The letter of Henry to "his very dear and good friends, allies, and

confederates," was chiefly a complimentary acknowledgment of the

expressions of gratitude made to him on part of the States-General, and

warm approbation of their sage resolve to support the cause of

Brandenburg and Neuburg. He referred them for particulars to the

confidential conferences held between the commissioners and himself. They

would state how important he thought it that this matter should be

settled now so thoroughly as to require no second effort at any future

time when circumstances might not be so propitious; and that he intended

to risk his person, at the head of his army, to accomplish this result.

To the ambassadors he expressed his high satisfaction at their assurances

of affection, devotion, and gratitude on the part of the States. He

approved and commended their resolution to assist the Elector and the

Palatine in the affair of the duchies. He considered this a proof of

their prudence and good judgment, as showing their conviction that they

were more interested and bound to render this assistance than any other

potentates or states, as much from the convenience and security to be

derived from the neighbourhood of princes who were their friends as from

dangers to be apprehended from other princes who were seeking to

appropriate those provinces. The King therefore begged the States to move

forward as soon as possible the forces which they offered for this

enterprise according to his Majesty's suggestion sent through de Bethune.

The King on his part would do the same with extreme care and diligence,

from the anxiety he felt to prevent My Lords the States from receiving

detriment in places so vital to their preservation.

He begged the States likewise to consider that it was meet not only to

make a first effort to put the princes into entire possession of the

duchies, but to provide also for the durable success of the enterprise;

to guard against any invasions that might be made in the future to eject

those princes. Otherwise all their present efforts would be useless; and

his Majesty therefore consented on this occasion to enter into the new

league proposed by the States with all the princes and states mentioned

in the memoir of the ambassadors for mutual assistance against all unjust

occupations, attempts, and baneful intrigues.

Having no special information as to the infractions by the Archdukes of

the recent treaty of truce, the King declined to discuss that subject for

the moment, although holding himself bound to all required of him as one

of the guarantees of that treaty.

In regard to the remonstrance made by the ambassadors concerning the

trade of the East Indies, his Majesty disclaimed any intention of doing

injury to the States in permitting his subjects to establish a company in

his kingdom for that commerce. He had deferred hitherto taking action in

the matter only out of respect to the States, but he could no longer

refuse the just claims of his subjects if they should persist in them as

urgently as they had thus far been doing. The right and liberty which

they demanded was common to all, said the King, and he was certainly

bound to have as great care for the interests of his subjects as for

those of his friends and allies.

Here, certainly, was an immense difference in tone and in terms towards

the Republic adopted respectively by their great and good friends and

allies the Kings of France and Great Britain. It was natural enough that

Henry, having secretly expressed his most earnest hope that the States

would move at his side in his broad and general assault upon the House of

Austria, should impress upon them his conviction, which was a just one,

that no power in the world was more interested in keeping a Spanish and

Catholic prince out of the duchies than they were themselves. But while

thus taking a bond of them as it were for the entire fulfilment of the

primary enterprise, he accepted with cordiality, and almost with

gratitude, their proposition of a close alliance of the Republic with

himself and with the Protestant powers which James had so superciliously

rejected.

It would have been difficult to inflict a more petty and, more studied

insult upon the Republic than did the King of Great Britain at that

supreme moment by his preposterous claim of sovereign rights over the

Netherlands. He would make no treaty with them, he said, but should he

find it worth while to treat with his royal brother of France, he should

probably not shut the door in their faces.

Certainly Henry's reply to the remonstrances of the ambassadors in regard

to the India trade was as moderate as that of James had been haughty and

peremptory in regard to the herring fishery. It is however sufficiently

amusing to see those excellent Hollanders nobly claiming that "the sea

was as free as air" when the right to take Scotch pilchards was in

question, while at the very same moment they were earnest for excluding

their best allies and all the world besides from their East India

monopoly. But Isaac Le Maire and Jacques Le Roy had not lain so long

disguised in Zamet's house in Paris for nothing, nor had Aerssens so

completely "broke the neck of the French East India Company" as he

supposed. A certain Dutch freebooter, however, Simon Danzer by name, a

native of Dordrecht, who had been alternately in the service of Spain,

France, and the States, but a general marauder upon all powers, was

exercising at that moment perhaps more influence on the East India trade

than any potentate or commonwealth.

He kept the seas just then with four swift-sailing and well-armed

vessels, that potent skimmer of the ocean, and levied tribute upon

Protestant and Catholic, Turk or Christian, with great impartiality. The

King of Spain had sent him letters of amnesty and safe-conduct, with

large pecuniary offers, if he would enter his service. The King of France

had outbid his royal brother and enemy, and implored him to sweep the

seas under the white flag.

The States' ambassador begged his masters to reflect whether this

"puissant and experienced corsair" should be permitted to serve Spaniard

or Frenchman, and whether they could devise no expedient for turning him

into another track. "He is now with his fine ships at Marseilles," said

Aerssens. "He is sought for in all quarters by the Spaniard and by the

directors of the new French East India Company, private persons who equip

vessels of war. If he is not satisfied with this king's offers, he is

likely to close with the King of Spain, who offers him 1000 crowns a

month. Avarice tickles him, but he is neither Spaniard nor Papist, and I

fear will be induced to serve with his ships the East India Company, and

so will return to his piracy, the evil of which will always fall on our

heads. If My Lords the States will send me letters of abolition for him,

in imitation of the French king, on condition of his returning to his

home in Zealand and quitting the sea altogether, something might be done.

Otherwise he will be off to Marseilles again, and do more harm to us than

ever. Isaac Le Maire is doing as much evil as he can, and one holds daily

council with him here."

Thus the slippery Simon skimmed the seas from Marseilles to the Moluccas,

from Java to Mexico, never to be held firmly by Philip, or Henry, or

Barneveld. A dissolute but very daring ship's captain, born in Zealand,

and formerly in the service of the States, out of which he had been

expelled for many evil deeds, Simon Danzer had now become a professional

pirate, having his head-quarters chiefly at Algiers. His English

colleague Warde stationed himself mainly at Tunis, and both acted

together in connivance with the pachas of the Turkish government. They

with their considerable fleet, one vessel of which mounted sixty guns,

were the terror of the Mediterranean, extorted tribute from the commerce

of all nations indifferently, and sold licenses to the greatest

governments of Europe. After growing rich with his accumulated booty,

Simon was inclined to become respectable, a recourse which was always

open to him--France, England, Spain, the United Provinces, vieing with

each other to secure him by high rank and pay as an honoured member of

their national marine. He appears however to have failed in his plan of

retiring upon his laurels, having been stabbed in Paris by a man whom he

had formerly robbed and ruined.

Villeroy, having delivered the letters with his own hands to the

ambassadors, was asked by them when and where it would be convenient for

the King to arrange the convention of close alliance. The Secretary of

State--in his secret heart anything but kindly disposed for this loving

union with a republic he detested and with heretics whom he would have

burned--answered briefly that his Majesty was ready at any time, and that

it might take place then if they were provided with the necessary powers.

He said in parting that the States should "have an eye to everything, for

occasions like the present were irrecoverable." He then departed, saying

that the King would receive them in final audience on the following day.

Next morning accordingly Marshal de Boisdaulphin and de Bonoeil came with

royal coaches to the Hotel Gondy and escorted the ambassadors to the

Louvre. On the way they met de Bethune, who had returned solo from the

Hague bringing despatches for the King and for themselves. While in the

antechamber, they had opportunity to read their letters from the

States-General, his Majesty sending word that he was expecting them with

impatience, but preferred that they should read the despatches before the

audience.

They found the King somewhat out of humour. He expressed himself as

tolerably well satisfied with the general tenour of the despatches

brought by de Bethune, but complained loudly of the request now made by

the States, that the maintenance and other expenses of 4000 French in the

States' service should be paid in the coming campaign out of the royal

exchequer. He declared that this proposition was "a small manifestation

of ingratitude," that my Lords the, States were "little misers," and that

such proceedings were "little avaricious tricks" such as he had not

expected of them.

So far as England was concerned, he said there was a great difference.

The English took away what he was giving. He did cheerfully a great deal

for his friends, he said, and was always ready doubly to repay what they

did for him. If, however, the States persisted in this course, he should

call his troops home again.

The King, as he went on, became more and more excited, and showed decided

dissatisfaction in his language and manner. It was not to be wondered at,

for we have seen how persistently he had been urging that the Advocate

should come in person with "the bridle on his neck," and now he had sent

his son-in-law and two colleagues tightly tied up by stringent

instructions. And over an above all this, while he was contemplating a

general war with intention to draw upon the States for unlimited

supplies, behold, they were haggling for the support of a couple of

regiments which were virtually their own troops.

There were reasons, however, for this cautiousness besides those

unfounded, although not entirely chimerical, suspicions as to the King's

good faith, to which we have alluded. It should not be forgotten that,

although Henry had conversed secretly with the States' ambassador at full

length on his far-reaching plans, with instructions that he should

confidentially inform the Advocate and demand his co-operation, not a

word of it had been officially propounded to the States-General, nor to

the special embassy with whom he was now negotiating. No treaty of

alliance offensive or defensive existed between the Kingdom and the

Republic or between the Republic and any power whatever. It would have

been culpable carelessness therefore at this moment for the prime

minister of the States to have committed his government in writing to a

full participation in a general assault upon the House of Austria; the

first step in which would have been a breach of the treaty just concluded

and instant hostilities with the Archdukes Albert and Isabella.

That these things were in the immediate future was as plain as that night

would follow day, but the hour had not yet struck for the States to throw

down the gauntlet.

Hardly two months before, the King, in his treaty with the princes at

Hall, had excluded both the King of Great Britain and the States-General

from participation in those arrangements, and it was grave matter for

consideration, therefore, for the States whether they should allow such

succour as they might choose to grant the princes to be included in the

French contingent. The opportunity for treating as a sovereign power with

the princes and making friends with them was tempting, but it did not

seem reasonable to the States that France should make use of them in this

war without a treaty, and should derive great advantage from the

alliance, but leave the expense to them.

Henry, on the other hand, forgetting, when it was convenient to him, all

about the Princess of Conde, his hatred of Spain, and his resolution to

crush the House of Austria, chose to consider the war as made simply for

the love of the States-General and to secure them for ever from danger.

The ambassadors replied to the King's invectives with great respect, and

endeavoured to appease his anger. They had sent a special despatch to

their government, they said, in regard to all those matters, setting

forth all the difficulties that had been raised, but had not wished to

trouble his Majesty with premature discussions of them. They did not

doubt, however, that their High Mightinesses would so conduct this great

affair as to leave the King no ground of complaint.

Henry then began to talk of the intelligence brought by de Bethune from

the Hague, especially in regard to the sending of States' troops to

Dusseldorf and the supply of food for the French army. He did not

believe, he said, that the Archdukes would refuse him the passage with

his forces through their territory, inasmuch as the States' army would be

on the way to meet him. In case of any resistance, however, he declared

his resolution to strike his blow and to cause people to talk of him. He

had sent his quartermaster-general to examine the passes, who had

reported that it would be impossible to prevent his Majesty's advance. He

was also distinctly informed that Marquis Spinola, keeping his places

garrisoned, could not bring more than 8000 men into the field. The Duke

of Bouillon, however, was sending advices that his communications were

liable to be cut off, and that for this purpose Spinola could set on foot

about 16,000 infantry and 4000 horse.

If the passage should be allowed by the Archdukes, the King stated his

intention of establishing magazines for his troops along the whole line

of march through the Spanish Netherlands and neighbouring districts, and

to establish and fortify himself everywhere in order to protect his

supplies and cover his possible retreat. He was still in doubt, he said,

whether to demand the passage at once or to wait until he had began to

move his army. He was rather inclined to make the request instantly in

order to gain time, being persuaded that he should receive no answer

either of consent or refusal.

