CHAPTER XLI. 1603-1604

Death of Queen Elizabeth--Condition of Spain--Legations to James I.

--Union of England and Scotland--Characteristics of the new monarch

--The English Court and Government--Piratical practices of the

English--Audience of the States' envoy with king James--Queen

Elizabeth's scheme far remodelling Europe--Ambassador extraordinary

from Henry IV. to James--De Rosny's strictures on the English

people--Private interview of De Rosny with the States' envoy--De

Rosny's audience of the king--Objects of his mission--Insinuations

of the Duke of Northumberland--Invitation of the embassy to

Greenwich--Promise of James to protect the Netherlands against

Spain--Misgivings of Barneveld--Conference at Arundel House--Its

unsatisfactory termination--Contempt of De Rosny for the English

counsellors--Political aspect of Europe--De Rosny's disclosure to

the king of the secret object of his mission--Agreement of James to

the proposals of De Rosny--Ratification of the treaty of alliance--

Return of De Rosny and suite to France--Arrival of the Spanish

ambassador.

On the 24th of March, 1603, Queen Elizabeth died at Richmond, having

nearly completed her seventieth year. The two halves of the little island

of Britain were at last politically adjoined to each other by the

personal union of the two crowns.

A foreigner, son of the woman executed by Elizabeth, succeeded to

Elizabeth's throne. It was most natural that the Dutch republic and the

French king, the archdukes and his Catholic Majesty, should be filled

with anxiety as to the probable effect of this change of individuals upon

the fortunes of the war.

For this Dutch war of independence was the one absorbing and controlling

interest in Christendom. Upon that vast, central, and, as men thought,

baleful constellation the fates of humanity, were dependent. Around it

lesser political events were forced to gravitate, and, in accordance to

their relation to it, were bright or obscure. It was inevitable that

those whose vocation it was to ponder the aspects of the political

firmament, the sages and high-priests who assumed to direct human action

and to foretell human destiny, should now be more than ever perplexed.

Spain, since the accession of Philip III. to his father's throne,

although rapidly declining in vital energy, had not yet disclosed its

decrepitude to the world. Its boundless ambition survived as a political

tradition rather than a real passion, while contemporaries still trembled

at the vision of universal monarchy in which the successor of Charlemagne

and of Charles V. was supposed to indulge.

Meantime, no feebler nor more insignificant mortal existed on earth than

this dreaded sovereign.

Scarcely a hairdresser or lemonade-dealer in all Spain was less cognizant

of the political affairs of the kingdom than was its monarch, for

Philip's first care upon assuming the crown was virtually to abdicate in

favour of the man soon afterwards known as the Duke of Lerma.

It is therefore only by courtesy and for convenience that history

recognizes his existence at all, as surely no human being in the reign of

Philip III. requires less mention than Philip III. himself.

I reserve for a subsequent chapter such rapid glances at the interior

condition of that kingdom with which it seemed the destiny of the Dutch

republic to be perpetually at war, as may be necessary to illustrate the

leading characteristics of the third Philip's reign.

Meantime, as the great queen was no more, who was always too sagacious to

doubt that the Dutch cause was her own--however disposed she might be to

browbeat the Dutchmen--it seemed possible to Spain that the republic

might at last be deprived of its only remaining ally. Tassis was

despatched as chief of a legation, precursory to a more stately embassy

to be confided to the Duke of Frias. The archdukes sent the prince of

Arenberg, while from the United States came young Henry of Nassau,

associated with John of Olden-Barneveld, Falk, Brederode, and other

prominent statesmen of the commonwealth. Ministers from Denmark and

Sweden, from the palatinate and from numerous other powers, small and

great, were also collected to greet the rising sun in united Britain,

while the awkward Scotchman, who was now called upon to play that

prominent part in the world's tragi-comedy which had been so long and so

majestically sustained by the "Virgin Queen," already began to tremble at

the plaudits and the bustle which announced how much was expected of the

new performer.

There was indeed a new sovereign upon the throne. That most regal spirit

which had well expressed so many of the highest characteristics of the

nation had fled. Mankind, has long been familiar with the dark, closing

hours of the illustrious reign. The great queen, moody, despairing,

dying, wrapt in profoundest thought, with eyes fixed upon the ground or

already gazing into infinity, was besought by the counsellors around her

to name the man to whom she chose that the crown should devolve.

"Not to a Rough," said Elizabeth, sententiously and grimly.

When the King of France was named, she shook her head. When Philip III.

was suggested, she made a still more significant sign of dissent. When

the King of Scots was mentioned, she nodded her approval, and again

relapsed into silent meditation.

She died, and James was King of Great Britain and Ireland. Cecil had

become his prime minister long before the queen's eyes were closed. The

hard-featured, rickety, fidgety, shambling, learned, most preposterous

Scotchman hastened to take possession of the throne. Never--could there

have been a more unfit place or unfit hour for such a man.

England, although so small in dimensions, so meager in population, so

deficient, compared to the leading nations of Europe, in material and

financial strength, had already her great future swelling in her heart.

Intellectually and morally she was taking the lead among the nations.

Even at that day she had produced much which neither she herself nor any

other nation seemed destined to surpass.

Yet this most redoubtable folk only numbered about three millions,

one-tenth of them inhabiting London. With the Scots and Irish added they

amounted to less than five millions of souls, hardly a third as many as

the homogeneous and martial people of that dangerous neighbour France.

Ireland was always rebellious; a mere conquered province, hating her

tyrant England's laws, religion, and people; loving Spain, and believing

herself closely allied by blood as well as sympathy to that most Catholic

land.

Scotland, on the accession of James, hastened to take possession of

England. Never in history had two races detested each other more

fervently. The leeches and locusts of the north, as they were universally

designated in England, would soon have been swept forth from the country,

or have left it of their own accord, had not the king employed all that

he had of royal authority or of eloquent persuasion to retain them on the

soil. Of union, save the personal union of the sceptre, there was no

thought. As in Ireland there was hatred to England and adoration for

Spain; so in Scotland, France was beloved quite as much as England was

abhorred. Who could have foretold, or even hoped, that atoms so mutually

repulsive would ever have coalesced into a sympathetic and indissoluble

whole?

Even the virtues of James were his worst enemies. As generous as the day,

he gave away with reckless profusion anything and everything that he

could lay his hands upon. It was soon to appear that the great queen's

most unlovely characteristic, her avarice; was a more blessed quality to

the nation she ruled than the ridiculous prodigality of James.

Two thousand gowns, of the most, expensive material, adorned with gold,

pearls, and other bravery--for Elizabeth was very generous to

herself--were found in the queen's wardrobe, after death. These

magnificent and costly robes, not one of which had she vouchsafed to

bestow upon or to bequeath to any of her ladies of honour, were now

presented by her successor to a needy Scotch lord, who certainly did not

intend to adorn his own person therewith. "The hat was ever held out,"

said a splenetic observer, "and it was filled in overflowing measure by

the new monarch."

In a very short period he had given away--mainly to Scotchmen--at least

two millions of crowns, in various articles of personal property. Yet

England was very poor.

The empire, if so it could be called, hardly boasted a regular revenue of

more than two millions of dollars a year; less than that of a fortunate

individual or two, in our own epoch, both in Europe and America; and not

one-fifth part of the contemporary income of France. The hundred thousand

dollars of Scotland's annual budget did not suffice to pay its expenses,

and Ireland was a constant charge upon the imperial exchequer.

It is astounding, however, to reflect upon the pomp, extravagance, and

inordinate pride which characterized the government and the court.

The expenses of James's household were at least five hundred thousand

crowns, or about one quarter of the whole revenue of the empire. Henry

IV., with all his extravagance, did not spend more than one-tenth of the

public income of France upon himself and his court.

