"Your Excellency will be graciously pleased to observe that this is not
the opinion of those whom one calls by the hateful name of Arminians, but
the opinion of their adversaries."
"Well, preacher," rejoined Maurice, "don't you think I know better?" And
turning to Count Lewis William, Stadholder of Friesland, who was present,
standing by the hearth with his hand on a copper ring of the
chimneypiece, he cried,
"Which is right, cousin, the preacher or I?"
"No, cousin," answered Count Lewis, "you are in the wrong."
Thus to the Catholic League organized throughout Europe in solid and
consistent phalanx was opposed the Great Protestant Union, ardent and
enthusiastic in detail, but undisciplined, disobedient, and inharmonious
as a whole.
The great principle, not of religious toleration, which is a phrase of
insult, but of religious equality, which is the natural right of mankind,
was to be evolved after a lapse of, additional centuries out of the
elemental conflict which had already lasted so long. Still later was
the total divorce of State and Church to be achieved as the final
consummation of the great revolution. Meantime it was almost inevitable
that the privileged and richly endowed church, with ecclesiastical armies
and arsenals vastly superior to anything which its antagonist could
improvise, should more than hold its own.
At the outset of the epoch which now occupies our attention, Europe was
in a state of exhaustion and longing for repose. Spain had submitted to
the humiliation of a treaty of truce with its rebellious subjects which
was substantially a recognition of their independence. Nothing could be
more deplorable than the internal condition of the country which claimed
to be mistress of the world and still aspired to universal monarchy.
It had made peace because it could no longer furnish funds for the war.
The French ambassador, Barante, returning from Madrid, informed his
sovereign that he had often seen officers in the army prostrating
themselves on their knees in the streets before their sovereign as he
went to mass, and imploring him for payment of their salaries, or at
least an alms to keep them from starving, and always imploring in vain.
The King, who was less than a cipher, had neither capacity to feel
emotion, nor intelligence to comprehend the most insignificant affair of
state. Moreover the means were wanting to him even had he been disposed
to grant assistance. The terrible Duke of Lerma was still his inexorably
lord and master, and the secretary of that powerful personage, who kept
an open shop for the sale of offices of state both high and low, took
care that all the proceeds should flow into the coffers of the Duke and
his own lap instead of the royal exchequer.
In France both king and people declared themselves disgusted with war.
Sully disapproved of the treaty just concluded between Spain and the
Netherlands, feeling sure that the captious and equivocal clauses
contained in it would be interpreted to the disadvantage of the Republic
and of the Reformed religion whenever Spain felt herself strong enough to
make the attempt. He was especially anxious that the States should make
no concessions in regard to the exercise of the Catholic worship within
their territory, believing that by so doing they would compromise their
political independence besides endangering the cause of Protestantism
everywhere. A great pressure was put upon Sully that moment by the King
to change his religion.
"You will all be inevitably ruined if you make concessions in this
regard," said he to Aerssens. "Take example by me. I should be utterly
undone if I had listened to any overture on this subject."
Nevertheless it was the opinion of the astute and caustic envoy that the
Duke would be forced to yield at last. The Pope was making great efforts
to gain him, and thus to bring about the extirpation of Protestantism in
France. And the King, at that time much under the influence of the
Jesuits, had almost set his heart on the conversion. Aerssens insinuated
that Sully was dreading a minute examination into the affairs of his
administration of the finances--a groundless calumny--and would be thus
forced to comply. Other enemies suggested that nothing would effect this
much desired apostasy but the office of Constable of France, which it was
certain would never be bestowed on him.
At any rate it was very certain that Henry at this period was bent on
peace.
"Make your account," said Aerssens to Barneveld, as the time for signing
the truce drew nigh, "on this indubitable foundation that the King is
determined against war, whatever pretences he may make. His bellicose
demeanour has been assumed only to help forward our treaty, which he
would never have favoured, and ought never to have favoured, if he had
not been too much in love with peace. This is a very important secret if
we manage it discreetly, and a very dangerous one if our enemies discover
it."