Leaving all these details, the King then frankly observed that the affair

of Cleve had a much wider outlook than people thought. Therefore the

States must consider well what was to be done to secure the whole work as

soon as the Cleve business had been successfully accomplished. Upon this

subject it was indispensable that he should consult especially with his

Excellency (Prince Maurice) and some members of the General Assembly,

whom he wished that My Lords the States-General should depute to the

army.

"For how much good will it do," said the King, "if we drive off Archduke

Leopold without establishing the princes in security for the future?

Nothing is easier than to put the princes in possession. Every one will

yield or run away before our forces, but two months after we have

withdrawn the enemy will return and drive the princes out again. I cannot

always be ready to spring out of my kingdom, nor to assemble such great

armies. I am getting old, and my army moreover costs me 400,000 crowns a

month, which is enough to exhaust all the treasures of France, Spain,

Venice, and the States-General together."

He added that, if the present occasion were neglected, the States would

afterwards bitterly lament and never recover it. The Pope was very much

excited, and was sending out his ambassadors everywhere. Only the

previous Saturday the new nuncius destined for France had left Rome. If

My Lords the States would send deputies to the camp with full powers, he

stood there firm and unchangeable, but if they remained cool in the

business, he warned them that they would enrage him.

The States must seize the occasion, he repeated. It was bald behind, and

must be grasped by the forelock. It was not enough to have begun well.

One must end well. "Finis coronat opus." It was very easy to speak of a

league, but a league was not to be made in order to sit with arms tied,

but to do good work. The States ought not to suffer that the Germans

should prove themselves more energetic, more courageous, than themselves.

And again the King vehemently urged the necessity of his Excellency and

some deputies of the States coming to him "with absolute power" to treat.

He could not doubt in that event of something solid being accomplished.

"There are three things," he continued, "which cause me to speak freely.

I am talking with my friends whom I hold dear--yes, dearer, perhaps, than

they hold themselves. I am a great king, and say what I choose to say. I

am old, and know by experience the ways of this world's affairs. I tell

you, then, that it is most important that you should come to me resolved

and firm on all points."

He then requested the ambassadors to make full report of all that he had

said to their masters, to make the journey as rapidly as possible, in

order to encourage the States to the great enterprise and to meet his

wishes. He required from them, he said, not only activity of the body,

but labour of the intellect.

He was silent for a few moments, and then spoke again. "I shall not

always be here," he said, "nor will you always have Prince Maurice, and a

few others whose knowledge of your commonwealth is perfect. My Lords the

States must be up and doing while they still possess them. Nest Tuesday I

shall cause the Queen to be crowned at Saint-Denis; the following

Thursday she will make her entry into Paris. Next day, Friday, I shall

take my departure. At the end of this month I shall cross the Meuse at

Mezieres or in that neighbourhood."

He added that he should write immediately to Holland, to urge upon his

Excellency and the States to be ready to make the junction of their army

with his forces without delay. He charged the ambassadors to assure their

High Mightinesses that he was and should remain their truest friend,

their dearest neighbour. He then said a few gracious and cordial words to

each of them, warmly embraced each, and bade them all farewell.

The next day was passed by the ambassadors in paying and receiving

farewell visits, and on Saturday, the 8th, they departed from Paris,

being escorted out of the gate by the Marshal de Boisdaulphin, with a

cavalcade of noblemen. They slept that night at Saint Denis, and then

returned to Holland by the way of Calais and Rotterdam, reaching the

Hague on the 16th of May.

I make no apology for the minute details thus given of the proceedings of

this embassy, and especially of the conversations of Henry.

The very words of those conversations were taken down on the spot by the

commissioners who heard them, and were carefully embodied in their report

made to the States-General on their return, from which I have transcribed

them.

It was a memorable occasion. The great king--for great he was, despite

his numerous vices and follies--stood there upon the threshold of a vast

undertaking, at which the world, still half incredulous, stood gazing,

half sick with anxiety. He relied on his own genius and valour chiefly,

and after these on the brain of Barneveld and the sword of Maurice. Nor

was his confidence misplaced.

But let the reader observe the date of the day when those striking

utterances were made, and which have never before been made public. It

was Thursday, the 6th May. "I shall not always be here," said the King,

. . . "I cannot be ready at any moment to spring out of my kingdom."

. . . "Friday of next week I take my departure."

How much of heroic pathos in Henry's attitude at this supreme moment! How

mournfully ring those closing words of his address to the ambassadors!

The die was cast. A letter drawn up by the Duc de Sully was sent to

Archduke Albert by the King.

"My brother," he said; "Not being able to refuse my best allies and

confederates the help which they have asked of me against those who wish

to trouble them in the succession to the duchies and counties of Cleve,

Julich, Mark, Berg, Ravensberg, and Ravenstein, I am advancing towards

them with my army. As my road leads me through your country, I desire to

notify you thereof, and to know whether or not I am to enter as a friend

or enemy."

Such was the draft as delivered to the Secretary of State; "and as such

it was sent," said Sully, "unless Villeroy changed it, as he had a great

desire to do."

Henry was mistaken in supposing that the Archduke would leave the letter

without an answer. A reply was sent in due time, and the permission

demanded was not refused. For although France was now full of military

movement, and the regiments everywhere were hurrying hourly to the places

of rendezvous, though the great storm at last was ready to burst, the

Archdukes made no preparations for resistance, and lapped themselves in

fatal security that nothing was intended but an empty demonstration.

Six thousand Swiss newly levied, with 20,000 French infantry and 6000

horse, were waiting for Henry to place himself at their head at Mezieres.

Twelve thousand foot and 2000 cavalry, including the French and English

contingents--a splendid army, led by Prince Maurice--were ready to march

from Holland to Dusseldorf. The army of the princes under Prince

Christian of Anhalt numbered 10,000 men. The last scruples of the usually

unscrupulous Charles Emmanuel had been overcome, and the Duke was quite

ready to act, 25,000 strong, with Marshal de Lesdiguieres, in the

Milanese; while Marshal de la Force was already at the head of his forces

in the Pyrenees, amounting to 12,000 foot and 2000 horse.

Sully had already despatched his splendid trains of artillery to the

frontier. "Never was seen in France, and perhaps never will be seen there

again, artillery more complete and better furnished," said the Duke,

thinking probably that artillery had reached the climax of perfect

destructiveness in the first decade of the seventeenth century.

His son, the Marquis de Rosny, had received the post of grand master of

artillery, and placed himself at its head. His father was to follow as

its chief, carrying with him as superintendent of finance a cash-box of

eight millions.

The King had appointed his wife, Mary de' Medici, regent, with an eminent

council.

The new nuncius had been requested to present himself with his letters of

credence in the camp. Henry was unwilling that he should enter Paris,

being convinced that he came to do his best, by declamation, persuasion,

and intrigue, to paralyse the enterprise. Sully's promises to Ubaldini,

the former nuncius, that his Holiness should be made king, however

flattering to Paul V., had not prevented his representatives from

vigorously denouncing Henry's monstrous scheme to foment heresy and

encourage rebellion.

The King's chagrin at the cautious limitations imposed upon the States'

special embassy was, so he hoped, to be removed by full conferences in

the camp. Certainly he had shown in the most striking manner the respect

he felt for the States, and the confidence he reposed in them.

"In the reception of your embassy," wrote Aerssens to the Advocate,

"certainly the King has so loosened the strap of his affection that he

has reserved nothing by which he could put the greatest king in the world

above your level."

He warned the States, however, that Henry had not found as much in their

propositions as the common interest had caused him to promise himself.

"Nevertheless he informs me in confidence," said Aerssens, "that he will

engage himself in nothing without you; nay, more, he has expressly told

me that he could hardly accomplish his task without your assistance, and

it was for our sakes alone that he has put himself into this position and

incurred this great expense."

Some days later he informed Barneveld that he would leave to van der Myle

and his colleagues the task of describing the great dissatisfaction of

the King at the letters brought by de Bethune. He told him in confidence

that the States must equip the French regiments and put them in marching

order if they wished to preserve Henry's friendship. He added that since

the departure of the special embassy the King had been vehemently and

seriously urging that Prince Maurice, Count Lewis William, Barneveld, and

three or four of the most qualified deputies of the States-General,

entirely authorized to treat for the common safety, should meet with him

in the territory of Julich on a fixed day.

The crisis was reached. The King stood fully armed, thoroughly prepared,

with trustworthy allies at his side, disposing of overwhelming forces

ready to sweep down with irresistible strength upon the House of Austria,

which, as he said and the States said, aspired to give the law to the

whole world. Nothing was left to do save, as the Ambassador said, to

"uncouple the dogs of war and let them run."

What preparations had Spain and the Empire, the Pope and the League, set

on foot to beat back even for a moment the overwhelming onset? None

whatever. Spinola in the Netherlands, Fuentes in Milan, Bucquoy and

Lobkowitz and Lichtenstein in Prague, had hardly the forces of a moderate

peace establishment at their disposal, and all the powers save France and

the States were on the verge of bankruptcy.

Even James of Great Britain--shuddering at the vast thundercloud which

had stretched itself over Christendom growing blacker and blacker,

precisely at this moment, in which he had proved to his own satisfaction

that the peace just made would perpetually endure--even James did not

dare to traverse the designs of the king whom he feared, and the republic

which he hated, in favour of his dearly loved Spain. Sweden, Denmark, the

Hanse Towns, were in harmony with France, Holland, Savoy, and the whole

Protestant force of Germany--a majority both in population and resources

of the whole empire. What army, what combination, what device, what

talisman, could save the House of Austria, the cause of Papacy, from the

impending ruin?

A sudden, rapid, conclusive victory for the allies seemed as predestined

a result as anything could be in the future of human affairs.

On the 14th or 15th day of May, as he had just been informing the States'

ambassadors, Henry meant to place himself at the head of his army. That

was the moment fixed by himself for "taking his departure."

And now the ides of May had come--but not gone.

In the midst of all the military preparations with which Paris had been

resounding, the arrangements for the Queen's coronation had been

simultaneously going forward. Partly to give check in advance to the

intrigues which would probably at a later date be made by Conde,

supported by the power of Spain, to invalidate the legitimacy of the

Dauphin, but more especially perhaps to further and to conceal what the

faithful Sully called the "damnable artifices" of the Queen's intimate

councillors--sinister designs too dark to be even whispered at that

epoch, and of which history, during the lapse of more than two centuries

and a half, has scarcely dared to speak above its breath--it was deemed

all important that the coronation should take place.

A certain astrologer, Thomassin by name, was said to have bidden the King

to beware the middle of the next month of May. Henry had tweaked the

soothsayer by the beard and made him dance twice or thrice about the

room. To the Duc de Vendome expressing great anxiety in regard to

Thomassin, Henry replied, "The astrologer is an old fool, and you are a

young fool." A certain prophetess called Pasithea had informed the Queen

that the King could not survive his fifty-seventh year. She was much in

the confidence of Mary de' Medici, who had insisted this year on her

returning to Paris. Henry, who was ever chafing and struggling to escape

the invisible and dangerous net which he felt closing about him, and who

connected the sorceress with all whom he most loathed among the intimate

associates of the Queen, swore a mighty oath that she should not show her

face again at court. "My heart presages that some signal disaster will

befall me on this coronation. Concini and his wife are urging the Queen

obstinately to send for this fanatic. If she should come, there is no

doubt that my wife and I shall squabble well about her. If I discover

more about these private plots of hers with Spain, I shall be in a mighty

passion." And the King then assured the faithful minister of his

conviction that all the jealousy affected by the Queen in regard to the

Princess of Conde was but a veil to cover dark designs. It was necessary

in the opinion of those who governed her, the vile Concini and his wife,

that there should be some apparent and flagrant cause of quarrel. The

public were to receive payment in these pretexts for want of better coin.

Henry complained that even Sully and all the world besides attributed to

jealousy that which was really the effect of a most refined malice.

