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Title: History of the United Netherlands, 1584-1609, Complete

Author: John Lothrop Motley

Release Date: January, 2004  [EBook #4885]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on April 17, 2002]

Edition: 10

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HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS, 1584-1609, Complete

From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce

By John Lothrop Motley




PREFACE.

The indulgence with which the History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic
was received has encouraged me to prosecute my task with renewed
industry.

A single word seems necessary to explain the somewhat increased
proportions which the present work has assumed over the original design.
The intimate connection which was formed between the Kingdom of England
and the Republic of Holland, immediately after the death of William the
Silent, rendered the history and the fate of the two commonwealths for a
season almost identical.  The years of anxiety and suspense during which
the great Spanish project for subjugating England and reconquering the
Netherlands, by the same invasion, was slowly matured, were of deepest
import for the future destiny of those two countries, and for the cause
of national liberty.  The deep-laid conspiracy of Spain and Rome against
human rights deserves to be patiently examined, for it is one of the
great lessons of history.  The crisis was long and doubtful, and the
health--perhaps the existence--of England and Holland, and, with them, of
a great part of Christendom, was on the issue.

History has few so fruitful examples of the dangers which come from
superstition and despotism, and the blessings which flow from the
maintenance of religious and political freedom, as those afforded by the
struggle between England and Holland on the one side, and Spain and Rome
on the other, during the epoch which I have attempted to describe.  It is
for this reason that I have thought it necessary to reveal, as minutely
as possible, the secret details of this conspiracy of king and priest
against the people, and to show how it was baffled at last by the strong
self-helping energy of two free nations combined.

The period occupied by these two volumes is therefore a short one, when
counted by years, for it begins in 1584 and ends with the commencement of
1590.  When estimated by the significance of events and their results for
future ages, it will perhaps be deemed worthy of the close examination
which it has received.  With the year 1588 the crisis was past; England
was safe, and the new Dutch commonwealth was thoroughly organized.  It is
my design, in two additional volumes, which, with the two now published,
will complete the present work, to carry the history of the Republic down
to the Synod of Dort.  After this epoch the Thirty Years' War broke out
in Germany; and it is my wish, at a future day, to retrace the history of
that eventful struggle, and to combine with it the civil and military
events in Holland, down to the epoch when the Thirty Years' War and the
Eighty Years' War of the Netherlands were both brought to a close by the
Peace of Westphalia.

The materials for the volumes now offered to the public were so abundant
that it was almost impossible to condense them into smaller compass
without doing injustice to the subject.  It was desirable to throw full
light on these prominent points of the history, while the law of
historical perspective will allow long stretches of shadow in the
succeeding portions, in which less important objects may be more slightly
indicated.  That I may not be thought capable of abusing the reader's
confidence by inventing conversations, speeches, or letters, I would take
this opportunity of stating--although I have repeated the remark in the
foot-notes--that no personage in these pages is made to write or speak
any words save those which, on the best historical evidence, he is known
to have written or spoken.

A brief allusion to my sources of information will not seem superfluous:
I have carefully studied all the leading contemporary chronicles and
pamphlets of Holland, Flanders, Spain, France, Germany, and England; but,
as the authorities are always indicated in the notes, it is unnecessary
to give a list of them here.  But by far my most valuable materials are
entirely unpublished ones.

The archives of England are especially rich for the history of the
sixteenth century; and it will be seen, in the course of the narrative,
how largely I have drawn from those mines of historical wealth, the State
Paper Office and the MS. department of the British Museum.  Although both
these great national depositories are in admirable order, it is to be
regretted that they are not all embraced in one collection, as much
trouble might then be spared to the historical student, who is now
obliged to pass frequently from the one place to the other, in order to,
find different portions of the same correspondence.

From the royal archives of Holland I have obtained many most important,
entirely unpublished documents, by the aid of which I have endeavoured to
verify, to illustrate, or sometimes to correct, the recitals of the elder
national chroniclers; and I have derived the greatest profit from the
invaluable series of Archives and Correspondence of the Orange-Nassau
Family, given to the world by M. Groen van Prinsterer.  I desire to renew
to that distinguished gentleman, and to that eminent scholar M. Bakhuyzen
van den Brink, the expression of my gratitude for their constant kindness
and advice during my residence at the Hague.  Nothing can exceed the
courtesy which has been extended to me in Holland, and I am deeply
grateful for the indulgence with which my efforts to illustrate the
history of the country have been received where that history is best
known.

I have also been much aided by the study of a portion of the Archives of
Simancas, the originals of which are in the Archives de l'Empire in
Paris, and which were most liberally laid before me through the kindness
of M. le Comte de La Borde.

I have, further; enjoyed an inestimable advantage in the perusal of the
whole correspondence between Philip II., his ministers, and governors,
relating to the affairs of the Netherlands, from the epoch at which this
work commences down to that monarch's death.  Copies of this
correspondence have been carefully made from the originals at Simancas by
order of the Belgian Government, under the superintendence of the eminent
archivist M. Gachard, who has already published a synopsis or abridgment
of a portion of it in a French translation.  The translation and
abridgment of so large a mass of papers, however, must necessarily occupy
many years, and it may be long, therefore, before the whole of the
correspondence--and particularly that portion of it relating to the epoch
occupied by these volumes sees the light.  It was, therefore, of the
greatest importance for me to see the documents themselves unabridged and
untranslated.  This privilege has been accorded me, and I desire to
express my thanks to his Excellency M. van de Weyer, the distinguished
representative of Belgium at the English Court, to whose friendly offices
I am mainly indebted for the satisfaction of my wishes in this respect.
A letter from him to his Excellency M. Rogier, Minister of the Interior
in Belgium--who likewise took the most courteous interest in promoting my
views--obtained for me the permission thoroughly to study this
correspondence; and I passed several months in Brussels, occupied with
reading the whole of it from the year 1584 to the end of the reign of
Philip II.

I was thus saved a long visit to the Archives of Simancas, for it would
be impossible conscientiously to write the history of the epoch without a
thorough examination of the correspondence of the King and his ministers.
I venture to hope, therefore--whatever judgment may be passed upon my own
labours--that this work may be thought to possess an intrinsic value; for
the various materials of which it is composed are original, and--so far
as I am aware--have not been made use of by any historical writer.

I would take this opportunity to repeat my thanks to M. Gachard,
Archivist of the kingdom of Belgium, for the uniform courtesy and
kindness which I have received at his-hands, and to bear my testimony to
the skill and critical accuracy with which he has illustrated so many
passages of Belgian and Spanish history.

31, HERTFORD-STREET, MAY-FAIR,
November llth 1860.




THE UNITED NETHERLANDS.

CHAPTER I.

     Murder of Orange--Extension of Protestantism--Vast Power of Spain--
     Religious Origin of the Revolt--Disposal of the Sovereignty--Courage
     of the Estates of Holland--Children of William the Silent--
     Provisional Council of State--Firm attitude of Holland and Zeeland--
     Weakness of Flanders--Fall of Ghent--Adroitness of Alexander
     Farnese.

WILLIAM THE SILENT, Prince of Orange, had been murdered on the 10th of
July, 1534.  It is difficult to imagine a more universal disaster than
the one thus brought about by the hand of a single obscure fanatic.  For
nearly twenty years the character of the Prince had been expanding
steadily as the difficulties of his situation increased.  Habit,
necessity, and the natural gifts of the man, had combined to invest him
at last with an authority which seemed more than human.  There was such
general confidence in his sagacity, courage, and purity, that the nation
had come to think with his brain and to act with his hand.  It was
natural that, for an instant, there should be a feeling as of absolute
and helpless paralysis.

Whatever his technical attributes in the polity of the Netherlands--and
it would be difficult to define them with perfect accuracy--there is no
doubt that he stood there, the head of a commonwealth, in an attitude
such as had been maintained by but few of the kings, or chiefs, or high
priests of history.  Assassination, a regular and almost indispensable
portion of the working machinery of Philip's government, had produced, in
this instance, after repeated disappointments, the result at last which
had been so anxiously desired.  The ban of the Pope and the offered gold
of the King had accomplished a victory greater than any yet achieved by
the armies of Spain, brilliant as had been their triumphs on the blood-
stained soil of the Netherlands.

Had that "exceeding proud, neat, and spruce"  Doctor of Laws, William
Parry, who had been busying himself at about the same time with his
memorable project against the Queen of England, proved as successful as
Balthazar Gerard, the fate of Christendom would have been still darker.
Fortunately, that member of Parliament had made the discovery in time--
not for himself, but for Elizabeth--that the "Lord was better pleased
with adverbs than nouns;" the well-known result being that the traitor
was hanged and the Sovereign saved.

Yet such was the condition of Europe at that day.  A small, dull,
elderly, imperfectly-educated, patient, plodding invalid, with white hair
and protruding under jaw, and dreary visage, was sitting day after day;
seldom speaking, never smiling, seven or eight hours out of every twenty-
four, at a writing table covered with heaps of interminable despatches,
in a cabinet far away beyond the seas and mountains, in the very heart of
Spain.  A clerk or two, noiselessly opening and shutting the door, from
time to time, fetching fresh bundles of letters and taking away others--
all written and composed by secretaries or high functionaries--and all
to be scrawled over in the margin by the diligent old man in a big
schoolboy's hand and style--if ever schoolboy, even in the sixteenth
century, could write so illegibly or express himself so awkwardly;
couriers in the court-yard arriving from or departing for the uttermost
parts of earth-Asia, Africa America, Europe-to fetch and carry these
interminable epistles which contained the irresponsible commands of this
one individual, and were freighted with the doom and destiny of countless
millions of the world's inhabitants--such was the system of government
against which the Netherlands had protested and revolted.  It was a
system under which their fields had been made desolate, their cities
burned and pillaged, their men hanged, burned, drowned, or hacked to
pieces; their women subjected to every outrage; and to put an end to
which they had been devoting their treasure and their blood for nearly
the length of one generation.  It was a system, too, which, among other
results, had just brought about the death of the foremost statesman of
Europe, and had nearly effected simultaneously the murder of the most
eminent sovereign in the world.  The industrious Philip, safe and
tranquil in the depths of the Escorial, saying his prayers three times
a day with exemplary regularity, had just sent three bullets through the
body of William the Silent at his dining-room door in Delft.  "Had it
only been done two years earlier," observed the patient old man, "much
trouble might have been spared me; but 'tis better late than never."  Sir
Edward Stafford, English envoy in Paris, wrote to his government--so soon
as the news of the murder reached him--that, according to his information
out of the Spanish minister's own house, "the same practice that had been
executed upon the Prince of Orange, there were practisers more than two
or three about to execute upon her Majesty, and that within two months."
Without vouching for the absolute accuracy of this intelligence, he
implored the Queen to be more upon her guard than ever.  "For there is no
doubt," said the envoy, "that she is a chief mark to shoot at; and seeing
that there were men cunning enough to inchant a man and to encourage him
to kill the Prince of Orange, in the midst of Holland, and that there was
a knave found desperate enough to do it, we must think hereafter that
anything may be done.  Therefore God preserve her Majesty."

Invisible as the Grand Lama of Thibet, clothed with power as extensive
and absolute as had ever been wielded by the most imperial Caesar, Philip
the Prudent, as he grew older and feebler in mind and body seemed to
become more gluttonous of work, more ambitious to extend his sceptre over
lands which he had never seen or dreamed of seeing, more fixed in his
determination to annihilate that monster Protestantism, which it had been
the business of his life to combat, more eager to put to death every
human creature, whether anointed monarch or humble artizan, that defended
heresy or opposed his progress to universal empire.

If this enormous power, this fabulous labour, had, been wielded or
performed with a beneficent intention; if the man who seriously regarded
himself as the owner of a third of the globe, with the inhabitants
thereof, had attempted to deal with these extensive estates inherited
from his ancestors with the honest intention of a thrifty landlord, an
intelligent slave-owner, it would have yet been possible for a little
longer to smile at the delusion, and endure the practice.

But there was another old man, who lived in another palace in another
remote land, who, in his capacity of representative of Saint Peter,
claimed to dispose of all the kingdoms of the earth--and had been willing
to bestow them upon the man who would go down and worship him.  Philip
stood enfeoffed, by divine decree, of all America, the East Indies, the
whole Spanish Peninsula, the better portion of Italy, the seventeen
Netherlands, and many other possessions far and near; and he contemplated
annexing to this extensive property the kingdoms of France, of England,
and Ireland.  The Holy League, maintained by the sword of Guise, the
pope's ban, Spanish ducats, Italian condottieri, and German mercenaries,
was to exterminate heresy and establish the Spanish dominion in France.
The same machinery, aided by the pistol or poniard of the assassin, was
to substitute for English protestantism and England's queen the Roman
Catholic religion and a foreign sovereign.  "The holy league," said
Duplessis-Mornay, one of the noblest characters of the age, "has destined
us all to the name sacrifice.  The ambition of the Spaniard, which has
overleaped so many lands and seas, thinks nothing inaccessible."

The Netherland revolt had therefore assumed world-wide proportions.
Had it been merely the rebellion of provinces against a sovereign, the
importance of the struggle would have been more local and temporary.  But
the period was one in which the geographical land-marks of countries were
almost removed.  The dividing-line ran through every state, city, and
almost every family.  There was a country which believed in the absolute
power of the church to dictate the relations between man and his Maker,
and to utterly exterminate all who disputed that position.  There was
another country which protested against that doctrine, and claimed,
theoretically or practically, a liberty of conscience.  The territory of
these countries was mapped out by no visible lines, but the inhabitants
of each, whether resident in France, Germany, England, or Flanders,
recognised a relationship which took its root in deeper differences than
those of race or language.  It was not entirely a question of doctrine or
dogma.  A large portion of the world had become tired of the antiquated
delusion of a papal supremacy over every land, and had recorded its
determination, once for all, to have done with it.  The transition to
freedom of conscience became a necessary step, sooner or later to be
taken.  To establish the principle of toleration for all religions was
an inevitable consequence of the Dutch revolt; although thus far, perhaps
only one conspicuous man in advance of his age had boldly announced that
doctrine and had died in its defence.  But a great true thought never
dies--though long buried in the earth--and the day was to come, after
long years, when the seed was to ripen into a harvest of civil and
religious emancipation, and when the very word toleration was to sound
like an insult and an absurdity.

A vast responsibility rested upon the head of a monarch, placed as Philip
II. found himself, at this great dividing point in modern history.  To
judge him, or any man in such a position, simply from his own point of
view, is weak and illogical.  History judges the man according to its
point of view.  It condemns or applauds the point of view itself.  The
point of view of a malefactor is not to excuse robbery and murder.  Nor
is the spirit of the age to be pleaded in defence of the evil-doer at a
time when mortals were divided into almost equal troops.  The age of
Philip II. was also the age of William of Orange and his four brethren,
of Sainte Aldegonde, of Olden-Barneveldt, of Duplessis-Mornay, La Noue,
Coligny, of Luther, Melancthon, and Calvin, Walsingham, Sidney, Raleigh,
Queen Elizabeth, of Michael Montaigne, and William Shakspeare.  It was
not an age of blindness, but of glorious light.  If the man whom the
Maker of the Universe had permitted to be born to such boundless
functions, chose to put out his own eyes that he might grope along his
great pathway of duty in perpetual darkness, by his deeds he must be
judged.  The King perhaps firmly believed that the heretics of the
Netherlands, of France, or of England, could escape eternal perdition
only by being extirpated from the earth by fire and sword, and therefore;
perhaps, felt it his duty to devote his life to their extermination.
But he believed, still more firmly, that his own political authority,
throughout his dominions, and his road to almost universal empire, lay
over the bodies of those heretics.  Three centuries have nearly past
since this memorable epoch; and the world knows the fate of the states
which accepted the dogma which it was Philip's life-work to enforce, and
of those who protested against the system.  The Spanish and Italian
Peninsulas have had a different history from that which records the
career of France, Prussia, the Dutch Commonwealth, the British Empire,
the Transatlantic Republic.

Yet the contest between those Seven meagre Provinces upon the sand-banks
of the North Sea, and--the great Spanish Empire, seemed at the moment
with which we are now occupied a sufficiently desperate one.  Throw a
glance upon the map of Europe.  Look at the broad magnificent Spanish
Peninsula, stretching across eight degrees of latitude and ten of
longitude, commanding the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, with a genial
climate, warmed in winter by the vast furnace of Africa, and protected
from the scorching heats of summer by shady mountain and forest, and
temperate breezes from either ocean.  A generous southern territory,
flowing with wine and oil, and all the richest gifts of a bountiful
nature-splendid cities--the new and daily expanding Madrid, rich in the
trophies of the most artistic period of the modern world--Cadiz, as
populous at that day as London, seated by the straits where the ancient
and modern systems of traffic were blending like the mingling of the two
oceans--Granada, the ancient wealthy seat of the fallen Moors--Toledo,
Valladolid, and Lisbon, chief city of the recently-conquered kingdom of
Portugal, counting, with its suburbs, a larger population than any city,
excepting Paris, in Europe, the mother of distant colonies, and the
capital of the rapidly-developing traffic with both the Indies--these
were some of the treasures of Spain herself.  But she possessed Sicily
also, the better portion of Italy, and important dependencies in Africa,
while the famous maritime discoveries of the age had all enured to her
aggrandizement.  The world seemed suddenly to have expanded its wings
from East to West, only to bear the fortunate Spanish Empire to the most
dizzy heights of wealth and power.  The most accomplished generals, the
most disciplined and daring infantry the world has ever known, the best-
equipped and most extensive navy, royal and mercantile, of the age, were
at the absolute command of the sovereign.  Such was Spain.

Turn now to the north-western corner of Europe.  A morsel of territory,
attached by a slight sand-hook to the continent, and half-submerged by
the stormy waters of the German Ocean--this was Holland.  A rude climate,
with long, dark, rigorous, winters, and brief summers, a territory, the
mere wash of three great rivers, which had fertilized happier portions of
Europe only to desolate and overwhelm this less-favoured land, a soil so
ungrateful, that if the whole of its four hundred thousand acres of
arable land had been sowed with grain, it could not feed the labourers
alone, and a population largely estimated at one million of souls--these
were the characteristics of the Province which already had begun to give
its name to the new commonwealth.  The isles of Zeeland--entangled in the
coils of deep slow-moving rivers, or combating the ocean without--and the
ancient episcopate of Utrecht, formed the only other Provinces that had
quite shaken off the foreign yoke.  In Friesland, the important city of
Groningen was still held for the King, while Bois-le-Duc, Zutphen,
besides other places in Gelderland and North Brabant, also in possession
of the royalists, made the position of those provinces precarious.

The limit of the Spanish or "obedient" Provinces, on the one hand, and of
the United Provinces on the other, cannot, therefore, be briefly and
distinctly stated.  The memorable treason--or, as it was called, the
"reconciliation" of the Walloon Provinces in the year 1583-4--had placed
the Provinces of Hainault, Arthois, Douay, with the flourishing cities
Arran, Valenciennes, Lille, Tournay, and others--all Celtic Flanders, in
short-in the grasp of Spain.  Cambray was still held by the French
governor, Seigneur de Balagny, who had taken advantage of the Duke of
Anjou's treachery to the States, to establish himself in an unrecognized
but practical petty sovereignty, in defiance both of France and Spain;
while East Flanders and South Brabant still remained a disputed
territory, and the immediate field of contest.  With these limitations,
it may be assumed, for general purposes, that the territory of the United
States was that of the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands, while the
obedient Provinces occupied what is now the territory of Belgium.

Such, then, were the combatants in the great eighty years' war for civil
and religious liberty; sixteen of which had now passed away.  On the one
side, one of the most powerful and, populous world-empires of history,
then in the zenith of its prosperity; on the other hand, a slender group
of cities, governed by merchants and artisans, and planted precariously
upon a meagre, unstable soil.  A million and a half of souls against the
autocrat of a third part of the known world.  The contest seemed as
desperate as the cause was certainly sacred; but it had ceased to be a
local contest.  For the history which is to occupy us in these volumes is
not exclusively the history of Holland.  It is the story of the great
combat between despotism, sacerdotal and regal, and the spirit of
rational human liberty.  The tragedy opened in the Netherlands, and its
main scenes were long enacted there; but as the ambition of Spain
expanded, and as the resistance to the principle which she represented
became more general, other nations were, of necessity, involved in the
struggle.  There came to be one country, the citizens of which were the
Leaguers; and another country, whose inhabitants were Protestants.  And
in this lay the distinction between freedom and absolutism. The religious
question swallowed all the others.  There was never a period in the early
history of the Dutch revolt when the Provinces would not have returned to
their obedience, could they have been assured of enjoying liberty of
conscience or religious peace; nor was there ever a single moment in
Philip II.'s life in which he wavered in his fixed determination never to
listen to such a claim.  The quarrel was in its nature irreconcilable and
eternal as the warfare between wrong and right; and the establishment of
a comparative civil liberty in Europe and America was the result of the
religious war of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  The struggle
lasted eighty years, but the prize was worth the contest.

The object of the war between the Netherlands and Spain was not,
therefore, primarily, a rebellion against established authority for the
maintenance of civil rights.  To preserve these rights was secondary.
The first cause was religion.  The Provinces had been fighting for years
against the Inquisition.  Had they not taken arms, the Inquisition would
have been established in the Netherlands, and very probably in England,
and England might have become in its turn a Province of the Spanish
Empire.

The death of William the Silent produced a sudden change in the political
arrangements of the liberated Netherlands.  During the year 1583, the
United Provinces had elected Francis, Duke of Anjou, to be Duke of
Brabant and sovereign of the whole country, under certain constitutional
provisions enumerated in articles of solemn compact.  That compact had
been grossly violated.  The Duke had made a treacherous attempt to
possess himself of absolute power and to seize several important cities.
He had been signally defeated in Antwerp, and obliged to leave the
country, covered with ignominy.  The States had then consulted William of
Orange as to the course to be taken in the emergency.  The Prince had
told them that their choice was triple.  They might reconcile themselves
with Spain, and abandon the contest for religious liberty which they had
so long been waging; they might reconcile themselves with Anjou,
notwithstanding that he had so utterly forfeited all claims to their
consideration; or they might fight the matter out with Spain single-
handed.  The last course was, in his opinion, the most eligible one, and
he was ready to sacrifice his life to its furtherance.  It was, however,
indispensable, should that policy be adopted, that much larger supplies
should be voted than had hitherto been raised, and, in general, that a
much more extensive and elevated spirit of patriotism should manifest
itself than had hitherto been displayed.

It was, on the whole, decided to make a second arrangement with the Duke
of Anjou, Queen Elizabeth warmly urging that course.  At the same time,
however, that articles of agreement were drawn up for the installation of
Anjou as sovereign of the United Provinces, the Prince had himself
consented to accept the title of Count of Holland, under an ample
constitutional charter, dictated by his own lips.  Neither Anjou nor
Orange lived to be inaugurated into the offices thus bestowed upon them.
The Duke died at Chateau-Thierry on the 10th June, and the Prince was
assassinated a month later at Delft.

What now was the political position of the United Provinces at this
juncture?  The sovereignty which had been held by the Estates, ready to
be conferred respectively upon Anjou and Orange, remained in the hands of
the Estates.  There was no opposition to this theory.  No more enlarged
view of the social compact had yet been taken.  The people, as such,
claimed no sovereignty.  Had any champion claimed it for them they would
hardly have understood him.  The nation dealt with facts.  After abjuring
Philip in 1581--an act which had been accomplished by the Estates--the
same Estates in general assembly had exercised sovereign power, and had
twice disposed of that sovereign power by electing a hereditary ruler.
Their right and their power to do this had been disputed by none, save by
the deposed monarch in Spain.  Having the sovereignty to dispose of, it
seemed logical that the Estates might keep it, if so inclined.  They did
keep it, but only in trust.  While Orange lived, he might often have been
elected sovereign of all the Provinces, could he have been induced to
consent.  After his death, the Estates retained, ex necessitate, the
sovereignty; and it will soon be related what they intended to do with
it.  One thing is very certain, that neither Orange, while he lived, nor
the Estates, after his death, were actuated in their policy by personal
ambition.  It will be seen that the first object of the Estates was to
dispossess themselves of the sovereignty which had again fallen into
their hands.

What were the Estates?  Without, at the present moment, any farther
inquiries into that constitutional system which had been long
consolidating itself, and was destined to exist upon a firmer basis for
centuries longer, it will be sufficient to observe, that the great
characteristic of the Netherland government was the municipality.

Each Province contained a large number of cities, which were governed by
a board of magistrates, varying in number from twenty to forty.  This
college, called the Vroedschap (Assembly of Sages), consisted of the most
notable citizens, and was a self-electing body--a close corporation--the
members being appointed for life, from the citizens at large.  Whenever
vacancies occurred from death or loss of citizenship, the college chose
new members--sometimes immediately, sometimes by means of a double or
triple selection of names, the choice of one from among which was offered
to the stadtholder of the province.  This functionary was appointed by
the Count, as he was called, whether Duke of Bavaria or of Burgundy,
Emperor, or King.  After the abjuration of Philip, the governors were
appointed by the Estates of each Province.

The Sage-Men chose annually a board of senators, or schepens, whose
functions were mainly judicial; and there were generally two, and
sometimes three, burgomasters, appointed in the same way.  This was
the popular branch of the Estates.  But, besides this body of
representatives, were the nobles, men of ancient lineage and large
possessions, who had exercised, according to the general feudal law of
Europe, high, low, and intermediate jurisdiction upon their estates, and
had long been recognized as an integral part of the body politic, having
the right to appear, through delegates of their order, in the provincial
and in the general assemblies.

Regarded as a machine for bringing the most decided political capacities
into the administration of public affairs, and for organising the most
practical opposition to the system of religious tyranny, the Netherland
constitution was a healthy, and, for the age, an enlightened one.  The
officeholders, it is obvious, were not greedy for the spoils of office;
for it was, unfortunately, often the case that their necessary expenses
in the service of the state were not defrayed.  The people raised
enormous contributions for carrying on the war; but they could not afford
to be extremely generous to their faithful servants.

Thus constituted was the commonwealth upon the death of William the
Silent.  The gloom produced by that event was tragical.  Never in human
history was a more poignant and universal sorrow for the death of any
individual.  The despair was, for a brief season, absolute; but it was
soon succeeded by more lofty sentiments.  It seemed, after they had laid
their hero in the tomb, as though his spirit still hovered above the
nation which he had loved so well, and was inspiring it with a portion of
his own energy and wisdom.

Even on the very day of the murder, the Estates of Holland, then sitting
at Delft, passed a resolution "to maintain the good cause, with God's
help, to the uttermost, without sparing gold or blood."  This decree was
communicated to Admiral de Warmont, to Count Hohenlo, to William Lewis of
Nassau, and to other commanders by land and sea.  At the same time, the
sixteen members--for no greater number happened to be present at the
session--addressed letters to their absent colleagues, informing them
of the calamity which had befallen them, summoning them at once to
conference, and urging an immediate convocation of the Estates of all
the Provinces in General Assembly.  They also addressed strong letters of
encouragement, mingled with manly condolence, upon the common affliction,
to prominent military and naval commanders and civil functionaries,
begging them to "bear themselves manfully and valiantly, without
faltering in the least on account of the great misfortune which had
occurred, or allowing themselves to be seduced by any one from the union
of the States."  Among these sixteen were Van Zuylen, Van Nyvelt, the
Seigneur de Warmont, the Advocate of Holland, Paul Buys, Joost de Menin,
and John van Olden-Barneveldt.  A noble example was thus set at once to
their fellow citizens by these their representatives--a manful step taken
forward in the path where Orange had so long been leading.

The next movement, after the last solemn obsequies had been rendered to
the Prince was to provide for the immediate wants of his family.  For the
man who had gone into the revolt with almost royal revenues, left his
estate so embarrassed that his carpets, tapestries, household linen--
nay, even his silver spoons, and the very clothes of his wardrobe were
disposed of at auction for the benefit of his creditors.  He left eleven
children--a son and daughter by the first wife, a son and daughter by
Anna of Saxony, six daughters by Charlotte of Bourbon, and an infant,
Frederic Henry, born six months before his death.  The eldest son, Philip
William, had been a captive in Spain for seventeen years, having been
kidnapped from school, in Leyden, in the year 1567.  He had already
become so thoroughly Hispaniolized under the masterly treatment of the
King and the Jesuits, that even his face had lost all resemblance to the
type of his heroic family, and had acquired a sinister, gloomy,
forbidding expression, most painful to contemplate.  All of good that
he had retained was a reverence for his father's name--a sentiment which
he had manifested to an extravagant extent on a memorable occasion in
Madrid, by throwing out of window, and killing on the spot a Spanish
officer who had dared to mention the great Prince with insult.

The next son was Maurice, then seventeen years of age, a handsome youth,
with dark blue eyes, well-chiselled features, and full red lips, who had
already manifested a courage and concentration of character beyond his
years.  The son of William the Silent, the grandson of Maurice of Saxony,
whom he resembled in visage and character, he was summoned by every drop
of blood in his veins to do life-long battle with the spirit of Spanish
absolutism, and he was already girding himself for his life's work.  He
assumed at once for his device a fallen oak, with a young sapling
springing from its root.  His motto, "Tandem fit surculus arbor," "the
twig shall yet become a tree"--was to be nobly justified by his career.

The remaining son, then a six months' child, was also destined to high
fortunes, and to win an enduring name in his country's history.  For the
present he remained with his mother, the noble Louisa de Coligny, who had
thus seen, at long intervals, her father and two husbands fall victims to
the Spanish policy; for it is as certain that Philip knew beforehand, and
testified his approbation of, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, as that he
was the murderer of Orange.

The Estates of Holland implored the widowed Princess to remain in their
territority, settling a liberal allowance upon herself and her child, and
she fixed her residence at Leyden.

But her position was most melancholy.  Married in youth to the Seigneur
de Teligny, a young noble of distinguished qualities, she had soon become
both a widow and an orphan in the dread night of St. Bartholomew.  She
had made her own escape to Switzerland; and ten years afterwards she had
united herself in marriage with the Prince of Orange.  At the age of
thirty-two, she now found herself desolate and wretched in a foreign
land, where she had never felt thoroughly at home.  The widow and
children of William the Silent were almost without the necessaries of
life.  "I hardly know," wrote the Princess to her brother-in-law, Count
John, "how the children and I are to maintain ourselves according to the
honour of the house.  May God provide for us in his bounty, and certainly
we have much need of it."  Accustomed to the more luxurious civilisation
of France, she had been amused rather than annoyed, when, on her first
arrival in Holland for her nuptials, she found herself making the journey
from Rotterdam to Delft in an open cart without springs, instead of the
well-balanced coaches to which she had been used, arriving, as might have
been expected, "much bruised and shaken."  Such had become the primitive
simplicity of William the Silent's household.  But on his death, in
embarrassed circumstances, it was still more straightened.  She had no
cause either to love Leyden, for, after the assassination of her husband,
a brutal preacher, Hakkius by name, had seized that opportunity for
denouncing the French marriage, and the sumptuous christening of the
infant in January, as the deeds which had provoked the wrath of God and
righteous chastisement.  To remain there in her widowhood, with that six
months' child, "sole pledge of her dead lord, her consolation and only
pleasure," as she pathetically expressed herself, was sufficiently
painful, and she had been inclined to fix her residence in Flushing, in
the edifice which had belonged to her husband, as Marquis of Vere.  She
had been persuaded, however, to remain in Holland, although "complaining,
at first, somewhat of the unkindness of the people."

A small well-formed woman, with delicate features, exquisite complexion,
and very beautiful dark eyes, that seemed in after-years, as they looked
from beneath her coif, to be dim with unshed tears; with remarkable
powers of mind, angelic sweetness of disposition, a winning manner, and a
gentle voice, Louisa de Coligny became soon dear to the rough Hollanders,
and was ever a disinterested and valuable monitress both to her own child
and to his elder brother Maurice.

Very soon afterwards the States General established a State Council,
as a provisional executive board, for the term of three months, for the
Provinces of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Friesland, and such parts of
Flanders and Brabant as still remained in the Union.  At the head of this
body was placed young Maurice, who accepted the responsible position,
after three days' deliberation.  The young man had been completing his
education, with a liberal allowance from Holland and Zeeland, at the
University of Leyden; and such had been their tender care for the child
of so many hopes, that the Estates had given particular and solemn
warning, by resolution, to his governor during the previous summer,
on no account to allow him to approach the sea-shore, lest he should be
kidnapped by the Prince of Parma, who had then some war-vessels cruising
on the coast.

The salary of Maurice was now fixed at thirty thousand florins a year,
while each of the councillors was allowed fifteen hundred annually, out
of which stipend he was to support at least one servant; without making
any claim for travelling or other incidental expenses.

The Council consisted of three members from Brabant, two from Flanders,
four from Holland, three from Zeeland, two from Utrecht, one from
Mechlin, and three from Friesland--eighteen in all.  They were empowered
and enjoined to levy troops by land and sea, and to appoint naval and
military officers; to establish courts of admiralty, to expend the moneys
voted by the States, to maintain the ancient privileges of the country,
and to see that all troops in service of the Provinces made oath of
fidelity to the Union.  Diplomatic relations, questions of peace and war,
the treaty-making power, were not entrusted to the Council, without the
knowledge and consent of the States General, which body was to be
convoked twice a year by the State Council.

Thus the Provinces in the hour of danger and darkness were true to
themselves, and were far from giving way to a despondency which under
the circumstances would not have been unnatural.

For the waves of bitterness were rolling far and wide around them.  A
medal, struck in Holland at this period, represented a dismasted hulk
reeling through the tempest. The motto, "incertum quo fate ferent" (who
knows whither fate is sweeping her?) expressed most vividly the ship
wrecked condition of the country.  Alexander of Parma, the most
accomplished general and one of the most adroit statesmen of the age,
was swift to take advantage of the calamity which had now befallen the
rebellious Provinces. Had he been better provided with men and money,
the cause of the States might have seemed hopeless.  He addressed many
letters to the States General, to the magistracies of various cities, and
to individuals, affecting to consider that with the death of Orange had
died all authority, as well as all motive for continuing the contest with
Spain.  He offered easy terms of reconciliation with the discarded
monarch--always reserving, however, as a matter of course, the religious
question--for it was as well known to the States as to Parma that there
was no hope of Philip making concessions upon that important point.

In Holland and Zeeland the Prince's blandishments were of no avail.  His
letters received in various towns of those Provinces, offered, said one
who saw them, "almost every thing they would have or demand, even till
they should repent."  But the bait was not taken.  Individuals and
municipalities were alike stanch, remembering well that faith was not to
be kept with heretics.  The example was followed by the Estates of other
Provinces, and all sent in to the General Assembly, soon in session at
Delft, "their absolute and irrevocable authority to their deputies to
stand to that which they, the said States General, should dispose of as
to their persons, goods and country; a resolution and agreement which
never concurred before among them, to this day, in what age or government
soever."

It was decreed that no motion of agreement "with the tyrant of Spain"
should be entertained either publicly or privately, "under pain to be
reputed ill patriots."  It was also enacted in the city of Dort that any
man that brought letter or message from the enemy to any private person
"should be forthwith hanged."  This was expeditious and business-like.
The same city likewise took the lead in recording its determination by
public act, and proclaiming it by sound of trumpet, "to live and die in
the cause now undertaken."

In Flanders and Brabant the spirit was less noble.  Those Provinces were
nearly lost already.  Bruges seconded Parma's efforts to induce its
sister-city Ghent to imitate its own baseness in surrendering without
a struggle; and that powerful, turbulent, but most anarchical little
commonwealth was but too ready to listen to the voice of the tempter.
"The ducats of Spain, Madam, are trotting about in such fashion," wrote
envoy Des Pruneaux to Catherine de Medici, "that they have vanquished a
great quantity of courages.  Your Majesties, too, must employ money if
you wish to advance one step."  No man knew better than Parma how to
employ such golden rhetoric to win back a wavering rebel to his loyalty,
but he was not always provided with a sufficient store of those practical
arguments.

He was, moreover, not strong in the field, although he was far superior
to the States at this contingency.  He had, besides his garrisons,
something above 18,000 men.  The Provinces had hardly 3000 foot and 2500
horse, and these were mostly lying in the neighbourhood of Zutphen.
Alexander was threatening at the same time Ghent, Dendermonde, Mechlin,
Brussels, and Antwerp.  These five powerful cities lie in a narrow
circle, at distances varying from six miles to thirty, and are, as it
were, strung together upon the Scheldt, by which river, or its tributary,
the Senne, they are all threaded.  It would have been impossible for
Parma, with 100,000 men at his back, to undertake a regular and
simultaneous siege of these important places.  His purpose was to isolate
them from each other and from the rest of the country, by obtaining the
control of the great river, and so to reduce them by famine.  The scheme
was a masterly one, but even the consummate ability of Farnese would have
proved inadequate to the undertaking, had not the preliminary
assassination of Orange made the task comparatively easy.  Treason,
faint-heartedness, jealousy, were the fatal allies that the Governor-
General had reckoned upon, and with reason, in the council-rooms of these
cities.  The terms he offered were liberal.  Pardon, permission for
soldiers to retreat with technical honour, liberty to choose between
apostacy to the reformed religion or exile, with a period of two years
granted to the conscientious for the winding up of their affairs; these
were the conditions, which seemed flattering, now that the well-known
voice which had so often silenced the Flemish palterers and intriguers
was for ever hushed.

Upon the 17th August (1584) Dendermonde surrendered, and no lives were
taken save those of two preachers, one of whom was hanged, while the
other was drowned.  Upon the 7th September Vilvoorde capitulated, by
which event the water-communication between Brussels and Antwerp was cut
off.  Ghent, now thoroughly disheartened, treated with Parma likewise;
and upon the 17th September made its reconciliation with the King.  The
surrender of so strong and important a place was as disastrous to the
cause of the patriots as it was disgraceful to the citizens themselves.
It was, however, the result of an intrigue which had been long spinning,
although the thread had been abruptly, and, as it was hoped,
conclusively, severed several months before.  During the early part of
the year, after the reconciliation of Bruges with the King--an event
brought about by the duplicity and adroitness of Prince Chimay--the same
machinery had been diligently and almost successfully employed to produce
a like result in Ghent.  Champagny, brother of the famous Cardinal
Granvelle, had been under arrest for six years in that city.  His
imprisonment was not a strict one however; and he avenged himself for
what he considered very unjust treatment at the hands of the patriots,
by completely abandoning a cause which he had once begun to favour.
A man of singular ability, courage, and energy, distinguished both for
military and diplomatic services, he was a formidable enemy to the party
from which he was now for ever estranged.  As early as April of this
year, secret emissaries of Parma, dealing with Champagny in his nominal
prison, and with the disaffected burghers at large, had been on the point
of effecting an arrangement with the royal governor.  The negotiation had
been suddenly brought to a close by the discovery of a flagrant attempt
by Imbue, one of the secret adherents of the King, to sell the city of
Dendermonde, of which he was governor, to Parma.  For this crime he had
been brought to Ghent for trial, and then publicly beheaded.  The
incident came in aid of the eloquence of Orange, who, up to the latest
moment of his life, had been most urgent in his appeals to the patriotic
hearts of Ghent, not to abandon the great cause of the union and of
liberty.  William the Silent knew full well, that after the withdrawal of
the great keystone-city of Ghent, the chasm between the Celtic-Catholic
and the Flemish-Calvinist Netherlands could hardly be bridged again.
Orange was now dead.  The negotiations with France, too, on which those
of the Ghenters who still held true to the national cause had fastened
their hopes, had previously been brought to a stand-still by the death of
Anjou; and Champagny, notwithstanding the disaster to Imbize, became more
active than ever.  A private agent, whom the municipal government had
despatched to the French court for assistance, was not more successful
than his character and course of conduct would have seemed to warrant;
for during his residence in Paris, he had been always drunk, and
generally abusive.  This was not good diplomacy, particularly on the part
of an agent from a weak municipality to a haughty and most undecided
government.

"They found at this court," wrote Stafford to Walsingham, "great fault
with his manner of dealing that was sent from Gaunt.  He was scarce sober
from one end of the week to the other, and stood so much on his tiptoes
to have present answer within three days, or else that they of Gaunt
could tell where to bestow themselves.  They sent him away after keeping
him three weeks, and he went off in great dudgeon, swearing by yea and
nay that he will make report thereafter."

Accordingly, they of Ghent did bestow themselves very soon thereafter
upon the King of Spain.  The terms were considered liberal, but there
was, of course, no thought of conceding the great object for which the
patriots were contending--religious liberty.  The municipal privileges--
such as they might prove to be worth under the interpretation of a royal
governor and beneath the guns of a citadel filled with Spanish troops--
were to be guaranteed; those of the inhabitants who did not choose to go
to mass were allowed two years to wind up their affairs before going into
perpetual exile, provided they behaved themselves "without scandal;"
while on the other hand, the King's authority as Count of Flanders was to
be fully recognised, and all the dispossessed monks and abbots to be
restored to their property.

Accordingly, Champagny was rewarded for his exertions by being released
from prison and receiving the appointment of governor of the city: and,
after a very brief interval, about one-half of the population, the most
enterprising of its merchants and manufacturers, the most industrious of
its artizans, emigrated to Holland and Zeeland.  The noble city of Ghent
--then as large as Paris, thoroughly surrounded with moats, and fortified
with bulwarks, ravelins, and counterscarps, constructed of earth, during
the previous two years, at great expense, and provided with bread and
meat, powder and shot, enough to last a year--was ignominiously
surrendered.  The population, already a very reduced and slender one
for the great extent of the place and its former importance, had been
estimated at 70,000.  The number of houses was 35,000, so that as the
inhabitants were soon farther reduced to one-half, there remained but one
individual to each house.  On the other hand, the twenty-five monasteries
and convents in the town were repeopled--with how much advantage as a
set-off to the thousands of spinners and weavers who had wandered away,
and who in the flourishing days of Ghent had sent gangs of workmen
through the streets "whose tramp was like that of an army"--may be
sufficiently estimated by the result.

The fall of Brussels was deferred till March, and that of Mechlin (19th
July, 1585) and of Antwerp (19th August, 1585), till Midsummer of the
following year; but, the surrender of Ghent (10th March 1585)
foreshadowed the fate of Flanders and Brabant.  Ostend and Sluys,
however, were still in the hands of the patriots, and with them the
control of the whole Flemish coast.  The command of the sea was destined
to remain for centuries with the new republic.

The Prince of Parma, thus encouraged by the great success of his
intrigues, was determined to achieve still greater triumphs with his
arms, and steadily proceeded with his large design of closing the
Scheldt--and bringing about the fall of Antwerp.  The details of that
siege-one of the most brilliant military operations of the age and one of
the most memorable in its results--will be given, as a connected whole,
in a subsequent series of chapters.  For the present, it will be better
for the reader who wishes a clear view of European politics at this
epoch, and of the position of the Netherlands, to give his attention to
the web of diplomatic negotiation and court-intrigue which had been
slowly spreading over the leading states of Christendom, and in which the
fate of the world was involved.  If diplomatic adroitness consists mainly
in the power to deceive, never were more adroit diplomatists than those
of the sixteenth century.  It would, however, be absurd to deny them a
various range of abilities; and the history of no other age can show more
subtle, comprehensive, indefatigable--but, it must also be added, often
unscrupulous--intellects engaged in the great game of politics in which
the highest interests of millions were the stakes, than were those of
several leading minds in England, France, Germany, and Spain.  With such
statesmen the burgher-diplomatists of the new-born commonwealth had to
measure themselves; and the result was to show whether or not they could
hold their own in the cabinet as on the field,

For the present, however, the new state was unconscious of its latent
importance, The new-risen republic remained for a season nebulous, and
ready to unsphere itself so soon as the relative attraction of other
great powers should determine its absorption.  By the death of Anjou and
of Orange the United Netherlands had became a sovereign state, an
independent republic; but they stood with that sovereignty in their
hands, offering it alternately, not to the highest bidder, but to the
power that would be willing to accept their allegiance, on the sole
condition of assisting them in the maintenance of their religious
freedom.



CHAPTER II.

     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:

Diplomatic adroitness consists mainly in the power to deceive
Enmity between Lutherans and Calvinists
Find our destruction in our immoderate desire for peace
German-Lutheran sixteenth-century idea of religious freedom
Intentions of a government which did not know its own intentions
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
Pauper client who dreamed of justice at the hands of law
Seem as if born to make the idea of royalty ridiculous
Shutting the stable-door when the steed is stolen
String of homely proverbs worthy of Sancho Panza
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




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v37
by John Lothrop Motley





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


CHAPTER III.

     Policy of England--Schemes of the Pretender of Portugal--Hesitation
     of the French Court--Secret Wishes of France--Contradictory Views as
     to the Opinions of Netherlanders--Their Love for England and
     Elizabeth--Prominent Statesmen of the Provinces--Roger Williams the
     Welshman Views of Walsingham, Burghley, and the Queen--An Embassy to
     Holland decided upon--Davison at the Hague--Cautious and Secret
     Measures of Burghley--Consequent Dissatisfaction of Walsingham--
     English and Dutch Suspicion of France--Increasing Affection of
     Holland for England.

The policy of England towards the Provinces had been somewhat hesitating,
but it had not been disloyal.  It was almost inevitable that there should
be timidity in the councils of Elizabeth, when so grave a question as
that of confronting the vast power of Spain was forcing itself day by
day more distinctly upon the consideration of herself and her statesmen.
It was very clear, now that Orange was dead, that some new and decided
step would be taken.  Elizabeth was in favour of combined action by the
French and English governments, in behalf of the Netherlands--a joint
protectorate of the Provinces, until such time as adequate concessions on
the religious question could be obtained from Spain.  She was unwilling
to plunge into the peril and expense of a war with the strongest power in
the world.  She disliked the necessity under which she should be placed
of making repeated applications to her parliament, and of thus fostering
the political importance of the Commons; she was reluctant to encourage
rebellious subjects in another land, however just the cause of their
revolt.  She felt herself vulnerable in Ireland and on the Scottish
border.  Nevertheless, the Spanish power was becoming so preponderant,
that if the Netherlands were conquered, she could never feel a moment's
security within her own territory.  If the Provinces were annexed to
France, on the other hand, she could not contemplate with complacency
the increased power thus placed in the hands of the treacherous and
jesuitical house of Valois.

The path of the Queen was thickly strewed with peril: her advisers were
shrewd, far-seeing, patriotic, but some of them were perhaps over
cautious.  The time had, however, arrived when the danger was to be
faced, if the whole balance of power in Europe were not to come to an
end, and weak states, like England and the Netherlands, to submit to the
tyranny of an overwhelming absolutism.  The instinct of the English
sovereign, of English statesmen, of the English nation, taught them that
the cause of the Netherlands was their own.  Nevertheless, they were
inclined to look on yet a little longer, although the part of spectator
had become an impossible one.  The policy of the English government was
not treacherous, although it was timid.  That of the French court was
both the one and the other, and it would have been better both for
England and the Provinces, had they more justly appreciated the character
of Catharine de' Medici and her son.

The first covert negotiations between Henry and the States had caused
much anxiety among the foreign envoys in France.  Don Bernardino de
Mendoza, who had recently returned from Spain after his compulsory
retreat from his post of English ambassador, was now established in
Paris, as representative of Philip.  He succeeded Tasais--a Netherlander
by birth, and one of the ablest diplomatists in the Spanish service--and
his house soon became the focus of intrigue against the government to
which he was accredited--the very head-quarters of the League.  His
salary was large, his way of living magnificent, his insolence
intolerable.

"Tassis is gone to the Netherlands," wrote envoy Busbecq to the Emperor,
"and thence is to proceed to Spain.  Don Bernardino has arrived in his
place.  If it be the duty of a good ambassador to expend largely, it
would be difficult to find a better one than he; for they say 'tis his
intention to spend sixteen thousand dollars yearly in his embassy.  I
would that all things were in correspondence; and that he were not in
other respects so inferior to Tassis."

It is, however, very certain that Mendoza was not only a brave soldier,
but a man of very considerable capacity in civil affairs, although his
inordinate arrogance interfered most seriously with his skill as a
negotiator.  He was, of course, watching with much fierceness the
progress of these underhand proceedings between the French court and the
rebellious subjects of his master, and using threats and expostulations
in great profusion.  "Mucio," too, the great stipendiary of Philip, was
becoming daily more dangerous, and the adherents of the League were
multiplying with great celerity.

The pretender of Portugal, Don Antonio, prior of Crato, was also in
Paris; and it was the policy of both the French and the English
governments to protect his person, and to make use of him as a rod over
the head of Philip.  Having escaped, after the most severe sufferings, in
the mountains of Spain, where he had been tracked like a wild beast, with
a price of thirty thousand crowns placed upon his head, he was now most
anxious to stir the governments of Europe into espousing his cause, and
into attacking Spain through the recently acquired kingdom of Portugal.
Meantime, he was very desirous of some active employment, to keep himself
from starving, and conceived the notion, that it would be an excellent
thing for the Netherlands and himself, were he to make good to them the
loss of William the Silent.

"Don Antonio," wrote Stafford, "made a motion to me yesterday, to move
her Majesty, that now upon the Prince of Orange's death, as it is a
necessary thing for them to have a governor and head, and him to be at
her Majesty's devotion, if her Majesty would be at the means to work it
for him, she should be assured nobody should be more faithfully tied in
devotion to her than he.  Truly you would pity the poor man's case, who
is almost next door to starving in effect."

A starving condition being, however, not the only requisite in a governor
and head to replace the Prince of Orange, nothing came of this motion.
Don Antonio remained in Paris, in a pitiable plight, and very much
environed by dangers; for the Duke of Guise and his brother had
undertaken to deliver him into the hands of Philip the Second, or those
of his ministers, before the feast of St. John of the coming year.  Fifty
thousand dollars were to be the reward of this piece of work, combined
with other services; "and the sooner they set about it the better," said
Philip, writing a few months later, "for the longer they delay it, the
less easy will they find it."'

The money was never earned, however, and meantime Don Antonio made
himself as useful as he could, in picking up information for Sir Edward
Stafford and the other opponents of Spanish policy in Paris.

The English envoy was much embarrassed by the position of affairs.  He
felt sure that the French monarch would never dare to enter the lists
against the king of Spain, yet he was accurately informed of the secret
negotiations with the Netherlands, while in the dark as to the ultimate
intentions of his own government.

"I was never set to school so much," he wrote to Walsingham (27th July,
1584), "as I have been to decipher the cause of the deputies of the Low
Countries coming hither, the offers that they made the King here, and the
King's manner of dealing with them!"

He expressed great jealousy at the mystery which enveloped the whole
transaction; and much annoyance with Noel de Caron, who "kept very
secret, and was angry at the motion," when he endeavoured to discover the
business in which they were engaged.  Yet he had the magnanimity to
request Walsingham not to mention the fact to the Queen, lest she should
be thereby prejudiced against the States.

"For my part," said he, "I would be glad in any thing to further them,
rather than to hinder them--though they do not deserve it--yet for the
good the helping them at this time may bring ourselves."

Meantime, the deputies went away from France, and the King went to Lyons,
where he had hoped to meet both the Duke of Savoy and the King of
Navarre.  But Joyeuse, who had been received at Chambery with "great
triumphs and tourneys," brought back only a broken wrist, without
bringing the Duke of Savoy; that potentate sending word that the "King of
Spain had done him the honour to give him his daughter, and that it was
not fit for him to do any thing that might bring jealousy."

Henry of Navarre also, as we have seen, declined the invitation sent him,
M. de Segur not feeling disposed for the sudden flight out of window
suggested by Agrippa D' Aubigne; so that, on the whole, the King and his
mother, with all the court, returned from Lyons in marvellous ill humour.

"The King storms greatly," said Stafford, "and is in a great dump."
It was less practicable than ever to discover the intentions of the
government; for although it was now very certain that active exertions
were making by Des Pruneaux in the Provinces, it was not believed by the
most sagacious that a serious resolution against Spain had been taken in
France.  There was even a talk of a double matrimonial alliance, at that
very moment, between the two courts.

"It is for certain here said," wrote Stafford, "that the King of Spain
doth presently marry the dowager of France, and 'tis thought that if the
King of Spain marry, he will not live a year.  Whensoever the marriage
be," added the envoy, "I would to God the effect were true, for if it be
not by some such handy work of God, I am afraid things will not go so
well as I could wish."

There was a lull on the surface of affairs, and it was not easy to sound
the depths of unseen combinations and intrigues.

There was also considerable delay in the appointment and the arrival of
the new deputies from the Netherlands; and Stafford was as doubtful as
ever as to the intentions of his own government.

"They look daily here for the States," he wrote to Walsingham (29th Dec.
1584), "and I pray that I may hear from you as soon as you may, what
course I shall take when they be here, either hot or cold or lukewarm in
the matter, and in what sort I shall behave myself.  Some badly affected
have gone about to put into the King's head, that they never meant to
offer the sovereignty, which, though the King be not thoroughly persuaded
of, yet so much is won by this means that the King hearkeneth to see the
end, and then to believe as he seeth cause, and in the meantime to speak
no more of any such matter than if it had never been moved."

While his Majesty was thus hearkening in order to see more, according to
Sir Edward's somewhat Hibernian mode of expressing himself, and keeping
silent that he might see the better, it was more difficult than ever for
the envoy to know what course to pursue.  Some persons went so far as to
suggest that the whole negotiation was a mere phantasmagoria devised by
Queen Elizabeth--her purpose being to breed a quarrel between Henry and
Philip for her own benefit; and "then, seeing them together by the ears,
as her accustomed manner was, to let them go alone, and sit still to look
on."

The King did not appear to be much affected by these insinuations against
Elizabeth; but the doubt and the delay were very harrassing.  "I would to
God," wrote the English envoy, "that if the States mean to do anything
here with the King, and if her.  Majesty and the council think it fit,
they would delay no time, but go roundly either to an agreement or to a
breach with the King.  Otherwise, as the matter now sleepeth, so it will
die, for the King must be taken in his humour when he begins to nibble at
any bait, for else he will come away, and never bite a full bite while he
liveth."

There is no doubt that the bait, at which Henry nibbled with much
avidity, was the maritime part of the Netherlands.  Holland and Zeeland
in the possession of either England or Spain, was a perpetual
inconvenience to France.  The King, or rather the Queen-Mother and her
advisers--for Henry himself hardly indulged in any profound reflections.
on state-affairs,--desired and had made a sine qua non of those
Provinces.  It had been the French policy, from the beginning, to delay
matters, in order to make the States feel the peril of their position to
the full.

"The King, differing and temporising," wrote Herle to the Queen, "would
have them fall into that necessity and danger, as that they should offer
unto him simply the possession of all their estates.  Otherwise, they
were to see, as in a glass, their evident and hasty ruin."

Even before the death of Orange, Henry had been determined, if possible,
to obtain possession of the island of Walcheren, which controlled the
whole country.  "To give him that," said Herle, "would be to turn the hot
end of the poker towards themselves, and put the cold part in the King's
hand.  He had accordingly made a secret offer to William of Orange,
through the Princess, of two millions of livres in ready money, or,
if he preferred it, one hundred thousand livres yearly of perpetual
inheritance, if he would secure to him the island of Walcheren.  In that
case he promised to declare war upon the King of Spain, to confirm to the
States their privileges, and to guarantee to the Prince the earldoms of
Holland and Zeeland, with all his other lands and titles."

It is superfluous to say that such offers were only regarded by the
Prince as an affront.  It was, however, so necessary, in his opinion; to
maintain the cause of the reformed churches in France, and to keep up the
antagonism between that country and Spain, that the French policy was not
abandoned, although the court was always held in suspicion.

But on the death of William, there was a strong reaction against France
and in favour of England.  Paul Buys, one of the ablest statesmen of the
Netherlands, Advocate of Holland, and a confidential friend of William
the Silent up to the time of his death, now became the leader of the
English party, and employed his most strenuous efforts against the French
treaty-having "seen the scope of that court."

With regard to the other leading personages, there was a strong
inclination in favour of Queen Elizabeth, whose commanding character
inspired great respect.  At the same time warmer sentiments of adhesion
seem to have been expressed towards the French court, by the same
individuals, than the, mere language of compliment justified.

Thus, the widowed Princess of Orange was described by Des Pruneaux to his
sovereign, as "very desolate, but nevertheless doing all in her power to
advance his interests; the Count Maurice, of gentle hopes, as also most
desirous of remaining his Majesty's humble servant, while Elector
Truchsess was said to be employing himself, in the same cause, with very
great affection."

A French statesman resident in the Provinces, whose name has not been
preserved, but who was evidently on intimate terms with many eminent
Netherlanders, declared that Maurice, "who had a mind entirely French,
deplored infinitely the misfortunes of France, and regretted that all the
Provinces could not be annexed to so fair a kingdom.  I do assure you,"
he added, "that he is in no wise English."

Of Count Hohenlo, general-in-chief of the States' army under Prince
Maurice, and afterwards his brother-in-law, the same gentleman spoke with
even greater confidence.  "Count d'Oloc," said he (for by that ridiculous
transformation of his name the German general was known to French and
English), "with whom I have passed three weeks on board the fleet of the
States, is now wholly French, and does not love the English at all.  The
very first time I saw him, he protested twice or thrice, in presence of
members of the States General and of the State Council, that if he had no
Frenchmen he could never carry on the war.  He made more account," he
said, "of two thousand French than of six thousand others, English, or
Germans."

Yet all these distinguished persons--the widowed Princess of Orange,
Count Maurice, ex-elector Truchsess, Count Holenlo--were described to
Queen Elizabeth by her confidential agent, then employed in the
Provinces, as entirely at that sovereign's devotion.

"Count Maurice holds nothing of the French, nor esteems them," said
Herle, "but humbly desired me to signify unto your Majesty that he had in
his mind and determination faithfully vowed his service to your Majesty,
which should be continued in his actions with all duty, and sealed with
his blood; for he knew how much his father and the cause were beholden
ever to your Highness's goodness."

The Princess, together with her sister-in-law Countess Schwartzenburg,
and the young daughters of the late Prince were described on the same
occasion "as recommending their service unto her Majesty with a most
tender affection, as to a lady of all ladies."  "Especially," said Herle,
"did the two Princesses in most humble and wise sort, express a certain
fervent devotion towards your Majesty."

Elector Truchsess was spoken of as "a prince well qualified and greatly
devoted to her Majesty; who, after many grave and sincere words had of
her Majesty's virtue, calling her 'la fille unique de Dieu, and le bien
heureuse Princesse', desired of God that he might do her service as she
merited."

And, finally, Count Hollock--who seemed to "be reformed in sundry things,
if it hold" (a delicate allusion to the Count's propensity for strong
potations), was said "to desire humbly to be known for one that would
obey the commandment of her Majesty more than of any earthly prince
living besides."

There can be no doubt that there was a strong party in favour of an
appeal to England rather than to France.  The Netherlanders were too
shrewd a people not to recognize the difference between the king of a
great realm, who painted his face and wore satin petticoats, and the
woman who entertained ambassadors, each in his own language, on gravest
affairs of state, who matched in her wit and wisdom the deepest or the
most sparkling intellects of her council, who made extemporaneous Latin
orations to her universities, and who rode on horseback among her
generals along the lines of her troops in battle-array, and yet was only
the unmarried queen of a petty and turbulent state.

"The reverend respect that is borne to your Majesty throughout these
countries is great," said William Herle.  They would have thrown
themselves into her arms, heart and soul, had they been cordially
extended at that moment of their distress; but she was coy, hesitating,
and, for reasons already sufficiently indicated, although not so
conclusive as they seemed, disposed to temporize and to await the issue
of the negotiations between the Provinces and France.

In Holland and Zeeland especially, there was an enthusiastic feeling in
favour of the English alliance.  "They recommend themselves," said Herleo
"throughout the country in their consultations and assemblies, as also in
their common and private speeches, to the Queen of England's only favour
and goodness, whom they call their saviour, and the Princess of greatest
perfection in wisdom and sincerity that ever governed.  Notwithstanding
their treaty now on foot by their deputies with France, they are not more
disposed to be governed by the French than to be tyrannized over by the
Spaniard; concluding it to be alike; and even 'commutare non sortem sed
servitutem'."

Paul Buys was indefatigable in his exertions against the treaty with
France, and in stimulating the enthusiasm for England and Elizabeth.  He
expressed sincere and unaffected devotion to the Queen on all occasions,
and promised that no negotiations should take place, however secret and
confidential, that were not laid before her Majesty.  "He has the chief
administration among the States," said Herle, "and to his credit and
dexterity they attribute the despatch of most things.  He showed unto me
the state of the enemy throughout the provinces, and of the negotiation
in France, whereof he had no opinion at all of success, nor any will of
his own part but to please the Prince of Orange in his life-time."

It will be seen in the sequel whether or not the views of this
experienced and able statesman were lucid and comprehensive.  It will
also be seen whether his strenuous exertions in favour of the English
alliance were rewarded as bountifully as they deserved, by those most
indebted to him.

Meantime he was busily employed in making the English government
acquainted with the capacity, disposition, and general plans of the
Netherlanders.

"They have certain other things in consultation amongst the States to
determine of," wrote Herle, "which they were sworn not to reveal to any,
but Buys protested that nothing should pass but to your liking and
surety, and the same to be altered and disposed as should seem good to
your Highness's own authority; affirming to me sincerely that Holland and
Zeeland, with the rest of the provinces, for the estimation they had of
your high virtue and temperancy, would yield themselves absolutely to
your Majesty and crown for ever, or to none other (their liberties only
reserved), whereof you should have immediate possession, without
reservation of place or privilege."

The important point of the capability of the Provinces to defend
themselves, about which Elizabeth was most anxious to be informed, was
also fully elucidated by the Advocate.  "The means should be such,
proceeding from the Provinces," said he, "as your Majesty might defend
your interest therein with facility against the whole world."  He then
indicated a plan, which had been proposed by the States of Brabant to the
States General, according to which they were to keep on foot an army of
15,000 foot and 5000 horse, with which they should be able, "to expulse
the enemy and to reconquer their towns and country lost, within three
months."  Of this army they hoped to induce the Queen to furnish 5000
English footmen and 500 horse, to be paid monthly by a treasurer of her
own; and for the assistance thus to be furnished they proposed to give
Ostend and Sluys as pledge of payment.  According to this scheme the
elector palatine, John Casimir, had promised to furnish, equip, and pay
2000 cavalry, taking the town of Maestricht and the country of Limburg,
when freed from the enemy, in pawn for his disbursements; while Antwerp
and Brabant had agreed to supply 300,000 crowns in ready money for
immediate use.  Many powerful politicians opposed this policy, however,
and urged reliance upon France, "so that this course seemed to be lame in
many parts."--[Letter of Herle].

Agents had already been sent both to England and France, to procure, if
possible, a levy of troops for immediate necessity.  The attempt was
unsuccessful in France, but the Dutch community of the reformed religion
in London subscribed nine thousand and five florins.  This sum, with
other contributions, proved sufficient to set Morgan's regiment on foot,
which soon after began to arrive in the Netherlands by companies.  "But
if it were all here at once," said Stephen Le Sieur, "'t would be but a
breakfast for the enemy."

The agent for the matter in England was De Griyse, formerly bailiff of
Bruges; and although tolerably successful in his mission, he was not
thought competent for so important a post, nor officially authorised for
the undertaking.  While procuring this assistance in English troops he
had been very urgent with the Queen to further the negotiations between
the States and France; and Paul Buys was offended with him as a mischief-
maker and an intriguer.  He complained of him as having "thrust himself
in, to deal and intermeddle in the affairs of the Low Countries
unavowed," and desired that he might be closely looked after.

After the Advocate, the next most important statesman in the provinces
was, perhaps, Meetkerk, President of the High Court of Flanders, a man of
much learning, sincerity, and earnestness of character; having had great
experience in the diplomatic service of the country on many important
occasions.  "He stands second in reputation here," said Herle, "and both
Buys and he have one special care in all practises that are discovered,
to examine how near anything may concern your person or kingdom, whereof
they will advertise as matter shall fall out in importance."

John van Olden-Barneveldt, afterwards so conspicuous in the history of
the country, was rather inclined, at this period, to favour the French
party; a policy which was strenuously furthered by Villiers and by Sainte
Aldegonde.

Besides the information furnished to the English government, as to the
state of feeling and resources of the Netherlands, by Buys, Meetkerk, and
William Herle, Walsingham relied much upon the experienced eye and the
keen biting humour of Roger Williams.

A frank open-hearted Welshman, with no fortune but his sword, but as true
as its steel, he had done the States much important service in the hard-
fighting days of Grand Commander Requesens and of Don John of Austria.
With a shrewd Welsh head under his iron morion, and a stout Welsh heart
under his tawny doublet, he had gained little but hard knocks and a dozen
wounds in his campaigning, and had but recently been ransomed, rather
grudgingly by his government, from a Spanish prison in Brabant.  He was
suffering in health from its effects, but was still more distressed in
mind, from his sagacious reading of the signs of the times.  Fearing that
England was growing lukewarm, and the Provinces desperate, he was
beginning to find himself out of work, and was already casting about him
for other employment.  Poor, honest, and proud, he had repeatedly
declined to enter the Spanish service.  Bribes, such as at a little later
period were sufficient to sully conspicuous reputations and noble names,
among his countrymen in better circumstances than his own, had been
freely but unsuccessfully offered him.  To serve under any but the
English or States' flag in the Provinces he scorned; and he thought the
opportunity fast slipping away there for taking the Papistical party in
Europe handsomely by the beard.  He had done much manful work in the
Netherlands, and was destined to do much more; but he was now
discontented, and thought himself slighted.  In more remote regions of
the world, the, thrifty soldier thought that there might be as good
harvesting for his sword as in the thrice-trampled stubble of Flanders.

"I would refuse no hazard that is possible to be done in the Queen's
service," he said to Walsingham; "but I do persuade myself she makes no
account of me.  Had it not been for the duty that nature bound me towards
her and my country, I needed not to have been in that case that I am in.
Perhaps I could have fingered more pistoles than Mr. Newell, the late
Latiner, and had better usage and pension of the Spaniards than he.  Some
can tell that I refused large offers, in the misery of Alost, of the
Prince of Parma.  Last of all, Verdugo offered me very fair, being in
Loccum, to quit the States' service, and accept theirs, without treachery
or betraying of place or man."

Not feeling inclined to teach Latin in Spain, like the late Mr. Newell,
or to violate oaths and surrender fortresses, like brave soldiers of
fortune whose deeds will be afterwards chronicled, he was disposed to
cultivate the "acquaintance of divers Pollacks," from which he had
received invitations.  "Find I nothing there," said he, "Duke Matthias
has promised me courtesy if I would serve in Hungary.  If not, I will
offer service to one of the Turk's bashaws against the Persians."

Fortunately, work was found for the trusty Welshman in the old fields.
His brave honest face often reappeared; his sharp sensible tongue uttered
much sage counsel; and his ready sword did various solid service, in
leaguer, battle-field, and martial debate, in Flanders, Holland, Spain,
and France.

For the present, he was casting his keen glances upon the negotiations in
progress, and cavilling at the general policy which seemed predominant.

He believed that the object of the French was to trifle with the States,
to protract interminably their negotiations, to prevent the English
government from getting any hold upon the Provinces, and then to leave
them to their fate.

He advised Walsingham to advance men and money, upon the security of
Sluys and Ostend.

"I dare venture my life," said he, with much energy, "that were Norris,
Bingham, Yorke, or Carlisle, in those ports, he would keep them during
the Spanish King's life."

But the true way to attack Spain--a method soon afterwards to be carried
into such brilliant effect by the naval heroes of England and the
Netherlands--the long-sighted Welshman now indicated; a combined attack,
namely, by sea upon the colonial possessions of Philip.

"I dare be bound," said he, "if you join with Treslong, the States
Admiral, and send off, both, three-score sail into his Indies, we will
force him to retire from conquering further, and to be contented to let
other princes live as well as he."

In particular, Williams urged rapid action, and there is little doubt,
that had the counsels of prompt, quick-witted, ready-handed soldiers like
himself, and those who thought with him, been taken; had the stealthy but
quick-darting policy of Walsingham prevailed over the solemn and stately
but somewhat ponderous proceedings of Burghley, both Ghent and Antwerp
might have been saved, the trifling and treacherous diplomacy of
Catharine de' Medici neutralized, and an altogether more fortunate aspect
given at once to the state of Protestant affairs.

"If you mean to do anything," said he, "it is more than time now.  If you
will send some man of credit about it, will it please your honour, I will
go with him, because I know the humour of the people, and am acquainted
with a number of the best.  I shall be able to show him a number of their
dealings, as well with the French as in other affairs, and perhaps will
find means to send messengers to Ghent, and to other places, better than
the States; for the message of one soldier is better than twenty boors."

It was ultimately decided--as will soon be related--to send a man of
credit to the Provinces.  Meantime, the policy of England continued to be
expectant and dilatory, and Advocate Buys, after having in vain attempted
to conquer the French influence, and bring about the annexation of the
Provinces to England, threw down his office in disgust, and retired for a
time from the contest.  He even contemplated for a moment taking service
in Denmark, but renounced the notion of abandoning his country, and he
will accordingly be found, at a later period, conspicuous in public
affairs.

The deliberations in the English councils were grave and anxious, for it
became daily more obvious that the Netherland question was the hinge upon
which the, whole fate of Christendom was slowly turning.  To allow the
provinces to fall back again into the grasp of Philip, was to offer
England herself as a last sacrifice to the Spanish Inquisition.  This was
felt by all the statesmen in the land; but some of them, more than the
rest, had a vivid perception of the danger, and of the necessity of
dealing with it at once.

To the prophetic eye of Walsingham, the mists of the future at times
were lifted; and the countless sails of the invincible Armada, wafting
defiance and destruction to England, became dimly visible.  He felt that
the great Netherland bulwark of Protestantism and liberty was to be
defended at all hazards, and that the death-grapple could not long be
deferred.

Burghley, deeply pondering, but less determined, was still disposed to
look on and to temporize.

The Queen, far-seeing and anxious, but somewhat hesitating, still clung
to the idea of a joint protectorate.  She knew that the reestablishment
of Spanish authority in the Low Countries would be fatal to England, but
she was not yet prepared to throw down the gauntlet to Philip.  She felt
that the proposed annexation of the Provinces to France would be almost
as formidable; yet she could not resolve, frankly and fearlessly, to
assume, the burthen of their protection.  Under the inspiration of
Burghley, she was therefore willing to encourage the Netherlanders
underhand; preventing them at every hazard from slackening in their
determined hostility to Spain; discountenancing, without absolutely
forbidding, their proposed absorption by France; intimating, without
promising, an ultimate and effectual assistance from herself.  Meantime,
with something of feline and feminine duplicity, by which the sex of the
great sovereign would so often manifest itself in the most momentous
affairs, she would watch and wait, teasing the Provinces, dallying with
the danger, not quite prepared as yet to abandon the prize to Henry or
Philip, or to seize it herself.

The situation was rapidly tending to become an impossible one.

Late in October a grave conference was held council, "upon the question
whether her Majesty should presently relieve the States of the Low
Countries."

It was shown, upon one side, that the "perils to the Queen and to the
realm were great, if the King of Spain should recover Holland and
Zeeland, as he had the other countries, for lack of succour in seasonable
time, either by the French King or the Queen's Majesty."

On the other side, the great difficulties in the way of effectual
assistance by England, were "fully remembered."

"But in the end, and upon comparison made," said Lord Burghley, summing
up, "betwixt the perils on the one part, and the difficulties on the
other," it was concluded that the Queen would be obliged to succumb to
the power of Spain, and the liberties of England be hopelessly lost, if
Philip were then allowed to carry out his designs, and if the Provinces
should be left without succour at his mercy.

A "wise person" was accordingly to be sent into Holland; first, to
ascertain whether the Provinces had come to an actual agreement with the
King of France, and, if such should prove to be the case, to enquire
whether that sovereign had pledged himself to declare war upon Philip.
In this event, the wise person was to express her Majesty's satisfaction
that the Provinces were thus to be "relieved from the tyranny of the King
of Spain."

On the other hand, if it should appear that no such conclusive
arrangements had been made, and that the Provinces were likely to fall
again victims to the "Spanish tyranny," her Majesty would then "strain
herself as far as, with preservation of her own estate, she might, to
succour them at this time."

The agent was then to ascertain "what conditions the Provinces would
require" upon the matter of succour, and, if the terms seemed reasonable,
he would assure them that "they should not be left to the cruelties of
the Spaniards."

And further, the wise person, "being pressed to answer, might by
conference of speeches and persuasions provoke them to offer to the Queen
the ports of Flushing and Middelburg and the Brill, wherein she meant not
to claim any property, but to hold them as gages for her expenses, and
for performances of their covenants."

He was also to make minute inquiries as to the pecuniary resources of the
Provinces, the monthly sums which they would be able to contribute, the
number of troops and of ships of war that they would pledge themselves to
maintain.  These investigations were very important, because the Queen,
although very well disposed to succour them, "so nevertheless she was to
consider how her power might be extended, without ruin or manifest peril
to her own estate."

It was also resolved, in the same conference, that a preliminary step of
great urgency was to "procure a good peace with the King of Scots."
Whatever the expense of bringing about such a pacification might be, it
was certain that a "great deal more would be expended in defending the
realm against Scotland," while England was engaged in hostilities with
Spain.  Otherwise, it was argued that her Majesty would be "so impeached
by Scotland in favour of the King of Spain, that her action against that
King would be greatly weakened."

Other measures necessary to be taken in view of the Spanish war were also
discussed.  The ex-elector of Cologne, "a man of great account in
Germany," was to be assisted with money to make head against his rival
supported by the troops of Philip.

Duke Casimir of the Palatinate was to be solicited to make a diversion
in Gelderland.

The King of France was to be reminded of his treaty with England for
mutual assistance in case of the invasion by a foreign power of either
realm, and to be informed "not only of the intentions of the Spaniards
to invade England, upon their conquest of the Netherlands, but of their
actual invasion of Ireland."

It was "to be devised how the King of Navarre and Don Antonio of
Portugal, for their respective titles, might be induced to offend and
occupy the King of Spain, whereby to diminish his forces bent upon the
Low Countries."

It was also decided that Parliament should be immediately summoned, in
which, besides the request of a subsidy, many other necessary, provisions
should be made for her Majesty's safety.

"The conclusions of the whole," said Lord Burghley, with much
earnestness, "was this.  Although her Majesty should hereby enter into a
war presently, yet were she better to do it now, while she may make the
same out of her realm, having the help of the people of Holland, and
before the King of Spain shall have consummated his conquests in those
countries, whereby he shall be so provoked with pride, solicited by the
Pope, and tempted by the Queen's own subjects, and shall be so strong by
sea, and so free from all other actions and quarrels,--yea, shall be so
formidable to all the rest of Christendom, as that her Majesty shall no
wise be able, with her own power, nor with aid of any other, neither by
sea nor land, to withstand his attempts, but shall be forced to give
place to his insatiable malice, which is most terrible to be thought of,
but miserable to suffer."

Thus did the Lord Treasurer wisely, eloquently, and well, describe the
danger by which England was environed.  Through the shield of Holland the
spear was aimed full at the heart of England.  But was it a moment to
linger?  Was that buckler to be suffered to fall to the ground, or to be
raised only upon the arm of a doubtful and treacherous friend?  Was it an
hour when the protection of Protestantism and of European liberty against
Spain was to be entrusted to the hand of a feeble and priest-ridden
Valois?  Was it wise to indulge any longer in doubtings and dreamings,
and in yet a little more folding of the arms to sleep, while that
insatiable malice, so terrible to be thought of, so miserable to feel,
was bowing hourly more formidable, and approaching nearer and nearer?

Early in December, William Davison, gentleman-in-ordinary of her
Majesty's household, arrived at the Hague; a man painstaking, earnest,
and zealous, but who was fated, on more than one great occasion, to be
made a scape-goat for the delinquencies of greater personages than
himself.

He had audience of the States General on the 8th December.  He then
informed that body that the Queen had heard, with, sorrowful heart, of
the great misfortunes which the United Provinces had sustained since the
death of the Prince of Orange; the many cities which they had lost, and
the disastrous aspect of the common cause.  Moved by the affection which
she had always borne the country, and anxious for its preservation, she
had ordered her ambassador Stafford to request the King of France to
undertake, jointly with herself, the defence of the provinces against the
king of Spain.  Not till very lately, however, had that envoy succeeded
in obtaining an audience, and he had then received "a very cold answer."
It being obvious to her Majesty, therefore, that the French government
intended to protract these matters indefinitely, Davison informed the
States that she had commissioned him to offer them "all possible
assistance, to enquire into the state of the country, and to investigate
the proper means of making that assistance most useful."  He accordingly
requested the appointment of a committee to confer with him upon the
subject; and declared that the Queen did not desire to make herself
mistress of the Provinces, but only to be informed how she best could aid
their cause.

A committee was accordingly appointed, and a long series of somewhat
concealed negotiations was commenced.  As the deputies were upon the eve
of their departure for France, to offer the sovereignty of the Provinces
to Henry, these proceedings were necessarily confused, dilatory, and at
tines contradictory.

After the arrival of the deputies in France, the cunctative policy
inspired by the Lord Treasurer was continued by England.  The delusion of
a joint protectorate was still clung to by the Queen, although the
conduct of France was becoming very ambiguous, and suspicion growing
darker as to the ultimate and secret purport of the negotiations in
progress.

The anxiety and jealousy of Elizabeth were becoming keener than ever.  If
the offers to the King were unlimited; he would accept them, and would
thus become as dangerous as Philip.  If they were unsatisfactory, he
would turn his back upon the Provinces, and leave them a prey to Philip.
Still she would not yet renounce the hope of bringing the French King
over to an ingenuous course of action.  It was thought, too, that
something might be done with the great malcontent nobles of Flanders,
whose defection from the national cause had been so disastrous, but who
had been much influenced in their course, it was thought, by their
jealousy of William the Silent.

Now that the Prince was dead, it was thought probable that the Arschots,
and Havres, Chimays, and Lalaings, might arouse themselves to more
patriotic views than they had manifested when they espoused the cause of
Spain.

It would be desirable to excite their jealousy of French influence, and,
at the same time, to inspire throughout the popular mind the fear of
another tyranny almost as absolute as that of Spain.  "And if it be
objected," said Burghley, "that except they shall admit the French King
to the absolute dominion, he will not aid them, and they, for lack of
succour, be forced to yield to the Spaniard, it may be answered that
rather than they should be wholly subjected to the French, or overcome
by the Spaniard, her Majesty would yield unto them as much as, with
preservation of her estate, and defence of her own country, might be
demanded."

The real object kept in view by the Queen's government was, in short, to
obtain for the Provinces and for the general cause of liberty the
greatest possible amount of assistance from Henry, and to allow him to
acquire in return the least possible amount of power.  The end proposed
was a reasonable one, but the means employed savoured too much of
intrigue.

"It may be easily made probable to the States," said the Lord Treasurer,
"that the government of the French is likely to prove as cumbersome and
perilous as that of the Spaniards; and likewise it may probably be
doubted how the French will keep touch and covenants with them, when any
opportunity shall be offered to break them; so that her Majesty thinketh
no good can be looked for to those countries by yielding this large
authority to the French.  If they shall continue their title by this
grant to be absolute lords, there is no end, for a long time, to be
expected of this war; and, contrariwise, if they break off, there is an
end of any good composition with the King of Spain."

Shivering and shrinking, but still wading in deeper and deeper, inch by
inch, the cautious minister was fast finding himself too far advanced to
retreat.  He was rarely decided, however, and never lucid; and least of
all in emergencies, when decision and lucidity would have been more
valuable than any other qualities.

Deeply doubting, painfully balancing, he at times drove the unfortunate
Davison almost distraught.  Puzzled himself and still more puzzling to
others, he rarely permitted the Netherlanders, or even his own agents, to
perceive his drift.  It was fair enough, perhaps, to circumvent the
French government by its own arts, but the Netherlanders meanwhile were
in danger of sinking into despair.

"Thus," wrote the Lord Treasurer to the envoy, "I have discoursed to you
of these uncertainties and difficulties, things not unknown to yourself,
but now being imparted to you by her Majesty's commandment, you are, by
your wisdom, to consider with whom to deal for the stay of this French
course, and yet, so to use it (as near as you may) that they of the
French faction there be not able to charge you therewith, by-advertising
into France.  For it hath already appeared, by some speeches past between
our ambassador there and Des Pruneaux, that you are had in some jealousy
as a hinderer of this French course, and at work for her Majesty to have
some entrance and partage in that country.  Nevertheless our ambassador;
by his answer, hath satisfied them to think the contrary."

They must have been easily satisfied, if they knew as much of the
dealings of her Majesty's government as the reader already knows.  To
inspire doubt of the French, to insinuate the probability of their not
"keeping touch and covenant," to represent their rule as "cumbersome and
perilous," was wholesome conduct enough towards the Netherlanders--and
still more so, had it been accompanied with frank offers of assistance
--but it was certainly somewhat to "hinder the courses of the French."

But in truth all parties were engaged for a season in a round game of
deception, in which nobody was deceived.

Walsingham was impatient, almost indignant at this puerility.  "Your
doings, no doubt of it," he wrote to Davison, "are observed by the French
faction, and therefore you cannot proceed so closely but it will be
espied.  Howsoever it be, seeing direction groweth from hence, we cannot
but blame ourselves, if the effects thereof do not fall out to our
liking."

That sagacious statesman was too well informed, and too much accustomed
to penetrate the designs of his antagonists, to expect anything from the
present intrigues.

To loiter thus, when mortal blows should be struck, was to give the
Spanish government exactly that of which it was always most gluttonous--
time; and the Netherlanders had none of it to spare.  "With time and
myself, there are two of us," was Philip II.'s favourite observation; and
the Prince of Parma was at this moment sorely perplexed by the parsimony
and the hesitations of his own government, by which his large, swift and
most creative genius was so often hampered.

Thus the Spanish soldiers, deep in the trenches, went with bare legs and
empty stomachs in January; and the Dutchmen, among their broken dykes,
were up to their ears in mud and water; and German mercenaries, in the
obedient Provinces, were burning the peasants' houses in order to sell
the iron to buy food withal; while grave-visaged statesmen, in
comfortable cabinets, wagged their long white beards at each other from a
distance, and exchanged grimaces and protocols which nobody heeded.

Walsingham was weary of this solemn trifling.  "I conclude," said he to
Davison, "that her Majesty--with reverence be it spoken--is ill advised,
to direct you in a course that is like to work so great peril.  I know
you will do your best endeavour to keep all things upright, and yet it is
hard--the disease being now come to this state, or, as the physicians
term it, crisis--to carry yourself in such sort, but that it will, I
fear, breed a dangerous alteration in the cause."

He denounced with impatience, almost with indignation, the insincerity
and injustice of these intolerable hesitations.  "Sorry am I," said he,
"to see the course that is taken in this weighty cause, for we will
neither help those poor countries ourselves, nor yet suffer others to
do it.  I am not ignorant that in time to come the annexing of these
countries to the crown of France may prove prejudicial to England, but
if France refuse to deal with them, and the rather for that we shall
minister some cause of impediment by a kind of dealing underhand, then
shall they be forced to return into the hands of Spain, which is like to
breed such a present peril towards her Majesty's self, as never a wise
man that seeth it, and loveth her, but lamenteth it from the bottom of
his heart."

Walsingham had made up his mind that it was England, not France, that
should take up the cause of the Provinces, and defend them at every
hazard.  He had been overruled, and the Queen's government had decided to
watch the course of the French negotiation, doing what it could,
underhand, to prevent that negotiation from being successful.  The
Secretary did not approve of this disingenuous course.  At the same time
he had no faith in the good intentions of the French court.

"I could wish," said he, "that the French King were carried with that
honourable mind into the defence of these countries that her Majesty is,
but France has not been used to do things for God's sake; neither do they
mean to use our advice or assistance in making of the bargain.  For they
still hold a jealous conceit that when Spain and they are together by the
ears, we will seek underhand to work our own peace."  Walsingham,
therefore, earnestly deprecated the attitude provisionally maintained by
England.

Meantime, early in January, (Jan. 3, 1585) the deputation from the
Provinces had arrived in France.  The progress of their 1585 negotiation
will soon be related, but, before its result was known, a general
dissatisfaction had already manifested itself in the Netherlands.  The
factitious enthusiasm which had been created in favour of France, as well
as the prejudice against England, began to die out.  It became probable
in the opinion of those most accustomed to read the signs of the times,
that the French court was acting in connivance with Philip, and that the
negotiation was only intended to amuse the Netherlanders, to circumvent
the English, and to gain time both for France and Spain.  It was not
believed that the character of Henry or the policy of his mother was
likely to the cause of any substantial aid to the cause of civil liberty
or Protestant principles.

"They look for no better fruit from the commission to France," wrote
Davison, who surveyed the general state of affairs with much keenness and
breadth of vision, "than a dallying entertainment of the time, neither
leaving them utterly hopeless, nor at full liberty to seek for relief
elsewhere, especially in England, or else some pleasing motion of peace,
wherein the French King will offer his mediation with Spain.  Meantime
the people, wearied with the troubles, charges, and hazard of the war,
shall be rocked asleep, the provision for their defence neglected, some
Provinces nearest the danger seduced, the rest by their defection
astonished, and the enemy by their decay and confusions, strengthened.
This is the scope whereto the doings of the French King, not without
intelligence with the Spanish sovereign, doth aim, whatever is
pretended."

There was a wide conviction that the French King was dealing falsely with
the Provinces.  It seemed certain that he must be inspired by intense
jealousy of England, and that he was unlikely, for the sake of those
whose "religion, popular liberty, and rebellion against their sovereign,"
he could not but disapprove, to allow Queen Elizabeth to steal a march
upon him, and "make her own market with Spain to his cost and
disadvantage."

In short, it was suspected--whether justly or not will be presently
shown--that Henry III.  "was seeking to blear the eyes of the world, as
his brother Charles did before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew."  As the
letters received from the Dutch envoys in France became less and less
encouraging, and as the Queen was informed by her ambassador in Paris of
the tergiversations in Paris, she became the more anxious lest the States
should be driven to despair.  She therefore wrote to Davison, instructing
him "to nourish in them underhand some hope--as a thing proceeding from
himself--that though France should reject them, yet she would not abandon
them."

He was directed to find out, by circuitous means, what towns they would
offer to her as security for any advances she might be induced to make,
and to ascertain the amount of monthly contributions towards the support
of the war that they were still capable of furnishing.  She was beginning
to look with dismay at the expatriation of wealthy merchants and
manufacturers going so rapidly forward, now that Ghent had fallen and
Brussels and Antwerp were in such imminent peril.  She feared that, while
so much valuable time had been thrown away, the Provinces had become too
much impoverished to do their own part in their own defence; and she was
seriously alarmed at rumours which had become prevalent of a popular
disposition towards treating for a peace at any price with Spain.  It
soon became evident that these rumours were utterly without foundation,
but the other reasons for Elizabeth's anxiety were sufficiently valid.

On the whole, the feeling in favour of England was rapidly gaining
ground.  In Holland especially there was general indignation against the
French party.  The letters of the deputies occasioned "murmur and
mislike" of most persons, who noted them to contain "more ample report of
ceremonies and compliments than solid argument of comfort."

Sir Edward Stafford, who looked with great penetration into the heart of
the mysterious proceedings at Paris, assured his government that no
better result was to be looked for, "after long dalliance and
entertainment, than either a flat refusal or such a masked embracing of
their cause, as would rather tend to the increasing of their miseries and
confusion than relief for their declining estate."  While "reposing upon
a broken reed," they were, he thought, "neglecting other means more
expedient for their necessities."

This was already the universal opinion in Holland.  Men now remembered,
with bitterness, the treachery of the Duke of Anjou, which they had been
striving so hard to forget, but which less than two years ago had nearly
proved fatal to the cause of liberty in the Provinces.  A committee of
the States had an interview with the Queen's envoy at the Hague; implored
her Majesty through him not to abandon their cause; expressed unlimited
regret for the course which had been pursued, and avowed a determination
"to pluck their heads out of the collar," so soon as the opportunity
should offer.

They stated, moreover, that they had been directed by the assembly to lay
before him the instructions for the envoys to France, and the articles
proposed for the acceptance of the King.  The envoy knew his business
better than not to have secretly provided himself with copies of these
documents, which he had already laid before his own government.

He affected, however, to feel hurt that he had been thus kept in
ignorance of papers which he really knew by heart.  "After some pretended
quarrel," said he, "for their not acquainting me therewith sooner, I did
accept them, as if.  I had before neither seen nor heard of them."

This then was the aspect of affairs in the provinces during the absence
of the deputies in France.  It is now necessary to shift the scene to
that country.




CHAPTER IV.

     Reception of the Dutch Envoys at the Louvre--Ignominious Result of
     the Embassy--Secret Influences at work--Bargaining between the
     French and Spanish Courts--Claims of Catharine de' Medici upon
     Portugal--Letters of Henry and Catharine--Secret Proposal by France
     to invade England--States' Mission to Henry of Navarre--Subsidies
     of Philip to Guise--Treaty of Joinville--Philip's Share in the
     League denied by Parma--Philip in reality its Chief--Manifesto of
     the League--Attitude of Henry III. and of Navarre--The League
     demands a Royal Decree--Designs of France and Spain against England
     --Secret Interview of Mendoza and Villeroy--Complaints of English
     Persecution--Edict of Nemours--Excommunication of Navarre and his
     Reply.

The King, notwithstanding his apparent reluctance, had, in Sir Edward
Stafford's language, "nibbled at the bait."  He had, however, not been
secured at the first attempt, and now a second effort was to be made,
under what were supposed to be most favourable circumstances.  In
accordance with his own instructions, his envoy, Des Pruneaux, had been
busily employed in the States, arranging the terms of a treaty which
should be entirely satisfactory.  It had been laid down as an
indispensable condition that Holland and Zeeland should unite in the
offer of sovereignty, and, after the expenditure of much eloquence,
diplomacy, and money, Holland and Zeeland had given their consent.  The
court had been for some time anxious and impatient for the arrival of the
deputies.  Early in December, Des Pruneaux wrote from Paris to Count
Maurice, urging with some asperity, the necessity of immediate action.

"When I left you," he said, "I thought that performance would follow
promises.  I have been a little ashamed, as the time passed by, to hear
nothing of the deputies, nor of any excuse on the subject.  It would seem
as though God had bandaged the eyes of those who have so much cause to
know their own adversity."

To the States his language was still more insolent.  "Excuse me,
Gentlemen," he said, "if I tell you that I blush at hearing nothing from
you.  I shall have the shame and you the damage.  I regret much the
capture of De Teligny, and other losses which are occasioned by your
delays and want of resolution."

Thus did the French court, which a few months before had imprisoned, and
then almost ignominiously dismissed the envoys who came to offer the
sovereignty of the Provinces, now rebuke the governments which had ever
since been strenuously engaged in removing all obstacles to the entire
fulfillment of the King's demands.  The States were just despatching a
solemn embassy to renew that offer, with hardly any limitation as to
terms.

The envoys arrived on January 3rd, 1585, at Boulogne, after a stormy
voyage from Brielle.  Yet it seems incredible to relate, that, after all
the ignominy heaped upon the last, there was nothing but solemn trifling
in reserve for the present legation; although the object of both
embassies was to offer a crown.  The deputies were, however, not kept in
prison, upon this occasion, nor treated like thieves or spies.  They were
admirably lodged, with plenty of cooks and lacqueys to minister to them;
they fared sumptuously every day, at Henry's expense, and, after they had
been six weeks in the kingdom, they at last succeeded in obtaining their
first audience.

On the 13th February the King sent five "very splendid, richly-gilded,
court-coach-waggons" to bring the envoys to the palace.  At one o'clock
they arrived at the Louvre, and were ushered through four magnificent
antechambers into the royal cabinet.  The apartments through which they
passed swarmed with the foremost nobles, court-functionaries, and ladies
of France, in blazing gala costume, who all greeted the envoys with
demonstrations of extreme respect: The halls and corridors were lined
with archers, halbardiers, Swiss guards, and grooms "besmeared with
gold," and it was thought that all this rustle of fine feathers would be
somewhat startling to the barbarous republicans, fresh from the fens of
Holland.

Henry received them in his cabinet, where he was accompanied only by the
Duke of Joyeuse--his foremost and bravest "minion"--by the Count of
Bouscaige, M. de Valette, and the Count of Chateau Vieux.

The most Christian King was neatly dressed, in white satin doublet and
hose, and well-starched ruff, with a short cloak on his shoulders, a
little velvet cap on the side of his head, his long locks duly perfumed
and curled, his sword at his side, and a little basket, full of puppies,
suspended from his neck by a broad ribbon.  He held himself stiff and
motionless, although his face smiled a good-humoured welcome to the
ambassadors; and he moved neither foot, hand, nor head, as they advanced.

Chancellor Leoninus, the most experienced, eloquent, and tedious of men,
now made an interminable oration, fertile in rhetoric and barren in
facts; and the King made a short and benignant reply, according to the
hallowed formula in such cases provided.  And then there was a
presentation to the Queen, and to the Queen-Mother, when Leoninus was
more prolix than before, and Catharine even more affectionate than her
son; and there were consultations with Chiverny and Villeroy, and Brulart
and Pruneaux, and great banquets at the royal expense, and bales of
protocols, and drafts of articles, and conditions and programmes and
apostilles by the hundred weight, and at last articles of annexation were
presented by the envoys, and Pruneaux looked at and pronounced them "too
raw and imperative," and the envoys took them home again, and dressed
them and cooked them till there was no substance left in them; for
whereas the envoys originally offered the crown of their country to
France, on condition that no religion but the reformed religion should be
tolerated there, no appointments made but by the States, and no security
offered for advances to be made by the Christian King, save the hearts
and oaths of his new subjects--so they now ended by proposing the
sovereignty unconditionally, almost abjectly; and, after the expiration
of nearly three months, even these terms were absolutely refused, and the
deputies were graciously permitted to go home as they came.  The
annexation and sovereignty were definitely declined.  Henry regretted and
sighed, Catharine de' Medici wept--for tears were ever at her command--
Chancellor Chiverny and Secretary Brulart wept likewise, and Pruneaux was
overcome with emotion at the parting interview of the ambassadors with
the court, in which they were allowed a last opportunity for expressing
what was called their gratitude.

And then, on the lath March, M. d'Oignon came to them, and presented, on
the part of the King, to each of the envoys a gold chain weighing twenty-
one ounces and two grains.

Des Pruneaux, too--Des Pruneaux who had spent the previous summer in the
Netherlands, who had travelled from province to province, from city to
city, at the King's command, offering boundless assistance, if they would
unanimously offer their sovereignty; who had vanquished by his
importunity the resistance of the stern Hollanders, the last of all the
Netherlanders to yield to the royal blandishments--Des Pruneaux, who had
"blushed"--Des Pruneaux who had wept--now thought proper to assume an
airy tone, half encouragement, half condolence.

"Man proposes, gentlemen," said he "but God disposes.  We are frequently
called on to observe that things have a great variety of times and terms.
Many a man is refused by a woman twice, who succeeds the third time," and
so on, with which wholesome apothegms Des Pruneaux faded away then and
for ever from the page of Netherland history.

In a few days afterwards the envoys took shipping at Dieppe, and arrived
early in April at the Hague.

And thus terminated the negotiation of the States with France.

It had been a scene of elaborate trifling on the King's part from
beginning to end.  Yet the few grains of wheat which have thus been
extracted from the mountains of diplomatic chaff so long mouldering in
national storehouses, contain, however dry and tasteless, still something
for human nourishment.  It is something to comprehend the ineffable
meanness of the hands which then could hold the destiny of mighty
empires.  Here had been offered a magnificent prize to France; a great
extent of frontier in the quarter where expansion was most desirable, a
protective network of towns and fortresses on the side most vulnerable,
flourishing, cities on the sea-coast where the marine traffic was most
lucrative, the sovereignty of a large population, the most bustling,
enterprising, and hardy in Europe--a nation destined in a few short years
to become the first naval and commercial power in the world--all this was
laid at the feet of Henry Valois and Catharine de' Medici, and rejected.

The envoys, with their predecessors, had wasted eight months of most
precious time; they had heard and made orations, they had read and
written protocols, they had witnessed banquets, masquerades, and revels
of stupendous frivolity, in honour of the English Garter, brought
solemnly to the Valois by Lord Derby, accompanied by one hundred
gentlemen "marvellously, sumptuously, and richly accoutred," during that
dreadful winter when the inhabitants of Brussels, Antwerp, Mechlin--to
save which splendid cities and to annex them to France, was a main object
of the solemn embassy from the Netherlands--were eating rats, and cats,
and dogs, and the weeds from the pavements, and the grass from the
churchyards; and were finding themselves more closely pressed than ever
by the relentless genius of Farnese; and in exchange for all these losses
and all this humiliation, the ambassadors now returned to their
constituents, bringing an account of Chiverny's magnificent banquets and
long orations, of the smiles of Henry III., the tears of Catharine de'
Medici, the regrets of M. des Pruneaux, besides sixteen gold chains, each
weighing twenty-one ounces and two grains.

It is worth while to go for a moment behind the scene; We have seen the
actors, with mask and cothurn and tinsel crown, playing their well-conned
parts upon the stage.  Let us hear them threaten, and whimper, and
chaffer among themselves.

So soon as it was intimated that Henry III. was about to grant the
Netherland, envoys an audience, the wrath of ambassador Mendoza was
kindled.  That magniloquent Spaniard instantly claimed an interview with
the King, before whom, according to the statement of his colleagues,
doing their best to pry into these secrets, he blustered and bounced, and
was more fantastical in his insolence than even Spanish envoy had ever
been before.

"He went presently to court," so Walsingham was informed by Stafford,
"and dealt very passionately with the King and Queen-Mother to deny them
audience, who being greatly offended with his presumptuous and malapert
manner of proceeding, the King did in choler and with some sharp
speeches, let him plainly understand that he was an absolute king, bound
to yield account of his doings to no man, and that it was lawful for him
to give access to any man within his own realm.  The Queen-Mother
answered him likewise very roundly, whereupon he departed for the time,
very much discontented."

Brave words, on both sides, if they had ever been spoken, or if there had
been any action corresponding to their spirit.

But, in truth, from the beginning, Henry and his mother saw in the
Netherland embassy only the means of turning a dishonest penny.  Since
the disastrous retreat of Anjou from the Provinces, the city of Cambray
had remained in the hands of the Seigneur de Balagny, placed there by the
duke.  The citadel, garrisoned by French troops, it was not the intention
of Catharine de' Medici to restore to Philip, and a truce on the subject
had been arranged provisionally for a year.  Philip, taking Parma's
advice to prevent the French court, if possible, from "fomenting the
Netherland rebellion," had authorized the Prince to conclude that truce,
as if done on his own responsibility, and not by royal order.  Meantime,
Balagny was gradually swelling into a petty potentate, on his own
account, making himself very troublesome to the Prince of Parma, and
requiring a great deal of watching.  Cambray was however apparently
acquired for France.

But, besides this acquisition, there was another way of earning something
solid, by turning this Netherland matter handsomely to account.  Philip
II. had recently conquered Portugal.  Among the many pretensions to that
crown, those of Catherine de' Medici had been put forward, but had been
little heeded.  The claim went back more than three hundred years, and to
establish its validity would have been to convert the peaceable
possession of a long line of sovereigns into usurpation.  To ascend to
Alphonso III. was like fetching, as it was said, a claim from Evander's
grandmother.  Nevertheless, ever since Philip had been upon the
Portuguese throne, Catherine had been watching the opportunity, not
of unseating that sovereign, but of converting her claim into money.

The Netherland embassy seemed to offer the coveted opportunity.  There
was, therefore, quite as much warmth at the outset, on the part of
Mendoza, in that first interview after the arrival of the deputies, as
had been represented.  There was however less dignity and more cunning on
the part of Henry and Catherine than was at all suspected.  Even before
that conference the King had been impatiently expecting overtures from
the Spanish envoy, and had been disappointed.  "He told me," said Henry,
"that he would make proposals so soon as Tassis should be gone, but he
has done nothing yet.  He said to Gondi that all he meant was to get the
truce of Cambray accomplished.  I hope, however, that my brother, the
King of Spain, will do what is right in regard to madam my mother's
pretensions.  'Tis likely that he will be now incited thereto, seeing
that the deputies of all the Netherland provinces are at present in my
kingdom, to offer me carte blanche.  I shall hear what they have to say,
and do exactly what the good of my own affairs shall seem to require.
The Queen of England, too, has been very pressing and urgent with me for
several months on this subject.  I shall hear, too, what she has to say,
and I presume, if the King of Spain will now disclose himself, and do
promptly what he ought, that we may set Christendom at rest."

Henry then instructed his ambassador in Spain to keep his eyes wide open,
in order to penetrate the schemes of Philip, and to this end ordered him
an increase of salary by a third, that he might follow that monarch on
his journey to Arragon.

Meanwhile Mendoza had audience of his Majesty.  "He made a very pressing
remonstrance," said the King, "concerning the arrival of these deputies,
urging me to send them back at once; denouncing them as disobedient
rebels and heretics.  I replied that my kingdom was free, and that I
should hear from them all that they had to say, because I could not
abandon madam my mother in her pretensions, not only for the filial
obedience which I owe her, but because I am her only heir.  Mendoza
replied that he should go and make the same remonstrance to the Queen-
Mother, which he accordingly did, and she will herself write you what
passed between them.  If they do not act up to their duty down there I
know how to take my revenge upon them."

This is the King's own statement--his veriest words--and he was surely
best aware of what occurred between himself and Mendoza, under their four
eyes only.  The ambassador is not represented as extremely insolent, but
only pressing; and certainly there is little left of the fine periods on
Henry's part about listening to the cry of the oppressed, or preventing
the rays of his ancestors' diadem from growing pale, with which
contemporary chronicles are filled.

There was not one word of the advancement and glory of the French nation;
not a hint of the fame to be acquired by a magnificent expansion of
territory, still less of the duty to deal generously or even honestly
with an oppressed people, who in good faith were seeking an asylum in
exchange for offered sovereignty, not a syllable upon liberty of
conscience, of religious or civil rights; nothing but a petty and
exclusive care for the interests of his mother's pocket, and of his own
as his mother's heir.  This farthing-candle was alone to guide the steps
of "the high and mighty King," whose reputation was perpetually
represented as so precious to him in all the conferences between his
ministers and the Netherland deputies.  Was it possible for those envoys
to imagine the almost invisible meanness of such childish tricks?

The Queen-Mother was still more explicit and unblushing throughout the
whole affair.

"The ambassador of Spain," she said, "has made the most beautiful
remonstrances he could think of about these deputies from the
Netherlands.  All his talk, however, cannot persuade me to anything else
save to increase my desire to have reparation for the wrong that has been
done me in regard to my claims upon Portugal, which I am determined to
pursue by every means within my power.  Nevertheless I have told Don
Bernardino that I should always be ready to embrace any course likely to
bring about a peaceful conclusion.  He then entered into a discussion of
my rights, which, he said, were not thought in Spain to be founded in
justice.  But when I explained to him the principal points (of which I
possess all the pieces of evidence and justification), he hardly knew
what to say, save that he was astounded that I had remained so long
without speaking of my claims.  In reply, I told him ingenuously the
truth."

The truth which the ingenuous Catharine thus revealed was, in brief, that
all her predecessors had been minors, women, and persons in situations
not to make their rights valid.  Finding herself more highly placed, she
had advanced her claims, which had been so fully recognized in Portugal,
that she had been received as Infanta of the kingdom.  All pretensions to
the throne being now through women only, hers were the best of any.  At
all this Don Bernardino expressed profound astonishment, and promised to
send a full account to his master of "the infinite words" which had
passed between them at this interview!

"I desire," said Catharine, "that the Lord King of Spain should open his
mind frankly and promptly upon the recompense which he is willing to make
me for Portugal, in order that things may pass rather with gentleness
than otherwise."

It was expecting a great deal to look for frankness and promptness from
the Lord King of Spain, but the Queen-Mother considered that the
Netherland envoys had put a whip into her hand.  She was also determined
to bring Philip up to the point, without showing her own game.  "I will
never say," said Catharine--ingenuous no longer--"I will never say how
much I ask, but, on the contrary, I shall wait for him to make the offer.
I expect it to be reasonable, because he has seen fit to seize and occupy
that which I declare to be my property."

This is the explanation of all the languor and trifling of the French
court in the Netherland negotiation.  A deep, constant, unseen current
was running counter to all the movement which appeared upon the surface.
The tergiversations of the Spanish cabinet in the Portugal matter were
the cause of the shufflings of the French ministers on the subject of the
Provinces.

"I know well," said Henry a few days later, "that the people down there,
and their ambassador here, are leading us on with words, as far as they
can, with regard to the recompense of madam my mother for her claims upon
Portugal.  But they had better remember (and I think they will), that out
of the offers which these sixteen deputies of the Netherlands are
bringing me--and I believe it to be carte blanche--I shall be able to pay
myself.  'Twill be better to come promptly to a good bargain and a brief
conclusion, than to spin the matter out longer."

"Don Bernardino," said the Queen-Mother on the same day, "has been
keeping us up to this hour in hopes of a good offer, but 'tis to be
feared, for the good of Christendom, that 'twill be too late.  The
deputies are come, bringing carte blanche.  Nevertheless, if the King of
Spain is willing to be reasonable, and that instantly, it will be well,
and it would seem as if God had been pleased to place this means in our
hands."

After the conferences had been fairly got under way between the French
government and the envoys, the demands upon Philip for a good bargain and
a handsome offer became still more pressing.

"I have given audience to the deputies from the Provinces," wrote Henry,
"and the Queen-Mother has done the same.  Chancellor Chiverny,
Villequier, Bellievre, and Brulart, will now confer with them from day
today.  I now tell you that it will be well, before things go any
farther, for the King of Spain to come to reason about the pretensions of
madam mother.  This will be a means of establishing the repose of
Christendom.  I shall be very willing to concur in such an arrangement,
if I saw any approximation to it on the part of the King or his
ministers.  But I fear they will delay too long, and so you had better
tell them.  Push them to the point as much as possible, without letting
them suspect that I have been writing about it, for that would make them
rather draw back than come forward."

At the same time, during this alternate threatening and coaxing between
the French and the Spanish court, and in the midst of all the solemn and
tedious protocolling of the ministry and the Dutch envoys, there was a
most sincere and affectionate intercourse maintained between Henry III.
and the Prince of Parma.  The Spanish Governor-General was assured that
nothing but the warmest regard was entertained for him and his master on
the part of the French court.  Parma had replied, however, that so many
French troops had in times past crossed the frontier to assist the
rebels, that he hardly knew what to think.  He expressed the hope, now
that the Duke of Anjou was dead, that his Christian Majesty would not
countenance the rebellion, but manifest his good-will.

"How can your Highness doubt it," said Malpierre, Henry's envoy, "for his
Majesty has given proof enough of his good will, having prevented all
enterprises in this regard, and preferred to have his own subjects cut
into pieces rather than that they should carry out their designs.  Had
his Majesty been willing merely to connive at these undertakings, 'tis
probable that the affairs of your highness would not have succeeded so
well as they have done."

With regard to England, also, the conduct of Henry and his mother in
these negotiations was marked by the same unfathomable duplicity.  There
was an appearance of cordiality on the surface; but there was deep
plotting, and bargaining, and even deadly hostility lurking below.  We
have seen the efforts which Elizabeth's government had been making to
counteract the policy which offered the sovereignty of the provinces to
the French monarch.  At the same time there was at least a loyal
disposition upon the Queen's part to assist the Netherlands, in
concurrence with Henry.  The demeanour of Burghley and his colleagues was
frankness itself, compared with the secret schemings of the Valois; for
at least peace and good-will between the "triumvirate" of France, England
and the Netherlands, was intended, as the true means of resisting the
predominant influence of Spain.

Yet very soon after the solemn reception by Henry of the garter brought
by Lord Derby, and in the midst of the negotiations between the French
court and the United Provinces, the French king was not only attempting
to barter the sovereignty offered him by the Netherlanders against a
handsome recompense for the Portugal claim, but he was actually proposing
to the King of Spain to join with him in an invasion of England!  Even
Philip himself must have admired and respected such a complication of
villany on the part of his most Christian brother.  He was, however, not
disposed to put any confidence in his schemes.

"With regard to the attempt against England," wrote Philip to Mendoza,
"you must keep your eyes open--you must look at the danger of letting
them, before they have got rid of their rivals and reduced their
heretics, go out of their own house and kingdom, and thus of being made
fools of when they think of coming back again.  Let them first
exterminate the heretics of France, and then we will look after those of
England; because 'tis more important to finish those who are near than
those afar off.  Perhaps the Queen-Mother proposes this invasion in order
to proceed more feebly with matters in her own kingdom; and thus Mucio
(Duke of Guise) and his friends will not have so safe a game, and must
take heed lest they be deceived."

Thus it is obvious that Henry and Catharine intended, on the whole, to
deceive the English and the Netherlanders, and to get as good a bargain
and as safe a friendship from Philip as could be manufactured out of the
materials placed in the French King's hands by the United Provinces.
Elizabeth honestly wished well to the States, but allowed Burghley and
those who acted with him to flatter themselves with the chimera that
Henry could be induced to protect the Netherlands without assuming the
sovereignty of that commonwealth.  The Provinces were fighting for their
existence, unconscious of their latent strength, and willing to trust to
France or to England, if they could only save themselves from being
swallowed by Spain.  As for Spain itself, that country was more practised
in duplicity even than the government of the Medici-Valois, and was of
course more than a match at the game of deception for the franker
politicians of England and Holland.

The King of Navarre had meanwhile been looking on at a distance.  Too
keen an observer, too subtle a reasoner to doubt the secret source of the
movements then agitating France to its centre, he was yet unable to
foresee the turn that all these intrigues were about to take.  He could
hardly doubt that Spain was playing a dark and desperate game with the
unfortunate Henry III.; for, as we have seen, he had himself not long
before received a secret and liberal offer from Philip II., if he would
agree to make war upon the King.  But the Bearnese was not the man to
play into the hands of Spain, nor could he imagine the possibility of the
Valois or even of his mother taking so suicidal a course.

After the Netherland deputies had received their final dismissal from the
King, they sent Calvart, who had been secretary to their embassy, on a
secret mission to Henry of Navarre, then resident at Chartres.

The envoy communicated to the Huguenot chief the meagre result of the
long negotiation with the French court.  Henry bade him be of good cheer,
and assured him of his best wishes for their cause.  He expressed the
opinion that the King of France would now either attempt to overcome the
Guise faction by gentle means, or at once make war upon them.  The Bishop
of Acqs had strongly recommended the French monarch to send the King of
Navarre, with a strong force, to the assistance of the Netherlands,
urging the point with much fervid eloquence and solid argument.  Henry
for a moment had seemed impressed, but such a vigorous proceeding was of
course entirely beyond his strength, and he had sunk back into his
effeminate languor so soon as the bold bishop's back was turned.

The Bearnese had naturally conceived but little hope that such a scheme
would be carried into effect; but he assured Calvart, that nothing could
give him greater delight than to mount and ride in such a cause.

"Notwithstanding," said the Bearnese, "that the villanous intentions of
the Guises are becoming plainer and plainer, and that they are obviously
supplied with Spanish dollars, I shall send a special envoy to the most
Christian King, and, although 'tis somewhat late, implore him to throw
his weight into the scale, in order to redeem your country from its
misery.  Meantime be of good heart, and defend as you have done your
hearths, your liberty, and the honour of God."

He advised the States unhesitatingly to continue their confidence in the
French King, and to keep him informed of their plans and movements;
expressing the opinion that these very intrigues of the Guise party would
soon justify or even force Henry III. openly to assist the Netherlands.

So far, at that very moment, was so sharp a politician as the Bearnese
from suspecting the secret schemes of Henry of Valois.  Calvart urged the
King of Navarre to assist the States at that moment with some slight
subsidy.  Antwerp was in such imminent danger as to fill the hearts of
all true patriots with dismay; and a timely succour, even if a slender
one, might be of inestimable value.

Henry expressed profound regret that his own means were so limited, and
his own position so dangerous, as to make it difficult for him to
manifest in broad daylight the full affection which he bore the
Provinces.

"To my sorrow," said he, "your proposition is made in the midst of such
dark and stormy weather, that those who have clearest sight are unable to
see to what issue these troubles of France are tending."

Nevertheless, with much generosity and manliness, he promised Calvart to
send two thousand soldiers, at his own charges, to the Provinces without
delay; and authorised that envoy to consult with his agent at the court
of the French King, in order to obtain the royal permission for the
troops to cross the frontier.

The crownless and almost houseless King had thus, at a single interview,
and in exchange for nothing but good wishes, granted what the most
Christian monarch of France had refused, after months of negotiation, and
with sovereignty as the purchase-money.  The envoy, well pleased, sped as
swiftly as possible to Paris; but, as may easily be imagined, Henry of
Valois forbade the movement contemplated by Henry of Navarre.

"His Majesty," said Villeroy, secretary of state, "sees no occasion, in
so weighty a business, thus suddenly to change his mind; the less so,
because he hopes to be able ere long to smooth over these troubles which
have begun in France.  Should the King either openly or secretly assist
the Netherlands or allow them to be assisted, 'twould be a reason for all
the Catholics now sustaining his Majesty's party to go over to the Guise
faction.  The Provinces must remain firm, and make no pacification with
the enemy.  Meantime the Queen of England is the only one to whom God has
given means to afford you succour.  One of these days, when the proper
time comes, his Majesty will assist her in affording you relief."

Calvart, after this conference with the King of Navarre, and subsequently
with the government, entertained a lingering hope that the French King
meant to assist the Provinces.  "I know well who is the author of these
troubles," said the unhappy monarch, who never once mentioned the name of
Guise in all those conferences, "but, if God grant me life, I will give
him as good as he sends, and make him rue his conduct."

They were not aware after how many strange vacillations Henry was one day
to wreak this threatened vengeance.  As for Navarre, he remained upon the
watch, good humoured as ever, more merry and hopeful as the tempest grew
blacker; manifesting the most frank and friendly sentiments towards the
Provinces, and writing to Queen Elizabeth in the chivalrous style so dear
to the heart of that sovereign, that he desired nothing better than to be
her "servant and captain-general against the common enemy."

But, indeed, the French King was not so well informed as he imagined
himself to be of the authorship of these troubles.  Mucio, upon whose
head he thus threatened vengeance, was but the instrument.  The concealed
hand that was directing all these odious intrigues, and lighting these
flames of civil war which were so long to make France a scene of
desolation, was that of the industrious letter-writer in the Escorial.
That which Henry of Navarre shrewdly suspected, when he talked of the
Spanish dollars in the Balafre's pocket, that which was dimly visible to
the Bishop of Acqs when he told Henry III. that the "Tagus had emptied
itself into the Seine and Loire, and that the gold of Mexico was flowing
into the royal cabinet," was much more certain than they supposed.

Philip, in truth, was neglecting his own most pressing interests that he
might direct all his energies towards entertaining civil war in France.
That France should remain internally at peace was contrary to all his
plans.  He had therefore long kept Guise and his brother, the Cardinal de
Lorraine, in his pay, and he had been spending large sums of money to
bribe many of the most considerable functionaries in the kingdom.

The most important enterprises in the Netherlands were allowed to
languish, that these subterranean operations of the "prudent" monarch of
Spain should be pushed forward.  The most brilliant and original genius
that Philip had the good fortune to have at his disposal, the genius of
Alexander Farnese, was cramped and irritated almost to madness, by the
fetters imposed upon it, by the sluggish yet obstinate nature of him it
was bound to obey.  Farnese was at that moment engaged in a most arduous
military undertaking, that famous siege of Antwerp, the details of which
will be related in future chapters, yet he was never furnished with men
or money enough to ensure success to a much more ordinary operation.
His complaints, subdued but intense, fell almost unheeded on his master's
ear.  He had not "ten dollars at his command," his cavalry horses were
all dead of hunger or had been eaten by their riders, who were starving
to death themselves, his army had dwindled to a "handful," yet he still
held on to his purpose, in spite of famine, the desperate efforts of
indefatigable enemies, and all the perils and privations of a deadly
winter.  He, too, was kept for a long time in profound ignorance of
Philip's designs.

Meantime, while the Spanish soldiers were starving in Flanders, Philip's
dollars were employed by Mucio and his adherents in enlisting troops in
Switzerland and Germany, in order to carry on the civil war in France.
The French king was held systematically up to ridicule or detestation in
every village-pulpit in his own kingdom, while the sister of Mucio, the
Duchess of Montpensier, carried the scissors at her girdle, with which
she threatened to provide Henry with a third crown, in addition to those
of France and Poland, which he had disgraced--the coronal tonsure of a
monk.  The convent should be, it was intimated, the eventual fate of the
modern Childeric, but meantime it was more important than ever to
supersede the ultimate pretensions of Henry of Navarre.  To prevent that
heretic of heretics, who was not to be bought with Spanish gold, from
ever reigning, was the first object of Philip and Mucio.

Accordingly, on the last day of the year 1584, a secret treaty had been
signed at Joinville between Henry of Guise and his brother the Duc de
Mayenne, holding the proxies of their brother the Cardinal and those of
their uncles, Aumale and Elbeuf, on the one part, and John Baptist Tassis
and Commander Moreo, on the other, as representatives of Philip.  This
transaction, sufficiently well known now to the most superficial student
of history, was a profound mystery then, so far as regarded the action of
the Spanish king.  It was not a secret, however, that the papistical
party did not intend that the Bearnese prince should ever come to the
throne, and the matter of the succession was discussed, precisely as if
the throne had been vacant.

It was decided that Charles, paternal uncle to Henry of Navarre, commonly
called the Cardinal Bourbon, should be considered successor to the crown,
in place of Henry, whose claim was forfeited by heresy.  Moreover, a
great deal of superfluous money and learning was expended in ordering
some elaborate legal arguments to be prepared by venal jurisconsults,
proving not only that the uncle ought to succeed before the nephew, but
that neither the one nor the other had any claim to succeed at all.  The
pea having thus been employed to do the work which the sword alone could
accomplish, the poor old Cardinal was now formally established by the
Guise faction as presumptive heir to the crown.

A man of straw, a superannuated court-dangler, a credulous trifler, but
an earnest Papist as his brother Antony had been, sixty-six years old,
and feeble beyond his years, who, his life long, had never achieved one
manly action, and had now one foot in the grave; this was the puppet
placed in the saddle to run a tilt against the Bearnese, the man with
foot ever in the stirrup, with sword rarely in its sheath.

The contracting parties at Joinville agreed that the Cardinal should
succeed on the death of the reigning king, and that no heretic should
ever ascend the throne, or hold the meanest office in the kingdom.
They agreed further that all heretics should be "exterminated" without
distinction throughout France and the Netherlands.  In order to procure
the necessary reforms among the clergy, the council of Trent was to be
fully carried into effect.  Philip pledged himself to furnish at least
fifty thousand crowns monthly, for the advancement of this Holy League,
as it was denominated, and as much more as should prove necessary.  The
sums advanced were to be repaid by the Cardinal on his succeeding to the
throne.  All the great officers of the crown, lords and gentlemen,
cities, chapters, and universities, all Catholics, in short, in the
kingdom, were deemed to be included in the league.  If any foreign
Catholic prince desired to enter the union, he should be admitted with
the consent of both parties.  Neither his Catholic majesty nor the
confederated princes should treat with the most Christian King, either
directly or indirectly.  The compact was to remain strictly secret--one
copy of it being sent to Philip, while the other was to be retained by
Cardinal Bourbon and his fellow leaguers.

And now--in accordance with this program--Philip proceeded stealthily and
industriously to further the schemes of Mucio, to the exclusion of more
urgent business.  Noiseless and secret himself, and delighting in
clothing so much as to glide, as it were, throughout Europe, wrapped in
the mantle of invisibility, he was perpetually provoked by the noise, the
bombast, and the bustle, which his less prudent confederates permitted
themselves.  While Philip for a long time hesitated to confide the secret
of the League to Parma, whom it most imported to understand these schemes
of his master, the confederates were openly boasting of the assistance
which they were to derive from Parma's cooperation.  Even when the Prince
had at last been informed as to the state of affairs, he stoutly denied
the facts of which the leaguers made their vaunt; thus giving to Mucio
and his friends a lesson in dissimulation."

"Things have now arrived at a point," wrote Philip to Tassis, 15th March,
1585, "that this matter of the League cannot and ought not to be
concealed from those who have a right to know it.  Therefore you must
speak clearly to the Prince of Parma, informing him of the whole scheme,
and enjoining the utmost secrecy.  You must concert with him as to the
best means of rendering aid to this cause, after having apprised him of
the points which regarded him, and also that of the security of Cardinal
de Bourbon, in case of necessity."

The Prince was anything but pleased, in the midst of his anxiety and
his almost superhuman labour in the Antwerp siege, to be distracted,
impoverished, and weakened, in order to carry out these schemes against
France; but he kept the secret manfully.

To Malpierre, the French envoy in Brussels--for there was the closest
diplomatic communication between Henry III. and Philip, while each was
tampering with the rebellious subjects of the other--to Malpierre Parma
flatly contradicted all complicity on the part of the Spanish King or
himself with the Holy League, of which he knew Philip to be the
originator and the chief.

"If I complain to the Prince of Parma," said the envoy, "of the companies
going from Flanders to assist the League, he will make me no other reply
than that which the President has done--that there is nothing at all in
it--until they are fairly arrived in France.  The President (Richardot)
said that if the Catholic King belonged to the League, as they insinuate,
his Majesty would declare the fact openly."

And a few days later, the Prince himself averred, as Malpierre had
anticipated, that "as to any intention on the part of himself or his
Catholic Majesty, to send succour to the League, according to the boast
of these gentlemen, he had never thought of such a thing, nor had
received any order on the subject from his master.  If the King intended
to do anything of the kind, he would do it openly.  He protested that he
had never seen anything, or known anything of the League."

Here was a man who knew how to keep a secret, and who had no scruples in
the matter of dissimulation, however enraged he might be at seeing men
and money diverted from his own masterly combinations in order to carry
out these schemes of his master.

Mucio, on the contrary, was imprudent and inclined to boast.  His
contempt for Henry III, made him blind to the dangers to be apprehended
from Henry of Navarre.  He did little, but talked a great deal.

Philip was very anxious that the work should be done both secretly and
thoroughly.  "Let the business be finished before Saint John's day," said
he to Tassis, when sending fifty thousand dollars for the use of the
brothers Guise.  "Tell Iniquez to warn them not to be sluggish.  Let them
not begin in a lukewarm manner, but promise them plenty of assistance
from me, if they conduct themselves properly.  Let them beware of
wavering, or of falling into plans of conciliation.  If they do their
duty, I will do mine."

But the Guise faction moved slowly despite of Philip's secret promptings.
The truth is, that the means proposed by the Spanish monarch were
ludicrously inadequate to his plans, and it was idle to suppose that the
world was to be turned upside down for his benefit, at the very low price
which he was prepared to pay.

Nothing less than to exterminate all the heretics in Christendom, to
place himself on the thrones of France and of England, and to extinguish
the last spark of rebellion in the Netherlands, was his secret thought,
and yet it was very difficult to get fifty thousand dollars from him from
month to month.  Procrastinating and indolent himself, he was for ever
rebuking the torpid movements of the Guises.

"Let Mucio set his game well at the outset," said he; "let him lay the
axe to the root of the tree, for to be wasting time fruitlessly is
sharpening the knife for himself."

This was almost prophetic.  When after so much talking and tampering,
there began to be recrimination among the leaguers, Philip was very angry
with his subordinate.

"Here is Mucio," said he, "trying to throw the blame of all the
difficulties, which have arisen, upon us.  Not hastening, not keeping his
secret, letting the execution of the enterprise grow cold, and lending an
ear to suggestions about peace, without being sure of its conclusion, he
has turned his followers into cowards, discredited his cause, and given
the King of France opportunity to strengthen his force and improve his
party.  These are all very palpable things.  I am willing to continue
my friendship for them, but not, if, while they accept it, they permit
themselves to complain, instead of manifesting gratitude."

On the whole, however, the affairs of the League seemed prosperous.
There was doubtless too much display among the confederates, but there
was a growing uneasiness among the royalists.  Cardinal Bourbon,
discarding his ecclesiastical robes and scarlet stockings, paraded
himself daily in public, clothed in military costume, with all the airs
of royalty.  Many persons thought him mad.  On the other hand, Epergnon,
the haughty minion-in-chief, who governed Henry III., and insulted all
the world, was becoming almost polite.

"The progress of the League," said Busbecq, "is teaching the Duc
d' Epergnon manners.  'Tis a youth of such insolence, that without
uncovering he would talk with men of royal descent, while they were
bareheaded.  'Tis a common jest now that he has found out where his hat
is."

Thus, for a long time, a network of secret political combinations had
been stretching itself over Christendom.  There were great movements of
troops throughout Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, slowly
concentrating themselves upon France; yet, on the whole, the great mass
of the populations, the men and women who were to pay, to fight, to
starve, to be trampled upon, to be outraged, to be plundered, to be
burned out of houses and home, to bleed, and to die, were merely
ignorant, gaping spectators.  That there was something very grave in
prospect was obvious, but exactly what was impending they knew no more
than the generation yet unborn.  Very noiselessly had the patient manager
who sat in the Escorial been making preparations for that European
tragedy in which most of the actors had such fatal parts assigned them,
and of which few of the spectators of its opening scenes were doomed to
witness the conclusion.  A shifting and glancing of lights, a vision of
vanishing feet, a trampling and bustling of unseen crowds, movements of
concealed machinery, a few incoherent words, much noise and confusion
vague and incomprehensible, till at last the tinkling of a small bell,
and a glimpse of the modest manager stealing away as the curtain was
rising--such was the spectacle presented at Midsummer 1585,

And in truth the opening picture was effective.  Sixteen black-robed,
long-bearded Netherland envoys stalking away, discomfited and indignant
upon one side; Catharine de' Medici on the other, regarding them with a
sneer, painfully contorted into a pathetic smile; Henry the King, robed
in a sack of penitence, trembling and hesitating, leaning on the arm of
Epergnon, but quailing even under the protection of that mighty
swordsman; Mucio, careering, truncheon in hand, in full panoply, upon his
war-horse, waving forward a mingled mass of German lanzknechts, Swiss
musketeers, and Lorraine pikemen; the redoubtable Don Bernardino de
Mendoza, in front, frowning and ferocious, with his drawn sword in his
hand; Elizabeth of England, in the back ground, with the white-bearded
Burghley and the monastic Walsingham, all surveying the scene with eyes
of deepest meaning; and, somewhat aside, but in full view, silent, calm,
and imperturbably good-humoured, the bold Bearnese, standing with a
mischievous but prophetic smile glittering through his blue eyes and
curly beard--thus grouped were the personages of the drama in the
introductory scenes.

The course of public events which succeeded the departure of the
Netherland deputies is sufficiently well known.  The secret negotiations
and intrigues, however, by which those external facts were preceded or
accompanied rest mainly in dusty archives, and it was therefore necessary
to dwell somewhat at length upon them in the preceding pages.

The treaty of Joinville was signed on the last day of the year 1584.

We have seen the real nature of the interview of Ambassador Mendoza with
Henry III. and his mother, which took place early in January, 1585.
Immediately after that conference, Don Bernardino betook himself to the
Duke of Guise, and lost no time in stimulating his confederate to prompt
but secret action.

The Netherland envoys had their last audience on the 18th March, and
their departure and disappointment was the signal for the general
exhibition and explosion.  The great civil war began, and the man who
refused to annex the Netherlands to the French kingdom soon ceased to be
regarded as a king.

On the 31st March, the heir presumptive, just manufactured by the Guises,
sent forth his manifesto.  Cardinal Bourbon, by this document, declared
that for twenty-four years past no proper measures had been taken to
extirpate the heresy by which France was infested.  There was no natural
heir to the King.  Those who claimed to succeed at his death had deprived
themselves, by heresy, of their rights.  Should they gain their ends, the
ancient religion would be abolished throughout the kingdom, as it had
been in England, and Catholics be subjected to the same frightful
tortures which they were experiencing there.  New men, admitted to the
confidence of the crown, clothed with the highest honours, and laden with
enormous emoluments, had excluded the ancient and honoured functionaries
of the state, who had been obliged to sell out their offices to these
upstart successors.  These new favourites had seized the finances of the
kingdom, all of which were now collected into the private coffers of the
King, and shared by him with his courtiers.  The people were groaning
under new taxes invented every day, yet they knew nothing of the
distribution of the public treasure, while the King himself was so
impoverished as to be unable to discharge his daily debts.  Meantime
these new advisers of the crown had renewed to the Protestants of the
kingdom the religious privileges of which they had so justly been
deprived, yet the religious peace which had followed had not brought with
it the promised diminution of the popular burthens.  Never had the nation
been so heavily taxed or reduced to such profound misery.  For these
reasons, he, Cardinal Bourbon, with other princes of the blood, peers,
gentlemen, cities, and universities, had solemnly bound themselves by
oath to extirpate heresy down to the last root, and to save the people
from the dreadful load under which they were languishing.  It was for
this that they had taken up arms, and till that purpose was accomplished
they would never lay them down.

The paper concluded with the hope that his Majesty would not take these
warlike demonstrations amiss; and a copy of the document was placed in
the royal hands.

It was very obvious to the most superficial observer, that the manifesto
was directed almost as much against the reigning sovereign as against
Henry of Navarre.  The adherents of the Guise faction, and especially
certain theologians in their employ, had taken very bold grounds upon the
relations between king and subjects, and had made the public very
familiar with their doctrines.  It was a duty, they said, "to depose a
prince who did not discharge his duty.  Authority ill regulated was
robbery, and it was as absurd to call him a king who knew not how to
govern, as it was to take a blind man for a guide, or to believe that a
statue could influence the movements of living men."

Yet to the faction, inspired by such rebellious sentiments, and which was
thundering in his face such tremendous denunciations, the unhappy Henry
could not find a single royal or manly word of reply.  He threw himself
on his knees, when, if ever, he should have assumed an attitude of
command.  He answered the insolence of the men, who were parading their
contempt for his authority, by humble excuses, and supplications for
pardon.  He threw his crown in the dust before their feet, as if such
humility would induce them to place it again upon his head.  He abandoned
the minions who had been his pride, his joy, and his defence, and
deprecated, with an abject whimper, all responsibility for the unmeasured
ambition and the insatiable rapacity of a few private individuals.  He
conjured the party-leaders, who had hurled defiance in his face, to lay
down their arms, and promised that they should find in his wisdom and
bounty more than all the advantages which they were seeking to obtain by
war.

Henry of Navarre answered in a different strain.  The gauntlet had at
last been thrown down to him, and he came forward to take it up; not
insolently nor carelessly, but with the cold courtesy of a Christian
knight and valiant gentleman.  He denied the charge of heresy.  He avowed
detestation of all doctrines contrary to the Word of God, to the decrees
of the Fathers of the Church, or condemned by the Councils.

The errors and abuses which had from time to time crept into the church,
had long demanded, in the opinion of all pious persons, some measures of
reform.  After many bloody wars, no better remedy had been discovered to
arrest the cause of these dire religious troubles, whether in France or
Germany, than to permit all men to obey the dictates of their own
conscience.  The Protestants had thus obtained in France many edicts by
which the peace of the kingdom had been secured.  He could not himself be
denounced as a heretic, for he had always held himself ready to receive
instruction, and to be set right where he had erred.  To call him
"relapsed" was an outrage.  Were it true, he were indeed unworthy of the
crown, but the world knew that his change at the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew had been made under duresse, and that he had returned to the
reformed faith when he had recovered his liberty.  Religious toleration
had been the object of his life.  In what the tyranny of the popes and
the violence of the Spaniards had left him of his kingdom of Navarre,
Catholics and Protestants enjoyed a perfect religious liberty.  No man
had the right, therefore, to denounce him as an enemy of the church, or
a disturber of the public repose, for he had ever been willing to accept
all propositions of peace which left the rights of conscience protected.

He was a Frenchman, a prince of France, a living member of the kingdom;
feeling with its pains, and bleeding with its wounds.  They who denounced
him were alien to France, factitious portions of her body, feeling no
suffering, even should she be consuming with living fire.  The Leaguers
were the friends and the servants of the Spaniards, while he had been
born the enemy, and with too good reason, of the whole Spanish race.

"Let the name of Papist and of Huguenot," he said, "be heard no more
among us.  Those terms were buried in the edict of peace.  Let us speak
only of Frenchmen and of Spaniards.  It is the counter-league which we
must all unite to form, the natural union of the head with all its
members."

Finally, to save the shedding of so much innocent blood, to spare all the
countless miseries of civil war, he implored the royal permission to
terminate this quarrel in person, by single combat with the Duke of
Guise, one to one, two to two, or in as large a number as might be
desired, and upon any spot within or without the kingdom that should be
assigned.  "The Duke of Guise," said Henry of Navarre, "cannot but accept
my challenge as an honour, coming as it does from a prince infinitely his
superior in rank; and thus, may God defend the right."

This paper, drawn up by the illustrious Duplessis-Mornay, who was to have
been the second of the King of Navarre in the proposed duel, was signed
10 June 1585.

The unfortunate Henry III., not so dull as to doubt that the true object
of the Guise party was to reduce him to insignificance, and to open their
own way to the throne, was too impotent of purpose to follow the dictates
which his wisest counsellors urged and his own reason approved.  His
choice had lain between open hostility with his Spanish enemy and a more
terrible combat with that implacable foe wearing the mask of friendship.
He had refused to annex to his crown the rich and powerful Netherlands,
from dread of a foreign war; and he was now about to accept for himself
and kingdom all the horrors of a civil contest, in which his avowed
antagonist was the first captain of the age, and his nominal allies the
stipendiaries of Philip II.

Villeroy, his prime minister, and Catharine de' Medici, his mother, had
both devoted him to disgrace and ruin.  The deputies from the Netherlands
had been dismissed, and now, notwithstanding the festivities and
exuberant demonstrations of friendship with which the Earl of Derby's
splendid embassy had been greeted, it became necessary to bind Henry hand
and foot to the conspirators, who had sworn the destruction of that
Queen, as well as his own, and the extirpation of heresy and heretics in
every realm of Christendom.

On the 9th June the league demanded a royal decree, forbidding the
practice of all religion but the Roman Catholic, on pain of death.  In
vain had the clear-sighted Bishop of Acqs uttered his eloquent warnings.
Despite such timely counsels, which he was capable at once of
appreciating and of neglecting, Henry followed slavishly the advice of
those whom he knew in his heart to be his foes, and authorised the great
conspiracy against Elizabeth, against Protestantism, and against himself.

On the 5th June Villeroy had expressed a wish for a very secret interview
with Mendoza, on the subject of the invasion of England.

"It needed not this overture," said that magniloquent Spaniard, "to
engender in a person of my talents, and with the heart of a Mendoza,
venom enough for vengeance.  I could not more desire than I did already
to assist in so holy a work; nor could I aspire to greater honour than
would be gained in uniting those crowns (of France and Spain) in strict
friendship, for the purpose of extirpating heresy throughout Europe, and
of chastising the Queen of England--whose abominations I am never likely
to forget, having had them so long before my eyes--and of satisfying my
just resentment for the injuries she has inflicted on myself.  It was on
this subject," continued the ambassador, "that Monsieur de Villeroy
wished a secret interview with me, pledging himself--if your Majesty
would deign to unite yourself with this King, and to aid him with your
forces--to a successful result."

Mendoza accordingly expressed a willingness to meet the ingenuous
Secretary of State--who had so recently been assisting at the banquets
and rejoicings with Lord Derby and his companions, which had so much
enlivened the French capital--and assured him that his most Catholic
Majesty would be only too glad to draw closer the bonds of friendship
with the most Christian King, for the service of God and the glory of
his Church.

The next day the envoy and the Secretary of State met, very secretly, in
the house of the Signor Gondi.  Villeroy commenced his harangue by an
allusion to the current opinion, that Mendoza had arrived in France with
a torch in his hand, to light the fires of civil war in that kingdom, as
he had recently done in England.

"I do not believe," replied Mendoza, "that discreet and prudent persons
in France attribute my actions to any such motives.  As for the ignorant
people of the kingdom, they do not appal me, although they evidently
imagine that I have imbibed, during my residence in England, something of
the spirit of the enchanter Merlin, that, by signs and cabalistic words
alone, I am thought capable of producing such commotions."

After this preliminary flourish the envoy proceeded to complain bitterly
of the most Christian King and his mother, who, after the propositions
which they had made him, when on his way to Spain, had, since his return,
become so very cold and dry towards him.  And on this theme he enlarged
for some time.

Villeroy replied, by complaining, in his turn, about the dealings of the
most Catholic King, with the leaguers and the rebels of France; and
Mendoza rejoined by an intimation that harping upon past grievances and
suspicions was hardly the way to bring about harmony in present matters.

Struck with the justice of this remark, the French Secretary of State
entered at once upon business.  He made a very long speech upon the
tyranny which "that Englishwoman" was anew inflicting upon the Catholics
in her kingdom, upon the offences which she had committed against the
King of Spain, and against the King of France and his brothers, and upon
the aliment which she had been yielding to the civil war in the
Netherlands and in France for so many years.  He then said that if
Mendoza would declare with sincerity, and "without any of the duplicity
of a minister"--that Philip would league himself with Henry for the
purpose of invading England, in order to reduce the three kingdoms to the
Catholic faith, and to place their crowns on the head of the Queen of
Scotland, to whom they of right belonged; then that the King, his master,
was most ready to join in so holy an enterprise.  He begged Mendoza to
say with what number of troops the invasion could be made; whether Philip
could send any from Flanders or from Spain; how many it would be well to
send from France, and under what chieftain; in what manner it would be
best to communicate with his most Catholic Majesty; whether it were
desirable to despatch a secret envoy to him, and of what quality such
agent ought to be.  He also observed that the most Christian King could
not himself speak to Mendoza on the subject before having communicated
the matter to the Queen-Mother, but expressed a wish that a special
carrier might be forthwith despatched to Spain; for he might be sure
that, on an affair of such weight, he would not have permitted himself to
reveal the secret wishes of his master, except by his commands.

Mendoza replied, by enlarging with much enthusiasm on the facility with
which England could be conquered by the combined power of France and
Spain.  If it were not a very difficult matter before--even with the
jealousy between the two crowns--how much less so, now that they could
join their fleets and armies; now that the arming by the one prince would
not inspire the other with suspicion; now that they would be certain of
finding safe harbour in each other's kingdoms, in case of unfavourable
weather and head-winds, and that they could arrange from what ports to
sail, in what direction, and under what commanders.  He disapproved,
however, of sending a special messenger to Spain, on the ground of
wishing to keep the matter entirely secret, but in reality--as he
informed Philip--because he chose to keep the management in his own
hands; because he could always let slip Mucio upon them, in case they
should play him false; because he feared that the leaking out of the
secret might discourage the Leaguers, and because he felt that the bolder
and more lively were the Cardinal of Bourbon and his confederates, the
stronger was the party of the King, his master, and the more intimidated
and dispirited would be the mind and the forces of the most Christian
King.  "And this is precisely the point," said the diplomatist, "at which
a minister of your Majesty should aim at this season."

Thus the civil war in France--an indispensable part of Philip's policy--
was to be maintained at all hazards; and although the ambassador was of
opinion that the most Christian King was sincere in his proposition to
invade England, it would never do to allow any interval of tranquillity
to the wretched subjects of that Christian King.

"I cannot doubt," said Mendoza, "that the making of this proposal to me
with so much warmth was the especial persuasion of God, who, hearing the
groans of the Catholics of England, so cruelly afflicted, wished to force
the French King and his minister to feel, in the necessity which
surrounds them, that the offending Him, by impeding the grandeur of your
Majesty, would be their total ruin, and that their only salvation is to
unite in sincerity and truth with your Majesty for the destruction of the
heretics."

Therefore, although judging from the nature of the French--he might
imagine that they were attempting to put him to sleep, Mendoza, on the
whole, expressed a conviction that the King was in earnest, having
arrived at the conclusion that he could only get rid of the Guise faction
by sending them over to England.  "Seeing that he cannot possibly
eradicate the war from his kingdom," said the envoy, "because of the
boldness with which the Leaguers maintain it, with the strong assistance
of your Majesty, he has determined to embrace with much fervour, and
without any deception at all, the enterprise against England, as the only
remedy to quiet his own dominions.  The subjugation of those three
kingdoms, in order to restore them to their rightful owner, is a purpose
so holy, just, and worthy of your Majesty, and one which you have had so
constantly in view, that it is superfluous for me to enlarge upon the
subject.  Your Majesty knows that its effects will be the tranquillity
and preservation of all your realms.  The reasons for making the attempt,
even without the aid of France, become demonstrations now that she is
unanimously in favour of the scheme.  The most Christian King is
resolutely bent--so far as I can comprehend the intrigues of Villeroy--
to carry out this project on the foundation of a treaty with the Guise
party.  It will not take much time, therefore, to put down the heretics
here; nor will it consume much more to conquer England with the armies of
two such powerful Princes.  The power of that island is of little moment,
there being no disciplined forces to oppose us, even if they were all
unanimous in its defence; how much less then, with so many Catholics to
assist the invaders, seeing them so powerful.  If your Majesty, on
account of your Netherlands, is not afraid of putting arms into the hands
of the Guise family in France, there need be less objection to sending
one of that house into England, particularly as you will send forces of
your own into that kingdom, by the reduction of which the affairs of
Flanders will be secured.  To effect the pacification of the Netherlands
the sooner, it would be desirable to conquer England as early as
October."

Having thus sufficiently enlarged upon the sincerity of the French King
and his prime minister, in their dark projects against a friendly power,
and upon the ease with which that friendly power could be subjected, the
ambassador begged for a reply from his royal master without delay.  He
would be careful, meantime, to keep the civil war alive in France--thus
verifying the poetical portrait of himself, the truth of which he had
just been so indignantly and rhetorically denying--but it was desirable
that the French should believe that this civil war was not Philip's sole
object.  He concluded by drawing his master's attention to the sufferings
of the English Catholics.  "I cannot refrain," he said, "from placing
before your eyes the terrible persecutions which the Catholics are
suffering in England; the blood of the martyrs flowing in so many kinds
of torments; the groans of the prisoners, of the widows and orphans; the
general oppression and servitude, which is the greatest ever endured by a
people of God, under any tyrant whatever.  Your Majesty, into whose hands
God is now pleased to place the means, so long desired, of extirpating
and totally destroying the heresies of our time, can alone liberate them
from their bondage."

The picture of these kings, prime ministers, and ambassadors, thus
plotting treason, stratagem, and massacre, is a dark and dreary one.
The description of English sufferings for conscience' sake, under the
Protestant Elizabeth, is even more painful; for it had unfortunately too
much, of truth, although as wilfully darkened and exaggerated as could be
done by religious hatred and Spanish bombast.  The Queen was surrounded
by legions of deadly enemies.  Spain, the Pope, the League, were united
in one perpetual conspiracy against her; and they relied on the
cooperation of those subjects of hers whom her own cruelty was
converting into traitors.

We read with a shudder these gloomy secrets of conspiracy and wholesale
murder, which make up the diplomatic history of the sixteenth century,
and we cease to wonder that a woman, feeling herself so continually the
mark at which all the tyrants and assassins of Europe were aiming--
although not possessing perhaps the evidences of her peril so completely
as they have been revealed to us--should come to consider every English
Papist as a traitor and an assassin.  It was unfortunate that she was not
able to rise beyond the vile instincts of the age, and by a magnanimous
and sublime toleration, to convert her secret enemies into loyal
subjects.

And now Henry of Valois was to choose between league and counter-league,
between Henry of Guise and Henry of Navarre, between France and Spain.
The whole chivalry of Gascony and Guienne, the vast swarm of industrious
and hardy Huguenot artisans, the Netherland rebels, the great English
Queen, stood ready to support the cause of French nationality, and of all
nationalities, against a threatening world-empire, of religious liberty
against sacerdotal absolutism, and the crown of a King, whose only merit
had hitherto been to acquiesce in a religious toleration dictated to him
by others, against those who derided his authority and insulted his
person.  The bold knight-errant of Christendom, the champion to the
utterance against Spain, stood there with lance in rest, and the King
scarcely hesitated.

The League, gliding so long unheeded, now reared its crest in the very
palace of France, and full in the monarch's face.  With a single shudder
the victim fell into its coils.

The choice was made.  On the 18th of July (1585) the edict of Nemours was
published, revoking all previous edicts by which religious peace had been
secured.  Death and confiscation of property were now proclaimed as the
penalty of practising any religious rites save those of the Roman
Catholic Church.  Six months were allowed to the Nonconformists to put
their affairs in order, after which they were to make public profession
of the Catholic religion, with regular attendance upon its ceremonies,
or else go into perpetual exile.  To remain in France without abjuring
heresy was thenceforth a mortal crime, to be expiated upon the gallows.
As a matter of course, all Huguenots were instantaneously incapacitated
from public office, the mixed chambers of justice were abolished, and the
cautionary towns were to be restored.  On the other hand, the Guise
faction were to receive certain cities into their possession, as pledges
that this sanguinary edict should be fulfilled.

Thus did Henry III. abjectly kiss the hand which smote him.  His mother,
having since the death of Anjou no further interest in affecting to
favour the Huguenots, had arranged the basis of this treaty with the
Spanish party.  And now the unfortunate King had gone solemnly down to
the Parliament of Paris, to be present at the registration of the edict.
The counsellors and presidents were all assembled, and as they sat there
in their crimson robes, they seemed, to the excited imagination of those
who loved their country, like embodiments of the impending and most
sanguinary tragedy.  As the monarch left the parliament-house a faint cry
of 'God save the King' was heard in the street.  Henry hung his head, for
it was long since that cry had met his ears, and he knew that it was a
false and languid demonstration which had been paid for by the Leaguers.

And thus was the compact signed--an unequal compact.  Madam League was on
horseback, armed in proof, said a contemporary; the King was on foot, and
dressed in a shirt of penitence.  The alliance was not an auspicious one.
Not peace, but a firebrand--'facem, non pacem'--had the King held
forth to his subjects.

When the news came to Henry of Navarre that the King had really
promulgated this fatal edict, he remained for a time, with amazement and
sorrow, leaning heavily upon a table, with his face in his right hand.
When he raised his head again--so he afterwards asserted--one side of his
moustachio had turned white.

Meantime Gregory XIII., who had always refused to sanction the League,
was dead, and Cardinal Peretti, under the name of Sixtus V., now reigned
in his place.  Born of an illustrious house, as he said--for it was a
house without a roof--this monk of humble origin was of inordinate
ambition.  Feigning a humility which was but the cloak to his pride, he
was in reality as grasping, self-seeking, and revengeful, as he seemed
gentle and devout.  It was inevitable that a pontiff of this character
should seize the opportunity offered him to mimic Hildebrand, and to
brandish on high the thunderbolts of the Church.

With a flaming prelude concerning the omnipotence delegated by Almighty
God to St. Peter and his successors--an authority infinitely superior to
all earthly powers--the decrees of which were irresistible alike by the
highest and the meanest, and which hurled misguided princes from their
thrones into the abyss, like children of Beelzebub, the Pope proceeded to
fulminate his sentence of excommunication against those children of
wrath, Henry of Navarre and Henry of Conde.  They were denounced as
heretics, relapsed, and enemies of God (28th Aug.1585).  The King was
declared dispossessed of his principality of Bearne, and of what remained
to him of Navarre.  He was stripped of all dignities, privileges, and
property, and especially proclaimed incapable of ever ascending the
throne of France.

The Bearnese replied by a clever political squib.  A terse and spirited
paper found its way to Rome, and was soon affixed, to the statutes of
Pasquin and Marforio, and in other public places of that city, and even
to the gates of the papal palace.  Without going beyond his own doors,
his Holiness had the opportunity of reading, to his profound amazement,
that Mr. Sixtus, calling himself Pope, had foully and maliciously lied in
calling the King of Navarre a heretic.  This Henry offered to prove
before any free council legitimately chosen.  If the Pope refused to
submit to such decision, he was himself no better than excommunicate and
Antichrist, and the King of Navarre thereby declared mortal and perpetual
war upon him.  The ancient kings of France had known how to chastise the
insolence of former popes, and he hoped, when he ascended the throne, to
take vengeance on Mr. Sixtus for the insult thus offered to all the kings
of Christendom--and so on, in a vein which showed the Bearnese to be a
man rather amused than blasted by these papal fireworks.

Sixtus V., though imperious, was far from being dull.  He knew how to
appreciate a man when he found one, and he rather admired the cheerful
attitude maintained by Navarre, as he tossed back the thunderbolts.  He
often spoke afterwards of Henry with genuine admiration, and declared
that in all the world he knew but two persons fit to wear a crown--Henry
of Navarre and Elizabeth of England.  "'Twas pity," he said, "that both
should be heretics."

And thus the fires of civil war had been lighted throughout Christendom,
and the monarch of France had thrown himself head foremost into the
flames.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Hibernian mode of expressing himself
His inordinate arrogance
His insolence intolerable
Humility which was but the cloak to his pride
Longer they delay it, the less easy will they find it
Oration, fertile in rhetoric and barren in facts
Round game of deception, in which nobody was deceived
Wasting time fruitlessly is sharpening the knife for himself
With something of feline and feminine duplicity
'Twas pity, he said, that both should be heretics



End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v38
by John Lothrop Motley






HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609

By John Lothrop Motley



History of The United Netherlands, 1585


Alexander Farnese, The Duke of Parma


CHAPTER V., Part 1.

     Position and Character of Farnese--Preparations for Antwerp Siege--
     Its Characteristics--Foresight of William the Silent--Sainte
     Aldegonde, the Burgomaster--Anarchy in Antwerp--Character of Sainte
     Aldegonde--Admiral Treslong--Justinus de Nassau--Hohenlo--Opposition
     to the Plan of Orange--Liefkenshoek--Head--Quarters of Parma at
     Kalloo--Difficulty of supplying the City--Results of not piercing
     the Dykes--Preliminaries of the Siege--Successes of the Spaniards--
     Energy of Farnese with Sword and Pen--His Correspondence with the
     Antwerpers--Progress of the Bridge--Impoverished Condition of Parma
     --Patriots attempt Bois-le-Duc--Their Misconduct--Failure of the
     Enterprise--The Scheldt Bridge completed--Description of the
     Structure

The negotiations between France and the Netherlands have been massed, in
order to present a connected and distinct view of the relative attitude
of the different countries of Europe.  The conferences and diplomatic
protocolling had resulted in nothing positive; but it is very necessary
for the reader to understand the negative effects of all this
dissimulation and palace-politics upon the destiny of the new
commonwealth, and upon Christendom at large.  The League had now achieved
a great triumph; the King of France had virtually abdicated, and it was
now requisite for the King of Navarre, the Netherlands, and Queen
Elizabeth, to draw more closely together than before, if the last hope
of forming a counter-league were not to be abandoned.  The next step in
political combination was therefore a solemn embassy of the States-
General to England.  Before detailing those negotiations, however, it is
proper to direct attention to the external public events which had been
unrolling themselves in the Provinces, contemporaneously with the secret
history which has been detailed in the preceding chapters.

By presenting in their natural groupings various distinct occurrences,
rather than by detailing them in strict chronological order, a clearer
view of the whole picture will be furnished than could be done by
intermingling personages, transactions, and scenery, according to the
arbitrary command of Time alone.

The Netherlands, by the death of Orange, had been left without a head.
On the other hand, the Spanish party had never been so fortunate in their
chief at any period since the destiny of the two nations had been blended
with each other.  Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma, was a general and a
politician, whose character had been steadily ripening since he came into
the command of the country.  He was now thirty-seven years of age--with
the experience of a sexagenarian.  No longer the impetuous, arbitrary,
hot-headed youth, whose intelligence and courage hardly atoned for his
insolent manner and stormy career, he had become pensive, modest, almost
gentle.  His genius was rapid in conception, patient in combination,
fertile in expedients, adamantine in the endurance or suffering; for
never did a heroic general and a noble army of veterans manifest more
military virtue in the support of an infamous cause than did Parma and
his handful of Italians and Spaniards.  That which they considered to be
their duty they performed.  The work before them they did with all their
might.

Alexander had vanquished the rebellion in the Celtic provinces, by the
masterly diplomacy and liberal bribery which have been related in a
former work.  Artois, Hainault, Douay, Orchies, with the rich cities of
Lille, Tournay, Valenciennes, Arras, and other important places, were now
the property of Philip.  These unhappy and misguided lands, however, were
already reaping the reward of their treason.  Beggared, trampled upon,
plundered, despised, they were at once the prey of the Spaniards, and the
cause that their sister-states, which still held out, were placed in more
desperate condition than ever.  They were also, even in their abject
plight, made still more forlorn by the forays of Balagny, who continued
in command of Cambray.  Catharine de' Medici claimed that city as her
property, by will of the Duke of Anjou.  A strange title--founded upon
the treason and cowardice of her favourite son--but one which, for a
time, was made good by the possession maintained by Balagny.  That
usurper meantime, with a shrewd eye to his own interests, pronounced the
truce of Cambray, which was soon afterwards arranged, from year to year,
by permission of Philip, as a "most excellent milch-cow;" and he
continued to fill his pails at the expense of the "reconciled" provinces,
till they were thoroughly exhausted.

This large south-western section of the Netherlands being thus
permanently re-annexed to the Spanish crown, while Holland, Zeeland, and
the other provinces, already constituting the new Dutch republic, were
more obstinate in their hatred of Philip than ever, there remained the
rich and fertile territory of Flanders and Brabant as the great
debateable land.  Here were the royal and political capital, Brussels,
the commercial capital, Antwerp, with Mechlin, Dendermonde, Vilvoorde,
and other places of inferior importance, all to be struggled for to the
death.  With the subjection of this district the last bulwark between the
new commonwealth and the old empire would be overthrown, and Spain and
Holland would then meet face to face.

If there had ever been a time when every nerve in Protestant Christendom
should be strained to weld all those provinces together into one great
commonwealth, as a bulwark for European liberty, rather than to allow
them to be broken into stepping-stones, over which absolutism could
stride across France and Holland into England, that moment had arrived.
Every sacrifice should have been cheerfully made by all Netherlanders,
the uttermost possible subsidies and auxiliaries should have been
furnished by all the friends of civil and religious liberty in every land
to save Flanders and Brabant from their impending fate.

No man felt more keenly the importance of the business in which he was
engaged than Parma.  He knew his work exactly, and he meant to execute it
thoroughly.  Antwerp was the hinge on which the fate of the whole
country, perhaps of all Christendom, was to turn.  "If we get Antwerp,"
said the Spanish soldiers--so frequently that the expression passed into
a proverb--"you shall all go to mass with us; if you save Antwerp, we
will all go to conventicle with you."

Alexander rose with the difficulty and responsibility of his situation.
His vivid, almost poetic intellect formed its schemes with perfect
distinctness.  Every episode in his great and, as he himself termed it,
his "heroic enterprise," was traced out beforehand with the tranquil
vision of creative genius; and he was prepared to convert his conceptions
into reality, with the aid of an iron nature that never knew fatigue or
fear.

But the obstacles were many.  Alexander's master sat in his cabinet with
his head full of Mucio, Don Antonio, and Queen Elizabeth; while Alexander
himself was left neglected, almost forgotten.  His army was shrinking to
a nullity.  The demands upon him were enormous, his finances delusive,
almost exhausted.  To drain an ocean dry he had nothing but a sieve.
What was his position?  He could bring into the field perhaps eight or
ten thousand men over and above the necessary garrisons.  He had before
him Brussels, Antwerp, Mechlin, Ghent, Dendermonde, and other powerful
places, which he was to subjugate.  Here was a problem not easy of
solution.  Given an army of eight thousand, more or less, to reduce
therewith in the least possible time, half-a-dozen cities; each
containing fifteen or twenty thousand men able to bear arms.  To besiege
these places in form was obviously a mere chimera.  Assault, battery, and
surprises--these were all out of the question.

Yet Alexander was never more truly heroic than in this position of vast
entanglement.  Untiring, uncomplaining, thoughtful of others, prodigal of
himself, generous, modest, brave; with so much intellect and so much
devotion to what he considered his duty, he deserved to be a patriot and
a champion of the right, rather than an instrument of despotism.

And thus he paused for a moment--with much work already accomplished,
but his hardest life-task before him; still in the noon of manhood,
a fine martial figure, standing, spear in hand, full in the sunlight,
though all the scene around him was wrapped in gloom--a noble, commanding
shape, entitled to the admiration which the energetic display of great
powers, however unscrupulous, must always command.  A dark, meridional
physiognomy, a quick; alert, imposing head; jet black, close-clipped
hair; a bold eagle's face, with full, bright, restless eye; a man rarely
reposing, always ready, never alarmed; living in the saddle, with harness
on his back--such was the Prince of Parma; matured and mellowed, but
still unharmed by time.

The cities of Flanders and Brabant he determined to reduce by gaining
command of the Scheldt.  The five principal ones Ghent, Dendermonde,
Mechlin, Brussels Antwerp, lie narrow circle, at distances from each
other varying from five miles to thirty, and are all strung together by
the great Netherland river or its tributaries.  His plan was immensely
furthered by the success of Balthasar Gerard, an ally whom Alexander had
despised and distrusted, even while he employed him.  The assassination
of Orange was better to Parma than forty thousand men.  A crowd of allies
instantly started up for him, in the shape of treason, faintheartedness,
envy, jealousy, insubordination, within the walls of every beleaguered
city.  Alexander knew well how to deal with those auxiliaries.  Letters,
artfully concocted, full of conciliation and of promise, were circulated
in every council-room, in almost every house.

The surrender of Ghent--brought about by the governor's eloquence, aided
by the golden arguments which he knew so well how to advance--had by the
middle of September (19th Sept. 1584), put him in possession of West
Flanders, with the important exception of the coast.  Dendermonde
capitulated at a still earlier day; while the fall of Brussels, which
held out till many persons had been starved to death, was deferred till
the 10th March of the following year, and that of Mechlin till midsummer.

The details of the military or political operations, by which the
reduction of most of these places were effected, possess but little
interest.  The siege of Antwerp, however, was one of the most striking
events of the age; and although the change in military tactics and the
progress of science may have rendered this leaguer of less technical
importance than it possessed in the sixteenth century, yet the
illustration that it affords of the splendid abilities of Parma, of the
most cultivated mode of warfare in use at that period, and of the
internal politics by which the country was then regulated, make it
necessary to dwell upon the details of an episode which must ever possess
enduring interest.

It is agreeable to reflect, too, that the fame of the general is not
polluted with the wholesale butchery, which has stained the reputation of
other Spanish commanders so indelibly.  There was no killing for the mere
love of slaughter.  With but few exceptions, there was no murder in cold
blood; and the many lives that were laid down upon those watery dykes
were sacrificed at least in bold, open combat; in a contest, the ruling
spirits of which were patriotism, or at least honour.

It is instructive, too, to observe the diligence and accuracy with which
the best lights of the age were brought to bear upon the great problem
which Parma had undertaken to solve.  All the science then at command was
applied both by the Prince and by his burgher antagonists to the
advancement of their ends.  Hydrostatics, hydraulics, engineering,
navigation, gunnery, pyrotechnics, mining, geometry, were summoned as
broadly, vigorously, and intelligently to the destruction or preservation
of a trembling city, as they have ever been, in more commercial days, to
advance a financial or manufacturing purpose.  Land converted into water,
and water into land, castles built upon the breast of rapid streams,
rivers turned from their beds and taught new courses; the distant ocean
driven across ancient bulwarks, mines dug below the sea, and canals made
to percolate obscene morasses--which the red hand of war, by the very
act, converted into blooming gardens--a mighty stream bridged and
mastered in the very teeth of winter, floating ice-bergs, ocean-tides,
and an alert and desperate foe, ever ready with fleets and armies and
batteries--such were the materials of which the great spectacle was
composed; a spectacle which enchained the attention of Europe for seven
months, and on the result of which, it was thought, depended the fate of
all the Netherlands, and perhaps of all Christendom.

Antwerp, then the commercial centre of the Netherlands and of Europe,
stands upon the Scheldt.  The river, flowing straight, broad, and full
along the verge of the city, subtends the arc into which the place
arranges itself as it falls back from the shore.  Two thousand ships of
the largest capacity then known might easily find room in its ample
harbours.  The stream, nearly half a mile in width, and sixty feet in
depth, with a tidal rise and fall of eleven feet, moves, for a few miles,
in a broad and steady current between the provinces of Brabant and
Flanders.  Then, dividing itself into many ample estuaries, and gathering
up the level isles of Zeeland into its bosom, it seems to sweep out with
them into the northern ocean.  Here, at the junction of the river and the
sea, lay the perpetual hope of Antwerp, for in all these creeks and
currents swarmed the fleets of the Zeelanders, that hardy and amphibious
race, with which few soldiers or mariners could successfully contend, on
land or water.

Even from the beginning of the year 1584 Parma had been from time to time
threatening Antwerp.  The victim instinctively felt that its enemy was
poising and hovering over head, although he still delayed to strike.
Early in the summer Sainte Aldegonde, Recorder Martini, and other
official personages, were at Delft, upon the occasion of the christening
ceremonies of Frederic Henry, youngest child of Orange.  The Prince,
at that moment, was aware of the plans of Parma, and held a long
conversation with his friends upon the measures which he desired to see
immediately undertaken.  Unmindful of his usual hospitality, he insisted
that these gentlemen should immediately leave for Antwerp.  Alexander
Farnese, he assured them, had taken the firm determination to possess
himself of that place, without further delay.  He had privately signified
his purpose of laying the axe at once to the root of the tree, believing
that with the fall of the commercial capital the infant confederacy of
the United States would fall likewise.  In order to accomplish this
object, he would forthwith attempt to make himself master of the banks
of the Scheldt, and would even throw a bridge across the stream, if his
plans were not instantly circumvented.

William of Orange then briefly indicated his plan; adding that he had no
fears for the result; and assuring his friends, who expressed much
anxiety on the subject, that if Parma really did attempt the siege of
Antwerp it should be his ruin.  The plan was perfectly simple.  The city
stood upon a river.  It was practicable, although extremely hazardous,
for the enemy to bridge that river, and by so doing ultimately to reduce
the place.  But the ocean could not be bridged; and it was quite possible
to convert Antwerp, for a season, into an ocean-port.  Standing alone
upon an island, with the sea flowing around it, and with full and free
marine communication with Zeeland and Holland, it might safely bid
defiance to the land-forces, even of so great a commander as Parma.  To
the furtherance of this great measure of defence, it was necessary to
destroy certain bulwarks, the chief of (10th June, 1584) which was called
the Blaw-garen Dyke; and Sainte Aldegonde was therefore requested to
return to the city, in order to cause this task to be executed without
delay.

Nothing could be more judicious than this advice.  The low lands along
the Scheldt were protected against marine encroachments, and the river
itself was confined to its bed, by a magnificent system of dykes, which
extended along its edge towards the ocean, in parallel lines.  Other
barriers of a similar nature ran in oblique directions, through the wide
open pasture lands, which they maintained in green fertility, against the
ever-threatening sea.  The Blaw-garen, to which the prince mainly
alluded, was connected with the great dyke upon the right bank of the
Scheldt.  Between this and the city, another bulwark called the Kowenstyn
Dyke, crossed the country at right angles to the river, and joined the
other two at a point, not very far from Lillo, where the States had a
strong fortress.

The country in this neighbourhood was low, spongy, full of creeks, small
meres, and the old bed of the Scheldt.  Orange, therefore, made it very
clear, that by piercing the great dyke just described, such a vast body
of water would be made to pour over the land as to submerge the Kowenstyn
also, the only other obstacle in the passage of fleets from Zeeland to
Antwerp.  The city would then be connected with the sea and its islands,
by so vast an expanse of navigable water, that any attempt on Parma's
part to cut off supplies and succour would be hopeless.  Antwerp would
laugh the idea of famine to scorn; and although this immunity would be
purchased by the sacrifice of a large amount of agricultural territory
the price so paid was but a slender one, when the existence of the
capital, and with it perhaps of the whole confederacy was at stake.

Sainte Aldegonde and Martini suggested, that, as there would be some
opposition to the measure proposed, it might be as well to make a similar
attempt on the Flemish side, in preference, by breaking through the dykes
in the neighbourhood of Saftingen.  Orange replied, by demonstrating that
the land in the region which he had indicated was of a character to
ensure success, while in the other direction there were certain very
unfavourable circumstances which rendered the issue doubtful.  The result
was destined to prove the sagacity of the Prince, for it will be shown in
the sequel, that the Saftingen plan, afterwards really carried out, was
rather advantageous than detrimental to the enemy's projects.

Sainte Aldegonde, accordingly, yielded to the arguments and entreaties of
his friend, and repaired without delay to Antwerp.

The advice of William the Silent--as will soon be related--was not acted
upon; and, within a few weeks after it had been given, he was in his
grave.  Nowhere was his loss more severely felt than in Antwerp.  It
seemed, said a contemporary, that with his death had died all authority.
The Prince was the only head which the many-membered body of that very
democratic city ever spontaneously obeyed.  Antwerp was a small republic
--in time of peace intelligently and successfully administered--which in
the season of a great foreign war, amid plagues, tumults, famine, and
internal rebellion, required the firm hand and the clear brain of a
single chief.  That brain and hand had been possessed by Orange alone.

Before his death he had desired that Sainte Aldegonde should accept the
office of burgomaster of the city.  Nominally, the position was not so
elevated as were many of the posts which that distinguished patriot had
filled.  In reality, it was as responsible and arduous a place as could
be offered to any man's acceptance throughout the country.  Sainte
Aldegonde consented, not without some reluctance.  He felt that there
was odium to be incurred; he knew that much would be expected of him,
and that his means would be limited.  His powers would be liable to a
constant and various restraint.  His measures were sure to be the subject
of perpetual cavil.  If the city were besieged, there were nearly one
hundred thousand mouths to feed, and nearly one hundred thousand tongues
to dispute about furnishing the food.

For the government of Antwerp had been degenerating from a well-organised
municipal republicanism into anarchy.  The clashing of the various bodies
exercising power had become incessant and intolerable.  The burgomaster
was charged with the chief executive authority, both for peace and war.
Nevertheless he had but a single vote in the board of magistrates, where
a majority decided.  Moreover, he could not always attend the sessions,
because he was also member of the council of Brabant.  Important measures
might therefore be decided by the magistracy, not only against his
judgment, but without his knowledge.  Then there was a variety of boards
or colleges, all arrogating concurrent--which in truth was conflicting-
authority.  There was the board of militia-colonels, which claimed great
powers.  Here, too, the burgomaster was nominally the chief, but he might
be voted down by a majority, and of course was often absent.  Then there
were sixteen captains who came into the colonels' sessions whenever they
liked, and had their word to say upon all subjects broached.  If they
were refused a hearing, they were backed by eighty other captains, who
were ready at any moment to carry every disputed point before the
"broadcouncil."

There were a college of ward-masters, a college of select men, a college
of deacons, a college of ammunition, of fortification, of ship-building,
all claiming equal authority, and all wrangling among themselves; and
there was a college of "peace-makers," who wrangled more than all the
rest together.

Once a week there was a session of the board or general council.  Dire
was the hissing and confusion, as the hydra heads of the multitudinous
government were laid together.  Heads of colleges, presidents of
chambers, militia-chieftains; magistrates, ward-masters, deans of
fishmongers, of tailors, gardeners, butchers, all met together pell-mell;
and there was no predominant authority.  This was not a convenient
working machinery for a city threatened with a siege by the first captain
of the age.  Moreover there was a deficiency of regular troops: The
burgher-militia were well trained and courageous, but not distinguished
for their docility.  There was also a regiment of English under Colonel
Morgan, a soldier of great experience, and much respected; but, as
Stephen Le Sieur said, "this force, unless seconded with more, was but a
breakfast for the enemy."  Unfortunately, too, the insubordination, which
was so ripe in the city, seemed to affect these auxiliaries.  A mutiny
broke out among the English troops.  Many deserted to Parma, some escaped
to England, and it was not until Morgan had beheaded Captain Lee and
Captain Powell, that discipline could be restored.

And into this scene of wild and deafening confusion came Philip de
Marnix, Lord of Sainte Aldegonde.

There were few more brilliant characters than he in all Christendom.  He
was a man, of a most rare and versatile genius.  Educated in Geneva at
the very feet of Calvin, he had drunk, like mother's milk, the strong and
bitter waters of the stern reformer's, creed; but he had in after life
attempted, although hardly with success, to lift himself to the height of
a general religious toleration.  He had also been trained in the severe
and thorough literary culture which characterised that rigid school.  He
was a scholar, ripe and rare; no holiday trifler in the gardens of
learning.  He spoke and wrote Latin like his native tongue.  He could
compose poignant Greek epigrams.  He was so familiar with Hebrew, that he
had rendered the Psalms of David out of the original into flowing Flemish
verse, for the use of the reformed churches.  That he possessed the
modern tongues of civilized Europe, Spanish, Italian, French, and German,
was a matter of course.  He was a profound jurisconsult, capable of
holding debate against all competitors upon any point of theory or
practice of law, civil, municipal, international.  He was a learned
theologian, and had often proved himself a match for the doctors,
bishops, or rabbin of Europe, in highest argument of dogma, creed, or
tradition.  He was a practised diplomatist, constantly employed in
delicate and difficult negotiations by William the Silent, who ever
admired his genius, cherished his friendship, and relied upon his
character.  He was an eloquent orator, whose memorable harangue, beyond
all his other efforts, at the diet of Worms, had made the German princes
hang their heads with shame, when, taking a broad and philosophical view
of the Netherland matter, he had shown that it was the great question of
Europe; that Nether Germany was all Germany; that Protestantism could not
be unravelled into shreds; that there was but one cause in Christendom--
that of absolutism against national liberty, Papacy against the reform;
and that the seventeen Provinces were to be assisted in building
themselves into an eternal barrier against Spain, or that the "burning
mark of shame would be branded upon the forehead of Germany;" that the
war, in short, was to be met by her on the threshold; or else that it
would come to seek her at home--a prophecy which the horrible Thirty
Years' War was in after time most signally to verify.

He was a poet of vigour and originality, for he had accomplished what has
been achieved by few; he had composed a national hymn, whose strophes, as
soon as heard, struck a chord in every Netherland heart, and for three
centuries long have rung like a clarion wherever the Netherland tongue is
spoken.  "Wilhelmus van Nassouwe," regarded simply as a literary
composition, has many of the qualities which an ode demands; an
electrical touch upon the sentiments, a throb of patriotism, sympathetic
tenderness, a dash of indignation, with rhythmical harmony and graceful
expression; and thus it has rung from millions of lips, from generation
to generation.

He was a soldier, courageous, untiring, prompt in action, useful in
council, and had distinguished himself in many a hard-fought field.
Taken prisoner in the sanguinary skirmish at Maaslandssluys, he had been
confined a year, and, for more than three months, had never laid his
head, as he declared, upon the pillow without commending his soul as for
the last time to his Maker, expecting daily the order for his immediate
execution, and escaping his doom only because William the Silent
proclaimed that the proudest head among the Spanish prisoners should fall
to avenge his death; so that he was ultimately exchanged against the
veteran Mondragon.

From the incipient stages of the revolt he had been foremost among the
patriots.  He was supposed to be the author of the famous "Compromise of
the Nobles," that earliest and most conspicuous of the state-papers of
the republic, and of many other important political documents; and he had
contributed to general literature many works of European celebrity, of
which the 'Roman Bee-Hive' was the most universally known.

Scholar, theologian, diplomatist, swordsman, orator, poet, pamphleteer,
he had genius for all things, and was eminent in all.  He was even famous
for his dancing, and had composed an intelligent and philosophical
treatise upon the value of that amusement, as an agent of civilisation,
and as a counteractor of the grosser pleasures of the table to which
Upper and Nether Germans were too much addicted.

Of ancient Savoyard extraction, and something of a southern nature, he
had been born in Brussels, and was national to the heart's core.

A man of interesting, sympathetic presence; of a physiognomy where many
of the attaching and attractive qualities of his nature revealed
themselves; with crisp curling hair, surmounting a tall, expansive
forehead--full of benevolence, idealism, and quick perceptions; broad,
brown, melancholy eyes, overflowing with tenderness; a lean and haggard
cheek, a rugged Flemish nose; a thin flexible mouth; a slender moustache,
and a peaked and meagre beard; so appeared Sainte Aldegonde in the forty-
seventh year of his age, when he came to command in Antwerp.

Yet after all--many-sided, accomplished, courageous, energetic, as he
was--it may be doubted whether he was the man for the hour or the post.
He was too impressionable; he had too much of the temperament of genius.
Without being fickle, he had, besides his versatility of intellect, a
character which had much facility in turning; not, indeed, in the breeze
of self-interest, but because he seemed placed in so high and clear an
atmosphere of thought that he was often acted upon and swayed by subtle
and invisible influences.  At any rate his conduct was sometimes
inexplicable.  He had been strangely fascinated by the ignoble Duke of
Anjou, and, in the sequel, it will be found that he was destined to
experience other magnetic or magical impulses, which were once thought
suspicious, and have remained mysterious even to the present day.

He was imaginative.  He was capable of broad and boundless hopes.  He was
sometimes prone to deep despair.  His nature was exquisitely tempered;
too fine and polished a blade to be wielded among those hydra-heads by
which he was, now surrounded; and for which the stunning sledgehammer of
arbitrary force was sometimes necessary.

He was perhaps deficient in that gift, which no training and no culture
can bestow, and which comes from above alone by birth-right divine--that
which men willingly call master, authority; the effluence which came so
naturally from the tranquil eyes of William the Silent.

Nevertheless, Sainte Aldegonde was prepared to do his best, and all his
best was to be tasked to the utmost.  His position was rendered still
more difficult by the unruly nature of some of his coordinates.

"From the first day to the last," said one who lived in Antwerp during
the siege, "the mistakes committed in the city were incredible."  It had
long been obvious that a siege was contemplated by Parma.  A liberal sum
of money had been voted by the States-General, of which Holland and
Zeeland contributed a very large proportion (two hundred thousand
florins); the city itself voted another large subsidy, and an order was
issued to purchase at once and import into the city at least a year's
supply of every kind of provisions of life and munitions of war.