Sully would have much preferred that the States should stand out for a
peace rather than for a truce, and believed it might have been obtained
if the King had not begun the matter so feebly, and if he had let it be
understood that he would join his arms to those of the Provinces in case
of rupture.
He warned the States very strenuously that the Pope, and the King of
Spain, and a host of enemies open and covert, were doing their host to
injure them at the French court. They would find little hindrance in
this course if the Republic did not show its teeth, and especially if it
did not stiffly oppose all encroachments of the Roman religion, without
even showing any deference to the King in this regard, who was much
importuned on the subject.
He advised the States to improve the interval of truce by restoring order
to their finances and so arranging their affairs that on the resumption
of hostilities, if come they must, their friends might be encouraged to
help them, by the exhibition of thorough vigour on their part.
France then, although utterly indisposed for war at that moment, was
thoroughly to be relied on as a friend and in case of need an ally, so
long as it was governed by its present policy. There was but one king
left in Europe since the death of Elizabeth of England.
But Henry was now on the abhorred threshold of old age which he
obstinately refused to cross.
There is something almost pathetic, in spite of the censure which much of
his private life at this period provokes, in the isolation which now
seemed his lot.
Deceived and hated by his wife and his mistresses, who were conspiring
with each other and with his ministers, not only against his policy but
against his life; with a vile Italian adventurer, dishonouring his
household, entirely dominating the queen, counteracting the royal
measures, secretly corresponding, by assumed authority, with Spain, in
direct violation of the King's instructions to his ambassadors, and
gorging himself with wealth and offices at the expense of everything
respectable in France; surrounded by a pack of malignant and greedy
nobles, who begrudged him his fame, his authority, his independence;
without a home, and almost without a friend, the Most Christian King in
these latter days led hardly as merry a life as when fighting years long
for his crown, at the head of his Gascon chivalry, the beloved chieftain
of Huguenots.
Of the triumvirate then constituting his council, Villeroy, Sillery, and
Sully, the two first were ancient Leaguers, and more devoted at heart to
Philip of Spain than to Henry of France and Navarre.
Both silent, laborious, plodding, plotting functionaries, thriftily
gathering riches; skilled in routine and adepts at intrigue; steady self-
seekers, and faithful to office in which their lives had passed, they
might be relied on at any emergency to take part against their master,
if to ruin would prove more profitable than to serve him.
There was one man who was truer to Henry than Henry had been to himself.
The haughty, defiant, austere grandee, brave soldier, sagacious
statesman, thrifty financier, against whom the poisoned arrows of
religious hatred, envious ambition, and petty court intrigue were daily
directed, who watched grimly over the exchequer confided to him, which
was daily growing fuller in despite of the cormorants who trembled at his
frown; hard worker, good hater, conscientious politician, who filled his
own coffers without dishonesty, and those of the state without tyranny;
unsociable, arrogant; pious, very avaricious, and inordinately vain,
Maximilian de Bethune, Duke of Sully, loved and respected Henry as no man
or woman loved and respected him. In truth, there was but one living
being for whom the Duke had greater reverence and affection than for the
King, and that was the Duke of Sully himself.
At this moment he considered himself, as indeed he was, in full
possession of his sovereign's confidence. But he was alone in this
conviction. Those about the court, men like Epernon and his creatures,
believed the great financier on the brink of perdition. Henry, always
the loosest of talkers even in regard to his best friends, had declared,
on some temporary vexation in regard to the affair between Aiguillon and
Balagny, that he would deal with the Duke as with the late Marshal de
Biron, and make him smaller than he had ever made him great: goading him
on this occasion with importunities, almost amounting to commands, that
both he and his son should forthwith change their religion or expect
instant ruin. The blow was so severe that Sully shut himself up, refused
to see anyone, and talked of retiring for good to his estates. But he
knew, and Henry knew, how indispensable he was, and the anger of the
master was as shortlived as the despair of the minister.