And the minister sometimes pauses in the midst of these revelations made

in his old age, and with self-imposed and shuddering silence intimates

that there are things he could tell which are too odious and dreadful to

be breathed.

Henry had an invincible repugnance to that coronation on which the Queen

had set her heart. Nothing could be more pathetic than the isolated

position in which he found himself, standing thus as he did on the

threshold of a mighty undertaking in which he was the central figure, an

object for the world to gaze upon with palpitating interest. At his

hearth in the Louvre were no household gods. Danger lurked behind every

tapestry in that magnificent old palace. A nameless dread dogged his

footsteps through those resounding corridors.

And by an exquisite refinement in torture the possible father of several

of his children not only dictated to the Queen perpetual outbreaks of

frantic jealousy against her husband, but moved her to refuse with

suspicion any food and drink offered her by his hands. The Concini's

would even with unparalleled and ingenious effrontery induce her to make

use of the kitchen arrangements in their apartments for the preparation

of her daily meals?

Driven from house and home, Henry almost lived at the Arsenal. There he

would walk for hours in the long alleys of the garden, discussing with

the great financier and soldier his vast, dreamy, impracticable plans.

Strange combination of the hero, the warrior, the voluptuary, the sage,

and the schoolboy--it would be difficult to find in the whole range of

history a more human, a more attractive, a more provoking, a less

venerable character.

Haunted by omens, dire presentiments, dark suspicions with and without

cause, he was especially averse from the coronation to which in a moment

of weakness he had given his consent.

Sitting in Sully's cabinet, in a low chair which the Duke had expressly

provided for his use, tapping and drumming on his spectacle case, or

starting up and smiting himself on the thigh, he would pour out his soul

hours long to his one confidential minister. "Ah, my friend, how this

sacrament displeases me," he said; "I know not why it is, but my heart

tells me that some misfortune is to befall me. By God I shall die in this

city, I shall never go out of it; I see very well that they are finding

their last resource in my death. Ah, accursed coronation! thou wilt be

the, cause of my death."

So many times did he give utterance to these sinister forebodings that

Sully implored him at last for leave to countermand the whole ceremony

notwithstanding the great preparations which had been made for the

splendid festival. "Yes, yes," replied the King, "break up this

coronation at once. Let me hear no more of it. Then I shall have my mind

cured of all these impressions. I shall leave the town and fear nothing."

He then informed his friend that he had received intimations that he

should lose his life at the first magnificent festival he should give,

and that he should die in a carriage. Sully admitted that he had often,

when in a carriage with him, been amazed at his starting and crying out

at the slightest shock, having so often seen him intrepid among guns and

cannon, pikes and naked swords.

The Duke went to the Queen three days in succession, and with passionate

solicitations and arguments and almost upon his knees implored her to

yield to the King's earnest desire, and renounce for the time at least

the coronation. In vain. Mary de' Medici was obdurate as marble to his

prayers.

The coronation was fixed for Thursday, the 13th May, two days later than

the time originally appointed when the King conversed with the States'

ambassadors. On the following Sunday was to be the splendid and solemn

entrance of the crowned Queen. On the Monday, Henry, postponing likewise

for two days his original plan of departure, would leave for the army.

Meantime there were petty annoyances connected with the details of the

coronation. Henry had set his heart on having his legitimatized children,

the offspring of the fair Gabrielle, take their part in the ceremony on

an equal footing with the princes of the blood. They were not entitled to

wear the lilies of France upon their garments, and the King was

solicitous that "the Count"--as Soissons, brother of Prince Conti and

uncle of Conde, was always called--should dispense with those ensigns for

his wife upon this solemn occasion, and that the other princesses of the

blood should do the same. Thus there would be no appearance of

inferiority on the part of the Duchess of Vendome.

The Count protested that he would have his eyes torn out of his head

rather than submit to an arrangement which would do him so much shame. He

went to the Queen and urged upon her that to do this would likewise be an

injury to her children, the Dukes of Orleans and of Anjou. He refused

flatly to appear or allow his wife to appear except in the costume

befitting their station. The King on his part was determined not to

abandon his purpose. He tried to gain over the Count by the most splendid

proposals, offering him the command of the advance-guard of the army, or

the lieutenancy-general of France in the absence of the King, 30,000

crowns for his equipment and an increase of his pension if he would cause

his wife to give up the fleurs-de-lys on this occasion. The alternative

was to be that, if she insisted upon wearing them, his Majesty would

never look upon him again with favourable eyes.

The Count never hesitated, but left Paris, refusing to appear at the

ceremony. The King was in a towering passion, for to lose the presence of

this great prince of the blood at a solemnity expressly intended as a

demonstration against the designs hatching by the first of all the

princes of the blood under patronage of Spain was a severe blow to his

pride and a check to his policy.'

Yet it was inconceivable that he could at such a moment commit so

superfluous and unmeaning a blunder. He had forced Conde into exile,

intrigue with the enemy, and rebellion, by open and audacious efforts to

destroy his domestic peace, and now he was willing to alienate one of his

most powerful subjects in order to place his bastards on a level with

royalty. While it is sufficiently amusing to contemplate this proposed

barter of a chief command in a great army or the lieutenancy-general of a

mighty kingdom at the outbreak of a general European war against a bit of

embroidery on the court dress of a lady, yet it is impossible not to

recognize something ideal and chivalrous from his own point of view in

the refusal of Soissons to renounce those emblems of pure and high

descent, those haughty lilies of St. Louis, against any bribes of place

and pelf however dazzling.

The coronation took place on Thursday, 13th May, with the pomp and

glitter becoming great court festivals; the more pompous and glittering

the more the monarch's heart was wrapped in gloom. The representatives of

the great powers were conspicuous in the procession; Aerssens, the Dutch

ambassador, holding a foremost place. The ambassadors of Spain and Venice

as usual squabbled about precedence and many other things, and actually

came to fisticuffs, the fight lasting a long time and ending somewhat to

the advantage of the Venetian. But the sacrament was over, and Mary de'

Medici was crowned Queen of France and Regent of the Kingdom during the

absence of the sovereign with his army.

Meantime there had been mysterious warnings darker and more distinct than

the babble of the soothsayer Thomassin or the ravings of the lunatic

Pasithea. Count Schomberg, dining at the Arsenal with Sully, had been

called out to converse with Mademoiselle de Gournay, who implored that a

certain Madame d'Escomans might be admitted to audience of the King. That

person, once in direct relations with the Marchioness of Verneuil, the

one of Henry's mistresses who most hated him, affirmed that a man from

the Duke of Epernon's country was in Paris, agent of a conspiracy seeking

the King's life.

The woman not enjoying a very reputable character found it impossible to

obtain a hearing, although almost frantic with her desire to save her

sovereign's life. The Queen observed that it was a wicked woman, who was

accusing all the world, and perhaps would accuse her too.

The fatal Friday came. Henry drove out, in his carriage to see the

preparations making for the triumphal entrance of the Queen into Paris on

the following Sunday. What need to repeat the tragic, familiar tale? The

coach was stopped by apparent accident in the narrow street de la

Feronniere, and Francis Ravaillac, standing on the wheel, drove his knife

through the monarch's heart. The Duke of Epernon, sitting at his side,

threw his cloak over the body and ordered the carriage back to the

Louvre.

"They have killed him, 'e ammazato,'" cried Concini (so says tradition),

thrusting his head into the Queen's bedchamber.

[Michelet, 197. It is not probable that the documents concerning

the trial, having been so carefully suppressed from the beginning,

especially the confession dictated to Voisin--who wrote it kneeling

on the ground, and was perhaps so appalled at its purport that he

was afraid to write it legibly--will ever see the light. I add in

the Appendix some contemporary letters of persons, as likely as any

one to know what could be known, which show how dreadful were the

suspicions which men entertained, and which they hardly ventured to

whisper to each other].

That blow had accomplished more than a great army could have done, and

Spain now reigned in Paris. The House of Austria, without making any

military preparations, had conquered, and the great war of religion and

politics was postponed for half a dozen years.

This history has no immediate concern with solving the mysteries of that

stupendous crime. The woman who had sought to save the King's life now

denounced Epernon as the chief murderer, and was arrested, examined,

accused of lunacy, proved to be perfectly sane, and, persisting in her

statements with perfect coherency, was imprisoned for life for her pains;

the Duke furiously demanding her instant execution.

The documents connected with the process were carefully suppressed. The

assassin, tortured and torn by four horses, was supposed to have revealed

nothing and to have denied the existence of accomplices.

The great accused were too omnipotent to be dealt with by humble accusers

or by convinced but powerless tribunals. The trial was all mystery,

hugger-mugger, horror. Yet the murderer is known to have dictated to the

Greflier Voisin, just before expiring on the Greve, a declaration which

that functionary took down in a handwriting perhaps purposely illegible.

Two centuries and a half have passed away, yet the illegible original

record is said to exist, to have been plainly read, and to contain the

names of the Queen and the Duke of Epernon.

Twenty-six years before, the pistol of Balthasar Gerard had destroyed the

foremost man in Europe and the chief of a commonwealth just struggling

into existence. Yet Spain and Rome, the instigators and perpetrators of

the crime, had not reaped the victory which they had the right to expect.

The young republic, guided by Barneveld and loyal to the son of the

murdered stadholder, was equal to the burthen suddenly descending upon

its shoulders. Instead of despair there had been constancy. Instead of

distracted counsels there had been heroic union of heart and hand. Rather

than bend to Rome and grovel to Philip, it had taken its sovereignty in

its hands, offered it successively, without a thought of

self-aggrandizement on the part of its children, to the crowns of France

and Great Britain, and, having been repulsed by both, had learned after

fiery trials and incredible exertions to assert its own high and foremost

place among the independent powers of the world.

And now the knife of another priest-led fanatic, the wretched but

unflinching instrument of a great conspiracy, had at a blow decapitated

France. No political revolution could be much more thorough than that

which had been accomplished in a moment of time by Francis Ravaillac.

On the 14th of May, France, while in spiritual matters obedient to the

Pope, stood at the head of the forces of Protestantism throughout Europe,

banded together to effect the downfall of the proud house of Austria,

whose fortunes and fate were synonymous with Catholicism. The Baltic

powers, the majority of the Teutonic races, the Kingdom of Britain, the

great Republic of the Netherlands, the northernmost and most warlike

governments of Italy, all stood at the disposition of the warrior-king.

Venice, who had hitherto, in the words of a veteran diplomatist, "shunned

to look a league or a confederation in the face, if there was any

Protestant element in it, as if it had been the head of Medusa," had

formally forbidden the passage of troops northwards to the relief of the

assailed power. Savoy, after direful hesitations, had committed herself

body and soul to the great enterprise. Even the Pope, who feared the

overshadowing personality of Henry, and was beginning to believe his

house's private interests more likely to flourish under the protection of

the French than the Spanish king, was wavering in his fidelity to Spain

and tempted by French promises: If he should prove himself incapable of

effecting a pause in the great crusade, it was doubtful on which side he

would ultimately range himself; for it was at least certain that the new

Catholic League, under the chieftainship of Maximilian of Bavaria, was

resolved not to entangle its fortunes inextricably with those of the

Austrian house.

The great enterprise, first unfolding itself with the episode of Cleve

and Berg and whimsically surrounding itself with the fantastic idyl of

the Princess of Conde, had attained vast and misty proportions in the

brain of its originator. Few political visions are better known in

history than the "grand design" of Henry for rearranging the map of the

world at the moment when, in the middle of May, he was about to draw his

sword. Spain reduced to the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees, but presented

with both the Indies, with all America and the whole Orient in fee; the

Empire taken from Austria and given to Bavaria; a constellation of States

in Italy, with the Pope for president-king; throughout the rest of

Christendom a certain number of republics, of kingdoms, of religions--a

great confederation of the world, in short--with the most Christian king

for its dictator and protector, and a great Amphictyonic council to

regulate all disputes by solemn arbitration, and to make war in the

future impossible, such in little was his great design.

