Relations of the Republic to France--Queen's Severity towards
Catholics and Calvinists--Relative Positions of England and France--
Timidity of Germany--Apathy of Protestant Germany--Indignation of
the Netherlanders--Henry III. of France--The King and his Minions--
Henry of Guise--Henry of Navarre--Power of France--Embassy of the
States to France--Ignominious position of the Envoys--Views of the
French Huguenots--Efforts to procure Annexation--Success of Des
Pruneaux.
The Prince of Orange had always favoured a French policy. He had ever
felt a stronger reliance upon the support of France than upon that of any
other power. This was not unreasonable, and so long as he lived, the
tendency of the Netherlands had been in that direction. It had never been
the wish of England to acquire the sovereignty of the Provinces. In
France on the contrary, the Queen Dowager, Catharine de' Medici had
always coveted that sovereignty for her darling Francis of Alencon; and
the design had been favoured, so far as any policy could be favoured, by
the impotent monarch who occupied the French throne.
The religion of the United Netherlands was Calvinistic. There were also
many Anabaptists in the country. The Queen of England hated Anabaptists,
Calvinists, and other sectarians, and banished them from her realms on
pain of imprisonment and confiscation of property. As firmly opposed as
was her father to the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, she felt much of
the paternal reluctance to accept the spirit of the Reformation. Henry
Tudor hanged the men who believed in the Pope, and burnt alive those who
disbelieved in transubstantiation, auricular confession, and the other
'Six Articles.' His daughter, whatever her secret religious convictions,
was stanch in her resistance to Rome, and too enlightened a monarch not
to see wherein the greatness and glory of England were to be found; but
she had no thought of tolerating liberty of conscience. All opposed to
the Church of England, whether Papists or Puritans, were denounced as
heretics, and as such imprisoned or banished. "To allow churches with
contrary rites and ceremonies," said Elizabeth, "were nothing else but to
sow religion out of religion, to distract good men's minds, to cherish
factious men's humours, to disturb religion and commonwealth, and mingle
divine and human things; which were a thing in deed evil, in example
worst of all; to our own subjects hurtful, and to themselves--to whom it
is granted, neither greatly commodious, nor yet at all safe."--[Camden]
The words were addressed, it is true, to Papists, but there is very
little doubt that Anabaptists or any other heretics would have received a
similar reply, had they, too, ventured to demand the right of public
worship. It may even be said that the Romanists in the earlier days of
Elizabeth's reign fared better than the Calvinists. The Queen neither
banished nor imprisoned the Catholics. She did not enter their houses to
disturb their private religious ceremonies, or to inquire into their
consciences. This was milder treatment than the burning alive, burying
alive, hanging, and drowning, which had been dealt out to the English and
the Netherland heretics by Philip and by Mary, but it was not the spirit
which William the Silent had been wont to manifest in his measures
towards Anabaptists and Papists alike. Moreover, the Prince could hardly
forget that of the nine thousand four hundred Catholic ecclesiastics who
held benefices at the death of Queen Mary, all had renounced the Pope on
the accession of Queen Elizabeth, and acknowledged her as the head of the
church, saving only one hundred and eighty-nine individuals. In the
hearts of the nine thousand two hundred and eleven others, it might be
thought perhaps that some tenderness for the religion from which they had
so suddenly been converted, might linger, while it could hardly be hoped
that they would seek to inculcate in the minds of their flocks or of
their sovereign any connivance with the doctrines of Geneva.
When, at a later period, the plotting of Catholics, suborned by the Pope
and Philip, against the throne and person of the Queen, made more
rigorous measures necessary; when it was thought indispensable to execute
as traitors those Roman seedlings--seminary priests and their
disciples--who went about preaching to the Queen's subjects the duty of
carrying out the bull by which the Bishop of Rome had deposed and
excommunicated their sovereign, and that "it was a meritorious act to
kill such princes as were excommunicate," even then, the men who preached
and practised treason and murder experienced no severer treatment than
that which other "heretics" had met with at the Queen's hands. Jesuits
and Popish priests were, by Act of Parliament, ordered to depart the
realm within forty days. Those who should afterwards return to the
kingdom were to be held guilty of high treason. Students in the foreign
seminaries were commanded to return within six months and recant, or be
held guilty of high treason. Parents and guardians supplying money to
such students abroad were to incur the penalty of a preamunire--perpetual
exile, namely, with loss of all their goods.
Many seminary priests and others were annually executed in England under
these laws, throughout the Queen's reign, but nominally at least they
were hanged not as Papists, but as traitors; not because they taught
transubstantiation, ecclesiastical celibacy, auricular confession, or
even Papal supremacy, but because they taught treason and murder--because
they preached the necessity of killing the Queen. It was not so easy,
however, to defend or even comprehend the banishment and imprisonment of
those who without conspiring against the Queen's life or throne, desired
to see the Church of England reformed according to the Church of Geneva.
Yet there is no doubt that many sectaries experienced much inhuman
treatment for such delinquency, both in the early and the later years of
Elizabeth's reign.
There was another consideration, which had its due weight in this
balance, and that was the respective succession to the throne in the two
kingdoms of France and England. Mary Stuart, the Catholic, the niece of
the Guises, emblem and exponent of all that was most Roman in Europe, the
sworn friend of Philip, the mortal foe to all heresy, was the legitimate
successor to Elizabeth. Although that sovereign had ever refused to
recognize that claim; holding that to confirm Mary in the succession was
to "lay her own winding sheet before her eyes, yea, to make her, own
grave, while she liveth and looketh on;" and although the unfortunate
claimant of two thrones was a prisoner in her enemy's hands, yet, so long
as she lived, there was little security for Protestantism, even in
Elizabeth's lifetime, and less still in case of her sudden death. On the
other hand, not only were the various politico-religious forces of France
kept in equilibrium by their action upon each other--so that it was
reasonable to believe that the House of Valois, however Catholic itself,
would be always compelled by the fast-expanding strength of French
Calvinism, to observe faithfully a compact to tolerate the Netherland
churches--but, upon the death of Henry III. the crown would be
legitimately placed upon the head of the great champion and chief of the
Huguenots, Henry of Navarre.
It was not unnatural, therefore, that the Prince of Orange, a Calvinist
himself, should expect more sympathy with the Netherland reformers in
France than in England. A large proportion of the population of that
kingdom, including an influential part of the nobility, was of the
Huguenot persuasion, and the religious peace, established by royal edict,
had endured so long, that the reformers of France and the Netherlands had
begun to believe in the royal clemency, and to confide in the royal word.
Orange did not live to see the actual formation of the Holy League, and
could only guess at its secrets.
Moreover, it should be remembered that France at that day was a more
formidable state than England, a more dangerous enemy, and, as it was
believed, a more efficient protector. The England of the period, glorious
as it was for its own and all future ages, was, not the great British
Empire of to-day. On the contrary, it was what would now be considered,
statistically speaking, a rather petty power. The England of Elizabeth,
Walsingham, Burghley, Drake, and Raleigh, of Spenser and Shakspeare,
hardly numbered a larger population than now dwells in its capital and
immediate suburbs. It had neither standing army nor considerable royal
navy. It was full of conspirators, daring and unscrupulous, loyal to none
save to Mary of Scotland, Philip of Spain, and the Pope of Rome, and
untiring in their efforts to bring about a general rebellion. With
Ireland at its side, nominally a subject province, but in a state of
chronic insurrection--a perpetual hot-bed for Spanish conspiracy and
stratagem; with Scotland at its back, a foreign country, with half its
population exasperated enemies of England, and the rest but doubtful
friends, and with the legitimate sovereign of that country, "the daughter
of debate, who discord still did sow,"--[Sonnet by Queen Elizabeth.]--a
prisoner in Elizabeth's hands, the central point around which treason was
constantly crystallizing itself, it was not strange that with the known
views of the Queen on the subject of the reformed Dutch religion, England
should seem less desirable as a protector for the Netherlands than the
neighbouring kingdom of France.
