, Zutphen,
+besides other places in Gelderland and North Brabant, also in possession
+of the royalists, made the position of those provinces precarious.
+
+The limit of the Spanish or "obedient" Provinces, on the one hand, and of
+the United Provinces on the other, cannot, therefore, be briefly and
+distinctly stated.  The memorable treason--or, as it was called, the
+"reconciliation" of the Walloon Provinces in the year 1583-4--had placed
+the Provinces of Hainault, Arthois, Douay, with the flourishing cities
+Arran, Valenciennes, Lille, Tournay, and others--all Celtic Flanders, in
+short-in the grasp of Spain.  Cambray was still held by the French
+governor, Seigneur de Balagny, who had taken advantage of the Duke of
+Anjou's treachery to the States, to establish himself in an unrecognized
+but practical petty sovereignty, in defiance both of France and Spain;
+while East Flanders and South Brabant still remained a disputed
+territory, and the immediate field of contest.  With these limitations,
+it may be assumed, for general purposes, that the territory of the United
+States was that of the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands, while the
+obedient Provinces occupied what is now the territory of Belgium.
+
+Such, then, were the combatants in the great eighty years' war for civil
+and religious liberty; sixteen of which had now passed away.  On the one
+side, one of the most powerful and, populous world-empires of history,
+then in the zenith of its prosperity; on the other hand, a slender group
+of cities, governed by merchants and artisans, and planted precariously
+upon a meagre, unstable soil.  A million and a half of souls against the
+autocrat of a third part of the known world.  The contest seemed as
+desperate as the cause was certainly sacred; but it had ceased to be a
+local contest.  For the history which is to occupy us in these volumes is
+not exclusively the history of Holland.  It is the story of the great
+combat between despotism, sacerdotal and regal, and the spirit of
+rational human liberty.  The tragedy opened in the Netherlands, and its
+main scenes were long enacted there; but as the ambition of Spain
+expanded, and as the resistance to the principle which she represented
+became more general, other nations were, of necessity, involved in the
+struggle.  There came to be one country, the citizens of which were the
+Leaguers; and another country, whose inhabitants were Protestants.  And
+in this lay the distinction between freedom and absolutism. The religious
+question swallowed all the others.  There was never a period in the early
+history of the Dutch revolt when the Provinces would not have returned to
+their obedience, could they have been assured of enjoying liberty of
+conscience or religious peace; nor was there ever a single moment in
+Philip II.'s life in which he wavered in his fixed determination never to
+listen to such a claim.  The quarrel was in its nature irreconcilable and
+eternal as the warfare between wrong and right; and the establishment of
+a comparative civil liberty in Europe and America was the result of the
+religious war of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  The struggle
+lasted eighty years, but the prize was worth the contest.
+
+The object of the war between the Netherlands and Spain was not,
+therefore, primarily, a rebellion against established authority for the
+maintenance of civil rights.  To preserve these rights was secondary.
+The first cause was religion.  The Provinces had been fighting for years
+against the Inquisition.  Had they not taken arms, the Inquisition would
+have been established in the Netherlands, and very probably in England,
+and England might have become in its turn a Province of the Spanish
+Empire.
+
+The death of William the Silent produced a sudden change in the political
+arrangements of the liberated Netherlands.  During the year 1583, the
+United Provinces had elected Francis, Duke of Anjou, to be Duke of
+Brabant and sovereign of the whole country, under certain constitutional
+provisions enumerated in articles of solemn compact.  That compact had
+been grossly violated.  The Duke had made a treacherous attempt to
+possess himself of absolute power and to seize several important cities.
+He had been signally defeated in Antwerp, and obliged to leave the
+country, covered with ignominy.  The States had then consulted William of
+Orange as to the course to be taken in the emergency.  The Prince had
+told them that their choice was triple.  They might reconcile themselves
+with Spain, and abandon the contest for religious liberty which they had
+so long been waging; they might reconcile themselves with Anjou,
+notwithstanding that he had so utterly forfeited all claims to their
+consideration; or they might fight the matter out with Spain single-
+handed.  The last course was, in his opinion, the most eligible one, and
+he was ready to sacrifice his life to its furtherance.  It was, however,
+indispensable, should that policy be adopted, that much larger supplies
+should be voted than had hitherto been raised, and, in general, that a
+much more extensive and elevated spirit of patriotism should manifest
+itself than had hitherto been displayed.
+
+It was, on the whole, decided to make a second arrangement with the Duke
+of Anjou, Queen Elizabeth warmly urging that course.  At the same time,
+however, that articles of agreement were drawn up for the installation of
+Anjou as sovereign of the United Provinces, the Prince had himself
+consented to accept the title of Count of Holland, under an ample
+constitutional charter, dictated by his own lips.  Neither Anjou nor
+Orange lived to be inaugurated into the offices thus bestowed upon them.
+The Duke died at Chateau-Thierry on the 10th June, and the Prince was
+assassinated a month later at Delft.
+
+What now was the political position of the United Provinces at this
+juncture?  The sovereignty which had been held by the Estates, ready to
+be conferred respectively upon Anjou and Orange, remained in the hands of
+the Estates.  There was no opposition to this theory.  No more enlarged
+view of the social compact had yet been taken.  The people, as such,
+claimed no sovereignty.  Had any champion claimed it for them they would
+hardly have understood him.  The nation dealt with facts.  After abjuring
+Philip in 1581--an act which had been accomplished by the Estates--the
+same Estates in general assembly had exercised sovereign power, and had
+twice disposed of that sovereign power by electing a hereditary ruler.
+Their right and their power to do this had been disputed by none, save by
+the deposed monarch in Spain.  Having the sovereignty to dispose of, it
+seemed logical that the Estates might keep it, if so inclined.  They did
+keep it, but only in trust.  While Orange lived, he might often have been
+elected sovereign of all the Provinces, could he have been induced to
+consent.  After his death, the Estates retained, ex necessitate, the
+sovereignty; and it will soon be related what they intended to do with
+it.  One thing is very certain, that neither Orange, while he lived, nor
+the Estates, after his death, were actuated in their policy by personal
+ambition.  It will be seen that the first object of the Estates was to
+dispossess themselves of the sovereignty which had again fallen into
+their hands.
+
+What were the Estates?  Without, at the present moment, any farther
+inquiries into that constitutional system which had been long
+consolidating itself, and was destined to exist upon a firmer basis for
+centuries longer, it will be sufficient to observe, that the great
+characteristic of the Netherland government was the municipality.
+
+Each Province contained a large number of cities, which were governed by
+a board of magistrates, varying in number from twenty to forty.  This
+college, called the Vroedschap (Assembly of Sages), consisted of the most
+notable citizens, and was a self-electing body--a close corporation--the
+members being appointed for life, from the citizens at large.  Whenever
+vacancies occurred from death or loss of citizenship, the college chose
+new members--sometimes immediately, sometimes by means of a double or
+triple selection of names, the choice of one from among which was offered
+to the stadtholder of the province.  This functionary was appointed by
+the Count, as he was called, whether Duke of Bavaria or of Burgundy,
+Emperor, or King.  After the abjuration of Philip, the governors were
+appointed by the Estates of each Province.
+
+The Sage-Men chose annually a board of senators, or schepens, whose
+functions were mainly judicial; and there were generally two, and
+sometimes three, burgomasters, appointed in the same way.  This was
+the popular branch of the Estates.  But, besides this body of
+representatives, were the nobles, men of ancient lineage and large
+possessions, who had exercised, according to the general feudal law of
+Europe, high, low, and intermediate jurisdiction upon their estates, and
+had long been recognized as an integral part of the body politic, having
+the right to appear, through delegates of their order, in the provincial
+and in the general assemblies.
+
+Regarded as a machine for bringing the most decided political capacities
+into the administration of public affairs, and for organising the most
+practical opposition to the system of religious tyranny, the Netherland
+constitution was a healthy, and, for the age, an enlightened one.  The
+officeholders, it is obvious, were not greedy for the spoils of office;
+for it was, unfortunately, often the case that their necessary expenses
+in the service of the state were not defrayed.  The people raised
+enormous contributions for carrying on the war; but they could not afford
+to be extremely generous to their faithful servants.
+
+Thus constituted was the commonwealth upon the death of William the
+Silent.  The gloom produced by that event was tragical.  Never in human
+history was a more poignant and universal sorrow for the death of any
+individual.  The despair was, for a brief season, absolute; but it was
+soon succeeded by more lofty sentiments.  It seemed, after they had laid
+their hero in the tomb, as though his spirit still hovered above the
+nation which he had loved so well, and was inspiring it with a portion of
+his own energy and wisdom.
+
+Even on the very day of the murder, the Estates of Holland, then sitting
+at Delft, passed a resolution "to maintain the good cause, with God's
+help, to the uttermost, without sparing gold or blood."  This decree was
+communicated to Admiral de Warmont, to Count Hohenlo, to William Lewis of
+Nassau, and to other commanders by land and sea.  At the same time, the
+sixteen members--for no greater number happened to be present at the
+session--addressed letters to their absent colleagues, informing them
+of the calamity which had befallen them, summoning them at once to
+conference, and urging an immediate convocation of the Estates of all
+the Provinces in General Assembly.  They also addressed strong letters of
+encouragement, mingled with manly condolence, upon the common affliction,
+to prominent military and naval commanders and civil functionaries,
+begging them to "bear themselves manfully and valiantly, without
+faltering in the least on account of the great misfortune which had
+occurred, or allowing themselves to be seduced by any one from the union
+of the States."  Among these sixteen were Van Zuylen, Van Nyvelt, the
+Seigneur de Warmont, the Advocate of Holland, Paul Buys, Joost de Menin,
+and John van Olden-Barneveldt.  A noble example was thus set at once to
+their fellow citizens by these their representatives--a manful step taken
+forward in the path where Orange had so long been leading.
+
+The next movement, after the last solemn obsequies had been rendered to
+the Prince was to provide for the immediate wants of his family.  For the
+man who had gone into the revolt with almost royal revenues, left his
+estate so embarrassed that his carpets, tapestries, household linen--
+nay, even his silver spoons, and the very clothes of his wardrobe were
+disposed of at auction for the benefit of his creditors.  He left eleven
+children--a son and daughter by the first wife, a son and daughter by
+Anna of Saxony, six daughters by Charlotte of Bourbon, and an infant,
+Frederic Henry, born six months before his death.  The eldest son, Philip
+William, had been a captive in Spain for seventeen years, having been
+kidnapped from school, in Leyden, in the year 1567.  He had already
+become so thoroughly Hispaniolized under the masterly treatment of the
+King and the Jesuits, that even his face had lost all resemblance to the
+type of his heroic family, and had acquired a sinister, gloomy,
+forbidding expression, most painful to contemplate.  All of good that
+he had retained was a reverence for his father's name--a sentiment which
+he had manifested to an extravagant extent on a memorable occasion in
+Madrid, by throwing out of window, and killing on the spot a Spanish
+officer who had dared to mention the great Prince with insult.
+
+The next son was Maurice, then seventeen years of age, a handsome youth,
+with dark blue eyes, well-chiselled features, and full red lips, who had
+already manifested a courage and concentration of character beyond his
+years.  The son of William the Silent, the grandson of Maurice of Saxony,
+whom he resembled in visage and character, he was summoned by every drop
+of blood in his veins to do life-long battle with the spirit of Spanish
+absolutism, and he was already girding himself for his life's work.  He
+assumed at once for his device a fallen oak, with a young sapling
+springing from its root.  His motto, "Tandem fit surculus arbor," "the
+twig shall yet become a tree"--was to be nobly justified by his career.
+
+The remaining son, then a six months' child, was also destined to high
+fortunes, and to win an enduring name in his country's history.  For the
+present he remained with his mother, the noble Louisa de Coligny, who had
+thus seen, at long intervals, her father and two husbands fall victims to
+the Spanish policy; for it is as certain that Philip knew beforehand, and
+testified his approbation of, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, as that he
+was the murderer of Orange.
+
+The Estates of Holland implored the widowed Princess to remain in their
+territority, settling a liberal allowance upon herself and her child, and
+she fixed her residence at Leyden.
+
+But her position was most melancholy.  Married in youth to the Seigneur
+de Teligny, a young noble of distinguished qualities, she had soon become
+both a widow and an orphan in the dread night of St. Bartholomew.  She
+had made her own escape to Switzerland; and ten years afterwards she had
+united herself in marriage with the Prince of Orange.  At the age of
+thirty-two, she now found herself desolate and wretched in a foreign
+land, where she had never felt thoroughly at home.  The widow and
+children of William the Silent were almost without the necessaries of
+life.  "I hardly know," wrote the Princess to her brother-in-law, Count
+John, "how the children and I are to maintain ourselves according to the
+honour of the house.  May God provide for us in his bounty, and certainly
+we have much need of it."  Accustomed to the more luxurious civilisation
+of France, she had been amused rather than annoyed, when, on her first
+arrival in Holland for her nuptials, she found herself making the journey
+from Rotterdam to Delft in an open cart without springs, instead of the
+well-balanced coaches to which she had been used, arriving, as might have
+been expected, "much bruised and shaken."  Such had become the primitive
+simplicity of William the Silent's household.  But on his death, in
+embarrassed circumstances, it was still more straightened.  She had no
+cause either to love Leyden, for, after the assassination of her husband,
+a brutal preacher, Hakkius by name, had seized that opportunity for
+denouncing the French marriage, and the sumptuous christening of the
+infant in January, as the deeds which had provoked the wrath of God and
+righteous chastisement.  To remain there in her widowhood, with that six
+months' child, "sole pledge of her dead lord, her consolation and only
+pleasure," as she pathetically expressed herself, was sufficiently
+painful, and she had been inclined to fix her residence in Flushing, in
+the edifice which had belonged to her husband, as Marquis of Vere.  She
+had been persuaded, however, to remain in Holland, although "complaining,
+at first, somewhat of the unkindness of the people."
+
+A small well-formed woman, with delicate features, exquisite complexion,
+and very beautiful dark eyes, that seemed in after-years, as they looked
+from beneath her coif, to be dim with unshed tears; with remarkable
+powers of mind, angelic sweetness of disposition, a winning manner, and a
+gentle voice, Louisa de Coligny became soon dear to the rough Hollanders,
+and was ever a disinterested and valuable monitress both to her own child
+and to his elder brother Maurice.
+
+Very soon afterwards the States General established a State Council,
+as a provisional executive board, for the term of three months, for the
+Provinces of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Friesland, and such parts of
+Flanders and Brabant as still remained in the Union.  At the head of this
+body was placed young Maurice, who accepted the responsible position,
+after three days' deliberation.  The young man had been completing his
+education, with a liberal allowance from Holland and Zeeland, at the
+University of Leyden; and such had been their tender care for the child
+of so many hopes, that the Estates had given particular and solemn
+warning, by resolution, to his governor during the previous summer,
+on no account to allow him to approach the sea-shore, lest he should be
+kidnapped by the Prince of Parma, who had then some war-vessels cruising
+on the coast.
+
+The salary of Maurice was now fixed at thirty thousand florins a year,
+while each of the councillors was allowed fifteen hundred annually, out
+of which stipend he was to support at least one servant; without making
+any claim for travelling or other incidental expenses.
+
+The Council consisted of three members from Brabant, two from Flanders,
+four from Holland, three from Zeeland, two from Utrecht, one from
+Mechlin, and three from Friesland--eighteen in all.  They were empowered
+and enjoined to levy troops by land and sea, and to appoint naval and
+military officers; to establish courts of admiralty, to expend the moneys
+voted by the States, to maintain the ancient privileges of the country,
+and to see that all troops in service of the Provinces made oath of
+fidelity to the Union.  Diplomatic relations, questions of peace and war,
+the treaty-making power, were not entrusted to the Council, without the
+knowledge and consent of the States General, which body was to be
+convoked twice a year by the State Council.
+
+Thus the Provinces in the hour of danger and darkness were true to
+themselves, and were far from giving way to a despondency which under
+the circumstances would not have been unnatural.
+
+For the waves of bitterness were rolling far and wide around them.  A
+medal, struck in Holland at this period, represented a dismasted hulk
+reeling through the tempest. The motto, "incertum quo fate ferent" (who
+knows whither fate is sweeping her?) expressed most vividly the ship
+wrecked condition of the country.  Alexander of Parma, the most
+accomplished general and one of the most adroit statesmen of the age,
+was swift to take advantage of the calamity which had now befallen the
+rebellious Provinces. Had he been better provided with men and money,
+the cause of the States might have seemed hopeless.  He addressed many
+letters to the States General, to the magistracies of various cities, and
+to individuals, affecting to consider that with the death of Orange had
+died all authority, as well as all motive for continuing the contest with
+Spain.  He offered easy terms of reconciliation with the discarded
+monarch--always reserving, however, as a matter of course, the religious
+question--for it was as well known to the States as to Parma that there
+was no hope of Philip making concessions upon that important point.
+
+In Holland and Zeeland the Prince's blandishments were of no avail.  His
+letters received in various towns of those Provinces, offered, said one
+who saw them, "almost every thing they would have or demand, even till
+they should repent."  But the bait was not taken.  Individuals and
+municipalities were alike stanch, remembering well that faith was not to
+be kept with heretics.  The example was followed by the Estates of other
+Provinces, and all sent in to the General Assembly, soon in session at
+Delft, "their absolute and irrevocable authority to their deputies to
+stand to that which they, the said States General, should dispose of as
+to their persons, goods and country; a resolution and agreement which
+never concurred before among them, to this day, in what age or government
+soever."
+
+It was decreed that no motion of agreement "with the tyrant of Spain"
+should be entertained either publicly or privately, "under pain to be
+reputed ill patriots."  It was also enacted in the city of Dort that any
+man that brought letter or message from the enemy to any private person
+"should be forthwith hanged."  This was expeditious and business-like.
+The same city likewise took the lead in recording its determination by
+public act, and proclaiming it by sound of trumpet, "to live and die in
+the cause now undertaken."
+
+In Flanders and Brabant the spirit was less noble.  Those Provinces were
+nearly lost already.  Bruges seconded Parma's efforts to induce its
+sister-city Ghent to imitate its own baseness in surrendering without
+a struggle; and that powerful, turbulent, but most anarchical little
+commonwealth was but too ready to listen to the voice of the tempter.
+"The ducats of Spain, Madam, are trotting about in such fashion," wrote
+envoy Des Pruneaux to Catherine de Medici, "that they have vanquished a
+great quantity of courages.  Your Majesties, too, must employ money if
+you wish to advance one step."  No man knew better than Parma how to
+employ such golden rhetoric to win back a wavering rebel to his loyalty,
+but he was not always provided with a sufficient store of those practical
+arguments.
+
+He was, moreover, not strong in the field, although he was far superior
+to the States at this contingency.  He had, besides his garrisons,
+something above 18,000 men.  The Provinces had hardly 3000 foot and 2500
+horse, and these were mostly lying in the neighbourhood of Zutphen.
+Alexander was threatening at the same time Ghent, Dendermonde, Mechlin,
+Brussels, and Antwerp.  These five powerful cities lie in a narrow
+circle, at distances varying from six miles to thirty, and are, as it
+were, strung together upon the Scheldt, by which river, or its tributary,
+the Senne, they are all threaded.  It would have been impossible for
+Parma, with 100,000 men at his back, to undertake a regular and
+simultaneous siege of these important places.  His purpose was to isolate
+them from each other and from the rest of the country, by obtaining the
+control of the great river, and so to reduce them by famine.  The scheme
+was a masterly one, but even the consummate ability of Farnese would have
+proved inadequate to the undertaking, had not the preliminary
+assassination of Orange made the task comparatively easy.  Treason,
+faint-heartedness, jealousy, were the fatal allies that the Governor-
+General had reckoned upon, and with reason, in the council-rooms of these
+cities.  The terms he offered were liberal.  Pardon, permission for
+soldiers to retreat with technical honour, liberty to choose between
+apostacy to the reformed religion or exile, with a period of two years
+granted to the conscientious for the winding up of their affairs; these
+were the conditions, which seemed flattering, now that the well-known
+voice which had so often silenced the Flemish palterers and intriguers
+was for ever hushed.
+
+Upon the 17th August (1584) Dendermonde surrendered, and no lives were
+taken save those of two preachers, one of whom was hanged, while the
+other was drowned.  Upon the 7th September Vilvoorde capitulated, by
+which event the water-communication between Brussels and Antwerp was cut
+off.  Ghent, now thoroughly disheartened, treated with Parma likewise;
+and upon the 17th September made its reconciliation with the King.  The
+surrender of so strong and important a place was as disastrous to the
+cause of the patriots as it was disgraceful to the citizens themselves.
+It was, however, the result of an intrigue which had been long spinning,
+although the thread had been abruptly, and, as it was hoped,
+conclusively, severed several months before.  During the early part of
+the year, after the reconciliation of Bruges with the King--an event
+brought about by the duplicity and adroitness of Prince Chimay--the same
+machinery had been diligently and almost successfully employed to produce
+a like result in Ghent.  Champagny, brother of the famous Cardinal
+Granvelle, had been under arrest for six years in that city.  His
+imprisonment was not a strict one however; and he avenged himself for
+what he considered very unjust treatment at the hands of the patriots,
+by completely abandoning a cause which he had once begun to favour.
+A man of singular ability, courage, and energy, distinguished both for
+military and diplomatic services, he was a formidable enemy to the party
+from which he was now for ever estranged.  As early as April of this
+year, secret emissaries of Parma, dealing with Champagny in his nominal
+prison, and with the disaffected burghers at large, had been on the point
+of effecting an arrangement with the royal governor.  The negotiation had
+been suddenly brought to a close by the discovery of a flagrant attempt
+by Imbue, one of the secret adherents of the King, to sell the city of
+Dendermonde, of which he was governor, to Parma.  For this crime he had
+been brought to Ghent for trial, and then publicly beheaded.  The
+incident came in aid of the eloquence of Orange, who, up to the latest
+moment of his life, had been most urgent in his appeals to the patriotic
+hearts of Ghent, not to abandon the great cause of the union and of
+liberty.  William the Silent knew full well, that after the withdrawal of
+the great keystone-city of Ghent, the chasm between the Celtic-Catholic
+and the Flemish-Calvinist Netherlands could hardly be bridged again.
+Orange was now dead.  The negotiations with France, too, on which those
+of the Ghenters who still held true to the national cause had fastened
+their hopes, had previously been brought to a stand-still by the death of
+Anjou; and Champagny, notwithstanding the disaster to Imbize, became more
+active than ever.  A private agent, whom the municipal government had
+despatched to the French court for assistance, was not more successful
+than his character and course of conduct would have seemed to warrant;
+for during his residence in Paris, he had been always drunk, and
+generally abusive.  This was not good diplomacy, particularly on the part
+of an agent from a weak municipality to a haughty and most undecided
+government.
+
+"They found at this court," wrote Stafford to Walsingham, "great fault
+with his manner of dealing that was sent from Gaunt.  He was scarce sober
+from one end of the week to the other, and stood so much on his tiptoes
+to have present answer within three days, or else that they of Gaunt
+could tell where to bestow themselves.  They sent him away after keeping
+him three weeks, and he went off in great dudgeon, swearing by yea and
+nay that he will make report thereafter."
+
+Accordingly, they of Ghent did bestow themselves very soon thereafter
+upon the King of Spain.  The terms were considered liberal, but there
+was, of course, no thought of conceding the great object for which the
+patriots were contending--religious liberty.  The municipal privileges--
+such as they might prove to be worth under the interpretation of a royal
+governor and beneath the guns of a citadel filled with Spanish troops--
+were to be guaranteed; those of the inhabitants who did not choose to go
+to mass were allowed two years to wind up their affairs before going into
+perpetual exile, provided they behaved themselves "without scandal;"
+while on the other hand, the King's authority as Count of Flanders was to
+be fully recognised, and all the dispossessed monks and abbots to be
+restored to their property.
+
+Accordingly, Champagny was rewarded for his exertions by being released
+from prison and receiving the appointment of governor of the city: and,
+after a very brief interval, about one-half of the population, the most
+enterprising of its merchants and manufacturers, the most industrious of
+its artizans, emigrated to Holland and Zeeland.  The noble city of Ghent
+--then as large as Paris, thoroughly surrounded with moats, and fortified
+with bulwarks, ravelins, and counterscarps, constructed of earth, during
+the previous two years, at great expense, and provided with bread and
+meat, powder and shot, enough to last a year--was ignominiously
+surrendered.  The population, already a very reduced and slender one
+for the great extent of the place and its former importance, had been
+estimated at 70,000.  The number of houses was 35,000, so that as the
+inhabitants were soon farther reduced to one-half, there remained but one
+individual to each house.  On the other hand, the twenty-five monasteries
+and convents in the town were repeopled--with how much advantage as a
+set-off to the thousands of spinners and weavers who had wandered away,
+and who in the flourishing days of Ghent had sent gangs of workmen
+through the streets "whose tramp was like that of an army"--may be
+sufficiently estimated by the result.
+
+The fall of Brussels was deferred till March, and that of Mechlin (19th
+July, 1585) and of Antwerp (19th August, 1585), till Midsummer of the
+following year; but, the surrender of Ghent (10th March 1585)
+foreshadowed the fate of Flanders and Brabant.  Ostend and Sluys,
+however, were still in the hands of the patriots, and with them the
+control of the whole Flemish coast.  The command of the sea was destined
+to remain for centuries with the new republic.
+
+The Prince of Parma, thus encouraged by the great success of his
+intrigues, was determined to achieve still greater triumphs with his
+arms, and steadily proceeded with his large design of closing the
+Scheldt--and bringing about the fall of Antwerp.  The details of that
+siege-one of the most brilliant military operations of the age and one of
+the most memorable in its results--will be given, as a connected whole,
+in a subsequent series of chapters.  For the present, it will be better
+for the reader who wishes a clear view of European politics at this
+epoch, and of the position of the Netherlands, to give his attention to
+the web of diplomatic negotiation and court-intrigue which had been
+slowly spreading over the leading states of Christendom, and in which the
+fate of the world was involved.  If diplomatic adroitness consists mainly
+in the power to deceive, never were more adroit diplomatists than those
+of the sixteenth century.  It would, however, be absurd to deny them a
+various range of abilities; and the history of no other age can show more
+subtle, comprehensive, indefatigable--but, it must also be added, often
+unscrupulous--intellects engaged in the great game of politics in which
+the highest interests of millions were the stakes, than were those of
+several leading minds in England, France, Germany, and Spain.  With such
+statesmen the burgher-diplomatists of the new-born commonwealth had to
+measure themselves; and the result was to show whether or not they could
+hold their own in the cabinet as on the field,
+
+For the present, however, the new state was unconscious of its latent
+importance, The new-risen republic remained for a season nebulous, and
+ready to unsphere itself so soon as the relative attraction of other
+great powers should determine its absorption.  By the death of Anjou and
+of Orange the United Netherlands had became a sovereign state, an
+independent republic; but they stood with that sovereignty in their
+hands, offering it alternately, not to the highest bidder, but to the
+power that would be willing to accept their allegiance, on the sole
+condition of assisting them in the maintenance of their religious
+freedom.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+     Relations of the Republic to France--Queen's Severity towards
+     Catholics and Calvinists--Relative Positions of England and France--
+     Timidity of Germany--Apathy of Protestant Germany--Indignation of
+     the Netherlanders--Henry III. of France--The King and his Minions--
+     Henry of Guise--Henry of Navarre--Power of France--Embassy of the
+     States to France--Ignominious position of the Envoys--Views of the
+     French Huguenots--Efforts to procure Annexation--Success of Des
+     Pruneaux.
+
+The Prince of Orange had always favoured a French policy.  He had ever
+felt a stronger reliance upon the support of France than upon that of any
+other power.  This was not unreasonable, and so long as he lived, the
+tendency of the Netherlands had been in that direction.  It had never
+been the wish of England to acquire the sovereignty of the Provinces.  In
+France on the contrary, the Queen Dowager, Catharine de' Medici had
+always coveted that sovereignty for her darling Francis of Alencon; and
+the design had been favoured, so far as any policy could be favoured, by
+the impotent monarch who occupied the French throne.
+
+The religion of the United Netherlands was Calvinistic.  There were also
+many Anabaptists in the country.  The Queen of England hated Anabaptists,
+Calvinists, and other sectarians, and banished them from her realms on
+pain of imprisonment and confiscation of property.  As firmly opposed as
+was her father to the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, she felt much of
+the paternal reluctance to accept the spirit of the Reformation.  Henry
+Tudor hanged the men who believed in the Pope, and burnt alive those who
+disbelieved in transubstantiation, auricular confession, and the other
+'Six Articles.'  His daughter, whatever her secret religious convictions,
+was stanch in her resistance to Rome, and too enlightened a monarch not
+to see wherein the greatness and glory of England were to be found; but
+she had no thought of tolerating liberty of conscience.  All opposed to
+the Church of England, whether Papists or Puritans, were denounced as
+heretics, and as such imprisoned or banished.  "To allow churches with
+contrary rites and ceremonies," said Elizabeth, "were nothing else but to
+sow religion out of religion, to distract good men's minds, to cherish
+factious men's humours, to disturb religion and commonwealth, and mingle
+divine and human things; which were a thing in deed evil, in example
+worst of all; to our own subjects hurtful, and to themselves--to whom it
+is granted, neither greatly commodious, nor yet at all safe."--[Camden]
+The words were addressed, it is true, to Papists, but there is very
+little doubt that Anabaptists or any other heretics would have received a
+similar reply, had they, too, ventured to demand the right of public
+worship.  It may even be said that the Romanists in the earlier days of
+Elizabeth's reign fared better than the Calvinists.  The Queen neither
+banished nor imprisoned the Catholics.  She did not enter their houses to
+disturb their private religious ceremonies, or to inquire into their
+consciences.  This was milder treatment than the burning alive, burying
+alive, hanging, and drowning, which had been dealt out to the English and
+the Netherland heretics by Philip and by Mary, but it was not the spirit
+which William the Silent had been wont to manifest in his measures
+towards Anabaptists and Papists alike.  Moreover, the Prince could hardly
+forget that of the nine thousand four hundred Catholic ecclesiastics who
+held benefices at the death of Queen Mary, all had renounced the Pope on
+the accession of Queen Elizabeth, and acknowledged her as the head of the
+church, saving only one hundred and eighty-nine individuals.  In the
+hearts of the nine thousand two hundred and eleven others, it might be
+thought perhaps that some tenderness for the religion from which they had
+so suddenly been converted, might linger, while it could hardly be hoped
+that they would seek to inculcate in the minds of their flocks or of
+their sovereign any connivance with the doctrines of Geneva.
+
+When,  at a later period, the plotting of Catholics, suborned by the Pope
+and Philip, against the throne and person of the Queen, made more
+rigorous measures necessary; when it was thought indispensable to execute
+as traitors those Roman seedlings--seminary priests and their disciples--
+who went about preaching to the Queen's subjects the duty of carrying out
+the bull by which the Bishop of Rome had deposed and excommunicated their
+sovereign, and that "it was a meritorious act to kill such princes as
+were excommunicate," even then, the men who preached and practised
+treason and murder experienced no severer treatment than that which other
+"heretics" had met with at the Queen's hands.  Jesuits and Popish priests
+were, by Act of Parliament, ordered to depart the realm within forty
+days.  Those who should afterwards return to the kingdom were to be held
+guilty of high treason.  Students in the foreign seminaries were
+commanded to return within six months and recant, or be held guilty of
+high treason.  Parents and guardians supplying money to such students
+abroad were to incur the penalty of a preamunire--perpetual exile,
+namely, with loss of all their goods.
+
+Many seminary priests and others were annually executed in England under
+these laws, throughout the Queen's reign, but nominally at least they
+were hanged not as Papists, but as traitors; not because they taught
+transubstantiation, ecclesiastical celibacy, auricular confession, or
+even Papal supremacy, but because they taught treason and murder--because
+they preached the necessity of killing the Queen.  It was not so easy,
+however, to defend or even comprehend the banishment and imprisonment of
+those who without conspiring against the Queen's life or throne, desired
+to see the Church of England reformed according to the Church of Geneva.
+Yet there is no doubt that many sectaries experienced much inhuman
+treatment for such delinquency, both in the early and the later years of
+Elizabeth's reign.
+
+There was another consideration, which had its due weight in this
+balance, and that was the respective succession to the throne in the two
+kingdoms of France and England.  Mary Stuart, the Catholic, the niece of
+the Guises, emblem and exponent of all that was most Roman in Europe, the
+sworn friend of Philip, the mortal foe to all heresy, was the legitimate
+successor to Elizabeth.  Although that sovereign had ever refused to
+recognize that claim; holding that to confirm Mary in the succession was
+to "lay her own winding sheet before her eyes, yea, to make her, own
+grave, while she liveth and looketh on;" and although the unfortunate
+claimant of two thrones was a prisoner in her enemy's hands, yet, so long
+as she lived, there was little security for Protestantism, even in
+Elizabeth's lifetime, and less still in case of her sudden death.  On the
+other hand, not only were the various politico-religious forces of France
+kept in equilibrium by their action upon each other--so that it was
+reasonable to believe that the House of Valois, however Catholic itself,
+would be always compelled by the fast-expanding strength of French
+Calvinism, to observe faithfully a compact to tolerate the Netherland
+churches--but, upon the death of Henry III.  the crown would be
+legitimately placed upon the head of the great champion and chief of the
+Huguenots, Henry of Navarre.
+
+It was not unnatural, therefore, that the Prince of Orange, a Calvinist
+himself, should expect more sympathy with the Netherland reformers in
+France than in England.  A large proportion of the population of that
+kingdom, including an influential part of the nobility, was of the
+Huguenot persuasion, and the religious peace, established by royal edict,
+had endured so long, that the reformers of France and the Netherlands had
+begun to believe in the royal clemency, and to confide in the royal word.
+Orange did not live to see the actual formation of the Holy League, and
+could only guess at its secrets.
+
+Moreover, it should be remembered that France at that day was a more
+formidable state than England, a more dangerous enemy, and, as it was
+believed, a more efficient protector.  The England of the period,
+glorious as it was for its own and all future ages, was, not the great
+British Empire of to-day.  On the contrary, it was what would now be
+considered, statistically speaking, a rather petty power.  The England of
+Elizabeth, Walsingham, Burghley, Drake, and Raleigh, of Spenser and
+Shakspeare, hardly numbered a larger population than now dwells in its
+capital and immediate suburbs.  It had neither standing army nor
+considerable royal navy.  It was full of conspirators, daring and
+unscrupulous, loyal to none save to Mary of Scotland, Philip of Spain,
+and the Pope of Rome, and untiring in their efforts to bring about a
+general rebellion.  With Ireland at its side, nominally a subject
+province, but in a state of chronic insurrection--a perpetual hot-bed for
+Spanish conspiracy and stratagem; with Scotland at its back, a foreign
+country, with half its population exasperated enemies of England, and the
+rest but doubtful friends, and with the legitimate sovereign of that
+country, "the daughter of debate, who discord still did sow,"--[Sonnet by
+Queen Elizabeth.]--a prisoner in Elizabeth's hands, the central point
+around which treason was constantly crystallizing itself, it was not
+strange that with the known views of the Queen on the subject of the
+reformed Dutch religion, England should seem less desirable as a
+protector for the Netherlands than the neighbouring kingdom of France.
+
+Elizabeth was a great sovereign, whose genius Orange always appreciated,
+in a comparatively feeble realm.  Henry of Valois was the contemptible
+monarch of a powerful state, and might be led by others to produce
+incalculable mischief or considerable good.  Notwithstanding the massacre
+of St. Bartholomew, therefore, and the more recent "French fury" of
+Antwerp, Orange had been willing to countenance fresh negociations with
+France.
+
+Elizabeth, too, it should never be forgotten, was, if not over generous,
+at least consistent and loyal in her policy towards the Provinces.  She
+was not precisely jealous of France, as has been unjustly intimated on
+distinguished authority, for she strongly advocated the renewed offer of
+the sovereignty to Anjou, after his memorable expulsion from the
+Provinces.  At that period, moreover, not only her own love-coquetries
+with Anjou were over, but he was endeavouring with all his might, though
+in secret, to make a match with the younger Infanta of Spain.  Elizabeth
+furthered the negociation with France, both publicly and privately.  It
+will soon be narrated how those negociations prospered.
+
+If then England were out of the, question, where, except in France,
+should the Netherlanders, not deeming themselves capable of standing
+alone, seek for protection and support?
+
+We have seen the extensive and almost ubiquitous power of Spain.  Where
+she did not command as sovereign, she was almost equally formidable as an
+ally.  The Emperor of Germany was the nephew and the brother-in-law of
+Philip, and a strict Catholic besides.  Little aid was to be expected
+from him or the lands under his control for the cause of the Netherland
+revolt.  Rudolph hated his brother-in-law, but lived in mortal fear of
+him.  He was also in perpetual dread of the Grand Turk.  That formidable
+potentate, not then the "sick man" whose precarious condition and
+territorial inheritance cause so much anxiety in modern days, was, it is
+true, sufficiently occupied for the moment in Persia, and had been
+sustaining there a series of sanguinary defeats.  He was all the more
+anxious to remain upon good terms with Philip, and had recently sent him
+a complimentary embassy, together with some rather choice presents, among
+which were "four lions, twelve unicorns, and two horses coloured white,
+black, and blue."  Notwithstanding these pacific manifestations towards
+the West, however, and in spite of the truce with the German Empire which
+the Turk had just renewed for nine years,--Rudolph and his servants still
+trembled at every report from the East.
+
+"He is much deceived," wrote Busbecq, Rudolph's ambassador in Paris, "who
+doubts that the Turk has sought any thing by this long Persian war, but
+to protect his back, and prepare the way, after subduing that enemy, to
+the extermination of all Christendom, and that he will then, with all his
+might, wage an unequal warfare with us, in which the existence of the
+Empire will be at stake."
+
+The envoy expressed, at the same period, however, still greater awe of
+Spain.  "It is to no one," he wrote, "endowed with good judgment, in the
+least obscure, that the Spanish nation, greedy of empire, will never be
+quiet, even with their great power, but will seek for the dominion of the
+rest of Christendom.  How much remains beyond what they have already
+acquired?  Afterwards, there will soon be no liberty, no dignity, for
+other princes and republics.  That single nation will be arbiter of all
+things, than which nothing can be more miserable, nothing more degrading.
+It cannot be doubted that all kings, princes, and states, whose safety or
+dignity is dear to them, would willingly associate in arms to extinguish
+the common conflagration.  The death of the Catholic king would seem the
+great opportunity 'miscendis rebus'."
+
+Unfortunately neither Busbecq's master nor any other king or prince
+manifested any of this commendable alacrity to "take up arms against the
+conflagration."  Germany was in a shiver at every breeze from East or
+West-trembling alike before Philip and Amurath.  The Papists were making
+rapid progress, the land being undermined by the steady and stealthy
+encroachments of the Jesuits.  Lord Burghley sent many copies of his
+pamphlet, in Latin, French, and Italian, against the Seminaries, to
+Gebhard Truchsess; and the deposed archbishop made himself busy in
+translating that wholesome production into German, and in dispersing it
+"all Germany over."  The work, setting duly forth "that the executions of
+priests in England were not for religion but for treason," was
+"marvellously liked" in the Netherlands.  "In uttering the truth," said
+Herle, "'tis likely to do great good;" and he added, that Duke Augustus
+of Saxony "did now see so far into the sect of Jesuits, and to their
+inward mischiefs, as to become their open enemy, and to make friends
+against them in the Empire."
+
+The love of Truchsess for Agnes Mansfeld had created disaster not only
+for himself but for Germany.  The whole electorate of Cologne had become
+the constant seat of partisan warfare, and the resort of organised bands
+of brigands.  Villages were burned and rifled, highways infested, cities
+threatened, and the whole country subjected to perpetual black mail
+(brandschatzung)--fire-insurance levied by the incendiaries in person--by
+the supporters of the rival bishops.  Truchsess had fled to Delft, where
+he had been countenanced and supported by Orange.  Two cities still held
+for him, Rheinberg and Neuss.  On the other hand, his rival, Ernest of
+Bavaria; supported by Philip II., and the occasional guest of Alexander
+of Parma, had not yet succeeded in establishing a strong foothold in the
+territory.  Two pauper archbishops, without men or means of their own,
+were thus pushed forward and back, like puppets, by the contending
+highwaymen on either side; while robbery and murder, under the name of
+Protestantism or Catholicism, were for a time the only motive or result
+of the contest.
+
+Thus along the Rhine, as well as the Maas and the Scheldt, the fires of
+civil war were ever burning.  Deeper within the heart of Germany, there
+was more tranquillity; but it was the tranquillity rather of paralysis
+than of health.  A fearful account was slowly accumulating, which was
+evidently to be settled only by one of the most horrible wars which
+history has ever recorded.  Meantime there was apathy where there should
+have been enthusiasm; parsimony and cowardice where generous and combined
+effort were more necessary than ever; sloth without security.  The
+Protestant princes, growing fat and contented on the spoils of the
+church, lent but a deaf ear to the moans of Truchsess, forgetting that
+their neighbour's blazing roof was likely soon to fire their own.  "They
+understand better, 'proximus sum egomet mild'," wrote Lord Willoughby
+from Kronenburg, "than they have learned, 'humani nihid a me alienum
+puto'.  These German princes continue still in their lethargy, careless
+of the state of others, and dreaming of their ubiquity, and some of them,
+it is thought, inclining to be Spanish or Popish more of late than
+heretofore."
+
+The beggared archbishop, more forlorn than ever since the death of his
+great patron, cried woe from his resting-place in Delft, upon Protestant
+Germany.  His tones seemed almost prophetic of the thirty years' wrath to
+blaze forth in the next generation.  "Courage is wanting to the people
+throughout Germany," he wrote to William Lewis of Nassau.  "We are
+becoming the laughing-stock of the nations.  Make sheep of yourselves,
+and the wolf will eat you.  We shall find our destruction in our
+immoderate desire for peace.  Spain is making a Papistical league in
+Germany.  Therefore is Assonleville despatched thither, and that's the
+reason why our trash of priests are so insolent in the empire.  'Tis
+astonishing how they are triumphing on all sides.  God will smite them.
+Thou dear God!  What are our evangelists about in Germany?  Asleep on
+both ears.  'Dormiunt in utramque aurem'.  I doubt they will be suddenly
+enough awakened one day, and the cry will be, 'Who'd have thought it?'
+Then they will be for getting oil for the lamp, for shutting the stable-
+door when the steed is stolen," and so on, with a string of homely
+proverbs worthy of Sancho Panza, or landgrave William of Hesse.
+
+In truth, one of the most painful features is the general aspect of
+affairs was the coldness of the German Protestants towards the
+Netherlands.  The enmity between Lutherans and Calvinists was almost as
+fatal as that between Protestants and Papists.  There was even a talk, at
+a little later period, of excluding those of the "reformed" church from
+the benefits of the peace of Passau.  The princes had got the Augsburg
+confession and the abbey-lands into the bargain; the peasants had got the
+Augsburg confession without the abbey-lands, and were to believe exactly
+what their masters believed.  This was the German-Lutheran sixteenth-
+century idea of religious freedom.  Neither prince nor peasant stirred in
+behalf of the struggling Christians in the United Provinces, battling,
+year after year, knee-deep in blood, amid blazing cities and inundated
+fields, breast to breast with the yellow jerkined pikemen of Spain and
+Italy, with the axe and the faggot and the rack of the Holy Inquisition
+distinctly visible behind them.  Such were the realities which occupied
+the Netherlanders in those days, not watery beams of theological
+moonshine, fantastical catechism-making, intermingled with scenes of riot
+and wantonness, which drove old John of Nassau half frantic; with
+banquetting and guzzling, drinking and devouring, with unchristian
+flaunting and wastefulness of apparel, with extravagant and wanton
+dancing, and other lewd abominations; all which, the firm old reformer
+prophesied, would lead to the destruction of Germany.
+
+For the mass, slow moving but apparently irresistible, of Spanish and
+papistical absolutism was gradually closing over Christendom.  The
+Netherlands were the wedge by which alone the solid bulk could be riven
+asunder.  It was the cause of German, of French, of English liberty, for
+which the Provinces were contending.  It was not surprising that they
+were bitter, getting nothing in their hour of distress from the land of
+Luther but dogmas and Augsburg catechisms instead of money and gunpowder,
+and seeing German reiters galloping daily to reinforce the army of Parma
+in exchange for Spanish ducats.
+
+Brave old La Noue, with the iron arm, noblest of Frenchmen and Huguenots
+--who had just spent five years in Spanish bondage, writing military
+discourses in a reeking dungeon, filled with toads and vermin, after
+fighting the battle of liberty for a life-time, and with his brave son
+already in the Netherlands emulating his father's valour on the same
+field--denounced at a little later day, the lukewarmness of Protestant
+Germany with whimsical vehemence:--"I am astounded," he cried, "that
+these princes are not ashamed of themselves; doing nothing while they see
+the oppressed cut to pieces at their gates.  When will God grant me grace
+to place me among those who are doing their duty, and afar from those who
+do nothing, and who ought to know that the cause is a common one.  If I
+am ever caught dancing the German cotillon, or playing the German flute,
+or eating pike with German sauce, I hope it may be flung in my teeth."
+
+The great league of the Pope and Philip was steadily consolidating
+itself, and there were but gloomy prospects for the counter-league in
+Germany.  There was no hope but in England and France.  For the reasons
+already indicated, the Prince of Orange, taking counsel with the Estates,
+had resolved to try the French policy once more.  The balance of power in
+Europe, which no man in Christendom so well understood as he, was to be
+established by maintaining (he thought) the equilibrium between France
+and Spain.  In the antagonism of those two great realms lay the only hope
+for Dutch or European liberty.  Notwithstanding the treason of Anjou,
+therefore, it had been decided to renew negociations with that Prince.
+On the death of the Duke, the envoys of the States were accordingly
+instructed to make the offer to King Henry III. which had been intended
+for his brother.  That proposition was the sovereignty of all the
+Netherlands, save Holland and Zeeland, under a constitution maintaining
+the reformed religion and the ancient laws and privileges of the
+respective provinces.
+
+But the death of Francis of Anjou had brought about a considerable change
+in French policy.  It was now more sharply defined than ever, a right-
+angled triangle of almost mathematical precision.  The three Henrys and
+their partizans divided the realm into three hostile camps--threatening
+each other in simulated peace since the treaty of Fleig (1580), which had
+put an end to the "lover's war" of the preceding year,--Henry of Valois,
+Henry of Guise, and Henry of Navarre.
+
+Henry III., last of the Valois line, was now thirty-three years of age.
+Less than king, less even than man, he was one of those unfortunate
+personages who seem as if born to make the idea of royalty ridiculous,
+and to test the capacity of mankind to eat and drink humiliation as if it
+were wholesome food.  It proved how deeply engraved in men's minds of
+that century was the necessity of kingship, when the hardy Netherlanders,
+who had abjured one tyrant, and had been fighting a generation long
+rather than return to him, were now willing to accept the sovereignty of
+a thing like Henry of Valois.
+
+He had not been born without natural gifts, such as Heaven rarely denies
+to prince or peasant; but the courage which he once possessed had been
+exhausted on the field of Moncontour, his manhood had been left behind
+him at Venice, and such wit as Heaven had endowed him withal was now
+expended in darting viperous epigrams at court-ladies whom he was only
+capable of dishonouring by calumny, and whose charms he burned to
+outrival in the estimation of his minions.  For the monarch of France was
+not unfrequently pleased to attire himself like a woman and a harlot.
+With silken flounces, jewelled stomacher, and painted face, with pearls
+of great price adorning his bared neck and breast, and satin-slippered
+feet, of whose delicate shape and size he was justly vain, it was his
+delight to pass his days and nights in a ceaseless round of gorgeous
+festivals, tourneys, processions; masquerades, banquets, and balls, the
+cost of which glittering frivolities caused the popular burthen and the
+popular execration to grow, from day to day, more intolerable and more
+audible.  Surrounded by a gang of "minions," the most debauched and the
+most desperate of France, whose bedizened dresses exhaled perfumes
+throughout Paris, and whose sanguinary encounters dyed every street in
+blood, Henry lived a life of what he called pleasure, careless of what
+might come after, for he was the last of his race.  The fortunes of his
+minions rose higher and higher, as their crimes rendered them more and
+more estimable in the eyes of a King who took a woman's pride in the
+valour of such champions to his weakness, and more odious to a people
+whose miserable homes were made even more miserable, that the coffers of
+a few court-favourites might be filled: Now sauntering, full-dressed, in
+the public promenades, with ghastly little death's heads strung upon his
+sumptuous garments, and fragments of human bones dangling among his
+orders of knighthood--playing at cup and ball as he walked, and followed
+by a few select courtiers who gravely pursued the same exciting
+occupation--now presiding like a queen of beauty at a tournament to
+assign the prize of valour, and now, by the advice of his mother, going
+about the streets in robes of penitence, telling his beads as he went,
+that the populace might be edified by his piety, and solemnly offering up
+prayers in the churches that the blessing of an heir might be vouchsafed
+to him,--Henry of Valois seemed straining every nerve in order to bring
+himself and his great office into contempt.
+
+As orthodox as he was profligate, he hated the Huguenots, who sought his
+protection and who could have saved his throne, as cordially as he loved
+the Jesuits, who passed their lives in secret plottings against his
+authority and his person, or in fierce denunciations from the Paris
+pulpits against his manifold crimes.  Next to an exquisite and sanguinary
+fop, he dearly loved a monk.  The presence of a friar, he said, exerted
+as agreeable an effect upon his mind as the most delicate and gentle
+tickling could produce upon his body; and he was destined to have a
+fuller dose of that charming presence than he coveted.
+
+His party--for he was but the nominal chief of a faction, 'tanquam unus
+ex nobis'--was the party in possession--the office-holders' party; the
+spoilsmen, whose purpose was to rob the exchequer and to enrich
+themselves.  His minions--for the favourites were called by no other
+name--were even more hated, because less despised than the King.  Attired
+in cloth of gold--for silk and satin were grown too coarse a material for
+them--with their little velvet porringer-caps stuck on the sides of their
+heads, with their long hair stiff with pomatum, and their heads set
+inside a well-starched ruff a foot wide, "like St. John's head in a
+charger," as a splenetic contemporary observed, with a nimbus of musk and
+violet-powder enveloping them as they passed before vulgar mortals, these
+rapacious and insolent courtiers were the impersonation of extortion and
+oppression to the Parisian populace.  They were supposed, not unjustly,
+to pass their lives in dancing, blasphemy, dueling, dicing, and intrigue,
+in following the King about like hounds, fawning at his feet, and showing
+their teeth to all besides; and for virtues such as these they were
+rewarded by the highest offices in church, camp, and state, while new
+taxes and imposts were invented almost daily to feed their avarice and
+supply their extravagance.  France, doomed to feel the beak and talons of
+these harpies in its entrails, impoverished by a government that robbed
+her at home while it humiliated her abroad, struggled vainly in its
+misery, and was now on the verge of another series of internecine
+combats--civil war seeming the only alternative to a voluptuous and
+licentious peace.
+
+"We all stood here at gaze," wrote ambassador Stafford to Walsingham,
+"looking for some great matter to come of this sudden journey to Lyons;
+but, as far as men can find, 'parturient montes', for there hath been
+nothing but dancing and banquetting from one house to another, bravery in
+apparel, glittering like the sun."  He, mentioned that the Duke of
+Epernon's horse, taking fright at a red cloak, had backed over a
+precipice, breaking his own neck, while his master's shoulder merely was
+put out of joint.  At the same time the Duke of Joyeuse, coming over
+Mount Cenis, on his return from Savoy, had broken his wrist.  The people,
+he said, would rather they had both broken their necks "than any other
+joint, the King having racked the nation for their sakes, as he hath-
+done."  Stafford expressed much compassion for the French in the plight
+in which they found themselves.  "Unhappy people!"  he cried, "to have
+such a King, who seeketh nothing but to impoverish them to enrich a
+couple, and who careth not what cometh after his death, so that he may
+rove on while he liveth, and careth neither for doing his own estate good
+nor his neighbour's state harm."  Sir Edward added, however, in a
+philosophizing vein, worthy of Corporal Nym, that, "seeing we cannot be
+so happy as to have a King to concur with us to do us any good, yet we
+are happy to have one that his humour serveth him not to concur with
+others to do us harm; and 'tis a wisdom for us to follow these humours,
+that we may keep him still in that humour, and from hearkening to others
+that may egg him on to worse."
+
+It was a dark hour for France, and rarely has a great nation been reduced
+to a lower level by a feeble and abandoned government than she was at
+that moment under the distaff of Henry III.  Society was corrupted to its
+core.  "There is no more truth, no more justice, no more mercy," moaned
+President L'Etoile.  "To slander, to lie, to rob, to wench, to steal; all
+things are permitted save to do right and to speak the truth."  Impiety
+the most cynical, debauchery the most unveiled, public and unpunished
+homicides, private murders by what was called magic, by poison, by hired
+assassins, crimes natural, unnatural, and preternatural, were the common
+characteristics of the time.  All posts and charges were venal.  Great
+offices of justice were sold to the highest bidder, and that which was
+thus purchased by wholesale was retailed in the same fashion.  Unhappy
+the pauper client who dreamed of justice at the hands of law.  The great
+ecclesiastical benefices were equally matter of merchandise, and married
+men, women, unborn children, enjoyed revenues as dignitaries of the
+church.  Infants came into the world, it was said, like the mitre-fish,
+stamped with the emblems of place.
+
+"'Twas impossible," said L'Etoile, "to find a crab so tortuous and
+backsliding as the government."
+
+This was the aspect of the first of the three factions in France.  Such
+was the Henry at its head, the representative of royalty.
+
+Henry with the Scar, Duke of Guise, the well-known chief of the house of
+Lorraine, was the chief of the extreme papistical party.  He was now
+thirty-four years of age, tall, stately, with a dark, martial face and
+dangerous eyes, which Antonio Moro loved to paint; a physiognomy made
+still more expressive by the arquebus-shot which had damaged his left
+cheek at the fight near Chateau-Thierry and gained him his name of
+Balafre.  Although one of the most turbulent and restless plotters of
+that plotting age, he was yet thought more slow and heavy in character
+than subtle, Teutonic rather than Italian.  He was the idol of the
+Parisian burghers.  The grocers, the market-men, the members of the
+arquebus and crossbow clubs, all doated on him.  The fishwomen worshipped
+him as a god.  He was the defender of the good old religion under which
+Paris and the other cities of France had thriven, the uncompromising
+opponent of the new-fangled doctrines which western clothiers, and dyers,
+and tapestry-workers, had adopted, and which the nobles of the mountain-
+country, the penniless chevaliers of Bearn and Gascony and Guienne, were
+ceaselessly taking the field and plunging France into misery and
+bloodshed to support.  But for the Balafre and Madam League--as the great
+Spanish Catholic conspiracy against the liberties of France, and of
+England, and of all Europe, was affectionately termed by the Paris
+populace--honest Catholics would fare no better in France than they did
+in England, where, as it was well known, they were every day subjected to
+fearful tortures: The shopwindows were filled with coloured engravings,
+representing, in exaggerated fashion, the sufferings of the English
+Catholics under bloody Elizabeth, or Jezebel, as she was called; and as
+the gaping burghers stopped to ponder over these works of art, there were
+ever present, as if by accident, some persons of superior information who
+would condescendingly explain the various pictures, pointing out with a
+long stick the phenomena most worthy of notice.  These caricatures
+proving highly successful, and being suppressed by order of government,
+they were repeated upon canvas on a larger scale, in still more
+conspicuous situations, as if in contempt of the royal authority, which
+sullied itself by compromise with Calvinism!  The pulpits, meanwhile,
+thundered denunciations on the one hand against the weak and wicked King,
+who worshipped idols, and who sacrificed the dearly-earned pittance of
+his subjects to feed the insolent pomp of his pampered favourites; and on
+the other, upon the arch-heretic, the arch-apostate, the Bearnese
+Huguenot, who, after the death of the reigning monarch, would have the
+effrontery to claim his throne, and to introduce into France the
+persecutions and the horrors under which unhappy England was already
+groaning.
+
+The scarce-concealed instigator of these assaults upon the royal and upon
+the Huguenot faction was, of course, the Duke of Guise,--the man whose
+most signal achievement had been the Massacre of St. Bartholomew--all the
+preliminary details of that transaction having been arranged by his
+skill.  So long as Charles IX. was living, the Balafre had created the
+confusion which was his element, by entertaining and fomenting the
+perpetual intrigues of Anjou and Alencon against their brother; while the
+altercations between them and the Queen Mother and the furious madman who
+then sat upon the throne, had been the cause of sufficient disorder and
+calamity for France.  On the death of Charles IX.  Guise had sought the
+intimacy of Henry of Navarre, that by his means he might frustrate the
+hopes of Alencon for the succession.  During the early period of the
+Bearnese's residence at the French court the two had been inseparable,
+living together, going to the same festivals, tournaments, and
+masquerades, and even sleeping in the same bed.  "My master," was ever
+Guise's address to Henry; "my gossip," the young King of Navarre's reply.
+But the crafty Bearnese had made use of the intimacy only to read the
+secrets of the Balafre's heart; and on Navarre's flight from the court,
+and his return to Huguenotism, Guise knew that he had been played upon by
+a subtler spirit than his own.  The simulated affection was now changed
+into undisguised hatred.  Moreover, by the death of Alencon, Navarre now
+stood next the throne, and Guise's plots became still more extensive and
+more open as his own ambition to usurp the crown on the death of the
+childless Henry III.  became more fervid.
+
+Thus, by artfully inflaming the populace of Paris, and through his
+organized bands of confederates--that of all the large towns of France,
+against the Huguenots and their chief, by appeals to the religious
+sentiment; and at the same time by stimulating the disgust and
+indignation of the tax-payers everywhere at the imposts and heavy
+burthens which the boundless extravagance of the court engendered, Guise
+paved the way for the advancement of the great League which he
+represented.  The other two political divisions were ingeniously
+represented as mere insolent factions, while his own was the true
+national and patriotic party, by which alone the ancient religion and the
+cherished institutions of France could be preserved.
+
+And the great chief of this national patriotic party was not Henry of
+Guise, but the industrious old man who sat writing despatches in the
+depths of the Escorial.  Spanish counsels, Spanish promises, Spanish
+ducats--these were the real machinery by which the plots of Guise against
+the peace of France and of Europe were supported.  Madam League was
+simply Philip II.  Nothing was written, officially or unofficially, to
+the French government by the Spanish court that was not at the same time
+communicated to "Mucio"--as the Duke of Guise was denominated in the
+secret correspondence of Philip, and Mucio was in Philip's pay, his
+confidential agent, spy, and confederate, long before the actual
+existence of the League was generally suspected.
+
+The Queen-Mother, Catharine de' Medici, played into the Duke's hands.
+Throughout the whole period of her widowhood, having been accustomed to
+govern her sons, she had, in a certain sense, been used to govern the
+kingdom.  By sowing dissensions among her own children, by inflaming
+party against party, by watching with care the oscillations of France
+--so than none of the great divisions should obtain preponderance--by
+alternately caressing and massacring the Huguenots, by cajoling or
+confronting Philip, by keeping, as she boasted, a spy in every family
+that possessed the annual income of two thousand livres, by making
+herself the head of an organized system of harlotry, by which the
+soldiers and politicians of France were inveigled, their secrets
+faithfully revealed to her by her well-disciplined maids of honour, by
+surrounding her unfortunate sons with temptation from earliest youth, and
+plunging them by cold calculation into deepest debauchery, that their
+enervated faculties might be ever forced to rely in political affairs on
+the maternal counsel, and to abandon the administration to the maternal
+will; such were the arts by which Catharine had maintained her influence,
+and a great country been governed for a generation--Machiavellian state-
+craft blended with the more simple wiles of a procuress.
+
+Now that Alencon was dead, and Henry III. hopeless of issue, it was her
+determination that the children of her daughter, the Duchess of Lorraine,
+should succeed to the throne.  The matter was discussed as if the throne
+were already vacant, and Guise and the Queen-Mother, if they agreed in
+nothing else, were both cordial in their detestation of Henry of Navarre.
+The Duke affected to support the schemes in favour of his relatives, the
+Princes of Lorraine, while he secretly informed the Spanish court that
+this policy was only a pretence.  He was not likely, he said, to advance
+the interests of the younger branch of a house of which he was himself
+the chief, nor were their backs equal to the burthen.  It was necessary
+to amuse the old queen, but he was profoundly of opinion that the only
+sovereign for France, upon the death of Henry, was Philip II. himself.
+This was the Duke's plan of arriving, by means of Spanish assistance,
+at the throne of France; and such was Henry le Balafre, chief of the
+League.
+
+And the other Henry, the Huguenot, the Bearnese, Henry of Bourbon, Henry
+of Navarre, the chieftain of the Gascon chivalry, the king errant, the
+hope and the darling of the oppressed Protestants in every land--of him
+it is scarce needful to say a single word.  At his very name a figure
+seems to leap forth from the mist of three centuries, instinct with ruddy
+vigorous life.  Such was the intense vitality of the Bearnese prince,
+that even now he seems more thoroughly alive and recognizable than half
+the actual personages who are fretting their hour upon the stage.
+
+We see, at once, a man of moderate stature, light, sinewy, and strong; a
+face browned with continual exposure; small, mirthful, yet commanding
+blue eyes, glittering from beneath an arching brow, and prominent
+cheekbones; a long hawk's nose, almost resting upon a salient chin, a
+pendent moustache, and a thick, brown, curly beard, prematurely grizzled;
+we see the mien of frank authority and magnificent good humour, we hear
+the ready sallies of the shrewd Gascon mother-wit, we feel the
+electricity which flashes out of him, and sets all hearts around him on
+fire, when the trumpet sounds to battle.  The headlong desperate charge,
+the snow-white plume waving where the fire is hottest, the large capacity
+for enjoyment of the man, rioting without affectation in the 'certaminis
+gaudia', the insane gallop, after the combat, to lay its trophies at the
+feet of the Cynthia of the minute, and thus to forfeit its fruits; all
+are as familiar to us as if the seven distinct wars, the hundred pitched
+battles, the two hundred sieges; in which the Bearnese was personally
+present, had been occurrences of our own day.
+
+He at least was both king and man, if the monarch who occupied the throne
+was neither.  He was the man to prove, too, for the instruction of the
+patient letter-writer of the Escorial, that the crown of France was to be
+won with foot in stirrup and carbine in hand, rather than to be caught by
+the weaving and casting of the most intricate nets of diplomatic
+intrigue, though thoroughly weighted with Mexican gold.
+
+The King of Navarre was now thirty-one years old; for the three Henrys
+were nearly of the same age.  The first indications of his existence had
+been recognized amid the cannon and trumpets of a camp in Picardy, and
+his mother had sung a gay Bearnese song as he was coming into the world
+at Pau.  Thus, said his grandfather, Henry of Navarre, thou shalt not
+bear to us a morose and sulky child.  The good king, without a kingdom,
+taking the child, as soon as born, in the lappel of his dressing-gown,
+had brushed his infant lips with a clove of garlic, and moistened them
+with a drop of generous Gascon wine.  Thus, said the grandfather again,
+shall the boy be both merry and bold.  There was something mythologically
+prophetic in the incidents of his birth.
+
+The best part of Navarre had been long since appropriated by Ferdinand of
+Aragon.  In France there reigned a young and warlike sovereign with four
+healthy boys.  But the new-born infant had inherited the lilies of France
+from St. Louis, and a later ancestor had added to the escutcheon the
+motto "Espoir."  His grandfather believed that the boy was born to
+revenge upon Spain the wrongs of the House of Albret, and Henry's nature
+seemed ever.  pervaded with Robert of Clermont's device.
+
+The same sensible grandfather, having different views on the subject of
+education from those manifested by Catherine de Medici towards her
+children, had the boy taught to run about bare-headed and bare-footed,
+like a peasant, among the mountains and rocks of Bearn, till he became as
+rugged as a young bear, and as nimble as a kid.  Black bread, and beef,
+and garlic, were his simple fare; and he was taught by his mother and his
+grandfather to hate lies and liars, and to read the Bible.
+
+When he was fifteen, the third religious war broke out.  Both his father
+and grandfather were dead.  His mother, who had openly professed the
+reformed faith, since the death of her husband, who hated it, brought her
+boy to the camp at Rochelle, where he was received as the chief of the
+Huguenots.  His culture was not extensive.  He had learned to speak the
+truth, to ride, to shoot, to do with little sleep and less food.  He
+could also construe a little Latin, and had read a few military
+treatises; but the mighty hours of an eventful life were now to take him
+by the hand, and to teach him much good and much evil, as they bore him
+onward.  He now saw military treatises expounded practically by
+professors, like his uncle Condo, and Admiral Coligny, and Lewis Nassau,
+in such lecture-rooms as Laudun, and Jarnac, and Montcontour, and never
+was apter scholar.
+
+The peace of Arnay-le-Duc succeeded, and then the fatal Bartholomew
+marriage with the Messalina of Valois.  The faith taught in the mountains
+of Bearn was no buckler against the demand of "the mass or death,"
+thundered at his breast by the lunatic Charles, as he pointed to
+thousands of massacred Huguenots.  Henry yielded to such conclusive
+arguments, and became a Catholic.  Four years of court imprisonment
+succeeded, and the young King of Navarre, though proof to the artifices
+of his gossip Guise, was not adamant to the temptations spread for him by
+Catherine de' Medici.  In the harem entertained for him in the Louvre
+many pitfalls entrapped him; and he became a stock-performer in the state
+comedies and tragedies of that plotting age.
+
+A silken web of palace-politics, palace-diplomacy, palace revolutions,
+enveloped him.  Schemes and counter-schemes, stratagems and conspiracies,
+assassinations and poisonings; all the state-machinery which worked so
+exquisitely in fair ladies' chambers, to spread havoc and desolation over
+a kingdom, were displayed before his eyes.  Now campaigning with one
+royal brother against Huguenots, now fighting with another on their side,
+now solicited by the Queen-Mother to attempt the life of her son, now
+implored by Henry III. to assassinate his brother, the Bearnese, as fresh
+antagonisms, affinities; combinations, were developed, detected,
+neutralized almost daily, became rapidly an adept in Medicean state-
+chemistry.  Charles IX. in his grave, Henry III. on the throne, Alencon
+in the Huguenot camp--Henry at last made his escape.  The brief war and
+peace of Monsieur succeeded, and the King of Navarre formally abjured the
+Catholic creed.  The parties were now sharply defined.  Guise mounted
+upon the League, Henry astride upon the Reformation, were prepared to do
+battle to the death.  The temporary "war of the amorous" was followed by
+the peace of Fleix.
+
+Four years of peace again; four fat years of wantonness and riot
+preceding fourteen hungry famine-stricken years of bloodiest civil war.
+The voluptuousness and infamy of the Louvre were almost paralleled in
+vice, if not in splendour, by the miniature court at Pau.  Henry's
+Spartan grandfather would scarce have approved the courses of the youth,
+whose education he had commenced on so simple a scale.  For Margaret
+of Valois, hating her husband, and living in most undisguised and
+promiscuous infidelity to him, had profited by her mother's lessons.
+A seraglio of maids of honour ministered to Henry's pleasures, and were
+carefully instructed that the peace and war of the kingdom were
+playthings in their hands.  While at Paris royalty was hopelessly sinking
+in a poisonous marsh, there was danger that even the hardy nature of the
+Bearnese would be mortally enervated by the atmosphere in which he lived.
+
+The unhappy Henry III., baited by the Guises, worried by Alencon and his
+mother, implored the King of Navarre to return to Paris and the Catholic
+faith.  M. de Segur, chief of Navarre's council, who had been won over
+during a visit to the capital, where he had made the discovery that
+"Henry III. was an angel, and his ministers devils," came back to Pau,
+urging his master's acceptance of the royal invitation.  Henry wavered.
+Bold D'Aubigne, stanchest of Huguenots, and of his friends, next day
+privately showed Segur a palace-window opening on a very steep precipice
+over the Bayae, and cheerfully assured him that he should be flung from
+it did he not instantly reverse his proceedings, and give his master
+different advice.  If I am not able to do the deed myself, said
+D'Aubigne, here are a dozen more to help me.  The chief of the council
+cast a glance behind him, saw a number of grim Puritan soldiers, with
+their hats plucked down upon their brows, looking very serious; so made
+his bow, and quite changed his line of conduct.
+
+At about the same time, Philip II. confidentially offered Henry of
+Navarre four hundred thousand crowns in hand, and twelve hundred thousand
+yearly, if he would consent to make war upon Henry III.  Mucio, or the
+Duke of Guise, being still in Philip's pay, the combination of Leaguers
+and Huguenots against the unfortunate Valois would, it was thought, be a
+good triangular contest.
+
+But Henry--no longer the unsophisticated youth who had been used to run
+barefoot among the cliffs of Coarasse--was grown too crafty a politician
+to be entangled by Spanish or Medicean wiles.  The Duke of Anjou was now
+dead.  Of all the princes who had stood between him and the throne, there
+was none remaining save the helpless, childless, superannuated youth, who
+was its present occupant.  The King of Navarre was legitimate heir to the
+crown of France.  "Espoir" was now in letters of light upon his shield,
+but he knew that his path to greatness led through manifold dangers, and
+that it was only at the head of his Huguenot chivalry that he could cut
+his way.  He was the leader of the nobles of Gascony, and Dauphins, and
+Guienne, in their mountain fastnesses, of the weavers, cutlers, and
+artizans, in their thriving manufacturing and trading towns.  It was not
+Spanish gold, but carbines and cutlasses, bows and bills, which could
+bring him to the throne of his ancestors.
+
+And thus he stood the chieftain of that great austere party of Huguenots,
+the men who went on, their knees before the battle, beating their breasts
+with their iron gauntlets, and singing in full chorus a psalm of David,
+before smiting the Philistines hip and thigh.
+
+Their chieftain, scarcely their representative--fit to lead his Puritans
+on the battle-field, was hardly a model for them elsewhere.  Yet, though
+profligate in one respect, he was temperate in every other.  In food,
+wine, and sleep, he was always moderate.  Subtle and crafty in self-
+defence, he retained something of his old love of truth, of his hatred
+for liars.  Hardly generous perhaps, he was a friend of justice, while
+economy in a wandering King, like himself, was a necessary virtue, of
+which France one day was to feel the beneficent action.  Reckless and
+headlong in appearance, he was in truth the most careful of men.  On the
+religious question, most cautious of all, he always left the door open
+behind him, disclaimed all bigotry of opinion, and earnestly implored the
+Papists to seek, not his destruction, but his instruction.  Yet prudent
+as he was by nature in every other regard, he was all his life the slave
+of one woman or another, and it was by good luck rather than by sagacity
+that he did not repeatedly forfeit the fruits of his courage and conduct,
+in obedience to his master-passion.
+
+Always open to conviction on the subject of his faith, he repudiated the
+appellation of heretic.  A creed, he said, was not to be changed like a
+shirt, but only on due deliberation, and under special advice.  In his
+secret heart he probably regarded the two religions as his chargers, and
+was ready to mount alternately the one or the other, as each seemed the
+more likely to bear him safely in the battle.  The Bearnese was no
+Puritan, but he was most true to himself and to his own advancement.  His
+highest principle of action was to reach his goal, and to that principle
+he was ever loyal.  Feeling, too, that it was the interest of France that
+he should succeed, he was even inspired--compared with others on the
+stage--by an almost lofty patriotism.
+
+Amiable by nature and by habit, he had preserved the most unimpaired
+good-humour throughout the horrible years which succeeded St.
+Bartholomew, during which he carried his life in his hand, and learned
+not to wear his heart upon his sleeve.  Without gratitude, without
+resentment, without fear, without remorse, entirely arbitrary, yet with
+the capacity to use all men's judgments; without convictions, save in
+regard to his dynastic interests, he possessed all the qualities,
+necessary to success.  He knew how to use his enemies.  He knew how to
+use his friends, to abuse them, and to throw them away.  He refused to
+assassinate Francis Alencon at the bidding of Henry III., but he
+attempted to procure the murder of the truest of his own friends, one of
+the noblest characters of the age--whose breast showed twelve scars
+received in his services--Agrippa D'Aubigne, because the honest soldier
+had refused to become his pimp--a service the King had implored upon his
+knees.
+
+Beneath the mask of perpetual careless good-humour, lurked the keenest
+eye, a subtle, restless, widely combining brain, and an iron will.
+Native sagacity had been tempered into consummate elasticity by the fiery
+atmosphere in which feebler natures had been dissolved.  His wit was as
+flashing and as quickly unsheathed as his sword.  Desperate, apparently
+reckless temerity on the battle-field was deliberately indulged in, that
+the world might be brought to recognise a hero and chieftain in a King.
+The do-nothings of the Merovingian line had been succeeded by the Pepins;
+to the effete Carlovingians had come a Capet; to the impotent Valois
+should come a worthier descendant of St. Louis.  This was shrewd Gascon
+calculation, aided by constitutional fearlessness.  When despatch-
+writing, invisible Philips, stargazing Rudolphs, and petticoated Henrys,
+sat upon the thrones of Europe, it was wholesome to show the world that
+there was a King left who could move about in the bustle and business of
+the age, and could charge as well as most soldiers at the head of his
+cavalry; that there was one more sovereign fit to reign over men, besides
+the glorious Virgin who governed England.
+
+Thus courageous, crafty, far-seeing, consistent, untiring, imperturbable,
+he was born to command, and had a right to reign.  He had need of the
+throne, and the throne had still more need of him.
+
+This then was the third Henry, representative of the third side of the
+triangle, the reformers of the kingdom.
+
+And before this bubbling cauldron of France, where intrigues, foreign and
+domestic, conflicting ambitions, stratagems, and hopes, were whirling in
+never-ceasing tumult, was it strange if the plain Netherland envoys
+should stand somewhat aghast?
+
+Yet it was necessary that they should ponder well the aspect of affairs;
+for all their hopes, the very existence of themselves and of their
+religion, depended upon the organization which should come of this chaos.
+
+It must be remembered, however, that those statesmen--even the wisest or
+the best-informed of them--could not take so correct a view of France and
+its politics as it is possible for us, after the lapse of three
+centuries, to do.  The interior leagues, subterranean schemes,
+conflicting factions, could only be guessed at; nor could the immediate
+future be predicted, even by such far-seeing politicians as William of
+Orange; at a distance, or Henry of Navarre, upon the spot.
+
+It was obvious to the Netherlanders that France, although torn by
+faction, was a great and powerful realm.  There had now been, with the
+brief exception of the lovers' war in 1580, a religious peace of eight
+years' duration.  The Huguenots had enjoyed tranquil exercise of their
+worship during that period, and they expressed perfect confidence in the
+good faith of the King.  That the cities were inordinately taxed to
+supply the luxury of the court could hardly be unknown to the
+Netherlanders.  Nevertheless they knew that the kingdom was the richest
+and most populous of Christendom, after that of Spain.  Its capital,
+already called by contemporaries the "compendium of the world," was
+described by travellers as "stupendous in extent and miraculous for its
+numbers."  It was even said to contain eight hundred thousand souls; and
+although, its actual population did not probably exceed three hundred and
+twenty thousand, yet this was more than double the number of London's
+inhabitants, and thrice as many as Antwerp could then boast, now that a
+great proportion of its foreign denizens had been scared away.  Paris was
+at least by one hundred thousand more populous than any city of Europe,
+except perhaps the remote and barbarous Moscow, while the secondary
+cities of France, Rouen in the north, Lyons in the centre, and Marseilles
+in the south, almost equalled in size, business, wealth, and numbers, the
+capitals of other countries.  In the whole kingdom were probably ten or
+twelve millions of inhabitants, nearly as many as in Spain, without her
+colonies, and perhaps three times the number that dwelt in England.
+
+In a military point of view, too, the alliance of France was most
+valuable to the contiguous Netherlands.  A few regiments of French
+troops, under the command of one of their experienced Marshals, could
+block up the Spaniards in the Walloon Provinces, effectually stop their
+operations against Ghent, Antwerp, and the other great cities of Flanders
+and Brabant, and, with the combined action of the United Provinces on the
+north, so surround and cripple the forces of Parma, as to reduce the
+power of Philip, after a few vigorous and well-concerted blows, to an
+absolute nullity in, the Low Countries.  As this result was of as vital
+importance to the real interests of France and of Europe, whether
+Protestant or Catholic, as it was to the Provinces, and as the French
+government had privately manifested a strong desire to oppose the
+progress of Spain towards universal empire, it was not surprising that
+the States General, not feeling capable of standing alone, should make
+their application to France.  This they had done with the knowledge and
+concurrence of the English government.  What lay upon the surface the
+Netherland statesmen saw and pondered well.  What lurked beneath, they
+surmised as shrewdly as they could, but it was impossible, with plummet
+and fathom-line ever in hand, to sound the way with perfect accuracy,
+where the quicksands were ever shifting, and the depth or shallowness of
+the course perpetually varying.  It was not easy to discover the
+intentions of a government which did not know its own intentions, and
+whose changing policy was controlled by so many hidden currents.
+
+Moreover, as already indicated, the envoys and those whom they
+represented had not the same means of arriving at a result as are granted
+to us.  Thanks to the liberality of many modern governments of Europe,
+the archives where the state-secrets of the buried centuries have so
+long mouldered, are now open to the student of history.  To him who
+has patience and industry many mysteries are thus revealed, which no
+political sagacity or critical acumen could have divined.  He leans over
+the shoulder of Philip the Second at his writing-table, as the King
+spells patiently out, with cipher-key in hand, the most concealed
+hieroglyphics of Parma or Guise or Mendoza.  He reads the secret thoughts
+of "Fabius,"--[The name usually assigned to Philip himself in the Paris-
+Simancas Correspondence.]--as that cunctative Roman scrawls his marginal
+apostilles on each despatch; he pries into all the stratagems of
+Camillus, Hortensius, Mucius, Julius, Tullius, and the rest of those
+ancient heroes who lent their names to the diplomatic masqueraders of
+the 16th century; he enters the cabinet of the deeply-pondering Burghley,
+and takes from the most private drawer the memoranda which record that
+minister's unutterable doubtings; he pulls from the dressing-gown folds
+of the stealthy, softly-gliding Walsingham the last secret which he has
+picked from the Emperor's pigeon-holes, or the Pope's pocket, and which,
+not Hatton, nor Buckhurst, nor Leicester, nor the Lord Treasurer, is to
+see; nobody but Elizabeth herself; he sits invisible at the most secret
+councils of the Nassaus and Barneveldt and Buys, or pores with Farnese
+over coming victories, and vast schemes of universal conquest; he reads
+the latest bit of scandal, the minutest characteristic of king or
+minister, chronicled by the gossiping Venetians for the edification of
+the Forty; and, after all this prying and eavesdropping, having seen the
+cross-purposes, the bribings, the windings, the fencings in the dark, he
+is not surprised, if those who were systematically deceived did not
+always arrive at correct conclusions.
+
+Noel de Caron, Seigneur de Schoneval, had been agent of the States at the
+French court at the time of the death of the Duke of Anjou.  Upon the
+occurrence of that event, La Mouillerie and Asseliers were deputed by the
+Provinces to King Henry III., in order to offer him the sovereignty,
+which they had intended to confer upon his brother.  Meantime that
+brother, just before his death, and with the privity of Henry, had been
+negotiating for a marriage with the younger daughter of Philip II.--an
+arrangement somewhat incompatible with his contemporaneous scheme to
+assume the sovereignty of Philip's revolted Provinces.  An attempt had
+been made at the same time to conciliate the Duke of Savoy, and invite
+him to the French court; but the Duc de Joyeuse, then on his return from
+Turin, was bringing the news, not only that the match with Anjou was not
+favored--which, as Anjou was dead, was of no great consequence--but that
+the Duke of Savoy was himself to espouse the Infanta, and was therefore
+compelled to decline the invitation to Paris, for fear of offending his
+father-in-law.  Other matters were in progress, to be afterwards
+indicated, very much interfering with the negotiations of the Netherland
+envoys.
+
+When La Mouillerie and Asseliers arrived at Rouen, on their road from
+Dieppe to Paris, they received a peremptory order from the Queen-Mother
+to proceed no farther.  This prohibition was brought by an unofficial
+personage, and was delivered, not to them, but to Des Pruneaux, French
+envoy to the States General, who had accompanied the envoys to France.
+
+After three weeks' time, during which they "kept themselves continually
+concealed in Rouen," there arrived in that city a young nephew of
+Secretary Brulart, who brought letters empowering him to hear what they
+had in charge for the King.  The envoys, not much flattered by such
+cavalier treatment on the part of him to, whom they were offering a
+crown, determined to digest the affront as they best might, and, to save
+time, opened the whole business to this subordinate stripling.  He
+received from them accordingly an ample memoir to be laid before his
+Majesty, and departed by the post the same night.  Then they waited ten
+days longer, concealed as if they had been thieves or spies, rather than
+the representatives of a friendly power, on a more than friendly errand.
+
+At last, on the 24th July 1854, after the deputies had been thus shut up
+a whole month, Secretary Brulart himself arrived from Fontainebleau.
+
+He stated that the King sent his royal thanks to the States for the offer
+which they had made him, and to the deputies in particular for taking the
+trouble of so long a journey; but that he did not find his realm in
+condition to undertake a foreign war so inopportunely.  In every other
+regard, his Majesty offered the States "all possible favours and
+pleasures."
+
+Certainly, after having been thus kept in prison for a month, the
+ambassadors had small cause to be contented with this very cold
+communication.  To be forbidden the royal presence, and to be turned out
+of the country without even an official and accredited answer to a
+communication in which they had offered the sovereignty of their
+fatherland, was not flattering to their dignity.  "We little thought,"
+said they to Brulart, after a brief consultation among themselves, "to
+receive such a reply as this.  It displeases us infinitely that his
+Majesty will not do us the honour to grant us an audience.  We must take
+the liberty of saying, that 'tis treating the States, our masters, with
+too much contempt.  Who ever heard before of refusing audience to public
+personages?  Kings often grant audience to mere letter-carriers.  Even
+the King of Spain never refused a hearing to the deputies from the
+Netherlands when they came to Spain to complain of his own government.
+The States General have sent envoys to many other kinds and princes, and
+they have instantly granted audience in every case.  His Majesty, too,
+has been very ill-informed of the contracts which we formerly made with
+the Duke of Anjou, and therefore a personal interview is the more
+necessary."  As the envoys were obstinate on the point of Paris, Brulart
+said "that the King, although he should himself be at Lyons, would not
+prevent any one from going to the capital on his own private affairs; but
+would unquestionably take it very ill if, they should visit that city in
+a public manner, and as deputies."
+
+Des Pruneaux professed himself "very grievous at this result, and
+desirous of a hundred deaths in consequence."
+
+They stated that they should be ready within a month to bring an army of
+3,000 horse and 13,000 foot into the field for the relief of Ghent,
+besides their military operations against Zutphen; and that the enemy had
+recently been ignominiously defeated in his attack upon Fort Lille, and
+had lost 2,000 of his best soldiers.
+
+Here were encouraging facts; and it certainly was worth the while of the
+French sovereign to pause a moment before rejecting without a hearing,
+the offer of such powerful and conveniently-situated provinces.
+
+Des Pruneaux, a man of probity and earnestness, but perhaps of
+insufficient ability to deal with such grave matters as now fell almost
+entirely upon his shoulders, soon afterwards obtained audience of the
+King.  Being most sincerely in favour of the annexation of the
+Netherlands to France, and feeling that now or never was the opportunity
+of bringing it about, he persuaded the King to send him back to the
+Provinces, in order to continue the negotiation directly with the States
+General.  The timidity and procrastination of the court could be overcome
+no further.
+
+The two Dutch envoys, who had stolen secretly to Paris, were indulged in
+a most barren and unmeaning interview with the Queen-Mother.  Before
+their departure from France, however, they had the advantage of much
+conversation with leading members of the royal council, of the
+parliaments of Paris and Rouen, and also with various persons professing
+the reformed religion.  They endeavoured thus to inform themselves, as
+well as they could, why the King made so much difficulty in accepting
+their propositions, and whether, and by what means, his Majesty could be
+induced to make war in their behalf upon the King of Spain.
+
+They were informed that, should Holland and Zeeland unite with the rest
+of the Netherlands, the King "without any doubt would undertake the cause
+most earnestly."  His councillors, also--even those who had been most
+active in dissuading his Majesty from such a policy--would then be
+unanimous in supporting the annexation of the Provinces and the war with
+Spain.  In such a contingency, with the potent assistance of Holland and
+Zeeland, the King would have little difficulty, within a very short time,
+in chasing every single Spaniard out of the Netherlands.  To further this
+end, many leading personages in France avowed to the envoys their
+determination "to venture their lives and their fortunes, and to use all
+the influence which they possessed at court."
+
+The same persons expressed their conviction that the King, once satisfied
+by the Provinces as to conditions and reasons, would cheerfully go into
+the war, without being deterred by any apprehension as to the power of
+Spain.  It was, however, fitting that each Province should chaffer as
+little as possible about details, but should give his Majesty every
+reasonable advantage.  They should remember that they were dealing with
+"a great, powerful monarch, who was putting his realm in jeopardy, and
+not with a Duke of Anjou, who had every thing to gain and nothing to
+lose."
+
+All the Huguenots, with whom the envoys conversed, were excessively
+sanguine.  Could the King be once brought they said, to promise the
+Netherlands his protection, there was not the least fear but that he
+would keep his word.  He would use all the means within his power; "yea,
+he would take the crown from his head," rather than turn back.  Although
+reluctant to commence a war with so powerful a sovereign, having once
+promised his help, he would keep his pledge to the utmost, "for he was a
+King of his word," and had never broken and would never break his faith
+with those of the reformed religion.
+
+Thus spoke the leading Huguenots of France, in confidential communication
+with the Netherland envoys, not many months before the famous edict of
+extermination, published at Nemours.
+
+At that moment the reformers were full of confidence; not foreseeing the
+long procession of battles and sieges which was soon to sweep through the
+land.  Notwithstanding the urgency of the Papists for their extirpation,
+they extolled loudly the liberty of religious worship which Calvinists,
+as well as Catholics, were enjoying in France, and pointed to the fact
+that the adherents of both religions were well received at court, and
+that they shared equally in offices of trust and dignity throughout the
+kingdom.
+
+The Netherland envoys themselves bore testimony to the undisturbed
+tranquillity and harmony in which the professors of both religions were
+living and worshipping side by side "without reproach or quarrel" in all
+the great cities which they had visited.  They expressed the conviction
+that the same toleration would be extended to all the Provinces when
+under French dominion; and, so far as their ancient constitutions and
+privileges were concerned, they were assured that the King of France
+would respect and maintain them with as much fidelity as the States could
+possibly desire.
+
+Des Pruneaux, accompanied by the two States' envoys, departed forthwith
+for the Netherlands.  On the 24th August, 1584 he delivered a discourse
+before the States General, in which he disclosed, in very general terms,
+the expectations of Henry III., and intimated very clearly that the
+different Provinces were to lose no time in making an unconditional offer
+to that monarch.  With regard to Holland and Zeeland he observed that he
+was provided with a special commission to those Estates.  It was not long
+before one Province after the other came to the conclusion to offer the
+sovereignty to the King without written conditions, but with a general
+understanding that their religious freedom and their ancient
+constitutions were to be sacredly respected.  Meantime, Des Pruneaux made
+his appearance in Holland and Zeeland, and declared the King's intentions
+of espousing the cause of the States, and of accepting the sovereignty of
+all the Provinces.  He distinctly observed, however, that it was as
+sovereign, not as protector, that his Majesty must be recognised in
+Holland and Zeeland, as well as in the rest of the country.
+
+Upon this grave question there was much debate and much difference of
+opinion.  Holland and Zeeland had never contemplated the possibility of
+accepting any foreign sovereignty, and the opponents of the present
+scheme were loud and angry, but very reasonable in their remarks.
+
+The French, they said, were no respecters of privileges nor of persons.
+The Duke of Anjou had deceived William of Orange and betrayed the
+Provinces.  Could they hope to see farther than that wisest and most
+experienced prince?  Had not the stout hearts of the Antwerp burghers
+proved a stronger defence to Brabant liberties than the "joyous entry" on
+the dread day of the "French fury," it would have fared ill then and for
+ever with the cause of freedom and religion in the Netherlands.  The King
+of France was a Papist, a Jesuit.  He was incapable of keeping his
+pledges.  Should they make the arrangement now proposed and confer the
+sovereignty upon him, he would forthwith make peace with Spain, and
+transfer the Provinces back to that crown in exchange for the duchy of
+Milan, which France had ever coveted.  The Netherlands, after a quarter
+of a century of fighting in defence of their hearths and altars, would
+find themselves handed over again, bound and fettered, to the tender
+mercies of the Spanish Inquisition.
+
+The Kings of France and of Spain always acted in concert, for religion
+was the most potent of bonds.  Witness the sacrifice of thousands of
+French soldiers to Alva by their own sovereign at Mons, witness the fate
+of Genlis, witness the bloody night of St. Bartholomew, witness the
+Antwerp fury.  Men cited and relied upon the advice of William of Orange
+as to this negotiation with France.  But Orange never dreamed of going so
+far as now proposed.  He was ever careful to keep the Provinces of
+Holland and Zeeland safe from every foreign master.  That spot was to be
+holy ground.  Not out of personal ambition.  God forbid that they, should
+accuse his memory of any such impurity, but because he wished one safe
+refuge for the spirit of freedom.
+
+Many years long they had held out by land and sea against the Spaniards,
+and should they now, because this Des Pruneaux shrugged his shoulders, be
+so alarmed as to open the door to the same Spaniard wearing the disguise
+of a Frenchman?
+
+Prince Maurice also made a brief representation to the States' Assembly
+of Holland, in which, without distinctly opposing the negotiation with
+France, he warned them not to proceed too hastily with so grave a matter.
+He reminded them how far they had gone in the presentation of the
+sovereignty to his late father, and requested them, in their dealings
+with France, not to forget his interests and those of his family.  He
+reminded them of the position of that family, overladen with debt
+contracted in their service alone.  He concluded by offering most
+affectionately his service in any way in which he, young and
+inexperienced as he knew himself to be, might be thought useful; as he
+was long since resolved to devote his life to the welfare of his country.
+
+These passionate appeals were answered with equal vehemence by those who
+had made up their minds to try the chances of the French sovereignty.
+Des Pruneaux, meanwhile, was travelling from province to province, and
+from city to city, using the arguments which have already been
+sufficiently indicated, and urging a speedy compliance with the French
+King's propositions.  At the same time, in accordance with his
+instructions, he was very cautious to confine himself to generalities,
+and to avoid hampering his royal master with the restrictions which had
+proved so irksome to the Duke of Anjou.
+
+"The States General demanded a copy of my speech," he wrote the day after
+that harangue had been delivered, "but I only gave them a brief outline;
+extending myself [25th August, 1584] as little as I possibly could,
+according to the intention and command of your Majesty.  When I got here,
+I found them without hope of our assistance, and terribly agitated by the
+partizans of Spain.  There was some danger of their going over in a panic
+to the enemy.  They are now much changed again, and the Spanish partizans
+are beginning to lose their tongues.  I invite them, if they intend to
+address your Majesty, to proceed as they ought towards a veritably grand
+monarch, without hunting up any of their old quibbles, or reservations of
+provinces, or any thing else which could inspire suspicion.  I have sent
+into Gelderland and Friesland, for I find I must stay here in Holland and
+Zeeland myself.  These two provinces are the gates and ramparts through
+which we must enter.  'Tis, in my opinion, what could be called superb,
+to command all the sea, thus subject to the crown of France.  And France,
+too, with assistance of this country, will command the land as well.
+They are much astonished here, however, that I communicate nothing of the
+intention of your Majesty.  They say that if your Majesty does not accept
+this offer of their country, your Majesty puts the rope around their
+necks."
+
+The French envoy was more and more struck with the brilliancy of the
+prize offered to his master.  "If the King gets these Provinces," said he
+to Catharine, "'t will be the most splendid inheritance which Prince has
+ever conquered."
+
+In a very few weeks the assiduity of the envoy and of the French party
+was successful.  All the other provinces had very soon repeated the offer
+which they had previously made through Asseliers and La Mouillerie.  By
+the beginning of October the opposition of Holland was vanquished.  The
+estates of that Province--three cities excepted, however--determined "to
+request England and France to assume a joint protectorate over the
+Netherlands.  In case the King of France should refuse this proposition,
+they were then ready to receive him as prince and master, with knowledge
+and consent of the Queen of England, and on such conditions as the United
+States should approve."
+
+Immediately afterwards, the General Assembly of all the States determined
+to offer the sovereignty to King Henry "on conditions to be afterwards
+settled."
+
+Des Pruneaux, thus triumphant, received a gold chain of the value of two
+thousand florins, and departed before the end of October for France.
+
+The departure of the solemn embassy to that country, for the purpose of
+offering the sovereignty to the King, was delayed till the beginning of
+January.  Meantime it is necessary to cast a glance at the position of
+England in relation to these important transactions.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Diplomatic adroitness consists mainly in the power to deceive
+Enmity between Lutherans and Calvinists
+Find our destruction in our immoderate desire for peace
+German-Lutheran sixteenth-century idea of religious freedom
+Intentions of a government which did not know its own intentions
+Lord was better pleased with adverbs than nouns
+Make sheep of yourselves, and the wolf will eat you
+Necessity of kingship
+Neighbour's blazing roof was likely soon to fire their own
+Nor is the spirit of the age to be pleaded in defence
+Pauper client who dreamed of justice at the hands of law
+Seem as if born to make the idea of royalty ridiculous
+Shutting the stable-door when the steed is stolen
+String of homely proverbs worthy of Sancho Panza
+The very word toleration was to sound like an insult
+There was apathy where there should have been enthusiasm
+Tranquillity rather of paralysis than of health
+Write so illegibly or express himself so awkwardly
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v37
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
+From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609
+
+By John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+History 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
+Wasting time fruitlessly is sharpening the knife for himself
+With something of feline and feminine duplicity
+'Twas pity, he said, that both should be heretics
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v38
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
+From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609
+
+By John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+History of The United Netherlands, 1585
+
+
+Alexander Farnese, The Duke of Parma
+
+
+CHAPTER V., Part 1.
+
+     Position and Character of Farnese--Preparations for Antwerp Siege--
+     Its Characteristics--Foresight of William the Silent--Sainte
+     Aldegonde, the Burgomaster--Anarchy in Antwerp--Character of Sainte
+     Aldegonde--Admiral Treslong--Justinus de Nassau--Hohenlo--Opposition
+     to the Plan of Orange--Liefkenshoek--Head--Quarters of Parma at
+     Kalloo--Difficulty of supplying the City--Results of not piercing
+     the Dykes--Preliminaries of the Siege--Successes of the Spaniards--
+     Energy of Farnese with Sword and Pen--His Correspondence with the
+     Antwerpers--Progress of the Bridge--Impoverished Condition of Parma
+     --Patriots attempt Bois-le-Duc--Their Misconduct--Failure of the
+     Enterprise--The Scheldt Bridge completed--Description of the
+     Structure
+
+The negotiations between France and the Netherlands have been massed, in
+order to present a connected and distinct view of the relative attitude
+of the different countries of Europe.  The conferences and diplomatic
+protocolling had resulted in nothing positive; but it is very necessary
+for the reader to understand the negative effects of all this
+dissimulation and palace-politics upon the destiny of the new
+commonwealth, and upon Christendom at large.  The League had now achieved
+a great triumph; the King of France had virtually abdicated, and it was
+now requisite for the King of Navarre, the Netherlands, and Queen
+Elizabeth, to draw more closely together than before, if the last hope
+of forming a counter-league were not to be abandoned.  The next step in
+political combination was therefore a solemn embassy of the States-
+General to England.  Before detailing those negotiations, however, it is
+proper to direct attention to the external public events which had been
+unrolling themselves in the Provinces, contemporaneously with the secret
+history which has been detailed in the preceding chapters.