Nothing could be more humane, more majestic, more elaborate, more utterly

preposterous. And all this gigantic fabric had passed away in an

instant--at one stroke of a broken table knife sharpened on a carriage

wheel.

Most pitiful was the condition of France on the day after, and for years

after, the murder of the King. Not only was the kingdom for the, time

being effaced from the roll of nations, so far as external relations were

concerned, but it almost ceased to be a kingdom. The ancient monarchy of

Hugh Capet, of Saint-Louis, of Henry of France and Navarre, was

transformed into a turbulent, self-seeking, quarrelsome, pillaging,

pilfering democracy of grandees. The Queen-Regent was tossed hither and

thither at the sport of the winds and waves which shifted every hour in

that tempestuous court.

No man pretended to think of the State. Every man thought only of

himself. The royal exchequer was plundered with a celerity and cynical

recklessness such as have been rarely seen in any age or country. The

millions so carefully hoarded by Sully, and exhibited so dramatically by

that great minister to the enraptured eyes of his sovereign; that

treasure in the Bastille on which Henry relied for payment of the armies

with which he was to transform the world, all disappeared in a few weeks

to feed the voracious maw of courtiers, paramours, and partisans!

The Queen showered gold like water upon her beloved Concini that he might

purchase his Marquisate of Ancre, and the charge of first gentleman of

the court from Bouillon; that he might fit himself for the government of

Picardy; that he might elevate his marquisate into a dukedom. Conde,

having no further reason to remain in exile, received as a gift from the

trembling Mary de' Medici the magnificent Hotel Gondy, where the Dutch

ambassadors had so recently been lodged, for which she paid 65,000

crowns, together with 25,000 crowns to furnish it, 50,000 crowns to pay

his debts, 50,000 more as yearly pension.

He claimed double, and was soon at sword's point with the Queen in spite

of her lavish bounty.

Epernon, the true murderer of Henry, trampled on courts of justice and

councils of ministers, frightened the court by threatening to convert his

possession of Metz into an independent sovereignty, as Balagny had

formerly seized upon Cambray, smothered for ever the process of

Ravaillac, caused those to be put to death or immured for life in

dungeons who dared to testify to his complicity in the great crime, and

strode triumphantly over friends and enemies throughout France, although

so crippled by the gout that he could scarcely walk up stairs.

There was an end to the triumvirate. Sully's influence was gone for ever.

The other two dropped the mask. The Chancellor and Villeroy revealed

themselves to be what they secretly had always been--humble servants and

stipendiaries of Spain. The formal meetings of the council were of little

importance, and were solemn, tearful, and stately; draped in woe for the

great national loss. In the private cabinet meetings in the entresol of

the Louvre, where the Nuncius and the Spanish ambassador held counsel

with Epernon and Villeroy and Jeannin and Sillery, the tone was merry and

loud; the double Spanish marriage and confusion to the Dutch being the

chief topics of consultation.

But the anarchy grew day by day into almost hopeless chaos. There was no

satisfying the princes of the blood nor the other grandees. Conde, whose

reconciliation with the Princess followed not long after the death of

Henry and his own return to France, was insatiable in his demands for

money, power, and citadels of security. Soissons, who might formerly have

received the lieutenancy-general of the kingdom by sacrificing the lilies

on his wife's gown, now disputed for that office with his elder brother

Conti, the Prince claiming it by right of seniority, the Count denouncing

Conti as deaf, dumb, and imbecile, till they drew poniards on each other

in the very presence of the Queen; while Conde on one occasion, having

been refused the citadels which he claimed, Blaye and Chateau Trompette,

threw his cloak over his nose and put on his hat while the Queen was

speaking, and left the council in a fury, declaring that Villeroy and the

chancellor were traitors, and that he would have them both soundly

cudgelled. Guise, Lorraine, Epernon, Bouillon, and other great lords

always appeared in the streets of Paris at the head of three, four, or

five hundred mounted and armed retainers; while the Queen in her

distraction gave orders to arm the Paris mob to the number of fifty

thousand, and to throw chains across the streets to protect herself and

her son against the turbulent nobles.

Sully, hardly knowing to what saint to burn his candle, being forced to

resign his great posts, was found for a time in strange political

combination with the most ancient foes of his party and himself. The

kaleidoscope whirling with exasperating quickness showed ancient Leaguers

and Lorrainers banded with and protecting Huguenots against the Crown,

while princes of the blood, hereditary patrons and chiefs of the

Huguenots, became partisans and stipendiaries of Spain.

It is easy to see that circumstances like these rendered the position of

the Dutch commonwealth delicate and perilous.

Sully informed Aerssens and van der Myle, who had been sent back to Paris

on special mission very soon after the death of the King, that it took a

hundred hours now to accomplish a single affair, whereas under Henry a

hundred affairs were transacted in a single hour. But Sully's sun had

set, and he had few business conferences now with the ambassadors.

Villeroy and the Chancellor had fed fat their ancient grudge to the once

omnipotent minister, and had sworn his political ruin. The old secretary

of state had held now complete control of the foreign alliances and

combinations of France, and the Dutch ambassadors could be under no

delusion as to the completeness of the revolution.

"You will find a passion among the advisers of the Queen," said Villeroy

to Aerssens and van der Myle, "to move in diametrical opposition to the

plans of the late king." And well might the ancient Leaguer and present

pensionary of Spain reveal this foremost fact in a policy of which he was

in secret the soul. He wept profusely when he first received Francis

Aerssens, but after these "useless tears," as the Envoy called them, he

soon made it manifest that there was no more to be expected of France, in

the great project which its government had so elaborately set on foot.

Villeroy was now sixty-six years of age, and had been secretary of state

during forty-two years and under four kings. A man of delicate health,

frail body, methodical habits, capacity for routine, experience in

political intrigue, he was not personally as greedy of money as many of

his contemporaries, and was not without generosity; but he loved power,

the Pope, and the House of Austria. He was singularly reserved in public,

practised successfully the talent of silence, and had at last arrived at

the position he most coveted, the virtual presidency of the council, and

saw the men he most hated beneath his feet.

At the first interview of Aerssens with the Queen-Regent she was drowned

in tears, and could scarcely articulate an intelligible sentence. So far

as could be understood she expressed her intention of carrying out the

King's plans, of maintaining the old alliances, of protecting both

religions. Nothing, however, could be more preposterous than such

phrases. Villeroy, who now entirely directed the foreign affairs of the

kingdom, assured the Ambassador that France was much more likely to apply

to the States for assistance than render them aid in any enterprise

whatever. "There is no doubt," said Aerssens, "that the Queen is entirely

in the hands of Spain and the priests." Villeroy, whom Henry was wont to

call the pedagogue of the council, went about sighing dismally, wishing

himself dead, and perpetually ejaculating, "Ho! poor France, how much

hast thou still to suffer!" In public he spoke of nothing but of union,

and of the necessity of carrying out the designs of the King, instructing

the docile Queen to hold the same language. In private he was quite

determined to crush those designs for ever, and calmly advised the Dutch

government to make an amicable agreement with the Emperor in regard to

the Cleve affair as soon as possible; a treaty which would have been

shameful for France and the possessory princes, and dangerous, if not

disastrous, for the States-General. "Nothing but feverish and sick

counsels," he said, "could be expected from France, which had now lost

its vigour and could do nothing but groan."

Not only did the French council distinctly repudiate the idea of doing

anything more for the princes than had been stipulated by the treaty of

Hall--that is to say, a contingent of 8000 foot and 2000 horse--but many

of them vehemently maintained that the treaty, being a personal one of

the late king, was dead with him? The duty of France was now in their

opinion to withdraw from these mad schemes as soon as possible, to make

peace with the House of Austria without delay, and to cement the

friendship by the double marriages.

Bouillon, who at that moment hated Sully as much as the most vehement

Catholic could do, assured the Dutch envoy that the government was, under

specious appearances, attempting to deceive the States; a proposition

which it needed not the evidence of that most intriguing duke to make

manifest to so astute a politician; particularly as there was none more

bent on playing the most deceptive game than Bouillon. There would be no

troops to send, he said, and even if there were, there would be no

possibility of agreeing on a chief. The question of religion would at

once arise. As for himself, the Duke protested that he would not accept

the command if offered him. He would not agree to serve under the Prince

of Anhalt, nor would he for any consideration in the world leave the

court at that moment. At the same time Aerssens was well aware that

Bouillon, in his quality of first marshal of France, a Protestant and a

prince having great possessions on the frontier, and the brother-in-law

of Prince Maurice, considered himself entitled to the command of the

troops should they really be sent, and was very indignant at the idea of

its being offered to any one else.

[Aerssens worked assiduously, two hours long on one occasion, to

effect a reconciliation between the two great Protestant chiefs, but

found Bouillon's demands "so shameful and unreasonable" that he

felt obliged to renounce all further attempts. In losing Sully from

the royal councils, the States' envoy acknowledged that the Republic

had lost everything that could be depended on at the French court.

"All the others are time-serving friends," he said, "or saints

without miracles."--Aerssens to Barneveld, 11 June, 1610. ]

He advised earnestly therefore that the States should make a firm demand

for money instead of men, specifying the amount that might be considered

the equivalent of the number of troops originally stipulated.

It is one of the most singular spectacles in history; France sinking into

the background of total obscurity in an instant of time, at one blow of a

knife, while the Republic, which she had been patronizing, protecting,

but keeping always in a subordinate position while relying implicitly

upon its potent aid, now came to the front, and held up on its strong

shoulders an almost desperate cause. Henry had been wont to call the

States-General "his courage and his right arm," but he had always

strictly forbidden them to move an inch in advance of him, but ever to

follow his lead, and to take their directions from himself. They were a

part, and an essential one, in his vast designs; but France, or he who

embodied France, was the great providence, the destiny, the

all-directing, all-absorbing spirit, that was to remodel and control the

whole world. He was dead, and France and her policy were already in a

state of rapid decomposition.

Barneveld wrote to encourage and sustain the sinking state. "Our courage

is rising in spite and in consequence of the great misfortune," he said.

He exhorted the Queen to keep her kingdom united, and assured her that My

Lords the States would maintain themselves against all who dared to

assail them. He offered in their name the whole force of the Republic to

take vengeance on those who had procured the assassination, and to defend

the young king and the Queen-Mother against all who might make any

attempt against their authority. He further declared, in language not to

be mistaken, that the States would never abandon the princes and their

cause.

This was the earliest indication on the part of the Advocate of the

intention of the Republic--so long as it should be directed by his

counsels--to support the cause of the young king, helpless and incapable

as he was, and directed for the time being by a weak and wicked mother,

against the reckless and depraved grandees, who were doing their best to

destroy the unity and the independence of France, Cornelis van der Myle

was sent back to Paris on special mission of condolence and comfort from

the States-General to the sorely afflicted kingdom.

On the 7th of June, accompanied by Aerssens, he had a long interview with

Villeroy. That minister, as usual, wept profusely, and said that in

regard to Cleve it was impossible for France to carry out the designs of

the late king. He then listened to what the ambassadors had to urge, and

continued to express his melancholy by weeping. Drying his tears for a

time, he sought by a long discourse to prove that France during this

tender minority of the King would be incapable of pursuing the policy of

his father. It would be even too burthensome to fulfil the Treaty of

Hall. The friends of the crown, he said, had no occasion to further it,

and it would be much better to listen to propositions for a treaty.

Archduke Albert was content not to interfere in the quarrel if the Queen

would likewise abstain; Leopold's forces were altogether too weak to make

head against the army of the princes, backed by the power of My Lords the

States, and Julich was neither strong nor well garrisoned. He concluded

by calmly proposing that the States should take the matter in hand by

themselves alone, in order to lighten the burthen of France, whose vigour

had been cut in two by that accursed knife.