Elizabeth was a great sovereign, whose genius Orange always appreciated,
in a comparatively feeble realm. Henry of Valois was the contemptible
monarch of a powerful state, and might be led by others to produce
incalculable mischief or considerable good. Notwithstanding the massacre
of St. Bartholomew, therefore, and the more recent "French fury" of
Antwerp, Orange had been willing to countenance fresh negociations with
France.
Elizabeth, too, it should never be forgotten, was, if not over generous,
at least consistent and loyal in her policy towards the Provinces. She
was not precisely jealous of France, as has been unjustly intimated on
distinguished authority, for she strongly advocated the renewed offer of
the sovereignty to Anjou, after his memorable expulsion from the
Provinces. At that period, moreover, not only her own love-coquetries
with Anjou were over, but he was endeavouring with all his might, though
in secret, to make a match with the younger Infanta of Spain. Elizabeth
furthered the negociation with France, both publicly and privately. It
will soon be narrated how those negociations prospered.
If then England were out of the question, where, except in France,
should the Netherlanders, not deeming themselves capable of standing
alone, seek for protection and support?
We have seen the extensive and almost ubiquitous power of Spain. Where
she did not command as sovereign, she was almost equally formidable as an
ally. The Emperor of Germany was the nephew and the brother-in-law of
Philip, and a strict Catholic besides. Little aid was to be expected from
him or the lands under his control for the cause of the Netherland
revolt. Rudolph hated his brother-in-law, but lived in mortal fear of
him. He was also in perpetual dread of the Grand Turk. That formidable
potentate, not then the "sick man" whose precarious condition and
territorial inheritance cause so much anxiety in modern days, was, it is
true, sufficiently occupied for the moment in Persia, and had been
sustaining there a series of sanguinary defeats. He was all the more
anxious to remain upon good terms with Philip, and had recently sent him
a complimentary embassy, together with some rather choice presents, among
which were "four lions, twelve unicorns, and two horses coloured white,
black, and blue." Notwithstanding these pacific manifestations towards
the West, however, and in spite of the truce with the German Empire which
the Turk had just renewed for nine years,--Rudolph and his servants still
trembled at every report from the East.
"He is much deceived," wrote Busbecq, Rudolph's ambassador in Paris, "who
doubts that the Turk has sought any thing by this long Persian war, but
to protect his back, and prepare the way, after subduing that enemy, to
the extermination of all Christendom, and that he will then, with all his
might, wage an unequal warfare with us, in which the existence of the
Empire will be at stake."
The envoy expressed, at the same period, however, still greater awe of
Spain. "It is to no one," he wrote, "endowed with good judgment, in the
least obscure, that the Spanish nation, greedy of empire, will never be
quiet, even with their great power, but will seek for the dominion of the
rest of Christendom. How much remains beyond what they have already
acquired? Afterwards, there will soon be no liberty, no dignity, for
other princes and republics. That single nation will be arbiter of all
things, than which nothing can be more miserable, nothing more degrading.
It cannot be doubted that all kings, princes, and states, whose safety or
dignity is dear to them, would willingly associate in arms to extinguish
the common conflagration. The death of the Catholic king would seem the
great opportunity 'miscendis rebus'."
Unfortunately neither Busbecq's master nor any other king or prince
manifested any of this commendable alacrity to "take up arms against the
conflagration." Germany was in a shiver at every breeze from East or
West-trembling alike before Philip and Amurath. The Papists were making
rapid progress, the land being undermined by the steady and stealthy
encroachments of the Jesuits. Lord Burghley sent many copies of his
pamphlet, in Latin, French, and Italian, against the Seminaries, to
Gebhard Truchsess; and the deposed archbishop made himself busy in
translating that wholesome production into German, and in dispersing it
"all Germany over." The work, setting duly forth "that the executions of
priests in England were not for religion but for treason," was
"marvellously liked" in the Netherlands. "In uttering the truth," said
Herle, "'tis likely to do great good;" and he added, that Duke Augustus
of Saxony "did now see so far into the sect of Jesuits, and to their
inward mischiefs, as to become their open enemy, and to make friends
against them in the Empire."
The love of Truchsess for Agnes Mansfeld had created disaster not only
for himself but for Germany. The whole electorate of Cologne had become
the constant seat of partisan warfare, and the resort of organised bands
of brigands. Villages were burned and rifled, highways infested, cities
threatened, and the whole country subjected to perpetual black mail
(brandschatzung)--fire-insurance levied by the incendiaries in person--by
the supporters of the rival bishops. Truchsess had fled to Delft, where
he had been countenanced and supported by Orange. Two cities still held
for him, Rheinberg and Neuss. On the other hand, his rival, Ernest of
Bavaria; supported by Philip II., and the occasional guest of Alexander
of Parma, had not yet succeeded in establishing a strong foothold in the
territory. Two pauper archbishops, without men or means of their own,
were thus pushed forward and back, like puppets, by the contending
highwaymen on either side; while robbery and murder, under the name of
Protestantism or Catholicism, were for a time the only motive or result
of the contest.
Thus along the Rhine, as well as the Maas and the Scheldt, the fires of
civil war were ever burning. Deeper within the heart of Germany, there
was more tranquillity; but it was the tranquillity rather of paralysis
than of health. A fearful account was slowly accumulating, which was
evidently to be settled only by one of the most horrible wars which
history has ever recorded. Meantime there was apathy where there should
have been enthusiasm; parsimony and cowardice where generous and combined
effort were more necessary than ever; sloth without security. The
Protestant princes, growing fat and contented on the spoils of the
church, lent but a deaf ear to the moans of Truchsess, forgetting that
their neighbour's blazing roof was likely soon to fire their own. "They
understand better, 'proximus sum egomet mild'," wrote Lord Willoughby
from Kronenburg, "than they have learned, 'humani nihid a me alienum
puto'. These German princes continue still in their lethargy, careless of
the state of others, and dreaming of their ubiquity, and some of them, it
is thought, inclining to be Spanish or Popish more of late than
heretofore."
The beggared archbishop, more forlorn than ever since the death of his
great patron, cried woe from his resting-place in Delft, upon Protestant
Germany. His tones seemed almost prophetic of the thirty years' wrath to
blaze forth in the next generation. "Courage is wanting to the people
throughout Germany," he wrote to William Lewis of Nassau. "We are
becoming the laughing-stock of the nations. Make sheep of yourselves, and
the wolf will eat you. We shall find our destruction in our immoderate
desire for peace. Spain is making a Papistical league in Germany.
Therefore is Assonleville despatched thither, and that's the reason why
our trash of priests are so insolent in the empire. 'Tis astonishing how
they are triumphing on all sides. God will smite them. Thou dear God!
What are our evangelists about in Germany? Asleep on both ears. 'Dormiunt
in utramque aurem'. I doubt they will be suddenly enough awakened one
day, and the cry will be, 'Who'd have thought it?' Then they will be for
getting oil for the lamp, for shutting the stable-door when the steed is
stolen," and so on, with a string of homely proverbs worthy of Sancho
Panza, or landgrave William of Hesse.
In truth, one of the most painful features is the general aspect of
affairs was the coldness of the German Protestants towards the
Netherlands. The enmity between Lutherans and Calvinists was almost as
fatal as that between Protestants and Papists. There was even a talk, at
a little later period, of excluding those of the "reformed" church from
the benefits of the peace of Passau. The princes had got the Augsburg
confession and the abbey-lands into the bargain; the peasants had got the
Augsburg confession without the abbey-lands, and were to believe exactly
what their masters believed. This was the German-Lutheran
sixteenth-century idea of religious freedom. Neither prince nor peasant
stirred in behalf of the struggling Christians in the United Provinces,
battling, year after year, knee-deep in blood, amid blazing cities and
inundated fields, breast to breast with the yellow jerkined pikemen of
Spain and Italy, with the axe and the faggot and the rack of the Holy
Inquisition distinctly visible behind them. Such were the realities which
occupied the Netherlanders in those days, not watery beams of theological
moonshine, fantastical catechism-making, intermingled with scenes of riot
and wantonness, which drove old John of Nassau half frantic; with
banquetting and guzzling, drinking and devouring, with unchristian
flaunting and wastefulness of apparel, with extravagant and wanton
dancing, and other lewd abominations; all which, the firm old reformer
prophesied, would lead to the destruction of Germany.