+
+By presenting in their natural groupings various distinct occurrences,
+rather than by detailing them in strict chronological order, a clearer
+view of the whole picture will be furnished than could be done by
+intermingling personages, transactions, and scenery, according to the
+arbitrary command of Time alone.
+
+The Netherlands, by the death of Orange, had been left without a head.
+On the other hand, the Spanish party had never been so fortunate in their
+chief at any period since the destiny of the two nations had been blended
+with each other.  Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma, was a general and a
+politician, whose character had been steadily ripening since he came into
+the command of the country.  He was now thirty-seven years of age--with
+the experience of a sexagenarian.  No longer the impetuous, arbitrary,
+hot-headed youth, whose intelligence and courage hardly atoned for his
+insolent manner and stormy career, he had become pensive, modest, almost
+gentle.  His genius was rapid in conception, patient in combination,
+fertile in expedients, adamantine in the endurance or suffering; for
+never did a heroic general and a noble army of veterans manifest more
+military virtue in the support of an infamous cause than did Parma and
+his handful of Italians and Spaniards.  That which they considered to be
+their duty they performed.  The work before them they did with all their
+might.
+
+Alexander had vanquished the rebellion in the Celtic provinces, by the
+masterly diplomacy and liberal bribery which have been related in a
+former work.  Artois, Hainault, Douay, Orchies, with the rich cities of
+Lille, Tournay, Valenciennes, Arras, and other important places, were now
+the property of Philip.  These unhappy and misguided lands, however, were
+already reaping the reward of their treason.  Beggared, trampled upon,
+plundered, despised, they were at once the prey of the Spaniards, and the
+cause that their sister-states, which still held out, were placed in more
+desperate condition than ever.  They were also, even in their abject
+plight, made still more forlorn by the forays of Balagny, who continued
+in command of Cambray.  Catharine de' Medici claimed that city as her
+property, by will of the Duke of Anjou.  A strange title--founded upon
+the treason and cowardice of her favourite son--but one which, for a
+time, was made good by the possession maintained by Balagny.  That
+usurper meantime, with a shrewd eye to his own interests, pronounced the
+truce of Cambray, which was soon afterwards arranged, from year to year,
+by permission of Philip, as a "most excellent milch-cow;" and he
+continued to fill his pails at the expense of the "reconciled" provinces,
+till they were thoroughly exhausted.
+
+This large south-western section of the Netherlands being thus
+permanently re-annexed to the Spanish crown, while Holland, Zeeland, and
+the other provinces, already constituting the new Dutch republic, were
+more obstinate in their hatred of Philip than ever, there remained the
+rich and fertile territory of Flanders and Brabant as the great
+debateable land.  Here were the royal and political capital, Brussels,
+the commercial capital, Antwerp, with Mechlin, Dendermonde, Vilvoorde,
+and other places of inferior importance, all to be struggled for to the
+death.  With the subjection of this district the last bulwark between the
+new commonwealth and the old empire would be overthrown, and Spain and
+Holland would then meet face to face.
+
+If there had ever been a time when every nerve in Protestant Christendom
+should be strained to weld all those provinces together into one great
+commonwealth, as a bulwark for European liberty, rather than to allow
+them to be broken into stepping-stones, over which absolutism could
+stride across France and Holland into England, that moment had arrived.
+Every sacrifice should have been cheerfully made by all Netherlanders,
+the uttermost possible subsidies and auxiliaries should have been
+furnished by all the friends of civil and religious liberty in every land
+to save Flanders and Brabant from their impending fate.
+
+No man felt more keenly the importance of the business in which he was
+engaged than Parma.  He knew his work exactly, and he meant to execute it
+thoroughly.  Antwerp was the hinge on which the fate of the whole
+country, perhaps of all Christendom, was to turn.  "If we get Antwerp,"
+said the Spanish soldiers--so frequently that the expression passed into
+a proverb--"you shall all go to mass with us; if you save Antwerp, we
+will all go to conventicle with you."
+
+Alexander rose with the difficulty and responsibility of his situation.
+His vivid, almost poetic intellect formed its schemes with perfect
+distinctness.  Every episode in his great and, as he himself termed it,
+his "heroic enterprise," was traced out beforehand with the tranquil
+vision of creative genius; and he was prepared to convert his conceptions
+into reality, with the aid of an iron nature that never knew fatigue or
+fear.
+
+But the obstacles were many.  Alexander's master sat in his cabinet with
+his head full of Mucio, Don Antonio, and Queen Elizabeth; while Alexander
+himself was left neglected, almost forgotten.  His army was shrinking to
+a nullity.  The demands upon him were enormous, his finances delusive,
+almost exhausted.  To drain an ocean dry he had nothing but a sieve.
+What was his position?  He could bring into the field perhaps eight or
+ten thousand men over and above the necessary garrisons.  He had before
+him Brussels, Antwerp, Mechlin, Ghent, Dendermonde, and other powerful
+places, which he was to subjugate.  Here was a problem not easy of
+solution.  Given an army of eight thousand, more or less, to reduce
+therewith in the least possible time, half-a-dozen cities; each
+containing fifteen or twenty thousand men able to bear arms.  To besiege
+these places in form was obviously a mere chimera.  Assault, battery, and
+surprises--these were all out of the question.
+
+Yet Alexander was never more truly heroic than in this position of vast
+entanglement.  Untiring, uncomplaining, thoughtful of others, prodigal of
+himself, generous, modest, brave; with so much intellect and so much
+devotion to what he considered his duty, he deserved to be a patriot and
+a champion of the right, rather than an instrument of despotism.
+
+And thus he paused for a moment--with much work already accomplished,
+but his hardest life-task before him; still in the noon of manhood,
+a fine martial figure, standing, spear in hand, full in the sunlight,
+though all the scene around him was wrapped in gloom--a noble, commanding
+shape, entitled to the admiration which the energetic display of great
+powers, however unscrupulous, must always command.  A dark, meridional
+physiognomy, a quick; alert, imposing head; jet black, close-clipped
+hair; a bold eagle's face, with full, bright, restless eye; a man rarely
+reposing, always ready, never alarmed; living in the saddle, with harness
+on his back--such was the Prince of Parma; matured and mellowed, but
+still unharmed by time.
+
+The cities of Flanders and Brabant he determined to reduce by gaining
+command of the Scheldt.  The five principal ones Ghent, Dendermonde,
+Mechlin, Brussels Antwerp, lie narrow circle, at distances from each
+other varying from five miles to thirty, and are all strung together by
+the great Netherland river or its tributaries.  His plan was immensely
+furthered by the success of Balthasar Gerard, an ally whom Alexander had
+despised and distrusted, even while he employed him.  The assassination
+of Orange was better to Parma than forty thousand men.  A crowd of allies
+instantly started up for him, in the shape of treason, faintheartedness,
+envy, jealousy, insubordination, within the walls of every beleaguered
+city.  Alexander knew well how to deal with those auxiliaries.  Letters,
+artfully concocted, full of conciliation and of promise, were circulated
+in every council-room, in almost every house.
+
+The surrender of Ghent--brought about by the governor's eloquence, aided
+by the golden arguments which he knew so well how to advance--had by the
+middle of September (19th Sept. 1584), put him in possession of West
+Flanders, with the important exception of the coast.  Dendermonde
+capitulated at a still earlier day; while the fall of Brussels, which
+held out till many persons had been starved to death, was deferred till
+the 10th March of the following year, and that of Mechlin till midsummer.
+
+The details of the military or political operations, by which the
+reduction of most of these places were effected, possess but little
+interest.  The siege of Antwerp, however, was one of the most striking
+events of the age; and although the change in military tactics and the
+progress of science may have rendered this leaguer of less technical
+importance than it possessed in the sixteenth century, yet the
+illustration that it affords of the splendid abilities of Parma, of the
+most cultivated mode of warfare in use at that period, and of the
+internal politics by which the country was then regulated, make it
+necessary to dwell upon the details of an episode which must ever possess
+enduring interest.
+
+It is agreeable to reflect, too, that the fame of the general is not
+polluted with the wholesale butchery, which has stained the reputation of
+other Spanish commanders so indelibly.  There was no killing for the mere
+love of slaughter.  With but few exceptions, there was no murder in cold
+blood; and the many lives that were laid down upon those watery dykes
+were sacrificed at least in bold, open combat; in a contest, the ruling
+spirits of which were patriotism, or at least honour.
+
+It is instructive, too, to observe the diligence and accuracy with which
+the best lights of the age were brought to bear upon the great problem
+which Parma had undertaken to solve.  All the science then at command was
+applied both by the Prince and by his burgher antagonists to the
+advancement of their ends.  Hydrostatics, hydraulics, engineering,
+navigation, gunnery, pyrotechnics, mining, geometry, were summoned as
+broadly, vigorously, and intelligently to the destruction or preservation
+of a trembling city, as they have ever been, in more commercial days, to
+advance a financial or manufacturing purpose.  Land converted into water,
+and water into land, castles built upon the breast of rapid streams,
+rivers turned from their beds and taught new courses; the distant ocean
+driven across ancient bulwarks, mines dug below the sea, and canals made
+to percolate obscene morasses--which the red hand of war, by the very
+act, converted into blooming gardens--a mighty stream bridged and
+mastered in the very teeth of winter, floating ice-bergs, ocean-tides,
+and an alert and desperate foe, ever ready with fleets and armies and
+batteries--such were the materials of which the great spectacle was
+composed; a spectacle which enchained the attention of Europe for seven
+months, and on the result of which, it was thought, depended the fate of
+all the Netherlands, and perhaps of all Christendom.
+
+Antwerp, then the commercial centre of the Netherlands and of Europe,
+stands upon the Scheldt.  The river, flowing straight, broad, and full
+along the verge of the city, subtends the arc into which the place
+arranges itself as it falls back from the shore.  Two thousand ships of
+the largest capacity then known might easily find room in its ample
+harbours.  The stream, nearly half a mile in width, and sixty feet in
+depth, with a tidal rise and fall of eleven feet, moves, for a few miles,
+in a broad and steady current between the provinces of Brabant and
+Flanders.  Then, dividing itself into many ample estuaries, and gathering
+up the level isles of Zeeland into its bosom, it seems to sweep out with
+them into the northern ocean.  Here, at the junction of the river and the
+sea, lay the perpetual hope of Antwerp, for in all these creeks and
+currents swarmed the fleets of the Zeelanders, that hardy and amphibious
+race, with which few soldiers or mariners could successfully contend, on
+land or water.
+
+Even from the beginning of the year 1584 Parma had been from time to time
+threatening Antwerp.  The victim instinctively felt that its enemy was
+poising and hovering over head, although he still delayed to strike.
+Early in the summer Sainte Aldegonde, Recorder Martini, and other
+official personages, were at Delft, upon the occasion of the christening
+ceremonies of Frederic Henry, youngest child of Orange.  The Prince,
+at that moment, was aware of the plans of Parma, and held a long
+conversation with his friends upon the measures which he desired to see
+immediately undertaken.  Unmindful of his usual hospitality, he insisted
+that these gentlemen should immediately leave for Antwerp.  Alexander
+Farnese, he assured them, had taken the firm determination to possess
+himself of that place, without further delay.  He had privately signified
+his purpose of laying the axe at once to the root of the tree, believing
+that with the fall of the commercial capital the infant confederacy of
+the United States would fall likewise.  In order to accomplish this
+object, he would forthwith attempt to make himself master of the banks
+of the Scheldt, and would even throw a bridge across the stream, if his
+plans were not instantly circumvented.
+
+William of Orange then briefly indicated his plan; adding that he had no
+fears for the result; and assuring his friends, who expressed much
+anxiety on the subject, that if Parma really did attempt the siege of
+Antwerp it should be his ruin.  The plan was perfectly simple.  The city
+stood upon a river.  It was practicable, although extremely hazardous,
+for the enemy to bridge that river, and by so doing ultimately to reduce
+the place.  But the ocean could not be bridged; and it was quite possible
+to convert Antwerp, for a season, into an ocean-port.  Standing alone
+upon an island, with the sea flowing around it, and with full and free
+marine communication with Zeeland and Holland, it might safely bid
+defiance to the land-forces, even of so great a commander as Parma.  To
+the furtherance of this great measure of defence, it was necessary to
+destroy certain bulwarks, the chief of (10th June, 1584) which was called
+the Blaw-garen Dyke; and Sainte Aldegonde was therefore requested to
+return to the city, in order to cause this task to be executed without
+delay.
+
+Nothing could be more judicious than this advice.  The low lands along
+the Scheldt were protected against marine encroachments, and the river
+itself was confined to its bed, by a magnificent system of dykes, which
+extended along its edge towards the ocean, in parallel lines.  Other
+barriers of a similar nature ran in oblique directions, through the wide
+open pasture lands, which they maintained in green fertility, against the
+ever-threatening sea.  The Blaw-garen, to which the prince mainly
+alluded, was connected with the great dyke upon the right bank of the
+Scheldt.  Between this and the city, another bulwark called the Kowenstyn
+Dyke, crossed the country at right angles to the river, and joined the
+other two at a point, not very far from Lillo, where the States had a
+strong fortress.
+
+The country in this neighbourhood was low, spongy, full of creeks, small
+meres, and the old bed of the Scheldt.  Orange, therefore, made it very
+clear, that by piercing the great dyke just described, such a vast body
+of water would be made to pour over the land as to submerge the Kowenstyn
+also, the only other obstacle in the passage of fleets from Zeeland to
+Antwerp.  The city would then be connected with the sea and its islands,
+by so vast an expanse of navigable water, that any attempt on Parma's
+part to cut off supplies and succour would be hopeless.  Antwerp would
+laugh the idea of famine to scorn; and although this immunity would be
+purchased by the sacrifice of a large amount of agricultural territory
+the price so paid was but a slender one, when the existence of the
+capital, and with it perhaps of the whole confederacy was at stake.
+
+Sainte Aldegonde and Martini suggested, that, as there would be some
+opposition to the measure proposed, it might be as well to make a similar
+attempt on the Flemish side, in preference, by breaking through the dykes
+in the neighbourhood of Saftingen.  Orange replied, by demonstrating that
+the land in the region which he had indicated was of a character to
+ensure success, while in the other direction there were certain very
+unfavourable circumstances which rendered the issue doubtful.  The result
+was destined to prove the sagacity of the Prince, for it will be shown in
+the sequel, that the Saftingen plan, afterwards really carried out, was
+rather advantageous than detrimental to the enemy's projects.
+
+Sainte Aldegonde, accordingly, yielded to the arguments and entreaties of
+his friend, and repaired without delay to Antwerp.
+
+The advice of William the Silent--as will soon be related--was not acted
+upon; and, within a few weeks after it had been given, he was in his
+grave.  Nowhere was his loss more severely felt than in Antwerp.  It
+seemed, said a contemporary, that with his death had died all authority.
+The Prince was the only head which the many-membered body of that very
+democratic city ever spontaneously obeyed.  Antwerp was a small republic
+--in time of peace intelligently and successfully administered--which in
+the season of a great foreign war, amid plagues, tumults, famine, and
+internal rebellion, required the firm hand and the clear brain of a
+single chief.  That brain and hand had been possessed by Orange alone.
+
+Before his death he had desired that Sainte Aldegonde should accept the
+office of burgomaster of the city.  Nominally, the position was not so
+elevated as were many of the posts which that distinguished patriot had
+filled.  In reality, it was as responsible and arduous a place as could
+be offered to any man's acceptance throughout the country.  Sainte
+Aldegonde consented, not without some reluctance.  He felt that there
+was odium to be incurred; he knew that much would be expected of him,
+and that his means would be limited.  His powers would be liable to a
+constant and various restraint.  His measures were sure to be the subject
+of perpetual cavil.  If the city were besieged, there were nearly one
+hundred thousand mouths to feed, and nearly one hundred thousand tongues
+to dispute about furnishing the food.
+
+For the government of Antwerp had been degenerating from a well-organised
+municipal republicanism into anarchy.  The clashing of the various bodies
+exercising power had become incessant and intolerable.  The burgomaster
+was charged with the chief executive authority, both for peace and war.
+Nevertheless he had but a single vote in the board of magistrates, where
+a majority decided.  Moreover, he could not always attend the sessions,
+because he was also member of the council of Brabant.  Important measures
+might therefore be decided by the magistracy, not only against his
+judgment, but without his knowledge.  Then there was a variety of boards
+or colleges, all arrogating concurrent--which in truth was conflicting-
+authority.  There was the board of militia-colonels, which claimed great
+powers.  Here, too, the burgomaster was nominally the chief, but he might
+be voted down by a majority, and of course was often absent.  Then there
+were sixteen captains who came into the colonels' sessions whenever they
+liked, and had their word to say upon all subjects broached.  If they
+were refused a hearing, they were backed by eighty other captains, who
+were ready at any moment to carry every disputed point before the
+"broadcouncil."
+
+There were a college of ward-masters, a college of select men, a college
+of deacons, a college of ammunition, of fortification, of ship-building,
+all claiming equal authority, and all wrangling among themselves; and
+there was a college of "peace-makers," who wrangled more than all the
+rest together.
+
+Once a week there was a session of the board or general council.  Dire
+was the hissing and confusion, as the hydra heads of the multitudinous
+government were laid together.  Heads of colleges, presidents of
+chambers, militia-chieftains; magistrates, ward-masters, deans of
+fishmongers, of tailors, gardeners, butchers, all met together pell-mell;
+and there was no predominant authority.  This was not a convenient
+working machinery for a city threatened with a siege by the first captain
+of the age.  Moreover there was a deficiency of regular troops: The
+burgher-militia were well trained and courageous, but not distinguished
+for their docility.  There was also a regiment of English under Colonel
+Morgan, a soldier of great experience, and much respected; but, as
+Stephen Le Sieur said, "this force, unless seconded with more, was but a
+breakfast for the enemy."  Unfortunately, too, the insubordination, which
+was so ripe in the city, seemed to affect these auxiliaries.  A mutiny
+broke out among the English troops.  Many deserted to Parma, some escaped
+to England, and it was not until Morgan had beheaded Captain Lee and
+Captain Powell, that discipline could be restored.
+
+And into this scene of wild and deafening confusion came Philip de
+Marnix, Lord of Sainte Aldegonde.
+
+There were few more brilliant characters than he in all Christendom.  He
+was a man, of a most rare and versatile genius.  Educated in Geneva at
+the very feet of Calvin, he had drunk, like mother's milk, the strong and
+bitter waters of the stern reformer's, creed; but he had in after life
+attempted, although hardly with success, to lift himself to the height of
+a general religious toleration.  He had also been trained in the severe
+and thorough literary culture which characterised that rigid school.  He
+was a scholar, ripe and rare; no holiday trifler in the gardens of
+learning.  He spoke and wrote Latin like his native tongue.  He could
+compose poignant Greek epigrams.  He was so familiar with Hebrew, that he
+had rendered the Psalms of David out of the original into flowing Flemish
+verse, for the use of the reformed churches.  That he possessed the
+modern tongues of civilized Europe, Spanish, Italian, French, and German,
+was a matter of course.  He was a profound jurisconsult, capable of
+holding debate against all competitors upon any point of theory or
+practice of law, civil, municipal, international.  He was a learned
+theologian, and had often proved himself a match for the doctors,
+bishops, or rabbin of Europe, in highest argument of dogma, creed, or
+tradition.  He was a practised diplomatist, constantly employed in
+delicate and difficult negotiations by William the Silent, who ever
+admired his genius, cherished his friendship, and relied upon his
+character.  He was an eloquent orator, whose memorable harangue, beyond
+all his other efforts, at the diet of Worms, had made the German princes
+hang their heads with shame, when, taking a broad and philosophical view
+of the Netherland matter, he had shown that it was the great question of
+Europe; that Nether Germany was all Germany; that Protestantism could not
+be unravelled into shreds; that there was but one cause in Christendom--
+that of absolutism against national liberty, Papacy against the reform;
+and that the seventeen Provinces were to be assisted in building
+themselves into an eternal barrier against Spain, or that the "burning
+mark of shame would be branded upon the forehead of Germany;" that the
+war, in short, was to be met by her on the threshold; or else that it
+would come to seek her at home--a prophecy which the horrible Thirty
+Years' War was in after time most signally to verify.
+
+He was a poet of vigour and originality, for he had accomplished what has
+been achieved by few; he had composed a national hymn, whose strophes, as
+soon as heard, struck a chord in every Netherland heart, and for three
+centuries long have rung like a clarion wherever the Netherland tongue is
+spoken.  "Wilhelmus van Nassouwe," regarded simply as a literary
+composition, has many of the qualities which an ode demands; an
+electrical touch upon the sentiments, a throb of patriotism, sympathetic
+tenderness, a dash of indignation, with rhythmical harmony and graceful
+expression; and thus it has rung from millions of lips, from generation
+to generation.
+
+He was a soldier, courageous, untiring, prompt in action, useful in
+council, and had distinguished himself in many a hard-fought field.
+Taken prisoner in the sanguinary skirmish at Maaslandssluys, he had been
+confined a year, and, for more than three months, had never laid his
+head, as he declared, upon the pillow without commending his soul as for
+the last time to his Maker, expecting daily the order for his immediate
+execution, and escaping his doom only because William the Silent
+proclaimed that the proudest head among the Spanish prisoners should fall
+to avenge his death; so that he was ultimately exchanged against the
+veteran Mondragon.
+
+From the incipient stages of the revolt he had been foremost among the
+patriots.  He was supposed to be the author of the famous "Compromise of
+the Nobles," that earliest and most conspicuous of the state-papers of
+the republic, and of many other important political documents; and he had
+contributed to general literature many works of European celebrity, of
+which the 'Roman Bee-Hive' was the most universally known.
+
+Scholar, theologian, diplomatist, swordsman, orator, poet, pamphleteer,
+he had genius for all things, and was eminent in all.  He was even famous
+for his dancing, and had composed an intelligent and philosophical
+treatise upon the value of that amusement, as an agent of civilisation,
+and as a counteractor of the grosser pleasures of the table to which
+Upper and Nether Germans were too much addicted.
+
+Of ancient Savoyard extraction, and something of a southern nature, he
+had been born in Brussels, and was national to the heart's core.
+
+A man of interesting, sympathetic presence; of a physiognomy where many
+of the attaching and attractive qualities of his nature revealed
+themselves; with crisp curling hair, surmounting a tall, expansive
+forehead--full of benevolence, idealism, and quick perceptions; broad,
+brown, melancholy eyes, overflowing with tenderness; a lean and haggard
+cheek, a rugged Flemish nose; a thin flexible mouth; a slender moustache,
+and a peaked and meagre beard; so appeared Sainte Aldegonde in the forty-
+seventh year of his age, when he came to command in Antwerp.
+
+Yet after all--many-sided, accomplished, courageous, energetic, as he
+was--it may be doubted whether he was the man for the hour or the post.
+He was too impressionable; he had too much of the temperament of genius.
+Without being fickle, he had, besides his versatility of intellect, a
+character which had much facility in turning; not, indeed, in the breeze
+of self-interest, but because he seemed placed in so high and clear an
+atmosphere of thought that he was often acted upon and swayed by subtle
+and invisible influences.  At any rate his conduct was sometimes
+inexplicable.  He had been strangely fascinated by the ignoble Duke of
+Anjou, and, in the sequel, it will be found that he was destined to
+experience other magnetic or magical impulses, which were once thought
+suspicious, and have remained mysterious even to the present day.
+
+He was imaginative.  He was capable of broad and boundless hopes.  He was
+sometimes prone to deep despair.  His nature was exquisitely tempered;
+too fine and polished a blade to be wielded among those hydra-heads by
+which he was, now surrounded; and for which the stunning sledgehammer of
+arbitrary force was sometimes necessary.
+
+He was perhaps deficient in that gift, which no training and no culture
+can bestow, and which comes from above alone by birth-right divine--that
+which men willingly call master, authority; the effluence which came so
+naturally from the tranquil eyes of William the Silent.
+
+Nevertheless, Sainte Aldegonde was prepared to do his best, and all his
+best was to be tasked to the utmost.  His position was rendered still
+more difficult by the unruly nature of some of his coordinates.
+
+"From the first day to the last," said one who lived in Antwerp during
+the siege, "the mistakes committed in the city were incredible."  It had
+long been obvious that a siege was contemplated by Parma.  A liberal sum
+of money had been voted by the States-General, of which Holland and
+Zeeland contributed a very large proportion (two hundred thousand
+florins); the city itself voted another large subsidy, and an order was
+issued to purchase at once and import into the city at least a year's
+supply of every kind of provisions of life and munitions of war.
+
+William de Blois, Lord of Treslong, Admiral of Holland and Zeeland, was
+requested to carry out this order, and superintend the victualling of
+Antwerp.  But Treslong at once became troublesome.  He was one of the old
+"beggars of the sea," a leader in the wild band who had taken possession
+of the Brill, in the teeth of Alva, and so laid the foundation of the
+republic.  An impetuous noble, of wealthy family, high connections, and
+refractory temper--a daring sailor, ever ready for any rash adventure,
+but possessed of a very moderate share of prudence or administrative
+ability, he fell into loose and lawless courses on the death of Orange,
+whose firm hand was needed to control him.  The French negotiation had
+excited his profound disgust, and knowing Sainte Aldegonde to be heart
+and soul in favour of that alliance, he was in no haste whatever to carry
+out his orders with regard to Antwerp.  He had also an insignificant
+quarrel with President Meetkerk.  The Prince of Parma--ever on the watch
+for such opportunities--was soon informed of the Admiral's discontent,
+and had long been acquainted with his turbulent character.  Alexander at
+once began to inflame his jealousy and soothe his vanity by letters and
+messengers, urging upon him the propriety of reconciling himself with the
+King, and promising him large rewards and magnificent employments in the
+royal service.  Even the splendid insignia of the Golden Fleece were
+dangled before his eyes.  It is certain that the bold Hollander was not
+seduced by these visions, but there is no doubt that he listened to the
+voice of the tempter.  He unquestionably neglected his duty.  Week after
+week he remained, at Ostend, sneering at the French and quaffing huge
+draughts in honour of Queen Elizabeth.  At last, after much time had
+elapsed, he agreed to victual Antwerp if he could be furnished with
+thirty krom-stevens,--a peculiar kind of vessel, not to be found in
+Zeeland.  The krom-stevens were sent to him from Holland.  Then, hearing
+that his negligence had been censured by the States-General, he became
+more obstinate than ever, and went up and down proclaiming that if people
+made themselves disagreeable to him he would do that which should make
+all the women and children in the Netherlands shriek and tremble.  What
+this nameless horror was to be he never divulged, but meantime he went
+down to Middelburg, and swore that not a boat-load of corn should go up
+to Antwerp until two members of the magistracy, whom he considered
+unpleasant, had been dismissed from their office.  Wearied with all this
+bluster, and imbued with grave suspicion as to his motives, the States at
+last rose upon their High Admiral and threw him into prison.  He was
+accused of many high crimes and misdemeanours, and, it was thought, would
+be tried for his life.  He was suspected and even openly accused of
+having been tampered with by Spain, but there was at any rate a
+deficiency of proof.
+
+"Treslong is apprehended," wrote Davison to Burghley, "and, is charged to
+have been the cause that the fleet passed not up to Antwerp.  He is
+suspected to have otherwise forgotten himself, but whether justly or not
+will appear by his trial.  Meantime he is kept in the common prison of
+Middelburg, a treatment which it is thought they would not offer him if
+they had not somewhat of importance against him."
+
+He was subsequently released at the intercession of Queen Elizabeth, and
+passed some time in England.  He was afterwards put upon trial, but no
+accuser appearing to sustain the charges against him, he was eventually
+released.  He never received a command in the navy again, but the very
+rich sinecures of Grand Falconer and Chief Forester of Holland were
+bestowed upon him, and he appears to have ended his days in peace and
+plenty.
+
+He was succeeded in the post of Admiral of Holland and Zeeland by
+Justinus de Nassau, natural son of William the Silent, a young man of
+much promise but of little experience.
+
+General Count Hohenlo, too, lieutenant for young Maurice, and virtual
+commander-in-chief of the States' forces, was apt to give much trouble.
+A German noble, of ancient descent and princely rank; brave to temerity,
+making a jest of danger; and riding into a foray as if to a merry-making;
+often furiously intoxicated, and always turbulent and uncertain; a
+handsome, dissipated cavalier, with long curls floating over his
+shoulders, an imposing aristocratic face, and a graceful, athletic
+figure, he needed some cool brain and steady hand to guide him--valuable
+as he was to fulfil any daring project but was hardly willing to accept
+the authority of a burgomaster.  While the young Maurice yet needed
+tutelage, while "the sapling was growing into the tree," Hohenlo was a
+dangerous chieftain and a most disorderly lieutenant.
+
+With such municipal machinery and such coadjutors had Sainte Aldegonde to
+deal, while, meantime, the delusive French negociation was dragging its
+slow length along, and while Parma was noiselessly and patiently
+proceeding with his preparations.
+
+The burgomaster--for Sainte Aldegonde, in whom vulgar ambition was not a
+foible, had refused the dignity and title of Margrave of Antwerp, which
+had been tendered him--had neglected no effort towards carrying into
+effect the advice of Orange, given almost with his latest breath.  The
+manner in which that advice was received furnished a striking
+illustration of the defective machinery which has been pourtrayed.
+
+Upon his return from Delft, Sainte Aldegonde had summoned a meeting of
+the magistracy of Antwerp.  He laid before the board the information
+communicated by Orange as to Parma's intentions.  He also explained the
+scheme proposed for their frustration, and urged the measures indicated
+with so much earnestness that his fellow-magistrates were convinced.  The
+order was passed for piercing the Blauw-garen Dyke, and Sainte Aldegonde,
+with some engineers, was requested to view the locality, and to take
+order for the immediate fulfilment of the plan.
+
+Unfortunately there were many other boards in session besides that of the
+Schepens, many other motives at work besides those of patriotism.  The
+guild of butchers held a meeting, so soon as the plan suggested was
+known, and resolved with all their strength to oppose its execution.
+
+The butchers were indeed furious.  Twelve thousand oxen grazed annually
+upon the pastures which were about to be submerged, and it was
+represented as unreasonable that all this good flesh and blood should be
+sacrificed.  At a meeting of the magistrates on the following day,
+sixteen butchers, delegates from their guild, made their appearance,
+hoarse with indignation.  They represented the vast damage which would be
+inflicted upon the estates of many private individuals by the proposed
+inundation, by this sudden conversion of teeming meadows, fertile farms,
+thriving homesteads, prolific orchards, into sandy desolation.  Above all
+they depicted, in glowing colours and with natural pathos, the vast
+destruction of beef which was imminent, and they urged--with some show of
+reason--that if Parma were really about to reduce Antwerp by famine, his
+scheme certainly would not be obstructed by the premature annihilation of
+these wholesome supplies.
+
+That the Scheldt could be, closed in any manner was, however, they said,
+a preposterous conception.  That it could be bridged was the dream of a
+lunatic.  Even if it were possible to construct a bridge, and probable
+that the Zeelanders and Antwerpers would look on with folded arms while
+the work proceeded, the fabric, when completed, would be at the mercy of
+the ice-floods of the winter and the enormous power of the ocean-tides.
+The Prince of Orange himself, on a former occasion, when Antwerp was
+Spanish, had attempted to close the river with rafts, sunken piles, and
+other obstructions, but the whole had been swept away, like a dam of
+bulrushes, by the first descent of the ice-blocks of winter.  It was
+witless to believe that Parma contemplated any such measure, and utterly
+monstrous to believe in its success.
+
+Thus far the butchers.  Soon afterwards came sixteen colonels of militia,
+as representatives of their branch of the multiform government.  These
+personages, attended by many officers of inferior degree, sustained the
+position of the butchers with many voluble and vehement arguments.  Not
+the least convincing of their conclusions was the assurance that it would
+be idle for the authorities to attempt the destruction of the dyke,
+seeing that the municipal soldiery itself would prevent the measure by
+main force, at all hazards, and without regard to their own or others'
+lives.
+
+The violence of this opposition, and the fear of a serious internecine
+conflict at so critical a juncture, proved fatal to the project.  Much
+precious time was lost, and when at last the inhabitants of the city
+awoke from their delusion, it was to find that repentance, as usual, had
+come many hours too late.
+
+For Parma had been acting while his antagonists had been wrangling.  He
+was hampered in his means, but he was assisted by what now seems the
+incredible supineness of the Netherlanders.  Even Sainte Aldegonde did
+not believe in the possibility of erecting the bridge; not a man in
+Antwerp seemed to believe it.  "The preparations," said one who lived in
+the city, "went on before our very noses, and every one was ridiculing
+the Spanish commander's folly."
+
+A very great error was, moreover, committed in abandoning Herenthals to
+the enemy.  The city of Antwerp governed Brabant, and it would have been
+far better for the authorities of the commercial capital to succour this
+small but important city, and, by so doing, to protract for a long time
+their own defence.  Mondragon saw and rejoiced over the mistake.  "Now
+'tis easy to see that the Prince of Orange is dead," said the veteran, as
+he took possession, in the Icing's name, of the forsaken Herenthals.
+
+Early in the summer, Parma's operations had been, of necessity,
+desultory.  He had sprinkled forts up and down the Scheldt, and had
+gradually been gaining control of the navigation upon that river.  Thus
+Ghent and Dendermonde, Vilvoorde, Brussels, and Antwerp, had each been
+isolated, and all prevented from rendering mutual assistance.  Below
+Antwerp, however, was to be the scene of the great struggle.  Here,
+within nine miles of the city, were two forts belonging to the States,
+on opposite sides of the stream, Lille, and Liefkenshoek.  It was
+important for the Spanish commander to gain possession of both; before
+commencing his contemplated bridge.
+
+Unfortunately for the States, the fortifications of Liefkenshoek, on the
+Flemish side of the river, had not been entirely completed.  Eight
+hundred men lay within it, under Colonel John Pettin of Arras, an old
+patriotic officer of much experience.  Parma, after reconnoitring the
+place in person, despatched the famous Viscount of Ghent--now called
+Marquis of Roubaix and Richebourg--to carry it by assault.  The Marquis
+sent one hundred men from his Walloon legion, under two officers, in whom
+he had confidence, to attempt a surprise, with orders, if not successful,
+to return without delay.  They were successful.  The one hundred gained
+entrance into the fort at a point where the defences had not been put
+into sufficient repair.
+
+They were immediately followed by Richebourg, at the head of his
+regiment.  The day was a fatal one.  It was the 10th July, 1584 and
+William of Orange was falling at Delft by the hand of Balthazar Gerard.
+Liefkenshoek was carried at a blow.  Of the eight hundred patriots in the
+place, scarcely a man escaped.  Four hundred were put to the sword, the
+others were hunted into the river, when nearly all were drowned.  Of the
+royalists a single man was killed, and two or three more were wounded.
+"Our Lord was pleased," wrote Parma piously to Philip, that we "should
+cut the throats of four hundred of them in a single instant, and that a
+great many more should be killed upon the dykes; so that I believe very
+few to have escaped with life.  We lost one man, besides two or three
+wounded."  A few were taken prisoners, and among them was the commander
+John Pettin.  He was at once brought before Richebourg, who was standing
+in the presence of the Prince of Parma.  The Marquis drew his sword,
+walked calmly up to the captured Colonel, and ran him through the body.
+Pettin fell dead upon the spot.  The Prince was displeased.  "Too much
+choler, Marquis, too much choler,"--said he reprovingly.  "Troppa colera,
+Signor Marchese, a questa."  But Richebourg knew better.  He had, while
+still Viscount of Ghent, carried on a year previously a parallel intrigue
+with the royalists and the patriots.  The Prince of Parma had bid highest
+for his services, and had, accordingly, found him a most effectual
+instrument in completing the reduction of the Walloon Provinces.  The
+Prince was not aware, however, that his brave but venal ally had, at the
+very same moment, been secretly treating with William of Orange; and as
+it so happened that Colonel Pettin had been the agent in the unsuccessful
+negotiation, it was possible that his duplicity would now be exposed.
+The Marquis had, therefore, been prompt to place his old confederate in
+the condition wherein men tell no tales, and if contemporary chronicles
+did not bely him, it was not the first time that he had been guilty of
+such cold-blooded murder.  The choler had not been superfluous.
+
+The fortress of Lille was garrisoned by the Antwerp volunteers, called
+the "Young Bachelors."  Teligny, the brave son of the illustrious "Iron-
+armed" La None, commanded in chief: and he had, besides the militia, a
+company of French under Captain Gascoigne, and four hundred Scotchmen
+under Colonel Morgan--perhaps two thousand men in all.
+
+Mondragon, hero of the famous submarine expeditions of Philipsland and
+Zierickzee, was ordered by Parma to take the place at every hazard.  With
+five thousand men--a large proportion of the Spanish effective force at
+that moment--the veteran placed himself before the fort, taking
+possession, of the beautiful country-house and farm of Lille, where he
+planted his batteries, and commenced a regular cannonade.  The place was
+stronger than Liefkenshoek, however, and Teligny thoroughly comprehended
+the importance of maintaining it for the States.  Mondragon dug mines,
+and Teligny countermined.  The Spanish daily cannonade was cheerfully
+responded to by the besieged, and by the time Mondragon had shot away
+fifty thousand pounds of powder, he found that he had made no impression
+upon the fortress, while the number of his troops had been diminishing
+with great rapidity.  Mondragon was not so impetuous as he had been on
+many former occasions.  He never ventured an assault.  At last Teligny
+made a sortie at the head of a considerable force.  A warm action
+succeeded, at the conclusion of which, without a decided advantage on
+either side, the sluice-gate in the fortress was opened, and the torrent
+of the Scheldt, swollen by a high tide, was suddenly poured upon the
+Spaniards.  Assailed at once by the fire from the Lillo batteries, and by
+the waters of the river, they were forced to a rapid retreat.  This they
+effected with great loss, but with signal courage; struggling breast high
+in the waves, and bearing off their field-pieces in their arms in the
+very face of the enemy.
+
+Three weeks long Mondragon had been before Fort Lille, and two thousand
+of his soldiers had been slain in the trenches.  The attempt was now
+abandoned.  Parma directed permanent batteries to be established at
+Lillo-house, at Oordam, and at other places along the river, and
+proceeded quietly with his carefully-matured plan for closing the river.
+
+His own camp was in the neighbourhood of the villages of Beveren, Kalloo,
+and Borght.  Of the ten thousand foot and seventeen hundred horse, which
+composed at the moment his whole army, about one-half lay with him, while
+the remainder were with Count Peter Ernest Mansfield, in the
+neighbourhood of Stabroek.  Thus the Prince occupied a position on the
+left bank of the Scheldt, nearly opposite Antwerp, while Mansfield was
+stationed upon the right bank, and ten miles farther down the river.
+From a point in the neighbourhood of Kalloo, Alexander intended to throw
+a fortified bridge to the opposite shore.  When completed, all traffic up
+the river from Zeeland would be cut off; and as the country on the land-
+side; abut Antwerp, had been now reduced, the city would be effectually
+isolated.  If the Prince could hold his bridge until famine should break
+the resistance of the burghers, Antwerp would fall into his hands.
+
+His head-quarters were at Kalloo, and this obscure spot soon underwent
+a strange transformation.  A drowsy placid little village--with a modest
+parish spire peeping above a clump of poplars, and with half a dozen
+cottages, with storks nests on their roofs, sprinkled here and there
+among pastures and orchards--suddenly saw itself changed as it were into
+a thriving bustling town; for, saving the white tents which dotted the
+green turf in every direction, the aspect of the scene was, for a time,
+almost pacific.  It was as if, some great manufacturing enterprise had
+been set on foot, and the world had suddenly awoke to the hidden
+capabilities of the situation.
+
+A great dockyard and arsenal suddenly revealed themselves--rising like an
+exhalation--where ship-builders, armourers, blacksmiths, joiners,
+carpenters, caulkers, gravers, were hard at work all day long.  The din
+and hum of what seemed a peaceful industry were unceasing.  From Kalloo,
+Parma dug a canal twelve miles long to a place called Steeken, hundreds
+of pioneers being kept constantly at work with pick and spade till it
+was completed.  Through this artificial channel--so soon as Ghent and
+Dendermonde had fallen--came floats of timber, fleets of boats laden with
+provisions of life and munitions of death, building-materials, and every
+other requisite for the great undertaking, all to be disembarked at
+Kalloo.  The object was a temporary and destructive one, but it remains a
+monument of the great general's energy and a useful public improvement.
+The amelioration of the fenny and barren soil, called the Waesland, is
+dated from that epoch; and the spot in Europe which is the most prolific,
+and which nourishes the largest proportion of inhabitants to the square
+mile, is precisely the long dreary swamp which the Prince thus drained
+for military purposes, and converted into a garden.  Drusus and Corbulo,
+in the days of the Roman Empire, had done the same good service for their
+barbarian foes.
+
+At Kalloo itself, all the shipwrights, cutlers, masons, brass-founders,
+rope-makers, anchor-forgers, sailors, boatmen, of Flanders and Brabant,
+with a herd of bakers, brewers, and butchers, were congregated by express
+order of Parma.  In the little church itself the main workshop was
+established, and all day long, week after week, month after month, the
+sound of saw and hammer, adze and plane, the rattle of machinery, the cry
+of sentinels, the cheers of mariners, resounded, where but lately had
+been heard nothing save the drowsy homily and the devout hymn of rustic
+worship.
+
+Nevertheless the summer and autumn wore on, and still the bridge was
+hardly commenced.  The navigation of the river--although impeded and
+rendered dangerous by the forts which Parma held along the banks--was
+still open; and, so long as the price of corn in Antwerp remained three
+or four times as high as the sum for which it could be purchased in
+Holland and Zeeland, there were plenty of daredevil skippers ready to
+bring cargoes.  Fleets of fly-boats, convoyed by armed vessels, were
+perpetually running the gauntlet.  Sharp actions on shore between the
+forts of the patriots and those of Parma, which were all intermingled
+promiscuously along the banks, and amphibious and most bloody encounters
+on ship-board, dyke, and in the stream itself, between the wild
+Zeelanders and the fierce pikemen of Italy and Spain, were of repeated
+occurrence.  Many a lagging craft fell into the enemy's hands, when, as a
+matter of course, the men, women, and children, on board, were horribly
+mutilated by the Spaniards, and were then sent drifting in their boat
+with the tide--their arms, legs, and ears lopped off up to the city, in
+order that--the dangerous nature of this provision-trade might be fully
+illustrated.
+
+Yet that traffic still went on.  It would have continued until Antwerp
+had been victualled for more than a year, had not the city authorities,
+in the plentitude of their wisdom, thought proper to issue orders for its
+regulation.  On the 25th October (1584) a census was taken, when the
+number of persons inside the walls was found to be ninety thousand.  For
+this population it was estimated that 300,000 veertell, or about 900,000
+bushels of corn, would be required annually.  The grain was coming in
+very fast, notwithstanding the perilous nature of the trade; for wheat
+could be bought in Holland for fifty florins the last, or about fifteen
+pence sterling the bushel, while it was worth five or six florins
+the veertel, or about four shillings the bushel, in Antwerp.
+
+The magistrates now committed a folly more stupendous than it seemed
+possible for human creatures, under such circumstances, to compass.  They
+established a maximum upon corn.  The skippers who had run their cargoes
+through the gauntlet, all the way from Flushing to Antwerp, found on
+their arrival, that, instead of being rewarded, according to the natural
+laws of demand and supply, they were required to exchange their wheat,
+rye, butter, and beef, against the exact sum which the Board of Schepens
+thought proper to consider a reasonable remuneration.  Moreover, in order
+to prevent the accumulation of provisions in private magazines, it was
+enacted, that all consumers of grain should be compelled to make their
+purchases directly from the ships.  These two measures were almost as
+fatal as the preservation of the Blaw-garen Dyke, in the interest of the
+butchers.  Winter and famine were staring the city in the face, and the
+maximum now stood sentinel against the gate, to prevent the admission of
+food.  The traffic ceased without a struggle.  Parma himself could not
+have better arranged the blockade.
+
+Meantime a vast and almost general inundation had taken place.  The
+aspect of the country for many miles around was strange and desolate.
+The sluices had been opened in the neighbourhood of Saftingen, on, the
+Flemish side, so that all the way from Hulst the waters were out, and
+flowed nearly to the gates of Antwerp.  A wide and shallow sea rolled
+over the fertile plains, while church-steeples, the tops of lofty trees,
+and here and there the turrets of a castle, scarcely lifted themselves
+above the black waters; the peasants' houses, the granges, whole rural
+villages, having entirely disappeared.  The high grounds of Doel, of
+Kalloo, and Beveren, where Alexander was established, remained out of
+reach of the flood.  Far below, on the opposite side of the river, other
+sluices had been opened, and the sea had burst over the wide, level
+plain.  The villages of Wilmerdonk, Orderen, Ekeren, were changed to
+islands in the ocean, while all the other hamlets, for miles around, were
+utterly submerged.
+
+Still, however, the Blaw-garen Dyke and its companion the Kowenstyn
+remained obstinately above the waters, forming a present and more fatal
+obstruction to the communication between Antwerp and Zeeland than would
+be furnished even by the threatened and secretly-advancing bridge across
+the Scheldt.  Had Orange's prudent advice been taken, the city had been
+safe.  Over the prostrate dykes, whose destruction he had so warmly
+urged, the ocean would have rolled quite to the gates of Antwerp, and it
+would have been as easy to bridge the North Sea as to control the free
+navigation of the patriots over so wide a surface.
+
+When it was too late, the butchers, and colonels, and captains, became
+penitent enough.  An order was passed, by acclamation, in November, to do
+what Orange had recommended in June.  It was decreed that the Blaw-garen
+and the Kowenstyn should be pierced.  Alas, the hour had long gone by.
+Alexander of Parma was not the man to undertake the construction of a
+bridge across the river, at a vast expense, and at the same time to
+permit the destruction of the already existing barrier.  There had been a
+time for such a deed.  The Seigneur de Kowenstyn, who had a castle and
+manor on and near the dyke which bore his name, had repeatedly urged upon
+the Antwerp magistracy the propriety of piercing this bulwark, even after
+their refusal to destroy the outer barrier.  Sainte Aldegonde, who
+vehemently urged the measure, protested that his hair had stood on end,
+when he found, after repeated entreaty, that the project was rejected.
+The Seigneur de Kowenstyn, disgusted and indignant, forswore his
+patriotism, and went over to Parma.  The dyke fell into the hands of the
+enemy.  And now from Stabroek, where old Mansfeid lay with his army, all
+the way across the flooded country, ran the great bulwark, strengthened
+with new palisade-work and block-houses, bristling with Spanish cannon,
+pike, and arquebus, even to the bank of the Scheldt, in the immediate
+vicinity of Fort Lille.  At the angle of its junction with the main dyke
+of the river's bank, a strong fortress called Holy Cross (Santa Cruz) had
+been constructed.  That fortress and the whole line of the Kowenstyn were
+held in the iron grip of Mondragon.  To wrench it from him would be no
+child's play.  Five new strong redoubts upon the dyke, and five or six
+thousand Spaniards established there, made the enterprise more formidable
+than it would have been in June.  It had been better to sacrifice the
+twelve thousand oxen.  Twelve thousand Hollanders might now be
+slaughtered, and still the dyke remain above the waves.
+
+Here was the key to the fate of Antwerp.
+
+On the other hand, the opening of the Saftingen Sluice had done Parma's
+work for him.  Even there, too, Orange had been prophetic.  Kalloo was
+high and dry, but Alexander had experienced some difficulty in bringing a
+fleet of thirty vessels, laden with cannon and other valuable materials,
+from Ghent along the Scheldt, into his encampment, because it was
+necessary for them, before reaching their destination, to pass in front
+of Antwerp.  The inundation, together with a rupture in the Dyke of
+Borght, furnished him with a watery road; over which his fleet completely
+avoided the city, and came in triumph to Kalloo.
+
+Sainte Aldegonde, much provoked by this masterly movement on the part of
+Parma, had followed the little squadron closely with some armed vessels
+from the city.  A sharp action had succeeded, in which the burgomaster,
+not being properly sustained by the Zeeland ships on which he relied, had
+been defeated.  Admiral Jacob Jacobzoon behaved with so little spirit on
+the occasion that he acquired with the Antwerp populace the name of "Run-
+away Jacob," "Koppen gaet loppen;" and Sainte Aldegonde declared, that,
+but for his cowardice, the fleet of Parma would have fallen into their
+hands.  The burgomaster himself narrowly escaped becoming a prisoner, and
+owed his safety only to the swiftness of his barge, which was called the
+"Flying Devil."
+
+The patriots, in order to counteract similar enterprises in future, now
+erected a sconce, which they called Fort Teligny; upon the ruptured dyke
+of Borght, directly in front of the Borght blockhouse, belonging to the
+Spaniards, and just opposite Fort Hoboken.  Here, in this narrow passage,
+close under the walls of Antwerp, where friends and foes were brought
+closely, face to face, was the scene of many a sanguinary skirmish, from
+the commencement of the siege until its close.
+
+Still the bridge was believed to be a mere fable, a chimaera.  Parma, men
+said, had become a lunatic from pride.  It was as easy to make the
+Netherlands submit to the yoke of the Inquisition as to put a bridle on
+the Scheldt.  Its depth; breadth, the ice-floods of a northern winter,
+the neighbourhood of the Zeeland fleets, the activity of the Antwerp
+authorities, all were pledges that the attempt would be signally
+frustrated.
+
+And they should have been pledges--more than enough.  Unfortunately,
+however, there was dissension within, and no chieftain in the field, no
+sage in the council, of sufficient authority to sustain the whole burthen
+of the war, and to direct all the energies of the commonwealth.  Orange
+was dead.  His son, one day to become the most illustrious military
+commander in Europe, was a boy of seventeen, nominally captain-general,
+but in reality but a youthful apprentice to his art.  Hohenlo was wild,
+wilful, and obstinate.  Young William Lewis Nassau, already a soldier of
+marked abilities, was fully occupied in Friesland, where he was
+stadholder, and where he had quite enough to do in making head against
+the Spanish governor and general, the veteran Verdugo: Military
+operations against Zutphen distracted the attention of the States, which
+should have been fixed upon Antwerp.
+
+Admiral Treslong, as we have seen, was refractory, the cause of great
+delinquency on the part of the fleets, and of infinite disaster to the
+commonwealth.  More than all, the French negotiation was betraying the
+States into indolence and hesitation; and creating a schism between the
+leading politicians of the country.  Several thousand French troops,
+under Monsieur d'Allaynes, were daily expected, but never arrived; and
+thus, while English and French partisans were plotting and counter-
+plotting, while a delusive diplomacy was usurping the place of
+lansquenettes and gun-boats--the only possible agents at that moment to
+preserve Antwerp--the bridge of Parma was slowly advancing.  Before the
+winter had closed in, the preparatory palisades had been finished.
+
+Between Kalloo and Ordam, upon the opposite side, a sandbar had been
+discovered in the river's bed, which diminished the depth of the stream,
+and rendered the pile-driving comparatively easy.  The breadth of the
+Scheldt at this passage was twenty-four hundred feet; its depth, sixty
+feet.  Upon the Flemish side, near Kalloo, a strong fort was erected,
+called Saint Mary, in honour of the blessed Virgin, to whom the whole
+siege of Antwerp had been dedicated from the beginning.  On the opposite
+bank was a similar fort, flamed Philip, for the King.  From each of these
+two points, thus fortified, a framework of heavy timber, supported upon
+huge piles, had been carried so far into the stream on either side that
+the distance between the ends had at last been reduced to thirteen
+hundred feet.  The breadth of the roadway--formed of strong sleepers
+firmly bound together--was twelve feet, along which block-houses of great
+thickness were placed to defend the whole against assault.
+
+Thus far the work had been comparatively easy.  To bridge the remaining
+open portion of the river, however, where its current was deepest and
+strongest, and where the action of tide, tempest, and icebergs, would be
+most formidable, seemed a desperate undertaking; for as the enterprise
+advanced, this narrow open space became the scene of daily amphibious
+encounters between the soldiers and sailors of Parma and the forces of
+the States.  Unfortunately for the patriots, it was only skirmishing.
+Had a strong, concerted attack, in large force, from Holland and Zeeland
+below and from the city above, been agreed upon, there was hardly a
+period, until very late in the winter, when it might not have had the
+best chances of success.  With a vigorous commander against him, Parma,
+weak in men, and at his wits' end for money, might, in a few hours, have
+seen the labour of several months hopelessly annihilated.  On the other
+hand, the Prince was ably seconded by his lieutenant, Marquis Richebourg,
+to whom had been delegated the immediate superintendence of the bridge-
+building in its minutest details.  He was never idle.  Audacious,
+indefatigable, ubiquitous, he at least atoned by energy and brilliant
+courage for his famous treason of the preceding year, while his striking
+and now rapidly approaching doom upon the very scene of his present
+labours, made him appear to have been building a magnificent though
+fleeting monument to his own memory.
+
+Sainte Aldegonde, shut up in Antwerp, and hampered by dissension within
+and obstinate jealousy without the walls, did all in his power to
+frustrate the enemy's enterprise and animate the patriots.  Through the
+whole of the autumn and early winter, he had urged the States of Holland
+and Zeeland to make use of the long winter nights, when moonless and
+stormy, to attempt the destruction of Parma's undertaking, but the fatal
+influences already indicated were more efficient against Antwerp than
+even the genius of Farnese; and nothing came of the burgomaster's
+entreaties save desultory skirmishing and unsuccessful enterprises.  An
+especial misfortune happened in one of these midnight undertakings.
+Teligny ventured forth in a row-barge, with scarcely any companions, to
+notify the Zeelanders of a contemplated movement, in which their co-
+operation was desired.  It was proposed that the Antwerp troops should
+make a fictitious demonstration upon Fort Ordam, while at the same moment
+the States' troops from Fort Lillo should make an assault upon the forts
+on Kowenstyn Dyke; and in this important enterprise the Zeeland vessels
+were requested to assist.  But the brave Teligny nearly forfeited his
+life by his rashness, and his services were, for a long time, lost to the
+cause of liberty.  It had been better to send a less valuable officer
+upon such hazardous yet subordinate service.  The drip of his oars was
+heard in the darkness.  He was pursued by a number of armed barges,
+attacked, wounded severely in the shoulder, and captured.  He threw his
+letters overboard, but they were fished out of the water, carried to
+Parma, and deciphered, so that the projected attack upon the Kowenstyn
+was discovered, and, of necessity, deferred.  As for Teligny, he was
+taken, as a most valuable prize, into the enemy's camp, and was soon
+afterwards thrust into prison at Tournay, where he remained six years--
+one year longer than the period which his illustrious father had been
+obliged to consume in the infamous dungeon at Mons.  Few disasters could
+have been more keenly felt by the States than the loss of this brilliant
+and devoted French chieftain, who, young as he was, had already become
+very dear to the republic; and Sainte Aldegonde was severely blamed for
+sending so eminent a personage on that dangerous expedition, and for
+sending him, too, with an insufficient convoy.
+
+Still Alexander felt uncertain as to the result.  He was determined to
+secure Antwerp, but he yet thought it possible to secure it by
+negotiation.  The enigmatical policy maintained by France perplexed him;
+for it did not seem possible that so much apparent solemnity and
+earnestness were destined to lead to an impotent and infamous conclusion.
+He was left, too, for a long time in ignorance of his own master's secret
+schemes, he was at liberty to guess, and to guess only, as to the
+projects of the league, he was without adequate means to carry out to a
+certain triumph his magnificent enterprise, and he was in constant alarm
+lest he should be suddenly assailed by an overwhelming French force.  Had
+a man sat upon the throne of Henry III., at that moment, Parma's bridge-
+making and dyke-fortifying skilful as they were--would have been all in
+vain.  Meantime, in uncertainty as to the great issue, but resolved to
+hold firmly to his purpose, he made repeated conciliatory offers to the
+States with one hand, while he steadily prosecuted his aggressive schemes
+with the other.
+
+Parma had become really gentle, almost affectionate, towards the
+Netherlanders.  He had not the disposition of an Alva to smite and to
+blast, to exterminate the rebels and heretics with fire and sword, with
+the axe, the rack, and the gallows.  Provided they would renounce the
+great object of the contest, he seemed really desirous that they should
+escape further chastisement; but to admit the worship of God according to
+the reformed creed, was with him an inconceivable idea.  To do so was
+both unrighteous and impolitic.  He had been brought up to believe that
+mankind could be saved from eternal perdition only by believing in the
+infallibility of the Bishop of Rome; that the only keys to eternal
+paradise were in the hands of St. Peter's representative.  Moreover, he
+instinctively felt that within this religious liberty which the
+Netherlanders claimed was hidden the germ of civil liberty; and though no
+bigger than a grain of mustard-seed, it was necessary to destroy it at
+once; for of course the idea of civil liberty could not enter the brain
+of the brilliant general of Philip II.
+
+On the 13th of November he addressed a letter to the magistracy and
+broad-council of Antwerp.  He asserted that the instigators of the
+rebellion were not seeking to further the common weal, but their own
+private ends.  Especially had this been the ruling motive with the prince
+of Orange and the Duke of Anjou, both of whom God had removed from the
+world, in order to manifest to the States their own weakness, and the
+omnipotence of Philip, whose, prosperity the Lord was constantly
+increasing.  It was now more than time for the authorities of the country
+to have regard for themselves, and for the miseries of the poor people.
+The affection Which he had always felt for the Provinces from which he
+had himself sprung and the favours which he had received from them in his
+youth, had often moved him to propose measures, which, before God and his
+conscience, he believed adequate to the restoration of peace.  But his
+letters had been concealed or falsely interpreted by the late Prince of
+Orange, who had sought nothing but to spread desolation over the land,
+and to shed the blood of the innocent.  He now wrote once more, and for
+the last time, in all fervour and earnestness, to implore them to take
+compassion on their own wives and children and forlorn fatherland, to
+turn their eyes backward on the peace and prosperity which they had
+formerly enjoyed when obedient to his Majesty, and to cast a glance
+around them upon the miseries which were so universal since the
+rebellion.  He exhorted them to close their ears to the insidious tongues
+of those who were leading them into delusion as to the benevolence and
+paternal sweetness of their natural lord and master, which were even now
+so boundless that he did not hesitate once more to offer them his entire
+forgiveness.  If they chose to negotiate, they would find everything
+granted that with right and reason could be proposed.  The Prince
+concluded by declaring that he made these advances not from any doubt as
+to the successful issue of the military operations in which he was
+engaged, but simply out of paternal anxiety for the happiness of the
+Provinces.  Did they remain obstinate, their ultimate conditions would be
+rendered still more severe, and themselves, not he, would be responsible
+for the misery and the bloodshed to ensue.
+
+Ten days afterwards, the magistrates, thus addressed--after communication
+with the broad-council--answered Parma's.  23rd Nov., letter manfully,
+copiously, and with the customary but superfluous historical sketch.
+They begged leave to entertain a doubt as to the paternal sweetness of a
+king who had dealt so long in racks and gibbets.  With Parma's own
+mother, as they told the Prince, the Netherlanders had once made a
+treaty, by which the right to worship God according to their consciences
+had been secured; yet for maintaining that treaty they had been devoted
+to indiscriminate destruction, and their land made desolate with fire and
+sword.  Men had been massacred by thousands, who had never been heard in
+their own defence, and who had never been accused of any crime, "save
+that they had assembled together in the name of God, to pray to Him
+through their only mediator and advocate Jesus Christ, according to His
+command."
+
+The axis of the revolt was the religious question; and it was impossible
+to hope anything from a monarch who was himself a slave of the
+Inquisition, and who had less independence of action than that enjoyed by
+Jews and Turks, according to the express permission of the Pope.
+Therefore they informed Parma that they had done with Philip for ever,
+and that in consequence of the extraordinary wisdom, justice, and
+moderation, of the French King, they had offered him the sovereignty of
+their land, and had implored his protection.
+
+They paid a tribute to the character of Farnese, who after gaining
+infinite glory in arms, had manifested so much gentleness and disposition
+to conciliate.  They doubted not that he would, if he possessed the
+power, have guided the royal councils to better and more generous
+results, and protested that they would not have delayed to throw
+themselves into his arms, had they been assured that he was authorized to
+admit that which alone could form the basis of a successful negotiation--
+religious freedom.  They would in such case have been willing to close
+with him, without talking about other conditions than such as his
+Highness in his discretion and sweetness might think reasonable.
+
+Moreover, as they observed in conclusion, they were precluded, by their
+present relations with France, from entering into any other negotiation;
+nor could they listen to any such proposals without deserving to be
+stigmatized as the most lewd, blasphemous, and thankless mortals, that
+ever cumbered the earth.
+
+Being under equal obligations both to the Union and to France, they
+announced that Parma's overtures would be laid before the French
+government and the assembly of the States-General.
+
+A day was to come, perhaps, when it would hardly seem lewdness and
+blasphemy for the Netherlanders to doubt the extraordinary justice and
+wisdom of the French King.  Meantime, it cannot be denied that they were
+at least loyal to their own engagements, and long-suffering where they
+had trusted and given their hearts.
+
+Parma replied by another letter, dated December 3rd.  He assured the
+citizens that Henry III. was far too discreet, and much too good a friend
+to Philip II., to countenance this rebellion.  If he were to take up
+their quarrel, however, the King of Spain had a thousand means of foiling
+all his attempts.  As to the religious question--which they affirmed to
+be the sole cause of the war--he was not inclined to waste words upon
+that subject; nevertheless, so far as he in his simplicity could
+understand the true nature of a Christian, he could not believe that it
+comported with the doctrines of Jesus, whom they called their only
+mediator, nor with the dictates of conscience, to take up arms against
+their lawful king, nor to burn, rob, plunder, pierce dykes, overwhelm
+their fatherland, and reduce all things to misery and chaos, in the name
+of religion.
+
+Thus moralizing and dogmatizing, the Prince concluded his letter, and so
+the correspondence terminated.  This last despatch was communicated at
+once both to the States-General and to the French government, and
+remained unanswered.  Soon afterwards the Netherlands and England, France
+and Spain, were engaged in that vast game of delusion which has been
+described in the preceding chapters.  Meantime both Antwerp and Parma
+remained among the deluded, and were left to fight out their battle on
+their own resources.
+
+Having found it impossible to subdue Antwerp by his rhetoric, Alexander
+proceeded with his bridge.  It is impossible not to admire the steadiness
+and ingenuity with which the Prince persisted in his plans, the courage
+with which he bore up against the parsimony and neglect of his sovereign,
+the compassionate tenderness which he manifested for his patient little
+army.  So much intellectual energy commands enthusiasm, while the
+supineness on the other side sometimes excites indignation.  There is
+even a danger of being entrapped into sympathy with tyranny, when the
+cause of tyranny is maintained by genius; and of being surprised into
+indifference for human liberty, when the sacred interests of liberty are
+endangered by self-interest, perverseness, and folly.
+
+Even Sainte Aldegonde did not believe that the bridge could be completed.
+His fears were that the city would be ruined rather by the cessation of
+its commerce than by want of daily food.  Already, after the capture of
+Liefkenshoek and the death of Orange, the panic among commercial people
+had been so intense that seventy or eighty merchants, representing the
+most wealthy mercantile firms in Antwerp, made their escape from the
+place, as if it had been smitten with pestilence, or were already in the
+hands of Parma.  All such refugees were ordered to return on peril of
+forfeiting their property.  Few came back, however, for they had found
+means of converting and transferring their funds to other more secure
+places, despite the threatened confiscation.  It was insinuated that
+Holland and Zeeland were indifferent to the fate of Antwerp, because in
+the sequel the commercial cities of those Provinces succeeded to the vast
+traffic and the boundless wealth which had been forfeited by the
+Brabantine capital.  The charge was an unjust one.  At the very
+commencement of the siege the States of Holland voted two hundred
+thousand florins for its relief; and, moreover, these wealthy refugees
+were positively denied admittance into the territory of tho United
+States, and were thus forced to settle in Germany or England.  This
+cessation of traffic was that which principally excited the anxiety of
+Aldegonde.  He could not bring himself to believe in the possibility of a
+blockade, by an army of eight or ten thousand men, of a great and wealthy
+city, where at least twenty thousand citizens were capable of bearing
+arms.  Had he thoroughly understood the deprivations under which
+Alexander was labouring, perhaps he would have been even more confident
+as to the result.
+
+"With regard to the affair of the river Scheldt," wrote Parma to Philip,
+"I should like to send your Majesty a drawing of the whole scheme; for
+the work is too vast to be explained by letters.  The more I examine it,
+the more astonished I am that it should have been conducted to this
+point; so many forts, dykes, canals, new inventions, machinery, and
+engines, have been necessarily required."
+
+He then proceeded to enlighten the King--as be never failed to do in all
+his letters--as to his own impoverished, almost helpless condition.
+Money, money, men!  This was his constant cry.  All would be in vain, he
+said, if he were thus neglected.  "'Tis necessary," said he, "for your
+Majesty fully to comprehend, that henceforth the enterprise is your own.
+I have done my work faithfully thus far; it is now for your Majesty to
+take it thoroughly to heart; and embrace it with the warmth with which an
+affair involving so much of your own interests deserves to be embraced."
+
+He avowed that without full confidence in his sovereign's sympathy he
+would never have conceived the project.  "I confess that the enterprise
+is great," he said, "and that by many it will be considered rash.
+Certainly I should not have undertaken it, had I not felt certain of your
+Majesty's full support."
+
+But he was already in danger of being forced to abandon the whole scheme
+--although so nearly carried into effect--for want of funds.  "The
+million promised," he wrote, "has arrived in bits and morsels, and with
+so many ceremonies, that I haven't ten crowns at my disposal.  How I am
+to maintain even this handful of soldiers--for the army is diminished to
+such a mere handful that it would astonish your Majesty--I am unable to
+imagine.  It would move you to witness their condition.  They have
+suffered as much as is humanly possible."
+
+Many of the troops, indeed, were deserting, and making their escape,
+beggared and desperate, into France, where, with natural injustice, they
+denounced their General, whose whole heart was occupied with their
+miseries, for the delinquency of his master, whose mind was full of other
+schemes.
+
+"There past this way many Spanish soldiers," wrote Stafford from Paris,
+"so poor and naked as I ever saw any.  There have been within this
+fortnight two hundred at a time in this town, who report the extremity of
+want of victuals in their camp, and that they have been twenty-four
+months without pay.  They exclaim greatly upon the Prince of Parma.
+Mendoza seeks to convey them away, and to get money for them by all means
+he can."
+
+Stafford urged upon his government the propriety of being at least as
+negligent as Philip had showed himself to be of the Spaniards.  By
+prohibiting supplies to the besieging army, England might contribute,
+negatively, if not otherwise, to the relief of Antwerp.  "There is no
+place," he wrote to Walsingham, "whence the Spaniards are so thoroughly
+victualled as from us.  English boats go by sixteen and seventeen into
+Dunkirk, well laden with provisions."
+
+This was certainly not in accordance with the interests nor the
+benevolent professions of the English ministers.
+
+These supplies were not to be regularly depended upon however.  They were
+likewise not to be had without paying a heavy price for them, and the
+Prince had no money in his coffer.  He lived from hand to mouth, and was
+obliged to borrow from every private individual who had anything to lend.
+Merchants, nobles, official personages, were all obliged to assist in
+eking out the scanty pittance allowed by the sovereign.
+
+"The million is all gone," wrote Parma to his master; "some to Verdugo in
+Friesland; some to repay the advances of Marquis Richebourg and other
+gentlemen.  There is not a farthing for the garrisons.  I can't go on a
+month longer, and, if not supplied, I shall be obliged to abandon the
+work.  I have not money enough to pay my sailors, joiners, carpenters,
+and other mechanics, from week to week, and they will all leave me in the
+lurch, if I leave them unpaid.  I have no resource but to rely on your
+Majesty.  Otherwise the enterprise must wholly fail."
+
+In case it did fail, the Prince wiped his hands of the responsibility.
+He certainly had the right to do so.
+
+One of the main sources of supply was the city of Hertogenbosch, or Bois-
+le-Duc.  It was one of the four chief cities of Brabant, and still held
+for the King, although many towns in its immediate neighbourhood had
+espoused the cause of the republic.  The States had long been anxious to
+effect a diversion for the relief of Antwerp, by making an attack on
+Bois-le-Duc.  Could they carry the place, Parma would be almost
+inevitably compelled to abandon the siege in which he was at present
+engaged, and he could moreover spare no troops for its defence.  Bois-le-
+Duc was a populous, wealthy, thriving town, situate on the Deeze, two
+leagues above its confluence with the Meuse, and about twelve leagues
+from Antwerp.  It derived its name of `Duke's Wood' from a magnificent
+park and forest, once the favourite resort and residence of the old Dukes
+of Brabant, of which some beautiful vestiges still remained.  It was a
+handsome well-built city, with two thousand houses of the better class,
+besides more humble tenements.  Its citizens were celebrated for their
+courage and belligerent skill, both on foot and on horseback.  They were
+said to retain more of the antique Belgic ferocity which Caesar had
+celebrated than that which had descended to most of their kinsmen.  The
+place was, moreover, the seat of many prosperous manufactures.  Its
+clothiers sent the products of their looms over all Christendom, and its
+linen and cutlery were equally renowned.
+
+It would be a most fortunate blow in the cause of freedom to secure so,
+thriving and conspicuous a town, situated thus in the heart of what
+seemed the natural territory of the United States; and, by so doing, to
+render nugatory the mighty preparations of Parma against Antwerp.
+Moreover, it was known that there was no Spanish or other garrison within
+its walls, so that there was no opposition to be feared, except from the
+warlike nature of the citizens.
+
+Count Hohenlo was entrusted, early in January, with this important
+enterprise.  He accordingly collected a force of four thousand infantry,
+together with two hundred mounted lancers; having previously
+reconnoitered the ground.  He relied very much, for the success of the
+undertaking, on Captain Kleerhagen, a Brussels nobleman, whose wife was a
+native of Bois-le-Duc, and who was thoroughly familiar with the locality.
+One dark winter's night, Kleerhagen, with fifty picked soldiers, advanced
+to the Antwerp gate of Bois-le-Duc, while Hohenlo, with his whole force,
+lay in ambuscade as near as possible to the city.
+
+Between the drawbridge and the portcullis were two small guard-houses,
+which, very carelessly, had been left empty.  Kleerhagen, with his fifty
+followers, successfully climbed into these lurking-places, where they
+quietly ensconced themselves for the night.  At eight o'clock of the
+following morning (20th January) the guards of the gate drew up the
+portcullis, and reconnoitered.  At the same instant, the ambushed fifty
+sprang from their concealment, put them to the sword, and made themselves
+masters of the gate.  None of the night-watch escaped with life, save one
+poor old invalided citizen, whose business had been to draw up the
+portcullis, and who was severely wounded, and left for dead.  The fifty
+immediately summoned all of Rohenlo's ambuscade that were within hearing,
+and then, without waiting for them, entered the town pell-mell in the
+best of spirits, and shouting victory! victory! till they were hoarse.  A
+single corporal, with two men, was left to guard the entrance.  Meantime,
+the old wounded gate-opener, bleeding and crippled, crept into a dark
+corner, and laid himself down, unnoticed, to die.
+
+Soon afterwards Hohenlo galloped into the town, clad in complete armour,
+his long curls floating in the wind, with about two hundred troopers
+clattering behind him, closely followed by five hundred pike-men on foot.
+
+Very brutally, foolishly, and characteristically, he had promised his
+followers the sacking of the city so soon as it should be taken.  They
+accordingly set about the sacking, before it was taken.  Hardly had the
+five or six hundred effected their entrance, than throwing off all
+control, they dispersed through the principal streets, and began bursting
+open the doors of the most opulent households.  The cries of "victory!"
+"gained city!"  "down with the Spaniards!"  resounded on all sides.  Many
+of the citizens, panic-struck, fled from their homes, which they thus
+abandoned to pillage, while, meantime, the loud shouts of the assailants
+reached the ears of the sergeant and his two companies who had been left
+in charge of the gate.  Fearing that they should be cheated of their
+rightful share in the plunder, they at once abandoned their post, and set
+forth after their comrades, as fast as their legs could carry them.
+
+Now it so chanced--although there was no garrison in the town--that forty
+Burgundian and Italian lancers, with about thirty foot-soldiers, had come
+in the day before to escort a train of merchandise.  The Seigneur de
+Haultepenne, governor of Breda, a famous royalist commander--son of old
+Count Berlaymont, who first gave the name of "beggars" to the patriots-
+had accompanied them in the expedition.  The little troop were already
+about to mount their horses to depart, when they became aware of the
+sudden tumult.  Elmont, governor of the city, had also flown to the
+rescue, and had endeavoured to rally the burghers.  Not unmindful of
+their ancient warlike fame, they had obeyed his entreaties.  Elmont, with
+a strong party of armed citizens, joined himself to Haultepenne's little
+band of lancers.  They fired a few shots at straggling parties of
+plunderers, and pursued others up some narrow streets.  They were but an
+handful in comparison with the number of the patriots, who had gained
+entrance to the city.  They were, however, compact, united, and resolute.
+The assailants were scattered, disorderly, and bent only upon plunder.
+When attacked by an armed and regular band, they were amazed.  They had
+been told that there was no garrison; and behold a choice phalanx of
+Spanish lancers, led on by one of the most famous of Philip's Netherland
+chieftains.  They thought themselves betrayed by Kleerhagen, entrapped
+into a deliberately arranged ambush.  There was a panic.  The soldiers,
+dispersed and doubtful, could not be rallied.  Hohenlo, seeing that
+nothing was to be done with his five hundred, galloped furiously out of
+the gate, to bring in the rest of his troops who had remained outside the
+walls.  The prize of the wealthy city of  Bois-le-Duc was too tempting to
+be lightly abandoned; but he had much better have thought of making
+himself master of it himself before he should present it as a prey to his
+followers.
+
+During his absence the panic spread.  The States' troops, bewildered,
+astonished, vigorously assaulted, turned their backs upon their enemies,
+and fled helter-skelter towards the gates, through which they had first
+gained admittance.  But unfortunately for them, so soon as the corporal
+had left his position, the wounded old gate-opener, in a dying condition,
+had crawled forth on his hands and knees from a dark hole in the tower,
+cut, with a pocket-knife, the ropes of the portcullis, and then given up
+the ghost.  Most effective was that blow struck by a dead man's hand.
+Down came the portcullis.  The flying plunderers were entrapped.  Close
+behind them came the excited burghers--their antique Belgic ferocity now
+fully aroused--firing away with carbine and matchlock, dealing about them
+with bludgeon and cutlass, and led merrily on by Haultepenne and Elmont
+armed in proof, at the head of their squadron of lancers.  The
+unfortunate patriots had risen very early in the morning only to shear
+the wolf.  Some were cut to pieces in the streets; others climbed the
+walls, and threw themselves head foremost into the moat.  Many were
+drowned, and but a very few effected their escape.  Justinus de Nassau.
+sprang over the parapet, and succeeded in swimming the ditch.
+Kleerhagen, driven into the Holy Cross tower, ascended to its .roof,
+leaped, all accoutred as he was, into the river, and with the assistance
+of a Scotch soldier, came safe to land.  Ferdinand Truchsess, brother of
+the ex-elector of Cologne, was killed.  Four or five hundred of the
+assailants--nearly all who had entered the city--were slain, and about
+fifty of the burghers.
+
+Hohenlo soon came back, with Colonel Ysselstein, and two thousand fresh
+troops.  But their noses, says a contemporary, grew a hundred feet long
+with surprise when they saw the gate shut in their faces.  It might have
+occurred to the Count, when he rushed out of the town for reinforcements,
+that it would be as well to replace the guard, which--as he must have
+seen--had abandoned their post.
+
+
+Cursing his folly, he returned, mavellously discomfited, and deservedly
+censured, to Gertruydenberg.  And thus had a most important enterprise;
+which had nearly been splendidly successful, ended in disaster and
+disgrace.  To the recklessness of the general, to the cupidity which he
+had himself awakened in his followers, was the failure alone to be
+attributed.  Had he taken possession of the city with a firm grasp at the
+head of his four thousand men, nothing could have resisted him;
+Haultepenne, and his insignificant force, would have been dead, or his
+prisoners; the basis of Parma's magnificent operations would have been
+withdrawn; Antwerp would have been saved.
+
+"Infinite gratitude," wrote Parma to Philip, "should be rendered to the
+Lord.  Great thanks are also due to Haultepenne.  Had the rebels
+succeeded in their enterprise against Bolduc, I should have been
+compelled to abandon the siege of Antwerp.  The town; by its strength and
+situation, is of infinite importance for the reduction both of that place
+and of Brussels, and the rebels in possession of Bolduc would have cut
+off my supplies."
+
+The Prince recommended Haultepenne most warmly to the King as deserving
+of a rich "merced."  The true hero of the day, however--at least the
+chief agent in the victory was the poor, crushed, nameless victim who had
+cut the ropes of the portcullis at the Antwerp gate.
+
+Hohenlo was deeply stung by the disgrace which he had incurred.  For a
+time he sought oblivion in hard drinking; but--brave and energetic,
+though reckless--he soon became desirous of retrieving his reputation by
+more successful enterprises.  There was no lack of work, and assuredly
+his hands were rarely idle.
+
+"Hollach (Hohenlo) is gone from hence on Friday last," wrote Davison to
+Walsingham, "he will do what he may to recover his reputation lost in the
+attempt, of Bois-le-Duc; which, for the grief and trouble he hath
+conceived thereof, hath for the time greatly altered him."
+
+Meantime the turbulent Scheldt, lashed by the storms of winter, was
+becoming a more formidable enemy to Parma's great enterprise than the
+military demonstrations of his enemies, or the famine which was making
+such havoc, with his little army.  The ocean-tides were rolling huge ice-
+blocks up and down, which beat against his palisade with the noise of
+thunder, and seemed to threaten its immediate destruction. But the work
+stood firm.  The piles supporting the piers, which had been thrust out
+from each bank into the stream, had been driven fifty feet into the
+river's bed, and did their duty well.  But in the space between, twelve
+hundred and forty feet in width, the current was too deep for pile-
+driving and a permanent bridge was to be established upon boats.  And
+that bridge was to be laid across the icy and tempestuous flood, in the
+depth of winter, in the teeth of a watchful enemy, with the probability
+of an immediate invasion from France, where the rebel envoys were known
+to be negotiating on express invitation of the King--by half-naked, half-
+starving soldiers and sailors, unpaid for years, and for the sake of a
+master who seemed to have forgotten their existence.
+
+"Thank God," wrote Alexander, "the palisade stands firm in spite of the
+ice.  Now with the favour of the Lord, we shall soon get the fruit we
+have been hoping, if your Majesty is not wanting in that to which your
+grandeur, your great Christianity, your own interests, oblige you.  In
+truth 'tis a great and heroic work, worthy the great power of your
+Majesty."  "For my own part," he continued, "I have done what depended
+upon me.  From your own royal hand must emanate the rest;--men, namely,
+sufficient to maintain the posts, and money enough to support them
+there."
+
+He expressed himself in the strongest language concerning the danger to
+the royal cause from the weak and gradually sinking condition of the
+army.  Even without the French intrigues with the rebels, concerning
+which, in his ignorance of the exact state of affairs, he expressed much
+anxiety, it would be impossible, he said, to save the royal cause without
+men and money.
+
+"I have spared myself," said the Prince, "neither day nor night.  Let
+not your Majesty impute the blame to me if we fail.  Verdugo also is
+uttering a perpetual cry out of Friesland for men--men and money."
+
+Yet, notwithstanding all these obstacles, the bridge was finished at
+last.  On the 25th February, (1585) the day sacred to Saint Matthew, and
+of fortunate augury to the Emperor Charles, father of Philip and
+grandfather of Alexander, the Scheldt was closed.
+
+As already stated, from Fort Saint Mary on the Kalloo side, and from Fort
+Philip, not far from Ordain on the Brabant shore of the Scheldt, strong
+structures, supported upon piers, had been projected, reaching,
+respectively, five hundred feet into the stream.  These two opposite ends
+were now connected by a permanent bridge of boats.  There were thirty-two
+of these barges, each of them sixty-two feet in length and twelve in
+breadth, the spaces between each couple being twenty-two feet wide, and
+all being bound together, stem, stern, and midships, by quadruple hawsers
+and chains.  Each boat was anchored at stem and stern with loose cables.
+Strong timbers, with cross rafters, were placed upon the boats, upon
+which heavy frame-work the planked pathway was laid down.  A thick
+parapet of closely-fitting beams was erected along both the outer edges
+of the whole fabric.  Thus a continuous and well-fortified bridge, two
+thousand four hundred feet in length, was stretched at last from shore to
+shore.  Each of the thirty-two boats on which the central portion of the
+structure reposed, was a small fortress provided with two heavy pieces of
+artillery, pointing, the one up, the other down the stream, and manned by
+thirty-two soldiers and four sailors, defended by a breastwork formed of
+gabions of great thickness.
+
+The forts of Saint Philip and St. Mary, at either end of the bridge, had
+each ten great guns, and both were filled with soldiers.  In front of
+each fort, moreover, was stationed a fleet of twenty armed vessels,
+carrying heavy pieces of artillery; ten anchored at the angle towards
+Antwerp, and as many looking down the river.  One hundred and seventy
+great guns, including the armaments of the boats under the bridge of the
+armada and the forts, protected the whole structure, pointing up and down
+the stream.
+
+But, besides these batteries, an additional precaution had been taken.
+On each side, above and below the bridge, at a moderate distance--a bow
+shot--was anchored a heavy, raft floating upon empty barrels.  Each raft
+was composed of heavy timbers, bound together in bunches of three, the
+spaces between being connected by ships' masts and lighter spar-work, and
+with a tooth-like projection along the whole outer edge, formed of strong
+rafters, pointed and armed with sharp prongs and hooks of iron.  Thus a
+serried phalanx, as it were, of spears stood ever on guard to protect the
+precious inner structure.  Vessels coming from Zeeland or Antwerp, and
+the floating ice-masses, which were almost as formidable, were obliged to
+make their first attack upon these dangerous outer defences.  Each raft;
+floating in the middle of the stream, extended twelve hundred, and fifty-
+two feet across, thus protecting the whole of the bridge of boats and a
+portion of that resting upon piles.
+
+Such was the famous bridge of Parma.  The magnificent undertaking has
+been advantageously compared with the celebrated Rhine-bridge of Julius
+Caesar.  When it is remembered; however; that the Roman work was
+performed in summer, across a river only half as broad as the Scheldt,
+free from the disturbing, action of the tides; and flowing through an
+unresisting country; while the whole character of the structure; intended
+only to, serve for the single passage of an army, was far inferior to the
+massive solidity of Parma's bridge; it seems not unreasonable to assign
+the superiority to the general who had surmounted all the obstacles of a
+northern winter, vehement ebb and flow from the sea, and enterprising and
+desperate enemies at every point.
+
+When the citizens, at last, looked upon the completed fabric, converted
+from the "dream," which they had pronounced it to be, into a terrible
+reality; when they saw the shining array of Spanish and Italian legions
+marching and counter-marching upon their new road; and trampling, as it
+were; the turbulent river beneath their feet; when they witnessed the
+solemn military spectacle with which the Governor-General celebrated his
+success, amid peals of cannon and shouts of triumph from his army, they
+bitterly bewailed their own folly.  Yet even then they could hardly
+believe that the work had been accomplished by human agency, but they
+loudly protested that invisible demons had been summoned to plan and
+perfect this fatal and preter-human work.  They were wrong.  There had
+been but one demon--one clear, lofty intelligence, inspiring a steady
+and untiring hand.  The demon was the intellect of Alexander Farnese;
+but it had been assisted in its labour by the hundred devils of envy,
+covetousness, jealousy, selfishness, distrust, and discord, that had
+housed, not, in his camp, but in the ranks of those who were contending
+for their hearths and altars.
+
+And thus had the Prince arrived at success in spite of every obstacle.
+He took a just pride in the achievement, yet he knew by how many dangers
+he was still surrounded, and he felt hurt at his sovereign's neglect.
+"The enterprise at Antwerp," he wrote to Philip on the day the bridge was
+completed, "is so great and heroic that to celebrate it would require me
+to speak more at large than I like, to do, for fear of being tedious to
+your Majesty.  What I will say, is that the labours and difficulties have
+been every day so, great, that if your Majesty knew them, you would
+estimate, what we have done more highly than-you do; and not forget us so
+utterly, leaving us to die of hunger."
+
+He considered the fabric in itself almost impregnable, provided he were
+furnished with the means to maintain what he had so painfully
+constructed.
+
+"The whole is in such condition," said he, "that in opinion of all
+competent military judges it would stand though all Holland and Zeeland
+should come to destroy our, palisades.  Their attacks must be made at
+immense danger, and disadvantage, so severely can we play upon them with
+our artillery and musketry.  Every boat is, garnished with the most
+dainty captains and soldiers, so that if the enemy should attempt to
+assail us now, they would come back with broken heads."
+
+Yet in the midst of his apparent triumph he had, at times, almost despair
+in his heart.  He felt really at the last gasp.  His troops had dwindled
+to the mere shadow of an army, and they were forced to live almost upon
+air.  The cavalry had nearly vanished.  The garrisons in the different
+cities were starving.  The burghers had no food for the soldiers nor for
+themselves.  "As for the rest of the troops," said Alexander, "they are
+stationed where they have nothing to subsist upon, save salt water and
+the dykes, and if the Lord does not grant a miracle, succour, even if
+sent by your Majesty, will arrive too late."  He assured his master, that
+he could not go on more than five or six days longer, that he had been
+feeding his soldiers for a long time from hand to mouth, and that it
+would soon be impossible for him to keep his troops together.  If he did
+not disband them they would run away.
+
+His pictures were most dismal, his supplications for money very moving
+but he never alluded to himself.  All his anxiety, all his tenderness,
+were for his soldiers.  "They must have food," he said: "'Tis impossible
+to sustain them any longer by driblets, as I have done for a long time.
+Yet how can I do it without money?  And I have none at all, nor do I see
+where to get a single florin."
+
+But these revelations were made only to his master's most secret ear.
+His letters, deciphered after three centuries, alone make manifest the
+almost desperate condition in which the apparently triumphant general was
+placed, and the facility with which his antagonists, had they been well
+guided and faithful to themselves, might have driven him into the sea.
+
+But to those adversaries he maintained an attitude of serene and smiling
+triumph.  A spy, sent from the city to obtain intelligence for the
+anxious burghers, had gained admission into his lines, was captured and
+brought before the Prince.  He expected, of course, to be immediately
+hanged.  On the contrary, Alexander gave orders that he should be
+conducted over every part of the encampment.  The forts, the palisades,
+the bridge, were all to be carefully exhibited and explained to him as if
+he had been a friendly visitor entitled to every information.  He was
+requested to count the pieces of artillery in the forts, on the bridge,
+in the armada.  After thoroughly studying the scene he was then dismissed
+with a safe-conduct to the city.
+
+"Go back to those who sent you," said the Prince.  "Convey to them the
+information in quest of which you came.  Apprize them of every thing
+which you have inspected, counted, heard explained.  Tell them further,
+that the siege will never be abandoned, and that this bridge will be my
+sepulcher or my pathway into Antwerp."
+
+And now the aspect of the scene was indeed portentous.  The chimera had
+become a very visible bristling reality.  There stood the bridge which
+the citizens had ridiculed while it was growing before their faces.
+There scowled the Kowenstyn--black with cannon, covered all over with
+fortresses which the butchers had so sedulously preserved.  From Parma's
+camp at Beveren and Kalloo a great fortified road led across the river
+and along the fatal dyke all the way to the entrenchments at Stabroek,
+where Mansfeld's army lay.  Grim Mondragon held the "holy cross" and the
+whole Kowenstyn in his own iron grasp.  A chain of forts, built and
+occupied by the contending hosts of the patriots and the Spaniards, were
+closely packed together along both banks of the Scheldt, nine miles long
+from Antwerp to Lillo, and interchanged perpetual cannonades.  The
+country all around, once fertile as a garden, had been changed into a
+wild and wintry sea where swarms of gun-boats and other armed vessels
+manoeuvred and contended with each other over submerged villages and
+orchards, and among half-drowned turrets and steeples.  Yet there rose
+the great bulwark--whose early destruction would have made all this
+desolation a blessing--unbroken and obstinate; a perpetual obstacle to
+communication between Antwerp and Zeeland.  The very spirit of the
+murdered Prince of Orange seemed to rise sadly and reproachfully out of
+the waste of waters, as if to rebuke the men who had been so deaf to his
+solemn warnings.
+
+Brussels, too, wearied and worn, its heart sick with hope deferred, now
+fell into despair as the futile result of the French negotiation became
+apparent.  The stately and opulent city had long been in a most abject
+condition.  Many of its inhabitants attempted to escape from the horrors
+of starving by flying from its walls.  Of the fugitives, the men were
+either scourged back by the Spaniards into the city, or hanged up along
+the road-side.  The women were treated, leniently, even playfully, for it
+was thought an excellent jest to cut off the petticoats of the
+unfortunate starving creatures up to their knees, and then command them
+to go back and starve at home with their friends and fellow-citizens.  A
+great many persons literally died of hunger.  Matrons with large families
+poisoned their children and themselves to avoid the more terrible death
+by starving.  At last, when Vilvoorde was taken, when the baseness of the
+French King was thoroughly understood, when Parma's bridge was completed
+and the Scheldt bridled, Brussels capitulated on as favourable terms as
+could well have been expected.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+College of "peace-makers," who wrangled more than all
+Military virtue in the support of an infamous cause
+Not distinguished for their docility
+Repentance, as usual, had come many hours too late
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v39
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
+From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609
+
+By John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+History United Netherlands, 1585
+
+
+Alexander Farnese, The Duke of Parma
+
+
+CHAPTER V., Part 2.
+
+
+     Position of Alexander and his Army--La Motte attempts in vain
+     Ostend--Patriots gain Liefkenshoek--Projects of Gianibelli--Alarm on
+     the Bridge--The Fire Ships--The Explosion--Its Results--Death of the
+     Viscount of Ghent--Perpetual Anxiety of Farnese--Impoverished State
+     of the Spaniards--Intended Attack of the Kowenstyn--Second Attack of
+     the Kowenstyn--A Landing effected--A sharp Combat--The Dyke pierced
+     --Rally of the Spaniards--Parma comes to the Rescue--Fierce Struggle
+     on the Dyke--The Spaniards successful--Premature Triumph at Antwerp
+     --Defeat of the Patriots--The Ship War's End--Despair of the Citizens
+
+Notwithstanding these triumphs, Parma was much inconvenienced by not
+possessing the sea-coast of Flanders.  Ostend was a perpetual stumbling-
+block to him.  He therefore assented, with pleasure to a proposition made
+by La Motte, one of the most experienced and courageous of the Walloon
+royalist, commanders, to attempt the place by surprise.  And La Motte; at
+the first blow; was more than half successful.
+
+On the night of the 29th March, (1585) with two thousand foot and twelve
+hundred cavalry, he carried the whole of the old port of Ostend.  Leaving
+a Walloon officer, in whom he had confidence, to guard the position
+already gained, he went back in person for reinforcements.  During his
+advance, the same ill luck attended his enterprise which had blasted
+Hohenlo's achievement at Bois-le-Duc.  The soldiers he left behind him
+deserted their posts for the sake of rifling the town.  The officer in
+command, instead of keeping them to their duty, joined in the chase.  The
+citizens roused themselves, attacked their invaders, killed many of them,
+and put the rest to flight.  When La Motte returned; he found the panic
+general.  His whole force, including the fresh soldiers just brought to
+the rescue, were beside themselves with fear.  He killed several with his
+own hand, but the troops were not to be rallied.  His quick triumph was
+changed into an absolute defeat.
+
+Parma, furious at the ignominious result of a plan from which so much had
+been expected, ordered the Walloon captain, from whose delinquency so
+much disaster had resulted, to be forthwith hanged.  "Such villainy,"
+said he, "must never go unpunished."
+
+It was impossible for the Prince to send a second expedition to attempt
+the reduction of Ostend, for the patriots were at last arousing
+themselves to the necessity of exertion.  It was very obvious--now that
+the bridge had been built, and the Kowenstyn fortified--that one or the
+other was to be destroyed, or Antwerp abandoned to its fate.
+
+The patriots had been sleeping, as it were, all the winter, hugging the
+delusive dream of French sovereignty and French assistance.  No language
+can exaggerate the deadly effects from the slow poison of that
+negotiation.  At any rate, the negotiation was now concluded.  The dream
+was dispelled.  Antwerp must now fall, or a decisive blow must be struck
+by the patriots themselves, and a telling blow had been secretly and
+maturely meditated.  Certain preparatory steps were however necessary.
+
+The fort of Liefkenshoek, "darling's corner," was a most important post.
+The patriots had never ceased to regret that precious possession, lost,
+as we have seen, in so tragical a manner on the very day of Orange's
+death.  Fort Lillo, exactly opposite, on the Brabant shore of the
+Scheldt, had always been securely held by them; and was their strongest
+position.  Were both places in their power, the navigation of the river,
+at least as far as the bridge, would be comparatively secure.
+
+A sudden dash was made upon Liefkenshoek.  A number of armed vessels
+sailed up from Zeeland, under command of Justinus de Nassau.  They were
+assisted from Fort Lillo by a detachment headed by Count Hohenlo.  These
+two officers were desirous of retrieving the reputation which they had
+lost at Bois-le-Duc.  They were successful, and the "darling" fort was
+carried at a blow.  After a brief cannonade, the patriots made a breach,
+effected a landing, and sprang over the ramparts.  The Walloons and
+Spaniards fled in dismay; many of them were killed in the fort, and along
+the dykes; others were hurled into the Scheldt.  The victors followed up
+their success by reducing, with equal impetuosity, the fort of Saint
+Anthony, situate in the neighbourhood farther down the river.  They thus
+gained entire command of all the high ground, which remained in that
+quarter above the inundation, and was called the Doel.
+
+The dyke, on which Liefkenshoek stood, led up the river towards Kalloo,
+distant less than a league.  There were Parma's head-quarters and the
+famous bridge.  But at Fort Saint Mary; where the Flemish head of that
+bridge rested, the dyke was broken.  Upon that broken end the commanders
+of the expedition against Liefkenshoek were ordered to throw up an
+entrenchment, without loss of a moment, so soon as they should have
+gained the fortresses which they were ordered first to assault.  Sainte
+Aldegonde had given urgent written directions to this effect.  From a
+redoubt situated thus, in the very face of Saint Mary's, that position,
+the palisade-work, the whole bridge, might be battered with all the
+artillery that could be brought from Zeeland.
+
+But Parma was beforehand with them.  Notwithstanding his rage and
+mortification that Spanish soldiers should have ignominiously lost the
+important fortress which Richebourg had conquered so brilliantly nine
+months before, he was not the man to spend time in unavailing regrets.
+His quick eye instantly, detected the flaw which might soon be fatal.