William de Blois, Lord of Treslong, Admiral of Holland and Zeeland, was
requested to carry out this order, and superintend the victualling of
Antwerp.  But Treslong at once became troublesome.  He was one of the old
"beggars of the sea," a leader in the wild band who had taken possession
of the Brill, in the teeth of Alva, and so laid the foundation of the
republic.  An impetuous noble, of wealthy family, high connections, and
refractory temper--a daring sailor, ever ready for any rash adventure,
but possessed of a very moderate share of prudence or administrative
ability, he fell into loose and lawless courses on the death of Orange,
whose firm hand was needed to control him.  The French negotiation had
excited his profound disgust, and knowing Sainte Aldegonde to be heart
and soul in favour of that alliance, he was in no haste whatever to carry
out his orders with regard to Antwerp.  He had also an insignificant
quarrel with President Meetkerk.  The Prince of Parma--ever on the watch
for such opportunities--was soon informed of the Admiral's discontent,
and had long been acquainted with his turbulent character.  Alexander at
once began to inflame his jealousy and soothe his vanity by letters and
messengers, urging upon him the propriety of reconciling himself with the
King, and promising him large rewards and magnificent employments in the
royal service.  Even the splendid insignia of the Golden Fleece were
dangled before his eyes.  It is certain that the bold Hollander was not
seduced by these visions, but there is no doubt that he listened to the
voice of the tempter.  He unquestionably neglected his duty.  Week after
week he remained, at Ostend, sneering at the French and quaffing huge
draughts in honour of Queen Elizabeth.  At last, after much time had
elapsed, he agreed to victual Antwerp if he could be furnished with
thirty krom-stevens,--a peculiar kind of vessel, not to be found in
Zeeland.  The krom-stevens were sent to him from Holland.  Then, hearing
that his negligence had been censured by the States-General, he became
more obstinate than ever, and went up and down proclaiming that if people
made themselves disagreeable to him he would do that which should make
all the women and children in the Netherlands shriek and tremble.  What
this nameless horror was to be he never divulged, but meantime he went
down to Middelburg, and swore that not a boat-load of corn should go up
to Antwerp until two members of the magistracy, whom he considered
unpleasant, had been dismissed from their office.  Wearied with all this
bluster, and imbued with grave suspicion as to his motives, the States at
last rose upon their High Admiral and threw him into prison.  He was
accused of many high crimes and misdemeanours, and, it was thought, would
be tried for his life.  He was suspected and even openly accused of
having been tampered with by Spain, but there was at any rate a
deficiency of proof.

"Treslong is apprehended," wrote Davison to Burghley, "and, is charged to
have been the cause that the fleet passed not up to Antwerp.  He is
suspected to have otherwise forgotten himself, but whether justly or not
will appear by his trial.  Meantime he is kept in the common prison of
Middelburg, a treatment which it is thought they would not offer him if
they had not somewhat of importance against him."

He was subsequently released at the intercession of Queen Elizabeth, and
passed some time in England.  He was afterwards put upon trial, but no
accuser appearing to sustain the charges against him, he was eventually
released.  He never received a command in the navy again, but the very
rich sinecures of Grand Falconer and Chief Forester of Holland were
bestowed upon him, and he appears to have ended his days in peace and
plenty.

He was succeeded in the post of Admiral of Holland and Zeeland by
Justinus de Nassau, natural son of William the Silent, a young man of
much promise but of little experience.

General Count Hohenlo, too, lieutenant for young Maurice, and virtual
commander-in-chief of the States' forces, was apt to give much trouble.
A German noble, of ancient descent and princely rank; brave to temerity,
making a jest of danger; and riding into a foray as if to a merry-making;
often furiously intoxicated, and always turbulent and uncertain; a
handsome, dissipated cavalier, with long curls floating over his
shoulders, an imposing aristocratic face, and a graceful, athletic
figure, he needed some cool brain and steady hand to guide him--valuable
as he was to fulfil any daring project but was hardly willing to accept
the authority of a burgomaster.  While the young Maurice yet needed
tutelage, while "the sapling was growing into the tree," Hohenlo was a
dangerous chieftain and a most disorderly lieutenant.

With such municipal machinery and such coadjutors had Sainte Aldegonde to
deal, while, meantime, the delusive French negociation was dragging its
slow length along, and while Parma was noiselessly and patiently
proceeding with his preparations.

The burgomaster--for Sainte Aldegonde, in whom vulgar ambition was not a
foible, had refused the dignity and title of Margrave of Antwerp, which
had been tendered him--had neglected no effort towards carrying into
effect the advice of Orange, given almost with his latest breath.  The
manner in which that advice was received furnished a striking
illustration of the defective machinery which has been pourtrayed.

Upon his return from Delft, Sainte Aldegonde had summoned a meeting of
the magistracy of Antwerp.  He laid before the board the information
communicated by Orange as to Parma's intentions.  He also explained the
scheme proposed for their frustration, and urged the measures indicated
with so much earnestness that his fellow-magistrates were convinced.  The
order was passed for piercing the Blauw-garen Dyke, and Sainte Aldegonde,
with some engineers, was requested to view the locality, and to take
order for the immediate fulfilment of the plan.

Unfortunately there were many other boards in session besides that of the
Schepens, many other motives at work besides those of patriotism.  The
guild of butchers held a meeting, so soon as the plan suggested was
known, and resolved with all their strength to oppose its execution.

The butchers were indeed furious.  Twelve thousand oxen grazed annually
upon the pastures which were about to be submerged, and it was
represented as unreasonable that all this good flesh and blood should be
sacrificed.  At a meeting of the magistrates on the following day,
sixteen butchers, delegates from their guild, made their appearance,
hoarse with indignation.  They represented the vast damage which would be
inflicted upon the estates of many private individuals by the proposed
inundation, by this sudden conversion of teeming meadows, fertile farms,
thriving homesteads, prolific orchards, into sandy desolation.  Above all
they depicted, in glowing colours and with natural pathos, the vast
destruction of beef which was imminent, and they urged--with some show of
reason--that if Parma were really about to reduce Antwerp by famine, his
scheme certainly would not be obstructed by the premature annihilation of
these wholesome supplies.

That the Scheldt could be, closed in any manner was, however, they said,
a preposterous conception.  That it could be bridged was the dream of a
lunatic.  Even if it were possible to construct a bridge, and probable
that the Zeelanders and Antwerpers would look on with folded arms while
the work proceeded, the fabric, when completed, would be at the mercy of
the ice-floods of the winter and the enormous power of the ocean-tides.
The Prince of Orange himself, on a former occasion, when Antwerp was
Spanish, had attempted to close the river with rafts, sunken piles, and
other obstructions, but the whole had been swept away, like a dam of
bulrushes, by the first descent of the ice-blocks of winter.  It was
witless to believe that Parma contemplated any such measure, and utterly
monstrous to believe in its success.

Thus far the butchers.  Soon afterwards came sixteen colonels of militia,
as representatives of their branch of the multiform government.  These
personages, attended by many officers of inferior degree, sustained the
position of the butchers with many voluble and vehement arguments.  Not
the least convincing of their conclusions was the assurance that it would
be idle for the authorities to attempt the destruction of the dyke,
seeing that the municipal soldiery itself would prevent the measure by
main force, at all hazards, and without regard to their own or others'
lives.

The violence of this opposition, and the fear of a serious internecine
conflict at so critical a juncture, proved fatal to the project.  Much
precious time was lost, and when at last the inhabitants of the city
awoke from their delusion, it was to find that repentance, as usual, had
come many hours too late.

For Parma had been acting while his antagonists had been wrangling.  He
was hampered in his means, but he was assisted by what now seems the
incredible supineness of the Netherlanders.  Even Sainte Aldegonde did
not believe in the possibility of erecting the bridge; not a man in
Antwerp seemed to believe it.  "The preparations," said one who lived in
the city, "went on before our very noses, and every one was ridiculing
the Spanish commander's folly."

A very great error was, moreover, committed in abandoning Herenthals to
the enemy.  The city of Antwerp governed Brabant, and it would have been
far better for the authorities of the commercial capital to succour this
small but important city, and, by so doing, to protract for a long time
their own defence.  Mondragon saw and rejoiced over the mistake.  "Now
'tis easy to see that the Prince of Orange is dead," said the veteran, as
he took possession, in the Icing's name, of the forsaken Herenthals.

Early in the summer, Parma's operations had been, of necessity,
desultory.  He had sprinkled forts up and down the Scheldt, and had
gradually been gaining control of the navigation upon that river.  Thus
Ghent and Dendermonde, Vilvoorde, Brussels, and Antwerp, had each been
isolated, and all prevented from rendering mutual assistance.  Below
Antwerp, however, was to be the scene of the great struggle.  Here,
within nine miles of the city, were two forts belonging to the States,
on opposite sides of the stream, Lille, and Liefkenshoek.  It was
important for the Spanish commander to gain possession of both; before
commencing his contemplated bridge.

Unfortunately for the States, the fortifications of Liefkenshoek, on the
Flemish side of the river, had not been entirely completed.  Eight
hundred men lay within it, under Colonel John Pettin of Arras, an old
patriotic officer of much experience.  Parma, after reconnoitring the
place in person, despatched the famous Viscount of Ghent--now called
Marquis of Roubaix and Richebourg--to carry it by assault.  The Marquis
sent one hundred men from his Walloon legion, under two officers, in whom
he had confidence, to attempt a surprise, with orders, if not successful,
to return without delay.  They were successful.  The one hundred gained
entrance into the fort at a point where the defences had not been put
into sufficient repair.

They were immediately followed by Richebourg, at the head of his
regiment.  The day was a fatal one.  It was the 10th July, 1584 and
William of Orange was falling at Delft by the hand of Balthazar Gerard.
Liefkenshoek was carried at a blow.  Of the eight hundred patriots in the
place, scarcely a man escaped.  Four hundred were put to the sword, the
others were hunted into the river, when nearly all were drowned.  Of the
royalists a single man was killed, and two or three more were wounded.
"Our Lord was pleased," wrote Parma piously to Philip, that we "should
cut the throats of four hundred of them in a single instant, and that a
great many more should be killed upon the dykes; so that I believe very
few to have escaped with life.  We lost one man, besides two or three
wounded."  A few were taken prisoners, and among them was the commander
John Pettin.  He was at once brought before Richebourg, who was standing
in the presence of the Prince of Parma.  The Marquis drew his sword,
walked calmly up to the captured Colonel, and ran him through the body.
Pettin fell dead upon the spot.  The Prince was displeased.  "Too much
choler, Marquis, too much choler,"--said he reprovingly.  "Troppa colera,
Signor Marchese, a questa."  But Richebourg knew better.  He had, while
still Viscount of Ghent, carried on a year previously a parallel intrigue
with the royalists and the patriots.  The Prince of Parma had bid highest
for his services, and had, accordingly, found him a most effectual
instrument in completing the reduction of the Walloon Provinces.  The
Prince was not aware, however, that his brave but venal ally had, at the
very same moment, been secretly treating with William of Orange; and as
it so happened that Colonel Pettin had been the agent in the unsuccessful
negotiation, it was possible that his duplicity would now be exposed.
The Marquis had, therefore, been prompt to place his old confederate in
the condition wherein men tell no tales, and if contemporary chronicles
did not bely him, it was not the first time that he had been guilty of
such cold-blooded murder.  The choler had not been superfluous.

The fortress of Lille was garrisoned by the Antwerp volunteers, called
the "Young Bachelors."  Teligny, the brave son of the illustrious "Iron-
armed" La None, commanded in chief: and he had, besides the militia, a
company of French under Captain Gascoigne, and four hundred Scotchmen
under Colonel Morgan--perhaps two thousand men in all.

Mondragon, hero of the famous submarine expeditions of Philipsland and
Zierickzee, was ordered by Parma to take the place at every hazard.  With
five thousand men--a large proportion of the Spanish effective force at
that moment--the veteran placed himself before the fort, taking
possession, of the beautiful country-house and farm of Lille, where he
planted his batteries, and commenced a regular cannonade.  The place was
stronger than Liefkenshoek, however, and Teligny thoroughly comprehended
the importance of maintaining it for the States.  Mondragon dug mines,
and Teligny countermined.  The Spanish daily cannonade was cheerfully
responded to by the besieged, and by the time Mondragon had shot away
fifty thousand pounds of powder, he found that he had made no impression
upon the fortress, while the number of his troops had been diminishing
with great rapidity.  Mondragon was not so impetuous as he had been on
many former occasions.  He never ventured an assault.  At last Teligny
made a sortie at the head of a considerable force.  A warm action
succeeded, at the conclusion of which, without a decided advantage on
either side, the sluice-gate in the fortress was opened, and the torrent
of the Scheldt, swollen by a high tide, was suddenly poured upon the
Spaniards.  Assailed at once by the fire from the Lillo batteries, and by
the waters of the river, they were forced to a rapid retreat.  This they
effected with great loss, but with signal courage; struggling breast high
in the waves, and bearing off their field-pieces in their arms in the
very face of the enemy.

Three weeks long Mondragon had been before Fort Lille, and two thousand
of his soldiers had been slain in the trenches.  The attempt was now
abandoned.  Parma directed permanent batteries to be established at
Lillo-house, at Oordam, and at other places along the river, and
proceeded quietly with his carefully-matured plan for closing the river.

His own camp was in the neighbourhood of the villages of Beveren, Kalloo,
and Borght.  Of the ten thousand foot and seventeen hundred horse, which
composed at the moment his whole army, about one-half lay with him, while
the remainder were with Count Peter Ernest Mansfield, in the
neighbourhood of Stabroek.  Thus the Prince occupied a position on the
left bank of the Scheldt, nearly opposite Antwerp, while Mansfield was
stationed upon the right bank, and ten miles farther down the river.
From a point in the neighbourhood of Kalloo, Alexander intended to throw
a fortified bridge to the opposite shore.  When completed, all traffic up
the river from Zeeland would be cut off; and as the country on the land-
side; abut Antwerp, had been now reduced, the city would be effectually
isolated.  If the Prince could hold his bridge until famine should break
the resistance of the burghers, Antwerp would fall into his hands.

His head-quarters were at Kalloo, and this obscure spot soon underwent
a strange transformation.  A drowsy placid little village--with a modest
parish spire peeping above a clump of poplars, and with half a dozen
cottages, with storks nests on their roofs, sprinkled here and there
among pastures and orchards--suddenly saw itself changed as it were into
a thriving bustling town; for, saving the white tents which dotted the
green turf in every direction, the aspect of the scene was, for a time,
almost pacific.  It was as if, some great manufacturing enterprise had
been set on foot, and the world had suddenly awoke to the hidden
capabilities of the situation.

A great dockyard and arsenal suddenly revealed themselves--rising like an
exhalation--where ship-builders, armourers, blacksmiths, joiners,
carpenters, caulkers, gravers, were hard at work all day long.  The din
and hum of what seemed a peaceful industry were unceasing.  From Kalloo,
Parma dug a canal twelve miles long to a place called Steeken, hundreds
of pioneers being kept constantly at work with pick and spade till it
was completed.  Through this artificial channel--so soon as Ghent and
Dendermonde had fallen--came floats of timber, fleets of boats laden with
provisions of life and munitions of death, building-materials, and every
other requisite for the great undertaking, all to be disembarked at
Kalloo.  The object was a temporary and destructive one, but it remains a
monument of the great general's energy and a useful public improvement.
The amelioration of the fenny and barren soil, called the Waesland, is
dated from that epoch; and the spot in Europe which is the most prolific,
and which nourishes the largest proportion of inhabitants to the square
mile, is precisely the long dreary swamp which the Prince thus drained
for military purposes, and converted into a garden.  Drusus and Corbulo,
in the days of the Roman Empire, had done the same good service for their
barbarian foes.

At Kalloo itself, all the shipwrights, cutlers, masons, brass-founders,
rope-makers, anchor-forgers, sailors, boatmen, of Flanders and Brabant,
with a herd of bakers, brewers, and butchers, were congregated by express
order of Parma.  In the little church itself the main workshop was
established, and all day long, week after week, month after month, the
sound of saw and hammer, adze and plane, the rattle of machinery, the cry
of sentinels, the cheers of mariners, resounded, where but lately had
been heard nothing save the drowsy homily and the devout hymn of rustic
worship.

Nevertheless the summer and autumn wore on, and still the bridge was
hardly commenced.  The navigation of the river--although impeded and
rendered dangerous by the forts which Parma held along the banks--was
still open; and, so long as the price of corn in Antwerp remained three
or four times as high as the sum for which it could be purchased in
Holland and Zeeland, there were plenty of daredevil skippers ready to
bring cargoes.  Fleets of fly-boats, convoyed by armed vessels, were
perpetually running the gauntlet.  Sharp actions on shore between the
forts of the patriots and those of Parma, which were all intermingled
promiscuously along the banks, and amphibious and most bloody encounters
on ship-board, dyke, and in the stream itself, between the wild
Zeelanders and the fierce pikemen of Italy and Spain, were of repeated
occurrence.  Many a lagging craft fell into the enemy's hands, when, as a
matter of course, the men, women, and children, on board, were horribly
mutilated by the Spaniards, and were then sent drifting in their boat
with the tide--their arms, legs, and ears lopped off up to the city, in
order that--the dangerous nature of this provision-trade might be fully
illustrated.

Yet that traffic still went on.  It would have continued until Antwerp
had been victualled for more than a year, had not the city authorities,
in the plentitude of their wisdom, thought proper to issue orders for its
regulation.  On the 25th October (1584) a census was taken, when the
number of persons inside the walls was found to be ninety thousand.  For
this population it was estimated that 300,000 veertell, or about 900,000
bushels of corn, would be required annually.  The grain was coming in
very fast, notwithstanding the perilous nature of the trade; for wheat
could be bought in Holland for fifty florins the last, or about fifteen
pence sterling the bushel, while it was worth five or six florins
the veertel, or about four shillings the bushel, in Antwerp.

The magistrates now committed a folly more stupendous than it seemed
possible for human creatures, under such circumstances, to compass.  They
established a maximum upon corn.  The skippers who had run their cargoes
through the gauntlet, all the way from Flushing to Antwerp, found on
their arrival, that, instead of being rewarded, according to the natural
laws of demand and supply, they were required to exchange their wheat,
rye, butter, and beef, against the exact sum which the Board of Schepens
thought proper to consider a reasonable remuneration.  Moreover, in order
to prevent the accumulation of provisions in private magazines, it was
enacted, that all consumers of grain should be compelled to make their
purchases directly from the ships.  These two measures were almost as
fatal as the preservation of the Blaw-garen Dyke, in the interest of the
butchers.  Winter and famine were staring the city in the face, and the
maximum now stood sentinel against the gate, to prevent the admission of
food.  The traffic ceased without a struggle.  Parma himself could not
have better arranged the blockade.

Meantime a vast and almost general inundation had taken place.  The
aspect of the country for many miles around was strange and desolate.
The sluices had been opened in the neighbourhood of Saftingen, on, the
Flemish side, so that all the way from Hulst the waters were out, and
flowed nearly to the gates of Antwerp.  A wide and shallow sea rolled
over the fertile plains, while church-steeples, the tops of lofty trees,
and here and there the turrets of a castle, scarcely lifted themselves
above the black waters; the peasants' houses, the granges, whole rural
villages, having entirely disappeared.  The high grounds of Doel, of
Kalloo, and Beveren, where Alexander was established, remained out of
reach of the flood.  Far below, on the opposite side of the river, other
sluices had been opened, and the sea had burst over the wide, level
plain.  The villages of Wilmerdonk, Orderen, Ekeren, were changed to
islands in the ocean, while all the other hamlets, for miles around, were
utterly submerged.

Still, however, the Blaw-garen Dyke and its companion the Kowenstyn
remained obstinately above the waters, forming a present and more fatal
obstruction to the communication between Antwerp and Zeeland than would
be furnished even by the threatened and secretly-advancing bridge across
the Scheldt.  Had Orange's prudent advice been taken, the city had been
safe.  Over the prostrate dykes, whose destruction he had so warmly
urged, the ocean would have rolled quite to the gates of Antwerp, and it
would have been as easy to bridge the North Sea as to control the free
navigation of the patriots over so wide a surface.

When it was too late, the butchers, and colonels, and captains, became
penitent enough.  An order was passed, by acclamation, in November, to do
what Orange had recommended in June.  It was decreed that the Blaw-garen
and the Kowenstyn should be pierced.  Alas, the hour had long gone by.
Alexander of Parma was not the man to undertake the construction of a
bridge across the river, at a vast expense, and at the same time to
permit the destruction of the already existing barrier.  There had been a
time for such a deed.  The Seigneur de Kowenstyn, who had a castle and
manor on and near the dyke which bore his name, had repeatedly urged upon
the Antwerp magistracy the propriety of piercing this bulwark, even after
their refusal to destroy the outer barrier.  Sainte Aldegonde, who
vehemently urged the measure, protested that his hair had stood on end,
when he found, after repeated entreaty, that the project was rejected.
The Seigneur de Kowenstyn, disgusted and indignant, forswore his
patriotism, and went over to Parma.  The dyke fell into the hands of the
enemy.  And now from Stabroek, where old Mansfeid lay with his army, all
the way across the flooded country, ran the great bulwark, strengthened
with new palisade-work and block-houses, bristling with Spanish cannon,
pike, and arquebus, even to the bank of the Scheldt, in the immediate
vicinity of Fort Lille.  At the angle of its junction with the main dyke
of the river's bank, a strong fortress called Holy Cross (Santa Cruz) had
been constructed.  That fortress and the whole line of the Kowenstyn were
held in the iron grip of Mondragon.  To wrench it from him would be no
child's play.  Five new strong redoubts upon the dyke, and five or six
thousand Spaniards established there, made the enterprise more formidable
than it would have been in June.  It had been better to sacrifice the
twelve thousand oxen.  Twelve thousand Hollanders might now be
slaughtered, and still the dyke remain above the waves.

Here was the key to the fate of Antwerp.

On the other hand, the opening of the Saftingen Sluice had done Parma's
work for him.  Even there, too, Orange had been prophetic.  Kalloo was
high and dry, but Alexander had experienced some difficulty in bringing a
fleet of thirty vessels, laden with cannon and other valuable materials,
from Ghent along the Scheldt, into his encampment, because it was
necessary for them, before reaching their destination, to pass in front
of Antwerp.  The inundation, together with a rupture in the Dyke of
Borght, furnished him with a watery road; over which his fleet completely
avoided the city, and came in triumph to Kalloo.

Sainte Aldegonde, much provoked by this masterly movement on the part of
Parma, had followed the little squadron closely with some armed vessels
from the city.  A sharp action had succeeded, in which the burgomaster,
not being properly sustained by the Zeeland ships on which he relied, had
been defeated.  Admiral Jacob Jacobzoon behaved with so little spirit on
the occasion that he acquired with the Antwerp populace the name of "Run-
away Jacob," "Koppen gaet loppen;" and Sainte Aldegonde declared, that,
but for his cowardice, the fleet of Parma would have fallen into their
hands.  The burgomaster himself narrowly escaped becoming a prisoner, and
owed his safety only to the swiftness of his barge, which was called the
"Flying Devil."

The patriots, in order to counteract similar enterprises in future, now
erected a sconce, which they called Fort Teligny; upon the ruptured dyke
of Borght, directly in front of the Borght blockhouse, belonging to the
Spaniards, and just opposite Fort Hoboken.  Here, in this narrow passage,
close under the walls of Antwerp, where friends and foes were brought
closely, face to face, was the scene of many a sanguinary skirmish, from
the commencement of the siege until its close.

Still the bridge was believed to be a mere fable, a chimaera.  Parma, men
said, had become a lunatic from pride.  It was as easy to make the
Netherlands submit to the yoke of the Inquisition as to put a bridle on
the Scheldt.  Its depth; breadth, the ice-floods of a northern winter,
the neighbourhood of the Zeeland fleets, the activity of the Antwerp
authorities, all were pledges that the attempt would be signally
frustrated.

And they should have been pledges--more than enough.  Unfortunately,
however, there was dissension within, and no chieftain in the field, no
sage in the council, of sufficient authority to sustain the whole burthen
of the war, and to direct all the energies of the commonwealth.  Orange
was dead.  His son, one day to become the most illustrious military
commander in Europe, was a boy of seventeen, nominally captain-general,
but in reality but a youthful apprentice to his art.  Hohenlo was wild,
wilful, and obstinate.  Young William Lewis Nassau, already a soldier of
marked abilities, was fully occupied in Friesland, where he was
stadholder, and where he had quite enough to do in making head against
the Spanish governor and general, the veteran Verdugo: Military
operations against Zutphen distracted the attention of the States, which
should have been fixed upon Antwerp.

Admiral Treslong, as we have seen, was refractory, the cause of great
delinquency on the part of the fleets, and of infinite disaster to the
commonwealth.  More than all, the French negotiation was betraying the
States into indolence and hesitation; and creating a schism between the
leading politicians of the country.  Several thousand French troops,
under Monsieur d'Allaynes, were daily expected, but never arrived; and
thus, while English and French partisans were plotting and counter-
plotting, while a delusive diplomacy was usurping the place of
lansquenettes and gun-boats--the only possible agents at that moment to
preserve Antwerp--the bridge of Parma was slowly advancing.  Before the
winter had closed in, the preparatory palisades had been finished.

Between Kalloo and Ordam, upon the opposite side, a sandbar had been
discovered in the river's bed, which diminished the depth of the stream,
and rendered the pile-driving comparatively easy.  The breadth of the
Scheldt at this passage was twenty-four hundred feet; its depth, sixty
feet.  Upon the Flemish side, near Kalloo, a strong fort was erected,
called Saint Mary, in honour of the blessed Virgin, to whom the whole
siege of Antwerp had been dedicated from the beginning.  On the opposite
bank was a similar fort, flamed Philip, for the King.  From each of these
two points, thus fortified, a framework of heavy timber, supported upon
huge piles, had been carried so far into the stream on either side that
the distance between the ends had at last been reduced to thirteen
hundred feet.  The breadth of the roadway--formed of strong sleepers
firmly bound together--was twelve feet, along which block-houses of great
thickness were placed to defend the whole against assault.

Thus far the work had been comparatively easy.  To bridge the remaining
open portion of the river, however, where its current was deepest and
strongest, and where the action of tide, tempest, and icebergs, would be
most formidable, seemed a desperate undertaking; for as the enterprise
advanced, this narrow open space became the scene of daily amphibious
encounters between the soldiers and sailors of Parma and the forces of
the States.  Unfortunately for the patriots, it was only skirmishing.
Had a strong, concerted attack, in large force, from Holland and Zeeland
below and from the city above, been agreed upon, there was hardly a
period, until very late in the winter, when it might not have had the
best chances of success.  With a vigorous commander against him, Parma,
weak in men, and at his wits' end for money, might, in a few hours, have
seen the labour of several months hopelessly annihilated.  On the other
hand, the Prince was ably seconded by his lieutenant, Marquis Richebourg,
to whom had been delegated the immediate superintendence of the bridge-
building in its minutest details.  He was never idle.  Audacious,
indefatigable, ubiquitous, he at least atoned by energy and brilliant
courage for his famous treason of the preceding year, while his striking
and now rapidly approaching doom upon the very scene of his present
labours, made him appear to have been building a magnificent though
fleeting monument to his own memory.

Sainte Aldegonde, shut up in Antwerp, and hampered by dissension within
and obstinate jealousy without the walls, did all in his power to
frustrate the enemy's enterprise and animate the patriots.  Through the
whole of the autumn and early winter, he had urged the States of Holland
and Zeeland to make use of the long winter nights, when moonless and
stormy, to attempt the destruction of Parma's undertaking, but the fatal
influences already indicated were more efficient against Antwerp than
even the genius of Farnese; and nothing came of the burgomaster's
entreaties save desultory skirmishing and unsuccessful enterprises.  An
especial misfortune happened in one of these midnight undertakings.
Teligny ventured forth in a row-barge, with scarcely any companions, to
notify the Zeelanders of a contemplated movement, in which their co-
operation was desired.  It was proposed that the Antwerp troops should
make a fictitious demonstration upon Fort Ordam, while at the same moment
the States' troops from Fort Lillo should make an assault upon the forts
on Kowenstyn Dyke; and in this important enterprise the Zeeland vessels
were requested to assist.  But the brave Teligny nearly forfeited his
life by his rashness, and his services were, for a long time, lost to the
cause of liberty.  It had been better to send a less valuable officer
upon such hazardous yet subordinate service.  The drip of his oars was
heard in the darkness.  He was pursued by a number of armed barges,
attacked, wounded severely in the shoulder, and captured.  He threw his
letters overboard, but they were fished out of the water, carried to
Parma, and deciphered, so that the projected attack upon the Kowenstyn
was discovered, and, of necessity, deferred.  As for Teligny, he was
taken, as a most valuable prize, into the enemy's camp, and was soon
afterwards thrust into prison at Tournay, where he remained six years--
one year longer than the period which his illustrious father had been
obliged to consume in the infamous dungeon at Mons.  Few disasters could
have been more keenly felt by the States than the loss of this brilliant
and devoted French chieftain, who, young as he was, had already become
very dear to the republic; and Sainte Aldegonde was severely blamed for
sending so eminent a personage on that dangerous expedition, and for
sending him, too, with an insufficient convoy.

Still Alexander felt uncertain as to the result.  He was determined to
secure Antwerp, but he yet thought it possible to secure it by
negotiation.  The enigmatical policy maintained by France perplexed him;
for it did not seem possible that so much apparent solemnity and
earnestness were destined to lead to an impotent and infamous conclusion.
He was left, too, for a long time in ignorance of his own master's secret
schemes, he was at liberty to guess, and to guess only, as to the
projects of the league, he was without adequate means to carry out to a
certain triumph his magnificent enterprise, and he was in constant alarm
lest he should be suddenly assailed by an overwhelming French force.  Had
a man sat upon the throne of Henry III., at that moment, Parma's bridge-
making and dyke-fortifying skilful as they were--would have been all in
vain.  Meantime, in uncertainty as to the great issue, but resolved to
hold firmly to his purpose, he made repeated conciliatory offers to the
States with one hand, while he steadily prosecuted his aggressive schemes
with the other.

Parma had become really gentle, almost affectionate, towards the
Netherlanders.  He had not the disposition of an Alva to smite and to
blast, to exterminate the rebels and heretics with fire and sword, with
the axe, the rack, and the gallows.  Provided they would renounce the
great object of the contest, he seemed really desirous that they should
escape further chastisement; but to admit the worship of God according to
the reformed creed, was with him an inconceivable idea.  To do so was
both unrighteous and impolitic.  He had been brought up to believe that
mankind could be saved from eternal perdition only by believing in the
infallibility of the Bishop of Rome; that the only keys to eternal
paradise were in the hands of St. Peter's representative.  Moreover, he
instinctively felt that within this religious liberty which the
Netherlanders claimed was hidden the germ of civil liberty; and though no
bigger than a grain of mustard-seed, it was necessary to destroy it at
once; for of course the idea of civil liberty could not enter the brain
of the brilliant general of Philip II.

On the 13th of November he addressed a letter to the magistracy and
broad-council of Antwerp.  He asserted that the instigators of the
rebellion were not seeking to further the common weal, but their own
private ends.  Especially had this been the ruling motive with the prince
of Orange and the Duke of Anjou, both of whom God had removed from the
world, in order to manifest to the States their own weakness, and the
omnipotence of Philip, whose, prosperity the Lord was constantly
increasing.  It was now more than time for the authorities of the country
to have regard for themselves, and for the miseries of the poor people.
The affection Which he had always felt for the Provinces from which he
had himself sprung and the favours which he had received from them in his
youth, had often moved him to propose measures, which, before God and his
conscience, he believed adequate to the restoration of peace.  But his
letters had been concealed or falsely interpreted by the late Prince of
Orange, who had sought nothing but to spread desolation over the land,
and to shed the blood of the innocent.  He now wrote once more, and for
the last time, in all fervour and earnestness, to implore them to take
compassion on their own wives and children and forlorn fatherland, to
turn their eyes backward on the peace and prosperity which they had
formerly enjoyed when obedient to his Majesty, and to cast a glance
around them upon the miseries which were so universal since the
rebellion.  He exhorted them to close their ears to the insidious tongues
of those who were leading them into delusion as to the benevolence and
paternal sweetness of their natural lord and master, which were even now
so boundless that he did not hesitate once more to offer them his entire
forgiveness.  If they chose to negotiate, they would find everything
granted that with right and reason could be proposed.  The Prince
concluded by declaring that he made these advances not from any doubt as
to the successful issue of the military operations in which he was
engaged, but simply out of paternal anxiety for the happiness of the
Provinces.  Did they remain obstinate, their ultimate conditions would be
rendered still more severe, and themselves, not he, would be responsible
for the misery and the bloodshed to ensue.

Ten days afterwards, the magistrates, thus addressed--after communication
with the broad-council--answered Parma's.  23rd Nov., letter manfully,
copiously, and with the customary but superfluous historical sketch.
They begged leave to entertain a doubt as to the paternal sweetness of a
king who had dealt so long in racks and gibbets.  With Parma's own
mother, as they told the Prince, the Netherlanders had once made a
treaty, by which the right to worship God according to their consciences
had been secured; yet for maintaining that treaty they had been devoted
to indiscriminate destruction, and their land made desolate with fire and
sword.  Men had been massacred by thousands, who had never been heard in
their own defence, and who had never been accused of any crime, "save
that they had assembled together in the name of God, to pray to Him
through their only mediator and advocate Jesus Christ, according to His
command."

The axis of the revolt was the religious question; and it was impossible
to hope anything from a monarch who was himself a slave of the
Inquisition, and who had less independence of action than that enjoyed by
Jews and Turks, according to the express permission of the Pope.
Therefore they informed Parma that they had done with Philip for ever,
and that in consequence of the extraordinary wisdom, justice, and
moderation, of the French King, they had offered him the sovereignty of
their land, and had implored his protection.

They paid a tribute to the character of Farnese, who after gaining
infinite glory in arms, had manifested so much gentleness and disposition
to conciliate.  They doubted not that he would, if he possessed the
power, have guided the royal councils to better and more generous
results, and protested that they would not have delayed to throw
themselves into his arms, had they been assured that he was authorized to
admit that which alone could form the basis of a successful negotiation--
religious freedom.  They would in such case have been willing to close
with him, without talking about other conditions than such as his
Highness in his discretion and sweetness might think reasonable.

Moreover, as they observed in conclusion, they were precluded, by their
present relations with France, from entering into any other negotiation;
nor could they listen to any such proposals without deserving to be
stigmatized as the most lewd, blasphemous, and thankless mortals, that
ever cumbered the earth.

Being under equal obligations both to the Union and to France, they
announced that Parma's overtures would be laid before the French
government and the assembly of the States-General.

A day was to come, perhaps, when it would hardly seem lewdness and
blasphemy for the Netherlanders to doubt the extraordinary justice and
wisdom of the French King.  Meantime, it cannot be denied that they were
at least loyal to their own engagements, and long-suffering where they
had trusted and given their hearts.

Parma replied by another letter, dated December 3rd.  He assured the
citizens that Henry III. was far too discreet, and much too good a friend
to Philip II., to countenance this rebellion.  If he were to take up
their quarrel, however, the King of Spain had a thousand means of foiling
all his attempts.  As to the religious question--which they affirmed to
be the sole cause of the war--he was not inclined to waste words upon
that subject; nevertheless, so far as he in his simplicity could
understand the true nature of a Christian, he could not believe that it
comported with the doctrines of Jesus, whom they called their only
mediator, nor with the dictates of conscience, to take up arms against
their lawful king, nor to burn, rob, plunder, pierce dykes, overwhelm
their fatherland, and reduce all things to misery and chaos, in the name
of religion.

Thus moralizing and dogmatizing, the Prince concluded his letter, and so
the correspondence terminated.  This last despatch was communicated at
once both to the States-General and to the French government, and
remained unanswered.  Soon afterwards the Netherlands and England, France
and Spain, were engaged in that vast game of delusion which has been
described in the preceding chapters.  Meantime both Antwerp and Parma
remained among the deluded, and were left to fight out their battle on
their own resources.

Having found it impossible to subdue Antwerp by his rhetoric, Alexander
proceeded with his bridge.  It is impossible not to admire the steadiness
and ingenuity with which the Prince persisted in his plans, the courage
with which he bore up against the parsimony and neglect of his sovereign,
the compassionate tenderness which he manifested for his patient little
army.  So much intellectual energy commands enthusiasm, while the
supineness on the other side sometimes excites indignation.  There is
even a danger of being entrapped into sympathy with tyranny, when the
cause of tyranny is maintained by genius; and of being surprised into
indifference for human liberty, when the sacred interests of liberty are
endangered by self-interest, perverseness, and folly.

Even Sainte Aldegonde did not believe that the bridge could be completed.
His fears were that the city would be ruined rather by the cessation of
its commerce than by want of daily food.  Already, after the capture of
Liefkenshoek and the death of Orange, the panic among commercial people
had been so intense that seventy or eighty merchants, representing the
most wealthy mercantile firms in Antwerp, made their escape from the
place, as if it had been smitten with pestilence, or were already in the
hands of Parma.  All such refugees were ordered to return on peril of
forfeiting their property.  Few came back, however, for they had found
means of converting and transferring their funds to other more secure
places, despite the threatened confiscation.  It was insinuated that
Holland and Zeeland were indifferent to the fate of Antwerp, because in
the sequel the commercial cities of those Provinces succeeded to the vast
traffic and the boundless wealth which had been forfeited by the
Brabantine capital.  The charge was an unjust one.  At the very
commencement of the siege the States of Holland voted two hundred
thousand florins for its relief; and, moreover, these wealthy refugees
were positively denied admittance into the territory of tho United
States, and were thus forced to settle in Germany or England.  This
cessation of traffic was that which principally excited the anxiety of
Aldegonde.  He could not bring himself to believe in the possibility of a
blockade, by an army of eight or ten thousand men, of a great and wealthy
city, where at least twenty thousand citizens were capable of bearing
arms.  Had he thoroughly understood the deprivations under which
Alexander was labouring, perhaps he would have been even more confident
as to the result.

"With regard to the affair of the river Scheldt," wrote Parma to Philip,
"I should like to send your Majesty a drawing of the whole scheme; for
the work is too vast to be explained by letters.  The more I examine it,
the more astonished I am that it should have been conducted to this
point; so many forts, dykes, canals, new inventions, machinery, and
engines, have been necessarily required."

He then proceeded to enlighten the King--as be never failed to do in all
his letters--as to his own impoverished, almost helpless condition.
Money, money, men!  This was his constant cry.  All would be in vain, he
said, if he were thus neglected.  "'Tis necessary," said he, "for your
Majesty fully to comprehend, that henceforth the enterprise is your own.
I have done my work faithfully thus far; it is now for your Majesty to
take it thoroughly to heart; and embrace it with the warmth with which an
affair involving so much of your own interests deserves to be embraced."

He avowed that without full confidence in his sovereign's sympathy he
would never have conceived the project.  "I confess that the enterprise
is great," he said, "and that by many it will be considered rash.
Certainly I should not have undertaken it, had I not felt certain of your
Majesty's full support."

But he was already in danger of being forced to abandon the whole scheme
--although so nearly carried into effect--for want of funds.  "The
million promised," he wrote, "has arrived in bits and morsels, and with
so many ceremonies, that I haven't ten crowns at my disposal.  How I am
to maintain even this handful of soldiers--for the army is diminished to
such a mere handful that it would astonish your Majesty--I am unable to
imagine.  It would move you to witness their condition.  They have
suffered as much as is humanly possible."

Many of the troops, indeed, were deserting, and making their escape,
beggared and desperate, into France, where, with natural injustice, they
denounced their General, whose whole heart was occupied with their
miseries, for the delinquency of his master, whose mind was full of other
schemes.

"There past this way many Spanish soldiers," wrote Stafford from Paris,
"so poor and naked as I ever saw any.  There have been within this
fortnight two hundred at a time in this town, who report the extremity of
want of victuals in their camp, and that they have been twenty-four
months without pay.  They exclaim greatly upon the Prince of Parma.
Mendoza seeks to convey them away, and to get money for them by all means
he can."

Stafford urged upon his government the propriety of being at least as
negligent as Philip had showed himself to be of the Spaniards.  By
prohibiting supplies to the besieging army, England might contribute,
negatively, if not otherwise, to the relief of Antwerp.  "There is no
place," he wrote to Walsingham, "whence the Spaniards are so thoroughly
victualled as from us.  English boats go by sixteen and seventeen into
Dunkirk, well laden with provisions."

This was certainly not in accordance with the interests nor the
benevolent professions of the English ministers.

These supplies were not to be regularly depended upon however.  They were
likewise not to be had without paying a heavy price for them, and the
Prince had no money in his coffer.  He lived from hand to mouth, and was
obliged to borrow from every private individual who had anything to lend.
Merchants, nobles, official personages, were all obliged to assist in
eking out the scanty pittance allowed by the sovereign.

"The million is all gone," wrote Parma to his master; "some to Verdugo in
Friesland; some to repay the advances of Marquis Richebourg and other
gentlemen.  There is not a farthing for the garrisons.  I can't go on a
month longer, and, if not supplied, I shall be obliged to abandon the
work.  I have not money enough to pay my sailors, joiners, carpenters,
and other mechanics, from week to week, and they will all leave me in the
lurch, if I leave them unpaid.  I have no resource but to rely on your
Majesty.  Otherwise the enterprise must wholly fail."

In case it did fail, the Prince wiped his hands of the responsibility.
He certainly had the right to do so.

One of the main sources of supply was the city of Hertogenbosch, or Bois-
le-Duc.  It was one of the four chief cities of Brabant, and still held
for the King, although many towns in its immediate neighbourhood had
espoused the cause of the republic.  The States had long been anxious to
effect a diversion for the relief of Antwerp, by making an attack on
Bois-le-Duc.  Could they carry the place, Parma would be almost
inevitably compelled to abandon the siege in which he was at present
engaged, and he could moreover spare no troops for its defence.  Bois-le-
Duc was a populous, wealthy, thriving town, situate on the Deeze, two
leagues above its confluence with the Meuse, and about twelve leagues
from Antwerp.  It derived its name of `Duke's Wood' from a magnificent
park and forest, once the favourite resort and residence of the old Dukes
of Brabant, of which some beautiful vestiges still remained.  It was a
handsome well-built city, with two thousand houses of the better class,
besides more humble tenements.  Its citizens were celebrated for their
courage and belligerent skill, both on foot and on horseback.  They were
said to retain more of the antique Belgic ferocity which Caesar had
celebrated than that which had descended to most of their kinsmen.  The
place was, moreover, the seat of many prosperous manufactures.  Its
clothiers sent the products of their looms over all Christendom, and its
linen and cutlery were equally renowned.

It would be a most fortunate blow in the cause of freedom to secure so,
thriving and conspicuous a town, situated thus in the heart of what
seemed the natural territory of the United States; and, by so doing, to
render nugatory the mighty preparations of Parma against Antwerp.
Moreover, it was known that there was no Spanish or other garrison within
its walls, so that there was no opposition to be feared, except from the
warlike nature of the citizens.

Count Hohenlo was entrusted, early in January, with this important
enterprise.  He accordingly collected a force of four thousand infantry,
together with two hundred mounted lancers; having previously
reconnoitered the ground.  He relied very much, for the success of the
undertaking, on Captain Kleerhagen, a Brussels nobleman, whose wife was a
native of Bois-le-Duc, and who was thoroughly familiar with the locality.
One dark winter's night, Kleerhagen, with fifty picked soldiers, advanced
to the Antwerp gate of Bois-le-Duc, while Hohenlo, with his whole force,
lay in ambuscade as near as possible to the city.

Between the drawbridge and the portcullis were two small guard-houses,
which, very carelessly, had been left empty.  Kleerhagen, with his fifty
followers, successfully climbed into these lurking-places, where they
quietly ensconced themselves for the night.  At eight o'clock of the
following morning (20th January) the guards of the gate drew up the
portcullis, and reconnoitered.  At the same instant, the ambushed fifty
sprang from their concealment, put them to the sword, and made themselves
masters of the gate.  None of the night-watch escaped with life, save one
poor old invalided citizen, whose business had been to draw up the
portcullis, and who was severely wounded, and left for dead.  The fifty
immediately summoned all of Rohenlo's ambuscade that were within hearing,
and then, without waiting for them, entered the town pell-mell in the
best of spirits, and shouting victory! victory! till they were hoarse.  A
single corporal, with two men, was left to guard the entrance.  Meantime,
the old wounded gate-opener, bleeding and crippled, crept into a dark
corner, and laid himself down, unnoticed, to die.

Soon afterwards Hohenlo galloped into the town, clad in complete armour,
his long curls floating in the wind, with about two hundred troopers
clattering behind him, closely followed by five hundred pike-men on foot.

Very brutally, foolishly, and characteristically, he had promised his
followers the sacking of the city so soon as it should be taken.  They
accordingly set about the sacking, before it was taken.  Hardly had the
five or six hundred effected their entrance, than throwing off all
control, they dispersed through the principal streets, and began bursting
open the doors of the most opulent households.  The cries of "victory!"
"gained city!"  "down with the Spaniards!"  resounded on all sides.  Many
of the citizens, panic-struck, fled from their homes, which they thus
abandoned to pillage, while, meantime, the loud shouts of the assailants
reached the ears of the sergeant and his two companies who had been left
in charge of the gate.  Fearing that they should be cheated of their
rightful share in the plunder, they at once abandoned their post, and set
forth after their comrades, as fast as their legs could carry them.

Now it so chanced--although there was no garrison in the town--that forty
Burgundian and Italian lancers, with about thirty foot-soldiers, had come
in the day before to escort a train of merchandise.  The Seigneur de
Haultepenne, governor of Breda, a famous royalist commander--son of old
Count Berlaymont, who first gave the name of "beggars" to the patriots-
had accompanied them in the expedition.  The little troop were already
about to mount their horses to depart, when they became aware of the
sudden tumult.  Elmont, governor of the city, had also flown to the
rescue, and had endeavoured to rally the burghers.  Not unmindful of
their ancient warlike fame, they had obeyed his entreaties.  Elmont, with
a strong party of armed citizens, joined himself to Haultepenne's little
band of lancers.  They fired a few shots at straggling parties of
plunderers, and pursued others up some narrow streets.  They were but an
handful in comparison with the number of the patriots, who had gained
entrance to the city.  They were, however, compact, united, and resolute.
The assailants were scattered, disorderly, and bent only upon plunder.
When attacked by an armed and regular band, they were amazed.  They had
been told that there was no garrison; and behold a choice phalanx of
Spanish lancers, led on by one of the most famous of Philip's Netherland
chieftains.  They thought themselves betrayed by Kleerhagen, entrapped
into a deliberately arranged ambush.  There was a panic.  The soldiers,
dispersed and doubtful, could not be rallied.  Hohenlo, seeing that
nothing was to be done with his five hundred, galloped furiously out of
the gate, to bring in the rest of his troops who had remained outside the
walls.  The prize of the wealthy city of  Bois-le-Duc was too tempting to
be lightly abandoned; but he had much better have thought of making
himself master of it himself before he should present it as a prey to his
followers.

During his absence the panic spread.  The States' troops, bewildered,
astonished, vigorously assaulted, turned their backs upon their enemies,
and fled helter-skelter towards the gates, through which they had first
gained admittance.  But unfortunately for them, so soon as the corporal
had left his position, the wounded old gate-opener, in a dying condition,
had crawled forth on his hands and knees from a dark hole in the tower,
cut, with a pocket-knife, the ropes of the portcullis, and then given up
the ghost.  Most effective was that blow struck by a dead man's hand.
Down came the portcullis.  The flying plunderers were entrapped.  Close
behind them came the excited burghers--their antique Belgic ferocity now
fully aroused--firing away with carbine and matchlock, dealing about them
with bludgeon and cutlass, and led merrily on by Haultepenne and Elmont
armed in proof, at the head of their squadron of lancers.  The
unfortunate patriots had risen very early in the morning only to shear
the wolf.  Some were cut to pieces in the streets; others climbed the
walls, and threw themselves head foremost into the moat.  Many were
drowned, and but a very few effected their escape.  Justinus de Nassau.
sprang over the parapet, and succeeded in swimming the ditch.
Kleerhagen, driven into the Holy Cross tower, ascended to its .roof,
leaped, all accoutred as he was, into the river, and with the assistance
of a Scotch soldier, came safe to land.  Ferdinand Truchsess, brother of
the ex-elector of Cologne, was killed.  Four or five hundred of the
assailants--nearly all who had entered the city--were slain, and about
fifty of the burghers.

Hohenlo soon came back, with Colonel Ysselstein, and two thousand fresh
troops.  But their noses, says a contemporary, grew a hundred feet long
with surprise when they saw the gate shut in their faces.  It might have
occurred to the Count, when he rushed out of the town for reinforcements,
that it would be as well to replace the guard, which--as he must have
seen--had abandoned their post.


Cursing his folly, he returned, mavellously discomfited, and deservedly
censured, to Gertruydenberg.  And thus had a most important enterprise;
which had nearly been splendidly successful, ended in disaster and
disgrace.  To the recklessness of the general, to the cupidity which he
had himself awakened in his followers, was the failure alone to be
attributed.  Had he taken possession of the city with a firm grasp at the
head of his four thousand men, nothing could have resisted him;
Haultepenne, and his insignificant force, would have been dead, or his
prisoners; the basis of Parma's magnificent operations would have been
withdrawn; Antwerp would have been saved.

"Infinite gratitude," wrote Parma to Philip, "should be rendered to the
Lord.  Great thanks are also due to Haultepenne.  Had the rebels
succeeded in their enterprise against Bolduc, I should have been
compelled to abandon the siege of Antwerp.  The town; by its strength and
situation, is of infinite importance for the reduction both of that place
and of Brussels, and the rebels in possession of Bolduc would have cut
off my supplies."

The Prince recommended Haultepenne most warmly to the King as deserving
of a rich "merced."  The true hero of the day, however--at least the
chief agent in the victory was the poor, crushed, nameless victim who had
cut the ropes of the portcullis at the Antwerp gate.

Hohenlo was deeply stung by the disgrace which he had incurred.  For a
time he sought oblivion in hard drinking; but--brave and energetic,
though reckless--he soon became desirous of retrieving his reputation by
more successful enterprises.  There was no lack of work, and assuredly
his hands were rarely idle.

"Hollach (Hohenlo) is gone from hence on Friday last," wrote Davison to
Walsingham, "he will do what he may to recover his reputation lost in the
attempt, of Bois-le-Duc; which, for the grief and trouble he hath
conceived thereof, hath for the time greatly altered him."

Meantime the turbulent Scheldt, lashed by the storms of winter, was
becoming a more formidable enemy to Parma's great enterprise than the
military demonstrations of his enemies, or the famine which was making
such havoc, with his little army.  The ocean-tides were rolling huge ice-
blocks up and down, which beat against his palisade with the noise of
thunder, and seemed to threaten its immediate destruction. But the work
stood firm.  The piles supporting the piers, which had been thrust out
from each bank into the stream, had been driven fifty feet into the
river's bed, and did their duty well.  But in the space between, twelve
hundred and forty feet in width, the current was too deep for pile-
driving and a permanent bridge was to be established upon boats.  And
that bridge was to be laid across the icy and tempestuous flood, in the
depth of winter, in the teeth of a watchful enemy, with the probability
of an immediate invasion from France, where the rebel envoys were known
to be negotiating on express invitation of the King--by half-naked, half-
starving soldiers and sailors, unpaid for years, and for the sake of a
master who seemed to have forgotten their existence.

"Thank God," wrote Alexander, "the palisade stands firm in spite of the
ice.  Now with the favour of the Lord, we shall soon get the fruit we
have been hoping, if your Majesty is not wanting in that to which your
grandeur, your great Christianity, your own interests, oblige you.  In
truth 'tis a great and heroic work, worthy the great power of your
Majesty."  "For my own part," he continued, "I have done what depended
upon me.  From your own royal hand must emanate the rest;--men, namely,
sufficient to maintain the posts, and money enough to support them
there."

He expressed himself in the strongest language concerning the danger to
the royal cause from the weak and gradually sinking condition of the
army.  Even without the French intrigues with the rebels, concerning
which, in his ignorance of the exact state of affairs, he expressed much
anxiety, it would be impossible, he said, to save the royal cause without
men and money.

"I have spared myself," said the Prince, "neither day nor night.  Let
not your Majesty impute the blame to me if we fail.  Verdugo also is
uttering a perpetual cry out of Friesland for men--men and money."

Yet, notwithstanding all these obstacles, the bridge was finished at
last.  On the 25th February, (1585) the day sacred to Saint Matthew, and
of fortunate augury to the Emperor Charles, father of Philip and
grandfather of Alexander, the Scheldt was closed.

As already stated, from Fort Saint Mary on the Kalloo side, and from Fort
Philip, not far from Ordain on the Brabant shore of the Scheldt, strong
structures, supported upon piers, had been projected, reaching,
respectively, five hundred feet into the stream.  These two opposite ends
were now connected by a permanent bridge of boats.  There were thirty-two
of these barges, each of them sixty-two feet in length and twelve in
breadth, the spaces between each couple being twenty-two feet wide, and
all being bound together, stem, stern, and midships, by quadruple hawsers
and chains.  Each boat was anchored at stem and stern with loose cables.
Strong timbers, with cross rafters, were placed upon the boats, upon
which heavy frame-work the planked pathway was laid down.  A thick
parapet of closely-fitting beams was erected along both the outer edges
of the whole fabric.  Thus a continuous and well-fortified bridge, two
thousand four hundred feet in length, was stretched at last from shore to
shore.  Each of the thirty-two boats on which the central portion of the
structure reposed, was a small fortress provided with two heavy pieces of
artillery, pointing, the one up, the other down the stream, and manned by
thirty-two soldiers and four sailors, defended by a breastwork formed of
gabions of great thickness.

The forts of Saint Philip and St. Mary, at either end of the bridge, had
each ten great guns, and both were filled with soldiers.  In front of
each fort, moreover, was stationed a fleet of twenty armed vessels,
carrying heavy pieces of artillery; ten anchored at the angle towards
Antwerp, and as many looking down the river.  One hundred and seventy
great guns, including the armaments of the boats under the bridge of the
armada and the forts, protected the whole structure, pointing up and down
the stream.

But, besides these batteries, an additional precaution had been taken.
On each side, above and below the bridge, at a moderate distance--a bow
shot--was anchored a heavy, raft floating upon empty barrels.  Each raft
was composed of heavy timbers, bound together in bunches of three, the
spaces between being connected by ships' masts and lighter spar-work, and
with a tooth-like projection along the whole outer edge, formed of strong
rafters, pointed and armed with sharp prongs and hooks of iron.  Thus a
serried phalanx, as it were, of spears stood ever on guard to protect the
precious inner structure.  Vessels coming from Zeeland or Antwerp, and
the floating ice-masses, which were almost as formidable, were obliged to
make their first attack upon these dangerous outer defences.  Each raft;
floating in the middle of the stream, extended twelve hundred, and fifty-
two feet across, thus protecting the whole of the bridge of boats and a
portion of that resting upon piles.

Such was the famous bridge of Parma.  The magnificent undertaking has
been advantageously compared with the celebrated Rhine-bridge of Julius
Caesar.  When it is remembered; however; that the Roman work was
performed in summer, across a river only half as broad as the Scheldt,
free from the disturbing, action of the tides; and flowing through an
unresisting country; while the whole character of the structure; intended
only to, serve for the single passage of an army, was far inferior to the
massive solidity of Parma's bridge; it seems not unreasonable to assign
the superiority to the general who had surmounted all the obstacles of a
northern winter, vehement ebb and flow from the sea, and enterprising and
desperate enemies at every point.

When the citizens, at last, looked upon the completed fabric, converted
from the "dream," which they had pronounced it to be, into a terrible
reality; when they saw the shining array of Spanish and Italian legions
marching and counter-marching upon their new road; and trampling, as it
were; the turbulent river beneath their feet; when they witnessed the
solemn military spectacle with which the Governor-General celebrated his
success, amid peals of cannon and shouts of triumph from his army, they
bitterly bewailed their own folly.  Yet even then they could hardly
believe that the work had been accomplished by human agency, but they
loudly protested that invisible demons had been summoned to plan and
perfect this fatal and preter-human work.  They were wrong.  There had
been but one demon--one clear, lofty intelligence, inspiring a steady
and untiring hand.  The demon was the intellect of Alexander Farnese;
but it had been assisted in its labour by the hundred devils of envy,
covetousness, jealousy, selfishness, distrust, and discord, that had
housed, not, in his camp, but in the ranks of those who were contending
for their hearths and altars.

And thus had the Prince arrived at success in spite of every obstacle.
He took a just pride in the achievement, yet he knew by how many dangers
he was still surrounded, and he felt hurt at his sovereign's neglect.
"The enterprise at Antwerp," he wrote to Philip on the day the bridge was
completed, "is so great and heroic that to celebrate it would require me
to speak more at large than I like, to do, for fear of being tedious to
your Majesty.  What I will say, is that the labours and difficulties have
been every day so, great, that if your Majesty knew them, you would
estimate, what we have done more highly than-you do; and not forget us so
utterly, leaving us to die of hunger."

He considered the fabric in itself almost impregnable, provided he were
furnished with the means to maintain what he had so painfully
constructed.

"The whole is in such condition," said he, "that in opinion of all
competent military judges it would stand though all Holland and Zeeland
should come to destroy our, palisades.  Their attacks must be made at
immense danger, and disadvantage, so severely can we play upon them with
our artillery and musketry.  Every boat is, garnished with the most
dainty captains and soldiers, so that if the enemy should attempt to
assail us now, they would come back with broken heads."

Yet in the midst of his apparent triumph he had, at times, almost despair
in his heart.  He felt really at the last gasp.  His troops had dwindled
to the mere shadow of an army, and they were forced to live almost upon
air.  The cavalry had nearly vanished.  The garrisons in the different
cities were starving.  The burghers had no food for the soldiers nor for
themselves.  "As for the rest of the troops," said Alexander, "they are
stationed where they have nothing to subsist upon, save salt water and
the dykes, and if the Lord does not grant a miracle, succour, even if
sent by your Majesty, will arrive too late."  He assured his master, that
he could not go on more than five or six days longer, that he had been
feeding his soldiers for a long time from hand to mouth, and that it
would soon be impossible for him to keep his troops together.  If he did
not disband them they would run away.

His pictures were most dismal, his supplications for money very moving
but he never alluded to himself.  All his anxiety, all his tenderness,
were for his soldiers.  "They must have food," he said: "'Tis impossible
to sustain them any longer by driblets, as I have done for a long time.
Yet how can I do it without money?  And I have none at all, nor do I see
where to get a single florin."

But these revelations were made only to his master's most secret ear.
His letters, deciphered after three centuries, alone make manifest the
almost desperate condition in which the apparently triumphant general was
placed, and the facility with which his antagonists, had they been well
guided and faithful to themselves, might have driven him into the sea.

But to those adversaries he maintained an attitude of serene and smiling
triumph.  A spy, sent from the city to obtain intelligence for the
anxious burghers, had gained admission into his lines, was captured and
brought before the Prince.  He expected, of course, to be immediately
hanged.  On the contrary, Alexander gave orders that he should be
conducted over every part of the encampment.  The forts, the palisades,
the bridge, were all to be carefully exhibited and explained to him as if
he had been a friendly visitor entitled to every information.  He was
requested to count the pieces of artillery in the forts, on the bridge,
in the armada.  After thoroughly studying the scene he was then dismissed
with a safe-conduct to the city.

"Go back to those who sent you," said the Prince.  "Convey to them the
information in quest of which you came.  Apprize them of every thing
which you have inspected, counted, heard explained.  Tell them further,
that the siege will never be abandoned, and that this bridge will be my
sepulcher or my pathway into Antwerp."

And now the aspect of the scene was indeed portentous.  The chimera had
become a very visible bristling reality.  There stood the bridge which
the citizens had ridiculed while it was growing before their faces.
There scowled the Kowenstyn--black with cannon, covered all over with
fortresses which the butchers had so sedulously preserved.  From Parma's
camp at Beveren and Kalloo a great fortified road led across the river
and along the fatal dyke all the way to the entrenchments at Stabroek,
where Mansfeld's army lay.  Grim Mondragon held the "holy cross" and the
whole Kowenstyn in his own iron grasp.  A chain of forts, built and
occupied by the contending hosts of the patriots and the Spaniards, were
closely packed together along both banks of the Scheldt, nine miles long
from Antwerp to Lillo, and interchanged perpetual cannonades.  The
country all around, once fertile as a garden, had been changed into a
wild and wintry sea where swarms of gun-boats and other armed vessels
manoeuvred and contended with each other over submerged villages and
orchards, and among half-drowned turrets and steeples.  Yet there rose
the great bulwark--whose early destruction would have made all this
desolation a blessing--unbroken and obstinate; a perpetual obstacle to
communication between Antwerp and Zeeland.  The very spirit of the
murdered Prince of Orange seemed to rise sadly and reproachfully out of
the waste of waters, as if to rebuke the men who had been so deaf to his
solemn warnings.

Brussels, too, wearied and worn, its heart sick with hope deferred, now
fell into despair as the futile result of the French negotiation became
apparent.  The stately and opulent city had long been in a most abject
condition.  Many of its inhabitants attempted to escape from the horrors
of starving by flying from its walls.  Of the fugitives, the men were
either scourged back by the Spaniards into the city, or hanged up along
the road-side.  The women were treated, leniently, even playfully, for it
was thought an excellent jest to cut off the petticoats of the
unfortunate starving creatures up to their knees, and then command them
to go back and starve at home with their friends and fellow-citizens.  A
great many persons literally died of hunger.  Matrons with large families
poisoned their children and themselves to avoid the more terrible death
by starving.  At last, when Vilvoorde was taken, when the baseness of the
French King was thoroughly understood, when Parma's bridge was completed
and the Scheldt bridled, Brussels capitulated on as favourable terms as
could well have been expected.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

College of "peace-makers," who wrangled more than all
Military virtue in the support of an infamous cause
Not distinguished for their docility
Repentance, as usual, had come many hours too late




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v39
by John Lothrop Motley






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, 1585


Alexander Farnese, The Duke of Parma


CHAPTER V., Part 2.


     Position of Alexander and his Army--La Motte attempts in vain
     Ostend--Patriots gain Liefkenshoek--Projects of Gianibelli--Alarm on
     the Bridge--The Fire Ships--The Explosion--Its Results--Death of the
     Viscount of Ghent--Perpetual Anxiety of Farnese--Impoverished State
     of the Spaniards--Intended Attack of the Kowenstyn--Second Attack of
     the Kowenstyn--A Landing effected--A sharp Combat--The Dyke pierced
     --Rally of the Spaniards--Parma comes to the Rescue--Fierce Struggle
     on the Dyke--The Spaniards successful--Premature Triumph at Antwerp
     --Defeat of the Patriots--The Ship War's End--Despair of the Citizens

Notwithstanding these triumphs, Parma was much inconvenienced by not
possessing the sea-coast of Flanders.  Ostend was a perpetual stumbling-
block to him.  He therefore assented, with pleasure to a proposition made
by La Motte, one of the most experienced and courageous of the Walloon
royalist, commanders, to attempt the place by surprise.  And La Motte; at
the first blow; was more than half successful.

On the night of the 29th March, (1585) with two thousand foot and twelve
hundred cavalry, he carried the whole of the old port of Ostend.  Leaving
a Walloon officer, in whom he had confidence, to guard the position
already gained, he went back in person for reinforcements.  During his
advance, the same ill luck attended his enterprise which had blasted
Hohenlo's achievement at Bois-le-Duc.  The soldiers he left behind him
deserted their posts for the sake of rifling the town.  The officer in
command, instead of keeping them to their duty, joined in the chase.  The
citizens roused themselves, attacked their invaders, killed many of them,
and put the rest to flight.  When La Motte returned; he found the panic
general.  His whole force, including the fresh soldiers just brought to
the rescue, were beside themselves with fear.  He killed several with his
own hand, but the troops were not to be rallied.  His quick triumph was
changed into an absolute defeat.

Parma, furious at the ignominious result of a plan from which so much had
been expected, ordered the Walloon captain, from whose delinquency so
much disaster had resulted, to be forthwith hanged.  "Such villainy,"
said he, "must never go unpunished."

It was impossible for the Prince to send a second expedition to attempt
the reduction of Ostend, for the patriots were at last arousing
themselves to the necessity of exertion.  It was very obvious--now that
the bridge had been built, and the Kowenstyn fortified--that one or the
other was to be destroyed, or Antwerp abandoned to its fate.

The patriots had been sleeping, as it were, all the winter, hugging the
delusive dream of French sovereignty and French assistance.  No language
can exaggerate the deadly effects from the slow poison of that
negotiation.  At any rate, the negotiation was now concluded.  The dream
was dispelled.  Antwerp must now fall, or a decisive blow must be struck
by the patriots themselves, and a telling blow had been secretly and
maturely meditated.  Certain preparatory steps were however necessary.

The fort of Liefkenshoek, "darling's corner," was a most important post.
The patriots had never ceased to regret that precious possession, lost,
as we have seen, in so tragical a manner on the very day of Orange's
death.  Fort Lillo, exactly opposite, on the Brabant shore of the
Scheldt, had always been securely held by them; and was their strongest
position.  Were both places in their power, the navigation of the river,
at least as far as the bridge, would be comparatively secure.

A sudden dash was made upon Liefkenshoek.  A number of armed vessels
sailed up from Zeeland, under command of Justinus de Nassau.  They were
assisted from Fort Lillo by a detachment headed by Count Hohenlo.  These
two officers were desirous of retrieving the reputation which they had
lost at Bois-le-Duc.  They were successful, and the "darling" fort was
carried at a blow.  After a brief cannonade, the patriots made a breach,
effected a landing, and sprang over the ramparts.  The Walloons and
Spaniards fled in dismay; many of them were killed in the fort, and along
the dykes; others were hurled into the Scheldt.  The victors followed up
their success by reducing, with equal impetuosity, the fort of Saint
Anthony, situate in the neighbourhood farther down the river.  They thus
gained entire command of all the high ground, which remained in that
quarter above the inundation, and was called the Doel.

The dyke, on which Liefkenshoek stood, led up the river towards Kalloo,
distant less than a league.  There were Parma's head-quarters and the
famous bridge.  But at Fort Saint Mary; where the Flemish head of that
bridge rested, the dyke was broken.  Upon that broken end the commanders
of the expedition against Liefkenshoek were ordered to throw up an
entrenchment, without loss of a moment, so soon as they should have
gained the fortresses which they were ordered first to assault.  Sainte
Aldegonde had given urgent written directions to this effect.  From a
redoubt situated thus, in the very face of Saint Mary's, that position,
the palisade-work, the whole bridge, might be battered with all the
artillery that could be brought from Zeeland.

But Parma was beforehand with them.  Notwithstanding his rage and
mortification that Spanish soldiers should have ignominiously lost the
important fortress which Richebourg had conquered so brilliantly nine
months before, he was not the man to spend time in unavailing regrets.
His quick eye instantly, detected the flaw which might soon be fatal.
In the very same night of the loss of Liefkenshoek, he sent as strong a
party as could be spared, with plenty of sappers and miners, in flat-
bottomed boats across from Kalloo.  As the morning dawned, an improvised
fortress, with the Spanish flag waving above its bulwarks, stood on the
broken end of the dyke.  That done, he ordered one of the two captains
who had commanded in Liefkenshoek and Saint Anthony to be beheaded on the
same dyke.  The other was dismissed with ignominy.  Ostend was, of
course, given up; "but it was not a small matter," said Parma, "to
fortify ourselves that very night upon the ruptured place, and so prevent
the rebels from doing it, which would have been very mal-a-propos."

Nevertheless, the rebels had achieved a considerable success; and now or
never the telling blow, long meditated, was to be struck.

There lived in Antwerp a subtle Mantuan, Gianibelli by name, who had
married and been long settled in the city.  He had made himself busy with
various schemes for victualling the place.  He had especially urged upon
the authorities, at an early period of the siege, the propriety of making
large purchases of corn and storing it in magazines at a time when
famine-price had by no means been reached.  But the leading men had then
their heads full of a great ship, or floating castle, which they were
building, and which they had pompously named the 'War's End,' 'Fin de la
Guerre.'  We shall hear something of this phenomenon at a later period.
Meanwhile, Gianibelli, who knew something of shipbuilding, as he did of
most other useful matters, ridiculed the design, which was likely to
cost, in itself before completion, as much money as would keep the city
in bread for a third of a year.

Gianibelli was no patriot.  He was purely a man of science and of great
acquirements, who was looked upon by the ignorant populace alternately as
a dreamer and a wizard.  He was as indifferent to the cause of freedom as
of despotism, but he had a great love for chemistry.  He was also a
profound mechanician, second to no man of his age in theoretic and
practical engineering.

He had gone from Italy to Spain that he might offer his services to
Philip, and give him the benefit of many original and ingenious
inventions.  Forced to dance attendance, day after day, among sneering
courtiers and insolent placemen, and to submit to the criticism of
practical sages and philosophers of routine, while, he was constantly
denied an opportunity of explaining his projects, the quick-tempered
Italian had gone away at last, indignant.  He had then vowed revenge upon
the dulness by which his genius had been slighted, and had sworn that the
next time the Spaniards heard the name of the man whom they had dared to
deride, they should hear it with tears.

He now laid before the senate of Antwerp a plan for some vessels likely
to prove more effective than the gigantic 'War's End,' which he had
prophesied would prove a failure.  With these he pledged himself to
destroy the bridge.  He demanded three ships which he had selected from
the city fleet; the 'Orange,' the 'Post,' and the 'Golden Lion,'
measuring, respectively, one hundred and fifty, three hundred and fifty,
and five hundred tons.  Besides these, he wished sixty flat-bottomed
scows, which he proposed to send down the river, partially submerged,
disposed in the shape of a half moon, with innumerable anchors and
grapnel's thrusting themselves out of the water at every point.  This
machine was intended to operate against the raft.

Ignorance and incredulity did their work, as usual, and Gianbelli's
request was refused.  As a quarter-measure, nevertheless, he was allowed
to take two smaller vessels of seventy and eighty tons.  The Italian was
disgusted with parsimony upon so momentous an occasion, but he at the
same time determined, even with these slender materials, to give an
exhibition of his power.

Not all his the glory, however, of the ingenious project.  Associated
with him were two skilful artizans of Antwerp; a clockmaker named Bory,
and a mechanician named Timmerman--but Gianibelli was the chief and
superintendent of the whole daring enterprise.

He gave to his two ships the cheerful names of the 'Fortune' and the
'Hope,' and set himself energetically to justify their titles by their
efficiency.  They were to be marine volcanos, which, drifting down the
river with tide, were to deal destruction where the Spaniards themselves
most secure.

In the hold of each vessel, along the whole length, was laid down a solid
flooring of brick and mortar, one foot thick and five feet wide.  Upon
this was built a chamber of marble mason-work, forty feet long, three and
a half feet broad, as many high, and with side-walks [walls? D.W.] five
feet in thickness.

This was the crater.  It was filled with seven thousand of gunpowder, of
a kind superior to anything known, and prepared  by Gianibelli himself.
It was covered with a roof, six feet in thickness, formed of blue
tombstones, placed edgewise.  Over this crater, rose a hollow cone, or
pyramid, made of heavy marble slabs, and filled with mill-stones, cannon
balls, blocks of marble, chain-shot, iron hooks, plough-coulters, and
every dangerous missile that could be imagined.  The spaces between the
mine and the sides of each ship were likewise filled with paving stones,
iron-bound stakes, harpoons, and other projectiles.  The whole fabric was
then covered by a smooth light flooring of planks and brick-work, upon
which was a pile of wood: This was to be lighted at the proper time, in
order that the two vessels might present the appearance of simple fire-
ships, intended only to excite a conflagration of the bridge.  On the
'Fortune' a slow match, very carefully prepared, communicated with the
submerged mine, which was to explode at a nicely-calculated moment.  The
eruption of the other floating volcano was to be regulated by an
ingenious piece of clock-work, by which, at the appointed time, fire,
struck from a flint, was to inflame the hidden mass of gunpowder below.

In addition to these two infernal machines, or "hell-burners," as they
were called, a fleet of thirty-two smaller vessels was prepared.  Covered
with tar, turpentine, rosin, and filled with inflammable and combustible
materials, these barks were to be sent from Antwerp down the river in
detachments of eight every half hour with the ebb tide.  The object was
to clear the way, if possible, of the raft, and to occupy the attention
of the Spaniards, until the 'Fortune' and the `Hope' should come down
upon the bridge.

The 5th April, (1885) being the day following that on which the
successful assault upon Liefkenshoek and Saint Anthony had taken place,
was fixed for the descent of the fire-ships.  So soon as it should be
dark, the thirty-two lesser burning-vessels, under the direction of
Admiral Jacob Jacobzoon, were to be sent forth from the neighborhood of
the 'Boor's Sconce'--a fort close to the city walls--in accordance with
the Italian's plan.  "Run-a-way Jacob," however, or "Koppen Loppen," had
earned no new laurels which could throw into the shade that opprobrious
appellation.  He was not one of Holland's naval heroes, but, on the
whole, a very incompetent officer; exactly the man to damage the best
concerted scheme which the genius of others could invent.  Accordingly,
Koppen-Loppen began with a grave mistake.  Instead of allowing the
precursory fire-ships to drift down the stream, at the regular intervals
agreed upon, he despatched them all rapidly, and helter skelter, one
after another, as fast as they could be set forth on their career.  Not
long afterwards, he sent the two "hellburners," the 'Fortune' and the
'Hope,' directly in their wake.  Thus the whole fiery fleet had set
forth, almost at once, upon its fatal voyage.

It was known to Parma that preparations for an attack were making at
Antwerp, but as to the nature of the danger he was necessarily in the
dark.  He was anticipating an invasion by a fleet from the city in
combination with a squadron of Zeelanders coming up from below.  So soon
as the first vessels, therefore, with their trains not yet lighted, were
discovered bearing down from the city, he was confirmed in his
conjecture.  His drama and trumpets instantly called to arms, and the
whole body of his troops was mustered upon the bridge; the palisades, and
in the nearest forts.  Thus the preparations to avoid or to contend with
the danger, were leading the Spaniards into the very jaws of destruction.
Alexander, after crossing and recrossing the river, giving minute
directions for repelling the expected assault, finally stationed himself
in the block-house at the point of junction, on the Flemish aide, between
the palisade and the bridge of boats.  He was surrounded by a group of
superior officers, among whom Richebourg, Billy, Gaetano, Cessis, and the
Englishman Sir Rowland Yorke, were conspicuous.

It was a dark, mild evening of early spring.  As the fleet of vessels
dropped slowly down the river, they suddenly became luminous, each ship
flaming out of the darkness, a phantom of living fire.  The very waves of
the Scheldt seemed glowing with the conflagration, while its banks were
lighted up with a preternatural glare.  It was a wild, pompous,
theatrical spectacle.  The array of soldiers on both aides the river,
along the dykes and upon the bridge, with banners waving, and spear and
cuirass glancing in the lurid light; the demon fleet, guided by no human
hand, wrapped in flames, and flitting through the darkness, with
irregular movement; but portentous aspect, at the caprice of wind and
tide; the death-like silence of expectation, which had succeeded the
sound of trumpet and the shouts of the soldiers; and the weird glow which
had supplanted the darkness-all combined with the sense of imminent and
mysterious danger to excite and oppress the imagination.

Presently, the Spaniards, as they gazed from the bridge, began to take
heart again.  One after another, many of the lesser vessels drifted
blindly against the raft, where they entangled themselves among the hooks
and gigantic spearheads, and burned slowly out without causing any
extensive conflagration.  Others grounded on the banks of the river,
before reaching their destination.  Some sank in the stream.

Last of all came the two infernal ships, swaying unsteadily with the
current; the pilots of course, as they neared the bridge, having
noiselessly effected their escape in the skiffs.  The slight fire upon
the deck scarcely illuminated the dark phantom-like hulls.  Both were
carried by the current clear of the raft, which, by a great error of
judgment, as it now appeared, on the part of the builders, had only been
made to protect the floating portion of the bridge.  The 'Fortune' came
first, staggering inside the raft, and then lurching clumsily against
the dyke, and grounding near Kalloo, without touching the bridge.  There
was a moment's pause of expectation.  At last the slow match upon the
deck burned out, and there was a faint and partial explosion, by which
little or no damage was produced.

Parma instantly called for volunteers to board the mysterious vessel.
The desperate expedition was headed by the bold Roland York, a Londoner,
of whom one day there was more to be heard in Netherland history.  The
party sprang into the deserted and now harmless volcano, extinguishing
the slight fires that were smouldering on the deck, and thrusting spears
and long poles into the hidden recesses of the hold.  There was, however,
little time to pursue these perilous investigations, and the party soon
made their escape to the bridge.

The troops of Parma, crowding on the palisade, and looking over the
parapets, now began to greet the exhibition with peals of derisive
laughter.  It was but child's play, they thought, to threaten a Spanish
army, and a general like Alexander Farnese, with such paltry fire-works
as these.  Nevertheless all eyes were anxiously fixed upon the remaining
fire-ship, or "hell-burner," the 'Hope,' which had now drifted very near
the place of its destination.  Tearing her way between the raft and the
shore, she struck heavily against the bridge on the Kalloo side, close to
the block-house at the commencement of the floating portion of the
bridge.  A thin wreath of smoke was seen curling over a slight and
smouldering fire upon her deck.

Marquis Richebourg, standing on the bridge, laughed loudly at the
apparently impotent conclusion of the whole adventure.  It was his last
laugh on earth.  A number of soldiers, at Parma's summons, instantly
sprang on board this second mysterious vessel, and occupied themselves,
as the party on board the 'Fortune' had done, in extinguishing, the
flames, and in endeavoring to ascertain the nature of the machine.
Richebourg boldly directed from the bridge their hazardous experiments.

At the same moment a certain ensign De Vega, who stood near the Prince of
Parma, close to the block-house, approached him with vehement entreaties
that he should retire.  Alexander refused to stir from the spot, being
anxious to learn the result of these investigations.  Vega, moved by some
instinctive and irresistible apprehension, fell upon his knees, and
plucking the General earnestly by the cloak, implored him with such
passionate words and gestures to leave the place, that the Prince
reluctantly yielded.

It was not a moment too soon.  The clockwork had been better adjusted
than the slow match in the 'Fortune.' Scarcely had Alexander reached the
entrance of Saint Mary's Fort, at the end of the bridge, when a horrible
explosion was heard.  The 'Hope' disappeared, together with the men who
had boarded her, and the block-house, against which she had struck, with
all its garrison, while a large portion of the bridge, with all the
troops stationed upon it, had vanished into air.  It was the work of a
single instant.  The Scheldt yawned to its lowest depth, and then cast
its waters across the dykes, deep into the forts, and far over the land.
The earth shook as with the throb of a volcano.  A wild glare lighted up
the scene for one moment, and was then succeeded by pitchy darkness.
Houses were toppled down miles away, and not a living thing, even in
remote places, could keep its feet.  The air was filled with a rain of
plough-shares, grave-stones, and marble balls, intermixed with the heads,
limbs, and bodies, of what had been human beings.  Slabs of granite,
vomited by the flaming ship, were found afterwards at a league's
distance, and buried deep in the earth.  A thousand soldiers were
destroyed in a second of time; many of them being torn to shreds, beyond
even the semblance of humanity.

Richebourg disappeared, and was not found until several days later, when
his body was discovered; doubled around an iron chain, which hung from
one of the bridge-boats in the centre of the river.  The veteran Robles,
Seigneur de Billy, a Portuguese officer of eminent service and high
military rank, was also destroyed.  Months afterwards, his body was
discovered adhering to the timber-work of the bridge, upon the ultimate
removal of that structure, and was only recognized by a peculiar gold
chain which he habitually wore.  Parma himself was thrown to the ground,
stunned by a blow on the shoulder from a flying stake.  The page, who was
behind him, carrying his helmet, fell dead without a wound, killed by the
concussion of the air.

Several strange and less tragical incidents occurred.  The Viscomte de
Bruxelles was blown out of a boat on the Flemish side, and descended safe
and, sound into another in the centre of the stream.  Captain Tucci, clad
in complete armour, was whirled out of a fort, shot perpendicularly into
the air, and then fell back into the river.  Being of a cool temperament,
a good swimmer, and very pious, he skilfully divested himself of cuirass
and helmet, recommended himself to the Blessed Virgin, and swam safely
ashore.  Another young officer of Parma's body-guard, Francois de Liege
by name, standing on the Kalloo end of the bridge, rose like a feather
into the clouds, and, flying quite across the river, alighted on the
opposite bank with no further harm than a contused shoulder.  He imagined
himself (he said afterwards) to have been changed into a cannon-ball, as
he rushed through the pitchy atmosphere, propelled by a blast of
irresistible fury.

     [The chief authorities used in the foregoing account of this famous
     enterprise are those already cited on a previous page, viz.: the MS.
     Letters of the Prince of Parma in the Archives of Simancas; Bor, ii.
     596, 597; Strada, H. 334 seq.; Meteren, xii.  223; Hoofd Vervolgh,
     91; Baudartii Polemographia, ii.  24-27; Bentivoglio, etc., I have
     not thought it necessary to cite them step by step; for all the
     accounts, with some inevitable and unimportant discrepancies, agree
     with each other.  The most copious details are to be found in Strada
     and in Bor.]

It had been agreed that Admiral Jacobzoon should, immediately after the
explosion of the fire-ships, send an eight-oared barge to ascertain the
amount of damage.  If a breach had been effected, and a passage up to the
city opened, he was to fire a rocket.  At this signal, the fleet
stationed at Lillo, carrying a heavy armament, laden with provisions
enough to relieve Antwerp from all anxiety, and ready to sail on the
instant, was at once to force its way up the river.

The deed was done.  A breach, two hundred feet in width was made.  Had
the most skilful pilot in Zeeland held the helm of the 'Hope,' with a
choice crew obedient to his orders, he could not have guided her more
carefully than she had been directed by wind and tide.  Avoiding the raft
which lay in her way, she had, as it were, with the intelligence of a
living creature, fulfilled the wishes of the daring genius that had
created her; and laid herself alongside the bridge, exactly at the most
telling point.  She had then destroyed herself, precisely at the right
moment.  All the effects, and more than all, that had been predicted by
the Mantuan wizard had come to pass.  The famous bridge was cleft through
and through, and a thousand picked men--Parma's very "daintiest"--were
blown out of existence.  The Governor-General himself was lying stark and
stiff upon the bridge which he said should be his triumphal monument or
his tomb.  His most distinguished officers were dead, and all the
survivors were dumb and blind with astonishment at the unheard of,
convulsion.  The passage was open for the fleet, and the fleet, lay below
with sails spread, and oars in the rowlocks, only waiting for the signal
to bear up at once to the scene of action, to smite out of existence all
that remained of the splendid structure, and to carry relief and triumph
into Antwerp.

Not a soul slept in the city.  The explosion had shook its walls, and
thousands of people thronged the streets, their hearts beating high with
expectation.  It was a moment of exquisite triumph.  The 'Hope,' word of
happy augury, had not been relied upon in vain, and Parma's seven months
of patient labour had been annihilated in a moment.  Sainte Aldegonde and
Gianibelli stood in the 'Boors' Sconce' on the edge of the river.  They
had felt and heard the explosion, and they were now straining their eyes
through the darkness to mark the flight of the welcome rocket.

That rocket never rose.  And it is enough, even after the lapse of three
centuries, to cause a pang in every heart that beats for human liberty to
think of the bitter disappointment which crushed these great and
legitimate hopes.  The cause lay in the incompetency and cowardice of the
man who had been so unfortunately entrusted with a share in a noble
enterprise.

Admiral Jacobzoon, paralyzed by the explosion, which announced his own
triumph, sent off the barge, but did not wait for its return.  The
boatmen, too, appalled by the sights and sounds which they had witnessed,
and by the murky darkness which encompassed them, did not venture near
the scene of action, but, after rowing for a short interval hither and
thither, came back with the lying report that nothing had been
accomplished, and that the bridge remained unbroken.  Sainte Aldegonde
and Gianibelli were beside themselves with rage, as they surmised the
imbecility of the Admiral, and devoted him in their hearts to the
gallows, which he certainly deserved.  The wrath of the keen Italian may
be conceived, now that his ingenious and entirely successful scheme was
thus rendered fruitless by the blunders of the incompetent Fleming.

On the other side, there was a man whom no danger could appall.
Alexander had been thought dead, and the dismay among his followers
was universal.  He was known to have been standing an instant before the
explosion on the very block-house where the 'Hope' had struck.  After the
first terrible moments had passed, his soldiers found their general
lying, as if in a trance, on the threshold of St. Mary's Fort, his drawn
sword in his hand, with Cessis embracing his knees, and Gaetano extended
at his side, stunned with a blow upon the head.

Recovering from his swoon, Parma was the first to spring to his feet.
Sword in hand, he rushed at once upon the bridge to mark the extent of
the disaster.  The admirable structure, the result of so much patient and
intelligent energy, was fearfully shattered; the bridge, the river, and
the shore, strewed with the mangled bodies of his soldiers.  He expected,
as a matter of certainty, that the fleet from below would instantly force
its passage, destroy, the remainder of his troops-stunned as they were
with the sudden catastrophe complete the demolition of the bridge, and
then make its way to Antwerp, with ample reinforcements and supplies.
And Alexander saw that the expedition would be successful.  Momently
expecting the attack, he maintained his courage and semblance of
cheerfulness, with despair in his heart.

His winter's work seemed annihilated, and it was probable that he should
be obliged to raise the siege.  Nevertheless, he passed in person from
rank to rank, from post to post, seeing that the wounded were provided
for, encouraging those that remained unhurt, and endeavouring to infuse a
portion of his own courage into the survivors of his panic-stricken army.

Nor was he entirely unsuccessful, as the night wore on and the expected
assault was still delayed.  Without further loss of time, he employed his
men to collect the drifting boats, timber, and spar-work, and to make a
hasty and temporary restoration--in semblance at least--of the ruined
portion of his bridge.  And thus he employed himself steadily all the
night, although expecting every instant to hear the first broadside of
the Zeeland cannon.  When morning broke, and it became obvious that the
patriots were unable or unwilling to follow up their own success, the
Governor-General felt as secure as ever.  He at once set about the
thorough repairs of his great work, and--before he could be again
molested--had made good the damage which it had sustained.

It was not till three days afterwards that the truth was known in
Antwerp.  Hohenlo then sent down a messenger, who swam, under the bridge,
ascertained the exact state of affairs, and returned, when it was too
late, with the first intelligence of the triumph which had been won and
lost.  The disappointment and mortification were almost intolerable.  And
thus had.  Run-a-way Jacob, 'Koppen Loppen,' blasted the hopes of so many
wiser and braver spirits than his own.

The loss to Parma and to the royalist cause in Marquis Richebourg, was
very great.  The death of De Billy, who was a faithful, experienced, and
courageous general, was also much lamented.  "The misfortune from their
death," said Parma, "is not to be exaggerated.  Each was ever ready to do
his duty in your Majesty's service, and to save me much fatigue in all my
various affairs.  Nevertheless," continued the Prince, with great piety,
"we give the Lord thanks for all, and take as a favour everything which
comes from His hand."

Alexander had indeed reason to deplore the loss of Robert de Melun,
Viscount of Ghent, Marquis of Roubaix and Richebourg.  He was a most
valuable officer.  His wealth was great.  It had been recently largely
increased by the confiscation of his elder brother's estates for his
benefit, a measure which at Parma's intercession had been accorded by the
King.  That brother was the patriotic Prince of Espinoy, whom we have
recently seen heading the legation of the States to France.  And
Richebourg was grateful to Alexander, for besides these fraternal spoils,
he had received two marquisates through his great patron, in addition to
the highest military offices.  Insolent, overbearing, truculent to all
the world, to Parma he was ever docile, affectionate, watchful,
obsequious.  A man who knew not fatigue, nor fear, nor remorse, nor
natural affection, who could patiently superintend all the details of a
great military work, or manage a vast political intrigue by alternations
of browbeating and bribery, or lead a forlorn hope, or murder a prisoner
in cold blood, or leap into the blazing crater of what seemed a marine
volcano, the Marquis of Richebourg had ever made himself most actively
and unscrupulously useful to his master.  Especially had he rendered
invaluable services in the reduction, of the Walloon Provinces, and in
the bridging of the Scheldt, the two crowning triumphs of Alexander's
life.  He had now passed from the scene where he had played so energetic
and dazzling a part, and lay doubled round an iron cable beneath the
current of the restless river.

And in this eventful night, Parma, as always, had been true to himself
and to his sovereign.  "We expected," said he, "that the rebels would
instantly attack us on all sides after the explosion.  But all remained
so astonished by the unheard-of accident, that very few understood what
was going on.  It seemed better that I--notwithstanding the risk of
letting myself be seen--should encourage the people not to run away.
I did so, and remedied matters a little but not so much as that--if the
enemy had then attacked us--we should not have been in the very greatest
risk and peril.  I did not fail to do what I am obliged to do, and always
hope to do; but I say no more of what passed, or what was done by myself,
because it does not become me to speak of these things."

Notwithstanding this discomfiture, the patriots kept up heart, and
were incessantly making demonstrations against Parma's works.  Their
proceedings against the bridge, although energetic enough to keep the
Spanish commander in a state of perpetual anxiety, were never so
efficient however as on the memorable occasion when the Mantuan engineer
and the Dutch watchmaker had exhausted all their ingenuity.
Nevertheless, the rebel barks swarmed all over the submerged territory,
now threatening this post, and now that, and effecting their retreat at
pleasure; for nearly the whole of Parma's little armada was stationed at
the two extremities of his bridge.  Many fire-ships were sent down from
time to time, but Alexander had organized a systematic patrol of a few
sentry-boats, armed with scythes and hooks, which rowed up and down in
front of the rafts, and protected them against invasion.

Some little effect was occasionally produced, but there was on the whole
more anxiety excited than damage actually inflicted.  The perturbation of
spirit among the Spaniards when any of these 'demon fine-ships,' as they
called them, appeared bearing down upon their bridge, was excessive.  It
could not be forgotten, that the `Hope' had sent into space a thousand of
the best soldiers of the little army within one moment of time.

Such rapid proceedings had naturally left an uneasy impression on the
minds of the survivors.  The fatigue of watching was enormous.  Hardly an
officer or soldier among the besieging forces knew what it was to sleep.
There was a perpetual exchanging of signals and beacon-fires and rockets
among the patriots--not a day or night, when a concerted attack by the
Antwerpers from above, and the Hollanders from below, with gun-boats and
fire-ships, and floating mines, and other devil's enginry, was not
expected.

"We are always upon the alert," wrote Parma, "with arms in our hands.
Every one must mount guard, myself as well as the rest, almost every
night, and the better part of every day."

He was quite aware that something was ever in preparation; and the
nameless, almost sickening apprehension which existed among his stout-
hearted veterans, was a proof that the Mantuan's genius--notwithstanding
the disappointment as to the great result--had not been exercised
entirely in vain.  The image of the Antwerp devil-ships imprinted itself
indelibly upon the Spanish mind, as of something preternatural, with
which human valour could only contend at a disadvantage; and a day was
not very far distant--one of the memorable days of the world's history,
big with the fate of England, Spain, Holland, and all Christendom--when
the sight of a half-dozen blazing vessels, and the cry of "the Antwerp
fireships," was to decide the issue of a most momentous enterprise.  The
blow struck by the obscure Italian against Antwerp bridge, although
ineffective then, was to be most sensibly felt after a few years had
passed, upon a wider field.

Meantime the uneasiness and the watchfulness in the biesieging army were
very exhausting.  "They are never idle in the city," wrote Parma.  "They
are perpetually proving their obstinacy and pertinacity by their
industrious genius and the machines which they devise.  Every day we are
expecting some new invention.  On our side we endeavour to counteract
their efforts by every human means in our power.  Nevertheless, I confess
that our merely human intellect is not competent to penetrate the designs
of their diabolical genius.  Certainly, most wonderful and extraordinary
things have been exhibited, such as the oldest soldiers here have never
before witnessed."

Moreover, Alexander saw himself growing weaker and weaker.  His force
had dwindled to a mere phantom of an army.  His soldiers, ill-fed, half-
clothed, unpaid, were fearfully overworked.  He was obliged to
concentrate all the troops at his disposal around Antwerp.  Diversions
against Ostend, operations in Friesland and Gelderland, although most
desirable, had thus been rendered quite impossible.

"I have recalled my cavalry and infantry from Ostend," he wrote, "and Don
Juan de Manrique has fortunately arrived in Stabroek with a thousand good
German folk.  The commissary-general of the cavalry has come in, too,
with a good lot of the troops that had been encamped in the open country.
Nevertheless, we remain wretchedly weak--quite insufficient to attempt
what ought to be done.  If the enemy were more in force, or if the French
wished to make trouble, your Majesty would see how important it had been
to provide in time against such contingencies.  And although our
neighbours, crestfallen, and rushing upon their own destruction, leave us
in quiet, we are not without plenty of work.  It would be of inestimable
advantage to make diversions in Gelderland and Friesland, because, in
that case, the Hollanders, seeing the enemy so near their own borders,
would be obliged to withdraw their assistance from Antwerp.  'Tis pity to
see how few Spaniards your Majesty has left, and how diminished is our
army.  Now, also, is the time to expect sickness, and this affair of
Antwerp is obviously stretching out into large proportions.  Unless soon
reinforced, we must inevitably go to destruction.  I implore your Majesty
to ponder the matter well, and not to defer the remedy."

His Majesty was sure to ponder the matter well, if that had been all.
Philip was good at pondering; but it was equally certain that the remedy
would be deferred.  Meantime Alexander and his starving but heroic little
army were left to fight their battles as they could.

His complaints were incessant, most reasonable, but unavailing.  With all
the forces he could muster, by withdrawing from the neighbourhood of
Ghent, Brussels, Vilvoorde, and from all the garrisons, every man that
could be spared, he had not strength enough to guard his own posts.  To
attempt to win back the important forts recently captured by the rebels
on the Doel, was quite out of the question.  The pictures he painted of
his army were indeed most dismal.

The Spaniards were so reduced by sickness that it was pitiful to see
them.  The Italians were not in much better condition, nor the Germans.
"As for the Walloons," said he, "they are deserting, as they always do.
In truth, one of my principal dangers is that the French civil wars are
now tempting my soldiers across the frontier; the country there is so
much richer, and offers so much more for the plundering."

During the few weeks which immediately followed them famous descent of
the 'Hope' and the 'Fortune,' there had accordingly been made a variety
of less elaborate, but apparently mischievous, efforts against the
bridge.  On the whole, however, the object was rather to deceive and
amuse the royalists, by keeping their attention fixed in that quarter,
while a great attack was, in reality, preparing against the Kowenstyn.
That strong barrier, as repeatedly stated, was even a more formidable
obstacle than the bridge to the communication between the beleagured city
and their allies upon the outside.  Its capture and demolition, even at
this late period, would open the navigation to all the fleets of Zeeland.

In the undertaking of the 5th of April all had been accomplished that
human ingenuity could devise; yet the triumph had been snatched away even
at the very moment when it was complete.  A determined and vigorous
effort was soon to be made upon the Kowenstyn, in the very face of Parma;
for it now seemed obvious that the true crisis was to come upon that
fatal dyke.  The great bulwark was three miles long.  It reached from
Stabroek in Brabant, near which village Mansfeld's troops were encamped,
across the inundated country, up to the line of the Scheldt.  Thence,
along the river-dyke, and across the bridge to Kalloo and Beveren, where
Parma's forces lay, was a continuous fortified road some three leagues in
length; so that the two divisions of the besieging army, lying four
leagues apart, were all connected by this important line.

Could the Kowenstyn be pierced, the water, now divided by that great
bulwark into two vast lakes, would flow together in one continuous sea.
Moreover the Scheldt, it was thought, would, in that case, return to its
own cannel through Brabant, deserting its present bed, and thus leaving
the famous bridge high and dry.  A wide sheet of navigable water would
then roll between Antwerp and the Zeeland coasts, and Parma's bridge, the
result of seven months' labour, would become as useless as a child's
broken toy.

Alexander had thoroughly comprehended the necessity of maintaining the
Kowenstyn.  All that it was possible to do with the meagre forces at his
disposal, he had done.  He had fringed both its margins, along its whole
length, with a breastwork of closely-driven stakes.  He had strengthened
the whole body of the dyke with timber-work and piles.  Upon its river-
end, just at the junction with the great Scheldt dyke, a strong fortress,
called the Holy Cross, had been constructed, which was under the special
command of Mondragon.  Besides this, three other forts had been built, at
intervals of about a mile, upon the dyke.  The one nearest to Mondragon
was placed at the Kowenstyn manor-house, and was called Saint James.
This was entrusted to Camillo Bourbon del Monte, an Italian officer, who
boasted the blood royal of France in his veins, and was disposed on all
occasions to vindicate that proud pedigree by his deeds.  The next fort
was Saint George's, sometimes called the Black Sconce.  It had been built
by La Motte, but it was now in command of the Spanish officer, Benites.
The third was entitled the Fort of the Palisades, because it had been
necessary to support it by a stockade-work in the water, there being
absolutely not earth enough to hold the structure.  It was placed in the
charge of Captain Gamboa.  These little castles had been created, as it
were, out of water and upon water, and under a hot fire from the enemy's
forts and fleets, which gave the pioneers no repose.

"'Twas very hard work," said Parma, "our soldiers are so exposed during
their labour, the rebels playing upon them perpetually from their musket-
proof vessels.  They fill the submerged land with their boats, skimming
everywhere as they like, while we have none at all.  We have been obliged
to build these three forts with neither material nor space; making land
enough for the foundation by bringing thither bundles of hurdles and of
earth.  The fatigue and anxiety are incredible.  Not a man can sleep at
night; not an officer nor soldier but is perpetually mounting guard.  But
they are animated to their hard work by seeing that I share in it, like
one of themselves.  We have now got the dyke into good order, so far as
to be able to give them a warm reception, whenever they choose to come."

Quite at the farther or land end of the Kowenstyn, was another fort,
called the Stabroek, which commanded and raked the whole dyke, and was in
the neighbourhood of Mansfeld's head-quarters.

Placed as were these little citadels upon a slender, and--at brief
distance--invisible thread of land, with the dark waters rolling around
them far and near, they presented an insubstantial dream-like aspect,
seeming rather like castles floating between air and ocean than actual
fortifications--a deceptive mirage rather than reality.  There was
nothing imaginary, however, in the work which they were to perform.

A series of attacks, some serious, others fictitious, had been made, from
time to time, upon both bridge and dyke; but Alexander was unable to
inspire his soldiers with his own watchfulness.  Upon the 7th of May a
more determined attempt was made upon the Kowenstyn, by the fleet from
Lillo.  Hohenlo and Colonel Ysselstein conducted the enterprise.  The
sentinels at the point selected--having recently been so often threatened
by an enemy, who most frequently made a rapid retreat, as to have grown
weary and indifferent-were surprised, at dawn of day, and put to the
sword.  "If the truth must be told," said Parma, "the sentries were sound
asleep."  Five hundred Zeelanders, with a strong party of sappers and
miners, fairly established themselves upon the dyke, between St.
George's and Fort Palisade.  The attack, although spirited at its
commencement, was doomed to be unsuccessful.  A co-operation, agreed upon
by the fleet from Antwerp, failed through a misunderstanding.  Sainte
Aldegonde had stationed certain members of the munition-chamber in the
cathedral tower, with orders to discharge three rockets, when they should
perceive a beacon-fire which he should light in Fort Tholouse.  The
watchmen mistook an accidental camp-fire in the neighbourhood for the
preconcerted signal, and sent up the rockets.  Hohenlo understanding,
accordingly, that the expedition was on the point of starting from
Antwerp, hastened to perform his portion of the work, and sailed up from
Lillo.  He did his duty faithfully and well, and established himself upon
the dyke, but found himself alone and without sufficient force to
maintain his position.  The Antwerp fleet never sailed.  It was even
whispered that the delinquency was rather intended than accidental; the
Antwerpers being supposed desirous to ascertain the result of Hohenlo's
attempt before coming forth to share his fate.  Such was the opinion
expressed by Farnese in his letters to Philip, but it seems probable
that he was mistaken.  Whatever the cause, however, the fact of the
Zeelanders' discomfiture was certain.  The St. George battery and that of
the Palisade were opened at once upon them, the balls came plunging among
the sappers and miners before they had time to throw up many spade-fulls
of earth, and the whole party were soon dead or driven from the dyke.
The survivors effected their retreat as they best could, leaving four of
their ships behind them and three or four hundred men.

"Forty rebels lay dead on the dyke," said Parma, "and one hundred and
fifty more, at least, were drowned.  The enemy confess a much larger loss
than the number I state, but I am not a friend of giving details larger
than my ascertained facts; nor do I know how many were killed in the
boats."

This enterprise was but a prelude, however, to the great undertaking
which had now been thoroughly matured.  Upon the 26th May, another and
most determined attack was to be made upon the Kowenstyn, by the
Antwerpers and Hollanders acting in concert.  This time, it was to be
hoped, there would be no misconception of signals.  "It was a
determination," said Parma, "so daring and desperate that there was no
substantial reason why we should believe they would carry it out; but
they were at last solemnly resolved to die or to effect their purpose."

Two hundred ships in all had been got ready, part of them under Hohenlo
and Justinus de Nassau, to sail up from Zeeland; the others to advance
from Antwerp under Sainte Aldegonde.  Their destination was the Kowenstyn
Dyke.  Some of the vessels were laden with provisions, others with
gabions, hurdles, branches, sacks of sand and of wool, and with other
materials for the rapid throwing up of fortifications.

It was two o'clock, half an hour before the chill dawn of a May morning,
Sunday, the 26th of the month.  The pale sight of a waning moon was
faintly perceptible in the sky.  Suddenly the sentinels upon the
Kowenstyn--this time not asleep--descried, as they looked towards Lillo,
four fiery apparitions gliding towards them across the waves.  The alarm
was given, and soon afterwards the Spaniards began to muster, somewhat
reluctantly, upon the dyke, filled as they always were with the
mysterious dread which those demon-vessels never failed to inspire.

The fire-ships floated slowly nearer, and at last struck heavily against
the stockade-work.  There, covered with tar, pitch, rosin, and gunpowder,
they flamed, flared, and exploded, during a brief period, with much
vigour, and then burned harmlessly out.  One of the objects for which
they had been sent--to set fire to the palisade--was not accomplished.
The other was gained; for the enemy, expecting another volcanic shower of
tombstones and plough-coulters, and remembering the recent fate of their
comrades on the bridge, had retired shuddering into the forts.  Meantime,
in the glare of these vast torches, a great swarm of gunboats and other
vessels, skimming across the leaden-coloured waters, was seen gradually
approaching the dyke.  It was the fleet of Hohenlo and Justinus de
Nassau, who had been sailing and rowing since ten o'clock of the
preceding night.  The burning ships lighted them on their way, while it
had scared the Spaniards from their posts.

The boats ran ashore in the mile-long space between forts St. George and
the Palisade, and a party of Zeelanders, Admiral Haultain, governor of
Walcheren, at their head, sprang upon the dyke.  Meantime, however, the
royalists, finding that the fire-ships had come to so innocent an end,
had rallied and emerged from their forts.  Haultain and his Zeelanders,
by the time they had fairly mounted the dyke, found themselves in the
iron embrace of several hundred Spaniards.  After a brief fierce
struggle, face to face, and at push of pike, the patriots reeled backward
down tile bank, and took refuge in their boats.  Admiral Haultain slipped
as he left the shore, missed a rope's end which was thrown to him, fell
into the water, and, borne down by the weight of his armour, was drowned.
The enemy, pursuing them, sprang to the waist in the ooze on the edge of
the dyke, and continued the contest.  The boats opened a hot fire, and
there was a severe skirmish for many minutes, with no certain result.  It
was, however, beginning to go hard with the Zeelanders, when, just at the
critical moment, a cheer from the other side of the dyke was heard, and
the Antwerp fleet was seen coming swiftly to the rescue.  The Spaniards,
taken between the two bands of assailants, were at a disadvantage, and it
was impossible to prevent the landing of these fresh antagonists.  The
Antwerpers sprang ashore.  Among the foremost was Sainte Aldegonde, poet,
orator, hymn-book maker, burgomaster, lawyer, polemical divine--now armed
to the teeth and cheering on his men, in the very thickest of the fight.
The diversion was successful, and Sainte Aldegonde gallantly drove the
Spaniards quite off the field.  The whole combined force from Antwerp and
Zeeland now effected their landing.  Three thousand men occupied all the
space between Fort George and the Palisade.

With Sainte Aldegonde came the unlucky Koppen Loppen, and all that could
be spared of the English and Scotch troops in Antwerp, under Balfour and
Morgan.  With Hohenlo and Justinus de Nassau came Reinier Kant, who had
just succeeded Paul Buys as Advocate of Holland.  Besides these came two
other men, side by side, perhaps in the same boat, of whom the world was
like to hear much, from that time forward, and whose names are to be most
solemnly linked together, so long as Netherland history shall endure;
one, a fair-faced flaxen-haired boy of eighteen, the other a square-
visaged, heavy-browed man of forty--Prince Maurice and John of Olden-
Barneveldt.  The statesman had been foremost to urge the claim of William
the Silent's son upon the stadholderate of Holland and Zeeland, and had
been, as it were, the youth's political guardian.  He had himself borne
arms more than once before, having shouldered his matchlock under
Batenburg, and marched on that officer's spirited but disastrous
expedition for the relief of Haarlem.  But this was the life of those
Dutch rebels.  Quill-driving, law-expounding, speech-making, diplomatic
missions, were intermingled with very practical business in besieged
towns or open fields, with Italian musketeers and Spanish pikemen.  And
here, too, young Maurice was taking his first solid lesson in the art of
which he was one day to be so distinguished a professor.  It was a sharp
beginning.  Upon this ribband of earth, scarce six paces in breadth, with
miles of deep water on both sides--a position recently fortified by the
first general of the age, and held by the famous infantry of Spain and
Italy--there was likely to be no prentice-work.

To assault such a position was in truth, as Alexander had declared it to
be, a most daring and desperate resolution on the part of the States.
"Soldiers, citizens, and all," said Parma, "they are obstinate as dogs to
try their fortune."

With wool-sacks, sand-bags, hurdles, planks, and other materials brought
with them, the patriots now rapidly entrenched themselves in the position
so brilliantly gained; while, without deferring for an instant the great
purpose which they had come to effect, the sappers and miners fastened
upon the ironbound soil of the dyke, tearing it with pick, mattock, and
shovel, digging, delving, and throwing up the earth around them, busy as
human beavers, instinctively engaged in a most congenial task.

But the beavers did not toil unmolested.  The large and determined force
of Antwerpers and English, Hollanders and Zeelanders, guarded the
fortifications as they were rapidly rising, and the pioneers as they were
so manfully delving; but the enemy was not idle.  From Fort Saint James,
next beyond Saint George, Camillo del Monte led a strong party to the
rescue.  There was a tremendous action, foot to foot, breast to breast,
with pike and pistol, sword and dagger.  Never since the beginning of the
war had there been harder fighting than now upon that narrow isthmus.
"'Twas an affair of most brave obstinacy on both sides," said Parma,
who rarely used strong language.  "Soldiers, citizens, and all--they
were like mad bulldogs."  Hollanders, Italians, Scotchmen, Spaniards,
Englishmen, fell thick and fast.  The contest was about the entrenchments
before they were completed, and especially around the sappers and miners,
in whose picks and shovels lay the whole fate of Antwerp.  Many of the
dyke-breakers were digging their own graves, and rolled, one after
another, into the breach which they were so obstinately creating.
Upon that slender thread of land the hopes of many thousands were
hanging.  To tear it asunder, to roll the ocean-waves up to Antwerp,
and thus to snatch the great city triumphantly from the grasp of Philip
--to accomplish this, the three thousand had come forth that May morning.
To prevent it, to hold firmly that great treasure entrusted to them, was
the determination of the Spaniards.  And so, closely pent and packed,
discharging their carbines into each other's faces, rolling, coiled
together, down the slimy sides of the dyke into the black waters,
struggling to and fro, while the cannon from the rebel fleet and from the
royal forts mingled their roar with the sharp crack of the musketry,
Catholics and patriots contended for an hour, while still, through all
the confusion and uproar, the miners dug and delved.

At last the patriots were victorious.  They made good their
entrenchments, drove the Spaniards, after much slaughter, back to the
fort of Saint George on the one side, and of the Palisade on the other,
and cleared the whole space between the two points.  The centre of the
dyke was theirs; the great Kowenstyn, the only key by which the gates of
Antwerp could be unlocked, was in the deliverers' hands.  They pursued
their victory, and attacked the Palisade Fort.  Gamboa, its commandant,
was severely wounded; many other officers dead or dying; the outworks
were in the hands of the Hollanders; the slender piles on which the
fortress rested in the water were rudely shaken; the victory was almost
complete.

And now there was a tremendous cheer of triumph.  The beavers had done
their work, the barrier was bitten through and through, the salt water
rushed like a river through the ruptured dyke.  A few moments later, and
a Zeeland barge, freighted with provisions, floated triumphantly into the
waters beyond, now no longer an inland sea.  The deed was done--the
victory achieved.  Nothing more was necessary than to secure it, to tear
the fatal barrier to fragments, to bury it, for its whole length, beneath
the waves.  Then, after the isthmus had been utterly submerged, when the
Scheldt was rolled back into its ancient bed, when Parma's famous bridge
had become useless, when the maritime communication between Antwerp and
Holland had been thoroughly established, the Spaniards would have nothing
left for it but to drown like rats in their entrenchments or to abandon
the siege in despair.  All this was in the hands of the patriots.  The
Kowenstyn was theirs.  The Spaniards were driven from the field, the
batteries of their forts silenced.  For a long period the rebels were
unmolested, and felt themselves secure.

"We remained thus some three hours," says Captain James, an English
officer who fought in the action, and described it in rough, soldierly
fashion to Walsingham the same day, "thinking all things to be secure."
Yet in the very supreme moment of victory, the leaders, both of the
Hollanders and of the Antwerpers, proved themselves incompetent to their
position.  With deep regret it must be admitted, that not only the
reckless Hohenlo, but the all-accomplished Sainte Aldegonde, committed
the gravest error.  In the hour of danger, both had comported themselves
with perfect courage and conduct.  In the instant of triumph, they gave
way to puerile exultation.  With a celerity as censurable as it seems
incredible, both these commanders sprang into the first barge which had
thus floated across the dyke, in order that they might, in person, carry
the news of the victory to Antwerp, and set all the bells ringing and the
bonfires blazing.  They took with them Ferrante Spinola, a mortally-
wounded Italian officer of rank, as a trophy of their battle, and a
boatload of beef and flour, as an earnest of the approaching relief.

While the conquerors were thus gone to enjoy their triumph, the
conquered, though perplexed and silenced, were not yet disposed to accept
their defeat.  They were even ignorant that they were conquered.  They
had been forced to abandon the field, and the patriots had entrenched
themselves upon the dyke, but neither Fort Saint George nor the Palisade
had been carried, although the latter was in imminent danger.

Old Count Peter Ernest Mansfeld--a grizzled veteran, who had passed his
childhood, youth, manhood, and old age, under fire--commanded at the
land-end of the dyke, in the fortress of Stabroek, in which neighbourhood
his whole division was stationed.  Seeing how the day was going, he
called a council of war.  The patriots had gained a large section of the
dyke.  So much was certain.  Could they succeed in utterly demolishing
that bulwark in the course of the day?  If so, how were they to be
dislodged before their work was perfected?  It was difficult to assault
their position.  Three thousand Hollanders, Antwerpers, Englishmen--
"mad bulldogs all," as Parma called them--showing their teeth very
mischievously, with one hundred and sixty Zeeland vessels throwing in
their broadsides from both margins of the dyke, were a formidable company
to face.

"Oh for one half hour of Alexander in the field!" sighed one of the
Spanish officers in council.  But Alexander was more than four leagues
away, and it was doubtful whether he even knew of the fatal occurrence.
Yet how to send him a messenger.  Who could reach him through that valley
of death?  Would it not be better to wait till nightfall?  Under the
cover of darkness something might be attempted, which in the daylight
would be hopeless.  There was much anxiety, and much difference of
opinion had been expressed, when Camillo Capizucca, colonel of the
Italian Legion, obtained a hearing.  A man bold in words as in deeds, he
vehemently denounced the pusillanimity which would wait either for Parma
or for nightfall.  "What difference will it make," he asked, "whether we
defer our action until either darkness or the General arrives?  In each
case we give the enemy time enough to destroy the dyke, and thoroughly to
relieve the city.  That done, what good can be accomplished by our arms?
Then our disheartened soldiers will either shrink from a fruitless combat
or march to certain death."  Having thus, very warmly but very
sagaciously, defined the position in which all were placed, he proceeded
to declare that he claimed, neither for himself nor for his legion, any
superiority over the rest of the army.  He knew not that the Italians
were more to be relied upon than others in the time of danger, but this
he did know, that no man in the world was so devoted as he was to the
Prince of Parma.  To show that devotion by waiting with folded arms
behind a wall until the Prince should arrive to extricate his followers,
was not in his constitution.  He claimed the right to lead his Italians
against the enemy at once--in the front rank, if others chose to follow;
alone, if the rest preferred to wait till a better leader should arrive.

The words of the Italian colonel sent a thrill through all who heard him.
Next in command under Capizucca was his camp-marshal, an officer who bore
the illustrious name of Piccolomini--father of the Duke Ottavio, of whom
so much was to be heard at a later day throughout the fell scenes of that
portion of the eighty years' tragedy now enacting, which was to be called
the Thirty Years' War of Germany.  The camp-marshal warmly seconded the
proposition of his colonel.  Mansfeld, pleased with such enthusiasm among
his officers, yielded to their wishes, which were, in truth, his own.
Six companies of the Italian Legion were in his encampment while the
remainder were stationed, far away, upon the bridge, under command of his
son, Count Charles.  Early in the morning, before the passage across the
dyke had been closed the veteran condottiere, pricking his ears as he
snuffed the battle from afar, had contrived to send a message to his son.

"Charles, my boy," were his words, "to-day we must either beat them or
burst."

Old Peter Ernest felt that the long-expected, long-deferred assault was
to be made that morning in full force, and that it was necessary for the
royalists, on both bridge and dyke, to hold their own.  Piccolomini now
drew up three hundred of his Italians, picked veterans all, and led them
in marching order to Mansfeld.  That general at the same moment, received
another small but unexpected reinforcement.  A portion of the Spanish
Legion, which had long been that of Pedro Pacchi, lay at the extreme
verge of the Stabroek encampment, several miles away.  Aroused by the
distant cannonading, and suspecting what had occurred, Don Juan d'Aquila,
the colonel in command, marched without a moment's delay to Mansfeld's
head-quarters, at the head of all the force he could muster--about two
hundred strong.  With him came Cardona, Gonzales de Castro, Toralva, and
other distinguished officers.  As they arrived, Capizucca was just
setting forth for the field.  There arose a dispute for precedence
between the Italians and the Spaniards.  Capizucca had first demanded the
privilege of leading what seemed a forlorn hope, and was unwilling to
yield his claim to the new comer.  On the other hand, the Spaniards were
not disposed to follow where they felt entitled to lead.  The quarrel was
growing warm, when Aquila, seizing his Italian rival by the hand,
protested that it was not a moment for friends to wrangle for precedence.

"Shoulder to shoulder," said he, "let us go into this business, and let
our blows rather fall on our enemies' heads than upon each other's."
This terminated the altercation.  The Italians and Spaniards--in battle
array as they were--all dropped on their knees, offered a brief prayer to
the Holy Virgin, and then, in the best possible spirits, set forth along
the dyke.  Next to fort Stabroek--whence they issued--was the Palisade
Fort, nearly a mile removed, which the patriots had nearly carried, and
between which and St. George, another mile farther on, their whole force
was established.

The troops under Capizucca and Aquila soon reached the Palisade, and
attacked the besiegers, while the garrison, cheered by the unexpected
relief, made a vigorous sortie.  There was a brief sharp contest, in
which many were killed on both sides; but at last the patriots fell back
upon their own entrenchments, and the fort was saved.  Its name was
instantly changed to Fort Victory, and the royalists then prepared to
charge the fortified camp of the rebels, in the centre of which the dyke-
cutting operations were still in progress.  At the same moment, from the
opposite end of the bulwark, a cry was heard along the whole line of the
dyke.  From Fort Holy Cross, at the Scheldt end, the welcome intelligence
was suddenly communicated--as if by a magnetic impulse--that Alexander
was in the field!

It was true.  Having been up half the night, as usual, keeping watch
along his bridge, where he was ever expecting a fatal attack, he had
retired for a few hours' rest in his camp at Beveren.  Aroused at day-
break by the roar of the cannon, he had hastily thrown on his armour,
mounted his horse, and, at the head of two hundred pikemen, set forth for
the scene of action.  Detained on the bridge by a detachment of the
Antwerp fleet, which had been ordered to make a diversion in that
quarter, he had, after beating off their vessels with his boat-artillery,
and charging Count Charles Mansfeld to heed well the brief injunction of
old Peter Ernest, made all the haste he could to the Kowenstyn.  Arriving
at Fort Holy Cross, he learned from Mondragon how the day was going.
Three thousand rebels, he learned, were established on the dyke, Fort
Palisade was tottering, a fleet from both sides was cannonading the
Spanish entrenchments, the salt water was flowing across the breach
already made.  His seven months' work, it seemed, had come to nought.
The navigation was already open from the sea to Antwerp, the Lowenstyn
was in the rebels' hands.  But Alexander was not prone to premature
despair.  "I arrived," said he to Philip in a letter written on the same
evening, "at the very nick of time."  A less hopeful person might have
thought that he had arrived several hours too late.  Having brought with
him every man that could be spared from Beveren and from the bridge,
he now ordered Camillo del Monte to transport some additional pieces of
artillery from Holy Cross and from Saint James to Fort Saint Georg.  At
the same time a sharp cannonade was to be maintained upon the rebel fleet
from all the forts.

Mondragon, with a hundred musketeers and pikemen, was sent forward
likewise as expeditiously as possible to Saint George.  No one could be
more alert.  The battered veteran, hero of some of the most remarkable
military adventures that history has ever recorded,' fought his way on
foot, in the midst of the fray, like a young ensign who had his first
laurels to win.  And, in truth, the day was not one for cunning
manoeuvres, directed, at a distance, by a skillful tactician.  It was
a brisk close contest, hand to hand and eye to eye--a Homeric encounter,
in which the chieftains were to prove a right to command by their
personal prowess.  Alexander, descending suddenly--dramatically, as it
were--when the battle seemed lost--like a deity from the clouds-was to
justify, by the strength of his arm, the enthusiasm which his name always
awakened.  Having, at a glance, taken in the whole situation, he made his
brief arrangements, going from rank to rank, and disposing his troops in
the most effective manner.  He said but few words, but his voice had
always a telling effect.

"The man who refuses, this day, to follow me," he said, "has never had
regard to his own honour, nor has God's cause or the King's ever been
dear to his heart."

His disheartened Spaniards and Italians--roused as by a magic trumpet--
eagerly demanded to be led against the rebels.  And now from each end of
the dyke, the royalists were advancing toward the central position
occupied by the patriots.  While Capizucca and Aquila were occupied at
Fort Victory, Parma was steadily cutting his way from Holy Cross to Saint
George.  On foot, armed with sword and shield, and in coat of mail, and
marching at the head of his men along the dyke, surrounded by Bevilacqua,
Bentivoglio, Manriquez, Sforza, and other officers of historic name and
distinguished courage, now upon the summit of the causeway, now on its
shelving banks, now breast-high in the waters, through which lay the
perilous path, contending at every inch with the scattered bands of the
patriots, who slowly retired to their entrenched camp, and with the
Antwerp and Zeeland vessels, whose balls tore through the royalist ranks,
the General at last reached Saint George.  On the preservation of that
post depended the whole fortune of the day, for Parma had already
received the welcome intelligence that the Palisade--now Fort Victory--
had been regained.  He instantly ordered an outer breast-work of wool-
sacks and sand-bags to be thrown up in front of Saint George, and planted
a battery to play point-blank at the enemy's entrenchments.  Here the
final issue was to be made.

The patriots and Spaniards were thus all enclosed in the mile-long space
between St.  George and the Palisade.  Upon that narrow strip of earth,
scarce six paces in width, more than five thousand men met in mortal
combat--a narrow arena for so many gladiators, hemmed in on both sides by
the sea.  The patriots had, with solemn ceremony, before starting upon
their enterprise, vowed to destroy the dyke and relieve Antwerp, or to
perish in the attempt.  They were true to their vow.  Not the ancient
Batavians or Nervii had ever manifested more tenacity against the Roman
legions than did their descendants against the far-famed Spanish infantry
upon this fatal day.  The fight on the Kowenstyn was to be long
remembered in the military annals of Spain and Holland.  Never, since the
curtain first rose upon the great Netherland tragedy, had there been a
fiercer encounter.  Flinching was impossible.  There was scant room for
the play of pike and dagger, and, close packed as were the combatants,
the dead could hardly fall to the ground.  It was a mile-long series of
separate mortal duels, and the oozy dyke was soon slippery with blood.

From both sides, under Capizucca and Aquila on the one band, and under
Alexander on the other, the entrenchments of the patriots were at last
assaulted, and as the royalists fell thick and fast beneath the breast-
work which they were storming, their comrades clambered upon their
bodies, and attempted, from such vantage-ground, to effect an entrance.
Three times the invaders were beaten back with heavy loss, and after each
repulse the attack was renewed with fresh vigour, while within the
entrenchments the pioneers still plied the pick and shovel, undismayed by
the uproar around them.

A fourth assault, vigorously made, was cheerfully repelled by the
Antwerpers and Hollanders, clustering behind their breast-works, and
looking steadily into their enemies' eyes.  Captain Heraugiere--of whom
more was to be heard one day--had led two hundred men into action, and
now found himself at the head of only thirteen.  The loss had been as
severe among many other patriot companies, as well as in the Spanish
ranks, and again the pikemen of Spain and Italy faltered before the iron
visages and cordial blows of the Hollanders.

This work had lasted a good hour and a half, when at last, on the fifth
assault, a wild and mysterious apparition renewed the enthusiasm of the
Spaniards.  The figure of the dead commander of the old Spanish Legion,
Don Pedro Pacchi, who had fallen a few months before at the siege of
Dendermonde was seen charging in front of his regiment, clad in his well-
known armour, and using the gestures which had been habitual with him in
life.  No satisfactory explanation was ever made of this singular
delusion, but it was general throughout the ranks, and in that
superstitious age was as effective as truth.  The wavering Spaniards
rallied once more under the guidance of their phantom leader, and again
charged the breast-work of the patriots.  Toralva, mounting upon the back
of one of his soldiers, was first to vault into the entrenchments.  At
the next instant he lay desperately wounded on the ground, but was close
followed by Capizucca, sustained by a determined band.  The entrenchment
was carried, but the furious conflict still continued.  At nearly the
same moment, however, several of the patriot vessels were observed to
cast off their moorings, and to be drifting away from the dyke.  A large
number of the rest had been disabled by the hot fire, which by
Alexander's judicious orders had been directed upon the fleet.  The
ebbing tide left no choice to the commander of the others but to retreat
or to remain and fall into the enemy's hands, should he gain the day.
Had they risked the dangerous alternative, it might have ensured the
triumph of the whole enterprise, while their actual decision proved most
disastrous in the end.

"We have conquered," cried Alexander, stretching his arm towards the
receding waters.  "The sea deserts the impious heretics.  Strike from
them now their last hope, and cut off their retreat to the departing
ships."  The Spaniards were not slow to perceive their advantage, while
the courage of the patriots at last began to ebb with the tide.  The day
was lost.  In the hour of transitory triumph the leaders of the
expedition had turned their backs on their followers, and now, after so
much heroism had been exhibited, fortune too had averted her face.  The
grim resistance changed to desperate panic, and a mad chase began along
the blood-stained dyke.  Some were slain with spear and bullet, others
were hunted into the sea, many were smothered in the ooze along the edge
of the embankment.  The fugitives, making their way to the retreating
vessels, were pursued by the Spaniards, who swam after them, with their
swords in their teeth, and engaged them in mortal combat in the midst of
the waves.

"And so we cut all their throats," said Parma, "the rebels on every side
remaining at our mercy, and I having no doubt that my soldiers would
avenge the loss of their friends."

The English and the Scotch, under Balfour and Morgan, were the very last
to abandon the position which they had held so manfully seven hours long.
Honest Captain James, who fought to the last, and described the action
the same night in the fewest possible words, was of opinion that the
fleet had moved away only to obtain a better position.  "They put off to
have more room to play on the enemy," said he; "but the Hollanders and
Zeelanders, seeing the enemy come on so hotly, and thinking our galleys
would leave them, abandoned their string.  The Scots, seeing them to
retire, left their string.  The enemy pursued very hotly; the Englishmen
stood to repulse, and are put most to the sword.  In this shameful
retreat there were slain or drowned to the number of two thousand."
The blunt Englishman was justly indignant that an enterprise, so nearly
successful, had been ruined by the desertion of its chiefs.  "We had cut
the dyke in three places," said he; "but left it most shamefully for want
of commandment."

Poor Koppen Loppen--whose blunders on former occasions had caused so much
disaster--was now fortunate enough to expiate them by a soldier's death.
Admiral Haultain had, as we have seen, been drowned at the commencement
of the action.  Justinus de Nassau, at its close, was more successful in
his retreat to the ships.  He, too, sprang into the water when the
overthrow was absolute; but, alighting in some shallows, was able to
conceal himself among weeds and waterlilies till he had divested himself
of his armour, when he made his escape by swimming to a boat, which
conveyed him to Lillo.  Roelke van Deest, an officer of some note, was so
horribly wounded in the face, that he was obliged to wear a mask for the
remainder of his life.

Parma, overjoyed at his victory, embraced Capizucca before the whole
army, with warm expressions of admiration for his conduct.  Both the
Italian colonel and his Spanish rival Aquila were earnestly recommended
to Philip for reward and promotion.  The wounded Toralva was carried to
Alexander's own quarters, and placed in Alexander's own bed, where he
remained till his recovery, and was then presented--a distinction which
he much valued--with the armour which the Prince had worn on the day of
the battle.  Parma himself, so soon as the action was concluded, went
with his chief officers straight from the field to the little village-
church of Stabroek, where he fell upon his knees and offered up fervent
thanks for his victory.  He next set about repairing the ruptured dyke,
damaged in many places but not hopelessly ruined, and for this purpose
the bodies of the rebels, among other materials, were cast by hundreds
into the ditches which their own hands had dug.

Thus ended the eight hours' fight on the Kowenstyn.  "The feast lasted
from seven to eight hours," said Parma, "with the most brave obstinacy on
both sides that has been seen for many a long day."  A thousand royalists
were killed and twice as many patriots, and the issue of the conflict was
most uncertain up to the very last.

"Our loss is greater than I wish it was," wrote Alexander to Philip: "It
was a very close thing, and I have never been more anxious in my life as
to the result for your Majesty's service.  The whole fate of the battle
was hanging all the time by a thread."  More than ever were
reinforcements necessary, and it was only by a miracle that the victory
had at last been gained with such slender resources.  "'Tis a large,
long, laborious, expensive, and most perilous war," said Parma, when
urging the claims of Capizucca and Aquila, "for we have to fight every
minute; and there are no castles and other rewards, so that if soldiers
are not to have promotion, they will lose their spirit."  Thirty-two of
the rebel vessels grounded, and fell into the hands of the Spaniards, who
took from them many excellent pieces of artillery.  The result was most
conclusive and most disheartening for the patriots.

Meantime--as we have seen--Hohenlo and Sainte Aldegonde had reached
Antwerp in breathless haste to announce their triumph.  They had been met
on the quay by groups of excited citizens, who eagerly questioned the two
generals arriving thus covered with laurels from the field of battle, and
drank with delight all the details of the victory.  The poor dying
Spinola was exhibited in triumph, the boat-load of breadstuffs received
with satisfaction, and vast preparations were made to receive, on wharves
and in storehouses, the plentiful supplies about to arrive.  Beacons and
bonfires were lighted, the bells from all the steeples rang their
merriest peals, cannon thundered in triumph not only in Antwerp itself,
but subsequently at Amsterdam and other more distant cities.  In due time
a magnificent banquet was spread in the town-house to greet the
conquering Hohenlo.  Immense gratification was expressed by those of the
reformed religion; dire threats were uttered against the Catholics.  Some
were for hanging them all out of hand, others for throwing them into the
Scheldt; the most moderate proposed packing them all out of town so soon
as the siege should be raised--an event which could not now be delayed
many days longer.

Hohenlo, placed on high at the head of the banquet-table, assumed the
very god of war.  Beside and near him sat the loveliest dames of Antwerp,
rewarding his bravery with their brightest smiles.  The Count drained
huge goblets to their health, to the success of the patriots, and to the
confusion of the royalists, while, as he still drank and feasted, the
trumpet, kettle-drum, and cymbal, and merry peal of bell without, did
honour to his triumph.  So gay and gallant was the victor, that he
announced another banquet on the following day, still further to
celebrate the happy release of Antwerp, and invited the fair ladies
around him again to grace the board.  It is recorded that the gentlewoman
next him responded with a sigh, that, if her presentiments were just, the
morrow would scarcely be so joyful as the present day had been, and that
she doubted whether the triumph were not premature.

Hardly had she spoken when sinister sounds were heard in the streets.
The first few stragglers, survivors of the deadly fight, had arrived with
the fatal news that all was lost, the dyke regained, the Spaniards
victorious, the whole band of patriots cut to pieces.  A few frightfully-
wounded and dying sufferers were brought into the banqueting-hall.
Hohenlo sprang from the feast--interrupted in so ghastly a manner--
pursued by shouts and hisses.  Howls of execration, saluted him in the
streets, and he was obliged to conceal himself for a time, to escape the
fury of the populace.

On the other hand, Parma was, not unnaturally, overjoyed at the
successful issue to the combat, and expressed himself on the subject in
language of (for him) unusual exultation.  "To-day, Sunday, 26th of
June," said he, in a letter to Philip, despatched by special courier on
the very same night, "the Lord has been pleased to grant to your Majesty
a great and most signal victory.  In this conjuncture of so great
importance it may be easily conceived that the best results that can be
desired will be obtained if your Majesty is now ready to do what is
needful.  I congratulate your Majesty very many times on this occasion,
and I desire to render infinite thanks to Divine Providence."

He afterwards proceeded, in a rapid and hurried manner, to give his
Majesty the outlines of the battle, mentioning, with great encomium,
Capizucca and Aquila, Mondragon and Vasto, with many other officers, and
recommending them for reward and promotion; praising, in short, heartily
and earnestly, all who had contributed to the victory, except himself, to
whose personal exertions it was chiefly due.  "As for good odd Mansfeld,"
said he, "he bore himself like the man he is, and he deserves that your
Majesty should send him a particular mark of your royal approbation,
writing to him yourself pleasantly in Spanish, which is that which will
be most highly esteemed by him."  Alexander hinted also that Philip would
do well to bestow upon Mansfeld the countship of Biart, as a reward for
his long years of faithful service!

This action on the Kowenstyn terminated the effective resistance of
Antwerp.  A few days before, the monster-vessel, in the construction of
which so much time and money had been consumed, had at last been set
afloat.  She had been called the War's End, and, so far as Antwerp was
concerned, the fates that presided over her birth seemed to have been
paltering in a double sense when the ominous name was conferred.  She was
larger than anything previously known in naval architecture; she had four
masts and three helms.  Her bulwarks were ten feet thick; her tops were
musket-proof.  She had twenty guns of largest size, besides many other
pieces of artillery of lesser calibre, the lower tier of which was almost
at the water's level.  She was to carry one thousand men, and she was so
supported on corks and barrels as to be sure to float under any
circumstances.  Thus she was a great swimming fortress which could not be
sunk, and was impervious to shot.  Unluckily, however, in spite of her
four masts and three helms, she would neither sail nor steer, and she
proved but a great, unmanageable and very ridiculous tub, fully
justifying all the sarcasms that had been launched upon her during the
period of her construction, which had been almost as long as the siege
itself.

The Spaniards called her the Bugaboo--a monster to scare children withal.
The patriots christened her the Elephant, the Antwerp Folly, the Lost
Penny, with many similar appellations.  A small army might have been
maintained for a month, they said, on the money she had cost, or the
whole city kept in bread for three months.  At last, late in May, a few
days before the battle of the Kowenstyn, she set forth from Antwerp,
across the submerged land, upon her expedition to sweep all the Spanish
forts out of existence, and to bring the war to its end.  She came to her
own end very briefly, for, after drifting helplessly about for an hour,
she stuck fast in the sand in the neighbourhood of Ordam, while the crew
and soldiers made their escape, and came back to the city to share in the
ridicule which, from first to last, had attached itself to the monster-
ship.

Two days after the Kowenstyn affair, Alexander sent an expedition under
Count Charles Mansfeld to take possession of the great Bugaboo.  The
boat, in which were Count Charles, Count Aremberg, his brother de
Barbancon, and other noble volunteers, met with an accident: a keg of gun
powder accidentally exploding, blowing Aremberg into the water, whence he
escaped unharmed by swimming, and frightfully damaging Mansfeld in the
face.  This indirect mischief--the only injury ever inflicted by the
War's End upon the enemy--did not prevent the rest of the party in the
boats from taking possession of the ship, and bringing her in triumph to
the Prince of Parma.  After being thoroughly examined and heartily
laughed at by the Spaniards, she was broken up--her cannon, munitions,
and other valuable materials, being taken from her--and then there was an
end of the War's End.

This useless expenditure-against the judgment and entreaties of many
leading personages--was but a type of the difficulties with which Sainte
Aldegonde had been obliged to contend from the first day of the siege to
the last.  Every one in the city had felt himself called on to express an
opinion as to the proper measures for defence.  Diversity of humours,
popular license, anarchy, did not constitute the best government for a
city beleagured by Alexander Farnese.  We have seen the deadly injury
inflicted upon the cause at the outset by the brutality of the butchers,
and the manful struggle which Sainte Aldegonde had maintained against
their cupidity and that of their friends.  He had dealt with the thousand
difficulties which rose up around him from day to day, but his best
intentions were perpetually misconstrued, his most strenuous exertions
steadily foiled.  It was a city where there was much love of money, and
where commerce--always timid by nature, particularly when controlled by
alien residents--was often the cause of almost abject cowardice.

From time to time there had been threatening demonstrations made against
the burgomaster, who, by protracting the resistance of Antwerp, was
bringing about the absolute destruction of a worldwide trade, and the
downfall of the most opulent capital in Christendom.  There were also
many popular riots--very easily inflamed by the Catholic portion of the
inhabitants--for bread.  "Bread, bread, or peace!"  was hoarsely shouted
by ill-looking mischievous crowds, that dogged the steps and besieged the
doors of Sainte Aldegonde; but the burgomaster had done his best by
eloquence of tongue and personal courage, both against mobs and against
the enemy, to inspire the mass of his fellow-citizens with his own
generous spirit.  He had relied for a long time on the negotiation with
France, and it would be difficult to exaggerate the disastrous effects
produced by the treachery of the Valois court.  The historian Le Petit,
a resident of Antwerp at the time of the siege, had been despatched on
secret mission to Paris, and had communicated to the States' deputies
Sainte Aldegonde's earnest adjurations that they should obtain, if
possible, before it should be too late, an auxiliary force and a
pecuniary subsidy.  An immediate assistance, even if slight, might be
sufficient to prevent Antwerp and its sister cities from falling into the
hands of the enemy.  On that messenger's return, the burgomaster, much
encouraged by his report, had made many eloquent speeches in the senate,
and for a long time sustained the sinking spirits of the citizens.

The irritating termination to the triumph actually achieved against the
bridge, and the tragical result to the great enterprise against the
Kowenstyn, had now thoroughly broken the heart of Antwerp.  For the last
catastrophe Sainte Aldegonde himself was highly censurable, although the
chief portion of the blame rested on the head of Hohenlo.  Nevertheless
the States of Holland were yet true to the cause of the Union and of
liberty.  Notwithstanding their heavy expenditures, and their own loss of
men, they urged warmly and earnestly the continuance of the resistance,
and promised, within at latest three months' time, to raise an army of
twelve thousand foot and seven thousand horse, with which they pledged
themselves to relieve the city, or to perish in the endeavour.  At the
same time, the legation, which had been sent to England to offer the
sovereignty to Queen Elizabeth, sent encouraging despatches to Antwerp,
assuring the authorities that arrangements for an auxiliary force had
been effected; while Elizabeth herself wrote earnestly upon the subject
with her own hand.

"I am informed," said that Princess, "that through the closing of the
Scheldt you are likely to enter into a treaty with the Prince of Parma,
the issue of which is very much to be doubted, so far as the maintenance
of your privileges is concerned.  Remembering the warm friendship which
has ever existed between this crown and the house of Burgundy, in the
realms of which you are an important member, and considering that my
subjects engaged in commerce have always met with more privilege and
comity in the Netherlands than in any other country, I have resolved to
send you at once, assistance, comfort, and aid.  The details of the plan
will be stated by your envoys; but be assured that by me you will never
be forsaken or neglected."

The negotiations with Queen Elizabeth--most important for the
Netherlands, for England, and for the destinies of Europe--which
succeeded the futile diplomatic transactions with France, will be laid
before the reader in a subsequent chapter.  It is proper that they should
be massed by themselves, so that the eye can comprehend at a single
glance their whole progress and aspect, as revealed both by public and
official, and by secret and hitherto unpublished records.  Meantime, so
far as regards Antwerp, those negotiations had been too deliberately
conducted for the hasty and impatient temper of the citizens.

The spirit of the commercial metropolis, long flagging, seemed at last
broken.  Despair was taking possession of all hearts.  The common people
did nothing but complain, the magistrates did nothing but wrangle.  In
the broad council the debates and dissensions were discouraging and
endless.  Six of the eight militia-colonels were for holding out at all
hazards, while a majority of the eighty captains were for capitulation.
The populace was tumultuous and threatening, demanding peace and bread at
any price.  Holland sent promises in abundance, and Holland was sincere;
but there had been much disappointment, and there was now infinite
bitterness.  It seemed obvious that a crisis was fast approaching, and--
unless immediate aid should come from Holland or from England--that a
surrender was inevitable.  La None, after five years' imprisonment, had
at last been exchanged against Count Philip Egmont.  That noble, chief of
an ancient house, cousin of the Queen of France, was mortified at being
ransomed against a simple Huguenot gentleman--even though that gentleman
was the illustrious "iron-armed" La Noue--but he preferred to sacrifice
his dignity for the sake of his liberty.  He was still more annoyed that
one hundred thousand crowns as security were exacted from La Noue--for
which the King of Navarre became bondsman--that he would never again bear
arms in the Netherlands except in obedience to the French monarch, while
no such pledges were required of himself.  La None visited the Prince of
Parma at Antwerp, to take leave, and was received with the courtesy due
to his high character and great distinction.  Alexander took pleasure in
showing him all his fortifications, and explaining to him the whole
system of the siege, and La Noue was filled with honest amazement.  He
declared afterwards that the works were superb and impregnable; and that
if he had been on the outside at the head of twelve thousand troops, he
should have felt obliged to renounce the idea of relieving the city.
"Antwerp cannot escape you," confessed the veteran Huguenot, "but must
soon fall into your hands.  And when you enter, I would counsel you to
hang up your sword at its gate, and let its capture be the crowning
trophy in your list of victories."

"You are right," answered Parma, "and many of my friends have given me
the same advice; but how am I to retire, engaged as I am for life in the
service of my King?"

Such was the opinion of La None, a man whose love for the reformed
religion and for civil liberty can be as little doubted as his competency
to form an opinion upon great military subjects.  As little could he be
suspected just coming as he did from an infamous prison, whence he had
been at one time invited by Philip II. to emerge, on condition of
allowing his eyes to be put out--of any partiality for that monarch or
his representative.

Moreover, although the States of Holland and the English government were
earnestly desirous of relieving the city, and were encouraging the
patriots with well-founded promises, the Zeeland authorities were
lukewarm.  The officers of the Zeeland navy, from which so much was
expected, were at last discouraged.  They drew up, signed, and delivered
to Admiral Justinus de Nassau, a formal opinion to the effect that the
Scheldt had now so many dry and dangerous places, and that the tranquil
summer-nights--so different from those long, stormy ones of winter--were
so short as to allow of no attempt by water likely to be successful to
relieve the city.

Here certainly was much to discourage, and Sainte Aldegonde was at length
discouraged.  He felt that the last hope of saving Antwerp was gone, and
with it all possibility of maintaining the existence of a United
Netherland commonwealth.  The Walloon Provinces were lost already; Ghent,
Brussels, Mechlin, had also capitulated, and, with the fall of Antwerp,
Flanders and Brabant must fall.  There would be no barrier left even to
save Holland itself.  Despair entered the heart of the burgomaster, and
he listened too soon to its treacherous voice.  Yet while he thought a
free national state no longer a possibility, he imagined it practicable
to secure religious liberty by negotiation with Philip II.  He abandoned
with a sigh one of the two great objects for which he had struggled side
by side with Orange for twenty years, but he thought it possible to
secure the other.  His purpose was now to obtain a favourable
capitulation for Antwerp, and at the same time to bring about the
submission of Holland, Zeeland, and the other United Provinces, to the
King of Spain.  Here certainly was a great change of face on the part of
one so conspicuous, and hitherto so consistent, in the ranks of
Netherland patriots, and it is therefore necessary, in order thoroughly
to estimate both the man and the crisis, to follow carefully his steps
through the secret path of negotiation into which he now entered, and in
which the Antwerp drama was to find its conclusion.  In these
transactions, the chief actors are, on the one side, the Prince of Parma,
as representative of absolutism and the Papacy; on the other, Sainte
Aldegonde, who had passed his life as the champion of the Reformation.

No doubt the pressure upon the burgomaster was very great.  Tumults were
of daily occurrence.  Crowds of rioters beset his door with cries of
denunciations and demands for bread.  A large and turbulent mob upon one
occasion took possession of the horse-market, and treated him with
personal indignity and violence, when be undertook to disperse them.
On the other hand, Parma had been holding out hopes of pardon with more
reasonable conditions than could well be expected, and had, with a good
deal of art, taken advantage of several trivial circumstances to inspire
the burghers with confidence in his good-will.  Thus, an infirm old lady
in the city happened to imagine herself so dependent upon asses milk as
to have sent her purveyor out of the city, at the peril of his life, to
procure a supply from the neighbourhood.  The young man was captured,
brought to Alexander, from whose hands he very naturally expected the
punishment of a spy.  The prince, however, presented him, not only with
his liberty, but with a she-ass; and loaded the animal with partridges
and capons, as a present for the invalid.  The magistrates, hearing of
the incident, and not choosing to be outdone in courtesy, sent back a
waggon-load of old wine and remarkable confectionary as an offering to
Alexander, and with this interchange of dainties led the way to the
amenities of diplomacy.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Courage and semblance of cheerfulness, with despair in his heart
Demanding peace and bread at any price
Not a friend of giving details larger than my ascertained facts



End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v40
by John Lothrop Motley






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, v41, 1584


Alexander Farnese, The Duke of Parma


CHAPTER V., Part 3.


     Sainte Aldegonde discouraged--His Critical Position--His
     Negotiations with the Enemy--Correspondence with Richardot--
     Commotion in the City--Interview of Marnix with Parma--Suspicious
     Conduct of Marnix--Deputation to the Prince--Oration of Marnix--
     Private Views of Parma--Capitulation of Antwerp--Mistakes of Marnix
     --Philip on the Religious Question--Triumphal Entrance of Alexander--
     Rebuilding of the Citadel--Gratification of Philip--Note on Sainte
     Aldegonde

Sainte Aldegonde's position had become a painful one.  The net had been
drawn closely about the city.  The bridge seemed impregnable, the great
Kowenstyn was irrecoverably in the hands of the enemy, and now all the
lesser forts in the immediate vicinity of Antwerp-Borght, Hoboken,
Cantecroix, Stralen, Berghen, and the rest--had likewise fallen into his
grasp.  An account of grain, taken on the 1st of June, gave an average of
a pound a-head for a month long, or half a pound for two months.  This
was not the famine-point, according to the standard which had once been
established in Leyden; but the courage of the burghers had been rapidly
oozing away, under the pressure of their recent disappointments.  It
seemed obvious to the burgomaster, that the time for yielding had
arrived.

"I had maintained the city,"  he said, "for a long period, without any
excessive tumult or great effusion of blood--a city where there was such
a multitude of inhabitants, mostly merchants or artisans deprived of all
their traffic, stripped of their manufactures, destitute of all
commodities and means of living.  I had done this in the midst of a great
diversity of humours and opinions, a vast popular license, a confused
anarchy, among a great number of commanders, most of them inexperienced
in war; with very little authority of my own, with slender forces of
ships, soldiers, and sailors; with alight appearance of support from king
or prince without, or of military garrison within; and under all these
circumstances I exerted myself to do my uttermost duty in preserving the
city, both in regard to its internal government, and by force of arms by
land and sea, without sparing myself in any labour or peril.

"I know very well that there are many persons, who, finding themselves
quite at their ease, and far away from the hard blows that are passing,
are pleased to exhibit their wisdom by sitting in judgment upon others,
founding their decision only upon the results.  But I demand to be judged
by equity and reason, when passion has been set aside.  I claim that my
honour shall be protected against my calumniators; for all should
remember that I am not the first man, nor shall I be the last, that has
been blamed unjustly.  All persons employed in public affairs are subject
to such hazards, but I submit myself to Him who knows all hearts, and who
governs all.  I take Him to witness that in the affair of Antwerp, as in
all my other actions since my earliest youth, I have most sincerely
sought His glory and the, welfare of His poor people, without regard to
my own private interests."

For it is not alone the fate of Antwerp that is here to be recorded.  The
fame of Sainte Aldegonde was now seriously compromised.  The character of
a great man must always be closely scanned and scrutinised; protected, if
needful, against calumny, but always unflinchingly held up to the light.
Names illustrious by genius and virtue are History's most precious
treasures, faithfully to be guarded by her, jealously to be watched; but
it is always a misfortune when her eyes are deceived by a glitter which
is not genuine.

Sainte Aldegonde was a man of unquestionable genius.  His character had
ever been beyond the reproach of self-seeking or ignoble ambition.  He
had multiplied himself into a thousand forms to serve the cause of the
United Netherland States, and the services so rendered had been brilliant
and frequent.  A great change in his conduct and policy was now
approaching, and it is therefore the more necessary to examine closely at
this epoch his attitude and his character.

Early in June, Richardot, president of the council of Artois, addressed a
letter to Sainte Aldegonde, by command of Alexander of Parma, suggesting
a secret interview between the burgomaster and the Prince.

On the 8th of June, Sainte Aldegonde replied, in favourable terms,
as to the interview; but observed, that, as he was an official personage,
it was necessary for him to communicate the project to the magistracy of
the city.  He expressed likewise the hope that Parma would embrace the
present opportunity for making a general treaty with all the Provinces.
A special accord with Antwerp, leaving out Holland and Zeeland, would,
he said, lead to the utter desolation of that city, and to the
destruction of its commerce and manufactures, while the occasion now
presented itself to the Prince of "winning praise and immortal glory by
bringing back all the country to a voluntary and prompt obedience to his
Majesty."  He proposed, that, instead of his coming alone, there should
be a number of deputies sent from Antwerp to confer with Alexander.

On the 11th June, Richardot replied by expressing, his own regrets and
those of the Prince, that the interview could not have been with the
burgomaster alone, but acknowledging the weight of his reasons, and
acquiescing in the proposition to send a larger deputation.  Three days
afterwards, Sainte Aldegonde, on private consultation with some
confidential personages, changed his ground; announced his preference
for a private interview, under four eyes, with Parma; and requested that
a passport might be sent.  The passport was accordingly forwarded the
same day, with an expression of Alexander's gratification, and with the
offer, on the part of Richardot, to come himself to Antwerp as hostage
during the absence of the burgomaster in Parma's camp at Beveren.

Sainte Aldegonde was accordingly about to start on the following day
(16th of June), but meantime the affair had got wind.  A secret
interview, thus projected, was regarded by the citizens as extremely
suspicious.  There was much bitter insinuation against the burgomaster--
many violent demonstrations.  "Aldegonde, they say, is going to see
Parma," said one of the burghers, "which gives much dissatisfaction,
because, 'tis feared that he will make a treaty according to the appetite
and pleasure of his Highness, having been gained over to the royal cause
by money.  He says that it would be a misfortune to send a large number
of burghers.  Last Sunday (16th June) there was a meeting of the broad
council.  The preachers came into the assembly and so animated the
citizens by demonstrations of their religion, that all rushed from the
council-house, crying with loud voices that they did not desire peace but
war."

This desire was a healthy and a reasonable one; but, unfortunately,
the Antwerpers had not always been so vigorous or so united in their
resistance to Parma.  At present, however, they were very furious, so
soon as the secret purpose of Sainte Aldegonde became generally known.
The proposed capitulation, which great mobs had been for weeks long
savagely demanding at the hands of the burgomaster, was now ascribed to
the burgomaster's unblushing corruption.  He had obviously, they thought,
been purchased by Spanish ducats to do what he had hitherto been so
steadily refusing.  A certain Van Werne had gone from Antwerp into
Holland a few days before upon his own private affairs, with a safe-
conduct from Parma.  Sainte Aldegonde had not communicated to him the
project then on foot, but he had permitted him to seek a secret interview
with Count Mansfeld.  If that were granted, Van Werne was to hint that in
case the Provinces could promise themselves a religious peace it would be
possible, in the opinion of Sainte Aldegonde, to induce Holland and
Zealand and all the rest of the United Provinces, to return to their
obedience.  Van Werne, on his return to Antwerp, divulged these secret
negotiations, and so put a stop to Sainte Aldegonde's scheme of going
alone to Parma.  "This has given a bad suspicion to the people," wrote
the burgomaster to Richardot, "so much so that I fear to have trouble.
The broad council has been in session, but I don't know what has taken
place there, and I do not dare to ask."

Sainte Aldegonde's motive, as avowed by himself, for seeking a private
interview, was because he had received no answer to the main point in his
first letter, as to the proposition for a general accord.  In order
therefore to make the deliberations more rapid, he had been disposed to
discuss that preliminary question in secret.  "But now," said he to
Richardot, "as the affair had been too much divulged, as well by diverse
reports and writings sown about, very inopportunely, as by the arrival
of M. Van Werne, I have not found it practicable to set out upon my road,
without communication with the members of the government.  This has been
done, however, not in the way of consultation, but as the announcement of
a thing already resolved upon."

He proceeded to state, that great difficulties had arisen, exactly as he
had foreseen.  The magistrates would not hear of a general accord, and it
was therefore necessary that a delay should be interposed before it would
be possible for him to come.  He begged Richardot to persuade Alexander,
that he was not trifling with him.  "It is not," said he, "from
lightness, or any other passion, that I am retarding this affair.  I will
do all in my power to obtain leave to make a journey to the camp of his
Highness, at whatever price it may cost and I hope before long to arrive
at my object.  If I fail, it must be ascribed to the humours of the
people; for my anxiety to restore all the Provinces to obedience to his
Majesty is extreme."

Richardot, in reply, the next day, expressed regret, without
astonishment, on the part of Alexander and himself, at the intelligence
thus received.  People had such difference of humour, he said, and all
men were not equally capable of reason.  Nevertheless the citizens were
warned not to misconstrue Parma's gentleness, because he was determined
to die, with his whole army, rather than not take Antwerp.  "As for the
King," said Richardot, "he will lay down all his crowns sooner than
abandon this enterprise."  Van Werne was represented as free from blame,
and sincerely desirous of peace.  Richardot had only stated to him, in
general terms, that letters had been received from Sainte Aldegonde,
expressing an opinion in favour of peace.  As for the royalists, they
were quite innocent of the reports and writings that had so inopportunely
been circulated in the city.  It was desirable, however, that the
negotiation should not too long be deferred, for otherwise Antwerp might
perish, before a general accord with Holland and Zeeland could be made.
He begged Sainte Aldegonde to banish all anxiety as to Parma's sentiments
towards himself or the community.  "Put yourself, Sir, quite at your
ease," said he.  "His Highness is in no respects dissatisfied with you,
nor prone to conceive any indignation against this poor people."  He
assured the burgomaster that he was not suspected of lightness, nor of a
wish to delay matters, but he expressed solicitude with regard to the
threatening demonstrations which had been made against him in Antwerp.
"For," said he, "popular governments are full of a thousand hazards, and
it would be infinitely painful to me, if you should come to harm."

Thus it would appear that it was Sainte Aldegonde who was chiefly anxious
to effect the reconciliation of Holland and Zeeland with the King.  The
initiative of this project to include all the United Provinces in one
scheme with the reduction of Antwerp came originally from him, and was
opposed, at the outset, by the magistrates of that city, by the Prince of
Parma and his councillors, and, by the States of Holland and Zeeland.
The demonstrations on the part of the preachers, the municipal
authorities, and the burghers, against Sainte Aldegonde and his plan for
a secret interview, so soon as it was divulged, made it impossible to
carry that project into effect.

"Aldegonde, who governs Antwerp," wrote Parma to Philip,
"was endeavouring, eight days ago, to bring about some kind of
negotiation for an accord.  He manifested a desire to come hither
for the sake of a personal interview with me, which I permitted.  It was
to have taken place last Sunday, 16th of this month, but by reason of a
certain popular tumult, which arose out of these circumstances, it has
been necessary to defer the meeting."

There was much disappointment felt by the royalist at this unsatisfactory
result.  "These bravadoes and impertinent demonstrations on the part of
some of your people," wrote Richardot, ten days later, "will be the
destruction of the whole country, and will convert the Prince's
gentleness into anger.  'Tis these good and zealous patriots, trusting to
a little favourable breeze that blew for a few days past, who have been
the cause of all this disturbance, and who are ruining their miserable
country--miserable, I say, for having produced such abortions as
themselves."

Notwithstanding what had passed, however, Richardot intimated that
Alexander was still ready to negotiate.  "And if you, Sir," he concluded,
in his letter to Aldegonde, "concerning whom many of our friends have at
present a sinister opinion, as if your object was to circumvent us, are
willing to proceed roundly and frankly, as I myself firmly believe that
you will do, we may yet hope for a favourable issue."

Thus the burgomaster was already the object of suspicion to both parties.
The Antwerpers denounced him as having been purchased by Spanish gold;
the royalists accused him of intending to overreach the King.  It was not
probable therefore that all were correct in their conjectures.

At last it was arranged that deputies should be appointed by the broad
council to commence a negotiation with Parma.  Sainte Aldegonde informed
Richardot, that he would (5th July, 1585) accompany them, if his affairs
should permit.  He  protested his sincerity and frankness throughout the
whole affair.  "They try to calumniate me," he said, "as much on one side
as on the other, but I will overcome by my innocence all the malice of my
slanderers.  If his Highness should be pleased to grant us some liberty
for our religion, I dare to promise such faithful service as will give
very great satisfaction."

Four days later, Sainte Aldegonde himself, together with M. de Duffel,
M. de Schoonhoven, and Adrian Hesselt, came to Parma's camp at Beveren,
as deputies on the part of the Antwerp authorities.  They were
courteously received by the Prince, and remained three days as his
guests.  During the period of this visit, the terms of a capitulation
were thoroughly discussed, between Alexander and his councillors upon one
part, and the four deputies on the other.  The envoys endeavoured, with
all the arguments at their command, to obtain the consent of the Prince
to three preliminary points which they laid down as indispensable.
Religious liberty must be granted, the citadel must not be reconstructed,
a foreign garrison must not be admitted; they said.  As it was the firm
intention of the King, however, not to make the slightest concession on
any one of these points, the discussion was not a very profitable one.
Besides the public interviews at which all the negotiators were present,
there was a private conference between Parma and Sainte Aldegonde which
lasted more than four hours, in which each did his best to enforce his
opinions upon the other.  The burgomaster endeavoured to persuade the
Prince with all the eloquence for which he was so renowned, that the
hearts not of the Antwerpers only, but of the Hollanders and Zeelanders,
were easily to be won at that moment.  Give them religious liberty, and
attempt to govern them by gentleness rather than by Spanish garrisons,
and the road was plain to a complete reconciliation of all the Provinces
with his Majesty.

Alexander, who knew his master to be inexorable upon these three points,
was courteous but peremptory in his statements.  He recommended that the
rebels should take into consideration their own declining strength, the
inexhaustible resources of the King, the impossibility of obtaining
succour from France, and the perplexing dilatoriness of England, rather
than waste their time in idle expectations of a change in the Spanish
policy.  He also intimated, obliquely but very plainly, to Sainte
Aldegonde, that his own fortune would be made, and that he had everything
to hope from his Majesty's bounty, if he were now willing to make himself
useful in carrying into effect the royal plans.

The Prince urged these views with so much eloquence, that he seemed,
in his own words, to have been directly inspired by the Lord for this
special occasion!  Sainte Aldegonde, too, was signally impressed by
Alexander's language, and thoroughly fascinated-magnetized, as it were
--by his character.  He subsequently declared, that he had often
conversed familiarly with many eloquent personages, but that he had never
known a man more powerful or persuasive than the Prince of Parma.  He
could honestly say of him--as Hasdrubal had said of Scipio--that Farnese
was even more admirable when seen face to face, than he had seemed when
one only heard of his glorious achievements.

"The burgomaster and three deputies," wrote Parma to Philip, "were here
until the 12th July.  We discussed (30th July, 1585) the points and form
of a capitulation, and they have gone back thoroughly satisfied.  Sainte
Aldegonde especially was much pleased with the long interview which he
had with me, alone, and which lasted more than three hours.  I told him,
as well as my weakness and suffering from the tertian fever permitted,
all that God inspired me to say on our behalf."

Nevertheless, if Sainte Aldegonde and his colleagues went away thoroughly
satisfied, they had reason, soon after their return, to become thoroughly
dejected.  The magistrates and burghers would not listen to a proposition
to abandon the three points, however strongly urged to do so by arguments
drawn from the necessity of the situation, and by representations of
Parma's benignity.  As for the burgomaster, he became the target for
calumny, so soon as his three hours' private interview became known; and
the citizens loudly declared that his head ought to be cut off, and sent
in a bag, as a present, to Philip, in order that the traitor might meet
the sovereign with whom he sought a reconciliation, face to face, as soon
as possible.

The deputies, immediately after their return, made their report to the
magistrates, as likewise to the colonels and captains, and to the deans
of guilds.  Next day, although it was Sunday, there was a session of the
broad council, and Sainte Aldegonde made a long address, in which--as he
stated in a letter to Richardot--he related everything that had passed in
his private conversation with Alexander.  An answer was promised to Parma
on the following Tuesday, but the burgomaster spoke very discouragingly
as to the probability of an accord.

"The joy with which our return was greeted," he said, "was followed by a
general disappointment and sadness, so soon as the result was known.  The
want of a religious toleration, as well as the refusal to concede on the
other two points, has not a little altered the hearts of all, even of the
Catholics.  A citadel and a garrison are considered ruin and desolation
to a great commercial city.  I have done what I can to urge the
acceptance of such conditions as the Prince is willing to give, and have
spoken in general terms of his benign intentions.  The citizens still
desire peace.  Had his Highness been willing to take both religions under
his protection, he might have won all hearts, and very soon all the other
Provinces would have returned to their obedience, while the clemency and
magnanimity of his Majesty would thus have been rendered admirable
throughout the world."

The power to form an accurate conception as to the nature of Philip and
of other personages with whom he was dealing, and as to the general signs
of his times, seems to have been wanting in the character of the gifted
Aldegonde.  He had been dazzled by the personal presence of Parma, and he
now spoke of Philip II., as if his tyranny over the Netherlands--which
for twenty years had been one horrible and uniform whole--were the
accidental result of circumstances, not the necessary expression of his
individual character, and might be easily changed at will--as if Nero,
at a moment's warning, might transform himself into Trajan.  It is true
that the innermost soul of the Spanish king could by no possibility be
displayed to any contemporary, as it reveals itself, after three
centuries, to those who study the record of his most secret thoughts;
but, at any rate, it would seem that his career had been sufficiently
consistent, to manifest the amount of "clemency and magnanimity" which he
might be expected to exercise.

"Had his Majesty," wrote Sainte Aldegonde, "been willing, since the year
sixty-six, to pursue a course of toleration, the memory of his reign
would have been sacred to all posterity, with an immortal praise of
sapience, benignity, and sovereign felicity."

This might be true, but nevertheless a tolerating Philip, in the year
1585, ought to have seemed to Sainte Aldegonde an impossible idea.

"The emperors," continued the burgomaster, "who immediately succeeded
Tiberius were the cause of the wisdom which displayed itself in the good
Trajan--also a Spaniard--and in Antoninus, Verus, and the rest: If you
think that this city, by the banishment of a certain number of persons,
will be content to abandon the profession of the reformed faith, you are
much mistaken.  You will see, with time, that the exile of this religion
will be accompanied by a depopulation and a sorrowful ruin and desolation
of this flourishing city.  But this will be as it pleases God.  Meantime
I shall not fail to make all possible exertions to induce the citizens to
consent to a reconciliation with his Majesty.  The broad council will
soon give their answer, and then we shall send a deputation.  We shall
invite Holland and Zeeland to join with us, but there is little hope of
their consent."

Certainly there was little hope of their consent.  Sainte Aldegonde was
now occupied in bringing about the capitulation of Antwerp, without any
provision for religious liberty--a concession which Parma had most
distinctly refused--and it was not probable that Holland and Zeeland,
after twenty years of hard fighting, and with an immediate prospect of
assistance from England--could now be induced to resign the great object
of the contest without further struggle.

It was not until a month had elapsed that the authorities of Antwerp sent
their propositions to the Prince of Parma.  On the 12th August, however,
Sainte Aldegonde, accompanied by the same three gentlemen who had been
employed on the first mission, and by seventeen others besides, proceeded
with safe-conduct to the camp at Beveren.  Here they were received with
great urbanity, and hospitably entertained by Alexander, who received
their formal draft of articles for a capitulation, and referred it to be
reported upon to Richardot, Pamel, and Vanden Burgh.  Meantime there were
many long speeches and several conferences, sometimes between all the
twenty-one envoys and the Prince together; on other occasions, more
secret ones, at which only Aldegonde and one or two of his colleagues
were present.  It had been obvious, from the date of the first interview,
in the preceding month, that the negotiation would be of no avail until
the government of Antwerp was prepared to abandon all the conditions
which they had originally announced as indispensable.  Alexander had not
much disposition and no authority whatever to make concessions.

"So far as I can understand," Parma had written on the 30th July, "they
are very far from a conclusion.  They have most exorbitant ideas, talking
of some kind of liberty of conscience, besides refusing on any account to
accept of garrisons, and having many reasons to allege on such subjects."

The discussions, therefore, after the deputies had at last arrived,
though courteously conducted, could scarcely be satisfactory to both
parties.  "The articles were thoroughly deliberated upon," wrote
Alexander, "by all the deputies, nor did I fail to have private
conferences with Aldegonde, that most skilful and practised lawyer and
politician, as well as with two or three of the others.  I did all in my
power to bring them to a thorough recognition of their errors, and to
produce a confidence in his Majesty's clemency, in order that they might
concede what was needful for the interests of the Catholic religion and
the security of the city.  They heard all I had to say without
exasperating themselves, and without interposing any strong objections,
except in the matter of religion, and, still more, in the matter of the
citadel and the garrison.  Aldegonde took much pains to persuade me that
it would be ruinous for a great, opulent, commercial city to submit to a
foreign military force.  Even if compelled by necessity to submit now,
the inhabitants would soon be compelled by the same necessity to abandon
the place entirely, and to leave in ruins one of the most splendid and
powerful cities in the world, and in this opinion Catholics and heretics
unanimously concurred.  The deputies protested, with one accord, that so
pernicious and abominable a thing as a citadel and garrison could not
even be proposed to their constituents.  I answered, that, so long as the
rebellion of Holland and Zeeland lasted, it would be necessary for your
Majesty to make sure of Antwerp, by one or the other of those means, but
promised that the city should be relieved of the incumbrance so soon as
those islands should be reduced.

"Sainte Aldegonde was not discouraged by this statement, but in the hope
of convincing others, or with the wish of showing that he had tried his
best, desired that I would hear him before the council of state.  I
granted the request, and Sainte Aldegonde then made another long and very
elegant oration, intended to divert me from my resolution."

It must be confessed--if the reports, which have come down to us of that
long and elegant oration be correct--that the enthusiasm of the
burgomaster for Alexander was rapidly degenerating into idolatry.

"We are not here, O invincible Prince," he said, "that we may excuse, by
an anxious legation, the long defence which we have made of our homes.
Who could have feared any danger to the most powerful city in the
Netherlands from so moderate a besieging force?  You would yourself have
rather wished for, than approved of, a greater facility on our part, for
the brave cannot love the timid.  We knew the number of your troops, we
had discovered the famine in your camp, we were aware of the paucity of
your ships, we had heard of the quarrels in your army, we were expecting
daily to hear of a general mutiny among your soldiers.  Were we to
believe that with ten or eleven thousand men you would be able to block
up the city by land and water, to reduce the open country of Brabant, to
cut off all aid as well from the neighbouring towns as from the powerful
provinces of Holland and Zeeland, to oppose, without a navy, the whole
strength of our fleets, directed against the dyke?  Truly, if you had
been at the head of fifty thousand soldiers, and every soldier had
possessed one hundred hands, it would have seemed impossible for you to
meet so many emergencies in so many places, and under so many
distractions.  What you have done we now believe possible to do, only
because we see that it has been done.  You have subjugated the Scheldt,
and forced it to bear its bridge, notwithstanding the strength of its
current, the fury of the ocean-tides, the tremendous power of the
icebergs, the perpetual conflicts with our fleets.  We destroyed your
bridge, with great slaughter of your troops.  Rendered more courageous
by that slaughter, you restored that mighty work.  We assaulted the great
dyke, pierced it through and through, and opened a path for our ships.
You drove us off when victors, repaired the ruined bulwark, and again
closed to us the avenue of relief.  What machine was there that we did
not employ? what miracles of fire did we not invent? what fleets and
floating cidadels did we not put in motion?  All that genius, audacity,
and art, could teach us we have executed, calling to our assistance
water, earth, heaven, and hell itself.  Yet with all these efforts, with
all this enginry, we have not only failed to drive you from our walls,
but we have seen you gaining victories over other cities at the same
time.  You have done a thing, O Prince, than which there is nothing
greater either in ancient or modern story.  It has often occurred, while
a general was besieging one city that he lost another situate farther
off.  But you, while besieging Antwerp, have reduced simultaneously
Dendermonde, Ghent, Nymegen, Brussels, and Mechlin."

All this, and much more, with florid rhetoric, the burgomaster pronounced
in honour of Farnese, and the eulogy was entirely deserved.  It was
hardly becoming, however, for such lips, at such a moment, to sound the
praise of him whose victory had just decided the downfall of religious
liberty, and of the national independence of the Netherlands.  His
colleagues certainly must have winced, as they listened to commendations
so lavishly bestowed upon the representative of Philip, and it is not
surprising that Sainte Aldegonde's growing unpopularity should, from that
hour, have rapidly increased.  To abandon the whole object of the siege,
when resistance seemed hopeless, was perhaps pardonable, but to offer
such lip-homage to the conqueror was surely transgressing the bounds of
decorum.

His conclusion, too, might to Alexander seem as insolent as the whole
tenor of his address had been humble; for, after pronouncing this solemn
eulogy upon the conqueror, he calmly proposed that the prize of the
contest should be transferred to the conquered.

"So long as liberty of religion, and immunity from citadel and garrison
can be relied upon," he said, "so long will Antwerp remain the most
splendid and flourishing city in Christendom; but desolation will ensue
if the contrary policy is to prevail."

But it was very certain that liberty of religion, as well as immunity
from citadel and garrison, were quite out of the question.  Philip and
Parma had long been inexorably resolved upon all the three points.

"After the burgomaster had finished his oration," wrote Alexander to his
sovereign, "I discussed the matter with him in private, very distinctly
and minutely."

The religious point was soon given up, Sainte Aldegonde finding it waste
of breath to say anything more about freedom of conscience.  A suggestion
was however made on the subject of the garrison, which the prince
accepted, because it contained a condition which it would be easy to
evade.

"Aldegonde proposed," said Parma, "that a garrison might be admissible
if I made my entrance into the city merely with infantry and cavalry of
nations which were acceptable--Walloons, namely, and Germans--and in no
greater numbers than sufficient for a body-guard.  I accepted, because,
in substance, this would amount to a garrison, and because, also, after
the magistrates shall have been changed, I shall have no difficulty in
making myself master of the people, continuing the garrison, and
rebuilding the citadel."

The Prince proceeded to give his reasons why he was willing to accept the
capitulation on what he considered so favourable terms to the besieged.
Autumn was approaching.  Already the fury of the storms had driven
vessels clean over the dykes; the rebels in Holland and Zeeland were
preparing their fleets--augmented by many new ships of war and fire-
machines--for another desperate attack upon the Palisades, in which there
was great possibility of their succeeding; an auxiliary force from
England was soon expected; so that, in view of all these circumstances,
he had resolved to throw himself at his Majesty's feet and implore his
clemency.  "If this people of Antwerp, as the head, is gained," said he,
"there will be tranquillity in all the members."

These reasons were certainly conclusive; nor is it easy to believe, that,
under the circumstances thus succinctly stated by Alexander, it would
have been impossible for the patriots to hold out until the promised
succour from Holland and from England should arrive.  In point of fact,
the bridge could not have stood the winter which actually ensued; for it
was the repeatedly expressed opinion of the Spanish officers in Antwerp,
that the icebergs which then filled the Scheldt must inevitably have
shattered twenty bridges to fragments, had there been so many.  It
certainly was superfluous for the Prince to make excuses to Philip for
accepting the proposed capitulation.  All the prizes of victory had been
thoroughly secured, unless pillage, massacre, and rape, which had been
the regular accompaniments of Alva's victories, were to be reckoned among
the indispensable trophies of a Spanish triumph.

Nevertheless, the dearth in the city had been well concealed from the
enemy; for, three days after the surrender, not a loaf of bread was to be
had for any money in all Antwerp, and Alexander declared that he would
never have granted such easy conditions had he been aware of the real
condition of affairs.

The articles of capitulation agreed upon between Parma and the deputies
were brought before the broad council on the 9th August.  There was much
opposition to them, as many magistrates and other influential personages
entertained sanguine expectations from the English negotiation, and were
beginning to rely with confidence upon the promises of Queen Elizabeth.
The debate was waxing warm, when some of the councillors, looking out of
window of the great hall, perceived that a violent mob had collected in
the streets.  Furious cries for bread were uttered, and some meagre-
looking individuals were thrust forward to indicate the famine which was
prevailing, and the necessity of concluding the treaty without further
delay.  Thus the municipal government was perpetually exposed to
democratic violence, excited by diametrically opposite influences.
Sometimes the burgomaster was denounced for having sold himself and his
country to the Spaniards, and was assailed with execrations for being
willing to conclude a sudden and disgraceful peace.  At other moments he
was accused of forging letters containing promises of succour from the
Queen of England and from the authorities of Holland, in order to
protract the lingering tortures of the war.  Upon this occasion the
peace-mob carried its point.  The councillors, looking out of window,
rushed into the hall with direful accounts of the popular ferocity;
the magistrates and colonels who had been warmest in opposition suddenly
changed their tone, and the whole body of the broad council accepted the
articles of capitulation by a unanimous vote.

The window was instantly thrown open, and the decision publicly
announced.  The populace, wild with delight, rushed through the streets,
tearing down the arms of the Duke of Anjou, which had remained above the
public edifices since the period of that personage's temporary residence
in the Netherlands, and substituting, with wonderful celerity, the
escutcheon of Philip the Second.  Thus suddenly could an Antwerp mob pass
from democratic insolence to intense loyalty.

The articles, on the whole, were as liberal as could have been expected.
The only hope for Antwerp and for a great commonwealth of all the
Netherlands was in holding out, even to the last gasp, until England and
Holland, now united, had time to relieve the city.  This was,
unquestionably, possible.  Had Antwerp possessed the spirit of Leyden,
had William of Orange been alive, that Spanish escutcheon, now raised
with such indecent haste, might have never been seen again on the outside
wall of any Netherland edifice.  Belgium would have become at once a
constituent portion of a great independent national realm, instead of
languishing until our own century, the dependency of a distant and a
foreign metropolis.  Nevertheless, as the Antwerpers were not disposed to
make themselves martyrs, it was something that they escaped the nameless
horrors which had often alighted upon cities subjected to an enraged
soldiery.  It redounds to the eternal honour of Alexander Farnese--when
the fate of Naarden and Haarlem and Maestricht, in the days of Alva, and
of Antwerp itself in the horrible "Spanish fury," is remembered--that
there were no scenes of violence and outrage in the populous and wealthy
city, which was at length at his mercy after having defied him so long.

Civil and religious liberty were trampled in the dust, commerce and
manufactures were destroyed, the most valuable portion of the citizens
sent into hopeless exile, but the remaining inhabitants were not
butchered in cold blood.

The treaty was signed on the 17th August.  Antwerp was to return to its
obedience.  There was to be an entire amnesty and oblivion for the past,
without a single exception.  Royalist absentees were to be reinstated in
their possessions.  Monasteries, churches, and the King's domains were to
be restored to their former proprietors.  The inhabitants of the city
were to practise nothing but the Catholic religion.  Those who refused to
conform were allowed to remain two years for the purpose of winding up
their affairs and selling out their property, provided that during that
period they lived "without scandal towards the ancient religion"--a very
vague and unsatisfactory condition.  All prisoners were to be released
excepting Teligny.  Four hundred thousand florins were to be paid by the
authorities as a fine.  The patriot garrison was to leave the city with
arms and baggage and all the honours of war.

This capitulation gave more satisfaction to the hungry portion of the
Antwerpers than to the patriot party of the Netherlands.  Sainte
Aldegonde was vehemently and unsparingly denounced as a venal traitor.
It is certain, whatever his motives, that his attitude had completely
changed.  For it was not Antwerp alone that he had reconciled or was
endeavouring to reconcile with the King of Spain, but Holland and Zeeland
as well, and all the other independent Provinces.  The ancient champion
of the patriot army, the earliest signer of the 'Compromise,' the bosom
friend of William the Silent, the author of the 'Wilhelmus' national
song, now avowed his conviction, in a published defence of his conduct
against the calumnious attacks upon it, "that it was impossible, with a
clear conscience, for subjects, under any circumstances, to take up arms
against Philip, their king."  Certainly if he had always entertained that
opinion he must have suffered many pangs of remorse during his twenty
years of active and illustrious rebellion.  He now made himself secretly
active in promoting the schemes of Parma and in counteracting the
negotiation with England.  He flattered himself, with an infatuation
which it is difficult to comprehend, that it would be possible to obtain
religious liberty for the revolting Provinces, although he had consented
to its sacrifice in Antwerp.  It is true that he had not the privilege of
reading Philip's secret letters to Parma, but what was there in the
character of the King--what intimation had ever been given by the
Governor-General--to induce a belief in even the possibility of such a
concession?

Whatever Sainte Aldegonde's opinions, it is certain that Philip had no
intention of changing his own policy.  He at first suspected the
burgomaster of a wish to protract the negotiations for a perfidious
purpose.

"Necessity has forced Antwerp," he wrote on the 17th of August--the very
day on which the capitulation was actually signed--"to enter into
negotiation.  I understand the artifice of Aldegonde in seeking to
prolong and make difficult the whole affair, under pretext of treating
for the reduction of Holland and Zeeland at the same time.  It was
therefore very adroit in you to defeat this joint scheme at once, and
urge the Antwerp matter by itself, at the same time not shutting the door
on the others.  With the prudence and dexterity with which this business
has thus far been managed I am thoroughly satisfied."