Certainly if England were destined to grow great it would be in despite

of its new monarch. Hating the People, most intolerant in religion,

believing intensely in royal prerogative, thoroughly convinced of his

regal as well as his personal infallibility, loathing that inductive

method of thought which was already leading the English nation so proudly

on the road of intellectual advancement, shrinking from the love of free

inquiry, of free action, of daring adventure, which was to be the real

informing spirit of the great British nation; abhorring the

Puritans--that is to say, one-third of his subjects--in whose harsh, but

lofty nature he felt instinctively that popular freedom was

enfolded--even as the overshadowing tree in the rigid husk--and sending

them forth into the far distant wilderness to wrestle with wild beasts

and with savages more ferocious than beasts; fearing and hating the

Catholics as the sworn enemies of his realm; his race, and himself,

trampling on them as much as he dared, forcing them into hypocrisy to

save themselves from persecution or at least pecuniary ruin--if they

would worship God according to their conscience; at deadly feud,

therefore, on religious grounds, with much more than half his

subjects--Puritans or Papists--and yet himself a Puritan in dogma and a

Papist in Church government, if only the king could be pope; not knowing,

indeed, whether a Puritan, or a Jesuit whom he called a Papist-Puritan,

should be deemed the more disgusting or dangerous animal; already

preparing for his unfortunate successor a path to the scaffold by

employing all the pedantry, both theological and philosophical at his

command to bring parliaments into contempt, and to place the royal

prerogative on a level with Divinity; at the head of a most martial,

dauntless, and practical nation, trembling, with unfortunate physical

timidity, at the sight of a drawn sword; ever scribbling or haranguing in

Latin, French, or broad Scotch, when the world was arming, it must always

be a special wonder that one who might have been a respectable; even a

useful, pedagogue, should by the caprice of destiny have been permitted,

exactly at that epoch to be one of the most contemptible and mischievous

of kings.

But he had a most effective and energetic minister. Even as in Spain and

in France at the same period, the administration of government was

essentially in-one pair of hands.

Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, ever since the termination of the

splendid triumvirate of his father and Walsingham, had been in reality

supreme. The proud and terrible hunchback, who never forgave, nor forgot

to destroy, his enemies, had now triumphed over the last passion of the

doting queen. Essex had gone to perdition.

Son of the great minister who had brought the mother of James to the

scaffold, Salisbury had already extorted forgiveness for that execution

from the feeble king. Before Elizabeth was in her grave, he was already

as much the favourite of her successor as of herself, governing Scotland

as well as England, and being Prime Minister of Great Britain before

Great Britain existed.

Lord High Treasurer and First Secretary of State, he was now all in all

in the council. The other great lords, highborn and highly titled as they

were and served at their banquets by hosts of lackeys on their

knees--Nottinghams, Northamptons, Suffolks--were, after all, ciphers or

at best, mere pensioners of Spain. For all the venality of Europe was not

confined to the Continent. Spain spent at least one hundred and fifty

thousand crowns annually among the leading courtiers of James while his

wife, Anne of Denmark, a Papist at heart, whose private boudoir was

filled with pictures and images of the Madonna and the saints, had

already received one hundred thousand dollars in solid cash from the

Spanish court, besides much jewelry, and other valuable things. To

negotiate with Government in England was to bribe, even as at Paris or

Madrid. Gold was the only passkey to justice, to preferment, or to power.

Yet the foreign subsidies to the English court were, after all, of but

little avail at that epoch. No man had influence but Cecil, and he was

too proud, too rich, too powerful to be bribed. Alone with clean fingers

among courtiers and ministers, he had, however, accumulated a larger

fortune than any. His annual income was estimated at two hundred thousand

crowns, and he had a vast floating capital, always well employed. Among

other investments, he had placed half a million on interest in Holland,'

and it was to be expected, therefore, that he should favour the cause of

the republic, rebellious and upstart though it were.

The pigmy, as the late queen had been fond of nicknaming him, was the

only giant in the Government. Those crooked shoulders held up, without

flinching, the whole burden of the State. Pale, handsome, anxious,

suffering, and intellectual of visage, with his indomitable spirit, ready

eloquence, and nervous energy, he easily asserted supremacy over all the

intriguers, foreign and domestic, the stipendiariea, the generals, the

admirals, the politicians, at court, as well as over the Scotch Solomon

who sat on the throne.

But most certainly, it was for the public good of Britain, that Europe

should be pacified. It is very true that the piratical interest would

suffer, and this was a very considerable and influential branch of

business. So long as war existed anywhere, the corsairs of England sailed

with the utmost effrontery from English ports, to prey upon the commerce

of friend and foe alike. After a career of successful plunder, it was not

difficult for the rovers to return to their native land, and, with the

proceeds of their industry, to buy themselves positions of importance,

both social and political. It was not the custom to consider too

curiously the source of the wealth. If it was sufficient to dazzle the

eyes of the vulgar, it was pretty certain to prove the respectability of

the owner.

It was in vain that the envoys of the Dutch and Venetian republics sought

redress for the enormous damage inflicted on their commerce by English

pirates, and invoked the protection of public law. It was always easy for

learned juris-consuls to prove such depredations to be consistent with

international usage and with sound morality. Even at that period,

although England was in population and in wealth so insignificant, it

possessed a lofty, insular contempt for the opinions and the doctrines of

other nations, and expected, with perfect calmness, that her own

principles should be not only admitted, but spontaneously adored.

Yet the piratical interest was no longer the controlling one. That city

on the Thames, which already numbered more than three hundred thousand

inhabitants, had discovered that more wealth was to be accumulated by her

bustling shopkeepers in the paths of legitimate industry than by a horde

of rovers over the seas, however adventurous and however protected by

Government.

As for France, she was already defending herself against piracy by what

at the period seemed a masterpiece of internal improvement. The Seine,

the Loire, and the Rhone were soon to be united in one chain of

communication. Thus merchandise might be water-borne from the channel to

the Mediterranean, without risking the five or six months' voyage by sea

then required from Havre to Marseilles, and exposure along the whole

coast to attack from the corsairs of England Spain and Barbary.

The envoys of the States-General had a brief audience of the new

sovereign, in which little more than phrases of compliment were

pronounced.

"We are here," said Barneveld, "between grief and joy. We have lost her

whose benefits to us we can never describe in words, but we have found a

successor who is heir not only to her kingdom but to all her virtues."

And with this exordium the great Advocate plunged at once into the depths

of his subject, so far as was possible in an address of ceremony. He

besought the king not to permit Spain, standing on the neck of the

provinces, to grasp from that elevation at other empires. He reminded

James of his duty to save those of his own religion from the clutch of a

sanguinary superstition, to drive away those lurking satellites of the

Roman pontiff who considered Britain their lawful prey. He implored him

to complete the work so worthily begun by Elizabeth. If all those bound

by one interest should now, he urged, unite their efforts, the Spaniard,

deprived not only of the Netherlands, but, if he were not wise in time,

banished from the ocean and stripped of all his transmarine possessions,

would be obliged to consent to a peace founded on the only secure basis,

equality of strength. The envoy concluded by beseeching the king for

assistance to Ostend, now besieged for two years long.

But James manifested small disposition to melt in the fervour of the

Advocate's eloquence. He answered with a few cold commonplaces. Benignant

but extremely cautious, he professed goodwill enough to the States but

quite as much for Spain, a power with which, he observed, he had never

quarrelled, and from which he had received the most friendly offices. The

archdukes, too, he asserted, had never been hostile to the realm, but

only to the Queen of England. In brief, he was new to English affairs,

required time to look about him, but would not disguise that his genius

was literary, studious, and tranquil, and much more inclined to peace

than to war.

In truth, James had cause to look very sharply about him. It required an

acute brain and steady nerves to understand and to control the whirl of

parties and the conflict of interests and intrigues, the chameleon

shiftings of character and colour, at this memorable epoch of transition

in the realm which he had just inherited. There was a Scotch party,

favourable on the whole to France; there was a Spanish party, there was

an English party, and, more busy than all, there was a party--not Scotch,

nor French, nor English, nor Spanish--that un-dying party in all

commonwealths or kingdoms which ever fights for itself and for the

spoils.

France and Spain had made peace with each other at Vervins five years

before, and had been at war ever since.