For the mass, slow moving but apparently irresistible, of Spanish and
papistical absolutism was gradually closing over Christendom. The
Netherlands were the wedge by which alone the solid bulk could be riven
asunder. It was the cause of German, of French, of English liberty, for
which the Provinces were contending. It was not surprising that they were
bitter, getting nothing in their hour of distress from the land of Luther
but dogmas and Augsburg catechisms instead of money and gunpowder, and
seeing German reiters galloping daily to reinforce the army of Parma in
exchange for Spanish ducats.
Brave old La Noue, with the iron arm, noblest of Frenchmen and
Huguenots--who had just spent five years in Spanish bondage, writing
military discourses in a reeking dungeon, filled with toads and vermin,
after fighting the battle of liberty for a life-time, and with his brave
son already in the Netherlands emulating his father's valour on the same
field--denounced at a little later day, the lukewarmness of Protestant
Germany with whimsical vehemence:--"I am astounded," he cried, "that
these princes are not ashamed of themselves; doing nothing while they see
the oppressed cut to pieces at their gates. When will God grant me grace
to place me among those who are doing their duty, and afar from those who
do nothing, and who ought to know that the cause is a common one. If I am
ever caught dancing the German cotillon, or playing the German flute, or
eating pike with German sauce, I hope it may be flung in my teeth."
The great league of the Pope and Philip was steadily consolidating
itself, and there were but gloomy prospects for the counter-league in
Germany. There was no hope but in England and France. For the reasons
already indicated, the Prince of Orange, taking counsel with the Estates,
had resolved to try the French policy once more. The balance of power in
Europe, which no man in Christendom so well understood as he, was to be
established by maintaining (he thought) the equilibrium between France
and Spain. In the antagonism of those two great realms lay the only hope
for Dutch or European liberty. Notwithstanding the treason of Anjou,
therefore, it had been decided to renew negociations with that Prince. On
the death of the Duke, the envoys of the States were accordingly
instructed to make the offer to King Henry III. which had been intended
for his brother. That proposition was the sovereignty of all the
Netherlands, save Holland and Zeeland, under a constitution maintaining
the reformed religion and the ancient laws and privileges of the
respective provinces.
But the death of Francis of Anjou had brought about a considerable change
in French policy. It was now more sharply defined than ever, a
right-angled triangle of almost mathematical precision. The three Henrys
and their partizans divided the realm into three hostile
camps--threatening each other in simulated peace since the treaty of
Fleig (1580), which had put an end to the "lover's war" of the preceding
year,--Henry of Valois, Henry of Guise, and Henry of Navarre.
Henry III., last of the Valois line, was now thirty-three years of age.
Less than king, less even than man, he was one of those unfortunate
personages who seem as if born to make the idea of royalty ridiculous,
and to test the capacity of mankind to eat and drink humiliation as if it
were wholesome food. It proved how deeply engraved in men's minds of that
century was the necessity of kingship, when the hardy Netherlanders, who
had abjured one tyrant, and had been fighting a generation long rather
than return to him, were now willing to accept the sovereignty of a thing
like Henry of Valois.
He had not been born without natural gifts, such as Heaven rarely denies
to prince or peasant; but the courage which he once possessed had been
exhausted on the field of Moncontour, his manhood had been left behind
him at Venice, and such wit as Heaven had endowed him withal was now
expended in darting viperous epigrams at court-ladies whom he was only
capable of dishonouring by calumny, and whose charms he burned to
outrival in the estimation of his minions. For the monarch of France was
not unfrequently pleased to attire himself like a woman and a harlot.
With silken flounces, jewelled stomacher, and painted face, with pearls
of great price adorning his bared neck and breast, and satin-slippered
feet, of whose delicate shape and size he was justly vain, it was his
delight to pass his days and nights in a ceaseless round of gorgeous
festivals, tourneys, processions; masquerades, banquets, and balls, the
cost of which glittering frivolities caused the popular burthen and the
popular execration to grow, from day to day, more intolerable and more
audible. Surrounded by a gang of "minions," the most debauched and the
most desperate of France, whose bedizened dresses exhaled perfumes
throughout Paris, and whose sanguinary encounters dyed every street in
blood, Henry lived a life of what he called pleasure, careless of what
might come after, for he was the last of his race. The fortunes of his
minions rose higher and higher, as their crimes rendered them more and
more estimable in the eyes of a King who took a woman's pride in the
valour of such champions to his weakness, and more odious to a people
whose miserable homes were made even more miserable, that the coffers of
a few court-favourites might be filled: Now sauntering, full-dressed, in
the public promenades, with ghastly little death's heads strung upon his
sumptuous garments, and fragments of human bones dangling among his
orders of knighthood--playing at cup and ball as he walked, and followed
by a few select courtiers who gravely pursued the same exciting
occupation--now presiding like a queen of beauty at a tournament to
assign the prize of valour, and now, by the advice of his mother, going
about the streets in robes of penitence, telling his beads as he went,
that the populace might be edified by his piety, and solemnly offering up
prayers in the churches that the blessing of an heir might be vouchsafed
to him,--Henry of Valois seemed straining every nerve in order to bring
himself and his great office into contempt.
As orthodox as he was profligate, he hated the Huguenots, who sought his
protection and who could have saved his throne, as cordially as he loved
the Jesuits, who passed their lives in secret plottings against his
authority and his person, or in fierce denunciations from the Paris
pulpits against his manifold crimes. Next to an exquisite and sanguinary
fop, he dearly loved a monk. The presence of a friar, he said, exerted as
agreeable an effect upon his mind as the most delicate and gentle
tickling could produce upon his body; and he was destined to have a
fuller dose of that charming presence than he coveted.
His party--for he was but the nominal chief of a faction, 'tanquam unus
ex nobis'--was the party in possession--the office-holders' party; the
spoilsmen, whose purpose was to rob the exchequer and to enrich
themselves. His minions--for the favourites were called by no other
name--were even more hated, because less despised than the King. Attired
in cloth of gold--for silk and satin were grown too coarse a material for
them--with their little velvet porringer-caps stuck on the sides of their
heads, with their long hair stiff with pomatum, and their heads set
inside a well-starched ruff a foot wide, "like St. John's head in a
charger," as a splenetic contemporary observed, with a nimbus of musk and
violet-powder enveloping them as they passed before vulgar mortals, these
rapacious and insolent courtiers were the impersonation of extortion and
oppression to the Parisian populace. They were supposed, not unjustly, to
pass their lives in dancing, blasphemy, dueling, dicing, and intrigue, in
following the King about like hounds, fawning at his feet, and showing
their teeth to all besides; and for virtues such as these they were
rewarded by the highest offices in church, camp, and state, while new
taxes and imposts were invented almost daily to feed their avarice and
supply their extravagance. France, doomed to feel the beak and talons of
these harpies in its entrails, impoverished by a government that robbed
her at home while it humiliated her abroad, struggled vainly in its
misery, and was now on the verge of another series of internecine
combats--civil war seeming the only alternative to a voluptuous and
licentious peace.
"We all stood here at gaze," wrote ambassador Stafford to Walsingham,
"looking for some great matter to come of this sudden journey to Lyons;
but, as far as men can find, 'parturient montes', for there hath been
nothing but dancing and banquetting from one house to another, bravery in
apparel, glittering like the sun." He, mentioned that the Duke of
Epernon's horse, taking fright at a red cloak, had backed over a
precipice, breaking his own neck, while his master's shoulder merely was
put out of joint. At the same time the Duke of Joyeuse, coming over Mount
Cenis, on his return from Savoy, had broken his wrist. The people, he
said, would rather they had both broken their necks "than any other
joint, the King having racked the nation for their sakes, as he
hath-done." Stafford expressed much compassion for the French in the
plight in which they found themselves. "Unhappy people!" he cried, "to
have such a King, who seeketh nothing but to impoverish them to enrich a
couple, and who careth not what cometh after his death, so that he may
rove on while he liveth, and careth neither for doing his own estate good
nor his neighbour's state harm." Sir Edward added, however, in a
philosophizing vein, worthy of Corporal Nym, that, "seeing we cannot be
so happy as to have a King to concur with us to do us any good, yet we
are happy to have one that his humour serveth him not to concur with
others to do us harm; and 'tis a wisdom for us to follow these humours,
that we may keep him still in that humour, and from hearkening to others
that may egg him on to worse."