+In the very same night of the loss of Liefkenshoek, he sent as strong a
+party as could be spared, with plenty of sappers and miners, in flat-
+bottomed boats across from Kalloo.  As the morning dawned, an improvised
+fortress, with the Spanish flag waving above its bulwarks, stood on the
+broken end of the dyke.  That done, he ordered one of the two captains
+who had commanded in Liefkenshoek and Saint Anthony to be beheaded on the
+same dyke.  The other was dismissed with ignominy.  Ostend was, of
+course, given up; "but it was not a small matter," said Parma, "to
+fortify ourselves that very night upon the ruptured place, and so prevent
+the rebels from doing it, which would have been very mal-a-propos."
+
+Nevertheless, the rebels had achieved a considerable success; and now or
+never the telling blow, long meditated, was to be struck.
+
+There lived in Antwerp a subtle Mantuan, Gianibelli by name, who had
+married and been long settled in the city.  He had made himself busy with
+various schemes for victualling the place.  He had especially urged upon
+the authorities, at an early period of the siege, the propriety of making
+large purchases of corn and storing it in magazines at a time when
+famine-price had by no means been reached.  But the leading men had then
+their heads full of a great ship, or floating castle, which they were
+building, and which they had pompously named the 'War's End,' 'Fin de la
+Guerre.'  We shall hear something of this phenomenon at a later period.
+Meanwhile, Gianibelli, who knew something of shipbuilding, as he did of
+most other useful matters, ridiculed the design, which was likely to
+cost, in itself before completion, as much money as would keep the city
+in bread for a third of a year.
+
+Gianibelli was no patriot.  He was purely a man of science and of great
+acquirements, who was looked upon by the ignorant populace alternately as
+a dreamer and a wizard.  He was as indifferent to the cause of freedom as
+of despotism, but he had a great love for chemistry.  He was also a
+profound mechanician, second to no man of his age in theoretic and
+practical engineering.
+
+He had gone from Italy to Spain that he might offer his services to
+Philip, and give him the benefit of many original and ingenious
+inventions.  Forced to dance attendance, day after day, among sneering
+courtiers and insolent placemen, and to submit to the criticism of
+practical sages and philosophers of routine, while, he was constantly
+denied an opportunity of explaining his projects, the quick-tempered
+Italian had gone away at last, indignant.  He had then vowed revenge upon
+the dulness by which his genius had been slighted, and had sworn that the
+next time the Spaniards heard the name of the man whom they had dared to
+deride, they should hear it with tears.
+
+He now laid before the senate of Antwerp a plan for some vessels likely
+to prove more effective than the gigantic 'War's End,' which he had
+prophesied would prove a failure.  With these he pledged himself to
+destroy the bridge.  He demanded three ships which he had selected from
+the city fleet; the 'Orange,' the 'Post,' and the 'Golden Lion,'
+measuring, respectively, one hundred and fifty, three hundred and fifty,
+and five hundred tons.  Besides these, he wished sixty flat-bottomed
+scows, which he proposed to send down the river, partially submerged,
+disposed in the shape of a half moon, with innumerable anchors and
+grapnel's thrusting themselves out of the water at every point.  This
+machine was intended to operate against the raft.
+
+Ignorance and incredulity did their work, as usual, and Gianbelli's
+request was refused.  As a quarter-measure, nevertheless, he was allowed
+to take two smaller vessels of seventy and eighty tons.  The Italian was
+disgusted with parsimony upon so momentous an occasion, but he at the
+same time determined, even with these slender materials, to give an
+exhibition of his power.
+
+Not all his the glory, however, of the ingenious project.  Associated
+with him were two skilful artizans of Antwerp; a clockmaker named Bory,
+and a mechanician named Timmerman--but Gianibelli was the chief and
+superintendent of the whole daring enterprise.
+
+He gave to his two ships the cheerful names of the 'Fortune' and the
+'Hope,' and set himself energetically to justify their titles by their
+efficiency.  They were to be marine volcanos, which, drifting down the
+river with tide, were to deal destruction where the Spaniards themselves
+most secure.
+
+In the hold of each vessel, along the whole length, was laid down a solid
+flooring of brick and mortar, one foot thick and five feet wide.  Upon
+this was built a chamber of marble mason-work, forty feet long, three and
+a half feet broad, as many high, and with side-walks [walls? D.W.] five
+feet in thickness.
+
+This was the crater.  It was filled with seven thousand of gunpowder, of
+a kind superior to anything known, and prepared  by Gianibelli himself.
+It was covered with a roof, six feet in thickness, formed of blue
+tombstones, placed edgewise.  Over this crater, rose a hollow cone, or
+pyramid, made of heavy marble slabs, and filled with mill-stones, cannon
+balls, blocks of marble, chain-shot, iron hooks, plough-coulters, and
+every dangerous missile that could be imagined.  The spaces between the
+mine and the sides of each ship were likewise filled with paving stones,
+iron-bound stakes, harpoons, and other projectiles.  The whole fabric was
+then covered by a smooth light flooring of planks and brick-work, upon
+which was a pile of wood: This was to be lighted at the proper time, in
+order that the two vessels might present the appearance of simple fire-
+ships, intended only to excite a conflagration of the bridge.  On the
+'Fortune' a slow match, very carefully prepared, communicated with the
+submerged mine, which was to explode at a nicely-calculated moment.  The
+eruption of the other floating volcano was to be regulated by an
+ingenious piece of clock-work, by which, at the appointed time, fire,
+struck from a flint, was to inflame the hidden mass of gunpowder below.
+
+In addition to these two infernal machines, or "hell-burners," as they
+were called, a fleet of thirty-two smaller vessels was prepared.  Covered
+with tar, turpentine, rosin, and filled with inflammable and combustible
+materials, these barks were to be sent from Antwerp down the river in
+detachments of eight every half hour with the ebb tide.  The object was
+to clear the way, if possible, of the raft, and to occupy the attention
+of the Spaniards, until the 'Fortune' and the `Hope' should come down
+upon the bridge.
+
+The 5th April, (1885) being the day following that on which the
+successful assault upon Liefkenshoek and Saint Anthony had taken place,
+was fixed for the descent of the fire-ships.  So soon as it should be
+dark, the thirty-two lesser burning-vessels, under the direction of
+Admiral Jacob Jacobzoon, were to be sent forth from the neighborhood of
+the 'Boor's Sconce'--a fort close to the city walls--in accordance with
+the Italian's plan.  "Run-a-way Jacob," however, or "Koppen Loppen," had
+earned no new laurels which could throw into the shade that opprobrious
+appellation.  He was not one of Holland's naval heroes, but, on the
+whole, a very incompetent officer; exactly the man to damage the best
+concerted scheme which the genius of others could invent.  Accordingly,
+Koppen-Loppen began with a grave mistake.  Instead of allowing the
+precursory fire-ships to drift down the stream, at the regular intervals
+agreed upon, he despatched them all rapidly, and helter skelter, one
+after another, as fast as they could be set forth on their career.  Not
+long afterwards, he sent the two "hellburners," the 'Fortune' and the
+'Hope,' directly in their wake.  Thus the whole fiery fleet had set
+forth, almost at once, upon its fatal voyage.
+
+It was known to Parma that preparations for an attack were making at
+Antwerp, but as to the nature of the danger he was necessarily in the
+dark.  He was anticipating an invasion by a fleet from the city in
+combination with a squadron of Zeelanders coming up from below.  So soon
+as the first vessels, therefore, with their trains not yet lighted, were
+discovered bearing down from the city, he was confirmed in his
+conjecture.  His drama and trumpets instantly called to arms, and the
+whole body of his troops was mustered upon the bridge; the palisades, and
+in the nearest forts.  Thus the preparations to avoid or to contend with
+the danger, were leading the Spaniards into the very jaws of destruction.
+Alexander, after crossing and recrossing the river, giving minute
+directions for repelling the expected assault, finally stationed himself
+in the block-house at the point of junction, on the Flemish aide, between
+the palisade and the bridge of boats.  He was surrounded by a group of
+superior officers, among whom Richebourg, Billy, Gaetano, Cessis, and the
+Englishman Sir Rowland Yorke, were conspicuous.
+
+It was a dark, mild evening of early spring.  As the fleet of vessels
+dropped slowly down the river, they suddenly became luminous, each ship
+flaming out of the darkness, a phantom of living fire.  The very waves of
+the Scheldt seemed glowing with the conflagration, while its banks were
+lighted up with a preternatural glare.  It was a wild, pompous,
+theatrical spectacle.  The array of soldiers on both aides the river,
+along the dykes and upon the bridge, with banners waving, and spear and
+cuirass glancing in the lurid light; the demon fleet, guided by no human
+hand, wrapped in flames, and flitting through the darkness, with
+irregular movement; but portentous aspect, at the caprice of wind and
+tide; the death-like silence of expectation, which had succeeded the
+sound of trumpet and the shouts of the soldiers; and the weird glow which
+had supplanted the darkness-all combined with the sense of imminent and
+mysterious danger to excite and oppress the imagination.
+
+Presently, the Spaniards, as they gazed from the bridge, began to take
+heart again.  One after another, many of the lesser vessels drifted
+blindly against the raft, where they entangled themselves among the hooks
+and gigantic spearheads, and burned slowly out without causing any
+extensive conflagration.  Others grounded on the banks of the river,
+before reaching their destination.  Some sank in the stream.
+
+Last of all came the two infernal ships, swaying unsteadily with the
+current; the pilots of course, as they neared the bridge, having
+noiselessly effected their escape in the skiffs.  The slight fire upon
+the deck scarcely illuminated the dark phantom-like hulls.  Both were
+carried by the current clear of the raft, which, by a great error of
+judgment, as it now appeared, on the part of the builders, had only been
+made to protect the floating portion of the bridge.  The 'Fortune' came
+first, staggering inside the raft, and then lurching clumsily against
+the dyke, and grounding near Kalloo, without touching the bridge.  There
+was a moment's pause of expectation.  At last the slow match upon the
+deck burned out, and there was a faint and partial explosion, by which
+little or no damage was produced.
+
+Parma instantly called for volunteers to board the mysterious vessel.
+The desperate expedition was headed by the bold Roland York, a Londoner,
+of whom one day there was more to be heard in Netherland history.  The
+party sprang into the deserted and now harmless volcano, extinguishing
+the slight fires that were smouldering on the deck, and thrusting spears
+and long poles into the hidden recesses of the hold.  There was, however,
+little time to pursue these perilous investigations, and the party soon
+made their escape to the bridge.
+
+The troops of Parma, crowding on the palisade, and looking over the
+parapets, now began to greet the exhibition with peals of derisive
+laughter.  It was but child's play, they thought, to threaten a Spanish
+army, and a general like Alexander Farnese, with such paltry fire-works
+as these.  Nevertheless all eyes were anxiously fixed upon the remaining
+fire-ship, or "hell-burner," the 'Hope,' which had now drifted very near
+the place of its destination.  Tearing her way between the raft and the
+shore, she struck heavily against the bridge on the Kalloo side, close to
+the block-house at the commencement of the floating portion of the
+bridge.  A thin wreath of smoke was seen curling over a slight and
+smouldering fire upon her deck.
+
+Marquis Richebourg, standing on the bridge, laughed loudly at the
+apparently impotent conclusion of the whole adventure.  It was his last
+laugh on earth.  A number of soldiers, at Parma's summons, instantly
+sprang on board this second mysterious vessel, and occupied themselves,
+as the party on board the 'Fortune' had done, in extinguishing, the
+flames, and in endeavoring to ascertain the nature of the machine.
+Richebourg boldly directed from the bridge their hazardous experiments.
+
+At the same moment a certain ensign De Vega, who stood near the Prince of
+Parma, close to the block-house, approached him with vehement entreaties
+that he should retire.  Alexander refused to stir from the spot, being
+anxious to learn the result of these investigations.  Vega, moved by some
+instinctive and irresistible apprehension, fell upon his knees, and
+plucking the General earnestly by the cloak, implored him with such
+passionate words and gestures to leave the place, that the Prince
+reluctantly yielded.
+
+It was not a moment too soon.  The clockwork had been better adjusted
+than the slow match in the 'Fortune.' Scarcely had Alexander reached the
+entrance of Saint Mary's Fort, at the end of the bridge, when a horrible
+explosion was heard.  The 'Hope' disappeared, together with the men who
+had boarded her, and the block-house, against which she had struck, with
+all its garrison, while a large portion of the bridge, with all the
+troops stationed upon it, had vanished into air.  It was the work of a
+single instant.  The Scheldt yawned to its lowest depth, and then cast
+its waters across the dykes, deep into the forts, and far over the land.
+The earth shook as with the throb of a volcano.  A wild glare lighted up
+the scene for one moment, and was then succeeded by pitchy darkness.
+Houses were toppled down miles away, and not a living thing, even in
+remote places, could keep its feet.  The air was filled with a rain of
+plough-shares, grave-stones, and marble balls, intermixed with the heads,
+limbs, and bodies, of what had been human beings.  Slabs of granite,
+vomited by the flaming ship, were found afterwards at a league's
+distance, and buried deep in the earth.  A thousand soldiers were
+destroyed in a second of time; many of them being torn to shreds, beyond
+even the semblance of humanity.
+
+Richebourg disappeared, and was not found until several days later, when
+his body was discovered; doubled around an iron chain, which hung from
+one of the bridge-boats in the centre of the river.  The veteran Robles,
+Seigneur de Billy, a Portuguese officer of eminent service and high
+military rank, was also destroyed.  Months afterwards, his body was
+discovered adhering to the timber-work of the bridge, upon the ultimate
+removal of that structure, and was only recognized by a peculiar gold
+chain which he habitually wore.  Parma himself was thrown to the ground,
+stunned by a blow on the shoulder from a flying stake.  The page, who was
+behind him, carrying his helmet, fell dead without a wound, killed by the
+concussion of the air.
+
+Several strange and less tragical incidents occurred.  The Viscomte de
+Bruxelles was blown out of a boat on the Flemish side, and descended safe
+and, sound into another in the centre of the stream.  Captain Tucci, clad
+in complete armour, was whirled out of a fort, shot perpendicularly into
+the air, and then fell back into the river.  Being of a cool temperament,
+a good swimmer, and very pious, he skilfully divested himself of cuirass
+and helmet, recommended himself to the Blessed Virgin, and swam safely
+ashore.  Another young officer of Parma's body-guard, Francois de Liege
+by name, standing on the Kalloo end of the bridge, rose like a feather
+into the clouds, and, flying quite across the river, alighted on the
+opposite bank with no further harm than a contused shoulder.  He imagined
+himself (he said afterwards) to have been changed into a cannon-ball, as
+he rushed through the pitchy atmosphere, propelled by a blast of
+irresistible fury.
+
+     [The chief authorities used in the foregoing account of this famous
+     enterprise are those already cited on a previous page, viz.: the MS.
+     Letters of the Prince of Parma in the Archives of Simancas; Bor, ii.
+     596, 597; Strada, H. 334 seq.; Meteren, xii.  223; Hoofd Vervolgh,
+     91; Baudartii Polemographia, ii.  24-27; Bentivoglio, etc., I have
+     not thought it necessary to cite them step by step; for all the
+     accounts, with some inevitable and unimportant discrepancies, agree
+     with each other.  The most copious details are to be found in Strada
+     and in Bor.]
+
+It had been agreed that Admiral Jacobzoon should, immediately after the
+explosion of the fire-ships, send an eight-oared barge to ascertain the
+amount of damage.  If a breach had been effected, and a passage up to the
+city opened, he was to fire a rocket.  At this signal, the fleet
+stationed at Lillo, carrying a heavy armament, laden with provisions
+enough to relieve Antwerp from all anxiety, and ready to sail on the
+instant, was at once to force its way up the river.
+
+The deed was done.  A breach, two hundred feet in width was made.  Had
+the most skilful pilot in Zeeland held the helm of the 'Hope,' with a
+choice crew obedient to his orders, he could not have guided her more
+carefully than she had been directed by wind and tide.  Avoiding the raft
+which lay in her way, she had, as it were, with the intelligence of a
+living creature, fulfilled the wishes of the daring genius that had
+created her; and laid herself alongside the bridge, exactly at the most
+telling point.  She had then destroyed herself, precisely at the right
+moment.  All the effects, and more than all, that had been predicted by
+the Mantuan wizard had come to pass.  The famous bridge was cleft through
+and through, and a thousand picked men--Parma's very "daintiest"--were
+blown out of existence.  The Governor-General himself was lying stark and
+stiff upon the bridge which he said should be his triumphal monument or
+his tomb.  His most distinguished officers were dead, and all the
+survivors were dumb and blind with astonishment at the unheard of,
+convulsion.  The passage was open for the fleet, and the fleet, lay below
+with sails spread, and oars in the rowlocks, only waiting for the signal
+to bear up at once to the scene of action, to smite out of existence all
+that remained of the splendid structure, and to carry relief and triumph
+into Antwerp.
+
+Not a soul slept in the city.  The explosion had shook its walls, and
+thousands of people thronged the streets, their hearts beating high with
+expectation.  It was a moment of exquisite triumph.  The 'Hope,' word of
+happy augury, had not been relied upon in vain, and Parma's seven months
+of patient labour had been annihilated in a moment.  Sainte Aldegonde and
+Gianibelli stood in the 'Boors' Sconce' on the edge of the river.  They
+had felt and heard the explosion, and they were now straining their eyes
+through the darkness to mark the flight of the welcome rocket.
+
+That rocket never rose.  And it is enough, even after the lapse of three
+centuries, to cause a pang in every heart that beats for human liberty to
+think of the bitter disappointment which crushed these great and
+legitimate hopes.  The cause lay in the incompetency and cowardice of the
+man who had been so unfortunately entrusted with a share in a noble
+enterprise.
+
+Admiral Jacobzoon, paralyzed by the explosion, which announced his own
+triumph, sent off the barge, but did not wait for its return.  The
+boatmen, too, appalled by the sights and sounds which they had witnessed,
+and by the murky darkness which encompassed them, did not venture near
+the scene of action, but, after rowing for a short interval hither and
+thither, came back with the lying report that nothing had been
+accomplished, and that the bridge remained unbroken.  Sainte Aldegonde
+and Gianibelli were beside themselves with rage, as they surmised the
+imbecility of the Admiral, and devoted him in their hearts to the
+gallows, which he certainly deserved.  The wrath of the keen Italian may
+be conceived, now that his ingenious and entirely successful scheme was
+thus rendered fruitless by the blunders of the incompetent Fleming.
+
+On the other side, there was a man whom no danger could appall.
+Alexander had been thought dead, and the dismay among his followers
+was universal.  He was known to have been standing an instant before the
+explosion on the very block-house where the 'Hope' had struck.  After the
+first terrible moments had passed, his soldiers found their general
+lying, as if in a trance, on the threshold of St. Mary's Fort, his drawn
+sword in his hand, with Cessis embracing his knees, and Gaetano extended
+at his side, stunned with a blow upon the head.
+
+Recovering from his swoon, Parma was the first to spring to his feet.
+Sword in hand, he rushed at once upon the bridge to mark the extent of
+the disaster.  The admirable structure, the result of so much patient and
+intelligent energy, was fearfully shattered; the bridge, the river, and
+the shore, strewed with the mangled bodies of his soldiers.  He expected,
+as a matter of certainty, that the fleet from below would instantly force
+its passage, destroy, the remainder of his troops-stunned as they were
+with the sudden catastrophe complete the demolition of the bridge, and
+then make its way to Antwerp, with ample reinforcements and supplies.
+And Alexander saw that the expedition would be successful.  Momently
+expecting the attack, he maintained his courage and semblance of
+cheerfulness, with despair in his heart.
+
+His winter's work seemed annihilated, and it was probable that he should
+be obliged to raise the siege.  Nevertheless, he passed in person from
+rank to rank, from post to post, seeing that the wounded were provided
+for, encouraging those that remained unhurt, and endeavouring to infuse a
+portion of his own courage into the survivors of his panic-stricken army.
+
+Nor was he entirely unsuccessful, as the night wore on and the expected
+assault was still delayed.  Without further loss of time, he employed his
+men to collect the drifting boats, timber, and spar-work, and to make a
+hasty and temporary restoration--in semblance at least--of the ruined
+portion of his bridge.  And thus he employed himself steadily all the
+night, although expecting every instant to hear the first broadside of
+the Zeeland cannon.  When morning broke, and it became obvious that the
+patriots were unable or unwilling to follow up their own success, the
+Governor-General felt as secure as ever.  He at once set about the
+thorough repairs of his great work, and--before he could be again
+molested--had made good the damage which it had sustained.
+
+It was not till three days afterwards that the truth was known in
+Antwerp.  Hohenlo then sent down a messenger, who swam, under the bridge,
+ascertained the exact state of affairs, and returned, when it was too
+late, with the first intelligence of the triumph which had been won and
+lost.  The disappointment and mortification were almost intolerable.  And
+thus had.  Run-a-way Jacob, 'Koppen Loppen,' blasted the hopes of so many
+wiser and braver spirits than his own.
+
+The loss to Parma and to the royalist cause in Marquis Richebourg, was
+very great.  The death of De Billy, who was a faithful, experienced, and
+courageous general, was also much lamented.  "The misfortune from their
+death," said Parma, "is not to be exaggerated.  Each was ever ready to do
+his duty in your Majesty's service, and to save me much fatigue in all my
+various affairs.  Nevertheless," continued the Prince, with great piety,
+"we give the Lord thanks for all, and take as a favour everything which
+comes from His hand."
+
+Alexander had indeed reason to deplore the loss of Robert de Melun,
+Viscount of Ghent, Marquis of Roubaix and Richebourg.  He was a most
+valuable officer.  His wealth was great.  It had been recently largely
+increased by the confiscation of his elder brother's estates for his
+benefit, a measure which at Parma's intercession had been accorded by the
+King.  That brother was the patriotic Prince of Espinoy, whom we have
+recently seen heading the legation of the States to France.  And
+Richebourg was grateful to Alexander, for besides these fraternal spoils,
+he had received two marquisates through his great patron, in addition to
+the highest military offices.  Insolent, overbearing, truculent to all
+the world, to Parma he was ever docile, affectionate, watchful,
+obsequious.  A man who knew not fatigue, nor fear, nor remorse, nor
+natural affection, who could patiently superintend all the details of a
+great military work, or manage a vast political intrigue by alternations
+of browbeating and bribery, or lead a forlorn hope, or murder a prisoner
+in cold blood, or leap into the blazing crater of what seemed a marine
+volcano, the Marquis of Richebourg had ever made himself most actively
+and unscrupulously useful to his master.  Especially had he rendered
+invaluable services in the reduction, of the Walloon Provinces, and in
+the bridging of the Scheldt, the two crowning triumphs of Alexander's
+life.  He had now passed from the scene where he had played so energetic
+and dazzling a part, and lay doubled round an iron cable beneath the
+current of the restless river.
+
+And in this eventful night, Parma, as always, had been true to himself
+and to his sovereign.  "We expected," said he, "that the rebels would
+instantly attack us on all sides after the explosion.  But all remained
+so astonished by the unheard-of accident, that very few understood what
+was going on.  It seemed better that I--notwithstanding the risk of
+letting myself be seen--should encourage the people not to run away.
+I did so, and remedied matters a little but not so much as that--if the
+enemy had then attacked us--we should not have been in the very greatest
+risk and peril.  I did not fail to do what I am obliged to do, and always
+hope to do; but I say no more of what passed, or what was done by myself,
+because it does not become me to speak of these things."
+
+Notwithstanding this discomfiture, the patriots kept up heart, and
+were incessantly making demonstrations against Parma's works.  Their
+proceedings against the bridge, although energetic enough to keep the
+Spanish commander in a state of perpetual anxiety, were never so
+efficient however as on the memorable occasion when the Mantuan engineer
+and the Dutch watchmaker had exhausted all their ingenuity.
+Nevertheless, the rebel barks swarmed all over the submerged territory,
+now threatening this post, and now that, and effecting their retreat at
+pleasure; for nearly the whole of Parma's little armada was stationed at
+the two extremities of his bridge.  Many fire-ships were sent down from
+time to time, but Alexander had organized a systematic patrol of a few
+sentry-boats, armed with scythes and hooks, which rowed up and down in
+front of the rafts, and protected them against invasion.
+
+Some little effect was occasionally produced, but there was on the whole
+more anxiety excited than damage actually inflicted.  The perturbation of
+spirit among the Spaniards when any of these 'demon fine-ships,' as they
+called them, appeared bearing down upon their bridge, was excessive.  It
+could not be forgotten, that the `Hope' had sent into space a thousand of
+the best soldiers of the little army within one moment of time.
+
+Such rapid proceedings had naturally left an uneasy impression on the
+minds of the survivors.  The fatigue of watching was enormous.  Hardly an
+officer or soldier among the besieging forces knew what it was to sleep.
+There was a perpetual exchanging of signals and beacon-fires and rockets
+among the patriots--not a day or night, when a concerted attack by the
+Antwerpers from above, and the Hollanders from below, with gun-boats and
+fire-ships, and floating mines, and other devil's enginry, was not
+expected.
+
+"We are always upon the alert," wrote Parma, "with arms in our hands.
+Every one must mount guard, myself as well as the rest, almost every
+night, and the better part of every day."
+
+He was quite aware that something was ever in preparation; and the
+nameless, almost sickening apprehension which existed among his stout-
+hearted veterans, was a proof that the Mantuan's genius--notwithstanding
+the disappointment as to the great result--had not been exercised
+entirely in vain.  The image of the Antwerp devil-ships imprinted itself
+indelibly upon the Spanish mind, as of something preternatural, with
+which human valour could only contend at a disadvantage; and a day was
+not very far distant--one of the memorable days of the world's history,
+big with the fate of England, Spain, Holland, and all Christendom--when
+the sight of a half-dozen blazing vessels, and the cry of "the Antwerp
+fireships," was to decide the issue of a most momentous enterprise.  The
+blow struck by the obscure Italian against Antwerp bridge, although
+ineffective then, was to be most sensibly felt after a few years had
+passed, upon a wider field.
+
+Meantime the uneasiness and the watchfulness in the biesieging army were
+very exhausting.  "They are never idle in the city," wrote Parma.  "They
+are perpetually proving their obstinacy and pertinacity by their
+industrious genius and the machines which they devise.  Every day we are
+expecting some new invention.  On our side we endeavour to counteract
+their efforts by every human means in our power.  Nevertheless, I confess
+that our merely human intellect is not competent to penetrate the designs
+of their diabolical genius.  Certainly, most wonderful and extraordinary
+things have been exhibited, such as the oldest soldiers here have never
+before witnessed."
+
+Moreover, Alexander saw himself growing weaker and weaker.  His force
+had dwindled to a mere phantom of an army.  His soldiers, ill-fed, half-
+clothed, unpaid, were fearfully overworked.  He was obliged to
+concentrate all the troops at his disposal around Antwerp.  Diversions
+against Ostend, operations in Friesland and Gelderland, although most
+desirable, had thus been rendered quite impossible.
+
+"I have recalled my cavalry and infantry from Ostend," he wrote, "and Don
+Juan de Manrique has fortunately arrived in Stabroek with a thousand good
+German folk.  The commissary-general of the cavalry has come in, too,
+with a good lot of the troops that had been encamped in the open country.
+Nevertheless, we remain wretchedly weak--quite insufficient to attempt
+what ought to be done.  If the enemy were more in force, or if the French
+wished to make trouble, your Majesty would see how important it had been
+to provide in time against such contingencies.  And although our
+neighbours, crestfallen, and rushing upon their own destruction, leave us
+in quiet, we are not without plenty of work.  It would be of inestimable
+advantage to make diversions in Gelderland and Friesland, because, in
+that case, the Hollanders, seeing the enemy so near their own borders,
+would be obliged to withdraw their assistance from Antwerp.  'Tis pity to
+see how few Spaniards your Majesty has left, and how diminished is our
+army.  Now, also, is the time to expect sickness, and this affair of
+Antwerp is obviously stretching out into large proportions.  Unless soon
+reinforced, we must inevitably go to destruction.  I implore your Majesty
+to ponder the matter well, and not to defer the remedy."
+
+His Majesty was sure to ponder the matter well, if that had been all.
+Philip was good at pondering; but it was equally certain that the remedy
+would be deferred.  Meantime Alexander and his starving but heroic little
+army were left to fight their battles as they could.
+
+His complaints were incessant, most reasonable, but unavailing.  With all
+the forces he could muster, by withdrawing from the neighbourhood of
+Ghent, Brussels, Vilvoorde, and from all the garrisons, every man that
+could be spared, he had not strength enough to guard his own posts.  To
+attempt to win back the important forts recently captured by the rebels
+on the Doel, was quite out of the question.  The pictures he painted of
+his army were indeed most dismal.
+
+The Spaniards were so reduced by sickness that it was pitiful to see
+them.  The Italians were not in much better condition, nor the Germans.
+"As for the Walloons," said he, "they are deserting, as they always do.
+In truth, one of my principal dangers is that the French civil wars are
+now tempting my soldiers across the frontier; the country there is so
+much richer, and offers so much more for the plundering."
+
+During the few weeks which immediately followed them famous descent of
+the 'Hope' and the 'Fortune,' there had accordingly been made a variety
+of less elaborate, but apparently mischievous, efforts against the
+bridge.  On the whole, however, the object was rather to deceive and
+amuse the royalists, by keeping their attention fixed in that quarter,
+while a great attack was, in reality, preparing against the Kowenstyn.
+That strong barrier, as repeatedly stated, was even a more formidable
+obstacle than the bridge to the communication between the beleagured city
+and their allies upon the outside.  Its capture and demolition, even at
+this late period, would open the navigation to all the fleets of Zeeland.
+
+In the undertaking of the 5th of April all had been accomplished that
+human ingenuity could devise; yet the triumph had been snatched away even
+at the very moment when it was complete.  A determined and vigorous
+effort was soon to be made upon the Kowenstyn, in the very face of Parma;
+for it now seemed obvious that the true crisis was to come upon that
+fatal dyke.  The great bulwark was three miles long.  It reached from
+Stabroek in Brabant, near which village Mansfeld's troops were encamped,
+across the inundated country, up to the line of the Scheldt.  Thence,
+along the river-dyke, and across the bridge to Kalloo and Beveren, where
+Parma's forces lay, was a continuous fortified road some three leagues in
+length; so that the two divisions of the besieging army, lying four
+leagues apart, were all connected by this important line.
+
+Could the Kowenstyn be pierced, the water, now divided by that great
+bulwark into two vast lakes, would flow together in one continuous sea.
+Moreover the Scheldt, it was thought, would, in that case, return to its
+own cannel through Brabant, deserting its present bed, and thus leaving
+the famous bridge high and dry.  A wide sheet of navigable water would
+then roll between Antwerp and the Zeeland coasts, and Parma's bridge, the
+result of seven months' labour, would become as useless as a child's
+broken toy.
+
+Alexander had thoroughly comprehended the necessity of maintaining the
+Kowenstyn.  All that it was possible to do with the meagre forces at his
+disposal, he had done.  He had fringed both its margins, along its whole
+length, with a breastwork of closely-driven stakes.  He had strengthened
+the whole body of the dyke with timber-work and piles.  Upon its river-
+end, just at the junction with the great Scheldt dyke, a strong fortress,
+called the Holy Cross, had been constructed, which was under the special
+command of Mondragon.  Besides this, three other forts had been built, at
+intervals of about a mile, upon the dyke.  The one nearest to Mondragon
+was placed at the Kowenstyn manor-house, and was called Saint James.
+This was entrusted to Camillo Bourbon del Monte, an Italian officer, who
+boasted the blood royal of France in his veins, and was disposed on all
+occasions to vindicate that proud pedigree by his deeds.  The next fort
+was Saint George's, sometimes called the Black Sconce.  It had been built
+by La Motte, but it was now in command of the Spanish officer, Benites.
+The third was entitled the Fort of the Palisades, because it had been
+necessary to support it by a stockade-work in the water, there being
+absolutely not earth enough to hold the structure.  It was placed in the
+charge of Captain Gamboa.  These little castles had been created, as it
+were, out of water and upon water, and under a hot fire from the enemy's
+forts and fleets, which gave the pioneers no repose.
+
+"'Twas very hard work," said Parma, "our soldiers are so exposed during
+their labour, the rebels playing upon them perpetually from their musket-
+proof vessels.  They fill the submerged land with their boats, skimming
+everywhere as they like, while we have none at all.  We have been obliged
+to build these three forts with neither material nor space; making land
+enough for the foundation by bringing thither bundles of hurdles and of
+earth.  The fatigue and anxiety are incredible.  Not a man can sleep at
+night; not an officer nor soldier but is perpetually mounting guard.  But
+they are animated to their hard work by seeing that I share in it, like
+one of themselves.  We have now got the dyke into good order, so far as
+to be able to give them a warm reception, whenever they choose to come."
+
+Quite at the farther or land end of the Kowenstyn, was another fort,
+called the Stabroek, which commanded and raked the whole dyke, and was in
+the neighbourhood of Mansfeld's head-quarters.
+
+Placed as were these little citadels upon a slender, and--at brief
+distance--invisible thread of land, with the dark waters rolling around
+them far and near, they presented an insubstantial dream-like aspect,
+seeming rather like castles floating between air and ocean than actual
+fortifications--a deceptive mirage rather than reality.  There was
+nothing imaginary, however, in the work which they were to perform.
+
+A series of attacks, some serious, others fictitious, had been made, from
+time to time, upon both bridge and dyke; but Alexander was unable to
+inspire his soldiers with his own watchfulness.  Upon the 7th of May a
+more determined attempt was made upon the Kowenstyn, by the fleet from
+Lillo.  Hohenlo and Colonel Ysselstein conducted the enterprise.  The
+sentinels at the point selected--having recently been so often threatened
+by an enemy, who most frequently made a rapid retreat, as to have grown
+weary and indifferent-were surprised, at dawn of day, and put to the
+sword.  "If the truth must be told," said Parma, "the sentries were sound
+asleep."  Five hundred Zeelanders, with a strong party of sappers and
+miners, fairly established themselves upon the dyke, between St.
+George's and Fort Palisade.  The attack, although spirited at its
+commencement, was doomed to be unsuccessful.  A co-operation, agreed upon
+by the fleet from Antwerp, failed through a misunderstanding.  Sainte
+Aldegonde had stationed certain members of the munition-chamber in the
+cathedral tower, with orders to discharge three rockets, when they should
+perceive a beacon-fire which he should light in Fort Tholouse.  The
+watchmen mistook an accidental camp-fire in the neighbourhood for the
+preconcerted signal, and sent up the rockets.  Hohenlo understanding,
+accordingly, that the expedition was on the point of starting from
+Antwerp, hastened to perform his portion of the work, and sailed up from
+Lillo.  He did his duty faithfully and well, and established himself upon
+the dyke, but found himself alone and without sufficient force to
+maintain his position.  The Antwerp fleet never sailed.  It was even
+whispered that the delinquency was rather intended than accidental; the
+Antwerpers being supposed desirous to ascertain the result of Hohenlo's
+attempt before coming forth to share his fate.  Such was the opinion
+expressed by Farnese in his letters to Philip, but it seems probable
+that he was mistaken.  Whatever the cause, however, the fact of the
+Zeelanders' discomfiture was certain.  The St. George battery and that of
+the Palisade were opened at once upon them, the balls came plunging among
+the sappers and miners before they had time to throw up many spade-fulls
+of earth, and the whole party were soon dead or driven from the dyke.
+The survivors effected their retreat as they best could, leaving four of
+their ships behind them and three or four hundred men.
+
+"Forty rebels lay dead on the dyke," said Parma, "and one hundred and
+fifty more, at least, were drowned.  The enemy confess a much larger loss
+than the number I state, but I am not a friend of giving details larger
+than my ascertained facts; nor do I know how many were killed in the
+boats."
+
+This enterprise was but a prelude, however, to the great undertaking
+which had now been thoroughly matured.  Upon the 26th May, another and
+most determined attack was to be made upon the Kowenstyn, by the
+Antwerpers and Hollanders acting in concert.  This time, it was to be
+hoped, there would be no misconception of signals.  "It was a
+determination," said Parma, "so daring and desperate that there was no
+substantial reason why we should believe they would carry it out; but
+they were at last solemnly resolved to die or to effect their purpose."
+
+Two hundred ships in all had been got ready, part of them under Hohenlo
+and Justinus de Nassau, to sail up from Zeeland; the others to advance
+from Antwerp under Sainte Aldegonde.  Their destination was the Kowenstyn
+Dyke.  Some of the vessels were laden with provisions, others with
+gabions, hurdles, branches, sacks of sand and of wool, and with other
+materials for the rapid throwing up of fortifications.
+
+It was two o'clock, half an hour before the chill dawn of a May morning,
+Sunday, the 26th of the month.  The pale sight of a waning moon was
+faintly perceptible in the sky.  Suddenly the sentinels upon the
+Kowenstyn--this time not asleep--descried, as they looked towards Lillo,
+four fiery apparitions gliding towards them across the waves.  The alarm
+was given, and soon afterwards the Spaniards began to muster, somewhat
+reluctantly, upon the dyke, filled as they always were with the
+mysterious dread which those demon-vessels never failed to inspire.
+
+The fire-ships floated slowly nearer, and at last struck heavily against
+the stockade-work.  There, covered with tar, pitch, rosin, and gunpowder,
+they flamed, flared, and exploded, during a brief period, with much
+vigour, and then burned harmlessly out.  One of the objects for which
+they had been sent--to set fire to the palisade--was not accomplished.
+The other was gained; for the enemy, expecting another volcanic shower of
+tombstones and plough-coulters, and remembering the recent fate of their
+comrades on the bridge, had retired shuddering into the forts.  Meantime,
+in the glare of these vast torches, a great swarm of gunboats and other
+vessels, skimming across the leaden-coloured waters, was seen gradually
+approaching the dyke.  It was the fleet of Hohenlo and Justinus de
+Nassau, who had been sailing and rowing since ten o'clock of the
+preceding night.  The burning ships lighted them on their way, while it
+had scared the Spaniards from their posts.
+
+The boats ran ashore in the mile-long space between forts St. George and
+the Palisade, and a party of Zeelanders, Admiral Haultain, governor of
+Walcheren, at their head, sprang upon the dyke.  Meantime, however, the
+royalists, finding that the fire-ships had come to so innocent an end,
+had rallied and emerged from their forts.  Haultain and his Zeelanders,
+by the time they had fairly mounted the dyke, found themselves in the
+iron embrace of several hundred Spaniards.  After a brief fierce
+struggle, face to face, and at push of pike, the patriots reeled backward
+down tile bank, and took refuge in their boats.  Admiral Haultain slipped
+as he left the shore, missed a rope's end which was thrown to him, fell
+into the water, and, borne down by the weight of his armour, was drowned.
+The enemy, pursuing them, sprang to the waist in the ooze on the edge of
+the dyke, and continued the contest.  The boats opened a hot fire, and
+there was a severe skirmish for many minutes, with no certain result.  It
+was, however, beginning to go hard with the Zeelanders, when, just at the
+critical moment, a cheer from the other side of the dyke was heard, and
+the Antwerp fleet was seen coming swiftly to the rescue.  The Spaniards,
+taken between the two bands of assailants, were at a disadvantage, and it
+was impossible to prevent the landing of these fresh antagonists.  The
+Antwerpers sprang ashore.  Among the foremost was Sainte Aldegonde, poet,
+orator, hymn-book maker, burgomaster, lawyer, polemical divine--now armed
+to the teeth and cheering on his men, in the very thickest of the fight.
+The diversion was successful, and Sainte Aldegonde gallantly drove the
+Spaniards quite off the field.  The whole combined force from Antwerp and
+Zeeland now effected their landing.  Three thousand men occupied all the
+space between Fort George and the Palisade.
+
+With Sainte Aldegonde came the unlucky Koppen Loppen, and all that could
+be spared of the English and Scotch troops in Antwerp, under Balfour and
+Morgan.  With Hohenlo and Justinus de Nassau came Reinier Kant, who had
+just succeeded Paul Buys as Advocate of Holland.  Besides these came two
+other men, side by side, perhaps in the same boat, of whom the world was
+like to hear much, from that time forward, and whose names are to be most
+solemnly linked together, so long as Netherland history shall endure;
+one, a fair-faced flaxen-haired boy of eighteen, the other a square-
+visaged, heavy-browed man of forty--Prince Maurice and John of Olden-
+Barneveldt.  The statesman had been foremost to urge the claim of William
+the Silent's son upon the stadholderate of Holland and Zeeland, and had
+been, as it were, the youth's political guardian.  He had himself borne
+arms more than once before, having shouldered his matchlock under
+Batenburg, and marched on that officer's spirited but disastrous
+expedition for the relief of Haarlem.  But this was the life of those
+Dutch rebels.  Quill-driving, law-expounding, speech-making, diplomatic
+missions, were intermingled with very practical business in besieged
+towns or open fields, with Italian musketeers and Spanish pikemen.  And
+here, too, young Maurice was taking his first solid lesson in the art of
+which he was one day to be so distinguished a professor.  It was a sharp
+beginning.  Upon this ribband of earth, scarce six paces in breadth, with
+miles of deep water on both sides--a position recently fortified by the
+first general of the age, and held by the famous infantry of Spain and
+Italy--there was likely to be no prentice-work.
+
+To assault such a position was in truth, as Alexander had declared it to
+be, a most daring and desperate resolution on the part of the States.
+"Soldiers, citizens, and all," said Parma, "they are obstinate as dogs to
+try their fortune."
+
+With wool-sacks, sand-bags, hurdles, planks, and other materials brought
+with them, the patriots now rapidly entrenched themselves in the position
+so brilliantly gained; while, without deferring for an instant the great
+purpose which they had come to effect, the sappers and miners fastened
+upon the ironbound soil of the dyke, tearing it with pick, mattock, and
+shovel, digging, delving, and throwing up the earth around them, busy as
+human beavers, instinctively engaged in a most congenial task.
+
+But the beavers did not toil unmolested.  The large and determined force
+of Antwerpers and English, Hollanders and Zeelanders, guarded the
+fortifications as they were rapidly rising, and the pioneers as they were
+so manfully delving; but the enemy was not idle.  From Fort Saint James,
+next beyond Saint George, Camillo del Monte led a strong party to the
+rescue.  There was a tremendous action, foot to foot, breast to breast,
+with pike and pistol, sword and dagger.  Never since the beginning of the
+war had there been harder fighting than now upon that narrow isthmus.
+"'Twas an affair of most brave obstinacy on both sides," said Parma,
+who rarely used strong language.  "Soldiers, citizens, and all--they
+were like mad bulldogs."  Hollanders, Italians, Scotchmen, Spaniards,
+Englishmen, fell thick and fast.  The contest was about the entrenchments
+before they were completed, and especially around the sappers and miners,
+in whose picks and shovels lay the whole fate of Antwerp.  Many of the
+dyke-breakers were digging their own graves, and rolled, one after
+another, into the breach which they were so obstinately creating.
+Upon that slender thread of land the hopes of many thousands were
+hanging.  To tear it asunder, to roll the ocean-waves up to Antwerp,
+and thus to snatch the great city triumphantly from the grasp of Philip
+--to accomplish this, the three thousand had come forth that May morning.
+To prevent it, to hold firmly that great treasure entrusted to them, was
+the determination of the Spaniards.  And so, closely pent and packed,
+discharging their carbines into each other's faces, rolling, coiled
+together, down the slimy sides of the dyke into the black waters,
+struggling to and fro, while the cannon from the rebel fleet and from the
+royal forts mingled their roar with the sharp crack of the musketry,
+Catholics and patriots contended for an hour, while still, through all
+the confusion and uproar, the miners dug and delved.
+
+At last the patriots were victorious.  They made good their
+entrenchments, drove the Spaniards, after much slaughter, back to the
+fort of Saint George on the one side, and of the Palisade on the other,
+and cleared the whole space between the two points.  The centre of the
+dyke was theirs; the great Kowenstyn, the only key by which the gates of
+Antwerp could be unlocked, was in the deliverers' hands.  They pursued
+their victory, and attacked the Palisade Fort.  Gamboa, its commandant,
+was severely wounded; many other officers dead or dying; the outworks
+were in the hands of the Hollanders; the slender piles on which the
+fortress rested in the water were rudely shaken; the victory was almost
+complete.
+
+And now there was a tremendous cheer of triumph.  The beavers had done
+their work, the barrier was bitten through and through, the salt water
+rushed like a river through the ruptured dyke.  A few moments later, and
+a Zeeland barge, freighted with provisions, floated triumphantly into the
+waters beyond, now no longer an inland sea.  The deed was done--the
+victory achieved.  Nothing more was necessary than to secure it, to tear
+the fatal barrier to fragments, to bury it, for its whole length, beneath
+the waves.  Then, after the isthmus had been utterly submerged, when the
+Scheldt was rolled back into its ancient bed, when Parma's famous bridge
+had become useless, when the maritime communication between Antwerp and
+Holland had been thoroughly established, the Spaniards would have nothing
+left for it but to drown like rats in their entrenchments or to abandon
+the siege in despair.  All this was in the hands of the patriots.  The
+Kowenstyn was theirs.  The Spaniards were driven from the field, the
+batteries of their forts silenced.  For a long period the rebels were
+unmolested, and felt themselves secure.
+
+"We remained thus some three hours," says Captain James, an English
+officer who fought in the action, and described it in rough, soldierly
+fashion to Walsingham the same day, "thinking all things to be secure."
+Yet in the very supreme moment of victory, the leaders, both of the
+Hollanders and of the Antwerpers, proved themselves incompetent to their
+position.  With deep regret it must be admitted, that not only the
+reckless Hohenlo, but the all-accomplished Sainte Aldegonde, committed
+the gravest error.  In the hour of danger, both had comported themselves
+with perfect courage and conduct.  In the instant of triumph, they gave
+way to puerile exultation.  With a celerity as censurable as it seems
+incredible, both these commanders sprang into the first barge which had
+thus floated across the dyke, in order that they might, in person, carry
+the news of the victory to Antwerp, and set all the bells ringing and the
+bonfires blazing.  They took with them Ferrante Spinola, a mortally-
+wounded Italian officer of rank, as a trophy of their battle, and a
+boatload of beef and flour, as an earnest of the approaching relief.
+
+While the conquerors were thus gone to enjoy their triumph, the
+conquered, though perplexed and silenced, were not yet disposed to accept
+their defeat.  They were even ignorant that they were conquered.  They
+had been forced to abandon the field, and the patriots had entrenched
+themselves upon the dyke, but neither Fort Saint George nor the Palisade
+had been carried, although the latter was in imminent danger.
+
+Old Count Peter Ernest Mansfeld--a grizzled veteran, who had passed his
+childhood, youth, manhood, and old age, under fire--commanded at the
+land-end of the dyke, in the fortress of Stabroek, in which neighbourhood
+his whole division was stationed.  Seeing how the day was going, he
+called a council of war.  The patriots had gained a large section of the
+dyke.  So much was certain.  Could they succeed in utterly demolishing
+that bulwark in the course of the day?  If so, how were they to be
+dislodged before their work was perfected?  It was difficult to assault
+their position.  Three thousand Hollanders, Antwerpers, Englishmen--
+"mad bulldogs all," as Parma called them--showing their teeth very
+mischievously, with one hundred and sixty Zeeland vessels throwing in
+their broadsides from both margins of the dyke, were a formidable company
+to face.
+
+"Oh for one half hour of Alexander in the field!" sighed one of the
+Spanish officers in council.  But Alexander was more than four leagues
+away, and it was doubtful whether he even knew of the fatal occurrence.
+Yet how to send him a messenger.  Who could reach him through that valley
+of death?  Would it not be better to wait till nightfall?  Under the
+cover of darkness something might be attempted, which in the daylight
+would be hopeless.  There was much anxiety, and much difference of
+opinion had been expressed, when Camillo Capizucca, colonel of the
+Italian Legion, obtained a hearing.  A man bold in words as in deeds, he
+vehemently denounced the pusillanimity which would wait either for Parma
+or for nightfall.  "What difference will it make," he asked, "whether we
+defer our action until either darkness or the General arrives?  In each
+case we give the enemy time enough to destroy the dyke, and thoroughly to
+relieve the city.  That done, what good can be accomplished by our arms?
+Then our disheartened soldiers will either shrink from a fruitless combat
+or march to certain death."  Having thus, very warmly but very
+sagaciously, defined the position in which all were placed, he proceeded
+to declare that he claimed, neither for himself nor for his legion, any
+superiority over the rest of the army.  He knew not that the Italians
+were more to be relied upon than others in the time of danger, but this
+he did know, that no man in the world was so devoted as he was to the
+Prince of Parma.  To show that devotion by waiting with folded arms
+behind a wall until the Prince should arrive to extricate his followers,
+was not in his constitution.  He claimed the right to lead his Italians
+against the enemy at once--in the front rank, if others chose to follow;
+alone, if the rest preferred to wait till a better leader should arrive.
+
+The words of the Italian colonel sent a thrill through all who heard him.
+Next in command under Capizucca was his camp-marshal, an officer who bore
+the illustrious name of Piccolomini--father of the Duke Ottavio, of whom
+so much was to be heard at a later day throughout the fell scenes of that
+portion of the eighty years' tragedy now enacting, which was to be called
+the Thirty Years' War of Germany.  The camp-marshal warmly seconded the
+proposition of his colonel.  Mansfeld, pleased with such enthusiasm among
+his officers, yielded to their wishes, which were, in truth, his own.
+Six companies of the Italian Legion were in his encampment while the
+remainder were stationed, far away, upon the bridge, under command of his
+son, Count Charles.  Early in the morning, before the passage across the
+dyke had been closed the veteran condottiere, pricking his ears as he
+snuffed the battle from afar, had contrived to send a message to his son.
+
+"Charles, my boy," were his words, "to-day we must either beat them or
+burst."
+
+Old Peter Ernest felt that the long-expected, long-deferred assault was
+to be made that morning in full force, and that it was necessary for the
+royalists, on both bridge and dyke, to hold their own.  Piccolomini now
+drew up three hundred of his Italians, picked veterans all, and led them
+in marching order to Mansfeld.  That general at the same moment, received
+another small but unexpected reinforcement.  A portion of the Spanish
+Legion, which had long been that of Pedro Pacchi, lay at the extreme
+verge of the Stabroek encampment, several miles away.  Aroused by the
+distant cannonading, and suspecting what had occurred, Don Juan d'Aquila,
+the colonel in command, marched without a moment's delay to Mansfeld's
+head-quarters, at the head of all the force he could muster--about two
+hundred strong.  With him came Cardona, Gonzales de Castro, Toralva, and
+other distinguished officers.  As they arrived, Capizucca was just
+setting forth for the field.  There arose a dispute for precedence
+between the Italians and the Spaniards.  Capizucca had first demanded the
+privilege of leading what seemed a forlorn hope, and was unwilling to
+yield his claim to the new comer.  On the other hand, the Spaniards were
+not disposed to follow where they felt entitled to lead.  The quarrel was
+growing warm, when Aquila, seizing his Italian rival by the hand,
+protested that it was not a moment for friends to wrangle for precedence.
+
+"Shoulder to shoulder," said he, "let us go into this business, and let
+our blows rather fall on our enemies' heads than upon each other's."
+This terminated the altercation.  The Italians and Spaniards--in battle
+array as they were--all dropped on their knees, offered a brief prayer to
+the Holy Virgin, and then, in the best possible spirits, set forth along
+the dyke.  Next to fort Stabroek--whence they issued--was the Palisade
+Fort, nearly a mile removed, which the patriots had nearly carried, and
+between which and St. George, another mile farther on, their whole force
+was established.
+
+The troops under Capizucca and Aquila soon reached the Palisade, and
+attacked the besiegers, while the garrison, cheered by the unexpected
+relief, made a vigorous sortie.  There was a brief sharp contest, in
+which many were killed on both sides; but at last the patriots fell back
+upon their own entrenchments, and the fort was saved.  Its name was
+instantly changed to Fort Victory, and the royalists then prepared to
+charge the fortified camp of the rebels, in the centre of which the dyke-
+cutting operations were still in progress.  At the same moment, from the
+opposite end of the bulwark, a cry was heard along the whole line of the
+dyke.  From Fort Holy Cross, at the Scheldt end, the welcome intelligence
+was suddenly communicated--as if by a magnetic impulse--that Alexander
+was in the field!
+
+It was true.  Having been up half the night, as usual, keeping watch
+along his bridge, where he was ever expecting a fatal attack, he had
+retired for a few hours' rest in his camp at Beveren.  Aroused at day-
+break by the roar of the cannon, he had hastily thrown on his armour,
+mounted his horse, and, at the head of two hundred pikemen, set forth for
+the scene of action.  Detained on the bridge by a detachment of the
+Antwerp fleet, which had been ordered to make a diversion in that
+quarter, he had, after beating off their vessels with his boat-artillery,
+and charging Count Charles Mansfeld to heed well the brief injunction of
+old Peter Ernest, made all the haste he could to the Kowenstyn.  Arriving
+at Fort Holy Cross, he learned from Mondragon how the day was going.
+Three thousand rebels, he learned, were established on the dyke, Fort
+Palisade was tottering, a fleet from both sides was cannonading the
+Spanish entrenchments, the salt water was flowing across the breach
+already made.  His seven months' work, it seemed, had come to nought.
+The navigation was already open from the sea to Antwerp, the Lowenstyn
+was in the rebels' hands.  But Alexander was not prone to premature
+despair.  "I arrived," said he to Philip in a letter written on the same
+evening, "at the very nick of time."  A less hopeful person might have
+thought that he had arrived several hours too late.  Having brought with
+him every man that could be spared from Beveren and from the bridge,
+he now ordered Camillo del Monte to transport some additional pieces of
+artillery from Holy Cross and from Saint James to Fort Saint Georg.  At
+the same time a sharp cannonade was to be maintained upon the rebel fleet
+from all the forts.
+
+Mondragon, with a hundred musketeers and pikemen, was sent forward
+likewise as expeditiously as possible to Saint George.  No one could be
+more alert.  The battered veteran, hero of some of the most remarkable
+military adventures that history has ever recorded,' fought his way on
+foot, in the midst of the fray, like a young ensign who had his first
+laurels to win.  And, in truth, the day was not one for cunning
+manoeuvres, directed, at a distance, by a skillful tactician.  It was
+a brisk close contest, hand to hand and eye to eye--a Homeric encounter,
+in which the chieftains were to prove a right to command by their
+personal prowess.  Alexander, descending suddenly--dramatically, as it
+were--when the battle seemed lost--like a deity from the clouds-was to
+justify, by the strength of his arm, the enthusiasm which his name always
+awakened.  Having, at a glance, taken in the whole situation, he made his
+brief arrangements, going from rank to rank, and disposing his troops in
+the most effective manner.  He said but few words, but his voice had
+always a telling effect.
+
+"The man who refuses, this day, to follow me," he said, "has never had
+regard to his own honour, nor has God's cause or the King's ever been
+dear to his heart."
+
+His disheartened Spaniards and Italians--roused as by a magic trumpet--
+eagerly demanded to be led against the rebels.  And now from each end of
+the dyke, the royalists were advancing toward the central position
+occupied by the patriots.  While Capizucca and Aquila were occupied at
+Fort Victory, Parma was steadily cutting his way from Holy Cross to Saint
+George.  On foot, armed with sword and shield, and in coat of mail, and
+marching at the head of his men along the dyke, surrounded by Bevilacqua,
+Bentivoglio, Manriquez, Sforza, and other officers of historic name and
+distinguished courage, now upon the summit of the causeway, now on its
+shelving banks, now breast-high in the waters, through which lay the
+perilous path, contending at every inch with the scattered bands of the
+patriots, who slowly retired to their entrenched camp, and with the
+Antwerp and Zeeland vessels, whose balls tore through the royalist ranks,
+the General at last reached Saint George.  On the preservation of that
+post depended the whole fortune of the day, for Parma had already
+received the welcome intelligence that the Palisade--now Fort Victory--
+had been regained.  He instantly ordered an outer breast-work of wool-
+sacks and sand-bags to be thrown up in front of Saint George, and planted
+a battery to play point-blank at the enemy's entrenchments.  Here the
+final issue was to be made.
+
+The patriots and Spaniards were thus all enclosed in the mile-long space
+between St.  George and the Palisade.  Upon that narrow strip of earth,
+scarce six paces in width, more than five thousand men met in mortal
+combat--a narrow arena for so many gladiators, hemmed in on both sides by
+the sea.  The patriots had, with solemn ceremony, before starting upon
+their enterprise, vowed to destroy the dyke and relieve Antwerp, or to
+perish in the attempt.  They were true to their vow.  Not the ancient
+Batavians or Nervii had ever manifested more tenacity against the Roman
+legions than did their descendants against the far-famed Spanish infantry
+upon this fatal day.  The fight on the Kowenstyn was to be long
+remembered in the military annals of Spain and Holland.  Never, since the
+curtain first rose upon the great Netherland tragedy, had there been a
+fiercer encounter.  Flinching was impossible.  There was scant room for
+the play of pike and dagger, and, close packed as were the combatants,
+the dead could hardly fall to the ground.  It was a mile-long series of
+separate mortal duels, and the oozy dyke was soon slippery with blood.
+
+From both sides, under Capizucca and Aquila on the one band, and under
+Alexander on the other, the entrenchments of the patriots were at last
+assaulted, and as the royalists fell thick and fast beneath the breast-
+work which they were storming, their comrades clambered upon their
+bodies, and attempted, from such vantage-ground, to effect an entrance.
+Three times the invaders were beaten back with heavy loss, and after each
+repulse the attack was renewed with fresh vigour, while within the
+entrenchments the pioneers still plied the pick and shovel, undismayed by
+the uproar around them.
+
+A fourth assault, vigorously made, was cheerfully repelled by the
+Antwerpers and Hollanders, clustering behind their breast-works, and
+looking steadily into their enemies' eyes.  Captain Heraugiere--of whom
+more was to be heard one day--had led two hundred men into action, and
+now found himself at the head of only thirteen.  The loss had been as
+severe among many other patriot companies, as well as in the Spanish
+ranks, and again the pikemen of Spain and Italy faltered before the iron
+visages and cordial blows of the Hollanders.
+
+This work had lasted a good hour and a half, when at last, on the fifth
+assault, a wild and mysterious apparition renewed the enthusiasm of the
+Spaniards.  The figure of the dead commander of the old Spanish Legion,
+Don Pedro Pacchi, who had fallen a few months before at the siege of
+Dendermonde was seen charging in front of his regiment, clad in his well-
+known armour, and using the gestures which had been habitual with him in
+life.  No satisfactory explanation was ever made of this singular
+delusion, but it was general throughout the ranks, and in that
+superstitious age was as effective as truth.  The wavering Spaniards
+rallied once more under the guidance of their phantom leader, and again
+charged the breast-work of the patriots.  Toralva, mounting upon the back
+of one of his soldiers, was first to vault into the entrenchments.  At
+the next instant he lay desperately wounded on the ground, but was close
+followed by Capizucca, sustained by a determined band.  The entrenchment
+was carried, but the furious conflict still continued.  At nearly the
+same moment, however, several of the patriot vessels were observed to
+cast off their moorings, and to be drifting away from the dyke.  A large
+number of the rest had been disabled by the hot fire, which by
+Alexander's judicious orders had been directed upon the fleet.  The
+ebbing tide left no choice to the commander of the others but to retreat
+or to remain and fall into the enemy's hands, should he gain the day.
+Had they risked the dangerous alternative, it might have ensured the
+triumph of the whole enterprise, while their actual decision proved most
+disastrous in the end.
+
+"We have conquered," cried Alexander, stretching his arm towards the
+receding waters.  "The sea deserts the impious heretics.  Strike from
+them now their last hope, and cut off their retreat to the departing
+ships."  The Spaniards were not slow to perceive their advantage, while
+the courage of the patriots at last began to ebb with the tide.  The day
+was lost.  In the hour of transitory triumph the leaders of the
+expedition had turned their backs on their followers, and now, after so
+much heroism had been exhibited, fortune too had averted her face.  The
+grim resistance changed to desperate panic, and a mad chase began along
+the blood-stained dyke.  Some were slain with spear and bullet, others
+were hunted into the sea, many were smothered in the ooze along the edge
+of the embankment.  The fugitives, making their way to the retreating
+vessels, were pursued by the Spaniards, who swam after them, with their
+swords in their teeth, and engaged them in mortal combat in the midst of
+the waves.
+
+"And so we cut all their throats," said Parma, "the rebels on every side
+remaining at our mercy, and I having no doubt that my soldiers would
+avenge the loss of their friends."
+
+The English and the Scotch, under Balfour and Morgan, were the very last
+to abandon the position which they had held so manfully seven hours long.
+Honest Captain James, who fought to the last, and described the action
+the same night in the fewest possible words, was of opinion that the
+fleet had moved away only to obtain a better position.  "They put off to
+have more room to play on the enemy," said he; "but the Hollanders and
+Zeelanders, seeing the enemy come on so hotly, and thinking our galleys
+would leave them, abandoned their string.  The Scots, seeing them to
+retire, left their string.  The enemy pursued very hotly; the Englishmen
+stood to repulse, and are put most to the sword.  In this shameful
+retreat there were slain or drowned to the number of two thousand."
+The blunt Englishman was justly indignant that an enterprise, so nearly
+successful, had been ruined by the desertion of its chiefs.  "We had cut
+the dyke in three places," said he; "but left it most shamefully for want
+of commandment."
+
+Poor Koppen Loppen--whose blunders on former occasions had caused so much
+disaster--was now fortunate enough to expiate them by a soldier's death.
+Admiral Haultain had, as we have seen, been drowned at the commencement
+of the action.  Justinus de Nassau, at its close, was more successful in
+his retreat to the ships.  He, too, sprang into the water when the
+overthrow was absolute; but, alighting in some shallows, was able to
+conceal himself among weeds and waterlilies till he had divested himself
+of his armour, when he made his escape by swimming to a boat, which
+conveyed him to Lillo.  Roelke van Deest, an officer of some note, was so
+horribly wounded in the face, that he was obliged to wear a mask for the
+remainder of his life.
+
+Parma, overjoyed at his victory, embraced Capizucca before the whole
+army, with warm expressions of admiration for his conduct.  Both the
+Italian colonel and his Spanish rival Aquila were earnestly recommended
+to Philip for reward and promotion.  The wounded Toralva was carried to
+Alexander's own quarters, and placed in Alexander's own bed, where he
+remained till his recovery, and was then presented--a distinction which
+he much valued--with the armour which the Prince had worn on the day of
+the battle.  Parma himself, so soon as the action was concluded, went
+with his chief officers straight from the field to the little village-
+church of Stabroek, where he fell upon his knees and offered up fervent
+thanks for his victory.  He next set about repairing the ruptured dyke,
+damaged in many places but not hopelessly ruined, and for this purpose
+the bodies of the rebels, among other materials, were cast by hundreds
+into the ditches which their own hands had dug.
+
+Thus ended the eight hours' fight on the Kowenstyn.  "The feast lasted
+from seven to eight hours," said Parma, "with the most brave obstinacy on
+both sides that has been seen for many a long day."  A thousand royalists
+were killed and twice as many patriots, and the issue of the conflict was
+most uncertain up to the very last.
+
+"Our loss is greater than I wish it was," wrote Alexander to Philip: "It
+was a very close thing, and I have never been more anxious in my life as
+to the result for your Majesty's service.  The whole fate of the battle
+was hanging all the time by a thread."  More than ever were
+reinforcements necessary, and it was only by a miracle that the victory
+had at last been gained with such slender resources.  "'Tis a large,
+long, laborious, expensive, and most perilous war," said Parma, when
+urging the claims of Capizucca and Aquila, "for we have to fight every
+minute; and there are no castles and other rewards, so that if soldiers
+are not to have promotion, they will lose their spirit."  Thirty-two of
+the rebel vessels grounded, and fell into the hands of the Spaniards, who
+took from them many excellent pieces of artillery.  The result was most
+conclusive and most disheartening for the patriots.
+
+Meantime--as we have seen--Hohenlo and Sainte Aldegonde had reached
+Antwerp in breathless haste to announce their triumph.  They had been met
+on the quay by groups of excited citizens, who eagerly questioned the two
+generals arriving thus covered with laurels from the field of battle, and
+drank with delight all the details of the victory.  The poor dying
+Spinola was exhibited in triumph, the boat-load of breadstuffs received
+with satisfaction, and vast preparations were made to receive, on wharves
+and in storehouses, the plentiful supplies about to arrive.  Beacons and
+bonfires were lighted, the bells from all the steeples rang their
+merriest peals, cannon thundered in triumph not only in Antwerp itself,
+but subsequently at Amsterdam and other more distant cities.  In due time
+a magnificent banquet was spread in the town-house to greet the
+conquering Hohenlo.  Immense gratification was expressed by those of the
+reformed religion; dire threats were uttered against the Catholics.  Some
+were for hanging them all out of hand, others for throwing them into the
+Scheldt; the most moderate proposed packing them all out of town so soon
+as the siege should be raised--an event which could not now be delayed
+many days longer.
+
+Hohenlo, placed on high at the head of the banquet-table, assumed the
+very god of war.  Beside and near him sat the loveliest dames of Antwerp,
+rewarding his bravery with their brightest smiles.  The Count drained
+huge goblets to their health, to the success of the patriots, and to the
+confusion of the royalists, while, as he still drank and feasted, the
+trumpet, kettle-drum, and cymbal, and merry peal of bell without, did
+honour to his triumph.  So gay and gallant was the victor, that he
+announced another banquet on the following day, still further to
+celebrate the happy release of Antwerp, and invited the fair ladies
+around him again to grace the board.  It is recorded that the gentlewoman
+next him responded with a sigh, that, if her presentiments were just, the
+morrow would scarcely be so joyful as the present day had been, and that
+she doubted whether the triumph were not premature.
+
+Hardly had she spoken when sinister sounds were heard in the streets.
+The first few stragglers, survivors of the deadly fight, had arrived with
+the fatal news that all was lost, the dyke regained, the Spaniards
+victorious, the whole band of patriots cut to pieces.  A few frightfully-
+wounded and dying sufferers were brought into the banqueting-hall.
+Hohenlo sprang from the feast--interrupted in so ghastly a manner--
+pursued by shouts and hisses.  Howls of execration, saluted him in the
+streets, and he was obliged to conceal himself for a time, to escape the
+fury of the populace.
+
+On the other hand, Parma was, not unnaturally, overjoyed at the
+successful issue to the combat, and expressed himself on the subject in
+language of (for him) unusual exultation.  "To-day, Sunday, 26th of
+June," said he, in a letter to Philip, despatched by special courier on
+the very same night, "the Lord has been pleased to grant to your Majesty
+a great and most signal victory.  In this conjuncture of so great
+importance it may be easily conceived that the best results that can be
+desired will be obtained if your Majesty is now ready to do what is
+needful.  I congratulate your Majesty very many times on this occasion,
+and I desire to render infinite thanks to Divine Providence."
+
+He afterwards proceeded, in a rapid and hurried manner, to give his
+Majesty the outlines of the battle, mentioning, with great encomium,
+Capizucca and Aquila, Mondragon and Vasto, with many other officers, and
+recommending them for reward and promotion; praising, in short, heartily
+and earnestly, all who had contributed to the victory, except himself, to
+whose personal exertions it was chiefly due.  "As for good odd Mansfeld,"
+said he, "he bore himself like the man he is, and he deserves that your
+Majesty should send him a particular mark of your royal approbation,
+writing to him yourself pleasantly in Spanish, which is that which will
+be most highly esteemed by him."  Alexander hinted also that Philip would
+do well to bestow upon Mansfeld the countship of Biart, as a reward for
+his long years of faithful service!
+
+This action on the Kowenstyn terminated the effective resistance of
+Antwerp.  A few days before, the monster-vessel, in the construction of
+which so much time and money had been consumed, had at last been set
+afloat.  She had been called the War's End, and, so far as Antwerp was
+concerned, the fates that presided over her birth seemed to have been
+paltering in a double sense when the ominous name was conferred.  She was
+larger than anything previously known in naval architecture; she had four
+masts and three helms.  Her bulwarks were ten feet thick; her tops were
+musket-proof.  She had twenty guns of largest size, besides many other
+pieces of artillery of lesser calibre, the lower tier of which was almost
+at the water's level.  She was to carry one thousand men, and she was so
+supported on corks and barrels as to be sure to float under any
+circumstances.  Thus she was a great swimming fortress which could not be
+sunk, and was impervious to shot.  Unluckily, however, in spite of her
+four masts and three helms, she would neither sail nor steer, and she
+proved but a great, unmanageable and very ridiculous tub, fully
+justifying all the sarcasms that had been launched upon her during the
+period of her construction, which had been almost as long as the siege
+itself.
+
+The Spaniards called her the Bugaboo--a monster to scare children withal.
+The patriots christened her the Elephant, the Antwerp Folly, the Lost
+Penny, with many similar appellations.  A small army might have been
+maintained for a month, they said, on the money she had cost, or the
+whole city kept in bread for three months.  At last, late in May, a few
+days before the battle of the Kowenstyn, she set forth from Antwerp,
+across the submerged land, upon her expedition to sweep all the Spanish
+forts out of existence, and to bring the war to its end.  She came to her
+own end very briefly, for, after drifting helplessly about for an hour,
+she stuck fast in the sand in the neighbourhood of Ordam, while the crew
+and soldiers made their escape, and came back to the city to share in the
+ridicule which, from first to last, had attached itself to the monster-
+ship.
+
+Two days after the Kowenstyn affair, Alexander sent an expedition under
+Count Charles Mansfeld to take possession of the great Bugaboo.  The
+boat, in which were Count Charles, Count Aremberg, his brother de
+Barbancon, and other noble volunteers, met with an accident: a keg of gun
+powder accidentally exploding, blowing Aremberg into the water, whence he
+escaped unharmed by swimming, and frightfully damaging Mansfeld in the
+face.  This indirect mischief--the only injury ever inflicted by the
+War's End upon the enemy--did not prevent the rest of the party in the
+boats from taking possession of the ship, and bringing her in triumph to
+the Prince of Parma.  After being thoroughly examined and heartily
+laughed at by the Spaniards, she was broken up--her cannon, munitions,
+and other valuable materials, being taken from her--and then there was an
+end of the War's End.
+
+This useless expenditure-against the judgment and entreaties of many
+leading personages--was but a type of the difficulties with which Sainte
+Aldegonde had been obliged to contend from the first day of the siege to
+the last.  Every one in the city had felt himself called on to express an
+opinion as to the proper measures for defence.  Diversity of humours,
+popular license, anarchy, did not constitute the best government for a
+city beleagured by Alexander Farnese.  We have seen the deadly injury
+inflicted upon the cause at the outset by the brutality of the butchers,
+and the manful struggle which Sainte Aldegonde had maintained against
+their cupidity and that of their friends.  He had dealt with the thousand
+difficulties which rose up around him from day to day, but his best
+intentions were perpetually misconstrued, his most strenuous exertions
+steadily foiled.  It was a city where there was much love of money, and
+where commerce--always timid by nature, particularly when controlled by
+alien residents--was often the cause of almost abject cowardice.
+
+From time to time there had been threatening demonstrations made against
+the burgomaster, who, by protracting the resistance of Antwerp, was
+bringing about the absolute destruction of a worldwide trade, and the
+downfall of the most opulent capital in Christendom.  There were also
+many popular riots--very easily inflamed by the Catholic portion of the
+inhabitants--for bread.  "Bread, bread, or peace!"  was hoarsely shouted
+by ill-looking mischievous crowds, that dogged the steps and besieged the
+doors of Sainte Aldegonde; but the burgomaster had done his best by
+eloquence of tongue and personal courage, both against mobs and against
+the enemy, to inspire the mass of his fellow-citizens with his own
+generous spirit.  He had relied for a long time on the negotiation with
+France, and it would be difficult to exaggerate the disastrous effects
+produced by the treachery of the Valois court.  The historian Le Petit,
+a resident of Antwerp at the time of the siege, had been despatched on
+secret mission to Paris, and had communicated to the States' deputies
+Sainte Aldegonde's earnest adjurations that they should obtain, if
+possible, before it should be too late, an auxiliary force and a
+pecuniary subsidy.  An immediate assistance, even if slight, might be
+sufficient to prevent Antwerp and its sister cities from falling into the
+hands of the enemy.  On that messenger's return, the burgomaster, much
+encouraged by his report, had made many eloquent speeches in the senate,
+and for a long time sustained the sinking spirits of the citizens.
+
+The irritating termination to the triumph actually achieved against the
+bridge, and the tragical result to the great enterprise against the
+Kowenstyn, had now thoroughly broken the heart of Antwerp.  For the last
+catastrophe Sainte Aldegonde himself was highly censurable, although the
+chief portion of the blame rested on the head of Hohenlo.  Nevertheless
+the States of Holland were yet true to the cause of the Union and of
+liberty.  Notwithstanding their heavy expenditures, and their own loss of
+men, they urged warmly and earnestly the continuance of the resistance,
+and promised, within at latest three months' time, to raise an army of
+twelve thousand foot and seven thousand horse, with which they pledged
+themselves to relieve the city, or to perish in the endeavour.  At the
+same time, the legation, which had been sent to England to offer the
+sovereignty to Queen Elizabeth, sent encouraging despatches to Antwerp,
+assuring the authorities that arrangements for an auxiliary force had
+been effected; while Elizabeth herself wrote earnestly upon the subject
+with her own hand.
+
+"I am informed," said that Princess, "that through the closing of the
+Scheldt you are likely to enter into a treaty with the Prince of Parma,
+the issue of which is very much to be doubted, so far as the maintenance
+of your privileges is concerned.  Remembering the warm friendship which
+has ever existed between this crown and the house of Burgundy, in the
+realms of which you are an important member, and considering that my
+subjects engaged in commerce have always met with more privilege and
+comity in the Netherlands than in any other country, I have resolved to
+send you at once, assistance, comfort, and aid.  The details of the plan
+will be stated by your envoys; but be assured that by me you will never
+be forsaken or neglected."
+
+The negotiations with Queen Elizabeth--most important for the
+Netherlands, for England, and for the destinies of Europe--which
+succeeded the futile diplomatic transactions with France, will be laid
+before the reader in a subsequent chapter.  It is proper that they should
+be massed by themselves, so that the eye can comprehend at a single
+glance their whole progress and aspect, as revealed both by public and
+official, and by secret and hitherto unpublished records.  Meantime, so
+far as regards Antwerp, those negotiations had been too deliberately
+conducted for the hasty and impatient temper of the citizens.
+
+The spirit of the commercial metropolis, long flagging, seemed at last
+broken.  Despair was taking possession of all hearts.  The common people
+did nothing but complain, the magistrates did nothing but wrangle.  In
+the broad council the debates and dissensions were discouraging and
+endless.  Six of the eight militia-colonels were for holding out at all
+hazards, while a majority of the eighty captains were for capitulation.
+The populace was tumultuous and threatening, demanding peace and bread at
+any price.  Holland sent promises in abundance, and Holland was sincere;
+but there had been much disappointment, and there was now infinite
+bitterness.  It seemed obvious that a crisis was fast approaching, and--
+unless immediate aid should come from Holland or from England--that a
+surrender was inevitable.  La None, after five years' imprisonment, had
+at last been exchanged against Count Philip Egmont.  That noble, chief of
+an ancient house, cousin of the Queen of France, was mortified at being
+ransomed against a simple Huguenot gentleman--even though that gentleman
+was the illustrious "iron-armed" La Noue--but he preferred to sacrifice
+his dignity for the sake of his liberty.  He was still more annoyed that
+one hundred thousand crowns as security were exacted from La Noue--for
+which the King of Navarre became bondsman--that he would never again bear
+arms in the Netherlands except in obedience to the French monarch, while
+no such pledges were required of himself.  La None visited the Prince of
+Parma at Antwerp, to take leave, and was received with the courtesy due
+to his high character and great distinction.  Alexander took pleasure in
+showing him all his fortifications, and explaining to him the whole
+system of the siege, and La Noue was filled with honest amazement.  He
+declared afterwards that the works were superb and impregnable; and that
+if he had been on the outside at the head of twelve thousand troops, he
+should have felt obliged to renounce the idea of relieving the city.
+"Antwerp cannot escape you," confessed the veteran Huguenot, "but must
+soon fall into your hands.  And when you enter, I would counsel you to
+hang up your sword at its gate, and let its capture be the crowning
+trophy in your list of victories."
+
+"You are right," answered Parma, "and many of my friends have given me
+the same advice; but how am I to retire, engaged as I am for life in the
+service of my King?"
+
+Such was the opinion of La None, a man whose love for the reformed
+religion and for civil liberty can be as little doubted as his competency
+to form an opinion upon great military subjects.  As little could he be
+suspected just coming as he did from an infamous prison, whence he had
+been at one time invited by Philip II. to emerge, on condition of
+allowing his eyes to be put out--of any partiality for that monarch or
+his representative.
+
+Moreover, although the States of Holland and the English government were
+earnestly desirous of relieving the city, and were encouraging the
+patriots with well-founded promises, the Zeeland authorities were
+lukewarm.  The officers of the Zeeland navy, from which so much was
+expected, were at last discouraged.  They drew up, signed, and delivered
+to Admiral Justinus de Nassau, a formal opinion to the effect that the
+Scheldt had now so many dry and dangerous places, and that the tranquil
+summer-nights--so different from those long, stormy ones of winter--were
+so short as to allow of no attempt by water likely to be successful to
+relieve the city.
+
+Here certainly was much to discourage, and Sainte Aldegonde was at length
+discouraged.  He felt that the last hope of saving Antwerp was gone, and
+with it all possibility of maintaining the existence of a United
+Netherland commonwealth.  The Walloon Provinces were lost already; Ghent,
+Brussels, Mechlin, had also capitulated, and, with the fall of Antwerp,
+Flanders and Brabant must fall.  There would be no barrier left even to
+save Holland itself.  Despair entered the heart of the burgomaster, and
+he listened too soon to its treacherous voice.  Yet while he thought a
+free national state no longer a possibility, he imagined it practicable
+to secure religious liberty by negotiation with Philip II.  He abandoned
+with a sigh one of the two great objects for which he had struggled side
+by side with Orange for twenty years, but he thought it possible to
+secure the other.  His purpose was now to obtain a favourable
+capitulation for Antwerp, and at the same time to bring about the
+submission of Holland, Zeeland, and the other United Provinces, to the
+King of Spain.  Here certainly was a great change of face on the part of
+one so conspicuous, and hitherto so consistent, in the ranks of
+Netherland patriots, and it is therefore necessary, in order thoroughly
+to estimate both the man and the crisis, to follow carefully his steps
+through the secret path of negotiation into which he now entered, and in
+which the Antwerp drama was to find its conclusion.  In these
+transactions, the chief actors are, on the one side, the Prince of Parma,
+as representative of absolutism and the Papacy; on the other, Sainte
+Aldegonde, who had passed his life as the champion of the Reformation.
+
+No doubt the pressure upon the burgomaster was very great.  Tumults were
+of daily occurrence.  Crowds of rioters beset his door with cries of
+denunciations and demands for bread.  A large and turbulent mob upon one
+occasion took possession of the horse-market, and treated him with
+personal indignity and violence, when be undertook to disperse them.
+On the other hand, Parma had been holding out hopes of pardon with more
+reasonable conditions than could well be expected, and had, with a good
+deal of art, taken advantage of several trivial circumstances to inspire
+the burghers with confidence in his good-will.  Thus, an infirm old lady
+in the city happened to imagine herself so dependent upon asses milk as
+to have sent her purveyor out of the city, at the peril of his life, to
+procure a supply from the neighbourhood.  The young man was captured,
+brought to Alexander, from whose hands he very naturally expected the
+punishment of a spy.  The prince, however, presented him, not only with
+his liberty, but with a she-ass; and loaded the animal with partridges
+and capons, as a present for the invalid.  The magistrates, hearing of
+the incident, and not choosing to be outdone in courtesy, sent back a
+waggon-load of old wine and remarkable confectionary as an offering to
+Alexander, and with this interchange of dainties led the way to the
+amenities of diplomacy.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Courage and semblance of cheerfulness, with despair in his heart
+Demanding peace and bread at any price
+Not a friend of giving details larger than my ascertained facts
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v40
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
+From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609
+
+By John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+History United Netherlands, v41, 1584
+
+
+Alexander Farnese, The Duke of Parma
+
+
+CHAPTER V., Part 3.
+
+
+     Sainte Aldegonde discouraged--His Critical Position--His
+     Negotiations with the Enemy--Correspondence with Richardot--
+     Commotion in the City--Interview of Marnix with Parma--Suspicious
+     Conduct of Marnix--Deputation to the Prince--Oration of Marnix--
+     Private Views of Parma--Capitulation of Antwerp--Mistakes of Marnix
+     --Philip on the Religious Question--Triumphal Entrance of Alexander--
+     Rebuilding of the Citadel--Gratification of Philip--Note on Sainte
+     Aldegonde
+
+Sainte Aldegonde's position had become a painful one.  The net had been
+drawn closely about the city.  The bridge seemed impregnable, the great
+Kowenstyn was irrecoverably in the hands of the enemy, and now all the
+lesser forts in the immediate vicinity of Antwerp-Borght, Hoboken,
+Cantecroix, Stralen, Berghen, and the rest--had likewise fallen into his
+grasp.  An account of grain, taken on the 1st of June, gave an average of
+a pound a-head for a month long, or half a pound for two months.  This
+was not the famine-point, according to the standard which had once been
+established in Leyden; but the courage of the burghers had been rapidly
+oozing away, under the pressure of their recent disappointments.  It
+seemed obvious to the burgomaster, that the time for yielding had
+arrived.
+
+"I had maintained the city,"  he said, "for a long period, without any
+excessive tumult or great effusion of blood--a city where there was such
+a multitude of inhabitants, mostly merchants or artisans deprived of all
+their traffic, stripped of their manufactures, destitute of all
+commodities and means of living.  I had done this in the midst of a great
+diversity of humours and opinions, a vast popular license, a confused
+anarchy, among a great number of commanders, most of them inexperienced
+in war; with very little authority of my own, with slender forces of
+ships, soldiers, and sailors; with alight appearance of support from king
+or prince without, or of military garrison within; and under all these
+circumstances I exerted myself to do my uttermost duty in preserving the
+city, both in regard to its internal government, and by force of arms by
+land and sea, without sparing myself in any labour or peril.
+
+"I know very well that there are many persons, who, finding themselves
+quite at their ease, and far away from the hard blows that are passing,
+are pleased to exhibit their wisdom by sitting in judgment upon others,
+founding their decision only upon the results.  But I demand to be judged
+by equity and reason, when passion has been set aside.  I claim that my
+honour shall be protected against my calumniators; for all should
+remember that I am not the first man, nor shall I be the last, that has
+been blamed unjustly.  All persons employed in public affairs are subject
+to such hazards, but I submit myself to Him who knows all hearts, and who
+governs all.  I take Him to witness that in the affair of Antwerp, as in
+all my other actions since my earliest youth, I have most sincerely
+sought His glory and the, welfare of His poor people, without regard to
+my own private interests."
+
+For it is not alone the fate of Antwerp that is here to be recorded.  The
+fame of Sainte Aldegonde was now seriously compromised.  The character of
+a great man must always be closely scanned and scrutinised; protected, if
+needful, against calumny, but always unflinchingly held up to the light.
+Names illustrious by genius and virtue are History's most precious
+treasures, faithfully to be guarded by her, jealously to be watched; but
+it is always a misfortune when her eyes are deceived by a glitter which
+is not genuine.
+
+Sainte Aldegonde was a man of unquestionable genius.  His character had
+ever been beyond the reproach of self-seeking or ignoble ambition.  He
+had multiplied himself into a thousand forms to serve the cause of the
+United Netherland States, and the services so rendered had been brilliant
+and frequent.  A great change in his conduct and policy was now
+approaching, and it is therefore the more necessary to examine closely at
+this epoch his attitude and his character.
+
+Early in June, Richardot, president of the council of Artois, addressed a
+letter to Sainte Aldegonde, by command of Alexander of Parma, suggesting
+a secret interview between the burgomaster and the Prince.
+
+On the 8th of June, Sainte Aldegonde replied, in favourable terms,
+as to the interview; but observed, that, as he was an official personage,
+it was necessary for him to communicate the project to the magistracy of
+the city.  He expressed likewise the hope that Parma would embrace the
+present opportunity for making a general treaty with all the Provinces.
+A special accord with Antwerp, leaving out Holland and Zeeland, would,
+he said, lead to the utter desolation of that city, and to the
+destruction of its commerce and manufactures, while the occasion now
+presented itself to the Prince of "winning praise and immortal glory by
+bringing back all the country to a voluntary and prompt obedience to his
+Majesty."  He proposed, that, instead of his coming alone, there should
+be a number of deputies sent from Antwerp to confer with Alexander.
+
+On the 11th June, Richardot replied by expressing, his own regrets and
+those of the Prince, that the interview could not have been with the
+burgomaster alone, but acknowledging the weight of his reasons, and
+acquiescing in the proposition to send a larger deputation.  Three days
+afterwards, Sainte Aldegonde, on private consultation with some
+confidential personages, changed his ground; announced his preference
+for a private interview, under four eyes, with Parma; and requested that
+a passport might be sent.  The passport was accordingly forwarded the
+same day, with an expression of Alexander's gratification, and with the
+offer, on the part of Richardot, to come himself to Antwerp as hostage
+during the absence of the burgomaster in Parma's camp at Beveren.
+
+Sainte Aldegonde was accordingly about to start on the following day
+(16th of June), but meantime the affair had got wind.  A secret
+interview, thus projected, was regarded by the citizens as extremely
+suspicious.  There was much bitter insinuation against the burgomaster--
+many violent demonstrations.  "Aldegonde, they say, is going to see
+Parma," said one of the burghers, "which gives much dissatisfaction,
+because, 'tis feared that he will make a treaty according to the appetite
+and pleasure of his Highness, having been gained over to the royal cause
+by money.  He says that it would be a misfortune to send a large number
+of burghers.  Last Sunday (16th June) there was a meeting of the broad
+council.  The preachers came into the assembly and so animated the
+citizens by demonstrations of their religion, that all rushed from the
+council-house, crying with loud voices that they did not desire peace but
+war."
+
+This desire was a healthy and a reasonable one; but, unfortunately,
+the Antwerpers had not always been so vigorous or so united in their
+resistance to Parma.  At present, however, they were very furious, so
+soon as the secret purpose of Sainte Aldegonde became generally known.
+The proposed capitulation, which great mobs had been for weeks long
+savagely demanding at the hands of the burgomaster, was now ascribed to
+the burgomaster's unblushing corruption.  He had obviously, they thought,
+been purchased by Spanish ducats to do what he had hitherto been so
+steadily refusing.  A certain Van Werne had gone from Antwerp into
+Holland a few days before upon his own private affairs, with a safe-
+conduct from Parma.  Sainte Aldegonde had not communicated to him the
+project then on foot, but he had permitted him to seek a secret interview
+with Count Mansfeld.  If that were granted, Van Werne was to hint that in
+case the Provinces could promise themselves a religious peace it would be
+possible, in the opinion of Sainte Aldegonde, to induce Holland and
+Zealand and all the rest of the United Provinces, to return to their
+obedience.  Van Werne, on his return to Antwerp, divulged these secret
+negotiations, and so put a stop to Sainte Aldegonde's scheme of going
+alone to Parma.  "This has given a bad suspicion to the people," wrote
+the burgomaster to Richardot, "so much so that I fear to have trouble.
+The broad council has been in session, but I don't know what has taken
+place there, and I do not dare to ask."
+
+Sainte Aldegonde's motive, as avowed by himself, for seeking a private
+interview, was because he had received no answer to the main point in his
+first letter, as to the proposition for a general accord.  In order
+therefore to make the deliberations more rapid, he had been disposed to
+discuss that preliminary question in secret.  "But now," said he to
+Richardot, "as the affair had been too much divulged, as well by diverse
+reports and writings sown about, very inopportunely, as by the arrival
+of M. Van Werne, I have not found it practicable to set out upon my road,
+without communication with the members of the government.  This has been
+done, however, not in the way of consultation, but as the announcement of
+a thing already resolved upon."
+
+He proceeded to state, that great difficulties had arisen, exactly as he
+had foreseen.  The magistrates would not hear of a general accord, and it
+was therefore necessary that a delay should be interposed before it would
+be possible for him to come.  He begged Richardot to persuade Alexander,
+that he was not trifling with him.  "It is not," said he, "from
+lightness, or any other passion, that I am retarding this affair.  I will
+do all in my power to obtain leave to make a journey to the camp of his
+Highness, at whatever price it may cost and I hope before long to arrive
+at my object.  If I fail, it must be ascribed to the humours of the
+people; for my anxiety to restore all the Provinces to obedience to his
+Majesty is extreme."
+
+Richardot, in reply, the next day, expressed regret, without
+astonishment, on the part of Alexander and himself, at the intelligence
+thus received.  People had such difference of humour, he said, and all
+men were not equally capable of reason.  Nevertheless the citizens were
+warned not to misconstrue Parma's gentleness, because he was determined
+to die, with his whole army, rather than not take Antwerp.  "As for the
+King," said Richardot, "he will lay down all his crowns sooner than
+abandon this enterprise."  Van Werne was represented as free from blame,
+and sincerely desirous of peace.  Richardot had only stated to him, in
+general terms, that letters had been received from Sainte Aldegonde,
+expressing an opinion in favour of peace.  As for the royalists, they
+were quite innocent of the reports and writings that had so inopportunely
+been circulated in the city.  It was desirable, however, that the
+negotiation should not too long be deferred, for otherwise Antwerp might
+perish, before a general accord with Holland and Zeeland could be made.
+He begged Sainte Aldegonde to banish all anxiety as to Parma's sentiments
+towards himself or the community.  "Put yourself, Sir, quite at your
+ease," said he.  "His Highness is in no respects dissatisfied with you,
+nor prone to conceive any indignation against this poor people."  He
+assured the burgomaster that he was not suspected of lightness, nor of a
+wish to delay matters, but he expressed solicitude with regard to the
+threatening demonstrations which had been made against him in Antwerp.
+"For," said he, "popular governments are full of a thousand hazards, and
+it would be infinitely painful to me, if you should come to harm."
+
+Thus it would appear that it was Sainte Aldegonde who was chiefly anxious
+to effect the reconciliation of Holland and Zeeland with the King.  The
+initiative of this project to include all the United Provinces in one
+scheme with the reduction of Antwerp came originally from him, and was
+opposed, at the outset, by the magistrates of that city, by the Prince of
+Parma and his councillors, and, by the States of Holland and Zeeland.
+The demonstrations on the part of the preachers, the municipal
+authorities, and the burghers, against Sainte Aldegonde and his plan for
+a secret interview, so soon as it was divulged, made it impossible to
+carry that project into effect.
+
+"Aldegonde, who governs Antwerp," wrote Parma to Philip,
+"was endeavouring, eight days ago, to bring about some kind of
+negotiation for an accord.  He manifested a desire to come hither
+for the sake of a personal interview with me, which I permitted.  It was
+to have taken place last Sunday, 16th of this month, but by reason of a
+certain popular tumult, which arose out of these circumstances, it has
+been necessary to defer the meeting."
+
+There was much disappointment felt by the royalist at this unsatisfactory
+result.  "These bravadoes and impertinent demonstrations on the part of
+some of your people," wrote Richardot, ten days later, "will be the
+destruction of the whole country, and will convert the Prince's
+gentleness into anger.  'Tis these good and zealous patriots, trusting to
+a little favourable breeze that blew for a few days past, who have been
+the cause of all this disturbance, and who are ruining their miserable
+country--miserable, I say, for having produced such abortions as
+themselves."
+
+Notwithstanding what had passed, however, Richardot intimated that
+Alexander was still ready to negotiate.  "And if you, Sir," he concluded,
+in his letter to Aldegonde, "concerning whom many of our friends have at
+present a sinister opinion, as if your object was to circumvent us, are
+willing to proceed roundly and frankly, as I myself firmly believe that
+you will do, we may yet hope for a favourable issue."
+
+Thus the burgomaster was already the object of suspicion to both parties.
+The Antwerpers denounced him as having been purchased by Spanish gold;
+the royalists accused him of intending to overreach the King.  It was not
+probable therefore that all were correct in their conjectures.
+
+At last it was arranged that deputies should be appointed by the broad
+council to commence a negotiation with Parma.  Sainte Aldegonde informed
+Richardot, that he would (5th July, 1585) accompany them, if his affairs
+should permit.  He  protested his sincerity and frankness throughout the
+whole affair.  "They try to calumniate me," he said, "as much on one side
+as on the other, but I will overcome by my innocence all the malice of my
+slanderers.  If his Highness should be pleased to grant us some liberty
+for our religion, I dare to promise such faithful service as will give
+very great satisfaction."
+
+Four days later, Sainte Aldegonde himself, together with M. de Duffel,
+M. de Schoonhoven, and Adrian Hesselt, came to Parma's camp at Beveren,
+as deputies on the part of the Antwerp authorities.  They were
+courteously received by the Prince, and remained three days as his
+guests.  During the period of this visit, the terms of a capitulation
+were thoroughly discussed, between Alexander and his councillors upon one
+part, and the four deputies on the other.  The envoys endeavoured, with
+all the arguments at their command, to obtain the consent of the Prince
+to three preliminary points which they laid down as indispensable.
+Religious liberty must be granted, the citadel must not be reconstructed,
+a foreign garrison must not be admitted; they said.  As it was the firm
+intention of the King, however, not to make the slightest concession on
+any one of these points, the discussion was not a very profitable one.
+Besides the public interviews at which all the negotiators were present,
+there was a private conference between Parma and Sainte Aldegonde which
+lasted more than four hours, in which each did his best to enforce his
+opinions upon the other.  The burgomaster endeavoured to persuade the
+Prince with all the eloquence for which he was so renowned, that the
+hearts not of the Antwerpers only, but of the Hollanders and Zeelanders,
+were easily to be won at that moment.  Give them religious liberty, and
+attempt to govern them by gentleness rather than by Spanish garrisons,
+and the road was plain to a complete reconciliation of all the Provinces
+with his Majesty.
+
+Alexander, who knew his master to be inexorable upon these three points,
+was courteous but peremptory in his statements.  He recommended that the
+rebels should take into consideration their own declining strength, the
+inexhaustible resources of the King, the impossibility of obtaining
+succour from France, and the perplexing dilatoriness of England, rather
+than waste their time in idle expectations of a change in the Spanish
+policy.  He also intimated, obliquely but very plainly, to Sainte
+Aldegonde, that his own fortune would be made, and that he had everything
+to hope from his Majesty's bounty, if he were now willing to make himself
+useful in carrying into effect the royal plans.
+
+The Prince urged these views with so much eloquence, that he seemed,
+in his own words, to have been directly inspired by the Lord for this
+special occasion!  Sainte Aldegonde, too, was signally impressed by
+Alexander's language, and thoroughly fascinated-magnetized, as it were
+--by his character.  He subsequently declared, that he had often
+conversed familiarly with many eloquent personages, but that he had never
+known a man more powerful or persuasive than the Prince of Parma.  He
+could honestly say of him--as Hasdrubal had said of Scipio--that Farnese
+was even more admirable when seen face to face, than he had seemed when
+one only heard of his glorious achievements.