Nothing could be plainer nor more cynical than the language exchanged

between the French monarch and the representative of Spain. That Philip

III.--as the Spanish Government by a convenient fiction was always

called--was the head and front of the great Savoy-Biron conspiracy to

take Henry's life and dismember his kingdom, was hardly a stage secret.

Yet diplomatic relations were still preserved between the two countries,

and wonderful diplomatic interviews had certainly been taking place in

Paris.

Ambassador Tassis had walked with lofty port into Henry's cabinet,

disdaining to salute any of the princes of the blood or high

functionaries of state in the apartments through which he passed, and

with insolent defiance had called Henry to account for his dealing with

the Dutch rebels.

"Sire, the king my master finds it very strange," he said, "that you

still continue to assist his rebels in Holland, and that you shoot at his

troops on their way to the Netherlands. If you don't abstain from such

infractions of his rights he prefers open war to being cheated by such a

pretended peace. Hereupon I demand your reply."

"Mr. Ambassador," replied the king, "I find it still more strange that

your master is so impudent as to dare to make such complaints--he who is

daily making attempts upon my life and upon this State. Even if I do

assist the Hollanders, what wrong is that to him? It is an organized

commonwealth, powerful, neighbourly, acknowledging no subjection to him.

But your master is stirring up rebellion in my own kingdom, addressing

himself to the princes of my blood and my most notable officers, so that

I have been obliged to cut off the head of one of the most beloved of

them all. By these unchristian proceedings he has obliged me to take

sides with the Hollanders, whom I know to be devoted to me; nor have I

done anything for them except to pay the debts I owed them. I know

perfectly well that the king your master is the head of this conspiracy,

and that the troops of Naples were meditating an attack upon my kingdom.

I have two letters written by the hand of your master to Marshal Biron,

telling him to trust Fuentes as if it were himself, and it is notorious

that Fuentes has projected and managed all the attempts to assassinate

me. Do you, think you have a child to deal with? The late King of Spain

knew me pretty well. If this one thinks himself wiser I shall let him see

who I am. Do you want peace or war? I am ready for either."

The ambassador, whose head had thus been so vigorously washed--as Henry

expressed it in recounting the interview afterwards to the Dutch envoy,

Dr. Aerssens--stammered some unintelligible excuses, and humbly begged

his Majesty not to be offended. He then retired quite crest-fallen, and

took leave most politely of everybody as he went, down even to the very

grooms of the chambers.

"You must show your teeth to the Spaniard," said Henry to Aerssens, "if

you wish for a quiet life."

Here was unsophisticated diplomacy; for the politic Henry, who could

forgive assassins and conspirators, crowned or otherwise, when it suited

his purpose to be lenient, knew that it was on this occasion very prudent

to use the gift of language, not in order to conceal, but to express his

thoughts.

"I left the king as red as a turkey-cock," said Tassis, as soon as he got

home that morning, "and I was another turkey-cock. We have been talking a

little bit of truth to each other."

In truth, it was impossible, as the world was then constituted, that

France and Spain, in spite of many secret sympathies, should not be

enemies; that France, England, and the Dutch commonwealth, although

cordially disliking each other, should not be allies.

Even before the death of Elizabeth a very remarkable interview had taken

place at Dover, in which the queen had secretly disclosed the great

thoughts with which that most imperial brain was filled just before its

boundless activity was to cease for ever.

She had wished for a personal interview with the French king, whose wit

and valour she had always heartily admired, Henry, on his part, while

unmercifully ridiculing that preterhuman vanity which he fed with

fantastic adulation, never failed to do justice to her genius, and had

been for a moment disposed to cross the channel, or even to hold council

with her on board ship midway between the two countries. It was however

found impracticable to arrange any such meeting, and the gossips of the

day hinted that the great Henry, whose delight was in battle, and who had

never been known to shrink from danger on dry land, was appalled at the

idea of sea-sickness, and even dreaded the chance of being kidnapped by

the English pirates.

The corsairs who drove so profitable a business at that period by

plundering the merchantmen of their enemy, of their Dutch and French

allies, and of their own nation, would assuredly have been pleased with

such a prize.

The queen had confided to De Bethune that she had some thing to say to

the king which she could never reveal to other ears than his, but when

the proposed visit of Henry was abandoned, it was decided that his

confidential minister should slip across the channel before Elizabeth

returned to her palace at Greenwich.

De Bethune accordingly came incognito from Calais to Dover, in which port

he had a long and most confidential interview with the queen. Then and

there the woman, nearly seventy years of age, who governed despotically

the half of a small island, while the other half was in the possession of

a man whose mother she had slain, and of a people who hated the English

more than they hated the Spaniards or the French--a queen with some three

millions of loyal but most turbulent subjects in one island, and with

about half-a-million ferocious rebels in another requiring usually an

army of twenty thousand disciplined soldiers to keep them in a kind of

subjugation, with a revenue fluctuating between eight hundred thousand

pounds sterling, and the half of that sum, and with a navy of a hundred

privateersmen--disclosed to the French envoy a vast plan for regulating

the polity and the religion of the civilized world, and for remodelling

the map of Europe.

There should be three religions, said Elizabeth--not counting the

dispensation from Mecca, about which Turk and Hun might be permitted to

continue their struggle on the crepuscular limits of civilization.

Everywhere else there should be toleration only for the churches of

Peter, of Luther, and of Calvin. The house of Austria was to be

humbled--the one branch driven back to Spain and kept there, the other

branch to be deprived of the imperial crown, which was to be disposed of

as in times past by the votes of the princely electors. There should be

two republics--the Swiss and the Dutch--each of those commonwealths to be

protected by France and England, and each to receive considerable parings

out of the possessions of Spain and the empire.

Finally, all Christendom was to be divided off into a certain number of

powers, almost exactly equal to each other; the weighing, measuring, and

counting, necessary to obtain this international equilibrium, being of

course the duty of the king and queen when they should sit some day

together at table.

Thus there were five points; sovereigns and politicians having always a

fondness for a neat summary in five or six points. Number one, to remodel

the electoral system of the holy Roman empire. Number two, to establish

the republic of the United Provinces. Number three, to do as much for

Switzerland. Number four, to partition Europe. Number five, to reduce all

religions to three. Nothing could be more majestic, no plan fuller

fraught with tranquillity for the rulers of mankind and their subjects.

Thrice happy the people, having thus a couple of heads with crowns upon

them and brains within them to prescribe what was to be done in this

world and believed as to the next!

The illustrious successor of that great queen now stretches her benignant

sceptre over two hundred millions of subjects, and the political revenues

of her empire are more than a hundredfold those of Elizabeth; yet it

would hardly now be thought great statesmanship or sound imperial policy

for a British sovereign even to imagine the possibility of the five

points which filled the royal English mind at Dover.

But Henry was as much convinced as Elizabeth of the necessity and the

possibility of establishing the five points, and De Bethune had been

astonished at the exact similarity of the conclusion which those two

sovereign intellects had reached, even before they had been placed in

communion with each other. The death of the queen had not caused any

change in the far-reaching designs of which the king now remained the

sole executor, and his first thought, on the accession of James, was

accordingly to despatch De Bethune, now created Marquis de Rosny, as

ambassador extraordinary to England, in order that the new sovereign

might be secretly but thoroughly instructed as to the scheme for

remodelling Christendom.

As Rosny was also charged with the duty of formally congratulating King

James, he proceeded upon his journey with remarkable pomp. He was

accompanied by two hundred gentlemen of quality, specially attached to

his embassy--young city fops, as he himself described them, who were out

of their element whenever they left the pavement of Paris--and by an

equal number of valets, grooms, and cooks. Such a retinue was

indispensable to enable an ambassador to transact the public business and

to maintain the public dignity in those days; unproductive consumption

being accounted most sagacious and noble.

Before reaching the English shore the marquis was involved in trouble.

Accepting the offer of the English vice-admiral lying off Calais, he

embarked with his suite in two English vessels, much to the

dissatisfaction of De Vic, vice-admiral of France, who was anxious to

convey the French ambassador in the war-ships of his country. There had

been suspicion afloat as to the good understanding between England and

Spain, caused by the great courtesy recently shown to the Count of

Arenberg, and there was intense irritation among all the seafaring people

of France on account of the exploits of the English corsairs upon their

coast. Rosny thought it best to begin his embassy by an act of

conciliation, but soon had cause to repent his decision.