It was a dark hour for France, and rarely has a great nation been reduced
to a lower level by a feeble and abandoned government than she was at
that moment under the distaff of Henry III. Society was corrupted to its
core. "There is no more truth, no more justice, no more mercy," moaned
President L'Etoile. "To slander, to lie, to rob, to wench, to steal; all
things are permitted save to do right and to speak the truth." Impiety
the most cynical, debauchery the most unveiled, public and unpunished
homicides, private murders by what was called magic, by poison, by hired
assassins, crimes natural, unnatural, and preternatural, were the common
characteristics of the time. All posts and charges were venal. Great
offices of justice were sold to the highest bidder, and that which was
thus purchased by wholesale was retailed in the same fashion. Unhappy the
pauper client who dreamed of justice at the hands of law. The great
ecclesiastical benefices were equally matter of merchandise, and married
men, women, unborn children, enjoyed revenues as dignitaries of the
church. Infants came into the world, it was said, like the mitre-fish,
stamped with the emblems of place.
"'Twas impossible," said L'Etoile, "to find a crab so tortuous and
backsliding as the government."
This was the aspect of the first of the three factions in France. Such
was the Henry at its head, the representative of royalty.
Henry with the Scar, Duke of Guise, the well-known chief of the house of
Lorraine, was the chief of the extreme papistical party. He was now
thirty-four years of age, tall, stately, with a dark, martial face and
dangerous eyes, which Antonio Moro loved to paint; a physiognomy made
still more expressive by the arquebus-shot which had damaged his left
cheek at the fight near Chateau-Thierry and gained him his name of
Balafre. Although one of the most turbulent and restless plotters of that
plotting age, he was yet thought more slow and heavy in character than
subtle, Teutonic rather than Italian. He was the idol of the Parisian
burghers. The grocers, the market-men, the members of the arquebus and
crossbow clubs, all doated on him. The fishwomen worshipped him as a god.
He was the defender of the good old religion under which Paris and the
other cities of France had thriven, the uncompromising opponent of the
new-fangled doctrines which western clothiers, and dyers, and
tapestry-workers, had adopted, and which the nobles of the
mountain-country, the penniless chevaliers of Bearn and Gascony and
Guienne, were ceaselessly taking the field and plunging France into
misery and bloodshed to support. But for the Balafre and Madam League--as
the great Spanish Catholic conspiracy against the liberties of France,
and of England, and of all Europe, was affectionately termed by the Paris
populace--honest Catholics would fare no better in France than they did
in England, where, as it was well known, they were every day subjected to
fearful tortures: The shopwindows were filled with coloured engravings,
representing, in exaggerated fashion, the sufferings of the English
Catholics under bloody Elizabeth, or Jezebel, as she was called; and as
the gaping burghers stopped to ponder over these works of art, there were
ever present, as if by accident, some persons of superior information who
would condescendingly explain the various pictures, pointing out with a
long stick the phenomena most worthy of notice. These caricatures proving
highly successful, and being suppressed by order of government, they were
repeated upon canvas on a larger scale, in still more conspicuous
situations, as if in contempt of the royal authority, which sullied
itself by compromise with Calvinism! The pulpits, meanwhile, thundered
denunciations on the one hand against the weak and wicked King, who
worshipped idols, and who sacrificed the dearly-earned pittance of his
subjects to feed the insolent pomp of his pampered favourites; and on the
other, upon the arch-heretic, the arch-apostate, the Bearnese Huguenot,
who, after the death of the reigning monarch, would have the effrontery
to claim his throne, and to introduce into France the persecutions and
the horrors under which unhappy England was already groaning.
The scarce-concealed instigator of these assaults upon the royal and upon
the Huguenot faction was, of course, the Duke of Guise,--the man whose
most signal achievement had been the Massacre of St. Bartholomew--all the
preliminary details of that transaction having been arranged by his
skill. So long as Charles IX. was living, the Balafre had created the
confusion which was his element, by entertaining and fomenting the
perpetual intrigues of Anjou and Alencon against their brother; while the
altercations between them and the Queen Mother and the furious madman who
then sat upon the throne, had been the cause of sufficient disorder and
calamity for France. On the death of Charles IX. Guise had sought the
intimacy of Henry of Navarre, that by his means he might frustrate the
hopes of Alencon for the succession. During the early period of the
Bearnese's residence at the French court the two had been inseparable,
living together, going to the same festivals, tournaments, and
masquerades, and even sleeping in the same bed. "My master," was ever
Guise's address to Henry; "my gossip," the young King of Navarre's reply.
But the crafty Bearnese had made use of the intimacy only to read the
secrets of the Balafre's heart; and on Navarre's flight from the court,
and his return to Huguenotism, Guise knew that he had been played upon by
a subtler spirit than his own. The simulated affection was now changed
into undisguised hatred. Moreover, by the death of Alencon, Navarre now
stood next the throne, and Guise's plots became still more extensive and
more open as his own ambition to usurp the crown on the death of the
childless Henry III. became more fervid.
Thus, by artfully inflaming the populace of Paris, and through his
organized bands of confederates--that of all the large towns of France,
against the Huguenots and their chief, by appeals to the religious
sentiment; and at the same time by stimulating the disgust and
indignation of the tax-payers everywhere at the imposts and heavy
burthens which the boundless extravagance of the court engendered, Guise
paved the way for the advancement of the great League which he
represented. The other two political divisions were ingeniously
represented as mere insolent factions, while his own was the true
national and patriotic party, by which alone the ancient religion and the
cherished institutions of France could be preserved.
And the great chief of this national patriotic party was not Henry of
Guise, but the industrious old man who sat writing despatches in the
depths of the Escorial. Spanish counsels, Spanish promises, Spanish
ducats--these were the real machinery by which the plots of Guise against
the peace of France and of Europe were supported. Madam League was simply
Philip II. Nothing was written, officially or unofficially, to the French
government by the Spanish court that was not at the same time
communicated to "Mucio"--as the Duke of Guise was denominated in the
secret correspondence of Philip, and Mucio was in Philip's pay, his
confidential agent, spy, and confederate, long before the actual
existence of the League was generally suspected.
The Queen-Mother, Catharine de' Medici, played into the Duke's hands.
Throughout the whole period of her widowhood, having been accustomed to
govern her sons, she had, in a certain sense, been used to govern the
kingdom. By sowing dissensions among her own children, by inflaming party
against party, by watching with care the oscillations of France--so than
none of the great divisions should obtain preponderance--by alternately
caressing and massacring the Huguenots, by cajoling or confronting
Philip, by keeping, as she boasted, a spy in every family that possessed
the annual income of two thousand livres, by making herself the head of
an organized system of harlotry, by which the soldiers and politicians of
France were inveigled, their secrets faithfully revealed to her by her
well-disciplined maids of honour, by surrounding her unfortunate sons
with temptation from earliest youth, and plunging them by cold
calculation into deepest debauchery, that their enervated faculties might
be ever forced to rely in political affairs on the maternal counsel, and
to abandon the administration to the maternal will; such were the arts by
which Catharine had maintained her influence, and a great country been
governed for a generation--Machiavellian state-craft blended with the
more simple wiles of a procuress.
Now that Alencon was dead, and Henry III. hopeless of issue, it was her
determination that the children of her daughter, the Duchess of Lorraine,
should succeed to the throne. The matter was discussed as if the throne
were already vacant, and Guise and the Queen-Mother, if they agreed in
nothing else, were both cordial in their detestation of Henry of Navarre.