+
+"The burgomaster and three deputies," wrote Parma to Philip, "were here
+until the 12th July.  We discussed (30th July, 1585) the points and form
+of a capitulation, and they have gone back thoroughly satisfied.  Sainte
+Aldegonde especially was much pleased with the long interview which he
+had with me, alone, and which lasted more than three hours.  I told him,
+as well as my weakness and suffering from the tertian fever permitted,
+all that God inspired me to say on our behalf."
+
+Nevertheless, if Sainte Aldegonde and his colleagues went away thoroughly
+satisfied, they had reason, soon after their return, to become thoroughly
+dejected.  The magistrates and burghers would not listen to a proposition
+to abandon the three points, however strongly urged to do so by arguments
+drawn from the necessity of the situation, and by representations of
+Parma's benignity.  As for the burgomaster, he became the target for
+calumny, so soon as his three hours' private interview became known; and
+the citizens loudly declared that his head ought to be cut off, and sent
+in a bag, as a present, to Philip, in order that the traitor might meet
+the sovereign with whom he sought a reconciliation, face to face, as soon
+as possible.
+
+The deputies, immediately after their return, made their report to the
+magistrates, as likewise to the colonels and captains, and to the deans
+of guilds.  Next day, although it was Sunday, there was a session of the
+broad council, and Sainte Aldegonde made a long address, in which--as he
+stated in a letter to Richardot--he related everything that had passed in
+his private conversation with Alexander.  An answer was promised to Parma
+on the following Tuesday, but the burgomaster spoke very discouragingly
+as to the probability of an accord.
+
+"The joy with which our return was greeted," he said, "was followed by a
+general disappointment and sadness, so soon as the result was known.  The
+want of a religious toleration, as well as the refusal to concede on the
+other two points, has not a little altered the hearts of all, even of the
+Catholics.  A citadel and a garrison are considered ruin and desolation
+to a great commercial city.  I have done what I can to urge the
+acceptance of such conditions as the Prince is willing to give, and have
+spoken in general terms of his benign intentions.  The citizens still
+desire peace.  Had his Highness been willing to take both religions under
+his protection, he might have won all hearts, and very soon all the other
+Provinces would have returned to their obedience, while the clemency and
+magnanimity of his Majesty would thus have been rendered admirable
+throughout the world."
+
+The power to form an accurate conception as to the nature of Philip and
+of other personages with whom he was dealing, and as to the general signs
+of his times, seems to have been wanting in the character of the gifted
+Aldegonde.  He had been dazzled by the personal presence of Parma, and he
+now spoke of Philip II., as if his tyranny over the Netherlands--which
+for twenty years had been one horrible and uniform whole--were the
+accidental result of circumstances, not the necessary expression of his
+individual character, and might be easily changed at will--as if Nero,
+at a moment's warning, might transform himself into Trajan.  It is true
+that the innermost soul of the Spanish king could by no possibility be
+displayed to any contemporary, as it reveals itself, after three
+centuries, to those who study the record of his most secret thoughts;
+but, at any rate, it would seem that his career had been sufficiently
+consistent, to manifest the amount of "clemency and magnanimity" which he
+might be expected to exercise.
+
+"Had his Majesty," wrote Sainte Aldegonde, "been willing, since the year
+sixty-six, to pursue a course of toleration, the memory of his reign
+would have been sacred to all posterity, with an immortal praise of
+sapience, benignity, and sovereign felicity."
+
+This might be true, but nevertheless a tolerating Philip, in the year
+1585, ought to have seemed to Sainte Aldegonde an impossible idea.
+
+"The emperors," continued the burgomaster, "who immediately succeeded
+Tiberius were the cause of the wisdom which displayed itself in the good
+Trajan--also a Spaniard--and in Antoninus, Verus, and the rest: If you
+think that this city, by the banishment of a certain number of persons,
+will be content to abandon the profession of the reformed faith, you are
+much mistaken.  You will see, with time, that the exile of this religion
+will be accompanied by a depopulation and a sorrowful ruin and desolation
+of this flourishing city.  But this will be as it pleases God.  Meantime
+I shall not fail to make all possible exertions to induce the citizens to
+consent to a reconciliation with his Majesty.  The broad council will
+soon give their answer, and then we shall send a deputation.  We shall
+invite Holland and Zeeland to join with us, but there is little hope of
+their consent."
+
+Certainly there was little hope of their consent.  Sainte Aldegonde was
+now occupied in bringing about the capitulation of Antwerp, without any
+provision for religious liberty--a concession which Parma had most
+distinctly refused--and it was not probable that Holland and Zeeland,
+after twenty years of hard fighting, and with an immediate prospect of
+assistance from England--could now be induced to resign the great object
+of the contest without further struggle.
+
+It was not until a month had elapsed that the authorities of Antwerp sent
+their propositions to the Prince of Parma.  On the 12th August, however,
+Sainte Aldegonde, accompanied by the same three gentlemen who had been
+employed on the first mission, and by seventeen others besides, proceeded
+with safe-conduct to the camp at Beveren.  Here they were received with
+great urbanity, and hospitably entertained by Alexander, who received
+their formal draft of articles for a capitulation, and referred it to be
+reported upon to Richardot, Pamel, and Vanden Burgh.  Meantime there were
+many long speeches and several conferences, sometimes between all the
+twenty-one envoys and the Prince together; on other occasions, more
+secret ones, at which only Aldegonde and one or two of his colleagues
+were present.  It had been obvious, from the date of the first interview,
+in the preceding month, that the negotiation would be of no avail until
+the government of Antwerp was prepared to abandon all the conditions
+which they had originally announced as indispensable.  Alexander had not
+much disposition and no authority whatever to make concessions.
+
+"So far as I can understand," Parma had written on the 30th July, "they
+are very far from a conclusion.  They have most exorbitant ideas, talking
+of some kind of liberty of conscience, besides refusing on any account to
+accept of garrisons, and having many reasons to allege on such subjects."
+
+The discussions, therefore, after the deputies had at last arrived,
+though courteously conducted, could scarcely be satisfactory to both
+parties.  "The articles were thoroughly deliberated upon," wrote
+Alexander, "by all the deputies, nor did I fail to have private
+conferences with Aldegonde, that most skilful and practised lawyer and
+politician, as well as with two or three of the others.  I did all in my
+power to bring them to a thorough recognition of their errors, and to
+produce a confidence in his Majesty's clemency, in order that they might
+concede what was needful for the interests of the Catholic religion and
+the security of the city.  They heard all I had to say without
+exasperating themselves, and without interposing any strong objections,
+except in the matter of religion, and, still more, in the matter of the
+citadel and the garrison.  Aldegonde took much pains to persuade me that
+it would be ruinous for a great, opulent, commercial city to submit to a
+foreign military force.  Even if compelled by necessity to submit now,
+the inhabitants would soon be compelled by the same necessity to abandon
+the place entirely, and to leave in ruins one of the most splendid and
+powerful cities in the world, and in this opinion Catholics and heretics
+unanimously concurred.  The deputies protested, with one accord, that so
+pernicious and abominable a thing as a citadel and garrison could not
+even be proposed to their constituents.  I answered, that, so long as the
+rebellion of Holland and Zeeland lasted, it would be necessary for your
+Majesty to make sure of Antwerp, by one or the other of those means, but
+promised that the city should be relieved of the incumbrance so soon as
+those islands should be reduced.
+
+"Sainte Aldegonde was not discouraged by this statement, but in the hope
+of convincing others, or with the wish of showing that he had tried his
+best, desired that I would hear him before the council of state.  I
+granted the request, and Sainte Aldegonde then made another long and very
+elegant oration, intended to divert me from my resolution."
+
+It must be confessed--if the reports, which have come down to us of that
+long and elegant oration be correct--that the enthusiasm of the
+burgomaster for Alexander was rapidly degenerating into idolatry.
+
+"We are not here, O invincible Prince," he said, "that we may excuse, by
+an anxious legation, the long defence which we have made of our homes.
+Who could have feared any danger to the most powerful city in the
+Netherlands from so moderate a besieging force?  You would yourself have
+rather wished for, than approved of, a greater facility on our part, for
+the brave cannot love the timid.  We knew the number of your troops, we
+had discovered the famine in your camp, we were aware of the paucity of
+your ships, we had heard of the quarrels in your army, we were expecting
+daily to hear of a general mutiny among your soldiers.  Were we to
+believe that with ten or eleven thousand men you would be able to block
+up the city by land and water, to reduce the open country of Brabant, to
+cut off all aid as well from the neighbouring towns as from the powerful
+provinces of Holland and Zeeland, to oppose, without a navy, the whole
+strength of our fleets, directed against the dyke?  Truly, if you had
+been at the head of fifty thousand soldiers, and every soldier had
+possessed one hundred hands, it would have seemed impossible for you to
+meet so many emergencies in so many places, and under so many
+distractions.  What you have done we now believe possible to do, only
+because we see that it has been done.  You have subjugated the Scheldt,
+and forced it to bear its bridge, notwithstanding the strength of its
+current, the fury of the ocean-tides, the tremendous power of the
+icebergs, the perpetual conflicts with our fleets.  We destroyed your
+bridge, with great slaughter of your troops.  Rendered more courageous
+by that slaughter, you restored that mighty work.  We assaulted the great
+dyke, pierced it through and through, and opened a path for our ships.
+You drove us off when victors, repaired the ruined bulwark, and again
+closed to us the avenue of relief.  What machine was there that we did
+not employ? what miracles of fire did we not invent? what fleets and
+floating cidadels did we not put in motion?  All that genius, audacity,
+and art, could teach us we have executed, calling to our assistance
+water, earth, heaven, and hell itself.  Yet with all these efforts, with
+all this enginry, we have not only failed to drive you from our walls,
+but we have seen you gaining victories over other cities at the same
+time.  You have done a thing, O Prince, than which there is nothing
+greater either in ancient or modern story.  It has often occurred, while
+a general was besieging one city that he lost another situate farther
+off.  But you, while besieging Antwerp, have reduced simultaneously
+Dendermonde, Ghent, Nymegen, Brussels, and Mechlin."
+
+All this, and much more, with florid rhetoric, the burgomaster pronounced
+in honour of Farnese, and the eulogy was entirely deserved.  It was
+hardly becoming, however, for such lips, at such a moment, to sound the
+praise of him whose victory had just decided the downfall of religious
+liberty, and of the national independence of the Netherlands.  His
+colleagues certainly must have winced, as they listened to commendations
+so lavishly bestowed upon the representative of Philip, and it is not
+surprising that Sainte Aldegonde's growing unpopularity should, from that
+hour, have rapidly increased.  To abandon the whole object of the siege,
+when resistance seemed hopeless, was perhaps pardonable, but to offer
+such lip-homage to the conqueror was surely transgressing the bounds of
+decorum.
+
+His conclusion, too, might to Alexander seem as insolent as the whole
+tenor of his address had been humble; for, after pronouncing this solemn
+eulogy upon the conqueror, he calmly proposed that the prize of the
+contest should be transferred to the conquered.
+
+"So long as liberty of religion, and immunity from citadel and garrison
+can be relied upon," he said, "so long will Antwerp remain the most
+splendid and flourishing city in Christendom; but desolation will ensue
+if the contrary policy is to prevail."
+
+But it was very certain that liberty of religion, as well as immunity
+from citadel and garrison, were quite out of the question.  Philip and
+Parma had long been inexorably resolved upon all the three points.
+
+"After the burgomaster had finished his oration," wrote Alexander to his
+sovereign, "I discussed the matter with him in private, very distinctly
+and minutely."
+
+The religious point was soon given up, Sainte Aldegonde finding it waste
+of breath to say anything more about freedom of conscience.  A suggestion
+was however made on the subject of the garrison, which the prince
+accepted, because it contained a condition which it would be easy to
+evade.
+
+"Aldegonde proposed," said Parma, "that a garrison might be admissible
+if I made my entrance into the city merely with infantry and cavalry of
+nations which were acceptable--Walloons, namely, and Germans--and in no
+greater numbers than sufficient for a body-guard.  I accepted, because,
+in substance, this would amount to a garrison, and because, also, after
+the magistrates shall have been changed, I shall have no difficulty in
+making myself master of the people, continuing the garrison, and
+rebuilding the citadel."
+
+The Prince proceeded to give his reasons why he was willing to accept the
+capitulation on what he considered so favourable terms to the besieged.
+Autumn was approaching.  Already the fury of the storms had driven
+vessels clean over the dykes; the rebels in Holland and Zeeland were
+preparing their fleets--augmented by many new ships of war and fire-
+machines--for another desperate attack upon the Palisades, in which there
+was great possibility of their succeeding; an auxiliary force from
+England was soon expected; so that, in view of all these circumstances,
+he had resolved to throw himself at his Majesty's feet and implore his
+clemency.  "If this people of Antwerp, as the head, is gained," said he,
+"there will be tranquillity in all the members."
+
+These reasons were certainly conclusive; nor is it easy to believe, that,
+under the circumstances thus succinctly stated by Alexander, it would
+have been impossible for the patriots to hold out until the promised
+succour from Holland and from England should arrive.  In point of fact,
+the bridge could not have stood the winter which actually ensued; for it
+was the repeatedly expressed opinion of the Spanish officers in Antwerp,
+that the icebergs which then filled the Scheldt must inevitably have
+shattered twenty bridges to fragments, had there been so many.  It
+certainly was superfluous for the Prince to make excuses to Philip for
+accepting the proposed capitulation.  All the prizes of victory had been
+thoroughly secured, unless pillage, massacre, and rape, which had been
+the regular accompaniments of Alva's victories, were to be reckoned among
+the indispensable trophies of a Spanish triumph.
+
+Nevertheless, the dearth in the city had been well concealed from the
+enemy; for, three days after the surrender, not a loaf of bread was to be
+had for any money in all Antwerp, and Alexander declared that he would
+never have granted such easy conditions had he been aware of the real
+condition of affairs.
+
+The articles of capitulation agreed upon between Parma and the deputies
+were brought before the broad council on the 9th August.  There was much
+opposition to them, as many magistrates and other influential personages
+entertained sanguine expectations from the English negotiation, and were
+beginning to rely with confidence upon the promises of Queen Elizabeth.
+The debate was waxing warm, when some of the councillors, looking out of
+window of the great hall, perceived that a violent mob had collected in
+the streets.  Furious cries for bread were uttered, and some meagre-
+looking individuals were thrust forward to indicate the famine which was
+prevailing, and the necessity of concluding the treaty without further
+delay.  Thus the municipal government was perpetually exposed to
+democratic violence, excited by diametrically opposite influences.
+Sometimes the burgomaster was denounced for having sold himself and his
+country to the Spaniards, and was assailed with execrations for being
+willing to conclude a sudden and disgraceful peace.  At other moments he
+was accused of forging letters containing promises of succour from the
+Queen of England and from the authorities of Holland, in order to
+protract the lingering tortures of the war.  Upon this occasion the
+peace-mob carried its point.  The councillors, looking out of window,
+rushed into the hall with direful accounts of the popular ferocity;
+the magistrates and colonels who had been warmest in opposition suddenly
+changed their tone, and the whole body of the broad council accepted the
+articles of capitulation by a unanimous vote.
+
+The window was instantly thrown open, and the decision publicly
+announced.  The populace, wild with delight, rushed through the streets,
+tearing down the arms of the Duke of Anjou, which had remained above the
+public edifices since the period of that personage's temporary residence
+in the Netherlands, and substituting, with wonderful celerity, the
+escutcheon of Philip the Second.  Thus suddenly could an Antwerp mob pass
+from democratic insolence to intense loyalty.
+
+The articles, on the whole, were as liberal as could have been expected.
+The only hope for Antwerp and for a great commonwealth of all the
+Netherlands was in holding out, even to the last gasp, until England and
+Holland, now united, had time to relieve the city.  This was,
+unquestionably, possible.  Had Antwerp possessed the spirit of Leyden,
+had William of Orange been alive, that Spanish escutcheon, now raised
+with such indecent haste, might have never been seen again on the outside
+wall of any Netherland edifice.  Belgium would have become at once a
+constituent portion of a great independent national realm, instead of
+languishing until our own century, the dependency of a distant and a
+foreign metropolis.  Nevertheless, as the Antwerpers were not disposed to
+make themselves martyrs, it was something that they escaped the nameless
+horrors which had often alighted upon cities subjected to an enraged
+soldiery.  It redounds to the eternal honour of Alexander Farnese--when
+the fate of Naarden and Haarlem and Maestricht, in the days of Alva, and
+of Antwerp itself in the horrible "Spanish fury," is remembered--that
+there were no scenes of violence and outrage in the populous and wealthy
+city, which was at length at his mercy after having defied him so long.
+
+Civil and religious liberty were trampled in the dust, commerce and
+manufactures were destroyed, the most valuable portion of the citizens
+sent into hopeless exile, but the remaining inhabitants were not
+butchered in cold blood.
+
+The treaty was signed on the 17th August.  Antwerp was to return to its
+obedience.  There was to be an entire amnesty and oblivion for the past,
+without a single exception.  Royalist absentees were to be reinstated in
+their possessions.  Monasteries, churches, and the King's domains were to
+be restored to their former proprietors.  The inhabitants of the city
+were to practise nothing but the Catholic religion.  Those who refused to
+conform were allowed to remain two years for the purpose of winding up
+their affairs and selling out their property, provided that during that
+period they lived "without scandal towards the ancient religion"--a very
+vague and unsatisfactory condition.  All prisoners were to be released
+excepting Teligny.  Four hundred thousand florins were to be paid by the
+authorities as a fine.  The patriot garrison was to leave the city with
+arms and baggage and all the honours of war.
+
+This capitulation gave more satisfaction to the hungry portion of the
+Antwerpers than to the patriot party of the Netherlands.  Sainte
+Aldegonde was vehemently and unsparingly denounced as a venal traitor.
+It is certain, whatever his motives, that his attitude had completely
+changed.  For it was not Antwerp alone that he had reconciled or was
+endeavouring to reconcile with the King of Spain, but Holland and Zeeland
+as well, and all the other independent Provinces.  The ancient champion
+of the patriot army, the earliest signer of the 'Compromise,' the bosom
+friend of William the Silent, the author of the 'Wilhelmus' national
+song, now avowed his conviction, in a published defence of his conduct
+against the calumnious attacks upon it, "that it was impossible, with a
+clear conscience, for subjects, under any circumstances, to take up arms
+against Philip, their king."  Certainly if he had always entertained that
+opinion he must have suffered many pangs of remorse during his twenty
+years of active and illustrious rebellion.  He now made himself secretly
+active in promoting the schemes of Parma and in counteracting the
+negotiation with England.  He flattered himself, with an infatuation
+which it is difficult to comprehend, that it would be possible to obtain
+religious liberty for the revolting Provinces, although he had consented
+to its sacrifice in Antwerp.  It is true that he had not the privilege of
+reading Philip's secret letters to Parma, but what was there in the
+character of the King--what intimation had ever been given by the
+Governor-General--to induce a belief in even the possibility of such a
+concession?
+
+Whatever Sainte Aldegonde's opinions, it is certain that Philip had no
+intention of changing his own policy.  He at first suspected the
+burgomaster of a wish to protract the negotiations for a perfidious
+purpose.
+
+"Necessity has forced Antwerp," he wrote on the 17th of August--the very
+day on which the capitulation was actually signed--"to enter into
+negotiation.  I understand the artifice of Aldegonde in seeking to
+prolong and make difficult the whole affair, under pretext of treating
+for the reduction of Holland and Zeeland at the same time.  It was
+therefore very adroit in you to defeat this joint scheme at once, and
+urge the Antwerp matter by itself, at the same time not shutting the door
+on the others.  With the prudence and dexterity with which this business
+has thus far been managed I am thoroughly satisfied."
+
+The King also expressed his gratification at hearing from Parma that the
+demand for religious liberty in the Netherlands would soon be abandoned.
+
+"In spite of the vehemence," he said, "which they manifest in the
+religious matter, desiring some kind of liberty, they will in the end,
+as you say they will, content themselves with what the other cities,
+which have returned to obedience, have obtained.  This must be done in
+all cases without flinching, and without permitting any modification."
+
+What "had been obtained" by Brussels, Mechlin, Ghent, was well known.
+The heretics had obtained the choice of renouncing their religion or of
+going into perpetual exile, and this was to be the case "without
+flinching" in Holland and Zeeland, if those provinces chose to return to
+obedience.  Yet Sainte Aldegonde deluded himself with the thought of a
+religious peace.
+
+In another and very important letter of the same date Philip laid down
+his policy very distinctly.  The Prince of Parma, by no means such a
+bigot as his master, had hinted at the possibility of tolerating the
+reformed religion in the places recovered from the rebels, sub silentio,
+for a period not defined, and long enough for the heretics to awake from
+their errors.
+
+"You have got an expression of opinion, I see," wrote the King to
+Alexander, "of some grave men of wisdom and conscience, that the
+limitation of time, during which the heretics may live without scandal,
+may be left undefined; but I feel very keenly the danger of such a
+proposition.  With regard to Holland and Zeeland, or any other provinces
+or towns, the first step must be for them to receive and maintain alone
+the exercise of the Catholic religion, and to subject themselves to the
+Roman church, without tolerating the exercise of any other religion, in
+city, village, farm-house, or building thereto destined in the fields, or
+in any place whatsoever; and in this regulation there is to be no flaw,
+no change, no concession by convention or otherwise of a religious peace,
+or anything of the sort.  They are all to embrace the Roman Catholic
+religion, and the exercise of that is alone to be permitted."
+
+This certainly was distinct enough, and nothing had been ever said in
+public to induce a belief in any modification of the principles on which
+Philip had uniformly acted.  That monarch considered himself born to
+suppress heresy, and he had certainly been carrying out this work during
+his whole lifetime.
+
+The King was willing, however, as Alexander had intimated in his
+negotiations with Antwerp, and previously in the capitulation of
+Brussels, Ghent, and other places, that there should be an absence of
+investigation into the private chambers of the heretics, during the
+period allotted them for choosing between the Papacy and exile.
+
+"It may be permitted," said Philip, "to abstain from inquiring as to what
+the heretics are doing within their own doors, in a private way, without
+scandal, or any public exhibition of their rites during a fixed time.
+But this connivance, and the abstaining from executing the heretics,
+or from chastising them, even although they may be living very
+circumspectly, is to be expressed in very vague terms."
+
+Being most anxious to provide against a second crop of heretics to
+succeed the first, which he was determined to uproot, he took pains to
+enjoin with his own hand upon Parma the necessity of putting in Catholic
+schoolmasters and mistresses to the exclusion of reformed teachers into
+all the seminaries of the recovered Provinces, in order that all the boys
+and girls might grow up in thorough orthodoxy.
+
+Yet this was the man from whom Sainte Aldegonde imagined the possibility
+of obtaining a religious peace.
+
+Ten days after the capitulation, Parma made his triumphal entrance into
+Antwerp; but, according to his agreement, he spared the citizens the
+presence of the Spanish and Italian soldiers, the military procession
+being composed of the Germans and Walloons.  Escorted by his body-guard,
+and surrounded by a knot of magnates and veterans, among whom the Duke of
+Arschot, the Prince of Chimay, the Counts Mansfeld, Egmont, and Aremberg,
+were conspicuous, Alexander proceeded towards the captured city.  He was
+met at the Keyser Gate by a triumphal chariot of gorgeous workmanship,
+in which sat the fair nymph Antwerpia, magnificently bedizened, and
+accompanied by a group of beautiful maidens.  Antwerpia welcomed the
+conqueror with a kiss, recited a poem in his honour, and bestowed upon
+him the keys of the city, one of which was in gold.  This the Prince
+immediately fastened to the chain around his neck, from which was
+suspended the lamb of the golden fleece, with which order he had just
+been, amid great pomp and ceremony, invested.
+
+On the public square called the Mere, the Genoese merchants had erected
+two rostral columns, each surmounted by a colossal image, representing
+respectively Alexander of Macedon and Alexander of Parma.  Before the
+house of Portugal was an enormous phoenix, expanding her wings quite
+across the street; while, in other parts of the town, the procession was
+met by ships of war, elephants, dromedaries, whales, dragons, and other
+triumphal phenomena.  In the market-place were seven statues in copper,
+personifying the seven planets, together with an eighth representing
+Bacchus; and perhaps there were good mythological reasons why the god of
+wine, together with so large a portion of our solar system, should be
+done in copper by Jacob Jongeling, to honour the triumph of Alexander,
+although the key to the enigma has been lost.
+
+The cathedral had been thoroughly fumigated with frankincense, and
+besprinkled with holy water, to purify the sacred precincts from their
+recent pollution by the reformed rites; and the Protestant pulpits which
+had been placed there, had been soundly beaten with rods, and then burned
+to ashes.  The procession entered within its walls, where a magnificent
+Te Deum was performed, and then, after much cannon-firing, bell-ringing,
+torch-light exhibition, and other pyrotechnics, the Prince made his way
+at last to the palace provided for him.  The glittering display, by which
+the royalists celebrated their triumph, lasted three days' long, the city
+being thronged from all the country round with eager and frivolous
+spectators, who were never wearied with examining the wonders of the
+bridge and the forts, and with gazing at the tragic memorials which still
+remained of the fight on the Kowenstyn.
+
+During this interval, the Spanish and Italian soldiery, not willing to be
+outdone in demonstrations of respect to their chief, nor defrauded of
+their rightful claim to a holiday amused themselves with preparing a
+demonstration of a novel character.  The bridge, which, as it was well
+known, was to be destroyed within a very few days, was adorned with
+triumphal arches, and decked with trees and flowering plants; its roadway
+was strewed with branches; and the palisades, parapets, and forts, were
+garnished with wreaths, emblems, and poetical inscriptions in honour of
+the Prince.  The soldiers themselves, attired in verdurous garments of
+foliage and flower-work, their swart faces adorned with roses and lilies,
+paraded the bridge and the dyke in fantastic procession with clash of
+cymbal and flourish of trumpet, dancing, singing, and discharging their
+carbines, in all the delirium of triumph.  Nor was a suitable termination
+to the festival wanting, for Alexander, pleased with the genial character
+of these demonstrations, repaired himself to the bridge, where he was
+received with shouts of rapture by his army, thus whimsically converted
+into a horde of fauns and satyrs.  Afterwards, a magnificent banquet was
+served to the soldiers upon the bridge.  The whole extent of its surface,
+from the Flemish to the Brabant shore--the scene so lately of deadly
+combat, and of the midnight havoc caused by infernal enginery--was
+changed, as if by the stroke of a wand, into a picture of sylvan and
+Arcadian merry-making, and spread with tables laden with delicate viands.
+Here sat that host of war--bronzed figures, banqueting at their ease,
+their heads crowned with flowers, while the highest magnates of the army,
+humouring them in their masquerade, served them with dainties, and filled
+their goblets with wine.
+
+After these festivities had been concluded, Parma set himself to
+practical business.  There had been a great opposition, during the
+discussion of the articles of capitulation to the reconstruction of the
+famous citadel.  That fortress had been always considered, not as a
+defence of the place against a foreign enemy, but as an instrument to
+curb the burghers themselves beneath a hostile power.  The city
+magistrates, however, as well as the dean and chief officers in all the
+guilds and fraternities, were at once changed by Parma--Catholics being
+uniformly substituted for heretics.  In consequence, it was not difficult
+to bring about a change of opinion in the broad council.  It is true that
+neither Papists nor Calvinists regarded with much satisfaction the
+prospect of military violence being substituted for civic rule, but
+in the first effusion of loyalty, and in the triumph of the ancient
+religion, they forgot the absolute ruin to which their own action was now
+condemning their city.  Champagny, who had once covered himself with
+glory by his heroic though unsuccessful efforts to save Antwerp from the
+dreadful "Spanish fury" which had descended from that very citadel, was
+now appointed governor of the town, and devoted himself to the
+reconstruction of the hated fortress.  "Champagny has particularly aided
+me," wrote Parma, "with his rhetoric and clever management, and has
+brought the broad council itself to propose that the citadel should be
+rebuilt.  It will therefore be done, as by the burghers themselves,
+without your Majesty or myself appearing to desire it."
+
+This was, in truth, a triumph of "rhetoric and clever management," nor
+could a city well abase itself more completely, kneeling thus cheerfully
+at its conqueror's feet, and requesting permission to put the yoke upon
+its own neck.  "The erection of the castle has thus been determined
+upon," said Parma, "and I am supposed to know nothing of the resolution."
+
+A little later he observed that they, were "working away most furiously
+at the citadel, and that within a month it would be stronger than it ever
+had been before."
+
+The building went on, indeed, with astonishing celerity, the fortress
+rising out of its ruins almost as rapidly, under the hands of the
+royalists, as it had been demolished, but a few years before, by the
+patriots.  The old foundations still remained, and blocks of houses,
+which had been constructed out of its ruins, were thrown down that the
+materials might be again employed in its restoration.
+
+The citizens, impoverished and wretched, humbly demanded that the expense
+of building the citadel might be in part defrayed by the four hundred
+thousand florins in which they had been mulcted by the capitulation.
+"I don't marvel at this," said Parma, "for certainly the poor city is
+most forlorn and poverty-stricken, the heretics having all left it."
+It was not long before it was very satisfactorily established, that the
+presence of those same heretics and liberty of conscience for all men,
+were indispensable conditions for the prosperity of the great capital.
+Its downfall was instantaneous.  The merchants and industrious artisans
+all wandered away from the place which had been the seat of a world-wide
+traffic.  Civilisation and commerce departed, and in their stead were the
+citadel and the Jesuits.  By express command of Philip, that order,
+banished so recently, was reinstated in Antwerp, as well as throughout
+the obedient provinces; and all the schools and colleges were placed
+under its especial care.  No children could be thenceforth instructed
+except by the lips of those fathers.  Here was a curb more efficacious
+even than the citadel.  That fortress was at first garrisoned with
+Walloons and Germans.  "I have not yet induced the citizens," said Parma,
+"to accept a Spanish garrison, nor am I surprised; so many of them
+remembering past events (alluding to the 'Spanish fury,' but not
+mentioning it by name), and observing the frequent mutinies at the
+present time.  Before long, I expect, however, to make the Spaniards as
+acceptable and agreeable as the inhabitants of the country themselves."
+
+It may easily be supposed that Philip was pleased with the triumphs that
+had thus been achieved.  He was even grateful, or affected to be
+grateful, to him who had achieved them.  He awarded great praise to
+Alexander for his exertions, on the memorable occasions of the attack
+upon the bridge, and the battle of the Kowenstyn; but censured him
+affectionately for so rashly exposing his life.  "I have no words,"
+he said, "to render the thanks which are merited for all that you have
+been doing.  I recommend you earnestly however to have a care for the
+security of your person, for that is of more consequence than all the
+rest."
+
+After the news of the reduction of the city, he again expressed
+gratification, but in rather cold language.  "From such obstinate
+people," said he, "not more could be extracted than has been extracted;
+therefore the capitulation is satisfactory."  What more he wished to
+extract it would be difficult to say, for certainly the marrow had been
+extracted from the bones, and the dead city was thenceforth left to
+moulder under the blight of a foreign garrison and an army of Jesuits.
+"Perhaps religious affairs will improve before long," said Philip.
+They did improve very soon, as he understood the meaning of improvement.
+A solitude of religion soon brought with it a solitude in every other
+regard, and Antwerp became a desert, as Sainte Aldegonde had foretold
+would be the case.
+
+The King had been by no means so calm, however, when the intelligence
+of the capitulation first reached him at Madrid.  On the contrary, his
+oldest courtiers had never seen him exhibit such marks of hilarity.
+
+When he first heard of the glorious victory at Lepanto, his countenance
+had remained impassive, and he had continued in the chapel at the
+devotional exercises which the messenger from Don John had interrupted.
+Only when the news of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew first reached him,
+had he displayed an amount of cheerfulness equal to that which he
+manifested at the fall of Antwerp.  "Never," said Granvelle, "had the
+King been so radiant with joy as when he held in his hand the despatches
+which announced the capitulation."  The letters were brought to him after
+he had retired to rest, but his delight was so great that he could not
+remain in his bed.  Rushing from his chamber, so soon as he had read
+them, to that of his dearly-beloved daughter, Clara Isabella, he knocked
+loudly at the door, and screaming through the keyhole the three words,
+"Antwerp is ours," returned precipitately again to his own apartment.
+
+It was the general opinion in Spain, that the capture of this city had
+terminated the resistance of the Netherlands.  Holland and Zeeland would,
+it was thought, accept with very little hesitation the terms which Parma
+had been offering, through the agency of Sainte Aldegonde; and, with the
+reduction of those two provinces, the Spanish dominion over the whole
+country would of course become absolute.  Secretary Idiaquez observed,
+on drawing up instructions for Carlo Coloma, a Spanish financier then
+departing on special mission for the Provinces, that he would soon come
+back to Spain, for the Prince of Parma was just putting an end to the
+whole Belgic war.
+
+Time was to show whether Holland and Zeeland were as malleable as
+Antwerp, and whether there would not be a battle or two more to fight
+before that Belgic war would come to its end.  Meantime Antwerp was
+securely fettered, while the spirit of commerce--to which its unexampled
+prosperity had been due--now took its flight to the lands where civil and
+religious liberty had found a home.
+
+
+             =====================================
+
+
+NOTE on MARNIX DE SAINTE ALDEGONDE.
+
+As every illustration of the career and character of this eminent
+personage excites constant interest in the Netherlands, I have here
+thrown together, in the form of an Appendix, many important and entirely
+unpublished details, drawn mainly from the Archives of Simancas, and from
+the State Paper Office and British Museum in London.
+
+The ex-burgomaster seemed determined to counteract the policy of those
+Netherlanders who wished to offer the sovereignty of the Provinces to the
+English Queen.  He had been earnestly in favour of annexation to France,
+for his sympathies and feelings were eminently French.  He had never been
+a friend to England, and he was soon aware that a strong feeling of
+indignation--whether just or unjust--existed against him both in that
+country and in the Netherlands, on account of the surrender of Antwerp.
+
+"I have had large conference with Villiers," wrote Sir John Norris to
+Walsingham, "he condemneth Ste. Aldegonde's doings, but will impute it to
+fear and not to malice.  Ste. Aldegonde, notwithstanding that he was
+forbidden to come to Holland, and laid for at the fleet, yet stole
+secretly to Dort, where they say he is staid, but I doubt he will be
+heard speak, and then assuredly he will do great hurt."
+
+It was most certainly Sainte Aldegonde's determination, so soon as the
+capitulation of Antwerp had been resolved upon, to do his utmost to
+restore all the independent Provinces to their ancient allegiance.
+Rather Spanish than English was his settled resolution.  Liberty of
+religion, if possible--that was his cherished wish--but still more
+ardently, perhaps, did he desire to prevent the country from falling
+into the hands of Elizabeth.
+
+"The Prince of Parma hath conceived such an assured hope of the fidelity
+of Aldegonde," wrote one of Walsingham's agents, Richard Tomson, "in
+reducing the Provinces, yet enemies, into a perfect subjection, that the
+Spaniards are so well persuaded of the man as if he had never been
+against them.  They say, about the middle of this month, he departed for
+Zeeland and Holland, to prosecute the effect of his promises, and I am
+the more induced to believe that he is become altogether Spanish, for
+that the common bruit goeth that he hastened the surrendering of the town
+of Antwerp, after he had intelligence of the coming of the English
+succours."
+
+There was naturally much indignation felt in the independent Provinces,
+against all who had been thought instrumental in bringing about the
+reduction of the great cities of Flanders.  Famars, governor of Mechlin,
+Van den Tympel, governor of Brussels, Martini, who had been active in
+effecting the capitulation of Antwerp, were all arrested in Holland.
+"From all that I can hear," said Parma, "it is likely that they will be
+very severely handled, which is the reason why Ste. Aldegonde, although
+he sent his wife and children to Holland, has not ventured thither
+himself: It appears that they threaten him there, but he means now to go,
+under pretext of demanding to justify himself from the imputations
+against him.  Although he tells me freely that, without some
+amplification of the concessions hitherto made on the point of religion,
+he hopes for no good result, yet I trust that he will do good offices in
+the meantime, in spite of the difficulties which obstruct his efforts.
+On my part, every exertion will be made, and not without hope of some
+fruit, if not before, at least after, these people have become as tired
+of the English as they were of the French."
+
+Of this mutual ill-feeling between the English and the burgomaster, there
+can be no doubt whatever.  The Queen's government was fully aware of his
+efforts to counteract its negotiation with the Netherlands, and to bring
+about their reconciliation with Spain.  When the Earl of Leicester--as
+will soon be related--arrived in the Provinces, he was not long in
+comprehending his attitude and his influence.
+
+"I wrote somewhat of Sir Aldegonde in putting his case," wrote Leicester,
+"but this is certain, I have the copy of his very letters sent hither to
+practise the peace not two days before I came, and this day one hath told
+me that loves him well, that he hates our countrymen unrecoverably.  I am
+sorry for it."
+
+On the other hand, the Queen was very indignant with the man whom she
+looked upon as the paid agent of Spain.  She considered him a renegade,
+the more dangerous because his previous services had been so illustrious.
+"Her Majesty's mislike towards Ste. Aldegonde continueth," wrote
+Walsingham to Leicester, "and she taketh offence that he was not
+restrained of his liberty by your Lordship's order." It is unquestionable
+that the exburgomaster intended to do his best towards effecting the
+reconciliation of all the Provinces with Spain; and it is equally certain
+that the King had offered to pay him well, if he proved successful in his
+endeavours.  There is no proof, however, and no probability that Sainte
+Aldegonde ever accepted or ever intended to accept the proffered bribe.
+On the contrary, his whole recorded career ought to disprove the
+supposition.  Yet it is painful, to find him, at this crisis, assiduous
+in his attempts to undo the great work of his own life, and still more
+distressing to find that great rewards were distinctly offered to him
+for such service.  Immense promises had been frequently made no doubt to
+William the Silent; nor could any public man, in such times, be so pure
+that an attempt to tamper with him might not be made: but when the
+personage, thus solicited, was evidently acting in the interests of the
+tempters, it is not surprising that he should become the object of grave
+suspicion.
+
+"It does not seem to me bad," wrote Philip to Parma, "this negotiation
+which you have commenced with Ste. Aldegonde, in order to gain him, and
+thus to employ his services in bringing about a reduction of the islands
+(Holland and Zeeland).  In exchange for this work, any thing which you
+think proper to offer to him as a reward, will be capital well invested;
+but it must not be given until the job is done."
+
+But the job was hard to do, and Sainte Aldegonde cared nothing for the
+offered bribe.  He was, however, most strangely confident of being able
+to overcome, on the one hand, the opposition of Holland and Zeeland to
+the hated authority of Spain, and, on the other, the intense abhorrence
+entertained by Philip to liberty of conscience.
+
+Soon after the capitulation, he applied for a passport to visit those two
+Provinces.  Permission to come was refused him. Honest men from Antwerp,
+he was informed, would be always welcome, but there was no room for him.
+There was, however--or Parma persuaded himself that there was--
+a considerable party in those countries in favour of reconciliation
+with Spain. If the ex-burgomaster could gain a hearing, it was thought
+probable that his eloquence would prove very effective.
+
+"We have been making efforts to bring about negotiations with Holland
+and Zeeland," wrote Alexander to Philip.  "Gelderland and Overyssel
+likewise show signs of good disposition, but I have not soldiers enough
+to animate the good and terrify the bad.  As for Holland and Zeeland,
+there is a strong inclination on the part of the people to a
+reconciliation, if some concession could be made on the religious
+question, but the governors oppose it, because they are perverse, and
+are relying on assistance from England.  Could this religious concession
+be made, an arrangement could, without doubt, be accomplished, and more
+quickly than people think.  Nevertheless, in such a delicate matter, I am
+obliged to await your Majesty's exact instructions and ultimatum."
+
+He then proceeded to define exactly the position and intentions of the
+burgomaster.
+
+"The government of Holland and Zeeland," he said, "have refused a
+passport to Ste. Aldegonde, and express dissatisfaction with him for
+having surrendered Antwerp so soon.  They know that he has much credit
+with the people and with the ministers of the sects, and they are in much
+fear of him because he is inclined for peace, which is against their
+interests.  They are, therefore, endeavouring to counteract my
+negotiations with him.  These have been, thus far, only in general terms.
+I have sought to induce him to perform the offices required, without
+giving him reason to expect any concession as to the exercise of
+religion.  He persuades himself that, in the end, there will be some
+satisfaction obtained upon this point, and, under this impression he
+considers the peace as good as concluded, there remaining no doubt as to
+other matters.  He has sent his wife to Zeeland, and is himself going to
+Germany, where, as he says, he will do all the good service that he can.
+He hopes that very shortly the Provinces will not only invite, but
+implore him to come to them; in which case, he promises me to perform
+miracles."
+
+Alexander then proceeded to pay a distinct tribute to Sainte Aldegonde's
+motives; and, when it is remembered that the statement thus made is
+contained in a secret despatch, in cipher, to the King, it may be assumed
+to convey the sincere opinion of the man most qualified to judge
+correctly as to this calumniated person's character.
+
+"Ste. Aldegonde offers me wonders," he said, "and I have promised him
+that he shall be recompensed very largely; yet, although he is poor, I do
+not find him influenced by mercenary or selfish considerations, but only
+very set in opinions regarding his religion."
+
+The Prince had however no doubt of Sainte Aldegonde's sincerity, for
+sincerity was a leading characteristic of the man.  His word, once given,
+was sacred, and he had given his word to do his best towards effecting a
+reconciliation of the Provinces with Spain, and frustrating the efforts
+of England.  "Through the agency of Ste. Aldegonde and that of others"
+wrote Parma, "I shall watch, day and night, to bring about a reduction of
+Holland and Zeeland, if humanly possible.  I am quite persuaded that they
+will soon be sick of the English, who are now arriving, broken down,
+without arms or money, and obviously incapable of holding out very long.
+Doubtless, however, this English alliance, and the determination of the
+Queen to do her utmost against us, complicates matters, and assists the
+government of Holland and Zeeland in opposing the inclinations of their
+people."
+
+Nothing ever came of these intended negotiations.  The miracles were
+never wrought, and even had Sainte Aldegonde been as venal as he was
+suspected of being--which we have thus proof positive that he was not--
+he never could have obtained the recompense, which, according to Philip's
+thrifty policy, was not to be paid until it had been earned.  Sainte
+Aldegonde's hands were clean.  It is pity that we cannot render the same
+tribute to his political consistency of character.  It is also certain
+that he remained--not without reason--for a long time under a cloud.  He
+became the object of unbounded and reckless calumny.  Antwerp had fallen,
+and the necessary consequence of its reduction was the complete and
+permanent prostration of its commerce and manufactures.  These were
+transferred to the new, free, national, independent, and prosperous
+commonwealth that had risen in the "islands" which Parma and Sainte
+Aldegonde had vainly hoped to restore to their ancient servitude.  In a
+very few years after the subjugation of Antwerp, it appeared by
+statistical documents that nearly all the manufactures of linen, coarse
+and fine cloths, serges, fustians, tapestry, gold-embroidery, arms-work,
+silks, and velvets, had been transplanted to the towns of Holland and
+Zeeland, which were flourishing and thriving, while the Flemish and
+Brabantine cities had become mere dens of thieves and beggars.  It was in
+the mistaken hope of averting this catastrophe--as melancholy as it was
+inevitable and in despair of seeing all the Netherlands united, unless
+united in slavery, and in deep-rooted distrust of the designs and policy
+of England, that this statesman, once so distinguished, had listened to
+the insidious tongue of Parma.  He had sought to effect a general
+reconciliation with Spain, and the only result of his efforts was a
+blight upon his own illustrious name.
+
+He published a defence of his conduct, and a detailed account of the
+famous siege.  His apology, at the time, was not considered conclusive,
+but his narrative remains one of the clearest and most trustworthy
+sources for the history of these important transactions.  He was never
+brought to trial, but he discovered, with bitterness, that he had
+committed a fatal error, and that his political influence had passed
+away.  He addressed numerous private epistles to eminent persons,
+indignantly denying the imputations against his character, and demanding
+an investigation.  Among other letters he observed in one to Count
+Hohenlo, that he was astonished and grieved to find that all his faithful
+labours and sufferings in the cause of his fatherland had been forgotten
+in an hour.  In place of praise and gratitude, he had reaped nothing but
+censure and calumny; because men ever judged, not by the merits, but by
+the issue.  That common people should be so unjust, he said, was not to
+be wondered at, but of men like Hohenlo be had hoped better things.  He
+asserted that he had saved Antwerp from another "Spanish fury," and from
+impending destruction--a city in which there was not a single regular
+soldier, and in which his personal authority was so slight that he was
+unable to count the number of his masters.  If a man had ever performed a
+service to his country, be claimed to have done so in this capitulation.
+Nevertheless, he declared that he was the same Philip Marnix, earnestly
+devoted to the service of God, the true religion, and the fatherland;
+although he avowed himself weary of the war, and of this perpetual
+offering of the Netherland sovereignty to foreign potentates.  He was now
+going, he said, to his estates in Zeeland; there to turn farmer again;
+renouncing public affairs, in the administration of which he had
+experienced so much ingratitude from his countrymen.  Count Maurice and
+the States of Holland and Zeeland wrote to him, however, in very plain
+language, describing the public indignation as so strong as to make it
+unsafe for him to visit the country.
+
+The Netherlands and England--so soon as they were united in policy--were,
+not without reason, indignant with the man who had made such strenuous
+efforts to prevent that union.  The English were, in truth, deeply
+offended.  He had systematically opposed their schemes, and to his
+prejudice against their country, and distrust of their intentions, they
+attributed the fall of Antwerp.  Envoy Davison, after his return to
+Holland, on the conclusion of the English treaty, at once expressed his
+suspicions of the ex-burgomaster, and the great dangers to be apprehended
+from his presence in the free States.  "Here is some working underhand,"
+said he to Walsingham, "to draw hither Sainte Aldegonde, under a pretext
+of his justification, which--as it has hitherto been denied him--so is
+the sequel suspected, if he should obtain it before they were well
+settled here, betwixt her Majesty and them, considering the manifold
+presumptions that the subject of his journey should be little profitable
+or advantageous to the state of these poor countries, as tending, at the
+best, to the propounding of some general reconcilement."  It was
+certainly not without substantial grounds that the English and
+Hollanders, after concluding their articles of alliance, felt uneasy at
+the possibility of finding their plans reversed by the intrigues of a man
+whom they knew to be a mediator between Spain and her revolted Provinces,
+and whom they suspected of being a venal agent of the Catholic King.
+It was given out that Philip had been induced to promise liberty of
+religion, in case of reconciliation.  We have seen that Parma was at
+heart in favour of such a course, and that he was very desirous of
+inducing Marnix to believe in the possibility of obtaining such a boon,
+however certain the Prince had been made by the King's secret letters,
+that such a belief was a delusion.  "Martini hath been examined," wrote
+Davison, "who confesseth both for himself and others, to become hither
+by direction of the Prince of Parma and intelligence of Sainte Aldegonde,
+from whom he was first addressed by Villiers and afterwards to others for
+advice and assistance.  That the scope of this direction was to induce
+them here to hearken to a peace, wherein the Prince of Parma promiseth
+them toleration of religion, although he confesseth yet to have no
+absolute power in that behalf, but hath written thereof to the King
+expressly, and holdeth himself assured thereof by the first post, as I
+have likewise been advertised from Rowland York, which if it had been
+propounded openly here before things had been concluded with her Majesty,
+and order taken for her assurance, your honour can judge what confusion
+it must of necessity have brought forth."
+
+At last, when Marnix had become convinced that the toleration would not
+arrive "by the very next mail from Spain," and that, in truth, such a
+blessing was not to be expected through the post-office at all, he felt
+an inward consciousness of the mistake which he had committed.  Too
+credulously had he inclined his ear to the voice of Parma; too
+obstinately had he steeled his heart against Elizabeth, and he was now
+the more anxious to clear himself at least from the charges of corruption
+so clamorously made against him by Holland and by England.  Conscious of
+no fault more censurable than credulity and prejudice, feeling that his
+long fidelity to the reformed religion ought to be a defence for him
+against his calumniators, he was desirous both to clear his own honour,
+and to do at least a tardy justice to England.  He felt confident that
+loyal natures, like those of Davison and his colleagues at home, would
+recognize his own loyalty.  He trusted, not without cause, to English
+honour, and coming to his manor-house of Zoubourg, near Flushing, he
+addressed a letter to the ambassador of Elizabeth, in which the strong
+desire to vindicate his aspersed integrity is quite manifest.
+
+"I am very joyous," said he, "that coming hither in order to justify
+myself against the false and malignant imputations with which they charge
+me, I have learned your arrival here on the part of her Majesty, as well
+as the soon expected coming of the Earl of Leicester.  I see, in truth,
+that the Lord God is just, and never abandons his own.  I have never
+spared myself in the service of my country, and I would have sacrificed
+my life, a thousand times, had it been possible, in her cause.  Now, I am
+receiving for all this a guerdon of blame and calumny, which is cast upon
+me in order to cover up faults which have been committed by others in
+past days.  I hope, however, to come soon to give you welcome, and to
+speak more particularly to you of all these things.  Meantime demanding
+my justification before these gentlemen, who ought to have known me
+better than to have added faith to such villanous imputations, I will
+entreat you that my definite justification, or condemnation, if I have
+merited it, may be reserved till the arrival of Lord Leicester."
+
+This certainly was not the language of a culprit, Nevertheless, his words
+did not immediately make a deep impression on the hearts of those who
+heard him.  He had come secretly to his house at Zoubourg, having
+previously published his memorable apology; and in accordance with the
+wishes of the English government, he was immediately confined to his own
+house.  Confidence in the intention of a statesman, who had at least
+committed such grave errors of judgment, and who had been so deeply
+suspected of darker faults, was not likely very soon to revive.  So far
+from shrinking from an investigation which would have been dangerous,
+even to his life, had the charges against his honour been founded in
+fact, he boldly demanded to be confronted with his accusers, in order
+that he might explain his conduct before all the world.  "Sir,
+yesternight, at the shutting of the gates," wrote Davison to Walsingham,
+transmitting the little note from Marnix, which has just been cited--
+"I was advertised that Ste.  Aldegonde was not an hour before secretly
+landed at the head on the other side the Rammekens, and come to his house
+at Zoubourg, having prepared his way by an apology, newly published in
+his defence, whereof I have as yet recovered one only copy, which
+herewith I send your honour.  This day, whilst I was at dinner, he sent
+his son unto me, with a few lines, whereof I send you the copy,
+advertising me of his arrival (which he knew I understood before),
+together with the desire he had to see me, and speak with me, if the
+States, before whom he was to come to purge himself of the crimes
+wherewith he stood, as he with, unjustly charged, would vouchsafe him so
+much liberty.  The same morning, the council of Zeeland, taking knowledge
+of his arrival, sent unto him the pensioner of Middelburgh and this town,
+to sound the causes of his coming, and to will him, in their behalf, to
+keep his house, and to forbear all meddling by word or writing, with any
+whatsoever, till they should further advise and determine in his cause.
+In defence thereof, he fell into large and particular discourse with the
+deputies, accusing his enemies of malice and untruth, offering himself to
+any trial, and to abide what punishment the laws should lay upon him, if
+he were found guilty of the crimes imputed to him.  Touching the cause of
+his coming, he pretended and protested that he had no other end than his
+simple justification, preferring any hazard he might incur thereby, to
+his honour and good fame."  As to the great question at issue, Marnix
+had at last become conscious that he had been a victim to Spanish
+dissimulation, and that Alexander Fainese was in reality quite powerless
+to make that concession of religious liberty, without which a
+reconciliation between Holland and Philip was impossible.  "Whereas,"
+said Davison, "it was supposed that Ste. Aldegonde had commission from
+the Prince of Parma to make some offer of peace, he assured them of the
+contrary as a thing which neither the Prince had any power to yield unto
+with the surety of religion, or himself would, in conscience, persuade
+without it; with a number of other particularities in his excuse; amongst
+the rest, allowing and commending in his speech, the course they had
+taken with her Majesty, as the only safe way of deliverance for these
+afflicted countries--letting them understand how much the news thereof--
+specially since the entry of our garrison into this place (which before
+they would in no sort believe), hath troubled the enemy, who doth what he
+may to suppress the bruit thereof, and yet comforteth himself with the
+hope that between the factions and partialities nourished by his
+industry, and musters among the towns, especially in Holland and Zeeland
+(where he is persuaded to find some pliable to a reconcilement) and the
+disorders and misgovernment of our people, there will be yet occasion
+offered him to make his profit and advantage.  I find that the gentleman
+hath here many friends indifferently persuaded of his innocency,
+notwithstanding the closing up of his apology doth make but little for
+him.  Howsoever it be, it falleth out the better that the treaty with her
+Majesty is finished, and the cautionary towns assured before his coming,
+which, if he be ill affected, will I hope either reform his judgment or
+restrain his will.  I will not forget to do the best I can to sift and
+decipher him yet more narrowly and particularly."
+
+Thus, while the scales had at length fallen from the eyes of Marnix, it
+was not strange that the confidence which he now began to entertain in
+the policy of England, should not be met, at the outset, with a
+corresponding sentiment on the part of the statesman by whom that policy
+was regulated.  "Howsoever Ste. Aldegonde would seem to purge himself,"
+said Davison, "it is suspected that his end is dangerous.  I have done
+what I may to restrain him, so nevertheless as it may not seem to come
+from me."  And again--"Ste.  Aldegonde," he wrote, "contimieth still our
+neighbor at his house between this and Middelburg; yet unmolested.  He
+findeth many favourers, and, I fear, doth no good offices.  He desireth
+to be reserved till the coming of my Lord of Leicester, before whom he
+pretends a desired trial."
+
+This covert demeanour on the part of the ambassador was in accordance
+with, the wishes of his government.  It was thought necessary that Sainte
+Aldegonde should be kept under arrest until the arrival of the Earl, but
+deemed preferable that the restraint should proceed from the action of
+the States rather than from the order of the Queen.  Davison was
+fulfilling orders in attempting, by underhand means, to deprive Marnix,
+for a time, of his liberty.  "Let him, I pray you, remain in good safety
+in any wise," wrote Leicester, who was uneasy at the thought of so
+influential, and, as he thought, so ill-affected a person being at large,
+but at the same time disposed to look dispassionately upon his past
+conduct, and to do justice, according to the results of an investigation.
+"It is thought meet," wrote Walsingham to Davison, "that you should do
+your best endeavour to procure that Ste. Aldegonde may be restrained,
+which in mine opinion were fit to be handled in such sort, as the
+restraint might rather proceed from themselves than by your solicitation.
+And yet rather than he should remain at liberty to practise underhand,
+whereof you seem to stand in great doubt, it is thought meet that you
+should make yourself a partizan, to seek by all the means that you may to
+have him restrained under the guard of some well affected patriot until
+the Earl's coming, at what time his cause may receive examination."
+
+This was, however, a result somewhat difficult to accomplish; for twenty
+years of noble service in the cause of liberty had not been utterly in
+vain, and there were many magnanimous spirits to sympathize with a great
+man struggling thus in the meshes of calumny.  That the man who
+challenged rather than shunned investigation, should be thrown into
+prison, as if he were a detected felon upon the point of absconding,
+seemed a heartless and superfluous precaution.  Yet Davison and others
+still feared the man whom they felt obliged to regard as a baffled
+intriguer.  "Touching the restraint of Ste. Aldegonde," wrote Davison to
+Lord Burghley, "which I had order from Mr. Secretary to procure
+underhand, I find the difficulty will be great in regard of his many
+friends and favourers, preoccupied with some opinion of his innocence,
+although I have travailled with divers of them underhand, and am promised
+that some order shall be taken in that behalf, which I think will be
+harder to execute as long as Count Maurice is here.  For Ste.
+Aldegonde's affection, I find continual matter to suspect it inclined to
+a peace, and that as one notably prejudging our scope and proceeding in
+this cause, doth lie in wait for an occasion to set it forward, being, as
+it seems, fed with a hope of 'telle quelle liberte de conscience,' which
+the Prince of Parma and others of his council have, as he confesseth,
+earnestly solicited at the King's hands.  This appeareth, in truth, the
+only apt and easy way for them to prevail both against religion and the
+liberty of these poor countries, having thereby once recovered the
+authority which must necessarily follow a peace, to renew and alter the
+magistrates of the particular towns, which, being at their devotion, may
+turn, as we say, all upside down, and so in an instant being under their
+servitude, if not wholly, at the least in a great part of the country,
+leaving so much the less to do about the rest, a thing confessed and
+looked for of all men of any judgment here, if the drift of our peace-
+makers may take effect."
+
+Sainte Aldegonde had been cured of his suspicions of England, and at last
+the purity of his own character shone through the mists.
+
+One winter's morning, two days after Christmas, 1585, Colonel Morgan, an
+ingenuous Welshman, whom we have seen doing much hard fighting on
+Kowenstyn Dyke, and at other places, and who now commanded the garrison
+at Flushing, was taking a walk outside the gates, and inhaling the salt
+breezes from the ocean.  While thus engaged he met a gentleman coming
+along, staff in hand, at a brisk pace towards the town, who soon proved
+to be no other than the distinguished and deeply suspected Sainte
+Aldegonde.  The two got at once into conversation.  "He began," said
+Morgan, "by cunning insinuations, to wade into matters of state, and at
+the last fell to touching the principal points, to wit, her Majesty's
+entrance into the cause now in hand, which, quoth he, was an action of
+high importance, considering how much it behoved her to go through the
+same, as well in regard of the hope that thereby was given to the
+distressed people of these parts, as also in consideration of that worthy
+personage whom she hath here placed, whose estate and credit may not be
+suffered to quail, but must be upholden as becometh the lieutenant of
+such a princess as her Majesty."
+
+"The opportunity thus offered," continued honest Morgan, "and the way
+opened by himself, I thought good to discourse with him to the full,
+partly to see the end and drift of his induced talk, and consequently to
+touch his quick in the suspected cause of Antwerp."  And thus, word for
+word, taken down faithfully the same day, proceeded the dialogue that
+wintry morning, near three centuries ago.  From that simple record--
+mouldering unseen and unthought of for ages, beneath piles of official
+dust--the forms of the illustrious Fleming and the bold Welsh colonel,
+seem to start, for a brief moment, out of the three hundred years of
+sleep which have succeeded their energetic existence upon earth.  And so,
+with the bleak winds of December whistling over the breakers of the North
+Sea, the two discoursed together, as they paced along the coast.
+
+Morgan.--"I charge you with your want of confidence in her Majesty's
+promised aid.  'Twas a thing of no small moment had it been embraced when
+it was first most graciously offered."
+
+Sainte Aldegonde.--"I left not her prince-like purpose unknown to the
+States, who too coldly and carelessly passed over the benefit thereof,
+until it was too late to put the same in practice.  For my own part,
+I acknowledge that indeed I thought some further advice would either
+alter or at least detract from the accomplishment of her determination.
+I thought this the rather because she had so long been wedded to peace,
+and I supposed it impossible to divorce her from so sweet a spouse.
+But, set it down that she were resolute, yet the sickness of Antwerp was
+so dangerous, as it was to be doubted the patient would be dead before
+the physician could come.  I protest that the state of the town was much
+worse than was known to any but myself and some few private persons.  The
+want of victuals was far greater than they durst bewray, fearing lest the
+common people, perceiving the plague of famine to be at hand, would
+rather grow desperate than patiently expect some happy event.  For as
+they were many in number, so were they wonderfully divided: some being
+Martinists, some Papists, some neither the one nor the other, but
+generally given to be factious, so that the horror at home was equal to
+the hazard abroad."
+
+Morgan.--"But you forget the motion made by the martial men for putting
+out of the town such as were simple artificers, with women and children,
+mouths that consumed meat, but stood in no stead for defence."
+
+Sainte Aldegonde.--"Alas, alas!  would you have had me guilty of the
+slaughter of so many innocents, whose lives were committed to my charge,
+as well as the best?  Or might I have answered my God when those
+massacred creatures should have stood up against me, that the hope of
+Antwerp's deliverance was purchased with the blood of so many simple
+souls?  No, no.  I should have found my conscience such a hell and
+continual worm as the gnawing thereof would have been more painful and
+bitter than the possession of the whole world would have been pleasant."
+
+Morgan continued to press the various points which had created suspicion
+as to the character and motives of Marnix, and point by point Marnix
+answered his antagonist, impressing him, armed as he had been in
+distrust, with an irresistible conviction as to the loftiness of the
+nature which had been so much calumniated.
+
+Sainte Aldegonde (with vehemence).--"I do assure you, in conclusion, that
+I have solemnly vowed service and duty to her Majesty, which I am ready
+to perform where and when it may best like her to use the same.  I will
+add moreover that I have oftentimes determined to pass into England to
+make my own purgation, yet fearing lest her Highness would mislike so
+bold a resolution, I have checked that purpose with a resolution to tarry
+the Lord's leisure, until some better opportunity might answer my desire.
+For since I know not how I stand in her grace, unwilling I am to attempt
+her presence without permission; but might it please her to command my
+attendance, I should not only most joyfully accomplish the same, but also
+satisfy her of and in all such matters as I stand charged with, and
+afterwards spend life, land, and goods, to witness my duty towards her
+Highness."
+
+Morgan.--"I tell you plainly, that if you are in heart the same man that
+you seem outwardly to be, I doubt not but her Majesty might easily be
+persuaded to conceive a gracious opinion of you.  For mine own part, I
+will surely advertise Sir Francis Walsingham of as much matter as this
+present conference hath ministered.
+
+"Hereof," said the Colonel--when, according to his promise, faithfully
+recording the conversation in all its details for Mr. Secretary's
+benefit," he seemed not only content but most glad.  Therefore I beseech
+your honour to vouchsafe some few lines herein, that I may return him
+some part of your mind.  I have already written thereof to Sir Philip
+Sidney, lord governor of Flushing, with request that his Excellency the
+Earl of Leicester may presently be made acquainted with the cause."
+
+Indeed the brave Welshman was thoroughly converted from his suspicions by
+the earnest language and sympathetic presence of the fallen statesman.
+This result of the conference was creditable to the ingenuous character
+of both personages.
+
+"Thus did he," wrote Morgan to Sir Francis, "from point to point, answer
+all objections from the first to the last, and that  in such sound and
+substantial manner, with a strong show of truth, as I think his very
+enemies, having heard his tale, would be satisfied.  And truly, Sir, as
+heretofore I have thought hardly of him, being led by a superficial
+judgment of things as they stood in outward appearance; so now, having
+pierced deep, and weighed causes by a sounder and more deliberate
+consideration, I find myself somewhat changed in conceit--not so much
+carried away by the sweetness of his speech, as confirmed by the force of
+his religious profession, wherein he remaineth constant, without wavering
+--an argument of great strength to set him free from treacherous
+attempts; but as I am herein least able and most unworthy to yield any
+censure, much less to give advice, so I leave the man and the matter to
+your honour's opinion.  Only (your graver judgment reserved) thus I
+think, that it were good either to employ him as a friend, or as an enemy
+to remove him farther from us, being a man of such action as the world
+knoweth he is.  And to conclude," added Morgan, "this was the upshot
+between us."
+
+Nevertheless, he remained in this obscurity for a long period.  When,
+towards the close of the year 1585, the English government was
+established in Holland, he was the object of constant suspicion.
+
+"Here is Aldegonde," wrote Sir Philip Sidney to Lord Leicester from
+Flushing, "a man greatly suspected, but by no man charged.  He lives
+restrained to his own house, and for aught I can find, deals with
+nothing, only desiring to have his cause wholly referred to your
+Lordship, and therefore, with the best heed I can to his proceedings,
+I will leave him to his clearing or condemning, when your Lordship shall
+hear him."
+
+In another letter, Sir Philip again spoke of Sainte Aldegonde as "one of
+whom he kept a good opinion, and yet a suspicious eye."
+
+Leicester himself was excessively anxious on the subject, deeply fearing
+the designs of a man whom he deemed so mischievous, and being earnestly
+desirous that he should not elude the chastisement which he seemed to
+deserve.
+
+"Touching Ste. Aldegonde," he wrote to Davison, "I grieve that he is at
+his house without good guard.  I do earnestly pray you to move such as
+have power presently to commit a guard about him, for I know he is a
+dangerous and a bold man, and presumes yet to carry all, for he hath made
+many promises to the Prince of Parma.  I would he were in Fort Rammekyns,
+or else that Mr. Russell had charge of him, with a recommendation from me
+to Russell to look well to him till I shall arrive.  You must have been
+so commanded in this from her Majesty, for she thinks he is in close and
+safe guard.  If he is not, look for a turn of all things, for he hath
+friends, I know."
+
+But very soon after his arrival, the Earl, on examining into the matter,
+saw fit to change his opinions and his language.  Persuaded, in spite of
+his previous convictions, even as the honest Welsh colonel had been, of
+the upright character of the man, and feeling sure that a change had come
+over the feelings of Marnix himself in regard to the English alliance,
+Leicester at once interested himself in removing the prejudices
+entertained towards him by the Queen.
+
+"Now a few words for Ste. Aldegonde," said he in his earliest despatches
+from Holland; "I will beseech her Majesty to stay her judgment till I
+write next.  If the man be as he now seemeth, it were pity to lose him,
+for he is indeed marvellously friended.  Her Majesty will think, I know,
+that I am easily pacified or led in such a matter, but I trust so to deal
+as she shall give me thanks.  Once if he do offer service it is sure
+enough, for he is esteemed that way above all the men in this country for
+his word, if he give it.  His worst enemies here procure me to win him,
+for sure, just matter for his life there is none.  He would fain come
+into England, so far is he come already, and doth extol her Majesty for
+this work of hers to heaven, and confesseth, till now an angel could not
+make him believe it."
+
+Here certainly was a noble tribute paid unconsciously, as it were, to the
+character of the maligned statesman.  "Above all the men in the country
+for his word, if he give it."  What wonder that Orange had leaned upon
+him, that Alexander had sought to gain him, and how much does it add to
+our bitter regret that his prejudices against England should not have
+been removed until too late for Antwerp and for his own usefulness.  Had
+his good angel really been present to make him believe in that "work of
+her Majesty," when his ear was open to the seductions of Parma, the
+destiny of Belgium and his own subsequent career might have been more
+fortunate than they became.
+
+The Queen was slow to return from her prejudices.  She believed--not
+without reason--that the opposition of Ste. Aldegonde to her policy had
+been disastrous to the cause both of England and the Netherlands; and it
+had been her desire that he should be imprisoned, and tried for his life.
+Her councillors came gradually to take a more favourable view of the
+case, and to be moved by the pathetic attitude of the man who had once
+been so conspicuous.
+
+"I did acquaint Sir Christopher Hatton," wrote Walsingham to Leicester,
+"with the letter which Ste. Aldegonde wrote to your Lordship, which,
+carrying a true picture of an afflicted mind, cannot but move an honest
+heart, weighing the rare parts the gentleman is endowed withal, to pity
+his distressed estate, and, to procure him relief and comfort, which Mr.
+Vice-Chamberlain (Hatton) bath promised on his part to perform.  I
+thought good to send Ste. Aldegonde's letter unto the Lord Treasurer
+(Burghley), who heretofore has carried a hard conceit of the gentleman,
+hoping that the view of his letter will breed some remorse towards him.
+I have also prayed his Lordship, if he see cause, to acquaint her Majesty
+with the said letter."
+
+But his high public career was closed.  He lived down calumny; and put
+his enemies to shame, but the fatal error which he had committed, in
+taking the side of Spain rather than of England at so momentous a crisis,
+could never be repaired.  He regained the good opinion of the most
+virtuous and eminent personages in Europe, but in the noon of life he
+voluntarily withdrew from public affairs.  The circumstances just
+detailed had made him impossible as a political leader, and it was
+equally impossible for him to play a secondary part.  He occasionally
+consented to be employed in special diplomatic missions, but the serious
+avocations of his life now became theological and literary.  He sought--
+in his own words--to penetrate himself still more deeply than ever with
+the spirit of the reformation, and to imbue the minds of the young with
+that deep love for the reformed religion which had been the guiding
+thought of his own career.  He often spoke with a sigh of his compulsory
+exile from the field where he had been so conspicuous all his lifetime;
+he bitterly lamented the vanished dream of the great national union
+between Belgium and Holland, which had flattered his youth and his
+manhood; and he sometimes alluded with bitterness to the calumny which
+had crippled him of his usefulness.  He might have played a distinguished
+part in that powerful commonwealth which was so steadily and splendidly
+arising out of the lagunes of Zeeland and Holland, but destiny and
+calumny and his own error had decided otherwise.
+
+"From the depth of my exile--" he said, "for I am resolved to retire,
+I know not where, into Germany, perhaps into Sarmatia, I shall look from
+afar upon the calamities of my country.  That which to me is most
+mournful is no longer to be able to assist my fatherland by my counsels
+and my actions."  He did not go into exile, but remained chiefly at his
+mansion of Zoubourg, occupied with agriculture and with profound study.
+Many noble works conspicuous in the literature of the epoch--were the
+results of his learned leisure; and the name of Marnix of Sainte
+Aldegonde will be always as dear to the lovers of science and letters as
+to the believers in civil and religious liberty.  At the request of the
+States of Holland he undertook, in 1593, a translation of the Scriptures
+from the original, and he was at the same time deeply engaged with a
+History of Christianity, which he intended for his literary master-piece.
+The man whose sword had done knightly service on many a battle-field for
+freedom, whose tongue had controlled mobs and senates, courts and
+councils, whose subtle spirit had metamorphosed itself into a thousand
+shapes to do battle with the genius of tyranny, now quenched the feverish
+agitation of his youth and manhood in Hebrew and classical lore.  A grand
+and noble figure always: most pathetic when thus redeeming by vigorous
+but solitary and melancholy hard labor, the political error which had
+condemned him to retirement.  To work, ever to work, was the primary law
+of his nature.  Repose in the other world, "Repos ailleurs" was the
+device which he assumed in earliest youth, and to which he was faithful
+all his days.
+
+A great and good man whose life had been brim-full of noble deeds,
+and who had been led astray from the path, not of virtue, but of sound
+policy, by his own prejudices and by the fascination of an intellect even
+more brilliant than his own, he at least enjoyed in his retirement
+whatever good may come from hearty and genuine labor, and from the high
+regard entertained for him by the noblest spirits among his
+contemporaries.
+
+"They tell me," said La Noue, "that the Seigneur de Ste. Aldegonde has
+been suspected by the Hollanders and the English.  I am deeply grieved,
+for 'tis a personage worthy to be employed.  I have always known him to
+be a zealous friend of his religion and his country, and I will bear him
+this testimony, that his hands and his heart are clean.  Had it been
+otherwise, I must have known it.  His example has made me regret the
+less the promise I was obliged to make, never to bear arms again in the
+Netherlands.  For I have thought that since this man, who has so much
+credit and authority among your people, after having done his duty well,
+has not failed to be calumniated and ejected from service, what would
+they have done with me, who am a stranger, had I continued in their
+employment?  The consul Terentius Varro lost, by his fault, the battle of
+Canna; nevertheless, when he returned to Rome, offering the remainder of
+his life in the cause of his Republic reduced to extremity, he was not
+rejected, but well received, because he hoped well for the country.
+It is not to be imputed as blame to Ste. Aldegonde that he lost Antwerp,
+for he surrendered when it could not be saved.  What I now say is drawn
+from me by the compassion I feel when persons of merit suffer without
+cause at the hands of their fellow citizens.  In these terrible tempests,
+as it is a duty rigorously to punish the betrayers of their country, even
+so it is an obligation upon us to honor good patriots, and to support
+them in venial errors, that we may all encourage each other to do the
+right."
+
+Strange too as it may now seem to us, a reconciliation of the Netherlands
+with Philip was not thought an impossibility by other experienced and
+sagacious patriots, besides Marnix.  Even Olden-Barneveld, on taking
+office as Holland's Advocate, at this period, made it a condition that
+his service was to last only until the reunion of the Provinces with
+Spain.
+
+There was another illustrious personage in a foreign land who ever
+rendered homage to the character of the retired Netherland statesman.
+Amid the desolation of France, Duplessis Mornay often solaced himself by
+distant communion with that kindred and sympathizing spirit.
+
+"Plunged in public annoyances," he wrote to Sainte Aldegonde, "I find no
+consolation, except in conference with the good, and among the good I
+hold you for one of the best.  With such men I had rather sigh profoundly
+than laugh heartily with others.  In particular, Sir, do me the honor to
+love me, and believe that I honor you singularly.  Impart to me something
+from your solitude, for I consider your deserts to be more fruitful and
+fertile than our most cultivated habitations.  As for me, think of me as
+of a man drowning in the anxieties of the time, but desirous, if
+possible, of swimming to solitude."
+
+Thus solitary, yet thus befriended,--remote from public employment, yet
+ever employed, doing his daily work with all his soul and strength,
+Marnix passed the fifteen years yet remaining to him.  Death surprised
+him at last, at Leyden, in the year 1598, while steadily laboring upon
+his Flemish translation of the Old Testament, and upon the great
+political, theological, controversial, and satirical work on the
+differences of religion, which remains the most stately, though
+unfinished, monument of his literary genius.  At the age of sixty
+he went at last to the repose which he had denied to himself on earth.
+"Repos ailleurs."
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Honor good patriots, and to support them in venial errors
+Possible to do, only because we see that it has been done
+Repose in the other world, "Repos ailleurs"
+Soldiers enough to animate the good and terrify the bad
+To work, ever to work, was the primary law of his nature
+When persons of merit suffer without cause
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v41
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
+From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609
+
+By John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+History United Netherlands, Volume 42, 1585
+
+
+CHAPTER VI., Part 1.
+
+     Policy of England--Diplomatic Coquetry--Dutch Envoys in England--
+     Conference of Ortel and Walsingham--Interview with Leicester--
+     Private Audience of the Queen--Letters of the States--General--
+     Ill Effects of Gilpin's Despatch--Close Bargaining of the Queen and
+     States--Guarantees required by England--England's comparative
+     Weakness--The English characterised--Paul Hentzner--The Envoys in
+     London--Their Characters--Olden-Barneveldt described--Reception at
+     Greenwich--Speech of Menin--Reply of the Queen--Memorial of the
+     Envoys--Discussions with the Ministers--Second Speech of the Queen
+     --Third Speech of the Queen
+
+England as we have seen--had carefully watched the negotiations between
+France and the Netherlands.  Although she had--upon the whole, for that
+intriguing age--been loyal in her bearing towards both parties, she was
+perhaps not entirely displeased with the result.  As her cherished
+triumvirate was out of the question, it was quite obvious that, now or
+never, she must come forward to prevent the Provinces from falling back
+into the hands of Spain.  The future was plainly enough foreshadowed, and
+it was already probable, in case of a prolonged resistance on the part of
+Holland, that Philip would undertake the reduction of his rebellious
+subjects by a preliminary conquest of England.  It was therefore quite
+certain that the expense and danger of assisting the Netherlands must
+devolve upon herself, but, at the same time it was a consolation that her
+powerful next-door neighbour was not to be made still more powerful by
+the annexation to his own dominion of those important territories.
+
+Accordingly, so soon as the deputies in France had received their
+definite and somewhat ignominious repulse from Henry III. and his mother,
+the English government lost no time in intimating to the States that they
+were not to be left without an ally.  Queen Elizabeth was however
+resolutely averse from assuming that sovereignty which she was not
+unwilling to see offered for her acceptance; and her accredited envoy at
+the Hague, besides other more secret agents, were as busily employed in
+the spring of 1585--as Des Pruneaux had been the previous winter on the
+part of France--to bring about an application, by solemn embassy, for her
+assistance.
+
+There was, however, a difference of view, from the outset, between the
+leading politicians of the Netherlands and the English Queen.  The
+Hollanders were extremely desirous of becoming her subjects; for the
+United States, although they had already formed themselves into an
+independent republic, were quite ignorant of their latent powers.  The
+leading personages of the country--those who were soon to become the
+foremost statesmen of the new commonwealth--were already shrinking from
+the anarchy which was deemed inseparable from a non-regal form of
+government, and were seeking protection for and against the people under
+a foreign sceptre.  On the other hand, they were indisposed to mortgage
+large and important fortified towns, such as Flushing, Brill, and others,
+for the repayment of the subsidies which Elizabeth might be induced to
+advance.  They preferred to pay in sovereignty rather than in money.
+The Queen, on the contrary, preferred money to sovereignty, and was not
+at all inclined to sacrifice economy to ambition.  Intending to drive a
+hard bargain with the States, whose cause was her own, and whose demands
+for aid she; had secretly prompted, she meant to grant a certain number
+of soldiers for as brief a period as possible, serving at her expense,
+and to take for such outlay a most ample security in the shape of
+cautionary towns.
+
+Too intelligent a politician not to feel the absolute necessity of at
+last coming into the field to help the Netherlanders to fight her own
+battle, she was still willing, for a season longer, to wear the mask of
+coyness and coquetry, which she thought most adapted to irritate the
+Netherlanders into a full compliance with her wishes.  Her advisers in
+the Provinces were inclined to take the same view.  It seemed obvious,
+after the failure in France, that those countries must now become either
+English or Spanish; yet Elizabeth, knowing the risk of their falling
+back, from desperation, into the arms of her rival, allowed them to
+remain for a season on the edge of destruction--which would probably have
+been her ruin also--in the hope of bringing them to her feet on her own
+terms.  There was something of feminine art in this policy, and it was
+not without the success which often attends such insincere manoeuvres.
+At the same time, as the statesmen of the republic knew that it was the
+Queen's affair, when so near a neighbour's roof was blazing, they
+entertained little doubt of ultimately obtaining her alliance.  It was
+pity--in so grave an emergency--that a little frankness could not have
+been substituted for a good deal of superfluous diplomacy.
+
+Gilpin, a highly intelligent agent of the English government in Zeeland,
+kept Sir Francis Walsingham thoroughly informed of the sentiments
+entertained by the people of that province towards England.  Mixing
+habitually with the most influential politicians, he was able to render
+material assistance to the English council in the diplomatic game which
+had been commenced, and on which a no less important stake than the crown
+of England was to be hazarded.
+
+"In conference," he said, "with particular persons that bear any rule or
+credit, I find a great inclination towards her Majesty, joined
+notwithstanding with a kind of coldness.  They allege that matters of
+such importance are to be maturely and thoroughly pondered, while some of
+them harp upon the old string, as if her Majesty, for the security of her
+own estate, was to have the more care of theirs here."
+
+He was also very careful to insinuate the expediency of diplomatic
+coquetry into the mind of a Princess who needed no such prompting.
+"The less by outward appearance," said he, "this people shall perceive
+that her Majesty can be contented to take the protection of them upon
+her, the forwarder they will be to seek and send unto her, and the larger
+conditions in treaty may be required.  For if they see it to come from
+herself, then do they persuade themselves that it is for the greater
+security of our own country and her Highness to fear the King of Spain's
+greatness.  But if they become seekers unto her Majesty, and if they may,
+by outward show, deem that she accounteth not of the said King's might,
+but able and sufficient to defend her own realms, then verily I think
+they may be brought to whatsoever points her Majesty may desire."
+
+Certainly it was an age of intrigue, in which nothing seemed worth
+getting at all unless it could be got by underhand means, and in which
+it was thought impossible for two parties to a bargain to meet together
+except as antagonists, who believed that one could not derive a profit
+from the transaction unless the other had been overreached.  This was
+neither good morality nor sound diplomacy, and the result of such
+trifling was much loss of time and great disaster.  In accordance with
+this crafty system, the agent expressed the opinion that it would "be
+good and requisite for the English government somewhat to temporise,"
+and to dally for a season longer, in order to see what measures the
+States would take to defend themselves, and how much ability and
+resources they would show for belligerent purposes.  If the Queen were
+too eager, the Provinces would become jealous, "yielding, as it were,
+their power, and yet keeping the rudder in their own hands."
+
+At the same time Gilpin was favourably impressed with the character both
+of the country and the nation, soon to be placed in such important
+relations with England.  "This people," he said, "is such as by fair
+means they will be won to yield and grant any reasonable motion or
+demand.  What these islands of Zeeland are her Majesty and all my lords
+of her council do know.  Yet for their government thus much I must write;
+that during these troubles it never was better than now.  They draw, in a
+manner, one line, long and carefully in their resolution; but the same
+once taken and promises made, they would perform them to the uttermost."
+
+Such then was the character of the people, for no man was better enabled
+to form an opinion on the subject than was Gilpin.  Had it not been as
+well, then, for Englishmen--who were themselves in that age, as in every
+other, apt to "perform to the uttermost promises once taken and made,"
+and to respect those endowed with the same wholesome characteristic--to
+strike hands at once in a cause which was so vital to both nations?
+
+So soon as the definite refusal of Henry III, was known in England,
+Leicester and Walsingham wrote at once to the Netherlands.  The Earl
+already saw shining through the distance a brilliant prize for his own
+ambition, although he was too haughty, perhaps too magnanimous, but
+certainly far too crafty, to suffer such sentiments as yet to pierce to
+the surface.
+
+"Mr. Davison," he wrote, "you shall perceive by Mr. Secretary's letters
+how the French have dealt with these people.  They are well enough
+served; but yet I think, if they will heartily and earnestly seek it, the
+Lord hath appointed them a far better defence.  But you must so use the
+matter as that they must seek their own good, although we shall be
+partakers thereof also.  They may now, if they will effectually and
+liberally deal, bring themselves to a better end than ever France would
+have brought them."
+
+At that moment there were two diplomatic agents from the States resident
+in England--Jacques de Gryze; whom Paul Buys had formerly described as
+having thrust himself head and shoulders into the matter without proper
+authority, and Joachim Ortel, a most experienced and intelligent man,
+speaking and writing English like a native, and thoroughly conversant
+with English habits and character.  So soon as the despatches from France
+arrived, Walsingham, 18th March, 1585, sent for Ortel, and the two held a
+long conference.
+
+Walsingham.--"We have just received letters from Lord Derby and Sir
+Edward Stafford, dated the 13th March.  They inform us that your
+deputies--contrary to all expectation and to the great hopes that had
+been hold out to them--have received, last Sunday, their definite answer
+from the King of France.  He tells them, that, considering the present
+condition of his kingdom, he is unable to undertake the protection of the
+Netherlands; but says that if they like, and if the Queen of England be
+willing to second his motion, he is disposed to send a mission of
+mediation to Spain for the purpose of begging the King to take the
+condition of the provinces to heart, and bringing about some honourable
+composition, and so forth, and so forth.
+
+"Moreover the King of France has sent Monsieur de Bellievre to Lord Derby
+and Mr. Stafford, and Bellievre has made those envoys a long oration.
+He explained to them all about the original treaty between the States and
+Monsieur, the King's brother, and what had taken place from that day to
+this, concluding, after many allegations and divers reasons, that the
+King could not trouble himself with the provinces at present; but hoped
+her Majesty would make the best of it, and not be offended with him.
+
+"The ambassadors say further, that they have had an interview with your
+deputies, who are excessively provoked at this most unexpected answer
+from the King, and are making loud complaints, being all determined to
+take themselves off as fast as possible.  The ambassadors have
+recommended that some of the number should come home by the way of
+England."
+
+Ortel.--"It seems necessary to take active measures at once, and to leave
+no duty undone in this matter.  It will be advisable to confer, so soon
+as may be, with some of the principal counsellors of her Majesty, and
+recommend to them most earnestly the present condition of the provinces.
+They know the affectionate confidence which the States entertain towards
+England, and must now, remembering the sentiments of goodwill which they
+have expressed towards the Netherlands, be willing to employ their
+efforts with her Majesty in this emergency."
+
+Walsingham (with much show of vexation).--"This conduct on the part of
+the French court has been most pernicious.  Your envoys have been
+delayed, fed with idle hopes, and then disgracefully sent away, so that
+the best part of the year has been consumed, and it will be most
+difficult now, in a great hurry, to get together a sufficient force of
+horse and foot folk, with other necessaries in abundance.  On the
+contrary, the enemy, who knew from the first what result was to be
+expected in France, has been doing his best to be beforehand with you in
+the field: add, moreover, that this French negotiation has given other
+princes a bad taste in their mouths.  This is the case with her Majesty.
+The Queen is, not without reason, annoyed that the States have not only
+despised her friendly and good-hearted offers, but have all along been
+endeavouring to embark her in this war, for the defence of the Provinces,
+which would have cost her several millions, without offering to her the
+slightest security.  On the contrary, others, enemies of the religion,
+who are not to be depended upon--who had never deserved well of the
+States or assisted them in their need, as she has done--have received
+this large offer of sovereignty without any reserve whatever."
+
+Ortel (not suffering himself to be disconcerted at this unjust and
+somewhat insidious attack).--"That which has been transacted with France
+was not done except with the express approbation and full foreknowledge
+of her Majesty, so far back as the lifetime of his Excellency (William of
+Orange), of high and laudable memory.  Things had already gone so far,
+and the Provinces had agreed so entirely together, as to make it
+inexpedient to bring about a separation in policy.  It was our duty to
+hold together, and, once for all, thoroughly to understand what the King
+of France, after such manifold presentations through Monsieur Des
+Pruneaulx and others, and in various letters of his own, finally intended
+to do.  At the same time, notwithstanding these negotiations, we had
+always an especial eye upon her Majesty.  We felt a hopeful confidence
+that she would never desert us, leaving us without aid or counsel, but
+would consider that these affairs do not concern the Provinces alone or
+even especially, but are just as deeply important to her and to all other
+princes of the religion."
+
+After this dialogue, with much more conversation of a similar character,
+the Secretary and the envoy set themselves frankly and manfully to work.
+It was agreed between them that every effort should be made with the
+leading members of the Council to induce the Queen "in this terrible
+conjuncture, not to forsake the Provinces, but to extend good counsel and
+prompt assistance to them in their present embarrassments."
+
+There was, however, so much business in Parliament just then, that it was
+impossible to obtain immediately the desired interviews.
+
+On the 20th, Ortel and De Gryze had another interview with Walsingham at
+the Palace of Greenwich.  The Secretary expressed the warmest and most
+sincere affection for the Provinces, and advised that one of the two
+envoys should set forth at once for home in order to declare to the
+States, without loss of time, her Majesty's good inclination to assume
+the protection of the land, together with the maintenance of the reformed
+religion and the ancient privileges.  Not that she was seeking her own
+profit, or wished to obtain that sovereignty which had just been offered
+to another of the contrary religion, but in order to make manifest her
+affectionate solicitude to preserve the Protestant faith and to support
+her old allies and neighbours.  Nevertheless, as she could not assume
+this protectorate without embarking in a dangerous war with the King of
+Spain, in which she would not only be obliged to spend the blood of her
+subjects, but also at least two millions of gold, there was the more
+reason that the States should give her certain cities as security.  Those
+cities would be held by certain of her gentlemen, nominated thereto, of
+quality, credit, and religion, at the head of good, true, and well-paid
+garrisons, who should make oath never to surrender them to the King of
+Spain or to any one else without consent of the States.  The Provinces
+were also reciprocally to bind themselves by oath to make no treaty with
+the King, without the advice and approval of her Majesty.  It was
+likewise thoroughly to be understood that such cautionary towns should be
+restored to the States so soon as payment should be made of all moneys
+advanced during the war.
+
+Next day the envoys had an interview with the Earl of Leicester, whom
+they found as amicably disposed towards their cause as Secretary
+Walsingham had been.  "Her Majesty," said the Earl, "is excessively
+indignant with the King of France, that he should so long have abused the
+Provinces, and at last have dismissed their deputies so contemptuously.
+Nevertheless," he continued, "'tis all your own fault to have placed your
+hopes so entirely upon him as to entirely forget other princes, and more
+especially her Majesty.  Notwithstanding all that has passed, however, I
+find her fully determined to maintain the cause of the Provinces.  For my
+own part, I am ready to stake my life, estates, and reputation, upon this
+issue, and to stand side by side with other gentlemen in persuading her
+Majesty to do her utmost for the assistance of your country."
+
+He intimated however, as Walsingham had done, that the matter of
+cautionary towns would prove an indispensable condition, and recommended
+that one of the two envoys should proceed homeward at once, in order to
+procure, as speedily as possible, the appointment of an embassy for that
+purpose to her Majesty.  "They must bring full powers," said the Earl,
+"to give her the necessary guarantees, and make a formal demand for
+protection; for it would be unbecoming, and against her reputation,
+to be obliged to present herself, unsought by the other party."
+
+In conclusion, after many strong expressions of good-will, Leicester
+promised to meet them next day at court, where he would address the Queen
+personally on the subject, and see that they spoke with her as well.
+Meantime he sent one of his principal gentlemen to keep company with the
+envoys, and make himself useful to them.  This personage, being "of good
+quality and a member of Parliament," gave them much useful information,
+assuring them that there was a strong feeling in England in favour of the
+Netherlands, and that the matter had been very vigorously taken up in the
+national legislature.  That assembly had been strongly encouraging her
+Majesty boldly to assume the protectorate, and had manifested a
+willingness to assist her with the needful.  "And if," said he, "one
+subsidy should not be enough, she shall have three, four, five, or six,
+or as much as may be necessary."
+
+The same day, the envoys had an interview with Lord Treasurer Burghley,
+who held the same language as Walsingham and Leicester had done.  "The
+Queen, to his knowledge," he said, "was quite ready to assume the
+protectorate; but it was necessary that it should be formally offered,
+with the necessary guarantees, and that without further loss of time."
+
+On the 22nd March, according to agreement, Ortel and De Gryze went to the
+court at Greenwich.  While waiting there for the Queen, who had ridden
+out into the country, they had more conversation with Walsingham, whom
+they found even more energetically disposed in their favour than ever,
+and who assured them that her Majesty was quite ready to assume the
+protectorate so soon as offered.  "Within a month," he said, "after the
+signing of a treaty, the troops would be on the spot, under command of
+such a personage of quality and religion as would be highly
+satisfactory."  While they were talking, the Queen rode into the court-
+yard, accompanied by the Earl of Leicester and other gentlemen.  Very
+soon afterwards the envoys were summoned to her presence, and allowed to
+recommend the affairs of the Provinces to her consideration.  She
+lamented the situation of their country, and in a few words expressed her
+inclination to render assistance, provided the States would manifest full
+confidence in her.  They replied by offering to take instant measures to
+gratify all her demands, so soon as those demands should be made known;
+and the Queen finding herself surrounded by so many gentlemen and by a
+crowd of people, appointed them accordingly to come to her private
+apartments the same afternoon.
+
+At that interview none were present save Walsingham and Lord Chamberlain
+Howard.  The Queen showed herself "extraordinarily resolute" to take up
+the affairs of the Provinces.  "She had always been sure," she said,
+"that the French negotiation would have no other issue than the one which
+they had just seen.  She was fully aware what a powerful enemy she was
+about to make--one who could easily create mischief for her in Scotland
+and Ireland; but she was nevertheless resolved, if the States chose to
+deal with her frankly and generously, to take them under her protection.
+She assured the envoys that if a deputation with full powers and
+reasonable conditions should be immediately sent to her, she would not
+delay and dally with them, as had been the case in France, but would
+despatch them back again at the speediest, and would make her good
+inclination manifest by deeds as well as words.  As she was hazarding
+her treasure together with the blood and repose of her subjects, she was
+not at liberty to do this except on receipt of proper securities."
+
+Accordingly De Gryze went to the Provinces, provided with complimentary
+and affectionate letters from the Queen, while Ortel remained in England.
+So far all was plain and above-board; and Walsingham, who, from the
+first, had been warmly in favour of taking up the Netherland cause, was
+relieved by being able to write in straightforward language.  Stealthy
+and subtle, where the object was to get within the guard of an enemy who
+menaced a mortal blow, he was, both by nature and policy, disposed to
+deal frankly with those he called his friends.
+
+"Monsieur de Gryze repaireth presently," he wrote to Davison, "to try if
+he can induce the States to send their deputies hither, furnished with
+more ample instructions than they had to treat with the French King,
+considering that her Majesty carryeth another manner of princely
+disposition than that sovereign.  Meanwhile, for that she doubteth lest
+in this hard estate of their affairs, and the distrust they have
+conceived to be relieved from hence, they should from despair throw
+themselves into the course of Spain, her pleasure therefore is--though by
+Burnham I sent you directions to put them in comfort of relief, only as
+of yourself--that you shall now, as it were, in her name, if you see
+cause sufficient, assure some of the aptest instruments that you shall
+make choice of for that purpose, that her Majesty, rather than that they
+should perish, will be content to take them under her protection."
+
+He added that it was indispensable for the States, upon their part, to
+offer "such sufficient cautions and assurances as she might in reason
+demand."
+
+Matters were so well managed that by the 22nd April the States-General
+addressed a letter to the Queen, in which they notified her, that the
+desired deputation was on the point of setting forth.  "Recognizing,"
+they said, "that there is no prince or potentate to whom they are more
+obliged than they are to your Majesty, we are about to request you very
+humbly to accept the sovereignty of these Provinces, and the people of
+the same for your very humble vassals and subjects."  They added that,
+as the necessity of the case was great, they hoped the Queen would send,
+so soon as might be, a force of four or five thousand men for the purpose
+of relieving the siege of Antwerp.
+
+A similar letter was despatched by the same courier to the Earl of
+Leicester.
+
+On the 1st of May, Ortel had audience of the Queen, to deliver the
+letters from the States-General.  He found that despatches, very
+encouraging and agreeable in their tenor, had also just arrived from
+Davison.  The Queen was in good humour.  She took the letter from Ortel,
+read it attentively, and paused a good while.  Then she assured him that
+her good affection towards the Provinces was not in the least changed,
+and that she thanked the States for the confidence in her that they were
+manifesting.  "It is unnecessary," said the Queen, "for me to repeat over
+and over again sentiments which I have so plainly declared.  You are to
+assure the States that they shall never be disappointed in the trust that
+they have reposed in my good intentions.  Let them deal with me
+sincerely, and without holding open any back-door.  Not that I am seeking
+the sovereignty of the Provinces, for I wish only to maintain their
+privileges and ancient liberties, and to defend them in this regard
+against all the world.  Let them ripely consider, then, with what
+fidelity I am espousing their cause, and how, without fear of any one,
+I am arousing most powerful enemies."
+
+Ortel had afterwards an interview with Leicester, in which the Earl
+assured him that her Majesty had not in the least changed in her
+sentiments towards the Provinces.  "For myself," said he, "I am ready, if
+her Majesty choose to make use of me, to go over there in person, and to
+place life, property, and all the assistance I can gain from my friends,
+upon the issue.  Yea, with so good a heart, that I pray the Lord may be
+good to me, only so far as I serve faithfully in this cause."  He added a
+warning that the deputies to be appointed should come with absolute
+powers, in order that her Majesty's bountiful intentions might not be
+retarded by their own fault.
+
+Ortel then visited Walsingham at his house, Barn-Elms, where he was
+confined by illness.  Sir Francis assured the envoy that he would use
+every effort, by letter to her Majesty and by verbal instructions to his
+son-in-law, Sir Philip Sidney, to further the success of the negotiation,
+and that he deeply regretted his enforced absence from the court on so
+important an occasion.
+
+Matters were proceeding most favourably, and the all-important point of
+sending an auxiliary force of Englishmen to the relief of Antwerp--before
+it should be too late, and in advance of the final conclusion of the
+treaty between the countries-had been nearly conceded.  Just at that
+moment, however, "as ill-luck would have it," said Ortel, "came a letter
+from Gilpin.  I don't think he meant it in malice, but the effect was
+most pernicious.  He sent the information that a new attack was to
+be made by the 10th May upon the Kowenstyn, that it was sure to be
+successful, and that the siege of Antwerp was as good as raised.  So Lord
+Burghley informed me, in presence of Lord Leicester, that her Majesty was
+determined to await the issue of this enterprise.  It was quite too late
+to get troops in readiness; to co-operate with the States' army, so soon
+as the 10th May, and as Antwerp was so sure to be relieved, there was no
+pressing necessity for haste.  I uttered most bitter complaints to these
+lords and to other counsellors of the Queen, that she should thus draw
+back, on account of a letter from a single individual, without paying
+sufficient heed to the despatches from the States-General, who certainly
+knew their own affairs and their own necessities better than any one else
+could do, but her Majesty sticks firm to her resolution."