In mid-channel they were met by De Vic's vessels with the French banner

displayed, at which sight the English commander was so wroth that he

forthwith ordered a broadside to be poured into the audacious

foreigner;--swearing with mighty oaths that none but the English flag

should be shown in those waters. And thus, while conveying a French

ambassador and three hundred Frenchmen on a sacred mission to the British

sovereign, this redoubtable mariner of England prepared to do battle with

the ships of France. It was with much difficulty and some prevarication

that Rosny appeased the strife, representing that the French flag had

only been raised in order that it might be dipped, in honour of the

French ambassador, as the ships passed each other. The full-shotted

broadside was fired from fifty guns, but the English commander consented,

at De Rosny's representations, that it should be discharged wide of the

mark.

A few shots, however, struck the side of one of the French vessels, and

at the same time, as Cardinal Richelieu afterwards remarked, pierced the

heart of every patriotic Frenchman.

The ambassador made a sign, which De Vic understood; to lower his flag

and to refrain from answering the fire. Thus a battle between allies,

amid the most amazing circumstances, was avoided, but it may well be

imagined how long and how deeply the poison of the insult festered.

Such an incident could hardly predispose the ambassador in favour of the

nation he was about to visit, or strengthen his hope of laying, not only

the foundation of a perpetual friendship between the two crowns, but of

effecting the palingenesis of Europe. Yet no doubt Sully--as the world

has so long learned to call him--was actuated by lofty sentiments in many

respects in advance of his age. Although a brilliant and successful

campaigner in his youth, he detested war, and looked down with contempt

at political systems which had not yet invented anything better than

gunpowder for the arbitrament of international disputes. Instead of war

being an occasional method of obtaining peace, it pained him to think

that peace seemed only a process for arriving at war. Surely it was no

epigram in those days, but the simplest statement of commonplace fact,

that war was the normal condition of Christians. Alas will it be

maintained that in the two and a half centuries which have since elapsed

the world has made much progress in a higher direction? Is there yet any

appeal among the most civilized nations except to the logic of the

largest battalions and the eloquence of the biggest guns?

De Rosny came to be the harbinger of a political millennium, and he

heartily despised war. The schemes, nevertheless, which were as much his

own as his master's, and which he was instructed to lay before the

English monarch as exclusively his own, would have required thirty years

of successful and tremendous warfare before they could have a beginning

of development.

It is not surprising that so philosophical a mind as his, while still

inclining to pacific designs, should have been led by what met his eyes

and ears to some rather severe generalizations.

"It is certain that the English hate us," he said, "and with a hatred so

strong and so general that one is tempted to place it among the natural

dispositions of this people. Yet it is rather the effect of their pride

and their presumption; since there is no nation in Europe more haughty,

more disdainful, more besotted with the idea of its own excellence. If

you were to take their word for it, mind and reason are only found with

them; they adore all their opinions and despise those of all other

nations; and it never occurs to them to listen to others, or to doubt

themselves. . . . Examine what are called with them maxims of state;

you will find nothing but the laws of pride itself, adopted through

arrogance or through indolence."

"Placed by nature amidst the tempestuous and variable ocean," he wrote to

his sovereign, "they are as shifting, as impetuous, as changeable as its

waves. So self-contradictory and so inconsistent are their actions almost

in the same instant as to make it impossible that they should proceed

from the same persons and the same mind. Agitated and urged by their

pride and arrogance alone, they take all their imaginations and

extravagances for truths and realities; the objects of their desires and

affections for inevitable events; not balancing and measuring those

desires with the actual condition of things, nor with the character of

the people with whom they have to deal."

When the ambassador arrived in London he was lodged at Arundel palace. He

at once became the cynosure of all indigenous parties and of adventurous

politicians from every part of Europe; few knowing how to shape their

course since the great familiar lustre had disappeared from the English

sky.

Rosny found the Scotch lords sufficiently favourable to France; the

English Catholic grandees, with all the Howards and the lord high admiral

at their head, excessively inclined to Spain, and a great English party

detesting both Spain and France with equal fervour and well enough

disposed to the United Provinces, not as hating that commonwealth less

but the two great powers more.

The ambassador had arrived with the five points, not in his portfolio but

in his heart, and they might after all be concentrated in one

phrase--Down with Austria, up with the Dutch republic. On his first

interview with Cecil, who came to arrange for his audience with the king,

he found the secretary much disposed to conciliate both Spain and the

empire, and to leave the provinces to shift for themselves.

He spoke of Ostend as of a town not worth the pains taken to preserve it,

and of the India trade as an advantage of which a true policy required

that the United Provinces should be deprived. Already the fine

commercial instinct of England had scented a most formidable rival on the

ocean.

As for the king, he had as yet declared himself for no party, while all

parties were disputing among each other for mastery over him. James found

himself, in truth, as much, astray in English politics as he was a

foreigner upon English earth. Suspecting every one, afraid of every one,

he was in mortal awe, most of all, of his wife, who being the daughter of

one Protestant sovereign and wife of another, and queen of a united realm

dependent for its very existence on antagonism to Spain and Rome, was

naturally inclined to Spanish politics and the Catholic faith.

The turbulent and intriguing Anne of Denmark was not at the moment in

London, but James was daily expecting and De Bethune dreading her

arrival.

The ambassador knew very well that, although the king talked big in her

absence about the forms which he intended to prescribe for her conduct,

he would take orders from her as soon as she arrived, refuse her nothing,

conceal nothing from her, and tremble before her as usual.

The king was not specially prejudiced in favour of the French monarch or

his ambassador, for he had been told that Henry had occasionally spoken

of him as captain of arts and doctor of arms, and that both the Marquis

de Rosny and his brother were known to have used highly disrespectful

language concerning him.

Before his audience, De Rosny received a private visit from Barneveld and

the deputies of the States-General, and was informed that since his

arrival they had been treated with more civility by the king. Previously

he had refused to see them after the first official reception, had not

been willing to grant Count Henry of Nassau a private audience, and had

spoken publicly of the States as seditious rebels.

Oh the 21st June Barneveld had a long private interview with the

ambassador at Arundel palace, when he exerted all his eloquence to prove

the absolute necessity of an offensive and defensive alliance between

France and the United Provinces if the independence of the republic were

ever to be achieved. Unless a French army took the field at once, Ostend

would certainly fall, he urged, and resistance to the Spaniards would

soon afterwards cease.

It is not probable that the Advocate felt in his heart so much despair as

his words indicated, but he was most anxious that Henry should openly

declare himself the protector of the young commonwealth, and not

indisposed perhaps to exaggerate the dangers, grave as they were without

doubt, by which its existence was menaced.

The ambassador however begged the Hollander to renounce any such hopes,

assuring him that the king had no intention of publicly and singly taking

upon his shoulders the whole burden of war with Spain, the fruits of

which would not be his to gather. Certainly before there had been time

thoroughly to study the character and inclinations of the British monarch

it would be impossible for De Rosny to hold out any encouragement in this

regard. He then asked Barneveld what he had been able to discover during

his residence in London as to the personal sentiments of James.

The Advocate replied that at first the king, yielding to his own natural

tendencies, and to the advice of his counsellors, had refused the Dutch

deputies every hope, but that subsequently reflecting, as it would seem,

that peace would cost England very dear if English inaction should cause

the Hollanders to fall again under the dominion of the Catholic king, or

to find their only deliverance in the protection of France, and beginning

to feel more acutely how much England had herself to fear from a power

like Spain, he had seemed to awake out of a profound sleep, and promised

to take these important affairs into consideration.

Subsequently he had fallen into a dreary abyss of indecision, where he

still remained. It was certain however that he would form no resolution

without the concurrence of the King of France, whose ambassador he had

been so impatiently expecting, and whose proposition to him of a double

marriage between their respective children had given him much

satisfaction.