A more sneaking and shameful policy was never announced by the minister

of a great kingdom. Surely it might seem that Ravaillac had cut in twain

not the vigour only but the honour and the conscience of France. But the

envoys, knowing in their hearts that they were talking not with a French

but a Spanish secretary of state, were not disposed to be the dupes of

his tears or his blandishments.

They reminded him that the Queen-Regent and her ministers since the

murder of the King had assured the States-General and the princes of

their firm intention to carry out the Treaty of Hall, and they observed

that they had no authority to talk of any negotiation. The affair of the

duchies was not especially the business of the States, and the Secretary

was well aware that they had promised their succour on the express

condition that his Majesty and his army should lead the way, and that

they should follow. This was very far from the plan now suggested, that

they should do it all, which would be quite out of the question. France

had a strong army, they said, and it would be better to use it than to

efface herself so pitiably. The proposition of abstention on the part of

the Archduke was a delusion intended only to keep France out of the

field.

Villeroy replied by referring to English affairs. King James, he said,

was treating them perfidiously. His first letters after the murder had

been good, but by the following ones England seemed to wish to put her

foot on France's throat, in order to compel her to sue for an alliance.

The British ministers had declared their resolve not to carry out that

convention of alliance, although it had been nearly concluded in the

lifetime of the late king, unless the Queen would bind herself to make

good to the King of Great Britain that third part of the subsidies

advanced by France to the States which had been furnished on English

account!

This was the first announcement of a grievance devised by the politicians

now governing France to make trouble for the States with that kingdom and

with Great Britain likewise. According to a treaty made at Hampton Court

by Sully during his mission to England at the accession of James, it had

been agreed that one-third of the moneys advanced by France in aid of the

United Provinces should be credited to the account of Great Britain, in

diminution of the debt for similar assistance rendered by Elizabeth to

Henry. In regard to this treaty the States had not been at all consulted,

nor did they acknowledge the slightest obligation in regard to it. The

subsidies in men and in money provided for them both by France and by

England in their struggle for national existence had always been most

gratefully acknowledged by the Republic, but it had always been perfectly

understood that these expenses had been incurred by each kingdom out of

an intelligent and thrifty regard for its own interest. Nothing could be

more ridiculous than to suppose France and England actuated by

disinterested sympathy and benevolence when assisting the Netherland

people in its life-and-death struggle against the dire and deadly enemy

of both crowns. Henry protested that, while adhering to Rome in spiritual

matters, his true alliances and strength had been found in the United

Provinces, in Germany, and in Great Britain. As for the States, he had

spent sixteen millions of livres, he said, in acquiring a perfect

benevolence on the part of the States to his person. It was the best

bargain he had ever made, and he should take care to preserve it at any

cost whatever, for he considered himself able, when closely united with

them, to bid defiance to all the kings in Europe together.

Yet it was now the settled policy of the Queen-Regent's council, so far

as the knot of politicians guided by the Nuncius and the Spanish

ambassador in the entresols of the Louvre could be called a council, to

force the States to refund that third, estimated at something between

three and four million livres, which France had advanced them on account

of Great Britain.

Villeroy told the two ambassadors at this interview that, if Great

Britain continued to treat the Queen-Regent in such fashion, she would be

obliged to look about for other allies. There could hardly be doubt as to

the quarter in which Mary de' Medici was likely to look. Meantime, the

Secretary of State urged the envoys "to intervene at once to-mediate the

difference." There could be as little doubt that to mediate the

difference was simply to settle an account which they did not owe.

The whole object of the Minister at this first interview was to induce

the States to take the whole Cleve enterprise upon their own shoulders,

and to let France off altogether. The Queen-Regent as then advised meant

to wash her hands of the possessory princes once and for ever. The envoys

cut the matter short by assuring Villeroy that they would do nothing of

the kind. He begged them piteously not to leave the princes in the lurch,

and at the same time not to add to the burthens of France at so

disastrous a moment.

So they parted. Next day, however, they visited the Secretary again, and

found him more dismal and flaccid than ever.

He spoke feebly and drearily about the succour for the great enterprise,

recounted all the difficulties in the way, and, having thrown down

everything that the day before had been left standing, he tried to excuse

an entire change of policy by the one miserable crime.

He painted a forlorn picture of the council and of France. "I can myself

do nothing as I wish," added the undisputed controller of that

government's policy, and then with a few more tears he concluded by

requesting the envoys to address their demands to the Queen in writing.

This was done with the customary formalities and fine speeches on both

sides; a dull comedy by which no one was amused.

Then Bouillon came again, and assured them that there had been a chance

that the engagements of Henry, followed up by the promise of the

Queen-Regent, would be carried out, but now the fact was not to be

concealed that the continued battery of the Nuncius, of the ambassadors

of Spain and of the Archdukes, had been so effective that nothing sure or

solid was thenceforth to be expected; the council being resolved to

accept the overtures of the Archduke for mutual engagement to abstain

from the Julich enterprise.

Nothing in truth could be more pitiable than the helpless drifting of the

once mighty kingdom, whenever the men who governed it withdrew their

attention for an instant from their private schemes of advancement and

plunder to cast a glance at affairs of State. In their secret heart they

could not doubt that France was rushing on its ruin, and that in the

alliance of the Dutch commonwealth, Britain, and the German Protestants,

was its only safety. But they trembled before the Pope, grown bold and

formidable since the death of the dreaded Henry. To offend his Holiness,

the King of Spain, the Emperor, and the great Catholics of France, was to

make a crusade against the Church. Garnier, the Jesuit, preached from his

pulpit that "to strike a blow in the Cleve enterprise was no less a sin

than to inflict a stab in the body of our Lord." The Parliament of Paris

having ordered the famous treatise of the Jesuit Mariana--justifying the

killing of excommunicated kings by their subjects--to be publicly burned

before Notre Dame, the Bishop opposed the execution of the decree. The

Parliament of Paris, although crushed by Epernon in its attempts to fix

the murder of the King upon himself as the true culprit, was at least

strong enough to carry out this sentence upon a printed, volume

recommending the deed, and the Queen's council could only do its best to

mitigate the awakened wrath of the Jesuits at this exercise of legal

authority.--At the same time, it found on the whole so many more

difficulties in a cynical and shameless withdrawal from the Treaty of

Hall than in a nominal and tardy fulfilment of its conditions that it

resolved at last to furnish the 8000 foot and 2000 horse promised to the

possessory princes. The next best thing to abandoning entirely even this

little shred, this pitiful remnant, of the splendid designs of Henry was

to so arrange matters that the contingent should be feebly commanded, and

set on foot in so dilatory a manner that the petty enterprise should on

the part of France be purely perfunctory. The grandees of the kingdom had

something more important to do than to go crusading in Germany, with the

help of a heretic republic, to set up the possessory princes. They were

fighting over the prostrate dying form of their common mother for their

share of the spoils, stripping France before she was dead, and casting

lots for her vesture.

Soissons was on the whole in favour of the Cleve expedition. Epernon was

desperately opposed to it, and maltreated Villeroy in full council when

he affected to say a word, insincere as the Duke knew it to be, in favour

of executing agreements signed by the monarch, and sealed with the great

seal of France. The Duke of Guise, finding himself abandoned by the

Queen, and bitterly opposed and hated by Soissons, took sides with his

deaf and dumb and imbecile brother, and for a brief interval the Duke of

Sully joined this strange combination of the House of Lorraine and chiefs

of ancient Leaguers, who welcomed him with transport, and promised him

security.

Then Bouillon, potent by his rank, his possessions, and his authority

among the Protestants, publicly swore that he would ruin Sully and change

the whole order of the government. What more lamentable spectacle, what

more desolate future for the cause of religious equality, which for a

moment had been achieved in France, than this furious alienation of the

trusted leaders of the Huguenots, while their adversaries were carrying

everything before them? At the council board Bouillon quarrelled

ostentatiously with Sully, shook his fist in his face, and but for the

Queen's presence would have struck him. Next day he found that the Queen

was intriguing against himself as well as against Sully, was making a

cat's-paw of him, and was holding secret councils daily from which he as

well as Sully was excluded. At once he made overtures of friendship to

Sully, and went about proclaiming to the world that all Huguenots were to

be removed from participation in affairs of state. His vows of vengeance

were for a moment hushed by the unanimous resolution of the council that,

as first marshal of France, having his principality on the frontier, and

being of the Reformed religion, he was the fittest of all to command the

expedition. Surely it might be said that the winds and tides were not

more changeful than the politics of the Queen's government. The Dutch

ambassador was secretly requested by Villeroy to negotiate with Bouillon

and offer him the command of the Julich expedition. The Duke affected to

make difficulties, although burning to obtain the post, but at last

consented. All was settled. Aerssens communicated at once with Villeroy,

and notice of Bouillon's acceptance was given to the Queen, when, behold,

the very next day Marshal de la Chatre was appointed to the command

expressly because he was a Catholic. Of course the Duke of Bouillon,

furious with Soissons and Epernon and the rest of the government, was

more enraged than ever against the Queen. His only hope was now in Conde,

but Conde at the outset, on arriving at the Louvre, offered his heart to

the Queen as a sheet of white paper. Epernon and Soissons received him

with delight, and exchanged vows of an eternal friendship of several

weeks' duration. And thus all the princes of the blood, all the cousins

of Henry of Navarre, except the imbecile Conti, were ranged on the side

of Spain, Rome, Mary de' Medici, and Concino Concini, while the son of

the Balafre, the Duke of Mayenne, and all their adherents were making

common cause with the Huguenots. What better example had been seen

before, even in that country of pantomimic changes, of the effrontery

with which Religion was made the strumpet of Political Ambition?

All that day and the next Paris was rife with rumours that there was to

be a general massacre of the Huguenots to seal the new-born friendship of

a Conde with a Medici. France was to renounce all her old alliances and

publicly to enter into treaties offensive and defensive with Spain. A

league like that of Bayonne made by the former Medicean Queen-Regent of

France was now, at Villeroy's instigation, to be signed by Mary de'

Medici. Meantime, Marshal de la Chatre, an honest soldier and fervent

Papist, seventy-three years of age, ignorant of the language, the

geography, the politics of the country to which he was sent, and knowing

the road thither about as well, according to Aerssens, who was requested

to give him a little preliminary instruction, as he did the road to

India, was to co-operate with Barneveld and Maurice of Nassau in the

enterprise against the duchies.

These were the cheerful circumstances amid which the first step in the

dead Henry's grand design against the House of Austria and in support of

Protestantism in half Europe and of religious equality throughout

Christendom, was now to be ventured.

Cornelis van der Myle took leave of the Queen on terminating his brief

special embassy, and was fain to content himself with languid assurances

from that corpulent Tuscan dame of her cordial friendship for the United

Provinces. Villeroy repeated that the contingent to be sent was furnished

out of pure love to the Netherlands, the present government being in no

wise bound by the late king's promises. He evaded the proposition of the

States for renewing the treaty of close alliance by saying that he was

then negotiating with the British government on the subject, who insisted

as a preliminary step on the repayment of the third part of the sums

advanced to the States by the late king.

He exchanged affectionate farewell greetings and good wishes with Jeannin

and with the dropsical Duke of Mayenne, who was brought in his chair to

his old fellow Leaguer's apartments at the moment of the Ambassador's

parting interview.