+
+Here were immense mistakes committed on all sides.  The premature
+shooting up of those three rockets from the cathedral-tower, on the
+unlucky 10th May, had thus not only ruined the first assault against the
+Kowenstyn, but also the second and the more promising adventure.  Had the
+four thousand bold Englishmen there enlisted, and who could have reached
+the Provinces in time to cooperate in that great enterprise, have stood
+side by side with the Hollanders, the Zeelanders, and the Antwerpers,
+upon that fatal dyke, it is almost a certainty that Antwerp would have
+been relieved, and the whole of Flanders and Brabant permanently annexed
+to the independent commonwealth, which would have thus assumed at once
+most imposing proportions.
+
+It was a great blunder of Sainte Aldegonde to station in the cathedral,
+on so important an occasion, watchmen in whose judgment he could not
+thoroughly rely.  It was a blunder in Gilpin, intelligent as he generally
+showed himself, to write in such sanguine style before the event.  But it
+was the greatest blunder of all for Queen Elizabeth to suspend her
+cooperation at the very instant when, as the result showed, it was likely
+to prove most successful.  It was a chapter of blunders from first to
+last, but the most fatal of all the errors was the one thus prompted by
+the great Queen's most traitorous characteristic, her obstinate
+parsimony.
+
+And now began a series of sharp chafferings on both sides, not very
+much to the credit of either party.  The kingdom of England, and the
+rebellious Provinces of Spain, were drawn to each other by an
+irresistible law of political attraction.  Their absorption into each
+other seemed natural and almost inevitable; and the weight of the strong
+Protestant organism, had it been thus completed, might have balanced the
+great Catholic League which was clustering about Spain.
+
+It was unfortunate that the two governments of England and the
+Netherlands should now assume the attitude of traders driving a hard
+bargain with each other, rather than that of two important commonwealths,
+upon whose action, at that momentous epoch, the weal and wo of
+Christendom was hanging.  It is quite true that the danger to England was
+great, but that danger in any event was to be confronted--Philip was to
+be defied, and, by assuming the cause of the Provinces to be her own,
+which it unquestionably was, Elizabeth was taking the diadem from her
+head--as the King of Sweden well observed--and adventuring it upon the
+doubtful chance of war.  Would it not have been better then--her mind
+being once made up--promptly to accept all the benefits, as well as all
+the hazards, of the bold game to which she was of necessity a party?
+But she could not yet believe in the incredible meanness of Henry III.
+"I asked her Majesty" (3rd May, 1585), said Ortel, "whether, in view of
+these vast preparations in France, it did not behove her to be most
+circumspect and upon her guard.  For, in the opinion of many men,
+everything showed one great scheme already laid down--a general
+conspiracy throughout Christendom against the reformed religion.  She
+answered me, that thus far she could not perceive this to be the case;
+'nor could she believe,' she said, 'that the King of France could be so
+faint-hearted as to submit to such injuries from the Guises.'"
+
+Time was very soon to show the nature of that unhappy monarch with regard
+to injuries, and to prove to Elizabeth the error she had committed in
+doubting his faint-heartedness.  Meanwhile, time was passing, and the
+Netherlands were shivering in the storm.  They, needed the open sunshine
+which her caution kept too long behind the clouds.  For it was now
+enjoined upon Walsingham to manifest a coldness upon the part of the
+English government towards the States.  Davison was to be allowed to
+return; "but," said Sir Francis, "her Majesty would not have you
+accompany the commissioners who are coming from the Low Countries; but to
+come over, either before them or after them, lest it be thought they come
+over by her Majesty's procurement."
+
+As if they were not coming over by her Majesty's most especial
+procurement, and as if it would matter to Philip--the union once made
+between England and Holland--whether the invitation to that union came
+first from the one party or the other!
+
+"I am retired for my health from the court to mine own house," said
+Walsingham, "but I find those in whose judgment her Majesty reposeth
+greatest trust so coldly affected unto the cause, as I have no great hope
+of the matter; and yet, for that the hearts of princes are in the hands
+of God, who both can will and dispose them at his pleasure, I would be
+loath to hinder the repair of the commissioners."
+
+Here certainly, had the sun gone most suddenly into a cloud.  Sir Francis
+would be loath to advise the commissioners to stay at home, but he
+obviously thought them coming on as bootless an errand as that which had
+taken their colleagues so recently into France.
+
+The cause of the trouble was Flushing.  Hence the tears, and the
+coldness, and the scoldings, on the part of the imperious and the
+economical Queen.  Flushing was the patrimony--a large portion of that
+which was left to him--of Count Maurice.  It was deeply mortgaged for the
+payment of the debts of William the Silent, but his son Maurice, so long
+as the elder brother Philip William remained a captive in Spain, wrote
+himself Marquis of Flushing and Kampveer, and derived both revenue and
+importance from his rights in that important town.  The States of
+Zeeland, while desirous of a political fusion of the two countries, were
+averse from the prospect of converting, by exception, their commercial,
+capital into an English city, the remainder of the Provinces remaining
+meanwhile upon their ancient footing.  The negociations on the subject
+caused a most ill-timed delay.  The States finding the English government
+cooling, affected to grow tepid themselves.  This was the true mercantile
+system, perhaps, for managing a transaction most thriftily, but frankness
+and promptness would have been more statesmanlike at such a juncture.
+
+"I am sorry to understand," wrote Walsingham, "that the States are not
+yet grown to a full resolution for the delivering of the town of Flushing
+into her Majesty's hands.  The Queen finding the people of that island so
+wavering and inconstant, besides that they can hardly, after the so long
+enjoying a popular liberty, bear a regal authority, would be loath to
+embark herself into so dangerous a war without some sufficient caution
+received from them.  It is also greatly to be doubted, that if, by
+practice and corruption, that town might be recovered by the Spaniards,
+it would put all the rest of the country in peril.  I find her Majesty,
+in case that town may be gotten, fully resolved to receive them into her
+protection, so as it may also be made probable unto her that the promised
+three hundred thousand guilders the month will be duly paid."
+
+A day or two after writing this letter, Walsingham sent one afternoon, in
+a great hurry, for Ortel, and informed him very secretly, that, according
+to information just received, the deputies from the States were coming
+without sufficient authority in regard to this very matter.  Thus all the
+good intentions of the English government were likely to be frustrated,
+and the Provinces to be reduced to direful extremity.
+
+"What can we possibly advise her Majesty to do?"  asked Walsingham,
+"since you are not willing to put confidence in her intentions.  You are
+trying to bring her into a public war, in which she is to risk her
+treasure and the blood of her subjects against the greatest potentates of
+the world, and you hesitate meantime at giving her such security as is
+required for the very defence of the Provinces themselves.  The deputies
+are coming hither to offer the sovereignty to her Majesty, as was
+recently done in France, or, if that should not prove acceptable, they
+are to ask assistance in men and money upon a mere 'taliter qualiter'
+guaranty.  That's not the way.  And there are plenty of ill-disposed
+persons here to take advantage of this position of affairs to ruin the
+interest of the Provinces now placed on so good a footing.  Moreover, in
+this perpetual sending of despatches back and forth, much precious time
+is consumed; and this is exactly what our enemies most desire."
+
+In accordance with Walsingham's urgent suggestions, Ortel wrote at once
+to his constituents, imploring them to remedy this matter.  Do not
+allow," he said, any, more time to be wasted.  Let us not painfully,
+build a wall only to knock our own heads against it, to the dismay of our
+friends and the gratification of our enemies."
+
+It was at last arranged that an important blank should be left in the
+articles to be brought by the deputies, upon which vacant place the names
+of certain cautionary towns, afterwards to be agreed upon, were to be
+inscribed by common consent.
+
+Meantime the English ministers were busy in preparing to receive the
+commissioners, and to bring the Netherland matter handsomely before the
+legislature.
+
+The integrity, the caution, the thrift, the hesitation, which
+characterized Elizabeth's government, were well pourtrayed in the
+habitual language of the Lord Treasurer, chief minister of a third-rate
+kingdom now called on to play a first-rate part, thoroughly acquainted
+with the moral and intellectual power of the nation whose policy he
+directed, and prophetically conscious of the great destinies which were
+opening upon her horizon.  Lord Burghley could hardly be censured--least
+of all ridiculed--for the patient and somewhat timid attributes of his
+nature: The ineffable ponderings, which might now be ludicrous, on the
+part of a minister of the British Empire, with two hundred millions of
+subjects and near a hundred millions of revenue, were almost inevitable
+in a man guiding a realm of four millions of people with half a million
+of income.
+
+It was, on the whole, a strange negotiation, this between England and
+Holland.  A commonwealth had arisen, but was unconscious of the strength
+which it was to find in the principle of states' union, and of religious
+equality.  It sought, on the contrary, to exchange its federal
+sovereignty for provincial dependence, and to imitate, to a certain
+extent, the very intolerance by which it had been driven into revolt.
+It was not unnatural that the Netherlanders should hate the Roman
+Catholic religion, in the name of which they had endured such infinite
+tortures, but it is, nevertheless, painful to observe that they requested
+Queen Elizabeth, whom they styled defender, not of "the faith" but of the
+"reformed religion," to exclude from the Provinces, in case she accepted
+the sovereignty, the exercise of all religious rites except those
+belonging to the reformed church.  They, however, expressly provided
+against inquisition into conscience.  Private houses were to be sacred,
+the, papists free within their own walls, but the churches were to be
+closed to those of the ancient faith.  This was not so bad as to hang,
+burn, drown, and bury alive nonconformists, as had been done by Philip
+and the holy inquisition in the name of the church of Rome; nor is it
+very surprising that the horrible past should have caused that church to
+be regarded with sentiments of such deep-rooted hostility as to make the
+Hollanders shudder at the idea of its re-establishment.  Yet, no doubt,
+it was idle for either Holland or England, at that day, to talk of a
+reconciliation with Rome.  A step had separated them, but it was a step
+from a precipice.  No human power could bridge the chasm.  The steep
+contrast between the league and the counter-league, between the systems
+of Philip and Mucio, and that of Elizabeth and Olden-Barneveld, ran
+through the whole world of thought, action, and life.
+
+But still the negociation between Holland and England was a strange one.
+Holland wished to give herself entirely, and England feared to accept.
+Elizabeth, in place of sovereignty, wanted mortgages; while Holland was
+afraid to give a part, although offering the whole.  There was no great
+inequality between the two countries.  Both were instinctively conscious,
+perhaps, of standing on the edge of a vast expansion.  Both felt that
+they were about to stretch their wings suddenly for a flight over the
+whole earth.  Yet each was a very inferior power, in comparison with the
+great empires of the past or those which then existed.
+
+It is difficult, without a strong effort of the imagination, to reduce
+the English empire to the slender proportions which belonged to her in
+the days of Elizabeth.  That epoch was full of light and life.  The
+constellations which have for centuries been shining in the English
+firmament were then human creatures walking English earth.  The captains,
+statesmen, corsairs, merchant-adventurers, poets, dramatists, the great
+Queen herself, the Cecils, Raleigh, Walsingham, Drake, Hawkins, Gilbert,
+Howard, Willoughby, the Norrises, Essex, Leicester, Sidney, Spenser,
+Shakspeare and the lesser but brilliant lights which surrounded him; such
+were the men who lifted England upon an elevation to which she was not
+yet entitled by her material grandeur.  At last she had done with Rome,
+and her expansion dated from that moment.
+
+Holland and England, by the very condition of their existence, were sworn
+foes to Philip.  Elizabeth stood excommunicated of the Pope.  There was
+hardly a month in which intelligence was not sent by English agents out
+of the Netherlands and France, that assassins, hired by Philip, were
+making their way to England to attempt the life of the Queen.  The
+Netherlanders were rebels to the Spanish monarch, and they stood, one
+and all, under death-sentence by Rome.  The alliance was inevitable and
+wholesome.  Elizabeth was, however, consistently opposed to the
+acceptance of a new sovereignty.  England was a weak power.  Ireland was
+at her side in a state of chronic rebellion--a stepping-stone for Spain
+in its already foreshadowed invasion.  Scotland was at her back with a
+strong party of Catholics, stipendiaries of Philip, encouraged by the
+Guises and periodically inflamed to enthusiasm by the hope of rescuing
+Mary Stuart from her imprisonment, bringing her rival's head to the
+block, and elevating the long-suffering martyr upon the throne of all the
+British Islands.  And in the midst of England itself, conspiracies were
+weaving every day.  The mortal duel between the two queens was slowly
+approaching its termination.  In the fatal form of Mary was embodied
+everything most perilous to England's glory and to England's Queen.
+Mary Stuart meant absolutism at home, subjection to Rome and Spain
+abroad.  The uncle Guises were stipendiaries of Philip, Philip was the
+slave of the Pope.  Mucio had frightened the unlucky Henry III. into
+submission, and there was no health nor hope in France.  For England,
+Mary Stuart embodied the possible relapse into sloth, dependence,
+barbarism.  For Elizabeth, Mary Stuart embodied sedition, conspiracy,
+rebellion, battle, murder, and sudden death.
+
+It was not to be wondered at that the Queen thus situated should be
+cautious, when about throwing down the gauntlet to the greatest powers of
+the earth.  Yet the commissioners from the United States were now on
+their way to England to propose the throwing of that gauntlet.  What now
+was that England?
+
+Its population was, perhaps, not greater than the numbers which dwell
+to-day within its capital and immediate suburbs.  Its revenue was perhaps
+equal to the sixtieth part of the annual interest on the present national
+debt.  Single, highly-favoured individuals, not only in England but in
+other countries cis- and trans-Atlantic, enjoy incomes equal to more than
+half the amount of Elizabeth's annual budget.  London, then containing
+perhaps one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, was hardly so
+imposing a town as Antwerp, and was inferior in most material respects to
+Paris and Lisbon.  Forty-two hundred children were born every year within
+its precincts, and the deaths were nearly as many.  In plague years,
+which were only too frequent, as many as twenty and even thirty thousand
+people had been annually swept away.
+
+At the present epoch there are seventeen hundred births every week, and
+about one thousand deaths.
+
+It is instructive to throw a glance at the character of the English
+people as it appeared to intelligent foreigners at that day; for the
+various parts of the world were not then so closely blended, nor did
+national colours and characteristics flow so liquidly into each other,
+as is the case in these days of intimate juxta-position.
+
+"The English are a very clever, handsome, and well-made people," says a
+learned Antwerp historian and merchant, who had resided a long time in
+London, "but, like all islanders, by nature weak and tender.  They are
+generally fair, particularly the women, who all--even to the peasant
+women--protect their complexions from the sun with fans and veils, as
+only the stately gentlewomen do in Germany and the Netherlands.  As a
+people they are stout-hearted, vehement, eager, cruel in war, zealous in
+attack, little fearing: death; not revengeful, but fickle, presumptuous,
+rash, boastful, deceitful, very suspicious, especially of strangers, whom
+they despise.  They are full of courteous and hypocritical gestures and
+words, which they consider to imply good manners, civility, and wisdom.
+They are well spoken, and very hospitable.  They feed well, eating much
+meat, which-owing to the rainy climate and the ranker character of the
+grass--is not so firm and succulent as the meat of France and the
+Netherlands.  The people are not so laborious as the French and
+Hollanders, preferring to lead an indolent life, like the Spaniards.
+The most difficult and ingenious of the handicrafts are in the hands
+of foreigners, as is the case with the lazy inhabitants of Spain.
+They feed many sheep, with fine wool, from which, two hundred years ago,
+they learned to make cloth.  They keep many idle servants, and many wild
+animals for their pleasure, instead of cultivating the sail.  They have
+many ships, but they do not even catch fish enough for their own
+consumption, but purchase of their neighbours.  They dress very
+elegantly.  Their costume is light and costly, but they are very
+changeable and capricious, altering their fashions every year, both the
+men and the women.  When they go away from home, riding or travelling,
+they always wear their best clothes, contrary to the habit of other
+nations.  The English language is broken Dutch, mixed with French and
+British terms and words, but with a lighter pronunciation.  They do not
+speak from the chest, like the Germans, but prattle only with the
+tongue."
+
+Here are few statistical facts, but certainly it is curious to see how
+many national traits thus photographed by a contemporary, have quite
+vanished, and have been exchanged for their very opposites.  Certainly
+the last physiological criticism of all would indicate as great a
+national metamorphosis, during the last three centuries, as is offered by
+many other of the writer's observations.
+
+"With regard to the women," continues the same authority, "they are
+entirely in the power of the men, except in matters of life and death,
+yet they are not kept so closely and strictly as in Spain and elsewhere.
+They are not locked up, but have free management of their household,
+like the Netherlanders and their other neighbours.  They are gay in
+their clothing, taking well their ease, leaving house-work to the
+servant-maids, and are fond of sitting, finely-dressed, before their
+doors to see the passers-by and to be seen of them.  In all banquets and
+dinner-parties they have the most honour, sitting at the upper end of the
+board, and being served first.
+
+"Their time is spent in riding, lounging, card-playing, and making merry
+with their gossips at child-bearings, christenings, churchings, and
+buryings; and all this conduct the men wink at, because such are the
+customs of the land.  They much commend however the industry and careful
+habits of the German and Netherland women, who do the work which in
+England devolves upon the men.  Hence, England is called the paradise of
+married women, for the unmarried girls are kept much more strictly than
+upon the continent.  The women are, handsome, white, dressy, modest;
+although they go freely about the streets without bonnet, hood, or veil;
+but lately learned to cover their faces with a silken mask or vizard with
+a plumage of feathers, for they change their fashions every year, to the
+astonishment of many."
+
+Paul Hentzner, a tourist from Germany at precisely the same epoch,
+touches with equal minuteness on English characteristics.  It may be
+observed, that, with some discrepancies, there is also much similarity,
+in the views of the two critics.
+
+"The English," says the whimsical Paul, are serious, like the Germans,
+lovers of show, liking to be followed, wherever they go, by troops of
+servants, who wear their master's arms, in silver, fastened to their left
+sleeves, and are justly ridiculed for wearing tails hanging down their
+backs.  They excel in dancing and music, for they are active and lively,
+although they are of thicker build than the Germans.  They cut their hair
+close on the forehead, letting it hang down on either side.  They are
+good sailors, and better pirates, cunning, treacherous, thievish.  Three
+hundred and upwards are hanged annually in London.  Hawking is the
+favourite sport of the nobility.  The English are more polite in eating
+than the French, devouring less bread, but more meat, which they roast in
+perfection.  They put a great deal of sugar in their drink.  Their beds
+are covered with tapestry, even those of farmers.  They are powerful in
+the field, successful against their enemies, impatient of anything like
+slavery, vastly fond of great ear-filling noises, such as cannon-firing,
+drum-beating, and bell-ringing; so that it is very common for a number of
+them, when they have got a cup too much in their heads, to go up to some
+belfry, and ring the bells for an hour together, for the sake of the
+amusement.  If they see a foreigner very well made or particularly
+handsome, they will say "'tis pity he is not an Englishman."
+
+It is also somewhat amusing, at the present day, to find a German
+elaborately explaining to his countrymen the mysteries of tobacco-
+smoking, as they appeared to his unsophisticated eyes in England.  "At
+the theatres and everywhere else," says the traveller, "the English are
+constantly smoking tobacco in the following manner.  They have pipes,
+made on purpose, of clay.  At the further end of these is a bowl.  Into
+the bowl they put the herb, and then setting fire to it, they draw the
+smoke into their mouths, which they puff out again through their
+nostrils, like funnels," and so on; conscientious explanations which a
+German tourist of our own times might think it superfluous to offer to
+his compatriots.
+
+It is also instructive to read that the light-fingered gentry of the
+metropolis were nearly as adroit in their calling as they are at present,
+after three additional centuries of development for their delicate craft;
+for the learned Tobias Salander, the travelling companion of Paul
+Hentzner, finding himself at a Lord Mayor's Show, was eased of his purse,
+containing nine crowns, as skilfully as the feat could have been done by
+the best pickpocket of the nineteenth century, much to that learned
+person's discomfiture.
+
+Into such an England and among such English the Netherland envoys had now
+been despatched on their most important errand.
+
+After twice putting back, through stress of weather, the commissioners,
+early in July, arrived at London, and were "lodged and very worshipfully
+appointed at charges of her Majesty in the Clothworkers' Hall in Pynchon-
+lane, near Tower-street."  About the Tower and its faubourgs the
+buildings were stated to be as elegant as they were in the city itself,
+although this was hardly very extravagant commendation.  From this
+district a single street led along the river's strand to Westminster,
+where were the old and new palaces, the famous hall and abbey, the
+Parliament chambers, and the bridge to Southwark, built of stone, with
+twenty arches, sixty feet high, and with rows of shops and dwelling-
+houses on both its sides.  Thence, along the broad and beautiful river,
+were dotted here and there many stately mansions and villas, residences
+of bishops and nobles, extending farther and farther west as the city
+melted rapidly into the country.  London itself was a town lying high
+upon a hill--the hill of Lud--and consisted of a coil of narrow,
+tortuous, unseemly streets, each with a black, noisome rivulet running
+through its centre, and with rows of three-storied, leaden-roofed houses,
+built of timber-work filled in with lime, with many gables, and with the
+upper stories overhanging and darkening the basements.  There were one
+hundred and twenty-one churches, small and large, the most conspicuous of
+which was the Cathedral.  Old Saint Paul's was not a very magnificent
+edifice--but it was an extremely large one, for it was seven hundred and
+twenty feet long, one hundred and thirty broad, and had a massive
+quadrangular tower, two hundred and sixty feet high.  Upon this tower had
+stood a timber-steeple, rising, to a height of five hundred and thirty-
+four feet from the ground, but it had been struck by lightning in the
+year 1561, and consumed to the stone-work.
+
+The Queen's favourite residence was Greenwich Palace, the place of her
+birth, and to this mansion, on the 9th of July, the Netherland envoys
+were conveyed, in royal barges, from the neighbourhood of Pynchon-lane,
+for their first audience.
+
+The deputation was a strong one.  There was Falck of Zeeland, a man
+of consummate adroitness, perhaps not of as satisfactory integrity;
+"a shrewd fellow and a fine," as Lord Leicester soon afterwards
+characterised him.  There was Menin, pensionary of Dort, an eloquent and
+accomplished orator, and employed on this occasion as chief spokesman of
+the legation--"a deeper man, and, I think, an honester," said the same
+personage, adding, with an eye to business, "and he is but poor, which
+you must consider, but with great secrecy."  There was Paul Buys, whom we
+have met with before; keen, subtle, somewhat loose of life, very
+passionate, a most most energetic and valuable friend to England, a
+determined foe to France, who had resigned the important post of
+Holland's Advocate, when the mission offering sovereignty to Henry III.
+had been resolved upon, and who had since that period been most
+influential in procuring the present triumph of the English policy.
+Through his exertions the Province of Holland had been induced at an
+early moment to furnish the most ample instructions to the commissioners
+for the satisfaction of Queen Elizabeth in the great matter of the
+mortgages.  "Judge if this Paul Buys has done his work well," said a
+French agent in the Netherlands, who, despite the infamous conduct of his
+government towards the Provinces, was doing his best to frustrate the
+subsequent negotiation with England, "and whether or no he has Holland
+under his thumb."  The same individual had conceived hopes from Falck of
+Zeeland.  That Province, in which lay the great bone of contention
+between the Queen and the States--the important town of Flushing--was
+much slower than Holland to agree to the English policy.  It is to be
+feared that Falck was not the most ingenuous and disinterested politician
+that could be found even in an age not distinguished for frankness or
+purity; for even while setting forth upon the mission to Elizabeth, he
+was still clingihg, or affecting to cling, to the wretched delusion of
+French assistance.  "I regret infinitely," said Falck to the French agent
+just mentioned, "that I am employed in this affair, and that it is
+necessary in our present straits to have recourse to England.  There is--
+so to speak--not a person in our Province that is inclined that way, all
+recognizing very well that France is much more salutary for us, besides
+that we all bear her a certain affection.  Indeed, if I were assured that
+the King still felt any goodwill towards us, I would so manage matters
+that neither the Queen of England, nor any other prince whatever except
+his most Christian-Majesty should take a bite at this country, at least
+at this Province, and with that view, while waiting for news from France,
+I will keep things in suspense, and spin them out as long as it is
+possible to do."
+
+The news from France happened soon to be very conclusive, and it then
+became difficult even for Falek to believe--after intelligence received
+of the accord between Henry III. and the Guises--that his Christian
+Majesty, would be inclined for a bite at the Netherlands.  This duplicity
+on the part of so leading a personage furnishes a key to much of the
+apparent dilatoriness on the part of the English government: It has been
+seen that Elizabeth, up to the last moment, could not fairly comprehend
+the ineffable meanness of the French monarch.  She told Ortel that she
+saw no reason to believe in that great Catholic conspiracy against
+herself and against all Protestantism which was so soon to be made public
+by the King's edict of July, promulgated at the very instant of the
+arrival in England of the Netherland envoys.  Then that dread fiat had
+gone forth, the most determined favourer of the French alliance could no
+longer admit its possibility, and Falck became the more open to that
+peculiar line of argument which Leicester had suggested with regard to
+one of the other deputies.  "I will do my best," wrote Walsingham, "to
+procure that Paul Buys and Falck shall receive underhand some reward."
+
+Besides Menin, Falck, and Buys, were Noel de Caron, an experienced
+diplomatist; the poet-soldier, Van der Does; heroic defender of Leyden;
+De Gryze, Hersolte, Francis Maalzoon, and three legal Frisians of pith
+and substance, Feitsma, Aisma, and Jongema;  a dozen Dutchmen together--
+as muscular champions as ever little republic sent forth to wrestle with
+all comers in the slippery ring of diplomacy.  For it was instinctively
+felt that here were conclusions to be tried with a nation of deep, solid
+thinkers, who were aware that a great crisis in the world's history had
+occurred, and would put forth their most substantial men to deal with it:
+Burghley and Walsingham, the great Queen herself, were no feather-weights
+like the frivolous Henry III., and his minions.  It was pity, however,
+that the discussions about to ensue presented from the outset rather the
+aspect of a hard hitting encounter of antagonists than that of a frank
+and friendly congress between two great parties whose interests were
+identical.
+
+Since the death of William the Silent, there was no one individual in the
+Netherlands to impersonate the great struggle of the Provinces with Spain
+and Rome, and to concentrate upon his own head a poetical, dramatic, and
+yet most legitimate interest.  The great purpose of the present history
+must be found in its illustration of the creative power of civil and
+religious freedom.  Here was a little republic, just born into the world,
+suddenly bereft of its tutelary saint, left to its own resources, yet
+already instinct with healthy vigorous life, and playing its difficult
+part among friends and enemies with audacity, self-reliance, and success.
+To a certain extent its achievements were anonymous, but a great
+principle manifested itself through a series of noble deeds.  Statesmen,
+soldiers, patriots, came forward on all sides to do the work which was to
+be done, and those who were brought into closest contact with the
+commonwealth acknowledged in strongest language the signal ability with
+which, self-guided, she steered her course.  Nevertheless, there was at
+this moment one Netherlander, the chief of the present mission to
+England, already the foremost statesman of his country, whose name will
+not soon be effaced from the record of the sixteenth and seventeenth
+centuries.  That man was John of Olden-Barneveld.
+
+He was now in his thirty-eighth year, having been born at Amersfoot on
+the 14th of September, 1547.  He bore an imposing name, for the Olden-
+Barnevelds of Gelderland were a race of unquestionable and antique
+nobility.  His enemies, however, questioned his right to the descent
+which he claimed.  They did not dispute that the great grandfather, Class
+van Olden-Barneveld, was of distinguished lineage and allied to many
+illustrious houses, but they denied that Class was really the great
+grandfather of John.  John's father, Gerritt, they said, was a nameless
+outcast, a felon, a murderer, who had escaped the punishment due to his
+crimes, but had dragged out a miserable existence in the downs, burrowing
+like a rabbit in the sand.  They had also much to say in disparagement of
+all John's connections.  Not only was his father a murderer, but his
+wife, whom he had married for money, was the child of a most horrible
+incest, his sisters were prostitutes, his sons and brothers were
+debauchees and drunkards, and, in short, never had a distinguished man a
+more uncomfortable and discreditable family-circle than that which
+surrounded Barneveld, if the report of his enemies was to be believed.
+Yet it is agreeable to reflect that, with all the venom which they had
+such power of secreting, these malignant tongues had been unable to
+destroy the reputation of the man himself.  John's character was
+honourable and upright, his intellectual power not disputed even by those
+who at a later period hated him the most bitterly.  He had been a
+profound and indefatigable student from his earliest youth.  He had read
+law at Leyden, in France, at Heidelberg.  Here, in the head-quarters of
+German Calvinism, his youthful mind had long pondered the dread themes of
+foreknowledge, judgment absolute, free will, and predestination: To
+believe it worth the while of a rational and intelligent Deity to create
+annually several millions of thinking beings, who were to struggle for a
+brief period on earth, and to consume in perpetual brimstone afterwards,
+while others were predestined to endless enjoyment, seemed to him an
+indifferent exchange for a faith in the purgatory and paradise of Rome.
+Perplexed in the extreme, the youthful John bethought himself of an
+inscription over the gateway of his famous but questionable great
+grandfather's house at Amersfort--'nil scire tutissima fides.'  He
+resolved thenceforth to adopt a system of ignorance upon matters beyond
+the flaming walls of the world; to do the work before him manfully and
+faithfully while he walked the earth, and to trust that a benevolent
+Creator would devote neither him nor any other man to eternal hellfire.
+For this most offensive doctrine he was howled at by the strictly pious,
+while he earned still deeper opprobrium by daring to advocate religious
+toleration: In face of the endless horrors inflicted by the Spanish
+Inquisition upon his native land, he had the hardihood--although a
+determined Protestant himself--to claim for Roman Catholics the right to
+exercise their religion in the free States on equal terms with those of
+the reformed faith.  "Anyone," said his enemies, "could smell what that
+meant who had not a wooden nose."  In brief, he was a liberal Christian,
+both in theory and practice, and he nobly confronted in consequence the
+wrath of bigots on both sides.  At a later period the most zealous
+Calvinists called him Pope John, and the opinions to which he was to owe
+such appellations had already been formed in his mind.
+
+After completing his very thorough legal studies, he had practised as
+an advocate in Holland and Zeeland.  An early defender of civil and
+religious freedom, he had been brought at an early day into contact with
+William the Silent, who recognized his ability.  He had borne a snap-
+hance on his shoulder as a volunteer in the memorable attempt to relieve
+Haarlem, and was one of the few survivors of that bloody night.  He had
+stood outside the walls of Leyden in company of the Prince of Orange when
+that magnificent destruction of the dykes had taken place by which the
+city had been saved from the fate impending over it.  At a still more
+recent period we have seen him landing from the gun-boats upon the
+Kowenstyn, on the fatal 26th May.  These military adventures were,
+however, but brief and accidental episodes in his career, which was
+that of a statesman and diplomatist.  As pensionary of Rotterdam, he was
+constantly a member of the General Assembly, and had already begun to
+guide the policy of the new commonwealth.  His experience was
+considerable, and he was now in the high noon of his vigour and his
+usefulness.
+
+He was a man of noble and imposing presence, with thick hair pushed from
+a broad forehead rising dome-like above a square and massive face; a
+strong deeply-coloured physiognomy, with shaggy brow, a chill blue eye,
+not winning but commanding, high cheek bones, a solid, somewhat scornful
+nose, a firm mouth and chin, enveloped in a copious brown beard;
+the whole head not unfitly framed in the stiff formal ruff of the period;
+and the tall stately figure well draped in magisterial robes of velvet
+and sable--such was John of Olden-Barneveld.
+
+The Commissioners thus described arrived at Greenwich Stairs, and were at
+once ushered into the palace, a residence which had been much enlarged
+and decorated by Henry VIII.
+
+They were received with stately ceremony.  The presence-chamber was hung
+with Gobelin tapestry, its floor strewn with rushes.  Fifty-gentlemen
+pensioners, with gilt battle-ages, and a throng of 'buffetiers', or beef-
+eaters, in that quaint old-world garb which has survived so many
+centuries, were in attendance, while the counsellors of the Queen, in
+their robes of state, waited around the throne.
+
+There, in close skull-cap and dark flowing gown, was the subtle,
+monastic-looking Walsingham, with long, grave, melancholy face and
+Spanish eyes.  There too, white staff in hand, was Lord High Treasurer
+Burghley, then sixty-five years of age, with serene blue eye, large,
+smooth, pale, scarce-wrinkled face and forehead; seeming, with his
+placid, symmetrical features, and great velvet bonnet, under which such
+silver hairs as remained were soberly tucked away, and with his long dark
+robes which swept the ground, more like a dignified gentlewoman than a
+statesman, but for the wintery beard which lay like a snow-drift on his
+ancient breast.
+
+The Queen was then in the fifty-third year of her age, and considered
+herself in the full bloom of her beauty.  Her, garments were of satin and
+velvet, with fringes of pearl as big as beans.  A small gold crown was
+upon her head, and her red hair, throughout its multiplicity of curls,
+blazed with diamonds and emeralds.  Her forehead was tall, her face long,
+her complexion fair, her eyes small, dark, and glittering, her nose high
+and hooked, her lips thin, her teeth black, her bosom white and liberally
+exposed.  As she passed through the ante-chamber to the presence-hall,
+supplicants presented petitions upon their knees.  Wherever she glanced,
+all prostrated themselves on the ground.  The cry of "Long live Queen
+Elizabeth" was spontaneous and perpetual; the reply; "I thank you, my
+good people," was constant and cordial.  She spoke to various foreigners
+in their respective languages, being mistress, besides the Latin and
+Greek, of French, Spanish, Italian, and German.  As the Commissioners
+were presented to her by Lord Buckhurst it was observed that she was
+perpetually gloving and ungloving, as if to attract attention to her
+hand, which was esteemed a wonder of beauty.  She spoke French with
+purity and elegance, but with a drawling, somewhat affected accent,
+saying "Paar maa foi; paar le Dieeu vivaant," and so forth, in a style
+which was ridiculed by Parisians, as she sometimes, to her extreme
+annoyance, discovered.
+
+Joos de Menin, pensionary of Dort, in the name of all the envoys, made an
+elaborate address.  He expressed the gratitude which the States
+entertained for her past kindness, and particularly for the good offices
+rendered by Ambassador Davison after the death of the Prince of Orange,
+and for the deep regret expressed by her Majesty for their disappointment
+in the hopes they had founded upon France.
+
+"Since the death of the Prince of Orange," he said, "the States have lost
+many important cities, and now, for the preservation of their existence,
+they have need of a prince and sovereign lord to defend them against the
+tyranny and iniquitous oppression of the Spaniards and their adherents,
+who are more and more determined utterly to destroy their country, and
+reduce the poor people to a perpetual slavery worse than that of Indians,
+under the insupportable and detestable yoke of the Spanish Inquisition.
+We have felt a confidence that your Majesty will not choose to see us
+perish at the hands of the enemy against whom we have been obliged to
+sustain this long and cruel war.  That war we have undertaken in order to
+preserve for the poor people their liberty, laws, and franchises,
+together with the exercise of the true Christian religion, of which your
+Majesty bears rightfully the title of defender, and against which the
+enemy and his allies have made so many leagues and devised so many
+ambushes and stratagems, besides organizing every day so many plots
+against the life of your Majesty and the safety of your realms--schemes
+which thus far the good God has averted for the good of Christianity and
+the maintenance of His churches.  For these reasons, Madam, the States
+have taken a firm resolution to have recourse to your Majesty, seeing
+that it is an ordinary thing for all oppressed nations to apply in their
+calamity to neighbouring princes, and especially to such as are endowed
+with piety, justice, magnanimity, and other kingly virtues.  For this
+reason we have been deputed to offer to your Majesty the sovereignty over
+these Provinces, under certain good and equitable conditions, having
+reference chiefly to the maintenance of the reformed religion and of our
+ancient liberties and customs.  And although, in the course of these long
+and continued wars, the enemy has obtained possession of many cities and
+strong places within our couniry, nevertheless the Provinces of Holland,
+Zeeland, Utrecht, and Friesland, are, thank God, still entire.  And in
+those lands are many large and stately cities, beautiful and deep rivers,
+admirable seaports, from which your Majesty and your successors can
+derive much good fruit and commodity, of which it is scarcely, necessary
+to make a long recital.  This point, however, beyond the rest, merits a
+special consideration; namely, that the conjunction of those Provinces of
+Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, and Friesland, together with the cities of
+Sluys and Ostend, with the kingdoms of your Majesty, carries with it the
+absolute empire of the great ocean, and consequently an assurance of
+perpetual felicity for your subjects.  We therefore humbly entreat you to
+agree to our conditions, to accept the sovereign seignory of these
+Provinces, and consequently to receive the people of the same as your
+very humble and obedient subjects, under the perpetual safeguard of your
+crown--a people certainly as faithful and loving towards their princes
+and sovereign lords, to speak without boasting, as any in all
+Christendom.
+
+"So doing, Madam, you will preserve many beautiful churches which it has
+pleased God to raise up in these lands, now much afflicted and shaken,
+and you will deliver this country and people--before the iniquitous
+invasion of the Spaniards, so rich and flourishing by the great Commodity
+of the sea, their ports and rivers, their commerce and manufactures, for
+all which they have such natural advantages--from ruin and perpetual
+slavery of body and soul.  This will be a truly excellent work, agreeable
+to God, profitable to Christianity, worthy of immortal praise, and
+comporting with the heroic virtues of your Majesty, and ensuring the
+prosperity of your country and people.  With this we present to your
+Majesty our articles and conditions, and pray that the King of Kings may
+preserve you from all your enemies and ever have you in His holy
+keeping."
+
+The Queen listened intently and very courteously to the delivery of this
+address, and then made answer in French to this effect:--"Gentlemen,--Had
+I a thousand tongues I should not be able to express my obligation to you
+for the great and handsome offers which you have just made.  I firmly
+believe that this proceeds from the true zeal, devotion, and affection,
+which you have always borne me, and I am certain that you have ever
+preferred me to all the princes and potentates in the world.  Even when
+you selected the late Duke of Anjou, who was so dear to me, and to whose
+soul I hope that God has been merciful, I know that you would sooner have
+offered your country to me if I had desired that you should do so.
+Certainly I esteem it a great thing that you wish to be governed by me,
+and I feel so much obliged to you in consequence that I will never
+abandon you, but, on the contrary, assist you till the last sigh of my
+life.  I know very well that your princes have treated you ill, and that
+the Spaniards are endeavouring to ruin you entirely; but I will come to
+your aid, and I will consider what I can do, consistently with my honour,
+in regard to the articles which you have brought me.  They shall be
+examined by the members of my council, and I promise that I will not keep
+you three or four months, for I know very well that your affairs require
+haste, and that they will become ruinous if you are not assisted.  It is
+not my custom to procrastinate, and upon this occasion I shall not dally,
+as others have done, but let you have my answer very soon."
+
+Certainly, if the Provinces needed a king, which they had most
+unequivocally declared to be the case, they might have wandered the
+whole earth over, and, had it been possible, searched through the whole
+range of history, before finding a monarch with a more kingly spirit
+than the great Queen to whom they had at last had recourse.
+
+Unfortunately, she was resolute in her refusal to accept the offered
+sovereignty.  The first interview terminated with this exchange of
+addresses, and the deputies departed in their barges for their lodgings
+in Pynchon-lane.
+
+The next two days were past in perpetual conferences, generally at Lord
+Burghley's house, between the envoys and the lords of the council, in
+which the acceptance of the sovereignty was vehemently urged on the part
+of the Netherlanders, and steadily declined in the name of her Majesty.
+
+"Her Highness," said Burghley, "cannot be induced, by any writing or
+harangue that you can make, to accept the principality or proprietorship
+as sovereign, and it will therefore be labour lost for you to exhibit any
+writing for the purpose of changing her intention.  It will be better to
+content yourselves with her Majesty's consent to assist you, and to take
+you under her protection."
+
+Nevertheless, two days afterwards, a writing was exhibited, drawn up by
+Menin, in which another elaborate effort was made to alter the Queen's
+determination.  This anxiety, on the part of men already the principal
+personages in a republic, to merge the independent existence of their
+commonwealth in another and a foreign political organism, proved, at any
+rate; that they were influenced by patriotic motives alone.  It is also
+instructive to observe the intense language with which the necessity
+of a central paramount sovereignty for all the Provinces, and the
+inconveniences of the separate States' right principle were urged by a
+deputation, at the head of which stood Olden-Barneveld.  "Although it is
+not becoming in us," said they, "to enquire into your Majesty's motives
+for refusing the sovereignty of our country, nevertheless, we cannot help
+observing that your consent would be most profitable, as well to your
+Majesty, and your successors, as to the Provinces themselves.  By your
+acceptance of the sovereignty the two peoples would be, as it were,
+united in one body.  This would cause a fraternal benevolence between
+them, and a single reverence, love, and obedience to your Majesty.--The
+two peoples being thus under the government of the same sovereign prince,
+the intrigues and practices which the enemy could attempt with persons
+under a separate subjection, would of necessity surcease.  Moreover,
+those Provinces are all distinct duchies, counties, seignories, governed
+by their own magistrates, laws, and ordinances; each by itself, without
+any authority or command to be exercised by one Province over another.
+To this end they have need of a supreme power and of one sovereign prince
+or seignor, who may command all equally, having a constant regard to the
+public weal--considered as a generality, and not with regard to the
+profit of the one or the other individual Province--and, causing promptly
+and universally to be executed such ordinances as may be made in the
+matter of war or police, according to various emergencies.  Each
+Province, on the contrary, retaining its sovereignty over its own
+inhabitants, obedience will not be so promptly and completely rendered
+to the commands of the lieutenant-general of your Majesty, and many,
+a good enterprise and opportunity, will be lost.  Where there is not a
+single authority it is always found that one party endeavours to usurp
+power over another, or to escape doing his duty so thoroughly as the
+others.  And this has notoriously been the case in the matter of
+contributions, imposts, and similar matters."
+
+Thus much, and more of similar argument, logically urged, made it
+sufficiently evident that twenty years of revolt and of hard fighting
+against one king, had not destroyed in the minds of the leading
+Netherlanders their conviction of the necessity of kingship.  If the new
+commonwealth was likely to remain a republic, it was, at that moment at
+any rate, because they could not find a king.  Certainly they did their
+best to annex themselves to England, and to become loyal subjects of
+England's Elizabeth.  But the Queen, besides other objections to the
+course proposed by the Provinces, thought that she could do a better
+thing in the way of mortgages.  In this, perhaps, there was something of
+the penny-wise policy, which sprang from one great defect in her
+character.  At any rate much mischief was done by the mercantile spirit
+which dictated the hard chaffering on both sides the Channel at this
+important juncture; for during this tedious flint-paring, Antwerp, which
+might have been saved, was falling into the hands of Philip.  It should
+never be forgotten, however, that the Queen had no standing army, and but
+a small revenue.  The men to be sent from England to the Netherland wars
+were first to be levied wherever it was possible to find them.  In truth,
+many were pressed in the various wards of London, furnished with red
+coats and matchlocks at the expense of the citizens, and so despatched,
+helter-skelter, in small squads as opportunity offered.  General Sir John
+Norris was already superintending these operations, by command of the
+Queen, before the present formal negotiation with the States had begun.
+
+Subsequently to the 11th July, on which day the second address had been
+made to Elizabeth, the envoys had many conferences with Leicester,
+Burghley, Walsingham, and other councillors, without making much
+progress.  There was perpetual wrangling about figures and securities.
+
+"What terms will you pledge for the repayment of the monies to be
+advanced?"  asked Burghley and Walsingham.
+
+"But if her Majesty takes the sovereignty," answered the deputies, "there
+will be no question of guarantees.  The Queen will possess our whole
+land, and there will be no need of any repayment."
+
+"And we have told you over and over again," said the Lord Treasurer,
+"that her Majesty will never think of accepting the sovereignty.  She
+will assist you in money and men, and must be repaid to the last farthing
+when the war is over; and, until that period, must have solid pledges in
+the shape of a town in each Province."
+
+Then came interrogatories as to the amount of troops and funds to be
+raised respectively by the Queen and the States for the common cause.
+The Provinces wished her Majesty to pay one-third of the whole expense,
+while her Majesty was reluctant to pay one-quarter.  The States wished
+a permanent force to be kept on foot in the Netherlands of thirteen
+thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry for the field, and twenty-
+three thousand for garrisons.  The councillors thought the last item too
+much.  Then there were queries as to the expense of maintaining a force
+in the Provinces.  The envoys reckoned one pound sterling, or ten
+florins, a month for the pay of each foot soldier, including officers;
+and for the cavalry, three times as much.  This seemed reasonable, and
+the answers to the inquiries touching the expense of the war-vessels and
+sailors were equally satisfactory.  Nevertheless it was difficult to
+bring the Queen up to the line to which the envoys had been limited by
+their instructions.  Five thousand foot and one thousand horse serving at
+the Queen's expense till the war should be concluded, over and above the
+garrisons for such cautionary towns as should be agreed upon; this was
+considered, by the States, the minimum.  The Queen held out for giving
+only four thousand foot and four hundred horse, and for deducting the
+garrisons even from this slender force.  As guarantee for the expense
+thus to be incurred, she required that Flushing and Brill should be
+placed in her hands.  Moreover the position of Antwerp complicated the
+negotiation.  Elizabeth, fully sensible of the importance of preserving
+that great capital, offered four thousand soldiers to serve until that
+city should be relieved, requiring repayment within three months after
+the object should have been accomplished.  As special guarantee for such
+repayment she required Sluys and Ostend.  This was sharp bargaining,
+but, at any rate, the envoys knew that the Queen, though cavilling to
+the ninth-part of a hair, was no trifler, and that she meant to perform
+whatever she should promise.
+
+There was another exchange of speeches at the Palace of Nonesuch, on the
+5th August; and the position of affairs and the respective attitudes of
+the Queen and envoys were plainly characterized by the language then
+employed.
+
+After an exordium about the cruelty of the Spanish tyranny and the
+enormous expense entailed by the war upon the Netherlands, Menin, who,
+as usual, was the spokesman, alluded to the difficulty which the States
+at last felt in maintaining themselves.
+
+"Five thousand foot and one thousand horse," he said, "over and above the
+maintenance of garrisons in the towns to be pledged as security to your
+Majesty, seemed the very least amount of succour that would be probably
+obtained from your royal bounty.  Considering the great demonstrations
+of affection and promises of support, made as well by your Majesty's own
+letters as by the mouth of your ambassador Davison, and by our envoys De
+Gryse and Ortel, who have all declared publicly that your Majesty would
+never forsake us, the States sent us their deputies to this country in
+full confidence that such reasonable demands as we had been authorized to
+make would be satisfied."
+
+The speaker then proceeded to declare that the offer made by the royal
+councillors of four thousand foot and four hundred horse, to serve during
+the war, together with a special force of four thousand for the relief of
+Antwerp, to be paid for within three months after the siege should be
+raised, auninst a concession of the cities of Flushing, Brill, Sluys, and
+Ostend, did not come within the limitations of the States-General.  They
+therefore begged the Queen to enlarge her offer to the number of five
+thousand foot and one thousand horse, or at least to allow the envoys to
+conclude the treaty provisionally, and subject to approval of their
+constituents.
+
+So soon as Menin had concluded his address, her Majesty instantly
+replied, with much earnestness and fluency of language.
+
+"Gentlemen," she said, "I will answer you upon the first point, because
+it touches my honour.  You say that I promised you, both by letters and
+through my agent Davison, and also by my own lips, to assist you and
+never to abandon you, and that this had moved you to come to me at
+present.  Very well, masters, do you not think I am assisting you when I
+am sending you four thousand foot and four hundred horse to serve during
+the war?  Certainly, I think yes; and I say frankly that I have never
+been wanting to my word.  No man shall ever say, with truth, that the
+Queen of England had at any time and ever so slightly failed in her
+promises, whether to the mightiest monarch, to republics, to gentlemen,
+or even to private persons of the humblest condition.  Am I, then, in
+your opinion, forsaking you when I send you English blood, which I love,
+and which is my own blood, and which I am bound to defend?  It seems to
+me, no.  For my part I tell you again that I will never forsake you.
+
+"'Sed de modo?'  That is matter for agreement.  You are aware, gentlemen,
+that I have storms to fear from many quarters--from France, Scotland,
+Ireland, and within my own kingdom.  What would be said if I looked only
+on one side, and if on that side I employed all my resources.  No, I will
+give my subjects no cause for murmuring.  I know that my counsellors
+desire to manage matters with prudence; 'sed aetatem habeo', and you are
+to believe, that, of my own motion, I have resolved not to extend my
+offer of assistance, at present, beyond the amount already stated.  But
+I don't say that at another time I may not be able to do more for you.
+For my intention is never to abandon your cause, always to assist you,
+and never more to suffer any foreign nation to have dominion over you.
+
+"It is true that you present me with two places in each of your
+Provinces.  I thank you for them infinitely, and certainly it is a great
+offer.  But it will be said instantly, the Queen of England wishes to
+embrace and devour everything; while, on the contrary, I only wish to
+render you assistance.  I believe, in truth, that if other monarchs
+should have this offer, they would not allow such an opportunity to
+escape.  I do not let it slip because of fears that I entertain for any
+prince whatever.  For to think that I am not aware--doing what I am
+doing--that I am embarking in a war against the King of Spain, is a great
+mistake.  I know very well that the succour which I am affording you will
+offend him as much as if I should do a great deal more.  But what care I?
+Let him begin, I will answer him.  For my part, I say again, that never
+did fear enter my heart.  We must all die once.  I know very well that
+many princes are my enemies, and are seeking my ruin; and that where
+malice is joined with force, malice often arrives at its ends.  But I am
+not so feeble a princess that I have not the means and the will to defend
+myself against them all.  They are seeking to take my life, but it
+troubles me not.  He who is on high has defended me until this hour,
+and will keep me still, for in Him do I trust.
+
+"As to the other point, you say that your powers are not extensive enough
+to allow your acceptance of the offer I make you.  Nevertheless, if I am
+not mistaken, I have remarked in passing--for princes look very close to
+words--that you would be content if I would give you money in place of
+men, and that your powers speak only of demanding a certain proportion
+of infantry and another of cavalry.  I believe this would be, as you say,
+an equivalent, 'secundum quod'.  But I say this only because you govern
+yourselves so precisely by the measure of your instructions. Nevertheless
+I don't wish to contest these points with you.  For very often 'dum Romae
+disputatur Saguntum perit.'  Nevertheless, it would be well for you to
+decide; and, in any event, I do not think it good that you should all
+take your departure, but that, on the contrary, you should leave some of
+your number here.  Otherwise it would at once be said that all was broken
+off, and that I had chosen to nothing for you; and with this the bad
+would comfort themselves, and the good would be much discouraged.
+
+"Touching the last point of your demand--according to which you desire a
+personage of quality--I know, gentlemen, that you do not always agree
+very well among yourselves, and that it would be good for you to have
+some one to effect such agreement.  For this reason I have always
+intended, so soon as we should have made our treaty, to send a lord of
+name and authority to reside with you, to assist you in governing, and to
+aid, with his advice, in the better direction of your affairs.
+
+"Would to God that Antwerp were relieved!  Certainly I should be very
+glad, and very well content to lose all that I am now expending if that
+city could be saved.  I hope, nevertheless, if it can hold out six weeks
+longer, that we shall see something good.  Already the two thousand men
+of General Norris have crossed, or are crossing, every day by companies.
+I will hasten the rest as much as possible; and I assure you, gentlemen,
+that I will spare no diligence.  Nevertheless you may, if you choose,
+retire with my council, and see if together you can come to some good
+conclusion."
+
+Thus spoke Elizabeth, like the wise, courageous, and very parsimonious
+princess that she was.  Alas, it was too true, that Saguntum was
+perishing while the higgling went on at Rome.  Had those two thousand
+under Sir John Norris and the rest of the four thousand but gone a few
+weeks earlier, how much happier might have been the result!
+
+Nevertheless, it was thought in England that Antwerp would still hold
+out; and, meantime, a treaty for its relief, in combination with another
+for permanent assistance to the Provinces, was agreed upon between the
+envoys and the lords of council.
+
+On the 12th August, Menin presented himself at Nonesuch at the head of
+his colleagues, and, in a formal speech, announced the arrangement which
+had thus been entered into, subject to the approval of the States.  Again
+Elizabeth, whose "tongue," in the homely phrase of the Netherlanders,
+"was wonderfully well hung," replied with energy and ready eloquence.
+
+"You see, gentlemen," she said, "that I have opened the door; that I am
+embarking once for all with you in a war against the King of Spain.  Very
+well, I am not anxious about the matter.  I hope that God will aid us,
+and that we shall strike a good blow in your cause.  Nevertheless, I pray
+you, with all my heart, and by the affection you bear me, to treat my
+soldiers well; for they are my own Englishmen, whom I love as I do
+myself.  Certainly  it would be a great cruelty, if you should treat
+them ill, since they are about to hazard their lives so freely in your
+defence, and I am sure that my request in this regard will be received by
+you as it deserves.
+
+"In the next place, as you know that I am sending, as commander of these
+English troops, an honest gentleman, who deserves most highly for his
+experience in arms, so I am also informed that you have on your side a
+gentleman of great valour.  I pray you, therefore, that good care be
+taken lest there be misunderstanding between these two, which might
+prevent them from agreeing well together, when great exploits of war
+are to be taken in hand.  For if that should happen--which God forbid--
+my succour would be rendered quite useless to you.  I name Count Hohenlo,
+because him alone have I heard mentioned.  But I pray you to make the
+same recommendation to all the colonels and gentlemen in your army;
+for I should be infinitely sad, if misadventures should arise from
+such a cause, for your interest and my honour are both at stake.
+
+"In the third place, I beg you, at your return, to make a favourable
+report of me, and to thank the States, in my behalf, for their great
+offers, which I esteem so highly as to be unable to express my thanks.
+Tell them that I shall remember them for ever.  I consider it a great
+honour, that from the commencement, you have ever been so faithful to me,
+and that with such great constancy you have preferred me to all other
+princes, and have chosen me for your Queen.  And chiefly do I thank the
+gentlemen of Holland and Zeeland, who, as I have been informed, were the
+first who so singularly loved me.  And so on my own part I will have a
+special care of them, and will do my best to uphold them by every
+possible means, as I will do all the rest who have put their trust in me.
+But I name Holland and Zeeland more especially, because they have been so
+constant and faithful in their efforts to assist the rest in shaking off
+the yoke of the enemy.
+
+"Finally, gentlemen, I beg you to assure the States that I do not decline
+the sovereignty of your country from any dread of the King of Spain.  For
+I take God to witness that I fear him not; and I hope, with the blessing
+of God, to make such demonstrations against him, that men shall say the
+Queen of England does not fear the Spaniards."
+
+Elizabeth then smote herself upon the breast, and cried, with great
+energy, "'Illa que virgo viri;' and is it not quite the same to you,
+even if I do not assume the sovereignty, since I intend to protect you,
+and since therefore the effects will be the same?  It is true that the
+sovereignty would serve to enhance my grandeur, but I am content to do
+without it, if you, upon your own part, will only do your duty.
+
+"For myself, I promise you, in truth, that so long as I live, and even to
+my last sigh, I will never forsake you.  Go home and tell this boldly to
+the States which sent you hither."
+
+Menin then replied with fresh expressions of thanks and compliments, and
+requested, in conclusion, that her Majesty would be pleased to send, as
+soon as possible, a personage of quality to the Netherlands.
+
+"Gentlemen," replied Elizabeth, "I intend to do this, so soon as our
+treaty shall be ratified, for, in contrary case, the King of Spain,
+seeing your government continue on its present footing, would do nothing
+but laugh at us.  Certainly I do not mean this year to provide him with
+so fine a banquet."
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Anarchy which was deemed inseparable from a non-regal form
+Dismay of our friends and the gratification of our enemies
+Her teeth black, her bosom white and liberally exposed (Eliz.)
+Holland was afraid to give a part, although offering the whole
+Resolved thenceforth to adopt a system of ignorance
+Say "'tis pity he is not an Englishman
+Seeking protection for and against the people
+Three hundred and upwards are hanged annually in London
+We must all die once
+Wrath of bigots on both sides
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v42
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
+From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609
+
+By John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+History United Netherlands, Volume 43, 1585
+
+
+CHAPTER VI., Part 2.
+
+     Sir John Norris sent to Holland--Parsimony of Elizabeth--Energy of
+     Davison--Protracted Negotiations--Friendly Sentiments of Count
+     Maurice--Letters from him and Louisa de Coligny--Davison vexed by
+     the Queen's Caprice--Dissatisfaction of Leicester--His vehement
+     Complaints--The Queen's Avarice--Perplexity of Davison--Manifesto
+     of Elizabeth--Sir Philip Sidney--His Arrival at Flushing.
+
+
+The envoys were then dismissed, and soon afterwards a portion of the
+deputation took their departure from the Netherlands with the proposed
+treaty.  It was however, as we know, quite too late for Saguntum.  Two
+days after the signing of the treaty, the remaining envoys were at the
+palace of Nonesuch, in conference with the Earl of Leicester, when a
+gentleman rushed suddenly into the apartment, exclaiming with great
+manifestations of anger:
+
+"Antwerp has fallen!  A treaty has been signed with the Prince of Parma.
+Aldegonde is the author of it all.  He is the culprit, who has betrayed
+us;" with many more expressions of vehement denunciation.
+
+The Queen was disappointed, but stood firm.  She had been slow in taking
+her resolution, but she was unflinching when her mind was made up.
+Instead of retreating from her, position, now that it became doubly
+dangerous, she advanced several steps nearer towards her allies.  For
+it was obvious, if more precious time should be lost, that Holland and
+Zeeland would share the fate of Antwerp.  Already the belief, that, with
+the loss of that city, all had been lost, was spreading both in the
+Provinces and in England, and Elizabeth felt that the time had indeed
+come to confront the danger.
+
+Meantime the intrigues of the enemy in the independent Provinces were
+rife.  Blunt Roger Williams wrote in very plain language to Walsingham,
+a very few days after the capitulation of Antwerp:
+
+"If her Majesty means to have Holland and Zeeland," said he, "she must
+resolve presently.  Aldegonde hath promised the enemy to bring them to
+compound.  Here arrived already his ministers which knew all his dealings
+about Antwerp from first to last.  Count Maurice is governed altogether
+by Villiers, and Villiers was never worse for the English than at this
+hour.  To be short, the people say in general, they will accept a peace,
+unless her Majesty do sovereign them presently.  All the men of war will
+be at her Highness' devotion, if they be in credit in time.  What you do,
+it must be done presently, for I do assure your honour there is large
+offers presented unto them by the enemies.  If her Majesty deals not
+roundly and resolutely with them now, it will be too late two months
+hence."
+
+Her Majesty meant to deal roundly and resolutely.  Her troops had already
+gone in considerable numbers.  She wrote encouraging letters with her own
+hand to the States, imploring them not to falter now, even though the
+great city had fallen.  She had long since promised never to desert them,
+and she was, if possible, more determined than ever to redeem her pledge.
+She especially recommended to their consideration General Norris,
+commander of the forces that had been despatched to the relief of
+Antwerp.
+
+A most accomplished officer, sprung of a house renowned for its romantic
+valour, Sir John was the second of the six sons of Lord Norris of Rycot,
+all soldiers of high reputation, "chickens of Mars," as an old writer
+expressed himself.  "Such a bunch of brethren for eminent achievement,"
+said he, "was never seen.  So great their states and stomachs that they
+often jostled with others."  Elizabeth called their mother, "her own
+crow;"  and the darkness of her hair and visage was thought not
+unbecoming to her martial issue, by whom it had been inherited.  Daughter
+of Lord Williams of Tame, who had been keeper of the Tower in the time of
+Elizabeth's imprisonment, she had been affectionate and serviceable to
+the Princess in the hour of her distress, and had been rewarded with her
+favour in the days of her grandeur.  We shall often meet this crow-black
+Norris, and his younger brother Sir Edward--the most daring soldiers of
+their time, posters of sea and land--wherever the buffeting was closest,
+or adventure the wildest on ship-board or shore, for they were men who
+combined much of the knight-errantry of a vanishing age with the more
+practical and expansive spirit of adventure that characterized the new
+epoch.
+
+Nor was he a stranger in the Netherlands.  "The gentleman to whom we have
+committed the government of the forces going to the relief of Antwerp,"
+said Elizabeth, "has already given you such proofs of his affection by
+the good services he has rendered you, that without recommendation on our
+part, he should stand already recommended.  Nevertheless, in respect for
+his quality, the house from which he is descended, and the valour which
+he has manifested in your own country, we desire to tell you that we hold
+him dear, and that he deserves also to be dear to you."
+
+When the fall of Antwerp was certain, the Queen sent Davison, who had
+been for a brief period in England, back again to his post.  "We have
+learned," she said in the letter which she sent by that envoy; "with very
+great regret of the surrender of Antwerp.  Fearing lest some apprehension
+should take possession of the people's mind in consequence, and that some
+dangerous change might ensue, we send you our faithful and well-beloved
+Davison to represent to you how much we have your affairs at heart, and
+to say that we are determined to forget nothing that may be necessary to
+your preservation.  Assure yourselves that we shall never fail to
+accomplish all that he may promise you in our behalf."
+
+Yet, notwithstanding the gravity of the situation, the thorough
+discussion that had taken place of the whole matter, and the enormous
+loss which had resulted from the money-saving insanity upon both sides,
+even then the busy devil of petty economy was not quite exorcised.
+Several precious weeks were wasted in renewed chafferings.  The Queen was
+willing that the permanent force should now be raised to five thousand
+foot and one thousand horse--the additional sixteen, hundred men being
+taken from the Antwerp relieving-force--but she insisted that the
+garrisons for the cautionary towns should be squeezed out of this general
+contingent.  The States, on the contrary, were determined to screw these
+garrisons out of her grip, as an additional subsidy.  Each party
+complained with reason of the other's closeness.  No doubt the states
+were shrewd bargainers, but it would have been difficult for the sharpest
+Hollander that ever sent a cargo of herrings to Cadiz, to force open
+Elizabeth's beautiful hand when she chose to shut it close.  Walsingham
+and Leicester were alternately driven to despair by the covetousness of
+the one party or the other.
+
+It was still uncertain what "personage of quality" was to go to the
+Netherlands in the Queen's name, to help govern the country.  Leicester
+had professed his readiness to risk his life, estates, and reputation,
+in the cause, and the States particularly desired his appointment.
+"The name of your Excellency is so very agreeable to this people," said
+they in a letter to the Earl, "as to give promise of a brief and happy
+end to this grievous and almost immortal war."  The Queen was, or
+affected to be, still undecided as to the appointment.  While waiting
+week after week for the ratifications of the treaty from Holland, affairs
+were looking gloomy at home, and her Majesty was growing very uncertain
+in her temper.
+
+"I see not her Majesty disposed to use the service of the Earl of
+Leicester," wrote Walsingham.  "I suppose the lot of government will
+light on Lord Gray.  I would to God the ability of his purse were
+answerable to his sufficiency otherwise."  This was certainly a most
+essential deficiency on the part of Lord Gray, and it will soon be seen
+that the personage of quality to be selected as chief in the arduous and
+honourable enterprise now on foot, would be obliged to rely quite as much
+on that same ability of purse as upon the sufficiency of his brain or
+arm.  The Queen did not mean to send her favourite forth to purchase
+anything but honour in the Netherlands; and it was not the Provinces only
+that were likely to struggle against her parsimony.  Yet that parsimony
+sprang from a nobler motive than the mere love of pelf.  Dangers
+encompassed her on every side, and while husbanding her own exchequer,
+she was saving her subjects' resources.  "Here we are but book-worms,"
+said Walsingham, "yet from sundry quarters we hear of great practices
+against this poor crown.  The revolt in Scotland is greatly feared, and
+that out of hand."
+
+Scotland, France, Spain, these were dangerous enemies and neighbours to a
+maiden Queen, who had a rebellious Ireland to deal with on one side the
+channel, and Alexander of Parma on the other.
+
+Davison experienced great inconvenience and annoyance before the definite
+arrangements could be made.  There is no doubt that the Spanish party had
+made great progress since the fall of Antwerp.  Roger Williams was right
+in advising the Queen to deal" roundly and resolutely" with the States,
+and to "sovereign them presently."
+
+They had need of being sovereigned, for it must be confessed that the
+self-government which prevailed at that moment was very like no
+government.  The death of Orange, the treachery of Henry III., the
+triumphs of Parma, disastrous facts, treading rapidly upon each other,
+had produced a not very unnatural effect.  The peace-at-any-price party
+was struggling hard for the ascendancy, and the Spanish partizans were
+doing their best to hold up to suspicion the sharp practice of the
+English Queen.  She was even accused of underhand dealing with Spain,
+to the disadvantage of the Provinces; so much had slander, anarchy, and
+despair, been able to effect.  The States were reluctant to sign those
+articles with Elizabeth which were absolutely necessary to their
+salvation.
+
+"In how doubtful and uncertain terms I found things at my coming hither,"
+wrote Davison to Burghley, "how thwarted and delayed since for a
+resolution, and with what conditions, and for what reasons I have been
+finally drawn to conclude with them as I have done, your Lordship may
+perceive by that I have written to Mr. Secretary.  The chief difficulty
+has rested upon the point of entertaining the garrisons within the towns
+of assurance, over and besides the five thousand footmen and one thousand
+horse."
+
+This, as Davison proceeded to observe, was considered a 'sine qua non'
+by the States, so that, under the perilous circumstances in which both
+countries were placed, he had felt it his duty to go forward as far as
+possible to meet their demands.  Davison always did his work veraciously,
+thoroughly, and resolutely; and it was seldom that his advice, in all
+matters pertaining to Netherland matters, did not prove the very best
+that could be offered.  No man knew better than he the interests and the
+temper of both countries.
+
+The imperious Elizabeth was not fond of being thwarted, least of all by
+any thing savouring of the democratic principle, and already there was
+much friction between the Tudor spirit of absolutism and the rough
+"mechanical" nature with which it was to ally itself in the Netherlands.
+The economical Elizabeth was not pleased at being overreached in a
+bargain; and, at a moment when she thought herself doing a magnanimous
+act, she was vexed at the cavilling with which her generosity was
+received.  "'Tis a manner of proceeding," said Walsingham, "not to be
+allowed of, and may very well be termed mechanical, considering that her
+Majesty seeketh no interest in that country--as Monsieur and the French
+King did--but only their good and benefit, without regard had of the
+expenses of her treasure and the hazard of her subjects' lives; besides
+throwing herself into a present war for their sakes with the greatest
+prince and potentate in Europe.  But seeing the government of those
+countries resteth in the hands of merchants and advocates--the one
+regarding profit, the other standing upon vantage of quirks--there
+is no better fruit to be looked to from them."
+
+Yet it was, after all, no quirk in those merchants and advocates to urge
+that the Queen was not going to war with the great potentate for their
+sakes alone.  To Elizabeth's honour, she did thoroughly comprehend that
+the war of the Netherlands was the war of England, of Protestantism, and
+of European liberty, and that she could no longer, without courting her
+own destruction, defer taking a part in active military operations.  It
+was no quirk, then, but solid reasoning, for the States to regard the
+subject in the same light.  Holland and England were embarked in one
+boat, and were to sink or swim together.  It was waste of time to wrangle
+so fiercely over pounds and shillings, but the fault was not to be
+exclusively imputed to the one side or the other.  There were bitter
+recriminations, particularly on the part of Elizabeth, for it was not
+safe to touch too closely either the pride or the pocket of that frugal
+and despotic heroine.  "The two thousand pounds promised by the States to
+Norris upon the muster of the two thousand volunteers," said Walsingham,
+"were not paid.  Her Majesty is not a little offended therewith, seeing
+how little care they have to yield her satisfaction, which she imputeth
+to proceed rather from contempt, than from necessity.  If it should fall
+out, however, to be such as by them is pretended, then doth she conceive
+her bargain to be very ill made, to join her fortune with so weak and
+broken an estate."  Already there were indications that the innocent
+might be made to suffer for the short-comings of the real culprits; nor
+would it be, the first time, or by any means the last, for Davison to
+appear in the character of a scape-goat.
+
+"Surely, sir," continued Mr. Secretary, "it is a thing greatly to be
+feared that the contributions they will yield will fall not more true in
+paper than in payment; which if it should so happen, it would turn some
+to blame, whereof you among others are to bear your part."
+
+And thus the months of September and of October wore away, and the
+ratifications of the treaty had not arrived from the Netherlands.
+Elizabeth became furious, and those of the Netherland deputation who had
+remained in England were at their wits' end to appease her choler.  No
+news arrived for many weeks.  Those were not the days of steam and
+magnetic telegraphs--inventions by which the nature of man and the aspect
+of history seem altered--and the Queen had nothing for it but to fret,
+and the envoys to concert with her ministers expedients to mitigate her
+spleen.  Towards the end of the month, the commissioners chartered a
+vessel which they despatched for news to Holland.  On his way across the
+sea the captain was hailed on the 28th October by a boat, in which one
+Hans Wyghans was leisurely proceeding to England with Netherland
+despatches dated on the 5th of the same month.  This was the freshest
+intelligence that had yet been received.
+
+So soon as the envoys were put in possession of the documents, they
+obtained an audience of the Queen.  This was the last day of October.
+Elizabeth read her letters, and listened to the apologies made by the
+deputies for the delay with anything but a benignant countenance.
+Then, with much vehemence of language, and manifestations of ill-temper,
+she expressed her displeasure at the dilatoriness of the States.  Having
+sent so many troops, and so many gentlemen of quality, she had considered
+the whole affair concluded.
+
+"I have been unhandsomely treated," she said, "and not as comports with a
+prince of my quality.  My inclination for your support--because you show
+yourselves unworthy of so great benefits--will be entirely destroyed,
+unless you deal with me and mine more worthily for the future than you
+have done in the past.  Through my great and especial affection for
+your welfare, I had ordered the Earl of Leicester to proceed to the
+Netherlands, and conduct your affairs; a man of such quality as all the
+world knows, and one whom I love, as if he were my own brother.  He was
+getting himself ready in all diligence, putting himself in many perils
+through the practices of the enemy, and if I should have reason to
+believe that he would not be respected there according to his due,
+I should be indeed offended.  He and many others are not going thither
+to advance their own affairs, to make themselves rich, or because they
+have not means enough to live magnificently at home.  They proceed to the
+Netherlands from pure affection for your cause.  This is the case, too,
+with many other of my subjects, all dear to me, and of much worth.  For I
+have sent a fine heap of folk thither--in all, with those his Excellency
+is taking with him, not under ten thousand soldiers of the English
+nation.  This is no small succour, and no little unbaring of this realm
+of mine, threatened as it is with war from many quarters.  Yet I am
+seeking no sovereignty, nor anything else prejudicial to the freedom of
+your country.  I wish only, in your utmost need, to help you out of this
+lamentable war, to maintain for you liberty of conscience, and to see
+that law and justice are preserved."
+
+All this, and more, with great eagerness of expression and gesture, was
+urged by the Queen, much to the discomfiture of the envoys.  In vain they
+attempted to modify and to explain.  Their faltering excuses were swept
+rapidly away upon the current of royal wrath; until at last Elizabeth
+stormed herself into exhaustion and comparative tranquillity.  She then
+dismissed them with an assurance that her goodwill towards the States was
+not diminished, as would be found to be the case, did they not continue
+to prove themselves unworthy of her favour that a permanent force of five
+thousand foot and one thousand horse should serve in the Provinces at the
+Queen's expense; and that the cities of Flushing and Brill should be
+placed in her Majesty's hands until the entire reimbursement of the debt
+thus incurred by the States.  Elizabeth also--at last overcoming her
+reluctance--agreed that the force necessary to garrison these towns
+should form an additional contingent, instead of being deducted from the
+general auxiliary force.
+
+Count Maurice of Nassau had been confirmed by the States of Holland and
+Zeeland as permanent stadholder of those provinces.  This measure excited
+some suspicion on the part of Leicester, who, as it was now understood,
+was the "personage of quality" to be sent to the Netherlands as
+representative of the Queen's authority.  "Touching the election of Count
+Maurice," said the Earl, "I hope it will be no impairing of the authority
+heretofore allotted to me, for if it will be, I shall tarry but awhile."
+
+Nothing, however, could be more frank or chivalrously devoted than the
+language of Maurice to the Queen.  "Madam, if I have ever had occasion,"
+he wrote, "to thank God for his benefits, I confess that it was when,
+receiving in all humility the letters with which it pleased your Majesty
+to honour me, I learned that the great disaster of my lord and father's
+death had not diminished the debonaire affection and favour which it has
+always pleased your Majesty to manifest to my father's house.  It has
+been likewise grateful to me to learn that your Majesty, surrounded by so
+many great and important affairs, had been pleased to approve the command
+which the States-General have conferred upon me.  I am indeed grieved
+that my actions cannot correspond with the ardent desire which I feel to
+serve your Majesty and these Provinces, for which I hope that my extreme
+youth will be accepted as an excuse.  And although I find myself feeble
+enough for the charge thus imposed upon me, yet God will assist my
+efforts to supply by diligence and sincere intention the defect of the
+other qualities requisite for my thorough discharge of my duty to the
+contentment of your Majesty.  To fulfil these obligations, which are
+growing greater day by day, I trust to prove by my actions that I will
+never spare either my labour or life."
+
+When it was found that the important town of Flushing was required as
+part of the guaranty to the Queen, Maurice, as hereditary seignor and
+proprietor of the place--during the captivity of his elder brother in
+Spain--signified his concurrence in the transfer, together with the most
+friendly feelings towards the Earl of Leicester, and to Sir Philip
+Sidney, appointed English governor of the town.  He wrote to Davison,
+whom he called "one of the best and most certain friends that the house
+of Nassau possessed in England," begging that he would recommend the
+interests of the family to the Queen, "whose favour could do more than
+anything else in the world towards maintaining what remained of the
+dignity of their house."  After solemn deliberation with his step-mother,
+Louisa de Coligny, and the other members of his family, he made a formal
+announcement of adhesion on the part of the House of Nassau to the
+arrangements concluded with the English government, and asked the
+benediction of God upon the treaty.  While renouncing, for the moment,
+any compensation for his consent to the pledging of Flushing his
+"patrimonial property, and a place of such great importance"--he expressed
+a confidence that the long services of his father, as well as those which
+he himself hoped to render, would meet in time with "condign
+recognition."  He requested the Earl of Leicester to consider the
+friendship which had existed between himself and the late Prince of
+Orange, as an hereditary affection to be continued to the children, and
+he entreated the Earl to do him the honour in future to hold him as a
+son, and to extend to him counsel and authority; declaring, on his part,
+that he should ever deem it an honour to be allowed to call him father.
+And in order still more strongly to confirm his friendship, he begged Sir
+Philip Sidney to consider him as his brother, and as his companion in
+arms, promising upon his own part the most faithful friendship.  In the
+name of Louisa de Coligny, and of his whole family, he also particularly
+recommended to the Queen the interests of the eldest brother of the
+house, Philip William, "who had been so long and so iniquitously detained
+captive in Spain," and begged that, in case prisoners of war of high rank
+should fall into the hands of the English commanders, they might be
+employed as a means of effecting the liberation of that much-injured
+Prince.  He likewise desired the friendly offices of the Queen to protect
+the principality of Orange against the possible designs of the French
+monarch, and intimated that occasions might arise in which the
+confiscated estates of the family in Burgundy might be recovered through
+the influence of the Swiss cantons, particularly those of the Grisons and
+of Berne.
+
+And, in conclusion, in case the Queen should please--as both Count
+Maurice and the Princess of Orange desired with all their hearts--to
+assume the sovereignty of these Provinces, she was especially entreated
+graciously to observe those suggestions regarding the interests of the
+House of Nassau, which had been made in the articles of the treaty.
+
+Thus the path had been smoothed, mainly through the indefatigable energy
+of Davison.  Yet that envoy was not able to give satisfaction to his
+imperious and somewhat whimsical mistress, whose zeal seemed to cool in
+proportion to the readiness with which the obstacles to her wishes were
+removed.  Davison was, with reason, discontented.  He had done more than
+any other man either in England or the Provinces, to bring about a hearty
+cooperation in the common cause, and to allay mutual heart-burnings and
+suspicions.  He had also, owing to the negligence of the English
+treasurer for the Netherlands, and the niggardliness of Elizabeth, been
+placed in a position, of great financial embarrassment.  His situation
+was very irksome.
+
+"I mused at the sentence you sent me," he wrote, "for I know no cause her
+Majesty hath to shrink at her charges hitherto.  The treasure she hath
+yet disbursed here is not above five or six thousand pounds, besides that
+which I have been obliged to take up for the saving of her honour, and
+necessity of her service, in danger otherwise of some notable disgrace.
+I will not, for shame, say how I have been left here to myself."
+
+The delay in the formal appointment of Leicester, and, more particularly,
+of the governors for the cautionary towns, was the cause of great
+confusion and anarchy in the transitional condition of the country.
+"The burden I am driven to sustain," said Davison, "doth utterly weary
+me.  If Sir Philip Sidney were here, and if my Lord of Leicester follow
+not all the sooner, I would use her Majesty's liberty to return home.
+If her Majesty think me worthy the reputation of a poor, honest, and
+loyal servant, I have that contents me.  For the rest, I wish
+
+         'Vivere sine invidia, mollesque inglorius annos
+          Egigere, amicitias et mihi jungere pares.'"
+
+There was something almost prophetic in the tone which this faithful
+public servant--to whom, on more than one occasion, such hard measure was
+to be dealt--habitually adopted in his private letters and conversation.
+He did his work, but he had not his reward; and he was already weary of
+place without power, and industry without recognition.
+
+"For mine own particular," he said, "I will say with the poet,
+
+         'Crede mihi, bene qui latuit bene vixit,
+          Et intra fortunam debet quisque manere suam.'"
+
+For, notwithstanding the avidity with which Elizabeth had sought the
+cautionary towns, and the fierceness with which she had censured the
+tardiness of the States, she seemed now half inclined to drop the prize
+which she had so much coveted, and to imitate the very languor which she
+had so lately rebuked.  "She hath what she desired," said Davison, "and
+might yet have more, if this content her not.  Howsoever you value the
+places at home, they are esteemed here, by such as know them best, no
+little increase to her Majesty's honour, surety, and greatness, if she be
+as careful to keep them as happy in getting them.  Of this, our cold
+beginning doth already make me jealous."
+
+Sagacious and resolute Princess as she was, she showed something of
+feminine caprice upon this grave occasion.  Not Davison alone, but
+her most confidential ministers and favourites at home, were perplexed
+and provoked by her misplaced political coquetries.  But while the
+alternation of her hot and cold fits drove her most devoted courtiers out
+of patience, there was one symptom that remained invariable throughout
+all her paroxysms, the rigidity with which her hand was locked.
+Walsingham, stealthy enough when an advantage was to be gained by
+subtlety, was manful and determined in his dealings with his friends; and
+he had more than once been offended with Elizabeth's want of frankness in
+these transactions.
+
+"I find you grieved, and not without cause," he wrote to Davison, "in
+respect to the over thwart proceedings as well there as here.  The
+disorders in those countries would be easily redressed if we could take
+a thoroughly resolute course here--a matter that men may rather pray for
+than hope for.  It is very doubtful whether the action now in hand will
+be accompanied by very hard success, unless they of the country there may
+be drawn to bear the greatest part of the burden of the wars."
+
+And now the great favourite of all had received the appointment which he
+coveted.  The Earl of Leicester was to be Commander-in-Chief of her
+Majesty's forces in the Netherlands, and representative of her authority
+in those countries, whatever that office might prove to be.  The nature
+of his post was anomalous from the beginning.  It was environed with
+difficulties, not the least irritating of which proceeded from the
+captious spirit of the Queen.  The Earl was to proceed in great pomp to
+Holland, but the pomp was to be prepared mainly at his own expense.
+Besides the auxiliary forces that had been shipped during the latter
+period of the year, Leicester was raising a force of lancers, from four
+to eight hundred in number; but to pay for that levy he was forced to
+mortgage his own property, while the Queen not only refused to advance
+ready money, but declined endorsing his bills.
+
+It must be confessed that the Earl's courtship of Elizabeth was anything
+at that moment but a gentle dalliance.  In those thorny regions of
+finance were no beds of asphodel or amaranthine bowers.  There was no
+talk but of troopers, saltpetre, and sulphur, of books of assurance, and
+bills of exchange; and the aspect of Elizabeth, when the budget was under
+discussion, must effectually have neutralized for the time any very
+tender sentiment.  The sharpness with which she clipped Leicester's
+authority, when authority was indispensable to his dignity, and the heavy
+demands upon his resources that were the result of her avarice, were
+obstacles more than enough to the calm fruition of his triumphs.  He had
+succeeded, in appearance at least, in the great object of his ambition,
+this appointment to the Netherlands; but the appointment was no sinecure,
+and least of all a promising pecuniary speculation.  Elizabeth had told
+the envoys, with reason, that she was not sending forth that man--whom
+she loved as a brother--in order that he might make himself rich.  On
+the contrary, the Earl seemed likely to make himself comparatively poor
+before he got to the Provinces, while his political power, at the moment,
+did not seem of more hopeful growth.
+
+Leicester had been determined and consistent in this great enterprize
+from the beginning.  He felt intensely the importance of the crisis.  He
+saw that the time had come for swift and uncompromising action, and the
+impatience with which he bore the fetters imposed upon him may be easily
+conceived.
+
+"The cause is such," he wrote to Walsingham, "that I had as lief be dead
+as be in the case I shall be in if this restraint hold for taking the
+oath there, or if some more authority be not granted than I see her
+Majesty would I should have.  I trust you all will hold hard for this, or
+else banish me England withal.  I have sent you the books to be signed by
+her Majesty.  I beseech you return them with all haste, for I get no
+money till they be under seal."
+
+But her Majesty would not put them under her seal, much to the
+favourite's discomfiture.
+
+"Your letter yieldeth but cold answer," he wrote, two days afterwards.
+"Above all things yet that her Majesty doth stick at, I marvel most at
+her refusal to sign my book of assurance; for there passeth nothing in
+the earth against her profit by that act, nor any good to me but to
+satisfy the creditors, who were more scrupulous than needs.  I did
+complain to her of those who did refuse to lend me money, and she was
+greatly offended with them.  But if her Majesty were to stay this, if I
+were half seas over, I must of necessity come back again, for I may not
+go without money.  I beseech, if the matter be refused by her, bestow a
+post on me to Harwich.  I lie this night at Sir John Peters', and but for
+this doubt I had been to-morrow at Harwich.  I pray God make you all that
+be counsellors plain and direct to the furtherance of all good service
+for her Majesty and the realm; and if it be the will of God to plague us
+that go, and you that tarry, for our sins, yet let us not be negligent to
+seek to please the Lord."
+
+The Earl was not negligent at any rate in seeking to please the Queen,
+but she was singularly hard to please.  She had never been so uncertain
+in her humours as at this important crisis.  She knew, and had publicly
+stated as much, that she was "embarking in a war with the greatest
+potentate in Europe;" yet now that the voyage had fairly commenced, and
+the waves were rolling around her, she seemed anxious to put back to the
+shore.  For there was even a whisper of peace-negotiations, than which
+nothing could have been more ill-timed.  "I perceive by your message,"
+said Leicester to Walsingham, "that your peace with Spain will go fast
+on, but this is not the way."  Unquestionably it was not the way, and the
+whisper was, for the moment at least, suppressed.  Meanwhile Leicester
+had reached Harwich, but the post "bestowed on him," contained, as usual,
+but cold comfort.  He was resolved, however, to go manfully forward, and
+do the work before him, until the enterprise should prove wholly
+impracticable.  It is by the light afforded by the secret never-published
+correspondence of the period with which we are now occupied, that the
+true characteristics of Elizabeth, the Earl of Leicester, and other
+prominent personages, must be scanned, and the study is most important,
+for it was by those characteristics, in combination with other human
+elements embodied in distant parts of Christendom, that the destiny of
+the world was determined.  In that age, more than in our own perhaps, the
+influence of the individual was widely and intensely felt.  Historical
+chymistry is only rendered possible by a detection of the subtle
+emanations, which it was supposed would for ever elude analysis, but
+which survive in those secret, frequently ciphered intercommunications.
+Philip II., William of Orange, Queen Elizabeth, Alexander Farnese, Robert
+Dudley, never dreamed--when disclosing their inmost thoughts to their
+trusted friends at momentous epochs--that the day would come on earth
+when those secrets would be no longer hid from the patient enquirer after
+truth.  Well for those whose reputations before the judgment-seat of
+history appear even comparatively pure, after impartial comparison of
+their motives with their deeds.
+
+"For mine own part, Mr. Secretary," wrote Leicester, "I am resolved to do
+that which shall be fit for a poor man's honour, and honestly to obey her
+Majesty's commandment.  Let the rest fall out to others, it shall not
+concern me.  I mean to assemble myself to the camp, where my authority
+must wholly lie, and will there do that which in good reason and duty I
+shall be bound to do.  I am sorry that her Majesty doth deal in this
+sort, and if content to overthrow so willingly her own cause.  If there
+can be means to salve this sore, I will.  If not,--I tell you what shall
+become of me, as truly as God lives."
+
+Yet it is remarkable, that, in spite of this dark intimation, the Earl,
+after all, did not state what was to become of him if the sore was not
+salved.  He was, however, explicit enough as to the causes of his grief,
+and very vehement in its manifestations.  "Another matter which shall
+concern me deeply," he said, "and all the subjects there, is now by you
+to be carefully considered, which is--money.  I find that the money is
+already gone, and this now given to the treasurer will do no more than
+pay to the end of the month.  I beseech you look to it, for by the Lord!
+I will bear no more so miserable burdens; for if I have no money to pay
+them, let them come home, or what else.  I will not starve them, nor stay
+them.  There was never gentleman nor general so sent out as I am; and if
+neither Queen nor council care to help it, but leave men desperate, as I
+see men shall be, that inconvenience will follow which I trust in the
+Lord I shall be free of."
+
+He then used language about himself, singularly resembling the
+phraseology employed by Elizabeth concerning him, when she was scolding
+the Netherland commissioners for the dilatoriness and parsimony of the
+States.
+
+"For mine own part," he said, "I have taken upon me this voyage, not as a
+desperate nor forlorn man, but as one as well contented with his place
+and calling at home as any subject was ever.  My cause was not, nor is,
+any other than the Lord's and the Queen's.  If the Queen fail, yet must I
+trust in the Lord, and on Him, I see, I am wholly to depend.  I can say
+no more, but pray to God that her Majesty never send General again as I
+am sent.  And yet I will do what I can for her and my country."
+
+The Earl had raised a choice body of lancers to accompany him to the
+Netherlands, but the expense of the levy had come mainly upon his own
+purse.  The Queen had advanced five thousand pounds, which was much less
+than the requisite amount, while for the balance required, as well as for
+other necessary expenses, she obstinately declined to furnish Leicester
+with funds, even refusing him, at last, a temporary loan.  She violently
+accused him of cheating her, reclaimed money which he had wrung from her
+on good security, and when he had repaid the sum, objected to give him a
+discharge.  As for receiving anything by way of salary, that was quite
+out of the question.  At that moment he would have been only too happy to
+be reimbursed for what he was already out of pocket.  Whether Elizabeth
+loved Leicester as a brother, or better than a brother, may be a
+historical question, but it is no question at all that she loved money
+better than she did Leicester.  Unhappy the man, whether foe or
+favourite, who had pecuniary transactions with her Highness.
+
+"I am sorry," said the Earl, "that her Majesty hath so hard a conceit of
+me, that I should go about to cozen her, as though I had got a fee simple
+from her, and had it not before, or that I had not had her full release
+for payment of the money I borrowed.  I pray God, any that did put such
+scruple in her, have not deceived her more than I have done.  I thank God
+I have a clear conscience for deceiving her, and for money matters.  I
+think I may justly say I have been the only cause of more gain to her
+coffers than all her chequer-men have been.  But so is the hap of some,
+that all they do is nothing, and others that do nothing, do all, and have
+all the thanks.  But I would this were all the grief I carry with me; but
+God is my comfort, and on Him I cast all, for there is no surety in this
+world beside.  What hope of help can I have, finding her Majesty so
+strait with myself as she is?  I did trust that--the cause being hers and
+this realm's--if I could have gotten no money of her merchants, she would
+not have refused to have lent money on so easy prized land as mine, to
+have been gainer and no loser by it.  Her Majesty, I see, will make trial
+of me how I love her, and what will discourage me from her service.  But
+resolved am I that no worldly respect shall draw me back from my faithful
+discharge of my duty towards her, though she shall show to hate me, as it
+goeth very near; for I find no love or favour at all.  And I pray you to
+remember that I have not had one penny of her Majesty towards all these
+charges of mine--not one penny-and, by all truth, I have already laid out
+above five thousand pounds.  Her Majesty appointed eight thousand pounds
+for the levy, which was after the rate of four hundred horse, and, upon
+my fidelity, there is shipped, of horse of service, eight hundred, so
+that there ought eight thousand more to have been paid me.  No general
+that ever went that was not paid to the uttermost of these things before
+he went, but had cash for his provision, which her Majesty would not
+allow me--not one groat.  Well, let all this go, it is like I shall be
+the last shall bear this, and some must suffer for the people.  Good Mr.
+Secretary, let her Majesty know this, for I deserve God-a-mercy, at the
+least."
+
+Leicester, to do him justice, was thoroughly alive to the importance of
+the Crisis.  On political principle, at any rate, he was a firm supporter
+of Protestantism, and even of Puritanism; a form of religion which
+Elizabeth detested, and in which, with keen instinct, she detected a
+mutinous element against the divine right of kings.  The Earl was quite
+convinced of the absolute necessity that England should take up the
+Netherland matter most vigorously, on pain of being herself destroyed.
+All the most sagacious counsellors of Elizabeth were day by day more and
+more confirmed in this opinion, and were inclined heartily to support the
+new Lieutenant-General.  As for Leicester himself, while fully conscious
+of his own merits, and of his firm intent to do his duty, he was also
+grateful to those who were willing to befriend him in his arduous
+enterprise.
+
+"I have received a letter from my Lord Willoughby," he said, "to my
+seeming, as wise a letter as I have read a great while, and not unfit for
+her Majesty's sight.  I pray God open her eyes, that they may behold her
+present estate indeed, and the wonderful means that God doth offer unto
+her.  If she lose these opportunities, who can look for other but
+dishonour and destruction?  My Lord Treasurer hath also written me a most
+hearty and comfortable letter touching this voyage, not only in showing
+the importance of it, both for her Majesty's own safety and the realm's,
+but that the whole state of religion doth depend thereon, and therefore
+doth faithfully promise his whole and best assistance for the supply of
+all wants.  I was not a little glad to receive such a letter from him at
+this time."
+
+And from on board the 'Amity,' ready to set sail, he expressed his thanks
+to Burghley, at finding him so "earnestly bent for the good supply and
+maintenance of us poor men sent in her Majesty's service and our
+country's."
+
+As for Walsingham, earnestly a defender of the Netherland cause from the
+beginning, he was wearied and disgusted with fighting against the Queen's
+parsimony and caprice.  "He is utterly discouraged," said Leicester to
+Burghley, "to deal any more in these causes.  I pray God your Lordship
+grow not so too; for then all will to the ground; on my poor side
+especially."
+
+And to Sir Francis himself, he wrote, even as his vessel was casting off
+her moorings:--"I am sorry, Mr. Secretary," he said, "to find you so
+discouraged, and that her Majesty doth deem you so partial.  And yet my
+suits to her Majesty have not of late been so many nor great, while the
+greatest, I am sure, are for her Majesty's own service.  For my part, I
+will discharge my duty as far as my poor ability and capacity shall
+serve, and if I shall not have her gracious and princely support and
+supply, the lack will be to us, for the present, but the shame and
+dishonour will be hers."
+
+And with these parting words the Earl committed himself to the December
+seas.
+
+Davison had been meantime doing his best to prepare the way in the
+Netherlands for the reception of the English administration.  What man
+could do, without money and without authority, he had done.  The
+governors for Flushing and the Brill, Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Thomas
+Cecil, eldest son of Lord Burghley, had been appointed, but had not
+arrived.  Their coming was anxiously looked for, as during the interval
+the condition of the garrisons was deplorable.  The English treasurer--
+by some unaccountable and unpardonable negligence, for which it is to be
+feared the Queen was herself to blame--was not upon the spot, and Davison
+was driven out of his wits to devise expedients to save the soldiers from
+starving.
+
+"Your Lordship has seen by my former letters," wrote the Ambassador to
+Burghley from Flushing, "what shift I have been driven to for the relief
+of this garrison here, left 'a l'abandon;' without which mean they had
+all fallen into wild and shameful disorder, to her Majesty's great
+disgrace and overthrow of her service.  I am compelled, unless I would
+see the poor men famish, and her Majesty aishonournd, to try my poor
+credit for them."
+
+General Sir John Norris was in the Betuwe, threatening Nvymegen, a town
+which he found "not so flexible as he had hoped;" and, as he had but two
+thousand men, while Alexander Farnese was thought to be marching upon him
+with ten thousand, his position caused great anxiety.  Meantime, his
+brother, Sir Edward, a hot-headed and somewhat wilful young man, who
+"thought that all was too little for him," was giving the sober Davison a
+good deal of trouble.  He had got himself into a quarrel, both with that
+envoy and with Roger Williams, by claiming the right to control military
+matters in Flushing until the arrival of Sidney.  "If Sir Thomas and Sir
+Philip," said Davison, "do not make choice of more discreet, staid, and
+expert commanders than those thrust into these places by Mr. Norris, they
+will do themselves a great deal of worry, and her Majesty a great deal of
+hurt."
+
+As might naturally be expected, the lamentable condition of the English
+soldiers, unpaid and starving--according to the report of the Queen's
+envoy himself--exercised anything but a salutary influence upon the minds
+of the Netherlanders and perpetually fed the hopes of the Spanish
+partizans that a composition with Philip and Parma would yet take place.
+On the other hand, the States had been far more liberal in raising funds
+than the Queen had shown herself to be, and were somewhat indignant at
+being perpetually taunted with parsimony by her agents.  Davison was
+offended by the injustice of Norris in this regard.  "The complaints
+which the General hath made of the States to her Majesty," said he, "are
+without cause, and I think, when your Lordship shall examine it well, you
+will find it no little sum they have already disbursed unto him for their
+part.  Wherein, nevertheless, if they had been looked into, they were
+somewhat the more excusable, considering how ill our people at her
+Majesty's entertainment were satisfied hitherto--a thing that doth much
+prejudice her reputation, and hurt her service."
+
+At last, however, the die had been cast.  The Queen, although rejecting
+the proposed sovereignty of the Netherlands, had espoused their cause,
+by solemn treaty of alliance, and thereby had thrown down the gauntlet
+to Spain.  She deemed it necessary, therefore, out of respect for the
+opinions of mankind, to issue a manifesto of her motives to the world.