De Rosny felt sure that the Dutch statesmen were far too adroit to put

entire confidence in anything said by James, whether favourable or

detrimental to their cause. He conjured Barneveld therefore, by the

welfare of his country, to conceal nothing from him in regard to the most

secret resolutions that might have been taken by the States in the event

of their being abandoned by England, or in case of their being

embarrassed by a sudden demand on the part of that power for the

cautionary towns offered to Elizabeth.

Barneveld, thus pressed, and considering the ambassador as the

confidential counsellor of a sovereign who was the republic's only

friend, no longer hesitated. Making a merit to himself of imparting an

important secret, he said that the state-council of the commonwealth had

resolved to elude at any cost the restoration of the cautionary towns.

The interview was then abruptly terminated by the arrival of the Venetian

envoy.

The 22nd of June arrived. The marquis had ordered mourning suits for his

whole embassy and retinue, by particular command of his sovereign, who

wished to pay this public tribute to the memory of the great queen.

To his surprise and somewhat to his indignation, he was however informed

that no one, stranger or native, Scotchman or Englishman, had been

permitted to present himself to the king in black, that his appearance

there in mourning would be considered almost an affront, and that it was

a strictly enforced rule at court to abstain from any mention of

Elizabeth, and to affect an entire oblivion of her reign.

At the last moment, and only because convinced that he might otherwise

cause the impending negotiations utterly to fail, the ambassador

consented to attire himself, the hundred and twenty gentlemen selected

from his diplomatic family to accompany him on this occasion, and all his

servants, in gala costume. The royal guards, with the Earl of Derby at

their head, came early in the afternoon to Arundel House to escort him to

the Thames, and were drawn up on the quay as the marquis and his

followers embarked in the splendid royal barges provided to convey them

to Greenwich.

On arriving at their destination they were met at the landing by the Earl

of Northumberland, and escorted with great pomp and through an infinite

multitude of spectators to the palace. Such was the crowd, without and

within, of courtiers and common people, that it was a long time before

the marquis, preceded by his hundred and twenty gentlemen, reached the

hall of audience.

At last he arrived at the foot of the throne, when James arose and

descended eagerly two steps of the dais in order to greet the ambassador.

He would have descended them all had not one of the counsellors plucked

him by the sleeve, whispering that he had gone quite far enough.

"And if I honour this ambassador," cried James, in a loud voice, "more

than is usual, I don't intend that it shall serve as a precedent for

others. I esteem and love him particularly, because of the affection

which I know he cherishes for me, of his firmness in our religion, and of

his fidelity to his master."

Much more that was personally flattering to the marquis was said thus

emphatically by James. To all this the ambassador replied, not by a set

discourse, but only by a few words of compliment, expressing his

sovereign's regrets at the death of Queen Elizabeth, and his joy at the

accession of the new sovereign. He then delivered his letters of

credence, and the complimentary conversation continued; the king

declaring that he had not left behind him in Scotland his passion for the

monarch of France, and that even had he found England at war with that

country on his accession he would have instantly concluded a peace with a

prince whom he so much venerated.

Thus talking, the king caused his guest to ascend with him to the

uppermost steps of the dais, babbling on very rapidly and skipping

abruptly from one subject to another. De Rosny took occasion to express

his personal esteem and devotion, and was assured by the king in reply

that the slanders in regard to him which had reached the royal ears had

utterly failed of their effect. It was obvious that they were the

invention of Spanish intriguers who wished to help that nation to

universal monarchy. Then he launched forth into general and cordial abuse

of Spain, much to the satisfaction of Count Henry of Nassau, who stood

near enough to hear a good deal of the conversation, and of the other

Dutch deputies who were moving about, quite unknown, in the crowd. He

denounced very vigorously the malignity of the Spaniards in lighting

fires everywhere in their neighbours' possessions, protested that he

would always oppose their wicked designs, but spoke contemptuously of

their present king as too feeble of mind and body ever to comprehend or

to carry out the projects of his predecessors.

Among other gossip, James asked the envoy if he went to hear the

Protestant preaching in London. Being answered in the affirmative, he

expressed surprise, having been told, he said, that it was Rosny's

intention to repudiate his religion as De Sancy had done, in order to

secure his fortunes. The marquis protested that such a thought had never

entered his head, but intimated that the reports might come from his

familiar intercourse with the papal nuncius and many French

ecclesiastics. The king asked if, when speaking with the nuncius, he

called the pope his Holiness, as by so doing he would greatly offend God,

in whom alone was holiness. Rosny replied that he commonly used the style

prevalent at court, governing himself according to the rules adopted in

regard to pretenders to crowns and kingdoms which they thought belonged

to them, but the possession of which was in other hands, conceding to

them, in order not to offend them, the titles which they claimed.

James shook his head portentously, and changed the subject.

The general tone of the royal-conversation was agreeable enough to the

ambassador, who eagerly alluded to the perfidious conduct of a Government

which, ever since concluding the peace of Vervins with Henry, had been

doing its best to promote sedition and territorial dismemberment in his

kingdom, and to assist all his open and his secret enemies.

James assented very emphatically, and the marquis felt convinced that a

resentment against Spain, expressed so publicly and so violently by

James, could hardly fail to, be sincere. He began seriously to, hope that

his negotiations would be successful, and was for soaring at once into

the regions of high politics, when the king suddenly began to talk of

hunting.

"And so you sent half the stag I sent you; to Count Arenberg," said

James; "but he is very angry about it; thinking that you did so to show

how much more I make of you than I do of him. And so I do; for I know the

difference between your king, my brother; and his masters who have sent

me an ambassador who can neither walk nor talk, and who asked me to give

him audience in a garden because he cannot go upstairs."

The king then alluded to Tassis, chief courier of his Catholic Majesty

and special envoy from Spain, asking whether the marquis had seen him on

his passage through France.

"Spain sends me a postillion-ambassador," said he, "that he may travel

the faster and attend to business by post."

It was obvious that James took a sincere satisfaction in abusing

everything relating to that country from its sovereign and the Duke of

Lerma downwards; but he knew very well that Velasco, constable of

Castile, had been already designated as ambassador, and would soon be on

his way to England.

De Rosny on the termination of his audience, was escorted in great state

by the Earl of Northumberland to the barges.

A few days later, the ambassador had another private audience, in which

the king expressed himself with apparent candour concerning the balance

of power.

Christendom, in his opinion, should belong in three equal shares to the

families of Stuart, Bourbon, and Habsburg; but personal ambition and the

force of events had given to the house of Austria more than its fair

third. Sound policy therefore required a combination between France and

England, in order to reduce their copartner within proper limits. This

was satisfactory as far as it went, and the ambassador complimented the

king on his wide views of policy and his lofty sentiments in regard to

human rights.

Warming with the subject, James held language very similar to that which

De Rosny and his master had used in their secret conferences, and took

the ground unequivocally that the secret war levied by Spain against

France and England, as exemplified in the Biron conspiracy, the assault

on Geneva, the aid of the Duke of Savoy, and in the perpetual fostering

of Jesuit intrigues, plots of assassination, and other conspiracies in

the British islands, justified a secret war on the part of Henry and

himself against Philip.

The ambassador would have been more deeply impressed with the royal

language had he felt more confidence in the royal character.

Highly applauding the sentiments expressed, and desiring to excite still

further the resentment of James against Spain, he painted a vivid picture

of the progress of that aggressive power in the past century. She had

devoured Flanders, Burgundy, Granada, Navarre, Portugal, the German

Empire, Milan, Naples, and all the Indies. If she had not swallowed

likewise both France and England those two crowns were indebted for their

preservation, after the firmness of Elizabeth and Henry, to the fortunate

incident of the revolt of the Netherlands.

De Rosny then proceeded to expound the necessity under which James would

soon find himself of carrying on open war with Spain, and of the

expediency of making preparations for the great struggle without loss of

time.

He therefore begged the king to concert with him some satisfactory

measure for the preservation of the United Provinces.