The Duke affected to support the schemes in favour of his relatives, the
Princes of Lorraine, while he secretly informed the Spanish court that
this policy was only a pretence. He was not likely, he said, to advance
the interests of the younger branch of a house of which he was himself
the chief, nor were their backs equal to the burthen. It was necessary to
amuse the old queen, but he was profoundly of opinion that the only
sovereign for France, upon the death of Henry, was Philip II. himself.
This was the Duke's plan of arriving, by means of Spanish assistance, at
the throne of France; and such was Henry le Balafre, chief of the League.
And the other Henry, the Huguenot, the Bearnese, Henry of Bourbon, Henry
of Navarre, the chieftain of the Gascon chivalry, the king errant, the
hope and the darling of the oppressed Protestants in every land--of him
it is scarce needful to say a single word. At his very name a figure
seems to leap forth from the mist of three centuries, instinct with ruddy
vigorous life. Such was the intense vitality of the Bearnese prince, that
even now he seems more thoroughly alive and recognizable than half the
actual personages who are fretting their hour upon the stage.
We see, at once, a man of moderate stature, light, sinewy, and strong; a
face browned with continual exposure; small, mirthful, yet commanding
blue eyes, glittering from beneath an arching brow, and prominent
cheekbones; a long hawk's nose, almost resting upon a salient chin, a
pendent moustache, and a thick, brown, curly beard, prematurely grizzled;
we see the mien of frank authority and magnificent good humour, we hear
the ready sallies of the shrewd Gascon mother-wit, we feel the
electricity which flashes out of him, and sets all hearts around him on
fire, when the trumpet sounds to battle. The headlong desperate charge,
the snow-white plume waving where the fire is hottest, the large capacity
for enjoyment of the man, rioting without affectation in the 'certaminis
gaudia', the insane gallop, after the combat, to lay its trophies at the
feet of the Cynthia of the minute, and thus to forfeit its fruits; all
are as familiar to us as if the seven distinct wars, the hundred pitched
battles, the two hundred sieges; in which the Bearnese was personally
present, had been occurrences of our own day.
He at least was both king and man, if the monarch who occupied the throne
was neither. He was the man to prove, too, for the instruction of the
patient letter-writer of the Escorial, that the crown of France was to be
won with foot in stirrup and carbine in hand, rather than to be caught by
the weaving and casting of the most intricate nets of diplomatic
intrigue, though thoroughly weighted with Mexican gold.
The King of Navarre was now thirty-one years old; for the three Henrys
were nearly of the same age. The first indications of his existence had
been recognized amid the cannon and trumpets of a camp in Picardy, and
his mother had sung a gay Bearnese song as he was coming into the world
at Pau. Thus, said his grandfather, Henry of Navarre, thou shalt not bear
to us a morose and sulky child. The good king, without a kingdom, taking
the child, as soon as born, in the lappel of his dressing-gown, had
brushed his infant lips with a clove of garlic, and moistened them with a
drop of generous Gascon wine. Thus, said the grandfather again, shall the
boy be both merry and bold. There was something mythologically prophetic
in the incidents of his birth.
The best part of Navarre had been long since appropriated by Ferdinand of
Aragon. In France there reigned a young and warlike sovereign with four
healthy boys. But the new-born infant had inherited the lilies of France
from St. Louis, and a later ancestor had added to the escutcheon the
motto "Espoir." His grandfather believed that the boy was born to revenge
upon Spain the wrongs of the House of Albret, and Henry's nature seemed
ever pervaded with Robert of Clermont's device.
The same sensible grandfather, having different views on the subject of
education from those manifested by Catherine de Medici towards her
children, had the boy taught to run about bare-headed and bare-footed,
like a peasant, among the mountains and rocks of Bearn, till he became as
rugged as a young bear, and as nimble as a kid. Black bread, and beef,
and garlic, were his simple fare; and he was taught by his mother and his
grandfather to hate lies and liars, and to read the Bible.
When he was fifteen, the third religious war broke out. Both his father
and grandfather were dead. His mother, who had openly professed the
reformed faith, since the death of her husband, who hated it, brought her
boy to the camp at Rochelle, where he was received as the chief of the
Huguenots. His culture was not extensive. He had learned to speak the
truth, to ride, to shoot, to do with little sleep and less food. He could
also construe a little Latin, and had read a few military treatises; but
the mighty hours of an eventful life were now to take him by the hand,
and to teach him much good and much evil, as they bore him onward. He now
saw military treatises expounded practically by professors, like his
uncle Condo, and Admiral Coligny, and Lewis Nassau, in such lecture-rooms
as Laudun, and Jarnac, and Montcontour, and never was apter scholar.
The peace of Arnay-le-Duc succeeded, and then the fatal Bartholomew
marriage with the Messalina of Valois. The faith taught in the mountains
of Bearn was no buckler against the demand of "the mass or death,"
thundered at his breast by the lunatic Charles, as he pointed to
thousands of massacred Huguenots. Henry yielded to such conclusive
arguments, and became a Catholic. Four years of court imprisonment
succeeded, and the young King of Navarre, though proof to the artifices
of his gossip Guise, was not adamant to the temptations spread for him by
Catherine de' Medici. In the harem entertained for him in the Louvre many
pitfalls entrapped him; and he became a stock-performer in the state
comedies and tragedies of that plotting age.
A silken web of palace-politics, palace-diplomacy, palace revolutions,
enveloped him. Schemes and counter-schemes, stratagems and conspiracies,
assassinations and poisonings; all the state-machinery which worked so
exquisitely in fair ladies' chambers, to spread havoc and desolation over
a kingdom, were displayed before his eyes. Now campaigning with one royal
brother against Huguenots, now fighting with another on their side, now
solicited by the Queen-Mother to attempt the life of her son, now
implored by Henry III. to assassinate his brother, the Bearnese, as fresh
antagonisms, affinities; combinations, were developed, detected,
neutralized almost daily, became rapidly an adept in Medicean
state-chemistry. Charles IX. in his grave, Henry III. on the throne,
Alencon in the Huguenot camp--Henry at last made his escape. The brief
war and peace of Monsieur succeeded, and the King of Navarre formally
abjured the Catholic creed. The parties were now sharply defined. Guise
mounted upon the League, Henry astride upon the Reformation, were
prepared to do battle to the death. The temporary "war of the amorous"
was followed by the peace of Fleix.
Four years of peace again; four fat years of wantonness and riot
preceding fourteen hungry famine-stricken years of bloodiest civil war.
The voluptuousness and infamy of the Louvre were almost paralleled in
vice, if not in splendour, by the miniature court at Pau. Henry's Spartan
grandfather would scarce have approved the courses of the youth, whose
education he had commenced on so simple a scale. For Margaret of Valois,
hating her husband, and living in most undisguised and promiscuous
infidelity to him, had profited by her mother's lessons. A seraglio of
maids of honour ministered to Henry's pleasures, and were carefully
instructed that the peace and war of the kingdom were playthings in their
hands. While at Paris royalty was hopelessly sinking in a poisonous
marsh, there was danger that even the hardy nature of the Bearnese would
be mortally enervated by the atmosphere in which he lived.
The unhappy Henry III., baited by the Guises, worried by Alencon and his
mother, implored the King of Navarre to return to Paris and the Catholic
faith. M. de Segur, chief of Navarre's council, who had been won over
during a visit to the capital, where he had made the discovery that
"Henry III. was an angel, and his ministers devils," came back to Pau,
urging his master's acceptance of the royal invitation. Henry wavered.
Bold D'Aubigne, stanchest of Huguenots, and of his friends, next day
privately showed Segur a palace-window opening on a very steep precipice
over the Bayae, and cheerfully assured him that he should be flung from
it did he not instantly reverse his proceedings, and give his master
different advice. If I am not able to do the deed myself, said D'Aubigne,
here are a dozen more to help me. The chief of the council cast a glance
behind him, saw a number of grim Puritan soldiers, with their hats
plucked down upon their brows, looking very serious; so made his bow, and
quite changed his line of conduct.
At about the same time, Philip II. confidentially offered Henry of
Navarre four hundred thousand crowns in hand, and twelve hundred thousand
yearly, if he would consent to make war upon Henry III. Mucio, or the
Duke of Guise, being still in Philip's pay, the combination of Leaguers
and Huguenots against the unfortunate Valois would, it was thought, be a
good triangular contest.