The King also expressed his gratification at hearing from Parma that the
demand for religious liberty in the Netherlands would soon be abandoned.

"In spite of the vehemence," he said, "which they manifest in the
religious matter, desiring some kind of liberty, they will in the end,
as you say they will, content themselves with what the other cities,
which have returned to obedience, have obtained.  This must be done in
all cases without flinching, and without permitting any modification."

What "had been obtained" by Brussels, Mechlin, Ghent, was well known.
The heretics had obtained the choice of renouncing their religion or of
going into perpetual exile, and this was to be the case "without
flinching" in Holland and Zeeland, if those provinces chose to return to
obedience.  Yet Sainte Aldegonde deluded himself with the thought of a
religious peace.

In another and very important letter of the same date Philip laid down
his policy very distinctly.  The Prince of Parma, by no means such a
bigot as his master, had hinted at the possibility of tolerating the
reformed religion in the places recovered from the rebels, sub silentio,
for a period not defined, and long enough for the heretics to awake from
their errors.

"You have got an expression of opinion, I see," wrote the King to
Alexander, "of some grave men of wisdom and conscience, that the
limitation of time, during which the heretics may live without scandal,
may be left undefined; but I feel very keenly the danger of such a
proposition.  With regard to Holland and Zeeland, or any other provinces
or towns, the first step must be for them to receive and maintain alone
the exercise of the Catholic religion, and to subject themselves to the
Roman church, without tolerating the exercise of any other religion, in
city, village, farm-house, or building thereto destined in the fields, or
in any place whatsoever; and in this regulation there is to be no flaw,
no change, no concession by convention or otherwise of a religious peace,
or anything of the sort.  They are all to embrace the Roman Catholic
religion, and the exercise of that is alone to be permitted."

This certainly was distinct enough, and nothing had been ever said in
public to induce a belief in any modification of the principles on which
Philip had uniformly acted.  That monarch considered himself born to
suppress heresy, and he had certainly been carrying out this work during
his whole lifetime.

The King was willing, however, as Alexander had intimated in his
negotiations with Antwerp, and previously in the capitulation of
Brussels, Ghent, and other places, that there should be an absence of
investigation into the private chambers of the heretics, during the
period allotted them for choosing between the Papacy and exile.

"It may be permitted," said Philip, "to abstain from inquiring as to what
the heretics are doing within their own doors, in a private way, without
scandal, or any public exhibition of their rites during a fixed time.
But this connivance, and the abstaining from executing the heretics,
or from chastising them, even although they may be living very
circumspectly, is to be expressed in very vague terms."

Being most anxious to provide against a second crop of heretics to
succeed the first, which he was determined to uproot, he took pains to
enjoin with his own hand upon Parma the necessity of putting in Catholic
schoolmasters and mistresses to the exclusion of reformed teachers into
all the seminaries of the recovered Provinces, in order that all the boys
and girls might grow up in thorough orthodoxy.

Yet this was the man from whom Sainte Aldegonde imagined the possibility
of obtaining a religious peace.

Ten days after the capitulation, Parma made his triumphal entrance into
Antwerp; but, according to his agreement, he spared the citizens the
presence of the Spanish and Italian soldiers, the military procession
being composed of the Germans and Walloons.  Escorted by his body-guard,
and surrounded by a knot of magnates and veterans, among whom the Duke of
Arschot, the Prince of Chimay, the Counts Mansfeld, Egmont, and Aremberg,
were conspicuous, Alexander proceeded towards the captured city.  He was
met at the Keyser Gate by a triumphal chariot of gorgeous workmanship,
in which sat the fair nymph Antwerpia, magnificently bedizened, and
accompanied by a group of beautiful maidens.  Antwerpia welcomed the
conqueror with a kiss, recited a poem in his honour, and bestowed upon
him the keys of the city, one of which was in gold.  This the Prince
immediately fastened to the chain around his neck, from which was
suspended the lamb of the golden fleece, with which order he had just
been, amid great pomp and ceremony, invested.

On the public square called the Mere, the Genoese merchants had erected
two rostral columns, each surmounted by a colossal image, representing
respectively Alexander of Macedon and Alexander of Parma.  Before the
house of Portugal was an enormous phoenix, expanding her wings quite
across the street; while, in other parts of the town, the procession was
met by ships of war, elephants, dromedaries, whales, dragons, and other
triumphal phenomena.  In the market-place were seven statues in copper,
personifying the seven planets, together with an eighth representing
Bacchus; and perhaps there were good mythological reasons why the god of
wine, together with so large a portion of our solar system, should be
done in copper by Jacob Jongeling, to honour the triumph of Alexander,
although the key to the enigma has been lost.

The cathedral had been thoroughly fumigated with frankincense, and
besprinkled with holy water, to purify the sacred precincts from their
recent pollution by the reformed rites; and the Protestant pulpits which
had been placed there, had been soundly beaten with rods, and then burned
to ashes.  The procession entered within its walls, where a magnificent
Te Deum was performed, and then, after much cannon-firing, bell-ringing,
torch-light exhibition, and other pyrotechnics, the Prince made his way
at last to the palace provided for him.  The glittering display, by which
the royalists celebrated their triumph, lasted three days' long, the city
being thronged from all the country round with eager and frivolous
spectators, who were never wearied with examining the wonders of the
bridge and the forts, and with gazing at the tragic memorials which still
remained of the fight on the Kowenstyn.

During this interval, the Spanish and Italian soldiery, not willing to be
outdone in demonstrations of respect to their chief, nor defrauded of
their rightful claim to a holiday amused themselves with preparing a
demonstration of a novel character.  The bridge, which, as it was well
known, was to be destroyed within a very few days, was adorned with
triumphal arches, and decked with trees and flowering plants; its roadway
was strewed with branches; and the palisades, parapets, and forts, were
garnished with wreaths, emblems, and poetical inscriptions in honour of
the Prince.  The soldiers themselves, attired in verdurous garments of
foliage and flower-work, their swart faces adorned with roses and lilies,
paraded the bridge and the dyke in fantastic procession with clash of
cymbal and flourish of trumpet, dancing, singing, and discharging their
carbines, in all the delirium of triumph.  Nor was a suitable termination
to the festival wanting, for Alexander, pleased with the genial character
of these demonstrations, repaired himself to the bridge, where he was
received with shouts of rapture by his army, thus whimsically converted
into a horde of fauns and satyrs.  Afterwards, a magnificent banquet was
served to the soldiers upon the bridge.  The whole extent of its surface,
from the Flemish to the Brabant shore--the scene so lately of deadly
combat, and of the midnight havoc caused by infernal enginery--was
changed, as if by the stroke of a wand, into a picture of sylvan and
Arcadian merry-making, and spread with tables laden with delicate viands.
Here sat that host of war--bronzed figures, banqueting at their ease,
their heads crowned with flowers, while the highest magnates of the army,
humouring them in their masquerade, served them with dainties, and filled
their goblets with wine.

After these festivities had been concluded, Parma set himself to
practical business.  There had been a great opposition, during the
discussion of the articles of capitulation to the reconstruction of the
famous citadel.  That fortress had been always considered, not as a
defence of the place against a foreign enemy, but as an instrument to
curb the burghers themselves beneath a hostile power.  The city
magistrates, however, as well as the dean and chief officers in all the
guilds and fraternities, were at once changed by Parma--Catholics being
uniformly substituted for heretics.  In consequence, it was not difficult
to bring about a change of opinion in the broad council.  It is true that
neither Papists nor Calvinists regarded with much satisfaction the
prospect of military violence being substituted for civic rule, but
in the first effusion of loyalty, and in the triumph of the ancient
religion, they forgot the absolute ruin to which their own action was now
condemning their city.  Champagny, who had once covered himself with
glory by his heroic though unsuccessful efforts to save Antwerp from the
dreadful "Spanish fury" which had descended from that very citadel, was
now appointed governor of the town, and devoted himself to the
reconstruction of the hated fortress.  "Champagny has particularly aided
me," wrote Parma, "with his rhetoric and clever management, and has
brought the broad council itself to propose that the citadel should be
rebuilt.  It will therefore be done, as by the burghers themselves,
without your Majesty or myself appearing to desire it."

This was, in truth, a triumph of "rhetoric and clever management," nor
could a city well abase itself more completely, kneeling thus cheerfully
at its conqueror's feet, and requesting permission to put the yoke upon
its own neck.  "The erection of the castle has thus been determined
upon," said Parma, "and I am supposed to know nothing of the resolution."

A little later he observed that they, were "working away most furiously
at the citadel, and that within a month it would be stronger than it ever
had been before."

The building went on, indeed, with astonishing celerity, the fortress
rising out of its ruins almost as rapidly, under the hands of the
royalists, as it had been demolished, but a few years before, by the
patriots.  The old foundations still remained, and blocks of houses,
which had been constructed out of its ruins, were thrown down that the
materials might be again employed in its restoration.

The citizens, impoverished and wretched, humbly demanded that the expense
of building the citadel might be in part defrayed by the four hundred
thousand florins in which they had been mulcted by the capitulation.
"I don't marvel at this," said Parma, "for certainly the poor city is
most forlorn and poverty-stricken, the heretics having all left it."
It was not long before it was very satisfactorily established, that the
presence of those same heretics and liberty of conscience for all men,
were indispensable conditions for the prosperity of the great capital.
Its downfall was instantaneous.  The merchants and industrious artisans
all wandered away from the place which had been the seat of a world-wide
traffic.  Civilisation and commerce departed, and in their stead were the
citadel and the Jesuits.  By express command of Philip, that order,
banished so recently, was reinstated in Antwerp, as well as throughout
the obedient provinces; and all the schools and colleges were placed
under its especial care.  No children could be thenceforth instructed
except by the lips of those fathers.  Here was a curb more efficacious
even than the citadel.  That fortress was at first garrisoned with
Walloons and Germans.  "I have not yet induced the citizens," said Parma,
"to accept a Spanish garrison, nor am I surprised; so many of them
remembering past events (alluding to the 'Spanish fury,' but not
mentioning it by name), and observing the frequent mutinies at the
present time.  Before long, I expect, however, to make the Spaniards as
acceptable and agreeable as the inhabitants of the country themselves."

It may easily be supposed that Philip was pleased with the triumphs that
had thus been achieved.  He was even grateful, or affected to be
grateful, to him who had achieved them.  He awarded great praise to
Alexander for his exertions, on the memorable occasions of the attack
upon the bridge, and the battle of the Kowenstyn; but censured him
affectionately for so rashly exposing his life.  "I have no words,"
he said, "to render the thanks which are merited for all that you have
been doing.  I recommend you earnestly however to have a care for the
security of your person, for that is of more consequence than all the
rest."

After the news of the reduction of the city, he again expressed
gratification, but in rather cold language.  "From such obstinate
people," said he, "not more could be extracted than has been extracted;
therefore the capitulation is satisfactory."  What more he wished to
extract it would be difficult to say, for certainly the marrow had been
extracted from the bones, and the dead city was thenceforth left to
moulder under the blight of a foreign garrison and an army of Jesuits.
"Perhaps religious affairs will improve before long," said Philip.
They did improve very soon, as he understood the meaning of improvement.
A solitude of religion soon brought with it a solitude in every other
regard, and Antwerp became a desert, as Sainte Aldegonde had foretold
would be the case.

The King had been by no means so calm, however, when the intelligence
of the capitulation first reached him at Madrid.  On the contrary, his
oldest courtiers had never seen him exhibit such marks of hilarity.

When he first heard of the glorious victory at Lepanto, his countenance
had remained impassive, and he had continued in the chapel at the
devotional exercises which the messenger from Don John had interrupted.
Only when the news of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew first reached him,
had he displayed an amount of cheerfulness equal to that which he
manifested at the fall of Antwerp.  "Never," said Granvelle, "had the
King been so radiant with joy as when he held in his hand the despatches
which announced the capitulation."  The letters were brought to him after
he had retired to rest, but his delight was so great that he could not
remain in his bed.  Rushing from his chamber, so soon as he had read
them, to that of his dearly-beloved daughter, Clara Isabella, he knocked
loudly at the door, and screaming through the keyhole the three words,
"Antwerp is ours," returned precipitately again to his own apartment.

It was the general opinion in Spain, that the capture of this city had
terminated the resistance of the Netherlands.  Holland and Zeeland would,
it was thought, accept with very little hesitation the terms which Parma
had been offering, through the agency of Sainte Aldegonde; and, with the
reduction of those two provinces, the Spanish dominion over the whole
country would of course become absolute.  Secretary Idiaquez observed,
on drawing up instructions for Carlo Coloma, a Spanish financier then
departing on special mission for the Provinces, that he would soon come
back to Spain, for the Prince of Parma was just putting an end to the
whole Belgic war.

Time was to show whether Holland and Zeeland were as malleable as
Antwerp, and whether there would not be a battle or two more to fight
before that Belgic war would come to its end.  Meantime Antwerp was
securely fettered, while the spirit of commerce--to which its unexampled
prosperity had been due--now took its flight to the lands where civil and
religious liberty had found a home.


             =====================================


NOTE on MARNIX DE SAINTE ALDEGONDE.

As every illustration of the career and character of this eminent
personage excites constant interest in the Netherlands, I have here
thrown together, in the form of an Appendix, many important and entirely
unpublished details, drawn mainly from the Archives of Simancas, and from
the State Paper Office and British Museum in London.

The ex-burgomaster seemed determined to counteract the policy of those
Netherlanders who wished to offer the sovereignty of the Provinces to the
English Queen.  He had been earnestly in favour of annexation to France,
for his sympathies and feelings were eminently French.  He had never been
a friend to England, and he was soon aware that a strong feeling of
indignation--whether just or unjust--existed against him both in that
country and in the Netherlands, on account of the surrender of Antwerp.

"I have had large conference with Villiers," wrote Sir John Norris to
Walsingham, "he condemneth Ste. Aldegonde's doings, but will impute it to
fear and not to malice.  Ste. Aldegonde, notwithstanding that he was
forbidden to come to Holland, and laid for at the fleet, yet stole
secretly to Dort, where they say he is staid, but I doubt he will be
heard speak, and then assuredly he will do great hurt."

It was most certainly Sainte Aldegonde's determination, so soon as the
capitulation of Antwerp had been resolved upon, to do his utmost to
restore all the independent Provinces to their ancient allegiance.
Rather Spanish than English was his settled resolution.  Liberty of
religion, if possible--that was his cherished wish--but still more
ardently, perhaps, did he desire to prevent the country from falling
into the hands of Elizabeth.

"The Prince of Parma hath conceived such an assured hope of the fidelity
of Aldegonde," wrote one of Walsingham's agents, Richard Tomson, "in
reducing the Provinces, yet enemies, into a perfect subjection, that the
Spaniards are so well persuaded of the man as if he had never been
against them.  They say, about the middle of this month, he departed for
Zeeland and Holland, to prosecute the effect of his promises, and I am
the more induced to believe that he is become altogether Spanish, for
that the common bruit goeth that he hastened the surrendering of the town
of Antwerp, after he had intelligence of the coming of the English
succours."

There was naturally much indignation felt in the independent Provinces,
against all who had been thought instrumental in bringing about the
reduction of the great cities of Flanders.  Famars, governor of Mechlin,
Van den Tympel, governor of Brussels, Martini, who had been active in
effecting the capitulation of Antwerp, were all arrested in Holland.
"From all that I can hear," said Parma, "it is likely that they will be
very severely handled, which is the reason why Ste. Aldegonde, although
he sent his wife and children to Holland, has not ventured thither
himself: It appears that they threaten him there, but he means now to go,
under pretext of demanding to justify himself from the imputations
against him.  Although he tells me freely that, without some
amplification of the concessions hitherto made on the point of religion,
he hopes for no good result, yet I trust that he will do good offices in
the meantime, in spite of the difficulties which obstruct his efforts.
On my part, every exertion will be made, and not without hope of some
fruit, if not before, at least after, these people have become as tired
of the English as they were of the French."

Of this mutual ill-feeling between the English and the burgomaster, there
can be no doubt whatever.  The Queen's government was fully aware of his
efforts to counteract its negotiation with the Netherlands, and to bring
about their reconciliation with Spain.  When the Earl of Leicester--as
will soon be related--arrived in the Provinces, he was not long in
comprehending his attitude and his influence.

"I wrote somewhat of Sir Aldegonde in putting his case," wrote Leicester,
"but this is certain, I have the copy of his very letters sent hither to
practise the peace not two days before I came, and this day one hath told
me that loves him well, that he hates our countrymen unrecoverably.  I am
sorry for it."

On the other hand, the Queen was very indignant with the man whom she
looked upon as the paid agent of Spain.  She considered him a renegade,
the more dangerous because his previous services had been so illustrious.
"Her Majesty's mislike towards Ste. Aldegonde continueth," wrote
Walsingham to Leicester, "and she taketh offence that he was not
restrained of his liberty by your Lordship's order." It is unquestionable
that the exburgomaster intended to do his best towards effecting the
reconciliation of all the Provinces with Spain; and it is equally certain
that the King had offered to pay him well, if he proved successful in his
endeavours.  There is no proof, however, and no probability that Sainte
Aldegonde ever accepted or ever intended to accept the proffered bribe.
On the contrary, his whole recorded career ought to disprove the
supposition.  Yet it is painful, to find him, at this crisis, assiduous
in his attempts to undo the great work of his own life, and still more
distressing to find that great rewards were distinctly offered to him
for such service.  Immense promises had been frequently made no doubt to
William the Silent; nor could any public man, in such times, be so pure
that an attempt to tamper with him might not be made: but when the
personage, thus solicited, was evidently acting in the interests of the
tempters, it is not surprising that he should become the object of grave
suspicion.

"It does not seem to me bad," wrote Philip to Parma, "this negotiation
which you have commenced with Ste. Aldegonde, in order to gain him, and
thus to employ his services in bringing about a reduction of the islands
(Holland and Zeeland).  In exchange for this work, any thing which you
think proper to offer to him as a reward, will be capital well invested;
but it must not be given until the job is done."

But the job was hard to do, and Sainte Aldegonde cared nothing for the
offered bribe.  He was, however, most strangely confident of being able
to overcome, on the one hand, the opposition of Holland and Zeeland to
the hated authority of Spain, and, on the other, the intense abhorrence
entertained by Philip to liberty of conscience.

Soon after the capitulation, he applied for a passport to visit those two
Provinces.  Permission to come was refused him. Honest men from Antwerp,
he was informed, would be always welcome, but there was no room for him.
There was, however--or Parma persuaded himself that there was--
a considerable party in those countries in favour of reconciliation
with Spain. If the ex-burgomaster could gain a hearing, it was thought
probable that his eloquence would prove very effective.

"We have been making efforts to bring about negotiations with Holland
and Zeeland," wrote Alexander to Philip.  "Gelderland and Overyssel
likewise show signs of good disposition, but I have not soldiers enough
to animate the good and terrify the bad.  As for Holland and Zeeland,
there is a strong inclination on the part of the people to a
reconciliation, if some concession could be made on the religious
question, but the governors oppose it, because they are perverse, and
are relying on assistance from England.  Could this religious concession
be made, an arrangement could, without doubt, be accomplished, and more
quickly than people think.  Nevertheless, in such a delicate matter, I am
obliged to await your Majesty's exact instructions and ultimatum."

He then proceeded to define exactly the position and intentions of the
burgomaster.

"The government of Holland and Zeeland," he said, "have refused a
passport to Ste. Aldegonde, and express dissatisfaction with him for
having surrendered Antwerp so soon.  They know that he has much credit
with the people and with the ministers of the sects, and they are in much
fear of him because he is inclined for peace, which is against their
interests.  They are, therefore, endeavouring to counteract my
negotiations with him.  These have been, thus far, only in general terms.
I have sought to induce him to perform the offices required, without
giving him reason to expect any concession as to the exercise of
religion.  He persuades himself that, in the end, there will be some
satisfaction obtained upon this point, and, under this impression he
considers the peace as good as concluded, there remaining no doubt as to
other matters.  He has sent his wife to Zeeland, and is himself going to
Germany, where, as he says, he will do all the good service that he can.
He hopes that very shortly the Provinces will not only invite, but
implore him to come to them; in which case, he promises me to perform
miracles."

Alexander then proceeded to pay a distinct tribute to Sainte Aldegonde's
motives; and, when it is remembered that the statement thus made is
contained in a secret despatch, in cipher, to the King, it may be assumed
to convey the sincere opinion of the man most qualified to judge
correctly as to this calumniated person's character.

"Ste. Aldegonde offers me wonders," he said, "and I have promised him
that he shall be recompensed very largely; yet, although he is poor, I do
not find him influenced by mercenary or selfish considerations, but only
very set in opinions regarding his religion."

The Prince had however no doubt of Sainte Aldegonde's sincerity, for
sincerity was a leading characteristic of the man.  His word, once given,
was sacred, and he had given his word to do his best towards effecting a
reconciliation of the Provinces with Spain, and frustrating the efforts
of England.  "Through the agency of Ste. Aldegonde and that of others"
wrote Parma, "I shall watch, day and night, to bring about a reduction of
Holland and Zeeland, if humanly possible.  I am quite persuaded that they
will soon be sick of the English, who are now arriving, broken down,
without arms or money, and obviously incapable of holding out very long.
Doubtless, however, this English alliance, and the determination of the
Queen to do her utmost against us, complicates matters, and assists the
government of Holland and Zeeland in opposing the inclinations of their
people."

Nothing ever came of these intended negotiations.  The miracles were
never wrought, and even had Sainte Aldegonde been as venal as he was
suspected of being--which we have thus proof positive that he was not--
he never could have obtained the recompense, which, according to Philip's
thrifty policy, was not to be paid until it had been earned.  Sainte
Aldegonde's hands were clean.  It is pity that we cannot render the same
tribute to his political consistency of character.  It is also certain
that he remained--not without reason--for a long time under a cloud.  He
became the object of unbounded and reckless calumny.  Antwerp had fallen,
and the necessary consequence of its reduction was the complete and
permanent prostration of its commerce and manufactures.  These were
transferred to the new, free, national, independent, and prosperous
commonwealth that had risen in the "islands" which Parma and Sainte
Aldegonde had vainly hoped to restore to their ancient servitude.  In a
very few years after the subjugation of Antwerp, it appeared by
statistical documents that nearly all the manufactures of linen, coarse
and fine cloths, serges, fustians, tapestry, gold-embroidery, arms-work,
silks, and velvets, had been transplanted to the towns of Holland and
Zeeland, which were flourishing and thriving, while the Flemish and
Brabantine cities had become mere dens of thieves and beggars.  It was in
the mistaken hope of averting this catastrophe--as melancholy as it was
inevitable and in despair of seeing all the Netherlands united, unless
united in slavery, and in deep-rooted distrust of the designs and policy
of England, that this statesman, once so distinguished, had listened to
the insidious tongue of Parma.  He had sought to effect a general
reconciliation with Spain, and the only result of his efforts was a
blight upon his own illustrious name.

He published a defence of his conduct, and a detailed account of the
famous siege.  His apology, at the time, was not considered conclusive,
but his narrative remains one of the clearest and most trustworthy
sources for the history of these important transactions.  He was never
brought to trial, but he discovered, with bitterness, that he had
committed a fatal error, and that his political influence had passed
away.  He addressed numerous private epistles to eminent persons,
indignantly denying the imputations against his character, and demanding
an investigation.  Among other letters he observed in one to Count
Hohenlo, that he was astonished and grieved to find that all his faithful
labours and sufferings in the cause of his fatherland had been forgotten
in an hour.  In place of praise and gratitude, he had reaped nothing but
censure and calumny; because men ever judged, not by the merits, but by
the issue.  That common people should be so unjust, he said, was not to
be wondered at, but of men like Hohenlo be had hoped better things.  He
asserted that he had saved Antwerp from another "Spanish fury," and from
impending destruction--a city in which there was not a single regular
soldier, and in which his personal authority was so slight that he was
unable to count the number of his masters.  If a man had ever performed a
service to his country, be claimed to have done so in this capitulation.
Nevertheless, he declared that he was the same Philip Marnix, earnestly
devoted to the service of God, the true religion, and the fatherland;
although he avowed himself weary of the war, and of this perpetual
offering of the Netherland sovereignty to foreign potentates.  He was now
going, he said, to his estates in Zeeland; there to turn farmer again;
renouncing public affairs, in the administration of which he had
experienced so much ingratitude from his countrymen.  Count Maurice and
the States of Holland and Zeeland wrote to him, however, in very plain
language, describing the public indignation as so strong as to make it
unsafe for him to visit the country.

The Netherlands and England--so soon as they were united in policy--were,
not without reason, indignant with the man who had made such strenuous
efforts to prevent that union.  The English were, in truth, deeply
offended.  He had systematically opposed their schemes, and to his
prejudice against their country, and distrust of their intentions, they
attributed the fall of Antwerp.  Envoy Davison, after his return to
Holland, on the conclusion of the English treaty, at once expressed his
suspicions of the ex-burgomaster, and the great dangers to be apprehended
from his presence in the free States.  "Here is some working underhand,"
said he to Walsingham, "to draw hither Sainte Aldegonde, under a pretext
of his justification, which--as it has hitherto been denied him--so is
the sequel suspected, if he should obtain it before they were well
settled here, betwixt her Majesty and them, considering the manifold
presumptions that the subject of his journey should be little profitable
or advantageous to the state of these poor countries, as tending, at the
best, to the propounding of some general reconcilement."  It was
certainly not without substantial grounds that the English and
Hollanders, after concluding their articles of alliance, felt uneasy at
the possibility of finding their plans reversed by the intrigues of a man
whom they knew to be a mediator between Spain and her revolted Provinces,
and whom they suspected of being a venal agent of the Catholic King.
It was given out that Philip had been induced to promise liberty of
religion, in case of reconciliation.  We have seen that Parma was at
heart in favour of such a course, and that he was very desirous of
inducing Marnix to believe in the possibility of obtaining such a boon,
however certain the Prince had been made by the King's secret letters,
that such a belief was a delusion.  "Martini hath been examined," wrote
Davison, "who confesseth both for himself and others, to become hither
by direction of the Prince of Parma and intelligence of Sainte Aldegonde,
from whom he was first addressed by Villiers and afterwards to others for
advice and assistance.  That the scope of this direction was to induce
them here to hearken to a peace, wherein the Prince of Parma promiseth
them toleration of religion, although he confesseth yet to have no
absolute power in that behalf, but hath written thereof to the King
expressly, and holdeth himself assured thereof by the first post, as I
have likewise been advertised from Rowland York, which if it had been
propounded openly here before things had been concluded with her Majesty,
and order taken for her assurance, your honour can judge what confusion
it must of necessity have brought forth."

At last, when Marnix had become convinced that the toleration would not
arrive "by the very next mail from Spain," and that, in truth, such a
blessing was not to be expected through the post-office at all, he felt
an inward consciousness of the mistake which he had committed.  Too
credulously had he inclined his ear to the voice of Parma; too
obstinately had he steeled his heart against Elizabeth, and he was now
the more anxious to clear himself at least from the charges of corruption
so clamorously made against him by Holland and by England.  Conscious of
no fault more censurable than credulity and prejudice, feeling that his
long fidelity to the reformed religion ought to be a defence for him
against his calumniators, he was desirous both to clear his own honour,
and to do at least a tardy justice to England.  He felt confident that
loyal natures, like those of Davison and his colleagues at home, would
recognize his own loyalty.  He trusted, not without cause, to English
honour, and coming to his manor-house of Zoubourg, near Flushing, he
addressed a letter to the ambassador of Elizabeth, in which the strong
desire to vindicate his aspersed integrity is quite manifest.

"I am very joyous," said he, "that coming hither in order to justify
myself against the false and malignant imputations with which they charge
me, I have learned your arrival here on the part of her Majesty, as well
as the soon expected coming of the Earl of Leicester.  I see, in truth,
that the Lord God is just, and never abandons his own.  I have never
spared myself in the service of my country, and I would have sacrificed
my life, a thousand times, had it been possible, in her cause.  Now, I am
receiving for all this a guerdon of blame and calumny, which is cast upon
me in order to cover up faults which have been committed by others in
past days.  I hope, however, to come soon to give you welcome, and to
speak more particularly to you of all these things.  Meantime demanding
my justification before these gentlemen, who ought to have known me
better than to have added faith to such villanous imputations, I will
entreat you that my definite justification, or condemnation, if I have
merited it, may be reserved till the arrival of Lord Leicester."

This certainly was not the language of a culprit, Nevertheless, his words
did not immediately make a deep impression on the hearts of those who
heard him.  He had come secretly to his house at Zoubourg, having
previously published his memorable apology; and in accordance with the
wishes of the English government, he was immediately confined to his own
house.  Confidence in the intention of a statesman, who had at least
committed such grave errors of judgment, and who had been so deeply
suspected of darker faults, was not likely very soon to revive.  So far
from shrinking from an investigation which would have been dangerous,
even to his life, had the charges against his honour been founded in
fact, he boldly demanded to be confronted with his accusers, in order
that he might explain his conduct before all the world.  "Sir,
yesternight, at the shutting of the gates," wrote Davison to Walsingham,
transmitting the little note from Marnix, which has just been cited--
"I was advertised that Ste.  Aldegonde was not an hour before secretly
landed at the head on the other side the Rammekens, and come to his house
at Zoubourg, having prepared his way by an apology, newly published in
his defence, whereof I have as yet recovered one only copy, which
herewith I send your honour.  This day, whilst I was at dinner, he sent
his son unto me, with a few lines, whereof I send you the copy,
advertising me of his arrival (which he knew I understood before),
together with the desire he had to see me, and speak with me, if the
States, before whom he was to come to purge himself of the crimes
wherewith he stood, as he with, unjustly charged, would vouchsafe him so
much liberty.  The same morning, the council of Zeeland, taking knowledge
of his arrival, sent unto him the pensioner of Middelburgh and this town,
to sound the causes of his coming, and to will him, in their behalf, to
keep his house, and to forbear all meddling by word or writing, with any
whatsoever, till they should further advise and determine in his cause.
In defence thereof, he fell into large and particular discourse with the
deputies, accusing his enemies of malice and untruth, offering himself to
any trial, and to abide what punishment the laws should lay upon him, if
he were found guilty of the crimes imputed to him.  Touching the cause of
his coming, he pretended and protested that he had no other end than his
simple justification, preferring any hazard he might incur thereby, to
his honour and good fame."  As to the great question at issue, Marnix
had at last become conscious that he had been a victim to Spanish
dissimulation, and that Alexander Fainese was in reality quite powerless
to make that concession of religious liberty, without which a
reconciliation between Holland and Philip was impossible.  "Whereas,"
said Davison, "it was supposed that Ste. Aldegonde had commission from
the Prince of Parma to make some offer of peace, he assured them of the
contrary as a thing which neither the Prince had any power to yield unto
with the surety of religion, or himself would, in conscience, persuade
without it; with a number of other particularities in his excuse; amongst
the rest, allowing and commending in his speech, the course they had
taken with her Majesty, as the only safe way of deliverance for these
afflicted countries--letting them understand how much the news thereof--
specially since the entry of our garrison into this place (which before
they would in no sort believe), hath troubled the enemy, who doth what he
may to suppress the bruit thereof, and yet comforteth himself with the
hope that between the factions and partialities nourished by his
industry, and musters among the towns, especially in Holland and Zeeland
(where he is persuaded to find some pliable to a reconcilement) and the
disorders and misgovernment of our people, there will be yet occasion
offered him to make his profit and advantage.  I find that the gentleman
hath here many friends indifferently persuaded of his innocency,
notwithstanding the closing up of his apology doth make but little for
him.  Howsoever it be, it falleth out the better that the treaty with her
Majesty is finished, and the cautionary towns assured before his coming,
which, if he be ill affected, will I hope either reform his judgment or
restrain his will.  I will not forget to do the best I can to sift and
decipher him yet more narrowly and particularly."

Thus, while the scales had at length fallen from the eyes of Marnix, it
was not strange that the confidence which he now began to entertain in
the policy of England, should not be met, at the outset, with a
corresponding sentiment on the part of the statesman by whom that policy
was regulated.  "Howsoever Ste. Aldegonde would seem to purge himself,"
said Davison, "it is suspected that his end is dangerous.  I have done
what I may to restrain him, so nevertheless as it may not seem to come
from me."  And again--"Ste.  Aldegonde," he wrote, "contimieth still our
neighbor at his house between this and Middelburg; yet unmolested.  He
findeth many favourers, and, I fear, doth no good offices.  He desireth
to be reserved till the coming of my Lord of Leicester, before whom he
pretends a desired trial."

This covert demeanour on the part of the ambassador was in accordance
with, the wishes of his government.  It was thought necessary that Sainte
Aldegonde should be kept under arrest until the arrival of the Earl, but
deemed preferable that the restraint should proceed from the action of
the States rather than from the order of the Queen.  Davison was
fulfilling orders in attempting, by underhand means, to deprive Marnix,
for a time, of his liberty.  "Let him, I pray you, remain in good safety
in any wise," wrote Leicester, who was uneasy at the thought of so
influential, and, as he thought, so ill-affected a person being at large,
but at the same time disposed to look dispassionately upon his past
conduct, and to do justice, according to the results of an investigation.
"It is thought meet," wrote Walsingham to Davison, "that you should do
your best endeavour to procure that Ste. Aldegonde may be restrained,
which in mine opinion were fit to be handled in such sort, as the
restraint might rather proceed from themselves than by your solicitation.
And yet rather than he should remain at liberty to practise underhand,
whereof you seem to stand in great doubt, it is thought meet that you
should make yourself a partizan, to seek by all the means that you may to
have him restrained under the guard of some well affected patriot until
the Earl's coming, at what time his cause may receive examination."

This was, however, a result somewhat difficult to accomplish; for twenty
years of noble service in the cause of liberty had not been utterly in
vain, and there were many magnanimous spirits to sympathize with a great
man struggling thus in the meshes of calumny.  That the man who
challenged rather than shunned investigation, should be thrown into
prison, as if he were a detected felon upon the point of absconding,
seemed a heartless and superfluous precaution.  Yet Davison and others
still feared the man whom they felt obliged to regard as a baffled
intriguer.  "Touching the restraint of Ste. Aldegonde," wrote Davison to
Lord Burghley, "which I had order from Mr. Secretary to procure
underhand, I find the difficulty will be great in regard of his many
friends and favourers, preoccupied with some opinion of his innocence,
although I have travailled with divers of them underhand, and am promised
that some order shall be taken in that behalf, which I think will be
harder to execute as long as Count Maurice is here.  For Ste.
Aldegonde's affection, I find continual matter to suspect it inclined to
a peace, and that as one notably prejudging our scope and proceeding in
this cause, doth lie in wait for an occasion to set it forward, being, as
it seems, fed with a hope of 'telle quelle liberte de conscience,' which
the Prince of Parma and others of his council have, as he confesseth,
earnestly solicited at the King's hands.  This appeareth, in truth, the
only apt and easy way for them to prevail both against religion and the
liberty of these poor countries, having thereby once recovered the
authority which must necessarily follow a peace, to renew and alter the
magistrates of the particular towns, which, being at their devotion, may
turn, as we say, all upside down, and so in an instant being under their
servitude, if not wholly, at the least in a great part of the country,
leaving so much the less to do about the rest, a thing confessed and
looked for of all men of any judgment here, if the drift of our peace-
makers may take effect."

Sainte Aldegonde had been cured of his suspicions of England, and at last
the purity of his own character shone through the mists.

One winter's morning, two days after Christmas, 1585, Colonel Morgan, an
ingenuous Welshman, whom we have seen doing much hard fighting on
Kowenstyn Dyke, and at other places, and who now commanded the garrison
at Flushing, was taking a walk outside the gates, and inhaling the salt
breezes from the ocean.  While thus engaged he met a gentleman coming
along, staff in hand, at a brisk pace towards the town, who soon proved
to be no other than the distinguished and deeply suspected Sainte
Aldegonde.  The two got at once into conversation.  "He began," said
Morgan, "by cunning insinuations, to wade into matters of state, and at
the last fell to touching the principal points, to wit, her Majesty's
entrance into the cause now in hand, which, quoth he, was an action of
high importance, considering how much it behoved her to go through the
same, as well in regard of the hope that thereby was given to the
distressed people of these parts, as also in consideration of that worthy
personage whom she hath here placed, whose estate and credit may not be
suffered to quail, but must be upholden as becometh the lieutenant of
such a princess as her Majesty."

"The opportunity thus offered," continued honest Morgan, "and the way
opened by himself, I thought good to discourse with him to the full,
partly to see the end and drift of his induced talk, and consequently to
touch his quick in the suspected cause of Antwerp."  And thus, word for
word, taken down faithfully the same day, proceeded the dialogue that
wintry morning, near three centuries ago.  From that simple record--
mouldering unseen and unthought of for ages, beneath piles of official
dust--the forms of the illustrious Fleming and the bold Welsh colonel,
seem to start, for a brief moment, out of the three hundred years of
sleep which have succeeded their energetic existence upon earth.  And so,
with the bleak winds of December whistling over the breakers of the North
Sea, the two discoursed together, as they paced along the coast.

Morgan.--"I charge you with your want of confidence in her Majesty's
promised aid.  'Twas a thing of no small moment had it been embraced when
it was first most graciously offered."

Sainte Aldegonde.--"I left not her prince-like purpose unknown to the
States, who too coldly and carelessly passed over the benefit thereof,
until it was too late to put the same in practice.  For my own part,
I acknowledge that indeed I thought some further advice would either
alter or at least detract from the accomplishment of her determination.
I thought this the rather because she had so long been wedded to peace,
and I supposed it impossible to divorce her from so sweet a spouse.
But, set it down that she were resolute, yet the sickness of Antwerp was
so dangerous, as it was to be doubted the patient would be dead before
the physician could come.  I protest that the state of the town was much
worse than was known to any but myself and some few private persons.  The
want of victuals was far greater than they durst bewray, fearing lest the
common people, perceiving the plague of famine to be at hand, would
rather grow desperate than patiently expect some happy event.  For as
they were many in number, so were they wonderfully divided: some being
Martinists, some Papists, some neither the one nor the other, but
generally given to be factious, so that the horror at home was equal to
the hazard abroad."

Morgan.--"But you forget the motion made by the martial men for putting
out of the town such as were simple artificers, with women and children,
mouths that consumed meat, but stood in no stead for defence."

Sainte Aldegonde.--"Alas, alas!  would you have had me guilty of the
slaughter of so many innocents, whose lives were committed to my charge,
as well as the best?  Or might I have answered my God when those
massacred creatures should have stood up against me, that the hope of
Antwerp's deliverance was purchased with the blood of so many simple
souls?  No, no.  I should have found my conscience such a hell and
continual worm as the gnawing thereof would have been more painful and
bitter than the possession of the whole world would have been pleasant."

Morgan continued to press the various points which had created suspicion
as to the character and motives of Marnix, and point by point Marnix
answered his antagonist, impressing him, armed as he had been in
distrust, with an irresistible conviction as to the loftiness of the
nature which had been so much calumniated.

Sainte Aldegonde (with vehemence).--"I do assure you, in conclusion, that
I have solemnly vowed service and duty to her Majesty, which I am ready
to perform where and when it may best like her to use the same.  I will
add moreover that I have oftentimes determined to pass into England to
make my own purgation, yet fearing lest her Highness would mislike so
bold a resolution, I have checked that purpose with a resolution to tarry
the Lord's leisure, until some better opportunity might answer my desire.
For since I know not how I stand in her grace, unwilling I am to attempt
her presence without permission; but might it please her to command my
attendance, I should not only most joyfully accomplish the same, but also
satisfy her of and in all such matters as I stand charged with, and
afterwards spend life, land, and goods, to witness my duty towards her
Highness."

Morgan.--"I tell you plainly, that if you are in heart the same man that
you seem outwardly to be, I doubt not but her Majesty might easily be
persuaded to conceive a gracious opinion of you.  For mine own part, I
will surely advertise Sir Francis Walsingham of as much matter as this
present conference hath ministered.

"Hereof," said the Colonel--when, according to his promise, faithfully
recording the conversation in all its details for Mr. Secretary's
benefit," he seemed not only content but most glad.  Therefore I beseech
your honour to vouchsafe some few lines herein, that I may return him
some part of your mind.  I have already written thereof to Sir Philip
Sidney, lord governor of Flushing, with request that his Excellency the
Earl of Leicester may presently be made acquainted with the cause."

Indeed the brave Welshman was thoroughly converted from his suspicions by
the earnest language and sympathetic presence of the fallen statesman.
This result of the conference was creditable to the ingenuous character
of both personages.

"Thus did he," wrote Morgan to Sir Francis, "from point to point, answer
all objections from the first to the last, and that  in such sound and
substantial manner, with a strong show of truth, as I think his very
enemies, having heard his tale, would be satisfied.  And truly, Sir, as
heretofore I have thought hardly of him, being led by a superficial
judgment of things as they stood in outward appearance; so now, having
pierced deep, and weighed causes by a sounder and more deliberate
consideration, I find myself somewhat changed in conceit--not so much
carried away by the sweetness of his speech, as confirmed by the force of
his religious profession, wherein he remaineth constant, without wavering
--an argument of great strength to set him free from treacherous
attempts; but as I am herein least able and most unworthy to yield any
censure, much less to give advice, so I leave the man and the matter to
your honour's opinion.  Only (your graver judgment reserved) thus I
think, that it were good either to employ him as a friend, or as an enemy
to remove him farther from us, being a man of such action as the world
knoweth he is.  And to conclude," added Morgan, "this was the upshot
between us."

Nevertheless, he remained in this obscurity for a long period.  When,
towards the close of the year 1585, the English government was
established in Holland, he was the object of constant suspicion.

"Here is Aldegonde," wrote Sir Philip Sidney to Lord Leicester from
Flushing, "a man greatly suspected, but by no man charged.  He lives
restrained to his own house, and for aught I can find, deals with
nothing, only desiring to have his cause wholly referred to your
Lordship, and therefore, with the best heed I can to his proceedings,
I will leave him to his clearing or condemning, when your Lordship shall
hear him."

In another letter, Sir Philip again spoke of Sainte Aldegonde as "one of
whom he kept a good opinion, and yet a suspicious eye."

Leicester himself was excessively anxious on the subject, deeply fearing
the designs of a man whom he deemed so mischievous, and being earnestly
desirous that he should not elude the chastisement which he seemed to
deserve.

"Touching Ste. Aldegonde," he wrote to Davison, "I grieve that he is at
his house without good guard.  I do earnestly pray you to move such as
have power presently to commit a guard about him, for I know he is a
dangerous and a bold man, and presumes yet to carry all, for he hath made
many promises to the Prince of Parma.  I would he were in Fort Rammekyns,
or else that Mr. Russell had charge of him, with a recommendation from me
to Russell to look well to him till I shall arrive.  You must have been
so commanded in this from her Majesty, for she thinks he is in close and
safe guard.  If he is not, look for a turn of all things, for he hath
friends, I know."

But very soon after his arrival, the Earl, on examining into the matter,
saw fit to change his opinions and his language.  Persuaded, in spite of
his previous convictions, even as the honest Welsh colonel had been, of
the upright character of the man, and feeling sure that a change had come
over the feelings of Marnix himself in regard to the English alliance,
Leicester at once interested himself in removing the prejudices
entertained towards him by the Queen.

"Now a few words for Ste. Aldegonde," said he in his earliest despatches
from Holland; "I will beseech her Majesty to stay her judgment till I
write next.  If the man be as he now seemeth, it were pity to lose him,
for he is indeed marvellously friended.  Her Majesty will think, I know,
that I am easily pacified or led in such a matter, but I trust so to deal
as she shall give me thanks.  Once if he do offer service it is sure
enough, for he is esteemed that way above all the men in this country for
his word, if he give it.  His worst enemies here procure me to win him,
for sure, just matter for his life there is none.  He would fain come
into England, so far is he come already, and doth extol her Majesty for
this work of hers to heaven, and confesseth, till now an angel could not
make him believe it."

Here certainly was a noble tribute paid unconsciously, as it were, to the
character of the maligned statesman.  "Above all the men in the country
for his word, if he give it."  What wonder that Orange had leaned upon
him, that Alexander had sought to gain him, and how much does it add to
our bitter regret that his prejudices against England should not have
been removed until too late for Antwerp and for his own usefulness.  Had
his good angel really been present to make him believe in that "work of
her Majesty," when his ear was open to the seductions of Parma, the
destiny of Belgium and his own subsequent career might have been more
fortunate than they became.

The Queen was slow to return from her prejudices.  She believed--not
without reason--that the opposition of Ste. Aldegonde to her policy had
been disastrous to the cause both of England and the Netherlands; and it
had been her desire that he should be imprisoned, and tried for his life.
Her councillors came gradually to take a more favourable view of the
case, and to be moved by the pathetic attitude of the man who had once
been so conspicuous.

"I did acquaint Sir Christopher Hatton," wrote Walsingham to Leicester,
"with the letter which Ste. Aldegonde wrote to your Lordship, which,
carrying a true picture of an afflicted mind, cannot but move an honest
heart, weighing the rare parts the gentleman is endowed withal, to pity
his distressed estate, and, to procure him relief and comfort, which Mr.
Vice-Chamberlain (Hatton) bath promised on his part to perform.  I
thought good to send Ste. Aldegonde's letter unto the Lord Treasurer
(Burghley), who heretofore has carried a hard conceit of the gentleman,
hoping that the view of his letter will breed some remorse towards him.
I have also prayed his Lordship, if he see cause, to acquaint her Majesty
with the said letter."

But his high public career was closed.  He lived down calumny; and put
his enemies to shame, but the fatal error which he had committed, in
taking the side of Spain rather than of England at so momentous a crisis,
could never be repaired.  He regained the good opinion of the most
virtuous and eminent personages in Europe, but in the noon of life he
voluntarily withdrew from public affairs.  The circumstances just
detailed had made him impossible as a political leader, and it was
equally impossible for him to play a secondary part.  He occasionally
consented to be employed in special diplomatic missions, but the serious
avocations of his life now became theological and literary.  He sought--
in his own words--to penetrate himself still more deeply than ever with
the spirit of the reformation, and to imbue the minds of the young with
that deep love for the reformed religion which had been the guiding
thought of his own career.  He often spoke with a sigh of his compulsory
exile from the field where he had been so conspicuous all his lifetime;
he bitterly lamented the vanished dream of the great national union
between Belgium and Holland, which had flattered his youth and his
manhood; and he sometimes alluded with bitterness to the calumny which
had crippled him of his usefulness.  He might have played a distinguished
part in that powerful commonwealth which was so steadily and splendidly
arising out of the lagunes of Zeeland and Holland, but destiny and
calumny and his own error had decided otherwise.

"From the depth of my exile--" he said, "for I am resolved to retire,
I know not where, into Germany, perhaps into Sarmatia, I shall look from
afar upon the calamities of my country.  That which to me is most
mournful is no longer to be able to assist my fatherland by my counsels
and my actions."  He did not go into exile, but remained chiefly at his
mansion of Zoubourg, occupied with agriculture and with profound study.
Many noble works conspicuous in the literature of the epoch--were the
results of his learned leisure; and the name of Marnix of Sainte
Aldegonde will be always as dear to the lovers of science and letters as
to the believers in civil and religious liberty.  At the request of the
States of Holland he undertook, in 1593, a translation of the Scriptures
from the original, and he was at the same time deeply engaged with a
History of Christianity, which he intended for his literary master-piece.
The man whose sword had done knightly service on many a battle-field for
freedom, whose tongue had controlled mobs and senates, courts and
councils, whose subtle spirit had metamorphosed itself into a thousand
shapes to do battle with the genius of tyranny, now quenched the feverish
agitation of his youth and manhood in Hebrew and classical lore.  A grand
and noble figure always: most pathetic when thus redeeming by vigorous
but solitary and melancholy hard labor, the political error which had
condemned him to retirement.  To work, ever to work, was the primary law
of his nature.  Repose in the other world, "Repos ailleurs" was the
device which he assumed in earliest youth, and to which he was faithful
all his days.

A great and good man whose life had been brim-full of noble deeds,
and who had been led astray from the path, not of virtue, but of sound
policy, by his own prejudices and by the fascination of an intellect even
more brilliant than his own, he at least enjoyed in his retirement
whatever good may come from hearty and genuine labor, and from the high
regard entertained for him by the noblest spirits among his
contemporaries.

"They tell me," said La Noue, "that the Seigneur de Ste. Aldegonde has
been suspected by the Hollanders and the English.  I am deeply grieved,
for 'tis a personage worthy to be employed.  I have always known him to
be a zealous friend of his religion and his country, and I will bear him
this testimony, that his hands and his heart are clean.  Had it been
otherwise, I must have known it.  His example has made me regret the
less the promise I was obliged to make, never to bear arms again in the
Netherlands.  For I have thought that since this man, who has so much
credit and authority among your people, after having done his duty well,
has not failed to be calumniated and ejected from service, what would
they have done with me, who am a stranger, had I continued in their
employment?  The consul Terentius Varro lost, by his fault, the battle of
Canna; nevertheless, when he returned to Rome, offering the remainder of
his life in the cause of his Republic reduced to extremity, he was not
rejected, but well received, because he hoped well for the country.
It is not to be imputed as blame to Ste. Aldegonde that he lost Antwerp,
for he surrendered when it could not be saved.  What I now say is drawn
from me by the compassion I feel when persons of merit suffer without
cause at the hands of their fellow citizens.  In these terrible tempests,
as it is a duty rigorously to punish the betrayers of their country, even
so it is an obligation upon us to honor good patriots, and to support
them in venial errors, that we may all encourage each other to do the
right."

Strange too as it may now seem to us, a reconciliation of the Netherlands
with Philip was not thought an impossibility by other experienced and
sagacious patriots, besides Marnix.  Even Olden-Barneveld, on taking
office as Holland's Advocate, at this period, made it a condition that
his service was to last only until the reunion of the Provinces with
Spain.

There was another illustrious personage in a foreign land who ever
rendered homage to the character of the retired Netherland statesman.
Amid the desolation of France, Duplessis Mornay often solaced himself by
distant communion with that kindred and sympathizing spirit.

"Plunged in public annoyances," he wrote to Sainte Aldegonde, "I find no
consolation, except in conference with the good, and among the good I
hold you for one of the best.  With such men I had rather sigh profoundly
than laugh heartily with others.  In particular, Sir, do me the honor to
love me, and believe that I honor you singularly.  Impart to me something
from your solitude, for I consider your deserts to be more fruitful and
fertile than our most cultivated habitations.  As for me, think of me as
of a man drowning in the anxieties of the time, but desirous, if
possible, of swimming to solitude."

Thus solitary, yet thus befriended,--remote from public employment, yet
ever employed, doing his daily work with all his soul and strength,
Marnix passed the fifteen years yet remaining to him.  Death surprised
him at last, at Leyden, in the year 1598, while steadily laboring upon
his Flemish translation of the Old Testament, and upon the great
political, theological, controversial, and satirical work on the
differences of religion, which remains the most stately, though
unfinished, monument of his literary genius.  At the age of sixty
he went at last to the repose which he had denied to himself on earth.
"Repos ailleurs."




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Honor good patriots, and to support them in venial errors
Possible to do, only because we see that it has been done
Repose in the other world, "Repos ailleurs"
Soldiers enough to animate the good and terrify the bad
To work, ever to work, was the primary law of his nature
When persons of merit suffer without cause




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v41
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 42, 1585


CHAPTER VI., Part 1.

     Policy of England--Diplomatic Coquetry--Dutch Envoys in England--
     Conference of Ortel and Walsingham--Interview with Leicester--
     Private Audience of the Queen--Letters of the States--General--
     Ill Effects of Gilpin's Despatch--Close Bargaining of the Queen and
     States--Guarantees required by England--England's comparative
     Weakness--The English characterised--Paul Hentzner--The Envoys in
     London--Their Characters--Olden-Barneveldt described--Reception at
     Greenwich--Speech of Menin--Reply of the Queen--Memorial of the
     Envoys--Discussions with the Ministers--Second Speech of the Queen
     --Third Speech of the Queen

England as we have seen--had carefully watched the negotiations between
France and the Netherlands.  Although she had--upon the whole, for that
intriguing age--been loyal in her bearing towards both parties, she was
perhaps not entirely displeased with the result.  As her cherished
triumvirate was out of the question, it was quite obvious that, now or
never, she must come forward to prevent the Provinces from falling back
into the hands of Spain.  The future was plainly enough foreshadowed, and
it was already probable, in case of a prolonged resistance on the part of
Holland, that Philip would undertake the reduction of his rebellious
subjects by a preliminary conquest of England.  It was therefore quite
certain that the expense and danger of assisting the Netherlands must
devolve upon herself, but, at the same time it was a consolation that her
powerful next-door neighbour was not to be made still more powerful by
the annexation to his own dominion of those important territories.

Accordingly, so soon as the deputies in France had received their
definite and somewhat ignominious repulse from Henry III. and his mother,
the English government lost no time in intimating to the States that they
were not to be left without an ally.  Queen Elizabeth was however
resolutely averse from assuming that sovereignty which she was not
unwilling to see offered for her acceptance; and her accredited envoy at
the Hague, besides other more secret agents, were as busily employed in
the spring of 1585--as Des Pruneaux had been the previous winter on the
part of France--to bring about an application, by solemn embassy, for her
assistance.

There was, however, a difference of view, from the outset, between the
leading politicians of the Netherlands and the English Queen.  The
Hollanders were extremely desirous of becoming her subjects; for the
United States, although they had already formed themselves into an
independent republic, were quite ignorant of their latent powers.  The
leading personages of the country--those who were soon to become the
foremost statesmen of the new commonwealth--were already shrinking from
the anarchy which was deemed inseparable from a non-regal form of
government, and were seeking protection for and against the people under
a foreign sceptre.  On the other hand, they were indisposed to mortgage
large and important fortified towns, such as Flushing, Brill, and others,
for the repayment of the subsidies which Elizabeth might be induced to
advance.  They preferred to pay in sovereignty rather than in money.
The Queen, on the contrary, preferred money to sovereignty, and was not
at all inclined to sacrifice economy to ambition.  Intending to drive a
hard bargain with the States, whose cause was her own, and whose demands
for aid she; had secretly prompted, she meant to grant a certain number
of soldiers for as brief a period as possible, serving at her expense,
and to take for such outlay a most ample security in the shape of
cautionary towns.

Too intelligent a politician not to feel the absolute necessity of at
last coming into the field to help the Netherlanders to fight her own
battle, she was still willing, for a season longer, to wear the mask of
coyness and coquetry, which she thought most adapted to irritate the
Netherlanders into a full compliance with her wishes.  Her advisers in
the Provinces were inclined to take the same view.  It seemed obvious,
after the failure in France, that those countries must now become either
English or Spanish; yet Elizabeth, knowing the risk of their falling
back, from desperation, into the arms of her rival, allowed them to
remain for a season on the edge of destruction--which would probably have
been her ruin also--in the hope of bringing them to her feet on her own
terms.  There was something of feminine art in this policy, and it was
not without the success which often attends such insincere manoeuvres.
At the same time, as the statesmen of the republic knew that it was the
Queen's affair, when so near a neighbour's roof was blazing, they
entertained little doubt of ultimately obtaining her alliance.  It was
pity--in so grave an emergency--that a little frankness could not have
been substituted for a good deal of superfluous diplomacy.

Gilpin, a highly intelligent agent of the English government in Zeeland,
kept Sir Francis Walsingham thoroughly informed of the sentiments
entertained by the people of that province towards England.  Mixing
habitually with the most influential politicians, he was able to render
material assistance to the English council in the diplomatic game which
had been commenced, and on which a no less important stake than the crown
of England was to be hazarded.

"In conference," he said, "with particular persons that bear any rule or
credit, I find a great inclination towards her Majesty, joined
notwithstanding with a kind of coldness.  They allege that matters of
such importance are to be maturely and thoroughly pondered, while some of
them harp upon the old string, as if her Majesty, for the security of her
own estate, was to have the more care of theirs here."

He was also very careful to insinuate the expediency of diplomatic
coquetry into the mind of a Princess who needed no such prompting.
"The less by outward appearance," said he, "this people shall perceive
that her Majesty can be contented to take the protection of them upon
her, the forwarder they will be to seek and send unto her, and the larger
conditions in treaty may be required.  For if they see it to come from
herself, then do they persuade themselves that it is for the greater
security of our own country and her Highness to fear the King of Spain's
greatness.  But if they become seekers unto her Majesty, and if they may,
by outward show, deem that she accounteth not of the said King's might,
but able and sufficient to defend her own realms, then verily I think
they may be brought to whatsoever points her Majesty may desire."

Certainly it was an age of intrigue, in which nothing seemed worth
getting at all unless it could be got by underhand means, and in which
it was thought impossible for two parties to a bargain to meet together
except as antagonists, who believed that one could not derive a profit
from the transaction unless the other had been overreached.  This was
neither good morality nor sound diplomacy, and the result of such
trifling was much loss of time and great disaster.  In accordance with
this crafty system, the agent expressed the opinion that it would "be
good and requisite for the English government somewhat to temporise,"
and to dally for a season longer, in order to see what measures the
States would take to defend themselves, and how much ability and
resources they would show for belligerent purposes.  If the Queen were
too eager, the Provinces would become jealous, "yielding, as it were,
their power, and yet keeping the rudder in their own hands."

At the same time Gilpin was favourably impressed with the character both
of the country and the nation, soon to be placed in such important
relations with England.  "This people," he said, "is such as by fair
means they will be won to yield and grant any reasonable motion or
demand.  What these islands of Zeeland are her Majesty and all my lords
of her council do know.  Yet for their government thus much I must write;
that during these troubles it never was better than now.  They draw, in a
manner, one line, long and carefully in their resolution; but the same
once taken and promises made, they would perform them to the uttermost."

Such then was the character of the people, for no man was better enabled
to form an opinion on the subject than was Gilpin.  Had it not been as
well, then, for Englishmen--who were themselves in that age, as in every
other, apt to "perform to the uttermost promises once taken and made,"
and to respect those endowed with the same wholesome characteristic--to
strike hands at once in a cause which was so vital to both nations?

So soon as the definite refusal of Henry III, was known in England,
Leicester and Walsingham wrote at once to the Netherlands.  The Earl
already saw shining through the distance a brilliant prize for his own
ambition, although he was too haughty, perhaps too magnanimous, but
certainly far too crafty, to suffer such sentiments as yet to pierce to
the surface.

"Mr. Davison," he wrote, "you shall perceive by Mr. Secretary's letters
how the French have dealt with these people.  They are well enough
served; but yet I think, if they will heartily and earnestly seek it, the
Lord hath appointed them a far better defence.  But you must so use the
matter as that they must seek their own good, although we shall be
partakers thereof also.  They may now, if they will effectually and
liberally deal, bring themselves to a better end than ever France would
have brought them."

At that moment there were two diplomatic agents from the States resident
in England--Jacques de Gryze; whom Paul Buys had formerly described as
having thrust himself head and shoulders into the matter without proper
authority, and Joachim Ortel, a most experienced and intelligent man,
speaking and writing English like a native, and thoroughly conversant
with English habits and character.  So soon as the despatches from France
arrived, Walsingham, 18th March, 1585, sent for Ortel, and the two held a
long conference.

Walsingham.--"We have just received letters from Lord Derby and Sir
Edward Stafford, dated the 13th March.  They inform us that your
deputies--contrary to all expectation and to the great hopes that had
been hold out to them--have received, last Sunday, their definite answer
from the King of France.  He tells them, that, considering the present
condition of his kingdom, he is unable to undertake the protection of the
Netherlands; but says that if they like, and if the Queen of England be
willing to second his motion, he is disposed to send a mission of
mediation to Spain for the purpose of begging the King to take the
condition of the provinces to heart, and bringing about some honourable
composition, and so forth, and so forth.

"Moreover the King of France has sent Monsieur de Bellievre to Lord Derby
and Mr. Stafford, and Bellievre has made those envoys a long oration.
He explained to them all about the original treaty between the States and
Monsieur, the King's brother, and what had taken place from that day to
this, concluding, after many allegations and divers reasons, that the
King could not trouble himself with the provinces at present; but hoped
her Majesty would make the best of it, and not be offended with him.

"The ambassadors say further, that they have had an interview with your
deputies, who are excessively provoked at this most unexpected answer
from the King, and are making loud complaints, being all determined to
take themselves off as fast as possible.  The ambassadors have
recommended that some of the number should come home by the way of
England."

Ortel.--"It seems necessary to take active measures at once, and to leave
no duty undone in this matter.  It will be advisable to confer, so soon
as may be, with some of the principal counsellors of her Majesty, and
recommend to them most earnestly the present condition of the provinces.
They know the affectionate confidence which the States entertain towards
England, and must now, remembering the sentiments of goodwill which they
have expressed towards the Netherlands, be willing to employ their
efforts with her Majesty in this emergency."

Walsingham (with much show of vexation).--"This conduct on the part of
the French court has been most pernicious.  Your envoys have been
delayed, fed with idle hopes, and then disgracefully sent away, so that
the best part of the year has been consumed, and it will be most
difficult now, in a great hurry, to get together a sufficient force of
horse and foot folk, with other necessaries in abundance.  On the
contrary, the enemy, who knew from the first what result was to be
expected in France, has been doing his best to be beforehand with you in
the field: add, moreover, that this French negotiation has given other
princes a bad taste in their mouths.  This is the case with her Majesty.
The Queen is, not without reason, annoyed that the States have not only
despised her friendly and good-hearted offers, but have all along been
endeavouring to embark her in this war, for the defence of the Provinces,
which would have cost her several millions, without offering to her the
slightest security.  On the contrary, others, enemies of the religion,
who are not to be depended upon--who had never deserved well of the
States or assisted them in their need, as she has done--have received
this large offer of sovereignty without any reserve whatever."

Ortel (not suffering himself to be disconcerted at this unjust and
somewhat insidious attack).--"That which has been transacted with France
was not done except with the express approbation and full foreknowledge
of her Majesty, so far back as the lifetime of his Excellency (William of
Orange), of high and laudable memory.  Things had already gone so far,
and the Provinces had agreed so entirely together, as to make it
inexpedient to bring about a separation in policy.  It was our duty to
hold together, and, once for all, thoroughly to understand what the King
of France, after such manifold presentations through Monsieur Des
Pruneaulx and others, and in various letters of his own, finally intended
to do.  At the same time, notwithstanding these negotiations, we had
always an especial eye upon her Majesty.  We felt a hopeful confidence
that she would never desert us, leaving us without aid or counsel, but
would consider that these affairs do not concern the Provinces alone or
even especially, but are just as deeply important to her and to all other
princes of the religion."

After this dialogue, with much more conversation of a similar character,
the Secretary and the envoy set themselves frankly and manfully to work.
It was agreed between them that every effort should be made with the
leading members of the Council to induce the Queen "in this terrible
conjuncture, not to forsake the Provinces, but to extend good counsel and
prompt assistance to them in their present embarrassments."

There was, however, so much business in Parliament just then, that it was
impossible to obtain immediately the desired interviews.

On the 20th, Ortel and De Gryze had another interview with Walsingham at
the Palace of Greenwich.  The Secretary expressed the warmest and most
sincere affection for the Provinces, and advised that one of the two
envoys should set forth at once for home in order to declare to the
States, without loss of time, her Majesty's good inclination to assume
the protection of the land, together with the maintenance of the reformed
religion and the ancient privileges.  Not that she was seeking her own
profit, or wished to obtain that sovereignty which had just been offered
to another of the contrary religion, but in order to make manifest her
affectionate solicitude to preserve the Protestant faith and to support
her old allies and neighbours.  Nevertheless, as she could not assume
this protectorate without embarking in a dangerous war with the King of
Spain, in which she would not only be obliged to spend the blood of her
subjects, but also at least two millions of gold, there was the more
reason that the States should give her certain cities as security.  Those
cities would be held by certain of her gentlemen, nominated thereto, of
quality, credit, and religion, at the head of good, true, and well-paid
garrisons, who should make oath never to surrender them to the King of
Spain or to any one else without consent of the States.  The Provinces
were also reciprocally to bind themselves by oath to make no treaty with
the King, without the advice and approval of her Majesty.  It was
likewise thoroughly to be understood that such cautionary towns should be
restored to the States so soon as payment should be made of all moneys
advanced during the war.

Next day the envoys had an interview with the Earl of Leicester, whom
they found as amicably disposed towards their cause as Secretary
Walsingham had been.  "Her Majesty," said the Earl, "is excessively
indignant with the King of France, that he should so long have abused the
Provinces, and at last have dismissed their deputies so contemptuously.
Nevertheless," he continued, "'tis all your own fault to have placed your
hopes so entirely upon him as to entirely forget other princes, and more
especially her Majesty.  Notwithstanding all that has passed, however, I
find her fully determined to maintain the cause of the Provinces.  For my
own part, I am ready to stake my life, estates, and reputation, upon this
issue, and to stand side by side with other gentlemen in persuading her
Majesty to do her utmost for the assistance of your country."

He intimated however, as Walsingham had done, that the matter of
cautionary towns would prove an indispensable condition, and recommended
that one of the two envoys should proceed homeward at once, in order to
procure, as speedily as possible, the appointment of an embassy for that
purpose to her Majesty.  "They must bring full powers," said the Earl,
"to give her the necessary guarantees, and make a formal demand for
protection; for it would be unbecoming, and against her reputation,
to be obliged to present herself, unsought by the other party."

In conclusion, after many strong expressions of good-will, Leicester
promised to meet them next day at court, where he would address the Queen
personally on the subject, and see that they spoke with her as well.
Meantime he sent one of his principal gentlemen to keep company with the
envoys, and make himself useful to them.  This personage, being "of good
quality and a member of Parliament," gave them much useful information,
assuring them that there was a strong feeling in England in favour of the
Netherlands, and that the matter had been very vigorously taken up in the
national legislature.  That assembly had been strongly encouraging her
Majesty boldly to assume the protectorate, and had manifested a
willingness to assist her with the needful.  "And if," said he, "one
subsidy should not be enough, she shall have three, four, five, or six,
or as much as may be necessary."

The same day, the envoys had an interview with Lord Treasurer Burghley,
who held the same language as Walsingham and Leicester had done.  "The
Queen, to his knowledge," he said, "was quite ready to assume the
protectorate; but it was necessary that it should be formally offered,
with the necessary guarantees, and that without further loss of time."

On the 22nd March, according to agreement, Ortel and De Gryze went to the
court at Greenwich.  While waiting there for the Queen, who had ridden
out into the country, they had more conversation with Walsingham, whom
they found even more energetically disposed in their favour than ever,
and who assured them that her Majesty was quite ready to assume the
protectorate so soon as offered.  "Within a month," he said, "after the
signing of a treaty, the troops would be on the spot, under command of
such a personage of quality and religion as would be highly
satisfactory."  While they were talking, the Queen rode into the court-
yard, accompanied by the Earl of Leicester and other gentlemen.  Very
soon afterwards the envoys were summoned to her presence, and allowed to
recommend the affairs of the Provinces to her consideration.  She
lamented the situation of their country, and in a few words expressed her
inclination to render assistance, provided the States would manifest full
confidence in her.  They replied by offering to take instant measures to
gratify all her demands, so soon as those demands should be made known;
and the Queen finding herself surrounded by so many gentlemen and by a
crowd of people, appointed them accordingly to come to her private
apartments the same afternoon.

At that interview none were present save Walsingham and Lord Chamberlain
Howard.  The Queen showed herself "extraordinarily resolute" to take up
the affairs of the Provinces.  "She had always been sure," she said,
"that the French negotiation would have no other issue than the one which
they had just seen.  She was fully aware what a powerful enemy she was
about to make--one who could easily create mischief for her in Scotland
and Ireland; but she was nevertheless resolved, if the States chose to
deal with her frankly and generously, to take them under her protection.
She assured the envoys that if a deputation with full powers and
reasonable conditions should be immediately sent to her, she would not
delay and dally with them, as had been the case in France, but would
despatch them back again at the speediest, and would make her good
inclination manifest by deeds as well as words.  As she was hazarding
her treasure together with the blood and repose of her subjects, she was
not at liberty to do this except on receipt of proper securities."

Accordingly De Gryze went to the Provinces, provided with complimentary
and affectionate letters from the Queen, while Ortel remained in England.
So far all was plain and above-board; and Walsingham, who, from the
first, had been warmly in favour of taking up the Netherland cause, was
relieved by being able to write in straightforward language.  Stealthy
and subtle, where the object was to get within the guard of an enemy who
menaced a mortal blow, he was, both by nature and policy, disposed to
deal frankly with those he called his friends.

"Monsieur de Gryze repaireth presently," he wrote to Davison, "to try if
he can induce the States to send their deputies hither, furnished with
more ample instructions than they had to treat with the French King,
considering that her Majesty carryeth another manner of princely
disposition than that sovereign.  Meanwhile, for that she doubteth lest
in this hard estate of their affairs, and the distrust they have
conceived to be relieved from hence, they should from despair throw
themselves into the course of Spain, her pleasure therefore is--though by
Burnham I sent you directions to put them in comfort of relief, only as
of yourself--that you shall now, as it were, in her name, if you see
cause sufficient, assure some of the aptest instruments that you shall
make choice of for that purpose, that her Majesty, rather than that they
should perish, will be content to take them under her protection."

He added that it was indispensable for the States, upon their part, to
offer "such sufficient cautions and assurances as she might in reason
demand."

Matters were so well managed that by the 22nd April the States-General
addressed a letter to the Queen, in which they notified her, that the
desired deputation was on the point of setting forth.  "Recognizing,"
they said, "that there is no prince or potentate to whom they are more
obliged than they are to your Majesty, we are about to request you very
humbly to accept the sovereignty of these Provinces, and the people of
the same for your very humble vassals and subjects."  They added that,
as the necessity of the case was great, they hoped the Queen would send,
so soon as might be, a force of four or five thousand men for the purpose
of relieving the siege of Antwerp.

A similar letter was despatched by the same courier to the Earl of
Leicester.

On the 1st of May, Ortel had audience of the Queen, to deliver the
letters from the States-General.  He found that despatches, very
encouraging and agreeable in their tenor, had also just arrived from
Davison.  The Queen was in good humour.  She took the letter from Ortel,
read it attentively, and paused a good while.  Then she assured him that
her good affection towards the Provinces was not in the least changed,
and that she thanked the States for the confidence in her that they were
manifesting.  "It is unnecessary," said the Queen, "for me to repeat over
and over again sentiments which I have so plainly declared.  You are to
assure the States that they shall never be disappointed in the trust that
they have reposed in my good intentions.  Let them deal with me
sincerely, and without holding open any back-door.  Not that I am seeking
the sovereignty of the Provinces, for I wish only to maintain their
privileges and ancient liberties, and to defend them in this regard
against all the world.  Let them ripely consider, then, with what
fidelity I am espousing their cause, and how, without fear of any one,
I am arousing most powerful enemies."

Ortel had afterwards an interview with Leicester, in which the Earl
assured him that her Majesty had not in the least changed in her
sentiments towards the Provinces.  "For myself," said he, "I am ready, if
her Majesty choose to make use of me, to go over there in person, and to
place life, property, and all the assistance I can gain from my friends,
upon the issue.  Yea, with so good a heart, that I pray the Lord may be
good to me, only so far as I serve faithfully in this cause."  He added a
warning that the deputies to be appointed should come with absolute
powers, in order that her Majesty's bountiful intentions might not be
retarded by their own fault.

Ortel then visited Walsingham at his house, Barn-Elms, where he was
confined by illness.  Sir Francis assured the envoy that he would use
every effort, by letter to her Majesty and by verbal instructions to his
son-in-law, Sir Philip Sidney, to further the success of the negotiation,
and that he deeply regretted his enforced absence from the court on so
important an occasion.

Matters were proceeding most favourably, and the all-important point of
sending an auxiliary force of Englishmen to the relief of Antwerp--before
it should be too late, and in advance of the final conclusion of the
treaty between the countries-had been nearly conceded.  Just at that
moment, however, "as ill-luck would have it," said Ortel, "came a letter
from Gilpin.  I don't think he meant it in malice, but the effect was
most pernicious.  He sent the information that a new attack was to
be made by the 10th May upon the Kowenstyn, that it was sure to be
successful, and that the siege of Antwerp was as good as raised.  So Lord
Burghley informed me, in presence of Lord Leicester, that her Majesty was
determined to await the issue of this enterprise.  It was quite too late
to get troops in readiness; to co-operate with the States' army, so soon
as the 10th May, and as Antwerp was so sure to be relieved, there was no
pressing necessity for haste.  I uttered most bitter complaints to these
lords and to other counsellors of the Queen, that she should thus draw
back, on account of a letter from a single individual, without paying
sufficient heed to the despatches from the States-General, who certainly
knew their own affairs and their own necessities better than any one else
could do, but her Majesty sticks firm to her resolution."

Here were immense mistakes committed on all sides.  The premature
shooting up of those three rockets from the cathedral-tower, on the
unlucky 10th May, had thus not only ruined the first assault against the
Kowenstyn, but also the second and the more promising adventure.  Had the
four thousand bold Englishmen there enlisted, and who could have reached
the Provinces in time to cooperate in that great enterprise, have stood
side by side with the Hollanders, the Zeelanders, and the Antwerpers,
upon that fatal dyke, it is almost a certainty that Antwerp would have
been relieved, and the whole of Flanders and Brabant permanently annexed
to the independent commonwealth, which would have thus assumed at once
most imposing proportions.

It was a great blunder of Sainte Aldegonde to station in the cathedral,
on so important an occasion, watchmen in whose judgment he could not
thoroughly rely.  It was a blunder in Gilpin, intelligent as he generally
showed himself, to write in such sanguine style before the event.  But it
was the greatest blunder of all for Queen Elizabeth to suspend her
cooperation at the very instant when, as the result showed, it was likely
to prove most successful.  It was a chapter of blunders from first to
last, but the most fatal of all the errors was the one thus prompted by
the great Queen's most traitorous characteristic, her obstinate
parsimony.

And now began a series of sharp chafferings on both sides, not very
much to the credit of either party.  The kingdom of England, and the
rebellious Provinces of Spain, were drawn to each other by an
irresistible law of political attraction.  Their absorption into each
other seemed natural and almost inevitable; and the weight of the strong
Protestant organism, had it been thus completed, might have balanced the
great Catholic League which was clustering about Spain.

It was unfortunate that the two governments of England and the
Netherlands should now assume the attitude of traders driving a hard
bargain with each other, rather than that of two important commonwealths,
upon whose action, at that momentous epoch, the weal and wo of
Christendom was hanging.  It is quite true that the danger to England was
great, but that danger in any event was to be confronted--Philip was to
be defied, and, by assuming the cause of the Provinces to be her own,
which it unquestionably was, Elizabeth was taking the diadem from her
head--as the King of Sweden well observed--and adventuring it upon the
doubtful chance of war.  Would it not have been better then--her mind
being once made up--promptly to accept all the benefits, as well as all
the hazards, of the bold game to which she was of necessity a party?
But she could not yet believe in the incredible meanness of Henry III.
"I asked her Majesty" (3rd May, 1585), said Ortel, "whether, in view of
these vast preparations in France, it did not behove her to be most
circumspect and upon her guard.  For, in the opinion of many men,
everything showed one great scheme already laid down--a general
conspiracy throughout Christendom against the reformed religion.  She
answered me, that thus far she could not perceive this to be the case;
'nor could she believe,' she said, 'that the King of France could be so
faint-hearted as to submit to such injuries from the Guises.'"

Time was very soon to show the nature of that unhappy monarch with regard
to injuries, and to prove to Elizabeth the error she had committed in
doubting his faint-heartedness.  Meanwhile, time was passing, and the
Netherlands were shivering in the storm.  They, needed the open sunshine
which her caution kept too long behind the clouds.  For it was now
enjoined upon Walsingham to manifest a coldness upon the part of the
English government towards the States.  Davison was to be allowed to
return; "but," said Sir Francis, "her Majesty would not have you
accompany the commissioners who are coming from the Low Countries; but to
come over, either before them or after them, lest it be thought they come
over by her Majesty's procurement."

As if they were not coming over by her Majesty's most especial
procurement, and as if it would matter to Philip--the union once made
between England and Holland--whether the invitation to that union came
first from the one party or the other!

"I am retired for my health from the court to mine own house," said
Walsingham, "but I find those in whose judgment her Majesty reposeth
greatest trust so coldly affected unto the cause, as I have no great hope
of the matter; and yet, for that the hearts of princes are in the hands
of God, who both can will and dispose them at his pleasure, I would be
loath to hinder the repair of the commissioners."

Here certainly, had the sun gone most suddenly into a cloud.  Sir Francis
would be loath to advise the commissioners to stay at home, but he
obviously thought them coming on as bootless an errand as that which had
taken their colleagues so recently into France.

The cause of the trouble was Flushing.  Hence the tears, and the
coldness, and the scoldings, on the part of the imperious and the
economical Queen.  Flushing was the patrimony--a large portion of that
which was left to him--of Count Maurice.  It was deeply mortgaged for the
payment of the debts of William the Silent, but his son Maurice, so long
as the elder brother Philip William remained a captive in Spain, wrote
himself Marquis of Flushing and Kampveer, and derived both revenue and
importance from his rights in that important town.  The States of
Zeeland, while desirous of a political fusion of the two countries, were
averse from the prospect of converting, by exception, their commercial,
capital into an English city, the remainder of the Provinces remaining
meanwhile upon their ancient footing.  The negociations on the subject
caused a most ill-timed delay.  The States finding the English government
cooling, affected to grow tepid themselves.  This was the true mercantile
system, perhaps, for managing a transaction most thriftily, but frankness
and promptness would have been more statesmanlike at such a juncture.

"I am sorry to understand," wrote Walsingham, "that the States are not
yet grown to a full resolution for the delivering of the town of Flushing
into her Majesty's hands.  The Queen finding the people of that island so
wavering and inconstant, besides that they can hardly, after the so long
enjoying a popular liberty, bear a regal authority, would be loath to
embark herself into so dangerous a war without some sufficient caution
received from them.  It is also greatly to be doubted, that if, by
practice and corruption, that town might be recovered by the Spaniards,
it would put all the rest of the country in peril.  I find her Majesty,
in case that town may be gotten, fully resolved to receive them into her
protection, so as it may also be made probable unto her that the promised
three hundred thousand guilders the month will be duly paid."

A day or two after writing this letter, Walsingham sent one afternoon, in
a great hurry, for Ortel, and informed him very secretly, that, according
to information just received, the deputies from the States were coming
without sufficient authority in regard to this very matter.  Thus all the
good intentions of the English government were likely to be frustrated,
and the Provinces to be reduced to direful extremity.

"What can we possibly advise her Majesty to do?"  asked Walsingham,
"since you are not willing to put confidence in her intentions.  You are
trying to bring her into a public war, in which she is to risk her
treasure and the blood of her subjects against the greatest potentates of
the world, and you hesitate meantime at giving her such security as is
required for the very defence of the Provinces themselves.  The deputies
are coming hither to offer the sovereignty to her Majesty, as was
recently done in France, or, if that should not prove acceptable, they
are to ask assistance in men and money upon a mere 'taliter qualiter'
guaranty.  That's not the way.  And there are plenty of ill-disposed
persons here to take advantage of this position of affairs to ruin the
interest of the Provinces now placed on so good a footing.  Moreover, in
this perpetual sending of despatches back and forth, much precious time
is consumed; and this is exactly what our enemies most desire."

In accordance with Walsingham's urgent suggestions, Ortel wrote at once
to his constituents, imploring them to remedy this matter.  Do not
allow," he said, any, more time to be wasted.  Let us not painfully,
build a wall only to knock our own heads against it, to the dismay of our
friends and the gratification of our enemies."

It was at last arranged that an important blank should be left in the
articles to be brought by the deputies, upon which vacant place the names
of certain cautionary towns, afterwards to be agreed upon, were to be
inscribed by common consent.

Meantime the English ministers were busy in preparing to receive the
commissioners, and to bring the Netherland matter handsomely before the
legislature.

The integrity, the caution, the thrift, the hesitation, which
characterized Elizabeth's government, were well pourtrayed in the
habitual language of the Lord Treasurer, chief minister of a third-rate
kingdom now called on to play a first-rate part, thoroughly acquainted
with the moral and intellectual power of the nation whose policy he
directed, and prophetically conscious of the great destinies which were
opening upon her horizon.  Lord Burghley could hardly be censured--least
of all ridiculed--for the patient and somewhat timid attributes of his
nature: The ineffable ponderings, which might now be ludicrous, on the
part of a minister of the British Empire, with two hundred millions of
subjects and near a hundred millions of revenue, were almost inevitable
in a man guiding a realm of four millions of people with half a million
of income.

It was, on the whole, a strange negotiation, this between England and
Holland.  A commonwealth had arisen, but was unconscious of the strength
which it was to find in the principle of states' union, and of religious
equality.  It sought, on the contrary, to exchange its federal
sovereignty for provincial dependence, and to imitate, to a certain
extent, the very intolerance by which it had been driven into revolt.
It was not unnatural that the Netherlanders should hate the Roman
Catholic religion, in the name of which they had endured such infinite
tortures, but it is, nevertheless, painful to observe that they requested
Queen Elizabeth, whom they styled defender, not of "the faith" but of the
"reformed religion," to exclude from the Provinces, in case she accepted
the sovereignty, the exercise of all religious rites except those
belonging to the reformed church.  They, however, expressly provided
against inquisition into conscience.  Private houses were to be sacred,
the, papists free within their own walls, but the churches were to be
closed to those of the ancient faith.  This was not so bad as to hang,
burn, drown, and bury alive nonconformists, as had been done by Philip
and the holy inquisition in the name of the church of Rome; nor is it
very surprising that the horrible past should have caused that church to
be regarded with sentiments of such deep-rooted hostility as to make the
Hollanders shudder at the idea of its re-establishment.  Yet, no doubt,
it was idle for either Holland or England, at that day, to talk of a
reconciliation with Rome.  A step had separated them, but it was a step
from a precipice.  No human power could bridge the chasm.  The steep
contrast between the league and the counter-league, between the systems
of Philip and Mucio, and that of Elizabeth and Olden-Barneveld, ran
through the whole world of thought, action, and life.

But still the negociation between Holland and England was a strange one.
Holland wished to give herself entirely, and England feared to accept.
Elizabeth, in place of sovereignty, wanted mortgages; while Holland was
afraid to give a part, although offering the whole.  There was no great
inequality between the two countries.  Both were instinctively conscious,
perhaps, of standing on the edge of a vast expansion.  Both felt that
they were about to stretch their wings suddenly for a flight over the
whole earth.  Yet each was a very inferior power, in comparison with the
great empires of the past or those which then existed.

It is difficult, without a strong effort of the imagination, to reduce
the English empire to the slender proportions which belonged to her in
the days of Elizabeth.  That epoch was full of light and life.  The
constellations which have for centuries been shining in the English
firmament were then human creatures walking English earth.  The captains,
statesmen, corsairs, merchant-adventurers, poets, dramatists, the great
Queen herself, the Cecils, Raleigh, Walsingham, Drake, Hawkins, Gilbert,
Howard, Willoughby, the Norrises, Essex, Leicester, Sidney, Spenser,
Shakspeare and the lesser but brilliant lights which surrounded him; such
were the men who lifted England upon an elevation to which she was not
yet entitled by her material grandeur.  At last she had done with Rome,
and her expansion dated from that moment.

Holland and England, by the very condition of their existence, were sworn
foes to Philip.  Elizabeth stood excommunicated of the Pope.  There was
hardly a month in which intelligence was not sent by English agents out
of the Netherlands and France, that assassins, hired by Philip, were
making their way to England to attempt the life of the Queen.  The
Netherlanders were rebels to the Spanish monarch, and they stood, one
and all, under death-sentence by Rome.  The alliance was inevitable and
wholesome.  Elizabeth was, however, consistently opposed to the
acceptance of a new sovereignty.  England was a weak power.  Ireland was
at her side in a state of chronic rebellion--a stepping-stone for Spain
in its already foreshadowed invasion.  Scotland was at her back with a
strong party of Catholics, stipendiaries of Philip, encouraged by the
Guises and periodically inflamed to enthusiasm by the hope of rescuing
Mary Stuart from her imprisonment, bringing her rival's head to the
block, and elevating the long-suffering martyr upon the throne of all the
British Islands.  And in the midst of England itself, conspiracies were
weaving every day.  The mortal duel between the two queens was slowly
approaching its termination.  In the fatal form of Mary was embodied
everything most perilous to England's glory and to England's Queen.
Mary Stuart meant absolutism at home, subjection to Rome and Spain
abroad.  The uncle Guises were stipendiaries of Philip, Philip was the
slave of the Pope.  Mucio had frightened the unlucky Henry III. into
submission, and there was no health nor hope in France.  For England,
Mary Stuart embodied the possible relapse into sloth, dependence,
barbarism.  For Elizabeth, Mary Stuart embodied sedition, conspiracy,
rebellion, battle, murder, and sudden death.

It was not to be wondered at that the Queen thus situated should be
cautious, when about throwing down the gauntlet to the greatest powers of
the earth.  Yet the commissioners from the United States were now on
their way to England to propose the throwing of that gauntlet.  What now
was that England?

Its population was, perhaps, not greater than the numbers which dwell
to-day within its capital and immediate suburbs.  Its revenue was perhaps
equal to the sixtieth part of the annual interest on the present national
debt.  Single, highly-favoured individuals, not only in England but in
other countries cis- and trans-Atlantic, enjoy incomes equal to more than
half the amount of Elizabeth's annual budget.  London, then containing
perhaps one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, was hardly so
imposing a town as Antwerp, and was inferior in most material respects to
Paris and Lisbon.  Forty-two hundred children were born every year within
its precincts, and the deaths were nearly as many.  In plague years,
which were only too frequent, as many as twenty and even thirty thousand
people had been annually swept away.

At the present epoch there are seventeen hundred births every week, and
about one thousand deaths.

It is instructive to throw a glance at the character of the English
people as it appeared to intelligent foreigners at that day; for the
various parts of the world were not then so closely blended, nor did
national colours and characteristics flow so liquidly into each other,
as is the case in these days of intimate juxta-position.

"The English are a very clever, handsome, and well-made people," says a
learned Antwerp historian and merchant, who had resided a long time in
London, "but, like all islanders, by nature weak and tender.  They are
generally fair, particularly the women, who all--even to the peasant
women--protect their complexions from the sun with fans and veils, as
only the stately gentlewomen do in Germany and the Netherlands.  As a
people they are stout-hearted, vehement, eager, cruel in war, zealous in
attack, little fearing: death; not revengeful, but fickle, presumptuous,
rash, boastful, deceitful, very suspicious, especially of strangers, whom
they despise.  They are full of courteous and hypocritical gestures and
words, which they consider to imply good manners, civility, and wisdom.
They are well spoken, and very hospitable.  They feed well, eating much
meat, which-owing to the rainy climate and the ranker character of the
grass--is not so firm and succulent as the meat of France and the
Netherlands.  The people are not so laborious as the French and
Hollanders, preferring to lead an indolent life, like the Spaniards.
The most difficult and ingenious of the handicrafts are in the hands
of foreigners, as is the case with the lazy inhabitants of Spain.
They feed many sheep, with fine wool, from which, two hundred years ago,
they learned to make cloth.  They keep many idle servants, and many wild
animals for their pleasure, instead of cultivating the sail.  They have
many ships, but they do not even catch fish enough for their own
consumption, but purchase of their neighbours.  They dress very
elegantly.  Their costume is light and costly, but they are very
changeable and capricious, altering their fashions every year, both the
men and the women.  When they go away from home, riding or travelling,
they always wear their best clothes, contrary to the habit of other
nations.  The English language is broken Dutch, mixed with French and
British terms and words, but with a lighter pronunciation.  They do not
speak from the chest, like the Germans, but prattle only with the
tongue."

Here are few statistical facts, but certainly it is curious to see how
many national traits thus photographed by a contemporary, have quite
vanished, and have been exchanged for their very opposites.  Certainly
the last physiological criticism of all would indicate as great a
national metamorphosis, during the last three centuries, as is offered by
many other of the writer's observations.

"With regard to the women," continues the same authority, "they are
entirely in the power of the men, except in matters of life and death,
yet they are not kept so closely and strictly as in Spain and elsewhere.
They are not locked up, but have free management of their household,
like the Netherlanders and their other neighbours.  They are gay in
their clothing, taking well their ease, leaving house-work to the
servant-maids, and are fond of sitting, finely-dressed, before their
doors to see the passers-by and to be seen of them.  In all banquets and
dinner-parties they have the most honour, sitting at the upper end of the
board, and being served first.

"Their time is spent in riding, lounging, card-playing, and making merry
with their gossips at child-bearings, christenings, churchings, and
buryings; and all this conduct the men wink at, because such are the
customs of the land.  They much commend however the industry and careful
habits of the German and Netherland women, who do the work which in
England devolves upon the men.  Hence, England is called the paradise of
married women, for the unmarried girls are kept much more strictly than
upon the continent.  The women are, handsome, white, dressy, modest;
although they go freely about the streets without bonnet, hood, or veil;
but lately learned to cover their faces with a silken mask or vizard with
a plumage of feathers, for they change their fashions every year, to the
astonishment of many."

Paul Hentzner, a tourist from Germany at precisely the same epoch,
touches with equal minuteness on English characteristics.  It may be
observed, that, with some discrepancies, there is also much similarity,
in the views of the two critics.

"The English," says the whimsical Paul, are serious, like the Germans,
lovers of show, liking to be followed, wherever they go, by troops of
servants, who wear their master's arms, in silver, fastened to their left
sleeves, and are justly ridiculed for wearing tails hanging down their
backs.  They excel in dancing and music, for they are active and lively,
although they are of thicker build than the Germans.  They cut their hair
close on the forehead, letting it hang down on either side.  They are
good sailors, and better pirates, cunning, treacherous, thievish.  Three
hundred and upwards are hanged annually in London.  Hawking is the
favourite sport of the nobility.  The English are more polite in eating
than the French, devouring less bread, but more meat, which they roast in
perfection.  They put a great deal of sugar in their drink.  Their beds
are covered with tapestry, even those of farmers.  They are powerful in
the field, successful against their enemies, impatient of anything like
slavery, vastly fond of great ear-filling noises, such as cannon-firing,
drum-beating, and bell-ringing; so that it is very common for a number of
them, when they have got a cup too much in their heads, to go up to some
belfry, and ring the bells for an hour together, for the sake of the
amusement.  If they see a foreigner very well made or particularly
handsome, they will say "'tis pity he is not an Englishman."

It is also somewhat amusing, at the present day, to find a German
elaborately explaining to his countrymen the mysteries of tobacco-
smoking, as they appeared to his unsophisticated eyes in England.  "At
the theatres and everywhere else," says the traveller, "the English are
constantly smoking tobacco in the following manner.  They have pipes,
made on purpose, of clay.  At the further end of these is a bowl.  Into
the bowl they put the herb, and then setting fire to it, they draw the
smoke into their mouths, which they puff out again through their
nostrils, like funnels," and so on; conscientious explanations which a
German tourist of our own times might think it superfluous to offer to
his compatriots.

It is also instructive to read that the light-fingered gentry of the
metropolis were nearly as adroit in their calling as they are at present,
after three additional centuries of development for their delicate craft;
for the learned Tobias Salander, the travelling companion of Paul
Hentzner, finding himself at a Lord Mayor's Show, was eased of his purse,
containing nine crowns, as skilfully as the feat could have been done by
the best pickpocket of the nineteenth century, much to that learned
person's discomfiture.

Into such an England and among such English the Netherland envoys had now
been despatched on their most important errand.

After twice putting back, through stress of weather, the commissioners,
early in July, arrived at London, and were "lodged and very worshipfully
appointed at charges of her Majesty in the Clothworkers' Hall in Pynchon-
lane, near Tower-street."  About the Tower and its faubourgs the
buildings were stated to be as elegant as they were in the city itself,
although this was hardly very extravagant commendation.  From this
district a single street led along the river's strand to Westminster,
where were the old and new palaces, the famous hall and abbey, the
Parliament chambers, and the bridge to Southwark, built of stone, with
twenty arches, sixty feet high, and with rows of shops and dwelling-
houses on both its sides.  Thence, along the broad and beautiful river,
were dotted here and there many stately mansions and villas, residences
of bishops and nobles, extending farther and farther west as the city
melted rapidly into the country.  London itself was a town lying high
upon a hill--the hill of Lud--and consisted of a coil of narrow,
tortuous, unseemly streets, each with a black, noisome rivulet running
through its centre, and with rows of three-storied, leaden-roofed houses,
built of timber-work filled in with lime, with many gables, and with the
upper stories overhanging and darkening the basements.  There were one
hundred and twenty-one churches, small and large, the most conspicuous of
which was the Cathedral.  Old Saint Paul's was not a very magnificent
edifice--but it was an extremely large one, for it was seven hundred and
twenty feet long, one hundred and thirty broad, and had a massive
quadrangular tower, two hundred and sixty feet high.  Upon this tower had
stood a timber-steeple, rising, to a height of five hundred and thirty-
four feet from the ground, but it had been struck by lightning in the
year 1561, and consumed to the stone-work.

The Queen's favourite residence was Greenwich Palace, the place of her
birth, and to this mansion, on the 9th of July, the Netherland envoys
were conveyed, in royal barges, from the neighbourhood of Pynchon-lane,
for their first audience.

The deputation was a strong one.  There was Falck of Zeeland, a man
of consummate adroitness, perhaps not of as satisfactory integrity;
"a shrewd fellow and a fine," as Lord Leicester soon afterwards
characterised him.  There was Menin, pensionary of Dort, an eloquent and
accomplished orator, and employed on this occasion as chief spokesman of
the legation--"a deeper man, and, I think, an honester," said the same
personage, adding, with an eye to business, "and he is but poor, which
you must consider, but with great secrecy."  There was Paul Buys, whom we
have met with before; keen, subtle, somewhat loose of life, very
passionate, a most most energetic and valuable friend to England, a
determined foe to France, who had resigned the important post of
Holland's Advocate, when the mission offering sovereignty to Henry III.
had been resolved upon, and who had since that period been most
influential in procuring the present triumph of the English policy.
Through his exertions the Province of Holland had been induced at an
early moment to furnish the most ample instructions to the commissioners
for the satisfaction of Queen Elizabeth in the great matter of the
mortgages.  "Judge if this Paul Buys has done his work well," said a
French agent in the Netherlands, who, despite the infamous conduct of his
government towards the Provinces, was doing his best to frustrate the
subsequent negotiation with England, "and whether or no he has Holland
under his thumb."  The same individual had conceived hopes from Falck of
Zeeland.  That Province, in which lay the great bone of contention
between the Queen and the States--the important town of Flushing--was
much slower than Holland to agree to the English policy.  It is to be
feared that Falck was not the most ingenuous and disinterested politician
that could be found even in an age not distinguished for frankness or
purity; for even while setting forth upon the mission to Elizabeth, he
was still clingihg, or affecting to cling, to the wretched delusion of
French assistance.  "I regret infinitely," said Falck to the French agent
just mentioned, "that I am employed in this affair, and that it is
necessary in our present straits to have recourse to England.  There is--
so to speak--not a person in our Province that is inclined that way, all
recognizing very well that France is much more salutary for us, besides
that we all bear her a certain affection.  Indeed, if I were assured that
the King still felt any goodwill towards us, I would so manage matters
that neither the Queen of England, nor any other prince whatever except
his most Christian-Majesty should take a bite at this country, at least
at this Province, and with that view, while waiting for news from France,
I will keep things in suspense, and spin them out as long as it is
possible to do."

The news from France happened soon to be very conclusive, and it then
became difficult even for Falek to believe--after intelligence received
of the accord between Henry III. and the Guises--that his Christian
Majesty, would be inclined for a bite at the Netherlands.  This duplicity
on the part of so leading a personage furnishes a key to much of the
apparent dilatoriness on the part of the English government: It has been
seen that Elizabeth, up to the last moment, could not fairly comprehend
the ineffable meanness of the French monarch.  She told Ortel that she
saw no reason to believe in that great Catholic conspiracy against
herself and against all Protestantism which was so soon to be made public
by the King's edict of July, promulgated at the very instant of the
arrival in England of the Netherland envoys.  Then that dread fiat had
gone forth, the most determined favourer of the French alliance could no
longer admit its possibility, and Falck became the more open to that
peculiar line of argument which Leicester had suggested with regard to
one of the other deputies.  "I will do my best," wrote Walsingham, "to
procure that Paul Buys and Falck shall receive underhand some reward."

Besides Menin, Falck, and Buys, were Noel de Caron, an experienced
diplomatist; the poet-soldier, Van der Does; heroic defender of Leyden;
De Gryze, Hersolte, Francis Maalzoon, and three legal Frisians of pith
and substance, Feitsma, Aisma, and Jongema;  a dozen Dutchmen together--
as muscular champions as ever little republic sent forth to wrestle with
all comers in the slippery ring of diplomacy.  For it was instinctively
felt that here were conclusions to be tried with a nation of deep, solid
thinkers, who were aware that a great crisis in the world's history had
occurred, and would put forth their most substantial men to deal with it:
Burghley and Walsingham, the great Queen herself, were no feather-weights
like the frivolous Henry III., and his minions.  It was pity, however,
that the discussions about to ensue presented from the outset rather the
aspect of a hard hitting encounter of antagonists than that of a frank
and friendly congress between two great parties whose interests were
identical.

Since the death of William the Silent, there was no one individual in the
Netherlands to impersonate the great struggle of the Provinces with Spain
and Rome, and to concentrate upon his own head a poetical, dramatic, and
yet most legitimate interest.  The great purpose of the present history
must be found in its illustration of the creative power of civil and
religious freedom.  Here was a little republic, just born into the world,
suddenly bereft of its tutelary saint, left to its own resources, yet
already instinct with healthy vigorous life, and playing its difficult
part among friends and enemies with audacity, self-reliance, and success.
To a certain extent its achievements were anonymous, but a great
principle manifested itself through a series of noble deeds.  Statesmen,
soldiers, patriots, came forward on all sides to do the work which was to
be done, and those who were brought into closest contact with the
commonwealth acknowledged in strongest language the signal ability with
which, self-guided, she steered her course.  Nevertheless, there was at
this moment one Netherlander, the chief of the present mission to
England, already the foremost statesman of his country, whose name will
not soon be effaced from the record of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.  That man was John of Olden-Barneveld.

He was now in his thirty-eighth year, having been born at Amersfoot on
the 14th of September, 1547.  He bore an imposing name, for the Olden-
Barnevelds of Gelderland were a race of unquestionable and antique
nobility.  His enemies, however, questioned his right to the descent
which he claimed.  They did not dispute that the great grandfather, Class
van Olden-Barneveld, was of distinguished lineage and allied to many
illustrious houses, but they denied that Class was really the great
grandfather of John.  John's father, Gerritt, they said, was a nameless
outcast, a felon, a murderer, who had escaped the punishment due to his
crimes, but had dragged out a miserable existence in the downs, burrowing
like a rabbit in the sand.  They had also much to say in disparagement of
all John's connections.  Not only was his father a murderer, but his
wife, whom he had married for money, was the child of a most horrible
incest, his sisters were prostitutes, his sons and brothers were
debauchees and drunkards, and, in short, never had a distinguished man a
more uncomfortable and discreditable family-circle than that which
surrounded Barneveld, if the report of his enemies was to be believed.
Yet it is agreeable to reflect that, with all the venom which they had
such power of secreting, these malignant tongues had been unable to
destroy the reputation of the man himself.  John's character was
honourable and upright, his intellectual power not disputed even by those
who at a later period hated him the most bitterly.  He had been a
profound and indefatigable student from his earliest youth.  He had read
law at Leyden, in France, at Heidelberg.  Here, in the head-quarters of
German Calvinism, his youthful mind had long pondered the dread themes of
foreknowledge, judgment absolute, free will, and predestination: To
believe it worth the while of a rational and intelligent Deity to create
annually several millions of thinking beings, who were to struggle for a
brief period on earth, and to consume in perpetual brimstone afterwards,
while others were predestined to endless enjoyment, seemed to him an
indifferent exchange for a faith in the purgatory and paradise of Rome.
Perplexed in the extreme, the youthful John bethought himself of an
inscription over the gateway of his famous but questionable great
grandfather's house at Amersfort--'nil scire tutissima fides.'  He
resolved thenceforth to adopt a system of ignorance upon matters beyond
the flaming walls of the world; to do the work before him manfully and
faithfully while he walked the earth, and to trust that a benevolent
Creator would devote neither him nor any other man to eternal hellfire.
For this most offensive doctrine he was howled at by the strictly pious,
while he earned still deeper opprobrium by daring to advocate religious
toleration: In face of the endless horrors inflicted by the Spanish
Inquisition upon his native land, he had the hardihood--although a
determined Protestant himself--to claim for Roman Catholics the right to
exercise their religion in the free States on equal terms with those of
the reformed faith.  "Anyone," said his enemies, "could smell what that
meant who had not a wooden nose."  In brief, he was a liberal Christian,
both in theory and practice, and he nobly confronted in consequence the
wrath of bigots on both sides.  At a later period the most zealous
Calvinists called him Pope John, and the opinions to which he was to owe
such appellations had already been formed in his mind.

After completing his very thorough legal studies, he had practised as
an advocate in Holland and Zeeland.  An early defender of civil and
religious freedom, he had been brought at an early day into contact with
William the Silent, who recognized his ability.  He had borne a snap-
hance on his shoulder as a volunteer in the memorable attempt to relieve
Haarlem, and was one of the few survivors of that bloody night.  He had
stood outside the walls of Leyden in company of the Prince of Orange when
that magnificent destruction of the dykes had taken place by which the
city had been saved from the fate impending over it.  At a still more
recent period we have seen him landing from the gun-boats upon the
Kowenstyn, on the fatal 26th May.  These military adventures were,
however, but brief and accidental episodes in his career, which was
that of a statesman and diplomatist.  As pensionary of Rotterdam, he was
constantly a member of the General Assembly, and had already begun to
guide the policy of the new commonwealth.  His experience was
considerable, and he was now in the high noon of his vigour and his
usefulness.

He was a man of noble and imposing presence, with thick hair pushed from
a broad forehead rising dome-like above a square and massive face; a
strong deeply-coloured physiognomy, with shaggy brow, a chill blue eye,
not winning but commanding, high cheek bones, a solid, somewhat scornful
nose, a firm mouth and chin, enveloped in a copious brown beard;
the whole head not unfitly framed in the stiff formal ruff of the period;
and the tall stately figure well draped in magisterial robes of velvet
and sable--such was John of Olden-Barneveld.

The Commissioners thus described arrived at Greenwich Stairs, and were at
once ushered into the palace, a residence which had been much enlarged
and decorated by Henry VIII.

They were received with stately ceremony.  The presence-chamber was hung
with Gobelin tapestry, its floor strewn with rushes.  Fifty-gentlemen
pensioners, with gilt battle-ages, and a throng of 'buffetiers', or beef-
eaters, in that quaint old-world garb which has survived so many
centuries, were in attendance, while the counsellors of the Queen, in
their robes of state, waited around the throne.

There, in close skull-cap and dark flowing gown, was the subtle,
monastic-looking Walsingham, with long, grave, melancholy face and
Spanish eyes.  There too, white staff in hand, was Lord High Treasurer
Burghley, then sixty-five years of age, with serene blue eye, large,
smooth, pale, scarce-wrinkled face and forehead; seeming, with his
placid, symmetrical features, and great velvet bonnet, under which such
silver hairs as remained were soberly tucked away, and with his long dark
robes which swept the ground, more like a dignified gentlewoman than a
statesman, but for the wintery beard which lay like a snow-drift on his
ancient breast.

The Queen was then in the fifty-third year of her age, and considered
herself in the full bloom of her beauty.  Her, garments were of satin and
velvet, with fringes of pearl as big as beans.  A small gold crown was
upon her head, and her red hair, throughout its multiplicity of curls,
blazed with diamonds and emeralds.  Her forehead was tall, her face long,
her complexion fair, her eyes small, dark, and glittering, her nose high
and hooked, her lips thin, her teeth black, her bosom white and liberally
exposed.  As she passed through the ante-chamber to the presence-hall,
supplicants presented petitions upon their knees.  Wherever she glanced,
all prostrated themselves on the ground.  The cry of "Long live Queen
Elizabeth" was spontaneous and perpetual; the reply; "I thank you, my
good people," was constant and cordial.  She spoke to various foreigners
in their respective languages, being mistress, besides the Latin and
Greek, of French, Spanish, Italian, and German.  As the Commissioners
were presented to her by Lord Buckhurst it was observed that she was
perpetually gloving and ungloving, as if to attract attention to her
hand, which was esteemed a wonder of beauty.  She spoke French with
purity and elegance, but with a drawling, somewhat affected accent,
saying "Paar maa foi; paar le Dieeu vivaant," and so forth, in a style
which was ridiculed by Parisians, as she sometimes, to her extreme
annoyance, discovered.

Joos de Menin, pensionary of Dort, in the name of all the envoys, made an
elaborate address.  He expressed the gratitude which the States
entertained for her past kindness, and particularly for the good offices
rendered by Ambassador Davison after the death of the Prince of Orange,
and for the deep regret expressed by her Majesty for their disappointment
in the hopes they had founded upon France.

"Since the death of the Prince of Orange," he said, "the States have lost
many important cities, and now, for the preservation of their existence,
they have need of a prince and sovereign lord to defend them against the
tyranny and iniquitous oppression of the Spaniards and their adherents,
who are more and more determined utterly to destroy their country, and
reduce the poor people to a perpetual slavery worse than that of Indians,
under the insupportable and detestable yoke of the Spanish Inquisition.
We have felt a confidence that your Majesty will not choose to see us
perish at the hands of the enemy against whom we have been obliged to
sustain this long and cruel war.  That war we have undertaken in order to
preserve for the poor people their liberty, laws, and franchises,
together with the exercise of the true Christian religion, of which your
Majesty bears rightfully the title of defender, and against which the
enemy and his allies have made so many leagues and devised so many
ambushes and stratagems, besides organizing every day so many plots
against the life of your Majesty and the safety of your realms--schemes
which thus far the good God has averted for the good of Christianity and
the maintenance of His churches.  For these reasons, Madam, the States
have taken a firm resolution to have recourse to your Majesty, seeing
that it is an ordinary thing for all oppressed nations to apply in their
calamity to neighbouring princes, and especially to such as are endowed
with piety, justice, magnanimity, and other kingly virtues.  For this
reason we have been deputed to offer to your Majesty the sovereignty over
these Provinces, under certain good and equitable conditions, having
reference chiefly to the maintenance of the reformed religion and of our
ancient liberties and customs.  And although, in the course of these long
and continued wars, the enemy has obtained possession of many cities and
strong places within our couniry, nevertheless the Provinces of Holland,
Zeeland, Utrecht, and Friesland, are, thank God, still entire.  And in
those lands are many large and stately cities, beautiful and deep rivers,
admirable seaports, from which your Majesty and your successors can
derive much good fruit and commodity, of which it is scarcely, necessary
to make a long recital.  This point, however, beyond the rest, merits a
special consideration; namely, that the conjunction of those Provinces of
Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, and Friesland, together with the cities of
Sluys and Ostend, with the kingdoms of your Majesty, carries with it the
absolute empire of the great ocean, and consequently an assurance of
perpetual felicity for your subjects.  We therefore humbly entreat you to
agree to our conditions, to accept the sovereign seignory of these
Provinces, and consequently to receive the people of the same as your
very humble and obedient subjects, under the perpetual safeguard of your
crown--a people certainly as faithful and loving towards their princes
and sovereign lords, to speak without boasting, as any in all
Christendom.

"So doing, Madam, you will preserve many beautiful churches which it has
pleased God to raise up in these lands, now much afflicted and shaken,
and you will deliver this country and people--before the iniquitous
invasion of the Spaniards, so rich and flourishing by the great Commodity
of the sea, their ports and rivers, their commerce and manufactures, for
all which they have such natural advantages--from ruin and perpetual
slavery of body and soul.  This will be a truly excellent work, agreeable
to God, profitable to Christianity, worthy of immortal praise, and
comporting with the heroic virtues of your Majesty, and ensuring the
prosperity of your country and people.  With this we present to your
Majesty our articles and conditions, and pray that the King of Kings may
preserve you from all your enemies and ever have you in His holy
keeping."

The Queen listened intently and very courteously to the delivery of this
address, and then made answer in French to this effect:--"Gentlemen,--Had
I a thousand tongues I should not be able to express my obligation to you
for the great and handsome offers which you have just made.  I firmly
believe that this proceeds from the true zeal, devotion, and affection,
which you have always borne me, and I am certain that you have ever
preferred me to all the princes and potentates in the world.  Even when
you selected the late Duke of Anjou, who was so dear to me, and to whose
soul I hope that God has been merciful, I know that you would sooner have
offered your country to me if I had desired that you should do so.
Certainly I esteem it a great thing that you wish to be governed by me,
and I feel so much obliged to you in consequence that I will never
abandon you, but, on the contrary, assist you till the last sigh of my
life.  I know very well that your princes have treated you ill, and that
the Spaniards are endeavouring to ruin you entirely; but I will come to
your aid, and I will consider what I can do, consistently with my honour,
in regard to the articles which you have brought me.  They shall be
examined by the members of my council, and I promise that I will not keep
you three or four months, for I know very well that your affairs require
haste, and that they will become ruinous if you are not assisted.  It is
not my custom to procrastinate, and upon this occasion I shall not dally,
as others have done, but let you have my answer very soon."

Certainly, if the Provinces needed a king, which they had most
unequivocally declared to be the case, they might have wandered the
whole earth over, and, had it been possible, searched through the whole
range of history, before finding a monarch with a more kingly spirit
than the great Queen to whom they had at last had recourse.

Unfortunately, she was resolute in her refusal to accept the offered
sovereignty.  The first interview terminated with this exchange of
addresses, and the deputies departed in their barges for their lodgings
in Pynchon-lane.

The next two days were past in perpetual conferences, generally at Lord
Burghley's house, between the envoys and the lords of the council, in
which the acceptance of the sovereignty was vehemently urged on the part
of the Netherlanders, and steadily declined in the name of her Majesty.

"Her Highness," said Burghley, "cannot be induced, by any writing or
harangue that you can make, to accept the principality or proprietorship
as sovereign, and it will therefore be labour lost for you to exhibit any
writing for the purpose of changing her intention.  It will be better to
content yourselves with her Majesty's consent to assist you, and to take
you under her protection."

Nevertheless, two days afterwards, a writing was exhibited, drawn up by
Menin, in which another elaborate effort was made to alter the Queen's
determination.  This anxiety, on the part of men already the principal
personages in a republic, to merge the independent existence of their
commonwealth in another and a foreign political organism, proved, at any
rate; that they were influenced by patriotic motives alone.  It is also
instructive to observe the intense language with which the necessity
of a central paramount sovereignty for all the Provinces, and the
inconveniences of the separate States' right principle were urged by a
deputation, at the head of which stood Olden-Barneveld.  "Although it is
not becoming in us," said they, "to enquire into your Majesty's motives
for refusing the sovereignty of our country, nevertheless, we cannot help
observing that your consent would be most profitable, as well to your
Majesty, and your successors, as to the Provinces themselves.  By your
acceptance of the sovereignty the two peoples would be, as it were,
united in one body.  This would cause a fraternal benevolence between
them, and a single reverence, love, and obedience to your Majesty.--The
two peoples being thus under the government of the same sovereign prince,
the intrigues and practices which the enemy could attempt with persons
under a separate subjection, would of necessity surcease.  Moreover,
those Provinces are all distinct duchies, counties, seignories, governed
by their own magistrates, laws, and ordinances; each by itself, without
any authority or command to be exercised by one Province over another.
To this end they have need of a supreme power and of one sovereign prince
or seignor, who may command all equally, having a constant regard to the
public weal--considered as a generality, and not with regard to the
profit of the one or the other individual Province--and, causing promptly
and universally to be executed such ordinances as may be made in the
matter of war or police, according to various emergencies.  Each
Province, on the contrary, retaining its sovereignty over its own
inhabitants, obedience will not be so promptly and completely rendered
to the commands of the lieutenant-general of your Majesty, and many,
a good enterprise and opportunity, will be lost.  Where there is not a
single authority it is always found that one party endeavours to usurp
power over another, or to escape doing his duty so thoroughly as the
others.  And this has notoriously been the case in the matter of
contributions, imposts, and similar matters."

Thus much, and more of similar argument, logically urged, made it
sufficiently evident that twenty years of revolt and of hard fighting
against one king, had not destroyed in the minds of the leading
Netherlanders their conviction of the necessity of kingship.  If the new
commonwealth was likely to remain a republic, it was, at that moment at
any rate, because they could not find a king.  Certainly they did their
best to annex themselves to England, and to become loyal subjects of
England's Elizabeth.  But the Queen, besides other objections to the
course proposed by the Provinces, thought that she could do a better
thing in the way of mortgages.  In this, perhaps, there was something of
the penny-wise policy, which sprang from one great defect in her
character.  At any rate much mischief was done by the mercantile spirit
which dictated the hard chaffering on both sides the Channel at this
important juncture; for during this tedious flint-paring, Antwerp, which
might have been saved, was falling into the hands of Philip.  It should
never be forgotten, however, that the Queen had no standing army, and but
a small revenue.  The men to be sent from England to the Netherland wars
were first to be levied wherever it was possible to find them.  In truth,
many were pressed in the various wards of London, furnished with red
coats and matchlocks at the expense of the citizens, and so despatched,
helter-skelter, in small squads as opportunity offered.  General Sir John
Norris was already superintending these operations, by command of the
Queen, before the present formal negotiation with the States had begun.

Subsequently to the 11th July, on which day the second address had been
made to Elizabeth, the envoys had many conferences with Leicester,
Burghley, Walsingham, and other councillors, without making much
progress.  There was perpetual wrangling about figures and securities.

"What terms will you pledge for the repayment of the monies to be
advanced?"  asked Burghley and Walsingham.

"But if her Majesty takes the sovereignty," answered the deputies, "there
will be no question of guarantees.  The Queen will possess our whole
land, and there will be no need of any repayment."

"And we have told you over and over again," said the Lord Treasurer,
"that her Majesty will never think of accepting the sovereignty.  She
will assist you in money and men, and must be repaid to the last farthing
when the war is over; and, until that period, must have solid pledges in
the shape of a town in each Province."

Then came interrogatories as to the amount of troops and funds to be
raised respectively by the Queen and the States for the common cause.
The Provinces wished her Majesty to pay one-third of the whole expense,
while her Majesty was reluctant to pay one-quarter.  The States wished
a permanent force to be kept on foot in the Netherlands of thirteen
thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry for the field, and twenty-
three thousand for garrisons.  The councillors thought the last item too
much.  Then there were queries as to the expense of maintaining a force
in the Provinces.  The envoys reckoned one pound sterling, or ten
florins, a month for the pay of each foot soldier, including officers;
and for the cavalry, three times as much.  This seemed reasonable, and
the answers to the inquiries touching the expense of the war-vessels and
sailors were equally satisfactory.  Nevertheless it was difficult to
bring the Queen up to the line to which the envoys had been limited by
their instructions.  Five thousand foot and one thousand horse serving at
the Queen's expense till the war should be concluded, over and above the
garrisons for such cautionary towns as should be agreed upon; this was
considered, by the States, the minimum.  The Queen held out for giving
only four thousand foot and four hundred horse, and for deducting the
garrisons even from this slender force.  As guarantee for the expense
thus to be incurred, she required that Flushing and Brill should be
placed in her hands.  Moreover the position of Antwerp complicated the
negotiation.  Elizabeth, fully sensible of the importance of preserving
that great capital, offered four thousand soldiers to serve until that
city should be relieved, requiring repayment within three months after
the object should have been accomplished.  As special guarantee for such
repayment she required Sluys and Ostend.  This was sharp bargaining,
but, at any rate, the envoys knew that the Queen, though cavilling to
the ninth-part of a hair, was no trifler, and that she meant to perform
whatever she should promise.

There was another exchange of speeches at the Palace of Nonesuch, on the
5th August; and the position of affairs and the respective attitudes of
the Queen and envoys were plainly characterized by the language then
employed.

After an exordium about the cruelty of the Spanish tyranny and the
enormous expense entailed by the war upon the Netherlands, Menin, who,
as usual, was the spokesman, alluded to the difficulty which the States
at last felt in maintaining themselves.

"Five thousand foot and one thousand horse," he said, "over and above the
maintenance of garrisons in the towns to be pledged as security to your
Majesty, seemed the very least amount of succour that would be probably
obtained from your royal bounty.  Considering the great demonstrations
of affection and promises of support, made as well by your Majesty's own
letters as by the mouth of your ambassador Davison, and by our envoys De
Gryse and Ortel, who have all declared publicly that your Majesty would
never forsake us, the States sent us their deputies to this country in
full confidence that such reasonable demands as we had been authorized to
make would be satisfied."

The speaker then proceeded to declare that the offer made by the royal
councillors of four thousand foot and four hundred horse, to serve during
the war, together with a special force of four thousand for the relief of
Antwerp, to be paid for within three months after the siege should be
raised, auninst a concession of the cities of Flushing, Brill, Sluys, and
Ostend, did not come within the limitations of the States-General.  They
therefore begged the Queen to enlarge her offer to the number of five
thousand foot and one thousand horse, or at least to allow the envoys to
conclude the treaty provisionally, and subject to approval of their
constituents.

So soon as Menin had concluded his address, her Majesty instantly
replied, with much earnestness and fluency of language.

"Gentlemen," she said, "I will answer you upon the first point, because
it touches my honour.  You say that I promised you, both by letters and
through my agent Davison, and also by my own lips, to assist you and
never to abandon you, and that this had moved you to come to me at
present.  Very well, masters, do you not think I am assisting you when I
am sending you four thousand foot and four hundred horse to serve during
the war?  Certainly, I think yes; and I say frankly that I have never
been wanting to my word.  No man shall ever say, with truth, that the
Queen of England had at any time and ever so slightly failed in her
promises, whether to the mightiest monarch, to republics, to gentlemen,
or even to private persons of the humblest condition.  Am I, then, in
your opinion, forsaking you when I send you English blood, which I love,
and which is my own blood, and which I am bound to defend?  It seems to
me, no.  For my part I tell you again that I will never forsake you.

"'Sed de modo?'  That is matter for agreement.  You are aware, gentlemen,
that I have storms to fear from many quarters--from France, Scotland,
Ireland, and within my own kingdom.  What would be said if I looked only
on one side, and if on that side I employed all my resources.  No, I will
give my subjects no cause for murmuring.  I know that my counsellors
desire to manage matters with prudence; 'sed aetatem habeo', and you are
to believe, that, of my own motion, I have resolved not to extend my
offer of assistance, at present, beyond the amount already stated.  But
I don't say that at another time I may not be able to do more for you.
For my intention is never to abandon your cause, always to assist you,
and never more to suffer any foreign nation to have dominion over you.

"It is true that you present me with two places in each of your
Provinces.  I thank you for them infinitely, and certainly it is a great
offer.  But it will be said instantly, the Queen of England wishes to
embrace and devour everything; while, on the contrary, I only wish to
render you assistance.  I believe, in truth, that if other monarchs
should have this offer, they would not allow such an opportunity to
escape.  I do not let it slip because of fears that I entertain for any
prince whatever.  For to think that I am not aware--doing what I am
doing--that I am embarking in a war against the King of Spain, is a great
mistake.  I know very well that the succour which I am affording you will
offend him as much as if I should do a great deal more.  But what care I?
Let him begin, I will answer him.  For my part, I say again, that never
did fear enter my heart.  We must all die once.  I know very well that
many princes are my enemies, and are seeking my ruin; and that where
malice is joined with force, malice often arrives at its ends.  But I am
not so feeble a princess that I have not the means and the will to defend
myself against them all.  They are seeking to take my life, but it
troubles me not.  He who is on high has defended me until this hour,
and will keep me still, for in Him do I trust.

"As to the other point, you say that your powers are not extensive enough
to allow your acceptance of the offer I make you.  Nevertheless, if I am
not mistaken, I have remarked in passing--for princes look very close to
words--that you would be content if I would give you money in place of
men, and that your powers speak only of demanding a certain proportion
of infantry and another of cavalry.  I believe this would be, as you say,
an equivalent, 'secundum quod'.  But I say this only because you govern
yourselves so precisely by the measure of your instructions. Nevertheless
I don't wish to contest these points with you.  For very often 'dum Romae
disputatur Saguntum perit.'  Nevertheless, it would be well for you to
decide; and, in any event, I do not think it good that you should all
take your departure, but that, on the contrary, you should leave some of
your number here.  Otherwise it would at once be said that all was broken
off, and that I had chosen to nothing for you; and with this the bad
would comfort themselves, and the good would be much discouraged.

"Touching the last point of your demand--according to which you desire a
personage of quality--I know, gentlemen, that you do not always agree
very well among yourselves, and that it would be good for you to have
some one to effect such agreement.  For this reason I have always
intended, so soon as we should have made our treaty, to send a lord of
name and authority to reside with you, to assist you in governing, and to
aid, with his advice, in the better direction of your affairs.

"Would to God that Antwerp were relieved!  Certainly I should be very
glad, and very well content to lose all that I am now expending if that
city could be saved.  I hope, nevertheless, if it can hold out six weeks
longer, that we shall see something good.  Already the two thousand men
of General Norris have crossed, or are crossing, every day by companies.
I will hasten the rest as much as possible; and I assure you, gentlemen,
that I will spare no diligence.  Nevertheless you may, if you choose,
retire with my council, and see if together you can come to some good
conclusion."

Thus spoke Elizabeth, like the wise, courageous, and very parsimonious
princess that she was.  Alas, it was too true, that Saguntum was
perishing while the higgling went on at Rome.  Had those two thousand
under Sir John Norris and the rest of the four thousand but gone a few
weeks earlier, how much happier might have been the result!

Nevertheless, it was thought in England that Antwerp would still hold
out; and, meantime, a treaty for its relief, in combination with another
for permanent assistance to the Provinces, was agreed upon between the
envoys and the lords of council.

On the 12th August, Menin presented himself at Nonesuch at the head of
his colleagues, and, in a formal speech, announced the arrangement which
had thus been entered into, subject to the approval of the States.  Again
Elizabeth, whose "tongue," in the homely phrase of the Netherlanders,
"was wonderfully well hung," replied with energy and ready eloquence.

"You see, gentlemen," she said, "that I have opened the door; that I am
embarking once for all with you in a war against the King of Spain.  Very
well, I am not anxious about the matter.  I hope that God will aid us,
and that we shall strike a good blow in your cause.  Nevertheless, I pray
you, with all my heart, and by the affection you bear me, to treat my
soldiers well; for they are my own Englishmen, whom I love as I do
myself.  Certainly  it would be a great cruelty, if you should treat
them ill, since they are about to hazard their lives so freely in your
defence, and I am sure that my request in this regard will be received by
you as it deserves.

"In the next place, as you know that I am sending, as commander of these
English troops, an honest gentleman, who deserves most highly for his
experience in arms, so I am also informed that you have on your side a
gentleman of great valour.  I pray you, therefore, that good care be
taken lest there be misunderstanding between these two, which might
prevent them from agreeing well together, when great exploits of war
are to be taken in hand.  For if that should happen--which God forbid--
my succour would be rendered quite useless to you.  I name Count Hohenlo,
because him alone have I heard mentioned.  But I pray you to make the
same recommendation to all the colonels and gentlemen in your army;
for I should be infinitely sad, if misadventures should arise from
such a cause, for your interest and my honour are both at stake.

"In the third place, I beg you, at your return, to make a favourable
report of me, and to thank the States, in my behalf, for their great
offers, which I esteem so highly as to be unable to express my thanks.
Tell them that I shall remember them for ever.  I consider it a great
honour, that from the commencement, you have ever been so faithful to me,
and that with such great constancy you have preferred me to all other
princes, and have chosen me for your Queen.  And chiefly do I thank the
gentlemen of Holland and Zeeland, who, as I have been informed, were the
first who so singularly loved me.  And so on my own part I will have a
special care of them, and will do my best to uphold them by every
possible means, as I will do all the rest who have put their trust in me.
But I name Holland and Zeeland more especially, because they have been so
constant and faithful in their efforts to assist the rest in shaking off
the yoke of the enemy.

"Finally, gentlemen, I beg you to assure the States that I do not decline
the sovereignty of your country from any dread of the King of Spain.  For
I take God to witness that I fear him not; and I hope, with the blessing
of God, to make such demonstrations against him, that men shall say the
Queen of England does not fear the Spaniards."

Elizabeth then smote herself upon the breast, and cried, with great
energy, "'Illa que virgo viri;' and is it not quite the same to you,
even if I do not assume the sovereignty, since I intend to protect you,
and since therefore the effects will be the same?  It is true that the
sovereignty would serve to enhance my grandeur, but I am content to do
without it, if you, upon your own part, will only do your duty.

"For myself, I promise you, in truth, that so long as I live, and even to
my last sigh, I will never forsake you.  Go home and tell this boldly to
the States which sent you hither."

Menin then replied with fresh expressions of thanks and compliments, and
requested, in conclusion, that her Majesty would be pleased to send, as
soon as possible, a personage of quality to the Netherlands.

"Gentlemen," replied Elizabeth, "I intend to do this, so soon as our
treaty shall be ratified, for, in contrary case, the King of Spain,
seeing your government continue on its present footing, would do nothing
but laugh at us.  Certainly I do not mean this year to provide him with
so fine a banquet."




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Anarchy which was deemed inseparable from a non-regal form
Dismay of our friends and the gratification of our enemies
Her teeth black, her bosom white and liberally exposed (Eliz.)
Holland was afraid to give a part, although offering the whole
Resolved thenceforth to adopt a system of ignorance
Say "'tis pity he is not an Englishman
Seeking protection for and against the people
Three hundred and upwards are hanged annually in London
We must all die once
Wrath of bigots on both sides




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v42
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 43, 1585


CHAPTER VI., Part 2.

     Sir John Norris sent to Holland--Parsimony of Elizabeth--Energy of
     Davison--Protracted Negotiations--Friendly Sentiments of Count
     Maurice--Letters from him and Louisa de Coligny--Davison vexed by
     the Queen's Caprice--Dissatisfaction of Leicester--His vehement
     Complaints--The Queen's Avarice--Perplexity of Davison--Manifesto
     of Elizabeth--Sir Philip Sidney--His Arrival at Flushing.


The envoys were then dismissed, and soon afterwards a portion of the
deputation took their departure from the Netherlands with the proposed
treaty.  It was however, as we know, quite too late for Saguntum.  Two
days after the signing of the treaty, the remaining envoys were at the
palace of Nonesuch, in conference with the Earl of Leicester, when a
gentleman rushed suddenly into the apartment, exclaiming with great
manifestations of anger:

"Antwerp has fallen!  A treaty has been signed with the Prince of Parma.
Aldegonde is the author of it all.  He is the culprit, who has betrayed
us;" with many more expressions of vehement denunciation.

The Queen was disappointed, but stood firm.  She had been slow in taking
her resolution, but she was unflinching when her mind was made up.
Instead of retreating from her, position, now that it became doubly
dangerous, she advanced several steps nearer towards her allies.  For
it was obvious, if more precious time should be lost, that Holland and
Zeeland would share the fate of Antwerp.  Already the belief, that, with
the loss of that city, all had been lost, was spreading both in the
Provinces and in England, and Elizabeth felt that the time had indeed
come to confront the danger.

Meantime the intrigues of the enemy in the independent Provinces were
rife.  Blunt Roger Williams wrote in very plain language to Walsingham,
a very few days after the capitulation of Antwerp:

"If her Majesty means to have Holland and Zeeland," said he, "she must
resolve presently.  Aldegonde hath promised the enemy to bring them to
compound.  Here arrived already his ministers which knew all his dealings
about Antwerp from first to last.  Count Maurice is governed altogether
by Villiers, and Villiers was never worse for the English than at this
hour.  To be short, the people say in general, they will accept a peace,
unless her Majesty do sovereign them presently.  All the men of war will
be at her Highness' devotion, if they be in credit in time.  What you do,
it must be done presently, for I do assure your honour there is large
offers presented unto them by the enemies.  If her Majesty deals not
roundly and resolutely with them now, it will be too late two months
hence."

Her Majesty meant to deal roundly and resolutely.  Her troops had already
gone in considerable numbers.  She wrote encouraging letters with her own
hand to the States, imploring them not to falter now, even though the
great city had fallen.  She had long since promised never to desert them,
and she was, if possible, more determined than ever to redeem her pledge.
She especially recommended to their consideration General Norris,
commander of the forces that had been despatched to the relief of
Antwerp.

A most accomplished officer, sprung of a house renowned for its romantic
valour, Sir John was the second of the six sons of Lord Norris of Rycot,
all soldiers of high reputation, "chickens of Mars," as an old writer
expressed himself.  "Such a bunch of brethren for eminent achievement,"
said he, "was never seen.  So great their states and stomachs that they
often jostled with others."  Elizabeth called their mother, "her own
crow;"  and the darkness of her hair and visage was thought not
unbecoming to her martial issue, by whom it had been inherited.  Daughter
of Lord Williams of Tame, who had been keeper of the Tower in the time of
Elizabeth's imprisonment, she had been affectionate and serviceable to
the Princess in the hour of her distress, and had been rewarded with her
favour in the days of her grandeur.  We shall often meet this crow-black
Norris, and his younger brother Sir Edward--the most daring soldiers of
their time, posters of sea and land--wherever the buffeting was closest,
or adventure the wildest on ship-board or shore, for they were men who
combined much of the knight-errantry of a vanishing age with the more
practical and expansive spirit of adventure that characterized the new
epoch.

Nor was he a stranger in the Netherlands.  "The gentleman to whom we have
committed the government of the forces going to the relief of Antwerp,"
said Elizabeth, "has already given you such proofs of his affection by
the good services he has rendered you, that without recommendation on our
part, he should stand already recommended.  Nevertheless, in respect for
his quality, the house from which he is descended, and the valour which
he has manifested in your own country, we desire to tell you that we hold
him dear, and that he deserves also to be dear to you."

When the fall of Antwerp was certain, the Queen sent Davison, who had
been for a brief period in England, back again to his post.  "We have
learned," she said in the letter which she sent by that envoy; "with very
great regret of the surrender of Antwerp.  Fearing lest some apprehension
should take possession of the people's mind in consequence, and that some
dangerous change might ensue, we send you our faithful and well-beloved
Davison to represent to you how much we have your affairs at heart, and
to say that we are determined to forget nothing that may be necessary to
your preservation.  Assure yourselves that we shall never fail to
accomplish all that he may promise you in our behalf."

Yet, notwithstanding the gravity of the situation, the thorough
discussion that had taken place of the whole matter, and the enormous
loss which had resulted from the money-saving insanity upon both sides,
even then the busy devil of petty economy was not quite exorcised.
Several precious weeks were wasted in renewed chafferings.  The Queen was
willing that the permanent force should now be raised to five thousand
foot and one thousand horse--the additional sixteen, hundred men being
taken from the Antwerp relieving-force--but she insisted that the
garrisons for the cautionary towns should be squeezed out of this general
contingent.  The States, on the contrary, were determined to screw these
garrisons out of her grip, as an additional subsidy.  Each party
complained with reason of the other's closeness.  No doubt the states
were shrewd bargainers, but it would have been difficult for the sharpest
Hollander that ever sent a cargo of herrings to Cadiz, to force open
Elizabeth's beautiful hand when she chose to shut it close.  Walsingham
and Leicester were alternately driven to despair by the covetousness of
the one party or the other.

It was still uncertain what "personage of quality" was to go to the
Netherlands in the Queen's name, to help govern the country.  Leicester
had professed his readiness to risk his life, estates, and reputation,
in the cause, and the States particularly desired his appointment.
"The name of your Excellency is so very agreeable to this people," said
they in a letter to the Earl, "as to give promise of a brief and happy
end to this grievous and almost immortal war."  The Queen was, or
affected to be, still undecided as to the appointment.  While waiting
week after week for the ratifications of the treaty from Holland, affairs
were looking gloomy at home, and her Majesty was growing very uncertain
in her temper.

"I see not her Majesty disposed to use the service of the Earl of
Leicester," wrote Walsingham.  "I suppose the lot of government will
light on Lord Gray.  I would to God the ability of his purse were
answerable to his sufficiency otherwise."  This was certainly a most
essential deficiency on the part of Lord Gray, and it will soon be seen
that the personage of quality to be selected as chief in the arduous and
honourable enterprise now on foot, would be obliged to rely quite as much
on that same ability of purse as upon the sufficiency of his brain or
arm.  The Queen did not mean to send her favourite forth to purchase
anything but honour in the Netherlands; and it was not the Provinces only
that were likely to struggle against her parsimony.  Yet that parsimony
sprang from a nobler motive than the mere love of pelf.  Dangers
encompassed her on every side, and while husbanding her own exchequer,
she was saving her subjects' resources.  "Here we are but book-worms,"
said Walsingham, "yet from sundry quarters we hear of great practices
against this poor crown.  The revolt in Scotland is greatly feared, and
that out of hand."

Scotland, France, Spain, these were dangerous enemies and neighbours to a
maiden Queen, who had a rebellious Ireland to deal with on one side the
channel, and Alexander of Parma on the other.

Davison experienced great inconvenience and annoyance before the definite
arrangements could be made.  There is no doubt that the Spanish party had
made great progress since the fall of Antwerp.  Roger Williams was right
in advising the Queen to deal" roundly and resolutely" with the States,
and to "sovereign them presently."

They had need of being sovereigned, for it must be confessed that the
self-government which prevailed at that moment was very like no
government.  The death of Orange, the treachery of Henry III., the
triumphs of Parma, disastrous facts, treading rapidly upon each other,
had produced a not very unnatural effect.  The peace-at-any-price party
was struggling hard for the ascendancy, and the Spanish partizans were
doing their best to hold up to suspicion the sharp practice of the
English Queen.  She was even accused of underhand dealing with Spain,
to the disadvantage of the Provinces; so much had slander, anarchy, and
despair, been able to effect.  The States were reluctant to sign those
articles with Elizabeth which were absolutely necessary to their
salvation.

"In how doubtful and uncertain terms I found things at my coming hither,"
wrote Davison to Burghley, "how thwarted and delayed since for a
resolution, and with what conditions, and for what reasons I have been
finally drawn to conclude with them as I have done, your Lordship may
perceive by that I have written to Mr. Secretary.  The chief difficulty
has rested upon the point of entertaining the garrisons within the towns
of assurance, over and besides the five thousand footmen and one thousand
horse."

This, as Davison proceeded to observe, was considered a 'sine qua non'
by the States, so that, under the perilous circumstances in which both
countries were placed, he had felt it his duty to go forward as far as
possible to meet their demands.  Davison always did his work veraciously,
thoroughly, and resolutely; and it was seldom that his advice, in all
matters pertaining to Netherland matters, did not prove the very best
that could be offered.  No man knew better than he the interests and the
temper of both countries.

The imperious Elizabeth was not fond of being thwarted, least of all by
any thing savouring of the democratic principle, and already there was
much friction between the Tudor spirit of absolutism and the rough
"mechanical" nature with which it was to ally itself in the Netherlands.
The economical Elizabeth was not pleased at being overreached in a
bargain; and, at a moment when she thought herself doing a magnanimous
act, she was vexed at the cavilling with which her generosity was
received.  "'Tis a manner of proceeding," said Walsingham, "not to be
allowed of, and may very well be termed mechanical, considering that her
Majesty seeketh no interest in that country--as Monsieur and the French
King did--but only their good and benefit, without regard had of the
expenses of her treasure and the hazard of her subjects' lives; besides
throwing herself into a present war for their sakes with the greatest
prince and potentate in Europe.  But seeing the government of those
countries resteth in the hands of merchants and advocates--the one
regarding profit, the other standing upon vantage of quirks--there
is no better fruit to be looked to from them."

Yet it was, after all, no quirk in those merchants and advocates to urge
that the Queen was not going to war with the great potentate for their
sakes alone.  To Elizabeth's honour, she did thoroughly comprehend that
the war of the Netherlands was the war of England, of Protestantism, and
of European liberty, and that she could no longer, without courting her
own destruction, defer taking a part in active military operations.  It
was no quirk, then, but solid reasoning, for the States to regard the
subject in the same light.  Holland and England were embarked in one
boat, and were to sink or swim together.  It was waste of time to wrangle
so fiercely over pounds and shillings, but the fault was not to be
exclusively imputed to the one side or the other.  There were bitter
recriminations, particularly on the part of Elizabeth, for it was not
safe to touch too closely either the pride or the pocket of that frugal
and despotic heroine.  "The two thousand pounds promised by the States to
Norris upon the muster of the two thousand volunteers," said Walsingham,
"were not paid.  Her Majesty is not a little offended therewith, seeing
how little care they have to yield her satisfaction, which she imputeth
to proceed rather from contempt, than from necessity.  If it should fall
out, however, to be such as by them is pretended, then doth she conceive
her bargain to be very ill made, to join her fortune with so weak and
broken an estate."  Already there were indications that the innocent
might be made to suffer for the short-comings of the real culprits; nor
would it be, the first time, or by any means the last, for Davison to
appear in the character of a scape-goat.

"Surely, sir," continued Mr. Secretary, "it is a thing greatly to be
feared that the contributions they will yield will fall not more true in
paper than in payment; which if it should so happen, it would turn some
to blame, whereof you among others are to bear your part."

And thus the months of September and of October wore away, and the
ratifications of the treaty had not arrived from the Netherlands.
Elizabeth became furious, and those of the Netherland deputation who had
remained in England were at their wits' end to appease her choler.  No
news arrived for many weeks.  Those were not the days of steam and
magnetic telegraphs--inventions by which the nature of man and the aspect
of history seem altered--and the Queen had nothing for it but to fret,
and the envoys to concert with her ministers expedients to mitigate her
spleen.  Towards the end of the month, the commissioners chartered a
vessel which they despatched for news to Holland.  On his way across the
sea the captain was hailed on the 28th October by a boat, in which one
Hans Wyghans was leisurely proceeding to England with Netherland
despatches dated on the 5th of the same month.  This was the freshest
intelligence that had yet been received.

So soon as the envoys were put in possession of the documents, they
obtained an audience of the Queen.  This was the last day of October.
Elizabeth read her letters, and listened to the apologies made by the
deputies for the delay with anything but a benignant countenance.
Then, with much vehemence of language, and manifestations of ill-temper,
she expressed her displeasure at the dilatoriness of the States.  Having
sent so many troops, and so many gentlemen of quality, she had considered
the whole affair concluded.

"I have been unhandsomely treated," she said, "and not as comports with a
prince of my quality.  My inclination for your support--because you show
yourselves unworthy of so great benefits--will be entirely destroyed,
unless you deal with me and mine more worthily for the future than you
have done in the past.  Through my great and especial affection for
your welfare, I had ordered the Earl of Leicester to proceed to the
Netherlands, and conduct your affairs; a man of such quality as all the
world knows, and one whom I love, as if he were my own brother.  He was
getting himself ready in all diligence, putting himself in many perils
through the practices of the enemy, and if I should have reason to
believe that he would not be respected there according to his due,
I should be indeed offended.  He and many others are not going thither
to advance their own affairs, to make themselves rich, or because they
have not means enough to live magnificently at home.  They proceed to the
Netherlands from pure affection for your cause.  This is the case, too,
with many other of my subjects, all dear to me, and of much worth.  For I
have sent a fine heap of folk thither--in all, with those his Excellency
is taking with him, not under ten thousand soldiers of the English
nation.  This is no small succour, and no little unbaring of this realm
of mine, threatened as it is with war from many quarters.  Yet I am
seeking no sovereignty, nor anything else prejudicial to the freedom of
your country.  I wish only, in your utmost need, to help you out of this
lamentable war, to maintain for you liberty of conscience, and to see
that law and justice are preserved."

All this, and more, with great eagerness of expression and gesture, was
urged by the Queen, much to the discomfiture of the envoys.  In vain they
attempted to modify and to explain.  Their faltering excuses were swept
rapidly away upon the current of royal wrath; until at last Elizabeth
stormed herself into exhaustion and comparative tranquillity.  She then
dismissed them with an assurance that her goodwill towards the States was
not diminished, as would be found to be the case, did they not continue
to prove themselves unworthy of her favour that a permanent force of five
thousand foot and one thousand horse should serve in the Provinces at the
Queen's expense; and that the cities of Flushing and Brill should be
placed in her Majesty's hands until the entire reimbursement of the debt
thus incurred by the States.  Elizabeth also--at last overcoming her
reluctance--agreed that the force necessary to garrison these towns
should form an additional contingent, instead of being deducted from the
general auxiliary force.

Count Maurice of Nassau had been confirmed by the States of Holland and
Zeeland as permanent stadholder of those provinces.  This measure excited
some suspicion on the part of Leicester, who, as it was now understood,
was the "personage of quality" to be sent to the Netherlands as
representative of the Queen's authority.  "Touching the election of Count
Maurice," said the Earl, "I hope it will be no impairing of the authority
heretofore allotted to me, for if it will be, I shall tarry but awhile."

Nothing, however, could be more frank or chivalrously devoted than the
language of Maurice to the Queen.  "Madam, if I have ever had occasion,"
he wrote, "to thank God for his benefits, I confess that it was when,
receiving in all humility the letters with which it pleased your Majesty
to honour me, I learned that the great disaster of my lord and father's
death had not diminished the debonaire affection and favour which it has
always pleased your Majesty to manifest to my father's house.  It has
been likewise grateful to me to learn that your Majesty, surrounded by so
many great and important affairs, had been pleased to approve the command
which the States-General have conferred upon me.  I am indeed grieved
that my actions cannot correspond with the ardent desire which I feel to
serve your Majesty and these Provinces, for which I hope that my extreme
youth will be accepted as an excuse.  And although I find myself feeble
enough for the charge thus imposed upon me, yet God will assist my
efforts to supply by diligence and sincere intention the defect of the
other qualities requisite for my thorough discharge of my duty to the
contentment of your Majesty.  To fulfil these obligations, which are
growing greater day by day, I trust to prove by my actions that I will
never spare either my labour or life."

When it was found that the important town of Flushing was required as
part of the guaranty to the Queen, Maurice, as hereditary seignor and
proprietor of the place--during the captivity of his elder brother in
Spain--signified his concurrence in the transfer, together with the most
friendly feelings towards the Earl of Leicester, and to Sir Philip
Sidney, appointed English governor of the town.  He wrote to Davison,
whom he called "one of the best and most certain friends that the house
of Nassau possessed in England," begging that he would recommend the
interests of the family to the Queen, "whose favour could do more than
anything else in the world towards maintaining what remained of the
dignity of their house."  After solemn deliberation with his step-mother,
Louisa de Coligny, and the other members of his family, he made a formal
announcement of adhesion on the part of the House of Nassau to the
arrangements concluded with the English government, and asked the
benediction of God upon the treaty.  While renouncing, for the moment,
any compensation for his consent to the pledging of Flushing his
"patrimonial property, and a place of such great importance"--he expressed
a confidence that the long services of his father, as well as those which
he himself hoped to render, would meet in time with "condign
recognition."  He requested the Earl of Leicester to consider the
friendship which had existed between himself and the late Prince of
Orange, as an hereditary affection to be continued to the children, and
he entreated the Earl to do him the honour in future to hold him as a
son, and to extend to him counsel and authority; declaring, on his part,
that he should ever deem it an honour to be allowed to call him father.
And in order still more strongly to confirm his friendship, he begged Sir
Philip Sidney to consider him as his brother, and as his companion in
arms, promising upon his own part the most faithful friendship.  In the
name of Louisa de Coligny, and of his whole family, he also particularly
recommended to the Queen the interests of the eldest brother of the
house, Philip William, "who had been so long and so iniquitously detained
captive in Spain," and begged that, in case prisoners of war of high rank
should fall into the hands of the English commanders, they might be
employed as a means of effecting the liberation of that much-injured
Prince.  He likewise desired the friendly offices of the Queen to protect
the principality of Orange against the possible designs of the French
monarch, and intimated that occasions might arise in which the
confiscated estates of the family in Burgundy might be recovered through
the influence of the Swiss cantons, particularly those of the Grisons and
of Berne.

And, in conclusion, in case the Queen should please--as both Count
Maurice and the Princess of Orange desired with all their hearts--to
assume the sovereignty of these Provinces, she was especially entreated
graciously to observe those suggestions regarding the interests of the
House of Nassau, which had been made in the articles of the treaty.

Thus the path had been smoothed, mainly through the indefatigable energy
of Davison.  Yet that envoy was not able to give satisfaction to his
imperious and somewhat whimsical mistress, whose zeal seemed to cool in
proportion to the readiness with which the obstacles to her wishes were
removed.  Davison was, with reason, discontented.  He had done more than
any other man either in England or the Provinces, to bring about a hearty
cooperation in the common cause, and to allay mutual heart-burnings and
suspicions.  He had also, owing to the negligence of the English
treasurer for the Netherlands, and the niggardliness of Elizabeth, been
placed in a position, of great financial embarrassment.  His situation
was very irksome.

"I mused at the sentence you sent me," he wrote, "for I know no cause her
Majesty hath to shrink at her charges hitherto.  The treasure she hath
yet disbursed here is not above five or six thousand pounds, besides that
which I have been obliged to take up for the saving of her honour, and
necessity of her service, in danger otherwise of some notable disgrace.
I will not, for shame, say how I have been left here to myself."

The delay in the formal appointment of Leicester, and, more particularly,
of the governors for the cautionary towns, was the cause of great
confusion and anarchy in the transitional condition of the country.
"The burden I am driven to sustain," said Davison, "doth utterly weary
me.  If Sir Philip Sidney were here, and if my Lord of Leicester follow
not all the sooner, I would use her Majesty's liberty to return home.
If her Majesty think me worthy the reputation of a poor, honest, and
loyal servant, I have that contents me.  For the rest, I wish

         'Vivere sine invidia, mollesque inglorius annos
          Egigere, amicitias et mihi jungere pares.'"

There was something almost prophetic in the tone which this faithful
public servant--to whom, on more than one occasion, such hard measure was
to be dealt--habitually adopted in his private letters and conversation.
He did his work, but he had not his reward; and he was already weary of
place without power, and industry without recognition.

"For mine own particular," he said, "I will say with the poet,

         'Crede mihi, bene qui latuit bene vixit,
          Et intra fortunam debet quisque manere suam.'"

For, notwithstanding the avidity with which Elizabeth had sought the
cautionary towns, and the fierceness with which she had censured the
tardiness of the States, she seemed now half inclined to drop the prize
which she had so much coveted, and to imitate the very languor which she
had so lately rebuked.  "She hath what she desired," said Davison, "and
might yet have more, if this content her not.  Howsoever you value the
places at home, they are esteemed here, by such as know them best, no
little increase to her Majesty's honour, surety, and greatness, if she be
as careful to keep them as happy in getting them.  Of this, our cold
beginning doth already make me jealous."

Sagacious and resolute Princess as she was, she showed something of
feminine caprice upon this grave occasion.  Not Davison alone, but
her most confidential ministers and favourites at home, were perplexed
and provoked by her misplaced political coquetries.  But while the
alternation of her hot and cold fits drove her most devoted courtiers out
of patience, there was one symptom that remained invariable throughout
all her paroxysms, the rigidity with which her hand was locked.
Walsingham, stealthy enough when an advantage was to be gained by
subtlety, was manful and determined in his dealings with his friends; and
he had more than once been offended with Elizabeth's want of frankness in
these transactions.

"I find you grieved, and not without cause," he wrote to Davison, "in
respect to the over thwart proceedings as well there as here.  The
disorders in those countries would be easily redressed if we could take
a thoroughly resolute course here--a matter that men may rather pray for
than hope for.  It is very doubtful whether the action now in hand will
be accompanied by very hard success, unless they of the country there may
be drawn to bear the greatest part of the burden of the wars."

And now the great favourite of all had received the appointment which he
coveted.  The Earl of Leicester was to be Commander-in-Chief of her
Majesty's forces in the Netherlands, and representative of her authority
in those countries, whatever that office might prove to be.  The nature
of his post was anomalous from the beginning.  It was environed with
difficulties, not the least irritating of which proceeded from the
captious spirit of the Queen.  The Earl was to proceed in great pomp to
Holland, but the pomp was to be prepared mainly at his own expense.
Besides the auxiliary forces that had been shipped during the latter
period of the year, Leicester was raising a force of lancers, from four
to eight hundred in number; but to pay for that levy he was forced to
mortgage his own property, while the Queen not only refused to advance
ready money, but declined endorsing his bills.

It must be confessed that the Earl's courtship of Elizabeth was anything
at that moment but a gentle dalliance.  In those thorny regions of
finance were no beds of asphodel or amaranthine bowers.  There was no
talk but of troopers, saltpetre, and sulphur, of books of assurance, and
bills of exchange; and the aspect of Elizabeth, when the budget was under
discussion, must effectually have neutralized for the time any very
tender sentiment.  The sharpness with which she clipped Leicester's
authority, when authority was indispensable to his dignity, and the heavy
demands upon his resources that were the result of her avarice, were
obstacles more than enough to the calm fruition of his triumphs.  He had
succeeded, in appearance at least, in the great object of his ambition,
this appointment to the Netherlands; but the appointment was no sinecure,
and least of all a promising pecuniary speculation.  Elizabeth had told
the envoys, with reason, that she was not sending forth that man--whom
she loved as a brother--in order that he might make himself rich.  On
the contrary, the Earl seemed likely to make himself comparatively poor
before he got to the Provinces, while his political power, at the moment,
did not seem of more hopeful growth.

Leicester had been determined and consistent in this great enterprize
from the beginning.  He felt intensely the importance of the crisis.  He
saw that the time had come for swift and uncompromising action, and the
impatience with which he bore the fetters imposed upon him may be easily
conceived.

"The cause is such," he wrote to Walsingham, "that I had as lief be dead
as be in the case I shall be in if this restraint hold for taking the
oath there, or if some more authority be not granted than I see her
Majesty would I should have.  I trust you all will hold hard for this, or
else banish me England withal.  I have sent you the books to be signed by
her Majesty.  I beseech you return them with all haste, for I get no
money till they be under seal."

But her Majesty would not put them under her seal, much to the
favourite's discomfiture.

"Your letter yieldeth but cold answer," he wrote, two days afterwards.
"Above all things yet that her Majesty doth stick at, I marvel most at
her refusal to sign my book of assurance; for there passeth nothing in
the earth against her profit by that act, nor any good to me but to
satisfy the creditors, who were more scrupulous than needs.  I did
complain to her of those who did refuse to lend me money, and she was
greatly offended with them.  But if her Majesty were to stay this, if I
were half seas over, I must of necessity come back again, for I may not
go without money.  I beseech, if the matter be refused by her, bestow a
post on me to Harwich.  I lie this night at Sir John Peters', and but for
this doubt I had been to-morrow at Harwich.  I pray God make you all that
be counsellors plain and direct to the furtherance of all good service
for her Majesty and the realm; and if it be the will of God to plague us
that go, and you that tarry, for our sins, yet let us not be negligent to
seek to please the Lord."

The Earl was not negligent at any rate in seeking to please the Queen,
but she was singularly hard to please.  She had never been so uncertain
in her humours as at this important crisis.  She knew, and had publicly
stated as much, that she was "embarking in a war with the greatest
potentate in Europe;" yet now that the voyage had fairly commenced, and
the waves were rolling around her, she seemed anxious to put back to the
shore.  For there was even a whisper of peace-negotiations, than which
nothing could have been more ill-timed.  "I perceive by your message,"
said Leicester to Walsingham, "that your peace with Spain will go fast
on, but this is not the way."  Unquestionably it was not the way, and the
whisper was, for the moment at least, suppressed.  Meanwhile Leicester
had reached Harwich, but the post "bestowed on him," contained, as usual,
but cold comfort.  He was resolved, however, to go manfully forward, and
do the work before him, until the enterprise should prove wholly
impracticable.  It is by the light afforded by the secret never-published
correspondence of the period with which we are now occupied, that the
true characteristics of Elizabeth, the Earl of Leicester, and other
prominent personages, must be scanned, and the study is most important,
for it was by those characteristics, in combination with other human
elements embodied in distant parts of Christendom, that the destiny of
the world was determined.  In that age, more than in our own perhaps, the
influence of the individual was widely and intensely felt.  Historical
chymistry is only rendered possible by a detection of the subtle
emanations, which it was supposed would for ever elude analysis, but
which survive in those secret, frequently ciphered intercommunications.
Philip II., William of Orange, Queen Elizabeth, Alexander Farnese, Robert
Dudley, never dreamed--when disclosing their inmost thoughts to their
trusted friends at momentous epochs--that the day would come on earth
when those secrets would be no longer hid from the patient enquirer after
truth.  Well for those whose reputations before the judgment-seat of
history appear even comparatively pure, after impartial comparison of
their motives with their deeds.

"For mine own part, Mr. Secretary," wrote Leicester, "I am resolved to do
that which shall be fit for a poor man's honour, and honestly to obey her
Majesty's commandment.  Let the rest fall out to others, it shall not
concern me.  I mean to assemble myself to the camp, where my authority
must wholly lie, and will there do that which in good reason and duty I
shall be bound to do.  I am sorry that her Majesty doth deal in this
sort, and if content to overthrow so willingly her own cause.  If there
can be means to salve this sore, I will.  If not,--I tell you what shall
become of me, as truly as God lives."

Yet it is remarkable, that, in spite of this dark intimation, the Earl,
after all, did not state what was to become of him if the sore was not
salved.  He was, however, explicit enough as to the causes of his grief,
and very vehement in its manifestations.  "Another matter which shall
concern me deeply," he said, "and all the subjects there, is now by you
to be carefully considered, which is--money.  I find that the money is
already gone, and this now given to the treasurer will do no more than
pay to the end of the month.  I beseech you look to it, for by the Lord!
I will bear no more so miserable burdens; for if I have no money to pay
them, let them come home, or what else.  I will not starve them, nor stay
them.  There was never gentleman nor general so sent out as I am; and if
neither Queen nor council care to help it, but leave men desperate, as I
see men shall be, that inconvenience will follow which I trust in the
Lord I shall be free of."

He then used language about himself, singularly resembling the
phraseology employed by Elizabeth concerning him, when she was scolding
the Netherland commissioners for the dilatoriness and parsimony of the
States.

"For mine own part," he said, "I have taken upon me this voyage, not as a
desperate nor forlorn man, but as one as well contented with his place
and calling at home as any subject was ever.  My cause was not, nor is,
any other than the Lord's and the Queen's.  If the Queen fail, yet must I
trust in the Lord, and on Him, I see, I am wholly to depend.  I can say
no more, but pray to God that her Majesty never send General again as I
am sent.  And yet I will do what I can for her and my country."

The Earl had raised a choice body of lancers to accompany him to the
Netherlands, but the expense of the levy had come mainly upon his own
purse.  The Queen had advanced five thousand pounds, which was much less
than the requisite amount, while for the balance required, as well as for
other necessary expenses, she obstinately declined to furnish Leicester
with funds, even refusing him, at last, a temporary loan.  She violently
accused him of cheating her, reclaimed money which he had wrung from her
on good security, and when he had repaid the sum, objected to give him a
discharge.  As for receiving anything by way of salary, that was quite
out of the question.  At that moment he would have been only too happy to
be reimbursed for what he was already out of pocket.  Whether Elizabeth
loved Leicester as a brother, or better than a brother, may be a
historical question, but it is no question at all that she loved money
better than she did Leicester.  Unhappy the man, whether foe or
favourite, who had pecuniary transactions with her Highness.

"I am sorry," said the Earl, "that her Majesty hath so hard a conceit of
me, that I should go about to cozen her, as though I had got a fee simple
from her, and had it not before, or that I had not had her full release
for payment of the money I borrowed.  I pray God, any that did put such
scruple in her, have not deceived her more than I have done.  I thank God
I have a clear conscience for deceiving her, and for money matters.  I
think I may justly say I have been the only cause of more gain to her
coffers than all her chequer-men have been.  But so is the hap of some,
that all they do is nothing, and others that do nothing, do all, and have
all the thanks.  But I would this were all the grief I carry with me; but
God is my comfort, and on Him I cast all, for there is no surety in this
world beside.  What hope of help can I have, finding her Majesty so
strait with myself as she is?  I did trust that--the cause being hers and
this realm's--if I could have gotten no money of her merchants, she would
not have refused to have lent money on so easy prized land as mine, to
have been gainer and no loser by it.  Her Majesty, I see, will make trial
of me how I love her, and what will discourage me from her service.  But
resolved am I that no worldly respect shall draw me back from my faithful
discharge of my duty towards her, though she shall show to hate me, as it
goeth very near; for I find no love or favour at all.  And I pray you to
remember that I have not had one penny of her Majesty towards all these
charges of mine--not one penny-and, by all truth, I have already laid out
above five thousand pounds.  Her Majesty appointed eight thousand pounds
for the levy, which was after the rate of four hundred horse, and, upon
my fidelity, there is shipped, of horse of service, eight hundred, so
that there ought eight thousand more to have been paid me.  No general
that ever went that was not paid to the uttermost of these things before
he went, but had cash for his provision, which her Majesty would not
allow me--not one groat.  Well, let all this go, it is like I shall be
the last shall bear this, and some must suffer for the people.  Good Mr.
Secretary, let her Majesty know this, for I deserve God-a-mercy, at the
least."

Leicester, to do him justice, was thoroughly alive to the importance of
the Crisis.  On political principle, at any rate, he was a firm supporter
of Protestantism, and even of Puritanism; a form of religion which
Elizabeth detested, and in which, with keen instinct, she detected a
mutinous element against the divine right of kings.  The Earl was quite
convinced of the absolute necessity that England should take up the
Netherland matter most vigorously, on pain of being herself destroyed.
All the most sagacious counsellors of Elizabeth were day by day more and
more confirmed in this opinion, and were inclined heartily to support the
new Lieutenant-General.  As for Leicester himself, while fully conscious
of his own merits, and of his firm intent to do his duty, he was also
grateful to those who were willing to befriend him in his arduous
enterprise.

"I have received a letter from my Lord Willoughby," he said, "to my
seeming, as wise a letter as I have read a great while, and not unfit for
her Majesty's sight.  I pray God open her eyes, that they may behold her
present estate indeed, and the wonderful means that God doth offer unto
her.  If she lose these opportunities, who can look for other but
dishonour and destruction?  My Lord Treasurer hath also written me a most
hearty and comfortable letter touching this voyage, not only in showing
the importance of it, both for her Majesty's own safety and the realm's,
but that the whole state of religion doth depend thereon, and therefore
doth faithfully promise his whole and best assistance for the supply of
all wants.  I was not a little glad to receive such a letter from him at
this time."

And from on board the 'Amity,' ready to set sail, he expressed his thanks
to Burghley, at finding him so "earnestly bent for the good supply and
maintenance of us poor men sent in her Majesty's service and our
country's."

As for Walsingham, earnestly a defender of the Netherland cause from the
beginning, he was wearied and disgusted with fighting against the Queen's
parsimony and caprice.  "He is utterly discouraged," said Leicester to
Burghley, "to deal any more in these causes.  I pray God your Lordship
grow not so too; for then all will to the ground; on my poor side
especially."

And to Sir Francis himself, he wrote, even as his vessel was casting off
her moorings:--"I am sorry, Mr. Secretary," he said, "to find you so
discouraged, and that her Majesty doth deem you so partial.  And yet my
suits to her Majesty have not of late been so many nor great, while the
greatest, I am sure, are for her Majesty's own service.  For my part, I
will discharge my duty as far as my poor ability and capacity shall
serve, and if I shall not have her gracious and princely support and
supply, the lack will be to us, for the present, but the shame and
dishonour will be hers."

And with these parting words the Earl committed himself to the December
seas.

Davison had been meantime doing his best to prepare the way in the
Netherlands for the reception of the English administration.  What man
could do, without money and without authority, he had done.  The
governors for Flushing and the Brill, Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Thomas
Cecil, eldest son of Lord Burghley, had been appointed, but had not
arrived.  Their coming was anxiously looked for, as during the interval
the condition of the garrisons was deplorable.  The English treasurer--
by some unaccountable and unpardonable negligence, for which it is to be
feared the Queen was herself to blame--was not upon the spot, and Davison
was driven out of his wits to devise expedients to save the soldiers from
starving.

"Your Lordship has seen by my former letters," wrote the Ambassador to
Burghley from Flushing, "what shift I have been driven to for the relief
of this garrison here, left 'a l'abandon;' without which mean they had
all fallen into wild and shameful disorder, to her Majesty's great
disgrace and overthrow of her service.  I am compelled, unless I would
see the poor men famish, and her Majesty aishonournd, to try my poor
credit for them."

General Sir John Norris was in the Betuwe, threatening Nvymegen, a town
which he found "not so flexible as he had hoped;" and, as he had but two
thousand men, while Alexander Farnese was thought to be marching upon him
with ten thousand, his position caused great anxiety.  Meantime, his
brother, Sir Edward, a hot-headed and somewhat wilful young man, who
"thought that all was too little for him," was giving the sober Davison a
good deal of trouble.  He had got himself into a quarrel, both with that
envoy and with Roger Williams, by claiming the right to control military
matters in Flushing until the arrival of Sidney.  "If Sir Thomas and Sir
Philip," said Davison, "do not make choice of more discreet, staid, and
expert commanders than those thrust into these places by Mr. Norris, they
will do themselves a great deal of worry, and her Majesty a great deal of
hurt."

As might naturally be expected, the lamentable condition of the English
soldiers, unpaid and starving--according to the report of the Queen's
envoy himself--exercised anything but a salutary influence upon the minds
of the Netherlanders and perpetually fed the hopes of the Spanish
partizans that a composition with Philip and Parma would yet take place.
On the other hand, the States had been far more liberal in raising funds
than the Queen had shown herself to be, and were somewhat indignant at
being perpetually taunted with parsimony by her agents.  Davison was
offended by the injustice of Norris in this regard.  "The complaints
which the General hath made of the States to her Majesty," said he, "are
without cause, and I think, when your Lordship shall examine it well, you
will find it no little sum they have already disbursed unto him for their
part.  Wherein, nevertheless, if they had been looked into, they were
somewhat the more excusable, considering how ill our people at her
Majesty's entertainment were satisfied hitherto--a thing that doth much
prejudice her reputation, and hurt her service."

At last, however, the die had been cast.  The Queen, although rejecting
the proposed sovereignty of the Netherlands, had espoused their cause,
by solemn treaty of alliance, and thereby had thrown down the gauntlet
to Spain.  She deemed it necessary, therefore, out of respect for the
opinions of mankind, to issue a manifesto of her motives to the world.
The document was published, simultaneously in Dutch, French, English, and
Italian.

In this solemn state-paper she spoke of the responsibility of princes
to the Almighty, of the ancient friendship between England and the
Netherlands, of the cruelty and tyranny of the Spaniards, of their
violation of the liberties of the Provinces, of their hanging, beheading,
banishing without law and against justice, in the space of a few months,
so many of the highest nobles in the land.  Although in the beginning of
the cruel persecution, the pretext had been the maintenance of the
Catholic religion, yet it was affirmed they had not failed to exercise
their barbarity upon Catholics also, and even upon ecclesiastics.  Of the
principal persons put to death, no one, it was asserted, had been more
devoted to the ancient church than was the brave Count Egmont, who, for
his famous victories in the service of Spain, could never be forgotten in
veracious history any more than could be the cruelty of his execution.

The land had been made desolate, continued the Queen, with fire, sword,
famine, and murder.  These misfortunes had ever been bitterly deplored by
friendly nations, and none could more truly regret such sufferings than
did the English, the oldest allies, and familiar neighbours of the
Provinces, who had been as close to them in the olden time by community
of connexion and language, as man and wife.  She declared that she had
frequently, by amicable embassies, warned her brother of Spain--speaking
to him like a good, dear sister and neighbour--that unless he restrained
the cruelty of his governors and their soldiers, he was sure to force his
Provinces into allegiance to some other power.  She expressed the danger
in which she should be placed if the Spaniards succeeded in establishing
their absolute government in the Netherlands, from which position their
attacks upon England would be incessant.  She spoke of the enterprise
favoured and set on foot by the Pope and by Spain, against the kingdom of
Ireland.  She alluded to the dismissal of the Spanish envoy, Don
Bernardino de Mendoza, who had been treated by her with great regard for
a long time, but who had been afterwards discovered in league with
certain ill-disposed and seditious subjects of hers, and with publicly
condemned traitors.  That envoy had arranged a plot according to which,
as appeared by his secret despatches, an invasion of England by a force
of men, coming partly from Spain, and partly from the Netherlands, might
be successfully managed, and he had even noted down the necessary number
of ships and men, with various other details.  Some of the conspirators
had fled, she observed, and were now consorting with Mendoza, who, after
his expulsion from England, had been appointed ambassador in Paris; while
some had been arrested, and had confessed the plot.  So soon as this
envoy had been discovered to be the chief of a rebellion and projected
invasion, the Queen had requested him, she said, to leave the kingdom
within a reasonable time, as one who was the object of deadly hatred to
the English people.  She had then sent an agent to Spain, in order to
explain the whole transaction.  That agent had not been allowed even to
deliver despatches to the King.

When the French had sought, at a previous period, to establish their
authority in Scotland, even as the Spaniards had attempted to do in the
Netherlands, and through the enormous ambition of the House of Guise, to
undertake the invasion of her kingdom, she had frustrated their plots,
even as she meant to suppress these Spanish conspiracies.  She spoke of
the Prince of Parma as more disposed by nature to mercy and humanity,
than preceding governors had been, but as unable to restrain the blood-
thirstiness of Spaniards, increased by long indulgence.  She avowed, in
assuming the protection of the Netherlands, and in sending her troops to
those countries, but three objects: peace, founded upon the recognition
of religious freedom in the Provinces, restoration of their ancient
political liberties, and security for England.  Never could there be
tranquillity, for her own realm until these neighbouring countries were
tranquil.  These were her ends and aims, despite all that slanderous
tongues might invent.  The world, she observed, was overflowing with
blasphemous libels, calumnies, scandalous pamphlets; for never had the
Devil been so busy in supplying evil tongues with venom against the
professors of the Christian religion.

She added that in a pamphlet, ascribed to the Archbishop of Milan, just
published, she had been accused of ingratitude to the King of Spain, and
of plots to take the life of Alexander Farnese.  In answer to the first
charge, she willingly acknowledged her obligations to the King of Spain
during the reign of her sister.  She pronounced it, however, an absolute
falsehood that he had ever saved her life, as if she had ever been
condemned to death.  She likewise denied earnestly the charge regarding
the Prince of Parma.  She protested herself incapable of such a crime,
besides declaring that he had never given her offence.  On the contrary,
he was a man whom she had ever honoured for the rare qualities that she
had noted in him, and for which he had deservedly acquired a high
reputation.

Such, in brief analysis, was the memorable Declaration of Elizabeth in
favour of the Netherlands--a document which was a hardly disguised
proclamation of war against Philip.  In no age of the world could an
unequivocal agreement to assist rebellious subjects, with men and money,
against their sovereign, be considered otherwise than as a hostile
demonstration.  The King of Spain so regarded the movement, and forthwith
issued a decree, ordering the seizure of all English as well as all
Netherland vessels within his ports, together with the arrest of persons,
and confiscation of property.

Subsequently to the publication of the Queen's memorial, and before the
departure of the Earl of Leicester, Sir Philip Sidney, having received
his appointment, together with the rank of general of cavalry, arrived in
the Isle of Walcheren, as governor of Flushing, at the head of a portion
of the English contingent.

It is impossible not to contemplate with affection so radiant a figure,
shining through the cold mists of that Zeeland winter, and that distant
and disastrous epoch.  There is hardly a character in history upon which
the imagination can dwell with more unalloyed delight.  Not in romantic
fiction was there ever created a more attractive incarnation of martial
valour, poetic genius, and purity of heart.  If the mocking spirit of the
soldier of Lepanto could "smile chivalry away," the name alone of his
English contemporary is potent enough to conjure it back again, so long
as humanity is alive to the nobler impulses.

"I cannot pass him over in silence," says a dusty chronicler, "that
glorious star, that lively pattern of virtue, and the lovely joy of all
the learned sort.  It was God's will that he should be born into the
world, even to show unto our age a sample of ancient virtue."  The
descendant of an ancient Norman race, and allied to many of the proudest
nobles in England, Sidney himself was but a commoner, a private
individual, a soldier of fortune.  He was now in his thirty second year,
and should have been foremost among the states men of Elizabeth, had it
not been, according to Lord Bacon, a maxim of the Cecils, that "able men
should be by design and of purpose suppressed."  Whatever of truth there
may have been in the bitter remark, it is certainly strange that a man so
gifted as Sidney--of whom his father-in-law Walsingham had declared, that
"although he had influence in all countries, and a hand upon all affairs,
his Philip did far overshoot him with his own bow"--should have passed so
much of his life in retirement, or in comparatively insignificant
employments.  The Queen, as he himself observed, was most apt to
interpret everything to his disadvantage.  Among those who knew him well,
there seems never to have been a dissenting voice.  His father, Sir Henry
Sidney, lord-deputy of Ireland, and president of Wales, a states man of
accomplishments and experience, called him "lumen familiae suae," and
said of him, with pardonable pride, "that he had the most virtues which
he had ever found in any man; that he was the very formular that all
well-disposed young gentlemen do form their manners and life by."

The learned Hubert Languet, companion of Melancthon, tried friend of
William the Silent, was his fervent admirer and correspondent.  The great
Prince of Orange held him in high esteem, and sent word to Queen
Elizabeth, that having himself been an actor in the most important
affairs of Europe, and acquainted with her foremost men, he could "pledge
his credit that her Majesty had one of the ripest and greatest
councillors of state in Sir Philip Sidney that lived in Europe."

The incidents of his brief and brilliant life, up to his arrival upon the
fatal soil of the Netherlands, are too well known to need recalling.
Adorned with the best culture that, in a learned age, could be obtained
in the best seminaries of his native country, where, during childhood and
youth, he had been distinguished for a "lovely and familiar gravity
beyond his years," he rapidly acquired the admiration of his comrades and
the esteem of all his teachers.

Travelling for three years, he made the acquaintance and gained the
personal regard of such opposite characters as Charles IX. of France,
Henry of Navarre, Don John of Austria, and William of Orange, and
perfected his accomplishments by residence and study, alternately, in
courts, camps, and learned universities.  He was in Paris during the
memorable days of August, 1572, and narrowly escaped perishing in the
St. Bartholomew Massacre.  On his return, he was, for a brief period,
the idol of the English court, which, it was said, "was maimed without
his company."  At the age of twenty-one he was appointed special envoy to
Vienna, ostensibly for the purpose of congratulating the Emperor Rudolph
upon his accession, but in reality that he might take the opportunity of
sounding the secret purposes of the Protestant princes of Germany, in
regard to the great contest of the age.  In this mission, young as he
was, he acquitted himself, not only to the satisfaction, but to the
admiration of Walsingham, certainly a master himself in that occult
science, the diplomacy of the sixteenth century.  "There hath not been,"
said he, "any gentleman, I am sure, that hath gone through so honourable
a charge with as great commendations as he."

When the memorable marriage-project of Queen Elizabeth with Anjou seemed
about to take effect, he denounced the scheme in a most spirited and
candid letter, addressed to her Majesty; nor is it recorded that the
Queen was offended with his frankness.  Indeed we are informed that
"although he found a sweet stream of sovereign humours in that well-
tempered lady to run against him, yet found he safety in herself against
that selfness which appeared to threaten him in her."  Whatever this
might mean, translated out of euphuism into English, it is certain that
his conduct was regarded with small favour by the court-grandees, by whom
"worth, duty, and justice, were looked upon with no other eyes than
Lamia's."

The difficulty of swimming against that sweet stream of sovereign humours
in the well-tempered Elizabeth, was aggravated by his quarrel, at this
period, with the magnificent Oxford.  A dispute at a tennis-court, where
many courtiers and foreigners were looking on, proceeded rapidly from one
extremity to another.  The Earl commanded Sir Philip to leave the place.
Sir Philip responded, that if he were of a mind that he should go, he
himself was of a mind that he should remain; adding that if he had
entreated, where he had no right to command, he might have done more than
"with the scourge of fury."--"This answer," says Fulke Greville, in a
style worthy of Don Adriano de Armado, "did, like a bellows, blowing up
the sparks of excess already kindled, make my lord scornfully call Sir
Philip by the name of puppy.  In which progress of heat, as the tempest
grew more and more vehement within, so did their hearts breathe out their
perturbations in a more loud and shrill accent;" and so on; but the
impending duel was the next day forbidden by express command of her
Majesty.  Sidney, not feeling the full force of the royal homily upon the
necessity of great deference from gentlemen to their superiors in rank,
in order to protect all orders from the insults of plebeians, soon
afterwards retired from the court.  To his sylvan seclusion the world
owes the pastoral and chivalrous romance of the 'Arcadia' and to the
pompous Earl, in consequence, an emotion of gratitude.  Nevertheless,
it was in him to do, rather than to write, and humanity seems defrauded,
when forced to accept the 'Arcadia,' the `Defence of Poesy,' and the
'Astrophel and Stella,' in discharge of its claims upon so great and pure
a soul.

Notwithstanding this disagreeable affair, and despite the memorable
letter against Anjou, Sir Philip suddenly flashes upon us again, as one
of the four challengers in a tournament to honour the Duke's presence in
England.  A vision of him in blue gilded armour--with horses caparisoned
in cloth of gold, pearl-embroidered, attended by pages in cloth of
silver, Venetian hose, laced hats, and by gentlemen, yeomen, and
trumpeters, in yellow velvet cassocks, buskins, and feathers--as one of
"the four fostered children of virtuous desire" (to wit, Anjou) storming
"the castle of perfect Beauty" (to wit, Queen Elizabeth, aetatis 47)
rises out of the cloud-dusts of ancient chronicle for a moment, and then
vanishes into air again.

         "Having that day his hand, his horse, his lance,
            Guided so well that they attained the prize
            Both in the judgment of our English eyes,
          But of some sent by that sweet enemy, France,"

as he chivalrously sings, he soon afterwards felt inclined for wider
fields of honourable adventure.  It was impossible that knight-errant so
true should not feel keenest sympathy with an oppressed people struggling
against such odds, as the Netherlanders were doing in their contest with
Spain.  So soon as the treaty with England was arranged, it was his
ambition to take part in the dark and dangerous enterprise, and, being
son-in-law to Walsingham and nephew to Leicester, he had a right to
believe that his talents and character would, on this occasion, be
recognised.  But, like his "very friend," Lord Willoughby, he was "not of
the genus Reptilia, and could neither creep nor crouch," and he failed,
as usual, to win his way to the Queen's favour.  The governorship of
Flushing was denied him, and, stung to the heart by such neglect, he
determined to seek his fortune beyond the seas.