"But," said James, "what better assistance could we give the

Netherlanders than to divide their territory between the States and

Spain; agreeing at the same time to drive the Spaniard out altogether, if

he violates the conditions which we should guarantee."

This conclusion was not very satisfactory to De Rosny, who saw in the

bold language of the king--followed thus by the indication of a policy

that might last to the Greek Kalends, and permit Ostend, Dutch Flanders,

and even the republic to fall--nothing but that mixture of timidity,

conceit, and procrastination which marked the royal character. He pointed

out to him accordingly that Spanish statesmanship could beat the world in

the art of delay, and of plucking the fruits of delay, and that when the

United Provinces had been once subjugated, the turn of England would

come. It would be then too late for him to hope to preserve himself by

such measures as, taken now, would be most salutary.

A few days later the king invited De Rosny and the two hundred members of

his embassy to dine at Greenwich, and the excursion down the Thames took

place with the usual pomp.

The two hundred dined with the gentlemen of the court; while at the

king's table, on an elevated platform in the same hall, were no guests

but De Rosny, and the special envoy of France, Count Beaumont.

The furniture and decorations of the table were sumptuous, and the

attendants, to the surprise of the Frenchmen, went on their knees

whenever they offered wine or dishes to the king. The conversation at

first was on general topics, such as the heat of the weather, which

happened to be remarkable, the pleasures of the chase, and the merits of

the sermon which, as it was Sunday, De Rosny had been invited to hear

before dinner in the royal chapel.

Soon afterwards, however, some allusion being made to the late queen,

James spoke of her with contempt. He went so far as to say that, for a

long time before her death, he had governed the councils, of England; all

her ministers obeying and serving him much better than they did herself.

He then called for wine, and, stretching out his glass towards his two.

guests, drank to the health of the king and queen and royal family of

France.

De Rosny, replied by proposing the health of his august host, not

forgetting the queen and their children, upon which the king, putting his

lips close to the ambassador's ear, remarked that his next toast should

be in honour of the matrimonial union which was proposed between the

families of Britain and France.

This was the first allusion made by James to the alliance; and the

occasion did not strike the marquis as particularly appropriate to such a

topic. He however replied in a whisper that he was rejoiced to hear this

language from the king, having always believed that there would be no

hesitation on his part between King Henry and the monarch of Spain, who,

as he was aware, had made a similar proposition. James, expressing

surprise that his guest was so well informed, avowed that he had in fact

received the same offer of the Infanta for his son as had been made to

his Christian Majesty for the Dauphin. What more convenient counters in

the great game of state than an infant prince and princess in each of the

three royal families to which Europe belonged! To how many grave

political combinations were these unfortunate infants to give rise, and

how distant the period when great nations might no longer be tied to the

pinafores of children in the nursery!

After this little confidential interlude, James expressed in loud voice,

so that all might hear, his determination never to permit the subjugation

of the Netherlands by Spain. Measures should be taken the very next day,

he promised, in concert with the ambassador, as to the aid to be given to

the States. Upon the faith of this declaration De Rosny took from his

pocket the plan of a treaty, and forthwith, in the presence of all the

ministers, placed it in the hands of the king, who meantime had risen

from table. The ambassador also took this occasion to speak publicly of

the English piracies upon French commerce while the two nations were at

peace. The king, in reply, expressed his dissatisfaction at these

depredations and at the English admiral who attempted to defend what had

been done.

He then took leave of his guests, and went off to bed, where it was his

custom to pass his afternoons.

It was certain that the Constable of Castile was now to arrive very soon,

and the marquis had, meantime, obtained information on which he relied,

that this ambassador would come charged with very advantageous offers to

the English court. Accounts had been got ready in council, of all the

moneys due to England by France and by the States, and it was thought

that these sums, payment of which was to be at once insisted upon,

together with the Spanish dollars set afloat in London, would prove

sufficient to buy up all resistance to the Spanish alliance.

Such being the nature of the information furnished to De Rosny, he did

not look forward with very high hopes to the issue of the conference

indicated by King James at the Greenwich dinner. As, after all, he would

have to deal once more with Cecil, the master-spirit of the Spanish

party, it did not seem very probable that the king's whispered

professions of affection for France, his very loud denunciations of

Spanish ambition, and his promises of support to the struggling

provinces, would be brought into any substantial form for human

nourishment. Whispers and big words, touching of glasses at splendid

banquets, and proposing of royal toasts, would not go far to help those

soldiers in Ostend, a few miles away, fighting two years long already for

a square half-mile of barren sand, in which seemed centred the world's

hopes of freedom.

Barneveld was inclined to take an even more gloomy view than that

entertained by the French ambassador. He had, in truth, no reason to be

sanguine. The honest republican envoys had brought no babies to offer in

marriage. Their little commonwealth had only the merit of exchanging

buffets forty years long with a power which, after subjugating the

Netherlands, would have liked to annihilate France and England too, and

which, during that period, had done its best to destroy and dismember

both. It had only struggled as no nation in the world's history had ever

done, for the great principle upon which the power and happiness of

England were ever to depend. It was therefore not to be expected that its

representatives should be received with the distinction conferred upon

royal envoys. Barneveld and his colleagues accordingly were not invited,

with two hundred noble hangers-on, to come down the Thames in gorgeous

array, and dine at Greenwich palace; but they were permitted to mix in

the gaping crowd of spectators, to see the fine folk, and to hear a few

words at a distance which fell from august lips. This was not very

satisfactory, as Barneveld could rarely gain admittance to James or his

ministers. De Rosny, however, was always glad to confer with him, and was

certainly capable of rendering justice both to his genius and to the

sacredness of his cause. The Advocate, in a long conference with the

ambassador, thought it politic to paint the situation of the republic in

even more sombre colours than seemed to De Rosny justifiable. He was,

indeed, the more struck with Barneveld's present despondency, because, at

a previous conference, a few days before, he had spoken almost with

contempt of the Spaniards, expressing the opinion that the mutinous and

disorganized condition of the archduke's army rendered the conquest of

Ostend improbable, and hinted at a plan, of which the world as yet knew

nothing, which would save that place, or at any rate would secure such an

advantage for the States as to more than counterbalance its possible

loss? This very sanguine demeanour had rather puzzled those who had

conferred with the Advocate, although they were ere long destined to

understand his allusions, and it was certainly a contrast to his present

gloom. He assured De Rosny that the Hollanders were becoming desperate,

and that they were capable of abandoning their country in mass, and

seeking an asylum beyond the seas? The menace was borrowed from the

famous project conceived by William the Silent in darker days, and seemed

to the ambassador a present anachronism.

Obviously it was thought desirable to force the French policy to extreme

lengths, and Barneveld accordingly proposed that Henry should take the

burthen upon his shoulders of an open war with Spain, in the almost

certain event that England would make peace with that power. De Rosny

calmly intimated to the Advocate that this was asking something entirely

beyond his power to grant, as the special object of his mission was to

form a plan of concerted action with England.

The cautionary towns being next mentioned, Barneveld stated that a demand

had been made upon Envoy Caron by Cecil for the delivery of those places

to the English Government, as England had resolved to make peace with

Spain.

The Advocate confided, however, to De Rosny that the States would

interpose difficulties, and that it would be long before the towns were

delivered. This important information was given under the seal of

strictest secrecy, and was coupled with an inference that a war between

the republic and Britain would be the probable result, in which case the

States relied upon the alliance with France. The ambassador replied that

in this untoward event the republic would have the sympathy of his royal

master, but that it would be out of the question for him to go to war

with Spain and England at the same time.

On the same afternoon there was a conference at Arundel House between the

Dutch deputies, the English counsellors, and De Rosny, when Barneveld

drew a most dismal picture of the situation; taking the ground that now

or never was the time for driving the Spaniards entirely out of the

Netherlands. Cecil said in a general way that his Majesty felt a deep

interest in the cause of the provinces, and the French ambassador

summoned the Advocate, now that he was assured of the sympathy of two

great kings, to furnish some plan by which that sympathy might be turned

to account. Barneveld, thinking figures more eloquent than rhetoric,

replied that the States, besides garrisons, had fifteen thousand infantry

and three thousand cavalry in the field, and fifty warships in

commission, with artillery and munitions in proportion, and that it would

be advisable for France and England to furnish an equal force, military

and naval, to the common cause.