There was abundant supply of smooth words, in the plentiful lack of any

substantial nutriment, from the representatives of each busy faction into

which the Medicean court was divided. Even Epernon tried to say a

gracious word to the retiring envoy, assuring him that he would do as

much for the cause as a good Frenchman and lover of his fatherland could

do. He added, in rather a surly way, that he knew very well how foully he

had been described to the States, but that the devil was not as black as

he was painted. It was necessary, he said, to take care of one's own

house first of all, and he knew very well that the States and all prudent

persons would do the same thing.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

And now the knife of another priest-led fanatic

As with his own people, keeping no back-door open

At a blow decapitated France

Conclusive victory for the allies seemed as predestined

Epernon, the true murderer of Henry

Father Cotton, who was only too ready to betray the secrets

Great war of religion and politics was postponed

Jesuit Mariana--justifying the killing of excommunicated kings

No man pretended to think of the State

Practised successfully the talent of silence

Queen is entirely in the hands of Spain and the priests

Religion was made the strumpet of Political Ambition

Smooth words, in the plentiful lack of any substantial

Stroke of a broken table knife sharpened on a carriage wheel

The assassin, tortured and torn by four horses

They have killed him, 'e ammazato,' cried Concini

Things he could tell which are too odious and dreadful

Uncouple the dogs and let them run

Vows of an eternal friendship of several weeks' duration

What could save the House of Austria, the cause of Papacy

Wrath of the Jesuits at this exercise of legal authority

THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND

WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR

By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.

Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v4, 1610-12

CHAPTER V.

Interviews between the Dutch Commissioners and King James--Prince

Maurice takes command of the Troops--Surrender of Julich--Matthias

crowned King of Bohemia--Death of Rudolph--James's Dream of a

Spanish Marriage--Appointment of Vorstius in place of Arminius at

Leyden--Interview between Maurice and Winwood--Increased Bitterness

between Barneveld and Maurice--Projects of Spanish Marriages in

France.

It is refreshing to escape from the atmosphere of self-seeking faction,

feverish intrigue, and murderous stratagem in which unhappy France was

stifling into the colder and calmer regions of Netherland policy.

No sooner had the tidings of Henry's murder reached the States than they

felt that an immense responsibility had fallen on their shoulders. It is

to the eternal honour of the Republic, of Barneveld, who directed her

councils, and of Prince Maurice, who wielded her sword, that she was

equal to the task imposed upon her.

There were open bets on the Exchange in Antwerp, after the death of

Henry, that Maurice would likewise be killed within the month. Nothing

seemed more probable, and the States implored the Stadholder to take

special heed to himself. But this was a kind of caution which the Prince

was not wont to regard. Nor was there faltering, distraction, cowardice,

or parsimony in Republican councils.

We have heard the strong words of encouragement and sympathy addressed by

the Advocate's instructions to the Queen-Regent and the leading statesmen

of France. We have seen their effects in that lingering sentiment of

shame which prevented the Spanish stipendiaries who governed the kingdom

from throwing down the mask as cynically as they were at first inclined

to do.

Not less manful and statesmanlike was the language held to the King of

Great Britain and his ministers by the Advocate's directions. The news of

the assassination reached the special ambassadors in London at three

o'clock of Monday, the 17th May. James returned to Whitehall from a

hunting expedition on the 21st, and immediately signified his intention

of celebrating the occasion by inviting the high commissioners of the

States to a banquet and festival at the palace.

Meantime they were instructed by Barneveld to communicate the results of

the special embassy of the States to the late king according to the

report just delivered to the Assembly. Thus James was to be informed of

the common resolution and engagement then taken to support the cause of

the princes. He was now seriously and explicitly to be summoned to assist

the princes not only with the stipulated 4000 men, but with a much

greater force, proportionate to the demands for the security and welfare

of Christendom, endangered by this extraordinary event. He was assured

that the States would exert themselves to the full measure of their

ability to fortify and maintain the high interests of France, of the

possessory princes, and of Christendom, so that the hopes of the

perpetrators of the foul deed would be confounded.

"They hold this to be the occasion," said the envoys, "to show to all the

world that it is within your power to rescue the affairs of France,

Germany, and of the United Provinces from the claws of those who imagine

for themselves universal monarchy."

They concluded by requesting the King to come to "a resolution on this

affair royally, liberally, and promptly, in order to take advantage of

the time, and not to allow the adversary to fortify himself in his

position"; and they pledged the States-General to stand by and second him

with all their power.

The commissioners, having read this letter to Lord Salisbury before

communicating it to the King, did not find the Lord Treasurer very prompt

or sympathetic in his reply. There had evidently been much jealousy at

the English court of the confidential and intimate relations recently

established with Henry, to which allusions were made in the documents

read at the present conference. Cecil, while expressing satisfaction in

formal terms at the friendly language of the States, and confidence in

the sincerity of their friendship for his sovereign, intimated very

plainly that more had passed between the late king and the authorities of

the Republic than had been revealed by either party to the King of Great

Britain, or than could be understood from the letters and papers now

communicated. He desired further information from the commissioners,

especially in regard to those articles of their instructions which

referred to a general rupture. They professed inability to give more

explanations than were contained in the documents themselves. If

suspicion was felt, they said, that the French King had been proposing

anything in regard to a general rupture, either on account of the retreat

of Conde, the affair of Savoy, or anything else, they would reply that

the ambassadors in France had been instructed to decline committing the

States until after full communication and advice and ripe deliberation

with his British Majesty and council, as well as the Assembly of the

States-General; and it had been the intention of the late king to have

conferred once more and very confidentially with Prince Maurice and Count

Lewis William before coming to a decisive resolution.

It was very obvious however to the commissioners that their statement

gave no thorough satisfaction, and that grave suspicions remained of

something important kept back by them. Cecil's manner was constrained and

cold, and certainly there were no evidences of profound sorrow at the

English court for the death of Henry.

"The King of France," said the High Treasurer, "meant to make a

master-stroke--a coup de maistre--but he who would have all may easily

lose all. Such projects as these should not have been formed or taken in

hand without previous communication with his Majesty of Great Britain."

All arguments on the part of the ambassadors to induce the Lord Treasurer

or other members of the government to enlarge the succour intended for

the Cleve affair were fruitless. The English troops regularly employed in

the States' service might be made use of with the forces sent by the

Republic itself. More assistance than this it was idle to expect, unless

after a satisfactory arrangement with the present regency of France. The

proposition, too, of the States for a close and general alliance was

coldly repulsed. "No resolution can be taken as to that," said Cecil;

"the death of the French king has very much altered such matters."

At a little later hour on the same day the commissioners, according to

previous invitation, dined with the King.

No one sat at the table but his Majesty and themselves, and they all kept

their hats on their heads. The King was hospitable, gracious, discursive,

loquacious, very theological.

He expressed regret for the death of the King of France, and said that

the pernicious doctrine out of which such vile crimes grew must be

uprooted. He asked many questions in regard to the United Netherlands,

enquiring especially as to the late commotions at Utrecht, and the

conduct of Prince Maurice on that occasion. He praised the resolute

conduct of the States-General in suppressing those tumults with force,

adding, however, that they should have proceeded with greater rigour

against the ringleaders of the riot. He warmly recommended the Union of

the Provinces.

He then led the conversation to the religious controversies in the

Netherlands, and in reply to his enquiries was informed that the points

in dispute related to predestination and its consequences.

"I have studied that subject," said James, "as well as anybody, and have

come to the conclusion that nothing certain can be laid down in regard to

it. I have myself not always been of one mind about it, but I will bet

that my opinion is the best of any, although I would not hang my

salvation upon it. My Lords the States would do well to order their

doctors and teachers to be silent on this topic. I have hardly ventured,

moreover, to touch upon the matter of justification in my own writings,

because that also seemed to hang upon predestination."

Thus having spoken with the air of a man who had left nothing further to

be said on predestination or justification, the King rose, took off his

hat, and drank a bumper to the health of the States-General and his

Excellency Prince Maurice, and success to the affair of Cleve.

After dinner there was a parting interview in the gallery. The King,

attended by many privy councillors and high functionaries of state, bade

the commissioners a cordial farewell, and, in order to show his

consideration for their government, performed the ceremony of knighthood

upon them, as was his custom in regard to the ambassadors of Venice. The

sword being presented to him by the Lord Chamberlain, James touched each

of the envoys on the shoulder as he dismissed him. "Out of respect to My

Lords the States," said they in their report, "we felt compelled to allow

ourselves to be burthened with this honour."

Thus it became obvious to the States-General that there was but little to

hope for from Great Britain or France. France, governed by Concini and by

Spain, was sure to do her best to traverse the designs of the Republic,

and, while perfunctorily and grudgingly complying with the letter of the

Hall treaty, was secretly neutralizing by intrigue the slender military

aid which de la Chatre was to bring to Prince Maurice. The close alliance

of France and Protestantism had melted into air. On the other hand the

new Catholic League sprang into full luxuriance out of the grave of

Henry, and both Spain and the Pope gave their hearty adhesion to the

combinations of Maximilian of Bavaria, now that the mighty designs of the

French king were buried with him. The Duke of Savoy, caught in the trap

of his own devising, was fain to send his son to sue to Spain for pardon

for the family upon his knees, and expiated by draining a deep cup of

humiliation his ambitious designs upon the Milanese and the matrimonial

alliance with France. Venice recoiled in horror from the position she

found herself in as soon as the glamour of Henry's seductive policy was

dispelled, while James of Great Britain, rubbing his hands with great

delight at the disappearance from the world of the man he so admired,

bewailed, and hated, had no comfort to impart to the States-General thus

left in virtual isolation. The barren burthen of knighthood and a sermon

on predestination were all he could bestow upon the high commissioners in

place of the alliance which he eluded, and the military assistance which

he point-blank refused. The possessory princes, in whose cause the sword

was drawn, were too quarrelsome and too fainthearted to serve for much

else than an incumbrance either in the cabinet or the field.

And the States-General were equal to the immense responsibility.

Steadily, promptly, and sagaciously they confronted the wrath, the

policy, and the power of the Empire, of Spain, and of the Pope. Had the

Republic not existed, nothing could have prevented that debateable and

most important territory from becoming provinces of Spain, whose power

thus dilated to gigantic proportions in the very face of England would

have been more menacing than in the days of the Armada. Had the Republic

faltered, she would have soon ceased to exist. But the Republic did not

falter.

On the 13th July, Prince Maurice took command of the States' forces,

13,000 foot and 3000 horse, with thirty pieces of cannon, assembled at

Schenkenschans. The July English and French regiments in the regular

service of the United Provinces were included in these armies, but there

were no additions to them: "The States did seven times as much,"

Barneveld justly averred, "as they had stipulated to do." Maurice, moving

with the precision and promptness which always marked his military

operations, marched straight upon Julich, and laid siege to that

important fortress. The Archdukes at Brussels, determined to keep out of

the fray as long as possible, offered no opposition to the passage of his

supplies up the Rhine, which might have been seriously impeded by them at

Rheinberg. The details of the siege, as of all the Prince's sieges,

possess no more interest to the general reader than the working out of a

geometrical problem. He was incapable of a flaw in his calculations, but

it was impossible for him quite to complete the demonstration before the

arrival of de la Chatre. Maurice received with courtesy the Marshal, who

arrived on the 18th August, at the head of his contingent of 8000 foot

and a few squadrons of cavalry, and there was great show of harmony

between them. For any practical purposes, de la Chatre might as well have

remained in France. For political ends his absence would have been

preferable to his presence.

Maurice would have rejoiced, had the Marshal blundered longer along the

road to the debateable land than he had done. He had almost brought

Julich to reduction. A fortnight later the place surrendered. The terms

granted by the conqueror were equitable. No change was to be made in the

liberty of Roman Catholic worship, nor in the city magistracy. The

citadel and its contents were to be handed over to the Princes of

Brandenburg and Neuburg. Archduke Leopold and his adherents departed to

Prague, to carry out as he best could his farther designs upon the crown

of Bohemia, this first portion of them having so lamentably failed, and

Sergeant-Major Frederick Pithan, of the regiment of Count Ernest Casimir

of Nassau, was appointed governor of Julich in the interest of the

possessory princes.

Thus without the loss of a single life, the Republic, guided by her

consummate statesman and unrivalled general, had gained an immense

victory, had installed the Protestant princes in the full possession of

those splendid and important provinces, and had dictated her decrees on

German soil to the Emperor of Germany, and had towed, as it were, Great

Britain and France along in her wake, instead of humbly following those

powers, and had accomplished all that she had ever proposed to do, even

in alliance with them both.