There was no living statesman for whom Henry had a more sincere respect
than for the Advocate of Holland. "His Majesty admires and greatly
extols your wisdom, which he judges necessary for the preservation of
our State; deeming you one of the rare and sage counsellors of the age."
It is true that this admiration was in part attributed to the singular
coincidence of Barneveld's views of policy with the King's own. Sully,
on his part, was a severe critic of that policy. He believed that better
terms might have been exacted from Spain in the late negotiations, and
strongly objected to the cavilling and equivocal language of the treaty.
Rude in pen as in speech, he expressed his mind very freely in his
conversation and correspondence with Henry in regard to leading
personages and great affairs, and made no secret of his opinions
to the States' ambassador.
He showed his letters in which he had informed the King that he ought
never to have sanctioned the truce without better securities than
existed, and that the States would never have moved in any matter without
him. It would have been better to throw himself into a severe war than
to see the Republic perish. He further expressed the conviction that
Henry ought to have such authority over the Netherlands that they would
embrace blindly whatever counsel he chose to give them, even if they saw
in it their inevitable ruin; and this not so much from remembrance of
assistance rendered by him, but from the necessity in which they should
always feel of depending totally upon him.
"You may judge, therefore," concluded Aerssens, "as to how much we can
build on such foundations as these. I have been amazed at these frank
communications, for in those letters he spares neither My Lords the
States, nor his Excellency Prince Maurice, nor yourself; giving his
judgment of each of you with far too much freedom and without sufficient
knowledge."
Thus the alliance between the Netherlands and France, notwithstanding
occasional traces of caprice and flaws of personal jealousy, was on
the whole sincere, for it was founded on the surest foundation of
international friendship, the self-interest of each. Henry, although
boasting of having bought Paris with a mass, knew as well as his worst
enemy that in that bargain he had never purchased the confidence of the
ancient church, on whose bosom he had flung himself with so much dramatic
pomp. His noble position, as champion of religious toleration, was not
only unappreciated in an age in which each church and every sect
arrogated to itself a monopoly of the truth, but it was one in which
he did not himself sincerely believe.
After all, he was still the chieftain of the Protestant Union, and,
although Eldest Son of the Church, was the bitter antagonist of the
League and the sworn foe to the House of Austria. He was walking through
pitfalls with a crowd of invisible but relentless foes dogging his every
footstep. In his household or without were daily visions of dagger and
bowl, and he felt himself marching to his doom. How could the man on
whom the heretic and rebellious Hollanders and the Protestant princes of
Germany relied as on their saviour escape the unutterable wrath and the
patient vengeance of a power that never forgave?
In England the jealousy of the Republic and of France as co-guardian and
protector of the Republic was even greater than in France. Though placed
by circumstances in the position of ally to the Netherlands and enemy to
Spain, James hated the Netherlands and adored Spain. His first thought
on escaping the general destruction to which the Gunpowder Plot was to
have involved himself and family and all the principal personages of the
realm seems to have been to exculpate Spain from participation in the
crime. His next was to deliver a sermon to Parliament, exonerating the
Catholics and going out of his way to stigmatize the Puritans as
entertaining doctrines which should be punished with fire. As the
Puritans had certainly not been accused of complicity with Guy Fawkes
or Garnet, this portion of the discourse was at least superfluous. But
James loathed nothing so much as a Puritan. A Catholic at heart, be
would have been the warmest ally of the League had he only been permitted
to be Pope of Great Britain. He hated and feared a Jesuit, not for his
religious doctrines, for with these he sympathized, but for his political
creed. He liked not that either Roman Pontiff or British Presbyterian
should abridge his heaven-born prerogative. The doctrine of Papal
superiority to temporal sovereigns was as odious to him as Puritan
rebellion to the hierarchy of which he was the chief. Moreover,
in his hostility to both Papists and Presbyterians, there was much of
professional rivalry. Having been deprived by the accident of birth of
his true position as theological professor, he lost no opportunity of
turning his throne into a pulpit and his sceptre into a controversial
pen.