"Sir Philip hath taken a very hard resolution," wrote Walsingham to
Davison, "to accompany Sir Francis Drake in this voyage, moved thereto
for that he saw her Majesty disposed to commit the charge of Flushing
unto some other; which he reputed would fall out greatly to his disgrace,
to see another preferred before him, both for birth and judgment inferior
unto him.  The despair thereof and the disgrace that he doubted he should
receive have carried him into a different course."

The Queen, however, relenting at last, interfered to frustrate his
design.  Having thus balked his ambition in the Indian seas, she felt
pledged to offer him the employment which he had originally solicited,
and she accordingly conferred upon him the governorship of Flushing, with
the rank of general of horse, under the Earl of Leicester.  In the latter
part of November, he cast anchor, in the midst of a violent storm, at
Rammekins, and thence came to the city of his government.  Young, and
looking even younger than his years--"not only of an excellent wit, but
extremely beautiful of face"--with delicately chiselled Anglo-Norman
features, smooth fair cheek, a faint moustache, blue eyes, and a mass of
amber-coloured hair; such was the author of 'Arcadia' and the governor of
Flushing.

And thus an Anglo-Norman representative of ancient race had come back to
the home of his ancestors.  Scholar, poet, knight-errant, finished
gentleman, he aptly typified the result of seven centuries of
civilization upon the wild Danish pirate.  For among those very
quicksands of storm-beaten Walachria that wondrous Normandy first came
into existence whose wings were to sweep over all the high places of
Christendom.  Out of these creeks, lagunes, and almost inaccessible
sandbanks, those bold freebooters sailed forth on their forays against
England, France, and other adjacent countries, and here they brought and
buried the booty of many a wild adventure.  Here, at a later day, Rollo
the Dane had that memorable dream of leprosy, the cure of which was the
conversion of North Gaul into Normandy, of Pagans into Christians, and
the subsequent conquest of every throne in Christendom from Ultima Thule
to Byzantium.  And now the descendant of those early freebooters had come
back to the spot, at a moment when a wider and even more imperial swoop
was to be made by their modern representatives.  For the sea-kings of the
sixteenth century--the Drakes, Hawkinses, Frobishers, Raleighs,
Cavendishes--the De Moors, Heemskerks, Barendts--all sprung of the old
pirate-lineage, whether called Englanders or Hollanders, and instinct
with the same hereditary love of adventure, were about to wrestle with
ancient tyrannies, to explore the most inaccessible regions, and to
establish new commonwealths in worlds undreamed of by their ancestors--
to accomplish, in short, more wondrous feats than had been attempted by
the Knuts, and Rollos, Rurics, Ropers, and Tancreds, of an earlier age.

The place which Sidney was appointed to govern was one of great military
and commercial importance.  Flushing was the key to the navigation of the
North Seas, ever since the disastrous storm of a century before, in which
a great trading city on the outermost verge of the island had been
swallowed bodily by the ocean.  The Emperor had so thoroughly recognized
its value, as to make special mention of the necessity for its
preservation, in his private instructions to Philip, and now the Queen of
England had confided it to one who was competent to appreciate and to
defend the prize.  "How great a jewel this place (Flushing) is to the
crown of England," wrote Sidney to his Uncle Leicester, "and to the
Queen's safety, I need not now write it to your lordship, who knows it
so well.  Yet I must needs say, the better I know it, the more I find
the preciousness of it."

He did not enter into his government, however, with much pomp and
circumstance, but came afoot into Flushing in the midst of winter and
foul weather.  "Driven to land at Rammekins," said he, "because the wind
began to rise in such sort as from thence our mariners durst not enter
the town, I came with as dirty a walk as ever poor governor entered his
charge withal."  But he was cordially welcomed, nor did he arrive by any
means too soon.

"I find the people very glad of our coming," he said, "and promise myself
as much surety in keeping this town, as popular good-will, gotten by
light hopes, and by as slight conceits, may breed; for indeed the
garrison is far too weak to command by authority, which is pity . . . .
I think, truly, that if my coming had been longer delayed, some
alteration would have followed; for the truth is, this people is weary
of war, and if they do not see such a course taken as may be likely to
defend them, they will in a sudden give over the cause. . . . All will
be lost if government be not presently used."

He expressed much anxiety for the arrival of his uncle, with which
sentiments he assured the Earl that the Netherlanders fully sympathized.
"Your Lordship's coming," he said, "is as much longed for as Messias is
of the Jews.  It is indeed most necessary that your Lordship make great
speed to reform both the Dutch and English abuses."




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Able men should be by design and of purpose suppressed
He did his work, but he had not his reward
Matter that men may rather pray for than hope for
Not of the genus Reptilia, and could neither creep nor crouch
Others that do nothing, do all, and have all the thanks
Peace-at-any-price party
The busy devil of petty economy
Thought that all was too little for him
Weary of place without power




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v43
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 44, 1585-1586


CHAPTER VII., Part 1.


     The Earl of Leicester--His Triumphal Entrance into Holland--English
     Spies about him--Importance of Holland to England--Spanish Schemes
     for invading England--Letter of the Grand Commander--Perilous
     Position of England--True Nature of the Contest--wealth and Strength
     of the Provinces--Power of the Dutch and English People--Affection
     of the Hollanders for the Queen--Secret Purposes of Leicester--
     Wretched condition of English Troops--The Nassaus and Hohenlo--The
     Earl's Opinion of them--Clerk and Killigrew--Interview with the
     States Government General offered to the Earl--Discussions on the
     Subject--The Earl accepts the Office--His Ambition and Mistakes--His
     Installation at the Hague--Intimations of the Queen's Displeasure--
     Deprecatory Letters of Leicester--Davison's Mission to England--
     Queen's Anger and Jealousy--Her angry Letters to the Earl and the
     States--Arrival of Davison--Stormy Interview with the Queen--The
     second one is calmer--Queen's Wrath somewhat mitigated--Mission of
     Heneago to the States--Shirley sent to England by the Earl--His
     Interview with Elizabeth


At last the Earl of Leicester came.  Embarking at Harwich, with a fleet
of fifty ships, and attended "by the flower and chief gallants of
England"--the Lords Sheffield, Willoughby, North, Burroughs, Sir Gervase
Clifton, Sir William Russell, Sir Robert Sidney, and others among the
number--the new lieutenant-general of the English forces in the
Netherlands arrived on the 19th December, 1585, at Flushing.

His nephew, Sir Philip Sidney, and Count Maurice of Nassau, with a body
of troops and a great procession of civil functionaries; were in
readiness to receive him, and to escort him to the lodgings prepared for
him.

Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was then fifty-four years of age.
There are few personages in English history whose adventures, real or
fictitious, have been made more familiar to the world than his have been,
or whose individuality has been presented in more picturesque fashion, by
chronicle, tragedy, or romance.  Born in the same day of the month and
hour of the day with the Queen, but two years before her birth, the
supposed synastry of their destinies might partly account, in that age of
astrological superstition, for the influence which he perpetually
exerted.  They had, moreover, been fellow-prisoners together, in the
commencement of the reign of Mary, and it is possible that he may have
been the medium through which the indulgent expressions of Philip II.
were conveyed to the Princess Elizabeth.

His grandfather, John Dudley, that "caterpillar of the commonwealth," who
lost his head in the first year of Henry VIII.  as a reward for the
grist which he brought to the mill of Henry VII.; his father, the mighty
Duke of Northumberland, who rose out of the wreck of an obscure and
ruined family to almost regal power, only to perish, like his
predecessor, upon the scaffold, had bequeathed him nothing save rapacity,
ambition, and the genius to succeed.  But Elizabeth seemed to ascend the
throne only to bestow gifts upon her favourite.  Baronies and earldoms,
stars and garters, manors and monopolies, castles and forests, church
livings and college chancellorships, advowsons and sinecures, emoluments
and dignities, the most copious and the most exalted, were conferred upon
him in breathless succession.  Wine, oil, currants, velvets,
ecclesiastical benefices, university headships, licences to preach, to
teach, to ride, to sail, to pick and to steal, all brought "grist to his
mill."  His grandfather, "the horse leach and shearer," never filled his
coffers more rapidly than did Lord Robert, the fortunate courtier.  Of
his early wedlock with the ill-starred Amy Robsart, of his nuptial
projects with the Queen, of his subsequent marriages and mock-marriages
with Douglas Sheffield and Lettice of Essex, of his plottings,
poisonings, imaginary or otherwise, of his countless intrigues, amatory
and political--of that luxuriant, creeping, flaunting, all-pervading
existence which struck its fibres into the mould, and coiled itself
through the whole fabric, of Elizabeth's life and reign--of all this the
world has long known too much to render a repetition needful here.  The
inmost nature and the secret deeds of a man placed so high by wealth and
station, can be seen but darkly through the glass of contemporary record.
There was no tribunal to sit upon his guilt.  A grandee could be judged
only when no longer a favourite, and the infatuation of Elizabeth for
Leicester terminated only with his life.  He stood now upon the soil of
the Netherlands in the character of a "Messiah," yet he has been charged
with crimes sufficient to send twenty humbler malefactors to the gibbet.
"I think," said a most malignant arraigner of the man, in a published
pamphlet, "that the Earl of Leicester hath more blood lying upon his head
at this day, crying for vengeance, than ever had private man before, were
he never so wicked."

Certainly the mass of misdemeanours and infamies hurled at the head of
the favourite by that "green-coated Jesuit," father Parsons, under the
title of 'Leycester's Commonwealth,' were never accepted as literal
verities; yet the value of the precept, to calumniate boldly, with the
certainty that much of the calumny would last for ever, was never better
illustrated than in the case of Robert Dudley.  Besides the lesser
delinquencies of filling his purse by the sale of honours and dignities,
by violent ejectments from land, fraudulent titles, rapacious enclosures
of commons, by taking bribes for matters of justice, grace, and
supplication to the royal authority, he was accused of forging various
letters to the Queen, often to ruin his political adversaries, and of
plottings to entrap them into conspiracies, playing first the comrade and
then the informer.  The list of his murders and attempts to murder was
almost endless.  "His lordship hath a special fortune," saith the Jesuit,
"that when he desireth any woman's favour, whatsoever person standeth in
his way hath the luck to die quickly."  He was said to have poisoned
Alice Drayton, Lady Lennox, Lord Sussex, Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, Lord
Sheffield, whose widow he married and then poisoned, Lord Essex, whose
widow he also married, and intended to poison, but who was said to have
subsequently poisoned him--besides murders or schemes for murder of
various other individuals, both French and English.  "He was a rare
artist in poison," said Sir Robert Naunton, and certainly not Caesar
Borgia, nor his father or sister, was more accomplished in that difficult
profession than was Dudley, if half the charges against him could be
believed.  Fortunately for his fame, many of them were proved to be
false.  Sir Henry Sidney, lord deputy of Ireland, at the time of the
death of Lord Essex, having caused a diligent inquiry to be made into
that dark affair, wrote to the council that it was usual for the Earl to
fall into a bloody flux when disturbed in his mind, and that his body
when opened showed no signs of poison.  It is true that Sir Henry,
although an honourable man, was Leicester's brother-in-law, and that
perhaps an autopsy was not conducted at that day in Ireland on very
scientific principles.

His participation in the strange death of his first wife was a matter of
current belief among his contemporaries.  "He is infamed by the death of
his wife," said Burghley, and the tale has since become so interwoven
with classic and legendary fiction, as well as with more authentic
history, that the phantom of the murdered Amy Robsart is sure to arise at
every mention of the Earl's name.  Yet a coroner's inquest--as appears
from his own secret correspondence with his relative and agent at Cumnor
--was immediately and persistently demanded by Dudley.  A jury was
impannelled--every man of them a stranger to him, and some of them
enemies.  Antony Forster, Appleyard, and Arthur Robsart, brother-in-law
and brother of the lady, were present, according to Dudley's special
request; "and if more of her friends could have been sent," said he, "I
would have sent them;" but with all their minuteness of inquiry, "they
could find," wrote Blount, "no presumptions of evil," although he
expressed a suspicion that "some of the jurymen were sorry that they
could not."  That the unfortunate lady was killed by a fall down stairs
was all that could be made of it by a coroner's inquest, rather hostile
than otherwise, and urged to rigorous investigation by the supposed
culprit himself.  Nevertheless, the calumny has endured for three
centuries, and is likely to survive as many more.

Whatever crimes Dudley may have committed in the course of his career,
there is no doubt whatever that he was the most abused man in Europe.  He
had been deeply wounded by the Jesuit's artful publication, in which all
the misdeeds with which he was falsely or justly charged were drawn up in
awful array, in a form half colloquial, half judicial.  "You had better
give some contentment to my Lord Leicester," wrote the French envoy from
London to his government, "on account of the bitter feelings excited in
him by these villainous books lately written against him."

The Earl himself ascribed these calumnies to the Jesuits, to the Guise
faction, and particularly to--the Queen of Scots.  He was said, in
consequence, to have vowed an eternal hatred to that most unfortunate and
most intriguing Princess.  "Leicester has lately told a friend," wrote
Charles Paget, "that he will persecute you to the uttermost, for that he
supposeth your Majesty to be privy to the setting forth of the book
against him."  Nevertheless, calumniated or innocent he was at least
triumphant over calumny.  Nothing could shake his hold upon Elizabeth's
affections.  The Queen scorned but resented the malignant attacks upon
the reputation of her favourite.  She declared "before God and in her
conscience, that she knew the libels against him to be most scandalous,
and such as none but an incarnate devil himself could dream to be true."
His power, founded not upon genius nor virtue, but upon woman's caprice,
shone serenely above the gulf where there had been so many shipwrecks.
"I am now passing into another world," said Sussex, upon his death-bed,
to his friends, "and I must leave you to your fortunes; but beware of the
gipsy, or he will be too hard for you.  You know not the beast so well as
I do."

The "gipsy," as he had been called from his dark complexion, had been
renowned in youth for the beauty of his person, being "tall and
singularly well-featured, of a sweet aspect, but high foreheaded, which
was of no discommendation," according to Naunton.  The Queen, who had the
passion of her father for tall and proper men, was easier won by
externals, from her youth even to the days of her dotage, than befitted
so very sagacious a personage.  Chamberlains, squires of the body,
carvers, cup-bearers, gentlemen-ushers, porters, could obtain neither
place nor favour at court, unless distinguished for stature, strength, or
extraordinary activity.  To lose a tooth had been known to cause the loss
of a place, and the excellent constitution of leg which helped Sir
Christopher Hatton into the chancellorship, was not more remarkable
perhaps than the success of similar endowments in other contemporaries.
Leicester, although stately and imposing, had passed his summer solstice.
A big bulky man, with a long red face, a bald head, a defiant somewhat
sinister eye, a high nose, and a little torrent of foam-white curly
beard, he was still magnificent in costume.  Rustling in satin and
feathers, with jewels in his ears, and his velvet toque stuck as airily
as ever upon the side of his head, he amazed the honest Hollanders, who
had been used to less gorgeous chieftains.

"Every body is wondering at the great magnificence and splendour of his
clothes," said the plain chronicler of Utrecht.  For, not much more than
a year before, Fulke Greville had met at Delft a man whose external
adornments were simpler; a somewhat slip-shod personage, whom he thus
pourtrayed: "His uppermost garment was a gown," said the euphuistic
Fulke, "yet such as, I confidently affirm, a mean-born student of our
Inns of Court would not have been well disposed to walk the streets in.
Unbuttoned his doublet was, and of like precious matter and form to the
other.  His waistcoat, which showed itself under it, not unlike the best
sort of those woollen knit ones which our ordinary barge-watermen row us
in.  His company about him, the burgesses of that beerbrewing town.  No
external sign of degree could have discovered the inequality of his worth
or estate from that multitude.  Nevertheless, upon conversing with him,
there was an outward passage of inward greatness."

Of a certainty there must have been an outward passage of inward
greatness about him; for the individual in unbuttoned doublet and
bargeman's waistcoat, was no other than William the Silent.  A different
kind of leader had now descended among those rebels, yet it would be a
great mistake to deny the capacity or vigorous intentions of the
magnificent Earl, who certainly was like to find himself in a more
difficult and responsible situation than any he had yet occupied.

And now began a triumphal progress through the land, with a series of
mighty banquets and festivities, in which no man could play a better part
than Leicester.  From Flushing he came to Middelburg, where, upon
Christmas eve (according to the new reckoning), there was an
entertainment, every dish of which has been duly chronicled.  Pigs served
on their feet, pheasants in their feathers, and baked swans with their
necks thrust through gigantic pie-crust; crystal castles of confectionery
with silver streams flowing at their base, and fair virgins leaning from
the battlements, looking for their new English champion, "wine in
abundance, variety of all sorts, and wonderful welcomes "--such was the
bill of fare.  The next day the Lieutenant-General returned the
compliment to the magistrates of Middelburg with a tremendous feast.
Then came an interlude of unexpected famine; for as the Earl sailed with
his suite in a fleet of two hundred vessels for Dort--a voyage of not
many hours' usual duration--there descended a mighty frozen fog upon the
waters, and they lay five whole days and nights in their ships, almost
starved with hunger and cold--offering in vain a "pound of silver for a
pound of bread."  Emerging at last from this dismal predicament, he
landed at Dort, and so went to Rotterdam and Delft, everywhere making his
way through lines of musketeers and civic functionaries, amid roaring
cannon, pealing bells, burning cressets, blazing tar-barrels, fiery
winged dragons, wreaths of flowers, and Latin orations.

The farther he went the braver seemed the country, and the better beloved
his.  Lordship.  Nothing was left undone, in the language of ancient
chronicle, to fill the bellies and the heads of the whole company.  At
the close of the year he came to the Hague, where the festivities were
unusually magnificent.  A fleet of barges was sent to escort him.  Peter,
James, and John, met him upon the shore, while the Saviour appeared
walking upon the waves, and ordered his disciples to cast their nets, and
to present the fish to his Excellency.  Farther on, he was confronted by
Mars and Bellona, who recited Latin odes in his honour.  Seven beautiful
damsels upon a stage, representing the United States, offered him golden
keys; seven others equally beautiful, embodying the seven sciences,
presented him with garlands, while an enthusiastic barber adorned his
shop with seven score of copper basins, with a wag-light in each,
together with a rose, and a Latin posy in praise of Queen Elizabeth.
Then there were tiltings in the water between champions mounted upon
whales, and other monsters of the deep-representatives of siege, famine,
pestilence, and murder--the whole interspersed with fireworks, poetry,
charades, and Matthias, nor Anjou, nor King Philip, nor the Emperor
Charles, in their triumphal progresses, had been received with more
spontaneous or more magnificent demonstrations.  Never had the living
pictures been more startling, the allegories more incomprehensible, the
banquets more elaborate, the orations more tedious.  Beside himself with
rapture, Leicester almost assumed the God.  In Delft, a city which he
described as "another London almost for beauty and fairness," he is said
so far to have forgotten himself as to declare that his family had--in
the person of Lady Jane Grey, his father, and brother--been unjustly
deprived of the crown of England; an indiscretion which caused a shudder
in all who heard him.  It was also very dangerous for the Lieutenant-
General to exceed the bounds of becoming modesty at that momentous epoch.
His power, as we shall soon have occasion to observe, was anomalous, and
he was surrounded by enemies.  He was not only to grapple with a rapidly
developing opposition in the States, but he was surrounded with masked
enemies, whom he had brought with him from England.  Every act and word
of his were liable to closest scrutiny, and likely to be turned against
him.  For it was most characteristic of that intriguing age, that even
the astute Walsingham, who had an eye and an ear at every key-hole in
Europe, was himself under closest domestic inspection.  There was one
Poley, a trusted servant of Lady Sidney, then living in the house of her
father Walsingham, during Sir Philip's absence, who was in close
communication with Lord Montjoy's brother, Blount, then high in favour of
Queen Elizabeth--"whose grandmother she might be for his age and hers"
--and with another brother Christopher Blount, at that moment in
confidential attendance upon Lord Leicester in Holland.  Now Poley,
and both the Blounts, were, in reality, Papists, and in intimate
correspondence with the agents of the Queen of Scots, both at home and
abroad, although "forced to fawn upon Leicester, to see if they might
thereby live quiet."  They had a secret "alphabet," or cipher, among
them, and protested warmly, that they "honoured the ground whereon Queen
Mary trod better than Leicester with all his generation; and that they
felt bound to serve her who was the only saint living on the earth."

It may be well understood then that the Earl's position was a slippery
one, and that great assumption might be unsafe.  "He taketh the matter
upon him," wrote Morgan to the Queen of Scots, "as though he were an
absolute king; but he hath many personages about him of good place out of
England, the best number whereof desire nothing more than his confusion.
Some of them be gone with him to avoid the persecution for religion in
England.  My poor advice and labour shall not be wanting to give
Leicester all dishonour, which will fall upon him in the end with shame
enough; though for the present he be very strong."  Many of these
personages of good place, and enjoying "charge and credit" with the Earl
had very serious plans in their heads.  Some of them meant "for the
service of God, and the advantage of the King of Spain, to further the
delivery of some notable towns in Holland and Zeeland to the said King
and his ministers," and we are like to hear of these individuals again.

Meantime, the Earl of Leicester was at the Hague.  Why was he there?
What was his work?  Why had Elizabeth done such violence to her affection
as to part with her favourite-in-chief; and so far overcome her thrift,
as to furnish forth, rather meagrely to be sure, that little army of
Englishmen?  Why had the flower of England's chivalry set foot upon that
dark and bloody ground where there seemed so much disaster to encounter,
and so little glory to reap?  Why had England thrown herself so
heroically into the breach, just as the last bulwarks were falling
which protected Holland from the overwhelming onslaught of Spain?
It was because Holland was the threshold of England; because the two
countries were one by danger and by destiny; because the naval expedition
from Spain against England was already secretly preparing; because the
deposed tyrant of Spain intended the Provinces, when again subjugated,
as a steppingstone to the conquest of England; because the naval and
military forces of Holland--her numerous ships, her hardy mariners, her
vast wealth, her commodious sea-ports, close to the English coast--if
made Spanish property would render Philip invincible by sea and land; and
because the downfall of Holland and of Protestantism would be death to
Elizabeth, and annihilation to England.

There was little doubt on the subject in the minds of those engaged in
this expedition.  All felt most keenly the importance of the game, in
which the Queen was staking her crown, and England its national
existence.

"I pray God," said Wilford, an officer much in Walsingham's confidence,
"that I live not to see this enterprise quail, and with it the utter
subversion of religion throughout all Christendom.  It may be I may be
judged to be afraid of my own shadow.  God grant it be so.  But if her
Majesty had not taken the helm in hand, and my Lord of Leicester sent
over, this country had been gone ere this. . . . This war doth defend
England.  Who is he that will refuse to spend his life and living in it?
If her Majesty consume twenty thousand men in the cause, the experimented
men that will remain will double that strength to the realm."

This same Wilford commanded a company in Ostend, and was employed by
Leicester in examining the defences of that important place.  He often
sent information to the Secretary, "troubling him with the rude stile of
a poor soldier, being driven to scribble in haste."  He reiterated, in
more than one letter, the opinion, that twenty thousand men consumed in
the war would be a saving in the end, and his own determination--although
he had intended retiring from the military profession--to spend not only
his life in the cause, but also the poor living that God had given him.
"Her Highness hath now entered into it," he said; "the fire is kindled;
whosoever suffers it to go out, it will grow dangerous to that side.  The
whole state of religion is in question, and the realm of England also, if
this action quail.  God grant we never live to see that doleful day.  Her
Majesty hath such footing now in these parts, as I judge it impossible
for the King to weary her out, if every man will put to the work his
helping hand, whereby it may be lustily followed, and the war not
suffered to cool.  The freehold of England will be worth but little, if
this action quail, and therefore I wish no subject to spare his purse
towards it."

Spain moved slowly.  Philip the Prudent was not sudden or rash, but his
whole life had proved, and was to prove, him inflexible in his purposes,
and patient in his attempts to carry them into effect, even when the
purposes had become chimerical, and the execution impossible.  Before the
fall of Antwerp he had matured his scheme for the invasion of England, in
most of its details--a necessary part of which was of course the
reduction of Holland and Zeeland.  "Surely no danger nor fear of any
attempt can grow to England," wrote Wilford, "so long as we can hold this
country good."  But never was honest soldier more mistaken than he, when
he added:--"The Papists will make her Highness afraid of a great fleet
now preparing in Spain.  We hear it also, but it is only a scare-crow to
cool the enterprise here."

It was no scare-crow.  On the very day on which Wilford was thus writing
to Walsingham, Philip the Second was writing to Alexander Farnese.  "The
English," he said, "with their troops having gained a footing in the
islands (Holland and Zeeland) give me much anxiety.  The English
Catholics are imploring me with much importunity to relieve them from
the persecution they are suffering.  When you sent me a plan, with the
coasts, soundings, quicksands, and ports of England, you said that the
enterprise of invading that country should be deferred till we had
reduced the isles; that, having them, we could much more conveniently
attack England; or that at least we should wait till we had got Antwerp.
As the city is now taken, I want your advice now about the invasion of
England.  To cut the root of the evils constantly growing up there, both
for God's service and mine, is desirable.  So many evils will thus be
remedied, which would not be by only warring with the islands.  It would
be an uncertain and expensive war to go to sea for the purpose of
chastising the insolent English corsairs, however much they deserve
chastisement.  I charge you to be secret, to give the matter your deepest
attention, and to let me have your opinions at once."  Philip then added
a postscript, in his own hand, concerning the importance of acquiring a
sea-port in Holland, as a basis of operations against England.  "Without
a port," he said, "we can do nothing whatever."

A few weeks later, the Grand Commander of Castile, by Philip's orders,
and upon subsequent information received from the Prince of Parma, drew
up an elaborate scheme for the invasion of England, and for the
government of that country afterwards; a program according to which the
King was to shape his course for a long time to come.  The plot was an
excellent plot.  Nothing could be more artistic, more satisfactory to the
prudent monarch; but time was to show whether there might not be some
difficulty in the way of its satisfactory development.

"The enterprise," said the Commander, "ought certainly to be undertaken
as serving the cause of the Lord.  From the Pope we must endeavour to
extract a promise of the largest aid we can get for the time when the
enterprise can be undertaken.  We must not declare that time however, in
order to keep the thing a secret, and because perhaps thus more will be
promised, under the impression that it will never take effect.  He added
that the work could not well be attempted before August or September of
the following year; the only fear of such delay being that the French
could hardly be kept during all that time in a state of revolt."  For
this was a uniform portion of the great scheme.  France was to be kept,
at Philip's expense, in a state of perpetual civil war; its every city
and village to be the scene of unceasing conflict and bloodshed--subjects
in arms against king, and family against family; and the Netherlands were
to be ravaged with fire and sword; all this in order that the path might
be prepared for Spanish soldiers into the homes of England.  So much of
misery to the whole human race was it in the power of one painstaking
elderly valetudinarian to inflict, by never for an instant neglecting the
business of his life.

Troops and vessels for the English invasion ought, in the Commander's
opinion, to be collected in Flanders, under colour of an enterprise
against Holland and Zeeland, while the armada to be assembled in Spain,
of galleons, galeazas, and galleys, should be ostensibly for an
expedition to the Indies.

Then, after the conquest, came arrangements for the government of
England.  Should Philip administer his new kingdom by a viceroy, or
should he appoint a king out of his own family?  On the whole the chances
for the Prince of Parma seemed the best of any.  "We must liberate the
Queen of Scotland," said the Grand Commander, "and marry her to some one
or another, both in order to put her out of love with her son, and to
conciliate her devoted adherents.  Of course the husband should be one of
your Majesty's nephews, and none could be so appropriate as the Prince of
Parma, that great captain, whom his talents, and the part he has to bear
in the business, especially indicate for that honour."

Then there was a difficulty about the possible issue of such a marriage.
The Farneses claimed Portugal; so that children sprung from the
bloodroyal of England blended with that of Parma, might choose to make
those pretensions valid.  But the objection was promptly solved by the
Commander:--"The Queen of Scotland is sure to have no children," he said.

That matter being adjusted, Parma's probable attitude as King of England
was examined.  It was true his ambition might cause occasional
uneasiness, but then he might make himself still more unpleasant in the
Netherlands.  "If your Majesty suspects him," said the Commander, "which,
after all, is unfair, seeing the way, in which he has been conducting
himself--it is to be remembered that in Flanders are similar
circumstances and opportunities, and that he is well armed, much beloved
in the country, and that the natives are of various humours.  The English
plan will furnish an honourable departure for him out of the Provinces;
and the principle of loyal obligation will have much influence over so
chivalrous a knight as he, when he is once placed on the English throne.
Moreover, as he will be new there, he will have need of your Majesty's
favour to maintain himself, and there will accordingly be good
correspondence with Holland and the Islands.  Thus your Majesty can put
the Infanta and her husband into full possession of all the Netherlands;
having provided them with so excellent a neighbour in England, and one so
closely bound and allied to them.  Then, as he is to have no English
children" (we have seen that the Commander had settled that point) "he
will be a very good mediator to arrange adoptions, especially if you make
good provision for his son Rainuccio in Italy.  The reasons in favour of
this plan being so much stronger than those against it, it would be well
that your Majesty should write clearly to the Prince of Parma, directing
him to conduct the enterprise" (the English invasion), "and to give him
the first offer for this marriage (with Queen Mary) if he likes the
scheme.  If not, he had better mention which of the Archdukes should be
substituted in his place."

There happened to be no lack of archdukes at that period for anything
comfortable that might offer--such as a throne in England, Holland, or
France--and the Austrian House was not remarkable for refusing convenient
marriages; but the immediate future only could show whether Alexander I.
of the House of Farnese was to reign in England, or whether the next king
of that country was to be called Matthias, Maximilian, or Ernest of
Hapsburg.

Meantime the Grand Commander was of opinion that the invasion-project was
to be pushed forward as rapidly and as secretly as possible; because,
before any one of Philip's nephews could place himself upon the English
throne, it was first necessary to remove Elizabeth from that position.
Before disposing of the kingdom, the preliminary step of conquering it
was necessary.  Afterwards it would be desirable, without wasting more
time than was requisite, to return with a large portion of the invading
force out of England, in order to complete the conquest of Holland.  For
after all, England was to be subjugated only as a portion of one general
scheme; the main features of which were the reannexation of Holland and
"the islands," and the acquisition of unlimited control upon the seas.

Thus the invasion of England was no "scarecrow," as Wilford imagined,
but a scheme already thoroughly matured.  If Holland and Zeeland should
meantime fall into the hands of Philip, it was no exaggeration on that
soldier's part to observe that the "freehold of England would be worth
but little."

To oppose this formidable array against the liberties of Europe stood
Elizabeth Tudor and the Dutch Republic.  For the Queen, however arbitrary
her nature, fitly embodied much of the nobler elements in the expanding
English national character.  She felt instinctively that her reliance in
the impending death-grapple was upon the popular principle, the national
sentiment, both in her own country and in Holland.  That principle and
that sentiment were symbolized in the Netherland revolt; and England,
although under a somewhat despotic rule, was already fully pervaded with
the instinct of self-government.  The people held the purse and the
sword.

No tyranny could be permanently established so long as the sovereign was
obliged to come every year before Parliament to ask for subsidies; so
long as all the citizens and yeomen of England had weapons in their
possession, and were carefully trained to use them; so long, in short,
as the militia was the only army, and private adventurers or trading
companies created and controlled the only navy.  War, colonization,
conquest, traffic, formed a joint business and a private speculation.
If there were danger that England, yielding to purely mercantile habits
of thought and action, might degenerate from the more martial standard to
which she had been accustomed, there might be virtue in that Netherland
enterprise, which was now to call forth all her energies.  The Provinces
would be a seminary for English soldiers.

"There can be no doubt of our driving the enemy out of the country
through famine and excessive charges," said the plain-spoken English
soldier already quoted, who came out with Leicester, "if every one of us
will put our minds to go forward without making a miserable gain by the
wars.  A man may see, by this little progress journey, what this long
peace hath wrought in us.  We are weary of the war before we come where
it groweth, such a danger hath this long peace brought us into.  This is,
and will be, in my opinion, a most fit school and nursery to nourish
soldiers to be able to keep and defend our country hereafter, if men will
follow it."

Wilford was vehement in denouncing the mercantile tendencies of his
countrymen, and returned frequently to that point in his communications
with Walsingham and other statesmen.  "God hath stirred up this action,"
he repeated again, "to be a school to breed up soldiers to defend the
freedom of England, which through these long times of peace and quietness
is brought into a most dangerous estate, if it should be attempted.  Our
delicacy is such that we are already weary, yet this journey is naught in
respect to the misery and hardship that soldiers must and do endure."

He was right in his estimate of the effect likely to be produced by the
war upon the military habits of Englishmen; for there can be no doubt
that the organization and discipline of English troops was in anything
but a satisfactory state at that period.  There was certainly vast room
for improvement.  Nevertheless he was wrong in his views of the leading
tendencies of his age.  Holland and England, self-helping, self-moving,
were already inaugurating a new era in the history of the world.  The
spirit of commercial maritime enterprise--then expanding rapidly into
large proportions--was to be matched against the religious and knightly
enthusiasm which had accomplished such wonders in an age that was passing
away.  Spain still personified, and had ever personified, chivalry,
loyalty, piety; but its chivalry, loyalty, and piety, were now in a
corrupted condition.  The form was hollow, and the sacred spark had fled.
In Holland and England intelligent enterprise had not yet degenerated
into mere greed for material prosperity.  The love of danger, the thirst
for adventure, the thrilling sense of personal responsibility and human
dignity--not the base love for land and lucre--were the governing
sentiments which led those bold Dutch and English rovers to
circumnavigate the world in cockle-shells, and to beard the most potent
monarch on the earth, both at home and abroad, with a handful of
volunteers.

This then was the contest, and this the machinery by which it was to be
maintained.  A struggle for national independence, liberty of conscience,
freedom of the seas, against sacerdotal and world-absorbing tyranny;
a mortal combat of the splendid infantry of Spain and Italy, the
professional reiters of Germany, the floating castles of a world-empire,
with the militiamen and mercantile-marine of England and Holland united.
Holland had been engaged twenty years long in the conflict.  England had
thus far escaped it; but there was no doubt, and could be none, that her
time had come.  She must fight the battle of Protestantism on sea and
shore, shoulder to shoulder, with the Netherlanders, or await the
conqueror's foot on her own soil.

What now was the disposition and what the means of the Provinces to do
their part in the contest?  If the twain as Holland wished, had become of
one flesh, would England have been the loser?  Was it quite sure that
Elizabeth--had she even accepted the less compromising title which she
refused--would not have been quite as much the protected as the
"protectress?"

It is very certain that the English, on their arrival in the Provinces,
were singularly impressed by the opulent and stately appearance of the
country and its inhabitants.  Notwithstanding the tremendous war which
the Hollanders had been waging against Spain for twenty years, their
commerce had continued to thrive, and their resources to increase.
Leicester was in a state of constant rapture at the magnificence
which surrounded him, from his first entrance into the country.
Notwithstanding the admiration expressed by the Hollanders for the
individual sumptuousness of the Lieutenant-General; his followers, on
their part, were startled by the general luxury of their new allies.
"The realm is rich and full of men," said Wilford, "the sums men exceed
in apparel would bear the brunt of this war;" and again, "if the excess
used in sumptuous apparel were only abated, and that we could convert the
same to these wars, it would stop a great gap."

The favourable view taken by the English as to the resources and
inclination of the Netherland commonwealth was universal.  "The general
wish and desire of these countrymen," wrote Sir Thomas Shirley, "is that
the amity begun between England and this nation may be everlasting, and
there is not any of our company of judgment but wish the same.  For all
they that see the goodliness and stateliness of these towns, strengthened
both with fortification and natural situation, all able to defend
themselves with their own abilities, must needs think it too fair a prey
to be let pass, and a thing most worthy to be embraced."

Leicester, whose enthusiasm continued to increase as rapidly as the
Queen's zeal seemed to be cooling, was most anxious lest the short-
comings of his own Government should work irreparable evil.  "I pray you,
my lord," he wrote to Burghley, "forget not us poor exiles; if you do,
God must and will forget you.  And great pity it were that so noble
provinces and goodly havens, with such infinite ships and mariners,
should not be always as they may now easily be, at the assured devotion
of England.  In my opinion he can neither love Queen nor country that
would not wish and further it should be so.  And seeing her Majesty is
thus far entered into the cause, and that these people comfort themselves
in full hope of her favour, it were a sin and a shame it should not be
handled accordingly, both for honour and surety."

Sir John Conway, who accompanied the Earl through the whole of his
"progress journey," was quite as much struck as he by the flourishing
aspect and English proclivities of the Provinces.  "The countries which
we have passed," he said, "are fertile in their nature; the towns,
cities, buildings, of snore state and beauty, to such as have travelled
other countries, than any they have ever seen.  The people the most
industrious by all means to live that be in the world, and, no doubt,
passing rich.  They outwardly show themselves of good heart, zeal,
and loyalty, towards the Queen our mistress.  There is no doubt that
the general number of them had rather come under her Majesty's regiment,
than to continue under the States and burgomasters of their country.
The impositions which they lay in defence of their State is wonderful.
If her Highness proceed in this beginning, she may retain these parts
hers, with their good love, and her great glory and gain.  I would she
might as perfectly see the whole country, towns, profits, and pleasures
thereof, in a glass, as she may her own face; I do then assure myself she
would with careful consideration receive them, and not allow of any man's
reason to the contrary .  .  .  .  The country is worthy any prince in
the world, the people do reverence the Queen, and in love of her do so
believe that the Grace of Leicester is by God and her sent among them for
her good.  And they believe in him for the redemption of their bodies,
as they do in God for their souls.  I dare pawn my soul, that if her
Majesty will allow him the just and rightful mean to manage this cause,
that he will so handle the manner and matter as shall highly both please
and profit her Majesty, and increase her country, and his own honour."

Lord North, who held a high command in the auxiliary force, spoke also
with great enthusiasm.  "Had your Lordship seen," he wrote to Burghley,
"with what thankful hearts these countries receive all her Majesty's
subjects, what multitudes of people they be, what stately cities and
buildings they have, how notably fortified by art, how strong by nature,
flow fertile the whole country, and how wealthy it is, you would, I know,
praise the Lord that opened your lips to undertake this enterprise, the
continuance and good success whereof will eternise her Majesty, beautify
her crown, with the most shipping, with the most populous and wealthy
countries, that ever prince added to his kingdom, or that is or can be
found in Europe.  I lack wit, good my Lord, to dilate this matter."

Leicester, better informed than some of those in his employment,
entertained strong suspicions concerning Philip's intentions with regard
to England; but he felt sure that the only way to laugh at a Spanish
invasion was to make Holland and England as nearly one as it was possible
to do.

"No doubt that the King of Spain's preparations by sea be great," he,
said; "but I know that all that he and his friends can make are not able
to match with her Majesty's forces, if it please her to use the means
that God hath given her.  But besides her own, if she need; I will
undertake to furnish her from hence, upon two months' warning, a navy for
strong and tall ships, with their furniture and mariners, that the King
of Spain, and all that he can make, shall not be able to encounter with
them.  I think the bruit of his preparations is made the greater to
terrify her Majesty and this country people.  But, thanked be God, her
Majesty hath little cause to fear him.  And in this country they esteem
no more of his power by sea than I do of six fisher-boats off Rye."

Thus suggestive is it to peep occasionally behind the curtain.  In the
calm cabinet of the Escorial, Philip and his comendador mayor are laying
their heads together, preparing the invasion of England; making
arrangements for King Alexander's coronation in that island, and--like
sensible, farsighted persons as they are--even settling the succession
to the throne after Alexander's death, instead of carelessly leaving such
distant details to chance, or subsequent consideration.  On the other
hand, plain Dutch sea-captains, grim beggars of the sea, and the like,
denizens of a free commonwealth and of the boundless ocean-men who are
at home on blue water, and who have burned gunpowder against those
prodigious slave-rowed galleys of Spain--together with their new allies,
the dauntless mariners of England--who at this very moment are "singeing
the King of Spain's beard," as it had never been singed before--are not
so much awestruck with the famous preparations for invasion as was
perhaps to be expected.  There may be a delay, after all, before Parma
can be got safely established in London, and Elizabeth in Orcus, and
before the blood-tribunal of the Inquisition can substitute its sway for
that of the "most noble, wise, and learned United States."  Certainly,
Philip the Prudent would have been startled, difficult as he was to
astonish, could he have known that those rebel Hollanders of his made
no more account of his slowly-preparing invincible armada than of six
fisher-boats off Rye.  Time alone could show where confidence had been
best placed.  Meantime it was certain, that it well behoved Holland and
England to hold hard together, nor let "that enterprise quail."

The famous expedition of Sir Francis Drake was the commencement of a
revelation.  "That is the string," said Leicester, "that touches the King
indeed."  It was soon to be made known to the world that the ocean was
not a Spanish Lake, nor both the Indies the private property of Philip.
"While the riches of the Indies continue," said Leicester, "he thinketh
he will be able to weary out all other princes; and I know, by good
means, that he more feareth this action of Sir Francis than he ever did
anything that has been attempted against him."  With these continued
assaults upon the golden treasure-houses of Spain, and by a determined
effort to maintain the still more important stronghold which had been
wrested from her in the Netherlands, England might still be safe.  "This
country is so full of ships and mariners," said Leicester, "so abundant
in wealth, and in the means to make money, that, had it but stood
neutral, what an aid had her Majesty been deprived of.  But if it had
been the enemy's also, I leave it to your consideration what had been
likely to ensue.  These people do now honour and love her Majesty in
marvellous sort."

There was but one feeling on this most important subject among the
English who went to the Netherlands.  All held the same language.  The
question was plainly presented to England whether she would secure to
herself the great bulwark of her defence, or place it in the hands of her
mortal foe?  How could there be doubt or supineness on such a momentous
subject?  "Surely, my Lord," wrote Richard Cavendish to Burghley, "if you
saw the wealth, the strength, the shipping, and abundance of mariners,
whereof these countries stand furnished, your heart would quake to think
that so hateful an enemy as Spain should again be furnished with such
instruments; and the Spaniards themselves do nothing doubt upon the hope
of the consequence hereof, to assure themselves of the certain ruin of
her Majesty and the whole estate."

And yet at the very outset of Leicester's administration, there was a
whisper of peace-overtures to Spain, secretly made by Elizabeth in her
own behalf, and in that of the Provinces.  We shall have soon occasion to
examine into the truth of these rumours, which, whether originating in
truth or falsehood, were most pernicious in their effects.  The
Hollanders were determined never to return to slavery again, so long as
they could fire a shot in their own defence.  They earnestly wished
English cooperation, but it was the cooperation of English matchlocks and
English cutlasses, not English protecols and apostilles.  It was
military, not diplomatic machinery that they required.  If they could
make up their minds to submit to Philip and the Inquisition again, Philip
and the Holy office were but too ready to receive the erring penitents to
their embrace without a go-between.

It was war, not peace, therefore, that Holland meant by the English
alliance.  It was war, not peace, that Philip intended.  It was war, not
peace, that Elizabeth's most trusty counsellors knew to be inevitable.
There was also, as we have shown, no doubt whatever as to the good
disposition, and the great power of the republic to bear its share in the
common cause.  The enthusiasm of the Hollanders was excessive.  "There
was such a noise, both in Delft, Rotterdam, and Dort," said Leicester,
"in crying 'God save the Queen!' as if she had been in Cheapside."  Her
own subjects could not be more loyal than were the citizens and yeomen of
Holland.  "The members of the States dare not but be Queen Elizabeth's,"
continued the Earl, "for by the living God! if there should fall but the
least unkindness through their default, the people would kill them.  All
sorts of people, from highest to lowest, assure themselves, now that they
have her Majesty's good countenance, to beat all the Spaniards out of
their country.  Never was there people in such jollity as these be.  I
could be content to lose a limb, could her Majesty see these countries
and towns as I have done."  He was in truth excessively elated, and had
already, in imagination, vanquished Alexander Farnese, and eclipsed the
fame of William the Silent.  "They will serve under me," he observed,
"with a better will than ever they served under the Prince of Orange.
Yet they loved him well, but they never hoped of the liberty of this
country till now."

Thus the English government had every reason to be satisfied with the
aspect of its affairs in the Netherlands.  But the nature of the Earl's
authority was indefinite.  The Queen had refused the sovereignty and the
protectorate.  She had also distinctly and peremptorily forbidden
Leicester to assume any office or title that might seem at variance with
such a refusal on her part.  Yet it is certain that, from the very first,
he had contemplated some slight disobedience to these prohibitions.
"What government is requisite"--wrote he in a secret memorandum of
"things most necessary to understand"--"to be appointed to him that shall
be their governor?  First, that he have as much authority as the Prince
of Orange, or any other governor or captain-general, hath had
heretofore."  Now the Prince of Orange hath been stadholder of each of
the United Provinces, governor-general, commander-in-chief, count of
Holland in prospect, and sovereign, if he had so willed it.  It would
doubtless have been most desirable for the country, in its confused
condition, had there been a person competent to wield, and willing to
accept, the authority once exercised by William I.  But it was also
certain that this was exactly the authority which Elizabeth had forbidden
Leicester to assume.  Yet it is diffcult to understand what position the
Queen intended that her favourite should maintain, nor how he was to
carry out her instructions, while submitting to her prohibitions.
He was directed to cause the confused government of the Provinces to
be redressed, and a better form of polity to be established.  He was
ordered, in particular, to procure a radical change in the constitution,
by causing the deputies to the General Assembly to be empowered to decide
upon important matters, without, as had always been the custom, making
direct reference to the assemblies of the separate Provinces.  He was
instructed to bring about, in some indefinite way, a complete reform in
financial matters, by compelling the States-General to raise money by
liberal taxation, according to the "advice of her Majesty, delivered unto
them by her lieutenant."

And how was this radical change in the institutions of the Provinces to
be made by an English earl, whose only authority was that of commander-
in-chief over five thousand half-starved, unpaid, utterly-forlorn English
troops?

The Netherland envoys in England, in their parting advice, most
distinctly urged him "to hale authority with the first, to declare
himself chief head and governor-general" of the whole country,--for it
was a political head that was wanted in order to restore unity of action
--not an additional general, where there were already generals in plenty.
Sir John Norris, valiant, courageous, experienced--even if not, as
Walsingham observed, a "religious soldier," nor learned in anything "but
a kind of licentious and corrupt government"--was not likely to require
the assistance of the new lieutenant-general in field operations nor
could the army be brought into a state of thorough discipline and
efficiency by the magic of Leicester's name.  The rank and file of the
English army--not the commanders-needed strengthening.  The soldiers
required shoes and stockings, bread and meat, and for these articles
there were not the necessary funds, nor would the title of Lieutenant-
General supply the deficiency.  The little auxiliary force was, in truth,
in a condition most pitiable to behold: it was difficult to say whether
the soldiers who had been already for a considerable period in the
Netherlands, or those who had been recently levied in the purlieus of
London, were in the most unpromising plight.  The beggarly state in which
Elizabeth had been willing that her troops should go forth to the wars
was a sin and a disgrace.  Well might her Lieutenant-General say that her
"poor subjects were no better than abjects."  There were few effective
companies remaining of the old force.  "There is but a small number of
the first bands left," said Sir John Conway, "and those so pitiful and
unable ever to serve again, as I leave to speak further of theirs, to
avoid grief to your heart.  A monstrous fault there hath been somewhere."

Leicester took a manful and sagacious course at starting.  Those who had
no stomach for the fight were ordered to depart.  The chaplain gave them
sermons; the Lieutenant-General, on St. Stephen's day, made them a "pithy
and honourable" oration, and those who had the wish or the means to buy
themselves out of the adventure, were allowed to do so: for the Earl was
much disgusted with the raw material out of which he was expected to
manufacture serviceable troops.  Swaggering ruffians from the
disreputable haunts of London, cockney apprentices, brokendown tapsters,
discarded serving men; the Bardolphs and Pistols, Mouldys, Warts, and the
like--more at home in tavern-brawls or in dark lanes than on the battle-
field--were not the men to be entrusted with the honour of England at a
momentous crisis.  He spoke with grief and shame of the worthless
character and condition of the English youths sent over to the
Netherlands.  "Believe me," said he, "you will all repent the cockney
kind of bringing up at this day of young men.  They be gone hence with
shame enough, and too many, that I will warrant, will make as many frays
with bludgeons and bucklers as any in London shall do; but such shall
never have credit with me again.  Our simplest men in show have been our
best men, and your gallant blood and ruffian men the worst of all
others."

Much winnowed, as it was, the small force might in time become more
effective; and the Earl spent freely of his own substance to supply the
wants of his followers, and to atone for the avarice of his sovereign.
The picture painted however by muster-master Digger of the plumed troops
that had thus come forth to maintain the honour of England and the cause
of liberty, was anything but imposing.  None knew better than Digges
their squalid and slovenly condition, or was more anxious to effect a
reformation therein.  "A very wise, stout fellow he is," said the Earl,
"and very careful to serve thoroughly her Majesty."  Leicester relied
much upon his efforts.  "There is good hope," said the muster-master,
"that his excellency will shortly establish such good order for the
government and training of our nation, that these weak, bad-furnished,
ill-armed, and worse-trained bands, thus rawly left unto him, shall
within a few months prove as well armed, trained, complete, gallant
companies as shall be found elsewhere in Europe."  The damage they were
likely to inflict upon the enemy seemed very problematical, until they
should have been improved by some wholesome ball-practice.  "They are so
unskilful," said Digger, "that if they should be carried to the field no
better trained than yet they are, they would prove much more dangerous to
their own leaders and companies than any ways serviceable on their
enemies.  The hard and miserable estate of the soldiers generally,
excepting officers, hath been such, as by the confessions of the captains
themselves, they have been offered by many of their soldiers thirty and
forty pounds a piece to be dismissed and sent away; whereby I doubt not
the flower of the pressed English bands are gone, and the remnant
supplied with such paddy persons as commonly, in voluntary procurements,
men are glad to accept."

Even after the expiration of four months the condition of the paddy
persons continued most destitute.  The English soldiers became mere
barefoot starving beggars in the streets, as had never been the case in
the worst of times, when the States were their paymasters.  The little
money brought from the treasury by the Earl, and the large sums which he
had contributed out of his own pocket, had been spent in settling, and
not fully settling, old scores.  "Let me entreat you," wrote Leicester to
Walsingham, "to be a mean to her Majesty, that the poor soldiers be not
beaten for my sake.  There came no penny of treasure over since my coming
hither.  That which then came was most part due before it came.  There is
much still due.  They cannot get a penny, their credit is spent, they
perish for want of victuals and clothing in great numbers.  The whole are
ready to mutiny.  They cannot be gotten out to service, because they
cannot discharge the debts they owe in the places where they are.  I have
let of my own more than I may spare."--"There was no soldier yet able to
buy himself a pair of hose," said the Earl again, "and it is too, too
great shame to see how they go, and it kills their hearts to show
themselves among men."

There was no one to dispute the Earl's claims.  The Nassau family was
desperately poor, and its chief, young Maurice, although he had been
elected stadholder of Holland and Zeeland, had every disposition--as Sir
Philip upon his arrival in Flushing immediately informed his uncle--to
submit to the authority of the new governor.  Louisa de Coligny, widow of
William the Silent, was most anxious for the English alliance, through
which alone she believed that the fallen fortunes of the family could be
raised.  It was thus only, she thought, that the vengeance for which she
thirsted upon the murderers of her father and her husband could be
obtained.  "We see now," she wrote to Walsingham, in a fiercer strain
than would seem to comport with so gentle a nature--deeply wronged as the
daughter of Coligny and the wife of Orange had been by Papists--"we see
now the effects of our God's promises.  He knows when it pleases Him to
avenge the blood of His own; and I confess that I feel most keenly the
joy which is shared in by the whole Church of God.  There is none that
has received more wrong from these murderers than I have done, and I
esteem myself happy in the midst of my miseries that God has permitted me
to see some vengeance.  These beginings make me hope that I shall see yet
more, which will be not less useful to the good, both in your country and
in these isles."

There was no disguise as to the impoverished condition to which the
Nassau family had been reduced by the self-devotion of its chief.  They
were obliged to ask alms of England, until the "sapling should become a
tree."--"Since it is the will of God," wrote the Princess to Davison, "I
am not ashamed to declare the necessity of our house, for it is in His
cause that it has fallen.  I pray you, Sir, therefore to do me and these
children the favour to employ your thoughts in this regard."  If there
had been any strong French proclivities on their part--as had been so
warmly asserted--they were likely to disappear.  Villiers, who had been a
confidential friend of William the Silent, and a strong favourer of
France, in vain endeavoured to keep alive the ancient sentiments towards
that country, although he was thought to be really endeavouring to bring
about a submission of the Nassaus to Spain.  "This Villiers," said
Leicester, "is a most vile traitorous knave, and doth abuse a young
nobleman here extremely, the Count Maurice.  For all his religion, he is
a more earnest persuader secretly to have him yield to a reconciliation
than Sainte Aldegonde was.  He shall not tarry ten days neither in
Holland nor Zeeland.  He is greatly hated here of all sorts, and it shall
go hard but I will win the young Count."

As for Hohenlo, whatever his opinions might once have been regarding the
comparative merits of Frenchmen and Englishmen, he was now warmly in
favour of England, and expressed an intention of putting an end to the
Villiers' influence by simply drowning Villiers.  The announcement of
this summary process towards the counsellor was not untinged with
rudeness towards the pupil.  "The young Count," said Leicester, "by
Villiers' means, was not willing to have Flushing rendered, which the
Count Hollock perceiving, told the Count Maurice, in a great rage, that
if he took any course than that of the Queen of England, and swore by no
beggars, he would drown his priest in the haven before his face, and turn
himself and his mother-in-law out of their house there, and thereupon
went with Mr. Davison to the delivery of it."  Certainly, if Hohenlo
permitted himself such startling demonstrations towards the son and widow
of William the Silent, it must have been after his habitual potations had
been of the deepest.  Nevertheless it was satisfactory for the new
chieftain to know that the influence of so vehement a partisan was
secured for England.  The Count's zeal deserved gratitude upon
Leicester's part, and Leicester was grateful.  "This man must be
cherished," said the Earl; "he is sound and faithful, and hath indeed all
the chief holds in his hands, and at his commandment.  Ye shall do well
to procure him a letter of thanks, taking knowledge in general of his
good-will to her Majesty.  He is a right Almayn in manner and fashion,
free of his purse and of his drink, yet do I wish him her Majesty's
pensioner before any prince in Germany, for he loves her and is able to
serve her, and doth desire to be known her servant.  He hath been
laboured by his nearest kinsfolk and friends in Germany to have left the
States and to have the King of Spain's pension and very great reward; but
he would not.  I trust her Majesty will accept of his offer to be her
servant during his life, being indeed a very noble soldier."  The Earl
was indeed inclined to take so cheerful view of matters as to believe
that he should even effect a reform in the noble soldier's most
unpleasant characteristic.  "Hollock is a wise gallant gentleman," he
said, "and very well esteemed.  He hath only one fault, which is
drinking; but good hope that he will amend it.  Some make me believe that
I shall be able to do much with him, and I mean to do my best, for I see
no man that knows all these countries, and the people of all sorts, like
him, and this fault overthrows all."

Accordingly, so long as Maurice continued under the tutelage of this
uproarious cavalier--who, at a later day, was to become his brother-in-
law-he was not likely to interfere with Leicester's authority.  The
character of the young Count was developing slowly.  More than his father
had ever done, he deserved the character of the taciturn.  A quiet keen
observer of men and things, not demonstrative nor talkative, nor much
given to writing--a modest, calm, deeply-reflecting student of military
and mathematical science--he was not at that moment deeply inspired by
political ambition.  He was perhaps more desirous of raising the fallen
fortunes of his house than of securing the independence of his country.
Even at that early age, however, his mind was not easy to read, and his
character was somewhat of a puzzle to those who studied it.  "I see him
much discontented with the States," said Leicester; "he hath a sullen
deep wit.  The young gentleman is yet to be won only to her Majesty, I
perceive, of his own inclination.  The house is marvellous poor and
little regarded by the States, and if they get anything it is like to be
by her Majesty, which should be altogether, and she may easily, do for
him to win him sure.  I will undertake it."  Yet the Earl was ever
anxious about some of the influences which surrounded Maurice, for he
thought him more easily guided than he wished him to be by any others but
himself.  "He stands upon making and marring," he said, "as he meets with
good counsel."  And at another time he observed, "The young gentleman
hath a solemn sly wit; but, in troth, if any be to be doubted toward the
King of Spain, it is he and his counsellors, for they have been
altogether, so far, French, and so far in mislike with England as they
cannot almost hide it."

And there was still another member of the house of Nassau who was already
an honour to his illustrious race.  Count William Lewis, hardly more than
a boy in years, had already served many campaigns, and had been
desperately wounded in the cause for which so much of the heroic blood of
his race had been shed.  Of the five Nassau brethren, his father Count
John was the sole survivor, and as devoted as ever to the cause of
Netherland liberty.  The other four had already laid down their lives in
its defence.  And William Lewis, was worthy to be the nephew of William
and Lewis, Henry and Adolphus, and the son of John.  Not at all a
beautiful or romantic hero in appearance, but an odd-looking little man,
with a round bullet-head, close-clipped hair, a small, twinkling,
sagacious eye, rugged, somewhat puffy features screwed whimsically awry,
with several prominent warts dotting, without ornamenting, all that was
visible of a face which was buried up to the ears in a furzy thicket of
yellow-brown beard, the tough young stadholder of Friesland, in his iron
corslet, and halting upon his maimed leg, had come forth with other
notable personages to the Hague.

He wished to do honour heartily and freely to Queen Elizabeth and her
representative.  And Leicester was favourably impressed with his new
acquaintance.  "Here is another little fellow," he said, "as little as
may be, but one of the gravest and wisest young men that ever I spake
withal; it is the Count Guilliam of Nassau.  He governs Friesland; I
would every Province had such another."

Thus, upon the great question which presented itself upon the very
threshold--the nature and extent of the authority to be exercised by
Leicester--the most influential Netherlanders were in favour of a large
and liberal interpretation of his powers.  The envoys in England, the
Nassau family Hohenlo, the prominent members of the States, such as the
shrewd, plausible Menin, the "honest and painful" Falk, and the
chancellor of Gelderland--"that very great, wise, old man Leoninus,"
as Leicester called him,--were all desirous that he should assume an
absolute governor-generalship over the whole country.  This was a grave
and a delicate matter, and needed to be severely scanned, without delay.
But besides the natives, there were two Englishmen--together with
ambassador Davison--who were his official advisers.  Bartholomew Clerk,
LL.D., and Sir Henry Killigrew had been appointed by the Queen to be
members of the council of the United States, according to the provisions
of the August treaty.  The learned Bartholomew hardly seemed equal to his
responsible position among those long-headed Dutch politicians.  Philip
Sidney--the only blemish in whose character was an intolerable tendency
to puns--observed that "Doctor Clerk was of those clerks that are not
always the wisest, and so my lord too late was finding him."  The Earl
himself, who never undervalued the intellect of the Netherlanders whom
he came to govern, anticipated but small assistance from the English
civilian.  "I find no great stuff in my little colleague," he said,
"nothing that I looked for.  It is a pity you have no more of his
profession, able men to serve.  This man hath good will, and a pretty
scholar's wit; but he is too little for these big fellows, as heavy as
her Majesty thinks them to be.  I would she had but one or two, such as
the worst of half a score be here."  The other English statecounsellor
seemed more promising.  "I have one here," said the Earl, "in whom I take
no small comfort; that is little Hal Killigrew.  I assure you, my lord,
he is a notable servant, and more in him than ever I heretofore thought
of him, though I always knew him to be an honest man and an able."

But of all the men that stood by Leicester's side, the most faithful,
devoted, sagacious, experienced, and sincere of his counsellors, English
or Flemish, was envoy Davison.  It is important to note exactly the
opinion that had been formed of him by those most competent to judge,
before events in which he was called on to play a prominent and
responsible though secondary part, had placed him in a somewhat
false position.

"Mr. Davison," wrote Sidney, "is here very careful in her Majesty's
causes, and in your Lordship's.  He takes great pains and goes to great
charges for it."  The Earl himself was always vehement in his praise.
"Mr. Davison," said he at another time, "has dealt most painfully and
chargeably in her Majesty's service here, and you shall find him as
sufficiently able to deliver the whole state of this country as any man
that ever was in it, acquainted with all sorts here that are men of
dealing.  Surely, my Lord, you shall do a good deed that he may be
remembered with her Majesty's gracious consideration, for his being here
has been very chargeable, having kept a very good countenance, and a very
good table, all his abode here, and of such credit with all the chief
sort, as I know no stranger in any place hath the like.  As I am a suitor
to you to be his good friend to her Majesty, so I must heartily pray you,
good my Lord, to procure his coming hither shortly to me again, for I
know not almost how to do without him.  I confess it is a wrong to the
gentleman, and I protest before God, if it were for mine own particular
respect, I would not require it for L5000.  But your Lordship doth little
think how greatly I have to do, as also how needful for her Majesty's
service his being here will, be.  Wherefore, good my Lord, if it may not
offend her Majesty, be a mean for this my request, for her own service'
sake wholly."

Such were the personages who surrounded the Earl on his arrival in the
Netherlands, and such their sentiments respecting the position that it
was desirable for him to assume.  But there was one very important fact.
He had studiously concealed from Davison that the Queen had peremptorily
and distinctly forbidden his accepting the office of governor-general.
It seemed reasonable, if he came thither at all, that he should come in
that elevated capacity.  The Staten wished it.  The Earl ardently longed
for it.  The ambassador, who knew more of Netherland politics and
Netherland humours than any man did, approved of it.  The interests of
both England and Holland seemed to require it.  No one but Leicester knew
that her Majesty had forbidden it.

Accordingly, no sooner had the bell-ringing, cannon-explosions, bonfires,
and charades, come to an end, and the Earl got fairly housed in the
Hague, than the States took the affair of government seriously in hand.

On the 9th January, Chancellor Leoninus and Paul Buys waited upon
Davison, and requested a copy of the commission granted by the Queen to
the Earl.  The copy was refused, but the commission was read; by which it
appeared that he had received absolute command over her Majesty's forces
in the Netherlands by land and sea, together with authority to send for
all gentlemen and other personages out of England that he might think
useful to him.  On the 10th the States passed a resolution to offer him
the governor-generalship over all the Provinces.  On the same day another
committee waited upon his "Excellency"--as the States chose to denominate
the Earl, much to the subsequent wrath of the Queen--and made an
appointment for the whole body to wait upon him the following morning.

Upon that day accordingly--New Year's Day, by the English reckoning, 11th
January by the New Style--the deputies of all the States at an early hour
came to his lodgings, with much pomp, preceded by a herald and
trumpeters.  Leicester, not expecting them quite so soon, was in his
dressing-room, getting ready for the solemn audience, when, somewhat to
his dismay, a flourish of trumpets announced the arrival of the whole
body in his principal hall of audience.  Hastening his preparations as
much as possible, he descended to that apartment, and was instantly
saluted by a flourish of rhetoric still more formidable; for that "very
great, and wise old Leoninus," forthwith began an oration, which promised
to be of portentous length and serious meaning.  The Earl was slightly
flustered, when, fortunately; some one whispered in his ear that they had
come to offer him the much-coveted prize of the stadholderate-general.
Thereupon he made bold to interrupt the flow of the chancellor's
eloquence in its first outpourings.  "As this is a very private matter,"
said he, "it will be better to treat of it in a more private place I pray
you therefore to come into my chamber, where these things may be more
conveniently discussed."

"You hear what my Lord says," cried Leoninus, turning to his companions;
"we are to withdraw into his chamber."

Accordingly they withdrew, accompanied by the Earl, and by five or six
select counsellors, among whom were Davison and Dr. Clerk.  Then the
chancellor once more commenced his harangue, and went handsomely through
the usual forms of compliment, first to the Queen, and then to her
representative, concluding with an earnest request that the Earl--
although her Majesty had declined the sovereignty "would take the name
and place of absolute governor and general of all their forces and
soldiers, with the disposition of their whole revenues and taxes."

So soon as the oration was concluded, Leicester; who did not speak
French, directed Davison to reply in that language.

The envoy accordingly, in name of the Earl, expressed the deepest
gratitude for this mark of the affection and confidence of the States-
General towards the Queen.  He assured them that the step thus taken by
them would be the cause of still more favour and affection on the part of
her Majesty, who would unquestionably, from day to day, augment the
succour that she was extending to the Provinces in order to relieve men
from their misery.  For himself, the Earl protested that he could never
sufficiently recompense the States for the honour which had thus been
conferred upon him, even if he should live one hundred lives.  Although
he felt himself quite unable to sustain the weight of so great an office,
yet he declared that they might repose with full confidence on his
integrity and good intentions.  Nevertheless, as the authority thus
offered to him was very arduous, and as the subject required deep
deliberation, he requested that the proposition should be reduced to
writing, and delivered into his hands.  He might then come to a
conclusion thereupon, most conducive to the glory of God and the welfare
of the land.

Three days afterwards, 14th January, the offer, drawn up formally in
writing, was presented to envoy Davison, according to the request of
Leicester.  Three days latter, 17th January, his Excellency having
deliberated upon the proposition, requested a committee of conference.
The conference took place the same day, and there was some discussion
upon matters of detail, principally relating to the matter of
contributions.  The Earl, according to the report of the committee,
manifested no repugnance to the acceptance of the office, provided these
points could be satisfactorily adjusted.  He seemed, on the contrary,
impatient, rather than reluctant; for, on the day following the
conference, he sent his secretary Gilpin with a somewhat importunate
message.  "His Excellency was surprised," said the secretary, "that the
States were so long in coming to a resolution on the matters suggested by
him in relation to the offer of the government-general; nor could his
Excellency imagine the cause of the delay."

For, in truth, the delay was caused by an excessive, rather than a
deficient, appetite for power on the part of his Excellency.  The States,
while conferring what they called the "absolute" government, by which it
afterwards appeared that they meant absolute, in regard to time, not to
function--were very properly desirous of retaining a wholesome control
over that government by means of the state-council.  They wished not only
to establish such a council, as a check upon the authority of the new
governor, but to share with him at least in the appointment of the
members who were to compose the board.  But the aristocratic Earl was
already restive under the thought of any restraint--most of all the
restraint of individuals belonging to what he considered the humbler
classes.

"Cousin, my lord ambassador," said he to Davison, "among your sober
companions be it always remembered, I beseech you, that your cousin have
no other alliance but with gentle blood.  By no means consent that he be
linked in faster bonds than their absolute grant may yield him a free and
honourable government, to be able to do such service as shall be meet for
an honest man to perform in such a calling, which of itself is very
noble.  But yet it is not more to be embraced, if I were to be led in
alliance by such keepers as will sooner draw my nose from the right scent
of the chace, than to lead my feet in the true pace to pursue the game I
desire to reach.  Consider, I pray you, therefore, what is to be done,
and how unfit it will be in respect of my poor self, and how unacceptable
to her Majesty, and how advantageous to enemies that will seek holes in
my coat, if I should take so great a name upon me, and so little power.
They challenge acceptation already, and I challenge their absolute grant
and offer to me, before they spoke of any instructions; for so it was
when Leoninus first spoke to me with them all on New Years Day, as you
heard--offering in his speech all manner of absolute authority.  If it
please them to confirm this, without restraining instructions, I will
willingly serve the States, or else, with such advising instructions as
the Dowager of Hungary had."

This was explicit enough, and Davison, who always acted for Leicester in
the negotiations with the States, could certainly have no doubt as to the
desires of the Earl, on the subject of "absolute" authority.  He did
accordingly what he could to bring the States to his Excellency's way of
thinking; nor was he unsuccessful.

On the 22nd January, a committee of conference was sent by the States to
Leyden, in which city Leicester was making a brief visit.  They were
instructed to procure his consent, if possible, to the appointment, by
the States themselves, of a council consisting of members from each
Province.  If they could not obtain this concession, they were directed
to insist as earnestly as possible upon their right to present a double.
list of candidates, from which he was to make nominations.  And if the
one and the other proposition should be refused, the States were then to
agree that his Excellency should freely choose and appoint a council of
state, consisting of native residents from every Province, for the period
of one year.  The committee was further authorised to arrange the
commission for the governor, in accordance with these points; and to draw
up a set of instructions for.  the state-council, to the satisfaction of
his Excellency.  The committee was also empowered to conclude the matter
at once, without further reference to the States.

Certainly a committee thus instructed was likely to be sufficiently
pliant.  It had need to be, in order to bend to the humour of his
Excellency, which was already becoming imperious.  The adulation which he
had received; the triumphal marches, the Latin orations, the flowers
strewn in his path, had produced their effect, and the Earl was almost
inclined to assume the airs of royalty.  The committee waited upon him at
Leyden.  He affected a reluctance to accept the "absolute" government,
but his coyness could not deceive such experienced statesmen as the "wise
old Leoliinus," or Menin, Maalzoon, Florin Thin, or Aitzma, who composed
the deputation.  It was obvious enough to them that it was not a King Log
that had descended among them, but it was not a moment for complaining.
The governor elect insisted, of course, that the two Englishmen,
according to the treaty with her Majesty, should be members of, the
council.  He also, at once, nominated Leoninus, Meetkerk, Brederode,
Falck, and Paul Buys, to the same office; thinking, no doubt, that these
were five keepers--if keepers he must have--who would not draw his nose
off the scent, nor prevent his reaching the game he hunted, whatever that
game might be.  It was reserved for the future, however, to show,
whether, the five were like to hunt in company with him as harmoniously
as he hoped.  As to the other counsellors, he expressed a willingness
that candidates should be proposed for him, as to whose qualifications he
would make up his mind at leisure.

This matter being satisfactorily adjusted-and certainly unless the game
pursued by the Earl was a crown royal, he ought to have been satisfied
with his success--the States received a letter from their committee at
Leyden, informing them that his Excellency, after some previous
protestations, had accepted the government (24th January, 1586).

It was agreed that he should be inaugurated Governor-General of the
United Provinces of Gelderland and Zutphen, Flanders, Holland, Zeeland,
Utrecht, Friesland, and all others in confederacy with them.  He was to
have supreme military command by land and sea.  He was to exercise
supreme authority in matters civil and political, according to the
customs prevalent in the reign of the Emperor Charles V.  All officers,
political, civil, legal, were to be appointed by him out of a double or
triple nomination made by the States of the Provinces in which vacancies
might occur.  The States-General were to assemble whenever and wherever
he should summon them.  They were also--as were the States of each
separate Province--competent to meet together by their own appointment.
The Governor-General was to receive an oath of fidelity from the States,
and himself to swear the maintenance of the ancient laws, customs, and
privileges of the country.

The deed was done.  In vain had an emissary of the French court been
exerting his utmost to prevent the consummation of this close alliance.
For the wretched government of Henry III., while abasing itself before
Philip II., and offering the fair cities and fertile plains of France as
a sacrifice to that insatiable ambition which wore the mask of religious
bigotry, was most anxious that Holland and England should not escape the
meshes by which it was itself enveloped.  The agent at the Hague came
nominally upon some mercantile affairs, but in reality, according to
Leicester, "to impeach the States from binding themselves to her
Majesty."  But he was informed that there was then no leisure for his
affairs; "for the States would attend to the service of the Queen of
England, before all princes in the world."  The agent did not feel
complimented by the coolness of this reception; yet it was reasonable
enough, certainly, that the Hollanders should remember with bitterness
the contumely, which they had experienced the previous year in France.
The emissary was; however, much disgusted.  "The fellow," said Leicester,
"took it in such snuff, that he came proudly to the States and offered
his letters, saying; 'Now I trust you have done all your sacrifices to
the Queen of England, and may yield me some leisure to read my masters
letters.'"--"But they so shook him, up," continued the Earl, "for naming
her Majesty in scorn--as they took it--that they hurled him his letters;
and bid him content himself;" and so on, much to the agent's
discomfiture, who retired in greater "snuff" than ever.

So much for the French influence.  And now Leicester had done exactly
what the most imperious woman in the world, whose favour was the breath
of his life, had expressly forbidden him to do.  The step having been
taken, the prize so tempting to his ambition having been snatched, and
the policy which had governed the united action of the States and himself
seeming so sound, what ought he to have done in order to avert the
tempest which he must have foreseen?  Surely a man who knew so much of
woman's nature and of Elizabeth's nature as he did, ought to have
attempted to conciliate her affections, after having so deeply wounded
her pride.  He knew his power.  Besides the graces of his person and
manner--which few women, once impressed by them, could ever forget--he
possessed the most insidious and flattering eloquence, and, in absence,
his pen was as wily as his tongue.  For the Earl was imbued with the very
genius of courtship.  None was better skilled than he in the phrases of
rapturous devotion, which were music to the ear both of the woman and the
Queen; and he knew his royal mistress too well not to be aware that the
language of passionate idolatry, however extravagant, had rarely fallen
unheeded upon her soul.  It was strange therefore, that in this
emergency, he should not at once throw himself upon her compassion
without any mediator.  Yet, on the contrary, he committed the monstrous
error of entrusting his defence to envoy Davison, whom he determined to
despatch at once with instructions to the Queen, and towards whom he
committed the grave offence of concealing from him her previous
prohibitions.  But how could the Earl fail to perceive that it was the
woman, not the Queen, whom be should have implored for pardon; that it
was Robert Dudley, not William Davison, who ought to have sued upon his
knees.  This whole matter of the Netherland sovereignty and the Leicester
stadholderate, forms a strange psychological study, which deserves and
requires some minuteness of attention; for it was by the characteristics
of these eminent personages that tho current history was deeply stamped.

Certainly, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, the first letter
conveying intelligence so likely to pique the pride of Elizabeth, should
have been a letter from Leicester.  On the contrary, it proved to be a
dull formal epistle from the States.

And here again the assistance of the indispensable Davison was considered
necessary.  On the 3rd February the ambassador--having announced his
intention of going to England, by command of his Excellency, so soon as
the Earl should have been inaugurated, for the purpose of explaining all
these important transactions to her Majesty--waited upon the States with
the request that they should prepare as speedily as might be their letter
to the Queen, with other necessary documents, to be entrusted to his
care.  He also suggested that the draft or minute of their proposed
epistle should be submitted to him for advice--"because the humours of
her Majesty were best known to him."

Now the humours of her Majesty were best known to Leicester of all men
in the whole world, and it is inconceivable that he should have allowed
so many days and weeks to pass without taking these humours properly into
account.  But the Earl's head was slightly turned by his sudden and
unexpected success.  The game that he had been pursuing had fallen into
his grasp, almost at the very start, and it is not astonishing that he
should have been somewhat absorbed in the enjoyment of his victory.

Three days later (6th February) the minute of a letter to Elizabeth,
drawn up by Menin, was submitted to the ambassador; eight days after that
(14th February) Mr. Davison took leave of the States, and set forth for
the Brill on his way to England; and three or four days later yet, he was
still in that sea-port, waiting for a favourable wind.  Thus from the
11th January, N.S., upon which day the first offer of the absolute
government had been made to Leicester, nearly forty days had elapsed,
during which long period the disobedient Earl had not sent one line,
private or official, to her Majesty on this most important subject.  And
when at last the Queen was to receive information of her favourite's
delinquency, it was not to be in his well-known handwriting and
accompanied by his penitent tears and written caresses, but to be laid
before her with all the formality of parchment and sealingwax, in the
stilted diplomatic jargon of those "highly-mighty, very learned, wise,
and very foreseeing gentlemen, my lords the States-General."  Nothing
could have been managed with less adroitness.

Meantime, not heeding the storm gathering beyond the narrow seas, the new
governor was enjoying the full sunshine of power.  On the 4th February
the ceremony of his inauguration took place, with great pomp and ceremony
at the Hague.

The beautiful, placid, village-capital of Holland wore much the same
aspect at that day as now.  Clean, quiet, spacious streets, shaded with
rows of whispering poplars and umbrageous limes, broad sleepy canals--
those liquid highways alone; which glided in phantom silence the bustle,
and traffic, and countless cares of a stirring population--quaint
toppling houses, with tower and gable; ancient brick churches, with
slender spire and musical chimes; thatched cottages on the outskirts,
with stork-nests on the roofs--the whole without fortification save the
watery defences which enclosed it with long-drawn lines on every side;
such was the Count's park, or 's Graven Haage, in English called the
Hague.

It was embowered and almost buried out of sight by vast groves of oaks
and beeches.  Ancient Badahuennan forests of sanguinary Druids, the "wild
wood without mercy" of Saxon savages, where, at a later period, sovereign
Dirks and Florences, in long succession of centuries, had ridden abroad
with lance in rest, or hawk on fist; or under whose boughs, in still
nearer days, the gentle Jacqueline had pondered and wept over her
sorrows, stretched out in every direction between the city and the
neighbouring sea.  In the heart of the place stood the ancient palace of
the counts, built in the thirteenth century by William II. of Holland,
King of the Romans, with massive brick walls, cylindrical turrets,
pointed gable and rose-shaped windows, and with spacious coup-yard,
enclosed by feudal moat, drawbridge, and portcullis.

In the great banqueting-hall of the ancient palace, whose cedarn-roof of
magnificent timber-work, brought by crusading counts from the Holy Land,
had rung with the echoes of many a gigantic revel in the days of
chivalry--an apartment one hundred and fifty feet long and forty feet
high--there had been arranged an elevated platform, with a splendid chair
of state for the "absolute" governor, and with a great profusion of
gilding and velvet tapestry, hangings, gilt emblems, complimentary
devices, lions, unicorns, and other imposing appurtenances.  Prince
Maurice, and all the members of his house, the States-General in full
costume, and all the great functionaries, civil and military, were
assembled.  There was an elaborate harangue by orator Menin, in which it
was proved; by copious citations from Holy Writ and from ancient
chronicle, that the Lord never forsakes His own; so that now, when the
Provinces were at their last gasp by the death of Orange and the loss of
Antwerp, the Queen of England and the Earl of Leicester had suddenly
descended, as if from Heaven; to their rescue.  Then the oaths of mutual
fidelity were exchanged between the governor and the States, and, in
conclusion, Dr. Bartholomew Clerk ventured to measure himself with the
"big fellows," by pronouncing an oration which seemed to command
universal approbation.  And thus the Earl was duly installed Governor-
General of the United States of the Netherlands.

But already the first mutterings of the storm were audible.  A bird in
the air had whispered to the Queen that her favourite was inclined to
disobedience.  "Some flying tale hath been told me here," wrote Leicester
to Walsingham, "that her Majesty should mislike my name of Excellency.
But if I had delighted, or would have received titles, I refused a title
higher than Excellency, as Mr. Davison, if you ask him, will tell you;
and that I, my own self, refused most earnestly that, and, if I might
have done it, this also."  Certainly, if the Queen objected to this
common form of address, which had always been bestowed upon Leicester, as
he himself observed, ever since she had made him an earl,  it might be
supposed that her wrath would mount high when she should hear of him as
absolute governor-general.  It is also difficult to say what higher title
he had refused, for certainly the records show that he had refused
nothing, in the way of power and dignity, that it was possible for him to
obtain.

But very soon afterwards arrived authentic intelligence that the Queen
had been informed of the proposition made on New Year's-Day (0.S.), and
that, although she could not imagine the possibility of his accepting,
she was indignant that he had not peremptorily rejected the offer.

"As to the proposal made to you," wrote Burghley, "by the mouth of
Leoninus, her Majesty hath been informed that you had thanked them in her
name, and alledged that there was no such thing in the contract, and that
therefore you could not accept nor knew how to answer the same."

Now this information was obviously far from correct, although it had been
furnished by the Earl himself to Burghley.  We have seen that Leicester
had by no means rejected, but very gratefully entertained, the
proposition as soon as made.  Nevertheless the Queen was dissatisfied,
even without suspecting that she had been directly disobeyed.  "Her
Majesty," continued the Lord-Treasurer; "is much offended with this
proceeding.  She allows not that you should give them thanks, but findeth
it very strange that you did not plainly declare to them that they did
well know how often her Majesty had refused to have any one for her take
any such government there, and that she had always so answered
peremptorily.  Therefore there might be some suspicion conceived that by
offering on their part, and refusal on hers, some further mischief might
be secretly hidden by some odd person's device to the hurt of the cause.
But in that your Lordship did not flatly say to them that yourself did
know her Majesty's mind therein, that she never meant, in this sort, to
take the absolute government, she is offended considering, as she saith,
that none knew her determination therein better than yourself.  For at
your going hence, she did peremptorily charge you not to accept any such
title and office; and therefore her straight commandment now is that you
shall not accept the same, for she will never assent thereto, nor avow
you with any such title."

If Elizabeth was so wrathful, even while supposing that the offer had
been gratefully declined, what were likely to be her emotions when she
should be informed that it had been gratefully accepted.  The Earl
already began to tremble at the probable consequences of his mal-
adroitness.  Grave was the error he had committed in getting himself made
governor-general against orders; graver still, perhaps fatal, the blunder
of not being swift to confess his fault, and cry for pardon, before other
tongues should have time to aggravate his offence.  Yet even now he
shrank from addressing the Queen in person, but hoped to conjure the
rising storm by means of the magic wand of the Lord-Treasurer.  He
implored his friend's interposition to shield him in the emergency, and
begged that at least her Majesty and the lords of council would suspend
their judgment until Mr. Davison should deliver those messages and
explanations with which, fully freighted, he was about to set sail from
the Brill.

"If my reasons seem to your wisdoms," said he, "other than such as might
well move a true and a faithful careful man to her Majesty to do as I
have done, I do desire, for my mistaking offence, to bear the burden of
it; to be disavowed with all displeasure and disgrace; a matter of as
great reproach and grief as ever can happen to any man."  He begged that
another person might be sent as soon as possible in his place-protesting,
however, by his faith in Christ, that he had done only what he was bound
to do by his regard for her Majesty's service--and that when he set foot
in the country he had no more expected to be made Governor of the
Netherlands than to be made King of Spain.  Certainly he had been paying
dear for the honour, if honour it was, and he had not intended on setting
forth for the Provinces to ruin himself, for the sake of an empty title.
His motives--and he was honest, when he so avowed them--were motives of
state at least as much as of self-advancement.  "I have no cause," he
said, "to have played the fool thus far for myself; first, to have her
Majesty's displeasure, which no kingdom in the world could make me
willingly deserve; next, to undo myself in my later days; to consume all
that should have kept me all my life in one half year.  But I must thank
God for all, and am most heartily grieved at her Majesty's heavy
displeasure.  I neither desire to live, nor to see my country with it."

And at this bitter thought, he began to sigh like furnace, and to shed
the big tears of penitence.

"For if I have not done her Majesty good service at this time," he said,
"I shall never hope to do her any, but will withdraw me into some out-
corner of the world, where I will languish out the rest of my few-too
many-days, praying ever for her Majesty's long and prosperous life, and
with this only comfort to live an exile, that this disgrace hath happened
for no other cause but for my mere regard for her Majesty's estate."

Having painted this dismal picture of the probable termination to his
career--not in the hope of melting Burghley but of touching the heart of
Elizabeth--he proceeded to argue the point in question with much logic
and sagacity.  He had satisfied himself on his arrival in the Provinces,
that, if he did not take the governor-generalship some other person
would; and that it certainly was for the interest of her Majesty that her
devoted servant, rather than an indifferent person, should be placed in
that important position.  He maintained that the Queen had intimated,
to him, in private, her willingness that he should accept the office in
question provided the proposition should come from the States and not
from her; he reasoned that the double nature of his functions--being
general and counsellor for her, as well as general and counsellor for the
Provinces--made his acceptance of the authority conferred on him almost
indispensable; that for him to be merely commander over five thousand
English troops, when an abler soldier than himself, Sir John Norris, was
at their head, was hardly worthy her Majesty's service or himself, and
that in reality the Queen had lost nothing, by his appointment, but had
gained much benefit and honour by thus having the whole command of the
Provinces, of their forces by land and sea, of their towns and treasures,
with knowledge of all their secrets of state.

Then, relapsing into a vein of tender but reproachful melancholy, he
observed, that, if it had been any man but himself that had done as he
had done, he would have been thanked, not censured.  "But such is now my
wretched case," he said, "as for my faithful, true, and loving heart to
her Majesty and my country, I have utterly undone myself.  For favour, I
have disgrace; for reward, utter spoil and ruin.  But if this taking upon
me the name of governor is so evil taken as it hath deserved dishonour,
discredit, disfavour, with all griefs that may be laid upon a man, I must
receive it as deserved of God and not of my Queen, whom I have reverenced
with all humility, and whom I have loved with all fidelity."

This was the true way, no doubt, to reach the heart of Elizabeth, and
Leicester had always plenty of such shafts in his quiver.  Unfortunately
he had delayed too long, and even now he dared not take a direct aim.  He
feared to write to the Queen herself, thinking that his so doing, "while
she had such conceipts of him, would only trouble her," and he therefore
continued to employ the Lord-Treasurer and Mr. Secretary as his
mediators.  Thus he committed error upon error.

Meantime, as if there had not been procrastination enough, Davison was
loitering at the Brill, detained by wind and weather.  Two days after the
letter, just cited, had been despatched to Walsingham, Leicester sent an
impatient message to the envoy.  "I am heartily sorry, with all my
heart," he said, "to hear of your long stay at Brill, the wind serving so
fair as it hath done these two days.  I would have laid any wager that
you had been in England ere this.  I pray you make haste, lest our cause
take too great a prejudice there ere you come, although I cannot fear it,
because it is so good and honest.  I pray you imagine in what care I
dwell till I shall hear from you, albeit some way very resolute."

Thus it was obvious that he had no secret despair of his cause when it
should be thoroughly laid before the Queen.  The wonder was that he had
added the offence of long silence to the sin of disobedience.  Davison
had sailed, however, before the receipt of the Earl's letter.  He had
been furnished with careful instructions upon the subject of his mission.
He was to show how eager the States had been to have Leicester for their
absolute governor--which was perfectly true--and how anxious the Earl
had been to decline the proffered honour--which was certainly false,
if contemporary record and the minutes of the States-General are to be
believed.  He was to sketch the general confusion which had descended
upon the country, the quarrelling of politicians, and the discontent of
officers and soldiers, from out of all which chaos one of two results was
sure to arise: the erection of a single chieftain, or a reconciliation of
the Provinces with Spain.  That it would be impossible for the Earl to
exercise the double functions with which he was charged--of general of
her Majesty's forces, and general and chief counsellor of the States--
if any other man than himself should be appointed governor; was obvious.
It was equally plain that the Provinces could only be kept at her
Majesty's disposition by choosing the course which, at their own
suggestion, had been adopted.  The offer of the government by the States,
and its acceptance by the Earl, were the logical consequence of the step
which the Queen had already taken.  It was thus only that England could
retain her hold upon the country, and even upon the cautionary towns.  As
to a reconciliation of the Provinces with Spain--which would have been
the probable result of Leicester's rejection of the proposition made
by the Stateait was unnecessary to do more than allude to such a
catastrophe.  No one but a madman could doubt that, in such an event,
the subjugation of England was almost certain.

But before the arrival of the ambassador, the Queen had been thoroughly
informed as to the whole extent of the Earl's delinquency.  Dire was the
result.  The wintry gales which had been lashing the North Sea, and
preventing the unfortunate Davison from setting forth on his disastrous
mission, were nothing to the tempest of royal wrath which had been
shaking the court-world to its centre.  The Queen had been swearing most
fearfully ever since she read the news, which Leicester had not dared to
communicate directly, to herself.  No one was allowed to speak a word in
extenuation of the favourite's offence.  Burghley, who lifted up his
voice somewhat feebly to appease her wrath, was bid, with a curse, to
hold his peace.  So he took to his bed-partly from prudence, partly from
gout--and thus sheltered himself for a season from the peltings of the
storm.  Walsingham, more manful, stood to his post, but could not gain a
hearing.  It was the culprit that should have spoken, and spoken in time.
"Why, why did you not write yourself?"  was the plaintive cry of all the
Earl's friends, from highest to humblest.  "But write to her now," they
exclaimed, "at any rate; and, above all, send her a present, a love-
gift."  "Lay out two or three hundred crowns in some rare thing, for
a token to her Majesty," said Christopher Hatton.

Strange that his colleagues and his rivals should have been obliged
to advise Leicester upon the proper course to pursue; that they--not
himself--should have been the first to perceive that it was the enraged
woman, even more than the offended sovereign, who was to be propitiated
and soothed.  In truth, all the woman had been aroused in Elizabeth's
bosom.  She was displeased that her favourite should derive power and
splendour from any source but her own bounty.  She was furious that
his wife, whom she hated, was about to share in his honours.  For the
mischievous tongues of court-ladies had been collecting or fabricating
many unpleasant rumours.  A swarm of idle but piquant stories had been
buzzing about the Queen's ears, and stinging her into a frenzy of
jealousy.  The Countess--it was said--was on the point of setting forth
for the Netherlands, to join the Earl, with a train of courtiers and
ladies, coaches and side-saddles, such as were never seen before--where
the two were about to establish themselves in conjugal felicity, as well
as almost royal state.  What a prospect for the jealous and imperious
sovereign!  "Coaches and side-saddles!  She would show the upstarts that
there was one Queen, and that her name was Elizabeth, and that there
was no court but hers."  And so she continued to storm and swear, and
threaten unutterable vengeance, till all her courtiers quaked in their
shoes.

Thomas Dudley, however, warmly contradicted the report, declaring, of his
own knowledge, that the Countess had no wish to go to the Provinces, nor
the Earl any intention of receiving her there.  This information was at
once conveyed to the Queen, "and," said Dudley, "it did greatly pacify
her stomach."  His friends did what they could to maintain the governor's
cause; but Burghley, Walsingham, Hatton, and the rest of them, were all
"at their wits end," and were nearly distraught at the delay in Davison's
arrival.  Meantime the Queen's stomach was not so much pacified but that
she was determined to humiliate the Earl with the least possible delay.
Having waited sufficiently long for his explanations, she now appointed
Sir Thomas Heneage as special commissioner to the States, without waiting
any longer.  Her wrath vented itself at once in the preamble to the
instructions for this agent.

"Whereas," she said, "we have been given to understand that the Earl of
Leicester hath in a very contemptuous sort--contrary to our express
commandment given unto him by ourself, accepted of an offer of a more
absolute government made by the States unto him, than was agreed on
between us and their commissioners--which kind of contemptible manner of
proceeding giveth the world just cause to think that there is not that
reverent respect carried towards us by our subjects as in duty
appertaineth; especially seeing so notorious a contempt committed by one
whom we have raised up and yielded in the eye of the world, even from the
beginning of our reign, as great portion of our favour as ever subject
enjoyed at any prince's hands; we therefore, holding nothing dearer than
our honour, and considering that no one thing could more touch our
reputation than to induce so open and public a faction of a prince, and
work a greater reproach than contempt at a subject's hand, without
reparation of our honour, have found it necessary to send you unto him,
as well to charge him with the said contempt, as also to execute such
other things as we think meet to be done, for the justifying of ourselves
to the world, as the repairing of the indignity cast upon us by his
undutiful manner of proceeding towards us .  .  .  .  .  And for that we
find ourselves also not well dealt withal by the States, in that they
have pressed the said Earl, without our assent or privity, to accept of
a more absolute government than was agreed on between us and their
commissioners, we have also thought meet that you shall charge them
therewith, according to the directions hereafter ensuing.  And to the end
there may be no delay used in the execution of that which we think meet
to be presently done, you shall charge the said States, even as they
tender the continuance of our good-will towards them, to proceed to the
speedy execution of our request."

After this trumpet-like preamble it may be supposed that the blast which
followed would be piercing and shrill.  The instructions, in truth,
consisted in wild, scornful flourishes upon one theme.  The word contempt
had occurred five times in the brief preamble.  It was repeated in almost
every line of the instructions.

"You shall let the Earl" (our cousin no longer) "understand," said the
Queen, "how highly and justly we are offended with his acceptation of the
government, which we do repute to be a very great and strange contempt,
least looked for at our hands, being, as he is, a creature of our own."
His omission to acquaint her by letter with the causes moving him "so
contemptuously to break" her commandment, his delay in sending Davison
"to answer the said contempt," had much "aggravated the fault," although
the Queen protested herself unable to imagine any "excuse for so manifest
a contempt."  The States were to be informed that she "held it strange"
that "this creature of her own" should have been pressed by them to
"commit so notorious a contempt" against her, both on account of this
very exhibition of contempt on Leicester's part, and because they thereby
"shewed themselves to have a very slender and weak conceit of her
judgment, by pressing a minister of hers to accept that which she had
refused, as: though her long experience in government had not taught her
to discover what was fit to do in matters of state."  As the result of
such a proceeding would be to disgrace her in the eyes of mankind, by
inducing an opinion that her published solemn declaration on this great
subject had been intended to abuse the, world, he was directed--in order
to remove the hard conceit justly to be taken by the world, "in
consideration of the said contempt,"--to make a public and open
resignation of the government in the place where he had accepted the
same.

Thus it had been made obvious to the unlucky "creature of her own," that
the Queen did not easily digest "contempt."  Nevertheless these
instructions to Heneage were gentle, compared with the fierce billet
which she addressed directly to the Earl: It was brief, too, as the posy
of a ring; and thus it ran: "To my Lord of Leicester, from the Queen, by
Sir Thomas Heneage.  How contemptuously we conceive ourself to have been
used by you, you shall by this bearer understand, whom we have expressly
sent unto you to charge you withal.  We could never have imagined, had we
not seen it fall out in experience, that a man raised up by ourself, and
extraordinarily favoured by us above any other subject of this land,
would have, in so contemptible a sort, broken our commandment, in a cause
that so greatly toucheth us in honour; whereof, although you have showed
yourself to make but little account, in most undutiful a sort, you may
not therefore think that we have so little care of the reparation thereof
as we mind to pass so great a wrong in silence unredressed.  And
therefore our express pleasure and commandment is, that--all delays and
excuses laid apart--you do presently, upon the duty of your allegiance,
obey and fulfil whatsoever the bearer hereof shall direct you to do in
our name.  Whereof fail not, as you will answer the contrary at your
uttermost peril."

Here was no billing and cooing, certainly, but a terse, biting
phraseology, about which there could be no misconception.

By the same messenger the Queen also sent a formal letter to the States-
General; the epistle--'mutatis mutandis'--being also addressed to the
state-council.

In this document her Majesty expressed her great surprise that Leicester
should have accepted their offer of the absolute government, "both for
police and war," when she had so expressly rejected it herself.  "To tell
the truth," she observed, "you seem to have treated us with very little
respect, and put a too manifest insult upon us, in presenting anew to one
of, our subjects the same proposition which we had already declined,
without at least waiting for our answer whether we should like it or no;
as if we had not sense enough to be able to decide upon what we ought to
accept or refuse."  She proceeded to express her dissatisfaction with the
course pursued, because so repugnant to her published declaration, in
which she had stated to the world her intention of aiding the Provinces,
without meddling in the least with the sovereignty of the country.
"The contrary would now be believed," she said, "at least by those who
take the liberty of censuring, according to their pleasure, the actions
of princes."  Thus her honour was at stake.  She signified her will,
therefore, that, in order to convince the world of her sincerity, the
authority conferred should be revoked, and that "the Earl," whom she had
decided to recall very soon, should, during his brief residence there,
only exercise the power agreed upon by the original contract.  She warmly
reiterated her intention, however, of observing inviolably the promise of
assistance which she had given to the States.  "And if," she said, "any
malicious or turbulent spirits should endeavour, perchance, to persuade
the people that this our refusal proceeds from lack of affection or
honest disposition to assist you--instead of being founded only on
respect for our honour, which is dearer to us than life--we beg you, by
every possible means, to shut their mouths, and prevent their pernicious
designs."

Thus, heavily laden with the royal wrath, Heneage was on the point of
leaving London for the Netherlands, on the very day upon which Davison
arrived, charged with deprecatory missives from that country.  After his
long detention he had a short passage, crossing from the Brill to Margate
in a single night.  Coming immediately to London, he sent to Walsingham
to inquire which way the wind was blowing at court, but received a
somewhat discouraging reply.  "Your long detention by his Lordship,"
said the Secretary, "has wounded the whole cause;" adding, that he
thought her Majesty would not speak with him.  On the other hand, it
seemed indispensable for him to go to the court, because if the Queen
should hear of his arrival before he had presented himself, she was
likely to be more angry than ever.

So, the same afternoon, Davison waited upon Walsingham, and found him
in a state of despondency.  "She takes his Lordship's acceptance of the,
government most haynously," said Sir Francis, "and has resolved to send
Sir Thomas Heneage at once, with orders for him to resign the office.
She has been threatening you and Sir Philip Sidney, whom she considers
the chief actors and persuaders in the matter, according to information
received from some persons about my Lord of Leicester."

Davison protested himself amazed at the Secretary's discourse, and at
once took great pains to show the reasons by which all parties had been
influenced in the matter of the government.  He declared roundly that if
the Queen should carry out her present intentions, the Earl would be most
unworthily disgraced, the cause utterly overthrown, the Queen's honour
perpetually stained, and that her kingdom would incur great disaster.

Directly after this brief conversation, Walsingham went up stairs to the
Queen, while Davison proceeded to the apartments of Sir Christopher
Hatton.  Thence he was soon summoned to the royal presence, and found
that he had not been misinformed as to the temper of her Majesty.  The
Queen was indeed in a passion, and began swearing at Davison so soon as
he got into the chamber; abusing Leicester for having accepted the offer
of the States, against her many times repeated commandment, and the
ambassador for not having opposed his course.  The thing had been done,
she said, in contempt of her, as if her consent had been of no
consequence, or as if the matter in no way concerned her.

So soon as she paused to take breath, the envoy modestly, but firmly,
appealed to her reason, that she would at any rate lend him a patient and
favourable ear, in which case he doubted not that she would form a more
favourable opinion of the case than she had hitherto done: He then
entered into a long discourse upon the state of the Netherlands before
the arrival of Leicester, the inclination in many quarters for a peace,
the "despair that any sound and good fruit would grow of her Majesty's
cold beginning," the general unpopularity of the States' government, the
"corruption, partiality, and confusion," which were visible everywhere,
the perilous condition of the whole cause, and the absolute necessity of
some immediate reform.

"It was necessary," said Davison, "that some one person of wisdom and
authority should take the helm.  Among the Netherlanders none was
qualified for such a charge.  Lord Maurice is a child, poor, and of but
little respect among them.  Elector Truchsess, Count Hohenlo, Meurs, and
the rest, strangers and incapable of the burden.  These considerations
influenced the States to the step which had been taken; without which all
the rest of her benevolence was to little purpose."  Although the
contract between the commissioners and the Queen had not literally
provided for such an arrangement, yet it had always been contemplated by
the States, who had left themselves without a head until the arrival of
the Earl.

"Under one pretext or another," continued the envoy, "my Lord of
Leicester had long delayed to satisfy them,"--(and in so stating he went
somewhat further in defence of his absent friend than the facts would
warrant), "for he neither flatly refused it, nor was willing to accept,
until your Majesty's pleasure should be known."  Certainly the records
show no reservation of his acceptance until the Queen had been consulted;
but the defence by Davison of the offending Earl was so much the more
courageous.

"At length, wearied by their importunity, moved with their reasons, and
compelled by necessity, he thought it better to take the course he did,"
proceeded the diplomatist, "for otherwise he must have been an eye-
witness of the dismemberment of the whole country, which could not be
kept together but by a reposed hope in her Majesty's found favour, which
had been utterly despaired of by his refusal.  He thought it better by
accepting to increase the honour, profit; and surety, of her Majesty, and
the good of the cause, than, by refusing, to utterly hazard the one, and
overthrow the other."

To all this and more, well and warmly urged by Davison; the Queen
listened by fits and starts, often interrupting his discourse by violent
abuse of Leicester, accusing him of contempt for her, charging him with
thinking more of his own particular greatness than of her honour and
service, and then "digressing into old griefs," said the envoy, "too long
and tedious to write."  She vehemently denounced Davison also for
dereliction of duty in not opposing the measure; but he manfully declared
that he never deemed so meanly of her Majesty or of his Lordship as to
suppose that she would send him, or that he would go to the Provinces,
merely," to take command of the relics of Mr. Norris's worn and decayed
troops."  Such a change, protested Davison, was utterly unworthy a person
of the Earl's quality, and utterly unsuited to the necessity of the time
and state.

But Davison went farther in defence of Leicester.  He had been present at
many of the conferences with the Netherland envoys during the preceding
summer in England, and he now told the Queen stoutly to her face that she
herself, or at any rate one of her chief counsellors, in her hearing and
his, had expressed her royal determination not to prevent the acceptance
of whatever authority the states might choose to confer, by any one whom
she might choose to send.  She had declined to accept it in person, but
she had been willing that it should be wielded by her deputy; and this
remembrance of his had been confirmed by that of one of the commissioners
since their return.  She had never--Davison maintained--sent him one
single line having any bearing on the subject.  Under such circumstances,
"I might have been accused of madness,", said he, "to have dissuaded an
action in my poor opinion so necessary and expedient for your Majesty's
honour, surety, and greatness."  If it were to do over again, he avowed,
and "were his opinion demanded, he could give no other advice than that
which he had given, having received no contrary, commandment from her
Highness."

And so ended the first evening's long and vehement debate, and Davison
departed, "leaving her," as he said, "much qualified, though in many
points unsatisfied."  She had however, absolutely refused to receive a
letter from Leicester, with which he had been charged, but which, in her
opinion, had better have been written two months before.

The next day, it seemed, after all, that Heneage was to be despatched,
"in great heat," upon his mission.  Davison accordingly requested an
immediate audience.  So soon as admitted to the presence he burst into
tears, and implored the Queen to pause before she should inflict the
contemplated disgrace on one whom she had hitherto so highly esteemed,
and, by so doing, dishonour herself and imperil both countries.  But the
Queen was more furious than ever that morning, returning at every pause
in the envoy's discourse to harp upon the one string--"How dared he come
to such a decision without at least imparting it to me?"--and so on, as
so many times before.  And again Davison, with all the eloquence and with
every soothing art he had at command; essayed to pour oil upon the waves.
Nor was he entirely unsuccessful; for presently the Queen became so calm
again that he ventured once more to present the rejected letter of the
Earl.  She broke the seal, and at sight of the well-known handwriting she
became still more gentle; and so soon as she had read the first of her
favourite's honied phrases she thrust the precious document into her
pocket, in order to read it afterwards, as Davison observed, at her
leisure.

The opening thus successfully made, and the envoy having thus, "by many
insinuations," prepared her to lend him a "more patient and willing ear
than she had vouchsafed before," he again entered into a skilful and
impassioned argument to show the entire wisdom of the course pursued by
the Earl.

It is unnecessary to repeat the conversation.  Since to say that no man
could have more eloquently and faithfully supported an absent friend
under difficulties than Davison now defended the Earl.  The line of
argument is already familiar to the reader, and, in truth, the Queen had
nothing to reply, save to insist upon the governor's delinquency in
maintaining so long and inexplicable a silence.  And--at this thought,
in spite of the envoy's eloquence, she went off again in a paroxysm of
anger, abusing the Earl, and deeply censuring Davison for his "peremptory
and partial dealing."

"I had conceived a better opinion of you," she said, "and I had intended
more good to you than I now find you worthy of."

"I humbly thank your Highness," replied the ambassador, "but I take
yourself to witness that I have never affected or sought any such grace
at your hands.  And if your Majesty persists in the dangerous course on
which you are now entering, I only pray your leave, in recompense for all
my travails, to retire myself home, where I may spend the rest of my life
in praying for you, whom Salvation itself is not able to save, if these
purposes are continued.  Henceforth, Madam, he is to be deemed happiest
who is least interested in the public service."

And so ended the second day's debate.  The next day the Lord-Treasurer,
who, according to Davison, employed himself diligently--as did also
Walsingham and Hatton--in dissuading the Queen from the violent measures
which she had resolved upon, effected so much of a change as to procure
the insertion of those qualifying clauses in Heneage's instructions which
had been previously disallowed.  The open and public disgrace of the
Earl, which was to have been peremptorily demanded, was now to be
deferred, if such a measure seemed detrimental to the public service.
Her Majesty, however, protested herself as deeply offended as ever,
although she had consented to address a brief, somewhat mysterious, but
benignant letter of compliment to the States.

Soon after this Davison retired for a few days from the court, having
previously written to the Earl that "the heat of her Majesty's offence to
his Lordship was abating every day somewhat, and that she was disposed
both to hear and to speak more temperately of him."

He implored him accordingly to a "more diligent entertaining of her by
wise letters and messages, wherein his slackness hitherto appeared to
have bred a great part of this unkindness."  He observed also that the
"traffic of peace was still going on underhand; but whether to use it as
a second string to our bow, if the first should fail, or of any settled
inclination thereunto, he could not affirm."

Meantime Sir Thomas Heneage was despatched on his mission to the Staten,
despite all the arguments and expostulations of Walsingham, Burghley,
Hatton, and Davison.  All the Queen's counsellors were unequivocally in
favour of sustaining Leicester; and Heneage was not a little embarrassed
as to the proper method of conducting the affair.  Everything, in truth,
was in a most confused condition.  He hardly understood to what power he
was accredited.  "Heneage writes even now unto me," said Walsingham to
Davison, "that he cannot yet receive any information who be the States,
which he thinketh will be a great maimer unto him in his negotiation.  I
have told him that it is an assembly much like that of our burgesses that
represent the State, and that my Lord of Leicester may cause some of them
to meet together, unto whom he may deliver his letters and messages."
Thus the new envoy was to request the culprit to summon the very assembly
by which his downfall and disgrace were to be solemnized, as formally as
had been so recently his elevation to the height of power.  The prospect
was not an agreeable one, and the less so because of his general want of
familiarity with the constitutional forms of the country he was about to
visit.  Davison accordingly, at the request of Sir Francis, furnished
Heneage with much valuable information and advice upon the subject.

Thus provided with information, forewarned of danger, furnished with a
double set of letters from the Queen to the States--the first expressed
in language of extreme exasperation, the others couched in almost
affectionate terms--and laden with messages brimfull of wrathful
denunciation from her Majesty to one who was notoriously her Majesty's
dearly-beloved, Sir Thomas Heneage set forth on his mission.  These were
perilous times for the Davisons and the Heneages, when even Leicesters
and Burghleys were scarcely secure.

Meantime the fair weather at court could not be depended upon from one
day to another, and the clouds were perpetually returning after the rain.

"Since my second and third day's audience," said Davison, "the storms I
met with at my arrival have overblown and abated daily.  On Saturday
again she fell into some new heat, which lasted not long.  This day I was
myself at the court, and found her in reasonable good terms, though she
will not yet seem satisfied to me either with the matter or manner of
your proceeding, notwithstanding all the labour I have taken in that
behalf.  Yet I find not her Majesty altogether so sharp as some men look,
though her favour has outwardly cooled in respect both of this action and
of our plain proceeding with her here in defence thereof."

The poor Countess--whose imaginary exodus, with the long procession of
coaches and side-saddles, had excited so much ire--found herself in a
most distressing position.  "I have not seen my Lady these ten or twelve
days," said Davison.  "To-morrow I hope to do my duty towards her.
I found her greatly troubled with tempestuous news she received from
court, but somewhat comforted when she understood how I had proceeded
with her Majesty .  .  .  .  But these passions overblown, I hope her
Majesty will have a gracious regard both towards myself and the cause."

But the passions seemed not likely to blow over so soon as was desirable.
Leicester's brother the Earl of Warwick took a most gloomy view of the
whole transaction, and hoarser than the raven's was his boding tone.

"Well, our mistress's extreme rage doth increase rather than diminish,"
he wrote, "and she giveth out great threatening words against you.
Therefore make the best assurance you can for yourself, and trust not her
oath, for that her malice is great and unquenchable in the wisest of
their opinions here, and as for other friendships, as far as I can learn,
it is as doubtful as the other.  Wherefore, my good brother, repose your
whole trust in God, and He will defend you in despite of all your
enemies.  And let this be a great comfort to you, and so it is likewise
to myself and all your assured friends, and that is, that you were never
so honoured and loved in your life amongst all good people as you are at
this day, only for dealing so nobly and wisely in this action as you
have done; so that, whatsoever cometh of it, you have done your part.
I praise God from my heart for it.  Once again, have great care of
yourself, I mean for your safety, and if she will needs revoke you, to
the overthrowing of the cause, if I were as you, if I could not be
assured there, I would go to the farthest part of Christendom rather than
ever come into England again.  Take heed whom you trust, for that you
have some false boys about you."

And the false boys were busy enough, and seemed likely to triumph in
the result of their schemes.  For a glance into the secret correspondence
of Mary of Scotland has already revealed the Earl to us constantly
surrounded by men in masks.  Many of those nearest his person, and of
highest credit out of England, were his deadly foes, sworn to compass
his dishonour, his confusion, and eventually his death, and in
correspondence with his most powerful adversaries at home and abroad.
Certainly his path was slippery and perilous along those icy summits of
power, and he had need to look well to his footsteps.

Before Heneage had arrived in the Netherlands, Sir Thomas Shirley,
despatched by Leicester to England with a commission to procure supplies
for the famishing soldiers, and, if possible, to mitigate the Queen's
wrath, had, been admitted more than once to her Majesty's presence.  He
had fought the Earl's battle as manfully as Davison had done, and, like
that envoy, had received nothing in exchange for his plausible arguments
but bitter words and big oaths.  Eight days after his arrival he was
introduced by Hatton into the privy chamber, and at the moment of his
entrance was received with a volley of execrations.

"I did expressly and peremptorily forbid his acceptance of the absolute
government, in the hearing of divers of my council," said the Queen.

Shirley.--"The necessity of the case was imminent, your Highness.
It was his Lordship's intent to do all for your Majesty's service.
Those countries did expect him as a governor at his first landing,
and the States durst do no other than satisfy the people also with that
opinion.  The people's mislike of their present government is such and so
great as that the name of States is grown odious amongst them.  Therefore
the States, doubting the furious rage of the people, conferred the
authority upon his Lordship with incessant suit to him to receive it.
Notwithstanding this, however, he did deny it until he saw plainly both
confusion and ruin of that country if he should refuse.  On the other
hand, when he had seen into their estates, his lordship found great
profit and commodity like to come unto your Majesty by your acceptance of
it.  Your Highness may now have garrisons of English in as many towns as
pleaseth you, without any more charge than you are now at.  Nor can any
peace be made with Spain at any time hereafter, but through you: and by
you.  Your Majesty should remember, likewise, that if a man of another
nation had been chosen governor it might have wrought great danger.
Moreover it would have been an indignity that your lieutenant-general
should of necessity be under him that so should have been elected.
Finally, this is a stop to any other that may affect the place of
government there."

Queen (who has manifested many signs of impatience during this
discourse).--"Your speech is all in vain.  His Lordship's proceeding is
sufficient to make me infamous to all princes, having protested the
contrary, as I have done, in a book which is translated into divers and
sundry languages.  His Lordship, being my servant, a creature of my own,
ought not, in duty towards me, have entered into this course without my
knowledge and good allowance."

Shirley.--"But the world hath conceived a high judgment of your Majesty's
great wisdom and providence; shown by your assailing the King of Spain at
one time both in the Low Countries and also by Sir Francis Drake.  I do
assure myself that the same judgment which did first cause you to take
this in hand must continue a certain knowledge in your Majesty that one
of these actions must needs stand much better by the other.  If Sir
Frances do prosper, then all is well.  And though he should not prosper,
yet this hold that his Lordship hath taken for you on the Low Countries
must always assure an honourable peace at your Highness's pleasure.  I
beseech your Majesty to remember that to the King of Spain the government
of his Lordship is no greater matter than if he were but your lieutenant-
general there; but the voyage of Sir Francis is of much greater offence
than all."

Queen (interrupting).--"I can very well answer for Sir Francis.
Moreover, if need be, the gentleman careth not if I should disavow him."

Shirley.--"Even so standeth my Lord, if your disavowing of him may also
stand with your Highness's favour towards him.  Nevertheless; should this
bruit of your mislike of his Lordship's authority there come unto the
ears of those people; being a nation both sudden and suspicious, and
having been heretofore used to stratagem--I fear it may work some strange
notion in them, considering that, at this time, there is an increase of
taxation raised upon them, the bestowing whereof perchance they know
not of.  His Lordship's giving; up of the government may leave them
altogether without government, and in worse case than they were ever
in before.  For now the authority of the States is dissolved, and his
Lordship's government is the only thing that holdeth them together.
I do beseech your Highness, then, to consider well of it, and if there
be any private cause for which you take grief against his Lordship,
nevertheless, to have regard unto the public cause, and to have a care
of your own safety, which in many wise men's opinions, standeth much
upon the good maintenance and upholding of this matter."

Queen.--"I believe nothing of, what you say concerning the dissolving of
the authority of the States.  I know well enough that the States do
remain states still.  I mean not to do harm to the cause, but only to
reform that which his Lordship hath done beyond his warrant from me."

And with this the Queen swept suddenly from the apartment.  Sir Thomas,
at different stages of the conversation, had in vain besought her to
accept a letter from the Earl which had been entrusted to his care.
She obstinately refused to touch it.  Shirley had even had recourse to
stratagem: affecting ignorance on many points concerning which the Queen
desired information, and suggesting that doubtless she would find those
matters fully explained in his Lordship's letter.  The artifice was in
vain, and the discussion was, on the whole, unsatisfactory.  Yet there is
no doubt that the Queen had had the worst of the argument, and she was
far too sagacious a politician not to feel the weight of that which had
been urged so often in defence of the course pursued.  But it was with
her partly a matter of temper and offended pride, perhaps even of wounded
affection.

On the following morning Shirley saw the Queen walking in the garden of
the palace, and made bold to accost her.  Thinking, as he said, "to test
her affection to Lord Leicester by another means," the artful Sir Thomas
stepped up to her, and observed that his Lordship was seriously ill.
"It is feared," he said, "that the Earl is again attacked by the disease
of which Dr. Goodrowse did once cure him.  Wherefore his Lordship is now
a humble suitor to your Highness that it would please you to spare
Goodrowse, and give him leave to go thither for some time."

The Queen was instantly touched.

"Certainly--with all my heart, with all my heart, he shall have him," she
replied, "and sorry I am that his Lordship hath that need of him."

"And indeed," returned sly Sir Thomas, "your Highness is a very gracious
prince, who are pleased not to suffer his Lordship to perish in health,
though otherwise you remain deeply offended with him."

"You know my mind," returned Elizabeth, now all the queen again, and
perhaps suspecting the trick; "I may not endure that any man should alter
my commission and the authority that I gave him, upon his own fancies and
without me."

With this she instantly summoned one of her gentlemen, in order to break
off the interview, fearing that Shirley was about to enter again upon a
discussion of the whole subject, and again to attempt the delivery of the
Earl's letter.

In all this there was much of superannuated coquetry, no doubt, and much
of Tudor despotism, but there was also a strong infusion of artifice.
For it will soon be necessary to direct attention to certain secret
transactions of an important nature in which the Queen was engaged, and
which were even hidden from the all-seeing eye of Walsingham--although
shrewdly suspected both by that statesman and by Leicester--but which
were most influential in modifying her policy at that moment towards the
Netherlands.

There could be no doubt, however, of the stanch and strenuous manner in
which the delinquent Earl was supported by his confidential messengers
and by some of his fellow-councillors.  His true friends were urgent that
the great cause in which he was engaged should be forwarded sincerely and
without delay.  Shirley had been sent for money; but to draw money from
Elizabeth was like coining her life-blood, drachma by drachma.

"Your Lordship is like to have but a poor supply of money at this time,"
said Sir Thomas.  "To be plain with you, I fear she groweth weary of the
charge, and will hardly be brought to deal thoroughly in the action."

He was also more explicit than he might have been--had he been better
informed as to the disposition of the chief personages of the court,
concerning whose temper the absent Earl was naturally anxious.  Hatton
was most in favour at the moment, and it was through Hatton that the
communications upon Netherland matters passed; "for," said Shirley, "she
will hardly endure Mr. Secretary (Walsingham) to speak unto her therein."

"And truly, my Lord," he continued, "as Mr. Secretary is a noble, good,
and true friend unto you, so doth Mr. Vice-Chamberlain show himself an
honourable, true, and faithful gentleman, and doth carefully and most
like a good friend for your Lordship."

And thus very succinctly and graphically had the envoy painted the
situation to his principal.  "Your Lordship now sees things just as they
stand," he moralized.  "Your Lordship is exceeding wise.  You know the
Queen and her nature best of any man.  You know all men here.  Your
Lordship can judge the sequel by this that you see: only this I must tell
your Lordship, I perceive that fears and doubts from thence are like to
work better effects here than comforts and assurance.  I think it my part
to send your Lordship this as it is, rather than to be silent."

And with these rather ominous insinuations the envoy concluded for the
time his narrative.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Intolerable tendency to puns
New Years Day in England, 11th January by the New Style
Peace and quietness is brought into a most dangerous estate



End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v44
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 45, 1586


CHAPTER VII., Part 2.

     Leicester's Letters to his Friends--Paltry Conduct of the Earl to
     Davison--He excuses himself at Davison's Expense--His Letter to
     Burghley--Effect of the Queen's Letters to the States--Suspicion and
     Discontent in Holland--States excuse their Conduct to the Queen--
     Leicester discredited in Holland--Evil Consequences to Holland and
     England--Magic: Effect of a Letter from Leicester--The Queen
     appeased--Her Letters to the States and the Earl--She permits the
     granted Authority----Unhappy Results of the Queen's Course--Her
     variable Moods--She attempts to deceive Walsingham--Her Injustice to
     Heneage--His Perplexity and Distress--Humiliating Position of
     Leicester--His melancholy Letters to the Queen--He receives a little
     Consolation--And writes more cheerfully--The Queen is more
     benignant--The States less contented than the Earl--His Quarrels
     with them begin.

While these storms were blowing and "overblowing" in England, Leicester
remained greatly embarrassed and anxious in Holland.  He had sown the
wind more extensively than he had dreamed of when accepting the
government, and he was now awaiting, with much trepidation, the usual
harvest: And we have seen that it was rapidly ripening.  Meantime, the
good which he had really effected in the Provinces by the course he had
taken was likely to be neutralized by the sinister rumours as to his
impending disgrace, while the enemy was proportionally encouraged.
"I understand credibly," he said, "that the Prince of Parma feels himself
in great jollity that her Majesty doth rather mislike than allow of our
doings here, which; if it be true, let her be sure her own sweet self
shall first smart."

Moreover; the English troops were, as we have seen, mere shoeless,
shivering, starving vagabonds.  The Earl had generously advanced very
large sums of money from his own pocket to relieve their necessity.  The
States, on the other hand, had voluntarily increased the monthly
contribution of 200,000 florins, to which their contract with Elizabeth
obliged them, and were more disposed than ever they had been since the
death of Orange to proceed vigorously and harmoniously against the common
enemy of Christendom.  Under such circumstances it may well be imagined
that there was cause on Leicester's part for deep mortification at the
tragical turn which the Queen's temper seemed to be taking.

"I know not," he said, "how her Majesty doth mean to dispose of me.
It hath grieved me more than I can express that for faithful and good
service she should so deeply conceive against me.  God knows with what
mind I have served her Highness, and perhaps some others might have
failed.  Yet she is neither tied one jot by covenant or promise by me in
any way, nor at one groat the more charges, but myself two or three
thousand pounds sterling more than now is like to be well spent.  I will
desire no partial speech in my favour.  If my doings be ill for her
Majesty and the realm, let me feel the smart of it.  The cause is now
well forward; let not her majesty suffer it to quail.  If you will have
it proceed to good effect, send away Sir William Pelham with all the
haste you can.  I mean not to complain, but with so weighty a cause as
this is, few men have been so weakly assisted.  Her Majesty hath far
better choice for my place, and with any that may succeed me let Sir
William Pelham be first that may come.  I speak from my soul for her
Majesty's service.  I am for myself upon an hour's warning to obey her
good pleasure."

Thus far the Earl had maintained his dignity.  He had yielded to the
solicitations of the States, and had thereby exceeded his commission, and
gratified his ambition, but he had in no wise forfeited his self-respect.
But--so soon as the first unquestionable intelligence of the passion to
which the Queen had given way at his misdoings reached him--he began to
whimper, The straightforward tone which Davison had adopted in his
interviews with Elizabeth, and the firmness with which he had defended
the cause of his absent friend, at a moment when he had plunged himself
into disgrace, was worthy of applause.  He deserved at least a word of
honest thanks.

Ignoble however was the demeanor of the Earl towards the man--for whom
he had but recently been unable to invent eulogies sufficiently warm--
so soon as he conceived the possibility of sacrificing his friend as the
scape-goat for his own fault.  An honest schoolboy would have scorned to
leave thus in the lurch a comrade who had been fighting his battles so
honestly.

"How earnest I was," he wrote to the lords of the council, 9th March,
1586, "not only to acquaint her Majesty, but immediately upon the first
motion made by the States, to send Mr. Davison over to her with letters,
I doubt not but he will truly affirm for me; yea, and how far against my
will it was, notwithstanding any reasons delivered me, that he and others
persisted in, to have me accept first of this place .  .  .  .  .  The
extremity of the case, and my being persuaded that Mr. Davison might have
better satisfied her Majesty, than I perceive he can, caused, me-neither
arrogantly nor contemptuously, but even merely and faithfully--to do her
Majesty the best service."

He acknowledged, certainly, that Davison had been influenced by honest
motives, although his importunities had been the real cause of the Earl's
neglect of his own obligations.  But he protested that he had himself,
only erred through an excessive pliancy to the will of others.  "My
yielding was my own fault," he admitted, "whatsoever his persuasions;
but far from a contemptuous heart, or else God pluck out both heart and
bowels with utter shame."

So soon as Sir Thomas Heneage had presented himself, and revealed the
full extent of the Queen's wrath, the Earl's disposition to cast the
whole crime on the shoulders of Davison became quite undisguised.

"I thank you for your letters," wrote Leicester to Walsingham, "though
you can send me no comfort.  Her Majesty doth deal hardly to believe so
ill of me.  It is true I faulted, but she doth not consider what
commodities she hath withal, and herself no way engaged for it, as Mr.
Davison might have better declared it, if it had pleased him.  And I
must thank him only for my blame, and so he will confess to you, for,
I protest before God, no necessity here could have made me leave her
Majesty unacquainted with the cause before I would have accepted of it,
but only his so earnest pressing me with his faithfid assured promise to
discharge me, however her Majesty should take it.  For you all see there
she had no other cause to be offended but this, and, by the Lord, he was
the only cause; albeit it is no sufficient allegation, being as I am .  .
.  .  .  He had, I think, saved all to have told her, as he promised me.
But now it is laid upon me, God send the cause to take no harm, my grief
must be the less.

"How far Mr. Heneage's commission shall deface me I know not.  He is wary
to observe his commission, and I consent withal.  I know the time will be
her Majesty will be sorry for it.  In the meantime I am too, too weary of
the high dignity.  I would that any that could serve her Majesty were
placed in it, and I to sit down with all my losses."

In more manful strain he then alluded to the sufferings of his army.
"Whatsoever become of me," he said, "give me leave to speak for the poor
soldiers.  If they be not better maintained, being in this strange
country, there will be neither good service done, nor be without great
dishonour to her Majesty .  .  .  .  .  Well, you see the wants, and it
is one cause that will glad me to be rid of this heavy high calling, and
wish me at my poor cottage again, if any I shall find.  But let her
Majesty pay them well, and appoint such a man as Sir William Pelham to
govern them, and she never wan more honour than these men here will do,
I am persuaded."

That the Earl was warmly urged by all most conversant with Netherland
politics to assume the government was a fact admitted by all.  That he
manifested rather eagerness than reluctance on the subject, and that his
only hesitation arose from the proposed restraints upon the power, not
from scruples about accepting the power, are facts upon record.  There
is nothing save his own assertion to show any backwardness on his part
to snatch the coveted prize; and that assertion was flatly denied by
Davison, and was indeed refuted by every circumstance in the case.  It
is certain that he had concealed from Davison the previous prohibitions
of the Queen.  He could anticipate much better than could Davison,
therefore, the probable indignation of the Queen.  It is strange then
that he should have shut his eyes to it so wilfully, and stranger still
that he should have relied on the envoy's eloquence instead of his own to
mitigate that emotion.  Had he placed his defence simply upon its true
basis, the necessity of the case, and the impossibility of carrying out
the Queen's intentions in any other way, it would be difficult to censure
him; but that he should seek to screen himself by laying the whole blame
on a subordinate, was enough to make any honest man who heard him hang
his head.  "I meant not to do it, but Davison told me to do it, please
your Majesty, and if there was naughtiness in it, he said he would make
it all right with your Majesty."  Such, reduced to its simplest
expression, was the defence of the magnificent Earl of Leicester.

And as he had gone cringing and whining to his royal mistress, so it was
natural that he should be brutal and blustering to his friend.

"By your means," said he, "I have fallen into her Majesty's deep
displeasure .  .  .  .  .  If you had delivered to her the truth of my
dealing, her Highness never could have conceived, as I perceive she doth
.  .  .  .  .  Nor doth her Majesty know how hardly I was drawn to accept
this place before I had acquainted her--as to which you promised you
would not only give her full satisfaction, but would, procure me great
thanks. . . . . You did chiefly persuade me to take this charge upon me
. . . . You can remember how many treaties you and others had with the
States, before I agreed; for all yours and their persuasion to take it
. . . . . You gave me assurance to satisfy her Majesty, but I see not
that you have done anything . . . . I did not hide from you the doubt
I had of her Majesty's ill taking it . . . . . You chiefly brought me
into it . . . . and it could no way have been heavy to you, though you
had told the uttermost of your own doing, as you faithfully promised you
would . . . . . I did very unwillingly come into the matter, doubting
that to fall out which is come to pass . . . . and it doth so fall out
by your negligent carelessness, whereof I many hundred times told you
that you would both mar the goodness of the matter, and breed me her
Majesty's displeasure . . . . . Thus fare you well, and except your
embassages have better success, I shall have no cause to commend them."

And so was the unfortunate Davison ground into finest dust between the
upper and lower millstones of royal wrath and loyal subserviency.

Meantime the other special envoy had made his appearance in the
Netherlands; the other go-between between the incensed Queen and the
backsliding favourite.  It has already been made sufficiently obvious,
by the sketch given of his instructions, that his mission was a delicate
one.  In obedience to those instructions, Heneage accordingly made his
appearance before the council, and, in Leicester's presence, delivered to
them the severe and biting reprimand which Elizabeth had chosen to
inflict upon the States and upon the governor.  The envoy performed his
ungracious task as daintily, as he could, and after preliminary
consultation with Leicester; but the proud Earl was deeply mortified."
The fourteenth day of this month of March," said he, "Sir Thomas Heneage
delivered a very sharp letter from her Majesty to the council of estate,
besides his message--myself being, present, for so was her Majesty's
pleasure, as he said, and I do think he did but as he was commanded.  How
great a grief it must be to an honest heart and a true, faithful servant,
before his own face, to a company of very wise and grave counsellors, who
had conceived a marvellous opinion before of my credit with her Majesty,
to be charged now with a manifest and wilful contempt!  Matter enough to
have broken any man's heart, that looked rather for thanks, as God doth
know I did when I first heard of Mr. Heneage's arrival--I must say to
your Lordship, for discharge of my duty, I can be no fit man to serve
here--my disgrace is too great--protesting to you that since that day I
cannot find it in my heart to come into that place, where, by my own
sufferings torn, I was made to be thought so lewd a person."

He then comforted himself--as he had a right to do--with the reflection
that this disgrace inflicted was more than he deserved, and that such
would be the opinion of those by whom he was surrounded.

"Albeit one thing," he said, "did greatly comfort me, that they all best
knew the wrong was great I had, and that her Majesty was very wrongfully
informed of the state of my cause.  I doubt not but they can and will
discharge me, howsoever they shall satisfy her Majesty.  And as I would
rather wish for death than justly to deserve her displeasure; so, good my
Lord, this disgrace not coming for any ill service to her, pray procure
me a speedy resolution, that I may go hide me and pray for her.  My heart
is broken, though thus far I can quiet myself, that I know I have done
her Majesty as faithful and good service in these countries as ever she
had done her since she was Queen of England .  .  .  .  .  Under
correction, my good Lord, I have had Halifax law--to be condemned first
and inquired upon after.  I pray God that no man find this measure that I
have done, and deserved no worse."

He defended himself--as Davison had already defended him--upon the
necessities of the case.

"I, a poor gentleman," he said, "who have wholly depended upon herself
alone--and now, being commanded to a service of the greatest importance
that ever her Majesty employed any servant in, and finding the occasion
so serving me, and the necessity of time such as would not permit such
delays, flatly seeing that if that opportunity were lost, the like again
for her service and the good of the realm was never, to be looked for,
presuming upon the favour of my prince, as many servants have done,
exceeding somewhat thereupon, rather than breaking any part of my
commission, taking upon me a place whereby I found these whole countries
could be held at her best devotion, without binding her Majesty to any
such matter as she had forbidden to the States before finding, I say,
both the time and opportunity to serve, and no lack but to trust to her
gracious acceptation, I now feel that how good, how honourable, how
profitable soever it be, it is turned to a worse part than if I had
broken all her commissions and commandments, to the greatest harm, and
dishonour, and danger, that may be imagined against her person, state,
and dignity."

He protested, not without a show of reason, that he was like to be worse
punished "for well-doing than any man that had committed a most heinous
or traitorous offence," and he maintained that if he had not accepted the
government, as he had done, "the whole State had been gone and wholly
lost."  All this--as we have seen--had already been stoutly urged by
Davison, in the very face of the tempest, but with no result, except to
gain the, enmity of both parties to the quarrel.  The ungrateful
Leicester now expressed confidence that the second go-between would be
more adroit than the first had proved.  "The causes why," said he, "Mr.
Davison could have told--no man better--but Mr. Heneage can now tell, who
hath sought to the uttermost the bottom of all things.  I will stand to
his report, whether glory or vain desire of title caused me to step one
foot forward in the matter.  My place was great enough and high enough
before, with much less trouble than by this, besides the great
indignation of her Majesty .  .  .  .  .  If I had overslipt the good
occasion then in danger, I had been worthy to be hanged, and to be taken
for a most lewd servant to her Majesty, and a dishonest wretch to my
country."

But diligently as Heneage had sought to the bottom of all things, he had
not gained the approbation of Sidney.  Sir Philip thought that the new
man had only ill botched a piece of work that had been most awkwardly
contrived from the beginning.  "Sir Thomas Heneage," said he, "hath with
as much honesty, in my opinion done as much hurt as any man this twelve-
month hath done with naughtiness.  But I hope in God, when her Majesty
finds the truth of things, her graciousness will not utterly, overthrow a
cause so behooveful and costly unto her."

He briefly warned the government that most disastrous effects were likely
to ensue, if the Earl should be publicly disgraced, and the recent action
of the States reversed.  The penny-wise economy, too, of the Queen, was
rapidly proving a most ruinous extravagance.  "I only cry for Flushing;"
said Sidney, "but, unless the monies be sent over, there will some
terrible accident follow, particularly to the cautionary towns, if her
Majesty mean to have them cautions."

The effect produced by the first explosion of the Queen's wrath was
indeed one of universal suspicion and distrust.  The greatest care had
been taken, however, that the affair should be delicately handled, for
Heneage, while, doing as much hurt by honesty as, others by naughtiness,
had modified his course as much as he dared in deference to the opinions
of the Earl himself, and that of his English counsellors.  The great
culprit himself, assisted by his two lawyers, Clerk and Killigrew--had
himself drawn the bill of his own indictment.  The letters of the Queen
to the States, to the council, and to the Earl himself, were, of
necessity, delivered, but the reprimand which Heneage had been instructed
to fulminate was made as harmless as possible.  It was arranged that he
should make a speech before the council; but abstain from a protocol.
The oration was duly pronounced, and it was, of necessity, stinging.
Otherwise the disobedience to the Queen, would have been flagrant.  But
the pain inflicted was to disappear with the first castigation.  The
humiliation was to be public and solemn, but it was not to be placed on
perpetual record.

"We thought best," said Leicester, Heneage, Clerk, and Killigrew--"In
according to her Majesty's secret instructions--to take that course which
might least endanger the weak estate of the Provinces--that is to say, to
utter so much in words as we hoped might satisfy her excellent Majesty's
expectation, and yet leave them nothing in writing to confirm that which
was secretly spread in many places to the hindrance of the good course of
settling these affairs.  Which speech, after Sir Thomas Heneage had
devised, and we both perused and allowed, he, by our consent and advice,
pronounced to the council of state. This we did think needful--especially
because every one of the council that was present at the reading of her
Majesty's first letters, was of the full mind, that if her Majesty should
again show the least mislike of the present government, or should not by
her next letters confirm it, they, were all undone--for that every man
would cast with himself which way to make his peace."

Thus adroitly had the "poor gentleman, who could not find it in his heart
to come again into the place, where--by his own sufferings torn--he was
made to appear so lewd a person"--provided that there should remain no
trace of that lewdness and of his sovereign's displeasure, upon the
record of the States.  It was not long, too, before the Earl was enabled
to surmount his mortification; but the end was not yet.

The universal suspicion, consequent on these proceedings, grew most
painful.  It pointed to one invariable quarter.  It was believed by all
that the Queen was privately treating for peace, and that the transaction
was kept a secret not only from the States but from her own most trusted
counsellors also.  It would be difficult to exaggerate the pernicious
effects of this suspicion.  Whether it was a well-grounded one or not,
will be shown in a subsequent chapter, but there is no doubt that the
vigour of the enterprise was thus sapped at a most critical moment.  The
Provinces had never been more heartily banded together since the fatal
10th of July, 1584, than they were in the early spring of 1586.  They
were rapidly organizing their own army, and, if the Queen had manifested
more sympathy with her own starving troops, the united Englishmen and
Hollanders would have been invincible even by Alexander Farnese.

Moreover, they had sent out nine war-vessels to cruise off the Cape Verd
Islands for the homeward-bound Spanish treasure fleet from America, with
orders, if they missed it, to proceed to the West Indies; so that, said
Leicester, "the King of Spain will have enough to do between these men
and Drake."  All parties had united in conferring a generous amount of
power upon the Earl, who was, in truth, stadholder-general, under grant
from the States--and both Leicester and the Provinces themselves were
eager and earnest for the war.  In war alone lay the salvation of England
and Holland.  Peace was an impossibility.  It seemed to the most
experienced statesmen of both countries even an absurdity.  It may well
be imagined, therefore, that the idea of an underhand negotiation by
Elizabeth would cause a frenzy in the Netherlands.  In Leicester's
opinion, nothing short of a general massacre of the English would be the
probable consequence.  "No doubt," said he, "the very way it is to put us
all to the sword here.  For mine own part it would be happiest for me,
though I wish and trust to lose my life in better sort."

Champagny, however, was giving out mysterious hints that the King of
Spain could have peace with England when he wished for it.  Sir Thomas
Cecil, son of Lord Burghley, on whose countenance the States especially
relied, was returning on sick-leave from his government of the Brill,
and this sudden departure of so eminent a personage, joined with the
public disavowal of the recent transaction between Leicester and the
Provinces, was producing a general and most sickening apprehension as to
the Queen's good faith.  The Earl did not fail to urge these matters most
warmly on the consideration of the English council, setting forth that
the States were stanch for the war, but that they would be beforehand
with her if she attempted by underhand means to compass a peace.  "If
these men once smell any such matter," wrote Leicester to Burghley, "be
you sure they will soon come before you, to the utter overthrow of her
Majesty and state for ever."

The Earl was suspecting the "false boys," by whom he was surrounded,
although it was impossible for him to perceive, as we have been enabled
to do, the wide-spread and intricate meshes by which he was enveloped.
"Your Papists in England," said he, "have sent over word to some in this
company, that all that they ever hoped for is come to pass; that my Lord
of Leicester shall be called away in greatest indignation with her
Majesty, and to confirm this of Champagny, I have myself seen a letter
that her Majesty is in hand with a secret peace.  God forbid! for if it
be so, her Majesty, her realm, and we, are all undone."

The feeling in the Provinces was still sincerely loyal towards England.
"These men," said Leicester, "yet honour and most dearly love her
Majesty, and hardly, I know, will be brought to believe ill of her any
way."  Nevertheless these rumours, to the discredit of her good faith,
were doing infinite harm; while the Earl, although keeping his eyes and
ears wide open, was anxious not to compromise himself any further with
his sovereign, by appearing himself to suspect her of duplicity.  "Good,
my Lord," he besought Burghley, "do not let her Majesty know of this
concerning Champagny as coming from me, for she will think it is done
for my own cause, which, by the Lord God, it is not, but even on the
necessity of the case for her own safety, and the realm, and us all.
Good my Lord, as you will do any good in the matter, let not her Majesty
understand any piece of it to come from me."

The States-General, on the 25th March, N.S., addressed a respectful
letter to the Queen, in reply to her vehement chidings.  They expressed
their deep regret that her Majesty should be so offended with the
election of the Earl of Leicester as absolute governor.

They confessed that she had just cause of displeasure, but hoped that
when she should be informed of the whole matter she would rest better
satisfied with their proceedings.  They stated that the authority was the
same which had been previously bestowed upon governors-general; observing
that by the word "absolute," which had been used in designation of that
authority, nothing more had been intended than to give to the Earl full
power to execute his commission, while the sovereignty of the country was
reserved to the people.  This commission, they said, could not be without
danger revoked.  And therefore they most humbly besought her Majesty to
approve what had been done, and to remember its conformity with her own
advice to them, that a multitude of heads, whereby confusion in the
government is bred, should be avoided.

Leicester, upon the same occasion, addressed a letter to Burghley and
Walsingham, expressing himself as became a crushed and contrite man,
never more to raise his drooping head again, but warmly and manfully
urging upon the attention of the English government--for the honour and
interest of the Queen herself--"the miserable state of the poor
soldiers."  The necessity of immediate remittances in order to keep them
from starving, was most imperious.  For himself, he was smothering his
wretchedness until he should learn her Majesty's final decision, as to
what was to become of him.  "Meantime," said he, "I carry my grief
inward, and will proceed till her Majesty's full pleasure come with as
little discouragement to the cause as I can.  I pray God her Majesty may
do that may be best for herself.  For my own part my, heart is broken,
but not by the enemy."

There is no doubt that the public disgrace thus inflicted upon the
broken-hearted governor, and the severe censure administered to the
States by the Queen were both ill-timed and undeserved.  Whatever his
disingenuousness towards Davison, whatever his disobedience to Elizabeth,
however ambitious his own secret motives may, have been, there is no
doubt at all that thus far he had borne himself well in his great office.

Richard Cavendish--than whom few had better opportunities of judging--
spoke in strong language on the subject.  "It is a thing almost
incredible," said he, "that the care and diligence of any, one man living
could, in so small time; have so much repaired so disjointed and loose an
estate as my Lord found this country, in.  But lest he should swell in
pride of that his good success, your Lordship knoweth that God hath so
tempered the cause with the construction thereof, as may well hold him in
good consideration of human things."  He alluded with bitterness--as did
all men in the Netherlands who were not open or disguised Papists--to the
fatal rumours concerning the peace-negotiation in connection with the
recall of Leicester.  "There be here advertisements of most fearful
instance," he said, "namely, that Champagny doth not spare most liberally
to bruit abroad that he hath in his hands the conditions of peace offered
by her Majesty unto the King his master, and that it is in his power to
conclude at pleasure--which fearful and mischievous plot, if in time it
be not met withal by some notable encounter, it cannot but prove the root
of great ruin."

The "false boys" about Leicester were indefatigable in spreading these
rumours, and in taking advantage--with the assistance of the Papists in
the obedient Provinces and in England--of the disgraced condition in
which the Queen had placed the favourite.  Most galling to the haughty
Earl--most damaging to the cause of England, Holland, and, liberty--were
the tales to his discredit, which circulated on the Bourse at Antwerp,
Middelburg, Amsterdam, and in all the other commercial centres.  The most
influential bankers and merchants, were assured--by a thousand chattering
--but as it were invisible--tongues, that the Queen had for a long time
disliked Leicester; that he was a man of no account among the statesmen
of England; that he was a beggar and a bankrupt; that, if he had waited
two months longer, he would have made his appearance in the Provinces
with one man and one boy for his followers; that the Queen had sent him
thither to be rid of him; that she never intended him to have more
authority than Sir John Norris had; that she could not abide the
bestowing the title of Excellency upon him, and that she had not
disguised her fury at his elevation to the post of governor-general.

All who attempted a refutation of these statements were asked, with a
sneer, whether her Majesty had ever written a line to him, or in
commendation of him, since his arrival.  Minute inquiries were made by
the Dutch merchants of their commercial correspondents, both in their own
country and in England, as to Leicester's real condition and character.
at home.  What was his rank, they asked, what his ability, what: his
influence at court?  Why, if he were really of so high quality as had
been reported, was he thus neglected, and at last disgraced?  Had he any
landed property in England?  Had he really ever held any other office but
that of master of the horse?  "And then," asked one particular busy body,
who made himself very unpleasant on the Amsterdam Exchange, "why has her
Majesty forbidden all noblemen and gentlemen from coming hither, as was
the case at the beginning?  Is it because she is hearkening to a peace?
And if it be so, quoth he, we are well handled; for if her Majesty
hath sent a disgraced man to amuse us, while she is secretly working
a peace for herself, when we--on the contrary--had broken off all our
negotiations, upon confidence of her Majesty's goodness; such conduct
will be remembered to the end of the world, and the Hollanders will
never abide the name of England again."

On such a bed of nettles there was small chance of repose for the
governor.  Some of the rumours were even more stinging.  So
incomprehensible did it seem that the proud sovereign of England should
send over her subjects to starve or beg in the streets of Flushing and
Ostend, that it was darkly intimated that Leicester had embezzled the
funds, which, no doubt, had been remitted for the poor soldiers.  This
was the most cruel blow of all.  The Earl had been put to enormous
charges.  His household at the Hague cost him a thousand pounds a month.
He had been paying and furnishing five hundred and fifty men out of his
own purse.  He had also a choice regiment of cavalry, numbering seven
hundred and fifty horse; three hundred and fifty of which number were
over and above those allowed for by the Queen, and were entirely at his
expense.  He was most liberal in making presents of money to every
gentleman in his employment.  He had deeply mortgaged his estates in
order to provide for these heavy demands upon him, and professed his
willingness "to spend more, if he might have got any more money for his
land that was left;" and in the face of such unquestionable facts--much
to the credit certainly of his generosity--he was accused of swindling
a Queen whom neither Jew nor Gentile had ever yet been sharp enough to
swindle; while he was in reality plunging forward in a course of reckless
extravagance in order to obviate the fatal effects of her penuriousness.

Yet these sinister reports were beginning to have a poisonous effect.
Already an alteration of mien was perceptible in the States-General.
"Some buzzing there is amongst them," said Leicester, "whatsoever it be.
They begin to deal very strangely within these few days."  Moreover the
industry of the Poleys, Blunts, and Pagets, had turned these unfavourable
circumstances to such good account that a mutiny had been near breaking
out among the English troops.  "And, before the Lord I speak it," said
the Earl, "I am sure some of these good towns had been gone ere this, but
for my money.  As for the States, I warrant you, they see day at a little
hole.  God doth know what a forward and a joyful country here was within
a month.  God send her Majesty to recover it so again, and to take care
of it, on the condition she send me after Sir Francis Drake to the
Indies, my service here being no more acceptable."

Such was the aspect of affairs in the Provinces after the first explosion
of the Queen's anger had become known.  Meanwhile the court-weather was
very changeable in England, being sometimes serene, sometimes cloudy,--
always treacherous.

Mr. Vavasour, sent by the Earl with despatches to her Majesty and the
council, had met with a sufficiently benignant reception.  She accepted
the letters, which, however, owing to a bad cold with a defluxion in the
eyes, she was unable at once to read; but she talked ambiguously with the
messenger.  Yavasour took pains to show the immediate necessity of
sending supplies, so that the armies in the Netherlands might take the
field at the, earliest possible moment.  "And what," said she, "if a
peace should come in the mean time?"

"If your Majesty desireth a convenient peace," replied Vavasour, "to take
the field is the readiest way to obtain it; for as yet the King of Spain
hath had no reason to fear you.  He is daily expecting that your own
slackness may give your Majesty an overthrow.  Moreover, the Spaniards
are soldiers, and are not to be moved by-shadows."

But the Queen had no ears for these remonstrances, and no disposition to
open her coffers.  A warrant for twenty-four thousand pounds had been
signed by her at the end of the month of March, and was about to be sent,
when Vavasour arrived; but it was not possible for him, although assisted
by the eloquence of Walsingham and Burghley, to obtain an enlargement of
the pittance.  "The storms are overblown," said Walsingham, "but I fear
your Lordship shall receive very scarce measure from hence.  You will not
believe how the sparing humour doth increase upon us."

Nor were the storms so thoroughly overblown but that there were not daily
indications of returning foul weather.  Accordingly--after a conference
with Vavasour--Burghley, and Walsingham had an interview with the Queen,
in which the Lord Treasurer used bold and strong language.  He protested
to her that he was bound, both by his duty to himself and his oath as her
councillor, to declare that the course she was holding to Lord Leicester
was most dangerous to her own honour, interest and safety.  If she
intended to continue in this line of conduct, he begged to resign his
office of Lord Treasurer; wishing; before God and man, to wash his bands
of the shame and peril which he saw could not be avoided.  The Queen,
astonished at the audacity of Burghley's attitude and language, hardly
knew whether to chide him for his presumption or to listen to his
arguments.  She did both.  She taxed him with insolence in daring to
address her so roundly, and then finding he was speaking even in
'amaritudine animae' and out of a clear conscience, she became calm
again, and intimated a disposition to qualify her anger against the
absent Earl.

Next day, to their sorrow, the two councillors found that the Queen had
again changed her mind--"as one that had been by some adverse counsel
seduced."  She expressed the opinion that affairs would do well enough in
the Netherlands, even though Leicester were displaced.  A conference
followed between Walsingham, Hatton, and Burghley, and then the three
went again to her Majesty.  They assured her that if she did not take
immediate steps to satisfy the States and the people of the Provinces,
she would lose those countries and her own honour at the same time; and
that then they would prove a source of danger to her instead of
protection and glory.  At this she was greatly troubled, and agreed to do
anything they might advise consistently with her honour.  It was then
agreed that Leicester should be continued in the government which he had
accepted until the matter should be further considered, and letters to
that effect were at once written.  Then came messenger from Sir Thomas
Heneage, bringing despatchesfrom that envoy, and a second and most secret
one from the Earl himself.  Burghley took the precious letter which the
favourite had addressed to his royal mistress, and had occasion to
observe its magical effect.  Walsingham and the Lord Treasurer had been
right in so earnestly remonstrating with him on his previous silence.

"She read your letter," said Burghley, "and, in very truth, I found her
princely heart touched with favourable interpretation of your actions;
affirming them to be only offensive to her, in that she was not made
privy to them; not now misliking that you had the authority."

Such, at fifty-three, was Elizabeth Tudor.  A gentle whisper of idolatry
from the lips of the man she loved, and she was wax in his hands.  Where
now were the vehement protestations of horror that her public declaration
of principles and motives had been set at nought?  Where now were her
vociferous denunciations of the States, her shrill invectives against
Leicester, her big oaths, and all the 'hysterica passio,' which had sent
poor Lord Burghley to bed with the gout, and inspired the soul of
Walsingham with dismal forebodings?  Her anger had dissolved into a
shower of tenderness, and if her parsimony still remained it was because
that could only vanish when she too should cease to be.

And thus, for a moment, the grave diplomatic difference between the
crown of England and their high mightinesses the United States--upon the
solution of which the fate of Christendom was hanging--seemed to shrink
to the dimensions of a lovers' quarrel.  Was it not strange that the
letter had been so long delayed?

Davison had exhausted argument in defence of the acceptance by the Earl
of the authority conferred by the States and had gained nothing by his
eloquence, save abuse from the Queen, and acrimonious censure from the
Earl.  He had deeply offended both by pleading the cause of the erring
favourite, when the favourite should have spoken for himself.  "Poor Mr.
Davison," said Walsingham, "doth take it very grievously that your
Lordship should conceive so hardly of him as you do.  I find the conceit
of your Lordship's disfavour hath greatly dejected him.  But at such time
as he arrived her Majesty was so incensed, as all the arguments and
orators in the world could not have wrought any satisfaction."

But now a little billet-doux had done what all the orators in the world
could not do.  The arguments remained the same, but the Queen no longer
"misliked that Leicester should have the authority."  It was natural that
the Lord Treasurer should express his satisfaction at this auspicious
result.

"I did commend her princely nature," he said, "in allowing your good
intention, and excusing you of any spot of evil meaning; and I thought
good to hasten her resolution, which you must now take to come from a
favourable good mistress.  You must strive with your nature to throw over
your shoulder that which is past."

Sir Walter Raleigh, too, who had been "falsely and pestilently"
represented to the Earl as an enemy, rather than what he really was,
a most ardent favourer of the Netherland cause, wrote at once to
congratulate him on the change in her Majesty's demeanour.  "The Queen is
in very good terms with you now," he said, "and, thanks be to God, well
pacified, and you are again her 'sweet Robin.'"

Sir Walter wished to be himself the bearer of the comforting despatches
to Leicester, on the ground that he had been represented as an "ill
instrument against him," and in order that he might justify himself
against the charge, with his own lips.  The Queen, however, while
professing to make use of Shirley as the messenger, bade Walsingham
declare to the Earl, upon her honour, that Raleigh had done good offices
for him, and that, in the time of her anger, he had been as earnest in
his defence as the best friend could be.  It would have been--singular,
indeed, had it been otherwise.  "Your Lordship," said Sir Walter, "doth
well understand my affection toward Spain, and how I have consumed the
best part of my fortune, hating the tyrannous prosperity of that state.
It were strange and monstrous that I should now become an enemy to my
country and conscience.  All that I have desired at your Lordship's
hands is that you will evermore deal directly with me in all matters
--of suspect doubleness, and so ever esteem me as you shall find me
deserving good or bad.  In the mean time, let no poetical scribe work
your Lordship by any device to doubt that I am a hollow or cold servant
to the action."

It was now agreed that letters should be drawn, up authorizing Leicester
to continue in the office which he held, until the state-council should
devise some modification in his commission.  As it seemed, however, very
improbable that the board would devise anything of the kind, Burghley
expressed the belief that the country was like to continue in the Earl's
government without any change whatever.  The Lord Treasurer was also of
opinion that the Queen's letters to Leicester would convey as much
comfort as he had received discomfort; although he admitted that there
was a great difference: The former letters he knew had deeply wounded his
heart, while the new ones could not suddenly sink so low as the wound.

The despatch to the States-General was benignant, elaborate, slightly
diffuse.  The Queen's letter to 'sweet Robin' was caressing, but
argumentative.

"It is always thought," said she, "in the opinion of the world, a hard
bargain when both parties are losers, and so doth fall out in the case
between us two.  You, as we hear, are greatly grieved in respect of the
great displeasure you find we have conceived against you.  We are no less
grieved that a subject of ours of that quality that you are, a creature
of our own, and one that hath always received an extraordinary portion of
our favour above all our subjects, even from the beginning of our reign,
should deal so carelessly, not to say contemptuously, as to give the
world just cause to think that we are had in contempt by him that ought
most to respect and reverence us, which, we do assure you, hath wrought
as great grief in us as anyone thing that ever happened unto us.

"We are persuaded that you, that have so long known us, cannot think that
ever we could have been drawn to have taken so hard a course therein had
we not been provoked by an extraordinary cause.  But for that your
grieved and wounded mind hath more need of comfort than reproof, who, we
are persuaded, though the act of contempt can no ways be excused, had no
other meaning and intent than to advance our service, we think meet to
forbear to dwell upon a matter wherein we ourselves do find so little
comfort, assuring you that whosoever professeth to love you best taketh
not more comfort of your well doing, or discomfort of your evil doing
than ourself."

After this affectionate preface she proceeded to intimate her desire that
the Earl should take the matter as nearly as possible into his own hands.
It was her wish that he should retain the authority of absolute governor,
but--if it could be so arranged--that he should dispense with the title,
retaining only that of her lieutenant-general.  It was not her intention
however, to create any confusion or trouble in the Provinces, and she was
therefore willing that the government should remain upon precisely the
same footing as that on which it then stood, until circumstances should
permit the change of title which she suggested.  And the whole matter was
referred to the wisdom of Leicester, who was to advise with Heneage and
such others as he liked to consult, although it was expressly stated that
the present arrangement was to be considered a provisional and not a
final one.

Until this soothing intelligence could arrive in the Netherlands the
suspicions concerning the underhand negotiations with Spain grew daily
more rife, and the discredit cast upon the Earl more embarrassing.  The
private letters which passed between the Earl's enemies in Holland and in
England contained matter more damaging to himself and to the cause which
he had at heart than the more public reports of modern days can
disseminate, which, being patent to all, can be more easily contradicted.
Leicester incessantly warned his colleagues of her Majesty's council
against the malignant manufacturers of intelligence.  "I pray you, my
Lords, as you are wise," said he, "beware of them all.  You shall find
them here to be shrewd pick-thinks, and hardly worth the hearkening
unto."

He complained bitterly of the disgrace that was heaped upon him, both
publicly and privately, and of the evil consequences which were sure to
follow from the course pursued.  "Never was man so villanously handled by
letters out of England as I have been," said he, "not only advertising
her Majesty's great dislike with me before this my coming over, but that
I was an odious man in England, and so long as I tarried here that no
help was to be looked for, that her Majesty would send no more men or
money, and that I was used here but for a time till a peace were
concluded between her Majesty and the Prince of Parma.  What the
continuance of a man's discredit thus will turn out is to be thought of,
for better I were a thousand times displaced than that her Majesty's
great advantage of so notable Provinces should be hindered."

As to the peace-negotiations--which, however cunningly managed, could not
remain entirely concealed--the Earl declared them to be as idle as they
were disingenuous.  "I will boldly pronounce that all the peace you can
make in the world, leaving these countries," said he to Burghley, "will
never prove other than a fair spring for a few days, to be all over
blasted with a hard storm after."  Two days later her Majesty's
comforting letters arrived, and the Earl began to raise his drooping
head.  Heneage, too, was much relieved, but he was, at the same time, not
a little perplexed.  It was not so easy to undo all the mischief created
by the Queen's petulance.  The "scorpion's sting"--as her Majesty
expressed herself--might be balsamed, but the poison had spread far
beyond the original wound.

"The letters just brought in," wrote Heneage to Burghley, "have well
relieved a most noble and sufficient servant, but I fear they will not
restore the much-repaired wrecks of these far-decayed noble countries
into the same state I found them in.  A loose, disordered, and unknit
state needs no shaking, but propping.  A subtle and fearful kind of
people--should not be made more distrustful, but assured."  He then
expressed annoyance at the fault already found with him, and surely if
ever man had cause to complain of reproof administered him, in quick
succession; for not obeying contradictory directions following upon each
other as quickly, that man was Sir Thomas Heneage.  He had been, as he
thought, over cautious in administering the rebuke to the Earl's
arrogance, which he had been expressly sent over to administer but
scarcely had he accomplished his task, with as much delicacy as he could
devise, when he found himself censured;--not for dilatoriness, but for
haste.  "Fault I perceive," said he to Burghley, "is found in me, not by
your Lordship, but by some other, that I did not stay proceeding if I
found the public cause might take hurt.  It is true I had good warrant
for the manner, the, place, and the persons, but, for the matter none,
for done it must be.  Her Majesty's offence must be declared.  Yet if I
did not all I possibly could to uphold the cause, and to keep the
tottering cause upon the wheels, I deserve no thanks, but reproof."

Certainly, when the blasts of royal rage are remembered, by which the
envoy had been, as it were, blown out of England into Holland, it is
astonishing to find his actions censured for undue precipitancy.  But
it was not the, first, nor was it likely to be the last time, for
comparatively subordinate agents in Elizabeth's government to be,
distressed by, contradictory commands, when the sovereign did not know
or did not chose to make known, her own mind on important occasions.
"Well, my Lord," said plaintive Sir Thomas, "wiser men may serve more
pleasingly and happily, but never shall any serve her Majesty more,
faithfully and heartily.  And so I cannot be persuaded her Majesty
thinketh; for from herself I find nothing but most sweet and--gracious,
favour, though by others' censures I may gather otherwise of her
judgment; which I confess, doth cumber me."

He was destined to be cumbered more than once before these negotiations
should be concluded; but meantime; there was a brief gleam of sunshine.
The English friends of Leicester in the Netherlands were enchanted with
the sudden change in the Queen's humour; and to Lord Burghley, who was
not, in reality, the most stanch of the absent Earl's defenders, they
poured themselves out in profuse and somewhat superfluous gratitude.

Cavendish, in strains exultant, was sure that Burghley's children, grand-
children, and remotest posterity, would rejoice that their great
ancestor, in such a time of need had been "found and felt to be indeed a
'pater patria,' a good-father to a happy land."  And, although unwilling
to "stir up the old Adam" in his Lordship's soul, he yet took the liberty
of comparing the Lord Treasurer, in his old and declining years with Mary
Magdalen; assuring him, that for ever after; when the tale of the
preservation of the Church of God, of her Majesty; and of the Netherland
cause; which were all one, should be told; his name and well-doing would
be held in memory also.

And truly there was much of honest and generous enthusiasm, even if
couched in language somewhat startling to the ears of a colder and more
material age; in the hearts of these noble volunteers.  They were
fighting the cause of England, of the Netherland republic, and of human
liberty; with a valour worthy the best days of English' chivalry, against
manifold obstacles, and they were certainly; not too often cheered by the
beams of royal favour.

It was a pity that a dark cloud was so soon again to sweep over the
scene: For the temper of Elizabeth at this important juncture seemed as
capricious: as the: April weather in which the scenes were enacting.  We
have seen the genial warmth of her letters and messages to Leicester, to
Heneage,--to the States-General; on the first of the month.  Nevertheless
it was hardly three weeks after they had been despatched when Walsingham
and Burghley found, her Majesty one morning a towering passion, because,
the Earl had not already laid down the government.  The Lord Treasurer
ventured to remonstrate, but was bid to bold his tongue.  Ever variable
and mutable as woman, Elizabeth was perplexing and baffling to her
counsellors, at this epoch, beyond all divination.  The "sparing humour"
was increasing fearfully, and she thought it would be easier for her to
slip out of the whole expensive enterprise, provided Leicester were
merely her lieutenant-general, and not stadholder for the Provinces.
Moreover the secret negotiations for peace were producing a deleterious
effect upon her mind.  Upon this subject, the Queen and Burghley,
notwithstanding his resemblance to Mary Magdalen, were better informed
than the Secretary, whom, however, it had been impossible wholly to
deceive.  The man who could read secrets so far removed as the Vatican,
was not to be blinded to intrigues going on before his face.  The Queen,
without revealing more than she could help, had been obliged to admit
that informal transactions were pending, but had authorised the Secretary
to assure the United States that no treaty would be made without their
knowledge and full concurrence.  "She doth think," wrote Walsingham to
Leicester," that you should, if you shall see no cause to the contrary,
acquaint the council of state there that certain overtures of peace are
daily made unto her, but that she meaneth not to proceed therein without
their good liking and privity, being persuaded that there can no peace be
made profitable or sure for her that shall not also stand with their
safety; and she doth acknowledge hers to be so linked with theirs as
nothing can fall out to their prejudice, but she must be partaker of
their harm."

This communication was dated on the 21st April, exactly three weeks after
the Queen's letter to Heneage, in which she had spoken of the "malicious
bruits" concerning the pretended peace-negotiations; and the Secretary
was now confirming, by her order, what she had then stated under her own
hand, that she would "do nothing that might concern them without their
own knowledge and good liking."

And surely nothing could be more reasonable.  Even if the strict letter
of the August treaty between the Queen and the States did not provide
against any separate negotiations by the one party without the knowledge
of the other, there could be no doubt at all that its spirit absolutely
forbade the clandestine conclusion of a peace with Spain by England
alone, or by the Netherlands alone, and that such an arrangement would be
disingenuous, if not positively dishonourable.

Nevertheless it would almost seem that Elizabeth had been taking
advantage of the day when she was writing her letter to Heneage on the
1st of April.  Never was painstaking envoy more elaborately trifled with.
On the 26th of the month--and only five days after the communication by
Walsingham just noticed--the Queen was furious that any admission should
have been made to the States of their right to participate with her in
peace-negotiations.

"We find that Sir Thomas Heneage," said she to Leicester, "hath gone
further--in assuring the States that we would make no peace without their
privity and assent--than he had commission; for that our direction was--
if our meaning had been well set down, and not mistaken by our Secretary
--that they should have been only let understand that in any treaty that
might pass between us and Spain, they might be well assured we would have
no less care of their safety than of our own."  Secretary Walsingham was
not likely to mistake her Majesty's directions in this or any other
important affair of state.  Moreover, it so happened that the Queen had,
in her own letter to Heneage, made the same statement which she now
chose to disavow.  She had often a convenient way of making herself
misunderstood, when she thought it desirable to shift responsibility from
her own shoulders upon those of others; but upon this occasion she had
been sufficiently explicit.  Nevertheless,  a scape-goat was necessary,
and unhappy the subordinate who happened to be within her Majesty's reach
when a vicarious sacrifice was to be made.  Sir Francis Walsingham was
not a man to be brow-beaten or hood-winked, but Heneage was doomed to
absorb a fearful amount of royal wrath.

"What phlegmatical reasons soever were made you," wrote the Queen, who
but three weeks before had been so gentle and affectionate to her,
ambassador, "how happeneth it that you will not remember, that when a man
hath faulted and committed by abettors thereto, neither the one nor the
other will willingly make their own retreat.  Jesus! what availeth wit,
when it fails the owner at greatest need?  Do that you are bidden, and
leave your considerations for your own affairs.  For in some things you
had clear commandment, which you did not, and in others none, and did.
We princes be wary enough of our bargains.  Think you I will be bound
by your own speech to make no peace for mine own matters without their
consent?  It is enough that I injure not their country nor themselves
in making peace for them without their consent.  I am assured of your
dutiful thoughts, but I am utterly at squares with this childish
dealing."

Blasted by this thunderbolt falling upon his head out of serenest sky,
the sad.  Sir. Thomas remained, for a time, in a state of political
annihilation.  'Sweet Robin' meanwhile, though stunned, was unscathed--
thanks to the convenient conductor at his side.  For, in Elizabeth's
court, mediocrity was not always golden, nor was it usually the loftiest
mountains that the lightnings smote.  The Earl was deceived by his royal
mistress, kept in the dark as to important transactions, left to provide
for his famishing' soldiers as he best might; but the, Queen at that
moment, though angry, was not disposed, to trample upon him.  Now that
his heart was known to be broken, and his sole object in life to be
retirement to remote regions--India or elsewhere--there to languish out
the brief remainder of his days in prayers for Elizabeth's happiness,
Elizabeth was not inclined very bitterly to upbraid him.  She had too
recently been employing herself in binding up his broken heart, and
pouring balm into the "scorpion's sting," to be willing so soon to
deprive him of those alleviations.

Her tone--was however no longer benignant, and her directions were
extremely peremptory.  On the 1st of April she had congratulated
Leicester, Heneage, the States, and all the world, that her secret
commands had been staid, and that the ruin which would have followed,
had, those decrees been executed according to her first violent wish, was
fortunately averted.  Heneage was even censured, not by herself, but by
courtiers in her confidence, and with her concurrence, for being over
hasty in going before the state-council, as he had done, with her
messages and commands.  On the 26th of April she expressed astonishment
that Heneage had dared to be so dilatory, and that the title of governor
had not been laid down by Leicester "out of hand."  She marvelled
greatly, and found it very strange that "ministers in matters of moment
should presume to do things of their own head without direction."  She
accordingly gave orders that there should be no more dallying, but that
the Earl should immediately hold a conference with the state-council in
order to arrange a modification in his commission.  It was her pleasure
that he should retain all the authority granted to him by the States, but
as already intimated by her, that he should abandon the title of
"absolute governor," and retain only that of her lieutenant-general.

Was it strange that Heneage, placed in so responsible a situation, and
with the fate of England, of Holland, and perhaps of all Christendom,
hanging in great measure upon this delicate negotiation, should be amazed
at such contradictory orders, and grieved by such inconsistent censures?

"To tell you my griefs and my lacks," said he to Walsingham, "would
little please you or help me.  Therefore I will say nothing, but think
there was never man in so great a service received so little comfort and
so contrarious directions.  But 'Dominus est adjutor in tribulationibus.'
If it be possible, let me receive some certain direction, in following
which I shall not offend her Majesty, what good or hurt soever I do
besides."

This certainly seemed a loyal and reasonable request, yet it was not one
likely to be granted.  Sir Thomas, perplexed, puzzled, blindfolded, and
brow-beaten, always endeavoring to obey orders, when he could comprehend
them, and always hectored and lectured whether he obeyed them or not--
ruined in purse by the expenses, of a mission on which he had been sent
without adequate salary--appalled at the disaffection waging more
formidable every hour in Provinces which were recently so loyal to her
Majesty, but which were now pervaded by a suspicion that there was
double-dealing upon her part became quite sick of his life.  He fell
seriously ill, and was disappointed, when, after a time, the physicians
declared him convalescent.  For when when he rose from his sick-bed, it
was only to plunge once more, without a clue, into the labyrinth where he
seemed to be losing his reason.  "It is not long," said he to Walsingham,
"since I looked to have written you no more letters, my extremity was so
great.  .  .  But God's will is best, otherwise I could have liked better
to have cumbered the earth no longer, where I find myself contemned, and
which I find no reason to see will be the better in the wearing .  .  .
It were better for her Majesty's service that the directions which come
were not contrarious one to another, and that those you would have serve
might know what is meant, else they cannot but much deceive you, as well
as displease you."

Public opinion concerning the political morality of the English court
was not gratifying, nor was it rendered more favourable by these recent
transactions.  "I fear," said Heneage, "that the world will judge what
Champagny wrote in one of his letters out of England (which I have lately
seen) to be over true.  His words be these, 'Et de vray, c'est le plus
fascheux et le plus incertain negocier de ceste court, que je pense soit
au monde.'"  And so "basting," as he said, "with a weak body and a
willing mind; to do, he feared, no good work," he set forth from
Middelburgh to rejoin Leicester at Arnheim, in order to obey, as well as
he could, the Queen's latest directions.

But before he could set to work there came more "contrarious" orders.
The last instructions, both to Leicester and himself, were that the Earl
should resign the post of governor absolute "out of hand," and the Queen
had been vehement in denouncing any delay on such an occasion.  He was
now informed, that, after consulting with Leicester and with the
state-council, he was to return to England with the result of such
deliberations.  It could afterwards be decided how the Earl could retain
all the authority of governor absolute, while bearing only the title of
the Queen's lieutenant general.  "For her meaning is not," said
Walsingham, "that his Lord ship should presently give it over, for she
foreseeth in her princely judgment that his giving over the government
upon a sudden, and leaving those countries without a head or director,
cannot but breed a most dangerous alteration there."  The secretary
therefore stated the royal wish at present to be that the "renunciation
of the title" should be delayed till Heneage could visit England, and
subsequently return to Holland with her Majesty's further directions.
Even the astute Walsingham was himself puzzled, however, while conveying
these ambiguous orders; and he confessed that he was doubtful whether he
had rightly comprehended the Queen's intentions.  Burghley, however, was
better at guessing riddles than he was, and so Heneage was advised to
rely chiefly upon Burghley.

But Heneage had now ceased to be interested in any enigmas that might be
propounded by the English court, nor could he find comfort, as Walsingham
had recommended he should do, in railing.  "I wish I could follow your
counsel," he said, "but sure the uttering of my choler doth little ease
my grief or help my case."

He rebuked, however, the inconsistency and the tergiversations of the
government with a good deal of dignity.  "This certainly shall I tell her
Majesty," he said, "if I live to see her, that except a more constant
course be taken with this inconstant people, it is not the blaming of her
ministers will advance her Highness's service, or better the state of
things.  And shall I tell you what they now say here of us--I fear not
without some cause--even as Lipsius wrote of the French, 'De Gallis
quidem enigmata veniunt, non veniunt, volunt, holunt, audent, timent,
omnia, ancipiti metu, suspensa et suspecta.'  God grant better, and ever
keep you and help me."

He announced to Burghley that he was about to attend a meeting of the
state-council the next day, for the purpose of a conference on these
matters at Arnheim, and that he would then set forth for England to
report proceedings to her Majesty.  He supposed, on the whole, that this
was what was expected of him, but acknowledged it hopeless to fathom.
the royal intentions.  Yet if he went wrong, he was always, sure to make
mischief, and though innocent, to be held accountable for others'
mistakes.  "Every prick I make," said he, "is made a gash; and to follow
the words of my directions from England is not enough, except I likewise
see into your minds.  And surely mine eyesight is not so good.  But I
will pray to God for his help herein.  With all the wit I have, I will
use all the care I can--first, to satisfy her Majesty, as God knoweth I
have ever most desired; then, not to hurt this cause, but that I despair
of."  Leicester, as maybe supposed, had been much discomfited and
perplexed during the course of these contradictory and perverse
directions.  There is no doubt whatever that his position bad been made
discreditable and almost ridiculous, while he was really doing his best,
and spending large sums out of his private fortune to advance the true
interests of the Queen.  He had become a suspected man in the
Netherlands, having been, in the beginning of the year, almost adored
as a Messiah.  He had submitted to the humiliation which had been imposed
upon him, of being himself the medium to convey to the council the severe
expressions of the Queen's displeasure at the joint action of the States-
General and himself.  He had been comforted by the affectionate
expressions with which that explosion of feminine and royal wrath had
been succeeded.  He was now again distressed by the peremptory command to
do what was a disgrace to him, and an irreparable detriment to the cause,
yet he was humble and submissive, and only begged to be allowed, as a
remedy for all his anguish, to return to the sunlight of Elizabeth's
presence.  He felt that her course; if persisted in, would lead to the
destruction of the Netherland commonwealth, and eventually to the
downfall of England; and that the Provinces, believing themselves
deceived by the Queen; were ready to revolt against an authority to
which, but a short time before, they were so devotedly loyal
Nevertheless, he only wished to know what his sovereign's commands
distinctly were, in order to set himself to their fulfilment.  He had
come from the camp before Nymegen in order to attend the conference with
the state-council at Arnheim, and he would then be ready and anxious to,
despatch Heneage to England, to learn her Majesty's final determination.

He protested to the Queen that he had come upon this arduous and perilous
service only, because he, considered her throne in danger, and that this
was the only means of preserving it; that, in accepting the absolute
government, he had been free from all ambitious motives, but deeply
impressed with the idea that only by so doing could he conduct the
enterprise entrusted to him to the desired consummation; and he declared
with great fervour that no advancement to high office could compensate
him for this enforced absence from her.  To be sent back even in disgrace
would still be a boon to him, for he should cease to be an exile from her
sight.  He knew that his enemies had been busy in defaming him, while he
had been no longer there to defend himself, but his conscience acquitted
him of any thought which was not for her happiness and glory.  "Yet
grievous it is to me," said he in, a tone of tender reproach, "that
having left all--yea, all that may be imagined--for you, you have left
me for very little, even to the uttermost of all hard fortune.  For what
have I, unhappy man, to do here either with cause or country but for
you?"

He stated boldly that his services had not been ineffective, that the
enemy had never been in worse plight than now, that he had lost at least
five thousand men in divers overthrows, and that, on the other hand,
the people and towns of the Seven Provinces had been safely preserved.
"Since my arrival," he said, "God hath blessed the action which you have
taken in hand, and committed to the charge of me your poor unhappy
servant.  I have good cause to say somewhat for myself, for that I think
I have as few friends to speak for me as any man."

Nevertheless--as he warmly protested--his only wish was to return; for
the country in which he had lost her favour, which was more precious than
life, had become odious to him.

The most lowly office in her presence was more to be coveted than the
possession of unlimited power away from her.  It was by these tender
and soft insinuations, as the Earl knew full well, that he was sure to
obtain what he really coveted--her sanction for retaining the absolute
government in the Provinces.  And most artfully did he strike the key.

"Most dear and gracious Lady," he cried, "my care and service here do
breed me nothing but grief and unhappiness.  I have never had your
Majesty's good favour since I came into this charge--a matter that from
my first beholding your eyes hath been most dear unto me above all
earthly treasures.  Never shall I love that place or like that soil which
shall cause the lack of it.  Most gracious Lady, consider my long, true,
and faithful heart toward you.  Let not this unfortunate place here
bereave me of that which, above all the world, I esteem there, which is
your favodr and your presence.  I see my service is not acceptable, but
rather more and more disliketh you.  Here I can do your Majesty no
service; there I can do you some, at the least rub your horse's heels--
a service which shall be much more welcome to me than this, with all that
these men may give me.  I do, humbly and from my heart, prostrate at your
feet, beg this grace at your sacred hands, that you will be pleased to
let me return to my home-service, with your favour, let the revocation be
used in what sort shall please and like you.  But if ever spark of favour
was in your Majesty toward your old servant, let me obtain this my humble
suit; protesting before the Majesty of all Majesties, that there was no
cause under Heaven but his and yours, even for your own special and
particular cause, I say, could have made me take this absent journey from
you in hand.  If your Majesty shall refuse me this, I shall think all
grace clean gone from me, and I know: my days will not be long."

She must melt at this, thought 'sweet Robin' to himself; and meantime
accompanied by Heneage; he proceeded with the conferences in the state-
council-chamber touching the modification of the title and the
confirmation of his authority.  This, so far as Walsingham could divine,
and Burghley fathom, was the present intention of the Queen.  He averred
that he had ever sought most painfully to conform his conduct to her
instructions as fast as they were received, and that he should continue
so to do.  On the whole it was decided by the conference to let matters
stand as, they were for a little longer, and until: after Heneage should
have time once more to go and come.  "The same manner of proceeding that
was is now," said Leicester, "Your pleasure is declared to the council
here as you have willed it. How it will fall out again in your Majesty's
construction, the Lord knoweth."

Leicester might be forgiven for referring to higher powers, for any
possible interpretation of her Majesty's changing humour; but meantime;
while Sir. Thomas was getting ready, for his expedition to England, the
Earl's heart was somewhat gladdened by more gracious messages from the
Queen.  The alternation of emotions would however prove too much for him,
he feared, and he was reluctant to open his heart to so unwonted a tenant
as joy.

"But that my fear is such, most dear and gracious Lady," he said, "as my
unfortunate destiny will hardly permit; whilst I remain here; any good-
acceptation of so simple a service as, mine, I should, greatly rejoice
and comfort myself with the hope of your Majesty's most prayed-for
favour.  But of late, being by your own sacred hand lifted even up into
Heaven with joy of your favour, I was bye and bye without any new desert
or offence at all, cast down and down: again into the depth of all grief.
God doth know, my dear and dread Sovereign, that after I first received
your resolute pleasure by Sir Thomas Heneage, I made neither stop nor
stay nor any excuse to be rid of this place, and to satisfy your command.
. . . . . So much I mislike this place and fortune of mine; as I desire
nothing in the world so much, as to be delivered, with your favours from
all charge here, fearing still some new cross of your displeasure to fall
upon me, trembling continually with the fear thereof, in such sort as
till I may be fully confirmed in my new regeneration of your wonted
favour I cannot receive that true comfort which doth appertain to so
great a hope.  Yet I will not only acknowledge with all humbleness and
dutiful thanks the exceeding joy these last blessed lines brought to my
long-wearied heart, but will, with all true loyal affection, attend that
further joy from your sweet self which may utterly, extinguish all
consuming fear away."

