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