Henry of France, who rarely concealed his contempt for Master Jacques, as
he called him, said to the English ambassador, on receiving from him one
of the King's books, and being asked what he thought of it--"It is not
the business of us kings to write, but to fight. Everybody should mind
his own business, but it is the vice of most men to wish to appear
learned in matters of which they are ignorant."
The flatterers of James found their account in pandering to his
sacerdotal and royal vanity. "I have always believed," said the Lord
Chancellor, after hearing the King argue with and browbeat a Presbyterian
deputation, "that the high-priesthood and royalty ought to be united, but
I never witnessed the actual junction till now, after hearing the learned
discourse of your Majesty." Archbishop Whitgift, grovelling still lower,
declared his conviction that James, in the observations he had deigned to
make, had been directly inspired by the Holy Ghost.
Nothing could be more illogical and incoherent with each other than his
theological and political opinions. He imagined himself a defender of
the Protestant faith, while hating Holland and fawning on the House of
Austria.
In England he favoured Arminianism, because the Anglican Church
recognized for its head the temporal chief of the State. In Holland
he vehemently denounced the Arminians, indecently persecuting their
preachers and statesmen, who were contending for exactly the same
principle--the supremacy of State over Church. He sentenced Bartholomew
Legate to be burned alive in Smithfield as a blasphemous heretic, and did
his best to compel the States of Holland to take the life of Professor
Vorstius of Leyden. He persecuted the Presbyterians in England as
furiously as he defended them in Holland. He drove Bradford and Carver
into the New England wilderness, and applauded Gomarus and Walaeus and
the other famous leaders of the Presbyterian party in the Netherlands
with all his soul and strength.
He united with the French king in negotiations for Netherland
independence, while denouncing the Provinces as guilty of criminal
rebellion against their lawful sovereign.
"He pretends," said Jeannin, "to assist in bringing about the peace, and
nevertheless does his best openly to prevent it."
Richardot declared that the firmness of the King of Spain proceeded
entirely from reliance on the promise of James that there should be no
acknowledgment in the treaty of the liberty of the States. Henry wrote
to Jeannin that he knew very well "what that was capable of, but that he
should not be kept awake by anything he could do."
As a king he spent his reign--so much of it as could be spared from
gourmandizing, drunkenness, dalliance with handsome minions of his own
sex, and theological pursuits--in rescuing the Crown from dependence on
Parliament; in straining to the utmost the royal prerogative; in
substituting proclamations for statutes; in doing everything in his
power, in short, to smooth the path for his successor to the scaffold.
As father of a family he consecrated many years of his life to the
wondrous delusion of the Spanish marriages.
The Gunpowder Plot seemed to have inspired him with an insane desire
for that alliance, and few things in history are more amazing than the
persistency with which he pursued the scheme, until the pursuit became
not only ridiculous, but impossible.
With such a man, frivolous, pedantic, conceited, and licentious, the
earnest statesmen of Holland were forced into close alliance. It is
pathetic to see men like Barneveld and Hugo Grotius obliged, on great
occasions of state, to use the language of respect and affection to one
by whom they were hated, and whom they thoroughly despised.
But turning away from France, it was in vain for them to look for kings
or men either among friends or foes. In Germany religious dissensions
were gradually ripening into open war, and it would be difficult to
imagine a more hopelessly incompetent ruler than the man who was
nominally chief of the Holy Roman Realm. Yet the distracted Rudolph was
quite as much an emperor as the chaos over which he was supposed to
preside was an empire. Perhaps the very worst polity ever devised by
human perverseness was the system under which the great German race was
then writhing and groaning. A mad world with a lunatic to govern it;
a democracy of many princes, little and big, fighting amongst each
other, and falling into daily changing combinations as some masterly or
mischievous hand whirled the kaleidoscope; drinking Rhenish by hogsheads,
and beer by the tun; robbing churches, dictating creeds to their
subjects, and breaking all the commandments themselves; a people at the
bottom dimly striving towards religious freedom and political life out of
abject social, ecclesiastical, and political serfdom, and perhaps even
then dumbly feeling within its veins, with that prophetic instinct which
never abandons great races, a far distant and magnificent Future of
national unity and Imperial splendour, the very reverse of the confusion
which was then the hideous Present; an Imperial family at top with many
heads and slender brains; a band of brothers and cousins wrangling,
intriguing, tripping up each others' heels, and unlucky Rudolph, in his
Hradschin, looking out of window over the peerless Prague, spread out in
its beauteous landscape of hill and dale, darkling forest, dizzy cliffs,
and rushing river, at his feet, feebly cursing the unhappy city for its
ingratitude to an invisible and impotent sovereign; his excellent brother
Matthias meanwhile marauding through the realms and taking one crown
after another from his poor bald head.