Poor Heneage--who likewise received a kind word or two after having been
so capriciously and petulantly dealt with was less extravagant in his
expressions of gratitude.  "The Queen hath sent me a paper-plaister which
must please for a time," he said.  "God Almighty bless her Majesty ever,
and best direct her."  He was on the point of starting for England, the
bearer of the States' urgent entreaties that Leicester might retain the,
government, and of despatches; announcing the recent success of the
allies before Grave.  "God prospereth the action in these countries
beyond all expectation," he said, "which all amongst you will not be over
glad of, for somewhat I know."  The intrigues of Grafigni, Champagny, and
Bodman, with Croft, Burghley, and the others were not so profound a
secret as they could wish.

The tone adopted by Leicester has been made manifest in his letters
to the Queen.  He had held the same language of weariness and
dissatisfaction in his communications to his friends.  He would not keep
the office, he avowed, if they should give him "all Holland and Zeeland,
with all their appurtenances," and he was ready to resign at any moment.
He was not "ceremonious for reputation," he said, but he gave warning
that the Netherlanders would grow desperate if they found her Majesty
dealing weakly or carelessly with them.  As for himself he had already
had enough of government.  "I am weary, Mr. Secretary," he plaintively
exclaimed, "indeed I am weary; but neither of pains nor travail.  My ill
hap that I can please her Majesty no better hath quite discouraged me."

He had recently, however--as we have seen--received some comfort, and he
was still further encouraged, upon the eve of Heneage's departure, by
receiving another affectionate epistle from the Queen.  Amends seemed at
last to be offered for her long and angry silence, and the Earl was
deeply grateful.

"If it hath not been, my most dear and gracious Lady," said he in reply,
"no small comfort to your poor old servant to receive but one line of
your blessed hand-writing in many months, for the relief of a most
grieved, wounded heart, how far more exceeding joy must it be, in the
midst of all sorrow, to receive from the same sacred hand so many
comfortable lines as my good friend Mr. George hath at once brought me.
Pardon me, my sweet Lady, if they cause me to forget myself.  Only this I
do say, with most humble dutiful thanks, that the scope of all my service
hath ever been to content and please you; and if I may do that, then is
all sacrifice, either of life or whatsoever, well offered for you."

The matter of the government absolute having been so fully discussed
during the preceding four months, and the last opinions of the state-
council having been so lucidly expounded in the despatches to be carried
by Heneage to England, the matter might be considered as exhausted.
Leicester contented himself, therefore, with once more calling her
Majesty's attention to the fact that if he had not himself accepted the
office thus conferred upon him by the States, it would have been bestowed
upon some other personage.  It would hardly have comported with her
dignity, if Count Maurice of Nassau, or Count William, or Count Moeurs,
had been appointed governor absolute, for in that case the Earl, as
general of the auxiliary English force, would have been subject to the
authority of the chieftain thus selected.  It was impossible, as the
state-council had very plainly shown, for Leicester to exercise supreme
authority, while merely holding the military office of her Majesty's
lieutenant-general.  The authority of governor or stadholder could only
be derived from the supreme power of the country.  If her Majesty had
chosen to accept the sovereignty, as the States had ever desired, the
requisite authority could then have been derived from her, as from the
original fountain.  As she had resolutely refused that offer however, his
authority was necessarily to be drawn from the States-General, or else
the Queen must content herself with seeing him serve as an English
military officer, only subject to the orders of the supreme power,
wherever that power might reside.  In short, Elizabeth's wish that her
general might be clothed with the privileges of her viceroy, while she
declined herself to be the sovereign, was illogical, and could not be
complied with.

Very soon after inditing these last epistles to the Provinces, the Queen
became more reasonable on the subject; and an elaborate communication was
soon received by the state-council, in which the royal acquiescence was
signified to the latest propositions of the States.  The various topics,
suggested in previous despatches from Leicester and from the council,
were reviewed, and the whole subject was suddenly placed in a somewhat
different light from that in which it seemed to have been previously
regarded by her Majesty.  She alluded to the excuse, offered by the
state-council, which had been drawn from the necessity of the case, and
from their "great liking for her cousin of Leicester," although in
violation of the original contract.  "As you acknowledge, however," she
said, "that therein you were justly to be blamed, and do crave pardon for
the same, we cannot, upon this acknowledgment of your fault, but remove
our former dislike."

Nevertheless it would now seem that her "mistake" had proceeded, not from
the excess, but from the insufficiency of the powers conferred upon the
Earl, and she complained, accordingly, that they had given him shadow
rather than substance.

Simultaneously with this royal communication, came a joint letter to
Leicester, from Burghley, Walsingham; and Hatton, depicting the long and
strenuous conflict which they had maintained in his behalf with the
rapidly varying inclinations of the Queen.  They expressed a warm
sympathy with the difficulties of his position, and spoke in strong terms
of the necessity that the Netherlands and England should work heartily
together.  For otherwise, they said, "the cause will fall, the enemy will
rise, and we must stagger."  Notwithstanding the secret negotiations with
the enemy, which Leicester and Walsingham suspected, and which will be
more fully examined in a subsequent chapter, they held a language on that
subject, which in the Secretary's mouth at least was sincere.
"Whatsoever speeches be blown abroad of parleys of peace," they said,
"all will be but smoke, yea fire will follow."

They excused themselves for their previous and enforced silence by the
fact that they had been unable to communicate any tidings but messages of
distress, but they now congratulated the Earl that her Majesty, as he
would see by her letter to the council, was firmly resolved, not only to
countenance his governorship, but to sustain him in the most thorough
manner.  It would be therefore quite out of the question for them to
listen to his earnest propositions to be recalled.

Moreover, the Lord Treasurer had already apprized Leicester that Heneage
had safely arrived in England, that he, had made his report to the Queen,
and that her Majesty was "very well contented with him and his mission."
It may be easily believed that the Earl would feel a sensation of relief,
if not of triumph, at this termination to the embarrassments under which
he had been labouring ever since, he listened to the oration of the wise
Leoninus upon New Years' Day.  At last the Queen had formally acquiesced
in the action of the States, and in his acceptance of their offer.  He
now saw himself undisputed "governor absolute," having been six months
long a suspected, discredited, almost disgraced man.  It was natural that
he should express himself cheerfully.

"My great comfort received, oh my most gracious Lady," he said, "by your
most favourable lines written by your own sacred hand, I did most humbly
acknowledge by my former letter; albeit I can no way make testimony of
enough of the great joy I took thereby.  And seeing my wounded heart is
by this means almost made whole, I do pray unto God that either I may
never feel the like again from you, or not be suffered to live, rather
than I should fall again into those torments of your displeasure.  Most
gracious Queen, I beseech you, therefore, make perfect that which you
have begun.  Let not the common danger, nor any ill, incident to the
place I serve you in, be accompanied with greater troubles and fears
indeed than all the horrors of death can bring me.  My strong hope doth
now so assure me, as I have almost won the battle against despair, and I
do arm myself with as many of those wonted comfortable conceits as may
confirm my new revived spirits, reposing myself evermore under the shadow
of those blessed beams that must yield the only nourishment to this
disease."

But however nourishing the shade of those blessed beams might prove to
Leicester's disease, it was not so easy to bring about a very sunny
condition in the Provinces.  It was easier for Elizabeth to mend the
broken heart of the governor than to repair the damage which had been
caused to the commonwealth by her caprice and her deceit.  The dispute
concerning the government absolute had died away, but the authority of
the Earl had got a "crack in it" which never could be handsomely made
whole.  The States, during the long period of Leicester's discredit--
feeling more and more doubtful as to the secret intentions of Elizabeth
--disappointed in the condition of the auxiliary troops and in the amount
of supplies furnished from England, and, above all, having had time to
regret their delegation of a power which they began to find agreeable to
exercise with their own hands, became indisposed to entrust the Earl with
the administration and full inspection of their resources.  To the
enthusiasm which had greeted the first arrival of Elizabeth's
representative had succeeded a jealous, carping, suspicious sentiment.
The two hundred thousand florins monthly were paid, according to the
original agreement, but the four hundred thousand of extra service-money
subsequently voted were withheld, and withheld expressly on account of
Heneage's original mission to disgrace the governor."

"The late return of Sir Thomas Heneage," said Lord North, "hath put such
busses in their heads, as they march forward with leaden heels and
doubtful hearts."

In truth, through the discredit cast by the Queen upon the Earl in this
important affair, the supreme authority was forced back into the hands
of the States, at the very moment when they had most freely divested
themselves of power.  After the Queen had become more reasonable, it was
too late to induce them to part, a second time, so freely with the
immediate control of their own affairs.  Leicester had become, to a
certain extent, disgraced and disliked by the Estates.  He thought
himself, by the necessity of the case, forced to appeal to the people
against their legal representatives, and thus the foundation of a
nominally democratic party, in opposition to the municipal one, was
already laid.  Nothing could be more unfortunate at that juncture; for we
shall, in future, find the Earl in perpetual opposition to the most
distinguished statesmen in the Provinces; to the very men indeed who had
been most influential in offering the sovereignty to England, and in
placing him in the position which he had so much coveted.  No sooner
therefore had he been confirmed by Elizabeth in that high office than his
arrogance broke forth, and the quarrels between himself and the
representative body became incessant.

"I stand now in somewhat better terms than I did," said he; "I was not in
case till of late to deal roundly with them as I have now done.  I have
established a chamber of finances, against some of their wills, whereby I
doubt not to procure great benefit to increase our ability for payments
hereafter.  The people I find still best devoted to her Majesty, though
of late many lewd practices have been used to withdraw their good wills.
But it will not be; they still pray God that her Majesty may be their
sovereign.  She should then see what a contribution they will all bring
forth.  But to the States they will never return, which will breed some
great mischief, there is such mislike of the States universally.  I would
your Lordship had seen the case I had lived in among them these four
months, especially after her Majesty's mislike was found.  You would then
marvel to see how I have waded, as I have done, through no small
obstacles, without help, counsel, or assistance."

Thus the part which he felt at last called upon to enact was that of an
aristocratic demagogue, in perpetual conflict with the burgher-
representative body.

It is now necessary to lift a corner of the curtain, by which some
international--or rather interpalatial--intrigues were concealed, as much
as possible, even from the piercing eyes of Walsingham.  The Secretary
was, however, quite aware--despite the pains taken to deceive him--of the
nature of the plots and of the somewhat ignoble character of the actors
concerned in them.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

A hard bargain when both parties are losers
Condemned first and inquired upon after
Disordered, and unknit state needs no shaking, but propping
Upper and lower millstones of royal wrath and loyal subserviency
Uttering of my choler doth little ease my grief or help my case




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v45
by John Lothrop Motley






HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609

By John Lothrop Motley



History of the United Netherlands, Volume 46, 1586



CHAPTER VIII.

     Forlorn Condition of Flanders--Parma's secret Negotiations with the
     Queen--Grafigni and Bodman--Their Dealings with English Counsellors
     --Duplicity of Farnese--Secret Offers of the English Peace-Party--
     Letters and Intrigues of De Loo--Drake's Victories and their Effect
     --Parma's Perplexity and Anxiety--He is relieved by the News from
     England--Queen's secret Letters to Parma--His Letters and
     Instructions to Bodman--Bodman's secret Transactions at Greenwich--
     Walsingham detects and exposes the Plot--The Intriguers baffled--
     Queen's Letter to Parma and his to the King--Unlucky Results of the
     Peace--Intrigues--Unhandsome Treatment of Leicester--Indignation of
     the Earl and Walsingham--Secret Letter of Parma to Philip--Invasion
     of England recommended--Details of the Project.

Alexander Farnese and his heroic little army had been left by their
sovereign in as destitute a condition as that in which Lord Leicester and
his unfortunate "paddy persons" had found themselves since their arrival
in the Netherlands.  These mortal men were but the weapons to be used and
broken in the hands of the two great sovereigns, already pitted against
each other in mortal combat.  That the distant invisible potentate,
the work of whose life was to do his best to destroy all European
nationality, all civil and religious freedom, should be careless of
the instruments by which his purpose was to be effected, was but natural.
It is painful to reflect that the great champion of liberty and of
Protestantism was almost equally indifferent to the welfare of the human
creatures enlisted in her cause.  Spaniards and Italians, English and
Irish, went half naked and half starving through the whole inclement
winter, and perished of pestilence in droves, after confronting the
less formidable dangers of battlefield and leaguer.  Manfully and
sympathetically did the Earl of Leicester--while whining in absurd
hyperbole over the angry demeanour of his sovereign towards himself-
represent the imperative duty of an English government to succour English
troops.

Alexander Farnese was equally plain-spoken to a sovereign with whom
plain-speaking was a crime.  In bold, almost scornful language, the
Prince represented to Philip the sufferings and destitution of the
little band of heroes, by whom that magnificent military enterprise,
the conquest of Antwerp, had just been effected.  "God will be weary of
working miracles for us," he cried, "and nothing but miracles can save
the troops from starving."  There was no question of paying them their
wages, there was no pretence at keeping them reasonably provided with
lodging and clothing, but he asserted the undeniable proposition that
they "could not pass their lives without eating," and he implored his
sovereign to send at least money enough to buy the soldiers shoes.
To go foodless and barefoot without complaining, on the frozen swamps of
Flanders, in January, was more than was to be expected from Spaniards and
Italians.  The country itself was eaten bare.  The obedient Provinces had
reaped absolute ruin as the reward of their obedience.  Bruges, Ghent,
and the other cities of Brabant and Flanders, once so opulent and
powerful, had become mere dens of thieves and paupers.  Agriculture,
commerce, manufactures--all were dead.  The condition of Antwerp was most
tragical.  The city, which had been so recently the commercial centre of
the earth, was reduced to absolute beggary.  Its world-wide traffic was
abruptly terminated, for the mouth of its great river was controlled by
Flushing, and Flushing was in the firm grasp of Sir Philip Sidney, as
governor for the English Queen.  Merchants and bankers, who had lately
been possessed of enormous resources, were stripped of all.  Such of the
industrial classes as could leave the place had wandered away to Holland
and England.  There was no industry possible, for there was no market for
the products of industry.  Antwerp was hemmed in by the enemy on every
side, surrounded by royal troops in a condition of open mutiny, cut off
from the ocean, deprived of daily bread, and yet obliged to contribute
out of its poverty to the maintenance of the Spanish soldiers, who were
there for its destruction.  Its burghers, compelled to furnish four
hundred thousand florins, as the price of their capitulation, and at
least six hundred thousand more for the repairs of the dykes, the
destruction of which, too long deferred, had only spread desolation over
the country without saving the city, and over and above all forced to
rebuild, at their own expense, that fatal citadel, by which their liberty
and lives were to be perpetually endangered, might now regret at leisure
that they had not been as stedfast during their siege as had been the
heroic inhabitants of Leyden in their time of trial, twelve years before.
Obedient Antwerp was, in truth, most forlorn.  But there was one
consolation for her and for Philip, one bright spot in the else universal
gloom.  The ecclesiastics assured Parma, that, notwithstanding the
frightful diminution in the population of the city, they had confessed
and absolved more persons that Easter than they had ever done since the
commencement of the revolt.  Great was Philip's joy in consequence.
"You cannot imagine my satisfaction," he wrote, "at the news you give me
concerning last Easter."

With a ruined country, starving and mutinous troops, a bankrupt
exchequer, and a desperate and pauper population, Alexander Farnese was
not unwilling to gain time by simulated negotiations for peace.  It was
strange, however, that so sagacious a monarch as the Queen of England
should suppose it for her interest to grant at that moment the very delay
which was deemed most desirable by her antagonist.

Yet it was not wounded affection alone, nor insulted pride, nor startled
parsimony, that had carried the fury of the Queen to such a height on the
occasion of Leicester's elevation to absolute government.  It was still
more, because the step was thought likely to interfere with the progress
of those negotiations into which the Queen had allowed herself to be
drawn.

A certain Grafigni--a Genoese merchant residing much in London and in
Antwerp, a meddling, intrusive, and irresponsible kind of individual,
whose occupation was gone with the cessation of Flemish trade--had
recently made his appearance as a volunteer diplomatist.  The principal
reason for accepting or rather for winking at his services, seemed to be
the possibility of disavowing him, on both sides, whenever it should be
thought advisable.  He had a partner or colleague, too, named Bodman,
who seemed a not much more creditable negotiator than himself.  The chief
director of the intrigue was, however, Champagny, brother of Cardinal
Granvelle, restored to the King's favour and disposed to atone by his
exuberant loyalty for his heroic patriotism on a former and most
memorable occasion.  Andrea de Loo, another subordinate politician, was
likewise employed at various stages of the negotiation.

It will soon be perceived that the part enacted by Burghley, Hatton,
Croft, and other counsellors, and even by the Queen herself, was not a
model of ingenuousness towards the absent Leicester and the States-
General.  The gentlemen sent at various times to and from the Earl and
her Majesty's government; Davison, Shirley, Vavasor, Heneage, and the
rest--had all expressed themselves in the strongest language concerning
the good faith and the friendliness of the Lord-Treasurer and the Vice-
Chamberlain,  but they were not so well informed as they would have been,
had they seen the private letters of Parma to Philip II.

Walsingham, although kept in the dark as much as it was possible,
discovered from time to time the mysterious practices of his political
antagonists, and warned the Queen of the danger and dishonour she was
bringing upon herself.  Elizabeth, when thus boldly charged, equivocated
and stormed alternately.  She authorized Walsingham to communicate the
secrets--which he had thus surprised--to the States-General, and then
denied having given any such orders.

In truth, Walsingham was only entrusted with such portions of the
negotiations as he had been able, by his own astuteness, to divine; and
as he was very much a friend to the Provinces and to Leicester, he never
failed to keep them instructed, to the best of his ability.  It must be
confessed, however, that the shuffling and paltering among great men and
little men, at that period, forms a somewhat painful subject of
contemplation at the present day.

Grafigni having some merchandise to convey from Antwerp to London, went
early in the year to the Prince of Parma, at Brussels, in order to
procure a passport.  They entered into some conversation upon the misery
of the country, and particularly concerning the troubles to which the
unfortunate merchants had been exposed.  Alexander expressed much
sympathy with the commercial community, and a strong desire that the
ancient friendship between his master and the Queen of England might be
restored.  Grafigni assured the Prince--as the result of his own
observation in England--that the Queen participated in those pacific
sentiments: "You are going to England," replied the Prince, "and you may
say to the ministers of her Majesty, that, after my allegiance to my
King, I am most favourably and affectionately inclined towards her.  If
it pleases them that I, as Alexander Farnese, should attempt to bring
about an accord, and if our commissioners could be assured of a hearing
in England, I would take care that everything should be conducted with
due regard to the honour and reputation of her Majesty."

Grafigni then asked for a written letter of credence.  "That cannot be,"
replied Alexander; "but if you return to me I shall believe your report,
and then a proper person can be sent, with authority from the King to
treat with her Majesty."

Grafigni proceeded to England, and had an interview with Lord Cobham.
A few days later that nobleman gave the merchant a general assurance
that the Queen had always felt a strong inclination to maintain firm
friendship with the House of Burgundy.  Nevertheless, as he proceeded
to state, the bad policy of the King's ministers, and the enterprises
against her Majesty, had compelled her to provide for her own security
and that of her realm by remedies differing in spirit from that good
inclination.  Being however a Christian princess, willing to leave
vengeance to the Lord and disposed to avoid bloodshed, she was ready
to lend her ear to a negotiation for peace, if it were likely to be a
sincere and secure one.  Especially she was pleased that his Highness
of Parma should act as mediator of such a treaty, as she considered him
a most just and honourable prince in all his promises and actions.  Her
Majesty would accordingly hold herself in readiness to receive the
honourable commissioners alluded to, feeling sure that every step taken
by his Highness would comport with her honour and safety.

At about the same time the other partner in this diplomatic enterprise,
William Bodman, communicated to Alexander, the result of his observations
in England.  He stated that Lords Burghley, Buckhurst, and Cobham, Sir
Christopher Hatton, and Comptroller Croft, were secretly desirous of
peace with Spain and that they had seized the recent opportunity of her
pique against the Earl of Leicester to urge forward these underhand
negotiations.  Some progress had been made; but as no accredited
commissioner arrived from the Prince of Parma, and as Leicester was
continually writing earnest letters against peace, the efforts of these
counsellors had slackened.  Bodman found them all, on his arrival,
anxious as he said, "to get their necks out of the matter;" declaring
everything which had been done to be pure matter of accident, entirely
without the concurrence of the Queen, and each seeking to outrival the
other in the good graces of her Majesty.  Grafigni informed Bodman,
however, that Lord Cobham was quite to be depended upon in the affair,
and would deal with him privately, while Lord Burghley would correspond
with Andrea de Loo at Antwerp.  Moreover, the servant of Comptroller
Croft would direct Bodman as to his course, and would give him daily
instructions.

Now it so happened that this servant of Croft, Norris by name, was a
Papist, a man of bad character, and formerly a spy of the Duke of Anjou.
"If your Lordship or myself should use such instruments as this," wrote
Walsingham to Leicester, "I know we should bear no small reproach; but
it is the good hap of hollow and doubtful men to be best thought of."
Bodman thought the lords of the peace-faction and their adherents not
sufficiently strong to oppose the other party with success.  He assured
Farnese that almost all the gentlemen and the common people of England
stood ready to risk their fortunes and to go in person to the field to
maintain the cause of the Queen and religious liberty; and that the
chance of peace was desperate unless something should turn the tide, such
as, for example, the defeat of Drake, or an invasion by Philip of Ireland
or Scotland.

As it so happened that Drake was just then engaged in a magnificent
career of victory, sweeping the Spanish Main and startling the nearest
and the most remote possessions of the King with English prowess, his
defeat was not one of the cards to be relied on by the peace-party in the
somewhat deceptive game which they had commenced.  Yet, strange to say,
they used, or attempted to use, those splendid triumphs as if they had
been disasters.

Meantime there was an active but very secret correspondence between Lord
Cobham, Lord Burghley, Sir James Croft, and various subordinate
personages in England, on the one side, and Champagny, President
Richardot, La Motte, governor of Gravelines, Andrea de Loo, Grafigni, and
other men in the obedient Provinces, more or less in Alexander's
confidence, on the other side.  Each party was desirous of forcing or
wheedling the antagonist to show his hand.  "You were employed to take
soundings off the English coast in the Duke of Norfolk's time," said
Cobham to La Motte: "you remember the Duke's fate.  Nevertheless, her
Majesty hates war, and it only depends on the King to have a firm and
lasting peace."

"You must tell Lord Cobham," said Richardot to La Motte, "that you
are not at liberty to go into a correspondence, until assured of the
intentions of Queen Elizabeth.  Her Majesty ought to speak first,
in order to make her good-will manifest," and so on.

"The 'friend' can confer with you," said Richardot to Champagny; "but his
Highness is not to appear to know anything at all about it.  The Queen
must signify her intentions."

"You answered Champagny correctly," said Burghley to De Loo, "as to what
I said last winter concerning her Majesty's wishes in regard to a
pacification.  The Netherlands must be compelled to return to obedience
to the King; but their ancient privileges are to be maintained.  You
omitted, however, to say a word about toleration, in the Provinces, of
the reformed religion.  But I said then, as I say now, that this is a
condition indispensable to peace."

This was a somewhat important omission on the part of De Loo, and gives
the measure of his conscientiousness or his capacity as a negotiator.
Certainly for the Lord-Treasurer of England to offer, on the part of her
Majesty, to bring about the reduction of her allies under the yoke which
they had thrown off without her assistance, and this without leave asked
of them, and with no provision for the great principle of religious
liberty, which was the cause of the revolt, was a most flagitious
trifling with the honour of Elizabeth and of England.  Certainly the more
this mysterious correspondence is examined, the more conclusive is the
justification of the vague and instinctive jealousy felt by Leicester and
the States-General as to English diplomacy during the winter and spring
of 1586.

Burghley summoned De Loo, accordingly, to recall to his memory all that
had been privately said to him on the necessity of protecting the
reformed religion in the Provinces.  If a peace were to be perpetual,
toleration was indispensable, he observed, and her Majesty was said to
desire this condition most earnestly.

The Lord-Treasurer also made the not unreasonable suggestion, that, in
case of a pacification, it would be necessary to provide that English
subjects--peaceful traders, mariners, and the like--should no longer be
shut up in the Inquisition prisons of Spain and Portugal, and there
starved to death, as, with great multitudes, had already been the case.

Meantime Alexander, while encouraging and directing all these underhand
measures, was carefully impressing upon his master that he was not, in
the least degree; bound by any such negotiations.  "Queen Elizabeth," he
correctly observed to Philip, "is a woman: she is also by no means fond
of expense.  The kingdom, accustomed to repose, is already weary of war
therefore, they are all pacifically inclined."  "It has been intimated to
me," he said, "that if I would send a properly qualified person, who
should declare that your Majesty had not absolutely forbidden the coming
of Lord Leicester, such an agent would be well received, and perhaps the
Earl would be recalled."  Alexander then proceeded, with the coolness
befitting a trusted governor of Philip II., to comment upon the course
which he was pursuing.  He could at any time denounce the negotiations
which he was secretly prompting.  Meantime immense advantages could be
obtained by the deception practised upon an enemy whose own object was
to deceive.

The deliberate treachery of the scheme was cynically enlarged upon, and
its possible results mathematically calculated:

Philip was to proceed with the invasion while Alexander was going on with
the negotiation.  If, meanwhile, they could receive back Holland and
Zeeland from the hands of England, that would be an immense success. The
Prince intimated a doubt, however, as to so fortunate a result, because,
in dealing with heretics and persons of similar quality, nothing but
trickery was to be expected.  The chief good to be hoped for was to
"chill the Queen in her plots, leagues, and alliances," and during the
chill, to carry forward their own great design.  To slacken not a whit
in their preparations, to "put the Queen to sleep," and, above all, not
to leave the French for a moment unoccupied with internal dissensions and
civil war; such was the game of the King and the governor, as expounded
between themselves.

President Richardot, at the same time, stated to Cardinal Granvelle that
the English desire for peace was considered certain at Brussels.
Grafigni had informed the Prince of Parma and his counsellors that the
Queen was most amicably disposed, and that there would be no trouble on
the point of religion, her Majesty not wishing to obtain more than she
would herself be willing to grant.  "In this," said Richardot, "there is
both hard and soft;" for knowing that the Spanish game was deception,
pure and simple, the excellent President could not bring himself to
suspect a possible grain of good faith in the English intentions.  Much
anxiety was perpetually felt in the French quarter, her Majesty's
government being supposed to be secretly preparing an invasion of the
obedient Netherlands across the French frontier, in combination, not with
the Bearnese, but with Henry III.  So much in the dark were even the most
astute politicians.  "I can't feel satisfied in this French matter," said
the President: "we mustn't tickle ourselves to make ourselves laugh."
Moreover, there was no self-deception nor self-tickling possible as to
the unmitigated misery of the obedient Netherlands.  Famine was a more
formidable foe than Frenchmen, Hollanders, and Englishmen combined; so
that Richardot avowed that the "negotiation would be indeed holy," if it
would restore Holland and Zeeland to the King without fighting.  The
prospect seemed on the whole rather dismal to loyal Netherlanders like
the old leaguing, intriguing, Hispamolized president of the privy
council.  "I confess," said he plaintively, "that England needs
chastisement; but I don't see how we are to give it to her.  Only let us
secure Holland and Zeeland, and then we shall always find a stick
whenever we like to beat the dog."

Meantime Andrea de Loo had been bustling and buzzing about the ears of
the chief counsellors at the English court during all the early spring.
Most busily he had been endeavouring to efface the prevalent suspicion
that Philip and Alexander were only trifling by these informal
negotiations.  We have just seen whether or not there was ground for that
suspicion.  De Loo, being importunate, however--"as he usually was,"
according to his own statement--obtained in Burghley's hand a
confirmation, by order of the Queen, of De Loo's--letter of the 26th
December.  The matter of religion gave the worthy merchant much
difficulty, and he begged Lord Buckhurst, the Lord Treasurer, and many
other counsellors, not to allow this point of toleration to ruin the
whole affair; "for," said he, "his Majesty will never permit any exercise
of the reformed religion."

At last Buckhurst sent for him, and in presence of Comptroller Croft,
gave him information that he had brought the Queen to this conclusion:
firstly, that she would be satisfied with as great a proportion of
religious toleration for Holland, Zeeland, and the other United
Provinces, as his Majesty could concede with safety to his conscience and
his honour; secondly, that she required an act of amnesty; thirdly, that
she claimed reimbursement by Philip for the money advanced by her to the
States.

Certainly a more wonderful claim was never made than this--a demand upon
an absolute monarch for indemnity for expenses incurred in fomenting a
rebellion of his own subjects.  The measure of toleration proposed for
the Provinces--the conscience, namely, of the greatest bigot ever born
into the world--was likely to prove as satisfactory as the claim for
damages propounded by the most parsimonious sovereign in Christendom.  It
was, however, stipulated that the nonconformists of Holland and Zeeland,
who should be forced into exile, were to have their property administered
by papist trustees; and further, that the Spanish inquisition was not to
be established in the Netherlands.  Philip could hardly demand better
terms than these last, after a career of victory.  That they should be
offered now by Elizabeth was hardly compatible with good faith to the
States.

On account of Lord Burghley's gout, it was suggested that the negotiators
had better meet in England, as it would be necessary for him to take the
lead in the matters and as he was but an indifferent traveller.  Thus,
according to De Loo, the Queen was willing to hand over the United
Provinces to Philip, and to toss religious toleration to the winds, if
she could only get back the seventy thousand pounds--more or less--which
she had invested in an unpromising speculation.  A few weeks later, and
at almost the very moment when Elizabeth had so suddenly overturned her
last vial of wrath upon the discomfited Heneage for having communicated
--according to her express command--the fact of the pending negotiations
to the Netherland States; at that very instant Parma was writing
secretly, and in cipher, to Philip.  His communication--could Sir Thomas
have read it--might have partly explained her Majesty's rage.

Parma had heard, he said, through Bodman, from Comptroller Croft, that
the Queen would willingly receive a proper envoy.  It was very easy to
see, he observed, that the English counsellors were seeking every means
of entering into communication with Spain, and that they were doing so
with the participation of the Queen!  Lord-Treasurer Burghley and
Comptroller Croft had expressed surprise that the Prince had not yet sent
a secret agent to her Majesty, under pretext of demanding explanations
concerning Lord Leicester's presence in the Provinces, but in reality to
treat for peace.  Such an agent, it had been intimated, would be well
received.  The Lord-Treasurer and the Comptroller would do all in their
power to advance the negotiation, so that, with their aid and with the
pacific inclination of the Queen, the measures proposed in favour of
Leicester would be suspended, and perhaps the Earl himself and all the
English would be recalled.

The Queen was further represented as taking great pains to excuse both
the expedition of Sir Francis Drake to the Indies, and the mission of
Leicester to the Provinces.  She was said to throw the whole blame of
these enterprises upon Walsingham and other ill-intentioned personages,
and to avow that she now understood matters better; so that, if Parma
would at once send an envoy, peace would, without question, soon be made.

Parma had expressed his gratification at these hopeful dispositions on
the part of Burghley and Croft, and held out hopes of sending an agent to
treat with them, if not directly with her Majesty.  For some time past--
according to the Prince--the English government had not seemed to be
honestly seconding the Earl of Leicester, nor to correspond with his
desires.  "This makes me think," he said, "that the counsellors before-
mentioned, being his rivals, are trying to trip him up."

In such a caballing, prevaricating age, it is difficult to know which of
all the plotters and counterplotters engaged in these intrigues could
accomplish the greatest amount of what--for the sake of diluting in nine
syllables that which could be more forcibly expressed in one--was then
called diplomatic dissimulation.  It is to be feared, notwithstanding her
frequent and vociferous denials, that the robes of the "imperial
votaress" were not so unsullied as could be wished.  We know how loudly
Leicester had complained--we have seen how clearly Walsingham could
convict; but Elizabeth, though convicted, could always confute: for an
absolute sovereign, even without resorting to Philip's syllogisms of axe
and faggot, was apt in the sixteenth century to have the best of an
argument with private individuals.

The secret statements of Parma-made, not for public effect, but for
the purpose of furnishing his master with the most accurate information
he could gather as to English policy--are certainly entitled to
consideration.  They were doubtless founded upon the statements
of individuals rejoicing in no very elevated character; but those
individuals had no motive to deceive their patron.  If they clashed
with the vehement declarations of very eminent personages, it must be
admitted, on the other hand, that they were singularly in accordance with
the silent eloquence of important and mysterious events.

As to Alexander Farnese--without deciding the question whether Elizabeth
and Burghley were deceiving Walsingham and Leicester, or only trying to
delude Philip and himself--he had no hesitation, of course, on his part,
in recommending to Philip the employment of unlimited dissimulation.
Nothing could be more ingenuous than the intercourse between the King and
his confidential advisers.  It was perfectly understood among them that
they were always to deceive every one, upon every occasion.  Only let
them be false, and it was impossible to be wholly wrong; but grave
mistakes might occur from occasional deviations into sincerity.  It was
no question at all, therefore, that it was Parma's duty to delude
Elizabeth and Burghley.  Alexander's course was plain.  He informed his
master that he would keep these difficulties alive as much as it was
possible.  In order to "put them all to sleep with regard to the great
enterprise of the invasion," he would send back Bodman to Burghley and
Croft, and thus keep this unofficial negotiation upon its legs.  The King
was quite uncommitted, and could always disavow what had been done.
Meanwhile he was gaining, and his adversaries losing, much precious time.
"If by this course," said Parma, "we can induce the English to hand over
to us the places which they hold in Holland and Zeeland, that will be a
great triumph."  Accordingly he urged the King not to slacken, in the
least, his preparations for invasion, and, above all, to have a care that
the French were kept entangled and embarrassed among themselves, which
was a most substantial point.

Meantime Europe was ringing with the American successes of the bold
corsair Drake.  San Domingo, Porto Rico, Santiago, Cartliagena, Florida,
were sacked and destroyed, and the supplies drawn so steadily from the
oppression of the Western World to maintain Spanish tyranny in Europe,
were for a time extinguished.  Parma was appalled at these triumphs of
the Sea-King--"a fearful man to the King of Spain"--as Lord Burghley well
observed.  The Spanish troops were starving in Flanders, all Flanders
itself was starving, and Philip, as usual, had sent but insignificant
remittances to save his perishing soldiers.  Parma had already exhausted
his credit.  Money was most difficult to obtain in such a forlorn
country; and now the few rich merchants and bankers of Antwerp that were
left looked very black at these crushing news from America.  "They are
drawing their purse-strings very tight," said Alexander, "and will make
no accommodation.  The most contemplative of them ponder much over this
success of Drake, and think that your Majesty will forget our matters
here altogether."  For this reason he informed the King that it would be
advisable to drop all further negotiation with England for the time, as
it was hardly probable that, with such advantages gained by the Queen,
she would be inclined to proceed in the path which had been just secretly
opened.  Moreover, the Prince was in a state of alarm as to the
intentions of France.  Mendoza and Tassis had given him to understand
that a very good feeling prevailed between the court of Henry and of
Elizabeth, and that the French were likely to come to a pacification
among themselves.  In this the Spanish envoys were hardly anticipating so
great an effect as we have seen that they had the right to do from their
own indefatigable exertions; for, thanks to their zeal, backed by the
moderate subsidies furnished by their master, the civil war in France
already seemed likely to be as enduring as that of the Netherlands.  But
Parma--still quite in the dark as to French politics--was haunted by the
vision of seventy thousand foot and six thousand horses ready to be let
slip upon him at any, moment, out of a pacified and harmonious France;
while he had nothing but a few starving and crippled regiments to
withstand such an invasion.  When all these events should have taken
place, and France, in alliance with England, should have formally
declared war against Spain, Alexander protested that he should have
learned nothing new.

The Prince was somewhat mistaken as to political affairs; but his doubts
concerning his neighbours, blended with the forlorn condition of himself
and army, about which there was no doubt at all, showed the exigencies of
his situation.  In the midst of such embarrassments it is impossible not
to admire his heroism as a military chieftain, and his singular
adroitness as a diplomatist.  He had painted for his sovereign a most
faithful and horrible portrait of the obedient Provinces.  The soil was
untilled; the manufactories had all stopped; trade had ceased to exist.
It was a pity only to look upon the raggedness of his soldiers.  No
language could describe the misery of the reconciled Provinces--Artois,
Hainault, Flanders.  The condition of Bruges would melt the hardest
heart; other cities were no better; Antwerp was utterly ruined; its
inhabitants were all starving.  The famine throughout the obedient
Netherlands was such as had not been known for a century.  The whole
country had been picked bare by the troops, and the plough was not put
into the ground.  Deputations were constantly with him from Bruges,
Dendermonde, Bois-le-Duc, Brussels, Antwerp, Nymegen, proving to him
by the most palpable evidence that the whole population of those cities
had almost literally nothing to eat.  He had nothing, however, but
exhortations to patience to feed them withal.  He was left without a
groat even to save his soldiers from starving, and he wildly and
bitterly, day after day, implored his sovereign for aid.  These pictures
are not the sketches of a historian striving for effect, but literal
transcripts from the most secret revelations of the Prince himself to his
sovereign.  On the other hand, although Leicester's complaints of the
destitution of the English troops in the republic were almost as bitter,
yet the condition of the United Provinces was comparatively healthy.
Trade, external and internal, was increasing daily.  Distant commercial
and military expeditions were fitted out, manufactures were prosperous,
and the war of independence was gradually becoming--strange to say--a
source of prosperity to the new commonwealth.

Philip--being now less alarmed than his nephew concerning French affairs,
and not feeling so keenly the misery of the obedient Provinces, or the
wants of the Spanish army--sent to Alexander six hundred thousand ducats,
by way of Genoa.  In the letter submitted by his secretary recording this
remittance, the King made, however, a characteristic marginal note:--
"See if it will not be as well to tell him something concerning the two
hundred thousand ducats to be deducted for Mucio, for fear of more
mischief, if the Prince should expect the whole six hundred thousand."

Accordingly Mucio got the two hundred thousand.  One-third of the meagre
supply destined for the relief of the King's starving and valiant little
army in the Netherlands was cut off to go into the pockets of the
intriguing Duke of Guise.  "We must keep the French," said Philip, "in a
state of confusion at home, and feed their civil war.  We must not allow
them to come to a general peace, which would be destruction for the
Catholics.  I know you will put a good face on the matter; and, after
all, 'tis in the interest of the Netherlands.  Moreover, the money shall
be immediately refunded."

Alexander was more likely to make a wry face, notwithstanding his views
of the necessity of fomenting the rebellion against the House of Valois.
Certainly if a monarch intended to conquer such countries as France,
England, and Holland, without stirring from his easy chair in the
Escorial, it would have been at least as well--so Alexander thought--to
invest a little more capital in the speculation.  No monarch ever dreamed
of arriving at universal empire with less personal fatigue or exposure,
or at a cheaper rate, than did Philip II.  His only fatigue was at his
writing-table.  But even here his merit was of a subordinate description.
He sat a great while at a time.  He had a genius for sitting; but he now
wrote few letters himself.  A dozen words or so, scrawled in
hieroglyphics at the top, bottom, or along the margin of the interminable
despatches of his secretaries, contained the suggestions, more or less
luminous, which arose in his mind concerning public affairs.  But he held
firmly to his purpose: He had devoted his life to the extermination of
Protestantism, to the conquest of France and England, to the subjugation
of Holland.  These were vast schemes.  A King who should succeed in such
enterprises, by his personal courage and genius, at the head of his
armies, or by consummate diplomacy, or by a masterly system of finance-
husbanding and concentrating the resources of his almost boundless
realms--might be in truth commended for capacity.  Hitherto however
Philip's triumph had seemed problematical; and perhaps something more
would be necessary than letters to Parma, and paltry remittances to
Mucio, notwithstanding Alexander's splendid but local victories in
Flanders.

Parma, although in reality almost at bay, concealed his despair, and
accomplished wonders in the field.  The military events during the spring
and summer of 1586 will be sketched in a subsequent chapter.  For the
present it is necessary to combine into a complete whole the subterranean
negotiations between Brussels and England.

Much to his surprise and gratification, Parma found that the peace-party
were not inclined to change their views in consequence of the triumphs of
Drake.  He soon informed the King that--according to Champagny and
Bodman--the Lord Treasurer, the Comptroller, Lord Cobham, and Sir
Christopher Hatton, were more pacific than they had ever been.  These
four were represented by Grafigni as secretly in league against Leicester
and Walsingham, and very anxious to bring about a reconciliation between
the crowns of England and Spain.  The merchant-diplomatist, according to
his own statement, was expressly sent by Queen Elizabeth to the prince of
Parma, although without letter of credence or signed instructions, but
with the full knowledge and approbation of the four counsellors just
mentioned.  He assured Alexander that the Queen and the majority of her
council felt a strong desire for peace, and had manifested much
repentance for what had been done.  They had explained their proceedings
by the necessity of self-defence.  They had avowed--in case they should
be made sure of peace--that they should, not with reluctance and against
their will, but, on the contrary, with the utmost alacrity and at once,
surrender to the King of Spain the territory which they possessed in the
Netherlands, and especially the fortified towns in Holland and Zeeland;
for the English object had never been conquest.  Parma had also been
informed of the Queen's strong desire that he should be employed as
negotiator, on account of her great confidence in his sincerity.  They
had expressed much satisfaction on hearing that he was about to send an
agent to England, and had protested themselves rejoiced at Drake's
triumphs, only because of their hope that a peace with Spain would thus
be rendered the easier of accomplishment.  They were much afraid,
according to Grafigni, of Philip's power, and dreaded a Spanish invasion
of their country, in conjunction with the Pope.  They were now extremely
anxious that Parma--as he himself informed the King--should send an agent
of good capacity, in great secrecy, to England.

The Comptroller had said that he had pledged himself to such a result,
and if it failed, that they would probably cut off his head.  The four
counsellors were excessively solicitous for the negotiation, and each of
them was expecting to gain favour by advancing it to the best of his
ability.

Parma hinted at the possibility that all these professions were false,
and that the English were only intending to keep the King from the
contemplated invasion.  At the same time he drew Philip's attention to
the fact that Burghley and his party had most evidently been doing
everything in their power to obstruct Leicester's progress in the
Netherlands and to keep back the reinforcements of troops and money which
he so much required.

No doubt these communications of Parma to the King were made upon the
faith of an agent not over-scrupulous, and of no elevated or recognised
rank in diplomacy.  It must be borne in mind, however, that he had been
made use of by both parties; perhaps because it would be easy to throw
off, and discredit, him whenever such a step should be convenient; and
that, on the other hand, coming fresh from Burghley and the rest into the
presence of the keen-eyed Farnese, he would hardly invent for his
employer a budget of falsehoods.  That man must have been a subtle
negotiator who could outwit such a statesman as Burghley--and the other
counsellors of Elizabeth, and a bold one who could dare to trifle on a
momentous occasion with Alexander of Parma.

Leicester thought Burghley very much his friend, and so thought Davison
and Heneage; and the Lord-Treasurer had, in truth, stood stoutly by the
Earl in the affair of the absolute governorship;--"a matter more severe
and cumbersome to him and others," said Burghley, "than any whatsoever
since he was a counsellor."  But there is no doubt that these
negotiations were going forward all the spring and summer, that they were
most detrimental to Leicester's success, and that they were kept--so far
as it was possible--a profound secret from him, from Walsingham, and from
the States-General.  Nothing was told them except what their own
astuteness had discovered beforehand; and the game of the counsellors--so
far as their attitude towards Leicester and Walsingham was concerned--
seems both disingenuous and impolitic.

Parma, it was to be feared, was more than a match for the English
governor-general in the field; and it was certainly hopeless for poor
old Comptroller Croft, even though backed by the sagacious Burghley, to
accomplish so great an amount of dissimulation in a year as the Spanish
cabinet, without effort, could compass in a week.  Nor were they
attempting to do so.  It is probable that England was acting towards
Philip in much better faith than he deserved, or than Parma believed;
but it is hardly to be wondered at that Leicester should think himself
injured by being kept perpetually in the dark.

Elizabeth was very impatient at not receiving direct letters from Parma,
and her anxiety on the subject explains much of her caprice during the
quarrel about the governor-generalahip.  Many persons in the Netherlands
thought those violent scenes a farce, and a farce that had been arranged
with Leicester beforehand.  In this they were mistaken; for an
examination of the secret correspondence of the period reveals the
motives--which to contemporaries were hidden--of many strange
transactions.  The Queen was, no doubt, extremely anxious, and with
cause, at the tempest slowly gathering over her head; but the more the
dangers thickened, the more was her own official language to those in
high places befitting the sovereign of England.

She expressed her surprise to Farnese that he had not written to her on
the subject of the Grafigni and Bodman affair.  The first, she said, was
justified in all which he had narrated, save in his assertion that she
had sent him.  The other had not obtained audience, because he had not
come provided with any credentials, direct or indirect.  Having now
understood from Andrea de Loo and the Seigneur de Champagny that Parma
had the power to conclude a peace, which he seemed very much to desire,
she observed that it was not necessary for him to be so chary in
explaining the basis of the proposed negotiations.  It was better to
enter into a straightforward path, than by ambiguous words to spin out
to great length matters which princes should at once conclude.

"Do not suppose," said the Queen, "that I am seeking what belongs to
others.  God forbid.  I seek only that which is mine own.  But be
sure that I will take good heed of the sword which threatens me with
destruction, nor think that I am so craven-spirited as to endure a
wrong, or to place myself at the mercy of my enemy.  Every week I see
advertisements and letters from Spain that this year shall witness the
downfall of England; for the Spaniards--like the hunter who divided, with
great liberality, among his friends the body and limbs of the wolf,
before it had been killed--have partitioned this kingdom and that of
Ireland before the conquest has been effected.  But my royal heart is no
whit appalled by such threats.  I trust, with the help of the Divine
hand--which has thus far miraculously preserved me--to smite all these
braggart powers into the dust, and to preserve my honour, and the
kingdoms which He has given me for my heritage.

"Nevertheless, if you have authority to enter upon and to conclude this
negotiation, you will find my ears open to hear your propositions; and I
tell you further, if a peace is to be made, that I wish you to be the
mediator thereof.  Such is the affection I bear you, notwithstanding that
some letters, written by your own hand, might easily have effaced such
sentiments from my mind."

Soon afterwards, Bodman was again despatched to England, Grafigni being
already there.  He was provided with unsigned instructions, according to
which he was to say that the Prince, having heard of the Queen's good
intentions, had despatched him and Grafigni to her court.  They were to
listen to any suggestions made by the Queen to her ministers; but they
were to do nothing but listen.  If the counsellors should enter into
their grievances against his Majesty, and ask for explanations, the
agents were to say that they had no authority or instructions to speak
for so great and Christian a monarch.  Thus they were to cut the thread
of any such discourse, or any other observations not to the purpose.

Silence, in short, was recommended, first and last, as the one great
business of their mission; and it was unlucky that men whose talent for
taciturnity was thus signally relied upon should be somewhat remarkable
for loquacity.  Grafigni was also the bearer of a letter from Alexander
to the Queen--of which Bodman received a copy--but it was strictly
enjoined upon them to keep the letter, their instructions, and the
objects of their journey, a secret from all the world.

The letter of the Prince consisted mainly of complimentary flourishes.
He had heard, he said, all that Agostino Grafigni had communicated, and
he now begged her Majesty to let him understand the course which it was
proper to take; assuring her of his gratitude for her good opinion
touching his sincerity, and his desire to save the effusion of blood,
and so on; concluding of course with expressions of most profound
consideration and devotion.

Early in July Bodman arrived in London.  He found Grafigni in very low
spirits.  He had been with Lord Cobham, and was much disappointed with
his reception, for Cobham--angry that Grafigni had brought no commission
from the King--had refused to receive Parma's letter to the Queen, and
had expressed annoyance that Bodman should be employed on this mission,
having heard that lie was very ill-tempered and passionate.  The same
evening, he had been sent for by Lord Burghley--who had accepted the
letter for her Majesty without saying a word--and on the following
morning, he had been taken to task, by several counsellors, on the ground
that the Prince, in that communication, had stated that the Queen had
expressed a desire for peace.

It has just been shown that there was no such intimation at all in the
letter; but as neither Grafigni nor Bodman had read the epistle itself,
but only the copy furnished them, they could merely say that such an
assertion; if made by the Prince, had been founded on no statement of
theirs.  Bodman consoled his colleague, as well as he could, by
assurances that when the letter was fairly produced, their vindication
would be complete, and Grafigni, upon that point, was comforted.  He was,
however, very doleful in general, and complained bitterly of Burghley and
the other English counsellors.  He said that they had forced him, against
his will, to make this journey to Brussels, that they had offered him
presents, that they would leave him no rest in his own house, but had
made him neglect all his private business, and caused him a great loss of
time and money, in order that he might serve them.  They had manifested
the strongest desire that Parma should open this communication, and had
led him to expect a very large recompense for his share in the
transaction.  "And now," said Grafigni to his colleague, with great
bitterness, "I find no faith nor honour in them at all.  They don't keep
their word, and every one of them is trying to slide out of the very
business, in which each was, but the other day, striving to outrival the
other, in order that it might be brought to a satisfactory conclusion."

After exploding in this way to Bodman, he went back to Cobham, and
protested, with angry vehemence, that Parma had never written such a word
to the Queen, and that so it would prove, if the letter were produced.

Next day, Bodman was sent for to Greenwich, where her Majesty was, as
usual, residing.  A secret pavilion was indicated to him, where he was to
stay until sunset.  When that time arrived, Lord Cobham's secretary came
with great mystery, and begged the emissary to follow him, but at a
considerable distance, towards the apartments of Lord Burghley in the
palace.  Arriving there, they found the Lord Treasurer accompanied by
Cobham and Croft.  Burghley instantly opened the interview by a defence
of the Queen's policy in sending troops to the Netherlands, and in
espousing their cause, and then the conversation proceeded to the
immediate matter in hand.

Bodman (after listening respectfully to the Lord-Treasurer's
observations).--"His Highness has, however, been extremely surprised that
my Lord Leicester should take an oath, as governor-general of the King's
Provinces.  He is shocked likewise by the great demonstrations of
hostility on the part of her Majesty."

Burghley.--"The oath was indispensable.  The Queen was obliged to
tolerate the step on account of the great urgency of the States to have a
head.  But her Majesty has commanded us to meet you on this occasion, in
order to hear what you have to communicate on the part of the Prince of
Parma."

Bodman (after a profusion of complimentary phrases).--"I have no
commission to say anything.  I am only instructed to listen to anything
that may be said to me, and that her Majesty may be pleased to command."

Burghley.--"'Tis very discreet to begin thus.  But time is pressing, and
it is necessary to be brief.  We beg you therefore to communicate,
without further preface, that which you have been charged to say."

Bodman.--"I can only repeat to your Lordship, that I have been charged to
say nothing."

After this Barmecide feast of diplomacy, to partake of which it seemed
hardly necessary that the guests should have previously attired
themselves in such garments of mystery, the parties separated for the
night.

In spite of their care, it would seem that the Argus-eyed Walsingham had
been able to see after sunset; for, the next evening--after Bodman had
been introduced with the same precautions to the same company, in the
same place--Burghley, before a word had been spoken, sent for Sir
Francis.

Bodman was profoundly astonished, for he had been expressly informed that
Walsingham was to know nothing of the transaction.  The Secretary of
State could not so easily be outwitted, however, and he was soon seated
at the table, surveying the scene, with his grave melancholy eyes, which
had looked quite through the whole paltry intrigue.

Burghley.--"Her Majesty has commanded us to assemble together, in order
that, in my presence, it may be made clear that she did not commence this
negotiation.  Let Grafigni be summoned."

Grafigni immediately made his appearance.

Burghley.--"You will please to explain how you came to enter into this
business."

Grafigni.--"The first time I went to the States, it was on my private
affairs; I had no order from any one to treat with the Prince of Parma.
His Highness, having accidentally heard, however, that I resided in
England, expressed a wish to see me.  I had an interview with the Prince.
I told him, out of my own head, that the Queen had a strong inclination
to hear propositions of peace, and that--as some of her counsellors were
of the same opinion--I believed that if his Highness should send a
negotiator, some good would be effected.  The Prince replied that he felt
by no means sure of such a result; but that, if I should come back from
England, sent by the Queen or her council, he would then despatch a
person with a commission to treat of peace.  This statement, together
with other matters that had passed between us, was afterwards drawn up in
writing by command of his Highness."

Burghley.--"Who bade you say, after your second return to Brussels, that
you came on the part of the Queen?  For you well know that her Majesty
did not send you."

Grafigni.--"I never said so.  I stated that my Lord Cobham had set down
in writing what I was to say to the Prince of Parma.  It will never
appear that I represented the Queen as desiring peace.  I said that her
Majesty would lend her ears to peace.  Bodman knows this too; and he has
a copy of the letter of his Highness."

Walsingham to Bodman.--"Have you the copy still?"

Bodman.--"Yes, Mr. Secretary."

Walsingham.--"Please to produce it, in order that this matter may be
sifted to the bottom."

Bodman.--"I supplicate your Lorships to pardon me, but indeed that cannot
be.  My instructions forbid my showing the letter."

Walsingham (rising).--"I will forthwith go to her Majesty, and fetch the
original."  A pause.  Mr. Secretary returns in a few minutes, having
obtained the document, which the Queen, up to that time, had kept by her,
without showing it to any one.

Walsingham (after reading the letter attentively, and aloud).--"There is
not such a word, as that her Majesty is desirous of peace, in the whole
paper."

Burghley (taking the letter, and slowly construing it out of Italian into
English).--"It would seem that his Highness hath written this, assuming
that the Signor Grafigni came from the Queen, although he had received
his instructions from my Lord Cobham.  It is plain, however, that the
negotiation was commenced accidentally."

Comptroller Croft (nervously, and with the air of a man fearful of
getting into trouble).--"You know very well, Mr. Bodman, that my servant
came to Dunkirk only to buy and truck away horses; and that you then, by
chance, entered into talk with him, about the best means of procuring a
peace between the two kingdoms.  My servant told you of the good feeling
that prevailed in England.  You promised to write on the subject to the
Prince, and I immediately informed the Lord-Treasurer of the whole
transaction."

Burghley.--"That is quite true."

Croft.--"My servant subsequently returned to the Provinces in order to
learn what the Prince might have said on the subject."

Bodman (with immense politeness, but very decidedly).--"Pardon me, Mr.
Comptroller; but, in this matter, I must speak the truth, even if the
honour and life of my father were on the issue.  I declare that your
servant Norris came to me, directly commissioned for that purpose by
yourself, and informed me from you, and upon your authority, that if I
would solicit the Prince of Parma to send a secret agent to England, a
peace would be at once negotiated.  Your servant entreated me to go to
his Highness at Brussels.  I refused, but agreed to consider the
proposition.  After the lapse of several days, the servant returned to
make further enquiries.  I told him that the Prince had come to no
decision.  Norris continued to press the matter.  I excused myself.  He
then solicited and obtained from me a letter of introduction to De Loo,
the secretary of his Highness.  Armed with this, he went to Brussels and
had an interview--as I found, four days later--with the Prince.  In
consequence of the representations of Norris, those of Signor Grafigni,
and those by way of Antwerp, his Highness determined to send me to
England."

Burghley to Croft.--"Did you order your servant to speak with Andrea de
Loo?"

Croft.--"I cannot deny it."

Burghley.--"The fellow seems to have travelled a good way out of his
commission.  His master sends him to buy horses, and he commences a
peace-negotiation between two kingdoms.  It would be well he were
chastised.  As regards the Antwerp matter, too, we have had many letters,
and I have, seen one from the Seigneur de Champagny, the same effect as
that of all the rest."

Walsingham.--"I see not to what end his Highness of Parma has sent Mr.
Bodman hither.  The Prince avows that he hath no commission from Spain."

Bodman.--"His Highness was anxious to know what was her Majesty's
pleasure.  So soon as that should be known, the Prince could obtain ample
authority.  He would never have proceeded so far without meaning a good
end."

Walsingham.--"Very like.  I dare say that his Highness will obtain the
commission.  Meantime, as Prince of Parma, he writes these letters, and
assists his sovereign perhaps more than he doth ourselves."

Here the interview terminated.  A few days later, Bodman had another
conversation with Burghley and Cobham.  Reluctantly, at their urgent
request, he set down in writing all that he had said concerning his
mission.

The Lord Treasurer said that the Queen and her counsellors were "ready to
embrace peace when it was treated of sincerely."  Meantime the Queen had
learned that the Prince had been sending letters to the cautionary towns
in Holland and Zeeland, stating that her Majesty was about to surrender
them to the King of Spain.  These were tricks to make mischief, and were
very detrimental to the Queen.

Bodman replied that these were merely the idle stories of quidnuncs; and
that the Prince and all his counsellors were dealing with the utmost
sincerity.

Burghley answered that he had intercepted the very letters, and had them
in his possession.

A week afterwards, Bodman saw Walsingham alone, and was informed by
him that the Queen had written an answer to Parma's letter, and that
negotiations for the future were to be carried on in the usual form,
or not at all.  Walsingham, having thus got the better of his rivals,
and delved below their mines, dismissed the agent with brief courtesy.
Afterwards the discomfited Mr. Comptroller wished a private interview
with Bodman.  Bodman refused to speak with him except in presence of Lord
Cobham.  This Croft refused.  In the same way Bodman contrived to get
rid, as he said, of Lord Burghley and Lord Cobham, declining to speak
with either of them alone.  Soon afterwards he returned to the Provinces!

The Queen's letter to Parma was somewhat caustic.  It was obviously
composed through the inspiration of Walsingham rather than that of
Burghley.  The letter, brought by a certain Grafigni and a certain
Bodman, she said, was a very strange one, and written under a delusion.
It was a very grave error, that, in her name, without her knowledge,
contrary to her disposition, and to the prejudice of her honour, such a
person as this Grafigni, or any one like him, should have the audacity to
commence such a business, as if she had, by messages to the Prince,
sought a treaty with his King, who had so often returned evil for her
good.  Grafigni, after representing the contrary to his Highness, had now
denied in presence of her counsellors having received any commission from
the Queen.  She also briefly gave the result of Bodman's interviews with
Burghley and the others, just narrated.  That agent had intimated that
Parma would procure authority to treat for peace, if assured that the
Queen would lend her ear to any propositions.

She replied by referring to her published declarations, as showing her
powerful motives for interfering in these affairs.  It was her purpose to
save her own realm and to rescue her ancient neighbours from misery and
from slavery.  To this end she should still direct her actions,
notwithstanding the sinister rumours which had been spread that she was
inclined to peace before providing for the security and liberty of her
allies.  She was determined never to separate their cause from her own.
Propositions tending to the security of herself and of her neighbours
would always be favourably received.

Parma, on his part, informed his master that there could be no doubt that
the Queen and the majority of her council abhorred the war, and that
already much had been gained by the fictitious negotiation.  Lord-
Treasurer Burghley had been interposing endless delays and difficulties
in the way of every measure proposed for the relief of Lord Leicester,
and the assistance rendered him had been most lukewarm.  Meantime the
Prince had been able, he said, to achieve much success in the field, and
the English had done nothing to prevent it.  Since the return of Grafigni
and Bodman, however, it was obvious that the English government had
disowned these non-commissioned diplomatists.  The whole negotiation and
all the negotiators were now discredited, but there was no doubt that
there had been a strong desire to treat, and great disappointment at the
result.  Grafigni and Andrea de Loo had been publishing everywhere in
Antwerp that England would consider the peace as made, so soon as his
Majesty should be willing to accept any propositions.

His Majesty, meanwhile, sat in his cabinet, without the slightest
intention of making or accepting any propositions save those that were
impossible.  He smiled benignantly at his nephew's dissimulation and at
the good results which it had already produced.  He approved of gaining
time, he said, by fictitious negotiations and by the use of a mercantile
agent; for, no doubt, such a course would prevent the proper succours
from being sent to the Earl of Leicester.  If the English would hand over
to him the cautionary towns held by them in Holland and Zeeland, promise
no longer to infest the seas, the Indies, and the Isles, with their
corsairs, and guarantee the complete obedience to their King and
submission to the holy Catholic Church of the rebellious Provinces,
perhaps something might be done with them; but, on the whole, he was
inclined to think that they had been influenced by knavish and deceitful
motives from the beginning.  He enjoined it upon Parma, therefore, to
proceed with equal knavery--taking care, however, not to injure his
reputation--and to enter into negotiations wherever occasion might serve,
in order to put the English off their guard and to keep back the
reinforcements so imperatively required by Leicester.

And the reinforcements were indeed kept back.  Had Burghley and Croft
been in the pay of Philip II.  they could hardly have served him better
than they had been doing by the course pursued.  Here then is the
explanation of the shortcomings of the English government towards
Leicester and the States during the memorable spring and summer of 1586.
No money, no soldiers, when most important operations in the field were
required.  The first general of the age was to be opposed by a man who
had certainly never gained many laurels as a military chieftain, but who
was brave and confident, and who, had he been faithfully supported by the
government which sent him to the Netherlands, would have had his
antagonist at a great disadvantage.  Alexander had scarcely eight
thousand effective men.  Famine, pestilence, poverty, mutiny, beset
and almost paralyzed him.  Language could not exaggerate the absolute
destitution of the country.  Only miracles could save the King's cause,
as Farnese repeatedly observed.  A sharp vigorous campaign, heartily
carried on against him by Leicester and Hohenlo, with plenty of troops
and money at command, would have brought the heroic champion of
Catholicism to the ground.  He was hemmed in upon all sides; he was cut
off from the sea; he stood as it were in a narrowing circle, surrounded
by increasing dangers.  His own veterans, maddened by misery, stung by
their King's ingratitude, naked, starving, ferocious, were turning
against him.  Mucio, like his evil genius, was spiriting away his
supplies just as they were reaching his hands; a threatening tempest
seemed rolling up from France; the whole population of the Provinces
which he had "reconciled"--a million of paupers--were crying to him for
bread; great commercial cities, suddenly blasted and converted into dens
of thieves and beggars, were cursing the royal author of their ruin, and
uttering wild threats against his vicegerent; there seemed, in truth,
nothing left for Alexander but to plunge headlong into destruction, when,
lo! Mr. Comptroller Croft, advancing out of the clouds, like a propitious
divinity, disguised in the garb of a foe--and the scene was changed.

The feeble old man, with his shufing, horse-trucking servant, ex-spy of
Monsieur, had accomplished more work for Philip and Alexander than many
regiments of Spaniards and Walloons could have done.  The arm of
Leicester was paralyzed upon the very threshold of success.  The picture
of these palace-intrigues has been presented with minute elaboration,
because, however petty and barren in appearance, they were in reality
prolific of grave results.  A series of victories by Parma was
substituted for the possible triumphs of Elizabeth and the States.

The dissimulation of the Spanish court was fathomless.  The secret
correspondence of the times reveals to us that its only purpose was to
deceive the Queen and her counsellors, and to gain time to prepare the
grand invasion of England and subjugation of Holland--that double purpose
which Philip could only abandon with life.  There was never a thought,
on his part, of honest negotiation.  On the other hand, the Queen was
sincere; Burghley and Hatton and Cobham were sincere; Croft was sincere,
so far as Spain was concerned.  At least they had been sincere.  In the
private and doleful dialogues between Bodman and Grafigni which we have
just been overhearing, these intriguers spoke the truth, for they could
have no wish to deceive each other, and no fear of eaves-droppers not to
be born till centuries afterwards.  These conversations have revealed to
us that the Lord Treasurer and three of his colleagues had been secretly
doing their best to cripple Leicester, to stop the supplies for the
Netherlands, and to patch up a hurried and unsatisfactory, if not a
disgraceful peace; and this, with the concurrence of her Majesty.  After
their plots had been discovered by the vigilant Secretary of State, there
was a disposition to discredit the humbler instruments in the cabal.
Elizabeth was not desirous of peace.  Far from it.  She was qualmish at
the very suggestion.  Dire was her wrath against Bodman, De Loo,
Graafigni, and the rest, at their misrepresentations on the subject.  But
she would "lend her ear."  And that royal ear was lent, and almost fatal
was the distilment poured into its porches.  The pith and marrow of the
great Netherland enterprise was sapped by the slow poison of the ill-
timed negotiation.  The fruit of Drake's splendid triumphs in America
was blighted by it.  The stout heart of the vainglorious but courageous
Leicester was sickened by it, while, meantime, the maturing of the
great armada-scheme, by which the destruction of England was to be
accomplished, was furthered, through the unlimited procrastination
so precious to the heart of Philip.

Fortunately the subtle Walsingham was there upon the watch to administer
the remedy before it was quite too late; and to him England and the
Netherlands were under lasting obligations.  While Alexander and Philip
suspected a purpose on the part of the English government to deceive
them, they could not help observing that the Earl of Leicester was both
deserted and deceived.  Yet it had been impossible for the peace-party in
the government wholly to conceal their designs, when such prating fellows
as Grafigni and De Loo were employed in what was intended to be a secret
negotiation.  In vain did the friends of Leicester in the Netherlands
endeavour to account for the neglect with which he was treated, and for
the destitution of his army.  Hopelessly did they attempt to counteract
those "advertisements of most fearful instance," as Richard Cavendish
expressed himself, which were circulating everywhere.

Thanks to the babbling of the very men, whose chief instructions had been
to hold their tongues, and to listen with all their ears, the secret
negotiations between Parma and the English counsellors became the town-
talk at Antwerp, the Hague, Amsterdam, Brussels, London.  It is true that
it was impossible to know what was actually said and done; but that there
was something doing concerning which Leicester was not to be informed was
certain.  Grafigni, during one of his visits to the obedient provinces,
brought a brace of greyhounds and a couple of horses from England, as a
present to Alexander, and he perpetually went about, bragging to every
one of important negotiations which he was conducting, and of his
intimacy with great personages in both countries.  Leicester,
on the other hand, was kept in the dark.  To him Grafigni made no
communications, but he once sent him a dish of plums, "which," said the
Earl, with superfluous energy, "I will boldly say to you, by the living
God, is all that I have ever had since I came into these countries."
When it is remembered that Leicester had spent many thousand pounds in
the Netherland cause, that he had deeply mortgaged his property in order
to provide more funds, that he had never received a penny of salary from
the Queen, that his soldiers were "ragged and torn like rogues-pity to
see them," and were left without the means of supporting life; that he
had been neglected, deceived, humiliated, until he was forced to describe
himself as a "forlorn man set upon a forlorn hope," it must be conceded
that Grafigni's present of a dish of plums could hardly be sufficient to
make him very happy.

From time to time he was enlightened by Sir Francis, who occasionally
forced his adversaries' hands, and who always faithfully informed the
Earl of everything he could discover.  "We are so greedy of a peace, in
respect of the charges of the wars," he wrote in April, "as in the
procuring thereof we weigh neither honour nor safety.  Somewhat here is
adealing underhand, wherein there is great care taken that I should not
be made acquainted withal."  But with all their great care, the
conspirators, as it has been seen, were sometimes outwitted by the
Secretary, and, when put to the blush, were forced to take him into half-
confidence.  "Your Lordship may see," he wrote, after getting possession
of Parma's letter to the Queen, and unravelling Croft's intrigues, "what
effects are wrought by such weak ministers.  They that have been the
employers of them are ashamed of the matter."

Unutterable was the amazement, as we have seen, of Bodman and Grafigni
when they had suddenly found themselves confronted in Burghley's private
apartments in Greenwich Palace, whither they had been conducted so
mysteriously after dark from the secret pavilion--by the grave Secretary
of State, whom they had been so anxious to deceive; and great was the
embarrassment of Croft and Cobham, and even of the imperturbable
Burghley.

And thus patiently did Walsingham pick his course, plummet in hand,
through the mists and along the quicksands, and faithfully did he hold
out signals to his comrade embarked on the same dangerous voyage.  As for
the Earl himself, he was shocked at the short-sighted policy of his
mistress, mortified by the neglect to which he was exposed, disappointed
in his ambitious schemes.  Vehemently and judiciously he insisted upon
the necessity of vigorous field operations throughout the spring and
summer thus frittered away in frivolous negotiations.  He was for peace,
if a lasting and honourable peace could be procured; but he insisted that
the only road tosuch a result was through a "good sharp war."  His troops
were mutinous for want of pay, so that he had been obligedto have a few
of them executed, although he protested that he would rather have "gone a
thousand miles a-foot" than have done so; and he was crippled by his
government at exactly the time when his great adversary's condition was
most forlorn.  Was it strange that the proud Earl should be fretting his
heart away when such golden chances were eluding his grasp?  He would
"creep upon the ground," he said, as far as his hands and knees would
carry him, to have a good peace for her Majesty, but his care was to have
a peace indeed, and not a show of it.  It was the cue of Holland and
England to fight before they could expect to deal upon favourable terms
with their enemy.  He was quick enough to see that his false colleagues
at home were playing into the enemy's hands.  Victory was what was
wanted; victory the Earl pledged himself, if properly seconded, to
obtain; and, braggart though he was, it is by no means impossible that
he might have redeemed his pledge.  "If her Majesty will use her
advantage," he said, "she shall bring the King, and especially this
Prince of Parma, to seek peace in other sort than by way of merchants."
Of courage and confidence the governor had no lack.  Whether he was
capable of outgeneralling Alexander Farnese or no, will be better seen,
perhaps, in subsequent chapters; but there is no doubt that he was
reasonable enough in thinking, at that juncture, that a hard campaign
rather than a "merchant's brokerage" was required to obtain an honourable
peace.  Lofty, indeed, was the scorn of the aristocratic Leicester that
"merchants and pedlars should be paltering in so weighty a cause," and
daring to send him a dish of plums when he was hoping half a dozen
regiments from the Queen; and a sorry business, in truth, the pedlars
had made of it.

Never had there been a more delusive diplomacy, and it was natural that
the lieutenant-general abroad and the statesman at home should be sad and
indignant, seeing England drifting to utter shipwreck while pursuing that
phantom of a pacific haven.  Had Walsingham and himself tampered with the
enemy, as some counsellors he could name had done, Leicester asserted
that the gallows would be thought too good for them; and yet he hoped he
might be hanged if the whole Spanish faction in England could procure for
the Queen a peace fit for her to accept.

Certainly it was quite impossible for the Spanish-faction to bring about
a peace.  No human power could bring it about.  Even if England had been
willing and able to surrender Holland, bound hand and foot, to Philip,
even then she could only have obtained a hollow armistice.  Philip had
sworn in his inmost soul the conquest of England and the dethronement of
Elizabeth.  His heart was fixed.  It was only by the subjugation of
England that he hoped to recover the Netherlands.  England was to be
his stepping-stone to Holland.  The invasion was slowly but steadily
maturing, and nothing could have diverted the King from his great
purpose.  In the very midst of all these plots and counterplots, Bodmans
and Grafignis, English geldings and Irish greyhounds, dishes of plums and
autograph letters of her Majesty and his Highness, the Prince was
deliberately discussing all the details of the invasion, which, as it was
then hoped, would be ready by the autumn of the year 1586.  Although he
had sent a special agent to Philip, who was to state by word of mouth
that which it was deemed unsafe to write, yet Alexander, perpetually
urged by his master, went at last more fully into particulars than he
had ever ventured to do before; and this too at the very moment when
Elizabeth was most seriously "lending her ear" to negotiation, and most
vehemently expressing her wrath at Sir Thomas Heneage for dealing
candidly with the States-General.

The Prince observed that when, two or three years before, he had sent his
master an account of the coasts, anchoring-places, and harbours of
England, he had then expressed the opinion that the conquest of England
was an enterprise worthy of the grandeur and Christianity of his Majesty,
and not so difficult as to be considered altogether impossible.  To make
himself absolutely master of the business, however, he had then thought
that the King should have no associates in the scheme, and should make no
account of the inhabitants of England.  Since that time the project had
become more difficult of accomplishment, because it was now a stale and
common topic of conversation everywhere--in Italy, Germany, and France--
so that there could be little doubt that rumours on the subject were
daily reaching the ears of Queen Elizabeth and of every one in her
kingdom.  Hence she had made a strict alliance with Sweden, Denmark, the
Protestant princes of Germany, and even with the Turks and the French.
Nevertheless, in spite of these obstacles, the King, placing his royal
hand to the work, might well accomplish the task; for the favour of the
Lord, whose cause it was, would be sure to give him success.

Being so Christian and Catholic a king, Philip naturally desired to
extend the area of the holy church, and to come to the relief of so many
poor innocent martyrs in England, crying aloud before the Lord for help.
Moreover Elizabeth had fomented rebellion in the King's Provinces for a
long time secretly, and now, since the fall of Antwerp, and just as
Holland and Zeeland were falling into his grasp, openly.

Thus, in secret and in public, she had done the very worst she could do;
and it was very clear that the Lord, for her sins; had deprived her of
understanding, in order that his Majesty might be the instrument of that
chastisement which she so fully deserved.  A monarch of such great
prudence, valour, and talent as Philip, could now give all the world to
understand that those who dared to lose a just and decorous respect for
him, as this good lady had done, would receive such chastisement as royal
power guided by prudent counsel could inflict.  Parma assured his
sovereign, that, if the conquest of England were effected, that of the
Netherlands would be finished with much facility and brevity; but that
otherwise, on account of the situation, strength and obstinacy of those
people, it would be a very long, perilous, and at best doubtful business.

"Three points," he said, "were most vital to the invasion of England--
secrecy, maintenance of the civil war in France, and judicious
arrangement of matters in the Provinces."

The French, if unoccupied at home, would be sure to make the enterprise
so dangerous as to become almost impossible; for it might be laid down as
a general maxim that that nation, jealous of Philip's power, had always
done and would always do what it could to counteract his purposes.

With regard to the Netherlands, it would be desirable to leave a good
number of troops in those countries--at least as many as were then
stationed there--besides the garrisons, and also to hold many German and
Swiss mercenaries in "wartgeld."  It would be further desirable that
Alexander should take most of the personages of quality and sufficiency
in the Provinces over with him to England, in order that they should not
make mischief in his absence.

With regard to the point of secrecy, that was, in Parma's opinion, the
most important of all.  All leagues must become more or less public,
particularly those contrived at or with Rome.  Such being the case, the
Queen of England would be well aware of the Spanish projects, and,
besides her militia at home, would levy German infantry and cavalry, and
provide plenty of vessels, relying therein upon Holland and Zeeland,
where ships and sailors were in such abundance.  Moreover, the English
and the Netherlanders knew the coasts, currents, tides, shallows,
quicksands, ports, better than did the pilots of any fleets that the King
could send thither.  Thus, having his back assured, the enemy would meet
them in front at a disadvantage.  Although, notwithstanding this
inequality, the enemy would be beaten, yet if the engagement should be
warm, the Spaniards would receive an amount of damage which could not
fail to be inconvenient, particularly as they would be obliged to land
their troops, and to give battle to those who would be watching their
landing.  Moreover the English would be provided with cavalry, of which
his Majesty's forces would have very little, on account of the difficulty
of its embarkation.

The obedient Netherlands would be the proper place in which to organize
the whole expedition.  There the regiments could be filled up, provisions
collected, the best way of effecting the passage ascertained, and the
force largely increased without exciting suspicion; but with regard to
the fleet, there were no ports there capacious enough for large vessels.
Antwerp had ceased to be a seaport; but a large number of flat-bottomed
barges, hoys, and other barks, more suitable for transporting soldiers,
could be assembled in Dunkirk, Gravelines, and Newport, which, with some
five-and-twenty larger vessels, would be sufficient to accompany the
fleet.

The Queen, knowing that there were no large ships, nor ports to hold them
in the obedient Provinces, would be unauspicious, if no greater levies
seemed to be making than the exigencies of the Netherlands might
apparently require.

The flat-bottomed boats, drawing two or three feet of water, would be
more appropriate than ships of war drawing twenty feet.  The passage
across, in favourable weather, might occupy from eight to twelve hours.

The number of troops for the invading force should be thirty thousand
infantry, besides five hundred light troopers, with saddles, bridles, and
lances, but without horses, because, in Alexander's opinion, it would be
easier to mount them in England.  Of these thirty thousand there should
be six thousand Spaniards, six thousand Italians, six thousand Walloons,
nine thousand Germans, and three thousand Burgundians.

Much money would be required; at least three hundred thousand dollars
the month for the new force, besides the regular one hundred and fifty
thousand for the ordinary provision in the Netherlands; and this ordinary
provision would be more necessary than ever, because a mutiny breaking
forth in the time of the invasion would be destruction to the Spaniards
both in England and in the Provinces.

The most appropriate part of the coast for a landing would,
in Alexander's opinion, be between Dover and Margate, because the
Spaniards, having no footing in Holland and Zeeland, were obliged to make
their starting-point in Flanders.  The country about Dover was described
by Parma as populous, well-wooded, and much divided by hedges;
advantageous for infantry, and not requiring a larger amount of cavalry
than the small force at his disposal, while the people there were
domestic in their habits, rich, and therefore less warlike, less trained
to arms, and more engrossed by their occupations and their comfortable
ways of life.  Therefore, although some encounters would take place, yet
after the commanders of the invading troops had given distinct and clear
orders, it would be necessary to leave the rest in the, "hands of God who
governs all things, and from whose bounty and mercy it was to be hoped
that He would favour a cause so eminently holy, just, and His own."

It would be necessary to make immediately for London, which city, not
being fortified, would be very easily taken.  This point gained, the
whole framework of the business might be considered as well put together.
If the Queen should fly--as, being a woman, she probably would do--
everything would be left in such confusion, as, with the blessing of God,
it might soon be considered that the holy and heroic work had been
accomplished: Her Majesty, it was suggested, would probably make her
escape in a boat before she could be captured; but the conquest would be
nevertheless effected.  Although, doubtless, some English troops might be
got together to return and try their fortune, yet it would be quite
useless; for the invaders would have already planted themselves upon the
soil, and then, by means of frequent excursions and forays hither and
thither about the island, all other places of importance would be gained,
and the prosperous and fortunate termination of the adventure assured.

As, however, everything was to be provided for, so, in case the secret
could not be preserved, it would be necessary for Philip, under pretext
of defending himself against the English and French corsairs, to send a
large armada to sea, as doubtless the Queen would take the same measure.
If the King should prefer, however, notwithstanding Alexander's advice to
the contrary, to have confederates in the enterprise,--then, the matter
being public, it would be necessary to prepare a larger and stronger
fleet than any which Elizabeth, with the assistance of her French and
Netherland allies, could oppose to him.  That fleet should be well
provided with vast stores of provisions, sufficient to enable the
invading force, independently of forage, to occupy three or four places
in England at once, as the enemy would be able to come from various towns
and strong places to attack them.

As for the proper season for the expedition, it would be advisable to
select the month of October of the current year, because the English
barns would then be full of wheat and other forage, and the earth would
have been sown for the next year--points of such extreme importance, that
if the plan could not be executed at that time, it would be as well to
defer it until the following October.

The Prince recommended that the negotiations with the League should be
kept spinning, without allowing them to come to a definite conclusion;
because there would be no lack of difficulties perpetually offering
themselves, and the more intricate and involved the policy of France, the
better it would be for the interests of Spain.  Alexander expressed the
utmost confidence that his Majesty, with his powerful arm, would overcome
all obstacles in the path of his great project, and would show the world
that he "could do a little more than what was possible."  He also assured
his master, in adding in this most extravagant language, of his personal
devotion, that it was unnecessary for him to offer his services in this
particular enterprise, because, ever since his birth, he had dedicated
and consecrated himself to execute his royal commands.

He further advised that old Peter Ernest Mansfeld should be left
commander-in-chief of the forces in the Netherlands during his own
absence in England.  "Mansfeld was an honourable cavalier," he said, "and
a faithful servant of the King;" and although somewhat ill-conditioned at
times, yet he had essential good qualities, and was the only general fit
to be trusted alone.

The reader, having thus been permitted to read the inmost thoughts of
Philip and Alexander, and to study their secret plans for conquering
England in October, while their frivolous yet mischievous negotiations
with the Queen had been going on from April to June, will be better able
than before to judge whether Leicester were right or no in doubting if a
good peace could be obtained by a "merchant's brokerage."

And now, after examining these pictures of inter-aulic politics and back-
stairs diplomacy, which represent so large and characteristic a phasis of
European history during the year 1586, we must throw a glance at the
external, more stirring, but not more significant public events which
were taking place during the same period.



ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Could do a little more than what was possible
Elizabeth, though convicted, could always confute
He sat a great while at a time.  He had a genius for sitting
Mistakes might occur from occasional deviations into sincerity
Nine syllables that which could be more forcibly expressed in on
They were always to deceive every one, upon every occasion
We mustn't tickle ourselves to make ourselves laugh




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v46
by John Lothrop Motley






ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS OF THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS 1584-86

A hard bargain when both parties are losers
Able men should be by design and of purpose suppressed
Anarchy which was deemed inseparable from a non-regal form
College of "peace-makers," who wrangled more than all
Condemned first and inquired upon after
Could do a little more than what was possible
Courage and semblance of cheerfulness, with despair in his heart
Demanding peace and bread at any price
Diplomatic adroitness consists mainly in the power to deceive
Dismay of our friends and the gratification of our enemies
Disordered, and unknit state needs no shaking, but propping
Elizabeth, though convicted, could always confute
Enmity between Lutherans and Calvinists
Find our destruction in our immoderate desire for peace
German-Lutheran sixteenth-century idea of religious freedom
He sat a great while at a time.  He had a genius for sitting
He did his work, but he had not his reward
Her teeth black, her bosom white and liberally exposed (Eliz.)
Hibernian mode of expressing himself
His inordinate arrogance
His insolence intolerable
Holland was afraid to give a part, although offering the whole
Honor good patriots, and to support them in venial errors
Humility which was but the cloak to his pride
Intentions of a government which did not know its own intentions
Intolerable tendency to puns
Longer they delay it, the less easy will they find it
Lord was better pleased with adverbs than nouns
Make sheep of yourselves, and the wolf will eat you
Matter that men may rather pray for than hope for
Military virtue in the support of an infamous cause
Mistakes might occur from occasional deviations into sincerity
Necessity of kingship
Neighbour's blazing roof was likely soon to fire their own
New Years Day in England, 11th January by the New Style
Nine syllables that which could be more forcibly expressed in on
Nor is the spirit of the age to be pleaded in defence
Not a friend of giving details larger than my ascertained facts
Not of the genus Reptilia, and could neither creep nor crouch
Not distinguished for their docility
Oration, fertile in rhetoric and barren in facts
Others that do nothing, do all, and have all the thanks
Pauper client who dreamed of justice at the hands of law
Peace and quietness is brought into a most dangerous estate
Peace-at-any-price party
Possible to do, only because we see that it has been done
Repentance, as usual, had come many hours too late
Repose in the other world, "Repos ailleurs"
Resolved thenceforth to adopt a system of ignorance
Round game of deception, in which nobody was deceived
Seeking protection for and against the people
Seem as if born to make the idea of royalty ridiculous
Shutting the stable-door when the steed is stolen
Soldiers enough to animate the good and terrify the bad
String of homely proverbs worthy of Sancho Panza
The very word toleration was to sound like an insult
The busy devil of petty economy
There was apathy where there should have been enthusiasm
They were always to deceive every one, upon every occasion
Thought that all was too little for him
Three hundred and upwards are hanged annually in London
Tis pity he is not an Englishman
To work, ever to work, was the primary law of his nature
Tranquillity rather of paralysis than of health
Twas pity, he said, that both should be heretics
Upper and lower millstones of royal wrath and loyal subserviency
Uttering of my choler doth little ease my grief or help my case
Wasting time fruitlessly is sharpening the knife for himself
We must all die once
We mustn't tickle ourselves to make ourselves laugh
Weary of place without power
When persons of merit suffer without cause
With something of feline and feminine duplicity
Wrath of bigots on both sides
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



MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, Project Gutenberg Edition, Vol. 60

History of the United Netherlands, 1586


CHAPTER IX.

     Military Plans in the Netherlands--The Elector and Electorate of
     Cologne--Martin Schenk--His Career before serving the States--
     Franeker University founded--Parma attempts Grave--Battle on the
     Meuse--Success and Vainglory of Leicester--St. George's Day
     triumphantly kept at Utrecht--Parma not so much appalled as it was
     thought--He besieges and reduces Grave--And is Master of the Meuse--
     Leicester's Rage at the Surrender of Grave--His Revenge--Parma on
     the Rhine--He besieges aid assaults Neusz--Horrible Fate of the
     Garrison and City--Which Leicester was unable to relieve--Asel
     surprised by Maurice and Sidney--The Zeeland Regiment given to
     Sidney--Condition of the Irish and English Troops--Leicester takes
     the Field--He reduces Doesburg--He lays siege to Zutphen--Which
     Parma prepares to relieve--The English intercept the Convoy--Battle
     of Warnsfeld--Sir Philip Sidney wounded--Results of the Encounter--
     Death of Sidney at Arnheim--Gallantry of Edward Stanley.

Five great rivers hold the Netherland territory in their coils.  Three
are but slightly separated--the Yssel, Waal, and ancient Rhine, while the
Scheldt and, Meuse are spread more widely asunder.  Along each of these
streams were various fortified cities, the possession of which, in those
days, when modern fortification was in its infancy, implied the control
of the surrounding country.  The lower part of all the rivers, where they
mingled with the sea and became wide estuaries, belonged to the Republic,
for the coasts and the ocean were in the hands of the Hollanders and
English.  Above, the various strong places were alternately in the hands
of the Spaniards and of the patriots.  Thus Antwerp, with the other
Scheldt cities, had fallen into Parma's power, but Flushing, which
controlled them all, was held by Philip Sidney for the Queen and States.
On the Meuse, Maastricht and Roermond were Spanish, but Yenloo, Grave,
Meghem, and other towns, held for the commonwealth.  On the Waal, the
town of Nymegen had, through the dexterity of Martin Schenk, been
recently transferred to the royalists, while the rest of that river's
course was true to the republic.  The Rhine, strictly so called, from its
entrance into Netherland, belonged to the rebels.  Upon its elder branch,
the Yssel, Zutphen was in Parma's hands, while, a little below, Deventer
had been recently and adroitly saved by Leicester and Count Meurs from
falling into the same dangerous grasp.

Thus the triple Rhine, after it had crossed the German frontier, belonged
mainly, although not exclusively, to the States.  But on the edge of the
Batavian territory, the ancient river, just before dividing itself into
its three branches, flowed through a debatable country which was even
more desolate and forlorn, if possible, than the land of the obedient
Provinces.

This unfortunate district was the archi-episcopal electorate of Cologne.
The city of Cologne itself, Neusz, and Rheinberg, on the river, Werll and
other places in Westphalia and the whole country around, were endangered,
invaded, ravaged, and the inhabitants plundered, murdered, and subjected
to every imaginable outrage, by rival bands of highwaymen, enlisted in
the support of the two rival bishops--beggars, outcasts, but high-born
and learned churchmen both--who disputed the electorate.

At the commencement of the year a portion of the bishopric was still in
the control of the deposed Protestant elector Gebhard Truchsess, assisted
of course by the English and the States.  The city of Cologne was held by
the Catholic elector, Ernest of Bavaria, bishop of Liege; but Neusz and
Rheinberg were in the hands of the Dutch republic.

The military operations of the year were, accordingly, along the Meuse,
where the main object of Parma was to wrest Grave From the Netherlands;
along the Waal, where, on the other hand, the patriots wished to recover
Nymegen; on the Yssel, where they desired to obtain the possession of
Zutphen; and in the Cologne electorate, where the Spaniards meant, if
possible, to transfer Neusz and Rheinberg from Truchsess to Elector
Ernest.  To clear the course of these streams, and especially to set free
that debatable portion of the river-territory which hemmed him in from
neutral Germany, and cut off the supplies from his starving troops, was
the immediate design of Alexander Farnese.

Nothing could be more desolate than the condition of the electorate.
Ever since Gebhard Truchsess had renounced the communion of the Catholic
Church for the love of Agnes Mansfeld, and so gained a wife and lost his
principality, he had been a dependant upon the impoverished Nassaus, or a
supplicant for alms to the thrifty Elizabeth.  The Queen was frequently
implored by Leicester, without much effect, to send the ex-elector a few
hundred pounds to keep him from starving, as "he had not one groat to
live upon," and, a little later, he was employed as a go-between, and
almost a spy, by the Earl, in his quarrels with the patrician party
rapidly forming against him in the States.

At Godesberg--the romantic ruins of which stronghold the traveller still
regards with interest, placed as it is in the midst of that enchanting
region where Drachenfels looks down on the crumbling tower of Roland and
the convent of Nonnenwerth--the unfortunate Gebhard had sustained a
conclusive defeat.  A small, melancholy man, accomplished, religious,
learned, "very poor but very wise," comely, but of mean stature,
altogether an unlucky and forlorn individual, he was not, after all,
in very much inferior plight to that in which his rival, the Bavarian
bishop, had found himself.  Prince Ernest, archbishop of Liege and
Cologne, a hangeron of his brother, who sought to shake him off, and a
stipendiary of Philip, who was a worse paymaster than Elizabeth, had a
sorry life of it, notwithstanding his nominal possession of the see.  He
was forced to go, disguised and in secret, to the Prince of Parma at
Brussels, to ask for assistance, and to mention, with lacrymose
vehemence, that both his brother and himself had determined to renounce
the episcopate, unless the forces of the Spanish King could be employed
to recover the cities on the Rhine.  If Neusz and Rheinberg were not
wrested from the rebels; Cologne itself would soon be gone.  Ernest
represented most eloquently to Alexander, that if the protestant
archbishop were reinstated in the ancient see, it would be a most
perilous result for the ancient church throughout all northern Europe.
Parma kept the wandering prelate for a few days in his palace in
Brussels, and then dismissed him, disguised and on foot, in the dusk of
the evening, through the park-gate.  He encouraged him with hopes of
assistance, he represented to his sovereign the importance of preserving
the Rhenish territory to Bishop Ernest and to Catholicism, but hinted
that the declared intention of the Bavarian to resign the dignity, was
probably a trick, because the archi-episcopate was no such very bad thing
after all.

The archi-episcopate might be no very bad thing, but it was a most
uncomfortable place of residence, at the moment, for prince or peasant.
Overrun by hordes of brigands, and crushed almost out of existence by
that most deadly of all systems of taxations, the 'brandschatzung,' it
was fast becoming a mere den of thieves.  The 'brandschatzung' had no
name in English, but it was the well-known impost, levied by roving
commanders, and even by respectable generals of all nations.  A hamlet,
cluster of farm-houses, country district, or wealthy city, in order to
escape being burned and ravaged, as the penalty of having fallen into a
conqueror's hands, paid a heavy sum of ready money on the nail at command
of the conqueror.  The free companions of the sixteenth century drove a
lucrative business in this particular branch of industry; and when to
this was added the more direct profits derived from actual plunder, sack,
and ransoming, it was natural that a large fortune was often the result
to the thrifty and persevering commander of free lances.

Of all the professors of this comprehensive art, the terrible Martin
Schenk was preeminent; and he was now ravaging the Cologne territory,
having recently passed again to the service of the States.  Immediately
connected with the chief military events of the period which now occupies
us, he was also the very archetype of the marauders whose existence was
characteristic of the epoch.  Born in 1549 of an ancient and noble family
of Gelderland, Martin Schenk had inherited no property but a sword.
Serving for a brief term as page to the Seigneur of Ysselstein, he
joined, while yet a youth, the banner of William of Orange, at the head
of two men-at-arms.  The humble knight-errant, with his brace of squires,
was received with courtesy by the Prince and the Estates, but he soon
quarrelled with his patrons.  There was a castle of Blyenbeek, belonging
to his cousin, which he chose to consider his rightful property, because
he was of the same race, and because it was a convenient and productive
estate and residence, The courts had different views of public law, and
supported the ousted cousin.  Martin shut himself up in the castle, and
having recently committed a rather discreditable homicide, which still
further increased his unpopularity with the patriots, he made overtures
to Parma.  Alexander was glad to enlist so bold a soldier on his side,
and assisted Schenk in his besieged stronghold.  For years afterwards,
his services under the King's banner were most brilliant, and he rose to
the highest military command, while his coffers, meantime, were rapidly
filling with the results of his robberies and 'brandschatzungs.' "'Tis a
most courageous fellow," said Parma, "but rather a desperate highwayman
than a valiant soldier."   Martin's couple of lances had expanded into a
corps of free companions, the most truculent, the most obedient, the most
rapacious in Christendom.  Never were freebooters more formidable to the
world at large, or more docile to their chief, than were the followers
of General Schenk.  Never was a more finished captain of highwaymen.
He was a man who was never sober, yet who never smiled.  His habitual
intoxication seemed only to increase both his audacity and his
taciturnity, without disturbing his reason.  He was incapable of fear,
of fatigue, of remorse.  He could remain for days and nights without
dismounting-eating, drinking, and sleeping in the saddle; so that to this
terrible centaur his horse seemed actually a part of himself.  His
soldiers followed him about like hounds, and were treated by him like
hounds.  He habitually scourged them, often took with his own hand the
lives of such as displeased him, and had been known to cause individuals
of them to jump from the top of church steeples at his command; yet the
pack were ever stanch to his orders, for they knew that he always led
them where the game was plenty.  While serving under Parma he had twice
most brilliantly defeated Hohenlo.  At the battle of Hardenberg Heath he
had completely outgeneralled that distinguished chieftain, slaying
fifteen hundred of his soldiers at the expense of only fifty or sixty of
his own.  By this triumph he had preserved the important city of
Groningen for Philip, during an additional quarter of a century, and had
been received in that city with rapture.  Several startling years of
victory and rapine he had thus run through as a royalist partisan.  He
became the terror and the scourge of his native Gelderland, and he was
covered with wounds received in the King's service.  He had been twice
captured and held for ransom.  Twice he had effected his escape.  He had
recently gained the city of Nymegen.  He was the most formidable, the
most unscrupulous, the most audacious Netherlander that wore Philip's
colours; but he had received small public reward for his services, and
the wealth which he earned on the high-road did not suffice for his
ambition.  He had been deeply disgusted, when, at the death of Count
Renneberg, Verdugo, a former stable-boy of Mansfeld, a Spaniard who had
risen from the humblest rank to be a colonel and general, had been made
governor of Friesland.  He had smothered his resentment for a time
however, but had sworn within himself to desert at the most favourable
opportunity.  At last, after he had brilliantly saved the city of Breda
from falling into the hands of the patriots, he was more enraged than he
had ever been before, when Haultepenne, of the house of Berlapmont, was
made governor of that place in his stead.

On the 25th of May, 1585, at an hour after midnight, he had a secret
interview with Count Meurs, stadholder for the States of Gelderland, and
agreed to transfer his mercenary allegiance to the republic.  He made
good terms.  He was to be lieutenant-governor of Gelderland, and he was
to have rank as marshal of the camp in the States' army, with a salary
of twelve hundred and fifty guilders a month.  He agreed to resign his
famous castle of Blyenbeek, but was to be reimbursed with estates in
Holland and Zeeland, of the annual value of four thousand florins.

After this treaty, Martin and his free lances served the States
faithfully, and became sworn foes to Parma and the King.  He gave and
took no quarter, and his men, if captured, "paid their ransom with their
heads."  He ceased to be the scourge of Gelderland, but he became the
terror of the electorate.  Early in 1586, accompanied by Herman Kloet,
the young and daring Dutch commandant of Neusz, he had swept down into
the Westphalian country, at the head of five hundred foot and five
hundred horse.  On the 18th of March he captured the city of Werll by a
neat stratagem.  The citizens, hemmed in on all sides by marauders, were
in want of many necessaries of life, among other things, of salt.  Martin
had, from time to time, sent some of his soldiers into the place,
disguised as boors from the neighbourhood, and carrying bags of that
article.  A pacific trading intercourse had thus been established between
the burghers within and the banditti without the gates.  Agreeable
relations were formed within the walls, and a party of townsmen had
agreed to cooperate with the followers of Schenk.  One morning a train
of waggons laden with soldiers neatly covered with salt, made their
appearance at the gate.  At the same time a fire broke out most
opportunely within the town.  The citizens busily employed themselves in
extinguishing the flames.  The salted soldiers, after passing through the
gateway, sprang from the waggons, and mastered the watch.  The town was.
carried at a blow.  Some of the inhabitants were massacred as a warning
to the rest; others were taken prisoners and held for ransom; a few, more
fortunate, made their escape to the citadel.  That fortress was stormed
in vain, but the city was thoroughly sacked.  Every house was rifled of
its contents.  Meantime Haultepenne collected a force of nearly four
thousand men, boors, citizens, and soldiers, and came to besiege Schenk
in the town, while, at the same time, attacks were made upon him from the
castle.  It was impossible for him to hold the city, but he had
completely robbed it of every thing valuable.  Accordingly he loaded a
train of waggons with his booty, took with him thirty of the magistrates
as hostages, with other wealthy citizens, and marching in good order
against Haultepenne, completely routed him, killing a number variously
estimated at from five hundred to two thousand, and effected his retreat,
desperately wounded in the thigh, but triumphant, and laden with the
spoils to Venlo on the Meuse, of which city he was governor.

"Surely this is a noble fellow, a worthy fellow," exclaimed Leicester,
who was filled with admiration at the bold marauder's progress, and vowed
that he was "the only soldier in truth that they had, for he was never
idle, and had succeeded hitherto very happily."

And thus, at every point of the doomed territory of the little
commonwealth, the natural atmosphere in which the inhabitants existed
was one of blood and rapine.  Yet during the very slight lull, which
was interposed in the winter of 1585-6 to the eternal clang of arms in
Friesland, the Estates of that Province, to their lasting honour, founded
the university of Franeker.  A dozen years before, the famous institution
at Leyden had been established, as a reward to the burghers for their
heroic defence of the city.  And now this new proof was given of the love
of Netherlanders, even in the midst of their misery and their warfare,
for the more humane arts.  The new college was well endowed from ancient
churchlands, and not only was the education made nearly gratuitous, while
handsome salaries were provided for the professors, but provision was
made by which the, poorer scholars could be fed and boarded at a very
moderate expense.  There was a table provided at an annual cost to the
student of but fifty florins, and a second and third table at the very
low price of forty and thirty florins respectively.  Thus the sum to be
paid by the poorer class of scholars for a year's maintenance was less
than three pounds sterling a year [1855 exchange rate D.W.].  The voice
with which this infant seminary of the Muses first made itself heard
above the din of war was but feeble, but the institution was destined to
thrive, and to endow the world, for many successive generations, with the
golden fruits of science and genius.

Early in the spring, the war was seriously taken in hand by Farnese.  It
has already been seen that the republic had been almost entirely driven
out of Flanders and Brabant.  The Estates, however, still held Grave,
Megem, Batenburg, and Venlo upon the Meuse.  That river formed, as it
were, a perfect circle of protection for the whole Province of Brabant,
and Farnese determined to make himself master of this great natural moat.
Afterwards, he meant to possess himself of the Rhine, flowing in a
parallel course, about twenty-five miles further to the east.  In order
to gain and hold the Meuse, the first step was to reduce the city of
Grave.  That town, upon the left or Brabant bank, was strongly fortified
on its land-side, where it was surrounded by low and fertile pastures,
while, upon the other, it depended upon its natural Toss, the river.  It
was, according to Lord North and the Earl of Leicester, the "strongest
town in all the Low Countries, though but a little one."

Baron Hemart, a young Gueldrian noble, of small experience in military
affairs, commanded in the city, his garrison being eight hundred
soldiers, and about one thousand burgher guard.  As early as January,
Farnese had ordered Count Mansfeld to lay siege to the place.  Five forts
had accordingly been constructed, above and below the town, upon the left
bank of the river, while a bridge of boats thrown across the stream led
to a fortified camp on the opposite side.  Mansfeld, Mondragon, Bobadil,
Aquila, and other distinguished veterans in Philip's service, were
engaged in the enterprise.  A few unimportant skirmishes between Schenk
and the Spaniards had taken place, but the city was already hard pressed,
and, by the series of forts which environed it, was cut off from its
supplies.  It was highly important, therefore, that Grave should be
relieved, with the least possible delay.

Early in Easter week, a force of three thousand men, under Hohenlo and
Sir John Norris, was accordingly despatched by Leicester, with orders,
at every hazard, to throw reinforcements and provisions into the place.
They took possession, at once, of a stone sconce, called the Mill-Fort,
which was guarded by fifty men, mostly boors of the country.  These were
nearly all hanged for "using malicious words," and for "railing against
Queen Elizabeth," and--a sufficient number of men being left to maintain
the fort--the whole relieving force marched with great difficulty--for
the river was rapidly rising, and flooding the country--along the right
bank of the Meuse, taking possession of Batenburg and Ravenstein castles,
as they went.  A force of four or five hundred Englishmen was then pushed
forward to a point almost exactly opposite Grave, and within an English
mile of the head of the bridge constructed by the Spaniards.  Here, in
the night of Easter Tuesday, they rapidly formed an entrenched camp, upon
the dyke along the river, and, although molested by some armed vessels,
succeeded in establishing themselves in a most important position.

On the morning of Easter Wednesday, April 16, Mansfeld, perceiving that
the enemy had thus stolen a march upon him, ordered one thousand picked
troops, all Spaniards, under Aquila, Casco and other veterans, to
assault this advanced post.  A reserve of two thousand was placed in
readiness to support the attack.  The Spaniards slowly crossed the
bridge, which was swaying very dangerously with the current, and then
charged the entrenched camp at a run.  A quarrel between the different
regiments as to the right of precedence precipitated the attack, before
the reserve, consisting of some picked companies of Mondragon's veterans,
had been able to arrive.  Coming in breathless and fatigued, the first
assailants were readily repulsed in their first onset.  Aquila then
opportunely made his appearance, and the attack was renewed with great
vigour: The defenders of the camp yielded at the third charge and fled in
dismay, while the Spaniards, leaping the barriers, scattered hither and
thither in the ardour of pursuit.  The routed Englishmen fled swiftly
along the oozy dyke, in hopes of joining the main body of the relieving
party, who were expected to advance, with the dawn, from their position
six miles farther down the river.  Two miles long the chace lasted, and
it seemed probable that the fugitives would be overtaken and destroyed,
when, at last, from behind a line of mounds which stretched towards
Batenburg and had masked their approach, appeared Count Hohenlo and Sir
John Norris, at the head of twenty-five hundred Englishmen and
Hollanders.  This force, advanced as rapidly as the slippery ground and
the fatigue of a two hours' march would permit to the rescue of their
friends, while the retreating English rallied, turned upon their
pursuers, and drove them back over the path along which they had just
been charging in the full career of victory.  The fortune of the day was
changed, and in a few minutes Hohenlo and Norris would have crossed the
river and entered Grave, when the Spanish companies of Bobadil and other
commanders were seen marching along the quaking bridge.

Three thousand men on each side now met at push of pike on the bank of
the Meuse.  The rain-was pouring in torrents, the wind was blowing a
gale, the stream was rapidly rising, and threatening to overwhelm its
shores.  By a tacit and mutual consent, both armies paused for a few
moments in full view of each other.  After this brief interval they
closed again, breast to breast, in sharp and steady conflict.  The
ground, slippery with rain and with blood, which was soon flowing almost
as fast as the rain, afforded an unsteady footing to the combatants.
They staggered like drunken men, fell upon their knees, or upon their
backs, and still, kneeling or rolling prostrate, maintained the deadly
conflict.  For the space of an hour and a half the fierce encounter of
human passion outmastered the fury of the elements.  Norris and Hohenlo
fought at the head of their columns, like paladins of old.  The
Englishman was wounded in the mouth and breast, the Count was seen to
gallop past one thousand musketeers and caliver-men of the enemy, and to
escape unscathed.  But as the strength of the soldiers exhausted itself,
the violence of the tempest increased.  The floods of rain and the blasts
of the hurricane at last terminated the affray.  The Spaniards, fairly
conquered, were compelled to a retreat, lest the rapidly rising river
should sweep away the frail and trembling bridge, over which they had
passed to their unsuccessful assault.  The English and Netherlanders
remained masters of the field.  The rising flood, too, which was fast
converting the meadows into a lake, was as useful to the conquerors as
it was damaging to the Spaniards.

In the course of the few following days, a large number of boats was
despatched before the very eyes of Parma, from Batenburg into Grave;
Hohenlo, who had "most desperately adventured his person" throughout the
whole affair, entering the town himself.

A force of five hundred men, together with provisions enough to last
a year, was thrown into the city, and the course of the Meuse was,
apparently, secured to the republic.  In this important action about
one hundred and fifty Dutch and English were killed, and probably four
hundred Spaniards, including several distinguished officers.

The Earl of Leicester was incredibly elated so soon as the success of
this enterprise was known.  "Oh that her Majesty knew," he cried, "how
easy a match now she hath with the King of Spain, and what millions of
aficted people she hath relieved in these, countries.  This summer, this
summer, I say, would make an end to her immortal glory."  He was no
friend to his countryman, the gallant Sir John Norris--whom, however, he
could not help applauding on this occasion,--but he was in raptures with
Hohenlo.  Next to God, he assured the Queen's government that the victory
was owing to the Count.  "He is both a valiant man and a wise man, and
the painfullest that ever I knew," he said; adding--as a secret--that
"five hundred Englishmen of the best Flemish training had flatly and
shamefully run away," when the fight had been renewed by Hohenlo and
Norris.  He recommended that her Majesty should, send her picture to the
Count, worth two hundred pounds, which he would value at more than one
thousand pounds in money, and he added that "for her sake the Count had
greatly left his drinking."

As for the Prince of Parma, Leicester looked upon him as conclusively
beaten.  He spoke of him as "marvellously appalled" by this overthrow of
his forces; but he assured the government that if the Prince's "choler
should press him to seek revenge," he should soon be driven out of the
country.  The Earl would follow him "at an inch," and effectually
frustrate all his undertakings.  "If the Spaniard have such a May as he
has had an April," said Lord North, "it will put water in his wine."

Meantime, as St. George's Day was approaching, and as the Earl was fond
of banquets and ceremonies, it was thought desirable to hold a great
triumphal feast at Utrecht.  His journey to that city from the Hague was
a triumphal procession.  In all the towns through which he passed he was
entertained with military display, pompous harangues, interludes, dumb
shows, and allegories.  At Amsterdam--a city which he compared to Venice
for situation and splendour, and where one thousand ships were constantly
lying--he was received with "sundry great whales and other fishes of
hugeness," that gambolled about his vessel, and convoyed him to the
shore.  These monsters of the deep presented him to the burgomaster and
magistrates who were awaiting him on the quay.  The burgomaster made him
a Latin oration, to which Dr. Bartholomew Clerk responded, and then the
Earl was ushered to the grand square, upon which, in his honour, a
magnificent living picture was exhibited, in which he figured as Moses,
at the head of the Israelites, smiting the Philistines hip and thigh.
After much mighty banqueting in Amsterdam, as in the other cities, the
governor-general came to Utrecht.  Through the streets of this antique
and most picturesque city flows the palsied current of the Rhine, and
every barge and bridge were decorated with the flowers of spring.  Upon
this spot, where, eight centuries before the Anglo-Saxon, Willebrod had
first astonished the wild Frisians with the pacific doctrines of Jesus,
and had been stoned to death as his reward, stood now a more arrogant
representative of English piety.  The balconies were crowded with fair
women, and decorated with scarves and banners.  From the Earl's
residence--the ancient palace of the Knights of Rhodes--to the cathedral,
the way was lined with a double row of burgher guards, wearing red roses
on their arms, and apparelled in the splendid uniforms for which the
Netherlanders were celebrated.  Trumpeters in scarlet and silver, barons,
knights, and great officers, in cloth of gold and silks of all colours;
the young Earl of Essex, whose career was to be so romantic, and whose
fate so tragic; those two ominous personages, the deposed little
archbishop-elector of Cologne, with his melancholy face, and the unlucky
Don Antonio, Pretender of Portugal, for whom, dead or alive, thirty
thousand crowns and a dukedom were perpetually offered by Philip II.;
young Maurice of Nassau, the future controller of European destinies;
great counsellors of state, gentlemen, guardsmen, and portcullis-herald,
with the coat of arms of Elizabeth, rode in solemn procession along.
Then great Leicester himself,  "most princelike in the robes of his
order," guarded by a troop of burghers, and by his own fifty halberd-men
in scarlet cloaks trimmed with white and purple velvet, pranced
gorgeously by.

The ancient cathedral, built on the spot where Saint Willebrod had once
ministered, with its light, tapering, brick tower, three hundred and
sixty feet in height, its exquisitely mullioned windows, and its
elegantly foliaged columns, soon received the glittering throng.  Hence,
after due religious ceremonies, and an English sermon from Master
Knewstubs, Leicester's chaplain, was a solemn march back again to the
palace, where a stupendous banquet was already laid in the great hall.

On the dais at the upper end of the table, blazing with plate and
crystal, stood the royal chair, with the Queen's plate and knife and fork
before it, exactly as if she had been present, while Leicester's trencher
and stool were set respectfully quite at the edge of the board.  In the
neighbourhood of this post of honour sat Count Maurice, the Elector, the
Pretender, and many illustrious English personages, with the fair Agnes
Mansfeld, Princess Chimay, the daughters of William the Silent, and other
dames of high degree.

Before the covers were removed, came limping up to the dais grim-visaged
Martin Schenk, freshly wounded, but triumphant, from the sack of Werll,
and black John Norris, scarcely cured of the spearwounds in his face and
breast received at the relief of Grave.  The sword of knighthood was
laid upon the shoulder of each hero, by the Earl of Leicester, as her
Majesty's vicegerent; and then the ushers marshalled the mighty feast.
Meats in the shape of lions, tigers, dragons, and leopards, flanked by
peacocks, swans, pheasants, and turkeys "in their natural feathers as in
their greatest pride," disappeared, course after course, sonorous metal
blowing meanwhile the most triumphant airs.  After the banquet came
dancing, vaulting, tumbling; together with the "forces of Hercules, which
gave great delight to the strangers," after which the company separated
until evensong.

Then again, "great was the feast," says the chronicler,--a mighty supper
following hard upon the gigantic dinner.  After this there was tilting
at the barriers, the young Earl of Essex and other knights bearing
themselves more chivalrously than would seem to comport with so much
eating and drinking.  Then, horrible to relate, came another "most
sumptuous banquet of sugar-meates for the men-at-arms and the ladies,"
after which, it being now midnight, the Lord of Leicester bade the whole
company good rest, and the men-at-arms and ladies took their leave.

But while all this chivalrous banqueting and holiday-making was in hand,
the Prince of Parma was in reality not quite so much "appalled" by the
relief of Grave as his antagonist had imagined.  The Earl, flushed with
the success of Hohenlo, already believed himself master of the country,
and assured his government, that, if he should be reasonably well
supplied, he would have Antwerp back again and Bruges besides before
mid June.  Never, said he, was "the Prince of Parma so dejected nor so
melancholy since he came into these countries, nor so far out of
courage."  And it is quite true that Alexander had reason to be
discouraged.  He had but eight or nine thousand men, and no money to pay
even this little force.  The soldiers were perishing daily, and nearly
all the survivors were described by their chief, as sick or maimed.  The
famine in the obedient Provinces was universal, the whole population was
desperate with hunger; and the merchants, frightened by Drake's
successes, and appalled by the ruin all around them, drew their purse-
strings inexorably.  "I know not to what saint to devote myself," said
Alexander.  He had been compelled, by the movement before Grave, to
withdraw Haultepenne from the projected enterprise against Neusz, and he
was quite aware of the cheerful view which Leicester was inclined to take
of their relative positions.  "The English think they are going to do
great things," said he; "and consider themselves masters of the field."

Nevertheless, on the 11th May, the dejected melancholy man had left
Brussels, and joined his little army, consisting of three thousand
Spaniards and five thousand of all other nations.  His veterans, though
unpaid; ragged, and half-starved were in raptures to, have their idolized
commander among them again, and vowed that under his guidance there was
nothing which they could not accomplish.  The King's honour, his own,
that of the army, all were pledged to take the city.  On the success of,
that enterprise, he said, depended all his past conquests, and every hope
for the future.  Leicester and the, English, whom he called the head and
body of the rebel forces, were equally pledged to relieve the place, and
were bent upon meeting him in the field.  The Earl had taken some forts
in the Batavia--Betuwe; or "good meadow," which he pronounced as fertile
and about as large as Herefordshire,--and was now threatening Nymegen,
a city which had been gained for Philip by the last effort of Schenk,
on the royalist side.  He was now observing Alexander's demonstrations
against Grave; but, after the recent success in victualling that place,
he felt a just confidence in its security.

On the 31st May the trenches were commenced, and on the 5th June the
batteries were opened.  The work went rapidly forward when Farnese was in
the field.  "The Prince of Parma doth batter it like a Prince," said Lord
North, admiring the enemy with the enthusiasm of an honest soldier: On
the 6th of June, as Alexander rode through the camp to reconnoitre,
previous to an attack.  A well-directed cannon ball carried away the
hinder half, of his horse.  The Prince fell to the ground, and, for a
moment, dismay was in the Spanish ranks.  At the next instant, though
somewhat bruised, he was on his feet again, and, having found the breach
sufficiently promising, he determined on the assault.

As a preliminary measure, he wished to occupy a tower which had been
battered nearly to ruins, situate near the river.  Captain de Solis was
ordered, with sixty veterans, to take possession of this tower, and to
"have a look at the countenance of the enemy, without amusing himself
with anything else."  The tower was soon secured, but Solis, in
disobedience to his written instructions led his men against the ravelin,
which was still in a state of perfect defence.  A musket-ball soon
stretched him dead beneath the wall, and his followers, still attempting
to enter the impracticable breach, were repelled by a shower of stones
and blazing pitch-hoops.  Hot sand; too, poured from sieves and baskets,
insinuated itself within the armour of the Spaniards, and occasioned such
exquisite suffering, that many threw themselves into the river to allay
the pain.  Emerging refreshed, but confused, they attempted in vain to
renew the onset.  Several of the little band were slain, the assault was
quite unsuccessful, and the trumpet sounded a recal.  So completely
discomfited were the Spaniards by this repulse, and so thoroughly at
their ease were the besieged, that a soldier let himself down from the
ramparts of the town for the sake of plundering the body of Captain
Solis, who was richly dressed, and, having accomplished this feat, was
quietly helped back again by his comrades from above.

To the surprise of the besiegers, however, on the very next morning came
a request from the governor of the city, Baron Hemart, to negotiate for
a surrender.  Alexander was, naturally, but too glad to grant easy terms,
and upon the 7th of June the garrison left the town with colours
displayed and drums beating, and the Prince of Parma marched into it, at
the head of his troops.  He found a year's provision there for six
thousand men, while, at the same time, the walls had suffered so
little, that he must have been obliged to wait long for a practicable
breach.

"There was no good reason even for women to have surrendered the place,"
exclaimed Leicester, when he heard the news.  And the Earl had cause to
be enraged at such a result.  He had received a letter only the day
before, signed by Hemart himself and by all the officers in Grave,
asserting their determination and ability to hold the place for a good
five months, or for an indefinite period, and until they should be
relieved.  And indeed all the officers, with three exceptions, had
protested against the base surrender.  But at the bottom of the
catastrophe--of the disastrous loss of the city and the utter ruin of
young Hemart--was a woman.  The governor was governed by his mistress,
a lady of good family in the place, but of Spanish inclinations, and she,
for some mysterious reasons, had persuaded him thus voluntarily to
capitulate.

Parma lost no time, however, in exulting over his success.  Upon the same
day the towns of Megen and Batenburg surrendered to him, and immediately
afterwards siege was laid to Venlo, a town of importance, lying thirty
miles farther up the Meuse.  The wife and family of Martin Schenk were in
the city, together with two hundred horses, and from forty to one hundred
thousand crowns in money, plate; and furniture belonging to him.

That bold partisan, accompanied by the mad Welshman, Roger Williams, at
the head of one hundred and thirty English lances and thirty of Schenk's
men, made a wild nocturnal attempt to cut their way through the besieging
force, and penetrate to the city.  They passed through the enemy's lines,
killed all the corps-de-garde, and many Spanish troopers--the terrible
Martin's own hand being most effective in this midnight slaughter--and
reached the very door of Parma's tent, where they killed his secretary
and many of his guards.  It was even reported; and generally believed,
that Farnese himself had been in imminent danger, that Schenk had fired
his pistol at him unsuccessfully, and had then struck him on the head
with its butt-end, and that the Prince had only saved his life by leaping
from his horse, and scrambling through a ditch.  But these seem to have
been fables.  The alarm at last became general, the dawn of a summer's
day was fast approaching; the drums beat to arms, and the bold marauders
were obliged to effect their retreat, as they best might, hotly pursued
by near two thousand men.  Having slain many of, the Spanish army, and
lost nearly half their own number, they at last obtained shelter in
Wachtendonk.

Soon afterwards the place capitulated without waiting for a battery, upon
moderate terms.  Schenk's wife was sent away (28 June 1586) courteously
with her family, in a coach and four, and with as much "apparel" as might
be carried with her.  His property was confiscated, for "no fair wars
could be made with him."

Thus, within a few weeks after taking the field, the "dejected,
melancholy" man, who was so "out of courage," and the soldiers who were
so "marvellously beginning to run away"--according to the Earl of
Leicester--had swept their enemy from every town on the Meuse.  That
river was now, throughout its whole course, in the power of the
Spaniards.  The Province of Brabant became thoroughly guarded again by
its foes, and the enemy's road was opened into the northern Provinces.

Leicester, meantime, had not distinguished himself.  It must be confessed
that he had been sadly out-generalled.  The man who had talked of
following the enemy inch by inch, and who had pledged himself not only
to protect Grave, and any other place that might be attacked, but even
to recover Antwerp and Bruges within a few weeks, had wasted the time in
very desultory operations.  After the St. George feasting, Knewstub
sermons, and forces of Hercules, were all finished, the Earl had taken
the field with five thousand foot and fifteen hundred horse.  His
intention was to clear the Yssel; by getting possession of Doesburg and
Zutphen, but, hearing of Parma's demonstrations upon Grave, he abandoned
the contemplated siege of those cities, and came to Arnheim.  He then
crossed the Rhine into the Isle of Batavia, and thence, after taking a
few sconces of inferior importance--while Schenk, meanwhile, was building
on the Island of Gravenweert, at the bifurcation of the Rhine and Waal,
the sconce so celebrated a century later as 'Schenk's Fort'
(Schenkenschans)---he was preparing to pass the Waal in order to attack
Farnese, when he heard to his astonishment, of the surrender of Grave.

He could therefore--to his chagrin--no longer save that important city,
but he could, at least, cut off the head of the culprit.  Leicester was
in Bommel when he heard of Baron Hemart's faint-heartedness or treachery,
and his wrath was extravagant in proportion to the exultation with which
his previous success had inspired him.  He breathed nothing but revenge
against the coward and the traitor, who had delivered up the town in
"such lewd and beastly sort."

"I will never depart hence," he said, "till by the goodness of God I be
satisfied someway of this villain's treachery."  There could be little
doubt that Hemart deserved punishment.  There could be as little that
Leicester would mete it out to him in ample measure.  "The lewd villain
who gave up Grave," said he, "and the captains as deep in fault as
himself, shall all suffer together."

Hemart came boldly to meet him.  "The honest man came to me at Bommel,"
said Leicester, and he assured the government that it was in the hope of
persuading the magistrates of that and other towns to imitate his own
treachery.

But the magistrates straightway delivered the culprit to the governor-
general, who immediately placed him under arrest.  A court-martial was
summoned, 26th of June, at Utrecht, consisting of Hohenlo, Essex, and
other distinguished officers.  They found that the conduct of the
prisoner merited death, but left it to the Earl to decide whether various
extenuating circumstances did not justify a pardon.  Hohenlo and Norris
exerted themselves to procure a mitigation of the young man's sentence,
and they excited thereby the governor's deep indignation.  Norris,
according to Leicester, was in love with the culprit's aunt, and was
therefore especially desirous of saving his life.  Moreover, much use was
made of the discredit which had been thrown by the Queen on the Earl's
authority, and it was openly maintained, that, being no longer governor-
general, he had no authority to order execution upon a Netherland
officer.

The favourable circumstances urged in the case, were, that Hemart was a
young man, without experience in military matters, and that he had been
overcome by the supplications and outcries of the women, panic-struck
after the first assault.  There were no direct proofs of treachery, or
even of personal cowardice.  He begged hard for a pardon, not on account
of his life, but for the sake of his reputation.  He earnestly implored
permission to serve under the Queen of England, as a private soldier,
without pay, on land or sea, for as many years as she should specify, and
to be selected for the most dangerous employments, in order that, before
he died, he might wipe out the disgrace, which, through his fault, in an
hour of weakness, had come upon an ancient and honourable house.  Much
interest was made for him--his family connection being powerful--and a
general impression prevailing that he had erred through folly rather than
deep guilt.  But Leicester beating himself upon the breast--as he was
wont when excited--swore that there should be no pardon for such a
traitor.  The States of Holland and Zeeland, likewise, were decidedly in
favour of a severe example.

Hemart was accordingly led to the scaffold on the 28th June.  He spoke to
the people with great calmness, and, in two languages, French and
Flemish, declared that he was guiltless of treachery, but that the terror
and tears of the women, in an hour of panic, had made a coward of him.
He was beheaded, standing.  The two captains, Du Ban and Koeboekum, who
had also been condemned, suffered with him.  A third captain, likewise
convicted, was, "for very just cause,", pardoned by Leicester.  The Earl
persisted in believing that Hemart had surrendered the city as part of a
deliberate plan, and affirmed that in such a time, when men had come to
think no more of giving up a town than of abandoning a house, it was
highly necessary to afford an example to traitors and satisfaction to the
people.  And the people were thoroughly satisfied, according to the
governor, and only expressed their regret that three or four members of
the States-General could not have their heads cut off as well, being as
arrant knaves as Henlart; "and so I think they be," added Leicester.

Parma having thus made himself master of the Meuse, lost no time in
making a demonstration upon the parallel course of the Rhine, thirty
miles farther east.  Schenk, Kloet; and other partisans, kept that
portion of the archi-episcopate and of Westphalia in a state of perpetual
commotion.  Early in the, preceding year, Count de Meurs had, by a
fortunate stratagem, captured the town of Neusz for the deposed elector,
and Herman Kloet, a young and most determined Geldrian soldier, now
commanded in the place.

The Elector Ernest had made a visit in disguise to the camp of Parma, and
had represented the necessity of recovering the city.  It had become the
stronghold of heretics, rebels, and banditti.  The Rhine was in their
hands, and with it the perpetual power of disturbing the loyal
Netherlands.  It was as much the interest of his Catholic Majesty as
that of the Archbishop that Neusz should be restored to its lawful owner.
Parma had felt the force of this reasoning, and had early in the year
sent Haultepenne to invest the city.  He had been obliged to recal that
commander during the siege of Grave.  The place being reduced, Alexander,
before the grass could grow beneath his feet advanced to the Rhine in
person.  Early in July he appeared before the walls of Neusz with eight
thousand foot and two thousand horse.  The garrison under Kloet numbered
scarcely more than sixteen hundred effective soldiers, all Netherlanders
and Germans, none being English.

The city is twenty-miles below Cologne.  It was so well fortified that a
century before it had stood a year's siege from the famous Charles the
Bold, who, after all, had been obliged to retire.  It had also resisted
the strenuous efforts of Charles the Fifth; and was now stronger than it
ever had been.  It was thoroughly well provisioned, so that it was safe
enough "if those within it," said Leicester, "be men."  The Earl
expressed the opinion, however, that "those fellows were not good to
defend towns, unless the besiegers were obliged to swim to the attack."
The issue was to show whether the sarcasm were just or not.  Meantime the
town was considered by the governor-general to be secure, "unless towns
were to be had for the asking."

Neusz is not immediately upon the Rhine, but that river, which sweeps
away in a north-easterly direction from the walls, throws out an arm
which completely encircles the town.  A part of the place, cut into an
island by the Erpt, was strengthened by two redoubts.  This island was
abandoned, as being too weak to hold, and the Spaniards took possession
of it immediately.  There were various preliminary and sanguinary sorties
and skirmishes, during which the Spaniards after having been once driven
from the island, again occupied that position.  Archbishop Ernest came
into the camp, and, before proceeding to a cannonade, Parma offered to
the city certain terms of capitulation, which were approved by that
prelate.  Kloet replied to this proposal, that he was wedded to the town
and to his honour, which were as one.  These he was incapable of
sacrificing, but his life he was ready to lay down.  There was, through
some misapprehension, a delay in reporting this answer to Farnese.
Meantime that general became impatient, and advanced to the battery of
the Italian regiment.  Pretending to be a plenipotentiary from the
commander-in-chief, he expostulated in a loud voice at the slowness of
their counsels.  Hardly had he begun to speak, when a shower of balls
rattled about him.  His own soldiers were terrified at his danger, and a
cry arose in the town that "Holofernese"--as the Flemings and Germans
were accustomed to nickname Farnese--was dead.  Strange to relate, he was
quite unharmed, and walked back to his tent with dignified slowness and a
very frowning face.  It was said that this breach of truce had been begun
by the Spaniards, who had fired first, and had been immediately answered
by the town.  This was hotly denied, and Parma sent Colonel Tasais with a
flag of truce to the commander, to rebuke and to desire an explanation of
this dishonourable conduct.

The answer given, or imagined, was that Commander Kloet had been sound
asleep, but that he now much regretted this untoward accident.  The
explanation was received with derision, for it seemed hardly probable
that so young and energetic a soldier would take the opportunity to
refresh himself with slumber at a moment when a treaty for the
capitulation of a city under his charge was under discussion.  This
terminated the negotiation.

A few days afterwards, the feast of St James was celebrated in the
Spanish camp, with bonfires and other demonstrations of hilarity.  The
townsmen are said to have desecrated the same holiday by roasting alive
in the market-place two unfortunate soldiers, who had been captured in a
sortie a few days before; besides burning the body of the holy Saint
Quirinus, with other holy relics.  The detestable deed was to be most
horribly avenged.

A steady cannonade from forty-five great guns was kept up from 2 A.M. of
July 15 until the dawn of the following day; the cannoneers--being all
provided with milk and vinegar to cool the pieces.  At daybreak the
assault was ordered.  Eight separate attacks were made with the usual
impetuosity of Spaniards, and were steadily repulsed.

At the ninth, the outer wall was carried, and the Spaniards shouting
"Santiago" poured over it, bearing back all resistance.  An Italian
Knight of the Sepulchre, Cesar Guidiccioni by name, and a Spanish ensign,
one Alphonao de Mesa, with his colours in one hand and a ladder in the
other, each claimed the honour of having first mounted the breach.  Both
being deemed equally worthy of reward, Parma, after the city had been
won, took from his own cap a sprig of jewels and a golden wheat-ear
ornamented with a gem, which he had himself worn in place of a plume, and
thus presented each with a brilliant token of his regard.  The wall was
then strengthened against the inner line of fortification, and all night
long a desperate conflict was maintained in the dark upon the narrow
space between the two barriers.  Before daylight Kloet, who then, as
always, had led his men in the moat desperate adventures, was carried
into the town, wounded in five places, and with his leg almost severed at
the thigh.  "'Tis the bravest man," said the enthusiastic Lord North,
"that was ever heard of in the world."--"He is but a boy," said Alexander
Farnese, "but a commander of extraordinary capacity and valour."

Early in the morning, when this mishap was known, an officer was sent to
the camp of the besiegers to treat.  The soldiers received him with
furious laughter, and denied him access to the general.  "Commander Kloet
had waked from his nap at a wrong time," they said, "and the Prince of
Parma was now sound asleep, in his turn."  There was no possibility of
commencing a negotiation.  The Spaniards, heated by the conflict,
maddened by opposition, and inspired by the desire to sack a wealthy
city, overpowered all resistance.  "My little soldiers were not to be
restrained," said Farnese, and so compelling a reluctant consent on the
part of the commander-in-chief to an assault, the Italian and Spanish
legions poured into the town at two opposite gates; which were no.
longer strong enough to withstand the enemy.  The two streams met in the
heart of the place, and swept every living thing in their, path out of
existence.  The garrison was butchered to a man, and subsequently many
of the inhabitants--men, women, and children-also, although the women;
to the honour of Alexander, had been at first secured from harm in some
of the churches, where they had been ordered to take refuge.  The first
blast of indignation was against the commandant of the place.  Alexander,
who had admired, his courage, was not unfavourably disposed towards him,
but Archbishop Ernest vehemently, demanded his immediate death, as a
personal favour to himself.  As the churchman was nominally sovereign of
the city although in reality a beggarly dependant on Philip's alms,
Farnese felt bound to comply.  The manner in which it was at first
supposed that the Bishop's Christian request had; been complied, with,
sent a shudder through every-heart in the Netherlands.  "They took Kloet,
wounded as he was," said Lord North, "and first strangled, him, then
smeared him with pitch, and burnt him with gunpowder; thus, with their
holiness, they, made a tragical end of an heroical service.  It is
wondered that the Prince would suffer so great an outrage to be done to
so noble a soldier, who did but his duty."

But this was an error.  A Jesuit priest was sent to the house of the
commandant, for a humane effort was thought necessary in order to save
the soul of the man whose life was forfeited for the crime of defending
his city.  The culprit was found lying in bed.  His wife, a woman of
remarkable beauty, with her sister, was in attendance upon him.  The
spectacle of those two fair women, nursing a wounded soldier fallen upon
the field of honour, might have softened devils with sympathy.  But the
Jesuit was closely followed by a band of soldiers, who, notwithstanding
the supplications of the women, and the demand of Kloet to be indulged
with a soldier's death, tied a rope round the commandant's necks dragged
him from his bed, and hanged him from his own window.  The Calvinist
clergyman, Fosserus of Oppenheim, the deacons of the congregation, two
military officers, and--said Parma--"forty other rascals," were murdered
in the same way at the same time.  The bodies remained at the window till
they were devoured by the flames, which soon consumed the house.  For a
vast conflagration, caused none knew whether by accident, by the despair
of the inhabitants; by the previous, arrangements of the commandant, by
the latest-arrived bands of the besiegers enraged that the Italians and
Spaniards had been beforehand with them in the spoils, or--as Farnese
more maturely believed--by the special agency of the Almighty, offended
with the burning of Saint Quirinus,--now came to complete the horror of
the scene.  Three-quarters of the town were at once in a blaze.  The
churches, where the affrighted women had been cowering during the sack
and slaughter, were soon on fire, and now, amid the crash of falling
houses and the uproar of the drunken soldiery, those unhappy victims were
seen flitting along the flaming streets; seeking refuge against the fury
of the elements in the more horrible cruelty of man.  The fire lasted all
day and night, and not one stone would have been left upon another, had
not the body of a second saint, saved on a former occasion from the
heretics by the piety of a citizen, been fortunately deposited in his
house.  At this point the conflagration was stayed--for the flames
refused to consume these holy relics--but almost the whole of the town
was destroyed, while at least four thousand people, citizens and
soldiers, had perished by sword or fire.

Three hundred survivors of the garrison took refuge in a tower.  Its base
was surrounded, and, after brief parley, they descended as prisoners.
The Prince and Haultepenne attempted in vain to protect them against the
fury of the soldiers, and every man of them was instantly put to death.

The next day, Alexander gave orders that the wife and sister of the
commandant should be protected--for they had escaped, as if by miracle,
from all the horrors of that day and night--and sent, under escort, to
their friends!  Neusz had nearly ceased to exist, for according to
contemporaneous accounts, but eight houses had escaped destruction.

And the reflection was most painful to Leicester and to every generous
Englishman or Netherlander in the country, that this important city and
its heroic defenders might have been preserved, but for want of harmony
and want of money.  Twice had the Earl got together a force of four
thousand men for the relief of the place, and twice had he been obliged
to disband them again for the lack of funds to set them in the field.

He had pawned his plate and other valuables, exhausted his credit, and
had nothing for it but to wait for the Queen's tardy remittances, and to
wrangle with the States; for the leaders of that body were unwilling to
accord large supplies to a man who had become personally suspected by
them, and was the representative of a deeply-suspected government.
Meanwhile, one-third at least of the money which really found its way
from time to time out of England, was filched from the "poor starved
wretches," as Leicester called his soldiers, by the dishonesty of Norris,
uncle of Sir John and army-treasurer.  This man was growing so rich on
his peculations, on his commissions, and on his profits from paying the
troops in a depreciated coin, that Leicester declared the whole revenue
of his own landed estates in England to be less than that functionary's
annual income.  Thus it was difficult to say whether the "ragged rogues"
of Elizabeth or the maimed and neglected soldiers of Philip were in the
more pitiable plight.

The only consolation in the recent reduction of Neusz was to be found in
the fact that Parma had only gained a position, for the town had ceased
to exist; and in the fiction that he had paid for his triumph by the loss
of six thousand soldiers, killed and wounded.  In reality not more than
five hundred of Farnese's army lost their lives, and although the town,
excepting some churches, had certainly been destroyed; yet the Prince was
now master of the Rhine as far as Cologne, and of the Meuse as far as
Grave.  The famine which pressed so sorely upon him, might now be
relieved, and his military communications with Germany be considered
secure.

The conqueror now turned his attention to Rheinberg, twenty-five miles
farther down the river.

Sir Philip Sidney had not been well satisfied by the comparative idleness
in which, from these various circumstances; he had been compelled to
remain.  Early in the spring he had been desirous of making an attack
upon Flanders by capturing the town of Steenberg.  The faithful Roger
Williams had strongly seconded the proposal.  "We wish to show your
Excellency," said he to Leicester, "that we are not sound asleep."  The
Welshman was not likely to be accused of somnolence, but on this occasion
Sidney and himself had been overruled.  At a later moment, and during the
siege of Neusz, Sir Philip had the satisfaction of making a successful
foray into Flanders.

The expedition had been planned by Prince Maurice of Nassau, and was his.
earliest military achievement.  He proposed carrying by surprise, the
city of Axel, a well-built, strongly-fortified town on the south-western
edge of the great Scheldt estuary, and very important from its position.
Its acquisition would make the hold of the patriots and the English upon
Sluys and Ostend more secure, and give them many opportunities of
annoying the enemy in Flanders.

Early in July, Maurice wrote to the Earl of Leicester, communicating the
particulars of his scheme, but begging that the affair might be "very
secretly handled," and kept from every one but Sidney.  Leicester
accordingly sent his nephew to Maurice that they might consult together
upon the enterprise, and make sure "that there was no ill intent, there
being so much treachery in the world."  Sidney found no treachery in
young Maurice, but only, a noble and intelligent love of adventure, and
the two arranged their plans in harmony.

Leicester, then, in order to deceive the enemy, came to Bergen-op-Zoom,
with five hundred men, where he remained two days, not sleeping a wink,
as he averred, during the whole time.  In the night of Tuesday, 16th of
July, the five hundred English soldiers were despatched by water, under
charge of Lord Willoughby, "who," said the Earl, "would needs go with
them."  Young Hatton, too, son of Sir Christopher, also volunteered on
the service, "as his first nursling."  Sidney had, five hundred of his
own Zeeland regiment in readiness, and the rendezvous was upon the broad
waters of the Scheldt, opposite Flushing.  The plan was neatly carried
out, and the united flotilla, in a dark, calm, midsummer's night, rowed
across the smooth estuary and landed at Ter Neuse, about a league from
Axel.  Here they were joined by Maurice with some Netherland companies,
and the united troops, between two and three thousand strong, marched at
once to the place proposed.  Before two in the morning they had reached
Axel, but found the moat very deep.  Forty soldiers immediately plunged
in, however, carrying their ladders with them, swam across, scaled the
rampart, killed, the guard, whom they found asleep in their beds, and
opened the gates for their comrades.  The whole force then marched in,
the Dutch companies under Colonel Pyion being first, Lord Willoughby's
men being second, and Sir Philip with his Zeelanders bringing up the
rear.  The garrison, between five and six hundred in number, though
surprised, resisted gallantly, and were all put to the sword.  Of the
invaders, not a single man lost his life.  Sidney most generously
rewarded from his own purse the adventurous soldiers who had swum the
moat; and it was to his care and intelligence that the success of Prince
Maurice's scheme was generally attributed.  The achievement was hailed
with great satisfaction, and it somewhat raised the drooping spirits of
the patriots after their severe losses at Grave and Venlo.  "This victory
hath happened in good time," wrote Thomas Cecil to his father, "and hath
made us somewhat to lift up our heads."  A garrison of eight hundred,
under Colonel Pyron, was left in Axel, and the dykes around were then
pierced.  Upwards of two millions' worth of property in grass, cattle,
corn, was thus immediately destroyed in the territory of the obedient
Netherlands.

After an unsuccessful attempt to surprise Gravelines, the governor of
which place, the veteran La Motte, was not so easily taken napping; Sir
Philip having gained much reputation by this conquest of Axel, then
joined the main body of the army, under Leicester, at Arnheim.

Yet, after all, Sir Philip had not grown in favour with her Majesty
during his service in the Low Countries.  He had also been disappointed
in the government of Zeeland, to which post his uncle had destined him.
The cause of Leicester's ambition had been frustrated by the policy of
Barneveld and Buys, in pursuance of which Count or Prince Maurice--as he
was now purposely designated, in order that his rank might surpass that
of the Earl--had become stadholder and captain general both of Holland
and Zeeland.  The Earl had given his nephew, however, the colonelcy of
the Zeeland regiment, vacant by the death of Admiral Haultain on the
Kowenstyn Dyke.  This promotion had excited much anger among the high
officers in the Netherlands who, at the instigation of Count Hohenlo,
had presented a remonstrance upon the subject to the governor-general.
It had always been the custom, they said, with the late Prince of Orange,
to confer promotion according to seniority, without regard to social
rank, and they were therefore unwilling that a young foreigner, who had
just entered the service; should thus be advanced over the heads of
veterans who had been campaigning there so many weary years.  At the same
time the gentlemen who signed the paper protested to Sir Philip, in
another letter, "with all the same hands," that they had no personal
feeling towards him, but, on the contrary, that they wished him all
honour.

Young Maurice himself had always manifested the most friendly feelings
toward Sidney, although influenced in his action by the statesmen who
were already organizing a powerful opposition to Leicester.  "Count
Maurice showed himself constantly, kind in the matter of the regiment,"
said Sir Philip, "but Mr. Paul Buss has so many busses in his head, such
as you shall find he will be to God and man about one pitch.  Happy is
the communication of them that join in the fear of God."  Hohenlo, too,
or Hollock, as he was called by the French and English, was much governed
by Buys and Olden-Barneveld.  Reckless and daring, but loose of life and
uncertain of purpose, he was most dangerous, unless under safe guidance.
Roger Williams--who vowed that but for the love he bore to Sidney and
Leicester, he would not remain ten days in the Netherlands--was much
disgusted by Hohenlo's conduct in regard to the Zeeland regiment.  "'Tis
a mutinous request of Hollock," said he, "that strangers should not
command Netherlanders.  He and his Alemaynes are farther born from
Zeeland than Sir Philip is.  Either you must make Hollock assured to you,
or you must disgrace him.  If he will not be yours, I will show you means
to disinherit him of all his commands at small danger.  What service doth
he, Count Solms, Count Overatein, with their Almaynes, but spend treasure
and consume great contributions?"

It was, very natural that the chivalrous Sidney, who had come to the
Netherlands to win glory in the field, should be desirous of posts that
would bring danger and distinction with them.  He was not there merely
that he might govern Flushing, important as it was, particularly as the
garrison was, according to his statement, about as able to maintain the
town, "as the Tower was to answer for London."  He disapproved of his
wife's inclination to join him in Holland, for he was likely--so he wrote
to her father, Walsingham--"to run such a course as would not be fit for
any of the feminine gender."  He had been, however; grieved to the heart,
by the spectacle which was perpetually exhibited of the Queen's
parsimony, and of the consequent suffering of the soldiers.  Twelve or
fifteen thousand Englishmen were serving in the Netherlands--more than
two thirds of them in her Majesty's immediate employment.  No troops had
ever fought better, or more honourably maintained the ancient glory of
England.  But rarely had more ragged and wretched warriors been seen than
they, after a few months' campaigning.

The Irish Kernes--some fifteen hundred of whom were among the
auxiliaries--were better off, for they habitually dispensed with
clothing; an apron from waist to knee being the only protection of these
wild Kelts, who fought with the valour, and nearly, in the costume of
Homeric heroes.  Fearing nothing, needing nothing, sparing nothing, they
stalked about the fens of Zeeland upon their long stilts, or leaped
across running rivers, scaling ramparts, robbing the highways, burning,
butchering, and maltreating the villages and their inhabitants, with as
little regard for the laws of Christian warfare as for those of civilized
costume.

Other soldiers, more sophisticated as to apparel, were less at their
ease.  The generous Sidney spent all his means, and loaded himself with
debt, in order to relieve the necessities of the poor soldiers.  He
protested that if the Queen would not pay her troops, she would lose her
troops, but that no living man should say the fault was in him.  "What
relief I can do them I will," he wrote to his father-in-law; "I will
spare no danger, if occasion serves.  I am sure that no creature shall
lay injustice to my charge."

Very soon it was discovered that the starving troops had to contend not
only with the Queen's niggardliness but with the dishonesty of her
agents.  Treasurer Norris was constantly accused by Leicester and Sidney
of gross peculation.  Five per cent., according to Sir Philip, was lost
to the Zeeland soldiers in every payment, "and God knows," he said, "they
want no such hindrance, being scarce able to keep life with their entire
pay.  Truly it is but poor increase to her Majesty, considering what loss
it is to the miserable soldier."  Discipline and endurance were sure to
be sacrificed, in the end, to such short-sighted economy.  "When
soldiers," said Sidney, "grow to despair, and give up towns, then it is
too late to buy with hundred thousands what might have been saved with a
trifle."

This plain dealing, on the part of Sidney, was anything but agreeable to
the Queen, who was far from feeling regret that his high-soaring
expectations had been somewhat blighted in the Provinces.  He often
expressed his mortification that her Majesty was disposed to interpret
everything to, his disadvantage.  "I understand," said he, "that I am
called ambitious, and very proud at home, but certainly, if they knew my
heart, they would not altogether so judge me."  Elizabeth had taken part
with Hohenlo against Sir Philip in the matter of the Zeeland regiment,
and in this perhaps she was not entirely to be blamed.  But she inveighed
needlessly against his ambitious seeking of the office, and--as
Walsingham observed--"she was very apt, upon every light occasion,
to find fault with him."  It is probable that his complaints against the
army treasurer, and his manful defence of the "miserable soldiers," more
than counterbalanced, in the Queen's estimation, his chivalry in the
field.

Nevertheless he had now the satisfaction of having gained an important
city in Flanders; and on subsequently joining the army under his uncle,
he indulged the hope of earning still greater distinction.

Martin Schenk had meanwhile been successfully defending Rheinberg, for
several weeks, against Parma's forces.  It was necessary, however, that
Leicester, notwithstanding the impoverished condition of his troops,
should make some diversion, while his formidable antagonist was thus
carrying all before him.

He assembled, accordingly, in the month of August, all the troops that
could be brought into the field, and reviewed them, with much ceremony,
in the neighbourhood of Arnheim.  His army--barely numbered seven
thousand foot and two thousand horse,  but he gave out, very extensively,
that he had fourteen thousand under his command, and he was moreover
expecting a force of three thousand reiters, and as many pikemen recently
levied in Germany.  Lord Essex was general of the cavalry, Sir William
Pelham--a distinguished soldier, who had recently arrived out of England,
after the most urgent solicitations to the Queen, for that end, by
Leicester--was lord-marshal of the camp, and Sir John Norris was colonel-
general of the infantry.

After the parade, two sermons were preached upon the hillside to
the soldiers, and then there was a council of war: It was decided--
notwithstanding the Earl's announcement of his intentions to attack Parma
in person--that the condition of the army did not warrant such an
enterprise.  It was thought better to lay siege to Zutphen.  This step,
if successful, would place in the power of the republic and her ally a
city of great importance and strength.  In every event the attempt would
probably compel Farnese to raise the siege of Berg.

Leicester, accordingly, with "his brave troop of able and likely men"
--five thousand of the infantry being English--advanced as far as
Doesburg.  This city, seated at the confluence of the ancient canal of
Drusus and the Yssel, five miles above Zutphen, it was necessary, as a
preliminary measure, to secure.  It was not a very strong place, being
rather slightly walled with brick, and with a foss drawing not more than
three feet of water.  By the 30th August it had been completely invested.

On the same night, at ten o'clock, Sir William Pelham, came to the Earl
to tell him "what beastly pioneers the Dutchmen were.  "Leicester
accordingly determined, notwithstanding the lord-marshal's entreaties,
to proceed to the trenches in person.  There being but faint light, the
two lost their way, and soon found themselves nearly, at the gate of the
town.  Here, while groping about in the dark; and trying to effect their
retreat, they were saluted with a shot, which struck Sir William in the
stomach.  For an instant; thinking himself mortally injured, he expressed
his satisfaction that he had been, between the commander-in-chief and the
blow, and made other "comfortable and resolute speeches."  Very
fortunately, however, it proved that the marshal was not seriously hurt,
and, after a few days, he was about his work as usual, although obliged--
as the Earl of Leicester expressed it--"to carry a bullet in his belly as
long as he should live."

Roger Williams, too, that valiant adventurer--"but no, more valiant than
wise, and worth his weight in gold," according to the appreciative
Leicester--was shot through the arm.  For the dare-devil Welshman, much
to the Earl's regret, persisted in running up and down the trenches "with
a great plume of feathers in his gilt morion," and in otherwise making a
very conspicuous mark of himself "within pointblank of a caliver."

Notwithstanding these mishaps, however, the siege went successfully
forward.  Upon the 2nd September the Earl began to batter, and after a
brisk cannonade, from dawn till two in the afternoon, he had considerably
damaged the wall in two places.  One of the breaches was eighty feet
wide, the other half as large, but the besieged had stuffed them full of
beds, tubs, logs of wood, boards, and "such like trash," by means whereof
the ascent was not so easy as it seemed.  The soldiers were excessively
eager for the assault.  Sir John Norris came to Leicester to receive his
orders as to the command of the attacking party.

The Earl referred the matter to him.  "There is no man," answered Sir
John, "fitter for that purpose than myself; for I am colonel-general of
the infantry."

But Leicester, not willing to indulge so unreasonable a proposal,
replied that he would reserve him for service of less hazard and greater
importance.  Norris being, as usual, "satis prodigus magnae animae," was
out of humour at the refusal, and ascribed it to the Earl's persistent
hostility to him and his family.  It was then arranged that the assault
upon the principal breach should be led by younger officers, to be
supported by Sir John and other veterans.  The other breach was assigned
to the Dutch and Scotch-black Norris scowling at them the while with
jealous eyes; fearing that they might get the start of the English party,
and be first to enter the town.  A party of noble volunteers clustered
about Sir John-Lord Burgh, Sir Thomas Cecil, Sir Philip Sidney, and his
brother Robert among the rest--most impatient for the signal.  The race
was obviously to be a sharp one.  The governor-general forbade these
violent demonstrations, but Lord Burgh, "in a most vehement passion,
waived the countermand," and his insubordination was very generally
imitated.  Before the signal was given, however, Leicester sent a trumpet
to summon the town to surrender, and could with difficulty restrain his
soldiers till the answer should be returned.  To the universal
disappointment, the garrison agreed to surrender.  Norris himself then
stepped forward to the breach, and cried aloud the terms, lest the
returning herald, who had been sent back by Leicester, should offer too
favourable a capitulation.  It was arranged that the soldiers should
retire without arms, with white wands in their hands--the officers
remaining prisoners--and that the burghers, their lives, and property,
should be at Leicester's disposal.  The Earl gave most peremptory orders
that persons and goods should be respected, but his commands were dis
obeyed.  Sir William Stanley's men committed frightful disorders, and
thoroughly, rifled the town."

"And because," said Norris, "I found fault herewith, Sir William began to
quarrel with me, hath braved me extremely, refuseth to take any direction
from me, and although I have sought for redress, yet it is proceeded in
so coldly, that he taketh encouragement rather to increase the quarrel
than to leave it."

Notwithstanding therefore the decree of Leicester, the expostulations and
anger of Norris, and the energetic efforts of Lord Essex and other
generals, who went about smiting the marauders on the head, the soldiers
sacked the city, and committed various disorders, in spite of the
capitulation.

Doesburg having been thus reduced, the Earl now proceeded toward the more
important city which he had determined to besiege.  Zutphen, or South-
Fen, an antique town of wealth and elegance, was the capital of the old
Landgraves of Zutphen.  It is situate on the right bank of the Yssel,
that branch of the Rhine which flows between Gelderland and Overyssel
into the Zuyder-Zee.

The ancient river, broad, deep, and languid, glides through a plain of
almost boundless extent, till it loses itself in the flat and misty
horizon.  On the other side of the stream, in the district called the
Veluwe, or bad meadow, were three sconces, one of them of remarkable
strength.  An island between the city and the shore was likewise well
fortified.  On the landward side the town was protected by a wall and
moat sufficiently strong in those infant days of artillery.  Near the
hospital-gate, on the east, was an external fortress guarding the road to
Warnsfeld.  This was a small village, with a solitary slender church-
spire, shooting up above a cluster of neat one-storied houses.  It was
about an English mile from Zutphen, in the midst of a wide, low, somewhat
fenny plain, which, in winter, became so completely a lake, that peasants
were not unfrequently drowned in attempting to pass from the city to the
village.  In summer, the vague expanse of country was fertile and
cheerful of aspect.  Long rows of poplars marking the straight highways,
clumps of pollard willows scattered around the little meres, snug farm-
houses, with kitchen-gardens and brilliant flower-patches dotting the
level plain, verdant pastures sweeping off into seemingly infinite
distance, where the innumerable cattle seemed to swarm like insects,
wind-mills swinging their arms in all directions, like protective giants,
to save the country from inundation, the lagging sail of market-boats
shining through rows of orchard trees--all gave to the environs of
Zutphen a tranquil and domestic charm.

Deventer and Kampen, the two other places on the river, were in the hands
of the States.  It was, therefore, desirable for the English and the
patriots, by gaining possession of Zutphen, to obtain control of the
Yssel; driven, as they had been, from the Meuse and Rhine.

Sir John Norris, by Leicester's direction, took possession of a
small rising-ground, called 'Gibbet Dill' on the land-side; where he
established a fortified camp, and proceeded to invest the city.  With him
were Count Lewis William of Nassau, and Sir Philip Sidney, while the Earl
himself, crossing the Yssel on a bridge of boats which he had
constructed, reserved for himself the reduction of the forts upon the
Veluwe side.

Farnese, meantime, was not idle; and Leicester's calculations proved
correct.  So soon as the Prince was informed of this important
demonstration of the enemy he broke up--after brief debate with his
officers--his camp before Rheinberg, and came to Wesel.  At this place
he built a bridge over the Rhine, and fortified it with two block-houses.
These he placed under command of Claude Berlot, who was ordered to watch
strictly all communication up the river with the city of Rheinberg, which
he thus kept in a partially beleaguered state.  Alexander then advanced
rapidly by way of Groll and Burik, both which places he took possession
of, to the neighbourhood of Zutphen.  He was determined, at every hazard,
to relieve that important city; and although, after leaving necessary
detachments on the, way; he had but five thousand men under his command,
besides fifteen hundred under Verdugo--making sixty-five hundred in all
--he had decided that the necessity of the case, and his own honour;
required him to seek the enemy, and to leave, as he said, the issue with
the God of battles, whose cause it was.

Tassis, lieutenant-governor of Gelderland, was ordered into the city with
two cornets of horse and six hundred foot.  As large a number, had
already been stationed there.  Verdugo, who had been awaiting the arrival
of the Prince at Borkelo, a dozen miles from Zutphen, with four hundred
foot and two hundred horse, now likewise entered the city.

On the night of 29th August Alexander himself entered Zutphen for
the purpose of encouraging the garrison by promise of-relief, and of
ascertaining the position of the enemy by personal observation.  His
presence as it always did, inspired the soldiers with enthusiasm, so that
they could with difficulty be restrained from rushing forth to assault
the besiegers.  In regard to the enemy he found that Gibbet Hill was
still occupied by Sir John Norris, "the best soldier, in his opinion,
that they had," who had entrenched himself very strongly, and was
supposed to have thirty-five hundred men under his command.  His position
seemed quite impregnable.  The rest of the English were on the other side
of the river, and Alexander observed, with satisfaction, that they had
abandoned a small redoubt, near the leper-house, outside the Loor-Gate,
through which the reinforcements must enter the city.  The Prince
determined to profit by this mistake, and to seize the opportunity thus
afforded of sending those much needed supplies.  During the night the
enemy were found to be throwing up works "most furiously," and
skirmishing parties were sent out of the town to annoy them.  In the
darkness nothing of consequence was effected, but a Scotch officer was
captured, who informed the Spanish commander that the enemy was fifteen
thousand strong--a number which was nearly double that of Leicester's
actual force.  In the morning Alexander returned to his camp at Borkelo
--leaving Tassis in command of the Veluwe Forts, and Verdugo in the city
itself--and he at once made rapid work in collecting victuals.  He had
soon wheat and other supplies in readiness, sufficient to feed four
thousand mouths for three months, and these he determined to send into
the city immediately, and at every hazard.

The great convoy which was now to be despatched required great care and a
powerful escort.  Twenty-five hundred musketeers and pikemen, of whom one
thousand were Spaniards, and six hundred cavalry, Epirotes; Spaniards,
and Italians, under Hannibal Gonzaga, George Crescia, Bentivoglio, Sesa,
and others, were accordingly detailed for this expedition.  The Marquis
del Vasto, to whom was entrusted the chief command, was ordered to march
from Borkelo at midnight on Wednesday, October 1 (St. Nov.) [N.S.].  It
was calculated that he would reach a certain hillock not far from
Warnsfeld by dawn of day.  Here he was to pause, and send forward an
officer towards the town, communicating his arrival, and requesting the
cooperation of Verdugo, who was to make a sortie with one thousand men,
according to Alexander's previous arrangements.  The plan was
successfully carried out.  The Marquis arrived by daybreak at the spot
indicated, and despatched Captain de Vega who contrived to send
intelligence of the fact.  A trooper, whom Parma had himself sent to
Verdugo with earlier information of the movement, had been captured on
the way.  Leicester had therefore been apprized, at an early moment, of
the Prince's intentions, but he was not aware that the convoy would be
accompanied by so strong a force as had really been detailed.

He had accordingly ordered Sir John Norris, who commanded on the outside
of the town near the road which the Spaniards must traverse, to place
an ambuscade in his way.  Sir John, always ready for adventurous
enterprises, took a body of two hundred cavalry, all picked men,
and ordered Sir William Stanley, with three hundred pikemen, to follow.
A much stronger force of infantry was held in reserve and readiness,
but it was not thought that it would be required.  The ambuscade was
successfully placed, before the dawn of Thursday morning, in the
neighbourhood of Warnsfeld church.  On the other hand, the Earl of
Leicester himself, anxious as to the result, came across the river just
at daybreak.  He was accompanied by the chief gentlemen in his camp, who
could never be restrained when blows were passing current.

The business that morning was a commonplace and practical though an
important, one--to "impeach" a convoy of wheat and barley, butter,
cheese, and beef--but the names of those noble and knightly volunteers,
familiar throughout Christendom, sound like the roll-call for some
chivalrous tournament.  There were Essex and Audley, Stanley, Pelham,
Russell, both the Sidneys, all the Norrises, men whose valour had been.
proved on many a hard-fought battle-field.  There, too, was the famous
hero of British ballad whose name was so often to ring on the plains of
the Netherlands--

                   "The brave Lord Willoughby,
                    Of courage fierce and fell,
                    Who would not give one inch of way
                    For all the devils in hell."

Twenty such volunteers as these sat on horseback that morning around the
stately Earl of Leicester.  It seemed an incredible extravagance to send
a handful of such heroes against an army.

But the English commander-in-chief had been listening to the insidious
tongue of Roland York--that bold, plausible, unscrupulous partisan,
already twice a renegade, of whom more was ere long to be heard in the
Netherlands and England.  Of the man's courage there could be no doubt,
and he was about to fight that morning in the front rank at the head of
his company.  But he had, for some mysterious reason, been bent upon
persuading the Earl that the Spaniards were no match for Englishmen at a
hand-to-hand contest.  When they could ride freely up and down, he said,
and use their lances as they liked, they were formidable.  But the
English were stronger men, better riders, better mounted, and better
armed.  The Spaniards hated helmets and proof armour, while the English
trooper, in casque, cuirass, and greaves, was a living fortress
impregnable to Spanish or Italian light horsemen.  And Leicester seemed
almost convinced by his reasoning.

It was five o'clock of a chill autumn morning.  It was time for day to
break, but the fog was so thick that a man at the distance of five yards
was quite invisible.  The creaking of waggon-wheels and the measured
tramp of soldiers soon became faintly audible however to Sir John Norris
and his five hundred as they sat there in the mist.  Presently came
galloping forward in hot haste those nobles and gentlemen, with their
esquires, fifty men in all--Sidney, Willoughby, and the rest--whom
Leicester had no longer been able to restrain from taking part in the
adventure.

A force of infantry, the amount of which cannot be satisfactorily
ascertained, had been ordered by the Earl to cross the bridge at a later
moment.  Sidney's cornet of horse was then in Deventer, to which place it
had been sent in order to assist in quelling an anticipated revolt, so
that he came, like most of his companions, as a private volunteer and
knight-errant.

The arrival of the expected convoy was soon more distinctly heard, but
no scouts or outposts had been stationed to give timely notice, of the
enemy's movements.  Suddenly the fog, which had shrouded the scene so
closely, rolled away like a curtain, and in the full light of an October
morning the Englishmen found themselves face to face with a compact body
of more than three thousand men.  The Marquis del Vasto rode at the head
of the forces surrounded by a band of mounted arquebus men.  The cavalry,
under the famous Epirote chief George Crescia, Hannibal Gonzaga,
Bentivoglio, Sesa, Conti, and other distinguished commanders, followed;
the columns of pikemen and musketeers lined the, hedge-rows on both sides
the causeway; while between them the long train of waggons came slowly
along under their protection.  The whole force had got in motion after
having sent notice of their arrival to Verdugo, who, with one or two
thousand men, was expected to sally forth almost immediately from the
city-gate.

There was but brief time for deliberation.  Notwithstanding the
tremendous odds there was no thought of retreat.  Black Norris called to
Sir William Stanley, with whom he had been at variance so lately at
Doesburg.

"There hath been ill-blood between us," he said.  "Let us be friends
together this day, and die side by side, if need be, in her Majesty's
cause."

"If you see me not serve my prince with faithful courage now," replied
Stanley, "account, me for ever a coward.  Living or dying I will stand
err lie by you in friendship."

As they were speaking these words the young Earl of Essex, general of the
horse, cried to his, handful of troopers:

"Follow me, good fellows, for the honour of England and of England's
Queen!"

As he spoke he dashed, lance in rest, upon the enemy's cavalry,
overthrew the foremost man, horse and rider, shivered his own spear to
splinters, and then, swinging his cartel-axe, rode merrily forward.  His
whole little troop, compact, as an arrow-head, flew with an irresistible
shock against the opposing columns, pierced clean through them, and
scattered them in all directions.  At the very first charge one hundred
English horsemen drove the Spanish and Albanian cavalry back upon the
musketeers and pikemen.  Wheeling with rapidity, they retired before a
volley of musket-shot, by which many horses and a few riders were killed;
and then formed again to renew the attack.  Sir Philip Sidney, an coming
to the field, having met Sir William Pelham, the veteran lord marshal,
lightly armed, had with chivalrous extravagance thrown off his own
cuishes, and now rode to the battle with no armour but his cuirass.
At the second charge his horse was shot under him, but, mounting another,
he was seen everywhere, in the thick of the fight, behaving himself with
a gallantry which extorted admiration even from the enemy.

For the battle was a series of personal encounters in which high officers
were doing the work of private, soldiers.  Lord North, who had been lying
"bed-rid" with a musket-shot in the leg, had got himself put on
horseback, and with "one boot on and one boot off," bore himself, "most
lustily" through the whole affair.  "I desire that her Majesty may know;"
he said, "that I live but to, serve her.  A better barony than I have
could not hire the Lord North to live, on meaner terms."  Sir William
Russell laid about him with his curtel-axe to such purpose that the
Spaniards pronounced him a devil and not a man.  "Wherever," said an eye-
witness, "he saw five or six of the enemy together; thither would he,
and with his hard knocks soon separated their friendship."  Lord
Willoughby encountered George Crescia, general of the famed Albanian
cavalry, unhorsed him at the first shock, and rolled him into the ditch.
"I yield me thy prisoner," called out the Epirote in French, "for thou
art a 'preux chevalier;'" while Willoughby, trusting to his captive's
word, galloped onward, and with him the rest of the little troop, till
they seemed swallowed up by the superior numbers of the enemy.  His horse
was shot under him, his basses were torn from his legs, and he was nearly
taken a prisoner, but fought his way back with incredible strength and
good fortune.  Sir William Stanley's horse had seven bullets in him, but
bore his rider unhurt to the end of the battle.  Leicester declared Sir
William and "old Reads" to be "worth their, weight in pearl."

Hannibal Gonzaga, leader of the Spanish cavalry, fell mortally wounded
a The Marquis del Vasto, commander of the expedition, nearly met the same
fate.  An Englishman was just cleaving his head with a battle-axe, when a
Spaniard transfixed the soldier with his pike.  The most obstinate
struggle took place about the train of waggons.  The teamsters had fled
in the beginning of the action, but the English and Spanish soldiers,
struggling with the horses, and pulling them forward and backward, tried
in vain to get exclusive possession of the convoy which was the cause of
the action.  The carts at last forced their way slowly nearer and nearer
to the town, while the combat still went on, warm as ever, between the
hostile squadrons.  The action, lasted an hour and a half, and again and
again the Spanish horsemen wavered and broke before the handful of
English, and fell back upon their musketeers.  Sir Philip Sidney, in the
last charge, rode quite through the enemy's ranks till he came upon their
entrenchments, when a musket-ball from the camp struck him upon the
thigh, three inches above the knee.  Although desperately wounded in a
part which should have been protected by the cuishes which he had thrown
aside, he was not inclined to leave the field; but his own horse had been
shot under him at the-beginning of the action, and the one upon which he
was now mounted became too restive for him, thus crippled, to control.
He turned reluctantly away, and rode a mile and a half back to the
entrenchments, suffering extreme pain, for his leg was dreadfully
shattered.  As he past along the edge of the battle-field his attendants
brought him a bottle of water to quench his raging thirst.  At, that
moment a wounded English soldier, "who had eaten his last at the same
feast," looked up wistfully, in his face, when Sidney instantly handed
him the flask, exclaiming, "Thy necessity is even greater than mine."
He then pledged his dying comrade in a draught, and was soon afterwards
met by his uncle.  "Oh, Philip," cried Leicester, in despair, "I am truly
grieved to see thee in this plight."  But Sidney comforted him with
manful words, and assured him that death was sweet in the cause of his
Queen and country.  Sir William Russell, too, all blood-stained from the
fight, threw his arms around his friend, wept like a child, and kissing
his hand, exclaimed, "Oh! noble Sir Philip, never did man attain hurt so
honourably or serve so valiantly as you."  Sir William Pelham declared
"that Sidney's noble courage in the face of our enemies had won him a
name of continuing honour."

The wounded gentleman was borne back to the camp, and thence in a barge
to Arnheim.  The fight was over.  Sir John Norris bade Lord Leicester
"be merry, for," said he, "you have had the honourablest day.  A handful
of men has driven the enemy three times to retreat.  "But, in truth, it
was now time for the English to retire in their turn.  Their reserve
never arrived.  The whole force engaged against the thirty-five hundred
Spaniards had never exceeded two hundred and fifty horse and three
hundred foot, and of this number the chief work had beer done by the
fifty or sixty volunteers and their followers.  The heroism which had
been displayed was fruitless, except as a proof--and so Leicester wrote
to the Palatine John Casimir--"that Spaniards were not invincible."  Two
thousand men now sallied from the Loor Gate under Verdugo and Tassis,
to join the force under Vasto, and the English were forced to retreat.
The whole convoy was then carried into the city, and the Spaniards
remained masters of the field.

Thirteen troopers and twenty-two foot soldiers; upon the English side,
were killed.  The enemy lost perhaps two hundred men.  They were thrice
turned from their position, and thrice routed, but they succeeded at last
in their attempt to carry their convoy into Zutphen.  Upon that day, and
the succeeding ones, the town was completely victualled.  Very little,
therefore, save honour, was gained by the display of English valour
against overwhelming numbers; five hundred against, near, four thousand.
Never in the whole course of the war had there been such fighting, for
the troops upon both sides were picked men and veterans.  For a long time
afterwards it was the custom of Spaniards and Netherlanders, in
characterising a hardly-contested action, to call it as warm as the fight
at Zutphen.

"I think I may call it," said Leicester, "the most notable encounter that
hath been in our age, and it will remain to our posterity famous."

Nevertheless it is probable that the encounter would have been forgotten
by posterity but for the melancholy close upon that field to Sidney's
bright career.  And perhaps the Queen of England had as much reason to
blush for the incompetency of her general and favourite as to be proud.
of the heroism displayed by her officers and soldiers.

"There were too many indeed at this skirmish of the better sort," said
Leicester; "only a two hundred and fifty horse, and most of them the best
of this camp, and unawares to me.  I was offended when I knew it, but
could not fetch them back; but since they all so well escaped (save my
dear nephew), I would not for ten thousand pounds but they had been
there, since they have all won that honour they have.  Your Lordship
never heard of such desperate charges as they gave upon the enemies in
the face of their muskets."

He described Sidney's wound as "very dangerous, the bone being broken in
pieces;" but said that the surgeons were in good hope.  "I pray God to
save his life," said the Earl, "and I care not how lame he be."  Sir
Philip was carried to Arnheim, where the best surgeons were immediately
in attendance upon him.  He submitted to their examination and the pain
which they inflicted, with great cheerfulness, although himself persuaded
that his wound was mortal.  For many days the result was doubtful, and
messages were sent day by day to England that he was convalescent--
intelligence which was hailed by the Queen and people as a matter not of
private but of public rejoicing.  He soon began to fail, however.  Count
Hohenlo was badly wounded a few days later before the great fort of
Zutphen.  A musket-ball entered his mouth; and passed through his cheek,
carrying off a jewel which hung in his ear.  Notwithstanding his own
critical condition, however, Hohenlo sent his surgeon, Adrian van den
Spiegel, a man of great skill, to wait upon Sir Philip, but Adrian soon
felt that the case was hopeless.  Meantime fever and gangrene attacked
the Count himself; and those in attendance upon him, fearing for his
life, sent for his surgeon.  Leicester refused to allow Adrian to depart,
and Hohenlo very generously acquiescing in the decree, but, also
requiring the surgeon's personal care, caused himself to be transported
in a litter to Arnheim.

Sidney was first to recognise the symptoms of mortification, which made a
fatal result inevitable.  His demeanour during his sickness and upon his
death-bed was as beautiful as his life.  He discoursed with his friends
concerning the immortality of the soul, comparing the doctrines of Plato
and of other ancient philosophers, whose writings were so familiar to
him, with the revelations of Scripture and with the dictates of natural
religion.  He made his will with minute and elaborate provisions, leaving
bequests, remembrances, and rings, to all his friends.  Then he indulged
himself with music, and listened particularly to a strange song which he
had himself composed during his illness, and which he had entitled 'La
Cuisse rompue.'  He took leave of the friends around him with perfect
calmness; saying to his brother Robert, "Love my memory.  Cherish my
friends.  Above all, govern your will and affections by the will and word
of your Creator; in me beholding the end of this world with all her
vanities."

And thus this gentle and heroic spirit took its flight.

Parma, after thoroughly victualling Zutphen, turned his attention to the
German levies which Leicester was expecting under the care of Count
Meurs.  "If the enemy is reinforced by these six thousand fresh troops,"
said Alexander; "it will make him master of the field."  And well he
might hold this opinion, for, in the meagre state of both the Spanish and
the liberating armies, the addition of three thousand fresh reiters and
as many infantry would be enough to turn the scale.  The Duke of Parma--
for, since the recent death of his father, Farnese had succeeded to his
title--determined in person to seek the German troops, and to destroy
them if possible.  But they never gave him the chance.  Their muster-
place was Bremen, but when they heard that the terrible 'Holofernese' was
in pursuit of them, and that the commencement of their service would be a
pitched battle with his Spaniards and Italians, they broke up and
scattered about the country.  Soon afterwards the Duke tried another
method of effectually dispersing them, in case they still retained a wish
to fulfil their engagement with Leicester.  He sent a messenger to treat
with them, and in consequence two of their rittmeisters; paid him a
visit.  He offered to give them higher pay, and "ready money in place of
tricks and promises."  The mercenary heroes listened very favourably to
his proposals, although they had already received--besides the tricks and
promises--at least one hundred thousand florins out of the States'
treasury.

After proceeding thus far in the negotiation, however, Parma concluded,
as the season was so far advanced, that it was sufficient to have
dispersed them, and to have deprived the English and patriots of their
services.  So he gave the two majors a gold chain a-piece, and they went
their way thoroughly satisfied.  "I have got them away from the enemy for
this year," said Alexander; "and this I hold to be one of the best
services that has been rendered for many a long day to your Majesty."

During the period which intervened between the action at Warnsfeld and
the death of Sidney, the siege-operations before Zutphen had been
continued.  The city, strongly garrisoned and well supplied with
provisions, as it had been by Parma's care, remained impregnable; but the
sconces beyond the river and upon the island fell into Leicester's hands.
The great fortress which commanded the Veluwe, and which was strong
enough to have resisted Count Hohenlo on a former, occasion for nearly a
whole year, was the scene of much hard fighting.  It was gained at last
by the signal valour of Edward Stanley, lieutenant to Sir William.  That
officer, at the commencement of an assault upon a not very practicable
breach, sprang at the long pike of a Spanish soldier, who was endeavoring
to thrust him from the wall, and seized it with both hands.  The Spaniard
struggled to maintain his hold of the weapon, Stanley to wrest it from
his grasp.  A dozen other soldiers broke their pikes upon his cuirass or
shot at him with their muskets.  Conspicuous by his dress, being all in
yellow but his corslet, he was in full sight of Leicester and of fire
thousand men.  The earth was so shifty and sandy that the soldiers who
were to follow him were not able to climb the wall.  Still Stanley
grasped his adversary's pike, but, suddenly changing his plan, he allowed
the Spaniard to lift him from the ground.  Then, assisting himself with
his feet against the wall, he, much to the astonishment of the
spectators, scrambled quite over the parapet, and dashed sword in hand
among the defenders of the fort.  Had he been endowed with a hundred
lives it seemed impossible for him to escape death.  But his followers,
stimulated by his example, made ladders for themselves of each others'
shoulders, clambered at last with great exertion over the broken wall,
overpowered the garrison, and made themselves masters of the sconce.
Leicester, transported with enthusiasm for this noble deed of daring,
knighted Edward Stanley upon the spot, besides presenting him next day
with forty pounds in gold and an annuity of one hundred marks, sterling
for life.  "Since I was born, I did never see any man behave himself as
he did," said the Earl.  "I shall never forget it, if I live a thousand
year, and he shall have a part of my living for it as long as I live."

The occupation of these forts terminated the military operations of the
year, for the rainy season, precursor of the winter, had now set in.
Leicester, leaving Sir William Stanley, with twelve hundred English and
Irish horse, in command of Deventer; Sir John Burrowes, with one thousand
men, in Doesburg; and Sir Robert Yorke, with one thousand more, in the
great sconce before Zutphen; took his departure for the Hague.  Zutphen
seemed so surrounded as to authorize the governor to expect ere long its
capitulation.  Nevertheless, the results of the campaign had not been
encouraging.  The States had lost ground, having been driven from the
Meuse and Rhine, while they had with difficulty maintained themselves on
the Flemish coast and upon the Yssel.

It is now necessary to glance at the internal politics of the Republic
during the period of Leicester's administration and to explain the
position in which he found himself at the close of the year.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

And thus this gentle and heroic spirit took its flight
Five great rivers hold the Netherland territory in their coils
High officers were doing the work of private, soldiers
I did never see any man behave himself as he did
There is no man fitter for that purpose than myself




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v48
by John Lothrop Motley





HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609

By John Lothrop Motley



History of the United Netherlands, Volume 49, 1586



CHAPTER X.

     Should Elizabeth accept the Sovereignty?--The Effects of her Anger--
     Quarrels between the Earl and the Staten--The Earl's three
     Counsellors--Leicester's Finance--Chamber--Discontent of the
     Mercantile Classes--Paul Buys and the Opposition--Been Insight of
     Paul Buys--Truchsess becomes a Spy upon him--Intrigues of Buys with
     Denmark--His Imprisonment--The Earl's Unpopularity--His Quarrels
     with the States--And with the Norrises--His Counsellors Wilkes and
     Clerke--Letter from the Queen to Leicester--A Supper Party at
     Hohenlo's--A drunken Quarrel--Hohenlo's Assault upon Edward Norris--
     Ill Effects of the Riot.

The brief period of sunshine had been swiftly followed by storms.  The
Governor Absolute had, from the outset, been placed in a false position.
Before he came to the Netherlands the Queen had refused the sovereignty.
Perhaps it was wise in her to decline so magnificent an offer; yet
certainly her acceptance would have been perfectly honourable.  The
constituted authorities of the Provinces formally made the proposition.
There is no doubt whatever that the whole population ardently desired to
become her subjects.  So far as the Netherlands were concerned, then, she
would have been fully justified in extending her sceptre over a free
people, who, under no compulsion and without any, diplomatic chicane, had
selected her for their hereditary chief.  So far as regarded England, the
annexation to that country of a continental cluster of states, inhabited
by a race closely allied to it by blood, religion, and the instinct for
political freedom, seemed, on the whole, desirable.

In a financial point of view, England would certainly lose nothing by the
union.  The resources of the Provinces were at leant equal to her own.
We have seen the astonishment which the wealth and strength of the
Netherlands excited in their English visitors.  They were amazed by the
evidences of commercial and manufacturing prosperity, by the spectacle of
luxury and advanced culture, which met them on every side.  Had the
Queen--as it had been generally supposed--desired to learn whether the
Provinces were able and willing to pay the expenses of their own defence
before she should definitely decide on, their offer of sovereignty, she
was soon thoroughly enlightened upon the subject.  Her confidential
agents all--held one language.  If she would only, accept the
sovereignty, the amount which the Provinces would pay was in a manner
boundless.  She was assured that the revenue of her own hereditary realm
was much inferior to that of the possessions thus offered to her sway.