But Henry--no longer the unsophisticated youth who had been used to run
barefoot among the cliffs of Coarasse--was grown too crafty a politician
to be entangled by Spanish or Medicean wiles. The Duke of Anjou was now
dead. Of all the princes who had stood between him and the throne, there
was none remaining save the helpless, childless, superannuated youth, who
was its present occupant. The King of Navarre was legitimate heir to the
crown of France. "Espoir" was now in letters of light upon his shield,
but he knew that his path to greatness led through manifold dangers, and
that it was only at the head of his Huguenot chivalry that he could cut
his way. He was the leader of the nobles of Gascony, and Dauphins, and
Guienne, in their mountain fastnesses, of the weavers, cutlers, and
artizans, in their thriving manufacturing and trading towns. It was not
Spanish gold, but carbines and cutlasses, bows and bills, which could
bring him to the throne of his ancestors.
And thus he stood the chieftain of that great austere party of Huguenots,
the men who went on, their knees before the battle, beating their breasts
with their iron gauntlets, and singing in full chorus a psalm of David,
before smiting the Philistines hip and thigh.
Their chieftain, scarcely their representative--fit to lead his Puritans
on the battle-field, was hardly a model for them elsewhere. Yet, though
profligate in one respect, he was temperate in every other. In food,
wine, and sleep, he was always moderate. Subtle and crafty in
self-defence, he retained something of his old love of truth, of his
hatred for liars. Hardly generous perhaps, he was a friend of justice,
while economy in a wandering King, like himself, was a necessary virtue,
of which France one day was to feel the beneficent action. Reckless and
headlong in appearance, he was in truth the most careful of men. On the
religious question, most cautious of all, he always left the door open
behind him, disclaimed all bigotry of opinion, and earnestly implored the
Papists to seek, not his destruction, but his instruction. Yet prudent as
he was by nature in every other regard, he was all his life the slave of
one woman or another, and it was by good luck rather than by sagacity
that he did not repeatedly forfeit the fruits of his courage and conduct,
in obedience to his master-passion.
Always open to conviction on the subject of his faith, he repudiated the
appellation of heretic. A creed, he said, was not to be changed like a
shirt, but only on due deliberation, and under special advice. In his
secret heart he probably regarded the two religions as his chargers, and
was ready to mount alternately the one or the other, as each seemed the
more likely to bear him safely in the battle. The Bearnese was no
Puritan, but he was most true to himself and to his own advancement. His
highest principle of action was to reach his goal, and to that principle
he was ever loyal. Feeling, too, that it was the interest of France that
he should succeed, he was even inspired--compared with others on the
stage--by an almost lofty patriotism.
Amiable by nature and by habit, he had preserved the most unimpaired
good-humour throughout the horrible years which succeeded St.
Bartholomew, during which he carried his life in his hand, and learned
not to wear his heart upon his sleeve. Without gratitude, without
resentment, without fear, without remorse, entirely arbitrary, yet with
the capacity to use all men's judgments; without convictions, save in
regard to his dynastic interests, he possessed all the qualities,
necessary to success. He knew how to use his enemies. He knew how to use
his friends, to abuse them, and to throw them away. He refused to
assassinate Francis Alencon at the bidding of Henry III., but he
attempted to procure the murder of the truest of his own friends, one of
the noblest characters of the age--whose breast showed twelve scars
received in his services--Agrippa D'Aubigne, because the honest soldier
had refused to become his pimp--a service the King had implored upon his
knees.
Beneath the mask of perpetual careless good-humour, lurked the keenest
eye, a subtle, restless, widely combining brain, and an iron will. Native
sagacity had been tempered into consummate elasticity by the fiery
atmosphere in which feebler natures had been dissolved. His wit was as
flashing and as quickly unsheathed as his sword. Desperate, apparently
reckless temerity on the battle-field was deliberately indulged in, that
the world might be brought to recognise a hero and chieftain in a King.
The do-nothings of the Merovingian line had been succeeded by the Pepins;
to the effete Carlovingians had come a Capet; to the impotent Valois
should come a worthier descendant of St. Louis. This was shrewd Gascon
calculation, aided by constitutional fearlessness. When despatch-writing,
invisible Philips, stargazing Rudolphs, and petticoated Henrys, sat upon
the thrones of Europe, it was wholesome to show the world that there was
a King left who could move about in the bustle and business of the age,
and could charge as well as most soldiers at the head of his cavalry;
that there was one more sovereign fit to reign over men, besides the
glorious Virgin who governed England.
Thus courageous, crafty, far-seeing, consistent, untiring, imperturbable,
he was born to command, and had a right to reign. He had need of the
throne, and the throne had still more need of him.
This then was the third Henry, representative of the third side of the
triangle, the reformers of the kingdom.
And before this bubbling cauldron of France, where intrigues, foreign and
domestic, conflicting ambitions, stratagems, and hopes, were whirling in
never-ceasing tumult, was it strange if the plain Netherland envoys
should stand somewhat aghast?
Yet it was necessary that they should ponder well the aspect of affairs;
for all their hopes, the very existence of themselves and of their
religion, depended upon the organization which should come of this chaos.
It must be remembered, however, that those statesmen--even the wisest or
the best-informed of them--could not take so correct a view of France and
its politics as it is possible for us, after the lapse of three
centuries, to do. The interior leagues, subterranean schemes, conflicting
factions, could only be guessed at; nor could the immediate future be
predicted, even by such far-seeing politicians as William of Orange; at a
distance, or Henry of Navarre, upon the spot.
It was obvious to the Netherlanders that France, although torn by
faction, was a great and powerful realm. There had now been, with the
brief exception of the lovers' war in 1580, a religious peace of eight
years' duration. The Huguenots had enjoyed tranquil exercise of their
worship during that period, and they expressed perfect confidence in the
good faith of the King. That the cities were inordinately taxed to supply
the luxury of the court could hardly be unknown to the Netherlanders.
Nevertheless they knew that the kingdom was the richest and most populous
of Christendom, after that of Spain. Its capital, already called by
contemporaries the "compendium of the world," was described by travellers
as "stupendous in extent and miraculous for its numbers." It was even
said to contain eight hundred thousand souls; and although, its actual
population did not probably exceed three hundred and twenty thousand, yet
this was more than double the number of London's inhabitants, and thrice
as many as Antwerp could then boast, now that a great proportion of its
foreign denizens had been scared away. Paris was at least by one hundred
thousand more populous than any city of Europe, except perhaps the remote
and barbarous Moscow, while the secondary cities of France, Rouen in the
north, Lyons in the centre, and Marseilles in the south, almost equalled
in size, business, wealth, and numbers, the capitals of other countries.
In the whole kingdom were probably ten or twelve millions of inhabitants,
nearly as many as in Spain, without her colonies, and perhaps three times
the number that dwelt in England.
In a military point of view, too, the alliance of France was most
valuable to the contiguous Netherlands. A few regiments of French troops,
under the command of one of their experienced Marshals, could block up
the Spaniards in the Walloon Provinces, effectually stop their operations
against Ghent, Antwerp, and the other great cities of Flanders and
Brabant, and, with the combined action of the United Provinces on the
north, so surround and cripple the forces of Parma, as to reduce the
power of Philip, after a few vigorous and well-concerted blows, to an
absolute nullity in, the Low Countries. As this result was of as vital
importance to the real interests of France and of Europe, whether
Protestant or Catholic, as it was to the Provinces, and as the French
government had privately manifested a strong desire to oppose the
progress of Spain towards universal empire, it was not surprising that
the States General, not feeling capable of standing alone, should make
their application to France. This they had done with the knowledge and
concurrence of the English government. What lay upon the surface the
Netherland statesmen saw and pondered well. What lurked beneath, they
surmised as shrewdly as they could, but it was impossible, with plummet
and fathom-line ever in hand, to sound the way with perfect accuracy,
where the quicksands were ever shifting, and the depth or shallowness of
the course perpetually varying. It was not easy to discover the
intentions of a government which did not know its own intentions, and
whose changing policy was controlled by so many hidden currents.