It would be difficult to depict anything more precisely what an emperor
in those portentous times should not be. He collected works of art of
many kinds--pictures, statues, gems. He passed his days in his galleries
contemplating in solitary grandeur these treasures, or in his stables,
admiring a numerous stud of horses which he never drove or rode.
Ambassadors and ministers of state disguised themselves as grooms and
stable-boys to obtain accidental glimpses of a sovereign who rarely
granted audiences. His nights were passed in star-gazing with Tycho de
Brake, or with that illustrious Suabian whose name is one of the great
lights and treasures of the world. But it was not to study the laws of
planetary motion nor to fathom mysteries of divine harmony that the
monarch stood with Kepler in the observatory. The influence of countless
worlds upon the destiny of one who, by capricious accident, if accident
ever exists in history, had been entrusted with the destiny of so large a
portion of one little world; the horoscope, not of the Universe, but of
himself; such were the limited purposes with which the Kaiser looked upon
the constellations.
For the Catholic Rudolph had received the Protestant Kepler, driven from
Tubingen because Lutheran doctors, knowing from Holy Writ that the sun
had stood still in Ajalon, had denounced his theory of planetary motion.
His mother had just escaped being burned as a witch, and the world owes
a debt of gratitude to the Emperor for protecting the astrologer, when
enlightened theologians might, perhaps, have hanged the astronomer.
A red-faced, heavy fowled, bald-headed, somewhat goggle-eyed old
gentleman, Rudolph did his best to lead the life of a hermit, and escape
the cares of royalty. Timid by temperament, yet liable to fits of
uncontrollable anger, he broke his furniture to pieces when irritated,
and threw dishes that displeased him in his butler's face, but left
affairs of state mainly to his valet, who earned many a penny by selling
the Imperial signature.
He had just signed the famous "Majestatsbrief," by which he granted vast
privileges to the Protestants of Bohemia, and had bitten the pen to
pieces in a paroxysm of anger, after dimly comprehending the extent of
the concessions which he had made.
There were hundreds of sovereign states over all of which floated the
shadowy and impalpable authority of an Imperial crown scarcely fixed
on the head of any one of the rival brethren and cousins; there was a
confederation of Protestants, with the keen-sighted and ambitious
Christian of Anhalt acting as its chief, and dreaming of the Bohemian
crown; there was the just-born Catholic League, with the calm, far-
seeing, and egotistical rather than self-seeking Maximilian at its head;
each combination extending over the whole country, stamped with
imbecility of action from its birth, and perverted and hampered by
inevitable jealousies. In addition to all these furrows ploughed by
the very genius of discord throughout the unhappy land was the wild and
secret intrigue with which Leopold, Archduke and Bishop, dreaming also
of the crown of Wenzel, was about to tear its surface as deeply as he
dared.
Thus constituted were the leading powers of Europe in the earlier part of
1609--the year in which a peaceful period seemed to have begun. To those
who saw the entangled interests of individuals, and the conflict of
theological dogmas and religious and political intrigue which furnished
so much material out of which wide-reaching schemes of personal ambition
could be spun, it must have been obvious that the interval of truce was
necessarily but a brief interlude between two tragedies.