In regard to constitutional polity, the condition of the Netherlands was
at least, as satisfactory as that of England. The great amount of civil
freedom enjoyed by those countries--although perhaps an objection--in the
eyes of Elizabeth Tudor--should certainly have been a recommendation
to her liberty-loving subjects.  The question of defence had been
satisfactorily answered.  The Provinces, if an integral part of the
English empire, could protect themselves, and would become an additional
element of strength--not a troublesome encumbrance.

The difference of language was far, less than that which already existed
between the English and their Irish fellow-subjects, while it was
counterbalanced by sympathy, instead of being aggravated by mutual
hostility in the matter of religion.

With regard to the great question of abstract sovereignty, it was
certainly impolitic for an absolute monarch to recognize the right of a
nation to repudiate its natural allegiance.  But Elizabeth had already
countenanced that step by assisting the rebellion against Philip.  To
allow the rebels to transfer their obedience from the King of Spain to
herself was only another step in the same direction.  The Queen, should
she annex the Provinces, would certainly be accused by the world of
ambition; but the ambition was a noble one, if, by thus consenting to the
urgent solicitations of a free people, she extended the region of civil
and religious liberty, and raised up a permanent bulwark against
sacerdotal and royal absolutism.

A war between herself and Spain was inevitable if she accepted the
sovereignty, but peace had been already rendered impossible by the treaty
of alliance.  It is true that the Queen imagined the possibility of
combining her engagements towards the States with a conciliatory attitude
towards their ancient master, but it was here that she committed the
gravest error.  The negotiations of Parma and his sovereign with the
English court were a masterpiece of deceit on the part of Spain.  We have
shown, by the secret correspondence, and we shall in the sequel make it
still clearer, that Philip only intended to amuse his antagonists; that
he had already prepared his plan for the conquest of England, down to the
minutest details; that the idea of tolerating religious liberty had never
entered his mind; and that his fixed purpose was not only thoroughly to
chastise the Dutch rebels, but to deprive the heretic Queen who had
fostered their rebellion both of throne and life.  So far as regarded the
Spanish King, then, the quarrel between him and Elizabeth was already
mortal; while in a religious, moral, political, and financial point of
view, it would be difficult to show that it was wrong, or imprudent for
England to accept the sovereignty over his ancient subjects.  The cause
of human, freedom seemed likely to gain by the step, for the States did
not consider themselves strong enough to maintain the independent
republic which had already risen.

It might be a question whether, on the whole, Elizabeth made a mistake in
declining the sovereignty.  She was certainly wrong, however, in wishing
the lieutenant-general of her six thousand auxiliary troops to be
clothed, as such, with vice-regal powers.  The States-General, in a
moment of enthusiasm, appointed him governor absolute, and placed in his
hands, not only the command of the forces, but the entire control of
their revenues, imposts, and customs, together with the appointment of
civil and military officers.  Such an amount of power could only be
delegated by the sovereign.  Elizabeth had refused the sovereignty: it
then rested with the States.  They only, therefore, were competent to
confer the power which Elizabeth wished her favourite to exercise simply
as her lieutenant-general.

Her wrathful and vituperative language damaged her cause and that of the
Netherlands more severely than can now be accurately estimated.  The Earl
was placed at once in a false, a humiliating, almost a ridiculous
position.  The authority which the States had thus a second time offered
to England was a second time and most scornfully thrust back upon them.
Elizabeth was indignant that "her own man" should clothe himself in the
supreme attributes which she had refused.  The States were forced by the
violence of the Queen to take the authority into their own hands again,
and Leicester was looked upon as a disgraced man.

Then came the neglect with which the Earl was treated by her Majesty and
her ill-timed parsimony towards the cause.  No letters to him in four
months, no remittances for the English troops, not a penny of salary for
him.  The whole expense of the war was thrown for the time upon their
hands, and the English soldiers seemed only a few thousand starving,
naked, dying vagrants, an incumbrance instead of an aid.

The States, in their turn, drew the purse-strings.  The two hundred
thousand florins monthly were paid.  The four hundred thousand florins
which had been voted as an additional supply were for a time held back,
as Leicester expressly stated, because of the discredit which had been
thrown upon him from home.

     [Strangely enough, Elizabeth was under the impression that the extra
     grant of 400,000 florins (L40,000) for four months was four hundred
     thousand pounds sterling.  "The rest that was granted by the States,
     as extraordinary to levy an army, which was 400,000 florins, not
     pounds, as I hear your Majesty taketh it.  It is forty thousand
     pounds, and to be paid In March, April, May, and June last," &c.
     Leicester to the Queen, l1 Oct.  1586.  (S. P.  Office MS.)]

The military operations were crippled for want of funds, but more fatal
than everything else were the secret negotiations for peace.  Subordinate
individuals, like Grafigni and De Loo, went up and down, bringing
presents out of England for Alexander Farnese, and bragging that Parma
and themselves could have peace whenever they liked to make it, and
affirming that Leicester's opinions were of no account whatever.
Elizabeth's coldness to the Earl and to the Netherlands was affirmed to
be the Prince of Parma's sheet-anchor; while meantime a house was
ostentatiously prepared in Brussels by their direction for the reception
of an English ambassador, who was every moment expected to arrive.  Under
such circumstances it was in, vain for the governor-general to protest
that the accounts of secret negotiations were false, and quite natural
that the States should lose their confidence in the Queen.  An unfriendly
and suspicious attitude towards her representative was a necessary
result, and the demonstrations against the common enemy became still more
languid.  But for these underhand dealings, Grave, Venlo, and Neusz,
might have been saved, and the current 'of the Meuse and Rhine have
remained in the hands of the patriots.

The Earl was industrious, generous, and desirous of playing well his
part.  His personal courage was undoubted, and, in the opinion of his
admirers--themselves, some of them, men of large military experience--his
ability as a commander was of a high order.  The valour displayed by the
English nobles and gentlemen who accompanied him was magnificent, worthy
the descendants of the victors at Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt; and the
good behaviour of their followers--with a few rare exceptions--had been
equally signal.  But now the army was dwindling to a ghastly array of
scarecrows, and the recruits, as they came from England, were appalled by
the spectacle presented by their predecessors.  "Our old ragged rogues
here have so discouraged our new men," said Leicester; "as I protest to
you they look like dead men."  Out of eleven hundred freshly-arrived
Englishmen, five hundred ran away in two days.  Some were caught and
hanged, and all seemed to prefer hanging to remaining in the service,
while the Earl declared that he would be hanged as well rather than again
undertake such a charge without being assured payment for his troops
beforehand!

The valour of Sidney and Essex, Willoughby and Pelham, Roger Williams
and Martin Schenk, was set at nought by such untoward circumstances.
Had not Philip also left his army to starve and Alexander Farnese to
work miracles, it would have fared still worse with Holland and England,
and with the cause of civil and religious liberty in the year 1586.

The States having resumed, as much as possible; their former authority,
were on very unsatisfactory terms with the governor-general.  Before
long, it was impossible for the, twenty or thirty individuals called the
States to be in the same town with the man whom, at the commencement of
the, year, they had greeted so warmly.  The hatred between the Leicester
faction and the municipalities became intense, for the foundation of the
two great parties which were long to divide the Netherland commonwealth
was already laid.  The mercantile patrician interest, embodied in the
states of Holland and Zeeland and inclined to a large toleration in the
matter of religion, which afterwards took the form of Arminianism, was
opposed by a strict Calvinist party, which desired to subject the
political commonwealth to the reformed church; which nevertheless
indulged in very democratic views of the social compact; and which was
controlled by a few refugees from Flanders and Brabant, who had succeeded
in obtaining the confidence of Leicester.

Thus the Earl was the nominal head of the Calvinist democratic party;
while young Maurice of Nassau; stadholder of Holland and Zeeland, and
guided by Barneveld, Buys, and other leading statesmen of these
Provinces; was in an attitude precisely the reverse of the one which he
was destined at a later and equally memorable epoch to assume.  The
chiefs of the faction which had now succeeded in gaining the confidence
of Leicester were Reingault, Burgrave, and Deventer, all refugees.

The laws of Holland and of the other United States were very strict on
the subject of citizenship, and no one but a native was competent to hold
office in each Province.  Doubtless, such regulations were narrow-
spirited; but to fly in the face of them was the act of a despot, and
this is what Leicester did.  Reingault was a Fleming.  He was a bankrupt
merchant, who had been taken into the protection of Lamoral Egmont, and
by that nobleman recommended to Granvelle for an office under the
Cardinal's government.  The refusal of this favour was one of the
original causes of Egmont's hostility to Granvelle.  Reingault
subsequently entered the service of the Cardinal, however, and rewarded
the kindness of his former benefactor by great exertions in finding, or
inventing, evidence to justify the execution of that unfortunate
nobleman.  He was afterwards much employed by the Duke of Alva and by the
Grand Commander Requesens; but after the pacification of Ghent he had
been completely thrown out of service.  He had recently, in a subordinate
capacity, accompanied the legations of the States to France and to
England, and had now contrived to ingratiate himself with the Earl of
Leicester.  He affected great zeal for the Calvinistic religion--an
exhibition which, in the old servant of Granvelle and Alva, was far from
edifying--and would employ no man or maid-servant in his household until
their religious principles had been thoroughly examined by one or two
clergymen.  In brief, he was one of those, who, according to a homely
Flemish proverb, are wont to hang their piety on the bell-rope; but, with
the exception of this brief interlude in his career, he lived and died a
Papist.

Gerard Proninck, called Deventer, was a respectable inhabitant of Bois-
le-Duc, who had left that city after it had again become subject to the
authority of Spain.  He was of decent life and conversation, but a
restless and ambitious demagogue.  As a Brabantine, he was unfit for
office; and yet, through Leicester's influence and the intrigues of the
democratic party, he obtained the appointment of burgomaster in the city
of Utrecht.  The States-General, however, always refused to allow him to
appear at their sessions as representative of that city.

Daniel de Burgrave was a Flemish mechanic, who, by the exertion of much
energy and talent, had risen to the poet of procureur-general of
Flanders.  After the conquest of the principal portion of that Province
by Parma, he had made himself useful to the English governor-general in
various ways, and particularly as a linguist.  He spoke English--a tongue
with which few Netherlanders of that day were familiar--and as the Earl
knew no other, except (very imperfectly) Italian, he found his services
in speaking and writing a variety of languages very convenient.  He was
the governor's private secretary, and, of course, had no entrance to the
council of state, but he was accused of frequently thrusting himself into
their hall of sessions, where, under pretence of arranging the Earl's
table, or portfolio, or papers, he was much addicted to whispering into
his master's ear, listening to conversation,--to eaves-dropping; in
short, and general intrusiveness.

"A most faithful, honest servant is Burgrave," said Leicester; "a
substantial, wise man.  'Tis as sufficient a man as ever I met withal of
any nation; very well learned, exceeding wise, and sincere in religion.
I cannot commend the man too much.  He is the only comfort I have had of
any of this nation."

These three personages were the leaders of the Leicester faction.  They
had much, influence with all the refugees from Flanders, Brabant, and the
Walloon Provinces.  In Utrecht, especially, where the Earl mainly
resided, their intrigues were very successful.  Deventer was appointed,
as already stated, to the important post of burgomaster; many, of the
influential citizens were banished, without cause or, trial; the upper
branch of the municipal government, consisting of the clerical delegates
of the colleges, was in an arbitrary manner abolished; and, finally, the
absolute sovereignty of, the Province, without condition, was offered to
the Queen, of England.

Leicester was now determined to carry out one of the great objects which
the Queen had in view when she sent him to the Netherlands.  She desired
thoroughly to ascertain the financial resources of the Provinces, and
their capacity to defend themselves.  It was supposed by the States, and
hoped by the Earl and by a majority of the Netherland people, that she
would, in case the results were satisfactory, accept, after all, the
sovereignty.  She certainly was not to be blamed that she wished to make
this most important investigation, but it was her own fault that any new
machinery had been rendered necessary.  The whole control of the finances
had, in the beginning of the year, been placed in the Earl's hands, and
it was only by her violently depriving him of his credit and of the
confidence of the country that he had not retained it.  He now
established a finance-chamber, under the chief control of Reingault, who
promised him mountains of money, and who was to be chief treasurer.  Paul
Buys was appointed by Leicester to fill a subordinate position in the new
council.  He spurned the offer with great indignation, saying that
Reingault was not fit to be his clerk, and that he was not likely
himself, therefore, to accept a humble post under the administration of
such an individual.  This scornful refusal filled to the full the hatred
of Leicester against the ex-Advocate of Holland.

The mercantile interest at once took the alarm, because it was supposed
that the finance-chamber, was intended to crush the merchants.  Early in
April an Act had been passed by the state-council, prohibiting commerce
with the Spanish possessions.  The embargo was intended to injure the
obedient Provinces and their sovereign, but it was shown that its effect
would be to blast the commerce of Holland.  It forbade the exportation
from the republic not only of all provisions and munitions of war, but of
all goods and merchandize whatever, to Spain, Portugal, the Spanish
Netherlands, or any other of Philip's territories, either in Dutch or
neutral vessel.  It would certainly seem, at first sight, that such an
act was reasonable, although the result would really be, not to deprive
the enemy of supplies, but to throw the whole Baltic trade into the hands
of the Bremen, Hamburg, and "Osterling" merchants.  Leicester expected to
derive a considerable revenue by granting passports and licenses to such
neutral traders, but the edict became so unpopular that it was never
thoroughly enforced, and was before long rescinded.

The odium of the measure was thrown upon the governor-general, yet he had
in truth opposed it in the state-council, and was influential in
procuring its repeal.

Another important Act had been directed against the mercantile interest,
and excited much general discontent.  The Netherlands wished the staple
of the English cloth manufacture to be removed from Emden--the petty,
sovereign of which place was the humble servant of Spain--to Amsterdam or
Delft.  The desire was certainly, natural, and the Dutch merchants sent a
committee to confer with Leicester.  He was much impressed with their
views, and with the sagacity of their chairman, one Mylward, "a wise
fellow and well languaged, an ancient man and very, religious," as the
Earl pronounced him to be.

Notwithstanding the wisdom however, of this well-languaged fellow,
the Queen, for some strange reason, could not be induced to change the
staple from Emden, although it was shown that the public revenue of the
Netherlands would gain twenty thousand pounds a year by the measure.
"All Holland will cry out for it," said Leicester; "but I had rather they
cried than that England should weep."

Thus the mercantile community, and especially the patrician families of
Holland and Zeeland, all engaged in trade, became more and more hostile
to the governor-general and to his financial trio, who were soon almost
as unpopular as the famous Consults of Cardinal Granvelle had been.  It
was the custom of the States to consider the men who surrounded the Earl
as needy and unprincipled renegades and adventurers.  It was the policy
of his advisers to represent the merchants and the States--which mainly
consisted of, or were controlled by merchants--as a body of corrupt,
selfish, greedy money-getters.

The calumnies put in circulation against the States by Reingault and his
associates grew at last so outrageous, and the prejudice created in the
mind of Leicester and his immediate English adherents so intense, that it
was rendered necessary for the States, of Holland and Zeeland to write to
their agent Ortell in London, that he might forestall the effect of these
perpetual misrepresentations on her Majesty's government.  Leicester, on
the other hand, under the inspiration; of his artful advisers, was
vehement in his entreaties that Ortell should be sent away from England.

The ablest and busiest of the opposition-party, the "nimblest head" in
the States-General was the ex-Advocate of Holland; Paul Buys.  This man
was then the foremost statesman in, the Netherlands.  He had been the
firmest friend to the English alliance; he had resigned his office when
the States were-offering the sovereignty to France, and had been on the
point of taking service in Denmark.  He had afterwards been prominent in
the legation which offered the sovereignty to Elizabeth, and, for a long
time, had been the most firm, earnest, and eloquent advocate of the
English policy.  Leicester had originally courted him, caressed him,
especially recommended him to the Queen's favour, given him money--as he
said, "two hundred pounds sterling thick at a time"--and openly
pronounced him to be "in ability above all men."  "No man hath ever
sought a man," he said, "as I have sought P. B."

The period of their friendship was, however, very brief.  Before many
weeks had passed there was no vituperative epithet that Leicester was not
in the daily habit of bestowing upon Paul.  The Earl's vocabulary of
abuse was not a limited one, but he exhausted it on the head of the
Advocate.  He lacked at last words and breath to utter what was like him.
He pronounced his former friend "a very dangerous man, altogether hated
of the people and the States;"--"a lewd sinner, nursled in revolutions;
a most covetous, bribing fellow, caring for nothing but to bear the sway
and grow rich;"--"a man who had played many parts, both lewd and
audacious;"--"a very knave, a traitor to his country;"--"the most
ungrateful wretch alive, a hater of the Queen and of all the English;
a most unthankful man to her Majesty; a practiser to make himself rich
and great, and nobody else;"--"among all villains the greatest;"--
"a bolsterer of all papists and ill men, a dissembler, a devil, an
atheist," a "most naughty man, and a most notorious drunkard in the worst
degree."

Where the Earl hated, his hatred was apt to be deadly, and he was
determined, if possible, to have the life of the detested Paul.  "You
shall see I will do well enough with him, and that shortly," he said.
"I will course him as he was not so this twenty year.  I will warrant him
hanged and one or two of his fellows, but you must not tell your shirt of
this yet;" and when he was congratulating the government on his having at
length procured the execution of Captain Hemart, the surrenderer of
Grave, he added, pithily, "and you shall hear that Mr. P. B. shall
follow."

Yet the Earl's real griefs against Buys may be easily summed up.  The
lewd sinner, nursled in revolutions, had detected the secret policy of
the Queen's government, and was therefore perpetually denouncing the
intrigues going on with Spain.  He complained that her Majesty was tired
of having engaged in the Netherland enterprise; he declared that she
would be glad to get fairly out of it; that her reluctance to spend a
farthing more in the cause than she was obliged to do was hourly
increasing upon her; that she was deceiving and misleading the States-
General; and that she was hankering after a peace.  He said that the Earl
had a secret intention to possess himself of certain towns in Holland,
in which case the whole question of peace and war would be in the hands
of the Queen, who would also have it thus in her power to reimburse
herself at once for all expenses that she had incurred.

It would be difficult to show that there was anything very calumnious in
these charges, which, no doubt, Paul was in the habit of making.  As to
the economical tendencies of her Majesty, sufficient evidence has been
given already from Leicester's private letters.  "Rather than spend one
hundred pounds," said Walsingham, "she can be content to be deceived of
five thousand."  That she had been concealing from the Staten, from
Walsingham, from Leicester, during the whole summer, her secret
negotiations with Spain, has also been made apparent.  That she was
disgusted with the enterprise in which she had embarked, Walsingham,
Burghley, Hatton, and all the other statesmen of England, most abundantly
testified.  Whether Leicester had really an intention to possess himself
of certain cities in Holland--a charge made by Paul Buys, and denounced
as especially slanderous by the Earl--may better appear from his own
private statements.

"This I will do," he wrote to the Queen, "and I hope not to fail of it,
to get into my hands three or four most principal places in North
Holland; which will be such a strength and assurance for your Majesty,
as you shall see you shall both rule these men and make war or peace as
you list, always provided--whatsoever you hear, or is--part not with the
Brill; and having these places in your hands, whatsoever should chance to
these countries, your Majesty, I will warrant sure enough to make what
peace you will in an hour, and to have your debts and charges readily
answered."  At a somewhat later moment it will be seen what came of these
secret designs.  For the present, Leicester was very angry with Paul for
daring to suspect him of such treachery.

The Earl complained, too, that the influence of Buys with Hohenlo and
young Maurice of Nassau was most pernicious.  Hohenlo had formerly stood
high in Leicester's opinion.  He was a "plain, faithful soldier, a most
valiant gentleman," and he was still more important, because about to
marry Mary of Nassau; eldest slaughter, of William the Silent, and
coheiress with Philip William, to the Buren property.  But he had been
tampered with by the intriguing Paul Buys, and had then wished to resign
his office under Leicester.  Being pressed for reasons, he had "grown
solemn," and withdrawn himself almost entirely.

Maurice; with his "solemn, sly wit," also gave the Earl much trouble,
saying little; but thinking much, and listening to the insidious Paul.
He "stood much on making or marring," so Leicester thought, "as he met
with good counsel."  He had formerly been on intimate terms with the
governor-general, who affected to call him his son; but he had
subsequently kept aloof, and in three months had not come near him.
The Earl thought that money might do much, and was anxious for Sir
Francis Drake to come home from the Indies with millions of gold, that
the Queen might make both Hohenlo and Maurice a handsome present before
it should be too late.

Meantime he did what he could with Elector Truchsess to lure them back
again.  That forlorn little prelate was now poorer and more wretched than
ever.  He was becoming paralytic, though young, and his heart was broken
through want.  Leicester, always generous as the sun, gave him money,
four thousand florins at a time, and was most earnest that the Queen
should put him on her pension list.  "His wisdom, his behaviour, his
languages, his person," said the Earl, "all would like her well.  He is
in great melancholy for his town of Neusz, and for his poverty, having a
very noble mind.  If, he be lost, her Majesty had better lose a hundred
thousand pounds."

The melancholy Truchsess now became a spy and a go-between.  He
insinuated himself into the confidence of Paul Buys, wormed his secrets
from him, and then communicated them to Hohenlo and to Leicester; "but he
did it very wisely," said the Earl, "so that he was not mistrusted."  The
governor always affected, in order to screen the elector from suspicion,
to obtain his information from persons in Utrecht; and he had indeed many
spies in that city; who diligently reported Paul's table-talk.
Nevertheless, that "noble gentleman, the elector," said Leicester, "hath
dealt most deeply with him, to seek out the bottom."  As the ex-Advocate
of Holland was very communicative in his cups, and very bitter against
the governor-general, there was soon such a fund of information collected
on the subject by various eaves-droppers, that Leicester was in hopes of
very soon hanging Mr. Paul Buys, as we have already seen.

The burthen of the charges against the culprit was his statement that
the Provinces would be gone if her Majesty did not declare herself,
vigorously and generously, in their favour; but, as this was the
perpetual cry of Leicester himself, there seemed hardly hanging matter in
that.  That noble gentleman, the elector, however, had nearly saved the
hangman his trouble, having so dealt with Hohenlo as to "bring him into
as good a mind as ever he was;" and the first fruits of this good mind
were, that the honest Count--a man of prompt dealings--walked straight to
Paul's house in order to kill him on the spot.  Something fortunately
prevented the execution of this plan; but for a time at least the
energetic Count continued to be "governed greatly" by the ex-archbishop,
and "did impart wholly unto him his most secret heart."

Thus the "deep wise Truxy," as Leicester called him, continued to earn
golden opinions, and followed up his conversion of Hohenlo by undertaking
to "bring Maurice into tune again also," and the young Prince was soon on
better terms with his "affectionate father" than he had ever been before.
Paul Buys was not so easily put down, however, nor the two magnates so
thoroughly gained over.  Before the end of the season Maurice stood in
his old position, the nominal head of the Holland or patrician party,
chief of the opposition to Leicester, while Hohenlo had become more
bitter than ever against the Earl.  The quarrel between himself and
Edward Norris, to which allusion will soon be made, tended to increase
the dissatisfaction, although he singularly misunderstood Leicester's
sentiments throughout the whole affair.  Hohenlo recovered of his wound
before Zutphen; but, on his recovery, was more malcontent than ever.  The
Earl was obliged at last to confess that "he was a very dangerous man,
inconstant, envious; and hateful to all our nation, and a very traitor to
the cause.  There is no dealing to win him," he added, "I have sought it
to my cost.  His best friends tell me he is not to be trusted."

Meantime that lewd sinner, the indefatigable Paul, was plotting
desperately--so Leicester said and believed--to transfer the sovereignty
of the Provinces to the King of Denmark.  Buys, who was privately of
opinion that the States required an absolute head, "though it were but an
onion's head," and that they would thankfully continue under Leicester as
governor absolute if Elizabeth would accept the sovereignty, had made up
his mind that the Queen would never take that step.  He was therefore
disposed to offer the crown to the King of Denmark, and was believed to
have brought Maurice--who was to espouse that King's daughter--to the
same way of thinking.  Young Count Rantzan, son of a distinguished Danish
statesman, made a visit to the Netherlands in order to confer with Buys.
Paul was also anxious to be appointed envoy to Denmark, ostensibly to
arrange for the two thousand cavalry, which the King had long before
promised for the assistance of the Provinces, but in reality, to examine
the details of this new project; and Leicester represented to the Queen
very earnestly how powerful the Danish monarch would become, thus
rendered master of the narrow seas, and how formidable to England.

In the midst of these plottings, real or supposed, a party of armed men,
one fine summer's morning, suddenly entered Paul's bedroom as he lay
asleep at the house of the burgomaster, seized his papers, and threw him:
into prison in the wine-cellar of the town-house.  "Oh my papers, oh my
papers!"  cried the unfortunate politician, according to Leicester's
statement, "the Queen of England will for ever hate me."  The Earl
disavowed all, participation in the arrest; but he was not believed.  He
declared himself not sorry that the measure had been taken, and promised
that he would not "be hasty to release him," not doubting that "he would
be found faulty enough."  Leicester maintained that there was stuff
enough discovered to cost Paul his head; but he never lost his head,
nor was anything treasonable or criminal ever found against him.  The
intrigue with Denmark--never proved--and commenced, if undertaken at all,
in utter despair of Elizabeth's accepting the sovereignty, was the
gravest charge.  He remained, however, six months in prison, and at the
beginning of 1587 was released, without trial or accusation, at the
request of the English Queen.

The States could hardly be blamed for their opposition to the Earl's
administration, for he had thrown himself completely into the arms of a
faction, whose object was to vilipend and traduce them, and it was now
difficult for him to recover the functions of which the Queen had
deprived him.  "The government they had given from themselves to me stuck
in their stomachs always," he said.  Thus on the one side, the States
were," growing more stately than ever," and were-always "jumbling
underhand," while the aristocratic Earl, on, his part, was resolute not
to be put down by "churls and tinkers."  He was sure that the people were
with him, and that, "having always been governed by some prince, they,
never did nor could consent to be ruled by bakers, brewers, and hired
advocates.  I know they hate them," said this high-born tribune of the
people.  He was much disgusted with the many-headed chimaera, the
monstrous republic, with which he found himself in such unceasing
conflict, and was disposed to take a manful stand.  "I have been fain of
late," he said, "to set the better leg foremost, to handle some of my
masters somewhat plainly; for they thought I would droop; and whatsoever
becomes of me, you shall hear I will keep my reputation, or die for it."

But one great accusation, made against the churls and tinkers, and bakers
and hired advocates, and Mr. Paul Buys at their head, was that they were
liberal towards the Papists.  They were willing that Catholics should
remain in the country and exercise the rights of citizens, provided they,
conducted themselves like good citizens.  For this toleration--a lesson
which statesmen like Buys and Barneveld had learned in the school of
William the Silent--the opposition-party were denounced as bolsterers of
Papists, and Papists themselves at heart, and "worshippers of idolatrous
idols."

From words, too, the government of Leicester passed to acts.  Seventy
papists were banished from the city of Utrecht at the time of the arrest
of Buys.  The Queen had constantly enforced upon Leicester the importance
of dealing justly with the Catholics in the Netherlands, on the ground
that they might be as good patriots and were as much interested in the
welfare of their country as were the Protestants; and he was especially
enjoined "not to meddle in matters of religion."  This wholesome advice
it would have been quite impossible for the Earl, under the guidance of
Reingault, Burgrave, and Stephen Perret, to carry out.  He protested that
he should have liked to treat Papists and Calvinists "with indifference,"
but that it had proved impossible; that the Catholics were perpetually
plotting with the Spanish faction, and that no towns were safe except
those in which Papists had been excluded from office.  "They love the
Pope above all," he said, "and the Prince of Parma hath continual
intelligence with them."  Nor was it Catholics alone who gave the
governor trouble.  He was likewise very busy in putting down other
denominations that differed from the Calvinists.  "Your Majesty will not
believe," he said, "the number of sects that are in most towns;
especially Anabaptists, Families of Love, Georgians; and I know not what.
The godly and good ministers were molested by them in many places, and
ready to give over; and even such diversities grew among magistrates in
towns, being caused by some sedition-sowers here."  It is however,
satisfactory to reflect that the anabaptists and families of love,
although discouraged and frowned upon, were not burned alive, buried
alive, drowned in dungeons, and roasted at slow fires, as had been the
case with them and with every other species of Protestants, by thousands
and tens of thousands, so long as Charles V. and Philip II. had ruled the
territory of that commonwealth.  Humanity had acquired something by the
war which the Netherlanders had been waging for twenty years, and no man
or woman was ever put to death for religious causes after the
establishment of the republic.

With his hands thus full of business, it was difficult for the Earl to
obey the Queen's command not to meddle in religious matters; for he was
not of the stature of William the Silent, and could not comprehend that
the great lesson taught by the sixteenth century was that men were not to
meddle with men in matters of religion.

But besides his especial nightmare--Mr. Paul Buys--the governor-general
had a whole set of incubi in the Norris family.  Probably no two persons
ever detested each other more cordially than did Leicester and Sir John
Norris.  Sir John had been commander of the forces in the Netherlands
before Leicester's arrival, and was unquestionably a man of larger
experience than the Earl.  He had, however, as Walsingham complained,
acquired by his services in "countries where neither discipline military
nor religion carried any sway," a very rude and licentious kind of
government.  "Would to God," said the secretary, "that, with his value
and courage, he carried the mind and reputation of a religious soldier."
But that was past praying for.  Sir John was proud, untractable,
turbulent, very difficult to manage.  He hated Leicester, and was furious
with Sir William Pelham, whom Leicester had made marshal of the camp.  He
complained, not unjustly, that from the first place in the army, which he
had occupied in the Netherlands, he had been reduced to the fifth.  The
governor-general--who chose to call Sir John the son of his ancient
enemy, the Earl of Sussex--often denounced him in good set terms.  "His
brother Edward is as ill as he," he said, "but John is right the late
Earl of Sussex' son; he will so dissemble and crouch, and so cunningly
carry his doings, as no man living would imagine that there were half
the malice or vindictive mind that plainly his words prove to be."
Leicester accused him of constant insubordination, insolence, and malice,
complained of being traduced by him everywhere in the Netherlands and in
England, and declared that he was followed about by "a pack of lewd
audacious fellows," whom the Earl vowed he would hang, one and all,
before he had done with them.  He swore openly, in presence of all his
camp, that he would hang Sir John likewise; so that both the brothers,
who had never been afraid of anything since they had been born into the
world, affected to be in danger of their lives.

The Norrises were on bad terms with many officers--with Sir William
Pelham of course, with "old Reade," Lord North, Roger Williams, Hohenlo,
Essex, and other nobles--but with Sir Philip Sidney, the gentle and
chivalrous, they were friends.  Sir John had quarrelled in former times--
according to Leicester--with Hohenlo and even with the "good and brave"
La None, of the iron arm; "for his pride," said the Earl, "was the spirit
of the devil."  The governor complained every day of his malignity, and
vowed that he "neither regarded the cause of God, nor of his prince, nor
country."

He consorted chiefly with Sir Thomas Cecil, governor of Brill, son of
Lord Burghley, and therefore no friend to Leicester; but the Earl
protested that "Master Thomas should bear small rule," so long as he was
himself governor-general.  "Now I have Pelham and Stanley, we shall do
well enough," he said, "though my young master would countenance him.
I will be master while I remain here, will they, nill they."

Edward Norris, brother of Sir John, gave the governor almost as much
trouble as he; but the treasurer Norris, uncle to them both, was, if
possible, more odious to him than all.  He was--if half Leicester's
accusations are to be believed--a most infamous peculator.  One-third of
the money sent by the Queen for the soldiers stuck in his fingers.  He
paid them their wretched four-pence a-day in depreciated coin, so that
for their "naughty money they could get but naughty ware."  Never was
such "fleecing of poor soldiers," said Leicester.

On the other hand, Sir John maintained that his uncle's accounts were
always ready for examination, and earnestly begged the home-government
not to condemn that functionary without a hearing.  For himself, he
complained that he was uniformly kept in the background, left in
ignorance of important enterprises, and sent on difficult duty with
inadequate forces.  It was believed that Leicester's course was inspired
by envy, lest any military triumph that might be gained should redound to
the glory of Sir John, one of the first commanders of the age, rather
than to that of the governor-general.  He was perpetually thwarted,
crossed, calumniated, subjected to coarse and indecent insults, even from
such brave men as Lord North and Roger Williams, and in the very presence
of the commander-in-chief, so that his talents were of no avail, and he
was most anxious to be gone from the country.

Thus with the tremendous opposition formed to his government in the
States-General, the incessant bickerings with the Norrises, the
peculations of the treasurer, the secret negotiations with Spain, and
the impossibility of obtaining money from home for himself or for his
starving little army, the Earl was in anything but a comfortable
position.  He was severely censured in England; but he doubted, with much
reason, whether there were many who would take his office, and spend
twenty thousand pounds sterling out of their own pockets, as he had done.
The Earl was generous and brave as man could be, full of wit, quick of
apprehension; but inordinately vain, arrogant, and withal easily led by
designing persons.  He stood up manfully for the cause in which he was
embarked, and was most strenuous in his demands for money.  "Personally
he cared," he said, "not sixpence for his post; but would give five
thousand sixpences, and six thousand shillings beside, to be rid of it;"
but it was contrary to his dignity to "stand bucking with the States" for
his salary.  "Is it reason," he asked, "that I, being sent from so great
a prince as our sovereign is, must come to strangers to beg my
entertainment:  If they are to pay me, why is there no remembrance made
of it by her Majesty's letters, or some of the lords?"

The Earl and those around him perpetually and vehemently urged upon the
Queen to reconsider her decision, and accept the sovereignty of the
Provinces at once.  There was no other remedy for the distracted state
of the country--no other safeguard for England.  The Netherland people
anxiously, eagerly desired it.  Her Majesty was adored by all the
inhabitants, who would gladly hang the fellows called the States.  Lord
North was of this opinion--so was Cavendish.  Leicester had always held
it.  "Sure I am," he said, "there is but one way for our safety, and that
is, that her Majesty may take that upon her which I fear she will not."
Thomas Wilkes, who now made his appearance on the scene, held the same
language.  This distinguished civilian had been sent by the Queen, early
in August, to look into the state of Netherland affairs.  Leicester
having expressly urged the importance of selecting as wise a politician
as could be found--because the best man in England would hardly be found
a match for the dullards and drunkards, as it was the fashion there to
call the Dutch statesmen--had selected Wilkes.  After fulfilling this
important special mission, he was immediately afterwards to return to the
Netherlands as English member of the state-council, at forty shillings
a-day, in the place of "little Hal Killigrew," whom Leicester pronounced
a "quicker and stouter fellow" than he had at first taken him for,
although he had always thought well of him.  The other English
counsellor, Dr. Bartholomew Clerk, was to remain, and the Earl declared
that he too, whom he had formerly undervalued, and thought to have
"little stuff in him," was now "increasing greatly in understanding."
But notwithstanding this intellectual progress, poor Bartholomew, who
was no beginner, was most anxious to retire.  He was a man of peace,
a professor, a doctor of laws, fonder of the learned leisure and the
trim gardens of England than of the scenes which now surrounded him.
"I beseech your good Lordship to consider," he dismally observed to
Burghley, "what a hard case it is for a man that these fifteen years hath
had vitam sedentariam, unworthily in a place judicial, always in his long
robe, and who, twenty-four years since, was a public reader in the
University (and therefore cannot be young), to come now among guns and
drums, tumbling up and down, day and night, over waters and banks, dykes
and ditches, upon every occasion that falleth out; hearing many
insolences with silence, bearing many hard measures with patience--
a course most different from my nature, and most unmeet for him that
hath ever professed learning."

Wilkes was of sterner stuff.  Always ready to follow the camp and to
face the guns and drums with equanimity, and endowed beside with keen
political insight, he was more competent than most men to unravel the
confused skein of Netherland politics.  He soon found that the Queen's
secret negotiations with Spain, and the general distrust of her
intentions in regard to the Provinces, were like to have fatal
consequences.  Both he and Leicester painted the anxiety of the
Netherland people as to the intention of her Majesty in vivid colours.

The Queen could not make up her mind--in the very midst of the Greenwich
secret conferences, already described--to accept the Netherland
sovereignty.  "She gathereth from your letter," wrote Walsingham, "that
the only salve for this sore is to make herself proprietary of the
country, and to put in such an army as may be able to make head to the
enemy.  These two things being so contrary to her Majesty's disposition--
the one, for that it breedeth a doubt of a perpetual war, the other, for
that it requireth an increase of charges--do marvellously distract her,
and make her repent that ever she entered into the action."

Upon the great subject of the sovereignty, therefore, she was unable to
adopt the resolution so much desired by Leicester and by the people of
the Provinces; but she answered the Earl's communications concerning
Maurice and Hohenlo, Sir John Norris and the treasurer, in characteristic
but affectionate language.  And thus she wrote:

"Rob, I am afraid you will suppose, by my wandering writings, that a
midsummer's moon hath taken large possession of my brains this month; but
you must needs take things as they come in my head, though order be left
behind me.  When I remember your request to have a discreet and honest
man that may carry my mind, and see how all goes there, I have chosen
this bearer (Thomas Wilkes), whom you know and have made good trial of.
I have fraught him full of my conceipts of those country matters, and
imparted what way I mind to take and what is fit for you to use.  I am
sure you can credit him, and so I will be short with these few notes.
First, that Count Maurice and Count Hollock (Hohenlo) find themselves
trusted of you, esteemed of me, and to be carefully regarded, if ever
peace should happen, and of that assure them on my word, that yet never
deceived any.  And for Norris and other captains that voluntarily,
without commandment, have many years ventured their lives and won our
nation honour and themselves fame, let them not be discouraged by any
means, neither by new-come men nor by old trained soldiers elsewhere.
If there be fault in using of soldiers, or making of profit by them, let
them hear of it without open shame, and doubt not I will well chasten
them therefore.  It frets me not a little that the poor soldiers that
hourly venture life should want their due, that well deserve rather
reward; and look, in whom the fault may truly be proved, let them smart
therefore.  And if the treasurer be found untrue or negligent, according
to desert he shall be used.  But you know my old wont, that love not to
discharge from office without desert.  God forbid!  I pray you let this
bearer know what may be learned herein, and for the treasure I have
joined Sir Thomas Shirley to see all this money discharged in due sort,
where it needeth and behoveth.

"Now will I end, that do imagine I talk still with you, and therefore
loathly say farewell one hundred thousand times; though ever I pray God
bless you from all harm, and save you from all foes.  With my million and
legion of thanks for all your pains and cares,

                         "As you know ever the same,

                                                       "E. R.

"P. S.  Let Wilkes see that he is acceptable to you.  If anything there
be that W. shall desire answer of be such as you would have but me to
know, write it to myself.  You know I can keep both others' counsel and
mine own.  Mistrust not that anything you would have kept shall be
disclosed by me, for although this bearer ask many things, yet you may
answer him such as you shall think meet, and write to me the rest."

Thus, not even her favourite Leicester's misrepresentations could make
the Queen forget her ancient friendship for "her own crow;" but meantime
the relations between that "bunch of brethren," black Norris and the
rest, and Pelham, Hollock, and other high officers in Leicester's army,
had grown worse than ever.

One August evening there was a supper-party at Count Hollock's quarters
in Gertruydenberg.  A military foray into Brabant had just taken place,
under the lead of the Count, and of the Lord Marshal, Sir William Pelham.
The marshal had requested Lord Willoughby, with his troop of horse and
five hundred foot, to join in the enterprise, but, as usual, particular
pains had been taken that Sir John Norris should know nothing of the
affair.  Pelham and Hollock--who was "greatly in love with Mr. Pelham"--
had invited several other gentlemen high in Leicester's confidence to
accompany the expedition; and, among the rest, Sir Philip Sidney, telling
him that he "should see some good service."  Sidney came accordingly, in
great haste, from Flushing, bringing along with him Edward Norris--that
hot-headed young man, who, according to Leicester, "greatly governed his
elder brother"--but they arrived at Gertruydenberg too late.  The foray
was over, and the party--"having burned a village, and killed some boors"
--were on their return.  Sidney, not perhaps much regretting the loss of
his share in this rather inglorious shooting party, went down to the
water-side, accompanied by Captain Norris, to meet Hollock and the other
commanders.

As the Count stepped on shore he scowled ominously, and looked very much
out of temper.

"What has come to Hollock?"  whispered Captain Patton, a Scotchman,
to Sidney.  "Has he a quarrel with any of the party?  Look at his face!
He means mischief to somebody."

But Sidney was equally amazed at the sudden change in the German
general's countenance, and as unable to explain it.

Soon afterwards, the whole party, Hollock, Lewis William of Nassau, Lord
Carew, Lord Essex, Lord Willoughby, both the Sidneys, Roger Williams,
Pelham, Edward Norris, and the rest, went to the Count's lodgings, where
they supped, and afterwards set themselves seriously to drinking.

Norris soon perceived that he was no welcome guest; for he was not--like
Sidney--a stranger to the deep animosity which had long existed between
Sir John Norris and Sir William Pelham and his friends.  The carouse was
a tremendous one, as usually was the case where Hollock was the
Amphitryon, and, as the potations grew deeper, an intention became
evident on the part of some of the company to behave unhandsomely to
Norris.

For a time the young Captain ostentatiously restrained himself, very much
after the fashion of those meek individuals who lay their swords on the
tavern-table, with "God grant I may have no need of thee!"  The custom
was then prevalent at banquets for the revellers to pledge each other in
rotation, each draining a great cup, and exacting the same feat from his
neighbour, who then emptied his goblet as a challenge to his next
comrade.

The Lord Marshal took a beaker, and called out to Edward Norris.
"I drink to the health of my Lord Norris, and of my lady; your mother."
So saying, he emptied his glass.

The young man did not accept the pledge.

"Your Lordship knows," he said somewhat sullenly, "that I am not wont to
drink deep.  Mr. Sidney there can tell you that, for my health's sake,
I have drank no wine these eight days.  If your Lordship desires the
pleasure of seeing me drunk, I am not of the same mind.  I pray you at
least to take a smaller glass."

Sir William insisted on the pledge.  Norris then, in no very good humour,
emptied his cup to the Earl of Essex.

Essex responded by draining a goblet to Count Hollock.

"A Norris's father," said the young Earl; as he pledged the Count, who
was already very drunk, and looking blacker than ever.

"An 'orse's father--an 'orse's father!" growled' Hollock; "I never drink
to horses, nor to their fathers either:" and with this wonderful
witticism he declined the pledge.

Essex explained that the toast was Lord Norris, father of the Captain;
but the Count refused to understand, and held fiercely, and with damnable
iteration, to his jest.

The Earl repeated his explanation several times with no better success.
Norris meanwhile sat swelling with wrath, but said nothing.

Again the Lord Marshal took the same great glass, and emptied it to the
young Captain.

Norris, not knowing exactly what course to take, placed the glass at the
side of his plate, and glared grimly at Sir William.

Pelham was furious.  Reaching over the table, he shoved the glass towards
Norris with an angry gesture.

"Take your glass, Captain Norris," he cried; "and if you have a mind to
jest, seek other companions.  I am not to be trifled with; therefore, I
say, pledge me at once."

"Your Lordship shall not force me to drink more wine than I list,"
returned the other.  "It is your pleasure to take advantage of your
military rank.  Were we both at home, you would be glad to be my
companion."

Norris was hard beset, and although his language was studiously moderate,
it was not surprising that his manner should be somewhat insolent.  The
veteran Lord Marshal, on the other hand, had distinguished himself on
many battle-fields, but his deportment at this banqueting-table was not
much to his credit.  He paused a moment, and Norris, too, held his peace,
thinking that his enemy would desist.

It was but for a moment.

"Captain Norris," cried Pelham, "I bid you pledge me without more ado.
Neither you nor your best friends shall use me as you list.  I am better
born than you and your brother, the colonel-general, and the whole of
you."

"I warn you to say nothing disrespectful against my brother," replied the
Captain.  "As for yourself, I know how to respect your age and superior
rank."

"Drink, drink, drink!" roared the old Marshal.  "I tell you I am better
born than the best of you.  I have advanced you all too, and you know it;
therefore drink to me."

Sir William was as logical as men in their cups are prone to be.

"Indeed, you have behaved well to my brother Thomas," answered Norris,
suddenly becoming very courteous, "and for this I have ever loved your
Lordship, and would, do you any service."

"Well, then," said the Marshal, becoming tender in his turn, "forget what
hath past this night, and do as you would have done before."

"Very well said, indeed!" cried Sir Philip Sidney, trying to help the
natter into the smoother channel towards which it was tending.

Norris, seeing that the eyes of the whole company were upon them; took
the glass accordingly, and rose to his feet.

"My Lord Marshal," he said, "you have done me more wrong this night than
you can easily make satisfaction for.  But I am unwilling that any
trouble or offence should grow through me.  Therefore once more I pledge
you."

He raised the cup to his lips.  At that instant Hollock, to whom nothing
had been said, and who had spoken no word since his happy remark about
the horse's father, suddenly indulged in a more practical jest; and
seizing the heavy gilt cover of a silver vase, hurled it at the head of
Norris.  It struck him full on the forehead, cutting him to the bone.
The Captain, stunned for a moment, fell back in his chair, with the blood
running down his eyes and face.  The Count, always a man of few words,
but prompt in action, now drew his dagger, and strode forward, with the
intention of despatching him upon the spot.  Sir Philip Sidney threw his
arms around Hollock, however, and, with the assistance of others in the
company, succeeded in dragging him from the room.  The affair was over in
a few seconds.

Norris, coming back to consciousness, sat for a moment as one amazed,
rubbing the blood out of his eyes; then rose from the table to seek his
adversary; but he was gone.

Soon afterwards he went to his lodgings.  The next morning he was advised
to leave the town as speedily as possible; for as it was under the
government of Hollock, and filled with his soldiers, he was warned that
his life would not be safe there an hour.  Accordingly he went to his
boat, accompanied only by his man and his page, and so departed with his
broken head, breathing vengeance against Hollock, Pelham, Leicester, and
the whole crew, by whom he had been thus abused.

The next evening there was another tremendous carouse at the Count's,
and, says the reporter of the preceding scene, "they were all on such
good terms, that not one of the company had falling band or ruff left
about his neck.  All were clean torn away, and yet there was no blood
drawn."

Edward Norris--so soon as might be afterwards--sent a cartel to the
Count, demanding mortal combat with sword and dagger.  Sir Philip Sidney
bore the message.  Sir John Norris, of course warmly and violently
espoused the cause of his brother, and was naturally more incensed
against the Lord Marshal than ever, for Sir William Pelham was considered
the cause of the whole affray.  "Even if the quarrel is to be excused by
drink," said an eye-witness, "'tis but a slender defence for my Lord to
excuse himself by his cups; and often drink doth bewray men's humours and
unmask their malice.  Certainly the Count Hollock thought to have done a
pleasure to the company in killing him."

Nothing could be more ill-timed than this quarrel, or more vexatious to
Leicester.  The Count--although considering himself excessively injured
at being challenged by a simple captain and an untitled gentleman, whom
he had attempted to murder--consented to waive his privilege, and grant
the meeting.

Leicester interposed, however, to delay, and, if possible, to patch up
the affair.  They were on the eve of active military operations, and it
was most vexatious for the commander-in-chief to see, as he said, "the
quarrel with the enemy changed to private revenge among ourselves."  The
intended duel did not take place; for various influential personages
succeeded in deferring the meeting.  Then came the battle of Zutphen.

Sidney fell, and Hollock was dangerously wounded in the attack which was
soon afterwards made upon the fort.  He was still pressed to afford the
promised satisfaction, however, and agreed to do so whenever he should
rise from his bed.

Strange to say, the Count considered Leicester, throughout the whole
business, to have taken part against him.

Yet there is no doubt whatever that the Earl--who detested the Norrises,
and was fonder of Pelham than of any man living--uniformly narrated
the story most unjustly, to the discredit of the young Captain.
He considered him extremely troublesome, represented him as always
quarrelling with some one--with Colonel Morgan, Roger Williams, old
Reade, and all the rest--while the Lord Marshal, on the contrary, was
depicted as the mildest of men.  "This I must say," he observed, "that
all present, except my two nephews (the Sidneys), who are not here yet,
declare the greatest fault to be in Edward Norris, and that he did most
arrogantly use the Marshal."

It is plain, however, that the old Marshal, under the influence of wine,
was at least quite as much to blame as the young Captain; and Sir Philip
Sidney sufficiently showed his sense of the matter by being the bearer of
Edward Norris's cartel.  After Sidney's death, Sir John Norris, in his
letter of condolence to Walsingham for the death of his illustrious son-
in-law, expressed the deeper regret at his loss because Sir Philip's
opinion had been that the Norrises were wronged.  Hollock had conducted
himself like a lunatic, but this he was apt to do whether in his cups or
not.  He was always for killing some one or another on the slightest
provocation, and, while the dog-star of 1586 was raging, it was not his
fault if he had not already despatched both Edward Norris and the
objectionable "Mr. P. B."

For these energetic demonstrations against Leicester's enemies he
considered himself entitled to the Earl's eternal gratitude, and was
deeply disgusted at his apparent coldness.  The governor was driven
almost to despair by these quarrels.

His colonel-general, his lord marshal, his lieutenant-general, were all
at daggers drawn.  "Would God I were rid of this place!" he exclaimed.
"What man living would go to the field and have his officers divided
almost into mortal quarrel?  One blow but by any of their lackeys brings
us altogether by the ears."

It was clear that there was not room enough on the Netherland soil for
the Earl of Leicester and the brothers Norris.  The queen, while
apparently siding with the Earl, intimated to Sir John that she did not
disapprove his conduct, that she should probably recall him to England,
and that she should send him back to the Provinces after the Earl had
left that country.

Such had been the position of the governor-general towards the Queen,
towards the States-General, and towards his own countrymen, during the
year 1586.



ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Are wont to hang their piety on the bell-rope
Arminianism
As logical as men in their cups are prone to be
Tolerating religious liberty had never entered his mind



End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v49
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 50, 1586



CHAPTER. XI

     Drake in the Netherlands--Good Results of his Visit--The Babington
     Conspiracy--Leicester decides to visit England--Exchange of parting
     Compliments.

Late in the autumn of the same year an Englishman arrived in the
Netherlands, bearer of despatches from the Queen.  He had been entrusted
by her Majesty with a special mission to the States-General, and he had
soon an interview with that assembly at the Hague.

He was a small man, apparently forty-five years of age, of a fair but
somewhat weather-stained complexion, with light-brown, closely-curling
hair, an expansive forehead, a clear blue eye, rather commonplace
features, a thin, brown, pointed beard, and a slight moustache.  Though
low of stature, he was broad-chested, with well-knit limbs.  His hands,
which were small and nervous, were brown and callous with the marks of
toil.  There was something in his brow and glance not to be mistaken,
and which men willingly call master; yet he did not seem, to have sprung
of the born magnates of the earth.  He wore a heavy gold chain about his
neck, and it might be observed that upon the light full sleeves of his
slashed doublet the image of a small ship on a terrestrial globe was
curiously and many times embroidered.

It was not the first time that he had visited the Netherlands.  Thirty
years before the man had been apprentice on board a small lugger, which
traded between the English coast and the ports of Zeeland.  Emerging in
early boyhood from his parental mansion--an old boat, turned bottom
upwards on a sandy down he had naturally taken to the sea, and his
master, dying childless not long afterwards, bequeathed to him the
lugger.  But in time his spirit, too much confined by coasting in the
narrow seas, had taken a bolder flight.  He had risked his hard-earned
savings in a voyage with the old slave-trader, John Hawkins--whose
exertions, in what was then considered an honourable and useful vocation,
had been rewarded by Queen Elizabeth with her special favour, and with a
coat of arms, the crest whereof was a negro's head, proper, chained--but
the lad's first and last enterprise in this field was unfortunate.
Captured by Spaniards, and only escaping with life, he determined to
revenge himself on the whole Spanish nation; and this was considered a
most legitimate proceeding according to the "sea divinity" in which he,
had been schooled.  His subsequent expeditions against the Spanish
possessions in the West Indies were eminently successful, and soon the
name of Francis Drake rang through the world, and startled Philip in the
depths of his Escorial.  The first Englishman, and the second of any
nation, he then ploughed his memorable "furrow round the earth," carrying
amazement and, destruction to the Spaniards as he sailed, and after three
years brought to the Queen treasure enough, as it was asserted, to
maintain a war with the Spanish King for seven years, and to pay himself
and companions, and the merchant-adventurers who had participated in his
enterprise, forty-seven pounds sterling for every pound invested in the
voyage.  The speculation had been a fortunate one both, for himself and
for the kingdom.

The terrible Sea-King was one of the great types of the sixteenth
century.  The self-helping private adventurer, in his little vessel the
'Golden Hind,' one hundred tons burthen, had waged successful war against
a mighty empire, and had shown England how to humble Philip.  When he
again set foot on his native soil he was followed by admiring crowds,
and became the favourite hero of romance and ballad; for it was not the
ignoble pursuit of gold alone, through toil and peril, which had endeared
his name to the nation.  The popular instinct recognized that the true
means had been found at last for rescuing England and Protestantism from
the overshadowing empire of Spain.  The Queen visited him in his 'Golden
Hind,' and gave him the honour of knighthood.

The treaty between the United Netherlands and England had been followed
by an embargo upon English vessels, persons, and property, in the ports
of Spain; and after five years of unwonted repose, the privateersman
again set forth with twenty-five small vessels--of which five or six only
were armed--under his command, conjoined with that of General Carlisle.
This time the voyage was undertaken with full permission and assistance
of the Queen who, however, intended to disavow him, if she should find
such a step convenient.  This was the expedition in which Philip Sidney
had desired to take part.  The Queen watched its result with intense
anxiety, for the fate of her Netherland adventure was thought to be
hanging on the issue.  "Upon Drake's voyage, in very truth, dependeth the
life and death of the cause, according to man's judgment," said
Walsingham.

The issue was encouraging, even, if the voyage--as a mercantile
speculation--proved not so brilliant as the previous enterprises of Sir
Francis had been.  He returned in the midsummer of 1586, having captured
and brandschatzed St. Domingo and Carthagena; and burned St. Augustine.
"A fearful man to the King of Spain is Sir Francis Drake," said Lord
Burghley.  Nevertheless, the Queen and the Lord-Treasurer--as we have
shown by the secret conferences at Greenwich--had, notwithstanding these
successes, expressed a more earnest desire for peace than ever.

A simple, sea-faring Englishman, with half-a-dozen miserable little
vessels, had carried terror, into the Spanish possessions all over the
earth: but even then the great Queen had not learned to rely on the
valour of her volunteers against her most formidable enemy.

Drake was, however, bent on another enterprise.  The preparations for
Philip's great fleet had been going steadily forward in Lisbon, Cadiz,
and other ports of Spain and Portugal, and, despite assurances to the
contrary, there was a growing belief that England was to be invaded.
To destroy those ships before the monarch's face, would be, indeed, to
"singe his beard."  But whose arm was daring enough for such a stroke?
Whose but that of the Devonshire skipper who had already accomplished so
much?

And so Sir Francis, "a man true to his word, merciful to those under him,
and hating nothing so much as idleness," had come to the Netherlands to
talk over his project with the States-General, and with the Dutch
merchants and sea-captains.  His visit was not unfruitful.  As a body the
assembly did nothing; but they recommended that in every maritime city of
Holland and Zeeland one or two ships should be got ready, to participate
in all the future enterprises of Sir Francis and his comrades.

The martial spirit of volunteer sailors, and the keen instinct of
mercantile speculation, were relied upon--exactly as in England--
to furnish men, ships, and money, for these daring and profitable
adventures.  The foundation of a still more intimate connection between
England and Holland was laid, and thenceforth Dutchmen and Englishmen
fought side by side, on land and sea, wherever a blow was to be struck in
the cause of human freedom against despotic Spain.

The famous Babington conspiracy, discovered by Walsingham's "travail and
cost," had come to convince the Queen and her counsellors--if further
proof were not superfluous--that her throne and life were both
incompatible with Philip's deep designs, and that to keep that monarch
out of the Netherlands, was as vital to her as to keep him out of
England.  "She is forced by this discovery to countenance the cause by
all outward means she may," said Walsingham, "for it appeareth unto her
most plain, that unless she had entered into the action, she had been
utterly undone, and that if she do not prosecute the same she cannot
continue."  The Secretary had sent Leicester information at an early day
of the great secret, begging his friend to "make the letter a heretic
after be had read the same," and expressing the opinion that "the matter,
if well handled, would break the neck of all dangerous practices during
her Majesty's reign."

The tragedy of Mary Stuart--a sad but inevitable portion of the vast
drama in which the emancipation of England and Holland, and, through
them, of half Christendom, was accomplished--approached its catastrophe;
and Leicester could not restrain his anxiety for her immediate execution.
He reminded Walsingham that the great seal had been put upon a warrant
for her execution for a less crime seventeen years before, on the
occasion of the Northumberland and Westmorland rebellion.  "For who can
warrant these villains from her," he said, "if that person live, or shall
live any time?  God forbid!  And be you all stout and resolute in this
speedy execution, or be condemned of all the world for ever.  It is most.
certain, if you will have your Majesty safe, it must be done, for justice
doth crave it beside policy."  His own personal safety was deeply
compromised.  "Your Lordship and I," wrote Burghley, "were very great
motes in the traitors' eyes; for your Lordship there and I here should
first, about one time, have been killed.  Of your Lordship they thought
rather of poisoning than slaying.  After us two gone, they purposed her
Majesty's death."

But on this great affair of state the Earl was not swayed by such
personal considerations.  He honestly thought--as did all the statesmen
who governed England--that English liberty, the very existence of the
English commonwealth, was impossible so long as Mary Stuart lived.  Under
these circumstances he was not impatient, for a time at least, to leave
the Netherlands.  His administration had not been very successful.
He had been led away by his own vanity, and by the flattery of artful
demagogues, but the immense obstacles with which he had to contend in the
Queen's wavering policy, and in the rivalry of both English and Dutch
politicians have been amply exhibited.  That he had been generous,
courageous, and zealous, could not be denied; and, on the whole, he had
accomplished as much in the field as could have been expected of him with
such meagre forces, and so barren an exchequer.

It must be confessed, however, that his leaving the Netherlands at that
moment was a most unfortunate step, both for his own reputation and for
the security of the Provinces.  Party-spirit was running high, and a
political revolution was much to be dreaded in so grave a position of
affairs, both in England and Holland.  The arrangements--and particularly
the secret arrangements which he made at his departure--were the most
fatal measures of all; but these will be described in the following
chapter.

On the 31st October; the Earl announced to the state-council his
intention of returning to England, stating, as the cause of this sudden
determination, that he had been summoned to attend the parliament then
sitting in Westminster.  Wilkes, who was of course present, having now
succeeded Killigrew as one of the two English members, observed that "the
States and council used but slender entreaty to his Excellency for his
stay and countenance there among them, whereat his Excellency and we that
were of the council for her Majesty did not a little marvel."

Some weeks later, however, upon the 21st November, Leicester summoned
Barneveld, and five other of the States General, to discuss the necessary
measures for his departure, when those gentlemen remonstrated very
earnestly upon the step, pleading the danger and confusion of affairs
which must necessarily ensue.  The Earl declared that he was not retiring
from the country because he was offended, although he had many causes for
offence: and he then alluded to the, Navigation Act, to the establishment
council, and spoke of the finance of Burgrave and Reingault, for his
employment of which individuals so much obloquy had been heaped upon his,
head.  Burgrave he pronounced, as usual, a substantial, wise, faithful,
religious personage, entitled to fullest confidence; while Reingault--
who had been thrown into prison by the States on charges of fraud,
peculation, and sedition--he declared to be a great financier, who had
promised, on penalty of his head, to bring "great sums into the treasury
for carrying on the war, without any burthen to the community."  Had he
been able to do this, he had certainly claim to be considered the
greatest of financiers; but the promised "mountains of gold" were never
discovered, and Reingault was now awaiting his trial.

The deputies replied that the concessions upon the Navigation Act had
satisfied the country, but that Reingault was a known instrument of the
Spaniards, and Burgrave a mischief-making demagogue, who consorted with
malignants, and sent slanderous reports concerning the States and the
country to her Majesty.  They had in consequence felt obliged to write
private despatches to envoy Ortel in England, not because they suspected
the Earl, but in order to counteract the calumnies of his chief advisers.
They had urged the agent to bring the imprisonment of Paul Buys before
her Majesty, but for that transaction Leicester boldly disclaimed all
responsibility.

It was agreed between the Earl and the deputies that, during his absence,
the whole government, civil and military, should devolve upon the state-
council, and that Sir John Norris should remain in command of the English
forces.

Two days afterwards Leicester, who knew very well that a legation was
about to proceed to England, without any previous concurrence on his
part, summoned a committee of the States-General, together with
Barneveld, into the state-council.  Counsellor Wilkes on his behalf then
made a speech, in which he observed that more ample communications on the
part of the States were to be expected.  They had in previous colloquies
touched upon comparatively unimportant matters, but he now begged to be
informed why these commissioners were proceeding to England, and what was
the nature of their instructions.  Why did not they formally offer the
sovereignty of the Provinces to the Queen without conditions?  That step
had already been taken by Utrecht.

The deputies conferred apart for a little while, and then replied that
the proposition made by Utrecht was notoriously factious, illegal, and
altogether futile.  Without the sanction of all the United States, of
what value was the declaration of Utrecht?  Moreover the charter of that
province had been recklessly violated, its government overthrown, and its
leading citizens banished.  The action of the Province under such
circumstances was not deserving of comment; but should it appear that her
Majesty was desirous of assuming the sovereignty of the Provinces upon
reasonable conditions, the States of Holland and of Zeeland would not be
found backward in the business.

Leicester proposed that Prince Maurice of Nassau should go with him to
England, as nominal chief of the embassy, and some of the deputies
favoured the suggestion.  It was however, vigorously and successfully
opposed by Barneveld, who urged that to leave the country without a head
in such a dangerous position of affairs, would be an act of madness.
Leicester was much annoyed when informed of this decision.  He was
suspected of a design, during his absence, of converting Maurice entirely
to his own way of thinking.  If unsuccessful, it was believed by the
Advocate and by many others that the Earl would cause the young Prince to
be detained in England as long as Philip William, his brother, had been
kept in Spain.  He observed peevishly that he knew how it had all been
brought about.

Words, of course, and handsome compliments were exchanged between the
Governor and the States-General on his departure.  He protested that he
had never pursued any private ends during his administration, but had
ever sought to promote the good of the country and the glory of the
Queen, and that he had spent three hundred thousand florins of his own
money in the brief period of his residence there.

The Advocate, on part of the States, assured him that they were all aware
that in the friendship of England lay their only chance of salvation, but
that united action was the sole means by which that salvation could be
effected, and the one which had enabled the late Prince of Orange to
maintain a contest unequalled by anything recorded in history.  There was
also much disquisition on the subject of finance--the Advocate observing
that the States now raised as much in a month as the Provinces in the
time of the Emperor used to levy in a year--and expressed the hope that
the Queen would increase her contingent to ten thousand foot, and two
thousand horse.  He repudiated, in the name of the States-General and his
own, the possibility of peace-negotiations; deprecated any allusion to
the subject as fatal to their religion, their liberty, their very
existence, and equally disastrous to England and to Protestantism, and
implored the Earl, therefore, to use all his influence in opposition to
any pacific overtures to or from Spain.

On the 24th November, acts were drawn up and signed by the Earl,
according to which the supreme government of the United Netherlands was
formally committed to the state-council during his absence.  Decrees were
to be pronounced in the name of his Excellency, and countersigned by
Maurice of Nassau.

On the following day, Leicester, being somewhat indisposed, requested a
deputation of the States-General to wait upon him in his own house.  This
was done, and a formal and affectionate farewell was then read to him by
his secretary, Mr. Atye.  It was responded to in complimentary fashion by
Advocate Barneveld, who again took occasion at this parting interview to
impress upon the governor the utter impossibility, in his own opinion and
that of the other deputies, of reconciling the Provinces with Spain.

Leicester received from the States--as a magnificent parting present--
a silver gilt vase "as tall as a man," and then departed for Flushing to
take shipping for England.




CHAPTER XII.

     Ill-timed Interregnum in the Provinces--Firmness of the English and
     Dutch People--Factions during Leicester's Government--Democratic
     Theories of the Leicestriana--Suspicions as to the Earl's Designs--
     Extreme Views of the Calvinists--Political Ambition of the Church--
     Antagonism of the Church and States--The States inclined to
     Tolerance--Desolation of the Obedient Provinces--Pauperism and
     Famine--Prosperity of the Republic--The Year of Expectation.

It was not unnatural that the Queen should desire the presence of her
favourite at that momentous epoch, when the dread question, "aut fer aut
feri," had at last demanded its definite solution.  It was inevitable,
too, that Leicester should feel great anxiety to be upon the spot where
the great tragedy, so full of fate to all Christendom, and in which his
own fortunes were so closely involved, was to be enacted.  But it was
most cruel to the Netherlands--whose well-being was nearly as important
to Elizabeth as that of her own realm--to plunge them into anarchy at
such a moment.  Yet this was the necessary result of the sudden
retirement of Leicester.

He did not resign his government.  He did not bind himself to return.
The question of sovereignty was still unsettled, for it was still hoped
by a large and influential party, that the English Queen would accept the
proposed annexation.  It was yet doubtful, whether, during the period of
abeyance, the States-General or the States-Provincial, each within their
separate sphere, were entitled to supreme authority.  Meantime, as if
here were not already sufficient elements of dissension and doubt, came a
sudden and indefinite interregnum, a provisional, an abnormal, and an
impotent government.  To the state-council was deputed the executive
authority.  But the state-council was a creature of the States-General,
acting in concert with the governor-general, and having no actual life of
its own.  It was a board of consultation, not of decision, for it could
neither enact its own decrees nor interpose a veto upon the decrees of
the governor.

Certainly the selection of Leicester to fill so important a post had not
been a very fortunate one; and the enthusiasm which had greeted him, "as
if he had been a Messiah," on his arrival, had very rapidly dwindled
away, as his personal character became known.  The leading politicians of
the country had already been aware of the error which they had committed
in clothing with almost sovereign powers the delegate of one who had
refused the sovereignty.  They, were too adroit to neglect the
opportunity, which her Majesty's anger offered them, of repairing what
they considered their blunder.  When at last the quarrel, which looked so
much like a lovers' quarrel, between Elizabeth and 'Sweet Robin,' had
been appeased to the satisfaction of Robin, his royal mistress became
more angry with the States for circumscribing than she had before been
for their exaggeration of his authority.  Hence the implacable hatred of
Leicester to Paul Buys and Barneveld.

Those two statesmen, for eloquence, learning, readiness, administrative
faculty, surpassed by few who have ever wielded the destinies of free
commonwealths, were fully equal to the task thrown upon their hands by
the progress of events.  That task was no slight one, for it was to the
leading statesmen of Holland and England, sustained by the indomitable
resistance to despotism almost universal in the English and Dutch
nations, that the liberty of Europe was entrusted at that, momentous
epoch.  Whether united under one crown, as the Netherlands ardently
desired, or closely allied for aggression and defence, the two peoples
were bound indissolubly together.  The clouds were rolling up from the
fatal south, blacker and more portentous than ever; the artificial
equilibrium of forces, by which the fate of France was kept in suspense,
was obviously growing every day more uncertain; but the prolonged and
awful interval before the tempest should burst over the lands of freedom
and Protestantism, gave at least time for the prudent to prepare.  The
Armada was growing every day in the ports of Spain and Portugal, and
Walsingham doubted, as little as did Buys or Barneveld, toward what
shores that invasion was to be directed.  England was to be conquered in
order that the rebellious Netherlands might be reduced; and 'Mucio' was
to be let slip upon the unhappy Henry III. so soon as it was thought
probable that the Bearnese and the Valois had sufficiently exhausted each
other.  Philip was to reign in Paris, Amsterdam, London, and Edinburgh,
without stirring from the Escorial.  An excellent programme, had there
not been some English gentlemen, some subtle secretaries of state, some
Devonshire skippers, some Dutch advocates and merchants, some Zeeland
fly-boatsmen, and six million men, women, and children, on the two sides
of the North Sea, who had the power of expressing their thoughts rather
bluntly than otherwise, in different dialects of old Anglo-Saxon speech.

Certainly it would be unjust and ungracious to disparage the heroism of
the great Queen when the hour of danger really came, nor would it be
legitimate for us, who can scan that momentous year of expectation, 1587,
by the light of subsequent events and of secret contemporaneous record,
to censure or even sharply to criticise the royal hankering for peace,
when peace had really become impossible.  But as we shall have occasion
to examine rather closely the secrets of the Spanish, French, English,
and Dutch councils, during this epoch, we are likely to find, perhaps,
that at least as great a debt is due to the English and Dutch people, in
mass, for the preservation of European liberty at that disastrous epoch
as to any sovereign, general, or statesman.

For it was in the great waters of the sixteenth century that the nations
whose eyes were open, discovered the fountain of perpetual youth, while
others, who were blind, passed rapidly onward to decrepitude.  England
was, in many respects, a despotism so far as regarded governmental forms;
and no doubt the Catholics were treated with greater rigour than could be
justified even by the perpetual and most dangerous machinations of the
seminary priests and their instigators against the throne and life of
Elizabeth.  The word liberty was never musical in Tudor ears, yet
Englishmen had blunt tongues and sharp weapons which rarely rusted for
want of use.  In the presence of a parliament, and the absence of a
standing army, a people accustomed to read the Bible in the vernacular,
to handle great questions of religion and government freely, and to bear
arms at will, was most formidable to despotism.  There was an advance on
the olden time.  A Francis Drake, a John Hawkins, a Roger Williams, might
have been sold, under the Plantagenets, like an ox or an ass.  A 'female
villain' in the reign of Henry III. could have been purchased for
eighteen shillings--hardly the price of a fatted pig, and not one-third
the value of an ambling palfrey--and a male villain, such an one as could
in Elizabeth's reign circumnavigate the globe in his own ship, or take
imperial field-marshals by the beard, was worth but two or three pounds
sterling in the market.  Here was progress in three centuries, for the
villains were now become admirals and generals in England and Holland,
and constituted the main stay of these two little commonwealths, while
the commanders who governed the 'invincible' fleets and armies of
omnipotent Spain, were all cousins of emperors, or grandees of bluest
blood.  Perhaps the system of the reformation would not prove the least
effective in the impending crisis.

It was most important, then, that these two nations should be united in
council, and should stand shoulder to shoulder as their great enemy
advanced.  But this was precisely what had been rendered almost
impossible by the course of events during Leicester's year of
administration, and by his sudden but not final retirement at its close.
The two great national parties which had gradually been forming, had
remained in a fluid state during the presence of the governor-general.
During his absence they gradually hardened into the forms which they were
destined to retain for centuries.  In the history of civil liberty, these
incessant contests, these oral and written disquisitions, these sharp
concussions of opinion, and the still harder blows, which, unfortunately,
were dealt on a few occasions by the combatants upon each other, make the
year 1587 a memorable one.  The great questions of the origin of
government, the balance of dynastic forces, the distribution of powers,
were dealt with by the ablest heads, both Dutch and English, that could
be employed in the service of the kingdom and republic.  It was a war of
protocols, arguments, orations, rejoinders, apostilles, and pamphlets;
very wholesome for the cause of free institutions and the intellectual
progress of mankind.  The reader may perhaps be surprised to see with how
much vigour and boldness the grave questions which underlie all polity,
were handled so many years before the days of Russell and Sidney, of
Montesquieu and Locke, Franklin, Jefferson, Rousseau, and Voltaire; and
he may be even more astonished to find exceedingly democratic doctrines
propounded, if not believed in, by trained statesmen of the Elizabethan
school.  He will be also apt to wonder that a more fitting time could not
be found for such philosophical debate than the epoch at which both the
kingdom and the republic were called upon to strain every sinew against
the most formidable and aggressive despotism that the world had known
since the fall of the Roman Empire.

The great dividing-line between the two parties, that of Leicester and
that of Holland, which controlled the action of the States-General, was
the question of sovereignty.  After the declaration of independence and
the repudiation of Philip, to whom did the sovereignty belong?  To the
people, said the Leicestrians.  To the States-General and the States-
Provincial, as legitimate representatives of the people, said the Holland
party.  Without looking for the moment more closely into this question,
which we shall soon find ably discussed by the most acute reasoners of
the time, it is only important at present to make a preliminary
reflection.  The Earl of Leicester, of all men is the world, would seem
to have been precluded by his own action, and by the action of his Queen,
from taking ground against the States.  It was the States who, by solemn
embassy, had offered the sovereignty to Elizabeth.  She had not accepted
the offer, but she had deliberated on the subject, and certainly she had
never expressed a doubt whether or not the offer had been legally made.
By the States, too, that governor-generalship had been conferred upon the
Earl, which had been so thankfully and eagerly accepted.  It was strange,
then, that he should deny the existence of the power whence his own
authority was derived.  If the States were not sovereigns of the
Netherlands, he certainly was nothing.  He was but general of a few
thousand English troops.

The Leicester party, then, proclaimed extreme democratic principles as to
the origin of government and the sovereignty of the people.  They sought
to strengthen and to make almost absolute the executive authority of
their chief, on the ground that such was the popular will; and they
denounced with great acrimony the insolence of the upstart members of the
States, half a dozen traders, hired advocates, churls, tinkers, and the
like--as Leicester was fond of designating the men who opposed him--in
assuming these airs of sovereignty.

This might, perhaps, be philosophical doctrine, had its supporters not
forgotten that there had never been any pretence at an expression of the
national will, except through the mouths of the States.  The States-
General and the States-Provincial, without any usurpation, but as a
matter of fact and of great political convenience, had, during fifteen
years, exercised the authority which had fallen from Philip's hands.
The people hitherto had acquiesced in their action, and certainly there
had not yet been any call for a popular convention, or any other device
to ascertain the popular will.  It was also difficult to imagine what was
the exact entity of this abstraction called the "people" by men who
expressed such extreme contempt for "merchants, advocates, town-orators,
churls, tinkers, and base mechanic men, born not to command but to obey."
Who were the people when the educated classes and the working classes
were thus carefully eliminated?  Hardly the simple peasantry--the boors--
who tilled the soil.  At that day the agricultural labourers less than
all others dreamed of popular sovereignty, and more than all others
submitted to the mild authority of the States.  According to the theory
of the Netherland constitutions, they were supposed--and they had
themselves not yet discovered the fallacies to which such doctrines could
lead--to be represented by the nobles and country-squires who maintained
in the States of each Province the general farming interests of the
republic.  Moreover, the number of agricultural peasants was
comparatively small.  The lower classes were rather accustomed to plough
the sea than the land, and their harvests were reaped from that element,
which to Hollanders and Zeelanders was less capricious than the solid
earth.  Almost every inhabitant of those sea-born territories was, in one
sense or another, a mariner; for every highway was a canal; the soil was
percolated by rivers and estuaries, pools and meres; the fisheries were
the nurseries in which still more daring navigators rapidly learned their
trade, and every child took naturally to the ocean as to its legitimate
home.

The "people," therefore, thus enthroned by the Leicestrians over all
the inhabitants of the country, appeared to many eyes rather a misty
abstraction, and its claim of absolute sovereignty a doctrine almost as
fantastic as that of the divine right of kings.  The Netherlanders were,
on the whole, a law-abiding people, preferring to conduct even a
revolution according to precedent, very much attached to ancient usages
and traditions, valuing the liberties, as they called them, which they
had wrested from what had been superior force, with their own right
hands, preferring facts to theories, and feeling competent to deal with
tyrants in the concrete rather than to annihilate tyranny in the abstract
by a bold and generalizing phraseology.  Moreover the opponents of the
Leicester party complained that the principal use to which this newly
discovered "people" had been applied, was to confer its absolute
sovereignty unconditionally upon one man.  The people was to be sovereign
in order that it might immediately abdicate in favour of the Earl.

Utrecht, the capital of the Leicestrians, had already been deprived of
its constitution.  The magistracy was, according to law, changed every
year.  A list of candidates was furnished by the retiring board, an equal
number of names was added by the governor of the Province, and from the
catalogue thus composed the governor with his council selected the new
magistrates for the year.  But De Villiers, the governor of the Province,
had been made a prisoner by the enemy in the last campaign; Count Moeurs
had been appointed provisional stadholder by the States; and, during his
temporary absence on public affairs, the Leicestrians had seized upon the
government, excluded all the ancient magistrates, banished many leading
citizens from the town, and installed an entirely new board, with Gerard
Proninck, called Deventer, for chief burgomaster, who was a Brabantine
refugee just arrived in the Province, and not eligible to office until
after ten years' residence.

It was not unnatural that the Netherlanders, who remembered the scenes
of bloodshed and disorder produced by the memorable attempt of the Duke
of Anjou to obtain possession of Antwerp and other cities, should be
suspicious of Leicester.  Anjou, too, had been called to the Provinces by
the voluntary action of the States.  He too had been hailed as a Messiah
and a deliverer.  In him too had unlimited confidence been reposed, and
he had repaid their affection and their gratitude by a desperate attempt
to obtain the control of their chief cities by the armed hand, and thus
to constitute himself absolute sovereign of the Netherlands.  The
inhabitants had, after a bloody contest, averted the intended massacre
and the impending tyranny; but it was not astonishing that--so very, few
years having elapsed since those tragical events--they should be inclined
to scan severely the actions of the man who had already obtained by
unconstitutional means the mastery of a most important city, and was
supposed to harbour designs upon all the cities.

No, doubt it was a most illiberal and unwise policy for the inhabitants
of the independent States to exclude from office the wanderers, for
conscience' sake, from the obedient Provinces.  They should have been
welcomed heart and hand by those who were their brethren in religion and
in the love of freedom.  Moreover, it was notorious that Hohenlo,
lieutenant-general under Maurice of Nassau, was a German, and that by the
treaty with England, two foreigners sat in the state council, while the
army swarmed with English, Irish, end German officers in high command.
Nevertheless, violently to subvert the constitution of a Province, and to
place in posts of high responsibility men who were ineligible--some whose
characters were suspicious, and some who were known to be dangerous, and
to banish large numbers of respectable burghers--was the act of a despot.

Besides their democratic doctrines, the Leicestrians proclaimed and
encouraged an exclusive and rigid Calvinism.

It would certainly be unjust and futile to detract from the vast debt
which the republic owed to the Geneva Church.  The reformation had
entered the Netherlands by the Walloon gate.  The earliest and most
eloquent preachers, the most impassioned converts, the sublimest martyrs,
had lived, preached, fought, suffered, and died with the precepts of
Calvin in their hearts.  The fire which had consumed the last vestige of
royal and sacerdotal despotism throughout the independent republic, had
been lighted by the hands of Calvinists.

Throughout the blood-stained soil of France, too, the men who were
fighting the same great battle as were the Netherlanders against Philip
II. and the Inquisition, the valiant cavaliers of Dauphiny and Provence,
knelt on the ground, before the battle, smote their iron breasts with
their mailed hands, uttered a Calvinistic prayer, sang a psalm of Marot,
and then charged upon Guise, or upon Joyeuse, under the white plume of
the Bearnese.  And it was on the Calvinist weavers and clothiers of
Rochelle that the great Prince relied in the hour of danger as much as on
his mountain chivalry.  In England too, the seeds of liberty, wrapped up
in Calvinism and hoarded through many trying years, were at last destined
to float over land and sea, and to bear large harvests of temperate
freedom for great commonwealths, which were still unborn.  Nevertheless
there was a growing aversion in many parts of the States for the rigid
and intolerant spirit of the reformed religion.  There were many men in
Holland who had already imbibed the true lesson--the only, one worth
learning of the reformation--liberty of thought; but toleration in the
eyes of the extreme Calvinistic party was as great a vice as it could be
in the estimation of Papists.  To a favoured few of other habits of
thought, it had come to be regarded as a virtue; but the day was still
far distant when men were to scorn the very word toleration as an insult
to the dignity of man; as if for any human being or set of human beings,
in caste, class, synod, or church, the right could even in imagination be
conceded of controlling the consciences of their fellow-creatures.

But it was progress for the sixteenth century that there were
individuals, and prominent individuals, who dared to proclaim liberty
of conscience for all.  William of Orange was a Calvinist, sincere and
rigid, but he denounced all oppression of religion, and opened wide the
doors of the Commonwealth to Papists, Lutherans, and Anabaptists alike.
The Earl of Leicester was a Calvinist, most rigid in tenet, most edifying
of conversation, the acknowledged head of the Puritan party of England,
but he was intolerant and was influenced only by the most intolerant of
his sect.  Certainly it would have required great magnanimity upon his
part to assume a friendly demeanour towards the Papists.  It is easier
for us, in more favoured ages, to rise to the heights of philosophical
abstraction, than for a man, placed as was Leicester, in the front rank
of a mighty battle, in which the triumph of either religion seemed to
require the bodily annihilation of all its adversaries.  He believed that
the success of a Catholic conspiracy against the life of Elizabeth or of
a Spanish invasion of England, would raise Mary to the throne and consign
himself to the scaffold.  He believed that the subjugation of the
independent Netherlands would place the Spaniards instantly in England,
and he frequently received information, true or false, of Popish plots
that were ever hatching in various parts of the Provinces against the
English Queen.  It was not surprising, therefore, although it was unwise,
that he should incline his ear most seriously to those who counselled
severe measures not only against Papists, but against those who were not
persecutors of Papists, and that he should allow himself to be guided by
adventurers, who wore the mask of religion only that they might plunder
the exchequer and rob upon the highway.

Under the administration of this extreme party, therefore, the Papists
were maltreated, disfranchised, banished, and plundered.  The
distribution of the heavy war-taxes, more than two-thirds of which were
raised in Holland only, was confided to foreigners, and regulated mainly
at Utrecht, where not one-tenth part of the same revenue was collected.
This naturally excited the wrath of the merchants and manufacturers of
Holland and the other Provinces, who liked not that these hard-earned and
lavishly-paid subsidies should be meddled with by any but the cleanest
hands.

The clergy, too, arrogated a direct influence in political affairs.
Their demonstrations were opposed by the anti-Leicestrians, who cared not
to see a Geneva theocracy in the place of the vanished Papacy.  They had
as little reverence in secular affairs for Calvinistic deacons as for the
college of cardinals, and would as soon accept the infallibility of
Sixtus V. as that of Herman Modet.  The reformed clergy who had
dispossessed and confiscated the property of the ancient ecclesiastics
who once held a constitutional place in the Estates of Utrecht--although
many of those individuals were now married and had embraced the reformed
religion who had demolished, and sold at public auction, for 12,300
florins, the time-honoured cathedral where the earliest Christians of the
Netherlands had worshipped, and St. Willibrod had ministered, were
roundly rebuked, on more than one occasion, by the blunt matters beyond
their sphere.

The party of the States-General, as opposed to the Leicester party,
was guided by the statesmen of Holland.  At a somewhat later period was
formed the States-right party, which claimed sovereignty for each
Province, and by necessary consequence the hegemony throughout the
confederacy, for Holland.  At present the doctrine maintained was that
the sovereignty forfeited by Philip had naturally devolved upon the
States-General.  The statesmen of this party repudiated the calumny that
it had therefore lapsed into the hands of half a dozen mechanics and men
of low degree.  The States of each Province were, they maintained,
composed of nobles and country-gentlemen, as representing the
agricultural interest, and of deputies from the 'vroedschappen,'
or municipal governments, of every city and smallest town.

Such men as Adrian Van der Werff, the heroic burgomaster of Leyden during
its famous siege, John Van der Does, statesman, orator, soldier, poet,
Adolphus Meetkerke, judge, financier, politician, Carl Roorda, Noel de
Carom diplomatist of most signal ability, Floris Thin, Paul Buys, and
Olden-Barneveld, with many others, who would have done honour to the
legislative assemblies and national councils in any country or any age,
were constantly returned as members of the different vroedschaps in the
commonwealth.

So far from its being true then that half a dozen ignorant mechanics had
usurped the sovereignty of the Provinces, after the abjuration of the
Spanish King, it may be asserted in general terms, that of the eight
hundred thousand inhabitants of Holland at least eight hundred persons
were always engaged in the administration of public affairs, that these
individuals were perpetually exchanged for others, and that those whose
names became most prominent in the politics of the day were remarkable
for thorough education, high talents, and eloquence with tongue and pen.
It was acknowledged by the leading statesmen of England and France, on
repeated occasions throughout the sixteenth century, that the
diplomatists and statesmen of the Netherlands were even more than a match
for any politicians who were destined to encounter them, and the profound
respect which Leicester expressed for these solid statesmen, these
"substantial, wise, well-languaged" men, these "big fellows," so soon as
he came in contact with them, and before he began to hate them for
outwitting him, has already appeared.  They were generally men of the
people, born without any of the accidents of fortune; but, the leaders
had studied in the common schools, and later in the noble universities of
a land where to be learned and eloquent was fast becoming almost as great
an honour as to be wealthy or high born.

The executive, the legislative, and the judiciary departments were more
carefully and scientifically separated than could perhaps have been
expected in that age.  The lesser municipal courts, in which city-
senators presided, were subordinate to the supreme court of Holland,
whose officers were appointed by the stadholders and council; the
supplies were in the hands of the States-Provincial, and the supreme
administrative authority was confided to a stadholder appointed by the
states.

The States-General were constituted of similar materials to those of
which the States-Provincial were constructed, and the same individuals
were generally prominent in both. They were deputies appointed by the
Provincial Estates, were in truth rather more like diplomatic envoys than
senators, were generally bound very strictly by instructions, and were
often obliged, by the jealousy springing from the States-right principle,
to refer to their constituents, on questions when the times demanded a
sudden decision, and when the necessary delay was inconvenient and
dangerous.

In religious matters, the States-party, to their honour, already leaned
to a wide toleration.  Not only Catholics were not burned, but they were
not banished, and very large numbers remained in the territory, and were
quite undisturbed in religious matters, within their own doors.  There
were even men employed in public affairs who were suspected of papistical
tendencies, although their hostility, to Spain and their attachment to
their native land could not fairly be disputed.  The leaders of the
States-party had a rooted aversion to any political influence on the part
of the clergy of any denomination whatever.  Disposed to be lenient to
all forms of worship, they were disinclined to an established church, but
still more opposed to allowing church-influence in secular affairs.  As a
matter of course, political men with such bold views in religious matters
were bitterly assailed by their rigid opponents.  Barneveld, with his
"nil scire tutissima fides," was denounced as a disguised Catholic or an
infidel, and as for Paul Buys, he was a "bolsterer of Papists, an
atheist, a devil," as it has long since been made manifest.

Nevertheless these men believed that they understood the spirit of their
country and of the age.  In encouragement to an expanding commerce, the
elevation and education of the masses, the toleration of all creeds, and
a wide distribution of political functions and rights, they looked for
the salvation of their nascent republic from destruction, and the
maintenance of the true interests of the people.  They were still loyal
to Queen Elizabeth, and desirous that she should accept the sovereignty
of the Provinces.  But they were determined that the sovereignty should
be a constitutional one, founded upon and limited by the time-honoured
laws and traditions of their commonwealth; for they recognised the value
of a free republic with an hereditary chief, however anomalous it might
in theory appear.  They knew that in Utrecht the Leicestrian party were
about to offer the Queen the sovereignty of their Province, without
conditions, but they were determined that neither Queen Elizabeth nor
any other monarch should ever reign in the Netherlands, except under
conditions to be very accurately defined and well secured.

Thus, contrasted, then, were the two great parties in the Netherlands, at
the conclusion of Leicester's first year of administration.  It may
easily be understood that it was not an auspicious moment to leave the
country without a chief.

The strength of the States-party lay in Holland, Zeeland, Friesland.
The main stay of the democratic or Leicester faction was in the city of
Utrecht, but the Earl had many partizans in Gelderland, Friesland, and in
Overyssel, the capital of which Province, the wealthy and thriving
Deventer, second only in the republic to Amsterdam for commercial and
political importance, had been but recently secured for the Provinces by
the vigorous measures of Sir William Pelham.

The condition of the republic and of the Spanish Provinces was, at that
moment, most signally contrasted.  If the effects of despotism and of
liberty could ever be exhibited at a single glance, it was certainly only
necessary to look for a moment at the picture of the obedient and of the
rebel Netherlands.

Since the fall of Antwerp, the desolation of Brabant, Flanders, and of
the Walloon territories had become complete.  The King had recovered the
great commercial capital, but its commerce was gone.  The Scheldt, which,
till recently, had been the chief mercantile river in the world, had
become as barren as if its fountains had suddenly dried up.  It was as if
it no longer flowed to the ocean, for its mouth was controlled by
Flushing.  Thus Antwerp was imprisoned and paralyzed.  Its docks and
basins, where 2500 ships had once been counted, were empty, grass was
growing in its streets, its industrious population had vanished, and the
Jesuits had returned in swarms.  And the same spectacle was presented by
Ghent, Bruges, Valenciennes, Tournay, and those other fair cities, which
had once been types of vigorous industry and tumultuous life.  The sea-
coast was in the hands of two rising commercial powers, the great and
free commonwealths of the future.  Those powers were acting in concert,
and commanding the traffic of the world, while the obedient Provinces
were excluded from all foreign intercourse and all markets, as the result
of their obedience.  Commerce, manufactures, agriculture; were dying
lingering deaths.  The thrifty farms, orchards, and gardens, which had
been a proverb and wonder of industry were becoming wildernesses.  The
demand for their produce by the opulent and thriving cities, which had
been the workshops of the world, was gone.  Foraging bands of Spanish and
Italian mercenaries had succeeded to the famous tramp of the artizans and
mechanics, which had often been likened to an army, but these new
customers were less profitable to the gardeners and farmers.  The
clothiers, the fullers, the tapestry-workers, the weavers, the cutlers,
had all wandered away, and the cities of Holland, Friesland, and of
England, were growing skilful and rich by the lessons and the industry of
the exiles to whom they afforded a home.  There were villages and small
towns in the Spanish Netherlands that had been literally depopulated.
Large districts of country had gone to waste, and cane-brakes and squalid
morasses usurped the place of yellow harvest-fields.  The fog, the wild
boar, and the wolf, infested the abandoned homes of the peasantry;
children could not walk in safety in the neighbourhood even of the larger
cities; wolves littered their young in the deserted farm-houses; two
hundred persons, in the winter of 1586-7, were devoured by wild beasts in
the outskirts of Ghent.  Such of the remaining labourers and artizans as
had not been converted into soldiers, found their most profitable
employment as brigands, so that the portion of the population spared by
war and emigration was assisting the enemy in preying upon their native
country.  Brandschatzung, burglary, highway-robbery, and murder, had
become the chief branches of industry among the working classes.  Nobles
and wealthy burghers had been changed to paupers and mendicants.  Many a
family of ancient lineage, and once of large possessions, could be seen
begging their bread, at the dusk of evening, in the streets of great
cities, where they had once exercised luxurious hospitality; and they
often begged in vain.

For while such was the forlorn aspect of the country--and the portrait,
faithfully sketched from many contemporary pictures, has not been
exaggerated in any of its dark details--a great famine smote the land
with its additional scourge.  The whole population, soldiers and
brigands, Spaniards and Flemings, beggars and workmen, were in danger
of perishing together.  Where the want of employment had been so great
as to cause a rapid depopulation, where the demand for labour had almost
entirely ceased, it was a necessary result, that during the process,
prices should be low, even in the presence of foreign soldiery, and
despite the inflamed' profits, which such capitalists as remained
required, by way not only of profit but insurance, in such troublous
times.  Accordingly, for the last year or two, the price of rye at
Antwerp and Brussels had been one florin for the veertel (three bushels)
of one hundred and twenty pounds; that of wheat, about one-third of a
florin more.  Five pounds of rye, therefore, were worth, one penny
sterling, reckoning, as was then usual, two shillings to the florin.  A
pound weight of wheat was worth about one farthing.  Yet this was forty-
one years after the discovery of the mines of Potosi (A.D. 1545), and
full sixteen years after the epoch; from which is dated that rapid fall
in the value of silver, which in the course of seventy years, caused the
average price of corn and of all other commodities, to be tripled or even
quadrupled.  At that very moment the average cost of wheat in England was
sixty-four shillings the quarter, or about seven and sixpence sterling
the bushel, and in the markets of Holland, which in truth regulated all
others, the same prices prevailed.  A bushel of wheat in England was
equal therefore to eight bushels in Brussels.

Thus the silver mines, which were the Spanish King's property, had
produced their effect everywhere more signally than within the obedient
Provinces.  The South American specie found its way to Philip's coffers,
thence to the paymasters of his troops in Flanders, and thence to the
commercial centres of Holland and England.  Those countries, first to
feel and obey the favourable expanding impulse of the age, were moving
surely and steadily on before it to greatness.  Prices were rising with
unexampled rapidity, the precious metals were comparatively a drug, a
world-wide commerce, such as had never been dreamed of, had become an
every-day concern, the arts and sciences and a most generous culture in
famous schools and universities, which had been founded in the midst of
tumult and bloodshed, characterized the republic, and the golden age of
English poetry, which was to make the Elizabethan era famous through all
time, had already begun.

In the Spanish Netherlands the newly-found treasure served to pay the
only labourers required in a subjugated and almost deserted country, the
pikemen of Spain and Italy, and the reiters of Germany.  Prices could not
sustain themselves in the face of depopulation.  Where there was no
security for property, no home-market, no foreign intercourse, industrial
pursuits had become almost impossible.  The small demand for labour had
caused it, as it were, to disappear, altogether.  All men had become
beggars, brigands, or soldiers.  A temporary reaction followed.  There
were no producers.  Suddenly it was discovered that no corn had been
planted, and that there was no harvest.  A famine was the inevitable
result.  Prices then rose with most frightful rapidity.  The veertel of
rye, which in the previous year had been worth one florin at Brussels and
Antwerp, rose in the winter of 1586-7 to twenty, twenty-two, and even
twenty-four florins; and wheat advanced from one and one-third florin to
thirty-two florins the veertel.  Other articles were proportionally
increased in market-value; but it is worthy of remark that mutton was
quoted in the midst of the famine at nine stuyvers (a little more than
ninepence sterling) the pound, and beef at fivepence, while a single cod-
fish sold for twenty-two florins.  Thus wheat was worth sixpence sterling
the pound weight (reckoning the veertel of one hundred and twenty pounds
at thirty florins), which was a penny more than the price of a pound of
beef; while an ordinary fish was equal in value to one hundred and six
pounds of beef.  No better evidence could be given that the obedient
Provinces were relapsing into barbarism, than that the only agricultural
industry then practised was to allow what flocks and herds were remaining
to graze at will over the ruined farms and gardens, and that their
fishermen were excluded from the sea.

The evil cured itself, however, and, before the expiration of another
year, prices were again at their previous level.  The land was
sufficiently cultivated to furnish the necessaries of life for a
diminishing population, and the supply of labour was more than enough,
for the languishing demand.  Wheat was again at tenpence the bushel, and
other commodities valued in like proportion, and far below the market-
prices in Holland and England.

On the other, hand, the prosperity of the republic was rapidly
increasing.  Notwithstanding the war, which had beer raging for a
terrible quarter.  of a century without any interruption, population was
increasing, property rapidly advancing in value, labour in active demand.
Famine was impossible to a state which commanded the ocean.  No corn grew
in Holland and Zeeland, but their ports were the granary of the world.
The fisheries were a mine of wealth almost equal to the famous Potosi,
with which the commercial world was then ringing.  Their commerce with
the Baltic nations was enormous.  In one month eight hundred vessels left
their havens for the eastern ports alone.  There was also no doubt
whatever--and the circumstance was a source of constant complaint and of
frequent ineffective legislation--that the rebellious Provinces were
driving a most profitable trade with Spain and the Spanish possessions,
in spite of their revolutionary war.  The mines of Peru and Mexico were
as fertile for the Hollanders and Zeelanders as for the Spaniards
themselves.  The war paid for the war, one hundred large frigates were
constantly cruising along the coasts to protect the fast-growing traffic,
and an army of twenty thousand foot soldiers and two thousand cavalry
were maintained on land.  There were more ships and sailors at that
moment in Holland and Zeeland than in the whole kingdom of England.

While the sea-ports were thus rapidly increasing in importance, the towns
in the interior were advancing as steadily.  The woollen manufacture, the
tapestry, the embroideries of Gelderland, and Friesland, and Overyssel,
were becoming as famous as had been those of Tournay, Ypres, Brussels,
and Valenciennes.  The emigration from the obedient Provinces and from
other countries was very great.  It was difficult to obtain lodgings in
the principal cities; new houses, new streets, new towns, were rising
every day.  The single Province of Holland furnished regularly, for war-
expenses alone, two millions of florins (two hundred thousand pounds) a
year, besides frequent extraordinary grants for the same purpose, yet the
burthen imposed upon the vigorous young commonwealth seemed only to make
it the more elastic.  "The coming generations may see," says a
contemporary historian, "the fortifications erected at that epoch in the
cities, the costly and magnificent havens, the docks, the great extension
of the cities; for truly the war had become a great benediction to the
inhabitants."  Such a prosperous commonwealth as this was not a prize to
be lightly thrown away.  There is no doubt whatever that a large majority
of the inhabitants, and of the States by whom the people were
represented, ardently and affectionately desired to be annexed to the
English crown.  Leicester had become unpopular, but Elizabeth was adored,
and there was nothing unreasonable in the desire entertained by the
Provinces of retaining their ancient constitutions, and of transferring
their allegiance to the English Queen.

But the English Queen could not resolve to take the step.  Although the
great tragedy which was swiftly approaching its inevitable catastrophe,
the execution of the Scottish Queen, was to make peace with Philip
impossible--even if it were imaginable before--Elizabeth, during the year
1587, was earnestly bent on peace.  This will be made manifest in
subsequent pages, by an examination of the secret correspondence of the
court.  Her most sagacious statesmen disapproved her course, opposed it,
and were often overruled, although never convinced; for her imperious
will would have its way.

The States-General loathed the very name of peace with Spain.  The people
loathed it.  All knew that peace with Spain meant the exchange of a
thriving prosperous commonwealth, with freedom of religion,
constitutional liberty, and self-government, for provincial subjection to
the inquisition and to despotism: To dream of any concession from Philip
on the religious point was ridiculous.  There was a mirror ever held up
before their eyes by the obedient Provinces, in which they might see
their own image, should, they too return to obedience.  And there was
never a pretence, on the part of any honest adviser of Queen Elizabeth in
the Netherlands, whether Englishman or Hollander, that the idea of peace-
negotiation could be tolerated for a moment by States or people.  Yet the
sum of the Queen's policy, for the year 1587, may be summed up in one
word--peace; peace for the Provinces, peace for herself, with their
implacable enemy.

In France, during the same year of expectation, we shall see the long
prologue to the tragic and memorable 1588 slowly enacting; the same
triangular contest between the three Henrys and their partizans still
proceeding.  We shall see the misguided and wretched Valois lamenting
over his victories, and rejoicing over his defeats; forced into hollow
alliance with his deadly enemy; arrayed in arms against his only
protector and the true champion of the realm; and struggling vainly in
the toils of his own mother and his own secretary of state, leagued with
his most powerful foes.  We shall see 'Mucio,' with one 'hand extended in
mock friendship toward the King, and with the other thrust backward to
grasp the purse of 300,000 crowns held forth to aid his fellow-
conspirator's dark designs against their common victim; and the Bearnese,
ever with lance in rest, victorious over the wrong antagonist, foiled of
the fruits of victory, proclaiming himself the English Queen's devoted
knight, but railing at her parsimony; always in the saddle, always
triumphant, always a beggar, always in love, always cheerful, and always
confident to outwit the Guises and Philip, Parma and the Pope.

And in Spain we shall have occasion to look over the King's shoulder, as
he sits at his study-table, in his most sacred retirement; and we shall
find his policy for the year 1587 summed up in two words--invasion of
England.  Sincerely and ardently as Elizabeth meant peace with Philip,
just so sincerely did Philip intend war with England, and the
dethronement and destruction of the Queen.  To this great design all
others were now subservient, and it was mainly on account of this
determination that there was sufficient leisure in the republic for the
Leicestrians and the States-General to fight out so thoroughly their
party-contests.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Acknowledged head of the Puritan party of England (Leicester)
Geneva theocracy in the place of the vanished Papacy
Hankering for peace, when peace had really become impossible
Hating nothing so much as idleness
Mirror ever held up before their eyes by the obedient Provinces
Rigid and intolerant spirit of the reformed religion
Scorn the very word toleration as an insult
The word liberty was never musical in Tudor ears




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v50
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 51, 1587




CHAPTER XIII.

     Barneveld's Influence in the Provinces--Unpopularity of Leicester
     intrigues--of his Servants--Gossip of his Secretary--
     Its mischievous Effects--The Quarrel of Norris and Hollock--
     The Earl's Participation in the Affair--His increased Animosity to
     Norris--Seizure of Deventer--Stanley appointed its Governor--York
     and Stanley--Leicester's secret Instructions--Wilkes remonstrates
     with Stanley--Stanley's Insolence and Equivocation--Painful Rumours
     as to him and York--Duplicity of York--Stanley's Banquet at
     Deventer--He surrenders the City to Tassis--Terms of the Bargain--
     Feeble Defence of Stanley's Conduct--Subsequent Fate of Stanley and
     York--Betrayal of Gelder to Parma--These Treasons cast Odium on the
     English--Miserable Plight of the English Troops--Honesty and Energy
     of Wilkes--Indignant Discussion in the Assembly.

The government had not been laid down by Leicester on his departure. It
had been provisionally delegated, as already mentioned to the state-
council.  In this body-consisting of eighteen persons--originally
appointed by the Earl, on nomination by the States, several members were
friendly to the governor, and others were violently opposed to him.  The
Staten of Holland, by whom the action of the States-General was mainly
controlled, were influenced in their action by Buys and Barneveld.  Young
Maurice of Nassau, nineteen years of age, was stadholder of Holland and
Zeeland.  A florid complexioned, fair-haired young man, of sanguine-
bilious temperament; reserved, quiet, reflective, singularly self-
possessed; meriting at that time, more than his father had ever done, the
appellation of the taciturn; discreet, sober, studious.  "Count Maurice
saith but little, but I cannot tell what he thinketh," wrote Leicester's
eaves-dropper-in-chiefs.  Mathematics, fortification, the science of war
--these were his daily pursuits.  "The sapling was to become the tree,"
and meantime the youth was preparing for the great destiny which he felt,
lay before him.  To ponder over the works and the daring conceptions of
Stevinus, to build up and to batter the wooden blocks of mimic citadels;
to arrange in countless combinations, great armies of pewter soldiers;
these were the occupations of his leisure-hours.  Yet he was hardly
suspected of bearing within him the germs of the great military
commander.  "Small desire hath Count Maurice to follow the wars," said
one who fancied himself an acute observer at exactly this epoch.  "And
whereas it might be supposed that in respect to his birth and place, he
would affect the chief military command in these countries, it is found
by experience had of his humour, that there is no chance of his entering
into competition with the others."  A modest young man, who could bide
his time--but who, meanwhile, under the guidance of his elders, was doing
his best, both in field and cabinet, to learn the great lessons of the
age--he had already enjoyed much solid practical instruction, under such
a desperate fighter as Hohenlo, and under so profound a statesman as
Barneveld.  For at this epoch Olden-Barneveld was the preceptor, almost
the political patron of Maurice, and Maurice, the official head of the
Holland party, was the declared opponent of the democratic-Calvinist
organization.  It is not necessary, at this early moment, to foreshadow
the changes which time was to bring.  Meantime it would be seen, perhaps
ere long, whether or no, it would be his humour to follow the wars.  As
to his prudent and dignified deportment there was little doubt.  "Count
Maurice behaveth himself very discreetly all this while," wrote one, who
did not love him, to Leicester, who loved him less: "He cometh every day
to the council, keeping no company with Count Hollock, nor with any of
them all, and never drinks himself full with any of them, as they do
every day among themselves."

Certainly the most profitable intercourse that Maurice could enjoy with
Hohenlo was upon the battle-field.  In winter-quarters, that hard-
fighting, hard-drinking, and most turbulent chieftain, was not the best
Mentor for a youth whose destiny pointed him out as the leader of a free
commonwealth.  After the campaigns were over--if they ever could be over-
-the Count and other nobles from the same country were too apt to indulge
in those mighty potations, which were rather characteristic of their
nation and the age.

"Since your Excellency's departure," wrote Leicester's secretary, "there
hath been among the Dutch Counts nothing but dancing and drinking, to the
grief of all this people; which foresee that there can come no good of
it.  Specially Count Hollock, who hath been drunk almost a fortnight
together."

Leicester had rendered himself unpopular with the States-General, and
with all the leading politicians and generals; yet, at that moment, he
had deeply mortgaged his English estates in order to raise funds to
expend in the Netherland cause.  Thirty thousand pounds sterling--
according to his own statement--he was already out of pocket, and, unless
the Queen would advance him the means to redeem his property; his broad
lands were to be brought to the hammer.  But it was the Queen, not the
States-General, who owed the money; for the Earl had advanced these sums
as a portion of the royal contingent.  Five hundred and sixty thousand
pounds sterling had been the cost of one year's war during the English
governor's administration; and of this sum one hundred and forty thousand
had been paid by England.  There was a portion of the sum, over and above
their monthly levies; for which the States had contracted a debt, and
they were extremely desirous to obtain, at that moment, an additional
loan of fifty thousand pounds from Elizabeth; a favour which--Elizabeth
was very firmly determined not to grant.  It was this terror at the
expense into which the Netherland war was plunging her, which made the
English sovereign so desirous for peace, and filled the anxious mind of
Walsingham with the most painful forebodings.

Leicester, in spite of his good qualities--such as they were--had not
that most necessary gift for a man in his position, the art of making
friends.  No man made so many enemies.  He was an excellent hater, and
few men have been more cordially hated in return.  He was imperious,
insolent, hot-tempered.  He could brook no equal.  He had also the fatal
defect of enjoying the flattery, of his inferiors in station.  Adroit
intriguers burned incense to him as a god, and employed him as their
tool.  And now he had mortally offended Hohenlo, and Buys, and Barneveld,
while he hated Sir John Norris with a most passionate hatred.  Wilkes,
the English representative, was already a special object of his aversion.
The unvarnished statements made by the stiff counsellor, of the expense
of the past year's administration, and the various errors committed, had
inspired Leicester with such ferocious resentment, that the friends of
Wilkes trembled for his life.

     ["It is generally bruited here," wrote Henry Smith to his brother-
     in-law Wilkes, "of a most heavy displeasure conceived by my Lord of
     Leicester against you, and it is said to be so great as that he hath
     protested to be revenged of you; and to procure you the more
     enemies, it is said he hath revealed to my Lord Treasurer, and
     Secretary Davison some injurious speeches (which I cannot report)
     you should have used of them to him at your last being with him.
     Furthermore some of the said Lord's secretaries have reported here
     that it were good for you never to return hither, or, if their Lord
     be appointed to go over again, it will be too hot for you to tarry
     there.  These things thus coming to the ears of your friends have
     stricken a great fear and grief into the minds of such as love you,
     lest the wonderful force and authority of this man being bent
     against you, should do you hurt, while there is none to answer for
     you."  Smith to Wilkes, 26 Jan.  1587.  (S. P.  Office MS.)]

Cordiality between the governor-general and Count Maurice had become
impossible.  As for Willoughby and Sir William Pelham, they were both
friendly to him, but Willoughby was a magnificent cavalry officer, who
detested politics, and cared little for the Netherlands, except as the
best battle-field in Europe, and the old marshal of the camp--the only
man that Leicester ever loved--was growing feeble in health, was broken
down by debt, and hardly possessed, or wished for, any general influence.

Besides Deventer of Utrecht, then, on whom, the Earl chiefly relied
during his, absence, there were none to support him cordially, except two
or three members of the state-council.  "Madame de Brederode hath sent
unto you a kind of rose," said his intelligencer, "which you have asked
for, and beseeches you to command anything she has in her garden, or
whatsoever.  M. Meetkerke, M. Brederode, and Mr. Dorius, wish your return
with all, their hearts.  For the rest I cannot tell, and will not swear.
But Mr. Barneveld is not your very great friend, whereof I can write no
more at this time."

This certainly was a small proportion out of a council of eighteen, when
all the leading politicians of the country were in avowed hostility to
the governor.  And thus the Earl was, at this most important crisis, to
depend upon the subtle and dangerous Deventer, and upon two inferior
personages, the "fellow Junius"  and a non-descript, whom Hohenlo
characterized as a "long lean Englishman, with a little black beard."
This meagre individual however seems to have been of somewhat doubtful
nationality.  He called himself Otheman, claimed to be a Frenchman, had
lived much in England, wrote with great fluency and spirit, both in
French and English, but was said, in reality, to be named Robert Dale.

It was not the best policy for the representative of the English Queen to
trust to such counsellors at a moment when the elements of strife between
Holland and England were actively at work; and when the safety, almost
the existence, of the two commonwealths depended upon their acting
cordially in concert.  "Overyssel, Utrecht, Friesland, and Gelderland,
have agreed to renew the offer of sovereignty to her Majesty," said
Leicester.  "I shall be able to make a better report of their love and
good inclination than I can of Holland."  It was thought very desirable
by the English government that this great demonstration should be made
once more, whatever might be the ultimate decision of her Majesty upon so
momentous a measure.  It seemed proper that a solemn embassy should once
more proceed to England in order to confer with Elizabeth; but there was
much delay in regard to the step, and much indignation, in consequence,
on the part of the Earl.  The opposition came, of course, from the
Barneveld party.  "They are in no great haste to offer the sovereignty,"
said Wilkes.  "First some towns of Holland made bones thereat, and now
they say that Zeeland is not resolved."

The nature and the causes of the opposition offered by Barneveld and the
States of Holland have been sufficiently explained.  Buys, maddened by
his long and unjustifiable imprisonment, had just been released by the
express desire of Hohenlo; and that unruly chieftain, who guided the
German and Dutch magnates; such as Moeurs and Overstein, and who even
much influenced Maurice and his cousin Count Lewis William, was himself
governed by Barneveld.  It would have been far from impossible for
Leicester, even then, to conciliate the whole party.  It was highly
desirable that he should do so, for not one of the Provinces where he
boasted his strength was quite secure for England.  Count Moeurs, a
potent and wealthy noble, was governor of Utrecht and Gelderland, and he
had already begun to favour the party in Holland which claimed for that
Province a legal jurisdiction over the whole ancient episcopate.  Under
these circumstances common prudence would have suggested that as good an
understanding as possible might be kept up with the Dutch and German
counts, and that the breach might not be rendered quite irreparable.

Yet, as if there had not been administrative blunders enough committed in
one year, the unlucky lean Englishman, with the black beard, who was the
Earl's chief representative, contrived--almost before his master's back
was turned--to draw upon himself the wrath of all the fine ladies in
Holland.  That this should be the direful spring of unutterable
disasters, social and political, was easy to foretell.

Just before the governor's departure Otheman came to pay his farewell
respects, and receive his last commands.  He found Leicester seated at
chess with Sir Francis Drake.

"I do leave you here, my poor Otheman," said the Earl, "but so soon as I
leave you I know very well that nobody will give you a good look."

"Your Excellency was a true prophet," wrote the secretary a few weeks
later, "for, my good Lord, I have been in as great danger of my life as
ever man was.  I have been hunted at Delft from house to house, and then
besieged in my lodgings four or five hours, as though I had been the
greatest thief, murderer, and traitor in the land."

And why was the unfortunate Otheman thus hunted to his lair?  Because he
had chosen to indulge in 'scandalum magnatum,' and had thereby excited
the frenzy of all the great nobles whom it was most important for the
English party to conciliate.

There had been gossip about the Princess of Chimay and one Calvaert, who
lived in her house, much against the advice of all her best friends.  One
day she complained bitterly to Master Otheman of the spiteful ways of the
world.

"I protest," said she, "that I am the unhappiest lady upon earth to have
my name thus called in question."

So said Otheman, in order to comfort her: "Your Highness is aware that
such things are said of all.  I am sure I hear every day plenty of
speeches about lords and ladies, queens and princesses.  You have little
cause to trouble yourself for such matters, being known to live honestly,
and like a good Christian lady.  Your Highness is not the only lady
spoken of."

The Princess listened with attention.

"Think of the stories about the Queen of England and my Lord of
Leicester!" said Otheman, with infinite tact.  "No person is exempted
from the tongues of evil, speakers; but virtuous and godly men do put all
such foolish matter under their feet.  Then there is the Countess of
Hoeurs, how much evil talk does one hear about her!"

The Princess seemed still more interested and even excited; and the
adroit Otheman having thus, as he imagined, very successfully smoothed
away her anger, went off to have a little more harmless gossip about the
Princess and the Countess, with Madame de Meetkerke, who had sent
Leicester the rose from her garden.

But, no sooner, had he gone, than away went her Highness to Madame de
Moeurs, "a marvellous wise and well-spoken gentlewoman and a grave," and
informed her and the Count, with some trifling exaggeration, that the
vile Englishman, secretary to the odious Leicester, had just been there,
abusing and calumniating the Countess in most lewd and abominable
fashion.  He had also, she protested, used "very evil speeches of all the
ladies in the country."  For her own part the Princess avowed her
determination to have him instantly murdered.  Count Moeurs was quite of
the same mind, and desired nothing better than to be one of his
executioners.  Accordingly, the next Sunday, when the babbling secretary
had gone down to Delft to hear the French sermon, a select party,
consisting of Moeurs, Lewis William of Nassau, Count Overstein, and
others, set forth for that city, laid violent hands on the culprit, and
brought him bodily before Princess Chimay.  There, being called upon to
explain his innuendos, he fell into much trepidation, and gave the names
of several English captains, whom he supposed to be at that time in
England.  "For if I had denied the whole matter," said he, "they would
have given me the lie, and used me according to their evil mind."  Upon
this they relented, and released their prisoner, but, the next day they
made another attack upon him, hunted him from house to house, through the
whole city of Delft, and at last drove him to earth in his own lodgings,
where they kept him besieged several hours.  Through the intercession of
Wilkes and the authority of the council of state, to which body he
succeeded in conveying information of his dangerous predicament, he was,
in his own language, "miraculously preserved," although remaining still in
daily danger of his life.  "I pray God keep me hereafter from the anger
of a woman," he exclaimed, "quia non est ira supra iram mulieris."

He was immediately examined before the council, and succeeded in clearing
and justifying himself to the satisfaction of his friends.  His part was
afterwards taken by the councillors, by all the preachers and godly men,
and by the university of Leyden.  But it was well understood that the
blow and the affront had been levelled at the English governor and the
English nation.

"All your friends do see," said Otheman, "that this disgrace is not meant
so much to me as to your Excellency; the Dutch Earls having used such
speeches unto me, and against all law, custom, and reason, used such
violence to me, that your Excellency shall wonder to hear of it."

Now the Princess Chimay, besides being of honourable character, was a
sincere and exemplary member of the Calvinist church, and well inclined
to the Leicestrians.  She was daughter of Count Meghem, one of the
earliest victims of Philip II., in the long tragedy of Netherland
independence, and widow of Lancelot Berlaymont.  Count Moeurs was
governor of Utrecht, and by no means, up to that time, a thorough
supporter of the Holland party; but thenceforward he went off most
abruptly from the party of England, became hand and glove with Hohenlo,
accepted the influence of Barneveld, and did his best to wrest the city
of Utrecht from English authority.  Such was the effect of the
secretary's harmless gossip.

"I thought Count Moeurs and his wife better friends to your Excellency
than I do see them to be," said Otheman afterwards.  "But he doth now
disgrace the English nation many ways in his speeches--saying that they
are no soldiers, that they do no good to this country, and that these
Englishmen that are at Arnheim have an intent to sell and betray the town
to the enemy."

But the disgraceful squabble between Hohenlo and Edward Norris had been
more unlucky for Leicester than any other incident during the year, for
its result was to turn the hatred of both parties against himself.  Yet
the Earl of all men, was originally least to blame for the transaction.
It has been seen that Sir Philip Sidney had borne Norris's cartel to
Hohenlo, very soon after the outrage had been committed.  The Count had
promised satisfaction, but meantime was desperately wounded in the attack
on Fort Zutphen.  Leicester afterwards did his best to keep Edward Norris
employed in distant places, for he was quite aware that Hohenlo, as
lieutenant-general and count of the empire, would consider himself
aggrieved at being called to the field by a simple English captain,
however deeply he might have injured him.  The governor accordingly
induced the Queen to recall the young man to England, and invited him--
much as he disliked his whole race--to accompany him on his departure for
that country.

The Captain then consulted with his brother Sir John, regarding the
pending dispute with Hohenlo.  His brother advised that the Count should
be summoned to keep his promise, but that Lord Leicester's permission
should previously be requested.

A week before the governor's departure, accordingly, Edward Norris
presented himself one morning in the dining-room, and, finding the Earl
reclining on a window-seat, observed to him that "he desired his
Lordship's favour towards the discharging of his reputation."

"The Count Hollock is now well," he proceeded, "and is fasting and
banqueting in his lodgings, although he does not come abroad."

"And what way will you take?"  inquired Leicester, "considering that he
keeps his house."

"'Twill be best, I thought," answered Norris, "to write unto him, to
perform his promise he made me to answer me in the field."

"To whom did he make that promise?"  asked the Earl.

"To Sir Philip Sidney," answered the Captain.

"To my nephew Sidney," said Leicester, musingly; "very well; do as you
think best, and I will do for you what I can."

And the governor then added many kind expressions concerning the interest
he felt in the young man's reputation.  Passing to other matters, Morris
then spoke of the great charges he had recently been put to by reason of
having exchanged out of the States' service in order to accept a
commission from his Lordship to levy a company of horse.  This levy had
cost him and his friends three hundred pounds, for which he had not been
able to "get one groat."

"I beseech your Lordship to stand good for me," said he; "considering the
meanest captain in all the country hath as good entertainment as I."

"I can do but little for you before my departure," said Leicester; "but
at my return I will advise to do more."

After this amicable conversation Morris thanked his Lordship, took his
leave, and straightway wrote his letter to Count Hollock.

That personage, in his answer, expressed astonishment that Norris should
summon him, in his "weakness and indisposition;" but agreed to give him
the desired meeting; with sword and dagger, so soon as he should be
sufficiently recovered.  Morris, in reply, acknowledged his courteous
promise, and hoped that he might be speedily restored to health.

The state-council, sitting at the Hague, took up the matter at once
however, and requested immediate information of the Earl.  He accordingly
sent for Norris and his brother Sir John, who waited upon him in his bed-
chamber, and were requested to set down in writing the reasons which had
moved them in the matter.  This statement was accordingly furnished,
together with a copy of the correspondence.  The Earl took the papers,
and promised to allow most honourably of it in the Council.

Such is the exact narrative, word for word, as given by Sir John and
Edward Norris, in a solemn memorial to the Lords of Her Majesty's privy
council, as well as to the state-council of the United Provinces.  A very
few days afterwards Leicester departed for England, taking Edward Norris
with him.

Count Hohenlo was furious at the indignity, notwithstanding the polite
language in which he had accepted the challenge.  "'T was a matter
punishable with death," he said, "in all kingdoms and countries, for a
simple captain to send such a summons to a man of his station, without
consent of the supreme authority.  It was plain," he added, "that the
English governor-general had connived at the affront," for Norris had been
living in his family and dining at his table.  Nay, more, Lord Leicester
had made him a knight at Flushing just before their voyage to England.
There seems no good reason to doubt the general veracity of the brothers
Norris, although, for the express purpose of screening Leicester, Sir
John represented at the time to Hohenlo and others that the Earl had not
been privy to the transaction.  It is very certain, however, that so soon
as the general indignation of Hohenlo and his partizans began to be
directed against Leicester, he at once denied, in passionate and abusive
language, having had any knowledge whatever of Norris's intentions.  He
protested that he learned, for the first time, of the cartel from
information furnished to the council of state.

The quarrel between Hohenlo and Norris was afterwards amicably arranged
by Lord Buckhurst, during his embassy to the States, at the express
desire of the Queen.  Hohenlo and Sir John Norris became very good
friends, while the enmity between them and Leicester grew more deadly
every day.  The Earl was frantic with rage whenever he spoke of the
transaction, and denounced Sir John Norris as "a fool, liar, and coward"
on all occasions, besides overwhelming his brother, Buckhurst, Wilkes,
and every other person who took their part, with a torrent of abuse; and
it is well known that the Earl was a master of Billingsgate.

"Hollock says that I did procure Edward Norris to send him his cartel,"
observed Leicester on one occasion, "wherein I protest before the Lord,
I was as ignorant as any man in England.  His brother John can tell
whether I did not send for him to have committed him for it; but that, in
very truth, upon the perusing of it" (after it had been sent), "it was
very reasonably written, and I did consider also the great wrong offered
him by the Count, and so forbore it.  I was so careful for the Count's
safety after the brawl between him and Norris, that I charged Sir John,
if any harm came to the Count's person by any of his or under him, that
he should answer it.  Therefore, I take the story to be bred in the bosom
of some much like a thief or villain, whatsoever he were."

And all this was doubtless true so far as regarded the Earl's original
exertions to prevent the consequences of the quarrel, but did not touch
the point of the second correspondence preceded by the conversation in
the dining-room, eight days before the voyage to England.  The affair, in
itself of slight importance, would not merit so much comment at this late
day had it not been for its endless consequences.  The ferocity with
which the Earl came to regard every prominent German, Hollander, and
Englishman, engaged in the service of the States, sprang very much from
the complications of this vulgar brawl.  Norris, Hohenlo, Wilkes,
Buckhurst, were all denounced to the Queen as calumniators, traitors, and
villains; and it may easily be understood how grave and extensive must
have been the effects of such vituperation upon the mind of Elizabeth,
who, until the last day of his life, doubtless entertained for the Earl
the deepest affection of which her nature was susceptible.  Hohenlo, with
Count Maurice, were the acknowledged chiefs of the anti-English party,
and the possibility of cordial cooperation between the countries may be
judged of by the entanglement which had thus occurred.

Leicester had always hated Sir John Norris, but he knew that the mother
had still much favour with the Queen, and he was therefore the more
vehement in his denunciations of the son the more difficulty be found in
entirely destroying his character, and the keener jealousy he felt that
any other tongue but his should influence her Majesty.  "The story of
John Norris about the cartel is, by the Lord God, most false," he
exclaimed; "I do beseech you not to see me so dealt withal, but that
especially her Majesty may understand these untruths, who perhaps, by the
mother's fair speeches and the son's smooth words, may take some other
conceit of my doings than I deserve."

He was most resolute to stamp the character of falsehood upon both the
brothers, for he was more malignant towards Sir John than towards any man
in the world, not even excepting Wilkes.  To the Queen, to the Lords of
the Privy Council, to Walsingham, to Burghley, he poured forth endless
quantities of venom, enough to destroy the characters of a hundred honest
men.

"The declaration of the two Norrises for the cartel is most false, as I
am a Christian," he said to Walsingham.  "I have a dozen witnesses, as
good and some better than they, who will testify that they were present
when I misliked the writing of the letter before ever I saw it.  And by
the allegiance I owe to her Majesty, I never knew of the letter, nor gave
consent to it, nor heard of it till it was complained of from Count
Hollock.  But, as they are false in this, so you will find J. N. as false
in his other answers; so that he would be ashamed, but that his old
conceit hath made him past shame, I fear.  His companions in Ireland, as
in these countries, report that Sir John Norris would often say that he
was but an ass and a fool, who, if a lie would serve his turn, would
spare it.  I remember I have heard that the Earl of Sussex would say so;
and indeed this gentleman doth imitate him in divers things."

But a very grave disaster to Holland and England was soon the fruit of
the hatred borne by Leicester to Sir John Norris.  Immediately after the
battle of Zutphen and the investment of that town by the English and
Netherlanders, great pains were taken to secure the city of Deventer.
This was, after Amsterdam and Antwerp, the most important mercantile
place in all the Provinces.  It was a large prosperous commercial and
manufacturing capital, a member of the Hanseatic League, and the great
centre of the internal trade of the Netherlands with the Baltic nations.
There was a strong Catholic party in the town, and the magistracy were
disposed to side with Parma.  It was notorious that provisions and
munitions were supplied from thence to the beleaguered Zutphen; and
Leicester despatched Sir William Pelham, accordingly, to bring the
inhabitants to reason.  The stout Marshal made short work of it.  Taking
Sir William Stanley and the greater part of his regiment with him, he
caused them, day by day, to steal into the town, in small parties of ten
and fifteen.  No objection was made to this proceeding on the part of the
city government.  Then Stanley himself arrived in the morning, and the
Marshal in the evening, of the 20th of October.  Pelham ordered the
magistrates to present themselves forthwith at his lodgings, and told
them, with grim courtesy, that the Earl of Leicester excused himself from
making them a visit, not being able, for grief at the death of Sir Philip
Sidney, to come so soon near the scene of his disaster.  His Excellency
had therefore sent him to require the town to receive an English
garrison.  "So make up your minds, and delay not," said Pelham; "for I
have many important affairs on my hands, and must send word to his
Excellency at once.  To-morrow morning, at eight o'clock, I shall expect
your answer."

Next day, the magistrates were all assembled in the townhouse before six.
Stanley had filled the great square with his troops, but he found that
the burghers-five thousand of whom constituted the municipal militia--had
chained the streets and locked the gates.  At seven o'clock Pelham
proceeded, to the town-house, and, followed by his train, made his
appearance before the magisterial board.  Then there was a knocking at
the door, and Sir William Stanley entered, having left a strong guard of
soldiers at the entrance to the hall.

"I am come for an answer," said the Lord Marshal; "tell me straight."
The magistrates hesitated, whispered, and presently one of them slipped
away.

"There's one of you gone," cried the Marshal.  "Fetch him straight back;
or, by the living God, before whom I stand, there is not one of you shall
leave this place with life."

So the burgomasters sent for the culprit, who returned.

"Now, tell me," said Pelham, "why you have, this night, chained your
streets and kept such strong watch while your friends and defenders were
in the town?  Do you think we came over here to spend our lives and our
goods, and to leave all we have, to be thus used and thus betrayed by
you?  Nay, you shall find us trusty to our friends, but as politic as
yourselves.  Now, then; set your hands to this document," he proceeded,
as he gave them a new list of magistrates, all selected from stanch
Protestants.

"Give over your government to the men here nominated, Straight; dally
not!"  The burgomasters signed the paper.

"Now," said Pelham, "let one of you go to the watch, discharge the guard,
bid them unarm, and go home to their lodgings."

A magistrate departed on the errand.

"Now fetch me the keys of the gate," said Pelham, "and that straightway,
or, before God, you shall die."

The keys were brought, and handed to the peremptory old Marshal.  The old
board of magistrates were then clapped into prison, the new ones
installed, and Deventer was gained for the English and Protestant party.

There could be no doubt that a city so important and thus fortunately
secured was worthy to be well guarded.  There could be no doubt either
that it would be well to conciliate the rich and influential Papists in
the place, who, although attached to the ancient religion, were not
necessarily disloyal to the republic; but there could be as little that,
under the circumstances of this sudden municipal revolution, it would be
important to place a garrison of Protestant soldiers there, under the
command of a Protestant officer of known fidelity.

To the astonishment of the whole commonwealth, the Earl appointed Sir
William Stanley to be governor of the town, and stationed in it a
garrison of twelve hundred wild Irishmen.

Sir William was a cadet of one of the noblest English houses.  He was the
bravest of the brave.  His gallantry at the famous Zutphen fight had
attracted admiration, where nearly all had performed wondrous exploits,
but he was known to be an ardent Papist and a soldier of fortune, who had
fought on various sides, and had even borne arms in the Netherlands under
the ferocious Alva.  Was it strange that there should be murmurs at the
appointment of so dangerous a chief to guard a wavering city which had so
recently been secured?

The Irish kernes--and they are described by all contemporaries, English
and Flemish, in the same language--were accounted as the wildest and
fiercest of barbarians.  There was something grotesque, yet appalling,
in the pictures painted of these rude, almost naked; brigands, who ate
raw flesh, spoke no intelligible language, and ranged about the country,
burning, slaying, plundering, a terror to the peasantry and a source of
constant embarrassment to the more orderly troops in the service of the
republic.  "It seemed," said one who had seen them, "that they belonged
not to Christendom, but to Brazil."  Moreover, they were all Papists,
and, however much one might be disposed to censure that great curse of
the age, religious intolerance--which was almost as flagrant in the
councils of Queen Elizabeth as in those of Philip--it was certainly a
most fatal policy to place such a garrison, at that critical juncture, in
the newly-acquired city.  Yet Leicester, who had banished Papists from
Utrecht without cause and without trial, now placed most notorious
Catholics in Deventer.

Zutphen, which was still besieged by the English and the patriots, was
much crippled by the loss of the great fort, the capture of which, mainly
through the brilliant valour of Stanley's brother Edward, has already
been related.  The possession of Deventer and of this fort gave the
control of the whole north-eastern territory to the patriots; but, as if
it were not enough to place Deventer in the hands of Sir William Stanley,
Leicester thought proper to confide the government of the fort to Roland
York.  Not a worse choice could be made in the whole army.

York was an adventurer of the most audacious and dissolute character.  He
was a Londoner by birth, one of those "ruing blades" inveighed against by
the governor-general on his first taking command of the forces.  A man of
desperate courage, a gambler, a professional duellist, a bravo, famous in
his time among the "common hacksters and swaggerers" as the first to
introduce the custom of foining, or thrusting with the rapier in single
combats--whereas before his day it had been customary among the English
to fight with sword and shield, and held unmanly to strike below the
girdle--he had perpetually changed sides, in the Netherland wars, with
the shameless disregard to principle which characterized all his actions.
He had been lieutenant to the infamous John Van Imbyze, and had been
concerned with him in the notorious attempt to surrender Dendermonde and
Ghent to the enemy, which had cost that traitor his head.  York had been
thrown into prison at Brussels, but there had been some delay about his
execution, and the conquest of the city by Parma saved him from the
gibbet.  He had then taken service under the Spanish commander-in-chief,
and had distinguished himself, as usual, by deeds of extraordinary
valour, having sprung on board the, burning volcano-ship at the siege of
Antwerp.  Subsequently returning to England, he had, on Leicester's
appointment, obtained the command of a company in the English contingent,
and had been conspicuous on the field of Warnsveld; for the courage which
he always displayed under any standard was only equalled by the audacity
with which he was ever ready to desert from it.  Did it seem credible
that the fort of Zutphen should be placed in the hands of Roland York?

Remonstrances were made by the States-General at once.  With regard to
Stanley, Leicester maintained that he was, in his opinion, the fittest
man to take charge of the whole English army, during his absence in
England.  In answer to a petition made by the States against the
appointment of York, "in respect to his perfidious dealings before," the
Earl replied that he would answer for his fidelity as for his own
brother; adding peremptorily--"Do you trust me?  Then trust York."

But, besides his other qualifications for high command, Stanley possessed
an inestimable one in Leicester's eyes.  He was, or at least had been, an
enemy of Sir John Norris.  To be this made a Papist pardonable.  It was
even better than to be a Puritan.

But the Earl did more than to appoint the traitor York and the Papist
Stanley to these important posts.  On the very day of his departure, and
immediately after his final quarrel with Sir John about the Hohenlo
cartel, which had renewed all the ancient venom, he signed a secret
paper, by which he especially forbade the council of state to interfere
with or set aside any appointments to the government of towns or forts,
or to revoke any military or naval commissions, without his consent.

Now supreme executive authority had been delegated to the state-council
by the Governor-General during his absence.  Command in chief over all
the English forces, whether in the Queen's pay or the State's pay, had
been conferred upon Norris, while command over the Dutch and German
troops belonged to Hohenlo; but, by virtue of the Earl's secret paper,
Stanley and York were now made independent of all authority.  The evil
consequences natural to such a step were not slow in displaying
themselves.

Stanley at once manifested great insolence towards Norris.  That
distinguished general was placed in a most painful position.  A post of
immense responsibility was confided to him.  The honour of England's
Queen and of England's soldiers was entrusted to his keeping; at a moment
full of danger, and in a country where every hour might bring forth some
terrible change; yet he knew himself the mark at which the most powerful
man in England was directing all his malice, and that the Queen, who was
wax in her great favourite's hands, was even then receiving the most
fatal impressions as to his character and conduct.  "Well I know," said
he to Burghley, "that the root of the former malice borne me is not
withered, but that I must look for like fruits therefrom as before;"
and he implored the Lord-Treasurer, that when his honour and reputation
should be called in question, he might be allowed to return to England
and clear himself.  "For myself," said he, "I have not yet received any
commission, although I have attended his Lordship of Leicester to his
ship.  It is promised to be sent me, and in the meantime I understand
that my Lord hath granted separate commissions to Sir William Stanley and
Roland York, exempting them from obeying of me.  If this be true, 'tis
only done to nourish factions, and to interrupt any better course in our
doings than before hath been."  He earnestly requested to be furnished
with a commission directly from her Majesty.  "The enemy is reinforcing,"
he added.  "We are very weak, our troops are unpaid these three months,
and we are grown odious, to our friends."

Honest Councillor Wilkes, who did his best to conciliate all parties, and
to do his duty to England and Holland, to Leicester and to Norris, had
the strongest sympathy with Sir John.  "Truly, besides the value, wisdom,
and many other good parts that are in him," he said, "I have noted
wonderful patience and modesty in the man, in bearing many apparent
injuries done unto him, which I have known to be countenanced and
nourished, contrary to all reason, to disgrace him.  Please therefore
continue your honourable opinion of him in his absence, whatsoever may be
maliciously reported to his disadvantage, for I dare avouch, of my own
poor skill, that her Majesty hath not a second subject of his place and
quality able to serve in those countries as he .  .  .  .  .  I doubt not
God will move her Majesty, in despite of the devil, to respect him as he
deserves."

Sir John disclaimed any personal jealousy in regard to Stanley's
appointment, but, within a week or two of the Earl's departure, he
already felt strong anxiety as to its probable results.  "If it prove no
hindrance to the service," he said, "it shall nothing trouble me.  I
desire that my doings may show what I am; neither will I seek, by
indirect means to calumniate him or any other, but will let them show
themselves."

Early in December he informed the Lord-Treasurer that Stanley's own men
were boasting that their master acknowledged no superior authority to his
own, and that he had said as much himself to the magistracy of Deventer.
The burghers had already complained, through the constituted guardians of
their liberties, of his insolence and rapacity, and of the turbulence of
his troops, and had appealed to Sir John; but the colonel-general's
remonstrances had been received by Sir William with contumely and abuse,
and by daunt that he had even a greater commission than any he had yet
shown.

"Three sheep, an ox, and a whole hog," were required weekly of the
peasants for his table, in a time of great scarcity, and it was
impossible to satisfy the rapacious appetites of the Irish kernes.  The
paymaster-general of the English forces was daily appealed to by Stanley
for funds--an application which was certainly not unreasonable, as her
Majesty's troops had not received any payment for three months--but there
"was not a denier in the treasury," and he was therefore implored to
wait.  At last the States-General sent him a month's pay for himself and
all his troops, although, as he was in the Queen's service, no claim
could justly be made upon them.

Wilkes, also, as English member of the state council, faithfully conveyed
to the governor-general in England the complaints which came up to all
the authorities of the republic, against Sir William Stanley's conduct in
Deventer.  He had seized the keys of the gates, he kept possession of the
towers and fortifications, he had meddled with the civil government, he
had infringed all their privileges.  Yet this was the board of
magistrates, expressly set up by Leicester, with the armed hand, by the
agency of Marshal Pelham and this very Colonel Stanley--a board of
Calvinist magistrates placed but a few weeks before in power to control a
city of Catholic tendencies.  And here was a papist commander displaying
Leicester's commission in their faces, and making it a warrant for
dealing with the town as if it were under martial law, and as if he were
an officer of the Duke of Parma.  It might easily be judged whether such
conduct were likely to win the hearts of Netherlanders to Leicester and
to England.

"Albeit, for my own part," said Wilkes, "I do hold Sir William Stanley to
be a wise and a discreet gent., yet when I consider that the magistracy
is such as was established by your Lordship, and of the religion, and
well affected to her Majesty, and that I see how heavily the matter is
conceived of here by the States and council, I do fear that all is not
well.  The very bruit of this doth begin to draw hatred upon our nation.
Were it not that I doubt some dangerous issue of this matter, and that I
might be justly charged with negligence, if I should not advertise you
beforehand, I would, have forborne to mention this dissension, for the
States are about to write to your Lordship and to her Majesty for
reformation in this matter."  He added that he had already written
earnestly to Sir William, "hoping to persuade him to carry a mild hand
over the people."

Thus wrote Councillor Wilkes, as in duty bound, to Lord Leicester, so
early as the 9th December, and the warning voice of Norris had made
itself heard in England quite as soon.  Certainly the governor-general,
having, upon his own responsibility; and prompted, it would seem, by
passion more than reason, made this dangerous appointment, was fortunate
in receiving timely and frequent notice of its probable results.

And the conscientious Wilkes wrote most earnestly, as he said he had
done, to the turbulent Stanley.

"Good Sir William," said he, "the magistrates and burgesses of Deventer
complain to this council, that you have by violence wrested from them the
keys of one of their gates, that you assemble your garrison in arms to
terrify them, that you have seized one of their forts, that the Irish
soldiers do commit many extortions and exactions upon the inhabitants,
that you have imprisoned their burgesses, and do many things against
their laws and privileges, so that it is feared the best affected, of the
inhabitants towards her Majesty will forsake the town.  Whether any of
these things be true, yourself doth best know, but I do assure you that
the apprehension thereof here doth make us and our government hateful.
For mine own part, I have always known you for a gentleman of value,
wisdom; and judgment, and therefore should hardly believe any such thing.
.  .  .  .  I earnestly require you to take heed of consequences, and to
be careful of the honour of her Majesty and the reputation of our nation.
You will consider that the gaining possession of the town grew by them
that are now in office, who being of the religion, and well affected to
his Excellency's government, wrought his entry into the same .  .  .  .
I know that Lord Leicester is sworn to maintain all the inhabitants of
the Provinces in their ancient privileges and customs.  I know further
that your commission carreeth no authority to warrant you to intermeddle
any further than with the government of the soldiers and guard of the
town.  Well, you may, in your own conceipt, confer some words to
authorize you in some larger sort, but, believe me, Sir, they will not
warrant you sufficiently to deal any further than I have said, for I have
perused a copy of your commission for that purpose.  I know the name
itself of a governor of a town is odious to this people, and hath been
ever since the remembrance of the Spanish government, and if we, by any
lack of foresight, should give the like occasion, we should make
ourselves as odious as they are; which God forbid.

"You are to consider that we are not come into these countries for their
defence only, but for the defence of her Majesty and our own native
country, knowing that the preservation of both dependeth altogether upon
the preserving of these.  Wherefore I do eftsoons intreat and require you
to forbear to intermeddle any further.  If there shall follow any
dangerous effect of your proceedings, after this my friendly advice,
I shall be heartily sorry for your sake, but I shall be able to testify
to her Majesty that I have done my duty in admonishing you."

Thus spake the stiff councillor, earnestly and well, in behalf of
England's honour and the good name of England's Queen.

But the brave soldier, whose feet were fast sliding into the paths of
destruction, replied, in a tone of indignant innocence, more likely to
aggravate than to allay suspicion.  "Finding," said Stanley, "that you
already threaten, I have gone so far as to scan the terms of my
commission, which I doubt not to execute, according to his Excellency's
meaning and mine honour.  First, I assure you that I have maintained
justice, and that severely; else hardly would the soldiers have been
contented with bread and bare cheese."

He acknowledged possessing himself of the keys of the town, but defended
it on the ground of necessity; and of the character of the people, "who
thrust out the Spaniards and Almaynes, and afterwards never would obey
the Prince and States."  "I would be," he said, "the sorriest man that
lives, if by my negligence the place should be lost.  Therefore I thought
good to seize the great tower and ports.  If I meant evil, I needed no
keys, for here is force enough."

With much effrontery, he then affected to rely for evidence of his
courteous and equitable conduct towards the citizens, upon the very
magistrates who had been petitioning the States-General, the state-
council, and the English Queen, against his violence:

"For my courtesy and humanity," he said, "I refer me unto the magistrates
themselves.  But I think they sent rhetoricians, who could, allege of
little grief, and speak pitiful, and truly I find your ears have been as
pitiful in so timorously condemning me.  I assure you that her Majesty
hath not a better servant than I nor a more faithful in these parts.
This I will prove with my flesh and blood.  Although I know there be
divers flying reports spread by my enemies, which are come to my ears, I
doubt not my virtue and truth will prove them calumniators and men of
little.  So, good Mr. Wilkes, I pray you, consider gravely, give ear
discreetly, and advertise into England soundly.  For me, I have been and
am your friend, and glad to hear any admonition from one so wise as
yourself."

He then alluded ironically to the "good favour and money" with which he
had been so contented of late, that if Mr. Wilkes would discharge him of
his promise to Lord Leicester, he would take his leave with all his
heart.  Captain, officers, and soldiers, had been living on half a pound
of cheese a day.  For himself, he had received but one hundred and twenty
pounds in five months, and was living at three pounds by the day.  "This
my wealth will not long hold out," he observed, "but yet I will never
fail of my promise to his Excellency, whatsoever I endure.  It is for her
Majesty's service and for the love I bear to him."

He bitterly complained of the unwillingness of the country-people to
furnish vivers, waggons, and other necessaries, for the fort before
Zutphen.  "Had it not been," he said, "for the travail extraordinary of
myself, and patience of my brother, Yorke, that fort would have been in
danger.  But, according to his desire and forethought, I furnished that
place with cavalry and infantry; for I know the troops there be
marvellous weak."

In reply, Wilkes stated that the complaints had been made "by no
rhetorician," but by letter from the magistrates themselves (on whom he
relied so confidently) to the state-council.  The councillor added,
rather tartly, that since his honest words of defence and of warning,
had been "taken in so scoffing a manner," Sir William might be sure of
not being troubled with any more of his letters.

But, a day or two before thus addressing him, he had already enclosed to
Leicester very important letters addressed by the council of Gelderland
to Count Moeurs, stadholder of the Province, and by him forwarded to the
state-council.  For there were now very grave rumours concerning the
fidelity of "that patient and foreseeing brother York," whom Stanley had
been so generously strengthening in Fort Zutphen.  The lieutenant of
York, a certain Mr. Zouch, had been seen within the city of Zutphen, in
close conference with Colonel Tassis, Spanish governor of the place.
Moreover there had been a very frequent exchange of courtesies--by which
the horrors of war seemed to be much mitigated--between York on the
outside and Tassis within.  The English commander sent baskets of
venison, wild fowl, and other game, which were rare in the market of a
besieged town.  The Spanish governor responded with baskets of excellent
wine and barrels of beer.  A very pleasant state of feeling, perhaps, to
contemplate--as an advance in civilization over the not very distant days
of the Haarlem and Leyden sieges, when barrels of prisoners' heads, cut
off, a dozen or two at a time, were the social amenities usually
exchanged between Spaniards and Dutchmen--but somewhat suspicious to
those who had grown grey in this horrible warfare.

The Irish kernes too, were allowed to come to mass within the city, and
were received there with as much fraternity by, the Catholic soldiers of
Tassis as the want of any common dialect would allow--a proceeding which
seemed better perhaps for the salvation of their souls, than--for the
advancement of the siege.

The state-council had written concerning these rumours to Roland York,
but the patient man had replied in a manner which Wilkes characterized as
"unfit to have been given to such as were the executors of the Earl of
Leicester's authority."  The councillor implored the governor-general
accordingly to send some speedy direction in this matter, as well to
Roland York as to Sir William Stanley; for he explicitly and earnestly
warned him, that those personages would pay no heed to the remonstrances
of the state-council.

Thus again and again was Leicester--on whose head rested, by his own
deliberate act, the whole responsibility--forewarned that some great
mischief was impending.  There was time enough even then--for it was but
the 16th December--to place full powers in the hands of the state-
council, of Norris, or of Hohenlo, and secretly and swiftly to secure the
suspected persons, and avert the danger.  Leicester did nothing.  How
could he acknowledge his error?  How could he manifest confidence in the
detested Norris?  How appeal to the violent and deeply incensed Hohenlo?

Three weeks more rolled by, and the much-enduring Roland York was still
in confidential correspondence with Leicester and Walsingham, although
his social intercourse with the Spanish governor of Zutphen continued to
be upon the most liberal and agreeable footing.  He was not quite
satisfied with the general, aspect of the Queen's cause in the
Netherlands, and wrote to the Secretary of State in a tone of
despondency, and mild expostulation.  Walsingham would have been less
edified by these communications, had he been aware that York, upon first
entering Leicester's service, had immediately opened  a correspondence
with the Duke of Parma, and had secretly given him to understand that his
object was to serve the cause of Spain.  This was indeed the fact, as the
Duke informed the King, "but then he is such a scatter-brained, reckless
dare-devil," said Parma, "that I hardly expected much of him."  Thus the
astute Sir Francis had been outwitted, by  the adventurous Roland, who
was perhaps destined also to surpass the anticipations of the Spanish
commander-in-chief.

Meantime York informed his English patrons, on the 7th January, that
matters were not proceeding so smoothly in the political world as he
could wish.  He had found "many cross and indirect proceedings," and so,
according to Lord Leicester's desire, he sent him a "discourse" on the
subject, which he begged Sir Francis to "peruse, add to, or take away
from," and then to inclose to the Earl.  He hoped he should be forgiven
if the style of the production was not quite satisfactory; for, said he,
"the place where I am doth too much torment my memory, to call every
point to my remembrance."

It must, in truth, have been somewhat a hard task upon his memory, to
keep freshly in mind every detail of the parallel correspondence which he
was carrying on with the Spanish and with the English government.  Even a
cool head like Roland's might be forgiven for being occasionally puzzled.
"So if there be anything hard to be understood," he observed to
Walsingham, "advertise me, and I will make it plainer."  Nothing could be
more ingenuous.  He confessed, however, to being out of pocket.  "Please
your honour," said he, "I have taken great pains to make a bad place
something, and it has cost me all the money I had, and here I can receive
nothing but discontentment.  I dare not write you all lest you should
think it impossible," he added--and it is quite probable that even
Walsingham would have been astonished, had Roland written all.  The game
playing by York and Stanley was not one to which English gentlemen were
much addicted.

"I trust the bearer, Edward Stanley; a discreet, brave gentleman," he
said, "with details."  And the remark proves that the gallant youth who
had captured this very Fort Zutphen in, so brilliant a manner was not
privy to the designs of his brother and of York; for the object of the
"discourse" was to deceive the English government.

"I humbly beseech that you will send for me home," concluded Roland,
"for true as I humbled my mind to please her Majesty, your honour, and
the dead, now am I content to humble myself lower to please myself, for
now, since his, Excellency's departure, there is no form of proceeding
neither honourably nor honestly."

Three other weeks passed over, weeks of anxiety and dread throughout the
republic.  Suspicion grew darker than ever, not only as to York and
Stanley, but as to all the English commanders, as to the whole English
nation.  An Anjou plot, a general massacre, was expected by many, yet
there were no definite grounds for such dark anticipations.  In vain had
painstaking, truth-telling Wilkes summoned Stanley to his duty, and
called on Leicester, time after time, to interfere.  In vain did Sir John
Norris, Sir John Conway, the members of the state-council, and all others
who should have had authority, do their utmost to avert a catastrophe.
Their hands were all tied by the fatal letter of the 24th November.  Most
anxiously did all implore the Earl of Leicester to return.  Never was a
more dangerous moment than this for a country to be left to its fate.
Scarcely ever in history was there a more striking exemplification of the
need of a man--of an individual--who should embody the powers and wishes,
and concentrate in one brain and arm, the whole energy, of a
commonwealth.  But there was no such man, for the republic had lost its
chief when Orange died.  There was much wisdom and patriotism now.
Olden-Barneveld was competent, and so was Buys, to direct the councils of
the republic, and there were few better soldiers than Norris and Hohenlo
to lead her armies against Spain.  But the supreme authority had been
confided to Leicester.  He had not perhaps proved himself extraordinarily
qualified for his post, but he was the governor-in-chief, and his
departure, without resigning his powers, left the commonwealth headless,
at a moment when singleness of action was vitally important.

At last, very late in January, one Hugh Overing, a haberdasher from
Ludgate Hill, was caught at Rotterdam, on his way to Ireland, with a
bundle of letters from Sir William Stanley, and was sent, as a suspicious
character, to the state-council at the Hague.  On the same day, another
Englishman, a small youth, "well-favoured," rejoicing in a "very little
red beard, and in very ragged clothes," unknown by name; but ascertained
to be in the service of Roland York and to have been the bearer of
letters to Brussels, also passed through Rotterdam.  By connivance of the
innkeeper, one Joyce, also an Englishman, he succeeded in making his
escape.  The information contained in the letters thus intercepted was
important, but it came too late, even if then the state-council could
have acted without giving mortal offence to Elizabeth and to Leicester.

On the evening of 28th January (N. S.), Sir William Stanley entertained
the magistrates of Deventer at a splendid banquet.  There was free
conversation at table concerning the idle suspicions which had been rife
in the Provinces as to his good intentions and the censures which had
been cast upon him for the repressive measures which he had thought
necessary to adopt for the security of the city.  He took that occasion
to assure his guests that the Queen of England had not a more loyal
subject than himself, nor the Netherlands a more devoted friend.  The
company expressed themselves fully restored to confidence in his
character and purposes, and the burgomasters, having exchanged pledges of
faith and friendship with the commandant in flowing goblets, went home
comfortably to bed, highly pleased with their noble entertainer and with
themselves.

Very late that same night, Stanley placed three hundred of his wild Irish
in the Noorenberg tower, a large white structure which commanded the
Zutphen gate, and sent bodies of chosen troops to surprise all the
burgher-guards at their respective stations.  Strong pickets of cavalry
were also placed in all the principal thoroughfares of the city.  At
three o'clock in the following morning he told his officers that he was
about to leave Deventer for a few hours, in order to bring in some
reinforcements for which he had sent, as he had felt much anxiety for
some time past as to the disposition of the burghers.  His officers,
honest Englishmen, suspecting no evil and having confidence in their
chief, saw nothing strange in this proceeding, and Sir William rode
deliberately out of Zutphen.  After he had been absent an hour or two,
the clatter of hoofs and the tramp of infantry was heard without, and
presently the commandant returned, followed by a thousand musketeers and
three or four hundred troopers.  It was still pitch dark; but, dimly
lighted by torches, small detachments of the fresh troops picked their
way through the black narrow streets, while the main body poured at once
upon the Brink, or great square.  Here, quietly and swiftly, they were
marshalled into order, the cavalry, pikemen, and musketeers, lining all
sides of the place, and a chosen band--among whom stood Sir William
Stanley, on foot, and an officer of high rank on horseback--occupying the
central space immediately in front of the town-house.

The drums then beat, and proclamation went forth through the city that
all burghers, without any distinction--municipal guards and all--were to
repair forthwith to the city-hall, and deposit their arms.  As the
inhabitants arose from their slumbers, and sallied forth into the streets
to inquire the cause of the disturbance, they soon discovered that they
had, in some mysterious manner, been entrapped.  Wild Irishmen, with
uncouth garb, threatening gesture, and unintelligible jargon, stood
gibbering at every corner, instead of the comfortable Flemish faces of
the familiar burgher-guard.  The chief burgomaster, sleeping heavily
after Sir William's hospitable banquet, aroused himself at last, and sent
a militia-captain to inquire the cause of the unseasonable drum-beat and
monstrous proclamation.  Day was breaking as the trusty captain made his
way to the scene of action.  The wan light of a cold, drizzly January
morning showed him the wide, stately square--with its leafless lime-trees
and its tall many storied, gable-ended houses rising dim and spectral
through the mist-filled to overflowing with troops, whose uniforms and
banners resembled nothing that he remembered in Dutch and English
regiments.  Fires were lighted at various corners, kettles were boiling,
and camp-followers and sutlers were crouching over them, half perished
with cold--for it had been raining dismally all night--while burghers,
with wives and children, startled from their dreams by the sudden
reveillee, stood gaping about, with perplexed faces and despairing
gestures.  As he approached the town-house--one of those magnificent,
many-towered, highly-decorated, municipal palaces of the Netherlands--he
found troops all around it; troops guarding the main entrance, troops on
the great external staircase leading to the front balcony, and officers,
in yellow jerkin and black bandoleer, grouped in the balcony itself.

The Flemish captain stood bewildered, when suddenly the familiar form of
Stanley detached itself from the central group and advanced towards him.
Taking him by the hand with much urbanity, Sir William led the militia-
man through two or three ranks of soldiers, and presented him to the
strange officer on horseback

"Colonel Tassis," said he, "I recommend to you a very particular friend
of mine.  Let me bespeak your best offices in his behalf."

"Ah God!"  cried the honest burgher, "Tassis!  Tassis!  Then are we
indeed most miserably betrayed."

Even the Spanish colonel who was of Flemish origin, was affected by the
despair of the Netherlander.

"Let those look to the matter of treachery whom it concerns," said he;
"my business here is to serve the King, my master."

"Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the
things which are God's," said Stanley, with piety.

The burgher-captain was then assured that no harm was intended to the
city, but that it now belonged to his most Catholic Majesty of Spain--
Colonel Stanley, to whom its custody had been entrusted, having freely
and deliberately restored it to its lawful owner.  He was then bid to go
and fetch the burgomasters and magistrates.

Presently they appeared--a dismal group, weeping and woe-begone--the same
board of strict Calvinists forcibly placed in office but three months
before by Leicester, through the agency of this very Stanley, who had so
summarily ejected their popish predecessors, and who only the night
before had so handsomely feasted themselves.  They came forward, the
tears running down their cheeks, crying indeed so piteously that even
Stanley began to weep bitterly himself.  "I have not done this," he
sobbed, "for power or pelf.  Not the hope of reward, but the love of God
hath moved me."

Presently some of the ex-magistrates made their appearance, and a party
of leading citizens went into a private house with Tassis and Stanley to
hear statements and explanations--as if any satisfactory ones were
possible.

Sir William, still in a melancholy tone, began to make a speech, through
an interpreter, and again to protest that he had not been influenced by
love of lucre.  But as he stammered and grew incoherent as he approached
the point, Tassis suddenly interrupted the conference.  "Let us look
after our soldiers,"  said he, "for they have been marching in the foul
weather half the night."  So the Spanish troops, who had been, standing
patiently to be rained upon after their long march, until the burghers
had all deposited their arms in the city-hall, were now billeted on the
townspeople.  Tassis gave peremptory orders that no injury should be
offered to persons or property on pain of death; and, by way of wholesome
example, hung several Hibernians the same day who had been detected in
plundering the inhabitants.

The citizens were, as usual in such cases, offered the choice between
embracing the Catholic religion or going into exile, a certain interval
being allowed them to wind up their affairs.  They were also required to
furnish Stanley and his regiment full pay for the whole period of their
service since coming to the Provinces, and to Tassis three months' wages
for his Spaniards in advance.  Stanley offered his troops the privilege
of remaining with him in the service of Spain, or of taking their
departure unmolested.  The Irish troops were quite willing to continue
under their old chieftain, particularly as it was intimated to them that
there was an immediate prospect of a brisk campaign in their native
island against the tyrant Elizabeth, under the liberating banners of
Philip.  And certainly, in an age where religion constituted country,
these fervent Catholics could scarcely be censured for taking arms
against the sovereign who persecuted their religion and themselves.
These honest barbarians had broken no oath, violated no trust, had
never pretended sympathy with freedom; or affection for their Queen.
They had fought fiercely under the chief who led them into battle--they
had robbed and plundered voraciously as opportunity served, and had been
occasionally hanged for their exploits; but Deventer and Fort Zutphen had
not been confided to their keeping; and it was a pleasant thought to
them, that approaching invasion of Ireland.  "I will ruin the whole
country from Holland to Friesland," said Stanley to Captain Newton, "and
then I will play such a game in Ireland as the Queen has never seen the
like all the days of her life."

Newton had already been solicited by Roland York to take service under
Parma, and had indignantly declined.  Sir Edmund Carey and his men, four
hundred in all, refused, to a man, to take part in the monstrous treason,
and were allowed to leave the city.  This was the case with all the
English officers.  Stanley and York were the only gentlemen who on this
occasion sullied the honour of England.

Captain Henchman, who had been taken prisoner in a skirmish a few days
before the surrender of Deventer, was now brought to that city, and
earnestly entreated by Tassis and by Stanley to seize this opportunity
of entering the service of Spain.

"You shall have great advancement and preferment," said Tassis.  "His
Catholic Majesty has got ready very many ships for Ireland, and Sir
William Stanley is to be general of the expedition."

"And you shall choose your own preferment," said Stanley, "for I know you
to be a brave man."

"I would rather," replied Henchman, "serve my prince in loyalty as a
beggar, than to be known and reported a rich traitor, with breach of
conscience."

"Continue so," replied Stanley, unabashed; "for this is the very
principle of my own enlargement: for, before, I served the devil,
and now I am serving God."

The offers and the arguments of the Spaniard and the renegade were
powerless with the blunt captain, and notwithstanding "divers other
traitorous alledgements by Sir William for his most vile facts," as
Henchman expressed it, that officer remained in poverty and captivity
until such time as he could be exchanged.

Stanley subsequently attempted in various ways to defend his character.
He had a commission from Leicester, he said, to serve whom he chose--as
if the governor-general had contemplated his serving Philip II. with that
commission; he had a passport to go whither he liked--as if his passport
entitled him to take the city of Deventer along with him; he owed no
allegiance to the States; he was discharged from his promise to the Earl;
he was his own master; he wanted neither money nor preferment; he had
been compelled by his conscience and his duty to God to restore the city
to its lawful master, and so on, and so on.

But whether he owed the States allegiance or not, it is certain that he
had accepted their money to relieve himself and his troops eight days
before his treason.  That Leicester had discharged him from his promises
to such an extent as to justify his surrendering a town committed to his
honour for safe keeping, certainly deserved no answer; that his duty to
conscience required him to restore the city argued a somewhat tardy
awakening of that monitor in the breast of the man who three months
before had wrested the place with the armed hand from men suspected of
Catholic inclinations; that his first motive however was not the mere
love of money, was doubtless true.  Attachment to his religion, a desire
to atone for his sins against it, the insidious temptings of his evil
spirit, York, who was the chief organizer of the conspiracy, and the
prospect of gratifying a wild and wicked ambition--these were the springs
that moved him.  Sums--varying from L30,000 to a pension of 1500
pistolets a year--were mentioned, as the stipulated price of his treason,
by Norris, Wilkes, Conway, and others;  but the Duke of Parma, in
narrating the whole affair in a private letter to the King, explicitly
stated that he had found Stanley "singularly disinterested."

"The colonel was only actuated by religious motives," he said, "asking
for no reward, except that be might serve in his Majesty's army
thenceforth--and this is worthy to be noted."

At the same time it appears from this correspondence, that the Duke,
recommended, and that the King bestowed, a "merced," which Stanley did
not refuse; and it was very well known that to no persons in, the world
was Philip apt to be so generous as to men of high rank, Flemish,
Walloon, or English, who deserted the cause of his rebellious subjects to
serve under his own banners.  Yet, strange to relate, almost at the very
moment that Stanley was communicating his fatal act of treason, in order
that he might open a high career for his ambition, a most brilliant
destiny was about to dawn upon him.  The Queen had it in contemplation,
in recompense for his distinguished services, and by advice of Leicester,
to bestow great honors and titles upon him, and to appoint him Viceroy of
Ireland--of that very country which he was now proposing, as an enemy to
his sovereign and as the purchased tool of a foreign despot, to invade.

Stanley's subsequent fate was obscure.  A price of 3000 florins was put
by the States upon his head and upon that of York.  He went to Spain, and
afterwards returned to the Provinces.  He was even reported to have
become, through the judgment of God, a lunatic, although the tale wanted
confirmation; and it is certain that at the close of the year he had
mustered his regiment under Farnese, prepared to join the Duke in the
great invasion of England.

Roland York, who was used to such practices, cheerfully consummated his
crime on the same day that witnessed the surrender of Deventer.  He rode
up to the gates of that city on the morning of the 29th January, inquired
quietly whether Tassis was master of the place, and then galloped
furiously back the ten miles to his fort.  Entering, he called his
soldiers together, bade them tear in pieces the colours of England, and
follow him into the city of Zutphen.  Two companies of States' troops
offered resistance, and attempted to hold the place; but they were
overpowered by the English and Irish, assisted by a force of Spaniards,
who, by a concerted movement, made their appearance from the town.  He
received a handsome reward, having far surpassed the Duke of Parma's
expectations, when he made his original offer of service.  He died very
suddenly, after a great banquet at Deventer, in the course of the sane
year, not having succeeded in making his escape into Spain to live at
ease on his stipend.  It was supposed that he was poisoned; but the
charge in those days was a common one, and nobody cared to investigate
the subject.  His body was subsequently exhumed when Deventer came into
the hands of the patriots--and with impotent and contemptible malice
hanged upon a gibbet.  This was the end of Roland York.

Parma was highly gratified, as may be imagined, at such successful
results.  "Thus Fort Zutphen," said he, "about which there have been so
many fisticuffs, and Deventer--which was the real object of the last
campaign, and which has cost the English so much blood and money, and is
the safety of Groningen and of all those Provinces--is now your
Majesty's.  Moreover, the effect of this treason must be to sow great
distrust between the English and the rebels, who will henceforth never
know in whom they can confide."

Parma was very right in this conjuncture.  Moreover, there was just then
a fearful run against the States.  The castle of Wauw, within a league of
Bergen-op-Zoom, which had been entrusted to one Le Marchand, a Frenchman
in the service of the republic, was delivered by him to Parma for 16,000
florins.  "'Tis a very important post," said the Duke, "and the money was
well laid out."

The loss of the city of Gelder, capital of the Province of the same name,
took place in the summer.  This town belonged to the jurisdiction of
Martin Schenk, and was, his chief place of deposit for the large and
miscellaneous property acquired by him during his desultory, but most
profitable, freebooting career.  The Famous partisan was then absent,
engaged in a lucrative job in the way of his profession.  He had made a
contract--in a very-business-like way--with the States, to defend the
city of Rheinberg and all the country, round against the Duke of Parma,
pledging himself to keep on foot for that purpose an army of 3300 foot
and 700 horse.  For this extensive and important operation, he was to
receive 20,000 florins a month from the general exchequer; and in
addition he was to be allowed the brandschatz--the black-mail, that is
to say--of the whole country-side, and the taxation upon all vessels
going up and down the river before Rheinberg; an ad valorem duty, in
short, upon all river-merchandise, assessed and collected in summary
fashion.  A tariff thus enforced was not likely to be a mild one; and
although the States considered that they had got a "good penny-worth" by
the job, it was no easy thing to get the better, in a bargain, of the
vigilant Martin, who was as thrifty a speculator as he was a desperate
fighter.  A more accomplished highwayman, artistically and
enthusiastically devoted to his pursuit, never lived.  Nobody did his
work more thoroughly--nobody got himself better paid for his work--and
Thomas Wilkes, that excellent man of business, thought the States not
likely to make much by their contract.  Nevertheless, it was a comfort to
know that the work would not be neglected.

Schenk was accordingly absent, jobbing the Rheinberg siege, and in his
place one Aristotle Patton, a Scotch colonel in the States' service, was
commandant of Gelders.  Now the thrifty Scot had an eye to business, too,
and was no more troubled with qualms of conscience than Rowland York
himself.  Moreover, he knew himself to be in great danger of losing his
place, for Leicester was no friend to him, and intended to supersede him.
Patton had also a decided grudge against Schenk, for that truculent
personage had recently administered to him a drubbing, which no doubt he
had richly deserved.  Accordingly, when; the Duke of Parma made a secret
offer to him of 36,000 florins if he would quietly surrender the city
entrusted to him, the colonel jumped at so excellent an opportunity of
circumventing Leicester, feeding his grudge against Martin, and making a
handsome fortune for himself.  He knew his trade too well, however, to
accept the offer too eagerly, and bargained awhile for better terms, and
to such good purpose, that it was agreed he should have not only the
36,000 florins, but all the horses, arms, plate, furniture, and other
moveables in the city belonging to Schenk, that he could lay his hands
upon.  Here were revenge and solid damages for the unforgotten assault
and battery--for Schenk's property alone made no inconsiderable fortune--
and accordingly the city, towards Midsummer, was surrendered to the
Seigneur d'Haultepenne.  Moreover, the excellent Patton had another and
a loftier motive.  He was in love.  He had also a rival.  The lady of his
thoughts was the widow of Pontus de Noyelle, Seigneur de Bours, who had
once saved the citadel of Antwerp, and afterwards sold that city and
himself.  His rival was no other than the great Seigneur de Champagny,
brother of Cardinal Granvelle, eminent as soldier, diplomatist, and
financier, but now growing old, not in affluent circumstances, and much
troubled with the gout.  Madame de Bours had, however, accepted his hand,
and had fixed the day for the wedding, when the Scotchman, thus suddenly
enriched, renewed a previously unsuccessful suit.  The widow then,
partially keeping her promise, actually celebrated her nuptials on the
appointed evening; but, to the surprise of the Provinces, she became not
the 'haulte et puissante dame de Champagny,' but Mrs. Aristotle Patton.

For this last treason neither Leicester nor the English were responsible.
Patton was not only a Scot, but a follower of Hohenlo, as Leicester
loudly protested.  Le Merchant was a Frenchman.  But Deventer and Zutphen
were places of vital importance, and Stanley an Englishman of highest
consideration, one who had been deemed worthy of the command in chief in
Leicester's absence.  Moreover, a cornet in the service of the Earl's
nephew, Sir Robert Sidney, had been seen at Zutphen in conference with
Tassis; and the horrible suspicion went abroad that even the illustrious
name of Sidney was to be polluted also.  This fear was fortunately false,
although the cornet was unquestionably a traitor, with whom the enemy had
been tampering; but the mere thought that Sir Robert Sidney could betray
the trust reposed in him was almost enough to make the still unburied
corpse of his brother arise from the dead.

Parma was right when he said that all confidence of the Netherlanders in
the Englishmen would now be gone, and that the Provinces would begin to
doubt their best friends.  No fresh treasons followed, but they were
expected every day.  An organized plot to betray the country was believed
in, and a howl of execration swept through the land.  The noble deeds of
Sidney and Willoughby, and Norris and Pelham, and Roger Williams, the
honest and valuable services of Wilkes, the generosity and courage of
Leicester, were for a season forgotten.  The English were denounced in
every city and village of the Netherlands as traitors and miscreants.
Respectable English merchants went from hostelry to hostelry, and from
town to town, and were refused a lodging for love or money.  The nation
was put under ban.  A most melancholy change from the beginning of the
year, when the very men who were now loudest in denunciation and fiercest
in hate, had been the warmest friends of Elizabeth, of England, and of
Leicester.

At Hohenlo's table the opinion was loudly expressed, even in the presence
of Sir Roger Williams, that it was highly improbable, if a man like
Stanley, of such high rank in the kingdom of England, of such great
connections and large means, could commit such a treason, that he could
do so without the knowledge and consent of her Majesty.

Barneveld, in council of state, declared that Leicester, by his
restrictive letter of 24th November, had intended to carry the authority
over the republic into England, in order to dispose of everything at his
pleasure, in conjunction with the English cabinet-council, and that the
country had never been so cheated by the French as it had now been by the
English, and that their government had become insupportable.

Councillor Carl Roorda maintained at the table of Elector Truchsess that
the country had fallen 'de tyrannide in tyrrannidem;' and--if they had
spurned the oppression of the Spaniards and the French--that it was now
time to, rebel against the English.  Barneveld and Buys loudly declared
that the Provinces were able to protect themselves without foreign
assistance, and that it was very injurious to impress a contrary opinion
upon the public mind.

The whole college of the States-General came before the state-council,
and demanded the name of the man to whom the Earl's restrictive letter
had been delivered--that document by which the governor had dared
surreptitiously to annul the authority which publicly he had delegated to
that body, and thus to deprive it of the power of preventing anticipated
crimes.  After much colloquy the name of Brackel was given, and, had not
the culprit fortunately been absent, his life might have, been in danger,
for rarely had grave statesmen been so thoroughly infuriated.

No language can exaggerate the consequences of this wretched treason.
Unfortunately, too; the abject condition to which the English troops had
been reduced by the niggardliness of their sovereign was an additional
cause of danger.  Leicester was gone, and since her favourite was no
longer in the Netherlands, the Queen seemed to forget that there was a
single Englishman upon that fatal soil.  In five months not one penny had
been sent to her troops.  While the Earl had been there one hundred and
forty thousand pounds had been sent in seven or eight months.  After his
departure not five thousand pounds were sent in one half year.

The English soldiers, who had fought so well in every Flemish battle-
field of freedom, had become--such as were left of them--mere famishing
half naked vagabonds and marauders.  Brave soldiers had been changed by
their sovereign into brigands, and now the universal odium which suddenly
attached itself to the English name converted them into outcasts.
Forlorn and crippled creatures swarmed about the Provinces, but were
forbidden to come through the towns, and so wandered about, robbing hen-
roosts and pillaging the peasantry.  Many deserted to the enemy.  Many
begged their way to England, and even to the very gates of the palace,
and exhibited their wounds and their misery before the eyes of that good
Queen Bess who claimed to be the mother of her subjects,--and begged for
bread in vain.

The English cavalry, dwindled now to a body of five hundred, starving and
mutinous, made a foray into Holland, rather as highwaymen than soldiers.
Count Maurice commanded their instant departure, and Hohenlo swore that
if the order were not instantly obeyed, he would put himself at the head
of his troops and cut every man of them to pieces.  A most painful and
humiliating condition for brave men who had been fighting the battles of
their Queen and of the republic, to behold themselves--through the
parsimony of the one and the infuriated sentiment of the other--compelled
to starve, to rob, or to be massacred by those whom they had left their
homes to defend.

At last, honest Wilkes, ever watchful of his duty, succeeded in borrowing
eight hundred pounds sterling for two months, by "pawning his own
carcase" as he expressed himself.  This gave the troopers about thirty
shillings a man, with which relief they became, for a time, contented and
well disposed.

Is this picture exaggerated?  Is it drawn by pencils hostile to the
English nation or the English Queen?  It is her own generals and
confidential counsellors who have told a story in all its painful
details, which has hardly found a place in other chronicles.  The
parsimony of the great Queen must ever remain a blemish on her character,
and it was never more painfully exhibited than towards her brave soldiers
in Flanders in the year 1587.  Thomas Wilkes, a man of truth, and a man
of accounts, had informed Elizabeth that the expenses of one year's war,
since Leicester had been governor-general, had amounted to exactly five
hundred and seventy-nine thousand three hundred and sixty pounds and
nineteen shillings, of which sum one hundred and forty-six thousand three
hundred and eighty-six pounds and eleven shillings had been spent by her
Majesty, and the balance had been paid, or was partly owing by the
States.  These were not agreeable figures, but the figures of honest
accountants rarely flatter, and Wilkes was not one of those financiers
who have the wish or the gift to make things pleasant.  He had
transmitted the accounts just as they had been delivered, certified by
the treasurers of the States and by the English paymasters, and the Queen
was appalled at the sum-totals.  She could never proceed with such a war
as that, she said, and she declined a loan of sixty thousand pounds which
the States requested, besides stoutly refusing to advance her darling
Robin a penny to pay off the mortgages upon two-thirds of his estates,
on which the equity of redemption was fast expiring, or to give him the
slightest help in furnishing him forth anew for the wars.

Yet not one of her statesmen doubted that these Netherland battles were
English battles, almost as much as if the fighting-ground had been the
Isle of Wight or the coast of Kent, the charts of which the statesmen and
generals of Spain were daily conning.

Wilkes, too, while defending Leicester stoutly behind his back, doing his
best, to explain his short-comings, lauding his courage and generosity,
and advocating his beloved theory of popular sovereignty with much
ingenuity and eloquence, had told him the truth to his face.  Although
assuring him that if he came back soon, he might rule the States "as a
schoolmaster doth his boys," he did not fail to set before him the
disastrous effects of his sudden departure and of his protracted absence;
he had painted in darkest colours the results of the Deventer treason,
he had unveiled the cabals against his authority, he had repeatedly and
vehemently implored his return; he had, informed the Queen, that
notwithstanding some errors of, administration, he was much the fittest
man to represent her in the Netherlands, and, that he could accomplish,
by reason of his experience, more in three months than any other man
could do in a year.  He bad done his best to reconcile the feuds which
existed between him and important personages in the Netherlands, he had
been the author of the complimentary letters sent to him in the name of
the States-General--to the great satisfaction of the Queen--but he had
not given up his friendship with Sir John Norris, because he said "the
virtues of the man made him as worthy of love as any one living, and
because the more he knew him, the more he had cause to affect and to
admire him."

This was the unpardonable offence, and for this, and for having told the
truth about the accounts, Leicester denounced Wilkes to the Queen as a
traitor and a hypocrite, and threatened repeatedly to take his life.  He
had even the meanness to prejudice Burghley against him--by insinuating
to the Lord-Treasurer that he too had been maligned by Wilkes--and thus
most effectually damaged the character of the plain-spoken councillor
with the Queen and many of her advisers; notwithstanding that he
plaintively besought her to "allow him to reiterate his sorry song, as
doth the cuckoo, that she would please not condemn her poor servant
unheard."

Immediate action was taken on the Deventer treason, and on the general
relations between the States-General and the English government.
Barneveld immediately drew up a severe letter to the Earl of Leicester.
On the 2nd February Wilkes came by chance into the assembly of the
States-General, with the rest of the councillors, and found Barneveld
just demanding the public reading of that document.  The letter was read.
Wilkes then rose and made a few remarks.

"The letter seems rather sharp upon his Excellency," he observed.  "There
is not a word in it," answered Barneveld curtly, "that is not perfectly
true;" and with this he cut the matter short, and made a long speech upon
other matters which were then before the assembly.

Wilkes, very anxious as to the effect of the letter, both upon public
feeling in England and upon his own position as English councillor,
waited immediately upon Count Maurice, President van der Myle, and upon
Villiers the clergyman, and implored their interposition to prevent the
transmission of the epistle.  They promised to make an effort to delay
its despatch or to mitigate its tone.  A fortnight afterwards, however,
Wilkes learned with dismay, that the document (the leading passages of
which will be given hereafter) had been sent to its destination.

Meantime, a consultation of civilians and of the family council of Count
Maurice was held, and it was determined that the Count should assume the
title of Prince more formally than he had hitherto done, in order that
the actual head of the Nassaus might be superior in rank to Leicester or
to any man who could be sent from England.  Maurice was also appointed by
the States, provisionally, governor-general, with Hohenlo for his
lieutenant-general.  That formidable personage, now fully restored to
health, made himself very busy in securing towns and garrisons for the
party of Holland, and in cashiering all functionaries suspected of
English tendencies.  Especially he became most intimate with Count
Moeurs, stadholder of Utrecht--the hatred of which individual and his
wife towards Leicester and the English nation; springing originally from
the unfortunate babble of Otheman, had grown more intense than ever,--
"banquetting and feasting" with him all day long, and concocting a
scheme; by which, for certain considerations, the province of Utrecht was
to be annexed to Holland under the perpetual stadholderate of Prince
Maurice.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Defect of enjoying the flattery, of his inferiors in station
The sapling was to become the tree




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v51
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 52, 1587



CHAPTER XIV.