De Rosny smiled at the extravagance of the proposition. Cecil, again

taking refuge in commonplaces, observed that his master was disposed to

keep the peace with all his neighbours, but that, having due regard to

the circumstances, he was willing to draw a line between the wishes of

the States and his own, and would grant them a certain amount of succour

underhand.

Thereupon the Dutch deputies withdrew to confer. De Rosny, who had no

faith in Cecil's sincerity--the suggestion being essentially the one

which he had himself desired--went meantime a little deeper into the

subject, and soon found that England, according to the Secretary of

State, had no idea of ruining herself for the sake of the provinces, or

of entering into any positive engagements in their behalf. In case Spain

should make a direct attack upon the two kings who were to constitute

themselves protectors of Dutch liberty, it might be necessary to take up

arms. The admission was on the whole superfluous, it not being probable

that Britain, even under a Stuart, would be converted to the doctrine of

non-resistance. Yet in this case it was suggested by Cecil that the chief

reliance of his Government would be on the debts owed by the Dutch and

French respectively, which would then be forthwith collected.

De Rosny was now convinced that Cecil was trifling with him, and

evidently intending to break off all practical negotiations. He concealed

his annoyance, however, as well as he could, and simply intimated that

the first business of importance was to arrange for the relief of Ostend;

that eventualities, such as the possible attack by Spain upon France and

England, might for the moment be deferred, but that if England thought it

a safe policy to ruin Henry by throwing on his shoulders the whole

burthen of a war with the common enemy, she would discover and deeply

regret her fatal mistake. The time was a very ill-chosen one to summon

France to pay old debts, and his Christian Majesty had given his

ambassador no instructions contemplating such a liquidation.

It was the intention to discharge the sum annually, little by little, but

if England desired to exhaust the king by these peremptory demands, it

was an odious conduct, and very different from any that France had ever

pursued.

The English counsellors were not abashed by this rebuke, but became, on

the contrary, very indignant, avowing that if anything more was demanded

of them, England would entirely abandon the United Provinces. "Cecil made

himself known to me in this conference," said De Rosny, "for exactly what

he was. He made use only of double meanings and vague propositions;

feeling that reason was not on his side. He was forced to blush at his

own self-contradictions, when, with a single word, I made him feel the

absurdity of his language. Now, endeavouring to intimidate me, he

exaggerated the strength of England, and again he enlarged upon the

pretended offers made by Spain to that nation."

The secretary, desirous to sow discord between the Dutch deputies and the

ambassador, then observed that France ought to pay to England L50,000

upon the nail, which sum would be at once appropriated to the necessities

of the States. "But what most enraged me," said De Rosny, "was to see

these ministers, who had come to me to state the intentions of their

king, thus impudently substitute their own; for I knew that he had

commanded them to do the very contrary to that which they did."

The conference ended with a suggestion by Cecil, that as France would

only undertake a war in conjunction with England, and as England would

only consent to this if paid by France and the States, the best thing for

the two kings to do would be to do nothing, but to continue to live in

friendship together, without troubling themselves about foreign

complications.

This was the purpose towards which the English counsellors had been

steadily tending, and these last words of Cecil seemed to the ambassador

the only sincere ones spoken by him in the whole conference.

"If I kept silence," said the ambassador, "it was not because I

acquiesced in their reasoning. On the contrary, the manner in which they

had just revealed themselves, and avowed themselves in a certain sort

liars and impostors, had given me the most profound contempt for them. I

thought, however, that by heating myself and contending with them so far

from causing them to abandon a resolution which they had taken in

concert--I might even bring about a total rupture. On the other hand,

matters remaining as they were, and a friendship existing between the two

kings, which might perhaps be cemented by a double marriage, a more

favourable occasion might present itself for negotiation. I did not yet

despair of the success of my mission, because I believed that the king

had no part in the designs which his counsellors wished to carry out."

That the counsellors, then struggling for dominion over the new king and

his kingdom, understood the character of their sovereign better than did

the ambassador, future events were likely enough to prove. That they

preferred peace to war, and the friendship of Spain to an alliance,

offensive and defensive, with France in favour of a republic which they

detested, is certain. It is difficult, however, to understand why they

were "liars and impostors" because, in a conference with the

representative of France, they endeavoured to make their own opinions of

public policy valid rather than content themselves simply with being the

errand-bearers of the new king, whom they believed incapable of being

stirred to an honourable action.

The whole political atmosphere of Europe was mephitic with falsehood, and

certainly the gales which blew from the English court at the accession of

James were not fragrant, but De Rosny had himself come over from France

under false pretences. He had been charged by his master to represent

Henry's childish scheme, which he thought so gigantic, for the

regeneration of Europe, as a project of his own, which he was determined

to bring to execution, even at the risk of infidelity to his sovereign,

and the first element in that whole policy was to carry on war underhand

against a power with which his master had just sworn to preserve peace.

In that age at least it was not safe for politicians to call each other

hard names.

The very next day De Rosny had a long private interview with James at

Greenwich. Being urged to speak without reserve, the ambassador depicted

the privy counsellors to the king as false to his instructions, traitors

to the best interests of their country, the humble servants of Spain, and

most desirous to make their royal master the slave of that power, under

the name of its ally. He expressed the opinion, accordingly, that James

would do better in obeying only the promptings of his own superior

wisdom, rather than the suggestions of the intriguers about him. The

adroit De Rosny thus softly insinuated to the flattered monarch that the

designs of France were the fresh emanations of his own royal intellect.

It was the whim of James to imagine himself extremely like Henry of

Bourbon in character, and he affected to take the wittiest, bravest, most

adventurous, and most adroit knight-errant that ever won and wore a crown

as his perpetual model.

It was delightful, therefore, to find himself in company with his royal

brother; making and unmaking kings; destroying empires, altering the

whole face of Christendom, and, better than all, settling then and for

ever the theology of the whole world, without the trouble of moving from

his easy chair, or of incurring any personal danger.

He entered at once, with the natural tendency to suspicion of a timid

man, into the views presented by De Rosny as to the perfidy of his

counsellors. He changed colour; and was visibly moved, as the ambassador

gave his version of the recent conference with Cecil and the other

ministers, and, being thus artfully stimulated, he was, prepared to

receive with much eagerness the portentous communications now to be made.

The ambassador, however, caused him to season his admiration until he had

taken a most solemn oath, by the sacrament of the Eucharist, never to

reveal a syllable of what he was about to hear. This done, and the royal

curiosity excited almost beyond endurance, De Rosny began to, unfold the

stupendous schemes which had been, concerted between Elizabeth and Henry

at Dover, and which formed the secret object of his present embassy.

Feeling that the king was most malleable in the theological part of his

structure, the wily envoy struck his first blows in that direction;

telling him that his own interest in the religious, condition of Europe,

and especially in the firm establishment of the Protestant faith, far

surpassed in his mind all considerations of fortune, country, or even of

fidelity to his sovereign. Thus far, political considerations had kept

Henry from joining in the great Catholic League, but it was possible that

a change might occur in his system, and the Protestant form of worship,

abandoned by its ancient protector, might disappear entirely from France

and from Europe. De Rosny had, therefore, felt the necessity of a new

patron for the reformed religion in this great emergency, and had

naturally fixed his eyes on the puissant and sagacious prince who now

occupied, the British throne. Now was the time, he urged, for James to

immortalize his name by becoming the arbiter of the destiny of Europe. It

would always seem his own design, although Henry was equally interested

in it with himself. The plan was vast but simple, and perfectly easy of

execution. There would be no difficulty in constructing an all-powerful

league of sovereigns for the destruction of the house of Austria, the

foundation-stones of which would of course be France, Great Britain, and

the United Provinces. The double marriage between the Bourbon and Stuart

families would indissolubly unite the two kingdoms, while interest and

gratitude; a common hatred and a common love, would bind the republic as

firmly to the union. Denmark and Sweden were certainly to be relied upon,

as well as all other Protestant princes. The ambitious and restless Duke

of Savoy would be gained by the offer of Lombardy and a kingly crown,

notwithstanding his matrimonial connection with Spain. As for the German

princes, they would come greedily into the arrangement, as the league,

rich in the spoils of the Austrian house, would have Hungary, Bohemia,

Silesia, Moravia, the archduchies, and other splendid provinces to divide

among them.