The King of England considered that quite enough had been done, and was

in great haste to patch up a reconciliation. He thought his ambassador

would soon "have as good occasion to employ his tongue and his pen as

General Cecil and his soldiers have done their swords and their

mattocks."

He had no sympathy with the cause of Protestantism, and steadily refused

to comprehend the meaning of the great movements in the duchies. "I only

wish that I may handsomely wind myself out of this quarrel, where the

principal parties do so little for themselves," he said.

De la Chatre returned with his troops to France within a fortnight after

his arrival on the scene. A mild proposition made by the French

government through the Marshal, that the provinces should be held in

seguestration by France until a decision as to the true sovereignty could

be reached, was promptly declined. Maurice of Nassau had hardly gained so

signal a triumph for the Republic and for the Protestant cause only to

hand it over to Concini and Villeroy for the benefit of Spain. Julich was

thought safer in the keeping of Sergeant Pithan.

By the end of September the States' troops had returned to their own

country.

Thus the Republic, with eminent success, had accomplished a brief and

brilliant campaign, but no statesman could suppose that the result was

more than a temporary one. These coveted provinces, most valuable in

themselves and from their important position, would probably not be

suffered peacefully to remain very long under the protection of the

heretic States-General and in the 'Condominium' of two Protestant

princes. There was fear among the Imperialists, Catholics, and Spaniards,

lest the baleful constellation of the Seven Provinces might be increased

by an eighth star. And this was a project not to be tolerated. It was

much already that the upstart confederacy had defied Pope, Emperor, and

King, as it were, on their own domains, had dictated arrangements in

Germany directly in the teeth of its emperor, using France as her

subordinate, and compelling the British king to acquiesce in what he most

hated.

But it was not merely to surprise Julich, and to get a foothold in the

duchies, that Leopold had gone forth on his adventure. His campaign, as

already intimated, was part of a wide scheme in which he had persuaded

his emperor-cousin to acquiesce. Poor Rudolph had been at last goaded

into a feeble attempt at revolt against his three brothers and his cousin

Ferdinand. Peace-loving, inert, fond of his dinner, fonder of his

magnificent collections of gems and intagli, liking to look out of window

at his splendid collection of horses, he was willing to pass a quiet

life, afar from the din of battles and the turmoil of affairs. As he

happened to be emperor of half Europe, these harmless tastes could not

well be indulged. Moon-faced and fat, silent and slow, he was not

imperial of aspect on canvas or coin, even when his brows were decorated

with the conventional laurel wreath. He had been stripped of his

authority and all but discrowned by his more bustling brothers Matthias

and Max, while the sombre figure of Styrian Ferdinand, pupil of the

Jesuits, and passionate admirer of Philip II., stood ever in the

background, casting a prophetic shadow over the throne and over Germany.

The brothers were endeavouring to persuade Rudolph that he would find

more comfort in Innsbruck than in Prague; that he required repose after

the strenuous labours of government. They told him, too, that it would be

wise to confer the royal crown of Bohemia upon Matthias, lest, being

elective and also an electorate, the crown and vote of that country might

pass out of the family, and so both Bohemia and the Empire be lost to the

Habsburgs. The kingdom being thus secured to Matthias and his heirs, the

next step, of course, was to proclaim him King of the Romans. Otherwise

there would be great danger and detriment to Hungary, and other

hereditary states of that conglomerate and anonymous monarchy which owned

the sway of the great Habsburg family.

The unhappy emperor was much piqued. He had been deprived by his brother

of Hungary, Moravia, and Austria, while Matthias was now at Prague with

an army, ostensibly to obtain ratification of the peace with Turkey, but

in reality to force the solemn transfer of those realms and extort the

promise of Bohemia. Could there be a better illustration of the

absurdities of such a system of Imperialism?

And now poor Rudolph was to be turned out of the Hradschin, and sent

packing with or without his collections to the Tyrol.

The bellicose bishop of Strassburg and Passau, brother of Ferdinand, had

little difficulty in persuading the downtrodden man to rise to vengeance.

It had been secretly agreed between the two that Leopold, at the head of

a considerable army of mercenaries which he had contrived to levy, should

dart into Julich as the Emperor's representative, seize the debateable

duchies, and hold them in sequestration until the Emperor should decide

to whom they belonged, and, then, rushing back to Bohemia, should

annihilate Matthias, seize Prague, and deliver Rudolph from bondage. It

was further agreed that Leopold, in requital of these services, should

receive the crown of Bohemia, be elected King of the Romans, and declared

heir to the Emperor, so far as Rudolph could make him his heir.

The first point in the program he had only in part accomplished. He had

taken Julich, proclaimed the intentions of the Emperor, and then been

driven out of his strong position by the wise policy of the States under

the guidance of Barneveld and by the consummate strategy of Maurice. It

will be seen therefore that the Republic was playing a world's game at

this moment, and doing it with skill and courage. On the issue of the

conflict which had been begun and was to be long protracted in the

duchies, and to spread over nearly all Christendom besides, would depend

the existence of the United Netherlands and the fate of Protestantism.

The discomfited Leopold swept back at the head of his mercenaries, 9000

foot and 3000 horse, through Alsace and along the Danube to Linz and so

to Prague, marauding, harrying, and black-mailing the country as he went.

He entered the city on the 15th of February 1611, fighting his way

through crowds of exasperated burghers. Sitting in full harness on

horseback in the great square before the cathedral, the warlike bishop

compelled the population to make oath to him as the Emperor's commissary.

The street fighting went on however day by day, poor Rudolph meantime

cowering in the Hradschin. On the third day, Leopold, driven out of the

town, took up a position on the heights, from which he commanded it with

his artillery. Then came a feeble voice from the Hradschin, telling all

men that these Passau marauders and their episcopal chief were there by

the Emperor's orders. The triune city--the old, the new, and the Jew--was

bidden to send deputies to the palace and accept the Imperial decrees. No

deputies came at the bidding. The Bohemians, especially the Praguers,

being in great majority Protestants knew very well that Leopold was

fighting the cause of the Papacy and Spain in Bohemia as well as in the

duchies.

And now Matthias appeared upon the scene. The Estates had already been in

communication with him, better hopes, for the time at least, being

entertained from him than from the flaccid Rudolph. Moreover a kind of

compromise had been made in the autumn between Matthias and the Emperor

after the defeat of Leopold in the duchies. The real king had fallen at

the feet of the nominal one by proxy of his brother Maximilian. Seven

thousand men of the army of Matthias now came before Prague under command

of Colonitz. The Passauers, receiving three months pay from the Emperor,

marched quietly off. Leopold disappeared for the time. His chancellor and

counsellor in the duchies, Francis Teynagel, a Geldrian noble, taken

prisoner and put to the torture, revealed the little plot of the Emperor

in favour of the Bishop, and it was believed that the Pope, the King of

Spain, and Maximilian of Bavaria were friendly to the scheme. This was

probable, for Leopold at last made no mystery of his resolve to fight

Protestantism to the death, and to hold the duchies, if he could, for the

cause of Rome and Austria.

Both Rudolph and Matthias had committed themselves to the toleration of

the Reformed religion. The famous "Majesty-Letter," freshly granted by

the Emperor (1609), and the Compromise between the Catholic and

Protestant Estates had become the law of the land. Those of the Bohemian

confession, a creed commingled of Hussism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism,

had obtained toleration. In a country where nine-tenths of the population

were Protestants it was permitted to Protestants to build churches and to

worship God in them unmolested. But these privileges had been extorted by

force, and there was a sullen, dogged determination which might be easily

guessed at to revoke them should it ever become possible. The House of

Austria, reigning in Spain, Italy, and Germany, was bound by the very law

of their being to the Roman religion. Toleration of other worship

signified in their eyes both a defeat and a crime.

Thus the great conflict, to be afterwards known as the Thirty Years' War,

had in reality begun already, and the Netherlands, in spite of the truce,

were half unconsciously taking a leading part in it. The odds at that

moment in Germany seemed desperately against the House of Austria, so

deep and wide was the abyss between throne and subjects which religious

difference had created. But the reserved power in Spain, Italy, and

Southern Germany was sure enough to make itself felt sooner or later on

the Catholic side.

Meantime the Estates of Bohemia knew well enough that the Imperial house

was bent on destroying the elective principle of the Empire, and on

keeping the crown of Bohemia in perpetuity. They had also discovered that

Bishop-Archduke Leopold had been selected by Rudolph as chief of the

reactionary movement against Protestantism. They could not know at that

moment whether his plans were likely to prove fantastic or dangerous.

So Matthias came to Prague at the invitation of the Estates, entering the

city with all the airs of a conqueror. Rudolph received his brother with

enforced politeness, and invited him to reside in the Hradschin. This

proposal was declined by Matthias, who sent a colonel however, with six

pieces of artillery, to guard and occupy that palace. The Passau

prisoners were pardoned and released, and there was a general

reconciliation. A month later, Matthias went in pomp to the chapel of the

holy Wenceslaus, that beautiful and barbarous piece of mediaeval,

Sclavonic architecture, with its sombre arches, and its walls encrusted

with huge precious stones. The Estates of Bohemia, arrayed in splendid

Zchech costume, and kneeling on the pavement, were asked whether they

accepted Matthias, King of Hungary, as their lawful king. Thrice they

answered Aye. Cardinal Dietrichstein then put the historic crown of St.

Wenceslaus on the King's head, and Matthias swore to maintain the laws

and privileges of Bohemia, including the recent charters granting liberty

of religion to Protestants. Thus there was temporary, if hollow, truce

between the religious parties, and a sham reconciliation between the

Emperor and his brethren. The forlorn Rudolph moped away the few months

of life left to him in the Hradschin, and died 1612 soon after the new

year. The House of Austria had not been divided, Matthias succeeded his

brother, Leopold's visions melted into air, and it was for the future to

reveal whether the Majesty-Letter and the Compromise had been written on

very durable material.

And while such was the condition of affairs in Germany immediately

following the Cleve and Julich campaign, the relations of the Republic

both to England and France were become rapidly more dangerous than they

ever had been. It was a severe task for Barneveld, and enough to overtax

the energies of any statesman, to maintain his hold on two such slippery

governments as both had become since the death of their great monarchs.

It had been an easier task for William the Silent to steer his course,

notwithstanding all the perversities, short-comings, brow-beatings, and

inconsistencies that he had been obliged to endure from Elizabeth and

Henry. Genius, however capricious and erratic at times, has at least

vision, and it needed no elaborate arguments to prove to both those

sovereigns that the severance of their policy from that of the

Netherlands was impossible without ruin to the Republic and incalculable

danger themselves.

But now France and England were both tending towards Spain through a

stupidity on the part of their rulers such as the gods are said to

contend against in vain. Barneveld was not a god nor a hero, but a

courageous and wide-seeing statesman, and he did his best. Obliged by his

position to affect admiration, or at least respect, where no emotion but

contempt was possible, his daily bread was bitter enough. It was

absolutely necessary to humour those whom knew to be traversing his

policy and desiring his ruin, for there was no other way to serve his

country and save it from impending danger. So long as he was faithfully

served by his subordinates, and not betrayed by those to whom he gave his

heart, he could confront external enemies and mould the policy of

wavering allies.

Few things in history are more pitiable than the position of James in

regard to Spain. For seven long years he was as one entranced, the slave

to one idea, a Spanish marriage for his son. It was in vain that his

counsellors argued, Parliament protested, allies implored. Parliament was

told that a royal family matter regarded himself alone, and that

interference on their part was an impertinence. Parliament's duty was a

simple one, to give him advice if he asked it, and money when he required

it, without asking for reasons. It was already a great concession that he

should ask for it in person. They had nothing to do with his affairs nor

with general politics. The mystery of government was a science beyond

their reach, and with which they were not to meddle. "Ne sutor ultra

crepidam," said the pedant.