     Leicester in England--Trial of the Queen of Scots--Fearful
     Perplexity at the English Court--Infatuation and Obstinacy of the
     Queen--Netherland Envoys in England--Queen's bitter Invective
     against them--Amazement of the Envoys--They consult with her chief
     Councillors--Remarks of Burghley and Davison--Fourth of February
     Letter from the States--Its severe Language towards Leicester--
     Painful Position of the Envoys at Court--Queen's Parsimony towards
     Leicester.

The scene shifts, for a brief interval, to England.  Leicester had
reached the court late in November.  Those "blessed beams," under whose
shade he was wont to find so much "refreshment and nutrition," had again
fallen with full radiance upon him.  "Never since I was born," said he,
"did I receive a more gracious welcome."--[Leicester to 'Wilkes, 4 Dec.
1587.  (S. P. Office MS)]--Alas, there was not so much benignity for the
starving English soldiers, nor for the Provinces, which were fast growing
desperate; but although their cause was so intimately connected with the
"great cause," which then occupied Elizabeth, almost to the exclusion of
other matter, it was, perhaps, not wonderful, although unfortunate, that
for a time the Netherlands should be neglected.

The "daughter of debate" had at last brought herself, it was supposed,
within the letter of the law, and now began those odious scenes of
hypocrisy on the part of Elizabeth, that frightful comedy--more
melancholy even than the solemn tragedy which it preceded and followed--
which must ever remain the darkest passage in the history of the Queen.

It is unnecessary, in these pages, to make more than a passing allusion
to the condemnation and death of the Queen of Scots.  Who doubts her
participation in the Babington conspiracy?  Who doubts that she was the
centre of one endless conspiracy by Spain and Rome against the throne and
life of Elizabeth?  Who doubts that her long imprisonment in England was
a violation of all law, all justice, all humanity?  Who doubts that the
fineing, whipping, torturing, hanging, embowelling of men, women, and
children, guilty of no other crime than adhesion to the Catholic faith,
had assisted the Pope and Philip, and their band of English, Scotch, and
Irish conspirators, to shake Elizabeth's throne and endanger her life?
Who doubts that; had the English sovereign been capable of conceiving the
great thought of religious toleration, her reign would have been more
glorious than, it was, the cause of Protestantism and freedom more
triumphant, the name of Elizabeth Tudor dearer to human hearts?  Who
doubts that there were many enlightened and noble spirits among her
Protestant subjects who lifted up their voices, over and over again, in
parliament and out of it, to denounce that wicked persecution exercised
upon their innocent Catholic brethren, which was fast converting loyal
Englishmen, against their will, into traitors and conspirators?  Yet who
doubts that it would have required, at exactly that moment, and in the
midst of that crisis; more elevation of soul than could fairly be
predicated of any individual, for Elizabeth in 1587 to pardon Mary,
or to relax in the severity of her legislation towards English Papists?

Yet, although a display of sublime virtue, such as the world has rarely
seen, was not to be expected, it was reasonable to look for honest and
royal dealing, from a great sovereign, brought at last face to face with
a great event.  The "great cause" demanded, a great, straightforward
blow.  It was obvious, however, that it would be difficult, in the midst
of the tragedy and the comedy, for the Netherland business to come fairly
before her Majesty.  "Touching the Low Country causes," said Leicester;
"very little is done yet, by reason of the continued business we have had
about the Queen of Scots' matters.  All the speech I have had with her
Majesty hitherto touching those causes hath been but private."--
[Leicester to Wilkes, 4 Des 1586.  (S. P. Office MS.)]--Walsingham,
longing for retirement, not only on account of his infinite grief for the
death of Sir Philip Sidney, "which hath been the cause;" he said, "that I
have ever since betaken myself into solitariness, and withdrawn; from
public affairs," but also by reason of the perverseness an difficulty
manifested in the gravest affairs by the sovereign he so faithfully
served, sent information, that, notwithstanding the arrival of some of
the States' deputies, Leicester was persuading her Majesty to proceed
first in the great cause.  "Certain principal persons, chosen as
committees," he said, "of both Houses are sent as humble suitors, to her
Majesty to desire that she would be pleased to give order for the
execution of the Scottish Queen.  Her Majesty made answer that she was
loath to proceed in so violent a course against the said Queen; as the
taking away of her life, and therefore prayed them to think of some other
way which might be for her own and their safety.  They replied, no other
way but her execution.  Her Majesty, though she yielded no answer to this
their latter reply, is contented to give order that the proclamation be
published, and so also it is hoped that she, will be moved by this, their
earnest instance to proceed to the thorough ending of the cause."

And so the cause went slowly on to its thorough ending.  And when
"no other way" could be thought of but to take Mary's life, and when
"no other way of taking that life could be devised," at Elizabeth's
suggestion, except by public execution, when none of the gentlemen
"of the association," nor Paulet, nor Drury--how skilfully soever their
"pulses had been felt" by Elizabeth's command--would commit assassination
to serve a Queen who was capable of punishing them afterwards for the
murder, the great cause came to its inevitable conclusion, and Mary
Stuart was executed by command of Elizabeth Tudor.  The world may
continue to differ as to the necessity of the execution but it has long
since pronounced a unanimous verdict as to the respective display of
royal dignity by the two Queens upon that great occasion.

During this interval the Netherland matter, almost as vital to England as
the execution of Mary, was comparatively neglected.  It was not
absolutely in abeyance, but the condition of the Queen's mind coloured
every state-affair with its tragic hues.  Elizabeth, harassed, anxious,
dreaming dreams, and enacting a horrible masquerade, was in the worst
possible temper to be approached by the envoys.  She was furious with the
Netherlanders for having maltreated her favourite.  She was still more
furious because their war was costing so much money.  Her disposition
became so uncertain, her temper so ungovernable, as to drive her
counsellors to their wit's ends.  Burghley confessed himself "weary of
his miserable life," and protested "that the only desire he had in the
world was to be delivered from the ungrateful burthen of service, which
her Majesty laid upon him so very heavily."  Walsingham wished himself
"well established in Basle."  The Queen set them all together by the
ears.  She wrangled spitefully over the sum-totals from the Netherlands;
she worried Leicester, she scolded Burghley for defending Leicester, and
Leicester abused Burghley for taking part against him.

The Lord-Treasurer, overcome with "grief which pierced both his body and
his heart," battled his way--as best he could--through the throng of
dangers which beset the path of England in that great crisis.  It was
most obvious to every statesman in the realm that this was not the time--
when the gauntlet had been thrown full in the face of Philip and Sixtus
and all Catholicism, by the condemnation of Mary--to leave the Netherland
cause "at random," and these outer bulwarks of her own kingdom
insufficiently protected.

"Your Majesty will hear," wrote Parma to Philip, "of the disastrous,
lamentable, and pitiful end of the, poor Queen of Scots.  Although for
her it will be immortal glory, and she will be placed among the number of
the many martyrs whose blood has been shed in the kingdom of England, and
be crowned in Heaven with a diadem more precious than the one she wore on
earth, nevertheless one cannot repress one's natural emotions.  I believe
firmly that this cruel deed will be the concluding crime of the many
which that Englishwoman has committed, and that our Lord will be pleased
that she shall at last receive the chastisement which she has these many
long years deserved, and which has been reserved till now, for her
greater ruin and confusion."--[Parma to Philip IL, 22 March.  1587.
(Arch. de Simancas, MS.)]--And with this, the Duke proceeded to discuss
the all important and rapidly-preparing invasion of England.  Farnese was
not the man to be deceived by the affected reluctance of Elizabeth before
Mary's scaffold, although he was soon to show that he was himself a
master in the science of grimace.  For Elizabeth--more than ever disposed
to be friends with Spain and Rome, now that war to the knife was made
inevitable--was wistfully regarding that trap of negotiation, against
which all her best friends were endeavouring to warn her.  She was more
ill-natured than ever to the Provinces, she turned her back upon the
Warnese, she affronted Henry III. by affecting to believe in the fable of
his envoy's complicity in the Stafford conspiracy against her life.

"I pray God to open her eyes," said Walsingham, "to see the evident peril
of the course she now holdeth .  .  .  .  If it had pleased her to have
followed the advice given her touching the French ambassador, our ships
had been released .  .  .  .  but she has taken a very strange course by
writing a very sharp letter unto the French King, which I fear will cause
him to give ear to those of the League, and make himself a party with
them, seeing so little regard had to him here.  Your Lordship may see
that our courage doth greatly increase, for that we make no difficulty to
fall out with all the world .  .  .  .  .  I never saw her worse affected
to the poor King of Navarre, and yet doth she seek in no sort to yield
contentment to the French King.  If to offend all the world;" repeated
the Secretary bitterly, "be it good cause of government, then can we not
do amiss .  .  .  .  . I never found her less disposed to take a course
of prevention of the approaching mischiefs toward this realm than at this
present.  And to be plain with you, there is none here that hath either
credit or courage to deal effectually with her in any of her great
causes."

Thus distracted by doubts and dangers, at war with her best friends, with
herself, and with all-the world, was Elizabeth during the dark days and
months which, preceded and followed the execution of the Scottish Queen.
If the great fight was at last to be fought triumphantly through, it was
obvious that England was to depend upon Englishmen of all ranks and
classes, upon her prudent and far-seeing statesmen, upon her nobles and
her adventurers, on her Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman blood ever mounting
against, oppression, on Howard and Essex, Drake and Williams, Norris, and
Willoughby, upon high-born magnates, plebeian captains, London merchants,
upon yeomen whose limbs were made in England, and upon Hollanders and
Zeelanders whose fearless mariners were to swarm to the protection of her
coasts, quite as much in that year of anxious expectation as upon the
great Queen herself.  Unquestionable as were her mental capacity and her
more than woman's courage, when fairly, brought face, to face with the
danger, it was fortunately not on one man or woman's brain and arm that
England's salvation depended in that crisis of her fate.

As to the Provinces, no one ventured to speak very boldly in their
defence.  "When I lay before her the peril," said Walsingham, "she
scorneth at it.  The hope of a peace with Spain has put her into a most
dangerous security."  Nor would any man now assume responsibility.  The
fate of Davison--of the man who had already in so detestable a manner
been made the scape-goat for Leicester's sins in the Netherlands, and
who had now been so barbarously sacrificed by the Queen for faithfully
obeying her orders in regard to the death-warrant, had sickened all
courtiers and counsellors for the time.  "The late severe, dealing
used by her Highness towards Mr. Secretary Davison," said Walsingham
to Wilkes, "maketh us very circumspect and careful not to proceed in
anything but wherein we receive direction from herself, and therefore
you must not find it strange if we now be more sparing than heretofore
hath been accustomed."

Such being the portentous state of the political atmosphere, and such
the stormy condition of the royal mind, it may be supposed that the
interviews of the Netherland envoys with her Majesty during this period
were not likely to be genial.  Exactly at the most gloomy moment--
thirteen days before the execution of Mary--they came first into
Elizabeth's presence at Greenwich.

The envoys were five in number, all of them experienced and able
statesmen--Zuylen van Nyvelt, Joos de Menyn, Nicasius de Silla, Jacob
Valck, and Vitus van Kammings.  The Queen was in the privy council-
chamber, attended by the admiral of England, Lord Thomas Howard, Lord
Hunsdon, great-chamberlain, Sir Christopher Hatton, vice-chamberlain,
Secretary Davison, and many other persons of distinction.

The letters of credence were duly presented, but it was obvious from the
beginning of the interview that the Queen was ill-disposed toward the
deputies, and had not only been misinformed as to matters of fact, but as
to the state of feeling of the Netherlanders and of the States-General
towards herself.

Menyu, however, who was an orator by profession--being pensionary of
Dort--made, in the name of his colleagues, a brief but pregnant speech,
to which the Queen listened attentively, although, with frequent
indications of anger and impatience.  He commenced by observing that
the United Provinces still entertained the hope that her Majesty would
conclude, upon further thoughts, to accept the sovereignty over them,
with reasonable conditions; but the most important passages of his
address were those relating to the cost of the war.  "Besides our
stipulated contributions," said the pensionary, "of 200,000 florins the
month, we have furnished 500,000 as an extraordinary grant; making for
the year 2,900,000 florins, and this over and above the particular and
special expenditures of the Provinces, and other sums for military
purposes.  We confess, Madam, that the succour of your Majesty is a truly
royal one, and that there have been few princes in history who have given
such assistance to their neighbours unjustly oppressed.  It is certain
that by means of that help, joined with the forces of the United
Provinces, the Earl of Leicester has been able to arrest the course
of the Duke of Parma's victories and to counteract his designs.
Nevertheless, it appears, Madam, that these forces have not been
sufficient to drive the enemy out of the country.  We are obliged, for
regular garrison work and defence of cities, to keep; up an army of at
least 27,000 foot and 3500 horse.  Of this number your Majesty pays 5000
foot and 1000 horse, and we are now commissioned, Madam, humbly to
request an increase of your regular succour during the war to 10,000 foot
and 2000 horse.  We also implore the loan of L60,000 sterling, in order
to assist us in maintaining for the coming season a sufficient force in
the field."

Such, in brief, was the oration of pensionary Menyn, delivered in the
French language.  He had scarcely concluded, when the Queen--evidently in
a great passion--rose to her feet, and without any hesitation, replied in
a strain of vehement eloquence in the same tongue.

"Now I am not deceived, gentlemen," she said, "and that which I have been
fearing has occurred.  Our common adage, which we have in England, is a
very good one.  When one fears that an evil is coming, the sooner it
arrives the better.  Here is a quarter of a year that I have been
expecting you, and certainly for the great benefit I have conferred on
you, you have exhibited a great ingratitude, and I consider myself very
ill treated by you.  'Tis very strange that you should begin by
soliciting still greater succour without rendering me any satisfaction
for your past actions, which have been so extraordinary, that I swear by
the living God I think it impossible to find peoples or states more
ungrateful or ill-advised than yourselves.

"I have sent you this year fifteen, sixteen, aye seventeen or eighteen
thousand men.  You have left them without payment, you have let some of
them die of hunger, driven others to such desperation that they have
deserted to the enemy.  Is it not mortifying for the English nation and
a great shame for you that Englishmen should say that they have found
more courtesy from Spaniards than from Netherlanders?  Truly, I tell you
frankly that I will never endure such indignities.  Rather will I act
according to my will, and you may do exactly, as you think best.

"If I chose, I could do something very good without you, although some
persons are so fond of saying that it was quite necessary for the Queen
of England to do what she does for her own protection.  No, no!  Disabuse
yourselves of that impression.  These are but false persuasions.  Believe
boldly that I can play an excellent game without your assistance, and a
better one than I ever did with it!  Nevertheless, I do not choose to do
that, nor do I wish you so much harm.  But likewise do I not choose that
you should hold such language to me.  It is true that I should not wish
the Spaniard so near me if he should be my enemy.  But why should I
not live in peace, if we were to be friends to each other?  At the
commencement of my reign we lived honourably together, the King of Spain
and I, and he even asked me to, marry him, and, after that, we lived a
long time very peacefully, without any attempt having been made against
my life.  If we both choose, we can continue so to do.

"On the other hand, I sent you the Earl of Leicester, as lieutenant of
my forces, and my intention was that he should have exact knowledge of
your finances and contributions.  But, on the contrary, he has never
known anything about them, and you have handled them in your own manner
and amongst yourselves.  You have given him the title of governor, in
order, under this name, to cast all your evils on his head.  That title
he accepted against my will, by doing which he ran the risk of losing his
life, and his estates, and the grace and favour of his Princess, which
was more important to him than all.  But he did it in order to maintain
your tottering state.  And what authority, I pray you, have you given
him?  A shadowy authority, a purely imaginary one.  This is but mockery.
He is, at any rate, a gentleman, a man of honour and of counsel.  You had
no right to treat him thus.  If I had accepted the title which you wished
to give me, by the living God, I would not have suffered you so to treat
me.

"But you are so badly advised that when there is a man of worth who
discovers your tricks you wish him ill, and make an outcry against him;
and yet some of you, in order to save your money, and others in the hope
of bribes, have been favouring the Spaniard, and doing very wicked work.
No, believe me that God will punish those who for so great a benefit wish
to return me so much evil.  Believe, boldly too, that the King of Spain
will never trust men who have abandoned the party to which they belonged,
and from which they have received so many benefits, and will never
believe a word of what they promise him.  Yet, in order to cover up their
filth, they spread the story that the Queen of England is thinking of
treating for peace without their knowledge.  No, I would rather be dead
than that any one should have occasion to say that I had not kept my
promise.  But princes must listen to both sides, and that can be done
without breach of faith.  For they transact business in a certain way,
and with a princely intelligence, such as private persons cannot imitate.

"You are States, to be sure, but private individuals in regard to
princes.  Certainly, I would never choose to do anything without your
knowledge, and I would never allow the authority which you have among
yourselves, nor your privileges, nor your statutes, to be infringed.
Nor will I allow you to be perturbed in your consciences.  What then
would you more of me?  You have issued a proclamation in your country
that no one is to talk of peace.  Very well, very good.  But permit
princes likewise to do as they shall think best for the security of their
state, provided it does you no injury.  Among us princes we are not wont
to make such long orations as you do, but you ought to be content with
the few words that we bestow upon you, and make yourself quiet thereby.

"If I ever do anything for you again, I choose to be treated more
honourably.  I shall therefore appoint some personages of my council to
communicate with you.  And in the first place I choose to hear and see
for myself what has taken place already, and have satisfaction about
that, before I make any reply to what you have said to me as to greater
assistance.  And so I will leave you to-day, without troubling you
further."

With this her Majesty swept from the apartment, leaving the deputies
somewhat astounded at the fierce but adroit manner in which the tables
had for a moment been turned upon them.

It was certainly a most unexpected blow, this charge of the States having
left the English soldiers--whose numbers the Queen had so suddenly
multiplied by three--unpaid and unfed.  Those Englishmen who, as
individuals, had entered the States' service, had been--like all the
other troops regularly paid.  This distinctly appeared from the
statements of her own counsellors and generals.  On the other hand,
the Queen's contingent, now dwindled to about half their original
number, had been notoriously unpaid for nearly six months.

This has already been made sufficiently clear from the private letters
of most responsible persons.  That these soldiers were starving,
deserting; and pillaging, was, alas! too true; but the envoys of the
States hardly expected to be censured by her Majesty, because she had
neglected to pay her own troops.  It was one of the points concerning
which they had been especially enjoined to complain, that the English
cavalry, converted into highwaymen by want of pay, had been plundering
the peasantry, and we have seen that Thomas Wilkes had "pawned his
carcase" to provide for their temporary relief.

With regard to the insinuation that prominent personages in the country
had been tampered with by the enemy, the envoys were equally astonished
by such an attack.  The great Deventer treason had not yet been heard of
in England for it had occurred only a week before this first interview--
but something of the kind was already feared; for the slippery dealings
of York and Stanley with Tassis and Parma, had long been causing painful
anxiety, and had formed the subject of repeated remonstrances on the part
of the 'States' to Leicester and to the Queen.  The deputies were hardly,
prepared therefore to defend their own people against dealing privately
with the King of Spain.  The only man suspected of such practices was
Leicester's own favourite and financier, Jacques Ringault, whom the Earl
had persisted in employing against the angry remonstrances of the States,
who believed him to be a Spanish spy; and the man was now in prison, and
threatened with capital punishment.

To suppose that Buys or Barneveld, Roorda, Meetkerk, or any other leading
statesman in the Netherlands, was contemplating a private arrangement
with Philip II., was as ludicrous a conception as to imagine Walsingham
a pensioner of the Pope, or Cecil in league with the Duke of Guise.  The
end and aim of the States' party was war.  In war they not only saw the
safety of the reformed religion, but the only means of maintaining the
commercial prosperity of the commonwealth.  The whole correspondence of
the times shows that no politician in the country dreamed of peace,
either by public or secret negotiation.  On the other hand--as will be
made still clearer than ever--the Queen was longing for peace, and was
treating for peace at that moment through private agents, quite without
the knowledge of the States, and in spite of her indignant disavowals in
her speech to the envoys.

Yet if Elizabeth could have had the privilege of entering--as we are
about to do--into the private cabinet of that excellent King of Spain,
with whom, she had once been such good friends, who had even sought her
hand in marriage, and with whom she saw no reason whatever why she should
not live at peace, she might have modified her expressions an this
subject.  Certainly, if she could have looked through the piles of
papers--as we intend to do--which lay upon that library-table, far beyond
the seas and mountains, she would have perceived some objections to the
scheme of living at peace with that diligent letter-writer.

Perhaps, had she known how the subtle Farnese was about to express
himself concerning the fast-approaching execution of Mary, and the as
inevitably impending destruction of "that Englishwoman" through the
schemes of his master and himself, she would have paid less heed to the
sentiments couched in most exquisite Italian which Alexander was at the
same time whispering in her ear, and would have taken less offence at the
blunt language of the States-General.

Nevertheless, for the present, Elizabeth would give no better answer than
the hot-tempered one which had already somewhat discomfited the deputies.

Two days afterwards, the five envoys had an interview with several
members of her Majesty's council, in the private apartment of the Lord-
Treasurer in Greenwich Palace.  Burghley, being indisposed, was lying
upon his bed.  Leicester, Admiral Lord Howard, Lord Hunsden, Sir
Christopher Hatton, Lord Buckhurst, and Secretary Davison, were present,
and the Lord-Treasurer proposed that the conversation should be in Latin,
that being the common language most familiar to them all.  Then, turning
over the leaves of the report, a copy of which lay on his bed, he asked
the envoys, whether, in case her Majesty had not sent over the assistance
which she had done under the Earl of Leicester, their country would not
have been utterly ruined.

"To all appearance, yes," replied Menyn.

"But," continued Burghley, still running through the pages of the
document, and here and there demanding an explanation of an obscure
passage or two, "you are now proposing to her Majesty to send 10,000 foot
and 2000 horse, and to lend L60,000.  This is altogether monstrous and
excessive.  Nobody will ever dare even to speak to her Majesty on the
subject.  When you first came in 1585, you asked for 12,000 men, but you
were fully authorized to accept 6000.  No doubt that is the case now."

"On that occasion," answered Menyn, "our main purpose was to induce her
Majesty to accept the sovereignty, or at least the perpetual protection
of our country.  Failing in that we broached the third point, and not
being able to get 12,000 soldiers we compounded for 5000, the agreement
being subject to ratification by our principals.  We gave ample security
in shape of the mortgaged cities.  But experience has shown us that these
forces and this succour are insufficient.  We have therefore been sent to
beg her Majesty to make up the contingent to the amount originally
requested."

"But we are obliged to increase the garrisons in the cautionary towns,"
said one of the English councillors, "as 800 men in a city like Flushing
are very little."

"Pardon me," replied Valck, "the burghers are not enemies but friends to
her Majesty and to the English nation.  They are her dutiful subjects
like all the inhabitants of the Netherlands."

"It is quite true," said Burghley, after having made some critical
remarks upon the military system of the Provinces, "and a very common
adage, 'quod tunc tua res agitur, paries cum proximus ardet,' but,
nevertheless, this war principally concerns you.  Therefore you are bound
to do your utmost to meet its expenses in your own country, quite as much
as a man who means to build a house is expected to provide the stone and
timber himself.  But the States have not done their best.  They have not
at the appointed time come forward with their extraordinary contributions
for the last campaign.  "How many men," he asked, "are required for
garrisons in all the fortresses and cities, and for the field?"

"But," interposed Lord Hunsden, "not half so many men are needed in the
garrisons; for the burghers ought to be able to defend their own cities.
Moreover it is probable that your ordinary contributions might be
continued and doubled and even tripled."

"And on the whole," observed the Lord Admiral, "don't you think that the
putting an army in the field might be dispensed with for this year?  Her
Majesty at present must get together and equip a fleet of war vessels
against the King of Spain, which will be an excessively large pennyworth,
besides the assistance which she gives her neighbours."

"Yes, indeed," said Secretary Davison, "it would be difficult to
exaggerate the enormous expense which her Majesty must encounter this
year for defending and liberating her own kingdoms against the King of
Spain.  That monarch is making great naval preparations, and is treating
all Englishmen in the most hostile manner.  We are on the brink of
declared war with Spain, with the French King, who is arresting all
English persons and property within his kingdom, and with Scotland, all
which countries are understood to have made a league together on account
of the Queen of Scotland, whom it will be absolutely necessary to put to
death in order to preserve the life of her Majesty, and are about to make
war upon England.  This matter then will cost us, the current year, at
least eight hundred thousand pounds sterling.  Nevertheless her Majesty
is sure to assist you so far as her means allow; and I, for my part, will
do my best to keep her Majesty well disposed to your cause, even as I
have ever done, as you well know."

Thus spoke poor Davison, but a few days before the fatal 8th of February,
little dreaming that the day for his influencing the disposition of her
Majesty would soon be gone, and that he was himself to be crushed for
ever by the blow which was about to destroy the captive Queen.  The
political combinations resulting from the tragedy were not to be exactly
as he foretold, but there is little doubt that in him the Netherlands,
and Leicester, and the Queen of England, were to lose an honest,
diligent, and faithful friend.

"Well, gentlemen," said the Lord-Treasurer, after a few more questions
concerning the financial abilities of the States had been asked and
answered, "it is getting late into the evening, and time for you all to
get back to London.  Let me request you, as soon as may be, to draw up
some articles in writing, to which we will respond immediately."

Menyn then, in the name of the deputies, expressed thanks for the
urbanity shown them in the conference, and spoke of the deep regret with
which they had perceived, by her Majesty's answer two days before, that
she was so highly offended with them and with the States-General.  He
then, notwithstanding Burghley's previous hint as to the lateness of the
hour, took up the Queen's answer, point by point, contradicted all its
statements, appealing frequently to Lord Leicester for confirmation of
what he advanced, and concluded by begging the councillors to defend the
cause of the Netherlands to her Majesty, Burghley requested them to make
an excuse or reply to the Queen in writing, and send it to him to
present.  Thus the conference terminated, and the envoys returned to
London.  They were fully convinced by the result of, these interviews,
as they told their constituents, that her Majesty, by false statements
and reports of persons either grossly ignorant or not having the good of
the commonwealth before their eyes, had been very incorrectly informed as
to the condition of the Provinces, and of the great efforts made by the
States-General to defend their country against the enemy: It was obvious,
they said, that their measures had been exaggerated in order to deceive
the Queen and her council.

And thus statements and counter-statements, protocols and apostilles,
were glibly exchanged; the heap of diplomatic rubbish was rising higher
and higher, and the councillors and envoys, pleased with their work, were
growing more and more amicable, when the court was suddenly startled by
the news of the Deventer and Zutphen treason.  The intelligence was
accompanied by the famous 4th of February letter, which descended, like a
bombshell, in the midst of the, decorous council-chamber.  Such language
had rarely been addressed to the Earl of Leicester, and; through him; to
the imperious sovereign herself, as the homely truths with which
Barneveld, speaking with the voice of the States-General, now smote the
delinquent governor.

"My Lord," said he, "it is notorious; and needs no illustration whatever,
with what true confidence and unfeigned affection we received your
Excellency in our land; the States-General, the States-Provincial,
the magistrates, and the communities of the chief cities in the United
Provinces, all uniting to do honour to her serene Majesty of England
and to yourself, and to confer upon you the government-general over us.
And although we should willingly have placed some limitations upon the
authority thus bestowed on you; in, order that by such a course your own
honour and the good and constitutional condition of the country might be
alike preserved, yet finding your Excellency not satisfied with those
limitations, we postponed every objection, and conformed ourselves
to your pleasure.  Yet; before coming to that decision, we had well
considered that by doing so we might be opening a door to many ambitious,
avaricious, and pernicious persons, both of these countries and from
other nations, who might seize the occasion to advance their own private
profits, to the detriment of the country and the dishonour of your
Excellency.

"And, in truth, such persons have done their work so efficiently as to
inspire you with distrust against the most faithful and capable men in
the Provinces, against the Estates General and Provincial, magistrates,
and private persons, knowing very well that they could never arrive
at their own ends so long as you were guided by the constitutional
authorities of the country.  And precisely upon the distrust; thus
created as a foundation, they raised a back-stairs council, by means
of which they were able to further their ambitious, avaricious, and
seditious practices, notwithstanding the good advice and remonstrances
of the council of state, and the States General and Provincial."

He proceeded to handle the subjects of the English rose-noble; put in
circulation by Leicester's finance or back-stairs council at two florins
above its value, to the manifest detriment of the Provinces, to the
detestable embargo which had prevented them from using the means bestowed
upon them by God himself to defend their country, to the squandering.
and embezzlement of the large sums contributed by the Province; and
entrusted to the Earl's administration; to the starving condition of the
soldiers; maltreated by government, and thus compelled to prey upon the
inhabitants--so that troops in the States' service had never been so
abused during the whole war, although the States had never before voted
such large contributions nor paid them so promptly--to the placing in
posts of high honour and trust men of notoriously bad character and even
Spanish spies; to the taking away the public authority from those to whom
it legitimately belonged, and conferring it on incompetent and
unqualified persons; to the illegal banishment of respectable citizens,
to the violation of time-honoured laws and privileges, to the shameful
attempts to repudiate the ancient authority of the States, and to usurp a
control over the communities and nobles by them represented, and to the
perpetual efforts to foster dissension, disunion, and rebellion among the
inhabitants.  Having thus drawn up a heavy bill of indictment, nominally
against the Earl's illegal counsellors, but in reality against the Earl
himself, he proceeded to deal with the most important matter of all.

"The principal cities and fortresses in the country have been placed in
hands of men suspected by the States on legitimate grounds, men who had
been convicted of treason against these Provinces, and who continued to
be suspected, notwithstanding that your Excellency had pledged your own
honour for their fidelity.  Finally, by means of these scoundrels, it was
brought to pass, that the council of state having been invested by your
Excellency with supreme authority during your absence--a secret document,
was brought to light after your departure, by which the most substantial
matters, and those most vital to the defence of the country, were
withdrawn from the disposition of that council.  And now, alas, we see
the effects of these practices!

"Sir William Stanley, by you appointed governor of Deventer, and Rowland
York, governor of Fort Zutphen, have refused, by virtue of that secret
document, to acknowledge any authority in this country.  And
notwithstanding that since your departure they and their soldiers have
been supported at our expense, and had just received a full month's pay
from the States, they have traitorously and villainously delivered the
city and the fortress to the enemy, with a declaration made by Stanley
that he did the deed to ease his conscience, and to render to the King of
Spain the city which of right was belonging to him.  And this is a crime
so dishonourable, scandalous, ruinous, and treasonable, as that, during
this, whole war, we have never seen the like.  And we are now, in daily
fear lest the English commanders in Bergen-op-Zoom, Ostend, and other
cities, should commit the same crime.  And although we fully suspected
the designs of Stanley and York, yet your Excellency's secret document
had deprived us of the power to act.

"We doubt not that her Majesty and your Excellency will think this
strange language.  But we can assure you, that we too think it strange
and grievous that those places should have been confided to such men,
against our repeated remonstrances, and that, moreover, this very Stanley
should have been recommended by your Excellency for general of all the
forces.  And although we had many just and grave reasons for opposing
your administration--even as our ancestors were often wont to rise
against the sovereigns of the country--we have, nevertheless, patiently
suffered for a long time, in order not to diminish your authority, which
we deemed so important to our welfare, and in the hope that you would at
last be moved by the perilous condition of the commonwealth, and awake to
the artifices of your advisers.

"But at last-feeling that the existence of the state can no longer be
preserved without proper authority, and that the whole community is full
of emotion and distrust, on account of these great treasons--we, the
States-General, as well as the States-Provincial, have felt constrained
to establish such a government as we deem meet for the emergency.  And of
this we think proper to apprize your Excellency."

He then expressed the conviction that all these evil deeds had been
accomplished against the intentions of the Earl and the English
government, and requested his Excellency so to deal with her Majesty that
the contingent of horse and foot hitherto accorded by her "might be
maintained in good order, and in better pay."

Here, then, was substantial choleric phraseology, as good plain speaking
as her Majesty had just been employing, and with quite as sufficient
cause.  Here was no pleasant diplomatic fencing, but straightforward
vigorous thrusts.  It was no wonder that poor Wilkes should have thought
the letter "too sharp," when he heard it read in the assembly, and that
he should have done his best to prevent it from being despatched.  He
would have thought it sharper could he have seen how the pride of her
Majesty and of Leicester was wounded by it to the quick.  Her list of
grievances against the States seem to vanish into air.  Who had been
tampering with the Spaniards now?  Had that "shadowy and imaginary
authority" granted to Leicester not proved substantial enough?  Was it
the States-General, the state-council, or was it the "absolute governor"
--who had carried off the supreme control of the commonwealth in his
pocket--that was responsible for the ruin effected by Englishmen who had
scorned all "authority" but his own?

The States, in another blunt letter to the Queen herself, declared the
loss of Deventer to be more disastrous to them than even the fall of
Antwerp had been; for the republic had now been split asunder, and its
most ancient and vital portions almost cut away.  Nevertheless they were
not "dazzled nor despairing," they said, but more determined than ever to
maintain their liberties, and bid defiance to the Spanish tyrant.  And
again they demanded of, rather than implored; her Majesty to be true to
her engagements with them.

The interviews which followed were more tempestuous than ever.  "I had
intended that my Lord of Leicester should return to you," she said to the
envoys.  "But that shall never be.  He has been treated with gross
ingratitude, he has served the Provinces with ability, he has consumed
his own property there, he has risked his life, he has lost his near
kinsman, Sir Philip Sidney, whose life I should be glad to purchase with
many millions, and, in place of all reward, he receives these venomous
letters, of which a copy has been sent to his sovereign to blacken him
with her."  She had been advising him to return, she added, but she was
now resolved that he should "never set foot in the Provinces again."

Here the Earl, who, was present, exclaimed--beating himself on the
breast--"a tali officio libera nos, Domine!"

But the States, undaunted by these explosions of wrath, replied that it
had ever been their custom, when their laws and liberties were invaded,
to speak their mind boldly to kings and governors, and to procure redress
of their grievances, as became free men.

During that whole spring the Queen was at daggers drawn with all her
leading counsellors, mainly in regard to that great question of
questions--the relations of England with the Netherlands and Spain.
Walsingham--who felt it madness to dream of peace, and who believed it
the soundest policy to deal with Parma and his veterans upon the soil of
Flanders, with the forces of the republic for allies, rather than to
await his arrival in London--was driven almost to frenzy by what he
deemed the Queen's perverseness.

"Our sharp words continue," said the Secretary, "which doth greatly
disquiet her Majesty, and discomfort her poor servants that attend her.
The Lord-Treasurer remaineth still in disgrace, and, behind my back,
her Majesty giveth out very hard speeches of myself, which I the rather
credit, for that I find, in dealing with her, I am nothing gracious;
and if her Majesty could be otherwise served, I know I should not be used
.  .  .  .  .  Her Majesty doth wholly lend herself to devise some
further means to disgrace her poor council, in respect whereof she
neglecteth all other causes .  .  .  .  .  The discord between her
Majesty and her council hindereth the necessary consultations that were
to be destined for the preventing of the manifold perils that hang over
this realm .  .  .  .  .  .  Sir Christopher Hatton hath dealt very
plainly and dutifully with her, which hath been accepted in so evil part
as he is resolved to retire for a time.  I assure you I find every man
weary of attendance here .  .  .  .  .  .  I would to God I could find
as good resolution in her Majesty to proceed in a princely course in
relieving the United Provinces, as I find an honorable disposition in
your Lordship to employ yourself in their service."

The Lord-Treasurer was much puzzled, very wretched, but philosophically
resigned.  "Why her Majesty useth me thus strangely, I know not," he
observed.  "To some she saith that she meant not I should have gone from
the court; to some she saith, she may not admit me, nor give me
contentment.  I shall dispose myself to enjoy God's favour, and shall do
nothing to deserve her disfavour.  And if I be suffered to be a stranger
to her affairs, I shall have a quieter life."

Leicester, after the first burst of his anger was over, was willing to
return to the Provinces.  He protested that he had a greater affection
for the Netherland people--not for the governing powers--even than he
felt for the people of England.--"There is nothing sticks in my
stomach," he said, "but the good-will of that poor afflicted people, for
whom, I take God to record, I could be content to lose any limb I have to
do them good."  But he was crippled with debt, and the Queen resolutely
refused to lend him a few thousand pounds, without which he could not
stir.  Walsingham in vain did battle with her parsimony, representing how
urgently and vividly the necessity of his return had been depicted by all
her ministers in both countries, and how much it imported to her own
safety and service.  But she was obdurate.  "She would rather," he said
bitterly to Leicester, "hazard the increase of confusion there--which may
put the whole country in peril--than supply your want.  The like course
she holdeth in the rest of her causes, which maketh me to wish myself
from the helm."  At last she agreed to advance him ten thousand pounds,
but on so severe conditions, that the Earl declared himself heart-broken
again, and protested that he would neither accept the money, nor ever set
foot in the Netherlands.  "Let Norris stay there," he said in a fury;
"he will do admirably, no doubt.  Only let it not be supposed that I can
be there also.  Not for one hundred thousand pounds would I be in that
country with him."

Meantime it was agreed that Lord Buckhurst should be sent forth on what
Wilkes termed a mission of expostulation, and a very ill-timed one.  This
new envoy was to inquire into the causes of the discontent, and to do his
best to remove them: as if any man in England or in Holland doubted as to
the causes, or as to the best means of removing them; or as if it were
not absolutely certain that delay was the very worst specific that could
be adopted--delay--which the Netherland statesmen, as well as the Queen's
wisest counsellors, most deprecated, which Alexander and Philip most
desired, and by indulging in which her Majesty was most directly playing
into her adversary's hand.  Elizabeth was preparing to put cards upon the
table against an antagonist whose game was close, whose honesty was
always to be suspected, and who was a consummate master in what was then
considered diplomatic sleight of hand.  So Lord Buckhurst was to go forth
to expostulate at the Hague, while transports were loading in Cadiz and
Lisbon, reiters levying in Germany, pikemen and musketeers in Spain and
Italy, for a purpose concerning which Walsingham and Barneveld had for a
long time felt little doubt.

Meantime Lord Leicester went to Bath to drink the waters, and after
he had drunk the waters, the Queen, ever anxious for his health, was
resolved that he should not lose the benefit of those salubrious draughts
by travelling too soon, or by plunging anew into the fountains of
bitterness which flowed perennially in the Netherlands.




CHAPTER XV.

     Buckhurst sent to the Netherlands--Alarming State of Affairs on his
     Arrival--His Efforts to conciliate--Democratic Theories of Wilkes--
     Sophistry of the Argument--Dispute between Wilkes and Barneveld--
     Religious Tolerance by the States--Their Constitutional Theory--
     Deventer's bad Counsels to Leicester--Their pernicious Effect--Real
     and supposed Plots against Hohenlo--Mutual Suspicion and Distrust--
     Buckhurst seeks to restore good Feeling--The Queen angry and
     vindictive--She censures Buckhurst's Course--Leicester's wrath at
     Hohenlo's Charges of a Plot by the Earl to murder him--Buckhurst's
     eloquent Appeals to the Queen--Her perplexing and contradictory
     Orders--Despair of Wilkes--Leicester announces his Return--His
     Instructions--Letter to Junius--Barneveld denounces him in the
     States.

We return to the Netherlands.  If ever proof were afforded of the
influence of individual character on the destiny of nations and of the
world, it certainly was seen in the year 1587.  We have lifted the
curtain of the secret council-chamber at Greenwich.  We have seen all
Elizabeth's advisers anxious to arouse her from her fatal credulity,
from her almost as fatal parsimony.  We have seen Leicester anxious to
return, despite all fancied indignities, Walsingham eager to expedite the
enterprise, and the Queen remaining obdurate, while month after month of
precious time was melting away.

In the Netherlands, meantime, discord and confusion had been increasing
every day; and the first great cause of such a dangerous condition of
affairs was the absence of the governor.  To this all parties agreed.
The Leicestrians, the anti-Leicestriana, the Holland party, the Utrecht
party, the English counsellors, the English generals, in private letter,
in solemn act, all warned the Queen against the lamentable effects
resulting from Leicester's inopportune departure and prolonged absence.

On the first outbreak of indignation after the Deventer Affair, Prince
Maurice was placed at the head of the general government, with the
violent Hohenlo as his lieutenant.  The greatest exertions were made by
these two nobles and by Barneveld, who guided the whole policy of the
party, to secure as many cities as possible to their cause.  Magistrates
and commandants of garrisons in many towns willingly gave in their
adhesion to the new government; others refused; especially Diedrich
Sonoy, an officer of distinction, who was governor of Enkhuyzen, and
influential throughout North Holland, and who remained a stanch partisan
of Leicester.  Utrecht, the stronghold of the Leicestrians, was wavering
and much torn by faction; Hohenlo and Moeurs had "banquetted and feasted"
to such good purpose that they had gained over half the captains of the
burgher-guard, and, aided by the branch of nobles, were making a good
fight against the Leicester magistracy and the clerical force, enriched
by the plunder of the old Catholic livings, who denounced as Papistical
and Hispaniolized all who favoured the party of Maurice and Barneveld.

By the end of March the envoys returned from London, and in their company
came Lord Buckhurst, as special ambassador from the Queen.

Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst--afterwards Earl of Dorset and lord-
treasurer--was then fifty-one years of age.  A man of large culture-poet,
dramatist, diplomatist-bred to the bar; afterwards elevated to the
peerage; endowed with high character and strong intellect; ready with
tongue and pen; handsome of person, and with a fascinating address, he
was as fit a person to send on a mission of expostulation as any man to
be found in England.  But the author of the 'Induction to the Mirror for
Magistrates' and of 'Gorboduc,' had come to the Netherlands on a forlorn
hope.  To expostulate in favour of peace with a people who knew that
their existence depended on war, to reconcile those to delay who felt
that delay was death, and to, heal animosities between men who were
enemies from their cradles to their graves, was a difficult mission.
But the chief ostensible object of Buckhurst was to smooth the way for
Leicester, and, if possible, to persuade the Netherlanders as to the good
inclinations of the English government.  This was no easy task, for they
knew that their envoys had been dismissed, without even a promise of
subsidy.  They had asked for twelve thousand soldiers and sixty thousand
pounds, and had received a volley of abuse.  Over and over again, through
many months, the Queen fell into a paroxysm of rage when even an allusion
was made to the loan of fifty or sixty thousand pounds; and even had she
promised the money, it would have given but little satisfaction.  As
Count Moeurs observed, he would rather see one English rose-noble than a
hundred royal promises.  So the Hollanders and Zeelanders--not fearing
Leicester's influence within their little morsel of a territory--were
concentrating their means of resistance upon their own soil, intending to
resist Spain, and, if necessary, England, in their last ditch, and with
the last drop of their blood.

While such was the condition of affairs, Lord Buckhurst landed at
Flushing--four months after the departure of Leicester--on the 24th
March, having been tossing three days and nights at sea in a great storm,
"miserably sick and in great danger of drowning."  Sir William Russell,
governor of Flushing, informed him of the progress making by Prince
Maurice in virtue of his new authority.  He told him that the Zeeland
regiment, vacant by Sidney's death, and which the Queen wished bestowed
upon Russell himself, had been given to Count Solms; a circumstance which
was very sure to exite her Majesty's ire; but that the greater number,
and those of the better sort; disliked the alteration of government, and
relied entirely upon the Queen.  Sainte Aldegonde visited him at
Middelburgh, and in a "long discourse" expressed the most friendly
sentiments towards England, with free offers of personal service.
"Nevertheless," said Buckhurst, cautiously, "I mean to trust the effect,
not his words, and so I hope he will not much deceive me.  His opinion is
that the Earl of Leicester's absence hath chiefly caused this change, and
that without his return it will hardly be restored again, but that upon
his arrival all these clouds will prove but a summershower."

As a matter of course the new ambassador lifted up his voice, immediately
after setting foot on shore, in favour of the starving soldiers of his
Queen.  "'Tis a most lamentable thing," said he, "to hear the complaints
of soldiers and captains for want of pay."  .  .  .  .  Whole companies
made their way into his presence, literally crying aloud for bread.  "For
Jesus' sake," wrote Buckhurst, "hasten to send relief with all speed, and
let such victuallers be appointed as have a conscience not to make
themselves rich with the famine of poor soldiers.  If her Majesty send
not money, and that with speed, for their payment, I am afraid to think
what mischief and miseries are like to follow."

Then the ambassador proceeded to the Hague, holding interviews with
influential personages in private, and with the States-General in public.
Such was the charm of his manner, and so firm the conviction of sincerity
and good-will which he inspired, that in the course of a fortnight there
was already a sensible change in the aspect of affairs.  The enemy, who,
at the time of their arrival, had been making bonfires and holding
triumphal processions for joy of the great breach between Holland and
England, and had been "hoping to swallow them all up, while there were so
few left who knew how to act," were already manifesting disappointment.

In a solemn meeting of the States-General with the State-council,
Buckhurst addressed the assembly upon the general subject of her
Majesty's goodness to the Netherlands.  He spoke of the gracious
assistance rendered by her, notwithstanding her many special charges for
the common cause, and of the mighty enmities which she had incurred for
their sake.  He sharply censured the Hollanders for their cruelty to men
who had shed their blood in their cause, but who were now driven forth
from their towns; and left to starve on the highways, and hated for their
nation's sake; as if the whole English name deserved to be soiled "for
the treachery of two miscreants."  He spoke strongly of their demeanour
towards the Earl of Leicester, and of the wrongs they had done him, and
told them, that, if they were not ready to atone to her Majesty for such
injuries, they were not to wonder if their deputies received no better
answer at her hands.  "She who embraced your cause," he said, "when other
mighty princes forsook you, will still stand fast unto you, yea, and
increase her goodness, if her present state may suffer it."

After being addressed in this manner the council of state made what
Counsellor Clerk called a "very honest, modest, and wise answer;" but the
States-General, not being able "so easily to discharge that which had so
long boiled within them," deferred their reply until the following day.
They then brought forward a deliberate rejoinder, in which they expressed
themselves devoted to her Majesty, and, on the whole, well disposed to
the Earl.  As to the 4th February letter, it had been written "in
amaritudine cordis," upon hearing the treasons of York and Stanley, and
in accordance with "their custom and liberty used towards all princes,
whereby they had long preserved their estate," and in the conviction that
the real culprits for all the sins of his Excellency's government were
certain "lewd persons who sought to seduce his Lordship, and to cause him
to hate the States."

Buckhurst did not think it well to reply, at that moment, on the ground
that there had been already crimination and recrimination more than
enough, and that "a little bitterness more had rather caused them to
determine dangerously than solve for the best."

They then held council together--the envoys and the State-General, as to
the amount of troops absolutely necessary--casting up the matter "as
pinchingly as possibly might be." And the result was, that 20,000 foot
and 2000 horse for garrison work, and an army of 13,000 foot, 5000 horse,
and pioneers, for a campaign of five or six months, were pronounced
indispensable.  This would require all their L240,000 sterling a-year,
regular contribution, her Majesty's contingent of L140,000, and an extra
sum of L150,000 sterling.  Of this sum the States requested her Majesty
should furnish two-thirds, while they agreed to furnish the other third,
which would make in all L240,000 for the Queen, and L290,000 for the
States.  As it was understood that the English subsidies were only a
loan, secured by mortgage of the cautionary towns, this did not seem very
unreasonable, when the intimate blending of England's welfare with that
of the Provinces was considered.

Thus it will be observed that Lord Buckhurst--while doing his best to
conciliate personal feuds and heart-burnings--had done full justice to
the merits of Leicester, and had placed in strongest light the favours
conferred by her Majesty.

He then proceeded to Utrecht, where he was received with many
demonstrations of respect, "with solemn speeches" from magistrates and
burgher-captains, with military processions, and with great banquets,
which were, however, conducted with decorum, and at which even Count
Moeurs excited universal astonishment by his sobriety.  It was difficult,
however, for matters to go very smoothly, except upon the surface.  What
could be more disastrous than for a little commonwealth--a mere handful
of people, like these Netherlanders, engaged in mortal combat with the
most powerful monarch in the world, and with the first general of the
age, within a league of their borders--thus to be deprived of all
organized government at a most critical moment, and to be left to wrangle
with their allies and among themselves, as to the form of polity to be
adopted, while waiting the pleasure of a capricious and despotic woman?

And the very foundation of the authority by which the Spanish yoke had
been abjured, the sovereignty offered to Elizabeth, and the government-
general conferred on Leicester, was fiercely assailed by the confidential
agents of Elizabeth herself.  The dispute went into the very depths of
the social contract.  Already Wilkes, standing up stoutly for the
democratic views of the governor, who was so foully to requite him, had
assured the English government that the "people were ready to cut the
throats" of the Staten-General at any convenient moment.  The sovereign
people, not the deputies, were alone to be heeded, he said, and although
he never informed the world by what process he had learned the deliberate
opinion of that sovereign, as there had been no assembly excepting those
of the States-General and States-Provincial--he was none the less fully
satisfied that the people were all with Leicester, and bitterly opposed
to the States.

"For the sovereignty, or supreme authority," said he, through failure of
a legitimate prince, belongs to the people, and not to you, gentlemen,
who are only servants, ministers, and deputies of the people.  You have
your commissions or instructions surrounded by limitations--which
conditions are so widely different from the power of sovereignty, as the
might of the subject is in regard to his prince, or of a servant in,
respect to his master.  For sovereignty is not limited either as to power
or as to time.  Still less do you represent the sovereignty; for the
people, in giving the general and absolute government to the Earl of
Leicester, have conferred upon him at once the exercise of justice, the
administration of polity, of naval affairs, of war, and of all the other
points of sovereignty.  Of these a governor-general is however only the
depositary or guardian, until such time as it may please the prince or
people to revoke the trust; there being no other in this state who can do
this; seeing that it was the people, through the instrumentality of your
offices--through you as its servants--conferred on his Excellency, this
power, authority, and government.  According to the common rule law,
therefore, 'quo jure quid statuitur, eodem jure tolli debet.'  You having
been fully empowered by the provinces and cities, or, to speak more
correctly, by your masters and superiors, to confer the government on
his Excellency, it follows that you require a like power in order to take
it away either in whole or in part.  If then you had no commission to
curtail his authority, or even that of the state-council, and thus to
tread upon and usurp his power as governor general and absolute, there
follows of two things one: either you did not well understand what you
were doing, nor duly consider how far that power reached, or--much more
probably--you have fallen into the sin of disobedience, considering how
solemnly you swore allegiance to him.

Thus subtly and ably did Wilkes defend the authority of the man who had
deserted his post at a most critical moment, and had compelled the
States, by his dereliction, to take the government into their own hands.

For, after all, the whole argument of the English counsellor rested upon
a quibble.  The people were absolutely sovereign, he said, and had lent
that sovereignty to Leicester.  How had they made that loan?  Through the
machinery of the States-General.  So long then as the Earl retained the
absolute sovereignty, the States were not even representatives of the
sovereign people.  The sovereign people was merged into one English Earl.
The English Earl had retired--indefinitely--to England.  Was the
sovereign people to wait for months, or years, before it regained its
existence?  And if not, how was it to reassert its vitality?  How but
through the agency of the States-General, who--according to Wilkes
himself--had been fully empowered by the Provinces and Cities to confer
the government on the Earl?  The people then, after all, were the
provinces and cities.  And the States-General were at that moment as much
qualified to represent those provinces and cities as they ever had been,
and they claimed no more.  Wilkes, nor any other of the Leicester party,
ever hinted at a general assembly of the people.  Universal suffrage was
not dreamed of at that day.  By the people, he meant, if he meant
anything, only that very small fraction of the inhabitants of a country,
who, according to the English system, in the reign of Elizabeth,
constituted its Commons.  He chose, rather from personal and political
motives than philosophical ones, to draw a distinction between the people
and the States, but it is quite obvious, from the tone of his private
communications, that by the 'States' he meant the individuals who
happened, for the time-being, to be the deputies of the States of each
Province.  But it was almost an affectation to accuse those individuals
of calling or considering themselves 'sovereigns;' for it was very well
known that they sat as envoys, rather than as members of a congress, and
were perpetually obliged to recur to their constituents, the States of
each Province, for instructions.  It was idle, because Buys and
Barneveld, and Roorda, and other leaders, exercised the influence due to
their talents, patriotism, and experience, to stigmatize them as usurpers
of sovereignty, and to hound the rabble upon them as tyrants and
mischief-makers.  Yet to take this course pleased the Earl of Leicester,
who saw no hope for the liberty of the people, unless absolute and
unconditional authority over the people, in war, naval affairs, justice,
and policy, were placed in his hands.  This was the view sustained by the
clergy of the Reformed Church, because they found it convenient, through
such a theory, and by Leicester's power, to banish Papists, exercise
intolerance in matters of religion, sequestrate for their own private
uses the property of the Catholic Church, and obtain for their own a
political power which was repugnant to the more liberal ideas of the
Barneveld party.

The States of Holland--inspired as it were by the memory of that great
martyr to religious and political liberty, William the Silent--maintained
freedom of conscience.

The Leicester party advocated a different theory on the religious
question.  They were also determined to omit no effort to make the States
odious.

"Seeing their violent courses," said Wilkes to Leicester, "I have not
been negligent, as well by solicitations to the ministers, as by my
letters to such as have continued constant in affection to your Lordship,
to have the people informed of the ungrateful and dangerous proceedings
of the States.  They have therein travailed with so good effect, as the
people are now wonderfully well disposed, and have delivered everywhere
in speeches, that if, by the overthwart dealings of the States, her
Majesty shall be drawn to stay her succours and goodness to them, and
that thereby your Lordship be also discouraged to return, they will cut
their throats."

Who the "people" exactly were, that had been so wonderfully well disposed
to throat-cutting by the ministers of the Gospel, did not distinctly
appear.  It was certain, however, that they were the special friends of
Leicester, great orators, very pious, and the sovereigns of the country.
So much could not be gainsaid.

"Your Lordship would wonder," continued the councillor, "to see the
people--who so lately, by the practice of the said States and the
accident of Deventer, were notably alienated--so returned to their former
devotion towards her Majesty, your Lordship, and our nation."

Wilkes was able moreover to gratify the absent governor-general with the
intelligence--of somewhat questionable authenticity however--that the
States were very "much terrified with these threats of the people."  But
Barneveld came down to the council to inquire what member of that body it
was who had accused the States of violating the Earl's authority.
"Whoever he is," said the Advocate, "let him deliver his mind frankly,
and he shall be answered."  The man did not seem much terrified by the
throat-cutting orations.  "It is true," replied Wilkes, perceiving
himself to be the person intended, "that you have very injuriously, in
many of your proceedings, derogated from and trodden the authority of his
Lordship and of this council under your feet."

And then he went into particulars, and discussed, 'more suo,' the
constitutional question, in which various Leicestrian counsellors
seconded him.

But Barneveld grimly maintained that the States were the sovereigns,
and that it was therefore unfit that the governor, who drew his authority
from them, should call them to account for their doings.  "It was as if
the governors in the time of Charles V.," said the Advocate, "should have
taxed that Emperor for any action of his done in the government."

In brief, the rugged Barneveld, with threatening voice, and lion port,
seemed to impersonate the Staten, and to hold reclaimed sovereignty in
his grasp.  It seemed difficult to tear it from him again.

"I did what I could," said Wilkes, "to beat them from this humour of
their sovereignty, showing that upon that error they had grounded the
rest of their wilful absurdities."

Next night, he drew up sixteen articles, showing the disorders of the
States, their breach of oaths, and violations of the Earl's authority;
and with that commenced a series of papers interchanged by the two
parties, in which the topics of the origin of government and the
principles of religious freedom were handled with much ability on both
sides, but at unmerciful length.

On the religious question, the States-General, led by Barneveld and by
Francis Franck, expressed themselves manfully, on various occasions,
during the mission of Buckhurst.

"The nobles and cities constituting the States," they said, "have been
denounced to Lord Leicester as enemies of religion, by the self-seeking
mischief-makers who surround him.  Why?  Because they had refused the
demand of certain preachers to call a general synod, in defiance of the
States-General, and to introduce a set of ordinances, with a system of
discipline, according to their arbitrary will.  This the late Prince of
Orange and the States-General had always thought detrimental both to
religion and polity.  They respected the difference in religious
opinions, and leaving all churches in their freedom, they chose to compel
no man's conscience--a course which all statesmen, knowing the diversity
of human opinions, had considered necessary in order to maintain
fraternal harmony."

Such words shine through the prevailing darkness of the religious
atmosphere at that epoch, like characters of light.  They are beacons in
the upward path of mankind.  Never before, had so bold and wise a tribute
to the genius of the reformation been paid by an organized community.
Individuals walking in advance of their age had enunciated such truths,
and their voices had seemed to die away, but, at last, a little,
struggling, half-developed commonwealth had proclaimed the rights of
conscience for all mankind--for Papists and Calvinists, Jews and
Anabaptists--because "having a respect for differences in religious
opinions, and leaving all churches in their freedom, they chose to compel
no man's conscience."

On the constitutional question, the States commenced by an astounding
absurdity.  "These mischief-makers, moreover," said they, "have not been
ashamed to dispute, and to cause the Earl of Leicester to dispute, the
lawful constitution of the Provinces; a matter which has not been
disputed for eight hundred years."

This was indeed to claim a respectable age for their republic.  Eight
hundred years took them back to the days of Charlemagne, in whose time it
would have been somewhat difficult to detect a germ of their States-
General and States-Provincial.  That the constitutional government--
consisting of nobles and of the vroedschaps of chartered cities--should
have been in existence four hundred and seventeen years before the first
charter had ever been granted to a city, was a very loose style of
argument.  Thomas Wilkes, in reply; might as well have traced the English
parliament to Hengist and Horsa.  "For eight hundred years;" they said,
"Holland had been governed by Counts and Countesses, on whom the nobles
and cities, as representing the States, had legally conferred
sovereignty."

Now the first incorporated city of Holland and Zeeland that ever existed
was Middelburg, which received its charter from Count William I. of
Holland and Countess Joan of Flanders; in the year 1217.  The first Count
that had any legal recognized authority was Dirk the First to whom
Charles the Simple presented the territory of Holland, by letters-patent,
in 922.  Yet the States-General, in a solemn and eloquent document,
gravely dated their own existence from the year 787, and claimed the
regular possession and habitual delegation of sovereignty from that epoch
down!

After this fabulous preamble, they proceeded to handle the matter of fact
with logical precision.  It was absurd, they said, that Mr. Wilkes and
Lord Leicester should affect to confound the persons who appeared in the
assembly with the States themselves; as if those individuals claimed or
exercised sovereignty.  Any man who had observed what had been passing
during the last fifteen years, knew very well that the supreme authority
did not belong to the thirty or forty individuals who came to the
meetings .  .  .  .  .  The nobles, by reason of their ancient dignity
and splendid possessions, took counsel together over state matters, and
then, appearing at the assembly, deliberated with the deputies of the
cities.  The cities had mainly one form of government--a college of
counsellors; or wise men, 40, 32, 28, or 24 in number, of the most
respectable out of the whole community.  They were chosen for life, and
vacancies were supplied by the colleges themselves out of the mass of
citizens.  These colleges alone governed the city, and that which had
been ordained by them was to be obeyed by all the inhabitants--a system
against which there had never been any rebellion.  The colleges again,
united with those of the nobles, represented the whole state, the whole
body of the population; and no form of government could be imagined,
they said, that could resolve, with a more thorough knowledge of the
necessities of the country, or that could execute its resolves with more
unity of purpose and decisive authority.  To bring the colleges into an
assembly could only be done by means of deputies.  These deputies, chosen
by their colleges, and properly instructed, were sent to the place of
meeting.  During the war they had always been commissioned to resolve in
common on matters regarding the liberty of the land.  These deputies,
thus assembled, represented, by commission, the States; but they are not,
in their own persons, the States; and no one of them had any such
pretension.  "The people of this country," said the States, "have an
aversion to all ambition; and in these disastrous times, wherein nothing
but trouble and odium is to be gathered by public employment, these
commissions are accounted 'munera necessaria' .  .  .  .  .  This form of
government has, by God's favour, protected Holland and Zeeland, during
this war, against a powerful foe, without lose of territory, without any
popular outbreak, without military mutiny, because all business has been
transacted with open doors; and because the very smallest towns are all
represented, and vote in the assembly."

In brief, the constitution of the United Provinces was a matter of fact.
It was there in good working order, and had, for a generation of mankind,
and throughout a tremendous war, done good service.  Judged by the
principles of reason and justice, it was in the main a wholesome
constitution, securing the independence and welfare of the state, and
the liberty and property of the individual, as well certainly as did any
polity then existing in the world.  It seemed more hopeful to abide by it
yet a little longer than to adopt the throat-cutting system by the
people, recommended by Wilkes and Leicester as an improvement on the old
constitution.  This was the view of Lord Buckhurst.  He felt that threats
of throat-cutting were not the best means of smoothing and conciliating,
and he had come over to smooth and conciliate.

"To spend the time," said he, "in private brabbles and piques between the
States and Lord Leicester, when we ought to prepare an army against the
enemy, and to repair the shaken and torn state, is not a good course for
her Majesty's service."  Letters were continually circulating from hand
to hand among the antagonists of the Holland party, written out of
England by Leicester, exciting the ill-will of the populace against the
organized government.  "By such means to bring the States into hatred,"
said Buckhurst, "and to stir up the people against them; tends to great
damage and miserable end.  This his Lordship doth full little consider,
being the very way to dissolve all government, and so to bring all into
confusion, and open the door for the enemy.  But oh, how lamentable a
thing it is, and how doth my Lord of Leicester abuse her Majesty, making
her authority the means to uphold and justify, and under her name to
defend and maintain, all his intolerable errors.  I thank God that
neither his might nor his malice shall deter me from laying open all
those things which my conscience knoweth, and which appertaineth to be
done for the good of this cause and of her Majesty's service.  Herein,
though I were sure to lose my life, yet will I not offend neither the
one nor the other, knowing very well that I must die; and to die in her
Majesty's faithful service, and with a good conscience, is far more happy
than the miserable life that I am in.  If Leicester do in this sort stir
up the people against the States to follow his revenge against them, and
if the Queen do yield no better aid, and the minds of Count Maurice and
Hohenlo remain thus in fear and hatred of him, what good end or service
can be hoped for here?"--[Buckhurst to Walsingham, 13th June, 1587.
(Brit. Mus.  Galba, D. I. p. 95, MS.)]

Buckhurst was a man of unimpeached integrity and gentle manners.  He had
come over with the best intentions towards the governor-general, and it
has been seen that he boldly defended him in, his first interviews with
the States.  But as the intrigues and underhand plottings of the Earl's
agents were revealed to him, he felt more and more convinced that there
was a deep laid scheme to destroy the government, and to constitute a
virtual and absolute sovereignty for Leicester.  It was not wonderful
that the States were standing vigorously on the defensive.

The subtle Deventer, Leicester's evil genius, did not cease to poison the
mind of the governor, during his protracted absence, against all persons
who offered impediments to the cherished schemes of his master and
himself.  "Your Excellency knows very well," he said, "that the state of
this country is democratic, since, by failure of a prince, the sovereign
disposition of affairs has returned to the people.  That same people is
everywhere so incredibly affectionate towards you that the delay in your
return drives them to extreme despair.  Any one who would know the real
truth has but to remember the fine fear the States-General were in when
the news of your displeasure about the 4th February letter became known."

Had it not been for the efforts of Lord Buckhurst in calming the popular
rage, Deventer assured the Earl that the writers of the letter would
"have scarcely saved their skins;" and that they had always continued in
great danger.

He vehemently urged upon Leicester, the necessity of his immediate
return--not so much for reasons drawn from the distracted state of the
country, thus left to a provisional government and torn by faction--but
because of the facility with which he might at once seize upon arbitrary
power.  He gratified his master by depicting in lively colours the abject
condition into which Barneveld, Maurice, Hohenlo, and similar cowards,
would be thrown by his sudden return.

"If," said he, "the States' members and the counts, every one of them,
are so desperately afraid of the people, even while your Excellency is
afar off, in what trepidation will they be when you are here!  God,
reason, the affection of the sovereign people, are on your side.  There
needs, in a little commonwealth like ours, but a wink of the eye, the
slightest indication of dissatisfaction on your part, to take away all
their valour from men who are only brave where swords are too short.
A magnanimous prince like yourself should seek at once the place where
such plots are hatching, and you would see the fury of the rebels change
at once to cowardice.  There is more than one man here in the Netherlands
that brags of what he will do against the greatest and most highly
endowed prince in England, because he thinks he shall never see him
again, who, at the very first news of your return, my Lord, would think
only of packing his portmanteau, greasing his boots, or, at the very
least, of sneaking back into his hole."

But the sturdy democrat was quite sure that his Excellency, that most
magnanimous prince of England would not desert his faithful followers--
thereby giving those "filthy rascals," his opponents, a triumph, and
"doing so great an injury to the sovereign people, who were ready to get
rid of them all at a single blow, if his Excellency would but say the
word."

He then implored the magnanimous prince to imitate the example of Moses,
Joshua, David, and that of all great emperors and captains, Hebrew,
Greek, and Roman, to come at once to the scene of action, and to smite
his enemies hip and thigh.  He also informed his Excellency, that if the
delay should last much longer, he would lose all chance of regaining
power, because the sovereign people had quite made up their mind to
return to the dominion of Spain within three months, if they could not
induce his Excellency to rule over them.  In that way at least, if in
no other, they could circumvent those filthy rascals whom they so much
abhorred, and frustrate the designs of Maurice, Hohenlo, and Sir John
Norris, who were represented as occupying the position of the triumvirs
after the death of Julius Caesar.

To place its neck under the yoke of Philip II.  and the Inquisition,
after having so handsomely got rid of both, did not seem a sublime
manifestation of sovereignty on the part of the people, and even Deventer
had some misgivings as to the propriety of such a result.  "What then
will become of our beautiful churches?"  he cried, "What will princes
say, what will the world in general say, what will historians say, about
the honour of the English nation?"

As to the first question, it is probable that the prospect of the
reformed churches would not have been cheerful, had the inquisition been
re-established in Holland and Utrecht, three months after that date.  As
to the second, the world and history were likely to reply, that the
honour of the English nation was fortunately not entirely, entrusted at
that epoch to the "magnanimous prince" of Leicester, and his democratic,
counsellor-in-chief, burgomaster Deventer.

These are but samples of the ravings which sounded incessantly in the
ears of the governor-general.  Was it strange that a man, so thirsty for
power, so gluttonous of flattery, should be influenced by such passionate
appeals?  Addressed in strains of fulsome adulation, convinced that
arbitrary power was within his reach, and assured that he had but to wink
his eye to see his enemies scattered before him, he became impatient of
all restraint; and determined, on his return, to crush the States into
insignificance.

Thus, while Buckhurst had been doing his best as a mediator to prepare
the path for his return, Leicester himself end his partisans had been
secretly exerting themselves to make his arrival the signal for discord;
perhaps of civil war.  The calm, then, immediately succeeding the mission
of Buckhurst was a deceitful one, but it seemed very promising. The best
feelings were avowed and perhaps entertained.  The States professed great
devotion to her Majesty and friendly regard for the governor.  They
distinctly declared that the arrangements by which Maurice and Hohenlo
had been placed in their new positions were purely provisional ones,
subject to modifications on the arrival of the Earl.  "All things are
reduced to a quiet calm," said Buckhurst, "ready to receive my Lord of
Leicester and his authority, whenever he cometh."

The quarrel of Hohenlo with Sir Edward Norris had been, by the exertions
of Buckhurst, amicably arranged: the Count became an intimate friend of
Sir John, "to the gladding of all such as wished well to, the country;"
but he nourished a deadly hatred to the Earl.  He ran up and down like a
madman whenever his return was mentioned.  "If the Queen be willing to
take the sovereignty," he cried out at his own dinner-table to a large
company, "and is ready to proceed roundly in this action, I will serve
her to the last drop of my blood; but if she embrace it in no other sort
than hitherto she hath done, and if Leicester is to return, then am I as
good a man as Leicester, and will never be commanded by him.  I mean to
continue on my frontier, where all who love me can come and find me."

He declared to several persons that he had detected a plot on the
part of Leicester to have him assassinated; and the assertion seemed so
important, that Villiers came to Councillor Clerk to confer with him on
the subject.  The worthy Bartholomew, who had again, most reluctantly,
left his quiet chambers in the Temple to come again among the guns and
drums, which his soul abhorred, was appalled by such a charge. It was
best to keep it a secret, he said, at least till the matter could be
thoroughly investigated.  Villiers was of the same opinion, and
accordingly the councillor, in the excess of his caution, confided the
secret only--to whom?  To Mr. Atye, Leicester's private secretary.  Atye,
of course, instantly told his master--his master in a frenzy of rage,
told the Queen, and her Majesty, in a paroxysm of royal indignation at
this new insult to her favourite, sent furious letters to her envoys,
to the States-General, to everybody in the Netherlands--so that the
assertion of Hohenlo became the subject of endless recrimination.
Leicester became very violent, and denounced the statement as an impudent
falsehood, devised wilfully in order to cast odium upon him and to
prevent his return.  Unquestionably there was nothing in the story but
table-talk; but the Count would have been still more ferocious towards
Leicester than he was, had he known what was actually happening at that
very moment.

While Buckhurst was at Utrecht, listening to the "solemn-speeches" of the
militia-captains and exchanging friendly expressions at stately banquets
with Moeurs, he suddenly received a letter in cipher from her Majesty.
Not having the key, he sent to Wilkes at the Hague.  Wilkes was very ill;
but the despatch was marked pressing and immediate, so he got out of bed
and made the journey to Utrecht.  The letter, on being deciphered, proved
to be an order from the Queen to decoy Hohenlo into some safe town, on
pretence of consultation and then to throw him into prison, on the ground
that he had been tampering with the enemy, and was about to betray the
republic to Philip.

The commotion which would have been excited by any attempt to enforce
this order, could be easily imagined by those familiar with Hohenlo and
with the powerful party in the Netherlands of which he was one of the
chiefs.  Wilkes stood aghast as he deciphered the letter.  Buckhurst felt
the impossibility of obeying the royal will.  Both knew the cause, and
both foresaw the consequences of the proposed step.  Wilkes had heard
some rumours of intrigues between Parma's agents at Deventer and Hohenlo,
and had confided them to Walsingham, hoping that the Secretary would keep
the matter in his own breast, at least till further advice.  He was
appalled at the sudden action proposed on a mere rumour, which both
Buckhurst and himself had begun to consider an idle one.  He protested,
therefore, to Walsingham that to comply with her Majesty's command would
not only be nearly impossible, but would, if successful, hazard the ruin
of the republic.  Wilkes was also very anxious lest the Earl of Leicester
should hear of the matter.  He was already the object of hatred to that
powerful personage, and thought him capable of accomplishing his
destruction in any mode.  But if Leicester could wreak his vengeance
upon his enemy Wilkes by the hand of his other deadly enemy Hohenlo,
the councillor felt that this kind of revenge would have a double
sweetness for him.  The Queen knows what I have been saying, thought
Wilkes, and therefore Leicester knows it; and if Leicester knows it, he
will take care that Hohenlo shall hear of it too, and then wo be unto me.
"Your honour knoweth," he said to Walsingham, "that her Majesty can hold
no secrets, and if she do impart it to Leicester, then am I sped."

Nothing came of it however, and the relations of Wilkes and Buckhurst
with Hohenlo continued to be friendly.  It was a lesson to Wilkes to
be more cautious even with the cautious Walsingham.  "We had but bare
suspicions," said Buckhurst, "nothing fit, God knoweth, to come to such a
reckoning.  Wilkes saith he meant it but for a premonition to you there;
but I think it will henceforth be a premonition to himself--there being
but bare presumptions, and yet shrewd presumptions."

Here then were Deventer and Leicester plotting to overthrow the
government of the States; the States and Hohenlo arming against
Leicester; the extreme democratic party threatening to go over to the
Spaniards within three months; the Earl accused of attempting the life of
Hohenlo; Hohenlo offering to shed the last drop of his blood for Queen
Elizabeth; Queen Elizabeth giving orders to throw Hohenlo into prison as
a traitor; Councillor Wilkes trembling for his life at the hands both of
Leicester and Hohenlo; and Buckhurst doing his best to conciliate all
parties, and imploring her Majesty in vain to send over money to help on
the war, and to save her soldiers from starving.

For the Queen continued to refuse the loan of fifty thousand pounds which
the provinces solicited, and in hope of which the States had just agreed
to an extra contribution of a million florins (L100,000), a larger sum
than had been levied by a single vote since the commencement of the war.
It must be remembered, too, that the whole expense of the war fell upon
Holland and Zeeland.  The Province of Utrecht, where there was so strong
a disposition to confer absolute authority upon Leicester, and to destroy
the power of the States-General contributed absolutely nothing.  Since
the Loss of Deventer, nothing could be raised in the Provinces of
Utrecht, Gelderland or Overyssel; the Spaniards levying black mail upon
the whole territory, and impoverishing the inhabitants till they became
almost a nullity.  Was it strange then that the States of Holland and
Zeeland, thus bearing nearly the whole; burden of the war, should be
dissatisfied with the hatred felt toward them by their sister Provinces
so generously protected by them?  Was it unnatural that Barneveld, and
Maurice, and Hohenlo, should be disposed to bridle the despotic
inclinations of Leicester, thus fostered by those who existed, as it
were, at their expense?

But the Queen refused the L50,000, although Holland and Zeeland had voted
the L100,000.  "No reason that breedeth charges," sighed Walsingham, "can
in any sort be digested."

It was not for want of vehement entreaty on the part of the Secretary of
State and of Buckhurst that the loan was denied.  At least she was
entreated to send over money for her troops, who for six months past were
unpaid.  "Keeping the money in your coffers," said Buckhurst, "doth yield
no interest to you, and--which is above all earthly, respects--it shall
be the means of preserving the lives of many of your faithful subjects
which otherwise must needs, daily perish.  Their miseries, through want
of meat and money, I do protest to God so much moves, my soul with
commiseration of that which is past, and makes my heart tremble to think
of the like to come again, that I humbly beseech your Majesty, for Jesus
Christ sake, to have compassion on their lamentable estate past, and send
some money to prevent the like hereafter."

These were moving words,--but the money did not come--charges could not
be digested.

"The eternal God," cried Buckhurst, "incline your heart to grant the
petition of the States for the loan of the L50,000, and that speedily,
for the dangerous terms of the State here and the mighty and forward
preparation of the enemy admit no minute of delay; so that even to grant
it slowly is to deny it utterly."

He then drew a vivid picture of the capacity of the Netherlands to assist
the endangered realm of England, if delay were not suffered to destroy
both commonwealths, by placing the Provinces in an enemy's hand.

"Their many and notable good havens," he said, "the great number of ships
and mariners, their impregnable towns, if they were in the hands of a
potent prince that would defend them, and, lastly, the state of this
shore; so near and opposite unto the land and coast of England--lo, the
sight of all this, daily in mine eye, conjoined with the deep, enrooted
malice of that your so mighty enemy who seeketh to regain them; these
things entering continually into the, meditations of my heart--so much do
they import the safety of yourself and your estate--do enforce me, in the
abundance of my love and duty to your Majesty, most earnestly to speak,
write, and weep unto you, lest when the occasion yet offered shall be
gone by, this blessed means of your defence, by God's provident goodness
thus put into your hand, will then be utterly lost, lo; never, never more
to be recovered again."

It was a noble, wise, and eloquent appeal, but it was muttered in vain.
Was not Leicester--his soul filled with petty schemes of reigning in
Utrecht, and destroying the constitutional government of the Provinces
--in full possession of the royal ear?  And was not the same ear lent,
at most critical moment, to the insidious Alexander Farnese, with his
whispers of peace, which were potent enough to drown all the preparations
for the invincible Armada?

Six months had rolled away since Leicester had left the Netherlands; six
months long, the Provinces, left in a condition which might have become
anarchy, had been saved by the wise government of the States-General; six
months long the English soldiers had remained unpaid by their sovereign;
and now for six weeks the honest, eloquent, intrepid, but gentle
Buckhurst had done his best to conciliate all parties, and to mould the
Netherlanders into an impregnable bulwark for the realm of England.  But
his efforts were treated with scorn by the Queen.  She was still maddened
by a sense of the injuries done by the States to Leicester.  She was
indignant that her envoy should have accepted such lame apologies for the
4th of February letter; that he should have received no better atonement
for their insolent infringements of the Earl's orders during his absence;
that he should have excused their contemptuous proceedings and that, in
short, he should have been willing to conciliate and forgive when he
should have stormed and railed.  "You conceived, it seemeth," said her
Majesty, "that a more sharper manner of proceeding would have exasperated
matters to the prejudice of the service, and therefore you did think it
more fit to wash the wounds rather with water than vinegar, wherein we
would rather have wished, on the other side, that you had better
considered that festering wounds had more need of corrosives than
lenitives.  Your own judgment ought to have taught that such a alight and
mild kind of dealing with a people so ingrate and void of consideration
as the said Estates have showed themselves toward us, is the ready way to
increase their contempt."

The envoy might be forgiven for believing that at any rate there would be
no lack of corrosives or vinegar, so long as the royal tongue or pen
could do their office, as the unfortunate deputies had found to their
cost in their late interviews at Greenwich, and as her own envoys in the
Netherlands were perpetually finding now.  The Queen was especially
indignant that the Estates should defend the tone of their letters to the
Earl on the ground that he had written a piquant epistle to them.  "But
you can manifestly see their untruths in naming it a piquant letter,"
said Elizabeth, "for it has no sour or sharp word therein, nor any clause
or reprehension, but is full of gravity and gentle admonition.  It
deserved a thankful answer, and so you may maintain it to them to their
reproof."

The States doubtless thought that the loss of Deventer and, with it, the
almost ruinous condition of three out of the seven Provinces, might
excuse on their part a little piquancy of phraseology, nor was it easy
for them to express gratitude to the governor for his grave and gentle
admonitions, after he had, by his secret document of 24th November,
rendered himself fully responsible for the disaster they deplored.

She expressed unbounded indignation with Hohenlo, who, as she was well
aware, continued to cherish a deadly hatred for Leicester.  Especially
she was exasperated, and with reason, by the assertion the Count had made
concerning the governor's murderous designs upon him.  "'Tis a matter,"
said the Queen, "so foul and dishonourable that doth not only touch
greatly the credit of the Earl, but also our own honour, to have one who
hath been nourished and brought up by us, and of whom we have made show
to the world to have extraordinarily favoured above any other of our own
subjects, and used his service in those countries in a place of that
reputation he held there, stand charged with so horrible and unworthy a
crime.  And therefore our pleasure is, even as you tender the continuance
of our favour towards you, that you seek, by all the means you may,
examining the Count Hollock, or any other party in this matter, to
discover and to sift out how this malicious imputation hath been wrought;
for we have reason to think that it hath grown out of some cunning device
to stay the Earl's coming, and to discourage him from the continuance of
his service in those countries."

And there the Queen was undoubtedly in the right.  Hohenlo was resolved,
if possible, to make the Earl's government of the Netherlands impossible.
There was nothing in the story however; and all that by the most diligent
"sifting" could ever be discovered, and all that the Count could be
prevailed upon to confess, was an opinion expressed by him that if he had
gone with Leicester to England, it might perhaps have fared ill with him.
But men were given to loose talk in those countries.  There was great
freedom of tongue and pen; and as the Earl, whether with justice or not,
had always been suspected of strong tendencies to assassination, it was
not very wonderful that so reckless an individual as Hohenlo should
promulgate opinions on such subjects, without much reserve.  "The number
of crimes that have been imputed to me," said Leicester, "would be
incomplete, had this calumny not been added to all preceding ones."
It is possible that assassination, especially poisoning, may have been
a more common-place affair in those days than our own.  At any rate, it
is certain that accusations of such crimes were of ordinary occurrence.
Men were apt to die suddenly if they had mortal enemies, and people would
gossip.  At the very same moment, Leicester was deliberately accused not
only of murderous intentions towards Hohenlo, but towards Thomas Wilkes
and Count Lewis William of Nassau likewise.  A trumpeter, arrested in
Friesland, had just confessed that he had been employed by the Spanish
governor of that Province, Colonel Verdugo, to murder Count Lewis, and
that four other persons had been entrusted with the same commission.
The Count wrote to Verdugo, and received in reply an indignant denial
of the charge.  "Had I heard of such a project," said the Spaniard,
"I would, on the contrary, have given you warning.  And I give you one
now."  He then stated, as a fact known to him on unquestionable
authority, that the Earl of Leicester had assassins at that moment in his
employ to take the life of Count Lewis, adding that as for the trumpeter,
who had just been hanged for the crime suborned by the writer, he was a
most notorious lunatic.  In reply, Lewis, while he ridiculed this plea of
insanity set up for a culprit who had confessed his crime succinctly and
voluntarily, expressed great contempt for the counter-charge against
Leicester.  "His Excellency," said the sturdy little Count," is a
virtuous gentleman, the most pious and God-fearing I have ever known.  I
am very sure that he could never treat his enemies in the manner stated,
much less his friends.  As for yourself, may God give me grace, in
requital of your knavish trick, to make such a war upon you as becomes an
upright soldier and a man of honour."

Thus there was at least one man--and a most important, one--in the
opposition--party who thoroughly believed in the honour of the governor-
general.

The Queen then proceeded to lecture Lord Buckhurst very severely for
having tolerated an instant the States' proposition to her for a loan of
L50,000.  "The enemy," she observed, "is quite unable to attempt the
siege of any town."

Buckhurst was, however, instructed, in case the States' million should
prove insufficient to enable the army to make head against the enemy, and
in the event of "any alteration of the good-will of the people towards
her, caused by her not yielding, in this their necessity, some convenient
support," to let them then understand, "as of himself, that if they would
be satisfied with a loan of ten or fifteen thousand pounds, he, would do
his best endeavour to draw her Majesty to yield unto the furnishing of
such a sum, with assured hope to obtaining the same at her hands."

Truly Walsingham was right in saying that charges of any kind were
difficult of digestion: Yet, even at that moment, Elizabeth had no more
attached subjects in England than sere the burghers of the Netherlands;
who were as anxious ever to annex their territory to her realms.

'Thus, having expressed an affection for Leicester which no one doubted,
having once more thoroughly brow-beaten the states, and having soundly
lectured Buckhurst--as a requital for his successful efforts to bring
about a more wholesome condition of affairs--she gave the envoy a parting
stab, with this postscript;--"There is small disproportion," she said
"twist a fool who useth not wit because he hath it not, and him that useth
it not when it should avail him."  Leicester, too, was very violent in
his attacks upon Buckhurst.  The envoy had succeeded in reconciling
Hohenlo with the brothers Norris, and had persuaded Sir John to offer the
hand of friendship to Leicester, provided it were sure of being accepted.
Yet in this desire to conciliate, the Earl found renewed cause for
violence.  "I would have had more regard of my Lord of Buckhurst," he
said, "if the case had been between him and Norris, but I must regard my
own reputation the more that I see others would impair it.  You have
deserved little thanks of me, if I must deal plainly, who do equal me
after this sort with him, whose best place is colonel under me, and once
my servant, and preferred by me to all honourable place he had."  And
thus were enterprises of great moment, intimately affecting the, safety
of Holland, of England, of all Protestantism, to be suspended between
triumph and ruin, in order that the spleen of one individual--one Queen's
favourite--might be indulged.  The contempt of an insolent grandee for a
distinguished commander--himself the son, of a Baron, with a mother the
dear friend of her sovereign--was to endanger the existence of great
commonwealths.  Can the influence of the individual, for good or bad,
upon the destinies of the race be doubted, when the characters and
conduct of Elizabeth and Leicester, Burghley and Walsingham, Philip and
Parma, are closely scrutinized and broadly traced throughout the wide
range of their effects?

"And I must now, in your Lordship's sight," continued Leicester, "be made
a counsellor with this companion, who never yet to this day hath done so
much as take knowledge of my mislike of him; no, not to say this much,
which I think would well become his better, that he was sorry, to hear I
had mislike to him, that he desired my suspension till he might either
speak with me, or be charged from me, and if then he were not able to
satisfy me, he would acknowledge his fault, and make me any honest
satisfaction.  This manner of dealing would have been no disparagement to
his better.  And even so I must think that your Lordship doth me wrong,
knowing what you do, to make so little difference between John Norris, my
man not long since, and now but my colonel under me, as though we were
equals.  And I cannot but more than marvel at this your proceeding, when
I remember your promises of friendship, and your opinions resolutely set
down .  .  .  .  You were so determined before you went hence, but must
have become wonderfully enamoured of those men's unknown virtues in a few
days of acquaintance, from the alteration that is grown by their own
commendations of themselves.  You know very well that all the world
should not make me serve with John Norris.  Your sudden change from
mislike to liking has, by consequence, presently cast disgrace upon me.
But all is not gold that glitters, nor every shadow a perfect
representation .  .  .  .  You knew he should not serve with me, but
either you thought me a very inconstant man, or else a very simple soul,
resolving with you as I did, for you to take the course you have done."
He felt, however, quite strong in her Majesty's favour.  He knew himself
her favourite, beyond all chance or change, and was sure, so long as
either lived, to thrust his enemies, by her aid, into outer darkness.
Woe to Buckhurst, and Norris, and Wilkes, and all others who consorted
with his enemies.  Let them flee from the wrath to come!  And truly they
were only too anxious to do so, for they knew that Leicester's hatred was
poisonous.  "He is not so facile to forget as ready to revenge," said
poor Wilkes, with neat alliteration.  "My very heavy and mighty adversary
will disgrace and undo me.

"It sufficeth," continued Leicester, "that her Majesty both find my
dealings well enough, and so, I trust will graciously use me.  As for the
reconciliations and love-days you have made there, truly I have liked
well of it; for you did sow me your disposition therein before, and I
allowed of it, and I had received letters both from Count Maurice and
Hohenlo of their humility and kindness, but now in your last letters you
say they have uttered the cause of their mislike towards me, which you
forbear to write of, looking so speedily for my return."

But the Earl knew well enough what the secret was, for had it not been
specially confided by the judicious Bartholomew to Atye, who had
incontinently told his master?  "This pretense that I should kill
Hohenlo," cried Leicester, "is a matter properly foisted in to bring me
to choler.  I will not suffer it to rest, thus.  Its authors shall be
duly and severely punished.  And albeit I see well enough the plot of
this wicked device, yet shall it not work the effect the devisers have
done it for.  No, my Lord, he is a villain and a false lying knave
whosoever he be, and of what, nation soever that hath forged this device.
Count Hohenlo doth know I never gave him cause to fear me so much.  There
were ways and means offered me to have quitted him of the country if I
had so liked.  This new monstrous villany which is now found out I do
hate and detest, as I would look for the right judgment of God to fall
upon myself, if I had but once imagined it.  All this makes good proof of
Wilkes's good dealing with me, that hath heard of so vile and villainous
a reproach of me, and never gave me knowledge.  But I trust your Lordship
shall receive her Majesty's order for this, as for a matter that toucheth
herself in honour, and me her poor servant and minister, as dearly as any
matter can do; and I will so take it and use it to the uttermost."

We have seen how anxiously Buckhurst had striven to do his duty upon a
most difficult mission.  Was it unnatural that so fine a nature as his
should be disheartened, at reaping nothing but sneers and contumely from
the haughty sovereign he served, and from the insolent favourite who
controlled her councils?  "I beseech your Lordship," he said to Burghley,
"keep one ear for me, and do not hastily condemn me before you hear mine
answer.  For if I ever did or shall do any acceptable service to her
Majesty, it was in, the stay and appeasing of these countries, ever ready
at my coming to have cast off all good respect towards us, and to have
entered even into some desperate cause.  In the meantime I am hardly
thought of by her Majesty, and in her opinion condemned before mine
answer be understood.  Therefore I beseech you to help me to return, and
not thus to lose her Majesty's favour for my good desert, wasting here my
mind, body, my wits, wealth, and all; with continual toils, taxes, and
troubles, more than I am able to endure."

But besides his instructions to smooth and expostulate, in which he had
succeeded so well, and had been requited so ill; Buckhurst had received a
still more difficult commission.  He had been ordered to broach the
subject of peace, as delicately as possible, but without delay; first
sounding the leading politicians, inducing them to listen to the Queen's
suggestions on the subject, persuading them that they ought to be
satisfied with the principles of the pacification of Ghent, and that it
was hopeless for the Provinces to continue the war with their mighty
adversary any longer.

Most reluctantly had Buckhurst fulfilled his sovereign's commands in this
disastrous course.  To talk to the Hollanders of the Ghent pacification
seemed puerile.  That memorable treaty, ten years before, had been one of
the great landmarks of progress, one of the great achievements of William
the Silent.  By its provisions, public exercise of the reformed religion
had been secured for the two Provinces of Holland and Zeeland, and it had
been agreed that the secret practice of those rites should be elsewhere
winked at, until such time as the States-General, under the auspices of
Philip II., should otherwise ordain.  But was it conceivable that now,
after Philip's authority had been solemnly abjured, and the reformed
worship had become the, public, dominant religion, throughout all the
Provinces,--the whole republic should return to the Spanish dominion,
and to such toleration as might be sanctioned by an assembly professing
loyalty to the most Catholic King?

Buckhurst had repeatedly warned the Queen, in fervid and eloquent
language, as to the intentions of Spain.  "There was never peace well
made," he observed, "without a mighty war preceding, and always, the
sword in hand is the best pen to write the conditions of peace."

"If ever prince had cause," he continued, "to think himself beset with
doubt and danger, you, sacred Queen, have most just cause not only to
think it, but even certainly to believe it.  The Pope doth daily plot
nothing else but how he may bring to pass your utter overthrow; the
French King hath already sent you threatenings of revenge, and though for
that pretended cause I think little will ensue, yet he is blind that
seeth not the mortal dislike that boileth deep in his heart for other
respects against you.  The Scottish King, not only in regard of his
future hope, but also by reason of some over conceit in his heart, may
be thought a dangerous neighbour to you.  The King of Spain armeth and
extendeth all his power to ruin both you and your estate.  And if the
Indian gold have corrupted also the King of Denmark, and made him
likewise Spanish, as I marvellously fear; why will not your Majesty,
beholding the flames of your enemies on every side kindling around,
unlock all your coffers and convert your treasure for the advancing of
worthy men, and for the arming of ships and men-of-war that may defend
you, since princes' treasures serve only to that end, and, lie they never
so fast or so full in their chests, can no ways so defend them?

"The eternal God, in whose hands the hearts of kings do rest, dispose and
guide your sacred Majesty to do that which may be most according to His
blessed will, and best for you, as I trust He will, even for His mercy's
sake, both toward your Majesty and the whole realm of England, whose
desolation is thus sought and compassed."

Was this the language of a mischievous intriguer, who was sacrificing the
true interest of his country, and whose proceedings were justly earning
for him rebuke and disgrace at the hands of his sovereign?  Or was it
rather the noble advice of an upright statesman, a lover of his country,
a faithful servant of his Queen, who had looked through the atmosphere of
falsehood in which he was doing his work, and who had detected, with rare
sagacity, the secret purposes of those who were then misruling the world?

Buckhurst had no choice, however, but to obey.  His private efforts were
of course fruitless, but he announced to her Majesty that it was his
intention very shortly to bring the matter--according to her wish--before
the assembly.

But Elizabeth, seeing that her counsel had been unwise and her action
premature, turned upon her envoy, as she was apt to do, and rebuked him
for his obedience, so soon as obedience had proved inconvenient to
herself.

"Having perused your letters," she said, "by which you at large debate
unto us what you have done in the matter of peace .  .  .  .  .  we find
it strange that you should proceed further.  And although we had given
you full and ample direction to proceed to a public dealing in that
cause, yet our own discretion, seeing the difficulties and dangers that
you yourself saw in the propounding of the matter, ought to have led you
to delay till further command from us."

Her Majesty then instructed her envoy, in case he had not yet "propounded
the matter in the state-house to the general assembly," to pause entirely
until he heard her further pleasure.  She concluded, as usual, with a
characteristic postcript in her own hand.

"Oh weigh deeplier this matter," she said, "than, with so shallow a
judgment, to spill the cause, impair my honour, and shame yourself, with
all your wit, that once was supposed better than to lose a bargain for
the handling."

Certainly the sphinx could have propounded no more puzzling riddles than
those which Elizabeth thus suggested to Buckhurst.  To make war without
an army, to support an army without pay, to frame the hearts of a whole
people to peace who were unanimous for war, and this without saying a
word either in private or public; to dispose the Netherlanders favourably
to herself and to Leicester, by refusing them men and money, brow-beating
them for asking for it, and subjecting them to a course of perpetual
insults, which she called "corrosives," to do all this and more seemed
difficult.  If not to do it, were to spill the cause and to lose the
bargain, it was more than probable that they would be spilt and lost.

But the ambassador was no OEdipus--although a man of delicate perceptions
and brilliant intellect--and he turned imploringly to a wise counsellor
for aid against the tormentor who chose to be so stony-faced and
enigmatical.

"Touching the matter of peace," said he to Walsingham, "I have written
somewhat to her Majesty in cipher, so as I am sure you will be called for
to decipher it.  If you did know how infinitely her Majesty did at my
departure and before--for in this matter of peace she hath specially used
me this good while--command me, pray me, and persuade me to further and
hasten the same with all the speed possible that might be, and how, on
the other side, I have continually been the man and the mean that have
most plainly dehorted her from such post-haste, and that she should never
make good peace without a puissant army in the field, you would then say
that I had now cause to fear her displeasure for being too slow, and not
too forward.  And as for all the reasons which in my last letters are set
down, her Majesty hath debated them with me many times."

And thus midsummer was fast approaching, the commonwealth was without a
regular government, Leicester remained in England nursing his wrath and
preparing his schemes, the Queen was at Greenwich, corresponding with
Alexander Farnese, and sending riddles to Buckhurst, when the enemy--who,
according to her Majesty, was "quite unable to attempt the, siege of any
town" suddenly appeared in force in Flanders, and invested Sluy's.  This
most important seaport, both for the destiny of the republic and of
England at that critical moment, was insufficiently defended.  It was
quite time to put an army in the field, with a governor-general to
command it.

On the 5th June there was a meeting of the state-council at the Hague.
Count Maurice, Hohenlo, and Moeurs were present, besides several members
of the States-General.  Two propositions were before the council.  The
first was that it was absolutely necessary to the safety of the republic,
now that the enemy had taken the field, and the important city of Sluy's
was besieged, for Prince Maurice to be appointed captain-general, until
such time as the Earl of Leicester or some other should be sent by her
Majesty.  The second was to confer upon the state-council the supreme
government in civil affairs, for the same period, and to repeal all
limitations and restrictions upon the powers of the council made secretly
by the Earl.

Chancellor Leoninus, "that grave, wise old man," moved the propositions.
The deputies of the States were requested to withdraw.  The vote of each
councillor was demanded.  Buckhurst, who, as the Queen's representative--
together with Wilkes and John Norris--had a seat in the council, refused
to vote.  "It was a matter," he discreetly observed with which "he had not
been instructed by her Majesty to intermeddle."  Norris and Wilkes also
begged to be excused from voting, and, although earnestly urged to do so
by the whole council, persisted in their refusal.  Both measures were
then carried.

No sooner was the vote taken, than an English courier entered the
council-chamber, with pressing despatches from Lord Leicester.  The
letters were at once read.  The Earl announced his speedy arrival, and
summoned both the States-General and the council to meet him at Dort,
where his lodgings were already taken.  All were surprised, but none more
than Buckhurst, Wilkes, and Norris; for no intimation of this sudden
resolution had been received by them, nor any answer given to various
propositions, considered by her Majesty as indispensable preliminaries to
the governor's visit.

The council adjourned till after dinner, and Buckhurst held conference
meantime with various counsellors and deputies.  On the reassembling of
the board, it was urged by Barneveld, in the name of the States, that the
election of Prince Maurice should still hold good.  "Although by these
letters," said he, "it would seem that her Majesty had resolved upon the
speedy return of his Excellency, yet, inasmuch as the counsels and
resolutions of princes are often subject to change upon new occasion, it
does not seem fit that our late purpose concerning Prince Maurice should
receive any interruption."

Accordingly, after brief debate, both resolutions, voted in the morning,
were confirmed in the afternoon.

"So now," said Wilkes, "Maurice is general of all the forces, 'et quid
sequetur nescimus.'"

But whatever else was to follow, it was very certain that Wilkes would
not stay.  His great enemy had sworn his destruction, and would now take
his choice, whether to do him to death himself, or to throw him into the
clutch of the ferocious Hohenlo.  "As for my own particular," said the
counsellor, "the word is go, whosoever cometh or cometh not," and he
announced to Walsingham his intention of departing without permission,
should he not immediately receive it from England.  "I shall stay to be
dandled with no love-days nor leave-takings," he observed.

But Leicester had delayed his coming too long.  The country felt that it-
had been trifled with by his: absence--at so critical a period--of seven
months.  It was known too that the Queen was secretly treating with the
enemy, and that Buckhurst had been privately sounding leading personages
upon that subject, by her orders.  This had caused a deep, suppressed
indignation.  Over and over again had the English government been warned
as to the danger of delay.  "Your length in resolving;" Wilkes had said,
"whatsoever your secret purposes may be--will put us to new plunges
before long."  The mission of Buckhurst was believed to be "but a stale,
having some other intent than was expressed."  And at last, the new
plunge had been fairly taken.  It seemed now impossible for Leicester to
regain the absolute authority, which he coveted; and which he had for a
brief season possessed. The States-General, under able leaders, had
become used to a government which had been forced upon them, and which
they had wielded with success.  Holland and Zeeland, paying the whole
expense of the war, were not likely to endure again the absolute
sovereignty of a foreigner, guided by a back stairs council of reckless
politicians--most of whom were unprincipled, and some of whom had been
proved to be  felons--and established, at Utrecht, which contributed
nothing to the general purse.  If Leicester were really-coming, it seemed
certain that he would be held to acknowledge the ancient constitution,
and to respect the sovereignty of the States-General.  It was resolved
that he should be well bridled.  The sensations of Barneveld and his
party may therefore be imagined, when a private letter of Leicester, to
his secretary "the fellow named Junius," as Hohenlo called him--having
been intercepted at this moment, gave them an opportunity of studying
the Earl's secret thoughts.

The Earl informed his correspondent that he was on the point of starting
for the Netherlands.  He ordered him therefore to proceed at once to
reassure those whom he knew well disposed as to the good intentions of
her Majesty and of the governor-general.  And if, on the part of Lord
Buckhurst or others, it should be intimated that the Queen was resolved
to treat for peace with the King of Spain; and wished to have the opinion
of the Netherlanders on that subject, he was to say boldly that Lord
Buckhurst never had any such charge, and that her Majesty had not been
treating at all.  She had only been attempting to sound the King's
intentions towards the Netherlands, in case of any accord.  Having
received no satisfactory assurance on the subject, her Majesty was
determined to proceed with the defence of these countries.  This appeared
by the expedition of Drake against Spain, and by the return of the Earl,
with a good cumber of soldiers paid by her Majesty, over and above her
ordinary subsidy.

"You are also;" said the Earl, "to tell those who have the care of the
people" (the ministers of the reformed church and others), "that I am
returning, in the confidence that they will, in future, cause all past
difficulties to cease, and that they will yield to me a legitimate
authority, such as befits for administering the sovereignty of the
Provinces, without my being obliged to endure all the oppositions and
counterminmgs of the States, as in times past.  The States must content
themselves with retaining the power which they claim to have exercised
under the governors of the Emperor and the King--without attempting
anything farther during my government--since I desire to do nothing of
importance without the advice of the council, which will be composed
legitimately of persons of the country.  You will also tell them that her
Majesty commands me to return unless I can obtain from the States the
authority which is necessary, in order not to be governor in appearance
only and on paper.  And I wish that those who are good may be apprized of
all this, in order that nothing may happen to their prejudice and ruin,
and contrary to their wishes."

There were two very obvious comments to be made upon this document.
Firstly, the States--de jure, as they claimed, and de facto most
unquestionably--were in the position of the Emperor and King.  They were
the sovereigns.  The Earl wished them to content themselves with the
power which they exercised under the Emperor's governors.  This was like
requesting the Emperor, when in the Netherlands, to consider himself
subject to his own governor.  The second obvious reflection was that the
Earl, in limiting his authority by a state-council, expected, no doubt,
to appoint that body himself--as he had done before--and to allow the
members only the right of talking, and of voting,--without the power of
enforcing their decisions.  In short, it was very plain that Leicester
meant to be more absolute than ever.

As to the flat contradiction given to Buckhurst's proceedings in the
matter of peace, that statement could scarcely deceive any one who had
seen her Majesty's letters and instructions to her envoy.

It was also a singularly deceitful course to be adopted by Leicester
towards Buckhurst and towards the Netherlands, because his own private
instructions, drawn up at the same moment, expressly enjoined him to do
exactly what Buckhurst had been doing.  He was most strictly and
earnestly commanded to deal privately with all such persons as bad
influence with the "common sort of people," in order that they should use
their influence with those common people in favour of peace, bringing
vividly before them the excessive burthens of the war, their inability to
cope with so potent a prince as Philip, and the necessity the Queen was
under of discontinuing her contributions to their support.  He was to
make the same representations to the States, and he was further most
explicitly to inform all concerned, that, in case they were unmoved by
these suggestions, her Majesty had quite made up her mind to accept the
handsome offers of peace held out by the King of Spain, and to leave them
to their fate.

It seemed scarcely possible that the letter to Junius and the
instructions for the Earl should have been dated the same week, and
should have emanated from the same mind; but such was the fact.

He was likewise privately to assure Maurice and Hohenlo--in order to
remove their anticipated opposition to the peace--that such care should
be taken in providing for them, as that "they should have no just cause
to dislike thereof, but to rest satisfied withal."

With regard to the nature of his authority, he was instructed to claim a
kind of dictatorship in everything regarding the command of the forces,
and the distribution of the public treasure.  All offices were to be at
his disposal.  Every florin contributed by the States was to be placed in
his hands, and spent according to his single will.  He was also to have
plenary power to prevent the trade in victuals with the enemy by death
and confiscation.

If opposition to any of these proposals were made by the States-General,
he was to appeal to the States of each Province; to the towns and
communities, and in case it should prove impossible for him "to be
furnished with the desired authority," he was then instructed to say that
it was "her Majesty's meaning to leave them to their own counsel and
defence, and to withdraw the support that she had yielded to them: seeing
plainly that the continuance of the confused government now reigning
among them could not but work their ruin."

Both these papers came into Barneveld's hands, through the agency of
Ortel, the States' envoy in England, before the arrival of the Earl in
the Netherlands.

Of course they soon became the topics of excited conversation and of
alarm in every part of the country.  Buckhurst, touched to the quick by
the reflection upon those--proceedings of his which had been so
explicitly enjoined upon him, and so reluctantly undertaken--appealed
earnestly to her Majesty.  He reminded her, as delicately as possible,
that her honour, as well as his own, was at stake by Leicester's insolent
disavowals of her authorized ambassador.  He besought her to remember
"what even her own royal hand had written to the Duke of Parma;" and how
much his honour was interested "by the disavowing of his dealings about
the peace begun by her Majesty's commandment."  He adjured her with much
eloquence to think upon the consequences of stirring up the common and
unstable multitude against their rulers; upon the pernicious effects of
allowing the clergy to inflame the passions of the people against the
government.  "Under the name of such as have charge over the people,"
said Buckhurst, "are understood the ministers and chaplains of the
churches in every town, by the means of whom it, seems that his Lordship
tendeth his whole purpose to attain to his desire of the administration
of the sovereignty."  He assured the Queen that this scheme of Leicester
to seize virtually upon that sovereignty, would be a disastrous one.
"The States are resolved," said he, "since your Majesty doth refuse the
sovereignty, to lay it upon no creature else, as a thing contrary to
their oath and allegiance to their country."  He reminded her also that
the States had been dissatisfied with the Earl's former administration,
believing that he had exceeded his commission, and that they were
determined therefore to limit his authority at his return.  "Your sacred
Majesty may consider," he said, "what effect all this may work among the
common and ignorant people, by intimating that, unless they shall procure
him the administration of such a sovereignty as he requireth, their ruin
may ensue."  Buckhurst also informed her that he had despatched
Councillor Wilkes to England, in order that he might give more ample
information on all these affairs by word of mouth than could well be
written.

It need hardly be stated that Barneveld came down to the states'-house
with these papers in his hand, and thundered against the delinquent and
intriguing governor till the general indignation rose to an alarming
height.  False statements of course were made to Leicester as to the
substance of the Advocate's discourse.  He was said to have charged upon
the English government an intention to seize forcibly upon their cities,
and to transfer them to Spain on payment of the sums due to the Queen
from the States, and to have declared that he had found all this treason
in the secret instructions of the Earl.  But Barneveld had read the
instructions, to which the attention of the reader has just been called,
and had strictly stated the truth which was damaging enough, without need
of exaggeration.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

All business has been transacted with open doors
Beacons in the upward path of mankind
Been already crimination and recrimination more than enough
Casting up the matter "as pinchingly as possibly might be"
Disposed to throat-cutting by the ministers of the Gospel
During this, whole war, we have never seen the like
Even to grant it slowly is to deny it utterly
Evil is coming, the sooner it arrives the better
Fool who useth not wit because he hath it not
Guilty of no other crime than adhesion to the Catholic faith
Individuals walking in advance of their age
Never peace well made, he observed, without a mighty war
Rebuked him for his obedience
Respect for differences in religious opinions
Sacrificed by the Queen for faithfully obeying her orders
Succeeded so well, and had been requited so ill
Sword in hand is the best pen to write the conditions of peace
Their existence depended on war
They chose to compel no man's conscience
Torturing, hanging, embowelling of men, women, and children
Universal suffrage was not dreamed of at that day
Waiting the pleasure of a capricious and despotic woman
Who the "people" exactly were




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v52
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 53, 1587




CHAPTER XVI.

     Situation of Sluys--Its Dutch and English Garrison--Williams writes
     from Sluys to the Queen--Jealousy between the Earl and States--
     Schemes to relieve Sluys--Which are feeble and unsuccessful--The
     Town Capitulates--Parma enters--Leicester enraged--The Queen angry
     with the Anti-Leicestrians--Norris, Wilkes, and Buckhurst punished--
     Drake sails for Spain--His Exploits at Cadiz and Lisbon--He is
     rebuked by Elizabeth.

When Dante had passed through the third circle of the Inferno--a desert
of red-hot sand, in which lay a multitude of victims of divine wrath,
additionally tortured by an ever-descending storm of fiery flakes--he was
led by Virgil out of this burning wilderness along a narrow causeway.
This path was protected, he said, against the showers of flame, by the
lines of vapour which rose eternally from a boiling brook.  Even by such
shadowy bulwarks, added the poet, do the Flemings between Kadzand and
Bruges protect their land against the ever-threatening sea.

It was precisely among these slender dykes between Kadzand and Bruges
that Alexander Farnese had now planted all the troops that he could
muster in the field.  It was his determination to conquer the city of
Sluys; for the possession of that important sea-port was necessary for
him as a basis for the invasion of England, which now occupied all the
thoughts of his sovereign and himself.

Exactly opposite the city was the island of Kadzand, once a fair and
fertile territory, with a city and many flourishing villages upon its
surface, but at that epoch diminished to a small dreary sand-bank by the
encroachments of the ocean.

A stream of inland water, rising a few leagues to the south of Sluys,
divided itself into many branches just before reaching the city,
converted the surrounding territory into a miniature archipelago--the
islands of which were shifting treacherous sand-banks at low water, and
submerged ones at flood--and then widening and deepening into a
considerable estuary, opened for the city a capacious harbour, and an
excellent although intricate passage to the sea.  The city, which was
well built and thriving, was so hidden in its labyrinth of canals and
streamlets, that it seemed almost as difficult a matter to find Sluys as
to conquer it.  It afforded safe harbour for five hundred large vessels;
and its possession, therefore, was extremely important for Parma.
Besides these natural defences, the place was also protected by
fortifications; which were as well constructed as the best of that
period.  There was a strong rampire and many towers.  There was also a
detached citadel of great strength, looking towards the sea, and there
was a ravelin, called St. Anne's, looking in the direction of Bruges.
A mere riband of dry land in that quarter was all of solid earth to be
found in the environs of Sluys.

The city itself stood upon firm soil, but that soil had been hollowed
into a vast system of subterranean magazines, not for warlike purposes,
but for cellars, as Sluys had been from a remote period the great
entrepot of foreign wines in the Netherlands.

While the eternal disputes between Leicester and the States were going on
both in Holland and in England, while the secret negotiations between
Alexander Farnese and Queen slowly proceeding at Brussels and Greenwich,
the Duke, notwithstanding the destitute condition of his troops, and the
famine which prevailed throughout the obedient Provinces, had succeeded
in bringing a little army of five thousand foot,  and something less than
one thousand horse, into the field.  A portion of this force he placed
under the command of the veteran La Motte.  That distinguished campaigner
had assured the commander-in-chief that the reduction of the city would
be an easy achievement.  Alexander soon declared that the enterprise was
the most difficult one that he had ever undertaken.  Yet, two years
before, he had carried to its triumphant conclusion the famous siege of
Antwerp.  He stationed his own division upon the isle of Kadzand, and
strengthened his camp by additionally fortifying those shadowy bulwarks,
by which the island, since the age of Dante, had entrenched itself
against the assaults of ocean.

On the other hand, La Motte, by the orders of his chief, had succeeded,
after a sharp struggle, in carrying the fort of St. Anne.  A still more
important step was the surprising of Blankenburg, a small fortified place
on the coast, about midway between Ostend and Sluys, by which the sea-
communications with the former city for the relief of the beleaguered
town were interrupted.

Parma's demonstrations against Sluys had commenced in the early days of
June.  The commandant of the place was Arnold de Groenevelt, a Dutch
noble of ancient lineage and approved valour.  His force was, however,
very meagre, hardly numbering more than eight hundred, all Netherlanders,
but counting among its officers several most distinguished personages-
Nicholas de Maulde, Adolphus de Meetkerke and his younger brother,
Captain Heraugiere, and other well-known partisans.

On the threatening of danger the commandant had made application to
Sir William Russell, the worthy successor of Sir Philip Sidney in the
government of Flushing.  He had received from him, in consequence, a
reinforcement of eight hundred English soldiers, under several eminent
chieftains, foremost among whom were the famous Welshman Roger Williams,
Captain Huntley, Baskerville, Sir Francis Vere, Ferdinando Gorges, and
Captain Hart.  This combined force, however, was but a slender one; there
being but sixteen hundred men to protect two miles and a half of rampart,
besides the forts and ravelins.

But, such as it was, no time was lost in vain regrets.  The sorties
against the besiegers were incessant and brilliant.  On one occasion Sir
Francis Vere--conspicuous in the throng, in his red mantilla, and
supported only by one hundred Englishmen and Dutchmen, under Captain
Baskerville--held at bay eight companies of the famous Spanish legion
called the Terzo Veijo, at push of pike, took many prisoners, and forced
the Spaniards from the position in which they were entrenching
themselves.  On the other hand, Farnese declared that he had never in his
life witnessed anything so unflinching as the courage of his troops;
employed as they were in digging trenches where the soil was neither land
nor water, exposed to inundation by the suddenly-opened sluices, to a
plunging fire from the forts, and to perpetual hand-to-hand combats with
an active and fearless foe, and yet pumping away in the coffer-dams-which
they had invented by way of obtaining a standing-ground for their
operations--as steadily and sedately as if engaged in purely pacific
employments.  The besieged here inspired by a courage equally remarkable.
The regular garrison was small enough, but the burghers were courageous,
and even the women organized themselves into a band of pioneers.  This
corps of Amazons, led by two female captains, rejoicing in the names of
'May in the Heart' and 'Catherine the Rose,' actually constructed an
important redoubt between the citadel and the rampart, which received, in
compliment to its builders, the appellation of 'Fort Venus.'

The demands of the beleaguered garrison, however, upon the States and
upon Leicester were most pressing.  Captain Hart swam thrice out of the
city with letters to the States, to the governor-general, and to Queen
Elizabeth; and the same perilous feat was performed several times by a
Netherland officer.  The besieged meant to sell their lives dearly, but
it was obviously impossible for them, with so slender a force, to resist
a very long time.

"Our ground is great and our men not so many," wrote Roger Williams to
his sovereign, "but we trust in God and our valour to defend it .  .  .
.  .  .  .  We mean, with God's help, to make their downs red and black,
and to let out every acre of our ground for a thousand of their lives,
besides our own."

The Welshman was no braggart, and had proved often enough that he was
more given to performances than promises.  "We doubt not your Majesty
will succour us," he said, "for our honest mind and plain dealing toward
your royal person and dear country;" adding, as a bit of timely advice,
"Royal Majesty, believe not over much your peacemakers.  Had they their
mind, they will not only undo your friend's abroad, but, in the end, your
royal estate."

Certainly it was from no want of wholesome warning from wise statesmen
and blunt soldiers that the Queen was venturing into that labyrinth of
negotiation which might prove so treacherous.  Never had been so
inopportune a moment for that princess to listen to the voice of him who
was charming her so wisely, while he was at the same moment battering
the place, which was to be the basis of his operations against her
realm.  Her delay in sending forth Leicester, with at least a moderate
contingent, to the rescue, was most pernicious.  The States--ignorant
of the Queen's exact relations with Spain, and exaggerating her
disingenuousness into absolute perfidy became on their own part
exceedingly to blame.  There is no doubt whatever that both Hollanders
and English men were playing into the hands of Parma as adroitly as if
he had actually directed their movements.  Deep were the denunciations
of Leicester and his partisans by the States' party, and incessant the
complaints of the English and Dutch troops shut up in Sluys against the
inactivity or treachery of Maurice and Hohenlo.

"If Count Maurice and his base brother, the Admiral (Justinus de Nassau),
be too young to govern, must Holland and Zeeland lose their countries and
towns to make them expert men of war?" asked Roger Williams.'  A pregnant
question certainly, but the answer was, that by suspicion and jealousy,
rather than by youth and inexperience, the arms were paralyzed which
should have saved the garrison.  "If these base fellows (the States) will
make Count Hollock their instrument," continued the Welshman; "to cover
and maintain their folly and lewd dealing, is it necessary for her royal
Majesty to suffer it?  These are too great matters to be rehearsed by me;
but because I am in the town, and do resolve to, sign with my blood my
duty in serving my sovereign and country, I trust her Majesty will pardon
me."  Certainly the gallant adventurer on whom devolved at least half the
work of directing the defence of the city, had a right to express his
opinions.  Had he known the whole truth, however, those opinions would
have been modified.  And he wrote amid the smoke and turmoil of daily and
nightly battle.

"Yesterday was the fifth sally we made," he observed: "Since I followed
the wars I never saw valianter captains, nor willinger soldiers.  At
eleven o'clock the enemy entered the ditch of our fort, with trenches
upon wheels, artillery-proof.  We sallied out, recovered their trenches,
slew the governor of Dam, two Spanish captains, with a number of others,
repulsed them into their artillery, kept the ditch until yesternight, and
will recover it, with God's help, this night, or else pay dearly for it .
.  .  .  .  I care not what may become of me in this world, so that her
Majesty's honour,--with the rest of honourable good friends, will think
me an honest man."

No one ever doubted the simple-hearted Welshman's honesty, any more than
his valour; but he confided in the candour of others who were somewhat
more sophisticated than himself.  When he warned her, royal Majesty
against the peace-makers, it was impossible for him to know that the
great peace-maker was Elizabeth herself.

After the expiration of a month the work had become most fatiguing.  The
enemy's trenches had been advanced close to the ramparts, and desperate
conflicts were of daily occurrence.  The Spanish mines, too, had been
pushed forward towards the extensive wine-caverns below the city, and the
danger of a vast explosion or of a general assault from beneath their
very feet, seemed to the inhabitants imminent.  Eight days long, with
scarcely an intermission, amid those sepulchral vaults, dimly-lighted
with torches, Dutchmen, Englishmen, Spaniards, Italians, fought hand to
hand, with pike, pistol, and dagger, within the bowels of the earth.

Meantime the operations of the States were not commendable.  The
ineradicable jealousy between the Leicestrians and the Barneveldians had
done its work.  There was no hearty effort for the relief of Sluys.
There were suspicions that, if saved, the town would only be taken
possession of by the Earl of Leicester, as an additional vantage-point
for coercing the country into subjection to his arbitrary authority.
Perhaps it would be transferred to Philip by Elizabeth as part of the
price for peace.  There was a growing feeling in Holland and Zeeland that
as those Provinces bore all the expense of the war, it was an imperative
necessity that they should limit their operations to the defence of their
own soil.  The suspicions as to the policy of the English government were
sapping the very foundations of the alliance, and there was small
disposition on the part of the Hollanders, therefore, to protect what
remained of Flanders, and thus to strengthen the hands of her whom they
were beginning to look upon as an enemy.

Maurice and Hohenlo made, however, a foray into Brabant, by way of
diversion to the siege of Sluys, and thus compelled Farnese to detach a
considerable force under Haultepenne into that country, and thereby to
weaken himself.  The expedition of Maurice was not unsuccessful.  There
was some sharp skirmishing between Hohenlo and Haultepenne, in which the
latter, one of the most valuable and distinguished generals on the royal
side, was defeated and slain; the fort of Engel, near Bois-le-Duc, was
taken, and that important city itself endangered; but, on the other hand,
the contingent on which Leicester relied from the States to assist in
relieving Sluys was not forthcoming.

For, meantime, the governor-general had at last been sent back by his
sovereign to the post which he had so long abandoned.  Leaving Leicester
House on the 4th July (N. S.), he had come on board the fleet two days
afterwards at Margate.  He was bringing with him to the Netherlands three
thousand fresh infantry, and thirty thousand pounds, of which sum fifteen
thousand pounds had been at last wrung from Elizabeth as an extra loan,
in place of the sixty thousand pounds which the States had requested.  As
he sailed past Ostend and towards Flushing, the Earl was witness to the
constant cannonading between the besieged city and the camp of Farnese,
and saw that the work could hardly be more serious; for in one short day
more shots were fired than had ever been known before in a single day in
all Parma's experience.

Arriving at Flushing, the governor-general was well received by the
inhabitants; but the mischief, which had been set a-foot six months
before, had done its work.  The political intrigues, disputes, and the
conflicting party-organizations, have already been set in great detail
before the reader, in order that their effect might now be thoroughly
understood without--explanation.  The governor-general came to Flushing
at a most critical moment.  The fate of all the Spanish Netherlands, of
Sluys, and with it the whole of Philip and Parma's great project, were,
in Farnese's own language, hanging by a thread.

It would have been possible--had the transactions of the past six months,
so far as regarded Holland and England, been the reverse of what they had
been--to save the city; and, by a cordial and united effort, for the two
countries to deal the Spanish power such a blow, that summer, as would
have paralyzed it for a long time to come, and have placed both
commonwealths in comparative security.

Instead of all this, general distrust and mutual jealousy prevailed.
Leicester had, previously to his departure from England, summoned the
States to meet him at Dort upon his arrival.  Not a soul appeared.  Such
of the state-councillors as were his creatures came to him, and Count
Maurice made a visit of ceremony.  Discussions about a plan for relieving
the siege became mere scenes of bickering and confusion.  The officers
within Sluys were desirous that a fleet should force its way into the
harbour, while, at the same time, the English army, strengthened by the
contingent which Leicester had demanded from the States, should advance
against the Duke of Parma by land.  It was, in truth, the only way to
succour the place.  The scheme was quite practicable.  Leicester
recommended it, the Hollanders seemed to favour it, Commandant Groenevelt
and Roger Williams urged it.

"I do assure you," wrote the honest Welshman to Leicester, "if you will
come afore this town, with as many galliots and as many flat-bottomed
boats as can cause two men-of-war to enter, they cannot stop their
passage, if, your mariners will do a quarter of their duty, as I saw them
do divers times.  Before, they make their entrance, we will come with our
boats, and fight with the greatest part, and show them there is no such
great danger.  Were it not for my wounded arm, I would be, in your first
boat to enter.  Notwithstanding, I and other Englishmen will approach
their boats in such sort, that we will force them to give their saker of
artillery upon us.  If, your Excellency will give ear unto those false
lewd fellows (the Captain meant the States-General), you shall lose great
opportunity.  Within ten or twelve days the enemy will make his bridge
from Kadzand unto St. Anne, and force you to hazard battle before you
succour this town.  Let my Lord Willoughby and Sir William Russell land
at Terhoven, right against Kadzand, with 4000, and entrench hard by the
waterside, where their boats can carry them victual and munition.  They
may approach by trenches without engaging any dangerous fight .  .  .  .
We dare not show the estate of this town more than we have done by
Captain Herte.  We must fight this night within our rampart in the fort.
You may sure the world here are no Hamerts, but valiant captains and
valiant soldiers, such as, with God's help, had rather be buried in the
place than be disgraced in any point that belongs to such a number of
men-of-war."

But in vain did the governor of the place, stout Arnold Froenevelt,
assisted by the rough and direct eloquence of Roger Williams, urge upon
the Earl of Leicester and the States-General the necessity and the
practicability of the plan proposed.  The fleet never entered the
harbour.  There was no William of Orange to save Antwerp and Sluys,
as Leyden had once been saved, and his son was not old enough to unravel
the web of intrigue by which he was surrounded, or to direct the whole
energies of the commonwealth towards an all-important end.  Leicester had
lost all influence, all authority, nor were his military abilities equal
to the occasion, even if he had been cordially obeyed.

Ten days longer the perpetual battles on the ramparts and within the
mines continued, the plans conveyed by the bold swimmer, Captain Hart,
for saving the place were still unattempted, and the city was tottering
to its fall.  "Had Captain Hart's words taken place," wrote Williams,
bitterly," we had been succoured, or, if my letters had prevailed, our
pain had been, no peril: All wars are best executed in sight of the enemy
.  .  .  .  The last night of June (10th July, N. S.) the enemy entered
the ditches of our fort in three several places, continuing in fight in
mine and on rampart for the space of eight nights.  The ninth; he
battered us furiously,  made a breach of five score paces suitable for
horse and man.  That day be attempted us in all, places with a general,
assault for the space of almost five hours."

The citadel was now lost.  It had been gallantly defended; and it was
thenceforth necessary to hold the town itself, in the very teeth of an
overwhelming force.  "We were forced to quit the fort," said-Sir Roger,
"leaving nothing behind us but bare earth.  But here we do remain
resolutely to be buried, rather than to be dishonoured in the least
point."

It was still possible for the fleet to succour the city.  "I do assure
you," said-Williams, "that your captains and mariners do not their duty
unless they enter with no great loss; but you must consider that no wars
may be made without danger.  What you mean to do, we beseech you to do
with expedition, and persuade yourself that we will die valiant, honest-
men.  Your Excellency will do well to thank the old President de Meetkerk
far the honesty and valour of his son."

Count Maurice and his natural brother, the Admiral, now undertook the
succour by sea; but, according to the Leicestrians, they continued
dilatory and incompetent.  At any rate, it is certain that they did
nothing.  At last, Parma had completed the bridge; whose construction,
was so much dreaded: The haven was now enclosed by a strong wooden
structure, resting an boats, on a plan similar to that of the famous
bridge with which he had two years before bridled the Scheldt, and Sluys
was thus completely shut in from the sea.  Fire-ships were now
constructed, by order of Leicester--feeble imitations: of the floating
volcanoes of Gianihelli--and it was agreed that they should be sent
against the bridge with the first flood-tide.  The propitious moment
never seemed to arrive, however, and, meantime, the citizens of Flushing,
of their own accord, declared that they would themselves equip and
conduct a fleet into the harbour of Sluys.  But the Nassaus are said to
have expressed great disgust that low-born burghers should presume to
meddle with so important an enterprise, which of right belonged to their
family.  Thus, in the midst of these altercations and contradictory
schemes; the month of July wore away, and the city was reduced to its
last gasp.

For the cannonading had thoroughly done its work.  Eighteen days long the
burghers and what remained of the garrison had lived upon the ramparts,
never leaving their posts, but eating, sleeping, and fighting day and
night.  Of the sixteen hundred Dutch and English but seven hundred
remained.  At last a swimming messenger was sent out by the besieged with
despatches for the States, to the purport that the city could hold out no
longer.  A breach in the wall had been effected wide enough to admit a
hundred men abreast.  Sluys had, in truth, already fallen, and it was
hopeless any longer to conceal the fact.  If not relieved within a day or
two, the garrison would be obliged to surrender; but they distinctly
stated, that they had all pledged themselves, soldiers and burghers, men,
women, and all, unless the most honourable terms were granted, to set
fire to the city in a hundred places, and then sally, in mass, from the
gates, determined to fight their way through, or be slain in the attempt.
The messenger who carried these despatches was drowned, but the letters
were saved, and fell into Parma's hands.

At the same moment, Leicester was making, at last, an effort to raise the
siege.  He brought three or four thousand men from Flushing, and landed
them at Ostend; thence he marched to Blanckenburg.  He supposed that if
he could secure that little port, and thus cut the Duke completely off
from the sea, he should force the Spanish commander to raise (or at least
suspend) the siege in order to give him battle.  Meantime, an opportunity
would be afforded for Maurice and Hohenlo to force an entrance into the
harbour of Sluys, In this conjecture he was quite correct; but
unfortunately he did not thoroughly carry out his own scheme.  If the
Earl had established himself at Blanckenburg, it would have been
necessary for Parma--as he himself subsequently declared-to raise the
siege.  Leicester carried the outposts of the place successfully; but, so
soon as Farnese was aware of this demonstration, he detached a few
companies with orders to skirmish with the enemy until the commander-in-
chief, with as large a force as he could spare, should come in person to
his support.  To the unexpected gratification of Farnese, however, no
sooner did the advancing Spaniards come in sight, than the Earl,
supposing himself invaded by the whole of the Duke's army, under their
famous general, and not feeling himself strong enough for such an
encounter, retired, with great precipitation, to his boats, re-embarked
his troops with the utmost celerity, and set sail for Ostend.

The next night had been fixed for sending forth the fireships against the
bridge, and for the entrance of the fleet into the harbour.  One fire-
ship floated a little way towards the bridge and exploded ingloriously.
Leicester rowed in his barge about the fleet, superintending the
soundings and markings of the channel, and hastening the preparations;
but, as the decisive moment approached, the pilots who had promised to
conduct the expedition came aboard his pinnace and positively refused to
have aught to do with the enterprise, which they now declared an
impossibility.  The Earl was furious with the pilots, with Maurice, with
Hohenlo, with Admiral de Nassau, with the States, with all the world.  He
stormed and raged and beat his breast, but all in vain.  His ferocity
would have been more useful the day before, in face of the Spaniards,
than now, against the Zeeland mariners: but the invasion by the fleet
alone, unsupported by a successful land-operation, was pronounced
impracticable, and very soon tie relieving fleet was seen by the
distressed garrison sailing away from the neighbourhood, and it soon
disappeared beneath the horizon.  Their fate was sealed.  They entered
into treaty with Parma, who, secretly instructed, as has been seen, of
their desperate intentions, in case any but the most honourable
conditions were offered, granted those conditions.  The garrison were
allowed to go out with colours displayed, lighted matches, bullet in
mouth, and with bag and baggage.  Such burghers as chose to conform to
the government of Spain and the church of Rome; were permitted to remain.
Those who preferred to depart were allowed reasonable time to make their
necessary arrangements.

"We have hurt and slain very near eight hundred," said Sir Roger
Williams."  We had not powder to fight two hours.  There was a breach of
almost four hundred paces, another of three score, another of fifty,
saltable for horse and men.  We had lain continually eighteen nights all
on the breaches.  He gave us honourable composition.  Had the state of
England lain on it, our lives could not defend the place, three hours,
for half the rampires were his, neither had we any pioneers but
ourselves.  We were sold by their negligence who are now angry with us."

On the 5th August Parma entered the city.  Roger Williams with his gilt
morion rather battered, and his great plume of feathers much bedraggled-
was a witness to the victor's entrance.  Alexander saluted respectfully
an officer so well known to him by reputation, and with some
complimentary remarks urged him to enter the Spanish service,
and to take the field against the Turks.

"My sword," replied the doughty Welshman, "belongs to her royal Majesty,
Queen Elizabeth, above and before all the world.  When her Highness has
no farther use for it, it is at the service of the King of Navarre."
Considering himself sufficiently answered, the Duke then requested Sir
Roger to point out Captain Baskerville--very conspicuous by a greater
plume of feathers than even that of the Welshman himself--and embraced
that officer; when presented to him, before all his staff.  "There serves
no prince in Europe a braver man than this Englishman," cried Alexander,
who well knew how to appreciate high military qualities, whether in his
own army or in that of his foes.

The garrison then retired, Sluy's became Spanish, and a capacious
harbour, just opposite the English coast, was in Parma's hands.  Sir
Roger Williams was despatched by Leicester to bear the melancholy tidings
to his government, and the Queen was requested to cherish the honest
Welshman, and at least to set him on horseback; for he was of himself not
rich enough to buy even a saddle.  It is painful to say that the captain
did not succeed in getting the horse.

The Earl was furious in his invectives against Hohenlo, against Maurice,
against the States, uniformly ascribing the loss of Sluy's to negligence
and faction.  As for Sir John Norris, he protested that his misdeeds in
regard to this business would, in King Henry VIII.'s time, have "cost him
his pate."

The loss of Sluys was the beginning and foreshadowed the inevitable end
of Leicester's second administration.  The inaction of the States was one
of the causes of its loss.  Distrust of Leicester was the cause of the
inaction.  Sir William Russell, Lord Willoughby, Sir William Pelham, and
other English officers, united in statements exonerating the Earl from
all blame for the great failure to relieve the place.  At the same time,
it could hardly be maintained that his expedition to Blanckenburg and his
precipitate retreat on the first appearance of the enemy were proofs of
consummate generalship.  He took no blame to himself for the disaster;
but he and his partisans were very liberal in their denunciations of the
Hollanders, and Leicester was even ungrateful enough to censure Roger
Williams, whose life had been passed, as it were, at push of pike with
the Spaniards, and who was one of his own most devoted adherents.

The Queen was much exasperated when informed of the fall of the city.
She severely denounced the Netherlanders, and even went so far as to
express dissatisfaction with the great Leicester himself.  Meantime,
Farnese was well satisfied with his triumph, for he had been informed
that "all England was about to charge upon him," in order to relieve the
place.  All England, however, had been but feebly represented by three
thousand raw recruits with a paltry sum of L15,000 to help pay a long
bill of arrears.

Wilkes and Norris had taken their departure from the Netherlands before
the termination of the siege, and immediately after the return of
Leicester.  They did not think it expedient to wait upon the governor
before leaving the country, for they had very good reason to believe that
such an opportunity of personal vengeance would be turned to account by
the Earl.  Wilkes had already avowed his intention of making his escape
without being dandled with leave-takings, and no doubt he was right.  The
Earl was indignant when he found that they had given him the slip, and
denounced them with fresh acrimony to the Queen, imploring her to wreak
full measure of wrath upon their heads; and he well knew that his
entreaties would meet with the royal attention.

Buckhurst had a parting interview with the governor-general, at which
Killigrew and Beale, the new English counsellors who had replaced Wilkes
and Clerk, were present.  The conversation was marked by insolence on the
part of Leicester, and by much bitterness on that of Buckhurst.  The
parting envoy refused to lay before the Earl a full statement of the
grievances between the States-General and the governor, on the ground
that Leicester had no right to be judge in his own cause.  The matter,
he said, should be laid before the Queen in council, and by her august
decision he was willing to abide.  On every other subject he was ready to
give any information in his power.  The interview lasted a whole forenoon
and afternoon.  Buckhurst, according to his own statement, answered,
freely all questions put to him by Leicester and his counsellors; while,
if the report of those personages is to be trusted, he passionately
refused to make any satisfactory communication.  Under the circumstances,
however, it may well be believed that no satisfactory communication was
possible.

On arriving in England, Sir John Norris was forbidden to come into her
Majesty's presence, Wilkes was thrown into the Fleet Prison, and
Buckhurst was confined in his own country house.

Norris had done absolutely nothing, which, even by implication, could be
construed into a dereliction of duty; but it was sufficient that he was
hated by Leicester, who had not scrupled, over and over again, to
denounce this first general of England as a fool, a coward, a knave, and
a liar.

As for Wilkes, his only crime was a most conscientious discharge of his
duty, in the course of which he had found cause to modify his abstract
opinions in regard to the origin of sovereignty, and had come reluctantly
to the conviction that Leicester's unpopularity had made perhaps another
governor-general desirable.  But this admission had only been made
privately and with extreme caution; while, on the other hand, he had
constantly defended the absent Earl, with all the eloquence at his
command.  But the hatred cf Leicester was sufficient to consign this able
and painstaking public servant to a prison; and thus was a man of worth,
honour, and talent, who had been placed in a position of grave
responsibility and immense fatigue, and who had done his duty like an
upright, straight-forward Englishman, sacrificed to the wrath of a
favourite.  "Surely, Mr. Secretary," said the Earl, "there was never a
falser creature, a more seditious wretch, than Wilkes.  He is a villain,
a devil, without faith or religion."

As for Buckhurst himself, it is unnecessary to say a word in his defence.
The story of his mission has been completely detailed from the most
authentic and secret documents, and there is not a single line written to
the Queen, to her ministers, to the States, to any public body or to any
private friend, in England or elsewhere, that does not reflect honour on
his name.  With sagacity, without passion, with unaffected sincerity,
he had unravelled the complicated web of Netherland politics, and, with
clear vision, had penetrated the designs of the mighty enemy whom England
and Holland had to encounter in mortal combat.  He had pointed out the
errors of the Earl's administration--he had fearlessly, earnestly, but
respectfully deplored the misplaced parsimony of the Queen--he had warned
her against the delusions which had taken possession of her keen
intellect--he had done--his best to place the governor-general upon good
terms with the States and with his sovereign; but it had been impossible
for him to further his schemes for the acquisition of a virtual
sovereignty over the Netherlands, or to extinguish the suspicions of the
States that the Queen was secretly negotiating with the Spaniard, when he
knew those suspicions to be just.

For deeds, such as these, the able and high-minded ambassador,
the accomplished statesman and poet, was forbidden to approach his
sovereign's presence, and was ignominiously imprisoned in his own house
until the death of Leicester.  After that event, Buckhurst emerged from
confinement, received the order of the garter and the Earldom of Dorset,
and on the death of Burghley succeeded that statesman in the office of
Lord-Treasurer.  Such was the substantial recognition of the merits of a
man who was now disgraced for the conscientious discharge of the most
important functions that had yet been confided to him.

It would be a thankless and superfluous task to give the details of the
renewed attempt, during a few months, made by Leicester to govern the
Provinces.  His second administration consisted mainly of the same
altercations with the States, on the subject of sovereignty, the same
mutual recriminations and wranglings, that had characterized the period
of his former rule.  He rarely met the States in person, and almost never
resided at the Hague, holding his court at Middleburg, Dort, or Utrecht,
as his humour led him.

The one great feature of the autumn of 1587 was the private negotiation
between Elizabeth and the Duke of Parma.

Before taking a glance at the nature of those secrets, however, it is
necessary to make a passing allusion to an event which might have seemed
likely to render all pacific communications with Spain, whether secret or
open, superfluous.

For while so much time had been lost in England and Holland, by
misunderstandings and jealousies, there was one Englishman who had not
been losing time.  In the winter and early spring of 1587, the Devonshire
skipper had organized that expedition which he had come to the
Netherlands, the preceding autumn, to discuss.  He meant to aim a blow
at the very heart of that project which Philip was shrouding with so much
mystery, and which Elizabeth was attempting to counteract by so much
diplomacy.

On the 2nd April, Francis Drake sailed from Plymouth with four ships
belonging to the Queen, and with twenty-four furnished by the merchants
of London, and other private individuals.  It was a bold buccaneering
expedition--combining chivalrous enterprise with the chance of enormous
profit--which was most suited to the character of English adventurers at
that expanding epoch.  For it was by England, not by Elizabeth, that the
quarrel with Spain was felt to be a mortal one.  It was England, not its
sovereign, that was instinctively arming, at all points, to grapple with
the great enemy of European liberty.  It was the spirit of self-help, of
self-reliance, which was prompting the English nation to take the great
work of the age into its own hands.  The mercantile instinct of the
nation was flattered with the prospect of gain, the martial quality of
its patrician and of its plebeian blood was eager to confront danger, the
great Protestant mutiny.  Against a decrepit superstition in combination
with an aggressive tyranny, all impelled the best energies of the English
people against Spain, as the embodiment of all which was odious and
menacing to them, and with which they felt that the life and death
struggle could not long be deferred.

And of these various tendencies, there were no more fitting
representatives than Drake and Frobisher, Hawkins and Essex, Cavendish
and Grenfell, and the other privateersmen of the sixteenth century.  The
same greed for danger, for gold, and for power, which, seven centuries
before, had sent the Norman race forth to conquer all Christendom, was
now sending its Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman kindred to take possession
of the old world and the new.

"The wind commands me away," said Drake on the 2nd April, 1587; "our ship
is under sail.  God grant that we may so live in His fear, that the enemy
may have cause to say that God doth fight for her Majesty abroad as well
as at home."

But he felt that he was not without enemies behind him, for the strong
influence brought to bear against the bold policy which Walsingham
favoured, was no secret to Drake.  "If we deserve ill," said he, "let us
be punished.  If we discharge our duty, in doing our best, it is a hard
measure to be reported ill by those who will either keep their fingers
out of the fire; or who too well affect that alteration in our government
which I hope in God they shall never live to see."  In latitude 40 deg.
he spoke two Zeeland ships, homeward bound, and obtained information of
great warlike stores accumulating in Cadiz and Lisbon.  His mind was
instantly made up.  Fortunately, the pinnace which the Queen despatched
with orders to stay his hand in the very act of smiting her great
adversary, did not sail fast enough to overtake the swift corsair and his
fleet.  Sir Francis had too promptly obeyed the wind, when it "commanded
him away," to receive the royal countermand.  On the 19th April, the
English ships entered the harbour of Cadiz, and destroyed ten thousand
tons of shipping, with their contents, in the very face of a dozen great
galleys, which the nimble English vessels soon drove under their forts
for shelter.  Two nights and a day, Sir Francis, that "hater of
idleness," was steadily doing his work; unloading, rifling, scuttling,
sinking, and burning those transportships which contained a portion of
the preparations painfully made by Philip for his great enterprise.
Pipe-staves and spikes, horse-shoes and saddles, timber and cutlasses,
wine, oil, figs, raisins, biscuits, and flour, a miscellaneous mass of
ingredients long brewing for the trouble of England, were emptied into
the harbour, and before the second night, the blaze of a hundred and
fifty burning vessels played merrily upon the grim walls of Philip's
fortresses.  Some of these ships were of the largest size then known.
There was one belonging to Marquis Santa Cruz of 1500 tons, there was a
Biscayan of 1200, there were several others of 1000, 800, and of nearly
equal dimensions.

Thence sailing for Lisbon, Sir Francis, captured and destroyed a hundred
vessels more, appropriating what was portable of the cargoes, and
annihilating the rest.  At Lisbon, Marquis Santa Cruz, lord high admiral
of Spain and generalissimo of the invasion, looked on, mortified and
amazed, but offering no combat, while the Plymouth privateersman swept
the harbour of the great monarch of the world.  After thoroughly
accomplishing his work, Drake sent a message to Santa Cruz, proposing to
exchange his prisoners for such Englishmen as might then be confined in
Spain.  But the marquis denied all prisoners.  Thereupon Sir Francis
decided to sell his captives to the Moors, and to appropriate the
proceeds of the sale towards the purchase of English slaves put of the
same bondage.  Such was the fortune of war in the sixteenth century.

Having dealt these great blows, Drake set sail again from Lisbon, and,
twenty leagues from St. Michaels, fell in with one of those famous
Spanish East Indiamen, called carracks, then the great wonder of the
seas.  This vessel, San Felipe by name, with a cargo of extraordinary
value, was easily captured, and Sir Francis now determined to return.  He
had done a good piece of work in a few weeks, but he was by no means of
opinion that he had materially crippled the enemy.  On the contrary, he
gave the government warning as to the enormous power and vast
preparations of Spain.  "There would be forty thousand men under way ere
long," he said, "well equipped and provisioned; "and he stated, as the
result of personal observation, that England could not be too energetic
in, its measures of resistance.  He had done something with his little
fleet, but he was no braggart, and had no disposition to underrate the
enemy's power.  "God make us all thankful again and again," he observed,
"that we have, although it be little, made a beginning upon the coast of
Spain."  And modestly as he spoke of what he had accomplished, so with
quiet self-reliance did he allude to the probable consequences.  It was
certain, he intimated, that the enemy would soon seek revenge with all
his strength, and "with all the devices and traps he could devise."  This
was a matter which could not be doubted.  "But," said Sir Francis, "I
thank them much that they have staid so long, and when they come they
shall be but the sons of mortal men."

Perhaps the most precious result of the expedition, was the lesson which
the Englishmen had thus learned in handling the great galleys of Spain.
It might soon stand them in stead.  The little war-vessels which had come
from Plymouth, had sailed round and round these vast unwieldy hulks, and
had fairly driven them off the field, with very slight damage to
themselves.  Sir Francis had already taught the mariners of England,
even if he had done nothing else by this famous Cadiz expedition,
that an armada, of Spain might not be so invincible as men imagined.

Yet when the conqueror returned from his great foray, he received no
laurels.  His sovereign met him, not with smiles, but with frowns and
cold rebukes.  He had done his duty, and helped to save her endangered
throne, but Elizabeth was now the dear friend of Alexander Farnese, and
in amicable correspondence with his royal master.  This "little"
beginning on the coast of Spain might not seem to his Catholic Majesty
a matter to be thankful for, nor be likely to further a pacification,
and so Elizabeth hastened to disavow her Plymouth captain.'

     ["True it is, and I avow it on my faith, her Majesty did send a ship
     expressly before he went to Cadiz with a message by letters charging
     Sir Francis Drake not to show any act of hostility, which messenger
     by contrary winds could never come to the place where he was, but
     was constrained to come home, and hearing of Sir F. Drake's actions,
     her Majesty commanded the party that returned to have been punished,
     but that he acquitted himself by the oaths of himself and all his
     company.  And so unwitting yea unwilling to her Majesty those
     actions were committed by Sir F. Drake, for the which her Majesty is
     as yet greatly offended with him."  Burghley to Andreas de Loo, 18
     July, 1587.  Flanders Correspondence.' (S. P. Office MS.)]




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

The blaze of a hundred and fifty burning vessels
We were sold by their negligence who are now angry with us




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v53
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 54, 1587



CHAPTER XVII.

     Secret Treaty between Queen and Parma--Excitement and Alarm in the
     States--Religious Persecution in England--Queen's Sincerity toward
     Spain--Language and Letters of Parma--Negotiations of De Loo--
     English Commissioners appointed--Parma's affectionate Letter to the
     Queen--Philip at his Writing-Table--His Plots with Parma against
     England--Parma's secret Letters to the King--Philip's Letters to
     Parma Wonderful Duplicity of Philip--His sanguine Views as to
     England--He is reluctant to hear of the Obstacles--and imagines
     Parma in England--But Alexander's Difficulties are great--He
     denounces Philip's wild Schemes--Walsingham aware of the Spanish
     Plot--which the States well understand--Leicester's great
     Unpopularity--The Queen warned against Treating--Leicester's Schemes
     against Barneveld--Leicestrian Conspiracy at Leyden--The Plot to
     seize the City discovered--Three Ringleaders sentenced to Death--
     Civil War in France--Victory gained by Navarre, and one by Guise--
     Queen recalls Leicester--Who retires on ill Terms with the States--
     Queen warned as to Spanish Designs--Result's of Leicester's
     Administration.

The course of Elizabeth towards the Provinces, in the matter of the
peace, was certainly not ingenuous, but it was not absolutely deceitful.
She concealed and denied the negotiations, when the Netherland statesmen
were perfectly aware of their existence, if not of their tenour; but she
was not prepared, as they suspected, to sacrifice their liberties and
their religion, as the price of her own reconciliation with Spain.
Her attitude towards the States was imperious, over-bearing, and abusive.
She had allowed the Earl of Leicester to return, she said, because of her
love for the poor and oppressed people, but in many of her official and
in all her private communications, she denounced the men who governed
that people as ungrateful wretches and impudent liars!

These were the corrosives and vinegar which she thought suitable for the
case; and the Earl was never weary in depicting the same statesmen as
seditious, pestilent, self-seeking, mischief-making traitors.  These
secret, informal negotiations, had been carried on during most of the
year 1587.  It was the "comptroller's peace;", as Walsingham
contemptuously designated the attempted treaty; for it will be
recollected that Sir James Croft, a personage of very mediocre abilities,
had always been more busy than any other English politician in these
transactions.  He acted; however, on the inspiration of Burghley, who
drew his own from the fountainhead.

But it was in vain for the Queen to affect concealment.  The States knew
everything which was passing, before Leicester knew.  His own secret
instructions reached the Netherlands before he did.  His secretary,
Junius, was thrown into prison, and his master's letter taken from him,
before there had been any time to act upon its treacherous suggestions.
When the Earl wrote letters with, his own hand to his sovereign, of so
secret a nature that he did not even retain a single copy for himself,
for fear of discovery, he found, to his infinite disgust, that the States
were at once provided with an authentic transcript of every line that he
had written.  It was therefore useless, almost puerile, to deny facts
which were quite as much within the knowledge of the Netherlanders as of
himself.  The worst consequence of the concealment was, that a deeper
treachery was thought possible than actually existed.  "The fellow they
call Barneveld," as Leicester was in the habit of designating one of the
first statesmen in Europe, was perhaps justified, knowing what he did, in
suspecting more.  Being furnished with a list of commissioners, already
secretly agreed upon between the English and Spanish governments, to
treat for peace, while at the same time the Earl was beating his breast,
and flatly denying that there was any intention of treating with Parma at
all, it was not unnatural that he should imagine a still wider and deeper
scheme than really existed, against the best interests of his country.
He may have expressed, in private conversation, some suspicions of this
nature, but there is direct evidence that he never stated in public
anything which was not afterwards proved to be matter of fact, or of
legitimate inference from the secret document which had come into his
hands.  The Queen exhausted herself in opprobious language against those
who dared to impute to her a design to obtain possession of the cities
and strong places of the Netherlands, in order to secure a position in
which to compel the Provinces into obedience to her policy.  She urged,
with much logic, that as she had refused the sovereignty of the whole
country when offered to her, she was not likely to form surreptitious
schemes to make herself mistress of a portion of it.  On the other hand,
it was very obvious, that to accept the sovereignty of Philip's
rebellious Provinces, was to declare war upon Philip; whereas, had she
been pacifically inclined towards that sovereign, and treacherously
disposed towards the Netherlands, it would be a decided advantage to her
to have those strong places in her power.  But the suspicions as to her
good faith were exaggerated.  As to the intentions of Leicester, the
States were justified in their almost unlimited distrust.  It is very
certain that both in 1586, and again, at this very moment, when Elizabeth
was most vehement in denouncing such aspersions on her government, he had
unequivocally declared to her his intention of getting possession, if
possible, of several cities, and of the whole Island of Walcheren, which,
together with the cautionary towns already in his power, would enable the
Queen to make good terms for herself with Spain, "if the worst came to
the, worst."  It will also soon be shown that he did his best to carry
these schemes into execution.  There is no evidence, however, and no
probability, that he had received the royal commands to perpetrate such a
crime.

The States believed also, that in those secret negotiations with Parma
the Queen was disposed to sacrifice the religious interests of the
Netherlands.  In this they were mistaken.  But they had reason for their
mistake, because the negotiator De Loo, had expressly said, that, in her
overtures to Farnese, she had abandoned that point altogether.  If this
had been so, it would have simply been a consent on the part of
Elizabeth, that the Catholic religion and the inquisition should be
re-established in the Provinces, to the exclusion of every other form of
worship or polity.  In truth, however, the position taken by her Majesty
on the subject was as fair as could be reasonably expected.  Certainly
she was no advocate for religious liberty.  She chose that her own
subjects should be Protestants, because she had chosen to be a Protestant
herself, and because it was an incident of her supremacy, to dictate
uniformity of creed to all beneath her sceptre.  No more than her father,
who sent to the stake or gallows heretics to transubstantiation as well
as believers in the Pope, had Elizabeth the faintest idea of religious
freedom.  Heretics to the English Church were persecuted, fined,
imprisoned, mutilated, and murdered, by sword, rope, and fire.  In some
respects, the practice towards those who dissented from Elizabeth was
more immoral and illogical, even if less cruel, than that to which those
were subjected who rebelled against Sixtus.  The Act of Uniformity
required Papists to assist at the Protestant worship, but wealthy Papists
could obtain immunity by an enormous fine.  The Roman excuse to destroy
bodies in order to save souls, could scarcely be alleged by a Church
which might be bribed into connivance at heresy, and which derived a
revenue from the very nonconformity for which humbler victims were sent
to the gallows.  It would, however, be unjust in the extreme to overlook
the enormous difference in the amount of persecution, exercised
respectively by the Protestant and the Roman Church.  It is probable that
not many more than two hundred Catholics were executed as such, in
Elizabeth's reign, and this was ten score too many.  But what was this
against eight hundred heretics burned, hanged, and drowned, in one Easter
week by Alva, against the eighteen thousand two hundred went to stake and
scaffold, as he boasted during his administration, against the vast
numbers of Protestants, whether they be counted by tens or by hundreds of
thousands, who perished by the edicts of Charles V., in the Netherlands,
or in the single Saint Bartholomew Massacre in France?  Moreover, it
should never be forgotten--from undue anxiety for impartiality--that most
of the Catholics who were executed in England, suffered as conspirators
rather than as heretics.  No foreign potentate, claiming to be vicegerent
of Christ, had denounced Philip as a bastard and, usurper, or had, by
means of a blasphemous fiction, which then was a terrible reality,
severed the bonds of allegiance by which his subjects were held, cut him
off from all communion with his fellow-creatures, and promised temporal
rewards and a crown of glory in heaven to those who should succeed in
depriving him of throne and life.  Yet this was the position of
Elizabeth.  It was war to the knife between her and Rome, declared by
Rome itself; nor was there any doubt whatever that the Seminary Priests
--seedlings transplanted from foreign nurseries, which were as watered
gardens for the growth of treason--were a perpetually organized band of
conspirators and assassins, with whom it was hardly an act of excessive
barbarity to deal in somewhat summary fashion.  Doubtless it would have
been a more lofty policy, and a far more intelligent one, to extend
towards the Catholics of England, who as a body were loyal to their
country, an ample toleration.  But it could scarcely be expected that
Elizabeth Tudor, as imperious and absolute by temperament as her father
had ever been, would be capable of embodying that great principle.

When, in the preliminaries to the negotiations of 1587, therefore, it was
urged on the part of Spain, that the Queen was demanding a concession of
religious liberty from Philip to the Netherlanders which she refused to
English heretics, and that he only claimed the same right of dictating a
creed to his subjects which she exercised in regard to her own, Lord
Burghley replied that the statement was correct.  The Queen permitted--
it was true--no man to profess any religion but the one which she
professed.  At the same time it was declared to be unjust, that those
persons in the Netherlands who had been for years in the habit of
practising Protestant rites, should be suddenly compelled, without
instruction, to abandon that form of worship.  It was well known that
many would rather die than submit to such oppression, and it was affirmed
that the exercise of this cruelty would be resisted by her to the
uttermost.  There was no hint of the propriety--on any logical basis--
of leaving the question of creed as a matter between man and his Maker,
with which any dictation on the part of crown or state was an act of
odious tyranny.  There was not even a suggestion that the Protestant
doctrines were true, and the Catholic doctrines false.  The matter was
merely taken up on the 'uti possidetis' principle, that they who had
acquired the fact of Protestant worship had a right to retain it, and
could not justly be deprived of it, except by instruction and persuasion.
It was also affirmed that it was not the English practice to inquire into
men's consciences.  It would have been difficult, however, to make that
very clear to Philip's comprehension, because, if men, women, and
children, were scourged with rods, imprisoned and hanged, if they refused
to conform publicly to a ceremony at which their consciences revolted-
unless they had money enough to purchase non-conformity--it seemed to be
the practice to inquire very effectively into their consciences.

But if there was a certain degree of disingenuousness on the part of
Elizabeth towards the States, her attitude towards Parma was one of
perfect sincerity.  A perusal of the secret correspondence leaves no
doubt whatever on that point.  She was seriously and fervently desirous
of peace with Spain.  On the part of Farnese and his master, there was
the most unscrupulous mendacity, while the confiding simplicity and
truthfulness of the Queen in these negotiations was almost pathetic.
Especially she declared her trust in the loyal and upright character of
Parma, in which she was sure of never being disappointed.  It is only
doing justice to Alexander to say that he was as much deceived by her
frankness as she by his falsehood.  It never entered his head that a
royal personage and the trusted counsellors of a great kingdom could be
telling the truth in a secret international transaction, and he justified
the industry with which his master and himself piled fiction upon
fiction, by their utter disbelief in every word which came to them from
England.

The private negotiations had been commenced, or rather had been renewed,
very early in February of this year.  During the whole critical period
which preceded and followed the execution of Mary, in the course of which
the language of Elizabeth towards the States had been so shrewish, there
had been the gentlest diplomatic cooing between Farnese and herself.  It
was--Dear Cousin, you know how truly I confide in your sincerity, how
anxious I am that this most desirable peace should be arranged; and it
was--Sacred Majesty, you know how much joy I feel in your desire for the
repose of the world, and for a solid peace between your Highness and the
King my master; how much I delight in concord--how incapable I am by
ambiguous words of spinning out these transactions, or of deceiving your
Majesty, and what a hatred I feel for steel, fire, and blood.'

Four or five months rolled on, during which Leicester had been wasting
time in England, Farnese wasting none before Sluys, and the States doing
their best to counteract the schemes both of their enemy and of their
ally.  De Loo made a visit, in July, to the camp of the Duke of Parma,
and received the warmest assurances of his pacific dispositions.  "I am
much pained," said Alexander, "with this procrastination.  I am so full
of sincerity myself, that it seems to me a very strange matter, this
hostile descent by Drake upon the coasts of Spain.  The result of such
courses will be, that the King will end by being exasperated, and I shall
be touched in my honour--so great is the hopes I have held out of being
able to secure a peace.  I have ever been and I still am most anxious for
concord, from the affection I bear to her sacred Majesty.  I have been
obliged, much against my will, to take the field again.  I could wish now
that our negotiations might terminate before the arrival of my fresh
troops, namely, 9000 Spaniards and 9000 Italians, which, with Walloons,
Germans, and Lorrainers, will give me an effective total of 30,000
soldiers.  Of this I give you my word as a gentleman.  Go, then, Andrew
de Loo," continued the Duke, "write to her sacred Majesty, that I desire
to make peace; and to serve her faithfully; and that I shall not change
my mind, even in case of any great success, for I like to proceed rather
by the ways of love than of rigour and effusion of bleed."

"I can assure you, oh, most serene Duke," replied Andrew, "that the most
serene Queen is in the very same dispositions with yourself."

"Excellent well then," said the Duke, "we shall come to an agreement
at once, and the sooner the deputies on both sides are appointed the
better."

A feeble proposition was then made, on the part of the peace-loving
Andrew, that the hostile operations against Sluy's should be at once
terminated.  But this did not seem so clear to the most serene Duke.  He
had gone to great expense in that business; and he had not built bridges,
erected forts, and dug mines, only to abandon them for a few fine words,
Fine words were plenty, but they raised no sieges.  Meantime these
pacific and gentle murmurings from Farnese's camp had lulled the Queen
into forgetfulness of Roger Williams and Arnold Groenevelt and their men,
fighting day and night in trench and mine during that critical midsummer.
The wily tongue of the Duke had been more effective than his batteries in
obtaining the much-coveted city.  The Queen obstinately held back her men
and money, confident of effecting a treaty, whether Sluys fell or not.
Was it strange that the States should be distrustful of her intentions,
and, in their turn, become neglectful of their duty?

And thus summer wore into autumn, Sluys fell, the States and their
governor-general were at daggers-drawn, the Netherlanders were full of
distrust with regard to England, Alexander hinted doubts as to the
Queen's sincerity; the secret negotiations, though fertile in suspicions,
jealousies, delays, and such foul weeds, had produced no wholesome fruit,
and the excellent De Loo became very much depressed.  At last a letter
from Burghley relieved his drooping spirits.  From the most disturbed and
melancholy man in the world, he protested, he had now become merry and
quiet.  He straightway went off to the Duke of Parma, with the letter in
his pocket, and translated it to him by candlelight, as he was careful to
state, as an important point in his narrative.  And Farnese was fuller of
fine phrases than ever.

"There is no cause whatever," said he, in a most loving manner, "to doubt
my sincerity.  Yet the Lord-Treasurer intimates that the most serene
Queen is disposed so to do.  But if I had not the very best intentions,
and desires for peace, I should never have made the first overtures.  If
I did not wish a pacific solution, what in the world forced me to do what
I have done?  On the contrary, it is I that have reason to suspect the
other parties with their long delays, by which they have made me lose the
best part of the summer."

He then commented on the strong expressions in the English letters, as to
the continuance of her Majesty in her pious resolutions; observed that he
was thoroughly advised of the disputes between the Earl of Leicester and
the States; and added that it was very important for the time indicated
by the Queen.

"Whatever is to be done," said he, in conclusion, "let it be done
quickly;" and with that he said he would go and eat a bit of supper.

"And may I communicate Lord Burghley's letter to any one else?" asked De
Loo.

"Yes, yes, to the Seigneur de Champagny, and to my secretary Cosimo,"
answered his Highness.

So the merchant negotiator proceeded at once to the mansion of Champagny,
in company with the secretary Cosimo.  There was a long conference, in
which De Loo was informed of many things which he thoroughly believed,
and faithfully transmitted to the court of Elizabeth.  Alexander had done
his best, they said, to delay the arrival of his fresh troops.  He had
withdrawn from the field, on various pretexts, hoping, day after day,
that the English commissioners would arrive, and that a firm and
perpetual peace would succeed to the miseries of war.  But as time wore
away, and there came no commissioners, the Duke had come to the painful
conclusion that he had been trifled with.  His forces would now be sent
into Holland to find something to eat; and this would ensure the total
destruction of all that territory.  He had also written to command all
the officers of the coming troops to hasten their march, in order that
he might avoid incurring still deeper censure.  He was much ashamed,
in truth, to have been wheedled into passing the whole fine season in
idleness.  He had been sacrificing himself for her sacred Majesty, and
to, serve her best interests; and now he found himself the object of her
mirth.  Those who ought to be well informed had assured him that the
Queen was only waiting to see how the King of Navarre was getting on with
the auxiliary force just, going to him from Germany, that she had no
intention whatever to make peace, and that, before long, he might expect
all these German mercenaries upon his shoulders in the Netherlands.
Nevertheless he was prepared to receive them with 40,000 good infantry,
a splendid cavalry force, and plenty of money.'

All this and more did the credulous Andrew greedily devour; and he lost
no time in communicating the important intelligence to her Majesty and
the Lord-Treasurer.  He implored her, he said, upon his bare knees,
prostrate on the ground, and from the most profound and veritable centre
of his heart and with all his soul and all his strength, to believe in
the truth of the matters thus confided to him.  He would pledge his
immortal soul, which was of more value to him--as he correctly observed
--than even the crown of Spain, that the King, the Duke, and his
counsellors, were most sincerely desirous of peace, and actuated by the
most loving and benevolent motives.  Alexander Farnese was "the antidote
to the Duke of Alva," kindly sent by heaven, 'ut contraria contrariis
curenter,' and if the entire security of the sacred Queen were not now
obtained, together with a perfect reintegration of love between her
Majesty and the King of Spain, and with the assured tranquillity and
perpetual prosperity of the Netherlands, it would be the fault of
England; not of Spain.

And no doubt the merchant believed all that was told him, and--what was
worse--that he fully impressed his own convictions upon her Majesty and
Lord Burghley, to say nothing of the comptroller, who, poor man, had
great facility in believing anything that came from the court of the
most Catholic King: yet it is painful to reflect, that in all these
communications of Alexander and his agents, there was not one single
word of truth.--It was all false from beginning to end, as to the
countermanding of the troops,--as to the pacific intentions of the King
and Duke, and as to the proposed campaign in Friesland, in case of
rupture; and all the rest.  But this will be conclusively proved a little
later.

Meantime the conference had been most amicable and satisfactory.  And
when business was over, Champagny--not a whit the worse for the severe
jilting which he had so recently sustained from the widow De Bours, now
Mrs. Aristotle Patton--invited De Loo and Secretary Cosimo to supper.
And the three made a night of it, sitting up late, and draining such huge
bumpers to the health of the Queen of England, that--as the excellent
Andrew subsequently informed Lord Burghley--his head ached most bravely
next morning.

And so, amid the din of hostile preparation not only in Cadiz and Lisbon,
but in Ghent and Sluys and Antwerp, the import of which it seemed
difficult to mistake, the comedy of, negotiation was still rehearsing,
and the principal actors were already familiar with their respective
parts.  There were the Earl of Derby, knight of the garter, and my Lord
Cobham; and puzzling James Croft, and other Englishmen, actually
believing that the farce was a solemn reality.  There was Alexander of
Parma thoroughly aware of the contrary.  There was Andrew de Loo, more
talkative, more credulous, more busy than ever, and more fully impressed
with the importance of his mission, and there was the white-bearded
Lord-Treasurer turning complicated paragraphs; shaking his head and
waving his wand across the water, as if, by such expedients, the storm
about to burst over England could, be dispersed.

The commissioners should come, if only the Duke of Parma would declare
on his word of honour, that these hostile preparations with which all
Christendom was ringing; were not intended against England; or if that
really were the case--if he would request his master to abandon all such
schemes, and if Philip in consequence would promise on the honour of a
prince, to make no hostile attempts against that country.

There would really seem an almost Arcadian simplicity in such demands,
coming from so practised a statesman as the Lord-Treasurer, and from a
woman of such brilliant intellect as Elizabeth unquestionably possessed.
But we read the history of 1587, not only by the light of subsequent
events, but by the almost microscopic revelations of sentiments and
motives, which a full perusal of the secret documents in those ancient
cabinets afford.  At that moment it was not ignorance nor dulness which
was leading England towards the pitfall so artfully dug by Spain.  There
was trust in the plighted word of a chivalrous soldier like Alexander
Farnese, of a most religious and anointed monarch like Philip II.
English frankness, playing cards upon the table, was no match for Italian
and Spanish legerdemain, a system according to which, to defraud the
antagonist by every kind of falsehood and trickery was the legitimate end
of diplomacy and statesmanship.  It was well known that there were great
preparations in Spain, Portugal, and the obedient Netherlands, by land
and sea.  But Sir Robert Sidney was persuaded that the expedition was
intended for Africa; even the Pope was completely mystified--to the
intense delight of Philip--and Burghley, enlightened by the sagacious
De Loo, was convinced, that even in case of a rupture, the whole strength
of the Spanish arms was to be exerted in reducing Friesland and
Overyssel.  But Walsingham was never deceived; for he had learned from
Demosthenes a lesson with which William the Silent, in his famous
Apology, had made the world familiar, that the only citadel against a
tyrant and a conqueror was distrust.

Alexander, much grieved that doubts should still be felt as to his
sincerity, renewed the most exuberant expressions of that sentiment,
together with gentle complaints against the dilatoriness which had
proceeded from the doubt.  Her Majesty had long been aware, he said,
of his anxiety to bring about a perfect reconciliation; but he had
waited, month after month, for her commissioners, and had waited in vain.
His hopes had been dashed to the ground.  The affair had been
indefinitely spun out, and he could not resist the conviction that her
Majesty had changed her mind.  Nevertheless, as Andrew de Loo was again
proceeding to England, the Duke seized the opportunity once more to kiss
her hand, and--although he had well nigh resolved to think no more on the
subject--to renew his declarations, that, if the much-coveted peace were
not concluded, the blame could not be imputed to him, and that he should
stand guiltless before God and the world.  He had done, and was still
ready to do, all which became a Christian and a man desirous of the
public welfare and tranquillity.

When Burghley read these fine phrases, he was much impressed;
and they were pronounced at the English court to be "very princely and
Christianly."  An elaborate comment too was drawn up by the comptroller
on every line of the letter.  "These be very good words," said the
comptroller.

But the Queen was even more pleased with the last proof of the Duke's
sincerity, than even Burghley and Croft had been.  Disregarding all the
warnings of Walsingham, she renewed her expressions of boundless
confidence in the wily Italian.  "We do assure you," wrote the Lords,
"and so you shall do well to avow it to the Duke upon our honours,
that her Majesty saith she thinketh both their minds to accord upon one
good and Christian meaning, though their ministers may perchance sound
upon a discord."  And she repeated her resolution to send over her
commissioners, so soon as the Duke had satisfied her as to the hostile
preparations.

We have now seen the good faith of the English Queen towards the Spanish
government.  We have seen her boundless trust in the sincerity of Farnese
and his master.  We have heard the exuberant professions of an honest
intention to bring about a firm and lasting peace, which fell from the
lips of Farnese and of his confidential agents.  It is now necessary to
glide for a moment into the secret cabinet of Philip, in order to satisfy
ourselves as to the value of all those professions.  The attention of the
reader is solicited to these investigations, because the year 1587 was a
most critical period in the history of English, Dutch, and European
liberty.  The coming year 1588 had been long spoken of in prophecy, as
the year of doom, perhaps of the destruction of the world, but it was in
1587, the year of expectation and preparation, that the materials were
slowly combining out of which that year's history was to be formed.

And there sat the patient letter-writer in his cabinet, busy with his
schemes.  His grey head was whitening fast.  He was sixty years of age.
His frame was slight, his figure stooping, his digestion very weak, his
manner more glacial and sepulchral than ever; but if there were a hard-
working man in Europe, that man was Philip II.  And there he sat at his
table, scrawling his apostilles.  The fine innumerable threads which
stretched across the surface of Christendom, and covered it as with a
net, all converged in that silent cheerless cell.  France was kept in a
state of perpetual civil war; the Netherlands had been converted into a
shambles; Ireland was maintained in a state of chronic rebellion;
Scotland was torn with internal feuds, regularly organized and paid for
by Philip; and its young monarch--"that lying King of Scots," as
Leicester called him--was kept in a leash ready to be slipped upon
England, when his master should give the word; and England herself was
palpitating with the daily expectation of seeing a disciplined horde of
brigands let loose upon her shores; and all this misery, past, present,
and future, was almost wholly due to the exertions of that grey-haired
letter-writer at his peaceful library-table.

At the very beginning of the year the King of Denmark had made an offer
to Philip of mediation.  The letter, entrusted to a young Count de
Rantzan, had been intercepted by the States--the envoy not having availed
himself, in time, of his diplomatic capacity, and having in consequence
been treated, for a moment, like a prisoner of war.  The States had
immediately addressed earnest letters of protest to Queen Elizabeth,
declaring that nothing which the enemy could do in war was half so
horrible to them as the mere mention of peace.  Life, honour, religion,
liberty, their all, were at stake, they said, and would go down in one
universal shipwreck, if peace should be concluded; and they implored her
Majesty to avert the proposed intercession of the Danish King.  Wilkes
wrote to Walsingham denouncing that monarch and his ministers as
stipendiaries of Spain, while, on the other hand, the Duke of Parma,
after courteously thanking the King for his offer of mediation, described
him to Philip as such a dogged heretic, that no good was to be derived
from him, except by meeting his fraudulent offers with an equally
fraudulent response.  There will be nothing lost, said Alexander, by
affecting to listen to his proposals, and meantime your Majesty must
proceed with the preparations against England.  This was in the first
week of the year 1587.

In February, and almost on the very day when Parma was writing those
affectionate letters to Elizabeth, breathing nothing but peace, he was
carefully conning Philip's directions in regard to the all-important
business of the invasion.  He was informed by his master, that one
hundred vessels, forty of them of largest size, were quite ready,
together with 12,000 Spanish infantry, including 3000 of the old legion,
and that there were volunteers more than enough.  Philip had also taken
note, he said, of Alexander's advice as to choosing the season when the
crops in England had just been got in, as the harvest of so fertile a
country would easily support an invading force; but he advised
nevertheless that the army should be thoroughly victualled at starting.
Finding that Alexander did not quite approve of the Irish part of the
plan, he would reconsider the point, and think more of the Isle of Wight;
but perhaps still some other place might be discovered, a descent upon
which might inspire that enemy with still greater terror and confusion.
It would be difficult for him, he said, to grant the 6000 men asked for
by the Scotch malcontents, without seriously weakening his armada; but
there must be no positive refusal, for a concerted action with the Scotch
lords and their adherents was indispensable.  The secret, said the King,
had been profoundly kept, and neither in Spain nor in Rome had anything
been allowed to transpire.  Alexander was warned therefore to do his best
to maintain the mystery, for the enemy was trying very hard to penetrate
their actions and their thoughts.

And certainly Alexander did his best.  He replied to his master, by
transmitting copies of the letters he had been writing with his own hand
to the Queen, and of the, pacific messages he had sent her through
Champagny.  and De Loo.  She is just now somewhat confused, said he, and
those of her counsellors who desire peace, are more eager, than ever for
negotiation.  She is very much afflicted with the loss of Deventer, and
is quarrelling with the French ambassador about the new conspiracy for
her assassination.  The opportunity is a good one, and if she writes an
answer to my letter, said Alexander, we can keep the negotiation, alive,
while, if she does not, 'twill be a proof that she has contracted leagues
with other parties.  But, in any event, the Duke fervently implored
Philip not to pause in his preparations for the great enterprise which he
had conceived in his royal breast.  So urgent for the invasion was the
peace-loving general.

He alluded also to the supposition that the quarrel between her Majesty
and the French envoy was a mere fetch, and only one of the results of
Bellievre's mission.  Whether that diplomatist had been sent to censure,
or in reality to approve, in the name of his master, of the Scottish
Queen's execution, Alexander would leave to be discussed by Don
Bernardino de Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador in Paris; but he was of
opinion that the anger of the Queen with France was a fiction, and her
supposed league with France and Germany against Spain a fact.  Upon this
point, as it appears from Secretary Walsingham's lamentations, the astute
Farnese was mistaken.

In truth he was frequently, led into error to the English policy the same
serpentine movement and venomous purpose which characterized his own; and
we have already seen; that Elizabeth was ready, on the contrary, to
quarrel with the States, with France, with all the world, if she could
only secure the good-will of Philip.

The French-matter, indissolubly connected in that monarch's schemes, with
his designs upon England and Holland, was causing Alexander much anxiety.
He foresaw great difficulty in maintaining that, indispensable civil war
in France, and thought that a peace might, some fine day, be declared
between Henry III. and the Huguenots, when least expected.  In
consequence, the Duke of Guise was becoming very importunate for Philip's
subsidies.  "Mucio comes begging to me," said Parma, "with the very
greatest earnestness, and utters nothing but lamentations and cries of
misery.  He asked for 25,000 of the 150,000 ducats promised him.  I gave
them.  Soon afterwards he writes, with just as much anxiety, for 25,000
more.  These I did not give; firstly, because I had them not," (which
would seem a sufficient reason) "and secondly, because I wished to
protract matters as much as possible.  He is constantly reminding me of
your Majesty's promise of 300,000 ducats, in case he comes to a rupture
with the King of France, and I always assure him that your Majesty will
keep all promises."

Philip, on his part, through the months of spring, continued to assure
his generalissimo of his steady preparations--by sea and land.  He had
ordered Mendoza to pay the Scotch lords the sum demanded by them, but not
till after they had done the deed as agreed upon; and as to the 6000 men,
he felt obliged, he said, to defer that matter for the moment; and to
leave the decision upon it to the Duke.  Farnese kept his sovereign
minutely informed of the negociations carried on through Champagny and De
Loo, and expressed his constant opinion that the Queen was influenced by
motives as hypocritical as his own.  She was only seeking, he said, to
deceive, to defraud, to put him to sleep, by those feigned negotiations,
while, she was making her combinations with France and Germany, for the
ruin of Spain.  There was no virtue to be expected from her, except she
was compelled thereto by pure necessity.  The English, he said, were
hated and abhorred by the natives of Holland and Zeeland, and it behoved
Philip to seize so favourable an opportunity for urging on his great plan
with all the speed in the world.  It might be that the Queen, seeing
these mighty preparations, even although not suspecting that she herself
was to be invaded, would tremble for her safety, if the Netherlands
should be crushed.  But if she succeeded in deceiving Spain, and putting
Philip and Parma to sleep, she might well boast of having made fools of
them all.  The negotiations for peace and the preparations for the
invasion should go simultaneously forward therefore, and the money would,
in consequence, come more sparingly to the Provinces from the English
coffers, and the disputes between England and the States would be
multiplied.  The Duke also begged to be informed whether any terms could
be laid down, upon which the King really would conclude peace; in order
that he might make no mistake for want of instructions or requisite
powers.  The condition of France was becoming more alarming every day, he
said.  In other words, there was an ever-growing chance of peace for that
distracted country.  The Queen of England was cementing a strong league
between herself, the French King, and the Huguenots; and matters were
looking very serious.  The impending peace in France would never do, and
Philip should prevent it in time, by giving Mucio his money.  Unless the
French are entangled and at war among themselves, it is quite clear, said
Alexander, that we can never think of carrying out our great scheme of
invading England.

The King thoroughly concurred in all that was said and done by his
faithful governor and general.  He had no intention of concluding a peace
on any terms whatever, and therefore could name no conditions; but he
quite approved of a continuance of the negotiations.  The English,
he was convinced, were utterly false on their part, and the King of
Denmark's proposition to-mediate was part and parcel of the same general
fiction.  He was quite sensible of the necessity of giving Mucio the
money to prevent a pacification in France, and would send letters of
exchange on Agostino Spinola for the 300,000 ducats.  Meantime Farnese
was to go on steadily with his preparations for the invasion.

The secretary-of-state, Don Juan de Idiaquez, also wrote most earnestly
on the great subject to the Duke.  "It is not to be exaggerated", he
said, "how set his Majesty is in the all-important business.  If you wish
to manifest towards him the most flattering obedience on earth, and to
oblige him as much as you could wish, give him this great satisfaction
this year.  Since you have money, prepare everything out there, conquer
all difficulties, and do the deed so soon as the forces of Spain and
Italy arrive, according to the plan laid down by your Excellency last
year.  Make use of the negotiations for peace for this one purpose, and
no more, and do the business like the man you are.  Attribute the liberty
of this advice to my desire to serve you more than any other, to my
knowledge of how much you will thereby gratify his Majesty, and to my
fear of his resentment towards you, in the contrary case."