The pope would be bought up by a present, in fee-simple, of Naples, and

other comfortable bits of property, of which he was now only feudal lord.

Sicily would be an excellent sop for the haughty republic of Venice. The

Franche Comte; Alsace, Tirol, were naturally to be annexed to

Switzerland; Liege and the heritage of the Duke of Cleves and Juliers to

the Dutch commonwealth.

The King of France, who, according to De Rosny's solemn assertions, was

entirely ignorant of the whole scheme, would, however, be sure to embrace

it very heartily when James should propose it to him, and would be far

too disinterested to wish to keep any of the booty for himself. A similar

self-denial was, of course, expected of James, the two great kings

satisfying themselves with the proud consciousness of having saved

society, rescued the world from the sceptre of an Austrian universal

monarchy, and regenerated European civilization for all future time.

The monarch listened with ravished ears, interposed here and there a

question or a doubt, but devoured every detail of the scheme, as the

ambassador slowly placed it before him.

De Rosny showed that the Spanish faction was not in reality so powerful

as the league which would be constructed for its overthrow. It was not so

much a religious as a political frontier which separated the nations. He

undertook to prove this, but, after all, was obliged to demonstrate that

the defection of Henry from the Protestant cause had deprived him of his

natural allies, and given him no true friends in exchange for the old

ones.

Essentially the Catholics were ranged upon one side, and the Protestants

on the other, but both religions were necessary to Henry the Huguenot:

The bold free-thinker adroitly balanced himself upon each creed. In

making use of a stern and conscientious Calvinist, like Maximilian de

Bethune, in his first assault upon the theological professor who now

stood in Elizabeth's place, he showed the exquisite tact which never

failed him. Toleration for the two religions which had political power,

perfect intolerance for all others; despotic forms of polity, except for

two little republics which were to be smothered with protection and never

left out of leading strings, a thorough recasting of governments and

races, a palingenesis of Europe, a nominal partition of its hegemony

between France and England, which was to be in reality absorbed by

France, and the annihilation of Austrian power east and west, these were

the vast ideas with which that teeming Bourbon brain was filled. It is

the instinct both of poetic and of servile minds to associate a sentiment

of grandeur with such fantastic dreams, but usually on condition that the

dreamer wears a crown. When the regenerator of society appears with a

wisp of straw upon his head, unappreciative society is apt to send him

back to his cell. There, at least, his capacity for mischief is limited.

If to do be as grand as to imagine what it were good to do, then the

Dutchmen in Hell's Mouth and the Porcupine fighting Universal Monarchy

inch by inch and pike to pike, or trying conclusions with the ice-bears

of Nova Zembla, or capturing whole Portuguese fleets in the Moluccas,

were effecting as great changes in the world, and doing perhaps as much

for the advancement of civilization, as James of the two Britains and

Henry of France and Navarre in those his less heroic days, were likely to

accomplish. History has long known the results.

The ambassador did his work admirably. The king embraced him in a

transport of enthusiasm, vowed by all that was most sacred to accept the

project in all its details, and exacted from the ambassador in his turn

an oath on the Eucharist never to reveal, except to his master, the

mighty secrets of their conference.

The interview had lasted four hours. When it was concluded, James

summoned Cecil, and in presence of the ambassador and of some of the

counsellors, lectured him soundly on his presumption in disobeying the

royal commands in his recent negotiations with De Rosny. He then

announced his decision to ally himself strictly with France against Spain

in consequence of the revelations just made to him, and of course to

espouse the cause of the United Provinces. Telling the crest-fallen

Secretary of State to make the proper official communications on the

subject to the ambassadors of my lords the States-General,--thus giving

the envoys from the republic for the first time that pompous designation,

the king turned once more to the marquis with the exclamation, "Well, Mr.

Ambassador, this time I hope that you are satisfied with me?"

In the few days following De Rosny busied himself in drawing up a plan of

a treaty embodying all that had been agreed upon between Henry and

himself, and which he had just so faithfully rehearsed to James. He felt

now some inconvenience from his own artfulness, and was in a measure

caught in his own trap. Had he brought over a treaty in his pocket, James

would have signed it on the spot, so eager was he for the regeneration of

Europe. It was necessary, however, to continue the comedy a little

longer, and the ambassador, having thought it necessary to express many

doubts whether his master could be induced to join in the plot, and to

approve what was really his own most cherished plan, could now do no more

than promise to use all his powers of persuasion unto that end.

The project of a convention, which James swore most solemnly to sign,

whether it were sent to him in six weeks or six months, was accordingly

rapidly reduced to writing and approved. It embodied, of course, most of

the provisions discussed in the last secret interview at Greenwich. The

most practical portion of it undoubtedly related to the United Provinces,

and to the nature of assistance to be at once afforded to that

commonwealth, the only ally of the two kingdoms expressly mentioned in

the treaty. England was to furnish troops, the number of which was not

specified, and France was to pay for them, partly out of her own funds,

partly out of the amount due by her to England. It was, however,

understood, that this secret assistance should not be considered to

infringe the treaty of peace which already existed between Henry and the

Catholic king. Due and detailed arrangements were made as to the manner

in which the allies were to assist each other, in case Spain, not

relishing this kind of neutrality, should think proper openly to attack

either great Britain or France, or both.

Unquestionably the Dutch republic was the only portion of Europe likely

to be substantially affected by these secret arrangements; for, after

all, it had not been found very easy to embody the splendid visions of

Henry, which had so dazzled the imagination of James in the dry clauses

of a protocol.

It was also characteristic enough of the crowned conspirators, that the

clause relating to the United Provinces provided that the allies would

either assist them in the attainment of their independence, or--if it

should be considered expedient to restore them to the domination of Spain

or the empire--would take such precautions and lay down such conditions

as would procure perfect tranquillity for them, and remove from the two

allied kings the fear of a too absolute government by the house of

Austria in those provinces.

It would be difficult to imagine a more impotent conclusion. Those Dutch

rebels had not been fighting for tranquillity. The tranquillity of the

rock amid raging waves--according to the device of the father of the

republic--they had indeed maintained; but to exchange their turbulent and

tragic existence, ever illumined by the great hope of freedom, for repose

under one despot guaranteed to them by two others, was certainly not

their aim. They lacked the breadth of vision enjoyed by the regenerators

who sat upon mountain-tops.

They were fain to toil on in their own way. Perhaps, however, the future

might show as large results from their work as from the schemes of those

who were to begin the humiliation of the Austrian house by converting its

ancient rebels into tranquil subjects.

The Marquis of Rosny, having distributed 60,000 crowns among the leading

politicians and distinguished personages at the English court, with ample

promises of future largess if they remained true to his master, took an

affectionate farewell of King James, and returned with his noble two

hundred to recount his triumphs to the impatient Henry. The treaty was

soon afterwards duly signed and ratified by the high contracting parties.

It was, however, for future history to register its results on the fate

of pope, emperor, kings, potentates, and commonwealths, and to show the

changes it would work in the geography, religion, and polity of the

world.

The deputies from the States-General, satisfied with the practical

assistance promised them, soon afterwards took their departure with

comparative cheerfulness, having previously obtained the royal consent to

raise recruits in Scotland. Meantime the great Constable of Castile,

ambassador from his Catholic Majesty, had arrived in London, and was

wroth at all that he saw and all that he suspected. He, too, began to

scatter golden arguments with a lavish hand among the great lords and

statesmen of Britain, but found that the financier of France had, on the

whole; got before him in the business, and was skilfully maintaining his

precedence from the other side of the channel.

But the end of these great diplomatic manoeuvres had not yet come.