+The document was published, simultaneously in Dutch, French, English, and
+Italian.
+
+In this solemn state-paper she spoke of the responsibility of princes
+to the Almighty, of the ancient friendship between England and the
+Netherlands, of the cruelty and tyranny of the Spaniards, of their
+violation of the liberties of the Provinces, of their hanging, beheading,
+banishing without law and against justice, in the space of a few months,
+so many of the highest nobles in the land.  Although in the beginning of
+the cruel persecution, the pretext had been the maintenance of the
+Catholic religion, yet it was affirmed they had not failed to exercise
+their barbarity upon Catholics also, and even upon ecclesiastics.  Of the
+principal persons put to death, no one, it was asserted, had been more
+devoted to the ancient church than was the brave Count Egmont, who, for
+his famous victories in the service of Spain, could never be forgotten in
+veracious history any more than could be the cruelty of his execution.
+
+The land had been made desolate, continued the Queen, with fire, sword,
+famine, and murder.  These misfortunes had ever been bitterly deplored by
+friendly nations, and none could more truly regret such sufferings than
+did the English, the oldest allies, and familiar neighbours of the
+Provinces, who had been as close to them in the olden time by community
+of connexion and language, as man and wife.  She declared that she had
+frequently, by amicable embassies, warned her brother of Spain--speaking
+to him like a good, dear sister and neighbour--that unless he restrained
+the cruelty of his governors and their soldiers, he was sure to force his
+Provinces into allegiance to some other power.  She expressed the danger
+in which she should be placed if the Spaniards succeeded in establishing
+their absolute government in the Netherlands, from which position their
+attacks upon England would be incessant.  She spoke of the enterprise
+favoured and set on foot by the Pope and by Spain, against the kingdom of
+Ireland.  She alluded to the dismissal of the Spanish envoy, Don
+Bernardino de Mendoza, who had been treated by her with great regard for
+a long time, but who had been afterwards discovered in league with
+certain ill-disposed and seditious subjects of hers, and with publicly
+condemned traitors.  That envoy had arranged a plot according to which,
+as appeared by his secret despatches, an invasion of England by a force
+of men, coming partly from Spain, and partly from the Netherlands, might
+be successfully managed, and he had even noted down the necessary number
+of ships and men, with various other details.  Some of the conspirators
+had fled, she observed, and were now consorting with Mendoza, who, after
+his expulsion from England, had been appointed ambassador in Paris; while
+some had been arrested, and had confessed the plot.  So soon as this
+envoy had been discovered to be the chief of a rebellion and projected
+invasion, the Queen had requested him, she said, to leave the kingdom
+within a reasonable time, as one who was the object of deadly hatred to
+the English people.  She had then sent an agent to Spain, in order to
+explain the whole transaction.  That agent had not been allowed even to
+deliver despatches to the King.
+
+When the French had sought, at a previous period, to establish their
+authority in Scotland, even as the Spaniards had attempted to do in the
+Netherlands, and through the enormous ambition of the House of Guise, to
+undertake the invasion of her kingdom, she had frustrated their plots,
+even as she meant to suppress these Spanish conspiracies.  She spoke of
+the Prince of Parma as more disposed by nature to mercy and humanity,
+than preceding governors had been, but as unable to restrain the blood-
+thirstiness of Spaniards, increased by long indulgence.  She avowed, in
+assuming the protection of the Netherlands, and in sending her troops to
+those countries, but three objects: peace, founded upon the recognition
+of religious freedom in the Provinces, restoration of their ancient
+political liberties, and security for England.  Never could there be
+tranquillity, for her own realm until these neighbouring countries were
+tranquil.  These were her ends and aims, despite all that slanderous
+tongues might invent.  The world, she observed, was overflowing with
+blasphemous libels, calumnies, scandalous pamphlets; for never had the
+Devil been so busy in supplying evil tongues with venom against the
+professors of the Christian religion.
+
+She added that in a pamphlet, ascribed to the Archbishop of Milan, just
+published, she had been accused of ingratitude to the King of Spain, and
+of plots to take the life of Alexander Farnese.  In answer to the first
+charge, she willingly acknowledged her obligations to the King of Spain
+during the reign of her sister.  She pronounced it, however, an absolute
+falsehood that he had ever saved her life, as if she had ever been
+condemned to death.  She likewise denied earnestly the charge regarding
+the Prince of Parma.  She protested herself incapable of such a crime,
+besides declaring that he had never given her offence.  On the contrary,
+he was a man whom she had ever honoured for the rare qualities that she
+had noted in him, and for which he had deservedly acquired a high
+reputation.
+
+Such, in brief analysis, was the memorable Declaration of Elizabeth in
+favour of the Netherlands--a document which was a hardly disguised
+proclamation of war against Philip.  In no age of the world could an
+unequivocal agreement to assist rebellious subjects, with men and money,
+against their sovereign, be considered otherwise than as a hostile
+demonstration.  The King of Spain so regarded the movement, and forthwith
+issued a decree, ordering the seizure of all English as well as all
+Netherland vessels within his ports, together with the arrest of persons,
+and confiscation of property.
+
+Subsequently to the publication of the Queen's memorial, and before the
+departure of the Earl of Leicester, Sir Philip Sidney, having received
+his appointment, together with the rank of general of cavalry, arrived in
+the Isle of Walcheren, as governor of Flushing, at the head of a portion
+of the English contingent.
+
+It is impossible not to contemplate with affection so radiant a figure,
+shining through the cold mists of that Zeeland winter, and that distant
+and disastrous epoch.  There is hardly a character in history upon which
+the imagination can dwell with more unalloyed delight.  Not in romantic
+fiction was there ever created a more attractive incarnation of martial
+valour, poetic genius, and purity of heart.  If the mocking spirit of the
+soldier of Lepanto could "smile chivalry away," the name alone of his
+English contemporary is potent enough to conjure it back again, so long
+as humanity is alive to the nobler impulses.
+
+"I cannot pass him over in silence," says a dusty chronicler, "that
+glorious star, that lively pattern of virtue, and the lovely joy of all
+the learned sort.  It was God's will that he should be born into the
+world, even to show unto our age a sample of ancient virtue."  The
+descendant of an ancient Norman race, and allied to many of the proudest
+nobles in England, Sidney himself was but a commoner, a private
+individual, a soldier of fortune.  He was now in his thirty second year,
+and should have been foremost among the states men of Elizabeth, had it
+not been, according to Lord Bacon, a maxim of the Cecils, that "able men
+should be by design and of purpose suppressed."  Whatever of truth there
+may have been in the bitter remark, it is certainly strange that a man so
+gifted as Sidney--of whom his father-in-law Walsingham had declared, that
+"although he had influence in all countries, and a hand upon all affairs,
+his Philip did far overshoot him with his own bow"--should have passed so
+much of his life in retirement, or in comparatively insignificant
+employments.  The Queen, as he himself observed, was most apt to
+interpret everything to his disadvantage.  Among those who knew him well,
+there seems never to have been a dissenting voice.  His father, Sir Henry
+Sidney, lord-deputy of Ireland, and president of Wales, a states man of
+accomplishments and experience, called him "lumen familiae suae," and
+said of him, with pardonable pride, "that he had the most virtues which
+he had ever found in any man; that he was the very formular that all
+well-disposed young gentlemen do form their manners and life by."
+
+The learned Hubert Languet, companion of Melancthon, tried friend of
+William the Silent, was his fervent admirer and correspondent.  The great
+Prince of Orange held him in high esteem, and sent word to Queen
+Elizabeth, that having himself been an actor in the most important
+affairs of Europe, and acquainted with her foremost men, he could "pledge
+his credit that her Majesty had one of the ripest and greatest
+councillors of state in Sir Philip Sidney that lived in Europe."
+
+The incidents of his brief and brilliant life, up to his arrival upon the
+fatal soil of the Netherlands, are too well known to need recalling.
+Adorned with the best culture that, in a learned age, could be obtained
+in the best seminaries of his native country, where, during childhood and
+youth, he had been distinguished for a "lovely and familiar gravity
+beyond his years," he rapidly acquired the admiration of his comrades and
+the esteem of all his teachers.
+
+Travelling for three years, he made the acquaintance and gained the
+personal regard of such opposite characters as Charles IX. of France,
+Henry of Navarre, Don John of Austria, and William of Orange, and
+perfected his accomplishments by residence and study, alternately, in
+courts, camps, and learned universities.  He was in Paris during the
+memorable days of August, 1572, and narrowly escaped perishing in the
+St. Bartholomew Massacre.  On his return, he was, for a brief period,
+the idol of the English court, which, it was said, "was maimed without
+his company."  At the age of twenty-one he was appointed special envoy to
+Vienna, ostensibly for the purpose of congratulating the Emperor Rudolph
+upon his accession, but in reality that he might take the opportunity of
+sounding the secret purposes of the Protestant princes of Germany, in
+regard to the great contest of the age.  In this mission, young as he
+was, he acquitted himself, not only to the satisfaction, but to the
+admiration of Walsingham, certainly a master himself in that occult
+science, the diplomacy of the sixteenth century.  "There hath not been,"
+said he, "any gentleman, I am sure, that hath gone through so honourable
+a charge with as great commendations as he."
+
+When the memorable marriage-project of Queen Elizabeth with Anjou seemed
+about to take effect, he denounced the scheme in a most spirited and
+candid letter, addressed to her Majesty; nor is it recorded that the
+Queen was offended with his frankness.  Indeed we are informed that
+"although he found a sweet stream of sovereign humours in that well-
+tempered lady to run against him, yet found he safety in herself against
+that selfness which appeared to threaten him in her."  Whatever this
+might mean, translated out of euphuism into English, it is certain that
+his conduct was regarded with small favour by the court-grandees, by whom
+"worth, duty, and justice, were looked upon with no other eyes than
+Lamia's."
+
+The difficulty of swimming against that sweet stream of sovereign humours
+in the well-tempered Elizabeth, was aggravated by his quarrel, at this
+period, with the magnificent Oxford.  A dispute at a tennis-court, where
+many courtiers and foreigners were looking on, proceeded rapidly from one
+extremity to another.  The Earl commanded Sir Philip to leave the place.
+Sir Philip responded, that if he were of a mind that he should go, he
+himself was of a mind that he should remain; adding that if he had
+entreated, where he had no right to command, he might have done more than
+"with the scourge of fury."--"This answer," says Fulke Greville, in a
+style worthy of Don Adriano de Armado, "did, like a bellows, blowing up
+the sparks of excess already kindled, make my lord scornfully call Sir
+Philip by the name of puppy.  In which progress of heat, as the tempest
+grew more and more vehement within, so did their hearts breathe out their
+perturbations in a more loud and shrill accent;" and so on; but the
+impending duel was the next day forbidden by express command of her
+Majesty.  Sidney, not feeling the full force of the royal homily upon the
+necessity of great deference from gentlemen to their superiors in rank,
+in order to protect all orders from the insults of plebeians, soon
+afterwards retired from the court.  To his sylvan seclusion the world
+owes the pastoral and chivalrous romance of the 'Arcadia' and to the
+pompous Earl, in consequence, an emotion of gratitude.  Nevertheless,
+it was in him to do, rather than to write, and humanity seems defrauded,
+when forced to accept the 'Arcadia,' the `Defence of Poesy,' and the
+'Astrophel and Stella,' in discharge of its claims upon so great and pure
+a soul.
+
+Notwithstanding this disagreeable affair, and despite the memorable
+letter against Anjou, Sir Philip suddenly flashes upon us again, as one
+of the four challengers in a tournament to honour the Duke's presence in
+England.  A vision of him in blue gilded armour--with horses caparisoned
+in cloth of gold, pearl-embroidered, attended by pages in cloth of
+silver, Venetian hose, laced hats, and by gentlemen, yeomen, and
+trumpeters, in yellow velvet cassocks, buskins, and feathers--as one of
+"the four fostered children of virtuous desire" (to wit, Anjou) storming
+"the castle of perfect Beauty" (to wit, Queen Elizabeth, aetatis 47)
+rises out of the cloud-dusts of ancient chronicle for a moment, and then
+vanishes into air again.
+
+         "Having that day his hand, his horse, his lance,
+            Guided so well that they attained the prize
+            Both in the judgment of our English eyes,
+          But of some sent by that sweet enemy, France,"
+
+as he chivalrously sings, he soon afterwards felt inclined for wider
+fields of honourable adventure.  It was impossible that knight-errant so
+true should not feel keenest sympathy with an oppressed people struggling
+against such odds, as the Netherlanders were doing in their contest with
+Spain.  So soon as the treaty with England was arranged, it was his
+ambition to take part in the dark and dangerous enterprise, and, being
+son-in-law to Walsingham and nephew to Leicester, he had a right to
+believe that his talents and character would, on this occasion, be
+recognised.  But, like his "very friend," Lord Willoughby, he was "not of
+the genus Reptilia, and could neither creep nor crouch," and he failed,
+as usual, to win his way to the Queen's favour.  The governorship of
+Flushing was denied him, and, stung to the heart by such neglect, he
+determined to seek his fortune beyond the seas.
+
+"Sir Philip hath taken a very hard resolution," wrote Walsingham to
+Davison, "to accompany Sir Francis Drake in this voyage, moved thereto
+for that he saw her Majesty disposed to commit the charge of Flushing
+unto some other; which he reputed would fall out greatly to his disgrace,
+to see another preferred before him, both for birth and judgment inferior
+unto him.  The despair thereof and the disgrace that he doubted he should
+receive have carried him into a different course."
+
+The Queen, however, relenting at last, interfered to frustrate his
+design.  Having thus balked his ambition in the Indian seas, she felt
+pledged to offer him the employment which he had originally solicited,
+and she accordingly conferred upon him the governorship of Flushing, with
+the rank of general of horse, under the Earl of Leicester.  In the latter
+part of November, he cast anchor, in the midst of a violent storm, at
+Rammekins, and thence came to the city of his government.  Young, and
+looking even younger than his years--"not only of an excellent wit, but
+extremely beautiful of face"--with delicately chiselled Anglo-Norman
+features, smooth fair cheek, a faint moustache, blue eyes, and a mass of
+amber-coloured hair; such was the author of 'Arcadia' and the governor of
+Flushing.
+
+And thus an Anglo-Norman representative of ancient race had come back to
+the home of his ancestors.  Scholar, poet, knight-errant, finished
+gentleman, he aptly typified the result of seven centuries of
+civilization upon the wild Danish pirate.  For among those very
+quicksands of storm-beaten Walachria that wondrous Normandy first came
+into existence whose wings were to sweep over all the high places of
+Christendom.  Out of these creeks, lagunes, and almost inaccessible
+sandbanks, those bold freebooters sailed forth on their forays against
+England, France, and other adjacent countries, and here they brought and
+buried the booty of many a wild adventure.  Here, at a later day, Rollo
+the Dane had that memorable dream of leprosy, the cure of which was the
+conversion of North Gaul into Normandy, of Pagans into Christians, and
+the subsequent conquest of every throne in Christendom from Ultima Thule
+to Byzantium.  And now the descendant of those early freebooters had come
+back to the spot, at a moment when a wider and even more imperial swoop
+was to be made by their modern representatives.  For the sea-kings of the
+sixteenth century--the Drakes, Hawkinses, Frobishers, Raleighs,
+Cavendishes--the De Moors, Heemskerks, Barendts--all sprung of the old
+pirate-lineage, whether called Englanders or Hollanders, and instinct
+with the same hereditary love of adventure, were about to wrestle with
+ancient tyrannies, to explore the most inaccessible regions, and to
+establish new commonwealths in worlds undreamed of by their ancestors--
+to accomplish, in short, more wondrous feats than had been attempted by
+the Knuts, and Rollos, Rurics, Ropers, and Tancreds, of an earlier age.
+
+The place which Sidney was appointed to govern was one of great military
+and commercial importance.  Flushing was the key to the navigation of the
+North Seas, ever since the disastrous storm of a century before, in which
+a great trading city on the outermost verge of the island had been
+swallowed bodily by the ocean.  The Emperor had so thoroughly recognized
+its value, as to make special mention of the necessity for its
+preservation, in his private instructions to Philip, and now the Queen of
+England had confided it to one who was competent to appreciate and to
+defend the prize.  "How great a jewel this place (Flushing) is to the
+crown of England," wrote Sidney to his Uncle Leicester, "and to the
+Queen's safety, I need not now write it to your lordship, who knows it
+so well.  Yet I must needs say, the better I know it, the more I find
+the preciousness of it."
+
+He did not enter into his government, however, with much pomp and
+circumstance, but came afoot into Flushing in the midst of winter and
+foul weather.  "Driven to land at Rammekins," said he, "because the wind
+began to rise in such sort as from thence our mariners durst not enter
+the town, I came with as dirty a walk as ever poor governor entered his
+charge withal."  But he was cordially welcomed, nor did he arrive by any
+means too soon.
+
+"I find the people very glad of our coming," he said, "and promise myself
+as much surety in keeping this town, as popular good-will, gotten by
+light hopes, and by as slight conceits, may breed; for indeed the
+garrison is far too weak to command by authority, which is pity . . . .
+I think, truly, that if my coming had been longer delayed, some
+alteration would have followed; for the truth is, this people is weary
+of war, and if they do not see such a course taken as may be likely to
+defend them, they will in a sudden give over the cause. . . . All will
+be lost if government be not presently used."
+
+He expressed much anxiety for the arrival of his uncle, with which
+sentiments he assured the Earl that the Netherlanders fully sympathized.
+"Your Lordship's coming," he said, "is as much longed for as Messias is
+of the Jews.  It is indeed most necessary that your Lordship make great
+speed to reform both the Dutch and English abuses."
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Able men should be by design and of purpose suppressed
+He did his work, but he had not his reward
+Matter that men may rather pray for than hope for
+Not of the genus Reptilia, and could neither creep nor crouch
+Others that do nothing, do all, and have all the thanks
+Peace-at-any-price party
+The busy devil of petty economy
+Thought that all was too little for him
+Weary of place without power
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v43
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
+From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609
+
+By John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+History United Netherlands, Volume 44, 1585-1586
+
+
+CHAPTER VII., Part 1.
+
+
+     The Earl of Leicester--His Triumphal Entrance into Holland--English
+     Spies about him--Importance of Holland to England--Spanish Schemes
+     for invading England--Letter of the Grand Commander--Perilous
+     Position of England--True Nature of the Contest--wealth and Strength
+     of the Provinces--Power of the Dutch and English People--Affection
+     of the Hollanders for the Queen--Secret Purposes of Leicester--
+     Wretched condition of English Troops--The Nassaus and Hohenlo--The
+     Earl's Opinion of them--Clerk and Killigrew--Interview with the
+     States Government General offered to the Earl--Discussions on the
+     Subject--The Earl accepts the Office--His Ambition and Mistakes--His
+     Installation at the Hague--Intimations of the Queen's Displeasure--
+     Deprecatory Letters of Leicester--Davison's Mission to England--
+     Queen's Anger and Jealousy--Her angry Letters to the Earl and the
+     States--Arrival of Davison--Stormy Interview with the Queen--The
+     second one is calmer--Queen's Wrath somewhat mitigated--Mission of
+     Heneago to the States--Shirley sent to England by the Earl--His
+     Interview with Elizabeth
+
+
+At last the Earl of Leicester came.  Embarking at Harwich, with a fleet
+of fifty ships, and attended "by the flower and chief gallants of
+England"--the Lords Sheffield, Willoughby, North, Burroughs, Sir Gervase
+Clifton, Sir William Russell, Sir Robert Sidney, and others among the
+number--the new lieutenant-general of the English forces in the
+Netherlands arrived on the 19th December, 1585, at Flushing.
+
+His nephew, Sir Philip Sidney, and Count Maurice of Nassau, with a body
+of troops and a great procession of civil functionaries; were in
+readiness to receive him, and to escort him to the lodgings prepared for
+him.
+
+Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was then fifty-four years of age.
+There are few personages in English history whose adventures, real or
+fictitious, have been made more familiar to the world than his have been,
+or whose individuality has been presented in more picturesque fashion, by
+chronicle, tragedy, or romance.  Born in the same day of the month and
+hour of the day with the Queen, but two years before her birth, the
+supposed synastry of their destinies might partly account, in that age of
+astrological superstition, for the influence which he perpetually
+exerted.  They had, moreover, been fellow-prisoners together, in the
+commencement of the reign of Mary, and it is possible that he may have
+been the medium through which the indulgent expressions of Philip II.
+were conveyed to the Princess Elizabeth.
+
+His grandfather, John Dudley, that "caterpillar of the commonwealth," who
+lost his head in the first year of Henry VIII.  as a reward for the
+grist which he brought to the mill of Henry VII.; his father, the mighty
+Duke of Northumberland, who rose out of the wreck of an obscure and
+ruined family to almost regal power, only to perish, like his
+predecessor, upon the scaffold, had bequeathed him nothing save rapacity,
+ambition, and the genius to succeed.  But Elizabeth seemed to ascend the
+throne only to bestow gifts upon her favourite.  Baronies and earldoms,
+stars and garters, manors and monopolies, castles and forests, church
+livings and college chancellorships, advowsons and sinecures, emoluments
+and dignities, the most copious and the most exalted, were conferred upon
+him in breathless succession.  Wine, oil, currants, velvets,
+ecclesiastical benefices, university headships, licences to preach, to
+teach, to ride, to sail, to pick and to steal, all brought "grist to his
+mill."  His grandfather, "the horse leach and shearer," never filled his
+coffers more rapidly than did Lord Robert, the fortunate courtier.  Of
+his early wedlock with the ill-starred Amy Robsart, of his nuptial
+projects with the Queen, of his subsequent marriages and mock-marriages
+with Douglas Sheffield and Lettice of Essex, of his plottings,
+poisonings, imaginary or otherwise, of his countless intrigues, amatory
+and political--of that luxuriant, creeping, flaunting, all-pervading
+existence which struck its fibres into the mould, and coiled itself
+through the whole fabric, of Elizabeth's life and reign--of all this the
+world has long known too much to render a repetition needful here.  The
+inmost nature and the secret deeds of a man placed so high by wealth and
+station, can be seen but darkly through the glass of contemporary record.
+There was no tribunal to sit upon his guilt.  A grandee could be judged
+only when no longer a favourite, and the infatuation of Elizabeth for
+Leicester terminated only with his life.  He stood now upon the soil of
+the Netherlands in the character of a "Messiah," yet he has been charged
+with crimes sufficient to send twenty humbler malefactors to the gibbet.
+"I think," said a most malignant arraigner of the man, in a published
+pamphlet, "that the Earl of Leicester hath more blood lying upon his head
+at this day, crying for vengeance, than ever had private man before, were
+he never so wicked."
+
+Certainly the mass of misdemeanours and infamies hurled at the head of
+the favourite by that "green-coated Jesuit," father Parsons, under the
+title of 'Leycester's Commonwealth,' were never accepted as literal
+verities; yet the value of the precept, to calumniate boldly, with the
+certainty that much of the calumny would last for ever, was never better
+illustrated than in the case of Robert Dudley.  Besides the lesser
+delinquencies of filling his purse by the sale of honours and dignities,
+by violent ejectments from land, fraudulent titles, rapacious enclosures
+of commons, by taking bribes for matters of justice, grace, and
+supplication to the royal authority, he was accused of forging various
+letters to the Queen, often to ruin his political adversaries, and of
+plottings to entrap them into conspiracies, playing first the comrade and
+then the informer.  The list of his murders and attempts to murder was
+almost endless.  "His lordship hath a special fortune," saith the Jesuit,
+"that when he desireth any woman's favour, whatsoever person standeth in
+his way hath the luck to die quickly."  He was said to have poisoned
+Alice Drayton, Lady Lennox, Lord Sussex, Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, Lord
+Sheffield, whose widow he married and then poisoned, Lord Essex, whose
+widow he also married, and intended to poison, but who was said to have
+subsequently poisoned him--besides murders or schemes for murder of
+various other individuals, both French and English.  "He was a rare
+artist in poison," said Sir Robert Naunton, and certainly not Caesar
+Borgia, nor his father or sister, was more accomplished in that difficult
+profession than was Dudley, if half the charges against him could be
+believed.  Fortunately for his fame, many of them were proved to be
+false.  Sir Henry Sidney, lord deputy of Ireland, at the time of the
+death of Lord Essex, having caused a diligent inquiry to be made into
+that dark affair, wrote to the council that it was usual for the Earl to
+fall into a bloody flux when disturbed in his mind, and that his body
+when opened showed no signs of poison.  It is true that Sir Henry,
+although an honourable man, was Leicester's brother-in-law, and that
+perhaps an autopsy was not conducted at that day in Ireland on very
+scientific principles.
+
+His participation in the strange death of his first wife was a matter of
+current belief among his contemporaries.  "He is infamed by the death of
+his wife," said Burghley, and the tale has since become so interwoven
+with classic and legendary fiction, as well as with more authentic
+history, that the phantom of the murdered Amy Robsart is sure to arise at
+every mention of the Earl's name.  Yet a coroner's inquest--as appears
+from his own secret correspondence with his relative and agent at Cumnor
+--was immediately and persistently demanded by Dudley.  A jury was
+impannelled--every man of them a stranger to him, and some of them
+enemies.  Antony Forster, Appleyard, and Arthur Robsart, brother-in-law
+and brother of the lady, were present, according to Dudley's special
+request; "and if more of her friends could have been sent," said he, "I
+would have sent them;" but with all their minuteness of inquiry, "they
+could find," wrote Blount, "no presumptions of evil," although he
+expressed a suspicion that "some of the jurymen were sorry that they
+could not."  That the unfortunate lady was killed by a fall down stairs
+was all that could be made of it by a coroner's inquest, rather hostile
+than otherwise, and urged to rigorous investigation by the supposed
+culprit himself.  Nevertheless, the calumny has endured for three
+centuries, and is likely to survive as many more.
+
+Whatever crimes Dudley may have committed in the course of his career,
+there is no doubt whatever that he was the most abused man in Europe.  He
+had been deeply wounded by the Jesuit's artful publication, in which all
+the misdeeds with which he was falsely or justly charged were drawn up in
+awful array, in a form half colloquial, half judicial.  "You had better
+give some contentment to my Lord Leicester," wrote the French envoy from
+London to his government, "on account of the bitter feelings excited in
+him by these villainous books lately written against him."
+
+The Earl himself ascribed these calumnies to the Jesuits, to the Guise
+faction, and particularly to--the Queen of Scots.  He was said, in
+consequence, to have vowed an eternal hatred to that most unfortunate and
+most intriguing Princess.  "Leicester has lately told a friend," wrote
+Charles Paget, "that he will persecute you to the uttermost, for that he
+supposeth your Majesty to be privy to the setting forth of the book
+against him."  Nevertheless, calumniated or innocent he was at least
+triumphant over calumny.  Nothing could shake his hold upon Elizabeth's
+affections.  The Queen scorned but resented the malignant attacks upon
+the reputation of her favourite.  She declared "before God and in her
+conscience, that she knew the libels against him to be most scandalous,
+and such as none but an incarnate devil himself could dream to be true."
+His power, founded not upon genius nor virtue, but upon woman's caprice,
+shone serenely above the gulf where there had been so many shipwrecks.
+"I am now passing into another world," said Sussex, upon his death-bed,
+to his friends, "and I must leave you to your fortunes; but beware of the
+gipsy, or he will be too hard for you.  You know not the beast so well as
+I do."
+
+The "gipsy," as he had been called from his dark complexion, had been
+renowned in youth for the beauty of his person, being "tall and
+singularly well-featured, of a sweet aspect, but high foreheaded, which
+was of no discommendation," according to Naunton.  The Queen, who had the
+passion of her father for tall and proper men, was easier won by
+externals, from her youth even to the days of her dotage, than befitted
+so very sagacious a personage.  Chamberlains, squires of the body,
+carvers, cup-bearers, gentlemen-ushers, porters, could obtain neither
+place nor favour at court, unless distinguished for stature, strength, or
+extraordinary activity.  To lose a tooth had been known to cause the loss
+of a place, and the excellent constitution of leg which helped Sir
+Christopher Hatton into the chancellorship, was not more remarkable
+perhaps than the success of similar endowments in other contemporaries.
+Leicester, although stately and imposing, had passed his summer solstice.
+A big bulky man, with a long red face, a bald head, a defiant somewhat
+sinister eye, a high nose, and a little torrent of foam-white curly
+beard, he was still magnificent in costume.  Rustling in satin and
+feathers, with jewels in his ears, and his velvet toque stuck as airily
+as ever upon the side of his head, he amazed the honest Hollanders, who
+had been used to less gorgeous chieftains.
+
+"Every body is wondering at the great magnificence and splendour of his
+clothes," said the plain chronicler of Utrecht.  For, not much more than
+a year before, Fulke Greville had met at Delft a man whose external
+adornments were simpler; a somewhat slip-shod personage, whom he thus
+pourtrayed: "His uppermost garment was a gown," said the euphuistic
+Fulke, "yet such as, I confidently affirm, a mean-born student of our
+Inns of Court would not have been well disposed to walk the streets in.
+Unbuttoned his doublet was, and of like precious matter and form to the
+other.  His waistcoat, which showed itself under it, not unlike the best
+sort of those woollen knit ones which our ordinary barge-watermen row us
+in.  His company about him, the burgesses of that beerbrewing town.  No
+external sign of degree could have discovered the inequality of his worth
+or estate from that multitude.  Nevertheless, upon conversing with him,
+there was an outward passage of inward greatness."
+
+Of a certainty there must have been an outward passage of inward
+greatness about him; for the individual in unbuttoned doublet and
+bargeman's waistcoat, was no other than William the Silent.  A different
+kind of leader had now descended among those rebels, yet it would be a
+great mistake to deny the capacity or vigorous intentions of the
+magnificent Earl, who certainly was like to find himself in a more
+difficult and responsible situation than any he had yet occupied.
+
+And now began a triumphal progress through the land, with a series of
+mighty banquets and festivities, in which no man could play a better part
+than Leicester.  From Flushing he came to Middelburg, where, upon
+Christmas eve (according to the new reckoning), there was an
+entertainment, every dish of which has been duly chronicled.  Pigs served
+on their feet, pheasants in their feathers, and baked swans with their
+necks thrust through gigantic pie-crust; crystal castles of confectionery
+with silver streams flowing at their base, and fair virgins leaning from
+the battlements, looking for their new English champion, "wine in
+abundance, variety of all sorts, and wonderful welcomes "--such was the
+bill of fare.  The next day the Lieutenant-General returned the
+compliment to the magistrates of Middelburg with a tremendous feast.
+Then came an interlude of unexpected famine; for as the Earl sailed with
+his suite in a fleet of two hundred vessels for Dort--a voyage of not
+many hours' usual duration--there descended a mighty frozen fog upon the
+waters, and they lay five whole days and nights in their ships, almost
+starved with hunger and cold--offering in vain a "pound of silver for a
+pound of bread."  Emerging at last from this dismal predicament, he
+landed at Dort, and so went to Rotterdam and Delft, everywhere making his
+way through lines of musketeers and civic functionaries, amid roaring
+cannon, pealing bells, burning cressets, blazing tar-barrels, fiery
+winged dragons, wreaths of flowers, and Latin orations.
+
+The farther he went the braver seemed the country, and the better beloved
+his.  Lordship.  Nothing was left undone, in the language of ancient
+chronicle, to fill the bellies and the heads of the whole company.  At
+the close of the year he came to the Hague, where the festivities were
+unusually magnificent.  A fleet of barges was sent to escort him.  Peter,
+James, and John, met him upon the shore, while the Saviour appeared
+walking upon the waves, and ordered his disciples to cast their nets, and
+to present the fish to his Excellency.  Farther on, he was confronted by
+Mars and Bellona, who recited Latin odes in his honour.  Seven beautiful
+damsels upon a stage, representing the United States, offered him golden
+keys; seven others equally beautiful, embodying the seven sciences,
+presented him with garlands, while an enthusiastic barber adorned his
+shop with seven score of copper basins, with a wag-light in each,
+together with a rose, and a Latin posy in praise of Queen Elizabeth.
+Then there were tiltings in the water between champions mounted upon
+whales, and other monsters of the deep-representatives of siege, famine,
+pestilence, and murder--the whole interspersed with fireworks, poetry,
+charades, and Matthias, nor Anjou, nor King Philip, nor the Emperor
+Charles, in their triumphal progresses, had been received with more
+spontaneous or more magnificent demonstrations.  Never had the living
+pictures been more startling, the allegories more incomprehensible, the
+banquets more elaborate, the orations more tedious.  Beside himself with
+rapture, Leicester almost assumed the God.  In Delft, a city which he
+described as "another London almost for beauty and fairness," he is said
+so far to have forgotten himself as to declare that his family had--in
+the person of Lady Jane Grey, his father, and brother--been unjustly
+deprived of the crown of England; an indiscretion which caused a shudder
+in all who heard him.  It was also very dangerous for the Lieutenant-
+General to exceed the bounds of becoming modesty at that momentous epoch.
+His power, as we shall soon have occasion to observe, was anomalous, and
+he was surrounded by enemies.  He was not only to grapple with a rapidly
+developing opposition in the States, but he was surrounded with masked
+enemies, whom he had brought with him from England.  Every act and word
+of his were liable to closest scrutiny, and likely to be turned against
+him.  For it was most characteristic of that intriguing age, that even
+the astute Walsingham, who had an eye and an ear at every key-hole in
+Europe, was himself under closest domestic inspection.  There was one
+Poley, a trusted servant of Lady Sidney, then living in the house of her
+father Walsingham, during Sir Philip's absence, who was in close
+communication with Lord Montjoy's brother, Blount, then high in favour of
+Queen Elizabeth--"whose grandmother she might be for his age and hers"
+--and with another brother Christopher Blount, at that moment in
+confidential attendance upon Lord Leicester in Holland.  Now Poley,
+and both the Blounts, were, in reality, Papists, and in intimate
+correspondence with the agents of the Queen of Scots, both at home and
+abroad, although "forced to fawn upon Leicester, to see if they might
+thereby live quiet."  They had a secret "alphabet," or cipher, among
+them, and protested warmly, that they "honoured the ground whereon Queen
+Mary trod better than Leicester with all his generation; and that they
+felt bound to serve her who was the only saint living on the earth."
+
+It may be well understood then that the Earl's position was a slippery
+one, and that great assumption might be unsafe.  "He taketh the matter
+upon him," wrote Morgan to the Queen of Scots, "as though he were an
+absolute king; but he hath many personages about him of good place out of
+England, the best number whereof desire nothing more than his confusion.
+Some of them be gone with him to avoid the persecution for religion in
+England.  My poor advice and labour shall not be wanting to give
+Leicester all dishonour, which will fall upon him in the end with shame
+enough; though for the present he be very strong."  Many of these
+personages of good place, and enjoying "charge and credit" with the Earl
+had very serious plans in their heads.  Some of them meant "for the
+service of God, and the advantage of the King of Spain, to further the
+delivery of some notable towns in Holland and Zeeland to the said King
+and his ministers," and we are like to hear of these individuals again.
+
+Meantime, the Earl of Leicester was at the Hague.  Why was he there?
+What was his work?  Why had Elizabeth done such violence to her affection
+as to part with her favourite-in-chief; and so far overcome her thrift,
+as to furnish forth, rather meagrely to be sure, that little army of
+Englishmen?  Why had the flower of England's chivalry set foot upon that
+dark and bloody ground where there seemed so much disaster to encounter,
+and so little glory to reap?  Why had England thrown herself so
+heroically into the breach, just as the last bulwarks were falling
+which protected Holland from the overwhelming onslaught of Spain?
+It was because Holland was the threshold of England; because the two
+countries were one by danger and by destiny; because the naval expedition
+from Spain against England was already secretly preparing; because the
+deposed tyrant of Spain intended the Provinces, when again subjugated,
+as a steppingstone to the conquest of England; because the naval and
+military forces of Holland--her numerous ships, her hardy mariners, her
+vast wealth, her commodious sea-ports, close to the English coast--if
+made Spanish property would render Philip invincible by sea and land; and
+because the downfall of Holland and of Protestantism would be death to
+Elizabeth, and annihilation to England.
+
+There was little doubt on the subject in the minds of those engaged in
+this expedition.  All felt most keenly the importance of the game, in
+which the Queen was staking her crown, and England its national
+existence.
+
+"I pray God," said Wilford, an officer much in Walsingham's confidence,
+"that I live not to see this enterprise quail, and with it the utter
+subversion of religion throughout all Christendom.  It may be I may be
+judged to be afraid of my own shadow.  God grant it be so.  But if her
+Majesty had not taken the helm in hand, and my Lord of Leicester sent
+over, this country had been gone ere this. . . . This war doth defend
+England.  Who is he that will refuse to spend his life and living in it?
+If her Majesty consume twenty thousand men in the cause, the experimented
+men that will remain will double that strength to the realm."
+
+This same Wilford commanded a company in Ostend, and was employed by
+Leicester in examining the defences of that important place.  He often
+sent information to the Secretary, "troubling him with the rude stile of
+a poor soldier, being driven to scribble in haste."  He reiterated, in
+more than one letter, the opinion, that twenty thousand men consumed in
+the war would be a saving in the end, and his own determination--although
+he had intended retiring from the military profession--to spend not only
+his life in the cause, but also the poor living that God had given him.
+"Her Highness hath now entered into it," he said; "the fire is kindled;
+whosoever suffers it to go out, it will grow dangerous to that side.  The
+whole state of religion is in question, and the realm of England also, if
+this action quail.  God grant we never live to see that doleful day.  Her
+Majesty hath such footing now in these parts, as I judge it impossible
+for the King to weary her out, if every man will put to the work his
+helping hand, whereby it may be lustily followed, and the war not
+suffered to cool.  The freehold of England will be worth but little, if
+this action quail, and therefore I wish no subject to spare his purse
+towards it."
+
+Spain moved slowly.  Philip the Prudent was not sudden or rash, but his
+whole life had proved, and was to prove, him inflexible in his purposes,
+and patient in his attempts to carry them into effect, even when the
+purposes had become chimerical, and the execution impossible.  Before the
+fall of Antwerp he had matured his scheme for the invasion of England, in
+most of its details--a necessary part of which was of course the
+reduction of Holland and Zeeland.  "Surely no danger nor fear of any
+attempt can grow to England," wrote Wilford, "so long as we can hold this
+country good."  But never was honest soldier more mistaken than he, when
+he added:--"The Papists will make her Highness afraid of a great fleet
+now preparing in Spain.  We hear it also, but it is only a scare-crow to
+cool the enterprise here."
+
+It was no scare-crow.  On the very day on which Wilford was thus writing
+to Walsingham, Philip the Second was writing to Alexander Farnese.  "The
+English," he said, "with their troops having gained a footing in the
+islands (Holland and Zeeland) give me much anxiety.  The English
+Catholics are imploring me with much importunity to relieve them from
+the persecution they are suffering.  When you sent me a plan, with the
+coasts, soundings, quicksands, and ports of England, you said that the
+enterprise of invading that country should be deferred till we had
+reduced the isles; that, having them, we could much more conveniently
+attack England; or that at least we should wait till we had got Antwerp.
+As the city is now taken, I want your advice now about the invasion of
+England.  To cut the root of the evils constantly growing up there, both
+for God's service and mine, is desirable.  So many evils will thus be
+remedied, which would not be by only warring with the islands.  It would
+be an uncertain and expensive war to go to sea for the purpose of
+chastising the insolent English corsairs, however much they deserve
+chastisement.  I charge you to be secret, to give the matter your deepest
+attention, and to let me have your opinions at once."  Philip then added
+a postscript, in his own hand, concerning the importance of acquiring a
+sea-port in Holland, as a basis of operations against England.  "Without
+a port," he said, "we can do nothing whatever."
+
+A few weeks later, the Grand Commander of Castile, by Philip's orders,
+and upon subsequent information received from the Prince of Parma, drew
+up an elaborate scheme for the invasion of England, and for the
+government of that country afterwards; a program according to which the
+King was to shape his course for a long time to come.  The plot was an
+excellent plot.  Nothing could be more artistic, more satisfactory to the
+prudent monarch; but time was to show whether there might not be some
+difficulty in the way of its satisfactory development.
+
+"The enterprise," said the Commander, "ought certainly to be undertaken
+as serving the cause of the Lord.  From the Pope we must endeavour to
+extract a promise of the largest aid we can get for the time when the
+enterprise can be undertaken.  We must not declare that time however, in
+order to keep the thing a secret, and because perhaps thus more will be
+promised, under the impression that it will never take effect.  He added
+that the work could not well be attempted before August or September of
+the following year; the only fear of such delay being that the French
+could hardly be kept during all that time in a state of revolt."  For
+this was a uniform portion of the great scheme.  France was to be kept,
+at Philip's expense, in a state of perpetual civil war; its every city
+and village to be the scene of unceasing conflict and bloodshed--subjects
+in arms against king, and family against family; and the Netherlands were
+to be ravaged with fire and sword; all this in order that the path might
+be prepared for Spanish soldiers into the homes of England.  So much of
+misery to the whole human race was it in the power of one painstaking
+elderly valetudinarian to inflict, by never for an instant neglecting the
+business of his life.
+
+Troops and vessels for the English invasion ought, in the Commander's
+opinion, to be collected in Flanders, under colour of an enterprise
+against Holland and Zeeland, while the armada to be assembled in Spain,
+of galleons, galeazas, and galleys, should be ostensibly for an
+expedition to the Indies.
+
+Then, after the conquest, came arrangements for the government of
+England.  Should Philip administer his new kingdom by a viceroy, or
+should he appoint a king out of his own family?  On the whole the chances
+for the Prince of Parma seemed the best of any.  "We must liberate the
+Queen of Scotland," said the Grand Commander, "and marry her to some one
+or another, both in order to put her out of love with her son, and to
+conciliate her devoted adherents.  Of course the husband should be one of
+your Majesty's nephews, and none could be so appropriate as the Prince of
+Parma, that great captain, whom his talents, and the part he has to bear
+in the business, especially indicate for that honour."
+
+Then there was a difficulty about the possible issue of such a marriage.
+The Farneses claimed Portugal; so that children sprung from the
+bloodroyal of England blended with that of Parma, might choose to make
+those pretensions valid.  But the objection was promptly solved by the
+Commander:--"The Queen of Scotland is sure to have no children," he said.
+
+That matter being adjusted, Parma's probable attitude as King of England
+was examined.  It was true his ambition might cause occasional
+uneasiness, but then he might make himself still more unpleasant in the
+Netherlands.  "If your Majesty suspects him," said the Commander, "which,
+after all, is unfair, seeing the way, in which he has been conducting
+himself--it is to be remembered that in Flanders are similar
+circumstances and opportunities, and that he is well armed, much beloved
+in the country, and that the natives are of various humours.  The English
+plan will furnish an honourable departure for him out of the Provinces;
+and the principle of loyal obligation will have much influence over so
+chivalrous a knight as he, when he is once placed on the English throne.
+Moreover, as he will be new there, he will have need of your Majesty's
+favour to maintain himself, and there will accordingly be good
+correspondence with Holland and the Islands.  Thus your Majesty can put
+the Infanta and her husband into full possession of all the Netherlands;
+having provided them with so excellent a neighbour in England, and one so
+closely bound and allied to them.  Then, as he is to have no English
+children" (we have seen that the Commander had settled that point) "he
+will be a very good mediator to arrange adoptions, especially if you make
+good provision for his son Rainuccio in Italy.  The reasons in favour of
+this plan being so much stronger than those against it, it would be well
+that your Majesty should write clearly to the Prince of Parma, directing
+him to conduct the enterprise" (the English invasion), "and to give him
+the first offer for this marriage (with Queen Mary) if he likes the
+scheme.  If not, he had better mention which of the Archdukes should be
+substituted in his place."
+
+There happened to be no lack of archdukes at that period for anything
+comfortable that might offer--such as a throne in England, Holland, or
+France--and the Austrian House was not remarkable for refusing convenient
+marriages; but the immediate future only could show whether Alexander I.
+of the House of Farnese was to reign in England, or whether the next king
+of that country was to be called Matthias, Maximilian, or Ernest of
+Hapsburg.
+
+Meantime the Grand Commander was of opinion that the invasion-project was
+to be pushed forward as rapidly and as secretly as possible; because,
+before any one of Philip's nephews could place himself upon the English
+throne, it was first necessary to remove Elizabeth from that position.
+Before disposing of the kingdom, the preliminary step of conquering it
+was necessary.  Afterwards it would be desirable, without wasting more
+time than was requisite, to return with a large portion of the invading
+force out of England, in order to complete the conquest of Holland.  For
+after all, England was to be subjugated only as a portion of one general
+scheme; the main features of which were the reannexation of Holland and
+"the islands," and the acquisition of unlimited control upon the seas.
+
+Thus the invasion of England was no "scarecrow," as Wilford imagined,
+but a scheme already thoroughly matured.  If Holland and Zeeland should
+meantime fall into the hands of Philip, it was no exaggeration on that
+soldier's part to observe that the "freehold of England would be worth
+but little."
+
+To oppose this formidable array against the liberties of Europe stood
+Elizabeth Tudor and the Dutch Republic.  For the Queen, however arbitrary
+her nature, fitly embodied much of the nobler elements in the expanding
+English national character.  She felt instinctively that her reliance in
+the impending death-grapple was upon the popular principle, the national
+sentiment, both in her own country and in Holland.  That principle and
+that sentiment were symbolized in the Netherland revolt; and England,
+although under a somewhat despotic rule, was already fully pervaded with
+the instinct of self-government.  The people held the purse and the
+sword.
+
+No tyranny could be permanently established so long as the sovereign was
+obliged to come every year before Parliament to ask for subsidies; so
+long as all the citizens and yeomen of England had weapons in their
+possession, and were carefully trained to use them; so long, in short,
+as the militia was the only army, and private adventurers or trading
+companies created and controlled the only navy.  War, colonization,
+conquest, traffic, formed a joint business and a private speculation.
+If there were danger that England, yielding to purely mercantile habits
+of thought and action, might degenerate from the more martial standard to
+which she had been accustomed, there might be virtue in that Netherland
+enterprise, which was now to call forth all her energies.  The Provinces
+would be a seminary for English soldiers.
+
+"There can be no doubt of our driving the enemy out of the country
+through famine and excessive charges," said the plain-spoken English
+soldier already quoted, who came out with Leicester, "if every one of us
+will put our minds to go forward without making a miserable gain by the
+wars.  A man may see, by this little progress journey, what this long
+peace hath wrought in us.  We are weary of the war before we come where
+it groweth, such a danger hath this long peace brought us into.  This is,
+and will be, in my opinion, a most fit school and nursery to nourish
+soldiers to be able to keep and defend our country hereafter, if men will
+follow it."
+
+Wilford was vehement in denouncing the mercantile tendencies of his
+countrymen, and returned frequently to that point in his communications
+with Walsingham and other statesmen.  "God hath stirred up this action,"
+he repeated again, "to be a school to breed up soldiers to defend the
+freedom of England, which through these long times of peace and quietness
+is brought into a most dangerous estate, if it should be attempted.  Our
+delicacy is such that we are already weary, yet this journey is naught in
+respect to the misery and hardship that soldiers must and do endure."
+
+He was right in his estimate of the effect likely to be produced by the
+war upon the military habits of Englishmen; for there can be no doubt
+that the organization and discipline of English troops was in anything
+but a satisfactory state at that period.  There was certainly vast room
+for improvement.  Nevertheless he was wrong in his views of the leading
+tendencies of his age.  Holland and England, self-helping, self-moving,
+were already inaugurating a new era in the history of the world.  The
+spirit of commercial maritime enterprise--then expanding rapidly into
+large proportions--was to be matched against the religious and knightly
+enthusiasm which had accomplished such wonders in an age that was passing
+away.  Spain still personified, and had ever personified, chivalry,
+loyalty, piety; but its chivalry, loyalty, and piety, were now in a
+corrupted condition.  The form was hollow, and the sacred spark had fled.
+In Holland and England intelligent enterprise had not yet degenerated
+into mere greed for material prosperity.  The love of danger, the thirst
+for adventure, the thrilling sense of personal responsibility and human
+dignity--not the base love for land and lucre--were the governing
+sentiments which led those bold Dutch and English rovers to
+circumnavigate the world in cockle-shells, and to beard the most potent
+monarch on the earth, both at home and abroad, with a handful of
+volunteers.
+
+This then was the contest, and this the machinery by which it was to be
+maintained.  A struggle for national independence, liberty of conscience,
+freedom of the seas, against sacerdotal and world-absorbing tyranny;
+a mortal combat of the splendid infantry of Spain and Italy, the
+professional reiters of Germany, the floating castles of a world-empire,
+with the militiamen and mercantile-marine of England and Holland united.
+Holland had been engaged twenty years long in the conflict.  England had
+thus far escaped it; but there was no doubt, and could be none, that her
+time had come.  She must fight the battle of Protestantism on sea and
+shore, shoulder to shoulder, with the Netherlanders, or await the
+conqueror's foot on her own soil.
+
+What now was the disposition and what the means of the Provinces to do
+their part in the contest?  If the twain as Holland wished, had become of
+one flesh, would England have been the loser?  Was it quite sure that
+Elizabeth--had she even accepted the less compromising title which she
+refused--would not have been quite as much the protected as the
+"protectress?"
+
+It is very certain that the English, on their arrival in the Provinces,
+were singularly impressed by the opulent and stately appearance of the
+country and its inhabitants.  Notwithstanding the tremendous war which
+the Hollanders had been waging against Spain for twenty years, their
+commerce had continued to thrive, and their resources to increase.
+Leicester was in a state of constant rapture at the magnificence
+which surrounded him, from his first entrance into the country.
+Notwithstanding the admiration expressed by the Hollanders for the
+individual sumptuousness of the Lieutenant-General; his followers, on
+their part, were startled by the general luxury of their new allies.
+"The realm is rich and full of men," said Wilford, "the sums men exceed
+in apparel would bear the brunt of this war;" and again, "if the excess
+used in sumptuous apparel were only abated, and that we could convert the
+same to these wars, it would stop a great gap."
+
+The favourable view taken by the English as to the resources and
+inclination of the Netherland commonwealth was universal.  "The general
+wish and desire of these countrymen," wrote Sir Thomas Shirley, "is that
+the amity begun between England and this nation may be everlasting, and
+there is not any of our company of judgment but wish the same.  For all
+they that see the goodliness and stateliness of these towns, strengthened
+both with fortification and natural situation, all able to defend
+themselves with their own abilities, must needs think it too fair a prey
+to be let pass, and a thing most worthy to be embraced."
+
+Leicester, whose enthusiasm continued to increase as rapidly as the
+Queen's zeal seemed to be cooling, was most anxious lest the short-
+comings of his own Government should work irreparable evil.  "I pray you,
+my lord," he wrote to Burghley, "forget not us poor exiles; if you do,
+God must and will forget you.  And great pity it were that so noble
+provinces and goodly havens, with such infinite ships and mariners,
+should not be always as they may now easily be, at the assured devotion
+of England.  In my opinion he can neither love Queen nor country that
+would not wish and further it should be so.  And seeing her Majesty is
+thus far entered into the cause, and that these people comfort themselves
+in full hope of her favour, it were a sin and a shame it should not be
+handled accordingly, both for honour and surety."
+
+Sir John Conway, who accompanied the Earl through the whole of his
+"progress journey," was quite as much struck as he by the flourishing
+aspect and English proclivities of the Provinces.  "The countries which
+we have passed," he said, "are fertile in their nature; the towns,
+cities, buildings, of snore state and beauty, to such as have travelled
+other countries, than any they have ever seen.  The people the most
+industrious by all means to live that be in the world, and, no doubt,
+passing rich.  They outwardly show themselves of good heart, zeal,
+and loyalty, towards the Queen our mistress.  There is no doubt that
+the general number of them had rather come under her Majesty's regiment,
+than to continue under the States and burgomasters of their country.
+The impositions which they lay in defence of their State is wonderful.
+If her Highness proceed in this beginning, she may retain these parts
+hers, with their good love, and her great glory and gain.  I would she
+might as perfectly see the whole country, towns, profits, and pleasures
+thereof, in a glass, as she may her own face; I do then assure myself she
+would with careful consideration receive them, and not allow of any man's
+reason to the contrary .  .  .  .  The country is worthy any prince in
+the world, the people do reverence the Queen, and in love of her do so
+believe that the Grace of Leicester is by God and her sent among them for
+her good.  And they believe in him for the redemption of their bodies,
+as they do in God for their souls.  I dare pawn my soul, that if her
+Majesty will allow him the just and rightful mean to manage this cause,
+that he will so handle the manner and matter as shall highly both please
+and profit her Majesty, and increase her country, and his own honour."
+
+Lord North, who held a high command in the auxiliary force, spoke also
+with great enthusiasm.  "Had your Lordship seen," he wrote to Burghley,
+"with what thankful hearts these countries receive all her Majesty's
+subjects, what multitudes of people they be, what stately cities and
+buildings they have, how notably fortified by art, how strong by nature,
+flow fertile the whole country, and how wealthy it is, you would, I know,
+praise the Lord that opened your lips to undertake this enterprise, the
+continuance and good success whereof will eternise her Majesty, beautify
+her crown, with the most shipping, with the most populous and wealthy
+countries, that ever prince added to his kingdom, or that is or can be
+found in Europe.  I lack wit, good my Lord, to dilate this matter."
+
+Leicester, better informed than some of those in his employment,
+entertained strong suspicions concerning Philip's intentions with regard
+to England; but he felt sure that the only way to laugh at a Spanish
+invasion was to make Holland and England as nearly one as it was possible
+to do.
+
+"No doubt that the King of Spain's preparations by sea be great," he,
+said; "but I know that all that he and his friends can make are not able
+to match with her Majesty's forces, if it please her to use the means
+that God hath given her.  But besides her own, if she need; I will
+undertake to furnish her from hence, upon two months' warning, a navy for
+strong and tall ships, with their furniture and mariners, that the King
+of Spain, and all that he can make, shall not be able to encounter with
+them.  I think the bruit of his preparations is made the greater to
+terrify her Majesty and this country people.  But, thanked be God, her
+Majesty hath little cause to fear him.  And in this country they esteem
+no more of his power by sea than I do of six fisher-boats off Rye."
+
+Thus suggestive is it to peep occasionally behind the curtain.  In the
+calm cabinet of the Escorial, Philip and his comendador mayor are laying
+their heads together, preparing the invasion of England; making
+arrangements for King Alexander's coronation in that island, and--like
+sensible, farsighted persons as they are--even settling the succession
+to the throne after Alexander's death, instead of carelessly leaving such
+distant details to chance, or subsequent consideration.  On the other
+hand, plain Dutch sea-captains, grim beggars of the sea, and the like,
+denizens of a free commonwealth and of the boundless ocean-men who are
+at home on blue water, and who have burned gunpowder against those
+prodigious slave-rowed galleys of Spain--together with their new allies,
+the dauntless mariners of England--who at this very moment are "singeing
+the King of Spain's beard," as it had never been singed before--are not
+so much awestruck with the famous preparations for invasion as was
+perhaps to be expected.  There may be a delay, after all, before Parma
+can be got safely established in London, and Elizabeth in Orcus, and
+before the blood-tribunal of the Inquisition can substitute its sway for
+that of the "most noble, wise, and learned United States."  Certainly,
+Philip the Prudent would have been startled, difficult as he was to
+astonish, could he have known that those rebel Hollanders of his made
+no more account of his slowly-preparing invincible armada than of six
+fisher-boats off Rye.  Time alone could show where confidence had been
+best placed.  Meantime it was certain, that it well behoved Holland and
+England to hold hard together, nor let "that enterprise quail."
+
+The famous expedition of Sir Francis Drake was the commencement of a
+revelation.  "That is the string," said Leicester, "that touches the King
+indeed."  It was soon to be made known to the world that the ocean was
+not a Spanish Lake, nor both the Indies the private property of Philip.
+"While the riches of the Indies continue," said Leicester, "he thinketh
+he will be able to weary out all other princes; and I know, by good
+means, that he more feareth this action of Sir Francis than he ever did
+anything that has been attempted against him."  With these continued
+assaults upon the golden treasure-houses of Spain, and by a determined
+effort to maintain the still more important stronghold which had been
+wrested from her in the Netherlands, England might still be safe.  "This
+country is so full of ships and mariners," said Leicester, "so abundant
+in wealth, and in the means to make money, that, had it but stood
+neutral, what an aid had her Majesty been deprived of.  But if it had
+been the enemy's also, I leave it to your consideration what had been
+likely to ensue.  These people do now honour and love her Majesty in
+marvellous sort."
+
+There was but one feeling on this most important subject among the
+English who went to the Netherlands.  All held the same language.  The
+question was plainly presented to England whether she would secure to
+herself the great bulwark of her defence, or place it in the hands of her
+mortal foe?  How could there be doubt or supineness on such a momentous
+subject?  "Surely, my Lord," wrote Richard Cavendish to Burghley, "if you
+saw the wealth, the strength, the shipping, and abundance of mariners,
+whereof these countries stand furnished, your heart would quake to think
+that so hateful an enemy as Spain should again be furnished with such
+instruments; and the Spaniards themselves do nothing doubt upon the hope
+of the consequence hereof, to assure themselves of the certain ruin of
+her Majesty and the whole estate."
+
+And yet at the very outset of Leicester's administration, there was a
+whisper of peace-overtures to Spain, secretly made by Elizabeth in her
+own behalf, and in that of the Provinces.  We shall have soon occasion to
+examine into the truth of these rumours, which, whether originating in
+truth or falsehood, were most pernicious in their effects.  The
+Hollanders were determined never to return to slavery again, so long as
+they could fire a shot in their own defence.  They earnestly wished
+English cooperation, but it was the cooperation of English matchlocks and
+English cutlasses, not English protecols and apostilles.  It was
+military, not diplomatic machinery that they required.  If they could
+make up their minds to submit to Philip and the Inquisition again, Philip
+and the Holy office were but too ready to receive the erring penitents to
+their embrace without a go-between.
+
+It was war, not peace, therefore, that Holland meant by the English
+alliance.  It was war, not peace, that Philip intended.  It was war, not
+peace, that Elizabeth's most trusty counsellors knew to be inevitable.
+There was also, as we have shown, no doubt whatever as to the good
+disposition, and the great power of the republic to bear its share in the
+common cause.  The enthusiasm of the Hollanders was excessive.  "There
+was such a noise, both in Delft, Rotterdam, and Dort," said Leicester,
+"in crying 'God save the Queen!' as if she had been in Cheapside."  Her
+own subjects could not be more loyal than were the citizens and yeomen of
+Holland.  "The members of the States dare not but be Queen Elizabeth's,"
+continued the Earl, "for by the living God! if there should fall but the
+least unkindness through their default, the people would kill them.  All
+sorts of people, from highest to lowest, assure themselves, now that they
+have her Majesty's good countenance, to beat all the Spaniards out of
+their country.  Never was there people in such jollity as these be.  I
+could be content to lose a limb, could her Majesty see these countries
+and towns as I have done."  He was in truth excessively elated, and had
+already, in imagination, vanquished Alexander Farnese, and eclipsed the
+fame of William the Silent.  "They will serve under me," he observed,
+"with a better will than ever they served under the Prince of Orange.
+Yet they loved him well, but they never hoped of the liberty of this
+country till now."
+
+Thus the English government had every reason to be satisfied with the
+aspect of its affairs in the Netherlands.  But the nature of the Earl's
+authority was indefinite.  The Queen had refused the sovereignty and the
+protectorate.  She had also distinctly and peremptorily forbidden
+Leicester to assume any office or title that might seem at variance with
+such a refusal on her part.  Yet it is certain that, from the very first,
+he had contemplated some slight disobedience to these prohibitions.
+"What government is requisite"--wrote he in a secret memorandum of
+"things most necessary to understand"--"to be appointed to him that shall
+be their governor?  First, that he have as much authority as the Prince
+of Orange, or any other governor or captain-general, hath had
+heretofore."  Now the Prince of Orange hath been stadholder of each of
+the United Provinces, governor-general, commander-in-chief, count of
+Holland in prospect, and sovereign, if he had so willed it.  It would
+doubtless have been most desirable for the country, in its confused
+condition, had there been a person competent to wield, and willing to
+accept, the authority once exercised by William I.  But it was also
+certain that this was exactly the authority which Elizabeth had forbidden
+Leicester to assume.  Yet it is diffcult to understand what position the
+Queen intended that her favourite should maintain, nor how he was to
+carry out her instructions, while submitting to her prohibitions.
+He was directed to cause the confused government of the Provinces to
+be redressed, and a better form of polity to be established.  He was
+ordered, in particular, to procure a radical change in the constitution,
+by causing the deputies to the General Assembly to be empowered to decide
+upon important matters, without, as had always been the custom, making
+direct reference to the assemblies of the separate Provinces.  He was
+instructed to bring about, in some indefinite way, a complete reform in
+financial matters, by compelling the States-General to raise money by
+liberal taxation, according to the "advice of her Majesty, delivered unto
+them by her lieutenant."
+
+And how was this radical change in the institutions of the Provinces to
+be made by an English earl, whose only authority was that of commander-
+in-chief over five thousand half-starved, unpaid, utterly-forlorn English
+troops?
+
+The Netherland envoys in England, in their parting advice, most
+distinctly urged him "to hale authority with the first, to declare
+himself chief head and governor-general" of the whole country,--for it
+was a political head that was wanted in order to restore unity of action
+--not an additional general, where there were already generals in plenty.
+Sir John Norris, valiant, courageous, experienced--even if not, as
+Walsingham observed, a "religious soldier," nor learned in anything "but
+a kind of licentious and corrupt government"--was not likely to require
+the assistance of the new lieutenant-general in field operations nor
+could the army be brought into a state of thorough discipline and
+efficiency by the magic of Leicester's name.  The rank and file of the
+English army--not the commanders-needed strengthening.  The soldiers
+required shoes and stockings, bread and meat, and for these articles
+there were not the necessary funds, nor would the title of Lieutenant-
+General supply the deficiency.  The little auxiliary force was, in truth,
+in a condition most pitiable to behold: it was difficult to say whether
+the soldiers who had been already for a considerable period in the
+Netherlands, or those who had been recently levied in the purlieus of
+London, were in the most unpromising plight.  The beggarly state in which
+Elizabeth had been willing that her troops should go forth to the wars
+was a sin and a disgrace.  Well might her Lieutenant-General say that her
+"poor subjects were no better than abjects."  There were few effective
+companies remaining of the old force.  "There is but a small number of
+the first bands left," said Sir John Conway, "and those so pitiful and
+unable ever to serve again, as I leave to speak further of theirs, to
+avoid grief to your heart.  A monstrous fault there hath been somewhere."
+
+Leicester took a manful and sagacious course at starting.  Those who had
+no stomach for the fight were ordered to depart.  The chaplain gave them
+sermons; the Lieutenant-General, on St. Stephen's day, made them a "pithy
+and honourable" oration, and those who had the wish or the means to buy
+themselves out of the adventure, were allowed to do so: for the Earl was
+much disgusted with the raw material out of which he was expected to
+manufacture serviceable troops.  Swaggering ruffians from the
+disreputable haunts of London, cockney apprentices, brokendown tapsters,
+discarded serving men; the Bardolphs and Pistols, Mouldys, Warts, and the
+like--more at home in tavern-brawls or in dark lanes than on the battle-
+field--were not the men to be entrusted with the honour of England at a
+momentous crisis.  He spoke with grief and shame of the worthless
+character and condition of the English youths sent over to the
+Netherlands.  "Believe me," said he, "you will all repent the cockney
+kind of bringing up at this day of young men.  They be gone hence with
+shame enough, and too many, that I will warrant, will make as many frays
+with bludgeons and bucklers as any in London shall do; but such shall
+never have credit with me again.  Our simplest men in show have been our
+best men, and your gallant blood and ruffian men the worst of all
+others."
+
+Much winnowed, as it was, the small force might in time become more
+effective; and the Earl spent freely of his own substance to supply the
+wants of his followers, and to atone for the avarice of his sovereign.
+The picture painted however by muster-master Digger of the plumed troops
+that had thus come forth to maintain the honour of England and the cause
+of liberty, was anything but imposing.  None knew better than Digges
+their squalid and slovenly condition, or was more anxious to effect a
+reformation therein.  "A very wise, stout fellow he is," said the Earl,
+"and very careful to serve thoroughly her Majesty."  Leicester relied
+much upon his efforts.  "There is good hope," said the muster-master,
+"that his excellency will shortly establish such good order for the
+government and training of our nation, that these weak, bad-furnished,
+ill-armed, and worse-trained bands, thus rawly left unto him, shall
+within a few months prove as well armed, trained, complete, gallant
+companies as shall be found elsewhere in Europe."  The damage they were
+likely to inflict upon the enemy seemed very problematical, until they
+should have been improved by some wholesome ball-practice.  "They are so
+unskilful," said Digger, "that if they should be carried to the field no
+better trained than yet they are, they would prove much more dangerous to
+their own leaders and companies than any ways serviceable on their
+enemies.  The hard and miserable estate of the soldiers generally,
+excepting officers, hath been such, as by the confessions of the captains
+themselves, they have been offered by many of their soldiers thirty and
+forty pounds a piece to be dismissed and sent away; whereby I doubt not
+the flower of the pressed English bands are gone, and the remnant
+supplied with such paddy persons as commonly, in voluntary procurements,
+men are glad to accept."
+
+Even after the expiration of four months the condition of the paddy
+persons continued most destitute.  The English soldiers became mere
+barefoot starving beggars in the streets, as had never been the case in
+the worst of times, when the States were their paymasters.  The little
+money brought from the treasury by the Earl, and the large sums which he
+had contributed out of his own pocket, had been spent in settling, and
+not fully settling, old scores.  "Let me entreat you," wrote Leicester to
+Walsingham, "to be a mean to her Majesty, that the poor soldiers be not
+beaten for my sake.  There came no penny of treasure over since my coming
+hither.  That which then came was most part due before it came.  There is
+much still due.  They cannot get a penny, their credit is spent, they
+perish for want of victuals and clothing in great numbers.  The whole are
+ready to mutiny.  They cannot be gotten out to service, because they
+cannot discharge the debts they owe in the places where they are.  I have
+let of my own more than I may spare."--"There was no soldier yet able to
+buy himself a pair of hose," said the Earl again, "and it is too, too
+great shame to see how they go, and it kills their hearts to show
+themselves among men."
+
+There was no one to dispute the Earl's claims.  The Nassau family was
+desperately poor, and its chief, young Maurice, although he had been
+elected stadholder of Holland and Zeeland, had every disposition--as Sir
+Philip upon his arrival in Flushing immediately informed his uncle--to
+submit to the authority of the new governor.  Louisa de Coligny, widow of
+William the Silent, was most anxious for the English alliance, through
+which alone she believed that the fallen fortunes of the family could be
+raised.  It was thus only, she thought, that the vengeance for which she
+thirsted upon the murderers of her father and her husband could be
+obtained.  "We see now," she wrote to Walsingham, in a fiercer strain
+than would seem to comport with so gentle a nature--deeply wronged as the
+daughter of Coligny and the wife of Orange had been by Papists--"we see
+now the effects of our God's promises.  He knows when it pleases Him to
+avenge the blood of His own; and I confess that I feel most keenly the
+joy which is shared in by the whole Church of God.  There is none that
+has received more wrong from these murderers than I have done, and I
+esteem myself happy in the midst of my miseries that God has permitted me
+to see some vengeance.  These beginings make me hope that I shall see yet
+more, which will be not less useful to the good, both in your country and
+in these isles."
+
+There was no disguise as to the impoverished condition to which the
+Nassau family had been reduced by the self-devotion of its chief.  They
+were obliged to ask alms of England, until the "sapling should become a
+tree."--"Since it is the will of God," wrote the Princess to Davison, "I
+am not ashamed to declare the necessity of our house, for it is in His
+cause that it has fallen.  I pray you, Sir, therefore to do me and these
+children the favour to employ your thoughts in this regard."  If there
+had been any strong French proclivities on their part--as had been so
+warmly asserted--they were likely to disappear.  Villiers, who had been a
+confidential friend of William the Silent, and a strong favourer of
+France, in vain endeavoured to keep alive the ancient sentiments towards
+that country, although he was thought to be really endeavouring to bring
+about a submission of the Nassaus to Spain.  "This Villiers," said
+Leicester, "is a most vile traitorous knave, and doth abuse a young
+nobleman here extremely, the Count Maurice.  For all his religion, he is
+a more earnest persuader secretly to have him yield to a reconciliation
+than Sainte Aldegonde was.  He shall not tarry ten days neither in
+Holland nor Zeeland.  He is greatly hated here of all sorts, and it shall
+go hard but I will win the young Count."
+
+As for Hohenlo, whatever his opinions might once have been regarding the
+comparative merits of Frenchmen and Englishmen, he was now warmly in
+favour of England, and expressed an intention of putting an end to the
+Villiers' influence by simply drowning Villiers.  The announcement of
+this summary process towards the counsellor was not untinged with
+rudeness towards the pupil.  "The young Count," said Leicester, "by
+Villiers' means, was not willing to have Flushing rendered, which the
+Count Hollock perceiving, told the Count Maurice, in a great rage, that
+if he took any course than that of the Queen of England, and swore by no
+beggars, he would drown his priest in the haven before his face, and turn
+himself and his mother-in-law out of their house there, and thereupon
+went with Mr. Davison to the delivery of it."  Certainly, if Hohenlo
+permitted himself such startling demonstrations towards the son and widow
+of William the Silent, it must have been after his habitual potations had
+been of the deepest.  Nevertheless it was satisfactory for the new
+chieftain to know that the influence of so vehement a partisan was
+secured for England.  The Count's zeal deserved gratitude upon
+Leicester's part, and Leicester was grateful.  "This man must be
+cherished," said the Earl; "he is sound and faithful, and hath indeed all
+the chief holds in his hands, and at his commandment.  Ye shall do well
+to procure him a letter of thanks, taking knowledge in general of his
+good-will to her Majesty.  He is a right Almayn in manner and fashion,
+free of his purse and of his drink, yet do I wish him her Majesty's
+pensioner before any prince in Germany, for he loves her and is able to
+serve her, and doth desire to be known her servant.  He hath been
+laboured by his nearest kinsfolk and friends in Germany to have left the
+States and to have the King of Spain's pension and very great reward; but
+he would not.  I trust her Majesty will accept of his offer to be her
+servant during his life, being indeed a very noble soldier."  The Earl
+was indeed inclined to take so cheerful view of matters as to believe
+that he should even effect a reform in the noble soldier's most
+unpleasant characteristic.  "Hollock is a wise gallant gentleman," he
+said, "and very well esteemed.  He hath only one fault, which is
+drinking; but good hope that he will amend it.  Some make me believe that
+I shall be able to do much with him, and I mean to do my best, for I see
+no man that knows all these countries, and the people of all sorts, like
+him, and this fault overthrows all."
+
+Accordingly, so long as Maurice continued under the tutelage of this
+uproarious cavalier--who, at a later day, was to become his brother-in-
+law-he was not likely to interfere with Leicester's authority.  The
+character of the young Count was developing slowly.  More than his father
+had ever done, he deserved the character of the taciturn.  A quiet keen
+observer of men and things, not demonstrative nor talkative, nor much
+given to writing--a modest, calm, deeply-reflecting student of military
+and mathematical science--he was not at that moment deeply inspired by
+political ambition.  He was perhaps more desirous of raising the fallen
+fortunes of his house than of securing the independence of his country.
+Even at that early age, however, his mind was not easy to read, and his
+character was somewhat of a puzzle to those who studied it.  "I see him
+much discontented with the States," said Leicester; "he hath a sullen
+deep wit.  The young gentleman is yet to be won only to her Majesty, I
+perceive, of his own inclination.  The house is marvellous poor and
+little regarded by the States, and if they get anything it is like to be
+by her Majesty, which should be altogether, and she may easily, do for
+him to win him sure.  I will undertake it."  Yet the Earl was ever
+anxious about some of the influences which surrounded Maurice, for he
+thought him more easily guided than he wished him to be by any others but
+himself.  "He stands upon making and marring," he said, "as he meets with
+good counsel."  And at another time he observed, "The young gentleman
+hath a solemn sly wit; but, in troth, if any be to be doubted toward the
+King of Spain, it is he and his counsellors, for they have been
+altogether, so far, French, and so far in mislike with England as they
+cannot almost hide it."
+
+And there was still another member of the house of Nassau who was already
+an honour to his illustrious race.  Count William Lewis, hardly more than
+a boy in years, had already served many campaigns, and had been
+desperately wounded in the cause for which so much of the heroic blood of
+his race had been shed.  Of the five Nassau brethren, his father Count
+John was the sole survivor, and as devoted as ever to the cause of
+Netherland liberty.  The other four had already laid down their lives in
+its defence.  And William Lewis, was worthy to be the nephew of William
+and Lewis, Henry and Adolphus, and the son of John.  Not at all a
+beautiful or romantic hero in appearance, but an odd-looking little man,
+with a round bullet-head, close-clipped hair, a small, twinkling,
+sagacious eye, rugged, somewhat puffy features screwed whimsically awry,
+with several prominent warts dotting, without ornamenting, all that was
+visible of a face which was buried up to the ears in a furzy thicket of
+yellow-brown beard, the tough young stadholder of Friesland, in his iron
+corslet, and halting upon his maimed leg, had come forth with other
+notable personages to the Hague.
+
+He wished to do honour heartily and freely to Queen Elizabeth and her
+representative.  And Leicester was favourably impressed with his new
+acquaintance.  "Here is another little fellow," he said, "as little as
+may be, but one of the gravest and wisest young men that ever I spake
+withal; it is the Count Guilliam of Nassau.  He governs Friesland; I
+would every Province had such another."
+
+Thus, upon the great question which presented itself upon the very
+threshold--the nature and extent of the authority to be exercised by
+Leicester--the most influential Netherlanders were in favour of a large
+and liberal interpretation of his powers.  The envoys in England, the
+Nassau family Hohenlo, the prominent members of the States, such as the
+shrewd, plausible Menin, the "honest and painful" Falk, and the
+chancellor of Gelderland--"that very great, wise, old man Leoninus,"
+as Leicester called him,--were all desirous that he should assume an
+absolute governor-generalship over the whole country.  This was a grave
+and a delicate matter, and needed to be severely scanned, without delay.
+But besides the natives, there were two Englishmen--together with
+ambassador Davison--who were his official advisers.  Bartholomew Clerk,
+LL.D., and Sir Henry Killigrew had been appointed by the Queen to be
+members of the council of the United States, according to the provisions
+of the August treaty.  The learned Bartholomew hardly seemed equal to his
+responsible position among those long-headed Dutch politicians.  Philip
+Sidney--the only blemish in whose character was an intolerable tendency
+to puns--observed that "Doctor Clerk was of those clerks that are not
+always the wisest, and so my lord too late was finding him."  The Earl
+himself, who never undervalued the intellect of the Netherlanders whom
+he came to govern, anticipated but small assistance from the English
+civilian.  "I find no great stuff in my little colleague," he said,
+"nothing that I looked for.  It is a pity you have no more of his
+profession, able men to serve.  This man hath good will, and a pretty
+scholar's wit; but he is too little for these big fellows, as heavy as
+her Majesty thinks them to be.  I would she had but one or two, such as
+the worst of half a score be here."  The other English statecounsellor
+seemed more promising.  "I have one here," said the Earl, "in whom I take
+no small comfort; that is little Hal Killigrew.  I assure you, my lord,
+he is a notable servant, and more in him than ever I heretofore thought
+of him, though I always knew him to be an honest man and an able."
+
+But of all the men that stood by Leicester's side, the most faithful,
+devoted, sagacious, experienced, and sincere of his counsellors, English
+or Flemish, was envoy Davison.  It is important to note exactly the
+opinion that had been formed of him by those most competent to judge,
+before events in which he was called on to play a prominent and
+responsible though secondary part, had placed him in a somewhat
+false position.
+
+"Mr. Davison," wrote Sidney, "is here very careful in her Majesty's
+causes, and in your Lordship's.  He takes great pains and goes to great
+charges for it."  The Earl himself was always vehement in his praise.
+"Mr. Davison," said he at another time, "has dealt most painfully and
+chargeably in her Majesty's service here, and you shall find him as
+sufficiently able to deliver the whole state of this country as any man
+that ever was in it, acquainted with all sorts here that are men of
+dealing.  Surely, my Lord, you shall do a good deed that he may be
+remembered with her Majesty's gracious consideration, for his being here
+has been very chargeable, having kept a very good countenance, and a very
+good table, all his abode here, and of such credit with all the chief
+sort, as I know no stranger in any place hath the like.  As I am a suitor
+to you to be his good friend to her Majesty, so I must heartily pray you,
+good my Lord, to procure his coming hither shortly to me again, for I
+know not almost how to do without him.  I confess it is a wrong to the
+gentleman, and I protest before God, if it were for mine own particular
+respect, I would not require it for L5000.  But your Lordship doth little
+think how greatly I have to do, as also how needful for her Majesty's
+service his being here will, be.  Wherefore, good my Lord, if it may not
+offend her Majesty, be a mean for this my request, for her own service'
+sake wholly."
+
+Such were the personages who surrounded the Earl on his arrival in the
+Netherlands, and such their sentiments respecting the position that it
+was desirable for him to assume.  But there was one very important fact.
+He had studiously concealed from Davison that the Queen had peremptorily
+and distinctly forbidden his accepting the office of governor-general.
+It seemed reasonable, if he came thither at all, that he should come in
+that elevated capacity.  The Staten wished it.  The Earl ardently longed
+for it.  The ambassador, who knew more of Netherland politics and
+Netherland humours than any man did, approved of it.  The interests of
+both England and Holland seemed to require it.  No one but Leicester knew
+that her Majesty had forbidden it.
+
+Accordingly, no sooner had the bell-ringing, cannon-explosions, bonfires,
+and charades, come to an end, and the Earl got fairly housed in the
+Hague, than the States took the affair of government seriously in hand.
+
+On the 9th January, Chancellor Leoninus and Paul Buys waited upon
+Davison, and requested a copy of the commission granted by the Queen to
+the Earl.  The copy was refused, but the commission was read; by which it
+appeared that he had received absolute command over her Majesty's forces
+in the Netherlands by land and sea, together with authority to send for
+all gentlemen and other personages out of England that he might think
+useful to him.  On the 10th the States passed a resolution to offer him
+the governor-generalship over all the Provinces.  On the same day another
+committee waited upon his "Excellency"--as the States chose to denominate
+the Earl, much to the subsequent wrath of the Queen--and made an
+appointment for the whole body to wait upon him the following morning.
+
+Upon that day accordingly--New Year's Day, by the English reckoning, 11th
+January by the New Style--the deputies of all the States at an early hour
+came to his lodgings, with much pomp, preceded by a herald and
+trumpeters.  Leicester, not expecting them quite so soon, was in his
+dressing-room, getting ready for the solemn audience, when, somewhat to
+his dismay, a flourish of trumpets announced the arrival of the whole
+body in his principal hall of audience.  Hastening his preparations as
+much as possible, he descended to that apartment, and was instantly
+saluted by a flourish of rhetoric still more formidable; for that "very
+great, and wise old Leoninus," forthwith began an oration, which promised
+to be of portentous length and serious meaning.  The Earl was slightly
+flustered, when, fortunately; some one whispered in his ear that they had
+come to offer him the much-coveted prize of the stadholderate-general.
+Thereupon he made bold to interrupt the flow of the chancellor's
+eloquence in its first outpourings.  "As this is a very private matter,"
+said he, "it will be better to treat of it in a more private place I pray
+you therefore to come into my chamber, where these things may be more
+conveniently discussed."
+
+"You hear what my Lord says," cried Leoninus, turning to his companions;
+"we are to withdraw into his chamber."
+
+Accordingly they withdrew, accompanied by the Earl, and by five or six
+select counsellors, among whom were Davison and Dr. Clerk.  Then the
+chancellor once more commenced his harangue, and went handsomely through
+the usual forms of compliment, first to the Queen, and then to her
+representative, concluding with an earnest request that the Earl--
+although her Majesty had declined the sovereignty "would take the name
+and place of absolute governor and general of all their forces and
+soldiers, with the disposition of their whole revenues and taxes."
+
+So soon as the oration was concluded, Leicester; who did not speak
+French, directed Davison to reply in that language.
+
+The envoy accordingly, in name of the Earl, expressed the deepest
+gratitude for this mark of the affection and confidence of the States-
+General towards the Queen.  He assured them that the step thus taken by
+them would be the cause of still more favour and affection on the part of
+her Majesty, who would unquestionably, from day to day, augment the
+succour that she was extending to the Provinces in order to relieve men
+from their misery.  For himself, the Earl protested that he could never
+sufficiently recompense the States for the honour which had thus been
+conferred upon him, even if he should live one hundred lives.  Although
+he felt himself quite unable to sustain the weight of so great an office,
+yet he declared that they might repose with full confidence on his
+integrity and good intentions.  Nevertheless, as the authority thus
+offered to him was very arduous, and as the subject required deep
+deliberation, he requested that the proposition should be reduced to
+writing, and delivered into his hands.  He might then come to a
+conclusion thereupon, most conducive to the glory of God and the welfare
+of the land.
+
+Three days afterwards, 14th January, the offer, drawn up formally in
+writing, was presented to envoy Davison, according to the request of
+Leicester.  Three days latter, 17th January, his Excellency having
+deliberated upon the proposition, requested a committee of conference.
+The conference took place the same day, and there was some discussion
+upon matters of detail, principally relating to the matter of
+contributions.  The Earl, according to the report of the committee,
+manifested no repugnance to the acceptance of the office, provided these
+points could be satisfactorily adjusted.  He seemed, on the contrary,
+impatient, rather than reluctant; for, on the day following the
+conference, he sent his secretary Gilpin with a somewhat importunate
+message.  "His Excellency was surprised," said the secretary, "that the
+States were so long in coming to a resolution on the matters suggested by
+him in relation to the offer of the government-general; nor could his
+Excellency imagine the cause of the delay."
+
+For, in truth, the delay was caused by an excessive, rather than a
+deficient, appetite for power on the part of his Excellency.  The States,
+while conferring what they called the "absolute" government, by which it
+afterwards appeared that they meant absolute, in regard to time, not to
+function--were very properly desirous of retaining a wholesome control
+over that government by means of the state-council.  They wished not only
+to establish such a council, as a check upon the authority of the new
+governor, but to share with him at least in the appointment of the
+members who were to compose the board.  But the aristocratic Earl was
+already restive under the thought of any restraint--most of all the
+restraint of individuals belonging to what he considered the humbler
+classes.
+
+"Cousin, my lord ambassador," said he to Davison, "among your sober
+companions be it always remembered, I beseech you, that your cousin have
+no other alliance but with gentle blood.  By no means consent that he be
+linked in faster bonds than their absolute grant may yield him a free and
+honourable government, to be able to do such service as shall be meet for
+an honest man to perform in such a calling, which of itself is very
+noble.  But yet it is not more to be embraced, if I were to be led in
+alliance by such keepers as will sooner draw my nose from the right scent
+of the chace, than to lead my feet in the true pace to pursue the game I
+desire to reach.  Consider, I pray you, therefore, what is to be done,
+and how unfit it will be in respect of my poor self, and how unacceptable
+to her Majesty, and how advantageous to enemies that will seek holes in
+my coat, if I should take so great a name upon me, and so little power.
+They challenge acceptation already, and I challenge their absolute grant
+and offer to me, before they spoke of any instructions; for so it was
+when Leoninus first spoke to me with them all on New Years Day, as you
+heard--offering in his speech all manner of absolute authority.  If it
+please them to confirm this, without restraining instructions, I will
+willingly serve the States, or else, with such advising instructions as
+the Dowager of Hungary had."
+
+This was explicit enough, and Davison, who always acted for Leicester in
+the negotiations with the States, could certainly have no doubt as to the
+desires of the Earl, on the subject of "absolute" authority.  He did
+accordingly what he could to bring the States to his Excellency's way of
+thinking; nor was he unsuccessful.
+
+On the 22nd January, a committee of conference was sent by the States to
+Leyden, in which city Leicester was making a brief visit.  They were
+instructed to procure his consent, if possible, to the appointment, by
+the States themselves, of a council consisting of members from each
+Province.  If they could not obtain this concession, they were directed
+to insist as earnestly as possible upon their right to present a double.
+list of candidates, from which he was to make nominations.  And if the
+one and the other proposition should be refused, the States were then to
+agree that his Excellency should freely choose and appoint a council of
+state, consisting of native residents from every Province, for the period
+of one year.  The committee was further authorised to arrange the
+commission for the governor, in accordance with these points; and to draw
+up a set of instructions for.  the state-council, to the satisfaction of
+his Excellency.  The committee was also empowered to conclude the matter
+at once, without further reference to the States.
+
+Certainly a committee thus instructed was likely to be sufficiently
+pliant.  It had need to be, in order to bend to the humour of his
+Excellency, which was already becoming imperious.  The adulation which he
+had received; the triumphal marches, the Latin orations, the flowers
+strewn in his path, had produced their effect, and the Earl was almost
+inclined to assume the airs of royalty.  The committee waited upon him at
+Leyden.  He affected a reluctance to accept the "absolute" government,
+but his coyness could not deceive such experienced statesmen as the "wise
+old Leoliinus," or Menin, Maalzoon, Florin Thin, or Aitzma, who composed
+the deputation.  It was obvious enough to them that it was not a King Log
+that had descended among them, but it was not a moment for complaining.
+The governor elect insisted, of course, that the two Englishmen,
+according to the treaty with her Majesty, should be members of, the
+council.  He also, at once, nominated Leoninus, Meetkerk, Brederode,
+Falck, and Paul Buys, to the same office; thinking, no doubt, that these
+were five keepers--if keepers he must have--who would not draw his nose
+off the scent, nor prevent his reaching the game he hunted, whatever that
+game might be.  It was reserved for the future, however, to show,
+whether, the five were like to hunt in company with him as harmoniously
+as he hoped.  As to the other counsellors, he expressed a willingness
+that candidates should be proposed for him, as to whose qualifications he
+would make up his mind at leisure.
+
+This matter being satisfactorily adjusted-and certainly unless the game
+pursued by the Earl was a crown royal, he ought to have been satisfied
+with his success--the States received a letter from their committee at
+Leyden, informing them that his Excellency, after some previous
+protestations, had accepted the government (24th January, 1586).
+
+It was agreed that he should be inaugurated Governor-General of the
+United Provinces of Gelderland and Zutphen, Flanders, Holland, Zeeland,
+Utrecht, Friesland, and all others in confederacy with them.  He was to
+have supreme military command by land and sea.  He was to exercise
+supreme authority in matters civil and political, according to the
+customs prevalent in the reign of the Emperor Charles V.  All officers,
+political, civil, legal, were to be appointed by him out of a double or
+triple nomination made by the States of the Provinces in which vacancies
+might occur.  The States-General were to assemble whenever and wherever
+he should summon them.  They were also--as were the States of each
+separate Province--competent to meet together by their own appointment.
+The Governor-General was to receive an oath of fidelity from the States,
+and himself to swear the maintenance of the ancient laws, customs, and
+privileges of the country.
+
+The deed was done.  In vain had an emissary of the French court been
+exerting his utmost to prevent the consummation of this close alliance.
+For the wretched government of Henry III., while abasing itself before
+Philip II., and offering the fair cities and fertile plains of France as
+a sacrifice to that insatiable ambition which wore the mask of religious
+bigotry, was most anxious that Holland and England should not escape the
+meshes by which it was itself enveloped.  The agent at the Hague came
+nominally upon some mercantile affairs, but in reality, according to
+Leicester, "to impeach the States from binding themselves to her
+Majesty."  But he was informed that there was then no leisure for his
+affairs; "for the States would attend to the service of the Queen of
+England, before all princes in the world."  The agent did not feel
+complimented by the coolness of this reception; yet it was reasonable
+enough, certainly, that the Hollanders should remember with bitterness
+the contumely, which they had experienced the previous year in France.
+The emissary was; however, much disgusted.  "The fellow," said Leicester,
+"took it in such snuff, that he came proudly to the States and offered
+his letters, saying; 'Now I trust you have done all your sacrifices to
+the Queen of England, and may yield me some leisure to read my masters
+letters.'"--"But they so shook him, up," continued the Earl, "for naming
+her Majesty in scorn--as they took it--that they hurled him his letters;
+and bid him content himself;" and so on, much to the agent's
+discomfiture, who retired in greater "snuff" than ever.
+
+So much for the French influence.  And now Leicester had done exactly
+what the most imperious woman in the world, whose favour was the breath
+of his life, had expressly forbidden him to do.  The step having been
+taken, the prize so tempting to his ambition having been snatched, and
+the policy which had governed the united action of the States and himself
+seeming so sound, what ought he to have done in order to avert the
+tempest which he must have foreseen?  Surely a man who knew so much of
+woman's nature and of Elizabeth's nature as he did, ought to have
+attempted to conciliate her affections, after having so deeply wounded
+her pride.  He knew his power.  Besides the graces of his person and
+manner--which few women, once impressed by them, could ever forget--he
+possessed the most insidious and flattering eloquence, and, in absence,
+his pen was as wily as his tongue.  For the Earl was imbued with the very
+genius of courtship.  None was better skilled than he in the phrases of
+rapturous devotion, which were music to the ear both of the woman and the
+Queen; and he knew his royal mistress too well not to be aware that the
+language of passionate idolatry, however extravagant, had rarely fallen
+unheeded upon her soul.  It was strange therefore, that in this
+emergency, he should not at once throw himself upon her compassion
+without any mediator.  Yet, on the contrary, he committed the monstrous
+error of entrusting his defence to envoy Davison, whom he determined to
+despatch at once with instructions to the Queen, and towards whom he
+committed the grave offence of concealing from him her previous
+prohibitions.  But how could the Earl fail to perceive that it was the
+woman, not the Queen, whom be should have implored for pardon; that it
+was Robert Dudley, not William Davison, who ought to have sued upon his
+knees.  This whole matter of the Netherland sovereignty and the Leicester
+stadholderate, forms a strange psychological study, which deserves and
+requires some minuteness of attention; for it was by the characteristics
+of these eminent personages that tho current history was deeply stamped.
+
+Certainly, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, the first letter
+conveying intelligence so likely to pique the pride of Elizabeth, should
+have been a letter from Leicester.  On the contrary, it proved to be a
+dull formal epistle from the States.
+
+And here again the assistance of the indispensable Davison was considered
+necessary.  On the 3rd February the ambassador--having announced his
+intention of going to England, by command of his Excellency, so soon as
+the Earl should have been inaugurated, for the purpose of explaining all
+these important transactions to her Majesty--waited upon the States with
+the request that they should prepare as speedily as might be their letter
+to the Queen, with other necessary documents, to be entrusted to his
+care.  He also suggested that the draft or minute of their proposed
+epistle should be submitted to him for advice--"because the humours of
+her Majesty were best known to him."
+
+Now the humours of her Majesty were best known to Leicester of all men
+in the whole world, and it is inconceivable that he should have allowed
+so many days and weeks to pass without taking these humours properly into
+account.  But the Earl's head was slightly turned by his sudden and
+unexpected success.  The game that he had been pursuing had fallen into
+his grasp, almost at the very start, and it is not astonishing that he
+should have been somewhat absorbed in the enjoyment of his victory.
+
+Three days later (6th February) the minute of a letter to Elizabeth,
+drawn up by Menin, was submitted to the ambassador; eight days after that
+(14th February) Mr. Davison took leave of the States, and set forth for
+the Brill on his way to England; and three or four days later yet, he was
+still in that sea-port, waiting for a favourable wind.  Thus from the
+11th January, N.S., upon which day the first offer of the absolute
+government had been made to Leicester, nearly forty days had elapsed,
+during which long period the disobedient Earl had not sent one line,
+private or official, to her Majesty on this most important subject.  And
+when at last the Queen was to receive information of her favourite's
+delinquency, it was not to be in his well-known handwriting and
+accompanied by his penitent tears and written caresses, but to be laid
+before her with all the formality of parchment and sealingwax, in the
+stilted diplomatic jargon of those "highly-mighty, very learned, wise,
+and very foreseeing gentlemen, my lords the States-General."  Nothing
+could have been managed with less adroitness.
+
+Meantime, not heeding the storm gathering beyond the narrow seas, the new
+governor was enjoying the full sunshine of power.  On the 4th February
+the ceremony of his inauguration took place, with great pomp and ceremony
+at the Hague.
+
+The beautiful, placid, village-capital of Holland wore much the same
+aspect at that day as now.  Clean, quiet, spacious streets, shaded with
+rows of whispering poplars and umbrageous limes, broad sleepy canals--
+those liquid highways alone; which glided in phantom silence the bustle,
+and traffic, and countless cares of a stirring population--quaint
+toppling houses, with tower and gable; ancient brick churches, with
+slender spire and musical chimes; thatched cottages on the outskirts,
+with stork-nests on the roofs--the whole without fortification save the
+watery defences which enclosed it with long-drawn lines on every side;
+such was the Count's park, or 's Graven Haage, in English called the
+Hague.
+
+It was embowered and almost buried out of sight by vast groves of oaks
+and beeches.  Ancient Badahuennan forests of sanguinary Druids, the "wild
+wood without mercy" of Saxon savages, where, at a later period, sovereign
+Dirks and Florences, in long succession of centuries, had ridden abroad
+with lance in rest, or hawk on fist; or under whose boughs, in still
+nearer days, the gentle Jacqueline had pondered and wept over her
+sorrows, stretched out in every direction between the city and the
+neighbouring sea.  In the heart of the place stood the ancient palace of
+the counts, built in the thirteenth century by William II. of Holland,
+King of the Romans, with massive brick walls, cylindrical turrets,
+pointed gable and rose-shaped windows, and with spacious coup-yard,
+enclosed by feudal moat, drawbridge, and portcullis.
+
+In the great banqueting-hall of the ancient palace, whose cedarn-roof of
+magnificent timber-work, brought by crusading counts from the Holy Land,
+had rung with the echoes of many a gigantic revel in the days of
+chivalry--an apartment one hundred and fifty feet long and forty feet
+high--there had been arranged an elevated platform, with a splendid chair
+of state for the "absolute" governor, and with a great profusion of
+gilding and velvet tapestry, hangings, gilt emblems, complimentary
+devices, lions, unicorns, and other imposing appurtenances.  Prince
+Maurice, and all the members of his house, the States-General in full
+costume, and all the great functionaries, civil and military, were
+assembled.  There was an elaborate harangue by orator Menin, in which it
+was proved; by copious citations from Holy Writ and from ancient
+chronicle, that the Lord never forsakes His own; so that now, when the
+Provinces were at their last gasp by the death of Orange and the loss of
+Antwerp, the Queen of England and the Earl of Leicester had suddenly
+descended, as if from Heaven; to their rescue.  Then the oaths of mutual
+fidelity were exchanged between the governor and the States, and, in
+conclusion, Dr. Bartholomew Clerk ventured to measure himself with the
+"big fellows," by pronouncing an oration which seemed to command
+universal approbation.  And thus the Earl was duly installed Governor-
+General of the United States of the Netherlands.
+
+But already the first mutterings of the storm were audible.  A bird in
+the air had whispered to the Queen that her favourite was inclined to
+disobedience.  "Some flying tale hath been told me here," wrote Leicester
+to Walsingham, "that her Majesty should mislike my name of Excellency.