Moreover, as already indicated, the envoys and those whom they
represented had not the same means of arriving at a result as are granted
to us. Thanks to the liberality of many modern governments of Europe, the
archives where the state-secrets of the buried centuries have so long
mouldered, are now open to the student of history. To him who has
patience and industry many mysteries are thus revealed, which no
political sagacity or critical acumen could have divined. He leans over
the shoulder of Philip the Second at his writing-table, as the King
spells patiently out, with cipher-key in hand, the most concealed
hieroglyphics of Parma or Guise or Mendoza. He reads the secret thoughts
of "Fabius,"--[The name usually assigned to Philip himself in the
Paris-Simancas Correspondence.]--as that cunctative Roman scrawls his
marginal apostilles on each despatch; he pries into all the stratagems of
Camillus, Hortensius, Mucius, Julius, Tullius, and the rest of those
ancient heroes who lent their names to the diplomatic masqueraders of the
16th century; he enters the cabinet of the deeply-pondering Burghley, and
takes from the most private drawer the memoranda which record that
minister's unutterable doubtings; he pulls from the dressing-gown folds
of the stealthy, softly-gliding Walsingham the last secret which he has
picked from the Emperor's pigeon-holes, or the Pope's pocket, and which,
not Hatton, nor Buckhurst, nor Leicester, nor the Lord Treasurer, is to
see; nobody but Elizabeth herself; he sits invisible at the most secret
councils of the Nassaus and Barneveldt and Buys, or pores with Farnese
over coming victories, and vast schemes of universal conquest; he reads
the latest bit of scandal, the minutest characteristic of king or
minister, chronicled by the gossiping Venetians for the edification of
the Forty; and, after all this prying and eavesdropping, having seen the
cross-purposes, the bribings, the windings, the fencings in the dark, he
is not surprised, if those who were systematically deceived did not
always arrive at correct conclusions.
Noel de Caron, Seigneur de Schoneval, had been agent of the States at the
French court at the time of the death of the Duke of Anjou. Upon the
occurrence of that event, La Mouillerie and Asseliers were deputed by the
Provinces to King Henry III., in order to offer him the sovereignty,
which they had intended to confer upon his brother. Meantime that
brother, just before his death, and with the privity of Henry, had been
negotiating for a marriage with the younger daughter of Philip II.--an
arrangement somewhat incompatible with his contemporaneous scheme to
assume the sovereignty of Philip's revolted Provinces. An attempt had
been made at the same time to conciliate the Duke of Savoy, and invite
him to the French court; but the Duc de Joyeuse, then on his return from
Turin, was bringing the news, not only that the match with Anjou was not
favored--which, as Anjou was dead, was of no great consequence--but that
the Duke of Savoy was himself to espouse the Infanta, and was therefore
compelled to decline the invitation to Paris, for fear of offending his
father-in-law. Other matters were in progress, to be afterwards
indicated, very much interfering with the negotiations of the Netherland
envoys.
When La Mouillerie and Asseliers arrived at Rouen, on their road from
Dieppe to Paris, they received a peremptory order from the Queen-Mother
to proceed no farther. This prohibition was brought by an unofficial
personage, and was delivered, not to them, but to Des Pruneaux, French
envoy to the States General, who had accompanied the envoys to France.
After three weeks' time, during which they "kept themselves continually
concealed in Rouen," there arrived in that city a young nephew of
Secretary Brulart, who brought letters empowering him to hear what they
had in charge for the King. The envoys, not much flattered by such
cavalier treatment on the part of him to, whom they were offering a
crown, determined to digest the affront as they best might, and, to save
time, opened the whole business to this subordinate stripling. He
received from them accordingly an ample memoir to be laid before his
Majesty, and departed by the post the same night. Then they waited ten
days longer, concealed as if they had been thieves or spies, rather than
the representatives of a friendly power, on a more than friendly errand.
At last, on the 24th July 1854, after the deputies had been thus shut up
a whole month, Secretary Brulart himself arrived from Fontainebleau.
He stated that the King sent his royal thanks to the States for the offer
which they had made him, and to the deputies in particular for taking the
trouble of so long a journey; but that he did not find his realm in
condition to undertake a foreign war so inopportunely. In every other
regard, his Majesty offered the States "all possible favours and
pleasures."
Certainly, after having been thus kept in prison for a month, the
ambassadors had small cause to be contented with this very cold
communication. To be forbidden the royal presence, and to be turned out
of the country without even an official and accredited answer to a
communication in which they had offered the sovereignty of their
fatherland, was not flattering to their dignity. "We little thought,"
said they to Brulart, after a brief consultation among themselves, "to
receive such a reply as this. It displeases us infinitely that his
Majesty will not do us the honour to grant us an audience. We must take
the liberty of saying, that 'tis treating the States, our masters, with
too much contempt. Who ever heard before of refusing audience to public
personages? Kings often grant audience to mere letter-carriers. Even the
King of Spain never refused a hearing to the deputies from the
Netherlands when they came to Spain to complain of his own government.
The States General have sent envoys to many other kinds and princes, and
they have instantly granted audience in every case. His Majesty, too, has
been very ill-informed of the contracts which we formerly made with the
Duke of Anjou, and therefore a personal interview is the more necessary."
As the envoys were obstinate on the point of Paris, Brulart said "that
the King, although he should himself be at Lyons, would not prevent any
one from going to the capital on his own private affairs; but would
unquestionably take it very ill if, they should visit that city in a
public manner, and as deputies."
Des Pruneaux professed himself "very grievous at this result, and
desirous of a hundred deaths in consequence."
They stated that they should be ready within a month to bring an army of
3,000 horse and 13,000 foot into the field for the relief of Ghent,
besides their military operations against Zutphen; and that the enemy had
recently been ignominiously defeated in his attack upon Fort Lille, and
had lost 2,000 of his best soldiers.
Here were encouraging facts; and it certainly was worth the while of the
French sovereign to pause a moment before rejecting without a hearing,
the offer of such powerful and conveniently-situated provinces.
Des Pruneaux, a man of probity and earnestness, but perhaps of
insufficient ability to deal with such grave matters as now fell almost
entirely upon his shoulders, soon afterwards obtained audience of the
King. Being most sincerely in favour of the annexation of the Netherlands
to France, and feeling that now or never was the opportunity of bringing
it about, he persuaded the King to send him back to the Provinces, in
order to continue the negotiation directly with the States General. The
timidity and procrastination of the court could be overcome no further.
The two Dutch envoys, who had stolen secretly to Paris, were indulged in
a most barren and unmeaning interview with the Queen-Mother. Before their
departure from France, however, they had the advantage of much
conversation with leading members of the royal council, of the
parliaments of Paris and Rouen, and also with various persons professing
the reformed religion. They endeavoured thus to inform themselves, as
well as they could, why the King made so much difficulty in accepting
their propositions, and whether, and by what means, his Majesty could be
induced to make war in their behalf upon the King of Spain.
They were informed that, should Holland and Zeeland unite with the rest
of the Netherlands, the King "without any doubt would undertake the cause
most earnestly." His councillors, also--even those who had been most
active in dissuading his Majesty from such a policy--would then be
unanimous in supporting the annexation of the Provinces and the war with
Spain. In such a contingency, with the potent assistance of Holland and
Zeeland, the King would have little difficulty, within a very short time,
in chasing every single Spaniard out of the Netherlands. To further this
end, many leading personages in France avowed to the envoys their
determination "to venture their lives and their fortunes, and to use all
the influence which they possessed at court."
The same persons expressed their conviction that the King, once satisfied
by the Provinces as to conditions and reasons, would cheerfully go into
the war, without being deterred by any apprehension as to the power of
Spain. It was, however, fitting that each Province should chaffer as
little as possible about details, but should give his Majesty every
reasonable advantage. They should remember that they were dealing with "a
great, powerful monarch, who was putting his realm in jeopardy, and not
with a Duke of Anjou, who had every thing to gain and nothing to lose."