Upon that one point his policy was made to turn. Spain held him in the

hollow of her hand. The Infanta, with two million crowns in dowry, was

promised, withheld, brought forward again like a puppet to please or

irritate a froward child. Gondemar, the Spanish ambassador, held him

spellbound. Did he falter in his opposition to the States--did he cease

to goad them for their policy in the duchies--did he express sympathy

with Bohemian Protestantism, or, as time went on, did he dare to lift a

finger or touch his pocket in behalf of his daughter and the unlucky

Elector-Palatine; did he, in short, move a step in the road which England

had ever trod and was bound to tread--the road of determined resistance

to Spanish ambition--instantaneously the Infanta withheld, and James was

on his knees again. A few years later, when the great Raleigh returned

from his trans-Alantic expedition, Gondemar fiercely denounced him to the

King as the worst enemy of Spain. The usual threat was made, the wand was

waved, and the noblest head in England fell upon the block, in pursuance

of an obsolete sentence fourteen years old.

It is necessary to hold fast this single clue to the crooked and amazing

entanglements of the policy of James. The insolence, the meanness, and

the prevarications of this royal toad-eater are only thus explained.

Yet Philip III. declared on his death-bed that he had never had a serious

intention of bestowing his daughter on the Prince.

The vanity and the hatreds of theology furnished the chief additional

material in the policy of James towards the Provinces. The diplomacy of

his reign so far as the Republic was concerned is often a mere mass of

controversial divinity, and gloomy enough of its kind. Exactly at this

moment Conrad Vorstius had been called by the University of Leyden to the

professorship vacant by the death of Arminius, and the wrath of Peter

Plancius and the whole orthodox party knew no bounds. Born in Cologne,

Vorstius had been a lecturer in Geneva, and beloved by Beza. He had

written a book against the Jesuit Belarmino, which he had dedicated to

the States-General. But he was now accused of Arminianism, Socianism,

Pelagianism, Atheism--one knew not what. He defended himself in writing

against these various charges, and declared himself a believer in the

Trinity, in the Divinity of Christ, in the Atonement. But he had written

a book on the Nature of God, and the wrath of Gomarus and Plancius and

Bogerman was as nothing to the ire of James when that treatise was one

day handed to him on returning from hunting. He had scarcely looked into

it before he was horror-struck, and instantly wrote to Sir Ralph Winwood,

his ambassador at the Hague, ordering him to insist that this blasphemous

monster should at once be removed from the country. Who but James knew

anything of the Nature of God, for had he not written a work in Latin

explaining it all, so that humbler beings might read and be instructed.

Sir Ralph accordingly delivered a long sermon to the States on the brief

supplied by his Majesty, told them that to have Vorstius as successor to

Arminius was to fall out of the frying-pan into the fire, and handed them

a "catalogue" prepared by the King of the blasphemies, heresies, and

atheisms of the Professor. "Notwithstanding that the man in full assembly

of the States of Holland," said the Ambassador with headlong and confused

rhetoric, "had found the means to palliate and plaster the dung of his

heresies, and thus to dazzle the eyes of good people," yet it was

necessary to protest most vigorously against such an appointment, and to

advise that "his works should be publicly burned in the open places of

all the cities."

The Professor never was admitted to perform his functions of theology,

but he remained at Leyden, so Winwood complained, "honoured, recognized

as a singularity and ornament to the Academy in place of the late Joseph

Scaliger."--"The friendship of the King and the heresy of Vorstius are

quite incompatible," said the Envoy.

Meantime the Advocate, much distressed at the animosity of England

bursting forth so violently on occasion of the appointment of a divinity

professor at Leyden, and at the very instant too when all the acuteness

of his intellect was taxed to keep on good or even safe terms with

France, did his best to stem these opposing currents. His private letters

to his old and confidential friend, Noel de Carom, States' ambassador in

London, reveal the perplexities of his soul and the upright patriotism by

which he was guided in these gathering storms. And this correspondence,

as well as that maintained by him at a little later period with the

successor of Aerssens at Paris, will be seen subsequently to have had a

direct and most important bearing upon the policy of the Republic and

upon his own fate. It is necessary therefore that the reader, interested

in these complicated affairs which were soon to bring on a sanguinary war

on a scale even vaster than the one which had been temporarily suspended,

should give close attention to papers never before exhumed from the musty

sepulchre of national archives, although constantly alluded to in the

records of important state trials. It is strange enough to observe the

apparent triviality of the circumstances out of which gravest events seem

to follow. But the circumstances were in reality threads of iron which

led down to the very foundations of the earth.

"I wish to know," wrote the Advocate to Caron, "from whom the Archbishop

of Canterbury received the advices concerning Vorstius in order to find

out what is meant by all this."

It will be remembered that Whitgift was of opinion that James was

directly inspired by the Holy Ghost, and that as he affected to deem him

the anointed High-priest of England, it was natural that he should

encourage the King in his claims to be 'Pontifex maximus' for the

Netherlands likewise.

"We are busy here," continued Barneveld, "in examining all things for the

best interests of the country and the churches. I find the nobles and

cities here well resolved in this regard, although there be some

disagreements 'in modo.' Vorstius, having been for many years professor

and minister of theology at Steinfurt, having manifested his learning in

many books written against the Jesuits, and proved himself pure and

moderate in doctrine, has been called to the vacant professorship at

Leyden. This appointment is now countermined by various means. We are

doing our best to arrange everything for the highest good of the

Provinces and the churches. Believe this and believe nothing else. Pay

heed to no other information. Remember what took place in Flanders,

events so well known to you. It is not for me to pass judgment in these

matters. Do you, too, suspend your judgment."

The Advocate's allusion was to the memorable course of affairs in

Flanders at an epoch when many of the most inflammatory preachers and

politicians of the Reformed religion, men who refused to employ a footman

or a housemaid not certified to be thoroughly orthodox, subsequently

after much sedition and disturbance went over to Spain and the Catholic

religion.

A few weeks later Barneveld sent copies to Caron of the latest harangues

of Winwood in the Assembly and the reply of My Lords on the Vorstian

business; that is to say, the freshest dialogue on predestination between

the King and the Advocate. For as James always dictated word for word the

orations of his envoy, so had their Mightinesses at this period no head

and no mouthpiece save Barneveld alone. Nothing could be drearier than

these controversies, and the reader shall be spared as much, as possible

the infliction of reading them. It will be necessary, however, for the

proper understanding of subsequent events that he should be familiar with

portions of the Advocate's confidential letters.

"Sound well the gentleman you wot of," said Barneveld, "and other

personages as to the conclusive opinions over there. The course of the

propositions does not harmonize with what I have myself heard out of the

King's mouth at other times, nor with the reports of former ambassadors.

I cannot well understand that the King should, with such preciseness,

condemn all other opinions save those of Calvin and Beza. It is important

to the service of this country that one should know the final intention

of his Majesty."

And this was the misery of the position. For it was soon to appear that

the King's definite and final intentions, varied from day to day. It was

almost humorous to find him at that moment condemning all opinions but

those of Calvin and Beza in Holland, while his course to the strictest

confessors of that creed in England was so ferocious.

But Vorstius was a rival author to his Majesty on subjects treated of by

both, so that literary spite of the most venomous kind, stirred into

theological hatred, was making a dangerous mixture. Had a man with the

soul and sense of the Advocate sat on the throne which James was

regarding at that moment as a professor's chair, the world's history

would have been changed.

"I fear," continued Barneveld, "that some of our own precisians have been

spinning this coil for us over there, and if the civil authority can be

thus countermined, things will go as in Flanders in your time. Pray

continue to be observant, discreet, and moderate."

The Advocate continued to use his best efforts to smooth the rising

waves. He humoured and even flattered the King, although perpetually

denounced by Winwood in his letters to his sovereign as tyrannical,

over-bearing, malignant, and treacherous. He did his best to counsel

moderation and mutual toleration, for he felt that these needless

theological disputes about an abstract and insoluble problem of casuistry

were digging an abyss in which the Republic might be swallowed up for

ever. If ever man worked steadily with the best lights of experience and

inborn sagacity for the good of his country and in defence of a

constitutional government, horribly defective certainly, but the only

legal one, and on the whole a more liberal polity than any then existing,

it was Barneveld. Courageously, steadily, but most patiently, he stood

upon that position so vital and daily so madly assailed; the defence of

the civil authority against the priesthood. He felt instinctively and

keenly that where any portion of the subjects or citizens of a country

can escape from the control of government and obey other head than the

lawful sovereignty, whether monarchical or republican, social disorder

and anarchy must be ever impending.

"We are still tortured by ecclesiastical disputes," he wrote a few weeks

later to Caron. "Besides many libels which have appeared in print, the

letters of his Majesty and the harangues of Winwood have been published;

to what end you who know these things by experience can judge. The truth

of the matter of Vorstius is that he was legally called in July 1610,

that he was heard last May before My Lords the States with six preachers

to oppose him, and in the same month duly accepted and placed in office.

He has given no public lectures as yet. You will cause this to be known

on fitting opportunity. Believe and cause to be believed that his

Majesty's letters and Sir R. Winwood's propositions have been and shall

be well considered, and that I am working with all my strength to that

end. You know the constitution of our country, and can explain everything

for the best. Many pious and intelligent people in this State hold

themselves assured that his Majesty according to his royal exceeding

great wisdom, foresight, and affection for the welfare of this land will

not approve that his letters and Winwood's propositions should be

scattered by the press among the common people. Believe and cause to be

believed, to your best ability, that My Lords the States of Holland

desire to maintain the true Christian, Reformed religion as well in the

University of Leyden as in all their cities and villages. The only

dispute is on the high points of predestination and its adjuncts,

concerning which moderation and a more temperate teaching is furthered by

some amongst us. Many think that such is the edifying practice in

England. Pray have the kindness to send me the English Confession of the

year 1572, with the corrections and alterations up to this year."

But the fires were growing hotter, fanned especially by Flemish

ministers, a brotherhood of whom Barneveld had an especial distrust, and

who certainly felt great animosity to him. His moderate counsels were but

oil to the flames. He was already depicted by zealots and calumniators as

false to the Reformed creed.

"Be assured and assure others," he wrote again to Caron, "that in the

matter of religion I am, and by God's grace shall remain, what I ever

have been. Make the same assurances as to my son-in-law and brother. We

are not a little amazed that a few extraordinary Puritans, mostly

Flemings and Frisians, who but a short time ago had neither property nor

kindred in the country, and have now very little of either, and who have

given but slender proofs of constancy or service to the fatherland, could

through pretended zeal gain credit over there against men well proved in

all respects. We wonder the more because they are endeavouring, in

ecclesiastical matters at least, to usurp an extraordinary authority,

against which his Majesty, with very weighty reasons, has so many times

declared his opinion founded upon God's Word and upon all laws and

principles of justice."

It was Barneveld's practice on this as on subsequent occasions very

courteously to confute the King out of his own writings and speeches, and

by so doing to be unconsciously accumulating an undying hatred against

himself in the royal breast. Certainly nothing could be easier than to

show that James, while encouraging in so reckless a manner the

emancipation of the ministers of an advanced sect in the Reformed Church

from control of government, and their usurpation of supreme authority

which had been destroyed in England, was outdoing himself in dogmatism

and inconsistency. A king-highpriest, who dictated his supreme will to

bishops and ministers as well as to courts and parliaments, was

ludicrously employed in a foreign country in enforcing the superiority of

the Church to the State.

"You will give good assurances," said the Advocate, "upon my word, that

the conservation of the true Reformed religion is as warmly cherished

here, especially by me, as at any time during the war."

He next alluded to the charges then considered very grave against certain

writings of Vorstius, and with equal fairness to his accusers as he had

been to the Professor gave a pledge that the subject should be examined.