+But if I had delighted, or would have received titles, I refused a title
+higher than Excellency, as Mr. Davison, if you ask him, will tell you;
+and that I, my own self, refused most earnestly that, and, if I might
+have done it, this also."  Certainly, if the Queen objected to this
+common form of address, which had always been bestowed upon Leicester, as
+he himself observed, ever since she had made him an earl,  it might be
+supposed that her wrath would mount high when she should hear of him as
+absolute governor-general.  It is also difficult to say what higher title
+he had refused, for certainly the records show that he had refused
+nothing, in the way of power and dignity, that it was possible for him to
+obtain.
+
+But very soon afterwards arrived authentic intelligence that the Queen
+had been informed of the proposition made on New Year's-Day (0.S.), and
+that, although she could not imagine the possibility of his accepting,
+she was indignant that he had not peremptorily rejected the offer.
+
+"As to the proposal made to you," wrote Burghley, "by the mouth of
+Leoninus, her Majesty hath been informed that you had thanked them in her
+name, and alledged that there was no such thing in the contract, and that
+therefore you could not accept nor knew how to answer the same."
+
+Now this information was obviously far from correct, although it had been
+furnished by the Earl himself to Burghley.  We have seen that Leicester
+had by no means rejected, but very gratefully entertained, the
+proposition as soon as made.  Nevertheless the Queen was dissatisfied,
+even without suspecting that she had been directly disobeyed.  "Her
+Majesty," continued the Lord-Treasurer; "is much offended with this
+proceeding.  She allows not that you should give them thanks, but findeth
+it very strange that you did not plainly declare to them that they did
+well know how often her Majesty had refused to have any one for her take
+any such government there, and that she had always so answered
+peremptorily.  Therefore there might be some suspicion conceived that by
+offering on their part, and refusal on hers, some further mischief might
+be secretly hidden by some odd person's device to the hurt of the cause.
+But in that your Lordship did not flatly say to them that yourself did
+know her Majesty's mind therein, that she never meant, in this sort, to
+take the absolute government, she is offended considering, as she saith,
+that none knew her determination therein better than yourself.  For at
+your going hence, she did peremptorily charge you not to accept any such
+title and office; and therefore her straight commandment now is that you
+shall not accept the same, for she will never assent thereto, nor avow
+you with any such title."
+
+If Elizabeth was so wrathful, even while supposing that the offer had
+been gratefully declined, what were likely to be her emotions when she
+should be informed that it had been gratefully accepted.  The Earl
+already began to tremble at the probable consequences of his mal-
+adroitness.  Grave was the error he had committed in getting himself made
+governor-general against orders; graver still, perhaps fatal, the blunder
+of not being swift to confess his fault, and cry for pardon, before other
+tongues should have time to aggravate his offence.  Yet even now he
+shrank from addressing the Queen in person, but hoped to conjure the
+rising storm by means of the magic wand of the Lord-Treasurer.  He
+implored his friend's interposition to shield him in the emergency, and
+begged that at least her Majesty and the lords of council would suspend
+their judgment until Mr. Davison should deliver those messages and
+explanations with which, fully freighted, he was about to set sail from
+the Brill.
+
+"If my reasons seem to your wisdoms," said he, "other than such as might
+well move a true and a faithful careful man to her Majesty to do as I
+have done, I do desire, for my mistaking offence, to bear the burden of
+it; to be disavowed with all displeasure and disgrace; a matter of as
+great reproach and grief as ever can happen to any man."  He begged that
+another person might be sent as soon as possible in his place-protesting,
+however, by his faith in Christ, that he had done only what he was bound
+to do by his regard for her Majesty's service--and that when he set foot
+in the country he had no more expected to be made Governor of the
+Netherlands than to be made King of Spain.  Certainly he had been paying
+dear for the honour, if honour it was, and he had not intended on setting
+forth for the Provinces to ruin himself, for the sake of an empty title.
+His motives--and he was honest, when he so avowed them--were motives of
+state at least as much as of self-advancement.  "I have no cause," he
+said, "to have played the fool thus far for myself; first, to have her
+Majesty's displeasure, which no kingdom in the world could make me
+willingly deserve; next, to undo myself in my later days; to consume all
+that should have kept me all my life in one half year.  But I must thank
+God for all, and am most heartily grieved at her Majesty's heavy
+displeasure.  I neither desire to live, nor to see my country with it."
+
+And at this bitter thought, he began to sigh like furnace, and to shed
+the big tears of penitence.
+
+"For if I have not done her Majesty good service at this time," he said,
+"I shall never hope to do her any, but will withdraw me into some out-
+corner of the world, where I will languish out the rest of my few-too
+many-days, praying ever for her Majesty's long and prosperous life, and
+with this only comfort to live an exile, that this disgrace hath happened
+for no other cause but for my mere regard for her Majesty's estate."
+
+Having painted this dismal picture of the probable termination to his
+career--not in the hope of melting Burghley but of touching the heart of
+Elizabeth--he proceeded to argue the point in question with much logic
+and sagacity.  He had satisfied himself on his arrival in the Provinces,
+that, if he did not take the governor-generalship some other person
+would; and that it certainly was for the interest of her Majesty that her
+devoted servant, rather than an indifferent person, should be placed in
+that important position.  He maintained that the Queen had intimated,
+to him, in private, her willingness that he should accept the office in
+question provided the proposition should come from the States and not
+from her; he reasoned that the double nature of his functions--being
+general and counsellor for her, as well as general and counsellor for the
+Provinces--made his acceptance of the authority conferred on him almost
+indispensable; that for him to be merely commander over five thousand
+English troops, when an abler soldier than himself, Sir John Norris, was
+at their head, was hardly worthy her Majesty's service or himself, and
+that in reality the Queen had lost nothing, by his appointment, but had
+gained much benefit and honour by thus having the whole command of the
+Provinces, of their forces by land and sea, of their towns and treasures,
+with knowledge of all their secrets of state.
+
+Then, relapsing into a vein of tender but reproachful melancholy, he
+observed, that, if it had been any man but himself that had done as he
+had done, he would have been thanked, not censured.  "But such is now my
+wretched case," he said, "as for my faithful, true, and loving heart to
+her Majesty and my country, I have utterly undone myself.  For favour, I
+have disgrace; for reward, utter spoil and ruin.  But if this taking upon
+me the name of governor is so evil taken as it hath deserved dishonour,
+discredit, disfavour, with all griefs that may be laid upon a man, I must
+receive it as deserved of God and not of my Queen, whom I have reverenced
+with all humility, and whom I have loved with all fidelity."
+
+This was the true way, no doubt, to reach the heart of Elizabeth, and
+Leicester had always plenty of such shafts in his quiver.  Unfortunately
+he had delayed too long, and even now he dared not take a direct aim.  He
+feared to write to the Queen herself, thinking that his so doing, "while
+she had such conceipts of him, would only trouble her," and he therefore
+continued to employ the Lord-Treasurer and Mr. Secretary as his
+mediators.  Thus he committed error upon error.
+
+Meantime, as if there had not been procrastination enough, Davison was
+loitering at the Brill, detained by wind and weather.  Two days after the
+letter, just cited, had been despatched to Walsingham, Leicester sent an
+impatient message to the envoy.  "I am heartily sorry, with all my
+heart," he said, "to hear of your long stay at Brill, the wind serving so
+fair as it hath done these two days.  I would have laid any wager that
+you had been in England ere this.  I pray you make haste, lest our cause
+take too great a prejudice there ere you come, although I cannot fear it,
+because it is so good and honest.  I pray you imagine in what care I
+dwell till I shall hear from you, albeit some way very resolute."
+
+Thus it was obvious that he had no secret despair of his cause when it
+should be thoroughly laid before the Queen.  The wonder was that he had
+added the offence of long silence to the sin of disobedience.  Davison
+had sailed, however, before the receipt of the Earl's letter.  He had
+been furnished with careful instructions upon the subject of his mission.
+He was to show how eager the States had been to have Leicester for their
+absolute governor--which was perfectly true--and how anxious the Earl
+had been to decline the proffered honour--which was certainly false,
+if contemporary record and the minutes of the States-General are to be
+believed.  He was to sketch the general confusion which had descended
+upon the country, the quarrelling of politicians, and the discontent of
+officers and soldiers, from out of all which chaos one of two results was
+sure to arise: the erection of a single chieftain, or a reconciliation of
+the Provinces with Spain.  That it would be impossible for the Earl to
+exercise the double functions with which he was charged--of general of
+her Majesty's forces, and general and chief counsellor of the States--
+if any other man than himself should be appointed governor; was obvious.
+It was equally plain that the Provinces could only be kept at her
+Majesty's disposition by choosing the course which, at their own
+suggestion, had been adopted.  The offer of the government by the States,
+and its acceptance by the Earl, were the logical consequence of the step
+which the Queen had already taken.  It was thus only that England could
+retain her hold upon the country, and even upon the cautionary towns.  As
+to a reconciliation of the Provinces with Spain--which would have been
+the probable result of Leicester's rejection of the proposition made
+by the Stateait was unnecessary to do more than allude to such a
+catastrophe.  No one but a madman could doubt that, in such an event,
+the subjugation of England was almost certain.
+
+But before the arrival of the ambassador, the Queen had been thoroughly
+informed as to the whole extent of the Earl's delinquency.  Dire was the
+result.  The wintry gales which had been lashing the North Sea, and
+preventing the unfortunate Davison from setting forth on his disastrous
+mission, were nothing to the tempest of royal wrath which had been
+shaking the court-world to its centre.  The Queen had been swearing most
+fearfully ever since she read the news, which Leicester had not dared to
+communicate directly, to herself.  No one was allowed to speak a word in
+extenuation of the favourite's offence.  Burghley, who lifted up his
+voice somewhat feebly to appease her wrath, was bid, with a curse, to
+hold his peace.  So he took to his bed-partly from prudence, partly from
+gout--and thus sheltered himself for a season from the peltings of the
+storm.  Walsingham, more manful, stood to his post, but could not gain a
+hearing.  It was the culprit that should have spoken, and spoken in time.
+"Why, why did you not write yourself?"  was the plaintive cry of all the
+Earl's friends, from highest to humblest.  "But write to her now," they
+exclaimed, "at any rate; and, above all, send her a present, a love-
+gift."  "Lay out two or three hundred crowns in some rare thing, for
+a token to her Majesty," said Christopher Hatton.
+
+Strange that his colleagues and his rivals should have been obliged
+to advise Leicester upon the proper course to pursue; that they--not
+himself--should have been the first to perceive that it was the enraged
+woman, even more than the offended sovereign, who was to be propitiated
+and soothed.  In truth, all the woman had been aroused in Elizabeth's
+bosom.  She was displeased that her favourite should derive power and
+splendour from any source but her own bounty.  She was furious that
+his wife, whom she hated, was about to share in his honours.  For the
+mischievous tongues of court-ladies had been collecting or fabricating
+many unpleasant rumours.  A swarm of idle but piquant stories had been
+buzzing about the Queen's ears, and stinging her into a frenzy of
+jealousy.  The Countess--it was said--was on the point of setting forth
+for the Netherlands, to join the Earl, with a train of courtiers and
+ladies, coaches and side-saddles, such as were never seen before--where
+the two were about to establish themselves in conjugal felicity, as well
+as almost royal state.  What a prospect for the jealous and imperious
+sovereign!  "Coaches and side-saddles!  She would show the upstarts that
+there was one Queen, and that her name was Elizabeth, and that there
+was no court but hers."  And so she continued to storm and swear, and
+threaten unutterable vengeance, till all her courtiers quaked in their
+shoes.
+
+Thomas Dudley, however, warmly contradicted the report, declaring, of his
+own knowledge, that the Countess had no wish to go to the Provinces, nor
+the Earl any intention of receiving her there.  This information was at
+once conveyed to the Queen, "and," said Dudley, "it did greatly pacify
+her stomach."  His friends did what they could to maintain the governor's
+cause; but Burghley, Walsingham, Hatton, and the rest of them, were all
+"at their wits end," and were nearly distraught at the delay in Davison's
+arrival.  Meantime the Queen's stomach was not so much pacified but that
+she was determined to humiliate the Earl with the least possible delay.
+Having waited sufficiently long for his explanations, she now appointed
+Sir Thomas Heneage as special commissioner to the States, without waiting
+any longer.  Her wrath vented itself at once in the preamble to the
+instructions for this agent.
+
+"Whereas," she said, "we have been given to understand that the Earl of
+Leicester hath in a very contemptuous sort--contrary to our express
+commandment given unto him by ourself, accepted of an offer of a more
+absolute government made by the States unto him, than was agreed on
+between us and their commissioners--which kind of contemptible manner of
+proceeding giveth the world just cause to think that there is not that
+reverent respect carried towards us by our subjects as in duty
+appertaineth; especially seeing so notorious a contempt committed by one
+whom we have raised up and yielded in the eye of the world, even from the
+beginning of our reign, as great portion of our favour as ever subject
+enjoyed at any prince's hands; we therefore, holding nothing dearer than
+our honour, and considering that no one thing could more touch our
+reputation than to induce so open and public a faction of a prince, and
+work a greater reproach than contempt at a subject's hand, without
+reparation of our honour, have found it necessary to send you unto him,
+as well to charge him with the said contempt, as also to execute such
+other things as we think meet to be done, for the justifying of ourselves
+to the world, as the repairing of the indignity cast upon us by his
+undutiful manner of proceeding towards us .  .  .  .  .  And for that we
+find ourselves also not well dealt withal by the States, in that they
+have pressed the said Earl, without our assent or privity, to accept of
+a more absolute government than was agreed on between us and their
+commissioners, we have also thought meet that you shall charge them
+therewith, according to the directions hereafter ensuing.  And to the end
+there may be no delay used in the execution of that which we think meet
+to be presently done, you shall charge the said States, even as they
+tender the continuance of our good-will towards them, to proceed to the
+speedy execution of our request."
+
+After this trumpet-like preamble it may be supposed that the blast which
+followed would be piercing and shrill.  The instructions, in truth,
+consisted in wild, scornful flourishes upon one theme.  The word contempt
+had occurred five times in the brief preamble.  It was repeated in almost
+every line of the instructions.
+
+"You shall let the Earl" (our cousin no longer) "understand," said the
+Queen, "how highly and justly we are offended with his acceptation of the
+government, which we do repute to be a very great and strange contempt,
+least looked for at our hands, being, as he is, a creature of our own."
+His omission to acquaint her by letter with the causes moving him "so
+contemptuously to break" her commandment, his delay in sending Davison
+"to answer the said contempt," had much "aggravated the fault," although
+the Queen protested herself unable to imagine any "excuse for so manifest
+a contempt."  The States were to be informed that she "held it strange"
+that "this creature of her own" should have been pressed by them to
+"commit so notorious a contempt" against her, both on account of this
+very exhibition of contempt on Leicester's part, and because they thereby
+"shewed themselves to have a very slender and weak conceit of her
+judgment, by pressing a minister of hers to accept that which she had
+refused, as: though her long experience in government had not taught her
+to discover what was fit to do in matters of state."  As the result of
+such a proceeding would be to disgrace her in the eyes of mankind, by
+inducing an opinion that her published solemn declaration on this great
+subject had been intended to abuse the, world, he was directed--in order
+to remove the hard conceit justly to be taken by the world, "in
+consideration of the said contempt,"--to make a public and open
+resignation of the government in the place where he had accepted the
+same.
+
+Thus it had been made obvious to the unlucky "creature of her own," that
+the Queen did not easily digest "contempt."  Nevertheless these
+instructions to Heneage were gentle, compared with the fierce billet
+which she addressed directly to the Earl: It was brief, too, as the posy
+of a ring; and thus it ran: "To my Lord of Leicester, from the Queen, by
+Sir Thomas Heneage.  How contemptuously we conceive ourself to have been
+used by you, you shall by this bearer understand, whom we have expressly
+sent unto you to charge you withal.  We could never have imagined, had we
+not seen it fall out in experience, that a man raised up by ourself, and
+extraordinarily favoured by us above any other subject of this land,
+would have, in so contemptible a sort, broken our commandment, in a cause
+that so greatly toucheth us in honour; whereof, although you have showed
+yourself to make but little account, in most undutiful a sort, you may
+not therefore think that we have so little care of the reparation thereof
+as we mind to pass so great a wrong in silence unredressed.  And
+therefore our express pleasure and commandment is, that--all delays and
+excuses laid apart--you do presently, upon the duty of your allegiance,
+obey and fulfil whatsoever the bearer hereof shall direct you to do in
+our name.  Whereof fail not, as you will answer the contrary at your
+uttermost peril."
+
+Here was no billing and cooing, certainly, but a terse, biting
+phraseology, about which there could be no misconception.
+
+By the same messenger the Queen also sent a formal letter to the States-
+General; the epistle--'mutatis mutandis'--being also addressed to the
+state-council.
+
+In this document her Majesty expressed her great surprise that Leicester
+should have accepted their offer of the absolute government, "both for
+police and war," when she had so expressly rejected it herself.  "To tell
+the truth," she observed, "you seem to have treated us with very little
+respect, and put a too manifest insult upon us, in presenting anew to one
+of, our subjects the same proposition which we had already declined,
+without at least waiting for our answer whether we should like it or no;
+as if we had not sense enough to be able to decide upon what we ought to
+accept or refuse."  She proceeded to express her dissatisfaction with the
+course pursued, because so repugnant to her published declaration, in
+which she had stated to the world her intention of aiding the Provinces,
+without meddling in the least with the sovereignty of the country.
+"The contrary would now be believed," she said, "at least by those who
+take the liberty of censuring, according to their pleasure, the actions
+of princes."  Thus her honour was at stake.  She signified her will,
+therefore, that, in order to convince the world of her sincerity, the
+authority conferred should be revoked, and that "the Earl," whom she had
+decided to recall very soon, should, during his brief residence there,
+only exercise the power agreed upon by the original contract.  She warmly
+reiterated her intention, however, of observing inviolably the promise of
+assistance which she had given to the States.  "And if," she said, "any
+malicious or turbulent spirits should endeavour, perchance, to persuade
+the people that this our refusal proceeds from lack of affection or
+honest disposition to assist you--instead of being founded only on
+respect for our honour, which is dearer to us than life--we beg you, by
+every possible means, to shut their mouths, and prevent their pernicious
+designs."
+
+Thus, heavily laden with the royal wrath, Heneage was on the point of
+leaving London for the Netherlands, on the very day upon which Davison
+arrived, charged with deprecatory missives from that country.  After his
+long detention he had a short passage, crossing from the Brill to Margate
+in a single night.  Coming immediately to London, he sent to Walsingham
+to inquire which way the wind was blowing at court, but received a
+somewhat discouraging reply.  "Your long detention by his Lordship,"
+said the Secretary, "has wounded the whole cause;" adding, that he
+thought her Majesty would not speak with him.  On the other hand, it
+seemed indispensable for him to go to the court, because if the Queen
+should hear of his arrival before he had presented himself, she was
+likely to be more angry than ever.
+
+So, the same afternoon, Davison waited upon Walsingham, and found him
+in a state of despondency.  "She takes his Lordship's acceptance of the,
+government most haynously," said Sir Francis, "and has resolved to send
+Sir Thomas Heneage at once, with orders for him to resign the office.
+She has been threatening you and Sir Philip Sidney, whom she considers
+the chief actors and persuaders in the matter, according to information
+received from some persons about my Lord of Leicester."
+
+Davison protested himself amazed at the Secretary's discourse, and at
+once took great pains to show the reasons by which all parties had been
+influenced in the matter of the government.  He declared roundly that if
+the Queen should carry out her present intentions, the Earl would be most
+unworthily disgraced, the cause utterly overthrown, the Queen's honour
+perpetually stained, and that her kingdom would incur great disaster.
+
+Directly after this brief conversation, Walsingham went up stairs to the
+Queen, while Davison proceeded to the apartments of Sir Christopher
+Hatton.  Thence he was soon summoned to the royal presence, and found
+that he had not been misinformed as to the temper of her Majesty.  The
+Queen was indeed in a passion, and began swearing at Davison so soon as
+he got into the chamber; abusing Leicester for having accepted the offer
+of the States, against her many times repeated commandment, and the
+ambassador for not having opposed his course.  The thing had been done,
+she said, in contempt of her, as if her consent had been of no
+consequence, or as if the matter in no way concerned her.
+
+So soon as she paused to take breath, the envoy modestly, but firmly,
+appealed to her reason, that she would at any rate lend him a patient and
+favourable ear, in which case he doubted not that she would form a more
+favourable opinion of the case than she had hitherto done: He then
+entered into a long discourse upon the state of the Netherlands before
+the arrival of Leicester, the inclination in many quarters for a peace,
+the "despair that any sound and good fruit would grow of her Majesty's
+cold beginning," the general unpopularity of the States' government, the
+"corruption, partiality, and confusion," which were visible everywhere,
+the perilous condition of the whole cause, and the absolute necessity of
+some immediate reform.
+
+"It was necessary," said Davison, "that some one person of wisdom and
+authority should take the helm.  Among the Netherlanders none was
+qualified for such a charge.  Lord Maurice is a child, poor, and of but
+little respect among them.  Elector Truchsess, Count Hohenlo, Meurs, and
+the rest, strangers and incapable of the burden.  These considerations
+influenced the States to the step which had been taken; without which all
+the rest of her benevolence was to little purpose."  Although the
+contract between the commissioners and the Queen had not literally
+provided for such an arrangement, yet it had always been contemplated by
+the States, who had left themselves without a head until the arrival of
+the Earl.
+
+"Under one pretext or another," continued the envoy, "my Lord of
+Leicester had long delayed to satisfy them,"--(and in so stating he went
+somewhat further in defence of his absent friend than the facts would
+warrant), "for he neither flatly refused it, nor was willing to accept,
+until your Majesty's pleasure should be known."  Certainly the records
+show no reservation of his acceptance until the Queen had been consulted;
+but the defence by Davison of the offending Earl was so much the more
+courageous.
+
+"At length, wearied by their importunity, moved with their reasons, and
+compelled by necessity, he thought it better to take the course he did,"
+proceeded the diplomatist, "for otherwise he must have been an eye-
+witness of the dismemberment of the whole country, which could not be
+kept together but by a reposed hope in her Majesty's found favour, which
+had been utterly despaired of by his refusal.  He thought it better by
+accepting to increase the honour, profit; and surety, of her Majesty, and
+the good of the cause, than, by refusing, to utterly hazard the one, and
+overthrow the other."
+
+To all this and more, well and warmly urged by Davison; the Queen
+listened by fits and starts, often interrupting his discourse by violent
+abuse of Leicester, accusing him of contempt for her, charging him with
+thinking more of his own particular greatness than of her honour and
+service, and then "digressing into old griefs," said the envoy, "too long
+and tedious to write."  She vehemently denounced Davison also for
+dereliction of duty in not opposing the measure; but he manfully declared
+that he never deemed so meanly of her Majesty or of his Lordship as to
+suppose that she would send him, or that he would go to the Provinces,
+merely," to take command of the relics of Mr. Norris's worn and decayed
+troops."  Such a change, protested Davison, was utterly unworthy a person
+of the Earl's quality, and utterly unsuited to the necessity of the time
+and state.
+
+But Davison went farther in defence of Leicester.  He had been present at
+many of the conferences with the Netherland envoys during the preceding
+summer in England, and he now told the Queen stoutly to her face that she
+herself, or at any rate one of her chief counsellors, in her hearing and
+his, had expressed her royal determination not to prevent the acceptance
+of whatever authority the states might choose to confer, by any one whom
+she might choose to send.  She had declined to accept it in person, but
+she had been willing that it should be wielded by her deputy; and this
+remembrance of his had been confirmed by that of one of the commissioners
+since their return.  She had never--Davison maintained--sent him one
+single line having any bearing on the subject.  Under such circumstances,
+"I might have been accused of madness,", said he, "to have dissuaded an
+action in my poor opinion so necessary and expedient for your Majesty's
+honour, surety, and greatness."  If it were to do over again, he avowed,
+and "were his opinion demanded, he could give no other advice than that
+which he had given, having received no contrary, commandment from her
+Highness."
+
+And so ended the first evening's long and vehement debate, and Davison
+departed, "leaving her," as he said, "much qualified, though in many
+points unsatisfied."  She had however, absolutely refused to receive a
+letter from Leicester, with which he had been charged, but which, in her
+opinion, had better have been written two months before.
+
+The next day, it seemed, after all, that Heneage was to be despatched,
+"in great heat," upon his mission.  Davison accordingly requested an
+immediate audience.  So soon as admitted to the presence he burst into
+tears, and implored the Queen to pause before she should inflict the
+contemplated disgrace on one whom she had hitherto so highly esteemed,
+and, by so doing, dishonour herself and imperil both countries.  But the
+Queen was more furious than ever that morning, returning at every pause
+in the envoy's discourse to harp upon the one string--"How dared he come
+to such a decision without at least imparting it to me?"--and so on, as
+so many times before.  And again Davison, with all the eloquence and with
+every soothing art he had at command; essayed to pour oil upon the waves.
+Nor was he entirely unsuccessful; for presently the Queen became so calm
+again that he ventured once more to present the rejected letter of the
+Earl.  She broke the seal, and at sight of the well-known handwriting she
+became still more gentle; and so soon as she had read the first of her
+favourite's honied phrases she thrust the precious document into her
+pocket, in order to read it afterwards, as Davison observed, at her
+leisure.
+
+The opening thus successfully made, and the envoy having thus, "by many
+insinuations," prepared her to lend him a "more patient and willing ear
+than she had vouchsafed before," he again entered into a skilful and
+impassioned argument to show the entire wisdom of the course pursued by
+the Earl.
+
+It is unnecessary to repeat the conversation.  Since to say that no man
+could have more eloquently and faithfully supported an absent friend
+under difficulties than Davison now defended the Earl.  The line of
+argument is already familiar to the reader, and, in truth, the Queen had
+nothing to reply, save to insist upon the governor's delinquency in
+maintaining so long and inexplicable a silence.  And--at this thought,
+in spite of the envoy's eloquence, she went off again in a paroxysm of
+anger, abusing the Earl, and deeply censuring Davison for his "peremptory
+and partial dealing."
+
+"I had conceived a better opinion of you," she said, "and I had intended
+more good to you than I now find you worthy of."
+
+"I humbly thank your Highness," replied the ambassador, "but I take
+yourself to witness that I have never affected or sought any such grace
+at your hands.  And if your Majesty persists in the dangerous course on
+which you are now entering, I only pray your leave, in recompense for all
+my travails, to retire myself home, where I may spend the rest of my life
+in praying for you, whom Salvation itself is not able to save, if these
+purposes are continued.  Henceforth, Madam, he is to be deemed happiest
+who is least interested in the public service."
+
+And so ended the second day's debate.  The next day the Lord-Treasurer,
+who, according to Davison, employed himself diligently--as did also
+Walsingham and Hatton--in dissuading the Queen from the violent measures
+which she had resolved upon, effected so much of a change as to procure
+the insertion of those qualifying clauses in Heneage's instructions which
+had been previously disallowed.  The open and public disgrace of the
+Earl, which was to have been peremptorily demanded, was now to be
+deferred, if such a measure seemed detrimental to the public service.
+Her Majesty, however, protested herself as deeply offended as ever,
+although she had consented to address a brief, somewhat mysterious, but
+benignant letter of compliment to the States.
+
+Soon after this Davison retired for a few days from the court, having
+previously written to the Earl that "the heat of her Majesty's offence to
+his Lordship was abating every day somewhat, and that she was disposed
+both to hear and to speak more temperately of him."
+
+He implored him accordingly to a "more diligent entertaining of her by
+wise letters and messages, wherein his slackness hitherto appeared to
+have bred a great part of this unkindness."  He observed also that the
+"traffic of peace was still going on underhand; but whether to use it as
+a second string to our bow, if the first should fail, or of any settled
+inclination thereunto, he could not affirm."
+
+Meantime Sir Thomas Heneage was despatched on his mission to the Staten,
+despite all the arguments and expostulations of Walsingham, Burghley,
+Hatton, and Davison.  All the Queen's counsellors were unequivocally in
+favour of sustaining Leicester; and Heneage was not a little embarrassed
+as to the proper method of conducting the affair.  Everything, in truth,
+was in a most confused condition.  He hardly understood to what power he
+was accredited.  "Heneage writes even now unto me," said Walsingham to
+Davison, "that he cannot yet receive any information who be the States,
+which he thinketh will be a great maimer unto him in his negotiation.  I
+have told him that it is an assembly much like that of our burgesses that
+represent the State, and that my Lord of Leicester may cause some of them
+to meet together, unto whom he may deliver his letters and messages."
+Thus the new envoy was to request the culprit to summon the very assembly
+by which his downfall and disgrace were to be solemnized, as formally as
+had been so recently his elevation to the height of power.  The prospect
+was not an agreeable one, and the less so because of his general want of
+familiarity with the constitutional forms of the country he was about to
+visit.  Davison accordingly, at the request of Sir Francis, furnished
+Heneage with much valuable information and advice upon the subject.
+
+Thus provided with information, forewarned of danger, furnished with a
+double set of letters from the Queen to the States--the first expressed
+in language of extreme exasperation, the others couched in almost
+affectionate terms--and laden with messages brimfull of wrathful
+denunciation from her Majesty to one who was notoriously her Majesty's
+dearly-beloved, Sir Thomas Heneage set forth on his mission.  These were
+perilous times for the Davisons and the Heneages, when even Leicesters
+and Burghleys were scarcely secure.
+
+Meantime the fair weather at court could not be depended upon from one
+day to another, and the clouds were perpetually returning after the rain.
+
+"Since my second and third day's audience," said Davison, "the storms I
+met with at my arrival have overblown and abated daily.  On Saturday
+again she fell into some new heat, which lasted not long.  This day I was
+myself at the court, and found her in reasonable good terms, though she
+will not yet seem satisfied to me either with the matter or manner of
+your proceeding, notwithstanding all the labour I have taken in that
+behalf.  Yet I find not her Majesty altogether so sharp as some men look,
+though her favour has outwardly cooled in respect both of this action and
+of our plain proceeding with her here in defence thereof."
+
+The poor Countess--whose imaginary exodus, with the long procession of
+coaches and side-saddles, had excited so much ire--found herself in a
+most distressing position.  "I have not seen my Lady these ten or twelve
+days," said Davison.  "To-morrow I hope to do my duty towards her.
+I found her greatly troubled with tempestuous news she received from
+court, but somewhat comforted when she understood how I had proceeded
+with her Majesty .  .  .  .  But these passions overblown, I hope her
+Majesty will have a gracious regard both towards myself and the cause."
+
+But the passions seemed not likely to blow over so soon as was desirable.
+Leicester's brother the Earl of Warwick took a most gloomy view of the
+whole transaction, and hoarser than the raven's was his boding tone.
+
+"Well, our mistress's extreme rage doth increase rather than diminish,"
+he wrote, "and she giveth out great threatening words against you.
+Therefore make the best assurance you can for yourself, and trust not her
+oath, for that her malice is great and unquenchable in the wisest of
+their opinions here, and as for other friendships, as far as I can learn,
+it is as doubtful as the other.  Wherefore, my good brother, repose your
+whole trust in God, and He will defend you in despite of all your
+enemies.  And let this be a great comfort to you, and so it is likewise
+to myself and all your assured friends, and that is, that you were never
+so honoured and loved in your life amongst all good people as you are at
+this day, only for dealing so nobly and wisely in this action as you
+have done; so that, whatsoever cometh of it, you have done your part.
+I praise God from my heart for it.  Once again, have great care of
+yourself, I mean for your safety, and if she will needs revoke you, to
+the overthrowing of the cause, if I were as you, if I could not be
+assured there, I would go to the farthest part of Christendom rather than
+ever come into England again.  Take heed whom you trust, for that you
+have some false boys about you."
+
+And the false boys were busy enough, and seemed likely to triumph in
+the result of their schemes.  For a glance into the secret correspondence
+of Mary of Scotland has already revealed the Earl to us constantly
+surrounded by men in masks.  Many of those nearest his person, and of
+highest credit out of England, were his deadly foes, sworn to compass
+his dishonour, his confusion, and eventually his death, and in
+correspondence with his most powerful adversaries at home and abroad.
+Certainly his path was slippery and perilous along those icy summits of
+power, and he had need to look well to his footsteps.
+
+Before Heneage had arrived in the Netherlands, Sir Thomas Shirley,
+despatched by Leicester to England with a commission to procure supplies
+for the famishing soldiers, and, if possible, to mitigate the Queen's
+wrath, had, been admitted more than once to her Majesty's presence.  He
+had fought the Earl's battle as manfully as Davison had done, and, like
+that envoy, had received nothing in exchange for his plausible arguments
+but bitter words and big oaths.  Eight days after his arrival he was
+introduced by Hatton into the privy chamber, and at the moment of his
+entrance was received with a volley of execrations.
+
+"I did expressly and peremptorily forbid his acceptance of the absolute
+government, in the hearing of divers of my council," said the Queen.
+
+Shirley.--"The necessity of the case was imminent, your Highness.
+It was his Lordship's intent to do all for your Majesty's service.
+Those countries did expect him as a governor at his first landing,
+and the States durst do no other than satisfy the people also with that
+opinion.  The people's mislike of their present government is such and so
+great as that the name of States is grown odious amongst them.  Therefore
+the States, doubting the furious rage of the people, conferred the
+authority upon his Lordship with incessant suit to him to receive it.
+Notwithstanding this, however, he did deny it until he saw plainly both
+confusion and ruin of that country if he should refuse.  On the other
+hand, when he had seen into their estates, his lordship found great
+profit and commodity like to come unto your Majesty by your acceptance of
+it.  Your Highness may now have garrisons of English in as many towns as
+pleaseth you, without any more charge than you are now at.  Nor can any
+peace be made with Spain at any time hereafter, but through you: and by
+you.  Your Majesty should remember, likewise, that if a man of another
+nation had been chosen governor it might have wrought great danger.
+Moreover it would have been an indignity that your lieutenant-general
+should of necessity be under him that so should have been elected.
+Finally, this is a stop to any other that may affect the place of
+government there."
+
+Queen (who has manifested many signs of impatience during this
+discourse).--"Your speech is all in vain.  His Lordship's proceeding is
+sufficient to make me infamous to all princes, having protested the
+contrary, as I have done, in a book which is translated into divers and
+sundry languages.  His Lordship, being my servant, a creature of my own,
+ought not, in duty towards me, have entered into this course without my
+knowledge and good allowance."
+
+Shirley.--"But the world hath conceived a high judgment of your Majesty's
+great wisdom and providence; shown by your assailing the King of Spain at
+one time both in the Low Countries and also by Sir Francis Drake.  I do
+assure myself that the same judgment which did first cause you to take
+this in hand must continue a certain knowledge in your Majesty that one
+of these actions must needs stand much better by the other.  If Sir
+Frances do prosper, then all is well.  And though he should not prosper,
+yet this hold that his Lordship hath taken for you on the Low Countries
+must always assure an honourable peace at your Highness's pleasure.  I
+beseech your Majesty to remember that to the King of Spain the government
+of his Lordship is no greater matter than if he were but your lieutenant-
+general there; but the voyage of Sir Francis is of much greater offence
+than all."
+
+Queen (interrupting).--"I can very well answer for Sir Francis.
+Moreover, if need be, the gentleman careth not if I should disavow him."
+
+Shirley.--"Even so standeth my Lord, if your disavowing of him may also
+stand with your Highness's favour towards him.  Nevertheless; should this
+bruit of your mislike of his Lordship's authority there come unto the
+ears of those people; being a nation both sudden and suspicious, and
+having been heretofore used to stratagem--I fear it may work some strange
+notion in them, considering that, at this time, there is an increase of
+taxation raised upon them, the bestowing whereof perchance they know
+not of.  His Lordship's giving; up of the government may leave them
+altogether without government, and in worse case than they were ever
+in before.  For now the authority of the States is dissolved, and his
+Lordship's government is the only thing that holdeth them together.
+I do beseech your Highness, then, to consider well of it, and if there
+be any private cause for which you take grief against his Lordship,
+nevertheless, to have regard unto the public cause, and to have a care
+of your own safety, which in many wise men's opinions, standeth much
+upon the good maintenance and upholding of this matter."
+
+Queen.--"I believe nothing of, what you say concerning the dissolving of
+the authority of the States.  I know well enough that the States do
+remain states still.  I mean not to do harm to the cause, but only to
+reform that which his Lordship hath done beyond his warrant from me."
+
+And with this the Queen swept suddenly from the apartment.  Sir Thomas,
+at different stages of the conversation, had in vain besought her to
+accept a letter from the Earl which had been entrusted to his care.
+She obstinately refused to touch it.  Shirley had even had recourse to
+stratagem: affecting ignorance on many points concerning which the Queen
+desired information, and suggesting that doubtless she would find those
+matters fully explained in his Lordship's letter.  The artifice was in
+vain, and the discussion was, on the whole, unsatisfactory.  Yet there is
+no doubt that the Queen had had the worst of the argument, and she was
+far too sagacious a politician not to feel the weight of that which had
+been urged so often in defence of the course pursued.  But it was with
+her partly a matter of temper and offended pride, perhaps even of wounded
+affection.
+
+On the following morning Shirley saw the Queen walking in the garden of
+the palace, and made bold to accost her.  Thinking, as he said, "to test
+her affection to Lord Leicester by another means," the artful Sir Thomas
+stepped up to her, and observed that his Lordship was seriously ill.
+"It is feared," he said, "that the Earl is again attacked by the disease
+of which Dr. Goodrowse did once cure him.  Wherefore his Lordship is now
+a humble suitor to your Highness that it would please you to spare
+Goodrowse, and give him leave to go thither for some time."
+
+The Queen was instantly touched.
+
+"Certainly--with all my heart, with all my heart, he shall have him," she
+replied, "and sorry I am that his Lordship hath that need of him."
+
+"And indeed," returned sly Sir Thomas, "your Highness is a very gracious
+prince, who are pleased not to suffer his Lordship to perish in health,
+though otherwise you remain deeply offended with him."
+
+"You know my mind," returned Elizabeth, now all the queen again, and
+perhaps suspecting the trick; "I may not endure that any man should alter
+my commission and the authority that I gave him, upon his own fancies and
+without me."
+
+With this she instantly summoned one of her gentlemen, in order to break
+off the interview, fearing that Shirley was about to enter again upon a
+discussion of the whole subject, and again to attempt the delivery of the
+Earl's letter.
+
+In all this there was much of superannuated coquetry, no doubt, and much
+of Tudor despotism, but there was also a strong infusion of artifice.
+For it will soon be necessary to direct attention to certain secret
+transactions of an important nature in which the Queen was engaged, and
+which were even hidden from the all-seeing eye of Walsingham--although
+shrewdly suspected both by that statesman and by Leicester--but which
+were most influential in modifying her policy at that moment towards the
+Netherlands.
+
+There could be no doubt, however, of the stanch and strenuous manner in
+which the delinquent Earl was supported by his confidential messengers
+and by some of his fellow-councillors.  His true friends were urgent that
+the great cause in which he was engaged should be forwarded sincerely and
+without delay.  Shirley had been sent for money; but to draw money from
+Elizabeth was like coining her life-blood, drachma by drachma.
+
+"Your Lordship is like to have but a poor supply of money at this time,"
+said Sir Thomas.  "To be plain with you, I fear she groweth weary of the
+charge, and will hardly be brought to deal thoroughly in the action."
+
+He was also more explicit than he might have been--had he been better
+informed as to the disposition of the chief personages of the court,
+concerning whose temper the absent Earl was naturally anxious.  Hatton
+was most in favour at the moment, and it was through Hatton that the
+communications upon Netherland matters passed; "for," said Shirley, "she
+will hardly endure Mr. Secretary (Walsingham) to speak unto her therein."
+
+"And truly, my Lord," he continued, "as Mr. Secretary is a noble, good,
+and true friend unto you, so doth Mr. Vice-Chamberlain show himself an
+honourable, true, and faithful gentleman, and doth carefully and most
+like a good friend for your Lordship."
+
+And thus very succinctly and graphically had the envoy painted the
+situation to his principal.  "Your Lordship now sees things just as they
+stand," he moralized.  "Your Lordship is exceeding wise.  You know the
+Queen and her nature best of any man.  You know all men here.  Your
+Lordship can judge the sequel by this that you see: only this I must tell
+your Lordship, I perceive that fears and doubts from thence are like to
+work better effects here than comforts and assurance.  I think it my part
+to send your Lordship this as it is, rather than to be silent."
+
+And with these rather ominous insinuations the envoy concluded for the
+time his narrative.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Intolerable tendency to puns
+New Years Day in England, 11th January by the New Style
+Peace and quietness is brought into a most dangerous estate
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v44
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
+From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609
+
+By John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+History United Netherlands, Volume 45, 1586
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII., Part 2.
+
+     Leicester's Letters to his Friends--Paltry Conduct of the Earl to
+     Davison--He excuses himself at Davison's Expense--His Letter to
+     Burghley--Effect of the Queen's Letters to the States--Suspicion and
+     Discontent in Holland--States excuse their Conduct to the Queen--
+     Leicester discredited in Holland--Evil Consequences to Holland and
+     England--Magic: Effect of a Letter from Leicester--The Queen
+     appeased--Her Letters to the States and the Earl--She permits the
+     granted Authority----Unhappy Results of the Queen's Course--Her
+     variable Moods--She attempts to deceive Walsingham--Her Injustice to
+     Heneage--His Perplexity and Distress--Humiliating Position of
+     Leicester--His melancholy Letters to the Queen--He receives a little
+     Consolation--And writes more cheerfully--The Queen is more
+     benignant--The States less contented than the Earl--His Quarrels
+     with them begin.
+
+While these storms were blowing and "overblowing" in England, Leicester
+remained greatly embarrassed and anxious in Holland.  He had sown the
+wind more extensively than he had dreamed of when accepting the
+government, and he was now awaiting, with much trepidation, the usual
+harvest: And we have seen that it was rapidly ripening.  Meantime, the
+good which he had really effected in the Provinces by the course he had
+taken was likely to be neutralized by the sinister rumours as to his
+impending disgrace, while the enemy was proportionally encouraged.
+"I understand credibly," he said, "that the Prince of Parma feels himself
+in great jollity that her Majesty doth rather mislike than allow of our
+doings here, which; if it be true, let her be sure her own sweet self
+shall first smart."
+
+Moreover; the English troops were, as we have seen, mere shoeless,
+shivering, starving vagabonds.  The Earl had generously advanced very
+large sums of money from his own pocket to relieve their necessity.  The
+States, on the other hand, had voluntarily increased the monthly
+contribution of 200,000 florins, to which their contract with Elizabeth
+obliged them, and were more disposed than ever they had been since the
+death of Orange to proceed vigorously and harmoniously against the common
+enemy of Christendom.  Under such circumstances it may well be imagined
+that there was cause on Leicester's part for deep mortification at the
+tragical turn which the Queen's temper seemed to be taking.
+
+"I know not," he said, "how her Majesty doth mean to dispose of me.
+It hath grieved me more than I can express that for faithful and good
+service she should so deeply conceive against me.  God knows with what
+mind I have served her Highness, and perhaps some others might have
+failed.  Yet she is neither tied one jot by covenant or promise by me in
+any way, nor at one groat the more charges, but myself two or three
+thousand pounds sterling more than now is like to be well spent.  I will
+desire no partial speech in my favour.  If my doings be ill for her
+Majesty and the realm, let me feel the smart of it.  The cause is now
+well forward; let not her majesty suffer it to quail.  If you will have
+it proceed to good effect, send away Sir William Pelham with all the
+haste you can.  I mean not to complain, but with so weighty a cause as
+this is, few men have been so weakly assisted.  Her Majesty hath far
+better choice for my place, and with any that may succeed me let Sir
+William Pelham be first that may come.  I speak from my soul for her
+Majesty's service.  I am for myself upon an hour's warning to obey her
+good pleasure."
+
+Thus far the Earl had maintained his dignity.  He had yielded to the
+solicitations of the States, and had thereby exceeded his commission, and
+gratified his ambition, but he had in no wise forfeited his self-respect.
+But--so soon as the first unquestionable intelligence of the passion to
+which the Queen had given way at his misdoings reached him--he began to
+whimper, The straightforward tone which Davison had adopted in his
+interviews with Elizabeth, and the firmness with which he had defended
+the cause of his absent friend, at a moment when he had plunged himself
+into disgrace, was worthy of applause.  He deserved at least a word of
+honest thanks.
+
+Ignoble however was the demeanor of the Earl towards the man--for whom
+he had but recently been unable to invent eulogies sufficiently warm--
+so soon as he conceived the possibility of sacrificing his friend as the
+scape-goat for his own fault.  An honest schoolboy would have scorned to
+leave thus in the lurch a comrade who had been fighting his battles so
+honestly.
+
+"How earnest I was," he wrote to the lords of the council, 9th March,
+1586, "not only to acquaint her Majesty, but immediately upon the first
+motion made by the States, to send Mr. Davison over to her with letters,
+I doubt not but he will truly affirm for me; yea, and how far against my
+will it was, notwithstanding any reasons delivered me, that he and others
+persisted in, to have me accept first of this place .  .  .  .  .  The
+extremity of the case, and my being persuaded that Mr. Davison might have
+better satisfied her Majesty, than I perceive he can, caused, me-neither
+arrogantly nor contemptuously, but even merely and faithfully--to do her
+Majesty the best service."
+
+He acknowledged, certainly, that Davison had been influenced by honest
+motives, although his importunities had been the real cause of the Earl's
+neglect of his own obligations.  But he protested that he had himself,
+only erred through an excessive pliancy to the will of others.  "My
+yielding was my own fault," he admitted, "whatsoever his persuasions;
+but far from a contemptuous heart, or else God pluck out both heart and
+bowels with utter shame."
+
+So soon as Sir Thomas Heneage had presented himself, and revealed the
+full extent of the Queen's wrath, the Earl's disposition to cast the
+whole crime on the shoulders of Davison became quite undisguised.
+
+"I thank you for your letters," wrote Leicester to Walsingham, "though
+you can send me no comfort.  Her Majesty doth deal hardly to believe so
+ill of me.  It is true I faulted, but she doth not consider what
+commodities she hath withal, and herself no way engaged for it, as Mr.
+Davison might have better declared it, if it had pleased him.  And I
+must thank him only for my blame, and so he will confess to you, for,
+I protest before God, no necessity here could have made me leave her
+Majesty unacquainted with the cause before I would have accepted of it,
+but only his so earnest pressing me with his faithfid assured promise to
+discharge me, however her Majesty should take it.  For you all see there
+she had no other cause to be offended but this, and, by the Lord, he was
+the only cause; albeit it is no sufficient allegation, being as I am .  .
+.  .  .  He had, I think, saved all to have told her, as he promised me.
+But now it is laid upon me, God send the cause to take no harm, my grief
+must be the less.
+
+"How far Mr. Heneage's commission shall deface me I know not.  He is wary
+to observe his commission, and I consent withal.  I know the time will be
+her Majesty will be sorry for it.  In the meantime I am too, too weary of
+the high dignity.  I would that any that could serve her Majesty were
+placed in it, and I to sit down with all my losses."
+
+In more manful strain he then alluded to the sufferings of his army.
+"Whatsoever become of me," he said, "give me leave to speak for the poor
+soldiers.  If they be not better maintained, being in this strange
+country, there will be neither good service done, nor be without great
+dishonour to her Majesty .  .  .  .  .  Well, you see the wants, and it
+is one cause that will glad me to be rid of this heavy high calling, and
+wish me at my poor cottage again, if any I shall find.  But let her
+Majesty pay them well, and appoint such a man as Sir William Pelham to
+govern them, and she never wan more honour than these men here will do,
+I am persuaded."
+
+That the Earl was warmly urged by all most conversant with Netherland
+politics to assume the government was a fact admitted by all.  That he
+manifested rather eagerness than reluctance on the subject, and that his
+only hesitation arose from the proposed restraints upon the power, not
+from scruples about accepting the power, are facts upon record.  There
+is nothing save his own assertion to show any backwardness on his part
+to snatch the coveted prize; and that assertion was flatly denied by
+Davison, and was indeed refuted by every circumstance in the case.  It
+is certain that he had concealed from Davison the previous prohibitions
+of the Queen.  He could anticipate much better than could Davison,
+therefore, the probable indignation of the Queen.  It is strange then
+that he should have shut his eyes to it so wilfully, and stranger still
+that he should have relied on the envoy's eloquence instead of his own to
+mitigate that emotion.  Had he placed his defence simply upon its true
+basis, the necessity of the case, and the impossibility of carrying out
+the Queen's intentions in any other way, it would be difficult to censure
+him; but that he should seek to screen himself by laying the whole blame
+on a subordinate, was enough to make any honest man who heard him hang
+his head.  "I meant not to do it, but Davison told me to do it, please
+your Majesty, and if there was naughtiness in it, he said he would make
+it all right with your Majesty."  Such, reduced to its simplest
+expression, was the defence of the magnificent Earl of Leicester.
+
+And as he had gone cringing and whining to his royal mistress, so it was
+natural that he should be brutal and blustering to his friend.
+
+"By your means," said he, "I have fallen into her Majesty's deep
+displeasure .  .  .  .  .  If you had delivered to her the truth of my
+dealing, her Highness never could have conceived, as I perceive she doth
+.  .  .  .  .  Nor doth her Majesty know how hardly I was drawn to accept
+this place before I had acquainted her--as to which you promised you
+would not only give her full satisfaction, but would, procure me great
+thanks. . . . . You did chiefly persuade me to take this charge upon me
+. . . . You can remember how many treaties you and others had with the
+States, before I agreed; for all yours and their persuasion to take it
+. . . . . You gave me assurance to satisfy her Majesty, but I see not
+that you have done anything . . . . I did not hide from you the doubt
+I had of her Majesty's ill taking it . . . . . You chiefly brought me
+into it . . . . and it could no way have been heavy to you, though you
+had told the uttermost of your own doing, as you faithfully promised you
+would . . . . . I did very unwillingly come into the matter, doubting
+that to fall out which is come to pass . . . . and it doth so fall out
+by your negligent carelessness, whereof I many hundred times told you
+that you would both mar the goodness of the matter, and breed me her
+Majesty's displeasure . . . . . Thus fare you well, and except your
+embassages have better success, I shall have no cause to commend them."
+
+And so was the unfortunate Davison ground into finest dust between the
+upper and lower millstones of royal wrath and loyal subserviency.
+
+Meantime the other special envoy had made his appearance in the
+Netherlands; the other go-between between the incensed Queen and the
+backsliding favourite.  It has already been made sufficiently obvious,
+by the sketch given of his instructions, that his mission was a delicate
+one.  In obedience to those instructions, Heneage accordingly made his
+appearance before the council, and, in Leicester's presence, delivered to
+them the severe and biting reprimand which Elizabeth had chosen to
+inflict upon the States and upon the governor.  The envoy performed his
+ungracious task as daintily, as he could, and after preliminary
+consultation with Leicester; but the proud Earl was deeply mortified."
+The fourteenth day of this month of March," said he, "Sir Thomas Heneage
+delivered a very sharp letter from her Majesty to the council of estate,
+besides his message--myself being, present, for so was her Majesty's
+pleasure, as he said, and I do think he did but as he was commanded.  How
+great a grief it must be to an honest heart and a true, faithful servant,
+before his own face, to a company of very wise and grave counsellors, who
+had conceived a marvellous opinion before of my credit with her Majesty,
+to be charged now with a manifest and wilful contempt!  Matter enough to
+have broken any man's heart, that looked rather for thanks, as God doth
+know I did when I first heard of Mr. Heneage's arrival--I must say to
+your Lordship, for discharge of my duty, I can be no fit man to serve
+here--my disgrace is too great--protesting to you that since that day I
+cannot find it in my heart to come into that place, where, by my own
+sufferings torn, I was made to be thought so lewd a person."
+
+He then comforted himself--as he had a right to do--with the reflection
+that this disgrace inflicted was more than he deserved, and that such
+would be the opinion of those by whom he was surrounded.
+
+"Albeit one thing," he said, "did greatly comfort me, that they all best
+knew the wrong was great I had, and that her Majesty was very wrongfully
+informed of the state of my cause.  I doubt not but they can and will
+discharge me, howsoever they shall satisfy her Majesty.  And as I would
+rather wish for death than justly to deserve her displeasure; so, good my
+Lord, this disgrace not coming for any ill service to her, pray procure
+me a speedy resolution, that I may go hide me and pray for her.  My heart
+is broken, though thus far I can quiet myself, that I know I have done
+her Majesty as faithful and good service in these countries as ever she
+had done her since she was Queen of England .  .  .  .  .  Under
+correction, my good Lord, I have had Halifax law--to be condemned first
+and inquired upon after.  I pray God that no man find this measure that I
+have done, and deserved no worse."
+
+He defended himself--as Davison had already defended him--upon the
+necessities of the case.
+
+"I, a poor gentleman," he said, "who have wholly depended upon herself
+alone--and now, being commanded to a service of the greatest importance
+that ever her Majesty employed any servant in, and finding the occasion
+so serving me, and the necessity of time such as would not permit such
+delays, flatly seeing that if that opportunity were lost, the like again
+for her service and the good of the realm was never, to be looked for,
+presuming upon the favour of my prince, as many servants have done,
+exceeding somewhat thereupon, rather than breaking any part of my
+commission, taking upon me a place whereby I found these whole countries
+could be held at her best devotion, without binding her Majesty to any
+such matter as she had forbidden to the States before finding, I say,
+both the time and opportunity to serve, and no lack but to trust to her
+gracious acceptation, I now feel that how good, how honourable, how
+profitable soever it be, it is turned to a worse part than if I had
+broken all her commissions and commandments, to the greatest harm, and
+dishonour, and danger, that may be imagined against her person, state,
+and dignity."
+
+He protested, not without a show of reason, that he was like to be worse
+punished "for well-doing than any man that had committed a most heinous
+or traitorous offence," and he maintained that if he had not accepted the
+government, as he had done, "the whole State had been gone and wholly
+lost."  All this--as we have seen--had already been stoutly urged by
+Davison, in the very face of the tempest, but with no result, except to
+gain the, enmity of both parties to the quarrel.  The ungrateful
+Leicester now expressed confidence that the second go-between would be
+more adroit than the first had proved.  "The causes why," said he, "Mr.
+Davison could have told--no man better--but Mr. Heneage can now tell, who
+hath sought to the uttermost the bottom of all things.  I will stand to
+his report, whether glory or vain desire of title caused me to step one
+foot forward in the matter.  My place was great enough and high enough
+before, with much less trouble than by this, besides the great
+indignation of her Majesty .  .  .  .  .  If I had overslipt the good
+occasion then in danger, I had been worthy to be hanged, and to be taken
+for a most lewd servant to her Majesty, and a dishonest wretch to my
+country."
+
+But diligently as Heneage had sought to the bottom of all things, he had
+not gained the approbation of Sidney.  Sir Philip thought that the new
+man had only ill botched a piece of work that had been most awkwardly
+contrived from the beginning.  "Sir Thomas Heneage," said he, "hath with
+as much honesty, in my opinion done as much hurt as any man this twelve-
+month hath done with naughtiness.  But I hope in God, when her Majesty
+finds the truth of things, her graciousness will not utterly, overthrow a
+cause so behooveful and costly unto her."
+
+He briefly warned the government that most disastrous effects were likely
+to ensue, if the Earl should be publicly disgraced, and the recent action
+of the States reversed.  The penny-wise economy, too, of the Queen, was
+rapidly proving a most ruinous extravagance.  "I only cry for Flushing;"
+said Sidney, "but, unless the monies be sent over, there will some
+terrible accident follow, particularly to the cautionary towns, if her
+Majesty mean to have them cautions."
+
+The effect produced by the first explosion of the Queen's wrath was
+indeed one of universal suspicion and distrust.  The greatest care had
+been taken, however, that the affair should be delicately handled, for
+Heneage, while, doing as much hurt by honesty as, others by naughtiness,
+had modified his course as much as he dared in deference to the opinions
+of the Earl himself, and that of his English counsellors.  The great
+culprit himself, assisted by his two lawyers, Clerk and Killigrew--had
+himself drawn the bill of his own indictment.  The letters of the Queen
+to the States, to the council, and to the Earl himself, were, of
+necessity, delivered, but the reprimand which Heneage had been instructed
+to fulminate was made as harmless as possible.  It was arranged that he
+should make a speech before the council; but abstain from a protocol.
+The oration was duly pronounced, and it was, of necessity, stinging.
+Otherwise the disobedience to the Queen, would have been flagrant.  But
+the pain inflicted was to disappear with the first castigation.  The
+humiliation was to be public and solemn, but it was not to be placed on
+perpetual record.
+
+"We thought best," said Leicester, Heneage, Clerk, and Killigrew--"In
+according to her Majesty's secret instructions--to take that course which
+might least endanger the weak estate of the Provinces--that is to say, to
+utter so much in words as we hoped might satisfy her excellent Majesty's
+expectation, and yet leave them nothing in writing to confirm that which
+was secretly spread in many places to the hindrance of the good course of
+settling these affairs.  Which speech, after Sir Thomas Heneage had
+devised, and we both perused and allowed, he, by our consent and advice,
+pronounced to the council of state. This we did think needful--especially
+because every one of the council that was present at the reading of her
+Majesty's first letters, was of the full mind, that if her Majesty should
+again show the least mislike of the present government, or should not by
+her next letters confirm it, they, were all undone--for that every man
+would cast with himself which way to make his peace."
+
+Thus adroitly had the "poor gentleman, who could not find it in his heart
+to come again into the place, where--by his own sufferings torn--he was
+made to appear so lewd a person"--provided that there should remain no
+trace of that lewdness and of his sovereign's displeasure, upon the
+record of the States.  It was not long, too, before the Earl was enabled
+to surmount his mortification; but the end was not yet.
+
+The universal suspicion, consequent on these proceedings, grew most
+painful.  It pointed to one invariable quarter.  It was believed by all
+that the Queen was privately treating for peace, and that the transaction
+was kept a secret not only from the States but from her own most trusted
+counsellors also.  It would be difficult to exaggerate the pernicious
+effects of this suspicion.  Whether it was a well-grounded one or not,
+will be shown in a subsequent chapter, but there is no doubt that the
+vigour of the enterprise was thus sapped at a most critical moment.  The
+Provinces had never been more heartily banded together since the fatal
+10th of July, 1584, than they were in the early spring of 1586.  They
+were rapidly organizing their own army, and, if the Queen had manifested
+more sympathy with her own starving troops, the united Englishmen and
+Hollanders would have been invincible even by Alexander Farnese.
+
+Moreover, they had sent out nine war-vessels to cruise off the Cape Verd
+Islands for the homeward-bound Spanish treasure fleet from America, with
+orders, if they missed it, to proceed to the West Indies; so that, said
+Leicester, "the King of Spain will have enough to do between these men
+and Drake."  All parties had united in conferring a generous amount of
+power upon the Earl, who was, in truth, stadholder-general, under grant
+from the States--and both Leicester and the Provinces themselves were
+eager and earnest for the war.  In war alone lay the salvation of England
+and Holland.  Peace was an impossibility.  It seemed to the most
+experienced statesmen of both countries even an absurdity.  It may well
+be imagined, therefore, that the idea of an underhand negotiation by
+Elizabeth would cause a frenzy in the Netherlands.  In Leicester's
+opinion, nothing short of a general massacre of the English would be the
+probable consequence.  "No doubt," said he, "the very way it is to put us
+all to the sword here.  For mine own part it would be happiest for me,
+though I wish and trust to lose my life in better sort."
+
+Champagny, however, was giving out mysterious hints that the King of
+Spain could have peace with England when he wished for it.  Sir Thomas
+Cecil, son of Lord Burghley, on whose countenance the States especially
+relied, was returning on sick-leave from his government of the Brill,
+and this sudden departure of so eminent a personage, joined with the
+public disavowal of the recent transaction between Leicester and the
+Provinces, was producing a general and most sickening apprehension as to
+the Queen's good faith.  The Earl did not fail to urge these matters most
+warmly on the consideration of the English council, setting forth that
+the States were stanch for the war, but that they would be beforehand
+with her if she attempted by underhand means to compass a peace.  "If
+these men once smell any such matter," wrote Leicester to Burghley, "be
+you sure they will soon come before you, to the utter overthrow of her
+Majesty and state for ever."
+
+The Earl was suspecting the "false boys," by whom he was surrounded,
+although it was impossible for him to perceive, as we have been enabled
+to do, the wide-spread and intricate meshes by which he was enveloped.
+"Your Papists in England," said he, "have sent over word to some in this
+company, that all that they ever hoped for is come to pass; that my Lord
+of Leicester shall be called away in greatest indignation with her
+Majesty, and to confirm this of Champagny, I have myself seen a letter
+that her Majesty is in hand with a secret peace.  God forbid! for if it
+be so, her Majesty, her realm, and we, are all undone."
+
+The feeling in the Provinces was still sincerely loyal towards England.
+"These men," said Leicester, "yet honour and most dearly love her
+Majesty, and hardly, I know, will be brought to believe ill of her any
+way."  Nevertheless these rumours, to the discredit of her good faith,
+were doing infinite harm; while the Earl, although keeping his eyes and
+ears wide open, was anxious not to compromise himself any further with
+his sovereign, by appearing himself to suspect her of duplicity.  "Good,
+my Lord," he besought Burghley, "do not let her Majesty know of this
+concerning Champagny as coming from me, for she will think it is done
+for my own cause, which, by the Lord God, it is not, but even on the
+necessity of the case for her own safety, and the realm, and us all.
+Good my Lord, as you will do any good in the matter, let not her Majesty
+understand any piece of it to come from me."
+
+The States-General, on the 25th March, N.S., addressed a respectful
+letter to the Queen, in reply to her vehement chidings.  They expressed
+their deep regret that her Majesty should be so offended with the
+election of the Earl of Leicester as absolute governor.
+
+They confessed that she had just cause of displeasure, but hoped that
+when she should be informed of the whole matter she would rest better
+satisfied with their proceedings.  They stated that the authority was the
+same which had been previously bestowed upon governors-general; observing
+that by the word "absolute," which had been used in designation of that
+authority, nothing more had been intended than to give to the Earl full
+power to execute his commission, while the sovereignty of the country was
+reserved to the people.  This commission, they said, could not be without
+danger revoked.  And therefore they most humbly besought her Majesty to
+approve what had been done, and to remember its conformity with her own
+advice to them, that a multitude of heads, whereby confusion in the
+government is bred, should be avoided.
+
+Leicester, upon the same occasion, addressed a letter to Burghley and
+Walsingham, expressing himself as became a crushed and contrite man,
+never more to raise his drooping head again, but warmly and manfully
+urging upon the attention of the English government--for the honour and
+interest of the Queen herself--"the miserable state of the poor
+soldiers."  The necessity of immediate remittances in order to keep them
+from starving, was most imperious.  For himself, he was smothering his
+wretchedness until he should learn her Majesty's final decision, as to
+what was to become of him.  "Meantime," said he, "I carry my grief
+inward, and will proceed till her Majesty's full pleasure come with as
+little discouragement to the cause as I can.  I pray God her Majesty may
+do that may be best for herself.  For my own part my, heart is broken,
+but not by the enemy."
+
+There is no doubt that the public disgrace thus inflicted upon the
+broken-hearted governor, and the severe censure administered to the
+States by the Queen were both ill-timed and undeserved.  Whatever his
+disingenuousness towards Davison, whatever his disobedience to Elizabeth,
+however ambitious his own secret motives may, have been, there is no
+doubt at all that thus far he had borne himself well in his great office.
+
+Richard Cavendish--than whom few had better opportunities of judging--
+spoke in strong language on the subject.  "It is a thing almost
+incredible," said he, "that the care and diligence of any, one man living
+could, in so small time; have so much repaired so disjointed and loose an
+estate as my Lord found this country, in.  But lest he should swell in
+pride of that his good success, your Lordship knoweth that God hath so
+tempered the cause with the construction thereof, as may well hold him in
+good consideration of human things."  He alluded with bitterness--as did
+all men in the Netherlands who were not open or disguised Papists--to the
+fatal rumours concerning the peace-negotiation in connection with the
+recall of Leicester.  "There be here advertisements of most fearful
+instance," he said, "namely, that Champagny doth not spare most liberally
+to bruit abroad that he hath in his hands the conditions of peace offered
+by her Majesty unto the King his master, and that it is in his power to
+conclude at pleasure--which fearful and mischievous plot, if in time it
+be not met withal by some notable encounter, it cannot but prove the root
+of great ruin."
+
+The "false boys" about Leicester were indefatigable in spreading these
+rumours, and in taking advantage--with the assistance of the Papists in
+the obedient Provinces and in England--of the disgraced condition in
+which the Queen had placed the favourite.  Most galling to the haughty
+Earl--most damaging to the cause of England, Holland, and, liberty--were
+the tales to his discredit, which circulated on the Bourse at Antwerp,
+Middelburg, Amsterdam, and in all the other commercial centres.  The most
+influential bankers and merchants, were assured--by a thousand chattering
+--but as it were invisible--tongues, that the Queen had for a long time
+disliked Leicester; that he was a man of no account among the statesmen
+of England; that he was a beggar and a bankrupt; that, if he had waited
+two months longer, he would have made his appearance in the Provinces
+with one man and one boy for his followers; that the Queen had sent him
+thither to be rid of him; that she never intended him to have more
+authority than Sir John Norris had; that she could not abide the
+bestowing the title of Excellency upon him, and that she had not
+disguised her fury at his elevation to the post of governor-general.
+
+All who attempted a refutation of these statements were asked, with a
+sneer, whether her Majesty had ever written a line to him, or in
+commendation of him, since his arrival.  Minute inquiries were made by
+the Dutch merchants of their commercial correspondents, both in their own
+country and in England, as to Leicester's real condition and character.
+at home.  What was his rank, they asked, what his ability, what: his
+influence at court?  Why, if he were really of so high quality as had
+been reported, was he thus neglected, and at last disgraced?  Had he any
+landed property in England?  Had he really ever held any other office but
+that of master of the horse?  "And then," asked one particular busy body,
+who made himself very unpleasant on the Amsterdam Exchange, "why has her
+Majesty forbidden all noblemen and gentlemen from coming hither, as was
+the case at the beginning?  Is it because she is hearkening to a peace?
+And if it be so, quoth he, we are well handled; for if her Majesty
+hath sent a disgraced man to amuse us, while she is secretly working
+a peace for herself, when we--on the contrary--had broken off all our
+negotiations, upon confidence of her Majesty's goodness; such conduct
+will be remembered to the end of the world, and the Hollanders will
+never abide the name of England again."
+
+On such a bed of nettles there was small chance of repose for the
+governor.  Some of the rumours were even more stinging.  So
+incomprehensible did it seem that the proud sovereign of England should
+send over her subjects to starve or beg in the streets of Flushing and
+Ostend, that it was darkly intimated that Leicester had embezzled the
+funds, which, no doubt, had been remitted for the poor soldiers.  This
+was the most cruel blow of all.  The Earl had been put to enormous
+charges.  His household at the Hague cost him a thousand pounds a month.
+He had been paying and furnishing five hundred and fifty men out of his
+own purse.  He had also a choice regiment of cavalry, numbering seven
+hundred and fifty horse; three hundred and fifty of which number were
+over and above those allowed for by the Queen, and were entirely at his
+expense.  He was most liberal in making presents of money to every
+gentleman in his employment.  He had deeply mortgaged his estates in
+order to provide for these heavy demands upon him, and professed his
+willingness "to spend more, if he might have got any more money for his
+land that was left;" and in the face of such unquestionable facts--much
+to the credit certainly of his generosity--he was accused of swindling
+a Queen whom neither Jew nor Gentile had ever yet been sharp enough to
+swindle; while he was in reality plunging forward in a course of reckless
+extravagance in order to obviate the fatal effects of her penuriousness.
+
+Yet these sinister reports were beginning to have a poisonous effect.
+Already an alteration of mien was perceptible in the States-General.
+"Some buzzing there is amongst them," said Leicester, "whatsoever it be.
+They begin to deal very strangely within these few days."  Moreover the
+industry of the Poleys, Blunts, and Pagets, had turned these unfavourable
+circumstances to such good account that a mutiny had been near breaking
+out among the English troops.  "And, before the Lord I speak it," said
+the Earl, "I am sure some of these good towns had been gone ere this, but
+for my money.  As for the States, I warrant you, they see day at a little
+hole.  God doth know what a forward and a joyful country here was within
+a month.  God send her Majesty to recover it so again, and to take care
+of it, on the condition she send me after Sir Francis Drake to the
+Indies, my service here being no more acceptable."
+
+Such was the aspect of affairs in the Provinces after the first explosion
+of the Queen's anger had become known.  Meanwhile the court-weather was
+very changeable in England, being sometimes serene, sometimes cloudy,--
+always treacherous.
+
+Mr. Vavasour, sent by the Earl with despatches to her Majesty and the
+council, had met with a sufficiently benignant reception.  She accepted
+the letters, which, however, owing to a bad cold with a defluxion in the
+eyes, she was unable at once to read; but she talked ambiguously with the
+messenger.  Yavasour took pains to show the immediate necessity of
+sending supplies, so that the armies in the Netherlands might take the
+field at the, earliest possible moment.  "And what," said she, "if a
+peace should come in the mean time?"
+
+"If your Majesty desireth a convenient peace," replied Vavasour, "to take
+the field is the readiest way to obtain it; for as yet the King of Spain
+hath had no reason to fear you.  He is daily expecting that your own
+slackness may give your Majesty an overthrow.  Moreover, the Spaniards
+are soldiers, and are not to be moved by-shadows."
+
+But the Queen had no ears for these remonstrances, and no disposition to
+open her coffers.  A warrant for twenty-four thousand pounds had been
+signed by her at the end of the month of March, and was about to be sent,
+when Vavasour arrived; but it was not possible for him, although assisted
+by the eloquence of Walsingham and Burghley, to obtain an enlargement of
+the pittance.  "The storms are overblown," said Walsingham, "but I fear
+your Lordship shall receive very scarce measure from hence.  You will not
+believe how the sparing humour doth increase upon us."
+
+Nor were the storms so thoroughly overblown but that there were not daily
+indications of returning foul weather.  Accordingly--after a conference
+with Vavasour--Burghley, and Walsingham had an interview with the Queen,
+in which the Lord Treasurer used bold and strong language.  He protested
+to her that he was bound, both by his duty to himself and his oath as her
+councillor, to declare that the course she was holding to Lord Leicester
+was most dangerous to her own honour, interest and safety.  If she
+intended to continue in this line of conduct, he begged to resign his
+office of Lord Treasurer; wishing; before God and man, to wash his bands
+of the shame and peril which he saw could not be avoided.  The Queen,
+astonished at the audacity of Burghley's attitude and language, hardly
+knew whether to chide him for his presumption or to listen to his
+arguments.  She did both.  She taxed him with insolence in daring to
+address her so roundly, and then finding he was speaking even in
+'amaritudine animae' and out of a clear conscience, she became calm
+again, and intimated a disposition to qualify her anger against the
+absent Earl.
+
+Next day, to their sorrow, the two councillors found that the Queen had
+again changed her mind--"as one that had been by some adverse counsel
+seduced."  She expressed the opinion that affairs would do well enough in
+the Netherlands, even though Leicester were displaced.  A conference
+followed between Walsingham, Hatton, and Burghley, and then the three
+went again to her Majesty.  They assured her that if she did not take
+immediate steps to satisfy the States and the people of the Provinces,
+she would lose those countries and her own honour at the same time; and
+that then they would prove a source of danger to her instead of
+protection and glory.  At this she was greatly troubled, and agreed to do
+anything they might advise consistently with her honour.  It was then
+agreed that Leicester should be continued in the government which he had
+accepted until the matter should be further considered, and letters to
+that effect were at once written.  Then came messenger from Sir Thomas
+Heneage, bringing despatchesfrom that envoy, and a second and most secret
+one from the Earl himself.  Burghley took the precious letter which the
+favourite had addressed to his royal mistress, and had occasion to
+observe its magical effect.  Walsingham and the Lord Treasurer had been
+right in so earnestly remonstrating with him on his previous silence.
+
+"She read your letter," said Burghley, "and, in very truth, I found her
+princely heart touched with favourable interpretation of your actions;
+affirming them to be only offensive to her, in that she was not made
+privy to them; not now misliking that you had the authority."
+
+Such, at fifty-three, was Elizabeth Tudor.  A gentle whisper of idolatry
+from the lips of the man she loved, and she was wax in his hands.  Where
+now were the vehement protestations of horror that her public declaration
+of principles and motives had been set at nought?  Where now were her
+vociferous denunciations of the States, her shrill invectives against
+Leicester, her big oaths, and all the 'hysterica passio,' which had sent
+poor Lord Burghley to bed with the gout, and inspired the soul of
+Walsingham with dismal forebodings?  Her anger had dissolved into a
+shower of tenderness, and if her parsimony still remained it was because
+that could only vanish when she too should cease to be.
+
+And thus, for a moment, the grave diplomatic difference between the
+crown of England and their high mightinesses the United States--upon the
+solution of which the fate of Christendom was hanging--seemed to shrink
+to the dimensions of a lovers' quarrel.  Was it not strange that the
+letter had been so long delayed?
+
+Davison had exhausted argument in defence of the acceptance by the Earl
+of the authority conferred by the States and had gained nothing by his
+eloquence, save abuse from the Queen, and acrimonious censure from the
+Earl.  He had deeply offended both by pleading the cause of the erring
+favourite, when the favourite should have spoken for himself.  "Poor Mr.
+Davison," said Walsingham, "doth take it very grievously that your
+Lordship should conceive so hardly of him as you do.  I find the conceit
+of your Lordship's disfavour hath greatly dejected him.  But at such time
+as he arrived her Majesty was so incensed, as all the arguments and
+orators in the world could not have wrought any satisfaction."
+
+But now a little billet-doux had done what all the orators in the world
+could not do.  The arguments remained the same, but the Queen no longer
+"misliked that Leicester should have the authority."  It was natural that
+the Lord Treasurer should express his satisfaction at this auspicious
+result.
+
+"I did commend her princely nature," he said, "in allowing your good
+intention, and excusing you of any spot of evil meaning; and I thought
+good to hasten her resolution, which you must now take to come from a
+favourable good mistress.  You must strive with your nature to throw over
+your shoulder that which is past."
+
+Sir Walter Raleigh, too, who had been "falsely and pestilently"
+represented to the Earl as an enemy, rather than what he really was,
+a most ardent favourer of the Netherland cause, wrote at once to
+congratulate him on the change in her Majesty's demeanour.  "The Queen is
+in very good terms with you now," he said, "and, thanks be to God, well
+pacified, and you are again her 'sweet Robin.'"
+
+Sir Walter wished to be himself the bearer of the comforting despatches
+to Leicester, on the ground that he had been represented as an "ill
+instrument against him," and in order that he might justify himself
+against the charge, with his own lips.  The Queen, however, while
+professing to make use of Shirley as the messenger, bade Walsingham
+declare to the Earl, upon her honour, that Raleigh had done good offices
+for him, and that, in the time of her anger, he had been as earnest in
+his defence as the best friend could be.  It would have been--singular,
+indeed, had it been otherwise.  "Your Lordship," said Sir Walter, "doth
+well understand my affection toward Spain, and how I have consumed the
+best part of my fortune, hating the tyrannous prosperity of that state.
+It were strange and monstrous that I should now become an enemy to my
+country and conscience.  All that I have desired at your Lordship's
+hands is that you will evermore deal directly with me in all matters
+--of suspect doubleness, and so ever esteem me as you shall find me
+deserving good or bad.  In the mean time, let no poetical scribe work
+your Lordship by any device to doubt that I am a hollow or cold servant
+to the action."
+
+It was now agreed that letters should be drawn, up authorizing Leicester
+to continue in the office which he held, until the state-council should
+devise some modification in his commission.  As it seemed, however, very
+improbable that the board would devise anything of the kind, Burghley
+expressed the belief that the country was like to continue in the Earl's
+government without any change whatever.  The Lord Treasurer was also of
+opinion that the Queen's letters to Leicester would convey as much
+comfort as he had received discomfort; although he admitted that there
+was a great difference: The former letters he knew had deeply wounded his
+heart, while the new ones could not suddenly sink so low as the wound.
+
+The despatch to the States-General was benignant, elaborate, slightly
+diffuse.  The Queen's letter to 'sweet Robin' was caressing, but
+argumentative.
+
+"It is always thought," said she, "in the opinion of the world, a hard
+bargain when both parties are losers, and so doth fall out in the case
+between us two.  You, as we hear, are greatly grieved in respect of the
+great displeasure you find we have conceived against you.  We are no less
+grieved that a subject of ours of that quality that you are, a creature
+of our own, and one that hath always received an extraordinary portion of
+our favour above all our subjects, even from the beginning of our reign,
+should deal so carelessly, not to say contemptuously, as to give the
+world just cause to think that we are had in contempt by him that ought
+most to respect and reverence us, which, we do assure you, hath wrought
+as great grief in us as anyone thing that ever happened unto us.
+
+"We are persuaded that you, that have so long known us, cannot think that
+ever we could have been drawn to have taken so hard a course therein had
+we not been provoked by an extraordinary cause.  But for that your
+grieved and wounded mind hath more need of comfort than reproof, who, we
+are persuaded, though the act of contempt can no ways be excused, had no
+other meaning and intent than to advance our service, we think meet to
+forbear to dwell upon a matter wherein we ourselves do find so little
+comfort, assuring you that whosoever professeth to love you best taketh
+not more comfort of your well doing, or discomfort of your evil doing
+than ourself."
+
+After this affectionate preface she proceeded to intimate her desire that
+the Earl should take the matter as nearly as possible into his own hands.
+It was her wish that he should retain the authority of absolute governor,
+but--if it could be so arranged--that he should dispense with the title,
+retaining only that of her lieutenant-general.  It was not her intention
+however, to create any confusion or trouble in the Provinces, and she was
+therefore willing that the government should remain upon precisely the
+same footing as that on which it then stood, until circumstances should
+permit the change of title which she suggested.  And the whole matter was
+referred to the wisdom of Leicester, who was to advise with Heneage and
+such others as he liked to consult, although it was expressly stated that
+the present arrangement was to be considered a provisional and not a
+final one.
+
+Until this soothing intelligence could arrive in the Netherlands the
+suspicions concerning the underhand negotiations with Spain grew daily
+more rife, and the discredit cast upon the Earl more embarrassing.  The
+private letters which passed between the Earl's enemies in Holland and in
+England contained matter more damaging to himself and to the cause which
+he had at heart than the more public reports of modern days can
+disseminate, which, being patent to all, can be more easily contradicted.
+Leicester incessantly warned his colleagues of her Majesty's council
+against the malignant manufacturers of intelligence.  "I pray you, my
+Lords, as you are wise," said he, "beware of them all.  You shall find
+them here to be shrewd pick-thinks, and hardly worth the hearkening
+unto."
+
+He complained bitterly of the disgrace that was heaped upon him, both
+publicly and privately, and of the evil consequences which were sure to
+follow from the course pursued.  "Never was man so villanously handled by
+letters out of England as I have been," said he, "not only advertising
+her Majesty's great dislike with me before this my coming over, but that
+I was an odious man in England, and so long as I tarried here that no
+help was to be looked for, that her Majesty would send no more men or
+money, and that I was used here but for a time till a peace were
+concluded between her Majesty and the Prince of Parma.  What the
+continuance of a man's discredit thus will turn out is to be thought of,
+for better I were a thousand times displaced than that her Majesty's
+great advantage of so notable Provinces should be hindered."
+
+As to the peace-negotiations--which, however cunningly managed, could not
+remain entirely concealed--the Earl declared them to be as idle as they
+were disingenuous.  "I will boldly pronounce that all the peace you can
+make in the world, leaving these countries," said he to Burghley, "will
+never prove other than a fair spring for a few days, to be all over
+blasted with a hard storm after."  Two days later her Majesty's
+comforting letters arrived, and the Earl began to raise his drooping
+head.  Heneage, too, was much relieved, but he was, at the same time, not
+a little perplexed.  It was not so easy to undo all the mischief created
+by the Queen's petulance.  The "scorpion's sting"--as her Majesty
+expressed herself--might be balsamed, but the poison had spread far
+beyond the original wound.
+
+"The letters just brought in," wrote Heneage to Burghley, "have well
+relieved a most noble and sufficient servant, but I fear they will not
+restore the much-repaired wrecks of these far-decayed noble countries
+into the same state I found them in.  A loose, disordered, and unknit
+state needs no shaking, but propping.  A subtle and fearful kind of
+people--should not be made more distrustful, but assured."  He then
+expressed annoyance at the fault already found with him, and surely if
+ever man had cause to complain of reproof administered him, in quick
+succession; for not obeying contradictory directions following upon each
+other as quickly, that man was Sir Thomas Heneage.  He had been, as he
+thought, over cautious in administering the rebuke to the Earl's
+arrogance, which he had been expressly sent over to administer but
+scarcely had he accomplished his task, with as much delicacy as he could
+devise, when he found himself censured;--not for dilatoriness, but for
+haste.  "Fault I perceive," said he to Burghley, "is found in me, not by
+your Lordship, but by some other, that I did not stay proceeding if I
+found the public cause might take hurt.  It is true I had good warrant
+for the manner, the, place, and the persons, but, for the matter none,
+for done it must be.  Her Majesty's offence must be declared.  Yet if I
+did not all I possibly could to uphold the cause, and to keep the
+tottering cause upon the wheels, I deserve no thanks, but reproof."
+
+Certainly, when the blasts of royal rage are remembered, by which the
+envoy had been, as it were, blown out of England into Holland, it is
+astonishing to find his actions censured for undue precipitancy.  But
+it was not the, first, nor was it likely to be the last time, for
+comparatively subordinate agents in Elizabeth's government to be,
+distressed by, contradictory commands, when the sovereign did not know
+or did not chose to make known, her own mind on important occasions.
+"Well, my Lord," said plaintive Sir Thomas, "wiser men may serve more
+pleasingly and happily, but never shall any serve her Majesty more,
+faithfully and heartily.  And so I cannot be persuaded her Majesty
+thinketh; for from herself I find nothing but most sweet and--gracious,
+favour, though by others' censures I may gather otherwise of her
+judgment; which I confess, doth cumber me."
+
+He was destined to be cumbered more than once before these negotiations
+should be concluded; but meantime; there was a brief gleam of sunshine.
+The English friends of Leicester in the Netherlands were enchanted with
+the sudden change in the Queen's humour; and to Lord Burghley, who was
+not, in reality, the most stanch of the absent Earl's defenders, they
+poured themselves out in profuse and somewhat superfluous gratitude.
+
+Cavendish, in strains exultant, was sure that Burghley's children, grand-
+children, and remotest posterity, would rejoice that their great
+ancestor, in such a time of need had been "found and felt to be indeed a
+'pater patria,' a good-father to a happy land."  And, although unwilling
+to "stir up the old Adam" in his Lordship's soul, he yet took the liberty
+of comparing the Lord Treasurer, in his old and declining years with Mary
+Magdalen; assuring him, that for ever after; when the tale of the
+preservation of the Church of God, of her Majesty; and of the Netherland
+cause; which were all one, should be told; his name and well-doing would
+be held in memory also.
+
+And truly there was much of honest and generous enthusiasm, even if
+couched in language somewhat startling to the ears of a colder and more
+material age; in the hearts of these noble volunteers.  They were
+fighting the cause of England, of the Netherland republic, and of human
+liberty; with a valour worthy the best days of English' chivalry, against
+manifold obstacles, and they were certainly; not too often cheered by the
+beams of royal favour.
+
+It was a pity that a dark cloud was so soon again to sweep over the
+scene: For the temper of Elizabeth at this important juncture seemed as
+capricious: as the: April weather in which the scenes were enacting.  We
+have seen the genial warmth of her letters and messages to Leicester, to
+Heneage,--to the States-General; on the first of the month.  Nevertheless
+it was hardly three weeks after they had been despatched when Walsingham
+and Burghley found, her Majesty one morning a towering passion, because,
+the Earl had not already laid down the government.  The Lord Treasurer
+ventured to remonstrate, but was bid to bold his tongue.  Ever variable
+and mutable as woman, Elizabeth was perplexing and baffling to her
+counsellors, at this epoch, beyond all divination.  The "sparing humour"
+was increasing fearfully, and she thought it would be easier for her to
+slip out of the whole expensive enterprise, provided Leicester were
+merely her lieutenant-general, and not stadholder for the Provinces.
+Moreover the secret negotiations for peace were producing a deleterious
+effect upon her mind.  Upon this subject, the Queen and Burghley,
+notwithstanding his resemblance to Mary Magdalen, were better informed
+than the Secretary, whom, however, it had been impossible wholly to
+deceive.  The man who could read secrets so far removed as the Vatican,
+was not to be blinded to intrigues going on before his face.  The Queen,
+without revealing more than she could help, had been obliged to admit
+that informal transactions were pending, but had authorised the Secretary
+to assure the United States that no treaty would be made without their
+knowledge and full concurrence.  "She doth think," wrote Walsingham to
+Leicester," that you should, if you shall see no cause to the contrary,
+acquaint the council of state there that certain overtures of peace are
+daily made unto her, but that she meaneth not to proceed therein without
+their good liking and privity, being persuaded that there can no peace be
+made profitable or sure for her that shall not also stand with their
+safety; and she doth acknowledge hers to be so linked with theirs as
+nothing can fall out to their prejudice, but she must be partaker of
+their harm."
+
+This communication was dated on the 21st April, exactly three weeks after
+the Queen's letter to Heneage, in which she had spoken of the "malicious
+bruits" concerning the pretended peace-negotiations; and the Secretary
+was now confirming, by her order, what she had then stated under her own
+hand, that she would "do nothing that might concern them without their
+own knowledge and good liking."
+
+And surely nothing could be more reasonable.  Even if the strict letter
+of the August treaty between the Queen and the States did not provide
+against any separate negotiations by the one party without the knowledge
+of the other, there could be no doubt at all that its spirit absolutely
+forbade the clandestine conclusion of a peace with Spain by England
+alone, or by the Netherlands alone, and that such an arrangement would be
+disingenuous, if not positively dishonourable.
+
+Nevertheless it would almost seem that Elizabeth had been taking
+advantage of the day when she was writing her letter to Heneage on the
+1st of April.  Never was painstaking envoy more elaborately trifled with.
+On the 26th of the month--and only five days after the communication by
+Walsingham just noticed--the Queen was furious that any admission should
+have been made to the States of their right to participate with her in
+peace-negotiations.
+
+"We find that Sir Thomas Heneage," said she to Leicester, "hath gone
+further--in assuring the States that we would make no peace without their
+privity and assent--than he had commission; for that our direction was--
+if our meaning had been well set down, and not mistaken by our Secretary
+--that they should have been only let understand that in any treaty that
+might pass between us and Spain, they might be well assured we would have
+no less care of their safety than of our own."  Secretary Walsingham was
+not likely to mistake her Majesty's directions in this or any other
+important affair of state.  Moreover, it so happened that the Queen had,
+in her own letter to Heneage, made the same statement which she now
+chose to disavow.  She had often a convenient way of making herself
+misunderstood, when she thought it desirable to shift responsibility from
+her own shoulders upon those of others; but upon this occasion she had
+been sufficiently explicit.  Nevertheless,  a scape-goat was necessary,
+and unhappy the subordinate who happened to be within her Majesty's reach
+when a vicarious sacrifice was to be made.  Sir Francis Walsingham was
+not a man to be brow-beaten or hood-winked, but Heneage was doomed to
+absorb a fearful amount of royal wrath.
+
+"What phlegmatical reasons soever were made you," wrote the Queen, who
+but three weeks before had been so gentle and affectionate to her,
+ambassador, "how happeneth it that you will not remember, that when a man
+hath faulted and committed by abettors thereto, neither the one nor the
+other will willingly make their own retreat.  Jesus! what availeth wit,
+when it fails the owner at greatest need?  Do that you are bidden, and
+leave your considerations for your own affairs.  For in some things you
+had clear commandment, which you did not, and in others none, and did.
+We princes be wary enough of our bargains.  Think you I will be bound
+by your own speech to make no peace for mine own matters without their
+consent?  It is enough that I injure not their country nor themselves
+in making peace for them without their consent.  I am assured of your
+dutiful thoughts, but I am utterly at squares with this childish
+dealing."
+
+Blasted by this thunderbolt falling upon his head out of serenest sky,
+the sad.  Sir. Thomas remained, for a time, in a state of political
+annihilation.  'Sweet Robin' meanwhile, though stunned, was unscathed--
+thanks to the convenient conductor at his side.  For, in Elizabeth's
+court, mediocrity was not always golden, nor was it usually the loftiest
+mountains that the lightnings smote.  The Earl was deceived by his royal
+mistress, kept in the dark as to important transactions, left to provide
+for his famishing' soldiers as he best might; but the, Queen at that
+moment, though angry, was not disposed, to trample upon him.  Now that
+his heart was known to be broken, and his sole object in life to be
+retirement to remote regions--India or elsewhere--there to languish out
+the brief remainder of his days in prayers for Elizabeth's happiness,
+Elizabeth was not inclined very bitterly to upbraid him.  She had too
+recently been employing herself in binding up his broken heart, and
+pouring balm into the "scorpion's sting," to be willing so soon to
+deprive him of those alleviations.
+
+Her tone--was however no longer benignant, and her directions were
+extremely peremptory.  On the 1st of April she had congratulated
+Leicester, Heneage, the States, and all the world, that her secret
+commands had been staid, and that the ruin which would have followed,
+had, those decrees been executed according to her first violent wish, was
+fortunately averted.  Heneage was even censured, not by herself, but by
+courtiers in her confidence, and with her concurrence, for being over
+hasty in going before the state-council, as he had done, with her
+messages and commands.  On the 26th of April she expressed astonishment
+that Heneage had dared to be so dilatory, and that the title of governor
+had not been laid down by Leicester "out of hand."  She marvelled
+greatly, and found it very strange that "ministers in matters of moment
+should presume to do things of their own head without direction."  She
+accordingly gave orders that there should be no more dallying, but that
+the Earl should immediately hold a conference with the state-council in
+order to arrange a modification in his commission.  It was her pleasure
+that he should retain all the authority granted to him by the States, but
+as already intimated by her, that he should abandon the title of
+"absolute governor," and retain only that of her lieutenant-general.
+
+Was it strange that Heneage, placed in so responsible a situation, and
+with the fate of England, of Holland, and perhaps of all Christendom,
+hanging in great measure upon this delicate negotiation, should be amazed
+at such contradictory orders, and grieved by such inconsistent censures?
+
+"To tell you my griefs and my lacks," said he to Walsingham, "would
+little please you or help me.  Therefore I will say nothing, but think
+there was never man in so great a service received so little comfort and
+so contrarious directions.  But 'Dominus est adjutor in tribulationibus.'
+If it be possible, let me receive some certain direction, in following
+which I shall not offend her Majesty, what good or hurt soever I do
+besides."
+
+This certainly seemed a loyal and reasonable request, yet it was not one
+likely to be granted.  Sir Thomas, perplexed, puzzled, blindfolded, and
+brow-beaten, always endeavoring to obey orders, when he could comprehend
+them, and always hectored and lectured whether he obeyed them or not--
+ruined in purse by the expenses, of a mission on which he had been sent
+without adequate salary--appalled at the disaffection waging more
+formidable every hour in Provinces which were recently so loyal to her
+Majesty, but which were now pervaded by a suspicion that there was
+double-dealing upon her part became quite sick of his life.  He fell
+seriously ill, and was disappointed, when, after a time, the physicians
+declared him convalescent.  For when when he rose from his sick-bed, it
+was only to plunge once more, without a clue, into the labyrinth where he
+seemed to be losing his reason.  "It is not long," said he to Walsingham,
+"since I looked to have written you no more letters, my extremity was so
+great.  .  .  But God's will is best, otherwise I could have liked better
+to have cumbered the earth no longer, where I find myself contemned, and
+which I find no reason to see will be the better in the wearing .  .  .
+It were better for her Majesty's service that the directions which come
+were not contrarious one to another, and that those you would have serve
+might know what is meant, else they cannot but much deceive you, as well
+as displease you."
+
+Public opinion concerning the political morality of the English court
+was not gratifying, nor was it rendered more favourable by these recent
+transactions.  "I fear," said Heneage, "that the world will judge what
+Champagny wrote in one of his letters out of England (which I have lately
+seen) to be over true.  His words be these, 'Et de vray, c'est le plus
+fascheux et le plus incertain negocier de ceste court, que je pense soit
+au monde.'"  And so "basting," as he said, "with a weak body and a
+willing mind; to do, he feared, no good work," he set forth from
+Middelburgh to rejoin Leicester at Arnheim, in order to obey, as well as
+he could, the Queen's latest directions.
+
+But before he could set to work there came more "contrarious" orders.
+The last instructions, both to Leicester and himself, were that the Earl
+should resign the post of governor absolute "out of hand," and the Queen
+had been vehement in denouncing any delay on such an occasion.  He was
+now informed, that, after consulting with Leicester and with the
+state-council, he was to return to England with the result of such
+deliberations.  It could afterwards be decided how the Earl could retain
+all the authority of governor absolute, while bearing only the title of
+the Queen's lieutenant general.  "For her meaning is not," said
+Walsingham, "that his Lord ship should presently give it over, for she
+foreseeth in her princely judgment that his giving over the government
+upon a sudden, and leaving those countries without a head or director,
+cannot but breed a most dangerous alteration there."  The secretary
+therefore stated the royal wish at present to be that the "renunciation
+of the title" should be delayed till Heneage could visit England, and
+subsequently return to Holland with her Majesty's further directions.
+Even the astute Walsingham was himself puzzled, however, while conveying
+these ambiguous orders; and he confessed that he was doubtful whether he
+had rightly comprehended the Queen's intentions.  Burghley, however, was
+better at guessing riddles than he was, and so Heneage was advised to
+rely chiefly upon Burghley.
+
+But Heneage had now ceased to be interested in any enigmas that might be
+propounded by the English court, nor could he find comfort, as Walsingham
+had recommended he should do, in railing.  "I wish I could follow your
+counsel," he said, "but sure the uttering of my choler doth little ease
+my grief or help my case."
+
+He rebuked, however, the inconsistency and the tergiversations of the
+government with a good deal of dignity.  "This certainly shall I tell her
+Majesty," he said, "if I live to see her, that except a more constant
+course be taken with this inconstant people, it is not the blaming of her
+ministers will advance her Highness's service, or better the state of
+things.  And shall I tell you what they now say here of us--I fear not
+without some cause--even as Lipsius wrote of the French, 'De Gallis
+quidem enigmata veniunt, non veniunt, volunt, holunt, audent, timent,
+omnia, ancipiti metu, suspensa et suspecta.'  God grant better, and ever
+keep you and help me."
+
+He announced to Burghley that he was about to attend a meeting of the
+state-council the next day, for the purpose of a conference on these
+matters at Arnheim, and that he would then set forth for England to
+report proceedings to her Majesty.  He supposed, on the whole, that this
+was what was expected of him, but acknowledged it hopeless to fathom.