All the Huguenots, with whom the envoys conversed, were excessively
sanguine. Could the King be once brought they said, to promise the
Netherlands his protection, there was not the least fear but that he
would keep his word. He would use all the means within his power; "yea,
he would take the crown from his head," rather than turn back. Although
reluctant to commence a war with so powerful a sovereign, having once
promised his help, he would keep his pledge to the utmost, "for he was a
King of his word," and had never broken and would never break his faith
with those of the reformed religion.
Thus spoke the leading Huguenots of France, in confidential communication
with the Netherland envoys, not many months before the famous edict of
extermination, published at Nemours.
At that moment the reformers were full of confidence; not foreseeing the
long procession of battles and sieges which was soon to sweep through the
land. Notwithstanding the urgency of the Papists for their extirpation,
they extolled loudly the liberty of religious worship which Calvinists,
as well as Catholics, were enjoying in France, and pointed to the fact
that the adherents of both religions were well received at court, and
that they shared equally in offices of trust and dignity throughout the
kingdom.
The Netherland envoys themselves bore testimony to the undisturbed
tranquillity and harmony in which the professors of both religions were
living and worshipping side by side "without reproach or quarrel" in all
the great cities which they had visited. They expressed the conviction
that the same toleration would be extended to all the Provinces when
under French dominion; and, so far as their ancient constitutions and
privileges were concerned, they were assured that the King of France
would respect and maintain them with as much fidelity as the States could
possibly desire.
Des Pruneaux, accompanied by the two States' envoys, departed forthwith
for the Netherlands. On the 24th August, 1584 he delivered a discourse
before the States General, in which he disclosed, in very general terms,
the expectations of Henry III., and intimated very clearly that the
different Provinces were to lose no time in making an unconditional offer
to that monarch. With regard to Holland and Zeeland he observed that he
was provided with a special commission to those Estates. It was not long
before one Province after the other came to the conclusion to offer the
sovereignty to the King without written conditions, but with a general
understanding that their religious freedom and their ancient
constitutions were to be sacredly respected. Meantime, Des Pruneaux made
his appearance in Holland and Zeeland, and declared the King's intentions
of espousing the cause of the States, and of accepting the sovereignty of
all the Provinces. He distinctly observed, however, that it was as
sovereign, not as protector, that his Majesty must be recognised in
Holland and Zeeland, as well as in the rest of the country.
Upon this grave question there was much debate and much difference of
opinion. Holland and Zeeland had never contemplated the possibility of
accepting any foreign sovereignty, and the opponents of the present
scheme were loud and angry, but very reasonable in their remarks.
The French, they said, were no respecters of privileges nor of persons.
The Duke of Anjou had deceived William of Orange and betrayed the
Provinces. Could they hope to see farther than that wisest and most
experienced prince? Had not the stout hearts of the Antwerp burghers
proved a stronger defence to Brabant liberties than the "joyous entry" on
the dread day of the "French fury," it would have fared ill then and for
ever with the cause of freedom and religion in the Netherlands. The King
of France was a Papist, a Jesuit. He was incapable of keeping his
pledges. Should they make the arrangement now proposed and confer the
sovereignty upon him, he would forthwith make peace with Spain, and
transfer the Provinces back to that crown in exchange for the duchy of
Milan, which France had ever coveted. The Netherlands, after a quarter of
a century of fighting in defence of their hearths and altars, would find
themselves handed over again, bound and fettered, to the tender mercies
of the Spanish Inquisition.
The Kings of France and of Spain always acted in concert, for religion
was the most potent of bonds. Witness the sacrifice of thousands of
French soldiers to Alva by their own sovereign at Mons, witness the fate
of Genlis, witness the bloody night of St. Bartholomew, witness the
Antwerp fury. Men cited and relied upon the advice of William of Orange
as to this negotiation with France. But Orange never dreamed of going so
far as now proposed. He was ever careful to keep the Provinces of Holland
and Zeeland safe from every foreign master. That spot was to be holy
ground. Not out of personal ambition. God forbid that they, should accuse
his memory of any such impurity, but because he wished one safe refuge
for the spirit of freedom.
Many years long they had held out by land and sea against the Spaniards,
and should they now, because this Des Pruneaux shrugged his shoulders, be
so alarmed as to open the door to the same Spaniard wearing the disguise
of a Frenchman?
Prince Maurice also made a brief representation to the States' Assembly
of Holland, in which, without distinctly opposing the negotiation with
France, he warned them not to proceed too hastily with so grave a matter.
He reminded them how far they had gone in the presentation of the
sovereignty to his late father, and requested them, in their dealings
with France, not to forget his interests and those of his family. He
reminded them of the position of that family, overladen with debt
contracted in their service alone. He concluded by offering most
affectionately his service in any way in which he, young and
inexperienced as he knew himself to be, might be thought useful; as he
was long since resolved to devote his life to the welfare of his country.
These passionate appeals were answered with equal vehemence by those who
had made up their minds to try the chances of the French sovereignty. Des
Pruneaux, meanwhile, was travelling from province to province, and from
city to city, using the arguments which have already been sufficiently
indicated, and urging a speedy compliance with the French King's
propositions. At the same time, in accordance with his instructions, he
was very cautious to confine himself to generalities, and to avoid
hampering his royal master with the restrictions which had proved so
irksome to the Duke of Anjou.
"The States General demanded a copy of my speech," he wrote the day after
that harangue had been delivered, "but I only gave them a brief outline;
extending myself [25th August, 1584] as little as I possibly could,
according to the intention and command of your Majesty. When I got here,
I found them without hope of our assistance, and terribly agitated by the
partizans of Spain. There was some danger of their going over in a panic
to the enemy. They are now much changed again, and the Spanish partizans
are beginning to lose their tongues. I invite them, if they intend to
address your Majesty, to proceed as they ought towards a veritably grand
monarch, without hunting up any of their old quibbles, or reservations of
provinces, or any thing else which could inspire suspicion. I have sent
into Gelderland and Friesland, for I find I must stay here in Holland and
Zeeland myself. These two provinces are the gates and ramparts through
which we must enter. 'Tis, in my opinion, what could be called superb, to
command all the sea, thus subject to the crown of France. And France,
too, with assistance of this country, will command the land as well. They
are much astonished here, however, that I communicate nothing of the
intention of your Majesty. They say that if your Majesty does not accept
this offer of their country, your Majesty puts the rope around their
necks."
The French envoy was more and more struck with the brilliancy of the
prize offered to his master. "If the King gets these Provinces," said he
to Catharine, "'t will be the most splendid inheritance which Prince has
ever conquered."
In a very few weeks the assiduity of the envoy and of the French party
was successful. All the other provinces had very soon repeated the offer
which they had previously made through Asseliers and La Mouillerie. By
the beginning of October the opposition of Holland was vanquished. The
estates of that Province--three cities excepted, however--determined "to
request England and France to assume a joint protectorate over the
Netherlands. In case the King of France should refuse this proposition,
they were then ready to receive him as prince and master, with knowledge
and consent of the Queen of England, and on such conditions as the United
States should approve."
Immediately afterwards, the General Assembly of all the States determined
to offer the sovereignty to King Henry "on conditions to be afterwards
settled."
Des Pruneaux, thus triumphant, received a gold chain of the value of two
thousand florins, and departed before the end of October for France.
The departure of the solemn embassy to that country, for the purpose of
offering the sovereignty to the King, was delayed till the beginning of
January. Meantime it is necessary to cast a glance at the position of
England in relation to these important transactions.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
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Enmity between Lutherans and Calvinists
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German-Lutheran sixteenth-century idea of religious freedom
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Lord was better pleased with adverbs than nouns
Make sheep of yourselves, and the wolf will eat you
Necessity of kingship
Neighbour's blazing roof was likely soon to fire their own
Nor is the spirit of the age to be pleaded in defence
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Seem as if born to make the idea of royalty ridiculous
Shutting the stable-door when the steed is stolen
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The very word toleration was to sound like an insult
There was apathy where there should have been enthusiasm
Tranquillity rather of paralysis than of health
Write so illegibly or express himself so awkwardly
HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609
By John Lothrop Motley
History United Netherlands, 1584-1585