+the royal intentions.  Yet if he went wrong, he was always, sure to make
+mischief, and though innocent, to be held accountable for others'
+mistakes.  "Every prick I make," said he, "is made a gash; and to follow
+the words of my directions from England is not enough, except I likewise
+see into your minds.  And surely mine eyesight is not so good.  But I
+will pray to God for his help herein.  With all the wit I have, I will
+use all the care I can--first, to satisfy her Majesty, as God knoweth I
+have ever most desired; then, not to hurt this cause, but that I despair
+of."  Leicester, as maybe supposed, had been much discomfited and
+perplexed during the course of these contradictory and perverse
+directions.  There is no doubt whatever that his position bad been made
+discreditable and almost ridiculous, while he was really doing his best,
+and spending large sums out of his private fortune to advance the true
+interests of the Queen.  He had become a suspected man in the
+Netherlands, having been, in the beginning of the year, almost adored
+as a Messiah.  He had submitted to the humiliation which had been imposed
+upon him, of being himself the medium to convey to the council the severe
+expressions of the Queen's displeasure at the joint action of the States-
+General and himself.  He had been comforted by the affectionate
+expressions with which that explosion of feminine and royal wrath had
+been succeeded.  He was now again distressed by the peremptory command to
+do what was a disgrace to him, and an irreparable detriment to the cause,
+yet he was humble and submissive, and only begged to be allowed, as a
+remedy for all his anguish, to return to the sunlight of Elizabeth's
+presence.  He felt that her course; if persisted in, would lead to the
+destruction of the Netherland commonwealth, and eventually to the
+downfall of England; and that the Provinces, believing themselves
+deceived by the Queen; were ready to revolt against an authority to
+which, but a short time before, they were so devotedly loyal
+Nevertheless, he only wished to know what his sovereign's commands
+distinctly were, in order to set himself to their fulfilment.  He had
+come from the camp before Nymegen in order to attend the conference with
+the state-council at Arnheim, and he would then be ready and anxious to,
+despatch Heneage to England, to learn her Majesty's final determination.
+
+He protested to the Queen that he had come upon this arduous and perilous
+service only, because he, considered her throne in danger, and that this
+was the only means of preserving it; that, in accepting the absolute
+government, he had been free from all ambitious motives, but deeply
+impressed with the idea that only by so doing could he conduct the
+enterprise entrusted to him to the desired consummation; and he declared
+with great fervour that no advancement to high office could compensate
+him for this enforced absence from her.  To be sent back even in disgrace
+would still be a boon to him, for he should cease to be an exile from her
+sight.  He knew that his enemies had been busy in defaming him, while he
+had been no longer there to defend himself, but his conscience acquitted
+him of any thought which was not for her happiness and glory.  "Yet
+grievous it is to me," said he in, a tone of tender reproach, "that
+having left all--yea, all that may be imagined--for you, you have left
+me for very little, even to the uttermost of all hard fortune.  For what
+have I, unhappy man, to do here either with cause or country but for
+you?"
+
+He stated boldly that his services had not been ineffective, that the
+enemy had never been in worse plight than now, that he had lost at least
+five thousand men in divers overthrows, and that, on the other hand,
+the people and towns of the Seven Provinces had been safely preserved.
+"Since my arrival," he said, "God hath blessed the action which you have
+taken in hand, and committed to the charge of me your poor unhappy
+servant.  I have good cause to say somewhat for myself, for that I think
+I have as few friends to speak for me as any man."
+
+Nevertheless--as he warmly protested--his only wish was to return; for
+the country in which he had lost her favour, which was more precious than
+life, had become odious to him.
+
+The most lowly office in her presence was more to be coveted than the
+possession of unlimited power away from her.  It was by these tender
+and soft insinuations, as the Earl knew full well, that he was sure to
+obtain what he really coveted--her sanction for retaining the absolute
+government in the Provinces.  And most artfully did he strike the key.
+
+"Most dear and gracious Lady," he cried, "my care and service here do
+breed me nothing but grief and unhappiness.  I have never had your
+Majesty's good favour since I came into this charge--a matter that from
+my first beholding your eyes hath been most dear unto me above all
+earthly treasures.  Never shall I love that place or like that soil which
+shall cause the lack of it.  Most gracious Lady, consider my long, true,
+and faithful heart toward you.  Let not this unfortunate place here
+bereave me of that which, above all the world, I esteem there, which is
+your favodr and your presence.  I see my service is not acceptable, but
+rather more and more disliketh you.  Here I can do your Majesty no
+service; there I can do you some, at the least rub your horse's heels--
+a service which shall be much more welcome to me than this, with all that
+these men may give me.  I do, humbly and from my heart, prostrate at your
+feet, beg this grace at your sacred hands, that you will be pleased to
+let me return to my home-service, with your favour, let the revocation be
+used in what sort shall please and like you.  But if ever spark of favour
+was in your Majesty toward your old servant, let me obtain this my humble
+suit; protesting before the Majesty of all Majesties, that there was no
+cause under Heaven but his and yours, even for your own special and
+particular cause, I say, could have made me take this absent journey from
+you in hand.  If your Majesty shall refuse me this, I shall think all
+grace clean gone from me, and I know: my days will not be long."
+
+She must melt at this, thought 'sweet Robin' to himself; and meantime
+accompanied by Heneage; he proceeded with the conferences in the state-
+council-chamber touching the modification of the title and the
+confirmation of his authority.  This, so far as Walsingham could divine,
+and Burghley fathom, was the present intention of the Queen.  He averred
+that he had ever sought most painfully to conform his conduct to her
+instructions as fast as they were received, and that he should continue
+so to do.  On the whole it was decided by the conference to let matters
+stand as, they were for a little longer, and until: after Heneage should
+have time once more to go and come.  "The same manner of proceeding that
+was is now," said Leicester, "Your pleasure is declared to the council
+here as you have willed it. How it will fall out again in your Majesty's
+construction, the Lord knoweth."
+
+Leicester might be forgiven for referring to higher powers, for any
+possible interpretation of her Majesty's changing humour; but meantime;
+while Sir. Thomas was getting ready, for his expedition to England, the
+Earl's heart was somewhat gladdened by more gracious messages from the
+Queen.  The alternation of emotions would however prove too much for him,
+he feared, and he was reluctant to open his heart to so unwonted a tenant
+as joy.
+
+"But that my fear is such, most dear and gracious Lady," he said, "as my
+unfortunate destiny will hardly permit; whilst I remain here; any good-
+acceptation of so simple a service as, mine, I should, greatly rejoice
+and comfort myself with the hope of your Majesty's most prayed-for
+favour.  But of late, being by your own sacred hand lifted even up into
+Heaven with joy of your favour, I was bye and bye without any new desert
+or offence at all, cast down and down: again into the depth of all grief.
+God doth know, my dear and dread Sovereign, that after I first received
+your resolute pleasure by Sir Thomas Heneage, I made neither stop nor
+stay nor any excuse to be rid of this place, and to satisfy your command.
+. . . . . So much I mislike this place and fortune of mine; as I desire
+nothing in the world so much, as to be delivered, with your favours from
+all charge here, fearing still some new cross of your displeasure to fall
+upon me, trembling continually with the fear thereof, in such sort as
+till I may be fully confirmed in my new regeneration of your wonted
+favour I cannot receive that true comfort which doth appertain to so
+great a hope.  Yet I will not only acknowledge with all humbleness and
+dutiful thanks the exceeding joy these last blessed lines brought to my
+long-wearied heart, but will, with all true loyal affection, attend that
+further joy from your sweet self which may utterly, extinguish all
+consuming fear away."
+
+Poor Heneage--who likewise received a kind word or two after having been
+so capriciously and petulantly dealt with was less extravagant in his
+expressions of gratitude.  "The Queen hath sent me a paper-plaister which
+must please for a time," he said.  "God Almighty bless her Majesty ever,
+and best direct her."  He was on the point of starting for England, the
+bearer of the States' urgent entreaties that Leicester might retain the,
+government, and of despatches; announcing the recent success of the
+allies before Grave.  "God prospereth the action in these countries
+beyond all expectation," he said, "which all amongst you will not be over
+glad of, for somewhat I know."  The intrigues of Grafigni, Champagny, and
+Bodman, with Croft, Burghley, and the others were not so profound a
+secret as they could wish.
+
+The tone adopted by Leicester has been made manifest in his letters
+to the Queen.  He had held the same language of weariness and
+dissatisfaction in his communications to his friends.  He would not keep
+the office, he avowed, if they should give him "all Holland and Zeeland,
+with all their appurtenances," and he was ready to resign at any moment.
+He was not "ceremonious for reputation," he said, but he gave warning
+that the Netherlanders would grow desperate if they found her Majesty
+dealing weakly or carelessly with them.  As for himself he had already
+had enough of government.  "I am weary, Mr. Secretary," he plaintively
+exclaimed, "indeed I am weary; but neither of pains nor travail.  My ill
+hap that I can please her Majesty no better hath quite discouraged me."
+
+He had recently, however--as we have seen--received some comfort, and he
+was still further encouraged, upon the eve of Heneage's departure, by
+receiving another affectionate epistle from the Queen.  Amends seemed at
+last to be offered for her long and angry silence, and the Earl was
+deeply grateful.
+
+"If it hath not been, my most dear and gracious Lady," said he in reply,
+"no small comfort to your poor old servant to receive but one line of
+your blessed hand-writing in many months, for the relief of a most
+grieved, wounded heart, how far more exceeding joy must it be, in the
+midst of all sorrow, to receive from the same sacred hand so many
+comfortable lines as my good friend Mr. George hath at once brought me.
+Pardon me, my sweet Lady, if they cause me to forget myself.  Only this I
+do say, with most humble dutiful thanks, that the scope of all my service
+hath ever been to content and please you; and if I may do that, then is
+all sacrifice, either of life or whatsoever, well offered for you."
+
+The matter of the government absolute having been so fully discussed
+during the preceding four months, and the last opinions of the state-
+council having been so lucidly expounded in the despatches to be carried
+by Heneage to England, the matter might be considered as exhausted.
+Leicester contented himself, therefore, with once more calling her
+Majesty's attention to the fact that if he had not himself accepted the
+office thus conferred upon him by the States, it would have been bestowed
+upon some other personage.  It would hardly have comported with her
+dignity, if Count Maurice of Nassau, or Count William, or Count Moeurs,
+had been appointed governor absolute, for in that case the Earl, as
+general of the auxiliary English force, would have been subject to the
+authority of the chieftain thus selected.  It was impossible, as the
+state-council had very plainly shown, for Leicester to exercise supreme
+authority, while merely holding the military office of her Majesty's
+lieutenant-general.  The authority of governor or stadholder could only
+be derived from the supreme power of the country.  If her Majesty had
+chosen to accept the sovereignty, as the States had ever desired, the
+requisite authority could then have been derived from her, as from the
+original fountain.  As she had resolutely refused that offer however, his
+authority was necessarily to be drawn from the States-General, or else
+the Queen must content herself with seeing him serve as an English
+military officer, only subject to the orders of the supreme power,
+wherever that power might reside.  In short, Elizabeth's wish that her
+general might be clothed with the privileges of her viceroy, while she
+declined herself to be the sovereign, was illogical, and could not be
+complied with.
+
+Very soon after inditing these last epistles to the Provinces, the Queen
+became more reasonable on the subject; and an elaborate communication was
+soon received by the state-council, in which the royal acquiescence was
+signified to the latest propositions of the States.  The various topics,
+suggested in previous despatches from Leicester and from the council,
+were reviewed, and the whole subject was suddenly placed in a somewhat
+different light from that in which it seemed to have been previously
+regarded by her Majesty.  She alluded to the excuse, offered by the
+state-council, which had been drawn from the necessity of the case, and
+from their "great liking for her cousin of Leicester," although in
+violation of the original contract.  "As you acknowledge, however," she
+said, "that therein you were justly to be blamed, and do crave pardon for
+the same, we cannot, upon this acknowledgment of your fault, but remove
+our former dislike."
+
+Nevertheless it would now seem that her "mistake" had proceeded, not from
+the excess, but from the insufficiency of the powers conferred upon the
+Earl, and she complained, accordingly, that they had given him shadow
+rather than substance.
+
+Simultaneously with this royal communication, came a joint letter to
+Leicester, from Burghley, Walsingham; and Hatton, depicting the long and
+strenuous conflict which they had maintained in his behalf with the
+rapidly varying inclinations of the Queen.  They expressed a warm
+sympathy with the difficulties of his position, and spoke in strong terms
+of the necessity that the Netherlands and England should work heartily
+together.  For otherwise, they said, "the cause will fall, the enemy will
+rise, and we must stagger."  Notwithstanding the secret negotiations with
+the enemy, which Leicester and Walsingham suspected, and which will be
+more fully examined in a subsequent chapter, they held a language on that
+subject, which in the Secretary's mouth at least was sincere.
+"Whatsoever speeches be blown abroad of parleys of peace," they said,
+"all will be but smoke, yea fire will follow."
+
+They excused themselves for their previous and enforced silence by the
+fact that they had been unable to communicate any tidings but messages of
+distress, but they now congratulated the Earl that her Majesty, as he
+would see by her letter to the council, was firmly resolved, not only to
+countenance his governorship, but to sustain him in the most thorough
+manner.  It would be therefore quite out of the question for them to
+listen to his earnest propositions to be recalled.
+
+Moreover, the Lord Treasurer had already apprized Leicester that Heneage
+had safely arrived in England, that he, had made his report to the Queen,
+and that her Majesty was "very well contented with him and his mission."
+It may be easily believed that the Earl would feel a sensation of relief,
+if not of triumph, at this termination to the embarrassments under which
+he had been labouring ever since, he listened to the oration of the wise
+Leoninus upon New Years' Day.  At last the Queen had formally acquiesced
+in the action of the States, and in his acceptance of their offer.  He
+now saw himself undisputed "governor absolute," having been six months
+long a suspected, discredited, almost disgraced man.  It was natural that
+he should express himself cheerfully.
+
+"My great comfort received, oh my most gracious Lady," he said, "by your
+most favourable lines written by your own sacred hand, I did most humbly
+acknowledge by my former letter; albeit I can no way make testimony of
+enough of the great joy I took thereby.  And seeing my wounded heart is
+by this means almost made whole, I do pray unto God that either I may
+never feel the like again from you, or not be suffered to live, rather
+than I should fall again into those torments of your displeasure.  Most
+gracious Queen, I beseech you, therefore, make perfect that which you
+have begun.  Let not the common danger, nor any ill, incident to the
+place I serve you in, be accompanied with greater troubles and fears
+indeed than all the horrors of death can bring me.  My strong hope doth
+now so assure me, as I have almost won the battle against despair, and I
+do arm myself with as many of those wonted comfortable conceits as may
+confirm my new revived spirits, reposing myself evermore under the shadow
+of those blessed beams that must yield the only nourishment to this
+disease."
+
+But however nourishing the shade of those blessed beams might prove to
+Leicester's disease, it was not so easy to bring about a very sunny
+condition in the Provinces.  It was easier for Elizabeth to mend the
+broken heart of the governor than to repair the damage which had been
+caused to the commonwealth by her caprice and her deceit.  The dispute
+concerning the government absolute had died away, but the authority of
+the Earl had got a "crack in it" which never could be handsomely made
+whole.  The States, during the long period of Leicester's discredit--
+feeling more and more doubtful as to the secret intentions of Elizabeth
+--disappointed in the condition of the auxiliary troops and in the amount
+of supplies furnished from England, and, above all, having had time to
+regret their delegation of a power which they began to find agreeable to
+exercise with their own hands, became indisposed to entrust the Earl with
+the administration and full inspection of their resources.  To the
+enthusiasm which had greeted the first arrival of Elizabeth's
+representative had succeeded a jealous, carping, suspicious sentiment.
+The two hundred thousand florins monthly were paid, according to the
+original agreement, but the four hundred thousand of extra service-money
+subsequently voted were withheld, and withheld expressly on account of
+Heneage's original mission to disgrace the governor."
+
+"The late return of Sir Thomas Heneage," said Lord North, "hath put such
+busses in their heads, as they march forward with leaden heels and
+doubtful hearts."
+
+In truth, through the discredit cast by the Queen upon the Earl in this
+important affair, the supreme authority was forced back into the hands
+of the States, at the very moment when they had most freely divested
+themselves of power.  After the Queen had become more reasonable, it was
+too late to induce them to part, a second time, so freely with the
+immediate control of their own affairs.  Leicester had become, to a
+certain extent, disgraced and disliked by the Estates.  He thought
+himself, by the necessity of the case, forced to appeal to the people
+against their legal representatives, and thus the foundation of a
+nominally democratic party, in opposition to the municipal one, was
+already laid.  Nothing could be more unfortunate at that juncture; for we
+shall, in future, find the Earl in perpetual opposition to the most
+distinguished statesmen in the Provinces; to the very men indeed who had
+been most influential in offering the sovereignty to England, and in
+placing him in the position which he had so much coveted.  No sooner
+therefore had he been confirmed by Elizabeth in that high office than his
+arrogance broke forth, and the quarrels between himself and the
+representative body became incessant.
+
+"I stand now in somewhat better terms than I did," said he; "I was not in
+case till of late to deal roundly with them as I have now done.  I have
+established a chamber of finances, against some of their wills, whereby I
+doubt not to procure great benefit to increase our ability for payments
+hereafter.  The people I find still best devoted to her Majesty, though
+of late many lewd practices have been used to withdraw their good wills.
+But it will not be; they still pray God that her Majesty may be their
+sovereign.  She should then see what a contribution they will all bring
+forth.  But to the States they will never return, which will breed some
+great mischief, there is such mislike of the States universally.  I would
+your Lordship had seen the case I had lived in among them these four
+months, especially after her Majesty's mislike was found.  You would then
+marvel to see how I have waded, as I have done, through no small
+obstacles, without help, counsel, or assistance."
+
+Thus the part which he felt at last called upon to enact was that of an
+aristocratic demagogue, in perpetual conflict with the burgher-
+representative body.
+
+It is now necessary to lift a corner of the curtain, by which some
+international--or rather interpalatial--intrigues were concealed, as much
+as possible, even from the piercing eyes of Walsingham.  The Secretary
+was, however, quite aware--despite the pains taken to deceive him--of the
+nature of the plots and of the somewhat ignoble character of the actors
+concerned in them.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A hard bargain when both parties are losers
+Condemned first and inquired upon after
+Disordered, and unknit state needs no shaking, but propping
+Upper and lower millstones of royal wrath and loyal subserviency
+Uttering of my choler doth little ease my grief or help my case
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v45
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
+From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609
+
+By John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+History of the United Netherlands, Volume 46, 1586
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+     Forlorn Condition of Flanders--Parma's secret Negotiations with the
+     Queen--Grafigni and Bodman--Their Dealings with English Counsellors
+     --Duplicity of Farnese--Secret Offers of the English Peace-Party--
+     Letters and Intrigues of De Loo--Drake's Victories and their Effect
+     --Parma's Perplexity and Anxiety--He is relieved by the News from
+     England--Queen's secret Letters to Parma--His Letters and
+     Instructions to Bodman--Bodman's secret Transactions at Greenwich--
+     Walsingham detects and exposes the Plot--The Intriguers baffled--
+     Queen's Letter to Parma and his to the King--Unlucky Results of the
+     Peace--Intrigues--Unhandsome Treatment of Leicester--Indignation of
+     the Earl and Walsingham--Secret Letter of Parma to Philip--Invasion
+     of England recommended--Details of the Project.
+
+Alexander Farnese and his heroic little army had been left by their
+sovereign in as destitute a condition as that in which Lord Leicester and
+his unfortunate "paddy persons" had found themselves since their arrival
+in the Netherlands.  These mortal men were but the weapons to be used and
+broken in the hands of the two great sovereigns, already pitted against
+each other in mortal combat.  That the distant invisible potentate,
+the work of whose life was to do his best to destroy all European
+nationality, all civil and religious freedom, should be careless of
+the instruments by which his purpose was to be effected, was but natural.
+It is painful to reflect that the great champion of liberty and of
+Protestantism was almost equally indifferent to the welfare of the human
+creatures enlisted in her cause.  Spaniards and Italians, English and
+Irish, went half naked and half starving through the whole inclement
+winter, and perished of pestilence in droves, after confronting the
+less formidable dangers of battlefield and leaguer.  Manfully and
+sympathetically did the Earl of Leicester--while whining in absurd
+hyperbole over the angry demeanour of his sovereign towards himself-
+represent the imperative duty of an English government to succour English
+troops.
+
+Alexander Farnese was equally plain-spoken to a sovereign with whom
+plain-speaking was a crime.  In bold, almost scornful language, the
+Prince represented to Philip the sufferings and destitution of the
+little band of heroes, by whom that magnificent military enterprise,
+the conquest of Antwerp, had just been effected.  "God will be weary of
+working miracles for us," he cried, "and nothing but miracles can save
+the troops from starving."  There was no question of paying them their
+wages, there was no pretence at keeping them reasonably provided with
+lodging and clothing, but he asserted the undeniable proposition that
+they "could not pass their lives without eating," and he implored his
+sovereign to send at least money enough to buy the soldiers shoes.
+To go foodless and barefoot without complaining, on the frozen swamps of
+Flanders, in January, was more than was to be expected from Spaniards and
+Italians.  The country itself was eaten bare.  The obedient Provinces had
+reaped absolute ruin as the reward of their obedience.  Bruges, Ghent,
+and the other cities of Brabant and Flanders, once so opulent and
+powerful, had become mere dens of thieves and paupers.  Agriculture,
+commerce, manufactures--all were dead.  The condition of Antwerp was most
+tragical.  The city, which had been so recently the commercial centre of
+the earth, was reduced to absolute beggary.  Its world-wide traffic was
+abruptly terminated, for the mouth of its great river was controlled by
+Flushing, and Flushing was in the firm grasp of Sir Philip Sidney, as
+governor for the English Queen.  Merchants and bankers, who had lately
+been possessed of enormous resources, were stripped of all.  Such of the
+industrial classes as could leave the place had wandered away to Holland
+and England.  There was no industry possible, for there was no market for
+the products of industry.  Antwerp was hemmed in by the enemy on every
+side, surrounded by royal troops in a condition of open mutiny, cut off
+from the ocean, deprived of daily bread, and yet obliged to contribute
+out of its poverty to the maintenance of the Spanish soldiers, who were
+there for its destruction.  Its burghers, compelled to furnish four
+hundred thousand florins, as the price of their capitulation, and at
+least six hundred thousand more for the repairs of the dykes, the
+destruction of which, too long deferred, had only spread desolation over
+the country without saving the city, and over and above all forced to
+rebuild, at their own expense, that fatal citadel, by which their liberty
+and lives were to be perpetually endangered, might now regret at leisure
+that they had not been as stedfast during their siege as had been the
+heroic inhabitants of Leyden in their time of trial, twelve years before.
+Obedient Antwerp was, in truth, most forlorn.  But there was one
+consolation for her and for Philip, one bright spot in the else universal
+gloom.  The ecclesiastics assured Parma, that, notwithstanding the
+frightful diminution in the population of the city, they had confessed
+and absolved more persons that Easter than they had ever done since the
+commencement of the revolt.  Great was Philip's joy in consequence.
+"You cannot imagine my satisfaction," he wrote, "at the news you give me
+concerning last Easter."
+
+With a ruined country, starving and mutinous troops, a bankrupt
+exchequer, and a desperate and pauper population, Alexander Farnese was
+not unwilling to gain time by simulated negotiations for peace.  It was
+strange, however, that so sagacious a monarch as the Queen of England
+should suppose it for her interest to grant at that moment the very delay
+which was deemed most desirable by her antagonist.
+
+Yet it was not wounded affection alone, nor insulted pride, nor startled
+parsimony, that had carried the fury of the Queen to such a height on the
+occasion of Leicester's elevation to absolute government.  It was still
+more, because the step was thought likely to interfere with the progress
+of those negotiations into which the Queen had allowed herself to be
+drawn.
+
+A certain Grafigni--a Genoese merchant residing much in London and in
+Antwerp, a meddling, intrusive, and irresponsible kind of individual,
+whose occupation was gone with the cessation of Flemish trade--had
+recently made his appearance as a volunteer diplomatist.  The principal
+reason for accepting or rather for winking at his services, seemed to be
+the possibility of disavowing him, on both sides, whenever it should be
+thought advisable.  He had a partner or colleague, too, named Bodman,
+who seemed a not much more creditable negotiator than himself.  The chief
+director of the intrigue was, however, Champagny, brother of Cardinal
+Granvelle, restored to the King's favour and disposed to atone by his
+exuberant loyalty for his heroic patriotism on a former and most
+memorable occasion.  Andrea de Loo, another subordinate politician, was
+likewise employed at various stages of the negotiation.
+
+It will soon be perceived that the part enacted by Burghley, Hatton,
+Croft, and other counsellors, and even by the Queen herself, was not a
+model of ingenuousness towards the absent Leicester and the States-
+General.  The gentlemen sent at various times to and from the Earl and
+her Majesty's government; Davison, Shirley, Vavasor, Heneage, and the
+rest--had all expressed themselves in the strongest language concerning
+the good faith and the friendliness of the Lord-Treasurer and the Vice-
+Chamberlain,  but they were not so well informed as they would have been,
+had they seen the private letters of Parma to Philip II.
+
+Walsingham, although kept in the dark as much as it was possible,
+discovered from time to time the mysterious practices of his political
+antagonists, and warned the Queen of the danger and dishonour she was
+bringing upon herself.  Elizabeth, when thus boldly charged, equivocated
+and stormed alternately.  She authorized Walsingham to communicate the
+secrets--which he had thus surprised--to the States-General, and then
+denied having given any such orders.
+
+In truth, Walsingham was only entrusted with such portions of the
+negotiations as he had been able, by his own astuteness, to divine; and
+as he was very much a friend to the Provinces and to Leicester, he never
+failed to keep them instructed, to the best of his ability.  It must be
+confessed, however, that the shuffling and paltering among great men and
+little men, at that period, forms a somewhat painful subject of
+contemplation at the present day.
+
+Grafigni having some merchandise to convey from Antwerp to London, went
+early in the year to the Prince of Parma, at Brussels, in order to
+procure a passport.  They entered into some conversation upon the misery
+of the country, and particularly concerning the troubles to which the
+unfortunate merchants had been exposed.  Alexander expressed much
+sympathy with the commercial community, and a strong desire that the
+ancient friendship between his master and the Queen of England might be
+restored.  Grafigni assured the Prince--as the result of his own
+observation in England--that the Queen participated in those pacific
+sentiments: "You are going to England," replied the Prince, "and you may
+say to the ministers of her Majesty, that, after my allegiance to my
+King, I am most favourably and affectionately inclined towards her.  If
+it pleases them that I, as Alexander Farnese, should attempt to bring
+about an accord, and if our commissioners could be assured of a hearing
+in England, I would take care that everything should be conducted with
+due regard to the honour and reputation of her Majesty."
+
+Grafigni then asked for a written letter of credence.  "That cannot be,"
+replied Alexander; "but if you return to me I shall believe your report,
+and then a proper person can be sent, with authority from the King to
+treat with her Majesty."
+
+Grafigni proceeded to England, and had an interview with Lord Cobham.
+A few days later that nobleman gave the merchant a general assurance
+that the Queen had always felt a strong inclination to maintain firm
+friendship with the House of Burgundy.  Nevertheless, as he proceeded
+to state, the bad policy of the King's ministers, and the enterprises
+against her Majesty, had compelled her to provide for her own security
+and that of her realm by remedies differing in spirit from that good
+inclination.  Being however a Christian princess, willing to leave
+vengeance to the Lord and disposed to avoid bloodshed, she was ready
+to lend her ear to a negotiation for peace, if it were likely to be a
+sincere and secure one.  Especially she was pleased that his Highness
+of Parma should act as mediator of such a treaty, as she considered him
+a most just and honourable prince in all his promises and actions.  Her
+Majesty would accordingly hold herself in readiness to receive the
+honourable commissioners alluded to, feeling sure that every step taken
+by his Highness would comport with her honour and safety.
+
+At about the same time the other partner in this diplomatic enterprise,
+William Bodman, communicated to Alexander, the result of his observations
+in England.  He stated that Lords Burghley, Buckhurst, and Cobham, Sir
+Christopher Hatton, and Comptroller Croft, were secretly desirous of
+peace with Spain and that they had seized the recent opportunity of her
+pique against the Earl of Leicester to urge forward these underhand
+negotiations.  Some progress had been made; but as no accredited
+commissioner arrived from the Prince of Parma, and as Leicester was
+continually writing earnest letters against peace, the efforts of these
+counsellors had slackened.  Bodman found them all, on his arrival,
+anxious as he said, "to get their necks out of the matter;" declaring
+everything which had been done to be pure matter of accident, entirely
+without the concurrence of the Queen, and each seeking to outrival the
+other in the good graces of her Majesty.  Grafigni informed Bodman,
+however, that Lord Cobham was quite to be depended upon in the affair,
+and would deal with him privately, while Lord Burghley would correspond
+with Andrea de Loo at Antwerp.  Moreover, the servant of Comptroller
+Croft would direct Bodman as to his course, and would give him daily
+instructions.
+
+Now it so happened that this servant of Croft, Norris by name, was a
+Papist, a man of bad character, and formerly a spy of the Duke of Anjou.
+"If your Lordship or myself should use such instruments as this," wrote
+Walsingham to Leicester, "I know we should bear no small reproach; but
+it is the good hap of hollow and doubtful men to be best thought of."
+Bodman thought the lords of the peace-faction and their adherents not
+sufficiently strong to oppose the other party with success.  He assured
+Farnese that almost all the gentlemen and the common people of England
+stood ready to risk their fortunes and to go in person to the field to
+maintain the cause of the Queen and religious liberty; and that the
+chance of peace was desperate unless something should turn the tide, such
+as, for example, the defeat of Drake, or an invasion by Philip of Ireland
+or Scotland.
+
+As it so happened that Drake was just then engaged in a magnificent
+career of victory, sweeping the Spanish Main and startling the nearest
+and the most remote possessions of the King with English prowess, his
+defeat was not one of the cards to be relied on by the peace-party in the
+somewhat deceptive game which they had commenced.  Yet, strange to say,
+they used, or attempted to use, those splendid triumphs as if they had
+been disasters.
+
+Meantime there was an active but very secret correspondence between Lord
+Cobham, Lord Burghley, Sir James Croft, and various subordinate
+personages in England, on the one side, and Champagny, President
+Richardot, La Motte, governor of Gravelines, Andrea de Loo, Grafigni, and
+other men in the obedient Provinces, more or less in Alexander's
+confidence, on the other side.  Each party was desirous of forcing or
+wheedling the antagonist to show his hand.  "You were employed to take
+soundings off the English coast in the Duke of Norfolk's time," said
+Cobham to La Motte: "you remember the Duke's fate.  Nevertheless, her
+Majesty hates war, and it only depends on the King to have a firm and
+lasting peace."
+
+"You must tell Lord Cobham," said Richardot to La Motte, "that you
+are not at liberty to go into a correspondence, until assured of the
+intentions of Queen Elizabeth.  Her Majesty ought to speak first,
+in order to make her good-will manifest," and so on.
+
+"The 'friend' can confer with you," said Richardot to Champagny; "but his
+Highness is not to appear to know anything at all about it.  The Queen
+must signify her intentions."
+
+"You answered Champagny correctly," said Burghley to De Loo, "as to what
+I said last winter concerning her Majesty's wishes in regard to a
+pacification.  The Netherlands must be compelled to return to obedience
+to the King; but their ancient privileges are to be maintained.  You
+omitted, however, to say a word about toleration, in the Provinces, of
+the reformed religion.  But I said then, as I say now, that this is a
+condition indispensable to peace."
+
+This was a somewhat important omission on the part of De Loo, and gives
+the measure of his conscientiousness or his capacity as a negotiator.
+Certainly for the Lord-Treasurer of England to offer, on the part of her
+Majesty, to bring about the reduction of her allies under the yoke which
+they had thrown off without her assistance, and this without leave asked
+of them, and with no provision for the great principle of religious
+liberty, which was the cause of the revolt, was a most flagitious
+trifling with the honour of Elizabeth and of England.  Certainly the more
+this mysterious correspondence is examined, the more conclusive is the
+justification of the vague and instinctive jealousy felt by Leicester and
+the States-General as to English diplomacy during the winter and spring
+of 1586.
+
+Burghley summoned De Loo, accordingly, to recall to his memory all that
+had been privately said to him on the necessity of protecting the
+reformed religion in the Provinces.  If a peace were to be perpetual,
+toleration was indispensable, he observed, and her Majesty was said to
+desire this condition most earnestly.
+
+The Lord-Treasurer also made the not unreasonable suggestion, that, in
+case of a pacification, it would be necessary to provide that English
+subjects--peaceful traders, mariners, and the like--should no longer be
+shut up in the Inquisition prisons of Spain and Portugal, and there
+starved to death, as, with great multitudes, had already been the case.
+
+Meantime Alexander, while encouraging and directing all these underhand
+measures, was carefully impressing upon his master that he was not, in
+the least degree; bound by any such negotiations.  "Queen Elizabeth," he
+correctly observed to Philip, "is a woman: she is also by no means fond
+of expense.  The kingdom, accustomed to repose, is already weary of war
+therefore, they are all pacifically inclined."  "It has been intimated to
+me," he said, "that if I would send a properly qualified person, who
+should declare that your Majesty had not absolutely forbidden the coming
+of Lord Leicester, such an agent would be well received, and perhaps the
+Earl would be recalled."  Alexander then proceeded, with the coolness
+befitting a trusted governor of Philip II., to comment upon the course
+which he was pursuing.  He could at any time denounce the negotiations
+which he was secretly prompting.  Meantime immense advantages could be
+obtained by the deception practised upon an enemy whose own object was
+to deceive.
+
+The deliberate treachery of the scheme was cynically enlarged upon, and
+its possible results mathematically calculated:
+
+Philip was to proceed with the invasion while Alexander was going on with
+the negotiation.  If, meanwhile, they could receive back Holland and
+Zeeland from the hands of England, that would be an immense success. The
+Prince intimated a doubt, however, as to so fortunate a result, because,
+in dealing with heretics and persons of similar quality, nothing but
+trickery was to be expected.  The chief good to be hoped for was to
+"chill the Queen in her plots, leagues, and alliances," and during the
+chill, to carry forward their own great design.  To slacken not a whit
+in their preparations, to "put the Queen to sleep," and, above all, not
+to leave the French for a moment unoccupied with internal dissensions and
+civil war; such was the game of the King and the governor, as expounded
+between themselves.
+
+President Richardot, at the same time, stated to Cardinal Granvelle that
+the English desire for peace was considered certain at Brussels.
+Grafigni had informed the Prince of Parma and his counsellors that the
+Queen was most amicably disposed, and that there would be no trouble on
+the point of religion, her Majesty not wishing to obtain more than she
+would herself be willing to grant.  "In this," said Richardot, "there is
+both hard and soft;" for knowing that the Spanish game was deception,
+pure and simple, the excellent President could not bring himself to
+suspect a possible grain of good faith in the English intentions.  Much
+anxiety was perpetually felt in the French quarter, her Majesty's
+government being supposed to be secretly preparing an invasion of the
+obedient Netherlands across the French frontier, in combination, not with
+the Bearnese, but with Henry III.  So much in the dark were even the most
+astute politicians.  "I can't feel satisfied in this French matter," said
+the President: "we mustn't tickle ourselves to make ourselves laugh."
+Moreover, there was no self-deception nor self-tickling possible as to
+the unmitigated misery of the obedient Netherlands.  Famine was a more
+formidable foe than Frenchmen, Hollanders, and Englishmen combined; so
+that Richardot avowed that the "negotiation would be indeed holy," if it
+would restore Holland and Zeeland to the King without fighting.  The
+prospect seemed on the whole rather dismal to loyal Netherlanders like
+the old leaguing, intriguing, Hispamolized president of the privy
+council.  "I confess," said he plaintively, "that England needs
+chastisement; but I don't see how we are to give it to her.  Only let us
+secure Holland and Zeeland, and then we shall always find a stick
+whenever we like to beat the dog."
+
+Meantime Andrea de Loo had been bustling and buzzing about the ears of
+the chief counsellors at the English court during all the early spring.
+Most busily he had been endeavouring to efface the prevalent suspicion
+that Philip and Alexander were only trifling by these informal
+negotiations.  We have just seen whether or not there was ground for that
+suspicion.  De Loo, being importunate, however--"as he usually was,"
+according to his own statement--obtained in Burghley's hand a
+confirmation, by order of the Queen, of De Loo's--letter of the 26th
+December.  The matter of religion gave the worthy merchant much
+difficulty, and he begged Lord Buckhurst, the Lord Treasurer, and many
+other counsellors, not to allow this point of toleration to ruin the
+whole affair; "for," said he, "his Majesty will never permit any exercise
+of the reformed religion."
+
+At last Buckhurst sent for him, and in presence of Comptroller Croft,
+gave him information that he had brought the Queen to this conclusion:
+firstly, that she would be satisfied with as great a proportion of
+religious toleration for Holland, Zeeland, and the other United
+Provinces, as his Majesty could concede with safety to his conscience and
+his honour; secondly, that she required an act of amnesty; thirdly, that
+she claimed reimbursement by Philip for the money advanced by her to the
+States.
+
+Certainly a more wonderful claim was never made than this--a demand upon
+an absolute monarch for indemnity for expenses incurred in fomenting a
+rebellion of his own subjects.  The measure of toleration proposed for
+the Provinces--the conscience, namely, of the greatest bigot ever born
+into the world--was likely to prove as satisfactory as the claim for
+damages propounded by the most parsimonious sovereign in Christendom.  It
+was, however, stipulated that the nonconformists of Holland and Zeeland,
+who should be forced into exile, were to have their property administered
+by papist trustees; and further, that the Spanish inquisition was not to
+be established in the Netherlands.  Philip could hardly demand better
+terms than these last, after a career of victory.  That they should be
+offered now by Elizabeth was hardly compatible with good faith to the
+States.
+
+On account of Lord Burghley's gout, it was suggested that the negotiators
+had better meet in England, as it would be necessary for him to take the
+lead in the matters and as he was but an indifferent traveller.  Thus,
+according to De Loo, the Queen was willing to hand over the United
+Provinces to Philip, and to toss religious toleration to the winds, if
+she could only get back the seventy thousand pounds--more or less--which
+she had invested in an unpromising speculation.  A few weeks later, and
+at almost the very moment when Elizabeth had so suddenly overturned her
+last vial of wrath upon the discomfited Heneage for having communicated
+--according to her express command--the fact of the pending negotiations
+to the Netherland States; at that very instant Parma was writing
+secretly, and in cipher, to Philip.  His communication--could Sir Thomas
+have read it--might have partly explained her Majesty's rage.
+
+Parma had heard, he said, through Bodman, from Comptroller Croft, that
+the Queen would willingly receive a proper envoy.  It was very easy to
+see, he observed, that the English counsellors were seeking every means
+of entering into communication with Spain, and that they were doing so
+with the participation of the Queen!  Lord-Treasurer Burghley and
+Comptroller Croft had expressed surprise that the Prince had not yet sent
+a secret agent to her Majesty, under pretext of demanding explanations
+concerning Lord Leicester's presence in the Provinces, but in reality to
+treat for peace.  Such an agent, it had been intimated, would be well
+received.  The Lord-Treasurer and the Comptroller would do all in their
+power to advance the negotiation, so that, with their aid and with the
+pacific inclination of the Queen, the measures proposed in favour of
+Leicester would be suspended, and perhaps the Earl himself and all the
+English would be recalled.
+
+The Queen was further represented as taking great pains to excuse both
+the expedition of Sir Francis Drake to the Indies, and the mission of
+Leicester to the Provinces.  She was said to throw the whole blame of
+these enterprises upon Walsingham and other ill-intentioned personages,
+and to avow that she now understood matters better; so that, if Parma
+would at once send an envoy, peace would, without question, soon be made.
+
+Parma had expressed his gratification at these hopeful dispositions on
+the part of Burghley and Croft, and held out hopes of sending an agent to
+treat with them, if not directly with her Majesty.  For some time past--
+according to the Prince--the English government had not seemed to be
+honestly seconding the Earl of Leicester, nor to correspond with his
+desires.  "This makes me think," he said, "that the counsellors before-
+mentioned, being his rivals, are trying to trip him up."
+
+In such a caballing, prevaricating age, it is difficult to know which of
+all the plotters and counterplotters engaged in these intrigues could
+accomplish the greatest amount of what--for the sake of diluting in nine
+syllables that which could be more forcibly expressed in one--was then
+called diplomatic dissimulation.  It is to be feared, notwithstanding her
+frequent and vociferous denials, that the robes of the "imperial
+votaress" were not so unsullied as could be wished.  We know how loudly
+Leicester had complained--we have seen how clearly Walsingham could
+convict; but Elizabeth, though convicted, could always confute: for an
+absolute sovereign, even without resorting to Philip's syllogisms of axe
+and faggot, was apt in the sixteenth century to have the best of an
+argument with private individuals.
+
+The secret statements of Parma-made, not for public effect, but for
+the purpose of furnishing his master with the most accurate information
+he could gather as to English policy--are certainly entitled to
+consideration.  They were doubtless founded upon the statements
+of individuals rejoicing in no very elevated character; but those
+individuals had no motive to deceive their patron.  If they clashed
+with the vehement declarations of very eminent personages, it must be
+admitted, on the other hand, that they were singularly in accordance with
+the silent eloquence of important and mysterious events.
+
+As to Alexander Farnese--without deciding the question whether Elizabeth
+and Burghley were deceiving Walsingham and Leicester, or only trying to
+delude Philip and himself--he had no hesitation, of course, on his part,
+in recommending to Philip the employment of unlimited dissimulation.
+Nothing could be more ingenuous than the intercourse between the King and
+his confidential advisers.  It was perfectly understood among them that
+they were always to deceive every one, upon every occasion.  Only let
+them be false, and it was impossible to be wholly wrong; but grave
+mistakes might occur from occasional deviations into sincerity.  It was
+no question at all, therefore, that it was Parma's duty to delude
+Elizabeth and Burghley.  Alexander's course was plain.  He informed his
+master that he would keep these difficulties alive as much as it was
+possible.  In order to "put them all to sleep with regard to the great
+enterprise of the invasion," he would send back Bodman to Burghley and
+Croft, and thus keep this unofficial negotiation upon its legs.  The King
+was quite uncommitted, and could always disavow what had been done.
+Meanwhile he was gaining, and his adversaries losing, much precious time.
+"If by this course," said Parma, "we can induce the English to hand over
+to us the places which they hold in Holland and Zeeland, that will be a
+great triumph."  Accordingly he urged the King not to slacken, in the
+least, his preparations for invasion, and, above all, to have a care that
+the French were kept entangled and embarrassed among themselves, which
+was a most substantial point.
+
+Meantime Europe was ringing with the American successes of the bold
+corsair Drake.  San Domingo, Porto Rico, Santiago, Cartliagena, Florida,
+were sacked and destroyed, and the supplies drawn so steadily from the
+oppression of the Western World to maintain Spanish tyranny in Europe,
+were for a time extinguished.  Parma was appalled at these triumphs of
+the Sea-King--"a fearful man to the King of Spain"--as Lord Burghley well
+observed.  The Spanish troops were starving in Flanders, all Flanders
+itself was starving, and Philip, as usual, had sent but insignificant
+remittances to save his perishing soldiers.  Parma had already exhausted
+his credit.  Money was most difficult to obtain in such a forlorn
+country; and now the few rich merchants and bankers of Antwerp that were
+left looked very black at these crushing news from America.  "They are
+drawing their purse-strings very tight," said Alexander, "and will make
+no accommodation.  The most contemplative of them ponder much over this
+success of Drake, and think that your Majesty will forget our matters
+here altogether."  For this reason he informed the King that it would be
+advisable to drop all further negotiation with England for the time, as
+it was hardly probable that, with such advantages gained by the Queen,
+she would be inclined to proceed in the path which had been just secretly
+opened.  Moreover, the Prince was in a state of alarm as to the
+intentions of France.  Mendoza and Tassis had given him to understand
+that a very good feeling prevailed between the court of Henry and of
+Elizabeth, and that the French were likely to come to a pacification
+among themselves.  In this the Spanish envoys were hardly anticipating so
+great an effect as we have seen that they had the right to do from their
+own indefatigable exertions; for, thanks to their zeal, backed by the
+moderate subsidies furnished by their master, the civil war in France
+already seemed likely to be as enduring as that of the Netherlands.  But
+Parma--still quite in the dark as to French politics--was haunted by the
+vision of seventy thousand foot and six thousand horses ready to be let
+slip upon him at any, moment, out of a pacified and harmonious France;
+while he had nothing but a few starving and crippled regiments to
+withstand such an invasion.  When all these events should have taken
+place, and France, in alliance with England, should have formally
+declared war against Spain, Alexander protested that he should have
+learned nothing new.
+
+The Prince was somewhat mistaken as to political affairs; but his doubts
+concerning his neighbours, blended with the forlorn condition of himself
+and army, about which there was no doubt at all, showed the exigencies of
+his situation.  In the midst of such embarrassments it is impossible not
+to admire his heroism as a military chieftain, and his singular
+adroitness as a diplomatist.  He had painted for his sovereign a most
+faithful and horrible portrait of the obedient Provinces.  The soil was
+untilled; the manufactories had all stopped; trade had ceased to exist.
+It was a pity only to look upon the raggedness of his soldiers.  No
+language could describe the misery of the reconciled Provinces--Artois,
+Hainault, Flanders.  The condition of Bruges would melt the hardest
+heart; other cities were no better; Antwerp was utterly ruined; its
+inhabitants were all starving.  The famine throughout the obedient
+Netherlands was such as had not been known for a century.  The whole
+country had been picked bare by the troops, and the plough was not put
+into the ground.  Deputations were constantly with him from Bruges,
+Dendermonde, Bois-le-Duc, Brussels, Antwerp, Nymegen, proving to him
+by the most palpable evidence that the whole population of those cities
+had almost literally nothing to eat.  He had nothing, however, but
+exhortations to patience to feed them withal.  He was left without a
+groat even to save his soldiers from starving, and he wildly and
+bitterly, day after day, implored his sovereign for aid.  These pictures
+are not the sketches of a historian striving for effect, but literal
+transcripts from the most secret revelations of the Prince himself to his
+sovereign.  On the other hand, although Leicester's complaints of the
+destitution of the English troops in the republic were almost as bitter,
+yet the condition of the United Provinces was comparatively healthy.
+Trade, external and internal, was increasing daily.  Distant commercial
+and military expeditions were fitted out, manufactures were prosperous,
+and the war of independence was gradually becoming--strange to say--a
+source of prosperity to the new commonwealth.
+
+Philip--being now less alarmed than his nephew concerning French affairs,
+and not feeling so keenly the misery of the obedient Provinces, or the
+wants of the Spanish army--sent to Alexander six hundred thousand ducats,
+by way of Genoa.  In the letter submitted by his secretary recording this
+remittance, the King made, however, a characteristic marginal note:--
+"See if it will not be as well to tell him something concerning the two
+hundred thousand ducats to be deducted for Mucio, for fear of more
+mischief, if the Prince should expect the whole six hundred thousand."
+
+Accordingly Mucio got the two hundred thousand.  One-third of the meagre
+supply destined for the relief of the King's starving and valiant little
+army in the Netherlands was cut off to go into the pockets of the
+intriguing Duke of Guise.  "We must keep the French," said Philip, "in a
+state of confusion at home, and feed their civil war.  We must not allow
+them to come to a general peace, which would be destruction for the
+Catholics.  I know you will put a good face on the matter; and, after
+all, 'tis in the interest of the Netherlands.  Moreover, the money shall
+be immediately refunded."
+
+Alexander was more likely to make a wry face, notwithstanding his views
+of the necessity of fomenting the rebellion against the House of Valois.
+Certainly if a monarch intended to conquer such countries as France,
+England, and Holland, without stirring from his easy chair in the
+Escorial, it would have been at least as well--so Alexander thought--to
+invest a little more capital in the speculation.  No monarch ever dreamed
+of arriving at universal empire with less personal fatigue or exposure,
+or at a cheaper rate, than did Philip II.  His only fatigue was at his
+writing-table.  But even here his merit was of a subordinate description.
+He sat a great while at a time.  He had a genius for sitting; but he now
+wrote few letters himself.  A dozen words or so, scrawled in
+hieroglyphics at the top, bottom, or along the margin of the interminable
+despatches of his secretaries, contained the suggestions, more or less
+luminous, which arose in his mind concerning public affairs.  But he held
+firmly to his purpose: He had devoted his life to the extermination of
+Protestantism, to the conquest of France and England, to the subjugation
+of Holland.  These were vast schemes.  A King who should succeed in such
+enterprises, by his personal courage and genius, at the head of his
+armies, or by consummate diplomacy, or by a masterly system of finance-
+husbanding and concentrating the resources of his almost boundless
+realms--might be in truth commended for capacity.  Hitherto however
+Philip's triumph had seemed problematical; and perhaps something more
+would be necessary than letters to Parma, and paltry remittances to
+Mucio, notwithstanding Alexander's splendid but local victories in
+Flanders.
+
+Parma, although in reality almost at bay, concealed his despair, and
+accomplished wonders in the field.  The military events during the spring
+and summer of 1586 will be sketched in a subsequent chapter.  For the
+present it is necessary to combine into a complete whole the subterranean
+negotiations between Brussels and England.
+
+Much to his surprise and gratification, Parma found that the peace-party
+were not inclined to change their views in consequence of the triumphs of
+Drake.  He soon informed the King that--according to Champagny and
+Bodman--the Lord Treasurer, the Comptroller, Lord Cobham, and Sir
+Christopher Hatton, were more pacific than they had ever been.  These
+four were represented by Grafigni as secretly in league against Leicester
+and Walsingham, and very anxious to bring about a reconciliation between
+the crowns of England and Spain.  The merchant-diplomatist, according to
+his own statement, was expressly sent by Queen Elizabeth to the prince of
+Parma, although without letter of credence or signed instructions, but
+with the full knowledge and approbation of the four counsellors just
+mentioned.  He assured Alexander that the Queen and the majority of her
+council felt a strong desire for peace, and had manifested much
+repentance for what had been done.  They had explained their proceedings
+by the necessity of self-defence.  They had avowed--in case they should
+be made sure of peace--that they should, not with reluctance and against
+their will, but, on the contrary, with the utmost alacrity and at once,
+surrender to the King of Spain the territory which they possessed in the
+Netherlands, and especially the fortified towns in Holland and Zeeland;
+for the English object had never been conquest.  Parma had also been
+informed of the Queen's strong desire that he should be employed as
+negotiator, on account of her great confidence in his sincerity.  They
+had expressed much satisfaction on hearing that he was about to send an
+agent to England, and had protested themselves rejoiced at Drake's
+triumphs, only because of their hope that a peace with Spain would thus
+be rendered the easier of accomplishment.  They were much afraid,
+according to Grafigni, of Philip's power, and dreaded a Spanish invasion
+of their country, in conjunction with the Pope.  They were now extremely
+anxious that Parma--as he himself informed the King--should send an agent
+of good capacity, in great secrecy, to England.
+
+The Comptroller had said that he had pledged himself to such a result,
+and if it failed, that they would probably cut off his head.  The four
+counsellors were excessively solicitous for the negotiation, and each of
+them was expecting to gain favour by advancing it to the best of his
+ability.
+
+Parma hinted at the possibility that all these professions were false,
+and that the English were only intending to keep the King from the
+contemplated invasion.  At the same time he drew Philip's attention to
+the fact that Burghley and his party had most evidently been doing
+everything in their power to obstruct Leicester's progress in the
+Netherlands and to keep back the reinforcements of troops and money which
+he so much required.
+
+No doubt these communications of Parma to the King were made upon the
+faith of an agent not over-scrupulous, and of no elevated or recognised
+rank in diplomacy.  It must be borne in mind, however, that he had been
+made use of by both parties; perhaps because it would be easy to throw
+off, and discredit, him whenever such a step should be convenient; and
+that, on the other hand, coming fresh from Burghley and the rest into the
+presence of the keen-eyed Farnese, he would hardly invent for his
+employer a budget of falsehoods.  That man must have been a subtle
+negotiator who could outwit such a statesman as Burghley--and the other
+counsellors of Elizabeth, and a bold one who could dare to trifle on a
+momentous occasion with Alexander of Parma.
+
+Leicester thought Burghley very much his friend, and so thought Davison
+and Heneage; and the Lord-Treasurer had, in truth, stood stoutly by the
+Earl in the affair of the absolute governorship;--"a matter more severe
+and cumbersome to him and others," said Burghley, "than any whatsoever
+since he was a counsellor."  But there is no doubt that these
+negotiations were going forward all the spring and summer, that they were
+most detrimental to Leicester's success, and that they were kept--so far
+as it was possible--a profound secret from him, from Walsingham, and from
+the States-General.  Nothing was told them except what their own
+astuteness had discovered beforehand; and the game of the counsellors--so
+far as their attitude towards Leicester and Walsingham was concerned--
+seems both disingenuous and impolitic.
+
+Parma, it was to be feared, was more than a match for the English
+governor-general in the field; and it was certainly hopeless for poor
+old Comptroller Croft, even though backed by the sagacious Burghley, to
+accomplish so great an amount of dissimulation in a year as the Spanish
+cabinet, without effort, could compass in a week.  Nor were they
+attempting to do so.  It is probable that England was acting towards
+Philip in much better faith than he deserved, or than Parma believed;
+but it is hardly to be wondered at that Leicester should think himself
+injured by being kept perpetually in the dark.
+
+Elizabeth was very impatient at not receiving direct letters from Parma,
+and her anxiety on the subject explains much of her caprice during the
+quarrel about the governor-generalahip.  Many persons in the Netherlands
+thought those violent scenes a farce, and a farce that had been arranged
+with Leicester beforehand.  In this they were mistaken; for an
+examination of the secret correspondence of the period reveals the
+motives--which to contemporaries were hidden--of many strange
+transactions.  The Queen was, no doubt, extremely anxious, and with
+cause, at the tempest slowly gathering over her head; but the more the
+dangers thickened, the more was her own official language to those in
+high places befitting the sovereign of England.
+
+She expressed her surprise to Farnese that he had not written to her on
+the subject of the Grafigni and Bodman affair.  The first, she said, was
+justified in all which he had narrated, save in his assertion that she
+had sent him.  The other had not obtained audience, because he had not
+come provided with any credentials, direct or indirect.  Having now
+understood from Andrea de Loo and the Seigneur de Champagny that Parma
+had the power to conclude a peace, which he seemed very much to desire,
+she observed that it was not necessary for him to be so chary in
+explaining the basis of the proposed negotiations.  It was better to
+enter into a straightforward path, than by ambiguous words to spin out
+to great length matters which princes should at once conclude.
+
+"Do not suppose," said the Queen, "that I am seeking what belongs to
+others.  God forbid.  I seek only that which is mine own.  But be
+sure that I will take good heed of the sword which threatens me with
+destruction, nor think that I am so craven-spirited as to endure a
+wrong, or to place myself at the mercy of my enemy.  Every week I see
+advertisements and letters from Spain that this year shall witness the
+downfall of England; for the Spaniards--like the hunter who divided, with
+great liberality, among his friends the body and limbs of the wolf,
+before it had been killed--have partitioned this kingdom and that of
+Ireland before the conquest has been effected.  But my royal heart is no
+whit appalled by such threats.  I trust, with the help of the Divine
+hand--which has thus far miraculously preserved me--to smite all these
+braggart powers into the dust, and to preserve my honour, and the
+kingdoms which He has given me for my heritage.
+
+"Nevertheless, if you have authority to enter upon and to conclude this
+negotiation, you will find my ears open to hear your propositions; and I
+tell you further, if a peace is to be made, that I wish you to be the
+mediator thereof.  Such is the affection I bear you, notwithstanding that
+some letters, written by your own hand, might easily have effaced such
+sentiments from my mind."
+
+Soon afterwards, Bodman was again despatched to England, Grafigni being
+already there.  He was provided with unsigned instructions, according to
+which he was to say that the Prince, having heard of the Queen's good
+intentions, had despatched him and Grafigni to her court.  They were to
+listen to any suggestions made by the Queen to her ministers; but they
+were to do nothing but listen.  If the counsellors should enter into
+their grievances against his Majesty, and ask for explanations, the
+agents were to say that they had no authority or instructions to speak
+for so great and Christian a monarch.  Thus they were to cut the thread
+of any such discourse, or any other observations not to the purpose.
+
+Silence, in short, was recommended, first and last, as the one great
+business of their mission; and it was unlucky that men whose talent for
+taciturnity was thus signally relied upon should be somewhat remarkable
+for loquacity.  Grafigni was also the bearer of a letter from Alexander
+to the Queen--of which Bodman received a copy--but it was strictly
+enjoined upon them to keep the letter, their instructions, and the
+objects of their journey, a secret from all the world.
+
+The letter of the Prince consisted mainly of complimentary flourishes.
+He had heard, he said, all that Agostino Grafigni had communicated, and
+he now begged her Majesty to let him understand the course which it was
+proper to take; assuring her of his gratitude for her good opinion
+touching his sincerity, and his desire to save the effusion of blood,
+and so on; concluding of course with expressions of most profound
+consideration and devotion.
+
+Early in July Bodman arrived in London.  He found Grafigni in very low
+spirits.  He had been with Lord Cobham, and was much disappointed with
+his reception, for Cobham--angry that Grafigni had brought no commission
+from the King--had refused to receive Parma's letter to the Queen, and
+had expressed annoyance that Bodman should be employed on this mission,
+having heard that lie was very ill-tempered and passionate.  The same
+evening, he had been sent for by Lord Burghley--who had accepted the
+letter for her Majesty without saying a word--and on the following
+morning, he had been taken to task, by several counsellors, on the ground
+that the Prince, in that communication, had stated that the Queen had
+expressed a desire for peace.
+
+It has just been shown that there was no such intimation at all in the
+letter; but as neither Grafigni nor Bodman had read the epistle itself,
+but only the copy furnished them, they could merely say that such an
+assertion; if made by the Prince, had been founded on no statement of
+theirs.  Bodman consoled his colleague, as well as he could, by
+assurances that when the letter was fairly produced, their vindication
+would be complete, and Grafigni, upon that point, was comforted.  He was,
+however, very doleful in general, and complained bitterly of Burghley and
+the other English counsellors.  He said that they had forced him, against
+his will, to make this journey to Brussels, that they had offered him
+presents, that they would leave him no rest in his own house, but had
+made him neglect all his private business, and caused him a great loss of
+time and money, in order that he might serve them.  They had manifested
+the strongest desire that Parma should open this communication, and had
+led him to expect a very large recompense for his share in the
+transaction.  "And now," said Grafigni to his colleague, with great
+bitterness, "I find no faith nor honour in them at all.  They don't keep
+their word, and every one of them is trying to slide out of the very
+business, in which each was, but the other day, striving to outrival the
+other, in order that it might be brought to a satisfactory conclusion."
+
+After exploding in this way to Bodman, he went back to Cobham, and
+protested, with angry vehemence, that Parma had never written such a word
+to the Queen, and that so it would prove, if the letter were produced.
+
+Next day, Bodman was sent for to Greenwich, where her Majesty was, as
+usual, residing.  A secret pavilion was indicated to him, where he was to
+stay until sunset.  When that time arrived, Lord Cobham's secretary came
+with great mystery, and begged the emissary to follow him, but at a
+considerable distance, towards the apartments of Lord Burghley in the
+palace.  Arriving there, they found the Lord Treasurer accompanied by
+Cobham and Croft.  Burghley instantly opened the interview by a defence
+of the Queen's policy in sending troops to the Netherlands, and in
+espousing their cause, and then the conversation proceeded to the
+immediate matter in hand.
+
+Bodman (after listening respectfully to the Lord-Treasurer's
+observations).--"His Highness has, however, been extremely surprised that
+my Lord Leicester should take an oath, as governor-general of the King's
+Provinces.  He is shocked likewise by the great demonstrations of
+hostility on the part of her Majesty."
+
+Burghley.--"The oath was indispensable.  The Queen was obliged to
+tolerate the step on account of the great urgency of the States to have a
+head.  But her Majesty has commanded us to meet you on this occasion, in
+order to hear what you have to communicate on the part of the Prince of
+Parma."
+
+Bodman (after a profusion of complimentary phrases).--"I have no
+commission to say anything.  I am only instructed to listen to anything
+that may be said to me, and that her Majesty may be pleased to command."
+
+Burghley.--"'Tis very discreet to begin thus.  But time is pressing, and
+it is necessary to be brief.  We beg you therefore to communicate,
+without further preface, that which you have been charged to say."
+
+Bodman.--"I can only repeat to your Lordship, that I have been charged to
+say nothing."
+
+After this Barmecide feast of diplomacy, to partake of which it seemed
+hardly necessary that the guests should have previously attired
+themselves in such garments of mystery, the parties separated for the
+night.
+
+In spite of their care, it would seem that the Argus-eyed Walsingham had
+been able to see after sunset; for, the next evening--after Bodman had
+been introduced with the same precautions to the same company, in the
+same place--Burghley, before a word had been spoken, sent for Sir
+Francis.
+
+Bodman was profoundly astonished, for he had been expressly informed that
+Walsingham was to know nothing of the transaction.  The Secretary of
+State could not so easily be outwitted, however, and he was soon seated
+at the table, surveying the scene, with his grave melancholy eyes, which
+had looked quite through the whole paltry intrigue.
+
+Burghley.--"Her Majesty has commanded us to assemble together, in order
+that, in my presence, it may be made clear that she did not commence this
+negotiation.  Let Grafigni be summoned."
+
+Grafigni immediately made his appearance.
+
+Burghley.--"You will please to explain how you came to enter into this
+business."
+
+Grafigni.--"The first time I went to the States, it was on my private
+affairs; I had no order from any one to treat with the Prince of Parma.
+His Highness, having accidentally heard, however, that I resided in
+England, expressed a wish to see me.  I had an interview with the Prince.
+I told him, out of my own head, that the Queen had a strong inclination
+to hear propositions of peace, and that--as some of her counsellors were
+of the same opinion--I believed that if his Highness should send a
+negotiator, some good would be effected.  The Prince replied that he felt
+by no means sure of such a result; but that, if I should come back from
+England, sent by the Queen or her council, he would then despatch a
+person with a commission to treat of peace.  This statement, together
+with other matters that had passed between us, was afterwards drawn up in
+writing by command of his Highness."
+
+Burghley.--"Who bade you say, after your second return to Brussels, that
+you came on the part of the Queen?  For you well know that her Majesty
+did not send you."
+
+Grafigni.--"I never said so.  I stated that my Lord Cobham had set down
+in writing what I was to say to the Prince of Parma.  It will never
+appear that I represented the Queen as desiring peace.  I said that her
+Majesty would lend her ears to peace.  Bodman knows this too; and he has
+a copy of the letter of his Highness."
+
+Walsingham to Bodman.--"Have you the copy still?"
+
+Bodman.--"Yes, Mr. Secretary."
+
+Walsingham.--"Please to produce it, in order that this matter may be
+sifted to the bottom."
+
+Bodman.--"I supplicate your Lorships to pardon me, but indeed that cannot
+be.  My instructions forbid my showing the letter."
+
+Walsingham (rising).--"I will forthwith go to her Majesty, and fetch the
+original."  A pause.  Mr. Secretary returns in a few minutes, having
+obtained the document, which the Queen, up to that time, had kept by her,
+without showing it to any one.
+
+Walsingham (after reading the letter attentively, and aloud).--"There is
+not such a word, as that her Majesty is desirous of peace, in the whole
+paper."
+
+Burghley (taking the letter, and slowly construing it out of Italian into
+English).--"It would seem that his Highness hath written this, assuming
+that the Signor Grafigni came from the Queen, although he had received
+his instructions from my Lord Cobham.  It is plain, however, that the
+negotiation was commenced accidentally."
+
+Comptroller Croft (nervously, and with the air of a man fearful of
+getting into trouble).--"You know very well, Mr. Bodman, that my servant
+came to Dunkirk only to buy and truck away horses; and that you then, by
+chance, entered into talk with him, about the best means of procuring a
+peace between the two kingdoms.  My servant told you of the good feeling
+that prevailed in England.  You promised to write on the subject to the
+Prince, and I immediately informed the Lord-Treasurer of the whole
+transaction."
+
+Burghley.--"That is quite true."
+
+Croft.--"My servant subsequently returned to the Provinces in order to
+learn what the Prince might have said on the subject."
+
+Bodman (with immense politeness, but very decidedly).--"Pardon me, Mr.
+Comptroller; but, in this matter, I must speak the truth, even if the
+honour and life of my father were on the issue.  I declare that your
+servant Norris came to me, directly commissioned for that purpose by
+yourself, and informed me from you, and upon your authority, that if I
+would solicit the Prince of Parma to send a secret agent to England, a
+peace would be at once negotiated.  Your servant entreated me to go to
+his Highness at Brussels.  I refused, but agreed to consider the
+proposition.  After the lapse of several days, the servant returned to
+make further enquiries.  I told him that the Prince had come to no
+decision.  Norris continued to press the matter.  I excused myself.  He
+then solicited and obtained from me a letter of introduction to De Loo,
+the secretary of his Highness.  Armed with this, he went to Brussels and
+had an interview--as I found, four days later--with the Prince.  In
+consequence of the representations of Norris, those of Signor Grafigni,
+and those by way of Antwerp, his Highness determined to send me to
+England."
+
+Burghley to Croft.--"Did you order your servant to speak with Andrea de
+Loo?"
+
+Croft.--"I cannot deny it."
+
+Burghley.--"The fellow seems to have travelled a good way out of his
+commission.  His master sends him to buy horses, and he commences a
+peace-negotiation between two kingdoms.  It would be well he were
+chastised.  As regards the Antwerp matter, too, we have had many letters,
+and I have, seen one from the Seigneur de Champagny, the same effect as
+that of all the rest."
+
+Walsingham.--"I see not to what end his Highness of Parma has sent Mr.
+Bodman hither.  The Prince avows that he hath no commission from Spain."
+
+Bodman.--"His Highness was anxious to know what was her Majesty's
+pleasure.  So soon as that should be known, the Prince could obtain ample
+authority.  He would never have proceeded so far without meaning a good
+end."
+
+Walsingham.--"Very like.  I dare say that his Highness will obtain the
+commission.  Meantime, as Prince of Parma, he writes these letters, and
+assists his sovereign perhaps more than he doth ourselves."
+
+Here the interview terminated.  A few days later, Bodman had another
+conversation with Burghley and Cobham.  Reluctantly, at their urgent
+request, he set down in writing all that he had said concerning his
+mission.
+
+The Lord Treasurer said that the Queen and her counsellors were "ready to
+embrace peace when it was treated of sincerely."  Meantime the Queen had
+learned that the Prince had been sending letters to the cautionary towns
+in Holland and Zeeland, stating that her Majesty was about to surrender
+them to the King of Spain.  These were tricks to make mischief, and were
+very detrimental to the Queen.
+
+Bodman replied that these were merely the idle stories of quidnuncs; and
+that the Prince and all his counsellors were dealing with the utmost
+sincerity.
+
+Burghley answered that he had intercepted the very letters, and had them
+in his possession.
+
+A week afterwards, Bodman saw Walsingham alone, and was informed by
+him that the Queen had written an answer to Parma's letter, and that
+negotiations for the future were to be carried on in the usual form,
+or not at all.  Walsingham, having thus got the better of his rivals,
+and delved below their mines, dismissed the agent with brief courtesy.
+Afterwards the discomfited Mr. Comptroller wished a private interview
+with Bodman.  Bodman refused to speak with him except in presence of Lord
+Cobham.  This Croft refused.  In the same way Bodman contrived to get
+rid, as he said, of Lord Burghley and Lord Cobham, declining to speak
+with either of them alone.  Soon afterwards he returned to the Provinces!
+
+The Queen's letter to Parma was somewhat caustic.  It was obviously
+composed through the inspiration of Walsingham rather than that of
+Burghley.  The letter, brought by a certain Grafigni and a certain
+Bodman, she said, was a very strange one, and written under a delusion.
+It was a very grave error, that, in her name, without her knowledge,
+contrary to her disposition, and to the prejudice of her honour, such a
+person as this Grafigni, or any one like him, should have the audacity to
+commence such a business, as if she had, by messages to the Prince,
+sought a treaty with his King, who had so often returned evil for her
+good.  Grafigni, after representing the contrary to his Highness, had now
+denied in presence of her counsellors having received any commission from
+the Queen.  She also briefly gave the result of Bodman's interviews with
+Burghley and the others, just narrated.  That agent had intimated that
+Parma would procure authority to treat for peace, if assured that the
+Queen would lend her ear to any propositions.
+
+She replied by referring to her published declarations, as showing her
+powerful motives for interfering in these affairs.  It was her purpose to
+save her own realm and to rescue her ancient neighbours from misery and
+from slavery.  To this end she should still direct her actions,
+notwithstanding the sinister rumours which had been spread that she was
+inclined to peace before providing for the security and liberty of her
+allies.  She was determined never to separate their cause from her own.
+Propositions tending to the security of herself and of her neighbours
+would always be favourably received.
+
+Parma, on his part, informed his master that there could be no doubt that
+the Queen and the majority of her council abhorred the war, and that
+already much had been gained by the fictitious negotiation.  Lord-
+Treasurer Burghley had been interposing endless delays and difficulties
+in the way of every measure proposed for the relief of Lord Leicester,
+and the assistance rendered him had been most lukewarm.  Meantime the
+Prince had been able, he said, to achieve much success in the field, and
+the English had done nothing to prevent it.  Since the return of Grafigni
+and Bodman, however, it was obvious that the English government had
+disowned these non-commissioned diplomatists.  The whole negotiation and
+all the negotiators were now discredited, but there was no doubt that
+there had been a strong desire to treat, and great disappointment at the
+result.  Grafigni and Andrea de Loo had been publishing everywhere in
+Antwerp that England would consider the peace as made, so soon as his
+Majesty should be willing to accept any propositions.
+
+His Majesty, meanwhile, sat in his cabinet, without the slightest
+intention of making or accepting any propositions save those that were
+impossible.  He smiled benignantly at his nephew's dissimulation and at
+the good results which it had already produced.  He approved of gaining
+time, he said, by fictitious negotiations and by the use of a mercantile
+agent; for, no doubt, such a course would prevent the proper succours
+from being sent to the Earl of Leicester.  If the English would hand over
+to him the cautionary towns held by them in Holland and Zeeland, promise
+no longer to infest the seas, the Indies, and the Isles, with their
+corsairs, and guarantee the complete obedience to their King and
+submission to the holy Catholic Church of the rebellious Provinces,
+perhaps something might be done with them; but, on the whole, he was
+inclined to think that they had been influenced by knavish and deceitful
+motives from the beginning.  He enjoined it upon Parma, therefore, to
+proceed with equal knavery--taking care, however, not to injure his
+reputation--and to enter into negotiations wherever occasion might serve,
+in order to put the English off their guard and to keep back the
+reinforcements so imperatively required by Leicester.
+
+And the reinforcements were indeed kept back.  Had Burghley and Croft
+been in the pay of Philip II.  they could hardly have served him better
+than they had been doing by the course pursued.  Here then is the
+explanation of the shortcomings of the English government towards
+Leicester and the States during the memorable spring and summer of 1586.
+No money, no soldiers, when most important operations in the field were
+required.  The first general of the age was to be opposed by a man who
+had certainly never gained many laurels as a military chieftain, but who
+was brave and confident, and who, had he been faithfully supported by the
+government which sent him to the Netherlands, would have had his
+antagonist at a great disadvantage.  Alexander had scarcely eight
+thousand effective men.  Famine, pestilence, poverty, mutiny, beset
+and almost paralyzed him.  Language could not exaggerate the absolute
+destitution of the country.  Only miracles could save the King's cause,
+as Farnese repeatedly observed.  A sharp vigorous campaign, heartily
+carried on against him by Leicester and Hohenlo, with plenty of troops
+and money at command, would have brought the heroic champion of
+Catholicism to the ground.  He was hemmed in upon all sides; he was cut
+off from the sea; he stood as it were in a narrowing circle, surrounded
+by increasing dangers.  His own veterans, maddened by misery, stung by
+their King's ingratitude, naked, starving, ferocious, were turning
+against him.  Mucio, like his evil genius, was spiriting away his
+supplies just as they were reaching his hands; a threatening tempest
+seemed rolling up from France; the whole population of the Provinces
+which he had "reconciled"--a million of paupers--were crying to him for
+bread; great commercial cities, suddenly blasted and converted into dens
+of thieves and beggars, were cursing the royal author of their ruin, and
+uttering wild threats against his vicegerent; there seemed, in truth,
+nothing left for Alexander but to plunge headlong into destruction, when,
+lo! Mr. Comptroller Croft, advancing out of the clouds, like a propitious
+divinity, disguised in the garb of a foe--and the scene was changed.
+
+The feeble old man, with his shufing, horse-trucking servant, ex-spy of
+Monsieur, had accomplished more work for Philip and Alexander than many
+regiments of Spaniards and Walloons could have done.  The arm of
+Leicester was paralyzed upon the very threshold of success.  The picture
+of these palace-intrigues has been presented with minute elaboration,
+because, however petty and barren in appearance, they were in reality
+prolific of grave results.  A series of victories by Parma was
+substituted for the possible triumphs of Elizabeth and the States.
+
+The dissimulation of the Spanish court was fathomless.  The secret
+correspondence of the times reveals to us that its only purpose was to
+deceive the Queen and her counsellors, and to gain time to prepare the
+grand invasion of England and subjugation of Holland--that double purpose
+which Philip could only abandon with life.  There was never a thought,
+on his part, of honest negotiation.  On the other hand, the Queen was
+sincere; Burghley and Hatton and Cobham were sincere; Croft was sincere,
+so far as Spain was concerned.  At least they had been sincere.  In the
+private and doleful dialogues between Bodman and Grafigni which we have
+just been overhearing, these intriguers spoke the truth, for they could
+have no wish to deceive each other, and no fear of eaves-droppers not to
+be born till centuries afterwards.  These conversations have revealed to
+us that the Lord Treasurer and three of his colleagues had been secretly
+doing their best to cripple Leicester, to stop the supplies for the
+Netherlands, and to patch up a hurried and unsatisfactory, if not a
+disgraceful peace; and this, with the concurrence of her Majesty.  After
+their plots had been discovered by the vigilant Secretary of State, there
+was a disposition to discredit the humbler instruments in the cabal.
+Elizabeth was not desirous of peace.  Far from it.  She was qualmish at
+the very suggestion.  Dire was her wrath against Bodman, De Loo,
+Graafigni, and the rest, at their misrepresentations on the subject.  But
+she would "lend her ear."  And that royal ear was lent, and almost fatal
+was the distilment poured into its porches.  The pith and marrow of the
+great Netherland enterprise was sapped by the slow poison of the ill-
+timed negotiation.  The fruit of Drake's splendid triumphs in America
+was blighted by it.  The stout heart of the vainglorious but courageous
+Leicester was sickened by it, while, meantime, the maturing of the
+great armada-scheme, by which the destruction of England was to be
+accomplished, was furthered, through the unlimited procrastination
+so precious to the heart of Philip.
+
+Fortunately the subtle Walsingham was there upon the watch to administer
+the remedy before it was quite too late; and to him England and the
+Netherlands were under lasting obligations.  While Alexander and Philip
+suspected a purpose on the part of the English government to deceive
+them, they could not help observing that the Earl of Leicester was both
+deserted and deceived.  Yet it had been impossible for the peace-party in
+the government wholly to conceal their designs, when such prating fellows
+as Grafigni and De Loo were employed in what was intended to be a secret
+negotiation.  In vain did the friends of Leicester in the Netherlands
+endeavour to account for the neglect with which he was treated, and for
+the destitution of his army.  Hopelessly did they attempt to counteract
+those "advertisements of most fearful instance," as Richard Cavendish
+expressed himself, which were circulating everywhere.
+
+Thanks to the babbling of the very men, whose chief instructions had been
+to hold their tongues, and to listen with all their ears, the secret
+negotiations between Parma and the English counsellors became the town-
+talk at Antwerp, the Hague, Amsterdam, Brussels, London.  It is true that
+it was impossible to know what was actually said and done; but that there
+was something doing concerning which Leicester was not to be informed was
+certain.  Grafigni, during one of his visits to the obedient provinces,
+brought a brace of greyhounds and a couple of horses from England, as a
+present to Alexander, and he perpetually went about, bragging to every
+one of important negotiations which he was conducting, and of his
+intimacy with great personages in both countries.  Leicester,
+on the other hand, was kept in the dark.  To him Grafigni made no
+communications, but he once sent him a dish of plums, "which," said the
+Earl, with superfluous energy, "I will boldly say to you, by the living
+God, is all that I have ever had since I came into these countries."
+When it is remembered that Leicester had spent many thousand pounds in
+the Netherland cause, that he had deeply mortgaged his property in order
+to provide more funds, that he had never received a penny of salary from
+the Queen, that his soldiers were "ragged and torn like rogues-pity to
+see them," and were left without the means of supporting life; that he
+had been neglected, deceived, humiliated, until he was forced to describe
+himself as a "forlorn man set upon a forlorn hope," it must be conceded
+that Grafigni's present of a dish of plums could hardly be sufficient to
+make him very happy.
+
+From time to time he was enlightened by Sir Francis, who occasionally
+forced his adversaries' hands, and who always faithfully informed the
+Earl of everything he could discover.  "We are so greedy of a peace, in
+respect of the charges of the wars," he wrote in April, "as in the
+procuring thereof we weigh neither honour nor safety.  Somewhat here is
+adealing underhand, wherein there is great care taken that I should not
+be made acquainted withal."  But with all their great care, the
+conspirators, as it has been seen, were sometimes outwitted by the
+Secretary, and, when put to the blush, were forced to take him into half-
+confidence.  "Your Lordship may see," he wrote, after getting possession
+of Parma's letter to the Queen, and unravelling Croft's intrigues, "what
+effects are wrought by such weak ministers.  They that have been the
+employers of them are ashamed of the matter."
+
+Unutterable was the amazement, as we have seen, of Bodman and Grafigni
+when they had suddenly found themselves confronted in Burghley's private
+apartments in Greenwich Palace, whither they had been conducted so
+mysteriously after dark from the secret pavilion--by the grave Secretary
+of State, whom they had been so anxious to deceive; and great was the
+embarrassment of Croft and Cobham, and even of the imperturbable
+Burghley.
+
+And thus patiently did Walsingham pick his course, plummet in hand,
+through the mists and along the quicksands, and faithfully did he hold
+out signals to his comrade embarked on the same dangerous voyage.  As for
+the Earl himself, he was shocked at the short-sighted policy of his
+mistress, mortified by the neglect to which he was exposed, disappointed
+in his ambitious schemes.  Vehemently and judiciously he insisted upon
+the necessity of vigorous field operations throughout the spring and
+summer thus frittered away in frivolous negotiations.  He was for peace,
+if a lasting and honourable peace could be procured; but he insisted that
+the only road tosuch a result was through a "good sharp war."  His troops
+were mutinous for want of pay, so that he had been obligedto have a few
+of them executed, although he protested that he would rather have "gone a
+thousand miles a-foot" than have done so; and he was crippled by his
+government at exactly the time when his great adversary's condition was
+most forlorn.  Was it strange that the proud Earl should be fretting his
+heart away when such golden chances were eluding his grasp?  He would
+"creep upon the ground," he said, as far as his hands and knees would
+carry him, to have a good peace for her Majesty, but his care was to have
+a peace indeed, and not a show of it.  It was the cue of Holland and
+England to fight before they could expect to deal upon favourable terms
+with their enemy.  He was quick enough to see that his false colleagues
+at home were playing into the enemy's hands.  Victory was what was
+wanted; victory the Earl pledged himself, if properly seconded, to
+obtain; and, braggart though he was, it is by no means impossible that
+he might have redeemed his pledge.  "If her Majesty will use her
+advantage," he said, "she shall bring the King, and especially this
+Prince of Parma, to seek peace in other sort than by way of merchants."
+Of courage and confidence the governor had no lack.  Whether he was
+capable of outgeneralling Alexander Farnese or no, will be better seen,
+perhaps, in subsequent chapters; but there is no doubt that he was
+reasonable enough in thinking, at that juncture, that a hard campaign
+rather than a "merchant's brokerage" was required to obtain an honourable
+peace.  Lofty, indeed, was the scorn of the aristocratic Leicester that
+"merchants and pedlars should be paltering in so weighty a cause," and
+daring to send him a dish of plums when he was hoping half a dozen
+regiments from the Queen; and a sorry business, in truth, the pedlars
+had made of it.
+
+Never had there been a more delusive diplomacy, and it was natural that
+the lieutenant-general abroad and the statesman at home should be sad and
+indignant, seeing England drifting to utter shipwreck while pursuing that
+phantom of a pacific haven.  Had Walsingham and himself tampered with the
+enemy, as some counsellors he could name had done, Leicester asserted
+that the gallows would be thought too good for them; and yet he hoped he
+might be hanged if the whole Spanish faction in England could procure for
+the Queen a peace fit for her to accept.
+
+Certainly it was quite impossible for the Spanish-faction to bring about
+a peace.  No human power could bring it about.  Even if England had been
+willing and able to surrender Holland, bound hand and foot, to Philip,
+even then she could only have obtained a hollow armistice.  Philip had
+sworn in his inmost soul the conquest of England and the dethronement of
+Elizabeth.  His heart was fixed.  It was only by the subjugation of
+England that he hoped to recover the Netherlands.  England was to be
+his stepping-stone to Holland.  The invasion was slowly but steadily
+maturing, and nothing could have diverted the King from his great
+purpose.  In the very midst of all these plots and counterplots, Bodmans
+and Grafignis, English geldings and Irish greyhounds, dishes of plums and
+autograph letters of her Majesty and his Highness, the Prince was
+deliberately discussing all the details of the invasion, which, as it was
+then hoped, would be ready by the autumn of the year 1586.  Although he
+had sent a special agent to Philip, who was to state by word of mouth
+that which it was deemed unsafe to write, yet Alexander, perpetually
+urged by his master, went at last more fully into particulars than he
+had ever ventured to do before; and this too at the very moment when
+Elizabeth was most seriously "lending her ear" to negotiation, and most
+vehemently expressing her wrath at Sir Thomas Heneage for dealing
+candidly with the States-General.
+
+The Prince observed that when, two or three years before, he had sent his
+master an account of the coasts, anchoring-places, and harbours of
+England, he had then expressed the opinion that the conquest of England
+was an enterprise worthy of the grandeur and Christianity of his Majesty,
+and not so difficult as to be considered altogether impossible.  To make
+himself absolutely master of the business, however, he had then thought
+that the King should have no associates in the scheme, and should make no
+account of the inhabitants of England.  Since that time the project had
+become more difficult of accomplishment, because it was now a stale and
+common topic of conversation everywhere--in Italy, Germany, and France--
+so that there could be little doubt that rumours on the subject were
+daily reaching the ears of Queen Elizabeth and of every one in her
+kingdom.  Hence she had made a strict alliance with Sweden, Denmark, the
+Protestant princes of Germany, and even with the Turks and the French.
+Nevertheless, in spite of these obstacles, the King, placing his royal
+hand to the work, might well accomplish the task; for the favour of the
+Lord, whose cause it was, would be sure to give him success.
+
+Being so Christian and Catholic a king, Philip naturally desired to
+extend the area of the holy church, and to come to the relief of so many
+poor innocent martyrs in England, crying aloud before the Lord for help.
+Moreover Elizabeth had fomented rebellion in the King's Provinces for a
+long time secretly, and now, since the fall of Antwerp, and just as
+Holland and Zeeland were falling into his grasp, openly.
+
+Thus, in secret and in public, she had done the very worst she could do;
+and it was very clear that the Lord, for her sins; had deprived her of
+understanding, in order that his Majesty might be the instrument of that
+chastisement which she so fully deserved.  A monarch of such great
+prudence, valour, and talent as Philip, could now give all the world to
+understand that those who dared to lose a just and decorous respect for
+him, as this good lady had done, would receive such chastisement as royal
+power guided by prudent counsel could inflict.  Parma assured his
+sovereign, that, if the conquest of England were effected, that of the
+Netherlands would be finished with much facility and brevity; but that
+otherwise, on account of the situation, strength and obstinacy of those
+people, it would be a very long, perilous, and at best doubtful business.
+
+"Three points," he said, "were most vital to the invasion of England--
+secrecy, maintenance of the civil war in France, and judicious
+arrangement of matters in the Provinces."
+
+The French, if unoccupied at home, would be sure to make the enterprise
+so dangerous as to become almost impossible; for it might be laid down as
+a general maxim that that nation, jealous of Philip's power, had always
+done and would always do what it could to counteract his purposes.
+
+With regard to the Netherlands, it would be desirable to leave a good
+number of troops in those countries--at least as many as were then
+stationed there--besides the garrisons, and also to hold many German and
+Swiss mercenaries in "wartgeld."  It would be further desirable that
+Alexander should take most of the personages of quality and sufficiency
+in the Provinces over with him to England, in order that they should not
+make mischief in his absence.
+
+With regard to the point of secrecy, that was, in Parma's opinion, the
+most important of all.  All leagues must become more or less public,
+particularly those contrived at or with Rome.  Such being the case, the
+Queen of England would be well aware of the Spanish projects, and,
+besides her militia at home, would levy German infantry and cavalry, and
+provide plenty of vessels, relying therein upon Holland and Zeeland,
+where ships and sailors were in such abundance.  Moreover, the English
+and the Netherlanders knew the coasts, currents, tides, shallows,
+quicksands, ports, better than did the pilots of any fleets that the King
+could send thither.  Thus, having his back assured, the enemy would meet
+them in front at a disadvantage.  Although, notwithstanding this
+inequality, the enemy would be beaten, yet if the engagement should be
+warm, the Spaniards would receive an amount of damage which could not
+fail to be inconvenient, particularly as they would be obliged to land
+their troops, and to give battle to those who would be watching their
+landing.  Moreover the English would be provided with cavalry, of which
+his Majesty's forces would have very little, on account of the difficulty
+of its embarkation.
+
+The obedient Netherlands would be the proper place in which to organize
+the whole expedition.  There the regiments could be filled up, provisions
+collected, the best way of effecting the passage ascertained, and the
+force largely increased without exciting suspicion; but with regard to
+the fleet, there were no ports there capacious enough for large vessels.
+Antwerp had ceased to be a seaport; but a large number of flat-bottomed
+barges, hoys, and other barks, more suitable for transporting soldiers,
+could be assembled in Dunkirk, Gravelines, and Newport, which, with some
+five-and-twenty larger vessels, would be sufficient to accompany the
+fleet.
+
+The Queen, knowing that there were no large ships, nor ports to hold them
+in the obedient Provinces, would be unauspicious, if no greater levies
+seemed to be making than the exigencies of the Netherlands might
+apparently require.
+
+The flat-bottomed boats, drawing two or three feet of water, would be
+more appropriate than ships of war drawing twenty feet.  The passage
+across, in favourable weather, might occupy from eight to twelve hours.
+
+The number of troops for the invading force should be thirty thousand
+infantry, besides five hundred light troopers, with saddles, bridles, and
+lances, but without horses, because, in Alexander's opinion, it would be
+easier to mount them in England.  Of these thirty thousand there should
+be six thousand Spaniards, six thousand Italians, six thousand Walloons,
+nine thousand Germans, and three thousand Burgundians.
+
+Much money would be required; at least three hundred thousand dollars
+the month for the new force, besides the regular one hundred and fifty
+thousand for the ordinary provision in the Netherlands; and this ordinary
+provision would be more necessary than ever, because a mutiny breaking
+forth in the time of the invasion would be destruction to the Spaniards
+both in England and in the Provinces.
+
+The most appropriate part of the coast for a landing would,
+in Alexander's opinion, be between Dover and Margate, because the
+Spaniards, having no footing in Holland and Zeeland, were obliged to make
+their starting-point in Flanders.  The country about Dover was described
+by Parma as populous, well-wooded, and much divided by hedges;
+advantageous for infantry, and not requiring a larger amount of cavalry
+than the small force at his disposal, while the people there were
+domestic in their habits, rich, and therefore less warlike, less trained
+to arms, and more engrossed by their occupations and their comfortable
+ways of life.  Therefore, although some encounters would take place, yet
+after the commanders of the invading troops had given distinct and clear
+orders, it would be necessary to leave the rest in the, "hands of God who
+governs all things, and from whose bounty and mercy it was to be hoped
+that He would favour a cause so eminently holy, just, and His own."
+
+It would be necessary to make immediately for London, which city, not
+being fortified, would be very easily taken.  This point gained, the
+whole framework of the business might be considered as well put together.
+If the Queen should fly--as, being a woman, she probably would do--
+everything would be left in such confusion, as, with the blessing of God,
+it might soon be considered that the holy and heroic work had been
+accomplished: Her Majesty, it was suggested, would probably make her
+escape in a boat before she could be captured; but the conquest would be
+nevertheless effected.  Although, doubtless, some English troops might be
+got together to return and try their fortune, yet it would be quite
+useless; for the invaders would have already planted themselves upon the
+soil, and then, by means of frequent excursions and forays hither and
+thither about the island, all other places of importance would be gained,
+and the prosperous and fortunate termination of the adventure assured.
+
+As, however, everything was to be provided for, so, in case the secret
+could not be preserved, it would be necessary for Philip, under pretext
+of defending himself against the English and French corsairs, to send a
+large armada to sea, as doubtless the Queen would take the same measure.
+If the King should prefer, however, notwithstanding Alexander's advice to
+the contrary, to have confederates in the enterprise,--then, the matter
+being public, it would be necessary to prepare a larger and stronger
+fleet than any which Elizabeth, with the assistance of her French and
+Netherland allies, could oppose to him.  That fleet should be well
+provided with vast stores of provisions, sufficient to enable the
+invading force, independently of forage, to occupy three or four places
+in England at once, as the enemy would be able to come from various towns
+and strong places to attack them.
+
+As for the proper season for the expedition, it would be advisable to
+select the month of October of the current year, because the English
+barns would then be full of wheat and other forage, and the earth would
+have been sown for the next year--points of such extreme importance, that
+if the plan could not be executed at that time, it would be as well to
+defer it until the following October.
+
+The Prince recommended that the negotiations with the League should be
+kept spinning, without allowing them to come to a definite conclusion;
+because there would be no lack of difficulties perpetually offering
+themselves, and the more intricate and involved the policy of France, the
+better it would be for the interests of Spain.  Alexander expressed the
+utmost confidence that his Majesty, with his powerful arm, would overcome
+all obstacles in the path of his great project, and would show the world
+that he "could do a little more than what was possible."  He also assured
+his master, in adding in this most extravagant language, of his personal
+devotion, that it was unnecessary for him to offer his services in this
+particular enterprise, because, ever since his birth, he had dedicated
+and consecrated himself to execute his royal commands.
+
+He further advised that old Peter Ernest Mansfeld should be left
+commander-in-chief of the forces in the Netherlands during his own
+absence in England.  "Mansfeld was an honourable cavalier," he said, "and
+a faithful servant of the King;" and although somewhat ill-conditioned at
+times, yet he had essential good qualities, and was the only general fit
+to be trusted alone.
+
+The reader, having thus been permitted to read the inmost thoughts of
+Philip and Alexander, and to study their secret plans for conquering
+England in October, while their frivolous yet mischievous negotiations
+with the Queen had been going on from April to June, will be better able
+than before to judge whether Leicester were right or no in doubting if a
+good peace could be obtained by a "merchant's brokerage."
+
+And now, after examining these pictures of inter-aulic politics and back-
+stairs diplomacy, which represent so large and characteristic a phasis of
+European history during the year 1586, we must throw a glance at the
+external, more stirring, but not more significant public events which
+were taking place during the same period.
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Could do a little more than what was possible
+Elizabeth, though convicted, could always confute
+He sat a great while at a time.  He had a genius for sitting
+Mistakes might occur from occasional deviations into sincerity
+Nine syllables that which could be more forcibly expressed in on
+They were always to deceive every one, upon every occasion
+We mustn't tickle ourselves to make ourselves laugh
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v46
+by John Lothrop Motley
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS OF THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS 1584-86
+
+A hard bargain when both parties are losers
+Able men should be by design and of purpose suppressed
+Anarchy which was deemed inseparable from a non-regal form
+College of "peace-makers," who wrangled more than all
+Condemned first and inquired upon after
+Could do a little more than what was possible
+Courage and semblance of cheerfulness, with despair in his heart
+Demanding peace and bread at any price
+Diplomatic adroitness consists mainly in the power to deceive
+Dismay of our friends and the gratification of our enemies
+Disordered, and unknit state needs no shaking, but propping
+Elizabeth, though convicted, could always confute
+Enmity between Lutherans and Calvinists
+Find our destruction in our immoderate desire for peace
+German-Lutheran sixteenth-century idea of religious freedom
+He sat a great while at a time.  He had a genius for sitting
+He did his work, but he had not his reward
+Her teeth black, her bosom white and liberally exposed (Eliz.)
+Hibernian mode of expressing himself
+His inordinate arrogance
+His insolence intolerable
+Holland was afraid to give a part, although offering the whole
+Honor good patriots, and to support them in venial errors
+Humility which was but the cloak to his pride
+Intentions of a government which did not know its own intentions
+Intolerable tendency to puns
+Longer they delay it, the less easy will they find it
+Lord was better pleased with adverbs than nouns
+Make sheep of yourselves, and the wolf will eat you
+Matter that men may rather pray for than hope for
+Military virtue in the support of an infamous cause
+Mistakes might occur from occasional deviations into sincerity
+Necessity of kingship
+Neighbour's blazing roof was likely soon to fire their own
+New Years Day in England, 11th January by the New Style
+Nine syllables that which could be more forcibly expressed in on
+Nor is the spirit of the age to be pleaded in defence
+Not a friend of giving details larger than my ascertained facts
+Not of the genus Reptilia, and could neither creep nor crouch
+Not distinguished for their docility
+Oration, fertile in rhetoric and barren in facts
+Others that do nothing, do all, and have all the thanks
+Pauper client who dreamed of justice at the hands of law
+Peace and quietness is brought into a most dangerous estate
+Peace-at-any-price party
+Possible to do, only because we see that it has been done
+Repentance, as usual, had come many hours too late
+Repose in the other world, "Repos ailleurs"
+Resolved thenceforth to adopt a system of ignorance
+Round game of deception, in which nobody was deceived
+Seeking protection for and against the people
+Seem as if born to make the idea of royalty ridiculous
+Shutting the stable-door when the steed is stolen
+Soldiers enough to animate the good and terrify the bad
+String of homely proverbs worthy of Sancho Panza
+The very word toleration was to sound like an insult
+The busy devil of petty economy
+There was apathy where there should have been enthusiasm
+They were always to deceive every one, upon every occasion
+Thought that all was too little for him
+Three hundred and upwards are hanged annually in London
+Tis pity he is not an Englishman
+To work, ever to work, was the primary law of his nature
+Tranquillity rather of paralysis than of health
+Twas pity, he said, that both should be heretics
+Upper and lower millstones of royal wrath and loyal subserviency
+Uttering of my choler doth little ease my grief or help my case
+Wasting time fruitlessly is sharpening the knife for himself
+We must all die once
+We mustn't tickle ourselves to make ourselves laugh
+Weary of place without power
+When persons of merit suffer without cause
+With something of feline and feminine duplicity
+Wrath of bigots on both sides
+Write so illegibly or express himself so awkwardly
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY UNITED NETHERLANDS, 1584-86 ***
+
+************ This file should be named jm47v10.txt or jm47v10.zip ************
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