And, on the same day, in order that there might be no doubt of the royal
sentiments, Philip expressed himself at length on the whole subject.  The
dealings of Farnese with the English, and his feeding them with hopes of
peace, would have given him more satisfaction, he observed, if it had
caused their preparations to slacken; but, on the contrary, their
boldness had increased.  They had perpetrated the inhuman murder of the
Queen of Scots, and moreover, not content with their piracies at sea and
in the Indies, they had dared to invade the ports of Spain, as would
appear in the narrative transmitted to Farnese of the late events at
Cadiz.  And although that damage was small, said Philip; there resulted a
very great obligation to take them 'seriously in hand.'  He declined
sending fill powers for treating; but in order to make use of the same
arts employed by the English, he preferred that Alexander should not
undeceive them, but desired him to express, as out of his own head; to
the negotiators, his astonishment that while they were holding such
language they should commit such actions.  Even their want of prudence in
thus provoking the King; when their strength was compared to his, should
be spoken of by Farnese as--wonderful, and he was to express the opinion
that his Majesty would think him much wanting in circumspection, should
he go on negotiating while they were playing such tricks.  "You must show
yourself very sensitive, about this event," continued Philip, "and you
must give them to understand that I am quite as angry as you.  You must
try to draw from them some offer of satisfaction--however false it will
be in reality--such as a proposal to recall the fleet, or an, assertion
that the deeds of Drake in Cadiz were without the knowledge and contrary
to the will of the Queen, and that she very much regrets them, or
something of that sort."

It has already been shown that Farnese was very successful in eliciting
from the Queen, through the mouth of Lord' Burghley, as ample a disavowal
and repudiation of Sir Francis Drake as the King could possibly desire.
Whether it would have the desired effect--of allaying the wrath of
Philip; might have been better foretold, could the letter, with which we
are now occupied, have been laid upon the Greenwich council-board.

"When you have got, such a disavowal," continued his Majesty, "you are to
act as if entirely taken in and imposed upon by them, and, pretending to
believe everything they tell you, you must renew the negotiations,
proceed to name commissioners, and propose a meeting upon neutral
territory.  As for powers; say that you, as my governor-general, will
entrust them to your deputies, in regard to the Netherlands.  For all
other matters, say that you have had full powers for many months, but
that you cannot exhibit them until conditions worthy of my acceptance
have been offered.--Say this only for the sake of appearance.  This is
the true way to take them in, and so the peace-commissioners may meet.
But to you only do I declare that my intention is that this shall never
lead to any result, whatever conditions maybe offered by them.  On the
contrary, all this is done--just as they do--to deceive them, and to cool
them in their preparations for defence, by inducing them to believe that
such preparations will be unnecessary.  You are well aware that the
reverse of all this is the truth, and that on our part there is to be no
slackness, but the greatest diligence in our efforts for the invasion of
England, for which we have already made the most abundant provision in
men, ships, and money, of which you are well aware."

Is it strange that the Queen of England was deceived?  Is it matter of
surprise, censure, or shame, that no English statesman was astute enough
or base enough to contend with such diplomacy, which seemed inspired only
by the very father of lies?

"Although we thus enter into negotiations," continued the King--unveiling
himself, with a solemn indecency, not agreeable to contemplate--"without
any intention of concluding them, you can always get out of them with
great honour, by taking umbrage about the point of religion and about
some other of the outrageous propositions which they are like to propose,
and of which there are plenty, in the letters of Andrew de Loo.  Your
commissioners must be instructed; to refer all important matters to your
personal decision.  The English will be asking for damages for money,
spent in assisting my rebels; your commissioners will contend that
damages are rather due to me.  Thus, and in other ways, time will be
agent.  Your own envoys are not to know the secret any more than the
English themselves.  I tell it to you only.  Thus you will proceed with
the negotiations, now, yielding on one point, and now insisting on
another, but directing all to the same object--to gain time while
proceeding with the preparation for the invasion, according to the plan
already agreed upon."

Certainly the most Catholic King seemed, in this remarkable letter to
have outdone himself; and Farnese--that sincere Farnese, in whose loyal,
truth-telling, chivalrous character, the Queen and her counsellors placed
such implicit reliance--could thenceforward no longer be embarrassed as
to the course he was to adopt.  To lie daily, through, thick, and thin,
and with every variety of circumstance and detail which; a genius fertile
in fiction could suggest, such was the simple rule prescribed by his
sovereign.  And the rule was implicitly obeyed, and the English sovereign
thoroughly deceived.  The secret confided only, to the faithful breast of
Alexander was religiously kept.  Even the Pope was outwitted.  His
Holiness proposed to, Philip the invasion of England, and offered a
million to further the plan.  He was most desirous to be informed if the
project was, resolved upon, and, if so, when it was to be accomplished.
The King took the Pope's million, but refused the desired information.
He answered evasively.  He had a very good will to invade the country, he
said, but there were great difficulties in the way.  After a time, the
Pope again tried to pry into the matter, and again offered the million
which Philip had only accepted for the time when it might be wanted;
giving him at the same time, to understand that it was not necessary at
that time, because there were then great impediments.  "Thus he is
pledged to give me the subsidy, and I am not pledged for the time," said
Philip, "and I keep my secret, which is the most important of all."

Yet after all, Farnese did not see his way clear towards the consummation
of the plan.  His army had wofully dwindled, and before he could
seriously set about ulterior matters, it would be necessary to take
the city of Sluys.  This was to prove--as already seen--a most arduous
enterprise.  He complained to Philip' of his inadequate supplies both in
men and money.  The project conceived in the royal breast was worth
spending millions for, he said, and although by zeal and devotion he
could accomplish something, yet after all he was no more than a man,
and without the necessary means the scheme could not succeed.  But
Philip, on the contrary, was in the highest possible spirits.  He had
collected more money, he declared than had ever been seen before in the
world.  He had two million ducats in reserve, besides the Pope's million;
the French were in a most excellent state of division, and the invasion
should be made this year without fail.  The fleet would arrive in the
English channel by the end of the summer; which would be exactly in
conformity with Alexander's ideas.  The invasion was to be threefold:
from Scotland, under the Scotch earls and their followers, with the money
and troops furnished by Philip; from the Netherlands, under Parma; and by
the great Spanish armada itself, upon the Isle of Wight.  Alexander must
recommend himself to God, in whose cause he was acting, and then do his
duty; which lay very plain before him.  If he ever wished to give his
sovereign satisfaction in his life; he was to do the deed that year,
whatever might betide.  Never could there be so fortunate a conjunction
of circumstances again.  France was in a state of revolution, the German
levies were weak, the Turk was fully occupied in Persia, an enormous mass
of money, over and above the Pope's million, had been got together, and
although the season was somewhat advanced, it was certain that the Duke
would conquer all impediments, and be the instrument by which his royal
master might render to God that service which he was so anxious to
perform.  Enthusiastic, though gouty, Philip grasped the pen in order to
scrawl a few words with his own royal hand.  "This business is of such
importance," he said, "and it is so necessary that it should not be
delayed, that I cannot refrain from urging it upon you as much as I can.
I should do it even more amply; if this hand would allow me, which has
been crippled with gout these several days, and my feet as well, and
although it is unattended with pain, yet it is an impediment to writing."

Struggling thus against his own difficulties, and triumphantly,
accomplishing a whole paragraph with disabled hand, it was natural that
the King should expect Alexander, then deep in the siege of Sluy's, to
vanquish all his obstacles as successfully; and to effect the conquest of
England so soon as the harvests of that kingdom should be garnered.

Sluy's was surrendered at last, and the great enterprise seemed opening
from hour to hour.  During the months of autumn; upon the very days when
those loving messages, mixed with gentle reproaches, were sent by
Alexander to Elizabeth, and almost at the self-same hours in which honest
Andrew de Loo was getting such head-aches by drinking the Queen's health
with Cosimo, and Champagny, the Duke and Philip were interchanging
detailed information as to the progress of the invasion.  The King
calculated that by the middle of September Alexander would have 30,000
men in the Netherlands ready for embarcation.--Marquis Santa Cruz was
announced as nearly ready to, sail for the English channel with 22,000
more, among whom were to be 16,000 seasoned Spanish infantry.  The
Marquis was then to extend the hand to Parma, and protect that passage to
England which the Duke was at once to effect.  The danger might be great
for so large a fleet to navigate the seas at so late a season of the
year; but Philip was sure that God, whose cause it was, would be pleased
to give good weather.  The Duke was to send, with infinite precautions of
secrecy, information which the Marquis would expect off Ushant, and be
quite ready to act so soon as Santa Cruz should arrive.  Most earnestly
and anxiously did the King deprecate any, thought of deferring the
expedition to another year.  If delayed, the obstacles of the following
summer--a peace in France, a peace between the Turk and Persia, and other
contingencies--would cause the whole project to fail, and Philip
declared, with much iteration, that money; reputation, honour, his
own character and that of Farnese, and God's service, were all at stake.
He was impatient at suggestions of difficulties occasionally, ventured by
the Duke, who was reminded that he had been appointed chief of the great
enterprise by the spontaneous choice of his master, and that all his
plans had been minutely followed.  "You are the author of the whole
scheme," said Philip, "and if it, is all to vanish into space, what kind
of a figure shall we cut the coming year?"  Again and again he referred
to the immense sum collected--such as never before had been seen since
the world was made--4,800,000 ducats with 2,000,000 in reserve, of which
he was authorized to draw for 500,000 in advance, to say nothing of the
Pope's million.

But Alexander,  while straining every nerve to obey his master's
wishes about the invasion, and to blind the English by the fictitious
negotiations, was not so sanguine as his sovereign.  In truth, there was
something puerile in the eagerness which Philip manifested.  He had made
up his mind that England was to be conquered that autumn, and had
endeavoured--as well as he could--to comprehend, the plans which his
illustrious general had laid down for accomplishing that purpose.  Of,
course; to any man of average intellect, or, in truth, to any man outside
a madhouse; it would seem an essential part of the conquest that the
Armada should arrive.  Yet--wonderful to relate-Philip, in his
impatience, absolutely suggested that the Duke might take possession of
England without waiting for Santa Cruz and his Armada.  As the autumn had
been wearing away, and there had been unavoidable delays about the
shipping in Spanish ports, the King thought it best not to defer matters
till, the winter.  "You are, doubtless, ready," he said to Farnese.
"If you think you can make the passage to England before the fleet from
Spain arrives, go at once.  You maybe sure that it will come ere long to
support, you.  But if, you prefer, to wait, wait.  The dangers of winter,
to the fleet and to your own person are to be regretted; but God, whose
cause it is; will protect you."

It was, easy to sit quite out of harm's way, and to make such excellent,
arrangements for smooth weather in the wintry channel, and for the.
conquest of a maritime and martial kingdom by a few flat bottoms.  Philip
had little difficulty on that score, but the affairs of France were not
quite to his mind.  The battle of Coutras, and the entrance of the German
and Swiss mercenaries into that country, were somewhat perplexing.
Either those auxiliaries of the Huguenots would be defeated, or they
would be victorious, or both parties would come to an agreement.  In the
first event, the Duke, after sending a little assistance to Mucio, was to
effect his passage to England at once.  In the second case, those troops,
even though successful, would doubtless be so much disorganized that it
might be still safe for Farnese to go on.  In the third contingency--that
of an accord--it would be necessary for him to wait till the foreign
troops had disbanded and left France.  He was to maintain all his forces
in perfect readiness, on pretext of the threatening aspect of French
matters and, so soon as the Swiss and Germane were dispersed, he was to
proceed to business without delay.  The fleet would be ready in Spain in
all November, but as sea-affairs were so doubtful, particularly in
winter, and as the Armada could not reach the channel till mid-winter;
the Duke was not to wait for its arrival.  "Whenever you see a favourable
opportunity," said Philip, "you must take care not to lose it, even if
the fleet has not made its appearance.  For you may be sure that it will
soon come to give you assistance, in one way or another."

Farnese had also been strictly enjoined to deal gently with the English,
after the conquest, so that they would have cause to love their new
master.  His troops were not to forget discipline after victory.  There
was to be no pillage or rapine.  The Catholics were to be handsomely
rewarded and all the inhabitants were to be treated with so much
indulgence that, instead of abhorring Parma and his soldiers, they would
conceive a strong affection for them all, as the source of so many
benefits.  Again the Duke was warmly commended for the skill with which
he had handled the peace negotiation.  It was quite right to appoint
commissioners, but it was never for an instant to be forgotten that the
sole object of treating was to take the English unawares.  "And therefore
do you guide them to this end," said the King with pious unction, "which
is what you owe to God, in whose service I  have engaged in this
enterprise, and to whom I have dedicated the whole."  The King of France,
too--that unfortunate Henry III., against whose throne and life Philip
maintained in constant pay an organized band of conspirators--was
affectionately adjured, through the Spanish envoy in Paris, Mendoza,--to
reflect upon the advantages to France of a Catholic king and kingdom of
England, in place of the heretics now in power.

But Philip, growing more and more sanguine, as those visions of fresh
crowns and conquered kingdoms rose before him in his solitary cell, had
even persuaded himself that the deed was already done.  In the early days
of December, he expressed a doubt whether his 14th November letter had
reached the Duke, who by that time was probably in England.  One would
have thought the King addressing a tourist just starting on a little
pleasure-excursion.  And this was precisely the moment when Alexander had
been writing those affectionate phrases to the Queen which had been
considered by the counsellors at Greenwich so "princely and Christianly,"
and which Croft had pronounced such "very good words."

If there had been no hostile, fleet to prevent, it was to be hoped, said
Philip, that, in the name of God, the passage had been made.  "Once
landed there," continued the King, "I am persuaded that you will give me
a good account of yourself, and, with the help of our Lord, that you will
do that service which I desire to render to Him, and that He will guide
our cause, which is His own, and of such great importance to His Church."
A part of the fleet would soon after arrive and bring six thousand
Spaniards, the Pope's million, and other good things, which might prove
useful to Parma, presupposing that they would find him established on the
enemy's territory.

This conviction that the enterprise had been already accomplished grew
stronger in the King's breast every day.  He was only a little disturbed
lest Farnese should have misunderstood that 14th November letter.
Philip--as his wont was--had gone into so many petty and puzzling
details, and had laid down rules of action suitable for various
contingencies, so easy to put comfortably upon paper, but which might
become perplexing in action, that it was no wonder he should be a little
anxious.  The third contingency suggested by him had really occurred.
There had been a composition between the foreign mercenaries and the
French King.  Nevertheless they had also been once or twice defeated, and
this was contingency number two.  Now which of the events would the Duke
consider as having really occurred.  It was to be hoped that he would
have not seen cause for delay, for in truth number three was not exactly
the contingency which existed.  France was still in a very satisfactory
state of discord and rebellion.  The civil war was by no means over.
There was small fear of peace that winter.  Give Mucio his pittance with
frugal hand, and that dangerous personage would ensure tranquillity for
Philip's project, and misery for Henry III. and his subjects for an
indefinite period longer.  The King thought it improbable that Farnese
could have made any mistake.  He expressed therefore a little anxiety at
having received no intelligence from him, but had great confidence that,
with the aid of the Lord and of with his own courage he had accomplished
the great exploit.  Philip had only, recommended delay in event of a
general peace in France--Huguenots, Royalists, Leaguers, and all.
This had not happened.  "Therefore, I trust," said the King; "that you--
perceiving that this is not contingency number three which was to justify
a pause--will have already executed the enterprise, and fulfilled my
desire.  I am confident that the deed is done, and that God has blessed
it, and I am now expecting the news from hour to hour."

But Alexander had not yet arrived in England.  The preliminaries for the
conquest caused him more perplexity than the whole enterprise occasioned
to Philip.  He was very short of funds.  The five millions were not to be
touched, except for the expenses of the invasion.  But as England was to
be subjugated, in order that rebellious Holland might be recovered, it
was hardly reasonable to go away leaving such inadequate forces in the
Netherlands as to ensure not only independence to the new republic, but
to hold out temptation for revolt to the obedient Provinces.  Yet this
was the dilemma in which the Duke was placed.  So much money had been set
aside for the grand project that there was scarcely anything for the
regular military business.  The customary supplies had not been sent.
Parma had leave to draw for six hundred thousand ducats, and he was able
to get that draft discounted on the Antwerp Exchange by consenting to
receive five hundred thousand, or sacrificing sixteen per cent. of the
sum.  A good number of transports, and scows had been collected, but
there had been a deficiency of money for their proper equipment, as the
five millions had been very slow in coming, and were still upon the road.
The whole enterprise was on the point of being sacrificed, according to
Farnese, for want of funds.  The time for doing the deed had arrived, and
he declared himself incapacitated by poverty.  He expressed his disgust
and resentment in language more energetic than courtly; and protested
that he was not to blame.  "I always thought," said he bitterly, "that
your Majesty would provide all that was necessary even in superfluity,
and not limit me beneath the ordinary.  I did not suppose, when it was
most important to have ready money, that I should be kept short, and not
allowed to draw certain sums by anticipation, which I should have done
had you not forbidden."

This was, through life, a striking characteristic of Philip.  Enormous
schemes were laid out with utterly inadequate provision for their
accomplishment, and a confident expectation entertained that wild,
visions were; in some indefinite way, to be converted into substantial
realities, without fatigue or personal exertion on his part, and with a
very trifling outlay of ready money.

Meantime the faithful Farnese did his best.  He was indefatigable night
and day in getting his boats together and providing his munitions of war.
He dug a canal from Sas de Gand--which was one of his principal depots--
all the way to Sluys, because the water-communication between those two
points was entirely in the hands of the Hollanders and Zeelanders.  The
rebel cruisers swarmed in the Scheldt, from, Flushing almost to Antwerp,
so that it was quite impossible for Parma's forces to venture forth at
all; and it also seemed hopeless to hazard putting to sea from Sluys.
At the same, time he had appointed his, commissioners to treat with the
English envoys already named by the Queen.  There had been much delay in
the arrival of those deputies, on account of the noise raised by
Barneveld and his followers; but Burghley was now sanguine that the
exposure of what he called the Advocate's seditious, false, and perverse
proceedings, would enable Leicester to procure the consent of the States
to a universal peace.

And thus, with these parallel schemes of invasion and negotiation,
spring; summer, and autumn, had worn away.  Santa Cruz was still with his
fleet in Lisbon, Cadiz, and the Azores; and Parma was in Brussels, when
Philip fondly imagined him established in Greenwich Palace.  When made
aware of his master's preposterous expectations, Alexander would have
been perhaps amused, had he not been half beside himself with
indignation.  Such folly seemed incredible.  There was not the slightest
appearance of a possibility of making a passage without the protection of
the Spanish fleet, he observed.  His vessels were mere transport-boats,
without the least power of resisting an enemy.  The Hollanders and
Zeelanders, with one hundred and forty cruisers, had shut him up in all
directions.  He could neither get out from Antwerp nor from Sluys.  There
were large English ships, too, cruising in the channel, and they were
getting ready in the Netherlands and in England "most furiously."  The
delays had been so great, that their secret had been poorly kept, and the
enemy was on his guard.  If Santa Cruz had come, Alexander declared that
he should have already been in England.  When he did come he should still
be prepared to make the passage; but to talk of such an attempt without
the Armada was senseless, and he denounced the madness of that
proposition to his Majesty in vehement and unmeasured terms.  His army,
by sickness and other causes, had been reduced to one-half the number
considered necessary for the invasion, and the rebels had established
regular squadrons in the Scheldt, in the very teeth of the forts, at
Lillo, Liefkenshoek, Saftingen, and other points close to Antwerp.  There
were so many of these war-vessels, and all in such excellent order, that
they were a most notable embarrassment to him, he observed, and his own
flotilla would run great risk of being utterly destroyed.  Alexander had
been personally superintending matters at Sluys, Ghent, and Antwerp, and
had strengthened with artillery the canal which he had constructed
between Sas and Sluys.  Meantime his fresh troops had been slowly
arriving, but much sickness prevailed among them.  The Italians were
dying fast, almost all the Spaniards were in hospital, and the others
were so crippled and worn out that it was most pitiable to behold them;
yet it was absolutely necessary that those who were in health should
accompany him to England, since otherwise his Spanish force would be
altogether too weak to do the service expected.  He had got together a
good number of transports.  Not counting his Antwerp fleet--which could
not stir from port, as he bitterly complained, nor be of any use, on
account of the rebel blockade--he had between Dunkerk and Newport
seventy-four vessels of various kinds fit for sea-service, one hundred
and fifty flat-bottoms (pleytas), and seventy riverhoys, all which were
to be assembled at Sluys, whence they would--so soon as Santa Cruz should
make his appearance--set forth for England.  This force of transports he
pronounced sufficient, when properly protected by the Spanish Armada, to
carry himself and his troops across the channel.  If, therefore, the
matter did not become publicly known, and if the weather proved
favourable, it was probable that his Majesty's desire would soon be
fulfilled according to the plan proposed.  The companies of light horse
and of arquebusmen, with which he meant to make his entrance into London,
had been clothed, armed, and mounted, he said, in a manner delightful to
contemplate, and those soldiers at least might be trusted--if they could
only effect their passage--to do good service, and make matters quite
secure.

But craftily as the King and Duke had been dealing, it had been found
impossible to keep such vast preparations entirely secret.  Walsingham
was in full possession of their plans down to the most minute details.
The misfortune was that he was unable to persuade his sovereign, Lord
Burghley, and others of the peace-party, as to the accuracy of his
information.  Not only was he thoroughly instructed in regard to the
number of men, vessels, horses, mules, saddles, spurs, lances, barrels of
beer and tons of biscuit, and other particulars of the contemplated
invasion, but he had even received curious intelligence as to the
gorgeous equipment of those very troops, with which the Duke was just
secretly announcing to the King his intention of making his triumphal
entrance into the English capital.  Sir Francis knew how many thousand
yards of cramoisy velvet, how many hundredweight of gold and silver
embroidery, how much satin and feathers, and what quantity of pearls and
diamonds; Farnese had been providing himself withal.  He knew the
tailors, jewellers, silversmiths, and haberdashers, with whom the great
Alexander--as he now began to be called--had been dealing;

     ["There is provided for lights a great number of torches, and so
     tempered that no water can put them out.  A great number of little
     mills for grinding corn, great store of biscuit baked and oxen
     salted, great number of saddles and boots also there is made 500
     pair of velvet shoes-red, crimson velvet, and in every cloister
     throughout the country great quantity of roses made of silk, white
     and red, which are to be badges for divers of his gentlemen.  By
     reason of these roses it is expected he is going for England.  There
     is sold to the Prince by John Angel, pergaman, ten hundred-weight of
     velvet, gold and silver to embroider his apparel withal.  The
     covering to his mules is most gorgeously embroidered with gold and
     silver, which carry his baggage.  There is also sold to him by the
     Italian merchants at least 670 pieces of velvet to apparel him and
     his train.  Every captain has received a gift from the Prince to
     make himself brave, and for Captain Corralini, an Italian, who hath
     one cornet of horse, I have seen with my eyes a saddle with the
     trappings of his horse, his coat and rapier and dagger, which cost
     3,500 French crowns.  (!!) All their lances are painted of divers
     colours, blue and white, green and White, and most part blood-red--
     so there is as great preparation for a triumph as for war.  A great
     number of English priests come to Antwerp from all places.  The
     commandment is given to all the churches to read the Litany daily
     for the prosperity of the Prince in his enterprise." John Giles to
     Walsingham, 4 Dec. 1587.(S. P. Office MS.)

     The same letter conveyed also very detailed information concerning
     the naval preparations by the Duke, besides accurate intelligence in
     regard to the progress of the armada in Cadiz and Lisbon.

     Sir William Russet wrote also from Flushing concerning these
     preparations in much the same strain; but it is worthy of note that
     he considered Farnese to be rather intending a movement against
     France.

     "The Prince of Parma," he said, "is making great preparations for
     war, and with all expedition means to march a great army, and for a
     triumph, the coats and costly, apparel for his own body doth exceed
     for embroidery, and beset with jewels; for all the embroiderers and
     diamond-cutters work both night and day, such haste is made.  Five
     hundred velvet coats of one sort for lances, and a great number of
     brave new coats made for horsemen; 30,000 men are ready, and gather
     in Brabant and Flanders.  It is said that there shall be in two days
     10,000 to do some great exploit in these parts, and 20,000 to march
     with the Prince into France, and for certain it is not known what
     way or how they shall march, but all are ready at an hour's warning
     --4,000 saddles, 4000 lances.  6,000 pairs of boots, 2,000 barrels of
     beer, biscuit sufficient for a camp of 20,000 men, &c.  The Prince
     hath received a marvellous costly garland or crown from the Pope,
     and is chosen chief of the holy league..."]

but when he spoke at the council-board, it was to ears wilfully deaf.
Nor was much concealed from the Argus-eyed politicians in the republic.
The States were more and more intractable.  They knew nearly all the
truth with regard to the intercourse between the Queen's government and
Farnese, and they suspected more than the truth.  The list of English
commissioners privately agreed upon between Burghley and De Loo was known
to Barneveld, Maurice, and Hohenlo, before it came to the ears of
Leicester.  In June, Buckhurst had been censured by Elizabeth for opening
the peace matter to members of the States, according to her bidding, and
in July Leicester was rebuked for exactly the opposite delinquency.  She
was very angry that he had delayed the communication of her policy so
long, but she expressed her anger only when that policy had proved so
transparent as to make concealment hopeless.  Leicester, as well as
Buckhurst, knew that it was idle to talk to the Netherlanders of peace,
because of their profound distrust in every word that came from Spanish
or Italian lips; but Leicester, less frank than Buckhurst, preferred to
flatter his sovereign, rather than to tell her unwelcome truths.  More
fortunate than Buckhurst, he was rewarded for his flattery by boundless
affection, and promotion to the very highest post in England when the
hour of England's greatest peril had arrived, while the truth-telling
counsellor was consigned to imprisonment and disgrace.  When the Queen
complained sharply that the States were mocking her, and that she was
touched in honour at the prospect of not keeping her plighted word to
Farnese, the Earl assured her that the Netherlanders were fast changing
their views; that although the very name of peace had till then been
odious and loathsome, yet now, as coming from her Majesty, they would
accept it with thankful hearts.

The States, or the leading members of that assembly, factious fellows,
pestilent and seditious knaves, were doing their utmost, and were singing
sirens' songs' to enchant and delude the people, but they were fast
losing their influence--so warmly did the country desire to conform to
her Majesty's pleasure.  He expatiated, however, upon the difficulties in
his path.  The knowledge possessed by the pestilent fellows as to the
actual position of affairs, was very mischievous.  It was honey to
Maurice and Hohenlo, he said, that the Queen's secret practices with
Farnese had thus been discovered.  Nothing could be more marked than the
jollity with which the ringleaders hailed these preparations for peace-
making, for they now felt certain that the government of their country
had been fixed securely in their own hands.  They were canonized, said
the Earl, for their hostility to peace.

Should not this conviction, on the part of men who had so many means of
feeling the popular pulse, have given the Queen's government pause?  To
serve his sovereign in truth, Leicester might have admitted a possibility
at least of honesty on the part of men who were so ready to offer up
their lives for their country.  For in a very few weeks ho was obliged to
confess that the people were no longer so well disposed to acquiesce in
her Majesty's policy.  The great majority, both of the States and the
people, were in favour, he agreed, of continuing the war.  The
inhabitants of the little Province of Holland alone, he said, had avowed
their determination to maintain their rights--even if obliged to fight
single-handed--and to shed the last drop in their veins, rather than to
submit again to Spanish tyranny.  This seemed a heroic resolution, worthy
the sympathy of a brave Englishman, but the Earl's only comment upon it
was, that it proved the ringleaders "either to be traitors or else the
most blindest asses in the world."  He never scrupled, on repeated
occasions, to insinuate that Barneveld, Hohenlo, Buys, Roorda, Sainte
Aldegonde, and the Nassaus, had organized a plot to sell their country to
Spain.  Of this there was not the faintest evidence, but it was the only
way in which he chose to account for their persistent opposition to the
peace-negotiations, and to their reluctance to confer absolute power on
himself.  "'Tis a crabbed, sullen, proud kind of people," said he, "and
bent on establishing a popular government,"--a purpose which seemed
somewhat inconsistent with the plot for selling their country to Spain,
which he charged in the same breath on the same persons.

Early in August, by the Queen's command, he had sent a formal
communication respecting the private negotiations to the States, but he
could tell them no secret.  The names of the commissioners, and even the
supposed articles of a treaty already concluded, were flying from town to
town, from mouth to mouth, so that the Earl pronounced it impossible for
one, not on the spot, to imagine the excitement which existed.

He had sent a state-counsellor, one Bardesius, to the Hague, to open the
matter; but that personage had only ventured to whisper a word to one or
two members of the States, and was assured that the proposition, if made,
would raise such a tumult of fury, that he might fear for his life.  So
poor Bardesius came back to Leicester, fell on his knees, and implored
him; at least to pause in these fatal proceedings.  After an interval, he
sent two eminent statesmen, Valk and Menin, to lay the subject before the
assembly.  They did so, and it was met by fierce denunciation.  On their
return, the Earl, finding that so much violence had been excited,
pretended that they had misunderstood his meaning, and that he had never
meant to propose peace-negotiations.  But Valk and Menin were too old
politicians to be caught in such a trap, and they produced a brief, drawn
up in Italian--the foreign language best understood by the Earl--with his
own corrections and interlineations, so that he was forced to admit that
there had been no misconception.

Leicester at last could no longer doubt that he was universally odious in
the Provinces.  Hohenlo, Barneveld, and the rest, who had "championed the
country against the peace," were carrying all before them.  They had
persuaded the people, that the "Queen was but a tickle stay for them,"
and had inflated young Maurice with vast ideas of his importance, telling
him that he was "a natural patriot, the image of his noble father, whose
memory was yet great among them, as good reason, dying in their cause, as
be had done."  The country was bent on a popular government, and on
maintaining the war.  There was no possibility, he confessed, that they
would ever confer the authority on him which they had formerly bestowed.
The Queen had promised, when he left England the second time, that his
absence should be for but three months, and he now most anxiously claimed
permission to depart.  Above all things, he deprecated being employed as
a peace-commissioner.  He was, of all men, the most unfit for such a
post.  At the same time he implored the statesmen at home to be wary in
selecting the wisest persons for that arduous duty, in order that the
peace might be made for Queen Elizabeth, as well as for King Philip.
He strongly recommended, for that duty, Beale, the councillor, who with
Killigrew had replaced the hated Wilkes and the pacific Bartholomew
Clerk.  "Mr. Beale, brother-in-law to Walsingham, is in my books a
prince," said the Earl.  "He was drowned in England, but most useful in
the Netherlands.  Without him I am naked."

And at last the governor told the Queen what Buckhurst and Walsingham had
been perpetually telling her, that the Duke of Parma meant mischief; and
he sent the same information as to hundreds of boats preparing, with six
thousand shirts for camisados, 7000 pairs of wading boots, and saddles,
stirrups, and spurs, enough for a choice band of 3000 men.  A shrewd
troop, said the Earl, of the first soldiers in Christendom, to be landed
some fine morning in England.  And he too had heard of the jewelled suits
of cramoisy velvet, and all the rest of the finery with which the
triumphant Alexander was intending to astonish London.  "Get horses
enough, and muskets enough in England," exclaimed Leicester, "and then
our people will not be beaten, I warrant you, if well led."

And now, the governor--who, in order to soothe his sovereign and comply
with her vehement wishes, had so long misrepresented the state of public
feeling--not only confessed that Papists and Protestants, gentle and
simple, the States and the people, throughout the republic, were all
opposed to any negotiation with the enemy, but lifted up his own voice,
and in earnest language expressed his opinion of the Queen's infatuation.

"Oh, my Lord, what a treaty is this for peace," said he to Burghley,
"that we must treat, altogether disarmed and weakened, and the King
having made his forces stronger than ever he had known in these parts,
besides what is coming out, of Spain, and yet we will presume of good
conditions.  It grieveth me to the heart.  But I fear you will all smart
for it, and I pray God her Majesty feel it not, if it be His blessed
will.  She meaneth well and sincerely to have peace, but God knows that
this is not the way.  Well, God Almighty defend us and the realm, and
especially her Majesty.  But look for a sharp war, or a miserable peace,
to undo others and ourselves after."

Walsingham, too, was determined not to act as a commissioner.  If his
failing health did not serve as an excuse, he should be obliged to
refuse, he said, and so forfeit her Majesty's favour, rather than be
instrumental in bringing about her ruin, and that of his country.  Never
for an instant had the Secretary of State faltered in his opposition to
the timid policy of Burghley.  Again and again he had detected the
intrigues of the Lord-Treasurer and Sir James Croft, and ridiculed the
"comptroller's peace."

And especially did Walsingham bewail the implicit confidence which the
Queen placed in the sugary words of Alexander, and the fatal parsimony
which caused her to neglect defending herself against Scotland; for he
was as well informed as was Farnese himself of Philip's arrangements with
the Scotch lords, and of the subsidies in men and money by which their
invasion of England was to be made part of the great scheme.  "No one
thing," sighed Walsingham, "doth more prognosticate an alteration of this
estate, than that a prince of her Majesty's judgment should neglect, in
respect of a little charges, the stopping of so dangerous a gap .  .  .
.  .  The manner of our cold and careless proceeding here, in this time
of peril, maketh me to take no comfort of my recovery of health, for that
I see, unless it shall please God in mercy and miraculously to preserve
us, we cannot long stand."

Leicester, finding himself unable to counteract the policy of Barneveld
and his party, by expostulation or argument, conceived a very dangerous
and criminal project before he left the country.  The facts are somewhat
veiled in mystery; but he was suspected, on weighty evidence, of a design
to kidnap both Maurice and Barneveld, and carry them off to England.  Of
this intention, which was foiled at any rate, before it could be carried
into execution, there is perhaps not conclusive proof, but it has already
been shown, from a deciphered letter, that the Queen had once given
Buckhurst and Wilkes peremptory orders to seize the person of Hohenlo,
and it is quite possible that similar orders may have been received at a
later moment with regard to the young Count and the Advocate.  At any
rate, it is certain that late in the autumn, some friends of Barneveld
entered his bedroom, at the Hague, in the dead of night, and informed him
that a plot was on foot to lay violent hands upon him, and that an armed
force was already on its way to execute this purpose of Leicester, before
the dawn of day.  The Advocate, without loss of time, took his departure
for Delft, a step which was followed, shortly afterwards, by Maurice.

Nor was this the only daring--stroke which the Earl had meditated.
During the progress of the secret negotiations with Parma, he had not
neglected those still more secret schemes to which he had occasionally
made allusion.  He had determined, if possible, to obtain possession of
the most important cities in Holland and Zeeland.  It was very plain to
him, that he could no longer hope, by fair means, for the great authority
once conferred upon him by the free will of the States.  It was his
purpose, therefore, by force and stratagem to recover his lost power.
We have heard the violent terms in which both the Queen and the Earl
denounced the men who accused the English government of any such
intention.  It had been formally denied by the States-General that
Barneveld had ever used the language in that assembly with which he had
been charged.  He had only revealed to them the exact purport of the
letter to Junius, and of the Queen's secret instructions to Leicester.
Whatever he may have said in private conversation, and whatever
deductions he may have made among his intimate friends, from the admitted
facts in the case, could hardly be made matters of record.  It does not
appear that he, or the statesmen who acted with him, considered the Earl
capable of a deliberate design to sell the cities, thus to be acquired,
to Spain, as the price of peace for England.  Certainly Elizabeth would
have scorned such a crime, and was justly indignant at rumours prevalent
to that effect; but the wrath of the Queen and of her favourite were,
perhaps, somewhat simulated, in order to cover their real mortification
at the discovery of designs on the part of the Earl which could not be
denied.  Not only had they been at last compelled to confess these
negotiations, which for several months had been concealed and stubbornly
denied, but the still graver plots of the Earl to regain his much-coveted
authority had been, in a startling manner, revealed.  The leaders of the
States-General had a right to suspect the English Earl of a design to
reenact the part of the Duke of Anjou, and were justified in taking
stringent measures to prevent a calamity, which, as they believed, was
impending over their little commonwealth.  The high-handed dealings of
Leicester in the city of Utrecht have been already described.  The most
respectable and influential burghers of the place had been imprisoned and
banished, the municipal government wrested from the hands to which it
legitimately belonged, and confided to adventurers, who wore the cloak of
Calvinism to conceal their designs, and a successful effort had been
made, in the name of democracy, to eradicate from one ancient province
the liberty on which it prided itself.

In the course of the autumn, an attempt was made to play the same game at
Amsterdam.  A plot was discovered, before it was fairly matured, to seize
the magistrates of that important city, to gain possession of the
arsenals, and to place the government in the hands of well-known
Leicestrians.  A list of fourteen influential citizens, drawn up in the
writing of Burgrave, the Earl's confidential secretary, was found, all of
whom, it was asserted, had been doomed to the scaffold.

The plot to secure Amsterdam had failed, but, in North Holland, Medenblik
was held firmly for Leicester, by Diedrich Sonoy, in the very teeth of
the States.  The important city of Enkhuyzen, too, was very near being
secured for the Earl, but a still more significant movement was made at
Leyden.  That heroic city, ever since the famous siege of 1574, in which
the Spaniard had been so signally foiled, had distinguished itself by
great liberality of sentiment in religious matters.  The burghers were
inspired by a love of country, and a hatred of oppression, both civil
and, ecclesiastical; and Papists and Protestants, who had fought side by
side against the common foe, were not disposed to tear each other to
pieces, now that he had been excluded from their gates.  Meanwhile,
however, refugee Flemings and Brabantines had sought an asylum in the
city, and being, as usual, of the strictest sect of the Calvinists were
shocked at the latitudinarianism which prevailed.  To the honour of the
city--as it seems to us now--but, to their horror, it was even found that
one or two Papists had seats in the magistracy.  More than all this,
there was a school in the town kept by a Catholic, and Adrian van der
Werff himself--the renowned burgomaster, who had sustained the city
during the dreadful leaguer of 1574, and who had told the famishing
burghers that they might eat him if they liked, but that they should
never surrender to the Spaniards while he remained alive--even Adrian van
der Werff had sent his son to this very school?  To the clamour made by
the refugees against this spirit of toleration, one of the favourite
preachers in the town, of Arminian tendencies, had declared in the
pulpit, that he would as lieve see the Spanish as the Calvinistic
inquisition established over his country; using an expression, in regard
to the church of Geneva, more energetic than decorous.

It was from Leyden that the chief opposition came to a synod, by which a
great attempt was to be made towards subjecting the new commonwealth to a
masked theocracy; a scheme which the States of Holland had resisted with
might and main.  The Calvinistic party, waxing stronger in Leyden,
although still in a minority, at last resolved upon a strong effort to
place the city in the hands of that great representative of Calvinism,
the Earl of Leicester.  Jacques Volmar, a deacon of the church, Cosmo de
Pescarengis, a Genoese captain of much experience in the service of the
republic, Adolphus de Meetkerke, former president of Flanders, who had
been, by the States, deprived of the seat in the great council to which
the Earl had appointed him; Doctor Saravia, professor of theology in the
university, with other deacons, preachers, and captains, went at
different times from Leyden to Utrecht, and had secret interviews with
Leicester.

A plan was at last agreed upon, according to which, about the middle of
October, a revolution should be effected in Leyden.  Captain Nicholas de
Maulde, who had recently so much distinguished himself in the defence of
Sluys, was stationed with two companies of States' troops in the city.
He had been much disgusted--not without reason--at the culpable
negligence through which the courageous efforts of the Sluys garrison
had been set at nought, and the place sacrificed, when it might so easily
have been relieved; and he ascribed the whole of the guilt to Maurice,
Hohenlo, and the States, although it could hardly be denied that at least
an equal portion belonged to Leicester and his party.  The young captain
listened, therefore, to a scheme propounded to him by Colonel Cosine, and
Deacon Volmar, in the name of Leicester.  He agreed, on a certain day, to
muster his company, to leave the city by the Delft gate--as if by command
of superior authority--to effect a junction with Captain Heraugiere,
another of the distinguished malcontent defenders of Sluys, who was
stationed, with his command, at Delft, and then to re-enter Leyden, take
possession of the town-hall, arrest all the magistrates, together with
Adrian van der Werff, ex-burgomaster, and proclaim Lord Leicester, in the
name of Queen Elizabeth, legitimate master of the city.  A list of
burghers, who were to be executed, was likewise agreed upon, at a final
meeting of the conspirators in a hostelry, which bore the ominous name of
'The Thunderbolt.'  A desire had been signified by Leicester, in the
preliminary interviews at Utrecht, that all bloodshed, if possible,
should be spared, but it was certainly an extravagant expectation,
considering the, temper, the political convictions, and the known courage
of the Leyden burghers, that the city would submit, without a struggle,
to this invasion of all their rights.  It could hardly be doubted that
the streets would run red with blood, as those of Antwerp had done, when
a similar attempt, on the part of Anjou, had been foiled.

Unfortunately for the scheme, a day or two before the great stroke was to
be hazarded, Cosmo de Pescarengis had been accidentally arrested for
debt.  A subordinate accomplice, taking alarm, had then gone before the
magistrate and revealed the plot.  Volmar and de Maulde fled at once, but
were soon arrested in the neighbourhood.  President de Meetkerke,
Professor Saravia, the preacher Van der Wauw, and others most
compromised, effected their escape.  The matter was instantly laid before
the States of Holland by the magistracy of Leyden, and seemed of the
gravest moment.  In the beginning of the year, the fatal treason of York
and Stanley had implanted a deep suspicion of Leicester in the hearts of
almost all the Netherlanders, which could not be eradicated.  The painful
rumours concerning the secret negotiations with Spain, and the design
falsely attributed to the English Queen, of selling the chief cities of
the republic to Philip as the price of peace, and of reimbursement for
expenses incurred by her, increased the general excitement to fever.  It
was felt by the leaders of the States that as mortal a combat lay before
them with the Earl of Leicester, as with the King of Spain, and that it
was necessary to strike a severe blow, in order to vindicate their
imperilled authority.

A commission was appointed by the high court of Holland, acting in
conjunction with the States of the Provinces, to try the offenders.
Among the commissioners were Adrian van der Werff, John van der Does, who
had been military commandant of Leyden during the siege, Barneveld, and
other distinguished personages, over whom Count Maurice presided.  The
accused were subjected to an impartial trial.  Without torture, they
confessed their guilt.  It is true, however, that Cosmo was placed within
sight of the rack.  He avowed that his object had been to place the city
under the authority of Leicester, and to effect this purpose, if
possible, without bloodshed.  He declared that the attempt was to be made
with the full knowledge and approbation of the Earl, who had promised him
the command of a regiment of twelve companies, as a recompense for his
services, if they proved successful.  Leicester, said Cosmo, had also
pledged himself, in case the men, thus executing his plans, should be
discovered and endangered, to protect and rescue them, even at the
sacrifice of all his fortune, and of the office he held.  When asked if
he had any written statement from his Excellency to that effect, Cosmo
replied, no, nothing but his princely word which he had voluntarily
given.

Volmar made a similar confession.  He, too, declared that he had acted
throughout the affair by express command of the Earl of Leicester.  Being
asked if he had any written evidence of the fact, he, likewise, replied
in the negative.  "Then his Excellency will unquestionably deny your
assertion," said the judges.  "Alas, then am I a dead man," replied
Volmar, and the unfortunate deacon never spoke truer words.  Captain de
Maulde also confessed his crime.  He did not pretend, however, to have
had any personal communication with Leicester, but said that the affair
had been confided to him by Colonel Cosmo, on the express authority of
the Earl, and that he had believed himself to be acting in obedience to
his Excellency's commands.

On the 26th October, after a thorough investigation, followed by a full
confession on the part of the culprits, the three were sentenced to
death.  The decree was surely a most severe one.  They had been guilty of
no actual crime, and only in case of high treason could an intention to
commit a crime be considered, by the laws of the state, an offence
punishable with death.  But it was exactly because it was important to
make the crime high treason that the prisoners were condemned.  The
offence was considered as a crime not against Leyden, but as an attempt
to levy war upon a city which was a member of the States of Holland and
of the United States.  If the States were sovereign, then this was a
lesion of their sovereignty.  Moreover, the offence had been aggravated
by the employment of United States' troops against the commonwealth of
the United States itself.  To cut off the heads of these prisoners was a
sharp practical answer to the claims of sovereignty by Leicester, as
representing the people, and a terrible warning to all who might, in
future; be disposed to revive the theories of Deventer and Burgrave.

In the case of De Maulde the punishment seemed especially severe.  His
fate excited universal sympathy, and great efforts were made to obtain
his pardon.  He was a universal favourite; he was young; he was very
handsome; his manners were attractive; he belonged to an ancient and
honourable race.  His father, the Seigneur de Mansart, had done great
services in the war of independence, had been an intimate friend of the
great Prince of Orange, and had even advanced large sums of money to
assist his noble efforts to liberate the country.  Two brothers of the
young captain had fallen in the service of the republic.  He, too, had
distinguished himself at Ostend, and his gallantry during the recent
siege of Sluys had been in every mouth, and had excited the warm applause
of so good a judge of soldiership as the veteran Roger Williams.  The
scars of the wounds received in the desperate conflicts of that siege
were fresh upon his breast.  He had not intended to commit treason, but,
convinced by the sophistry of older soldiers than himself, as well as by
learned deacons and theologians, he had imagined himself doing his duty,
while obeying the Earl of Leicester.  If there were ever a time for
mercy, this seemed one, and young Maurice of Nassau might have
remembered, that even in the case of the assassins who had attempted the
life of his father, that great-hearted man had lifted up his voice--which
seemed his dying one--in favour of those who had sought his life.

But they authorities were inexorable.  There was no hope of a mitigation
of punishment, but a last effort was made, under favour of a singular
ancient custom, to save the life of De Maulde.  A young lady of noble
family in Leyden--Uytenbroek by name--claimed the right of rescuing the
condemned malefactor, from the axe, by appearing upon the scaffold, and
offering to take him for her husband.

Intelligence was brought to the prisoner in his dungeon, that the young,
lady had made the proposition, and he was told to be of good cheer: But
he refused to be comforted. He was slightly acquainted with the gentle-
woman, he observed; and doubted much whether her request would be
granted.  Moreover if contemporary chronicle can be trusted he even
expressed a preference for the scaffold, as the milder fate of the two.
The lady, however, not being aware of those uncomplimentary sentiments,
made her proposal to the magistrates, but was dismissed with harsh
rebukes.  She had need be ashamed, they said; of her willingness to take
a condemned traitor for her husband.  It was urged, in her behalf, that
even in the cruel Alva's time, the ancient custom had been respected,
and that victims had been saved from the executioners, on a demand in
marriage made even by women of abandoned character.  But all was of no
avail.  The prisoners were executed on the 26th October, the same day
on which the sentence had been pronounced.  The heads of Volmar and Cosmo
were exposed on one of the turrets of the city.  That of Maulde was
interred with his body.

The Earl was indignant when he heard of the event.  As there had been no
written proof of his complicity in the conspiracy, the judges had thought
it improper to mention his name in the sentences.  He, of course, denied
any knowledge of the plot, and its proof rested therefore only on the
assertion of the prisoners themselves, which, however, was
circumstantial, voluntary, and generally believed!

France, during the whole of this year of expectation, was ploughed
throughout its whole surface by perpetual civil war.  The fatal edict of
June, 1585, had drowned the unhappy land in blood.  Foreign armies,
called in by the various contending factions, ravaged its-fair territory,
butchered its peasantry, and changed its fertile plains to a wilderness.
The unhappy creature who wore the crown of Charlemagne and of Hugh Capet,
was but the tool in the hands of the most profligate and designing of his
own subjects, and of foreigners.  Slowly and surely the net, spread by
the hands of his own mother, of his own prime minister, of the Duke of
Guise, all obeying the command and receiving the stipend of Philip,
seemed closing over him.  He was without friends, without power to know
his friends, if he had them.  In his hatred to the Reformation, he had
allowed himself to be made the enemy of the only man who could be his
friend, or the friend of France.  Allied with his mortal foe, whose
armies were strengthened by contingents from Parma's forces, and paid for
by Spanish gold, he was forced to a mock triumph over the foreign
mercenaries who came to save his crown, and to submit to the defeat of
the flower of his chivalry, by the only man who could rescue France from
ruin, and whom France could look up to with respect.

For, on the 20th October, Henry of Navarre had at last gained a victory.
After twenty-seven years of perpetual defeat, during which they had been
growing stronger and stronger, the Protestants had met the picked troops
of Henry III., under the Due de Joyeuse, near the burgh of Contras.  His
cousins Conde and Soissons each commanded a wing in the army of the
Warnese.  "You are both of my family," said Henry, before the engagement,
"and the Lord so help me, but I will show you that I am the eldest born."
And during that bloody day the white plume was ever tossing where the
battle, was fiercest.  "I choose to show myself.  They shall see the
Bearnese," was his reply to those who implored him to have a care for his
personal safety.  And at last, when the day was done, the victory gained,
and more French nobles lay dead on the field, as Catharine de' Medici
bitterly declared, than had fallen in a battle for twenty years; when two
thousand of the King's best troops had been slain, and when the bodies of
Joyeuse and his brother had been laid out in the very room where the
conqueror's supper, after the battle, was served, but where he refused,
with a shudder, to eat, he was still as eager as before--had the wretched
Valois been possessed of a spark of manhood, or of intelligence--to
shield him and his kingdom from the common enemy.'

For it could hardly be doubtful, even to Henry III., at that moment, that
Philip II. and his jackal, the Duke of Guise, were pursuing him to the
death, and that, in his breathless doublings to escape, he had been
forced to turn upon his natural protector.  And now Joyeuse was defeated
and slain.  Had it been my brother's son," exclaimed Cardinal de Bourbon,
weeping and wailing, "how much better it would have been."  It was not
easy to slay the champion of French Protestantism; yet, to one less
buoyant, the game, even after the brilliant but fruitless victory of
Contras, might have seemed desperate.  Beggared and outcast, with
literally scarce a shirt to his back, without money to pay a corporal's
guard, how was he to maintain an army?

But 'Mucio' was more successful than Joyeuse had been, and the German and
Swiss mercenaries who had come across the border to assist the Bearnese,
were adroitly handled by Philip's great stipendiary.  Henry of Valois,
whose troops had just been defeated at Contras, was now compelled to
participate in a more fatal series of triumphs.  For alas, the victim had
tied himself to the apron-string of "Madam League," and was paraded by
her, in triumph, before the eyes of his own subjects and of the world.
The passage of the Loire by the auxiliaries was resisted; a series of
petty victories was gained by Guise, and, at last, after it was obvious
that the leaders of the legions had been corrupted with Spanish ducats,
Henry allowed them to depart, rather than give the Balafre opportunity
for still farther successes.

Then came the triumph in Paris--hosannahs in the churches, huzzas in the
public places--not for the King, but for Guise.  Paris, more madly in
love with her champion than ever, prostrated herself at his feet.  For
him paeans as to a deliverer.  Without him the ark would have fallen into
the hands of the Philistines.  For the Valois, shouts of scorn from the
populace, thunders from the pulpit, anathemas from monk and priest,
elaborate invectives from all the pedants of the Sorbonne, distant
mutterings of excommunication from Rome--not the toothless beldame of
modern days, but the avenging divinity of priest-rid monarchs.  Such were
the results of the edicts of June.  Spain and the Pope had trampled upon
France, and the populace in her capital clapped their hands and jumped
for joy.  "Miserable country miserable King," sighed an illustrious
patriot, "whom his own countrymen wish rather to survive, than to die to
defend him!  Let the name of Huguenot and of Papist be never heard of
more.  Let us think only of the counter-league.  Is France to be saved by
opening all its gates to Spain?  Is France to be turned out of France, to
make a lodging for the Lorrainer and the Spaniard?"  Pregnant questions,
which could not yet be answered, for the end was not yet.  France was to
become still more and more a wilderness.  And well did that same brave
and thoughtful lover, of his: country declare, that he who should
suddenly awake from a sleep of twenty-five years, and revisit that once
beautiful land, would deem himself transplanted to a barbarous island of
cannibals.--[Duplessis Mornay, 'Mem.' iv. 1-34.]

It had now become quite obvious that the game of Leicester was played
out.  His career--as it has now been fully exhibited--could have but one
termination.  He had made himself thoroughly odious to the nation whom he
came to govern.  He had lost for ever the authority once spontaneously
bestowed; and he had attempted in vain, both by fair means and foul, to
recover that power.  There was nothing left him but retreat.  Of this he
was thoroughly convinced.  He was anxious to be gone, the republic most
desirous to be rid of him, her Majesty impatient to have her favourite
back again.  The indulgent Queen, seeing nothing to blame in his conduct,
while her indignation, at the attitude maintained by the Provinces was
boundless, permitted him, accordingly, to return; and in her letter to
the States, announcing this decision, she took a fresh opportunity of
emptying her wrath upon their heads.

She told them, that, notwithstanding her frequent messages to them,
signifying her evil contentment with their unthankfulness for her
exceeding great benefits, and with their gross violations of their
contract with herself and with Leicester, whom they had, of their own
accord, made absolute governor without her instigation; she had never
received any good answer to move, her to commit their sins to oblivion,
nor had she remarked, any amendment in their conduct.  On the contrary,
she complained: that they daily increased their offences, most
notoriously in the sight of--the world and in so many points that she
lacked words to express them in one letter.  She however thought it worth
while to allude to some of their transgressions.  She, declared that
their sinister, or rather barbarous interpretation of her conduct had
been notorious in perverting and falsifying her princely and Christian
intentions; when she imparted to them the overtures that had been made to
her for a treaty of peace for herself and for them with the King of
Spain.  Yet although she had required their allowance, before she would
give her assent, she had been grieved that the world should see what
impudent untruths had been forged upon her, not only by their.
sufferance; but by their special permission for her Christian good
meaning towards them.  She denounced the statements as to her having
concluded a treaty, not only without their knowledge; but with the
sacrifice of their liberty and religion, as utterly false, either for
anything done in act, or intended in thought, by her.  She complained
that upon this most false ground had been heaped a number of like
untruths and malicious slanders against her cousin Leicester, who had
hazarded his life, spend his substance, left his native country, absented
himself from her, and lost his time, only for their service.  It had been
falsely stated among them, she said, that the Earl had come over the last
time, knowing that peace had been secretly concluded.  It was false that
he had intended to surprise divers of their towns, and deliver them to
the King of Spain.  All such untruths contained matter so improbable,
that it was most, strange that any person; having any sense, could
imagine them correct.  Having thus slightly animadverted upon their
wilfulness, unthankfulness, and bad government, and having, in very
plain English, given them the lie, eight distinct and separate times
upon a single page, she proceeded to inform them that she had recalled
her cousin Leicester, having great cause to use his services in England,
and not seeing how, by his tarrying there, he could either profit them or
herself.  Nevertheless she protested herself not void of compassion for
their estate, and for the pitiful condition of the great multitude of
kind and godly people, subject to the miseries which, by the States
government, were like to fall upon them, unless God should specially
interpose; and she had therefore determined, for the time, to continue
her subsidies, according to the covenant between them.  If, meantime, she
should conclude a peace with Spain, she promised to them the same care
for their country as for her own.

Accordingly the Earl, after despatching an equally ill-tempered letter to
the States, in which he alluded, at unmerciful length, to all the old
grievances, blamed them for the loss of Sluys, for which place he
protested that they had manifested no more interest than if it had been
San Domingo in Hispaniola, took his departure for Flushing.  After
remaining there, in a very moody frame of mind, for several days,
expecting that the States would, at least, send a committee to wait upon
him and receive his farewells, he took leave of them by letter.  "God
send me shortly a wind to blow me from them all," he exclaimed--a prayer
which was soon granted--and before the end of the year he was safely
landed in England.  "These legs of mine," said he, clapping his hands
upon them as he sat in his chamber at Margate, "shall never go again into
Holland.  Let the States get others to serve their mercenary turn, for me
they shall not have."  Upon giving up the government, he caused a medal
to be struck in his own honour.  The device was a flock of sheep watched
by an English mastiff.  Two mottoes--"non gregem aed ingratos," and
"invitus desero"--expressed his opinion of Dutch ingratitude and his own
fidelity.  The Hollanders, on their part, struck several medals to
commemorate the same event, some of which were not destitute of
invention.  Upon one of them, for instance, was represented an ape
smothering her young ones to death in her embrace, with the device,
"Libertas ne its chara ut simiae catuli;" while upon the reverse was a
man avoiding smoke and falling into the fire, with the inscription,
"Fugiens fumum, incidit in ignem."

Leicester found the usual sunshine at Greenwich.  All the efforts of
Norris, Wilkes, and Buckhurst, had been insufficient to raise even a
doubt in Elizabeth's mind as to the wisdom and integrity by which his
administration of the Provinces had been characterised from beginning to
end.  Those who had appealed from his hatred to the justice of their
sovereign, had met with disgrace and chastisement.  But for the great
Earl; the Queen's favour was a rock of adamant.  At a private interview
he threw himself at her feet, and with tears and sobs implored her not to
receive him in disgrace whom she had sent forth in honour.  His
blandishments prevailed, as they had always done.  Instead, therefore,
of appearing before the council, kneeling, to answer such inquiries as
ought surely to have been instituted, he took his seat boldly among his
colleagues, replying haughtily to all murmurs by a reference to her
Majesty's secret instructions.

The unhappy English soldiers, who had gone forth under his banner in
midsummer, had been returning, as they best might, in winter, starving,
half-naked wretches, to beg a morsel of bread at the gates of Greenwich
palace, and to be driven away as vagabonds, with threats of the stock.
This was not the fault of the Earl, for he had fed them with his own
generous hand in the Netherlands, week after week, when no money for
their necessities could be obtained from the paymasters.  Two thousand
pounds had been sent by Elizabeth to her soldiers when sixty-four
thousand pounds arrearage were due, and no language could exaggerate the
misery to which these outcasts, according to eye-witnesses of their own
nation, were reduced.

Lord Willoughby was appointed to the command, of what remained of these
unfortunate troops, upon--the Earl's departure.  The sovereignty of the
Netherlands remained undisputed with the States.  Leicester resigned his,
commission by an instrument dated 17/27 December, which, however, never
reached the Netherlands till April of the following year.  From that time
forth the government of the republic maintained the same forms which the
assembly had claimed for it in the long controversy with the governor-
general, and which have been sufficiently described.

Meantime the negotiations for a treaty, no longer secret, continued.
The Queen; infatuated as ever, still believed in the sincerity of
Farnese, while that astute personage and his master were steadily
maturing their schemes.  A matrimonial alliance was secretly projected
between the King of Scots and Philip's daughter, the Infants Isabella,
with the consent of the Pope and the whole college of cardinals; and
James, by the whole force of the Holy League, was to be placed upon the
throne of Elizabeth.  In the case of his death, without issue, Philip
was to succeed quietly to the crowns of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
Nothing could be simpler or more rational, and accordingly these
arrangements were the table-talk at Rome, and met with general
approbation.

Communications to this effect; coming straight from the Colonna palace,
were thought sufficiently circumstantial to be transmitted to the English
government.  Maurice of Nassau wrote with his own hand to Walsingham,
professing a warm attachment to the cause in which Holland and England
were united, and perfect personal devotion to the English Queen.

His language, was not that of a youth, who, according to Leicester's
repeated insinuations, was leagued with the most distinguished soldiers
and statesmen of the Netherlands to sell their country to Spain.

But Elizabeth was not to be convinced.  She thought it extremely probable
that the Provinces would be invaded, and doubtless felt some anxiety for
England.  It was unfortunate that the possession of Sluys had given
Alexander such a point of vantage; and there was moreover, a fear that he
might take possession of Ostend.  She had, therefore, already recommended
that her own troops should be removed from that city, that its walls
should be razed; its marine bulwarks destroyed, and that the ocean.
should be let in to swallow the devoted city forever--the inhabitants
having been previously allowed to take their departure.  For it was
assumed by her Majesty that to attempt resistance would be idle, and that
Ostend could never stand a siege.

The advice was not taken; and before the end of her reign Elizabeth was
destined to see this indefensible city--only fit, in her judgment, to be
abandoned to the waves--become memorable; throughout all time, for the
longest; and, in many respects, the most remarkable siege which modern
history has recorded, the famous leaguer, in which the first European
captains of the coming age were to take their lessons, year after year,
in the school of the great Dutch soldier, who was now but a "solemn, sly
youth," just turned of twenty.

The only military achievement which characterized the close of the year,
to the great satisfaction of the Provinces and the annoyance of Parma,
was the surprise of the city of Bonn.  The indefatigable Martin Schenk--
in fulfilment of his great contract with the States-General, by which the
war on the Rhine had been farmed out to him on such profitable terms:--
had led his mercenaries against this important town.  He had found one of
its gates somewhat insecurely guarded, placed a mortar under it at night,
and occupied a neighbouring pig-stye with a number of his men, who by
chasing, maltreating, and slaughtering the swine, had raised an unearthly
din, sufficient to drown the martial operations at the gate.  In brief,
the place was easily mastered, and taken possession of by Martin, in the
name of the deposed elector, Gebhard Truchsess--the first stroke of good
fortune which had for a long time befallen that melancholy prelate.

The administration of Leicester has been so minutely pictured, that it
would be superfluous to indulge in many concluding reflections.  His acts
and words have been made to speak for themselves.  His career in the
country has been described with much detail, because the period was a
great epoch of transition.  The republic of the Netherlands, during those
years, acquired consistency and permanent form.  It seemed possible, on
the Earl's first advent, that the Provinces might become part and parcel
of the English realm.  Whether such a consummation would have been
desirable or not, is a fruitless enquiry.  But it is certain that the
selection of such a man as Leicester made that result impossible.
Doubtless there were many errors committed by all parties.  The Queen
was supposed by the Netherlands to be secretly desirous of accepting the
sovereignty of the Provinces, provided she were made sure, by the Earl's
experience, that they were competent to protect themselves.  But this
suspicion was unfounded.  The result of every investigation showed the
country so full of resources, of wealth, and of military and naval
capabilities, that, united with England, it would have been a source of
great revenue and power, not a burthen and an expense.  Yet, when
convinced of such facts, by the statistics which were liberally laid
before her by her confidential agents, she never manifested, either in
public or private, any intention of accepting the sovereignty.  This
being her avowed determination, it was an error on the part of the
States, before becoming thoroughly acquainted with the man's character,
to confer upon Leicester the almost boundless authority which they
granted on, his first arrival.  It was a still graver mistake, on the
part of Elizabeth, to give way to such explosions of fury, both against
the governor and the States, when informed of the offer and acceptance of
that authority.  The Earl, elevated by the adulation of others, and by
his own vanity, into an almost sovereign attitude, saw himself chastised
before the world, like an aspiring lackey, by her in whose favour he
had felt most secure.  He found, himself, in an instant, humbled and
ridiculous.  Between himself and the Queen it was, something of a lovers'
quarrel, and he soon found balsam in the hand that smote him.  But though
reinstated in authority, he was never again the object of reverence in
the land he was attempting to rule.  As he came to know the Netherlanders
better, he recognized the great capacity which their statesmen concealed
under a plain and sometimes a plebeian exterior, and the splendid grandee
hated, where at first he had only despised.  The Netherlanders, too, who
had been used to look up almost with worship to a plain man of kindly
manners, in felt hat and bargeman's woollen jacket, whom they called
"Father William," did not appreciate, as they ought, the magnificence of
the stranger who had been sent to govern them.  The Earl was handsome,
quick-witted, brave; but he was, neither wise in council nor capable in
the field.  He was intolerably arrogant, passionate, and revengeful.
He hated easily, and he hated for life.  It was soon obvious that no
cordiality of feeling or of action could exist between him and the plain,
stubborn Hollanders.  He had the fatal characteristic of loving only the
persons who flattered him.  With much perception of character, sense of
humour, and appreciation of intellect, he recognized the power of the
leading men in the nation, and sought to gain them.  So long as he hoped
success, he was loud in their praises.  They were all wise, substantial,
well-languaged, big fellows, such as were not to be found in England or
anywhere else.  When they refused to be made his tools, they became
tinkers, boors, devils, and atheists.  He covered them with curses and
devoted them to the gibbet.  He began by warmly commending Buys and
Barneveld, Hohenlo and Maurice, and endowing them with every virtue.
Before he left the country he had accused them of every crime, and would
cheerfully, if he could, have taken the life of every one of them.  And
it was quite the same with nearly every Englishman who served with or
under him.  Wilkes and Buckhurst, however much the objects of his
previous esteem; so soon as they ventured to censure or even to criticise
his proceedings, were at once devoted to perdition.  Yet, after minute
examination of the record, public and private, neither Wilkes nor
Buckhurst can be found guilty of treachery or animosity towards him, but
are proved to have been governed, in all their conduct, by a strong sense
of duty to their sovereign, the Netherlands, and Leicester himself.

To Sir John Norris, it must be allowed, that he was never fickle,
for he had always entertained for that distinguished general an honest,
unswerving, and infinite hatred, which was not susceptible of increase
or diminution by any act or word.  Pelham, too, whose days were numbered,
and who was dying bankrupt and broken-hearted, at the close of the,
Earl's administration, had always been regarded by him with tenderness
and affection.  But Pelham had never thwarted him, had exposed his life
for him, and was always proud of being his faithful, unquestioning,
humble adherent.  With perhaps this single exception, Leicester found
himself at the end of his second term in the Provinces, without a single
friend and with few respectable partisans.  Subordinate mischievous
intriguers like Deventer, Junius, and Otheman, were his chief advisers
and the instruments of his schemes.

With such qualifications it was hardly possible--even if the current of
affairs had been flowing smoothly--that he should prove a successful
governor of the new republic.  But when the numerous errors and
adventitious circumstances are considered--for some of which he was
responsible, while of others he was the victim--it must be esteemed
fortunate that no great catastrophe occurred.  His immoderate elevation;
his sudden degradation, his controversy in regard to the sovereignty, his
abrupt departure for England, his protracted absence, his mistimed
return, the secret instructions for his second administration, the
obstinate parsimony and persistent ill-temper of the Queen--who, from the
beginning to the end of the Earl's government, never addressed a kindly
word to the Netherlanders, but was ever censuring and brow beating them
in public state-papers and private epistles--the treason of York and
Stanley, above all, the disastrous and concealed negotiations with Parma,
and the desperate attempts upon Amsterdam and Leyden--all placed him in a
most unfortunate position from first to last.  But he was not competent
for his post under any circumstances.  He was not the statesman to deal
in policy with Buys, Barneveld, Ortel, Sainte Aldegonde; nor the soldier
to measure himself against Alexander Farnese.  His administration was a
failure; and although he repeatedly hazarded his life, and poured out his
wealth in their behalf with an almost unequalled liberality, he could
never gain the hearts of the Netherlanders.  English valour, English
intelligence, English truthfulness, English generosity, were endearing
England more and more to Holland.  The statesmen of both countries were
brought into closest union, and learned to appreciate and to respect
each other, while they recognized that the fate of their respective
commonwealths was indissolubly united.  But it was to the efforts of
Walsingham, Drake, Raleigh, Wilkes, Buckburst, Norris, Willoughby,
Williams, Vere, Russell, and the brave men who fought under their banners
or their counsels, on every battle-field, and in every beleaguered town
in the Netherlands, and to the universal spirit and sagacity of the
English nation, in this grand crisis of its fate, that these fortunate
results were owing; not to the Earl of Leicester, nor--during the term of
his administration--to Queen Elizabeth herself.

In brief, the proper sphere of this remarkable personage, and the one
in which he passed the greater portion of his existence, was that of a
magnificent court favourite, the spoiled darling, from youth to his
death-bed, of the great English Queen; whether to the advantage or not of
his country and the true interests of his sovereign, there can hardly be
at this day any difference of opinion.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Act of Uniformity required Papists to assist
As lieve see the Spanish as the Calvinistic inquisition
Elizabeth (had not) the faintest idea of religious freedom
God, whose cause it was, would be pleased to give good weather
Heretics to the English Church were persecuted
Look for a sharp war, or a miserable peace
Loving only the persons who flattered him
Not many more than two hundred Catholics were executed
Only citadel against a tyrant and a conqueror was distrust
Stake or gallows (for) heretics to transubstantiation
States were justified in their almost unlimited distrust
Undue anxiety for impartiality
Wealthy Papists could obtain immunity by an enormous fine




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v54
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 55, 1588




CHAPTER XVIII.  Part 1.

     Prophecies as to the Year 1588--Distracted Condition of the Dutch
     Republic--Willoughby reluctantly takes Command--English
     Commissioners come to Ostend--Secretary Gamier and Robert Cecil--
     Cecil accompanies Dale to Ghent--And finds the Desolation complete--
     Interview of Dale and Cecil with Parma--His fervent Expressions in
     favour of Peace--Cecil makes a Tour in Flanders--And sees much that
     is remarkable--Interviews of Dr. Rogers with Parma--Wonderful
     Harangues of the Envoy--Extraordinary Amenity of Alexander--With
     which Rogers is much touched--The Queen not pleased with her Envoy--
     Credulity of the English Commissioners--Ceremonious Meeting of all
     the Envoys--Consummate Art in wasting Time--Long Disputes about
     Commissions--The Spanish Commissions meant to deceive--Disputes
     about Cessation of Arms--Spanish Duplicity and Procrastination--
     Pedantry and Credulity of Dr. Dale--The Papal Bull and Dr. Allen's
     Pamphlet--Dale sent to ask Explanations--Parma denies all Knowledge
     of either--Croft believes to the last in Alexander.

The year 1588 had at last arrived--that fatal year concerning which the
German astrologers--more than a century before had prognosticated such
dire events.  As the epoch approached it was firmly believed by many that
the end of the world was at hand, while the least superstitious could not
doubt that great calamities were impending over the nations.  Portents
observed during the winter and in various parts of Europe came to
increase the prevailing panic.  It rained blood in Sweden, monstrous
births occurred in France, and at Weimar it was gravely reported by
eminent chroniclers that the sun had appeared at mid-day holding a drawn
sword in his mouth--a warlike portent whose meaning could not be
mistaken.

But, in truth, it needed no miracles nor prophecies to enforce the
conviction that a long procession of disasters was steadily advancing.
With France rent asunder by internal convulsions, with its imbecile king
not even capable of commanding a petty faction among his own subjects,
with Spain the dark cause of unnumbered evils, holding Italy in its
grasp, firmly allied with the Pope, already having reduced and nearly
absorbed France, and now, after long and patient preparation, about to
hurl the concentrated vengeance and hatred of long years upon the little
kingdom of England, and its only ally--the just organized commonwealth of
the Netherlands--it would have been strange indeed if the dullest
intellect had not dreamed of tragical events.  It was not encouraging
that there should be distraction in the counsels of the two States so
immediately threatened; that the Queen of England should be at variance
with her wisest and most faithful statesmen as to their course of action,
and that deadly quarrels should exist between the leading men of the
Dutch republic and the English governor, who had assumed the
responsibility of directing its energies against the common enemy.

The blackest night that ever descended upon the Netherlands--more
disappointing because succeeding a period of comparative prosperity and
triumph--was the winter of 1587-8, when Leicester had terminated his
career by his abrupt departure for England, after his second brief
attempt at administration.  For it was exactly at this moment of anxious
expectation, when dangers were rolling up from the south till not a ray
of light or hope could pierce the universal darkness, that the little
commonwealth was left without a chief.  The English Earl departed,
shaking the dust from his feet; but he did not resign.  The supreme
authority--so far as he could claim it--was again transferred,--with his
person, to England.

The consequences were immediate and disastrous.  All the Leicestrians
refused to obey the States-General.  Utrecht, the stronghold of that
party, announced its unequivocal intention to annex itself, without any
conditions whatever, to the English crown, while, in Holland, young
Maurice was solemnly installed stadholder, and captain-general of the
Provinces, under the guidance of Hohenlo and Barneveld.  But his
authority was openly defied in many important cities within his
jurisdiction by military chieftains who had taken the oaths of allegiance
to Leicester as governor, and who refused to renounce fidelity to the man
who had deserted their country, but who had not resigned his authority.
Of these mutineers the most eminent was Diedrich Sonoy, governor of North
Holland, a soldier of much experience, sagacity, and courage, who had
rendered great services to the cause of liberty and Protestantism, and
had defaced it by acts of barbarity which had made his name infamous.
Against this refractory chieftain it was necessary for Hohenlo and
Maurice to lead an armed force, and to besiege him in his stronghold--
the important city of Medenblik--which he resolutely held for Leicester,
although Leicester had definitely departed, and which he closed against
Maurice, although Maurice was the only representative of order and
authority within the distracted commonwealth.  And thus civil war had
broken out in the little scarcely-organized republic, as if there were
not dangers and bloodshed enough impending over it from abroad.  And the
civil war was the necessary consequence of the Earl's departure.

The English forces--reduced as they were by sickness, famine, and abject
poverty--were but a remnant of the brave and well-seasoned bands which
had faced the Spaniards with success on so many battle-fields.

The general who now assumed chief command over them--by direction of
Leicester, subsequently confirmed by the Queen--was Lord Willoughby.
A daring, splendid dragoon, an honest, chivalrous, and devoted servant of
his Queen, a conscientious adherent of Leicester, and a firm believer in
his capacity and character, he was, however, not a man of sufficient
experience or subtlety to perform the various tasks imposed upon him by
the necessities of such a situation.  Quick-witted, even brilliant in
intellect, and the bravest of the brave on the battle-field, he was
neither a sagacious administrator nor a successful commander.  And he
honestly confessed his deficiencies, and disliked the post to which he
had been elevated.  He scorned baseness, intrigue, and petty quarrels,
and he was impatient of control.  Testy, choleric, and quarrelsome, with
a high sense of honour, and a keen perception of insult, very modest and
very proud, he was not likely to feed with wholesome appetite upon the
unsavoury annoyances which were the daily bread of a chief commander in
the Netherlands.  "I ambitiously affect not high titles, but round
dealing," he said; "desiring rather to be a private lance with
indifferent reputation, than a colonel-general spotted or defamed with
wants."  He was not the politician to be matched against the unscrupulous
and all-accomplished Farnese; and indeed no man better than Willoughby
could illustrate the enormous disadvantage under which Englishmen
laboured at that epoch in their dealings with Italians and Spaniards.
The profuse indulgence in falsehood which characterized southern
statesmanship, was more than a match for English love of truth.  English
soldiers and negotiators went naked into a contest with enemies armed in
a panoply of lies.  It was an unequal match, as we have already seen,
and as we are soon more clearly to see.  How was an English soldier who
valued his knightly word--how were English diplomatists--among whom one
of the most famous--then a lad of twenty, secretary to Lord Essex in the
Netherlands--had poetically avowed that "simple truth was highest skill,"
--to deal with the thronging Spanish deceits sent northward by the great
father of lies who sat in the Escorial?

"It were an ill lesson," said Willoughby, "to teach soldiers the,
dissimulations of such as follow princes' courts, in Italy.  For my own
part, it is my only end to be loyal and dutiful to my sovereign, and
plain to all others that I honour.  I see the finest reynard loses his
best coat as well as the poorest sheep."  He was also a strong
Leicestrian, and had imbibed much of the Earl's resentment against the
leading politicians of the States.  Willoughby was sorely in need of
council.  That shrewd and honest Welshman--Roger Williams--was, for the
moment, absent.  Another of the same race and character commanded in
Bergen-op-Zoom, but was not more gifted with administrative talent than
the general himself.

"Sir Thomas Morgan is a very sufficient, gallant gentleman," said
Willoughby, "and in truth a very old soldier; but we both have need of
one that can both give and keep counsel better than ourselves.  For
action he is undoubtedly very able, if there were no other means to
conquer but only to give blows."

In brief, the new commander of the English forces in the Netherlands was
little satisfied with the States, with the enemy, or with himself; and
was inclined to take but a dismal view of the disjointed commonwealth,
which required so incompetent a person as he professed himself to be to
set it right.

"'Tis a shame to show my wants," he said, "but too great a fault of duty
that the Queen's reputation be frustrate.  What is my slender experience!
What an honourable person do I succeed!  What an encumbered popular state
is left!  What withered sinews, which it passes my cunning to restore!
What an enemy in head greater than heretofore!  And wherewithal should I
sustain this burthen?  For the wars I am fitter to obey than to command.
For the state, I am a man prejudicated in their opinion, and not the
better liked of them that have earnestly followed the general, and, being
one that wants both opinion and experience with them I have to deal, and
means to win more or to maintain that which is left, what good may be
looked for?"

The supreme authority--by the retirement of Leicester--was once more the
subject of dispute.  As on his first departure, so also on this his
second and final one, he had left a commission to the state-council to
act as an executive body during his absence.  But, although he--nominally
still retained his office, in reality no man believed in his return; and
the States-General were ill inclined to brook a species of guardianship
over them, with which they believed themselves mature enough to dispense.
Moreover the state-council, composed mainly of Leicestrians, would
expire, by limitation of its commission, early in February of that year.
The dispute for power would necessarily terminate, therefore, in favour
of the States-General.

Meantime--while this internal revolution was taking place in the polity
of the commonwealth-the gravest disturbances were its natural
consequence.  There were mutinies in the garrisons of Heusden, of
Gertruydenberg, of Medenblik, as alarming, and threatening to become as
chronic in their character, as those extensive military rebellions which
often rendered the Spanish troops powerless at the most critical epochs.
The cause of these mutinies was uniformly, want of pay, the pretext, the
oath to the Earl of Leicester, which was declared incompatible with the
allegiance claimed by Maurice in the name of the States-General.  The
mutiny of Gertruydenberg was destined to be protracted; that of
Medenblik, dividing, as it did, the little territory of Holland in its
very heart, it was most important at once to suppress.  Sonoy, however--
who was so stanch a Leicestrian, that his Spanish contemporaries
uniformly believed him to be an Englishman--held out for a long time,
as will be seen, against the threats and even the armed demonstrations of
Maurice and the States.

Meantime the English sovereign, persisting in her delusion, and despite
the solemn warnings of her own wisest counsellors; and the passionate
remonstrances of the States-General of the Netherlands, sent her peace-
commissioners to the Duke of Parma.

The Earl of Derby, Lord Cobham, Sir James Croft, Valentine Dale, doctor
of laws, and former ambassador at Vienna, and Dr. Rogers, envoys on the
part of the Queen, arrived in the Netherlands in February.  The
commissioners appointed on the part of Farnese were Count Aremberg,
Champagny, Richardot, Jacob Maas, and Secretary Garnier.

If history has ever furnished a lesson, how an unscrupulous tyrant, who
has determined upon enlarging his own territories at the expense of his
neighbours, upon oppressing human freedom wherever it dared to manifest
itself, with fine phrases of religion and order for ever in his mouth,
on deceiving his friends and enemies alike, as to his nefarious and
almost incredible designs, by means of perpetual and colossal falsehoods;
and if such lessons deserve to be pondered, as a source of instruction
and guidance for every age, then certainly the secret story of the
negotiations by which the wise Queen of England was beguiled, and her
kingdom brought to the verge of ruin, in the spring of 1588, is worthy of
serious attention.

The English commissioners arrived at Ostend.  With them came Robert
Cecil, youngest son of Lord-Treasurer Burghley, then twenty-five years of
age.--He had no official capacity, but was sent by his father, that he
might improve his diplomatic talents, and obtain some information as to
the condition of the Netherlands.  A slight, crooked, hump-backed young
gentleman, dwarfish in stature, but with a face not irregular in feature,
and thoughtful and subtle in expression, with reddish hair, a thin tawny
beard, and large, pathetic, greenish-coloured eyes, with a mind and
manners already trained to courts and cabinets, and with a disposition
almost ingenuous, as compared to the massive dissimulation with which it
was to be contrasted, and with what was, in aftertimes, to constitute a
portion of his own character, Cecil, young as he was, could not be
considered the least important of the envoys.  The Queen, who loved
proper men, called him "her pigmy;" and "although," he observed with
whimsical courtliness, "I may not find fault with the sporting name she
gives me, yet seem I only not to mislike it, because she gives it."  The
strongest man among them was Valentine Dale, who had much shrewdness,
experience, and legal learning, but who valued himself, above all things,
upon his Latinity.  It was a consolation to him, while his adversaries
were breaking Priscian's head as fast as the Duke, their master, was
breaking his oaths, that his own syntax was as clear as his conscience.
The feeblest commissioner was James-a-Croft, who had already exhibited
himself with very anile characteristics, and whose subsequent
manifestations were to seem like dotage.  Doctor Rogers, learned in the
law, as he unquestionably was, had less skill in reading human character,
or in deciphering the physiognomy of a Farnese, while Lord Derby, every
inch a grandee, with Lord Cobham to assist him, was not the man to cope
with the astute Richardot, the profound and experienced Champagny, or
that most voluble and most rhetorical of doctors of law, Jacob Maas of
Antwerp.

The commissioners, on their arrival, were welcomed by Secretary Garnier,
who had been sent to Ostend to greet them.  An adroit, pleasing,
courteous gentleman, thirty-six years of age, small, handsome, and
attired not quite as a soldier, nor exactly as one of the long robe,
wearing a cloak furred to the knee, a cassock of black velvet, with plain
gold buttons, and a gold chain about his neck, the secretary delivered
handsomely the Duke of Parma's congratulations, recommended great
expedition in the negotiations, and was then invited by the Earl of Derby
to dine with the commissioners.  He was accompanied by a servant in plain
livery, who--so soon as his master had made his bow to the English
envoys--had set forth for a stroll through the town.  The modest-looking
valet, however, was a distinguished engineer in disguise, who had
been sent by Alexander for the especial purpose of examining the
fortifications of Ostend--that town being a point much coveted,
and liable to immediate attack by the Spanish commander.

Meanwhile Secretary Gamier made himself very agreeable, showing wit,
experience, and good education; and, after dinner, was accompanied to
his lodgings by Dr. Rogers and other gentlemen, with whom--especially
with Cecil--he held much conversation.

Knowing that this young gentleman "wanted not an honourable father," the
Secretary was very desirous that he should take this opportunity to make
a tour through the Provinces, examine the cities, and especially "note
the miserable ruins of the poor country and people."  He would then
feelingly perceive how much they had to answer for, whose mad rebellion
against their sovereign lord and master had caused so great an effusion
of blood, and the wide desolation of such goodly towns and territories.

Cecil probably entertained a suspicion that the sovereign lord and
master, who had been employed, twenty years long, in butchering his
subjects and in ravaging their territory to feed his executioners and
soldiers, might almost be justified in treating human beings as beasts
and reptiles, if they had not at last rebelled.  He simply and
diplomatically answered, however, that he could not but concur with the
Secretary in lamenting the misery of the Provinces and people so utterly
despoiled and ruined, but, as it might be matter of dispute; "from what
head this fountain of calamity was both fed and derived, he would not
enter further therein, it being a matter much too high for his capacity."
He expressed also the hope that the King's heart might sympathize with
that of her Majesty, in earnest compassion for all this suffering, and in
determination to compound their differences.

On the following day there was some conversation with Gamier, on
preliminary and formal matters, followed in the evening by a dinner at
Lord Cobham's lodgings--a banquet which the forlorn condition of the
country scarcely permitted to be luxurious.  "We rather pray here for
satiety," said Cecil, "than ever think of variety."

It was hoped by the Englishmen that the Secretary would take his
departure after dinner; for the governor of Ostend, Sir John Conway, had
an uneasy sensation, during his visit, that the unsatisfactory condition
of the defences would attract his attention, and that a sudden attack by
Farnese might be the result.  Sir John was not aware however, of the
minute and scientific observations then making at the very moment when
Mr. Garnier was entertaining the commissioners with his witty and
instructive conversation--by the unobtrusive menial who had accompanied
the Secretary to Ostend.  In order that those observations might be as
thorough as possible, rather than with any view to ostensible business,
the envoy of Parma now declared that--on account of the unfavourable
state of the tide--he had resolved to pass another night at Ostend.
"We could have spared his company," said Cecil, "but their Lordships
considered it convenient that he should be used well."  So Mr.
Comptroller Croft gave the affable Secretary a dinner-invitation
for the following day.

Here certainly was a masterly commencement on the part of the Spanish
diplomatists.  There was not one stroke of business during the visit of
the Secretary.  He had been sent simply to convey a formal greeting, and
to take the names of the English commissioners--a matter which could have
been done in an hour as well as in a week.  But it must be remembered,
that, at that very moment, the Duke was daily expecting intelligence of
the sailing of the Armada, and that Philip, on his part, supposed the
Duke already in England, at the head of his army.  Under these
circumstances, therefore--when the whole object of the negotiation, so
far as Parma and his master were, concerned, was to amuse and to gain
time--it was already ingenious in Garnier to have consumed several days
in doing nothing; and to have obtained plans and descriptions of Ostend
into the bargain.

Garnier--when his departure could no longer, on any pretext, be deferred
--took his leave, once more warmly urging Robert Cecil to make a little
tour in the obedient Netherlands, and to satisfy himself, by personal
observation, of their miserable condition.  As Dr. Dale purposed making a
preliminary visit to the Duke of Parma at Ghent, it was determined
accordingly that he should be accompanied by Cecil.

That young gentleman had already been much impressed by the forlorn
aspect of the country about Ostend--for, although the town was itself in
possession of the English, it was in the midst of the enemy's territory.
Since the fall of Sluys the Spaniards were masters of all Flanders, save
this one much-coveted point.  And although the Queen had been disposed to
abandon that city, and to suffer the ocean to overwhelm it, rather than
that she should be at charges to defend it, yet its possession was of
vital consequence to the English-Dutch cause, as time was ultimately to
show.  Meanwhile the position was already a very important one, for--
according to the predatory system of warfare of the day--it was an
excellent starting-point for those marauding expeditions against persons
and property, in which neither the Dutch nor English were less skilled
than the Flemings or Spaniards.  "The land all about here," said Cecil,
"is so devastated, that where the open country was wont to be covered
with kine and sheep, it is now fuller of wild boars and wolves; whereof
many come so nigh the town that the sentinels--three of whom watch every
night upon a sand-hill outside the gates--have had them in a dark night
upon them ere they were aware."

But the garrison of Ostend was quite as dangerous to the peasants and the
country squires of Flanders, as were the wolves or wild boars; and many a
pacific individual of retired habits, and with a remnant of property
worth a ransom, was doomed to see himself whisked from his seclusion by
Conway's troopers, and made a compulsory guest at the city.  Prisoners
were brought in from a distance of sixty miles; and there was one old
gentlemen, "well-languaged," who "confessed merrily to Cecil, that when
the soldiers fetched him out of his own mansion-house, sitting safe in
his study, he was as little in fear of the garrison of Ostend as he was
of the Turk or the devil."

     [And Doctor Rogers held very similar language: "The most dolorous
     and heavy sights in this voyage to Ghent, by me weighed," he said;
     "seeing the countries which, heretofore; by traffic of merchants, as
     much as any other I have seen flourish, now partly drowned, and,
     except certain great cities, wholly burned, ruined, and desolate,
     possessed I say, with wolves, wild boars, and foxes--a great,
     testimony of the wrath of God," &c. &c.  Dr. Rogers to the Queen,-
     April, 1588.  (S. P.  Office MS.)]

Three days after the departure of Garnier, Dr. Dale and his attendants
started upon their expedition from Ostend to Ghent--an hour's journey or
so in these modern times.--The English envoys, in the sixteenth century,
found it a more formidable undertaking.  They were many hours traversing
the four miles to Oudenburg, their first halting-place; for the waters
were out, there having been a great breach of the sea-dyke of Ostend, a
disaster threatening destruction to town and country.  At Oudenburg, a
"small and wretched hole," as Garnier had described it to be, there was,
however, a garrison of three thousand Spanish soldiers, under the Marquis
de Renti.  From these a convoy of fifty troopers was appointed to protect
the English travellers to Bruges.  Here they arrived at three o'clock,
were met outside the gates by the famous General La Motte, and by him
escorted to their lodgings in the "English house," and afterwards
handsomely entertained at supper in his own quarters.

The General's wife; Madame de la Motte, was, according to Cecil, "a fair
gentlewoman of discreet and modest behaviour, and yet not unwilling
sometimes to hear herself speak;" so that in her society, and in that of
her sister--"a nun of the order of the Mounts, but who, like the rest of
the sisterhood, wore an ordinary dress in the evening, and might leave
the convent if asked in marriage"--the supper passed off very agreeably.

In the evening Cecil found that his father had formerly occupied the same
bedroom of the English hotel in which he was then lodged; for he found
that Lord Burghley had scrawled his name in the chimney-corner--a fact
which was highly gratifying to the son.

The next morning, at seven o'clock, the travellers set forth for Ghent.
The journey was a miserable one.  It was as cold and gloomy weather as
even a Flemish month of March could furnish.  A drizzling rain was
falling all day long, the lanes were foul and miry, the frequent thickets
which overhung their path were swarming with the freebooters of Zeeland,
who were "ever at hand," says Cecil, "to have picked our purses, but that
they descried our convoy, and so saved themselves in the woods."  Sitting
on horseback ten hours without alighting, under such circumstances as
these, was not luxurious for a fragile little gentleman like Queen
Elizabeth's "pigmy;" especially as Dr. Dale and himself had only half a
red herring between them for luncheon, and supped afterwards upon an
orange.  The envoy protested that when they could get a couple of eggs a
piece, while travelling in Flanders, "they thought they fared like
princes."

Nevertheless Cecil and himself fought it out manfully, and when they
reached Ghent, at five in the evening, they were met by their
acquaintance Garnier, and escorted to their lodgings.  Here they were
waited upon by President Richardot, "a tall gentleman," on behalf of the
Duke of Parma, and then left to their much-needed repose.

Nothing could be more forlorn than the country of the obedient
Netherlands, through which their day's journey had led them.  Desolation
had been the reward of obedience.  "The misery of the inhabitants," said
Cecil, "is incredible, both without the town, where all things are
wasted, houses spoiled, and grounds unlaboured, and also, even in these
great cities, where they are for the most part poor beggars even in the
fairest houses."

And all this human wretchedness was the elaborate work of one man--one
dull, heartless bigot, living, far away, a life of laborious ease and
solemn sensuality; and, in reality, almost as much removed from these
fellow-creatures of his, whom he called his subjects, as if he had been
the inhabitant of another planet.  Has history many more instructive
warnings against the horrors of arbitrary government--against the folly
of mankind in ever tolerating the rule of a single irresponsible
individual, than the lesson furnished by the life-work of that crowned
criminal, Philip the Second?

The longing for peace on the part of these unfortunate obedient Flemings
was intense.  Incessant cries for peace reached the ears of the envoys on
every side.  Alas, it would have been better for these peace-wishers, had
they stood side by side with their brethren, the noble Hollanders and
Zeelanders, when they had been wresting, if not peace, yet independence
and liberty, from Philip, with their own right hands.  Now the obedient
Flemings were but fuel for the vast flame which the monarch was kindling
for the destruction of Christendom--if all Christendom were not willing
to accept his absolute dominion.

The burgomasters of Ghent--of Ghent, once the powerful, the industrious,
the opulent, the free, of all cities in the world now the most abject and
forlorn--came in the morning to wait upon Elizabeth's envoy, and to
present him, according to ancient custom, with some flasks of wine.  They
came with tears streaming down their cheeks, earnestly expressing the
desire of their hearts for peace, and their joy that at least it had now
"begun to be thought on."

"It is quite true," replied Dr. Dale, "that her excellent Majesty the
Queen--filled with compassion for your condition, and having been
informed that the Duke of Parma is desirous of peace--has vouchsafed to
make this overture.  If it take not the desired effect, let not the blame
rest upon her, but upon her adversaries."  To these words the magistrates
all said Amen, and invoked blessings on her Majesty.  And most certainly,
Elizabeth was sincerely desirous of peace; even at greater sacrifices
than the Duke could well have imagined; but there was something almost
diabolic in the cold dissimulation by which her honest compassion was
mocked, and the tears of a whole people in its agony made the
laughingstock of a despot and his tools.

On Saturday morning, Richardot and Garnier waited upon the envoy to
escort him to the presence of the Duke.  Cecil, who accompanied him, was
not much impressed with the grandeur of Alexander's lodgings; and made
unfavourable and rather unreasonable comparisons between them and the
splendour of Elizabeth's court.  They passed through an ante-chamber into
a dining-room, thence into an inner chamber, and next into the Duke's
room.  In the ante-chamber stood Sir William Stanley, the Deventer
traitor, conversing with one Mockett, an Englishman, long resident in
Flanders.  Stanley was meanly dressed, in the Spanish fashion, and as
young Cecil, passing through the chamber, looked him in the face, he
abruptly turned from him, and pulled his hat over his eyes.  "'Twas well
he did so," said that young gentleman, "for his taking it off would
hardly have cost me mine."  Cecil was informed that Stanley was to have
a commandery of Malta, and was in good favour with the Duke, who was,
however, quite weary of his mutinous and disorderly Irish regiment.

In the bed-chamber, Farnese--accompanied by the Marquis del Guasto, the
Marquis of Renty, the Prince of Aremberg, President Richardot, and
Secretary Cosimo--received the envoy and his companion.  "Small and mean
was the furniture of the chamber," said Cecil; "and although they
attribute this to his love of privacy, yet it is a sign that peace is the
mother of all honour and state, as may best be perceived by the court of
England, which her Majesty's royal presence doth so adorn, as that it
exceedeth this as far as the sun surpasseth in light the other stars of
the firmament."

Here was a compliment to the Queen and her upholsterers drawn in by the
ears.  Certainly, if the first and best fruit of the much-longed-for
peace were only to improve the furniture of royal and ducal apartments,
it might be as well perhaps for the war to go on, while the Queen
continued to outshine all the stars in the firmament.  But the budding
courtier and statesman knew that a personal compliment to Elizabeth could
never be amiss or ill-timed.

The envoy delivered the greetings of her Majesty to the Duke, and was
heard with great attention.  Alexander attempted a reply in French, which
was very imperfect, and, apologizing, exchanged that tongue for Italian.
He alluded with great fervour to the "honourable opinion concerning his
sincerity and word," expressed to him by her Majesty, through the mouth
of her envoy.  "And indeed," said he, "I have always had especial care of
keeping my word.  My body and service are at the commandment of the King,
my lord and master, but my honour is my own, and her Majesty may be
assured that I shall always have especial regard of my word to so great
and famous a Queen as her Majesty."

The visit was one of preliminaries and of ceremony.  Nevertheless Farnese
found opportunity to impress the envoy and his companions with his
sincerity of heart.  He conversed much with Cecil, making particular and
personal inquiries, and with appearance of deep interest, in regard to
Queen Elizabeth.

"There is not a prince in the world--" he said, "reserving all question
between her Majesty and my royal master--to whom I desire more to do
service.  So much have I heard of her perfections, that I wish earnestly
that things might so fall out, as that it might be my fortune to look
upon her face before my return to my own country.  Yet I desire to behold
her, not as a servant to him who is not able still to maintain war, or as
one that feared any harm that might befall him; for in such matters my
account was made long ago, to endure all which God may send.  But, in
truth, I am weary to behold the miserable estate of this people, fallen
upon them through their own folly, and methinks that he who should do the
best offices of peace would perform a 'pium et sanctissimum opus.'  Right
glad am I that the Queen is not behind me in zeal for peace."  He then
complimented Cecil in regard to his father, whom he understood to be the
principal mover in these negotiations.

The young man expressed his thanks, and especially for the good affection
which the Duke had manifested to the Queen and in the blessed cause of
peace.  He was well aware that her Majesty esteemed him a prince of great
honour and virtue, and that for this good work, thus auspiciously begun,
no man could possibly doubt that her Majesty, like himself, was most
zealously affected to bring all things to a perfect peace.

The matters discussed in this first interview were only in regard to the
place to be appointed for the coming conferences, and the exchange of
powers.  The Queen's commissioners had expected to treat at Ostend.
Alexander, on the contrary, was unable to listen to such a suggestion,
as it would be utter dereliction of his master's dignity to send envoys
to a city of his own, now in hostile occupation by her Majesty's forces.
The place of conference, therefore, would be matter of future
consideration.  In respect to the exchange of powers, Alexander expressed
the hope that no man would doubt as to the production on his
commissioners' part of ample authority both from himself and from the
King.

Yet it will be remembered, that, at this moment, the Duke had not only no
powers from the King, but that Philip had most expressly refused to send
a commission, and that he fully expected the negotiation to be superseded
by the invasion, before the production of the powers should become
indispensable.

And when Farnese was speaking thus fervently in favour of peace, and
parading his word and his honour, the letters lay in his cabinet in that
very room, in which Philip expressed his conviction that his general was
already in London, that the whole realm of England was already at the
mercy of a Spanish soldiery, and that the Queen, upon whose perfection
Alexander had so long yearned to gaze, was a discrowned captive, entirely
in her great enemy's power.

Thus ended the preliminary interview.  On the following Monday, 11th
March, Dr. Dale and his attendants made the best of their way back to
Ostend, while young Cecil, with a safe conduct from Champagny, set forth
on a little tour in Flanders.

The journey from Ghent to Antwerp was easy, and he was agreeably
surprised by the apparent prosperity of the country.  At intervals of
every few miles; he was refreshed with the spectacle of a gibbet well
garnished with dangling freebooters; and rejoiced, therefore, in
comparative security.  For it seemed that the energetic bailiff of
Waasland had levied a contribution upon the proprietors of the country,
to be expended mainly in hanging brigands; and so well had the funds been
applied, that no predatory bands could make their appearance but they
were instantly pursued by soldiers, and hanged forthwith, without judge
or trial.  Cecil counted twelve such places of execution on his road
between Ghent and Antwerp.

On his journey he fell in with an Italian merchant,--Lanfranchi by name,
of a great commercial house in Antwerp, in the days when Antwerp had
commerce, and by him, on his arrival the same evening in that town, he
was made an honoured guest, both for his father's sake and his Queen's.
"'Tis the pleasantest city that ever I saw," said Cecil, "for situation
and building; but utterly left and abandoned now by those rich merchants
that were wont to frequent the place."

His host was much interested in the peace-negotiations, and indeed,
through his relations with Champagny and Andreas de Loo, had been one of
the instruments by which it had been commenced.  He inveighed bitterly
against the Spanish captains and soldiers, to whose rapacity and ferocity
he mainly ascribed the continuance of the war;--and he was especially
incensed with Stanley and other--English renegades, who were thought
fiercer haters of England than were the Spaniards themselves: Even in the
desolate and abject condition of Antwerp and its neighbourhood, at that
moment, the quick eye of Cecil detected the latent signs of a possible
splendour.  Should peace be restored, the territory once more be tilled,
and the foreign merchants attracted thither again, he believed that the
governor of the obedient Netherlands might live there in more
magnificence than the King of Spain himself, exhausted as were his
revenues by the enormous expense of this protracted war: Eight hundred
thousand dollars monthly; so Lanfranchi informed Cecil, were the costs
of the forces on the footing then established.  This, however, was
probably an exaggeration, for the royal account books showed a less
formidable sum, although a sufficiently large one to appal a less
obstinate bigot than Philip.  But what to him were the, ruin of the
Netherlands; the impoverishment of Spain, and the downfall of her ancient
grandeur compared to the glory of establishing the Inquisition in England
and Holland?

While at dinner in Lanfranchi's house; Cecil was witness to another
characteristic of the times, and one which afforded proof of even more
formidable freebooters abroad than those for whom the bailiff of Waasland
had erected his gibbets.  A canal-boat had left Antwerp for Brussels that
morning, and in the vicinity of the latter city had been set upon by a
detachment from the English garrison of Bergen-op-Zoom, and captured,
with twelve prisoners and a freight of 60,000 florins in money.  "This
struck the company at the dinner-table all in a dump;" said Cecil.  And
well it might; for the property mainly belonged to themselves, and they
forthwith did their best to have the marauders waylaid on their return.
But Cecil, notwithstanding his gratitude for the hospitality of
Lanfranchi, sent word next day to the garrison of Bergen of the designs
against them, and on his arrival at the place had the satisfaction of
being informed by Lord Willoughby that the party had got safe home with
their plunder.

"And, well worthy they are of it," said young Robert, "considering how
far they go for it."

The traveller, on, leaving Antwerp, proceeded down the river to Bergen-
op-Zoom, where he was hospitably entertained by that doughty old soldier
Sir William Reade, and met Lord Willoughby, whom he accompanied to
Brielle on a visit to the deposed elector Truchsess, then living in that
neighbourhood.  Cecil--who was not passion's slave--had small sympathy
with the man who could lose a sovereignty for the sake of Agnes Mansfeld.
"'Tis a very goodly gentleman," said he, "well fashioned, and of good
speech, for which I must rather praise him than for loving a wife better
than so great a fortune as he lost by her occasion."  At Brielle he
was handsomely entertained by the magistrates, who had agreeable
recollections of his brother Thomas, late governor of that city.
Thence he proceeded by way of Delft--which, like all English travellers,
he described as "the finest built town that ever he saw"--to the Hague,
and thence to Fushing, and so back by sea to Ostend.--He had made the
most of his three weeks' tour, had seen many important towns both in the
republic and in the obedient Netherlands, and had conversed with many
"tall gentlemen," as he expressed himself, among the English commanders,
having been especially impressed by the heroes of Sluys, Baskerville and
that "proper gentleman Francis Vere."

He was also presented by Lord Willoughby to Maurice of Nassau, and was
perhaps not very benignantly received by the young prince.  At that
particular moment, when Leicester's deferred resignation, the rebellion
of Sonoy in North Holland, founded on a fictitious allegiance to the late
governor-general, the perverse determination of the Queen to treat for
peace against the advice of all the leading statesmen of the Netherlands,
and the sharp rebukes perpetually administered by her, in consequence,
to the young stadholder and all his supporters, had not tended to produce
the most tender feelings upon their part towards the English government,
it was not surprising that the handsome soldier should look askance at
the crooked little courtier, whom even the great Queen smiled at while
she petted him.  Cecil was very angry with Maurice.

"In my life I never saw worse behaviour," he said, "except it were in one
lately come from school.  There is neither outward appearance in him of
any noble mind nor inward virtue."

Although Cecil had consumed nearly the whole month of March in his tour,
he had been more profitably employed than were the royal commissioners
during the same period at Ostend.

Never did statesmen know better how not to do that which they were
ostensibly occupied in doing than Alexander Farnese and his agents,
Champagny, Richardot, Jacob Maas, and Gamier.  The first pretext by which
much time was cleverly consumed was the dispute as to the place of
meeting.  Doctor Dale had already expressed his desire for Ostend as the
place of colloquy.  "'Tis a very slow old gentleman, this Doctor Dale,"
said Alexander; "he was here in the time of Madam my mother, and has also
been ambassador at Vienna.  I have received him and his attendants with
great courtesy, and held out great hopes of peace.  We had conversations
about the place of meeting.  He wishes Ostend: I object.  The first
conference will probably be at some point between that place and
Newport."

The next opportunity for discussion and delay was afforded by the
question of powers.  And it must be ever borne in mind that Alexander was
daily expecting the arrival of the invading fleets and armies of Spain,
and was holding himself in readiness to place himself at their head for
the conquest of England.  This was, of course, so strenuously denied by
himself and those under his influence, that Queen Elizabeth implicitly.
believed him, Burghley was lost in doubt, and even the astute Walsingham
began to distrust his own senses.  So much strength does a falsehood
acquire in determined and skilful hands.

"As to the commissions, it will be absolutely necessary for, your Majesty
to send them," wrote Alexander at the moment when he was receiving the
English envoy at Ghent, "for unless the Armada arrive soon--it will be
indispensable for me, to have them, in order to keep the negotiation
alive.  Of course they will never broach the principal matters without
exhibition of powers.  Richardot is aware of the secret which your
Majesty confided to me, namely, that the negotiations are only intended
to deceive the Queen and to gain time for the fleet; but the powers must
be sent in order that we may be able to produce them; although your
secret intentions will be obeyed."

The Duke commented, however, on the extreme difficulty of carrying out
the plan, as originally proposed.  "The conquest of England would have
been difficult," he said, "even although the country had been taken by
surprise.  Now they are strong and armed; we are comparatively weak.  The
danger and the doubt are great; and the English deputies, I think, are
really desirous of peace.  Nevertheless I am at your Majesty's
disposition--life and all--and probably, before the answer arrives to
this letter, the fleet will have arrived, and I shall have undertaken the
passage to England."

After three weeks had thus adroitly been frittered away, the English
commissioners became somewhat impatient, and despatched Doctor Rogers to
the Duke at Ghent.  This was extremely obliging upon their part, for if
Valentine Dale were a "slow old gentleman," he was keen, caustic, and
rapid, as compared to John Rogers.  A formalist and a pedant, a man of
red tape and routine, full of precedents and declamatory commonplaces
which he mistook for eloquence, honest as daylight and tedious as a king,
he was just the time-consumer for Alexander's purpose.  The wily Italian
listened with profound attention to the wise saws in which the excellent
diplomatist revelled, and his fine eyes often filled with tears at the
Doctor's rhetoric.

Three interviews--each three mortal hours long--did the two indulge in at
Ghent, and never, was high-commissioner better satisfied with himself
than was John Rogers upon those occasions.  He carried every point; he
convinced, he softened, he captivated the great Duke; he turned the great
Duke round his finger.  The great Duke smiled, or wept, or fell into his
arms, by turns.  Alexander's military exploits had rung through the
world, his genius for diplomacy and statesmanship had never been
disputed; but his talents as a light comedian were, in these interviews,
for the first time fully revealed.

On the 26th March the learned Doctor made his first bow and performed his
first flourish of compliments at Ghent.  "I assure your Majesty," said
he, "his Highness followed my compliments of entertainment with so much
honour, as that--his Highness or I, speaking of the Queen of England--he
never did less than uncover his head; not covering the same, unless I was
covered also."  And after these salutations had at last been got through
with, thus spake the Doctor of Laws to the Duke of Parma:--

"Almighty God, the light of lights, be pleased to enlighten the
understanding of your Alteza, and to direct the same to his glory, to the
uniting of both their Majesties and the finishing of these most bloody
wars, whereby these countries, being in the highest degree of misery
desolate, lie as it were prostrate before the wrathful presence of the
most mighty God, most lamentably beseeching his Divine Majesty to
withdraw his scourge of war from them, and to move the hearts of princes
to restore them unto peace, whereby they might attain unto their ancient
flower and dignity.  Into the hands of your Alteza are now the lives of
many thousands, the destruction of cities, towns, and countries, which to
put to the fortune of war how perilous it were, I pray consider.  Think
ye, ye see the mothers left alive tendering their offspring in your
presence, 'nam matribus detestata bells,'"  continued the orator.  "Think
also of others of all sexes, ages, and conditions, on their knees before
your Alteza, most humbly praying and crying most dolorously to spare
their lives, and save their property from the ensanguined scourge of the
insane soldiers," and so on, and so on.

Now Philip II.  was slow in resolving, slower in action. The ponderous
three-deckers of Biscay were notoriously the dullest sailers ever known,
nor were the fettered slaves who rowed the great galleys of Portugal or
of Andalusia very brisk in their movements; and yet the King might have
found time to marshal his ideas and his squadrons, and the Armada had
leisure to circumnavigate the globe and invade England afterwards, if a
succession of John Rogerses could have entertained his Highness with
compliments while the preparations were making.

But Alexander--at the very outset of the Doctor's eloquence--found it
difficult to suppress his feelings.  "I can assure your Majesty," said
Rogers, "that his eyes--he has a very large eye--were moistened.
Sometimes they were thrown upward to heaven, sometimes they were fixed
full upon me, sometimes they were cast downward, well declaring how his
heart was affected."

Honest John even thought it necessary to mitigate the effect of his
rhetoric, and to assure his Highness that it was, after all, only he
Doctor Rogers, and not the minister plenipotentiary of the Queen's most
serene Majesty, who was exciting all this emotion.

"At this part of my speech," said he, "I prayed his Highness not to be
troubled, for that the same only proceeded from Doctor Rogers, who, it
might please him to know, was so much moved with the pitiful case of
these countries, as also that which of war was sure to ensue, that I
wished, if my body were full of rivers of blood, the same to be poured
forth to satisfy any that were blood-thirsty, so there might an assured
peace follow."

His Highness, at any rate, manifesting no wish to drink of such
sanguinary streams--even had the Doctor's body contained them--Rogers
became calmer.  He then descended from rhetoric to jurisprudence and
casuistry, and argued at intolerable length the propriety of commencing
the conferences at Ostend, and of exhibiting mutually the commissions.

It is quite unnecessary to follow him as closely as did Farnese.  When he
had finished the first part of his oration, however, and was "addressing
himself to the second point," Alexander at last interrupted the torrent
of his eloquence.

"He said that my divisions and subdivisions," wrote the Doctor, "were
perfectly in his remembrance, and that he would first answer the first
point, and afterwards give audience to the second, and answer the same
accordingly."

Accordingly Alexander put on his hat, and begged the envoy also to be
covered.  Then, "with great gravity, as one inwardly much moved," the
Duke took up his part in the dialogue.

"Signor Ruggieri," said he, "you have propounded unto me speeches of two
sorts: the one proceeds from Doctor Ruggieri, the other from the lord
ambassador of the most serene Queen of England.  Touching the first, I do
give you my hearty thanks for your godly speeches, assuring you that
though, by reason I have always followed the wars, I cannot be ignorant
of the calamities by you alleged, yet you have so truly represented the
same before mine eyes as to effectuate in me at this instant, not only
the confirmation of mine own disposition to have peace, but also an
assurance that this treaty shall take good and speedy end, seeing that it
hath pleased God to raise up such a good instrument as you are."

"Many are the causes," continued the Duke, "which, besides my
disposition, move me to peace.  My father and mother are dead; my son
is a young prince; my house has truly need of my presence.  I am not
ignorant how ticklish a thing is the fortune of war, which--how
victorious soever I have been--may in one moment not only deface the
same, but also deprive me of my life.  The King, my master, is now,
stricken in years, his children are young, his dominions in trouble.
His desire is to live, and to leave his posterity in quietness.  The
glory of God, the honor of both their Majesties, and the good of these
countries, with the stay of the effusion of Christian blood, and divers
other like reasons, force him to peace."

Thus spoke Alexander, like an honest Christian gentleman, avowing the
most equitable and pacific dispositions on the part of his master and
himself.  Yet at that moment he knew that the Armada was about to sail,
that his own nights and days were passed in active preparations for war,
and that no earthly power could move Philip by one hair's-breadth from
his purpose to conquer England that summer.

It would be superfluous to follow the Duke or the Doctor through their
long dialogue on the place of conference, and the commissions.  Alexander
considered it "infamy" on his name if he should send envoys to a place of
his master's held by the enemy.  He was also of opinion that it was
unheard of to exhibit commissions previous to a preliminary colloquy.

Both propositions were strenuously contested by Rogers.  In regard to the
second point in particular, he showed triumphantly, by citations from the
"Polonians, Prussians, and Lithuanians," that commissions ought to be
previously exhibited.  But it was not probable that even the Doctor's
learning and logic would persuade Alexander to produce his commission;
because, unfortunately, he had no commission to produce.  A comfortable
argument on the subject, however, would, none the less, consume time.

Three hours of this work brought them, exhausted and hungry; to the hour
of noon and of dinner Alexander, with profuse and smiling thanks for the
envoy's plain dealing and eloquence, assured him that there would have
been peace long ago "had Doctor Rogers always been the instrument," and
regretted that he was himself not learned enough to deal creditably with
him.  He would, however, send Richardot to bear him company at table,
and chop logic with him afterwards.

Next day, at the same, hour, the Duke and Doctor had another encounter.
So soon as the envoy made his appearance, he found himself "embraced most
cheerfully and familiarly by his Alteza," who, then entering at once into
business, asked as to the Doctor's second point.

The Doctor answered with great alacrity.

"Certain expressions have been reported to her Majesty," said he, "as
coming both from your Highness and from Richardot, hinting at a possible
attempt by the King of Spain's forces against the Queen.  Her Majesty,
gathering that you are going about belike to terrify her, commands me to
inform you very clearly and very expressly that she does not deal so
weakly in her government, nor so improvidently, but that she is provided
for anything that might be attempted against her by the King, and as able
to offend him as he her Majesty."

Alexander--with a sad countenance, as much offended, his eyes declaring
miscontentment--asked who had made such a report.

"Upon the honour of a gentleman," said he, "whoever has said this has
much abused me, and evil acquitted himself.  They who know me best are
aware that it is not my manner to let any word pass my lips that might
offend any prince."  Then, speaking most solemnly, he added, "I declare
really and truly (which two words he said in Spanish), that I know not of
any intention of the King of Spain against her Majesty or her realm."

At that moment the earth did not open--year of portents though it was--
and the Doctor, "singularly rejoicing" at this authentic information from
the highest source, proceeded cheerfully with the conversation.

"I hold myself," he exclaimed, "the man most satisfied in the world,
because I may now write to her Majesty that I have heard your Highness
upon your honour use these words."

"Upon my honour, it is true," repeated the Duke; "for so honourably do I
think of her Majesty, as that, after the King, my master, I would honour
and serve her before any prince in Christendom."  He added many earnest
asseverations of similar import.

"I do not deny, however," continued Alexander, "that I have heard of
certain ships having been armed by the King against that Draak"--he
pronounced the "a" in Drake's name very broadly, or Doric" who has
committed so many outrages; but I repeat that I have never heard of any
design against her Majesty or against England."

The Duke then manifested much anxiety to know by whom he had been so
misrepresented.  "There has been no one with me but Dr. Dale," said, he,
"and I marvel that he should thus wantonly have injured me."

"Dr. Dale," replied Ropers, "is a man of honour, of good years, learned,
and well experienced; but perhaps he unfortunately misapprehended some of
your Alteza's words, and thought himself bound by his allegiance strictly
to report them to her Majesty."

"I grieve that I should be misrepresented and injured," answered Farnese,
"in a manner so important to my honour.  Nevertheless, knowing the
virtues with which her Majesty is endued, I assure myself that the
protestations I am now making will entirely satisfy her."

He then expressed the fervent hope that the holy work of negotiation now
commencing would result in a renewal of the ancient friendship between
the Houses of Burgundy and of England, asserting that "there had never
been so favourable a time as the present."

Under former governments of the Netherlands there had been many mistakes
and misunderstandings.

"The Duke of Alva," said he, "has learned by this time, before the
judgment-seat of God, how he discharged his functions, succeeding as he
did my mother, the Duchess of Parma who left the Provinces in so
flourishing a condition.  Of this, however, I will say no more, because
of a feud between the Houses of Farnese and of Alva.  As for Requesens,
he was a good fellow, but didn't understand his business.  Don John of
Austria again, whose soul I doubt not is in heaven, was young and poor,
and disappointed in all his designs; but God has never offered so great a
hope of assured peace as might now be accomplished by her Majesty."

Finding the Duke in so fervent and favourable a state of mind, the envoy
renewed his demand that at least the first meeting of the commissioners
might be held at Ostend.

"Her Majesty finds herself so touched in honour upon this point, that if
it be not conceded--as I doubt not it will be, seeing the singular
forwardness of your Highness"--said the artful Doctor with a smile,
"we are no less than commanded to return to her Majesty's presence."

"I sent Richardot to you yesterday," said Alexander; "did he not content
you?"

"Your Highness, no," replied Ropers.  "Moreover her Majesty sent me to
your Alteza, and not to Richardot.  And the matter is of such importance
that I pray you to add to all your graces and favours heaped upon me,
this one of sending your commissioners to Ostend."

His Highness could hold out no longer; but suddenly catching the Doctor
in his arms, and hugging him "in most honourable and amiable manner," he
cried--

"Be contented, be cheerful; my lord ambassador.  You shall be satisfied
upon this point also."

"And never did envoy depart;" cried the lord ambassador, when he could
get his breath, "more bound to you; and more resolute to speak honour of
your Highness than I do."

"To-morrow we will ride together towards Bruges;" said the Duke, in
conclusion.  "Till then farewell."

Upon, this he again heartily embraced the envoy, and the friends parted
for the day.

Next morning; 28th March, the Duke, who was on his way to Bruges and
Sluys to look after his gun-boats, and, other naval, and military
preparations, set forth on horseback, accompanied by the Marquis del
Vasto, and, for part of the way, by Rogers.

They conversed on the general topics of the approaching negotiations; the
Duke, expressing the opinion that the treaty of peace would be made short
work with; for it only needed to renew the old ones between the Houses of
England and Burgundy.  As for the Hollanders and Zeelanders, and their
accomplices, he thought there would be no cause of stay on their account;
and in regard to the cautionary towns he felt sure that her Majesty had
never had any intention of appropriating them to herself, and would
willingly surrender them to the King.

Rogers thought it a good opportunity to put in a word for the Dutchmen;
who certainly, would not have thanked him for his assistance at that
moment.

"Not, to give offence to your Highness," he said, "if the Hollanders and
Zeelanders, with their confederates, like to come into this treaty,
surely your Highness would not object?"

Alexander, who had been riding along quietly during this conversation;
with his right, hand, on, his hip, now threw out his arm energetically:

"Let them come into it; let them treat, let them conclude," he exclaimed,
"in the name of Almighty God!  I have always been well disposed to peace,
and am now more so than ever.  I could even, with the loss of my life, be
content to have peace made at this time."

Nothing more, worthy of commemoration, occurred during this concluding
interview; and the envoy took his leave at Bruges, and returned to
Ostend.

I have furnished the reader with a minute account of these conversations,
drawn entirely, from the original records; not so much because the
interviews were in themselves of vital importance; but because they
afford a living and breathing example--better than a thousand homilies--
of the easy victory which diplomatic or royal mendacity may always obtain
over innocence and credulity.

Certainly never was envoy more thoroughly beguiled than the excellent
John upon this occasion.  Wiser than a serpent, as he imagined himself
to be, more harmless than a dove; as Alexander found him, he could not,
sufficiently congratulate himself upon the triumphs of his eloquence and
his adroitness; and despatched most glowing accounts of his proceedings
to the Queen.

His ardour was somewhat damped, however, at receiving a message from her
Majesty in reply, which was anything but benignant.  His eloquence was
not commended; and even his preamble, with its touching allusion to the
live mothers tendering their offspring--the passage: which had brought
the tears into the large eyes of Alexander--was coldly and cruelly
censured.

"Her Majesty can in no sort like such speeches"--so ran the return-
despatch--" in which she is made to beg for peace.  The King of Spain
standeth in as great need of peace as her self; and she doth greatly
mislike the preamble of Dr. Rogers in his address to the Duke at Ghent,
finding it, in very truth quite fond and vain.  I am commanded by a
particular letter to let him understand how much her Majesty is offended
with him."

Alexander, on his part, informed his royal master of these interviews, in
which there had been so much effusion of sentiment, in very brief
fashion.

"Dr. Rogers, one of the Queen's commissioners, has been here," he said,
"urging me with all his might to let all your Majesty's deputies go, if
only for one hour, to Ostend.  I refused, saying, I would rather they
should go to England than into a city of your Majesty held by English
troops.  I told him it ought to be satisfactory that I had offered the
Queen, as a lady, her choice of any place in the Provinces, or on neutral
ground.  Rogers expressed regret for all the, bloodshed and other
consequences if the negotiations should fall through for so trifling a
cause; the more so as in return for this little compliment to the Queen
she would not only restore to your Majesty everything that she holds in
the Netherlands, but would assist you to recover the part which remains
obstinate.  To quiet him and to consume time, I have promised that
President Richardot shall go and try to satisfy them.  Thus two or three
weeks more will be wasted.  But at last the time will come for exhibiting
the powers.  They are very anxious to see mine; and when at last they
find I have none, I fear that they will break off the negotiations."

Could the Queen have been informed of this voluntary offer on the part of
her envoy to give up the cautionary towns, and to assist in reducing the
rebellion, she might have used stronger language of rebuke.  It is quite
possible, however, that Farnese--not so attentively following the
Doctor's eloquence as he had appeared to do-had somewhat inaccurately
reported the conversations, which, after all, he knew to be of no
consequence whatever, except as time-consumers.  For Elizabeth, desirous
of peace as she was, and trusting to Farnese's sincerity as she was
disposed to do, was more sensitive than ever as to her dignity.

"We charge you all," she wrote with her own hand to the commissioners,
"that no word he overslipt by them, that may, touch our honour and
greatness, that be not answered with good sharp words.  I am a king that
will be ever known not to fear any but God."

It would have been better, however, had the Queen more thoroughly
understood that the day for scolding had quite gone by, and that
something sharper than the sharpest words would soon be wanted to protect
England and herself from impending doom.  For there was something almost
gigantic in the frivolities with which weeks and months of such precious
time were now squandered.  Plenary powers--"commission bastantissima"--
from his sovereign had been announced by Alexander as in his possession;
although the reader has seen that he had no such powers at all.  The
mission of Rogers had quieted the envoys at Ostend for a time, and they
waited quietly for the visit of Richardot to Ostend, into which the
promised meeting of all the Spanish commissioners in that city had
dwindled.  Meantime there was an exchange of the most friendly amenities
between the English and their mortal enemies.  Hardly a day passed that
La Motte, or Renty, or Aremberg, did not send Lord Derby, or Cobham, or
Robert Cecil, a hare, or a pheasant, or a cast of hawks, and they in
return sent barrel upon barrel of Ostend oysters, five or six hundred at
a time.  The Englishmen, too; had it in their power to gratify Alexander
himself with English greyhounds, for which he had a special liking.
"You would wonder," wrote Cecil to his father, "how fond he is of English
dogs."  There was also much good preaching among other occupations, at
Ostend.  "My Lord of Derby's two chaplains," said Cecil, "have seasoned
this town better with sermons than it had been before for a year's
apace."  But all this did not expedite the negotiations, nor did the
Duke manifest so much anxiety for colloquies as for greyhounds.  So, in
an unlucky hour for himself, another "fond and vain" old gentleman--James
Croft, the comptroller who had already figured, not much to his credit,
in the secret negotiations between the Brussels and English courts--
betook himself, unauthorized and alone; to the Duke at Bruges.  Here he
had an interview very similar in character to that in which John Rogers
had been indulged, declared to Farnese that the Queen was most anxious
for peace, and invited him to send a secret envoy to England, who would
instantly have ocular demonstration of the fact.  Croft returned as
triumphantly as the excellent Doctor had done; averring that there was no
doubt as to the immediate conclusion of a treaty.  His grounds of belief
were very similar to those upon which Rogers had founded his faith.
"Tis a weak old man of seventy," said Parma, "with very little sagacity.
I am inclined to think that his colleagues are taking him in, that they
may the better deceive us.  I will see that they do nothing of the kind."
But the movement was purely one of the comptroller's own inspiration; for
Sir James had a singular facility for getting himself into trouble, and
for making confusion.  Already, when he had been scarcely a day in
Ostend, he had insulted the governor of the place, Sir John Conway, had
given him the lie in the hearing of many of his own soldiers, had gone
about telling all the world that he had express authority from her
Majesty to send him home in disgrace, and that the Queen had called him
a fool, and quite unfit for his post.  And as if this had not been
mischief-making enough, in addition to the absurd De Loo and Bodman
negotiations of the previous year, in which he had been the principal
actor, he had crowned his absurdities by this secret and officious visit
to Ghent.  The Queen, naturally very indignant at this conduct,
reprehended him severely, and ordered him back to England.  The
comptroller was wretched.  He expressed his readiness to obey her
commands, but nevertheless implored his dread sovereign to take merciful
consideration of the manifold misfortunes, ruin, and utter undoing, which
thereby should fall upon him and his unfortunate family.  All this he
protested he would "nothing esteem if it tended to her Majesty's pleasure
or service,"  but seeing it should effectuate nothing but to bring the
aged carcase of her poor vassal to present decay, he implored compassion
upon his hoary hairs, and promised to repair the error of his former
proceedings.  He avowed that he would not have ventured to disobey for a
moment her orders to return, but "that his aged and feeble limbs did not
retain sufficient force, without present death, to comply with her
commandment."  And with that he took to his bed, and remained there until
the Queen was graciously pleased to grant him her pardon.

At last, early in May--instead of the visit of Richardot--there was a
preliminary meeting of all the commissioners in tents on the sands;
within a cannon-shot of Ostend, and between that place and Newport.
It was a showy and ceremonious interview, in which no business was
transacted.  The commissioners of Philip were attended by a body of one
hundred and fifty light horse, and by three hundred private gentlemen in
magnificent costume.  La Motte also came from Newport with one thousand
Walloon cavalry while the English Commissioners, on their part were
escorted from Ostend by an imposing array of English and Dutch troops.'
As the territory was Spanish; the dignity of the King was supposed to be
preserved, and Alexander, who had promised Dr. Rogers that the first
interview should take place within Ostend itself, thought it necessary to
apologize to his sovereign for so nearly keeping his word as to send the
envoys within cannon-shot of the town.  "The English commissioners," said
he, "begged with so much submission for this concession, that I thought
it as well to grant it."

The Spanish envoys were despatched by the Duke of Parma, well provided
with full powers for himself, which were not desired by the English
government, but unfurnished with a commission from Philip, which had been
pronounced indispensable.  There was, therefore, much prancing of
cavalry, flourishing of trumpets, and eating of oysters; at the first
conference, but not one stroke of business.  As the English envoys
had now been three whole months in Ostend, and as this was the first
occasion on which they had been brought face to face with the Spanish
commissioners, it must be confessed that the tactics of Farnese had been
masterly.  Had the haste in the dock-yards of Lisbon and Cadiz been at
all equal to the magnificent procrastination in the council-chambers of
Bruges and Ghent, Medina Sidonia might already have been in the Thames.

But although little ostensible business was performed, there was one
man who had always an eye to his work.  The same servant in plain livery,
who had accompanied Secretary Garnier, on his first visit to the English
commissioners at Ostend, had now come thither again, accompanied by a
fellow-lackey.  While the complimentary dinner, offered in the name of
the absent Farnese to the Queen's representatives, was going forward, the
two menials strayed off together to the downs, for the purpose of rabbit-
shooting.  The one of them was the same engineer who had already, on the
former occasion, taken a complete survey of the fortifications of Ostend;
the other was no less a personage than the Duke of Parma himself.  The
pair now made a thorough examination of the town and its neighbourhood,
and, having finished their reconnoitring, made the best of their way back
to Bruges.  As it was then one of Alexander's favourite objects to reduce
the city of Ostend, at the earliest possible moment, it must be allowed
that this preliminary conference was not so barren to himself as it was
to the commissioners.  Philip, when informed of this manoeuvre, was
naturally gratified at such masterly duplicity, while he gently rebuked
his nephew for exposing his valuable life; and certainly it would have
been an inglorious termination to the Duke's splendid career; had he been
hanged as a spy within the trenches of Ostend.  With the other details
of this first diplomatic colloquy Philip was delighted.  "I see you
understand me thoroughly," he said.  "Keep the negotiation alive till
my Armada appears, and then carry out my determination, and replant
the Catholic religion on the soil of England."

The Queen was not in such high spirits.  She was losing her temper very
fast, as she became more and more convinced that she had been trifled
with.  No powers had been yet exhibited, no permanent place of conference
fixed upon, and the cessation of arms demanded by her commissioners for
England, Spain, and all the Netherlands, was absolutely refused.  She
desired her commissioners to inform the Duke of Parma that it greatly
touched his honour--as both before their coming and afterwards, he had
assured her that he had 'comision bastantissima' from his sovereign--to
clear himself at once from the imputation of insincerity.  "Let not the
Duke think," she wrote with her own hand, "that we would so long time
endure these many frivolous and unkindly dealings, but that we desire all
the world to know our desire of a kingly peace, and that we will endure
no more the like, nor any, but will return you from your charge."

Accordingly--by her Majesty's special command--Dr. Dale made another
visit to Bruges, to discover, once for all, whether there was a
commission from Philip or not; and, if so, to see it with his own eyes.
On the 7th May he had an interview with the Duke.  After thanking his
Highness for the honourable and stately manner in which the conferences
had been, inaugurated near Ostend, Dale laid very plainly before him her
Majesty's complaints of the tergiversations and equivocations concerning
the commission, which had now lasted three months long.

In answer, Alexander made a complimentary harangue; confining himself
entirely to the first part of the envoy's address, and assuring him in
redundant phraseology, that he should hold himself very guilty before
the world, if he had not surrounded the first colloquy between the
plenipotentiaries of two such mighty princes, with as much pomp as the
circumstances of time and place would allow.  After this superfluous
rhetoric had been poured forth, he calmly dismissed the topic which Dr.
Dale had come all the way from.  Ostend to discuss, by carelessly
observing that President Richardot would confer with him on the subject
of the commission.

"But," said the envoy, "tis no matter of conference or dispute.  I desire
simply to see the commission."

"Richardot and Champagny shall deal with you in the afternoon," repeated
Alexander; and with this reply, the Doctor was fair to be contented.

Dale then alluded to the point of cessation of arms.

"Although," said he, "the Queen might justly require that the cessation
should be general for all the King's dominion, yet in order not to stand
on precise points, she is content that it should extend no further than
to the towns of Flushing; Brief, Ostend, and Bergen-op-Zoom."

"To this he said nothing," wrote the envoy, "and so I went no further."

In the afternoon Dale had conference with Champagny and Richardot.  As
usual, Champagny was bound hand and foot by the gout, but was as quick-
witted and disputatious as ever.  Again Dale made an earnest harangue,
proving satisfactorily--as if any proof were necessary on such a point--
that a commission from Philip ought to be produced, and that a commission
had been promised, over and over again.

After a pause, both the representatives of Parma began to wrangle with
the envoy in very insolent fashion.  "Richardot is always their mouth-
piece," said Dale, "only Champagny choppeth in at every word, and would
do so likewise in ours if we would suffer it."

"We shall never have done with these impertinent demands," said the
President.  "You ought to be satisfied with the Duke's promise of
ratification contained in his commission.  We confess what you say
concerning the former requisitions and promises to be true, but when will
you have done?  Have we not showed it to Mr. Croft, one of your own
colleagues?  And if we show it you now, another may come to-morrow, and
so we shall never have an end."

"The delays come from yourselves," roundly replied the Englishman, "for
you refuse to do what in reason and law you are bound to do.  And the
more demands the more 'mora aut potius culpa' in you.  You, of all men,
have least cause to hold such language, who so confidently and even
disdainfully answered our demand for the commission, in Mr. Cecil's
presence, and promised to show a perfect one at the very first meeting.
As for Mr. Comptroller Croft, he came hither without the command of her
Majesty and without the knowledge of his colleagues."

Richardot then began to insinuate that, as Croft had come without
authority, so--for aught they could tell--might Dale also.  But Champagny
here interrupted, protested that the president was going too far, and
begged him to show the commission without further argument.

Upon this Richardot pulled out the commission from under his gown, and
placed it in Dr. Dale's hands!

It was dated 17th April, 1588, signed and sealed by the King,
and written in French, and was to the effect, that as there had been
differences between her Majesty and himself; as her Majesty had sent
ambassadors into the Netherlands, as the Duke of Parma had entered into
treaty with her Majesty, therefore the King authorised the Duke to
appoint commissioners to treat, conclude, and determine all controversies
and misunderstandings, confirmed any such appointments already made, and
promised to ratify all that might be done by them in the premises.'

Dr. Dale expressed his satisfaction with the tenor of this document,
and begged to be furnished with a copy of it, but his was peremptorily
refused.  There was then a long conversation--ending, as usual, in
nothing--on the two other points, the place for the conferences, namely,
and the cessation of arms.

Nest morning Dale, in taking leave of the Duke of Parma, expressed the
gratification which he felt, and which her Majesty was sure to feel at
the production of the commission.  It was now proved, said the envoy,
that the King was as earnestly in favour of peace as the Duke was
himself.

Dale then returned, well satisfied, to Ostend.

In truth the commission had arrived just in time.  "Had I not received it
soon enough to produce it then," said Alexander, "the Queen would have
broken off the negotiations.  So I ordered Richardot, who is quite aware
of your Majesty's secret intentions, from which we shall not swerve one
jot, to show it privately to Croft, and afterwards to Dr. Dale, but
without allowing a copy of it to be taken."

"You have done very well," replied Philip, "but that commission is, on no
account, to be used, except for show.  You know my mind thoroughly."

Thus three months had been consumed, and at last one indispensable
preliminary to any negotiation had, in appearance, been performed.  Full
powers on both sides had been exhibited.  When the Queen of England gave
the Earl of Derby and his colleagues commission to treat with the King's
envoys, and pledged herself beforehand to, ratify all their proceedings,
she meant to perform the promise to which she had affixed her royal name
and seal.  She could not know that the Spanish monarch was deliberately
putting his name to a lie, and chuckling in secret over the credulity of
his English sister, who was willing to take his word and his bond.  Of a
certainty the English were no match for southern diplomacy.

But Elizabeth was now more impatient than ever that the other two
preliminaries should be settled, the place of conferences, and the
armistice.

"Be plain with the Duke," she wrote to her envoys, "that we have
tolerated so many weeks in tarrying a commission, that I will never
endure more delays.  Let him know he deals with a prince who prizes her
honour more than her life:  Make yourselves such as stand of your
reputations."

Sharp words, but not sharp enough to prevent a further delay of a month;
for it was not till the 6th June that the commissioners at last came
together at Bourbourg, that "miserable little hole," on the coast between
Ostend and Newport, against which Gamier had warned them.  And now there
was ample opportunity to wrangle at full length on the next preliminary,
the cessation of arms.  It would be superfluous to follow the
altercations step by step--for negotiations there were none--and it is
only for the sake of exhibiting at full length the infamy of diplomacy,
when diplomacy is unaccompanied by honesty, that we are hanging up this
series of pictures at all.  Those bloodless encounters between credulity
and vanity upon one side, and gigantic fraud on the other, near those
very sands of Newport, and in sight of the Northern Ocean, where, before
long, the most terrible battles, both by land and sea, which the age had
yet witnessed, were to occur, are quite as full of instruction and moral
as the most sanguinary combats ever waged.

At last the commissioners exchanged copies of their respective powers.
After four months of waiting and wrangling, so much had been achieved--
a show of commissions and a selection of the place for conference.  And
now began the long debate about the cessation of arms.  The English
claimed an armistice for the whole dominion of Philip and Elizabeth
respectively, during the term of negotiation, and for twenty days after.
The Spanish would grant only a temporary truce, terminable at six days'
notice, and that only for the four cautionary towns of Holland held by
the Queen.  Thus Philip would be free to invade England at his leisure
out of the obedient Netherlands or Spain.  This was inadmissible, of
course, but a week was spent at the outset in reducing the terms to
writing; and when the Duke's propositions were at last produced in the
French tongue, they were refused by the Queen's commissioners, who
required that the documents should be in Latin.  Great was the triumph of
Dr. Dale, when, after another interval, he found their Latin full of
barbarisms and blunders, at which a school-boy would have blushed.  The
King's commissioners, however, while halting in their syntax, had kept
steadily to their point.

"You promised a general cessation of aims at our coming," said Dale, at a
conference on the 2/12 June, "and now ye have lingered five times twenty
days, and nothing done at all.  The world may see the delays come of you
and not of us, and that ye are not so desirous of peace as ye pretend."

"But as far your invasion of England," stoutly observed the Earl of
Derby, "ye shall find it hot coming thither.  England was never so ready
in any former age,--neither by sea nor by land; but we would show your
unreasonableness in proposing a cessation of arms by which ye would bind
her Majesty to forbear touching all the Low Countries, and yet leave
yourselves at liberty to invade England."

While they were thus disputing, Secretary Gamier rushed into the room,
looking very much frightened, and announced that Lord Henry Seymour's
fleet of thirty-two ships of war was riding off Gravelines, and that he
had sent two men on shore who were now waiting in the ante-chamber.

The men being accordingly admitted, handed letters to the English
commissioners from Lord Henry, in which be begged to be informed in
what terms they were standing, and whether they needed his assistance
or countenance in the cause in which they were engaged.  The envoys found
his presence very "comfortable," as it showed the Spanish commissioners
that her Majesty was so well provided as to make a cessation of arms less
necessary to her than it was to the King.  They therefore sent their
thanks to the Lord Admiral, begging him to cruise for a time off Dunkirk
and its neighbourhood, that both their enemies and their friends might
have a sight of the English ships.

Great was the panic all along the coast at this unexpected demonstration.
The King's commissioners got into their coaches, and drove down to the
coast to look at the fleet, and--so soon as they appeared--were received
with such a thundering cannonade an hour long, by way of salute, as to
convince them, in the opinion of the English envoys, that the Queen had
no cause to be afraid of any enemies afloat or ashore.

But these noisy arguments were not much more effective than the
interchange of diplomatic broadsides which they had for a moment
superseded.  The day had gone by for blank cartridges and empty
protocols.  Nevertheless Lord Henry's harmless thunder was answered, the
next day, by a "Quintuplication" in worse Latin than ever, presented to
Dr. Dale and his colleagues by Richardot and Champagny, on the subject of
the armistice.  And then there was a return quintuplication, in choice
Latin, by the classic Dale, and then there was a colloquy on the
quintuplication, and everything that had been charged, and truly
charged, by the English; was now denied by the King's commissioners;
and Champagny--more gouty and more irascible than ever--"chopped in" at
every word spoken by King's envoys or Queen's, contradicted everybody,
repudiated everything said or done by Andrew de Loo, or any of the other
secret negotiators during the past year, declared that there never had
been a general cessation of arms promised, and that, at any rate, times
were now changed, and such an armistice was inadmissible!  Then the
English answered with equal impatience, and reproached the King's
representatives with duplicity and want of faith, and censured them for
their unseemly language, and begged to inform Champagny and Richardot
that they had not then to deal with such persons as they might formerly
have been in the habit of treating withal, but with a "great prince who
did justify the honour of her actions," and they confuted the positions
now assumed by their opponents with official documents and former
statements from those very opponents' lips.  And then, after all this
diplomatic and rhetorical splutter, the high commissioners recovered
their temper and grew more polite, and the King's "envoys excused
themselves in a mild, merry manner," for the rudeness of their speeches,
and the Queen's envoys accepted their apologies with majestic urbanity,
and so they separated for the day in a more friendly manner than they
had done the day before.'

"You see to what a scholar's shift we have been driven for want of
resolution," said Valentine Dale.  "If we should linger here until there
should be broken heads, in what case we should be God knoweth.  For I can
trust Champagny and Richardot no farther than I can see them."

And so the whole month of June passed by; the English commissioners
"leaving no stone unturned to get a quiet cessation of arms in general
terms," and being constantly foiled; yet perpetually kept in hope that
the point would soon be carried.  At the same time the signs of the
approaching invasion seemed to thicken.  "In my opinion," said Dale,
"as Phormio spake in matters of wars, it were very requisite that my Lord
Harry should be always on this coast, for they will steal out from hence
as closely as they can, either to join with the Spanish navy or to land,
and they may be very easily scattered, by God's grace."  And, with the
honest pride of a protocol-maker, he added, "our postulates do trouble
the King's commissioners very much, and do bring them to despair."

The excellent Doctor had not even yet discovered that the King's
commissioners were delighted with his postulates; and that to have kept
them postulating thus five months in succession, while naval and military
preparations were slowly bringing forth a great event--which was soon to
strike them with as much amazement as if the moon had fallen out of
heaven--was one of the most decisive triumphs ever achieved by Spanish
diplomacy.  But the Doctor thought that his logic had driven the King of
Spain to despair.

At the same time he was not insensible to the merits of another and more
peremptory style of rhetoric,--"I pray you," said he to Walsingham, "let
us hear some arguments from my Lord Harry out of her Majesty's navy now
and then.  I think they will do more good than any bolt that we can shoot
here.  If they be met with at their going out, there is no possibility
for them to make any resistance, having so few men that can abide the
sea; for the rest, as you know, must be sea-sick at first."

But the envoys were completely puzzled.  Even at the beginning of July,
Sir James Croft was quite convinced of the innocence of the King and the
Duke; but Croft was in his dotage.  As for Dale, he occasionally opened
his eyes, and his ears, but more commonly kept them well closed to the
significance of passing events; and consoled himself with his protocols
and his classics, and the purity of his own Latin.

"'Tis a very wise saying of Terence," said he, "omnibus nobis ut res dant
sese; ita magni aut humiles sumus.'  When the King's commissioners hear
of the King's navy from Spain, they are in such jollity that they talk
loud .  .  .  .  .  In the mean time--as the wife of Bath sath in Chaucer
by her husband, we owe them not a word.  If we should die tomorrow;
I hope her Majesty will find by our writings that the honour of the
cause, in the opinion of the world, must be with her Majesty; and that
her commissioners are, neither of such imperfection in their reasons,
or so barbarous in language, as they who fail not, almost in every line,
of some barbarism not to be borne in a grammar-school, although in
subtleness and impudent affirming of untruths and denying of truths, her
commissioners are not in any respect to match with Champagny and
Richardot, who are doctors in that faculty."

It might perhaps prove a matter of indifference to Elizabeth and to
England, when the Queen should be a state-prisoner in Spain and the
Inquisition quietly established in her kingdom, whether the world should
admit or not, in case of his decease, the superiority of Dr. Dale's logic
and latin to those of his antagonists.  And even if mankind conceded the
best of the argument to the English diplomatists, that diplomacy might
seem worthless which could be blind to the colossal falsehoods growing
daily before its eyes.  Had the commissioners been able to read the
secret correspondence between Parma and his master--as we have had the
opportunity of doing--they would certainly not have left their homes in
February, to be made fools of until July; but would, on their knees, have
implored their royal mistress to awake from her fatal delusion before it
should be too late.  Even without that advantage, it seems incredible
that they should have been unable to pierce through the atmosphere of
duplicity which surrounded them, and to obtain one clear glimpse of the
destruction so, steadily advancing upon England.

For the famous bull of Sixtus V. had now been fulminated.  Elizabeth had
bean again denounced as a bastard and usurper, and her kingdom had been
solemnly conferred upon Philip, with title of defender of the Christian,
faith, to have and to hold as tributary and feudatory of Rome.  The so-
called Queen had usurped the crown contrary to the ancient treaties
between the apostolic stool and the kingdom of England, which country,
on its reconciliation with the head of the church after the death of
St. Thomas of Canterbury, had recognised the necessity of the Pope's.
consent in the succession to its throne; she had deserved chastisement
for the terrible tortures inflicted by her upon English Catholics and
God's own saints; and it was declared an act of virtue, to be repaid with
plenary indulgence and forgiveness of all sins, to lay violent hands on
the usurper, and deliver her into the hands of the Catholic party.  And
of the holy league against the usurper, Philip was appointed the head,
and Alexander of Parma chief commander.  This document was published in
large numbers in Antwerp in the English tongue.

The pamphlet of Dr. Allen, just named Cardinal, was also translated in
the same city, under the direction of the Duke of Parma, in-order to be
distributed throughout England, on the arrival in that kingdom of the
Catholic troops.  The well-known 'Admonition to the Nobility and People
of England and Ireland' accused the Queen of every crime and vice which
can pollute humanity; and was filled with foul details unfit for the
public eye in these more decent days.

So soon as the intelligence of these publications reached England, the
Queen ordered her commissioners at Bourbourg to take instant cognizance
of them, and to obtain a categorical explanation on the subject from
Alexander himself: as if an explanation were possible, as if the designs
of Sixtus, Philip, and Alexander, could any longer be doubted, and as if
the Duke were more likely now than before to make a succinct statement
of them for the benefit of her Majesty.

"Having discovered," wrote Elizabeth on the 9th July (N.S.), "that this
treaty of peace is entertained only to abuse us, and being many ways
given to understand that the preparations which have so long been making,
and which now are consummated, both in Spain and the Low Countries, are
purposely to be employed against us and our country; finding that, for
the furtherance of these exploits, there is ready to be published a vile,
slanderous, and blasphemous book, containing as many lies as lines,
entitled, 'An Admonition,' &c., and contrived by a lewd born-subject of
ours, now become an arrant traitor, named Dr. Allen, lately made, a
cardinal at Rome; as also a bull of the Pope, whereof we send you a copy,
both very lately brought into those Low Countries, the one whereof is
already printed at Antwerp, in a great multitude; in the English tongue,
and the other ordered to be printed, only to stir up our subjects,
contrary to the laws of God and their allegiance, to join with such
foreign purposes as are prepared against us and our realm, to come out of
those Low Countries and out of Spain; and as it appears by the said bull
that the Duke of Parma is expressly named and chosen by the Pope and the
King of Spain to be principal executioner of these intended enterprises,
we cannot think it honourable for us to continue longer the treaty of
peace with them that, under colour of treaty, arm themselves with all the
power they can to a bloody war."

Accordingly the Queen commanded Dr. Dale, as one of the commissioners,
to proceed forthwith to the Duke, in order to obtain explanations as to
his contemplated conquest of her realm, and as to his share in the
publication of the bull and pamphlet, and to "require him, as he would be
accounted a prince of honour, to let her plainly understand what she
might think thereof."  The envoy was to assure him that the Queen would
trust implicitly to his statement, to adjure him to declare the truth,
and, in case he avowed the publications and the belligerent intentions
suspected, to demand instant safe-conduct to England for her
commissioners, who would, of course, instantly leave the Netherlands.
On the other hand, if the Duke disavowed those infamous documents,
he was to be requested to punish the printers, and have the books
burned by the hangman?

Dr. Dale, although suffering from cholic, was obliged to set forth,
at once upon what he felt would be a bootless journey.  At his return--
which was upon the 22nd of July (N.S.)the shrewd old gentleman had nearly
arrived at the opinion that her Majesty might as well break off the
negotiations.  He had a "comfortless voyage and a ticklish message;"
found all along the road signs of an approaching enterprise, difficult to
be mistaken; reported 10,000 veteran Spaniards, to which force Stanley's
regiment was united; 6000 Italians, 3000 Germans, all with pikes,
corselets, and slash swords complete; besides 10,000 Walloons.  The
transports for the cavalry at Gravelingen he did not see, nor was he
much impressed with what he heard as to the magnitude of the naval
preparations at Newport.  He was informed that the Duke was about making
a foot-pilgrimage from Brussels to Our Lady of Halle, to implore victory
for his banners, and had daily evidence of the soldier's expectation to
invade and to "devour England."  All this had not tended to cure him of
the low spirits with which he began the journey.  Nevertheless, although
he was unable--as will be seen--to report an entirely satisfactory answer
from Farnese to the Queen upon the momentous questions entrusted to him,
he, at least, thought of a choice passage in 'The AEneid,' so very apt to
the circumstances, as almost to console him for the "pangs of his cholic"
and the terrors of the approaching invasion.

"I have written two or three verses out of Virgil for the Queen to read,"
said he, "which I pray your Lordship to present unto her.  God grant her
to weigh them.  If your Lordship do read the whole discourse of Virgil in
that place, it will make your heart melt.  Observe the report of the
ambassadors that were sent to Diomedes to make war against the Trojans,
for the old hatred that he, being a Grecian, did bear unto them; and note
the answer of Diomedes dissuading them from entering into war with the
Trojans, the perplexity of the King, the miseries of the country, the
reasons of Drances that spake against them which would have war, the
violent persuasions of Turnus to war; and note, I pray you; one word,
'nec te ullius violentia frangat.'  What a lecture could I make with Mr.
Cecil upon that passage in Virgil!"

The most important point for the reader to remark is the date of this
letter.  It was received in the very last days of the month of July.
Let him observe--as he will soon have occasion to do--the events which
were occurring on land and sea, exactly at the moment when this classic
despatch reached its destination, and judge whether the hearts of the
Queen and Lord Burghley would be then quite at leisure to melt at the
sorrows of the Trojan War.  Perhaps the doings of Drake and Howard,
Medina Sidonia, and Ricalde, would be pressing as much on their attention
as the eloquence of Diomede or the wrath of Turnus.  Yet it may be
doubted whether the reports of these Grecian envoys might not in truth,
be almost as much to the purpose as the despatches of the diplomatic
pedant, with his Virgil and his cholic, into whose hands grave matters of
peace and war were entrusted in what seemed the day of England's doom.

"What a lecture I could make with Mr. Cecil on the subject!--"An English
ambassador, at the court of Philip II.'s viceroy, could indulge himself
in imaginary prelections on the AEneid, in the last days of July, of the
year of our Lord 1588!

The Doctor, however--to do him justice--had put the questions
categorically, to his Highness as he had been instructed to do.  He went
to Bruges so mysteriously; that no living man, that side the sea, save
Lord Derby and Lord Cobham, knew the cause of his journey. Poor-puzzling
James Croft, in particular, was moved almost to tears, by being kept out
of the secret.  On the 8/18 July Dale had audience of the Duke at Bruges.
After a few commonplaces, he was invited by the Duke to state what
special purpose had brought him to Bruges.

"There is a book printed at Antwerp," said Dale, "and set forth by a
fugitive from England, who calleth himself a cardinal."

Upon this the Duke began diligently to listen.

"This book," resumed Dale, "is an admonition to the nobility and people
of England and Ireland touching the execution of the sentence of the Pope
against the Queen which the King Catholic hath entrusted to your Highness
as chief of the enterprise.  There is also a bull of the Pope declaring
my sovereign mistress illegitimate and an usurper, with other matters too
odious for any prince or gentleman to name or hear.  In this bull the
Pope saith that he hath dealt with the most Catholic King to employ all
the means in his power to the deprivation and deposition of my sovereign,
and doth charge her subjects to assist the army appointed by the King
Catholic for that purpose, under the conduct of your Highness.  Therefore
her Majesty would be satisfied from your Highness in that point, and will
take satisfaction of none other; not doubting but that as you are a
prince of word and credit; you will deal plainly with her Majesty.
Whatsoever it may be, her Majesty will not take it amiss against your
Highness, so she may only be informed by you of the truth.  Wherefore I
do require you to satisfy the Queen."

"I am glad," replied the Duke, "that her Majesty and her commissioners do
take in good part my good-will towards them.  I am especially touched by
the good opinion her Majesty hath of my sincerity, which I should be glad
always to maintain.  As to the book to which you refer, I have never read
it, nor seen it, nor do I take heed of it.  It may well be that her
Majesty, whom it concerneth, should take notice of it; but, for my part,
I have nought to do with it, nor can I prevent men from writing or
printing at their pleasure.  I am at the commandment of my master only."

As Alexander made no reference to the Pope's bull, Dr. Dale observed,
that if a war had been, of purpose, undertaken at the instance of the
Pope, all this negotiation had been in vain, and her Majesty would be
obliged to withdraw her commissioners, not doubting that they would
receive safe-conduct as occasion should require.

"Yea, God forbid else," replied Alexander; "and further, I know nothing
of any bull of the Pope, nor do I care for any, nor do I undertake
anything for him.  But as for any misunderstanding (mal entendu) between
my master and her Majesty, I must, as a soldier, act at the command of my
sovereign.  For my part, I have always had such respect for her Majesty,
being so noble a Queen, as that I would never hearken to anything that
might be reproachful to her.  After my master, I would do most to serve
your Queen, and I hope she will take my word for her satisfaction on that
point.  And for avoiding of bloodshed and the burning of houses and such
other calamities as do follow the wars, I have been a petitioner to my
sovereign that all things might be ended quietly by a peace.  That is a
thing, however," added the Duke; "which you have more cause to desire
than we; for if the King my master, should lose a battle, he would be
able to recover it well enough, without harm to himself, being far enough
off in Spain, while, if the battle be lost on your side, you may lose
kingdom and all."

"By God's sufferance," rejoined the Doctor, "her Majesty is not without
means to defend her crown, that hath descended to her from so long a
succession of ancestors.  Moreover your Highness knows very well that
one battle cannot conquer a kingdom in another country."

"Well," said the Duke, "that is in God's hand."

"So it is," said the Doctor.

"But make an end of it," continued Alexander quietly, "and if you have
anything to put into writing; you will do me a pleasure by sending it to
me."

Dr. Valentine Dale was not the man to resist the temptation to make a
protocol, and promised one for the next day.

"I am charged only to give your Highness satisfaction," he said, "as to
her Majesty's sincere intentions, which have already been published to
the world in English, French, and Italian, in the hope that you may
also satisfy the Queen upon this other point.  I am but one of her
commissioners, and could not deal without my colleagues.  I crave leave
to depart to-morrow morning, and with safe-convoy, as I had in coming."

After the envoy had taken leave, the Duke summoned Andrea de Loo, and
related to him the conversation which had taken place.  He then, in the
presence of that personage, again declared--upon his honour and with very
constant affirmations, that he had never seen nor heard of the book--the
'Admonition' by Cardinal Allen--and that he knew nothing of any bull, and
had no regard to it.'

The plausible Andrew accompanied the Doctor to his lodgings, protesting
all the way of his own and his master's sincerity, and of their
unequivocal intentions to conclude a peace.  The next day the Doctor,
by agreement, brought a most able protocol of demands in the name of all
the commissioners of her Majesty; which able protocol the Duke did not at
that moment read, which he assuredly never read subsequently, and which
no human soul ever read afterwards.  Let the dust lie upon it, and upon
all the vast heaps of protocols raised mountains high during the spring
and summer of 1588.

"Dr. Dale has been with me two or three, times," said Parma, in giving
his account of these interviews to Philip.  "I don't know why he came,
but I think he wished to make it appear, by coming to Bruges, that the
rupture, when it occurs, was caused by us, not by the English.  He has
been complaining of Cardinal Allen's book, and I told him that I didn't
understand a word of English, and knew nothing whatever of the matter."

It has been already seen that the Duke had declared, on his word of
honour, that he had never heard of the famous pamphlet.  Yet at that very
moment letters were lying in his cabinet, received more than a fortnight
before from Philip, in which that monarch thanked Alexander for having
had the Cardinal's book translated at Antwerp!  Certainly few English
diplomatists could be a match for a Highness so liberal of his word of
honour.

But even Dr. Dale had at last convinced himself--even although the Duke
knew nothing of bull or pamphlet--that mischief was brewing against
England.  The sagacious man, having seen large bodies of Spaniards and
Walloons making such demonstrations of eagerness to be led against his
country, and "professing it as openly as if they were going to a fair or
market," while even Alexander himself could "no more hide it than did
Henry VIII. when he went to Boulogne," could not help suspecting
something amiss.

His colleague, however, Comptroller Croft, was more judicious, for he
valued himself on taking a sound, temperate, and conciliatory view of
affairs.  He was not the man to offend a magnanimous neighbour--who
meant nothing unfriendly by regarding his manoeuvres with superfluous
suspicion.  So this envoy wrote to Lord Burghley on the 2nd August
(N.S.)--let the reader mark the date--that, "although a great doubt
had been conceived as to the King's sincerity, .  .  .  .  yet that
discretion and experience induced him--the envoy--to think, that besides
the reverent opinion to be had of princes' oaths, and the general
incommodity which will come by the contrary, God had so balanced princes'
powers in that age, as they rather desire to assure themselves at home,
than with danger to invade their neighbours."

Perhaps the mariners of England--at that very instant exchanging
broadsides off the coast of Devon and Dorset with the Spanish Armada,
and doing their best to protect their native land from the most horrible
calamity which had ever impended over it--had arrived at a less reverent
opinion of princes' oaths; and it was well for England in that supreme
hour that there were such men as Howard and Drake, and Winter and
Frobisher, and a whole people with hearts of oak to defend her, while
bungling diplomatists and credulous dotards were doing their best to
imperil her existence.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Bungling diplomatists and credulous dotards
Fitter to obey than to command
Full of precedents and declamatory commonplaces
I am a king that will be ever known not to fear any but God
Infamy of diplomacy, when diplomacy is unaccompanied by honesty
Mendacity may always obtain over innocence and credulity
Never did statesmen know better how not to do
Pray here for satiety, (said Cecil) than ever think of variety
Simple truth was highest skill
Strength does a falsehood acquire in determined and skilful hand
That crowned criminal, Philip the Second




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v55
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 56, 1588



CHAPTER XVIII.  Part 2.

     Dangerous Discord in North Holland--Leicester's Resignation arrives
     --Enmity of Willoughby and Maurice--Willoughby's dark Picture of
     Affairs--Hatred between States and Leicestrians--Maurice's Answer to
     the Queen's Charges--End of Sonoy's Rebellion--Philip foments the
     Civil War in France--League's Threats and Plots against Henry--Mucio
     arrives in Paris--He is received with Enthusiasm--The King flies,
     and Spain triumphs in Paris--States expostulate with the Queen--
     English Statesmen still deceived--Deputies from Netherland Churches
     --Hold Conference with the Queen--And present long Memorials--More
     Conversations with the Queen--National Spirit of England and
     Holland--Dissatisfaction with Queen's Course--Bitter Complaints of
     Lord Howard--Want of Preparation in Army and Navy--Sanguine
     Statements of Leicester--Activity of Parma--The painful Suspense
     continues.


But it is necessary-in order to obtain a complete picture of that famous
year 1588, and to understand the cause from which such great events were
springing--to cast a glance at the internal politics of the States most
involved in Philip's meshes.

Certainly, if there had ever been a time when the new commonwealth of the
Netherlands should be both united in itself and on thoroughly friendly
terms with England, it was exactly that epoch of which we are treating.
There could be no reasonable doubt that the designs of Spain against
England were hostile, and against Holland revengeful.  It was at least
possible that Philip meant to undertake the conquest of England, and to
undertake it as a stepping-stone to the conquest of Holland.  Both the
kingdom and the republic should have been alert, armed, full of suspicion
towards the common foe, full of confidence in each other.  What decisive
blows might have been struck against Parma in the Netherlands, when his
troops were starving, sickly, and mutinous, if the Hollanders and
Englishmen had been united under one chieftain, and thoroughly convinced
of the impossibility of peace!  Could the English and Dutch statesmen of
that day have read all the secrets of their great enemy's heart, as it is
our privilege at this hour to do, they would have known that in sudden
and deadly strokes lay their best chance of salvation.  But, without that
advantage, there were men whose sagacity told them that it was the hour
for deeds and not for dreams.  For to Leicester and Walsingham, as well
as to Paul Buys and Barneveld, peace with Spain seemed an idle vision.
It was unfortunate that they were overruled by Queen Elizabeth and
Burghley, who still clung to that delusion; it was still more disastrous
that the intrigues of Leicester had done so much to paralyze the
republic; it was almost fatal that his departure, without laying down his
authority, had given the signal for civil war.

During the winter, spring, and summer of 1588, while the Duke--in the
face of mighty obstacles--was slowly proceeding with his preparations in
Flanders, to co-operate with the armaments from Spain, it would have been
possible by a combined movement to destroy his whole plan, to liberate
all the Netherlands, and to avert, by one great effort, the ruin
impending over England.  Instead of such vigorous action, it was thought
wiser to send commissioners, to make protocols, to ask for armistices,
to give profusely to the enemy that which he was most in need of--time.
Meanwhile the Hollanders and English could quarrel comfortably among
themselves, and the little republic, for want of a legal head, could come
as near as possible to its dissolution.

Young Maurice--deep thinker for his years and peremptory in action--was
not the man to see his great father's life-work annihilated before his
eyes, so long as he had an arm and brain of his own.  He accepted his
position at the head of the government of Holland and Zeeland, and as
chief of the war-party.  The council of state, mainly composed of
Leicester's creatures, whose commissions would soon expire by their own
limitation, could offer but a feeble resistance to such determined
individuals as Maurice, Buys, and Barneveld.  The party made rapid
progress.  On the other hand, the English Leicestrians did their best
to foment discord in the Provinces.  Sonoy was sustained in his rebellion
in North Holland, not only by the Earl's partizans, but by Elizabeth
herself.  Her rebukes to Maurice, when Maurice was pursuing the only
course which seemed to him consistent with honour and sound policy,
were sharper than a sword.  Well might Duplessis Mornay observe, that
the commonwealth had been rather strangled than embraced by the English
Queen.  Sonoy, in the name of Leicester, took arms against Maurice and
the States; Maurice marched against him; and Lord Willoughby, commander-
in-chief of the English forces, was anxious to march against Maurice.
It was a spectacle to make angels weep, that of Englishmen and Hollanders
preparing to cut each other's throats, at the moment when Philip and
Parma were bending all their energies to crush England and Holland at
once.

Indeed, the interregnum between the departure of Leicester and his
abdication was diligently employed by his more reckless partizans to
defeat and destroy the authority of the States.  By prolonging the
interval, it was hoped that no government would be possible except the
arbitrary rule of the Earl, or of a successor with similar views: for a
republic--a free commonwealth--was thought an absurdity.  To entrust
supreme power to advocates; merchants, and mechanics, seemed as hopeless
as it was vulgar.  Willoughby; much devoted to Leicester and much
detesting Barneveld, had small scruple in fanning the flames of discord.

There was open mutiny against the States by the garrison of
Gertruydenberg, and Willoughby's brother-in-law, Captain Wingfield,
commanded in Gertruydenberg.  There were rebellious demonstrations in
Naarden, and Willoughby went to Naarden.  The garrison was troublesome,
but most of the magistrates were firm.  So Willoughby supped with the
burgomasters, and found that Paul Buys had been setting the people
against Queen Elizabeth, Leicester, and the whole English nation, making
them all odious.  Colonel Dorp said openly that it was a shame for the
country to refuse their own natural-born Count for strangers.  He swore
that he would sing his song whose bread he had eaten.  A "fat militia
captain" of the place, one Soyssons, on the other hand, privately
informed Willoughby that Maurice and Barneveld were treating underhand
with Spain.  Willoughby was inclined to believe the calumny, but feared
that his corpulent friend would lose his head for reporting it.  Meantime
the English commander did his best to strengthen the English party in
their rebellion against the States.

"But how if they make war upon us?"  asked the Leicestrians.

"It is very likely," replied Willoughby, "that if they use violence you
will have her Majesty's assistance, and then you who continue constant to
the end will be rewarded accordingly.  Moreover, who would not rather be
a horse-keeper to her Majesty, than a captain to Barneveld or Buys?"

When at last the resignation of Leicester--presented to the States by
Killegrew on the 31st March--seemed to promise comparative repose to the
republic, the vexation of the Leicestrians was intense.  Their efforts.
to effect a dissolution of the government had been rendered unsuccessful,
when success seemed within their grasp.  "Albeit what is once executed
cannot be prevented," said Captain Champernoun; "yet 'tis thought certain
that if the resignation of Lord Leicester's commission had been deferred
yet some little time; the whole country and towns would have so revolted
and mutinied against the government and authority of the States, as that
they should have had no more credit given them by the people than pleased
her Majesty.  Most part of the people could see--in consequence of the
troubles, discontent, mutiny of garrisons, and the like, that it was most
necessary for the good success of their affairs that the power of the
States should be abolished, and the whole government of his Excellency
erected.  As these matters were busily working into the likelihood of
some good effect, came the resignation of his Excellency's commission and
authority, which so dashed the proceedings of it, as that all people and
commanders well affected unto her Majesty and my Lord of Leicester are
utterly discouraged.  The States, with their adherents, before they had
any Lord's resignations were much perplexed what course to take, but now
begin to hoist their heads."  The excellent Leicestrian entertained
hopes, however; that mutiny and intrigue might still carry the day.
He had seen the fat militiaman of Naarden and other captains, and,
hoped much mischief from their schemes.  "The chief mutineers of
Gertruydenberg," he said, "maybe wrought to send unto 'the States, that
if they do not procure them some English governor, they will compound
with the enemy, whereon the States shall be driven to request her Majesty
to accept the place, themselves entertaining the garrison.  I know
certain captains discontented with the States for arrears of pay, who
will contrive to get into Naarden with their companies, with the States
consent, who, once entered, will keep the place for their satisfaction,
pay their soldiers out of the contributions of the country; and yet
secretly hold the place at her Majesty's command."

This is not an agreeable picture; yet it is but one out of many examples
of the intrigues by which Leicester and his party were doing their best
to destroy the commonwealth of the Netherlands at a moment when its
existence was most important to that of England.

To foment mutiny in order to subvert the authority of Maurice, was not
a friendly or honourable course of action either towards Holland or
England; and it was to play into the hands of Philip as adroitly as
his own stipendiaries could have done.

With mischief-makers like Champernoun in every city, and with such
diplomatists at Ostend as Croft and Ropers and Valentine Dale, was it
wonderful that the King and the Duke of Parma found time to mature their
plans for the destruction of both countries?

Lord Willoughby, too, was extremely dissatisfied with his own position.
He received no commission from the Queen for several months.  When it at
last reached him, it seemed inadequate, and he became more sullen than
ever.  He declared that he would rather serve the Queen as a private
soldier, at his own expense--"lean as his purse was"--than accept the
limited authority conferred on him.  He preferred to show his devotion
"in a beggarly state, than in a formal show."  He considered it beneath
her Majesty's dignity that he should act in the field under the States,
but his instructions forbade his acceptance of any office from that body
but that of general in their service.  He was very discontented, and more
anxious than ever to be rid of his functions.  Without being extremely
ambitious, he was impatient of control.  He desired not "a larger-shaped
coat," but one that fitted him better.  "I wish to shape my garment
homely, after my cloth," he said, "that the better of my parish may not
be misled by my sumptuousness.  I would live quietly, without great
noise, my poor roof low and near the ground, not subject to be overblown
with unlooked-for storms, while the sun seems most shining."

Being the deadly enemy of the States and their leaders, it was a matter
of course that he should be bitter against Maurice.  That young Prince,
bold, enterprising, and determined, as he was, did not ostensibly meddle
with political affairs more than became his years; but he accepted the
counsels of the able statesmen in whom his father had trusted.  Riding,
hunting, and hawking, seemed to be his chief delight at the Hague, in the
intervals of military occupations.  He rarely made his appearance in the
state-council during the winter, and referred public matters to the
States-General, to the States of Holland, to Barneveld, Buys, and
Hohenlo.  Superficial observers like George Gilpin regarded him as a
cipher; others, like Robert Cecil, thought him an unmannerly schoolboy;
but Willoughby, although considering him insolent and conceited, could
not deny his ability.  The peace partisans among the burghers--a very
small faction--were furious against him, for they knew that Maurice of
Nassau represented war.  They accused of deep designs against the
liberties of their country the youth who was ever ready to risk his life
in their defence.  A burgomaster from Friesland, who had come across the
Zuyder Zee to intrigue against the States' party, was full of spleen at
being obliged to dance attendance for a long time at the Hague.  He
complained that Count Maurice, green of years, and seconded by greener
counsellors, was meditating the dissolution of the state-council, the
appointment of a new board from his own creatures, the overthrow of all
other authority, and the assumption of the, sovereignty of Holland and
Zeeland, with absolute power.  "And when this is done;" said the rueful
burgomaster, "he and his turbulent fellows may make what terms they like
with Spain, to the disadvantage of the Queen and of us poor wretches."

But there was nothing farther from the thoughts of the turbulent fellows
than any negotiations with Spain.  Maurice was ambitious enough, perhaps,
but his ambition ran in no such direction.  Willoughby knew better; and
thought that by humouring the petulant young man it might be possible to
manage him.

"Maurice is young," he said, "hot-headed; coveting honour.  If we do but
look at him through our fingers, without much words, but with providence
enough, baiting his hook a little to his appetite, there is no doubt but
he might be caught and kept in a fish-pool; while in his imagination he
may judge it a sea.  If not, 'tis likely he will make us fish in troubled
waters."

Maurice was hardly the fish for a mill-pond even at that epoch, and it
might one day be seen whether or not he could float in the great ocean
of events.  Meanwhile, he swam his course without superfluous gambols or
spoutings.

The commander of her Majesty's forces was not satisfied with the States,
nor their generals, nor their politicians.  "Affairs are going 'a malo in
pejus,'" he said.  "They embrace their liberty as apes their young.  To
this end are Counts Hollock and Maurice set upon the stage to entertain
the popular sort.  Her Majesty and my Lord of Leicester are not
forgotten.  The Counts are in Holland, especially Hollock, for the other
is but the cipher.  And yet I can assure you Maurice hath wit and spirit
too much for his time."

As the troubles of the interregnum increased Willoughby was more
dissatisfied than ever with the miserable condition of the Provinces,
but chose to ascribe it to the machinations of the States' party,
rather than to the ambiguous conduct of Leicester.  "These evils,"
he said, "are especially, derived from the childish ambition of the
young Count Maurice, from the covetous and furious counsels of the proud
Hollanders, now chief of the States-General, and, if with pardon it may
be said, from our slackness and coldness to entertain our friends.  The
provident and wiser sort--weighing what a slender ground the appetite of
a young man is, unfurnished with the sinews of war to manage so great a
cause--for a good space after my Lord of Leicester's departure, gave him
far looking on, to see him play has part on the stage."

Willoughby's spleen caused him to mix his metaphors more recklessly than
strict taste would warrant, but his violent expressions painted the
relative situation of parties more vividly than could be done by a calm
disquisition.  Maurice thus playing his part upon the stage--as the
general proceeded to observe--"was a skittish horse, becoming by little
and little assured of what he had feared, and perceiving the harmlessness
thereof; while his companions, finding no safety of neutrality in so
great practices, and no overturning nor barricado to stop his rash wilded
chariot, followed without fear; and when some of the first had passed the
bog; the rest, as the fashion is, never started after.  The variable
democracy; embracing novelty, began to applaud their prosperity; the base
and lewdest sorts of men, to whom there is nothing more agreeable than
change of estates, is a better monture to degrees than their merit, took
present hold thereof.  Hereby Paul Buys, Barneveld, and divers others,
who were before mantled with a tolerable affection, though seasoned with
a poisoned intention, caught the occasion, and made themselves the
Beelzebubs of all these mischiefs, and, for want of better angels, spared
not to let fly our golden-winged ones in the name of guilders, to prepare
the hearts and hands that hold money more dearer than honesty, of which
sort, the country troubles and the Spanish practices having suckled up
many, they found enough to serve their purpose.  As the breach is safely
saltable where no defence is made, so they, finding no head, but those
scattered arms that were disavowed, drew the sword with Peter, and gave
pardon with the Pope, as you shall plainly perceive by the proceedings
at Horn.  Thus their force; fair words, or corruption, prevailing
everywhere, it grew to this conclusion--that the worst were encouraged
with their good success, and the best sort assured of no fortune or
favour."

Out of all this hubbub of stage-actors, skittish horses, rash wilded
chariots, bogs, Beelzebubs, and golden-winged angels, one truth was
distinctly audible; that Beelzebub, in the shape of Barneveld, had been
getting the upper hand in the Netherlands, and that the Lecestrians were
at a disadvantage.  In truth those partisans were becoming extremely
impatient.  Finding themselves deserted by their great protector, they
naturally turned their eyes towards Spain, and were now threatening to
sell themselves to Philip.  The Earl, at his departure, had given them
privately much encouragement.  But month after month had passed by while
they were waiting in vain for comfort.  At last the "best"--that is to
say, the unhappy Leicestrians--came to Willoughby, asking his advice in
their "declining and desperate cause."

"Well nigh a month longer," said that general, "I nourished them with
compliments, and assured them that my Lord of Leicester would take care
of them."  The diet was not fattening.  So they began to grumble more
loudly than ever, and complained with great bitterness of the miserable
condition in which they had been left by the Earl, and expressed their
fears lest the Queen likewise meant to abandon them.  They protested that
their poverty, their powerful foes, and their slow friends, would.
compel them either to make their peace with the States' party, or
"compound with the enemy."

It would have seemed that real patriots, under such circumstances, would
hardly hesitate in their choice, and would sooner accept the dominion of
"Beelzebub," or even Paul Buys, than that of Philip II.  But the
Leicestrians of Utrecht and Friesland--patriots as they were--hated
Holland worse than they hated the Inquisition.  Willoughby encouraged
them in that hatred.  He assured him of her Majesty's affection for them,
complained of the factious proceedings of the States, and alluded to the
unfavourable state of the weather, as a reason why--near four months
long--they had not received the comfort out of England which they had a
right to expect.  He assured them that neither the Queen nor Leicester
would conclude this honourable action, wherein much had been hazarded,
"so rawly and tragically" as they seemed to fear, and warned them, that
"if they did join with Holland, it would neither ease nor help them, but
draw them into a more dishonourable loss of their liberties; and that,
after having wound them in, the Hollanders would make their own peace
with the enemy."

It seemed somewhat unfair-while the Queen's government was straining
every nerve to obtain a peace from Philip, and while the Hollanders were
obstinately deaf to any propositions for treating--that Willoughby should
accuse them of secret intentions to negotiate.  But it must be confessed
that faction has rarely worn a more mischievous aspect than was presented
by the politics of Holland and England in the winter and spring of 1588.

Young Maurice was placed in a very painful position.  He liked not to be
"strangled in the great Queen's embrace;" but he felt most keenly the
necessity of her friendship, and the importance to both countries of a
close alliance.  It was impossible for him, however, to tolerate the
rebellion of Sonoy, although Sonoy was encouraged by Elizabeth, or to fly
in the face of Barneveld, although Barneveld was detested by Leicester.
So with much firmness and courtesy, notwithstanding the extravagant
pictures painted by Willoughby, he suppressed mutiny in Holland, while
avowing the most chivalrous attachment to the sovereign of England.

Her Majesty expressed her surprise and her discontent, that,
notwithstanding his expressions of devotion to herself, he should
thus deal with Sonoy, whose only crime was an equal devotion.  "If you
do not behave with more moderation in future," she said, "you may believe
that we are not a princess of so little courage as not to know how to
lend a helping hand to those who are unjustly oppressed.  We should be
sorry if we had cause to be disgusted with your actions, and if we were
compelled to make you a stranger to the ancient good affection which we
bore to your late father, and have continued towards yourself."

But Maurice maintained a dignified attitude, worthy of his great father's
name.  He was not the man to crouch like Leicester, when he could no
longer refresh himself in the "shadow of the Queen's golden beams,"
important as he knew her friendship to be to himself and his country.
So he defended himself in a manly letter to the privy council against the
censures of Elizabeth.  He avowed his displeasure, that, within his own
jurisdiction, Sonoy should give a special oath of obedience to Leicester;
a thing never done before in the country, and entirely illegal.  It would
not even be tolerated in England, he said, if a private gentleman should
receive a military appointment in Warwickshire or Norfolk without the
knowledge of the lord-lieutenant of the shire.  He had treated the
contumacious Sonoy with mildness during a long period, but without
effect.  He had abstained from violence towards him, out of reverence to
the Queen, under whose sacred name he sheltered himself.  Sonoy had not
desisted, but had established himself in organized rebellion at
Medenblik, declaring that he would drown the whole country, and levy
black-mail upon its whole property, if he were not paid one hundred
thousand crowns.  He had declared that he would crush Holland like a
glass beneath his feet.  Having nothing but religion in his mouth, and
protecting himself with the Queen's name, he had been exciting all the
cities of North Holland to rebellion, and bringing the poor people to
destruction.  He had been offered money enough to satisfy the most
avaricious soldier in the world, but he stood out for six years' full
pay for his soldiers, a demand with which it was impossible to comply.
It was necessary to prevent him from inundating the land and destroying
the estates of the country gentlemen and the peasants.  "This gentlemen,"
said Maurice, "is the plain truth; nor do I believe that you will sustain
against me a man who was under such vast obligations to my late father,
and who requites his debt by daring to speak of myself as a rascal; or
that you will countenance his rebellion against a country to which he
brought only, his cloak and sword, and, whence he has filched one hundred
thousand crowns.  You will not, I am sure, permit a simple captain, by
his insubordination to cause such mischief, and to set on fire this and
other Provinces.

"If, by your advice," continued the Count; "the Queen should appoint
fitting' personages to office here--men who know what honour is; born
of illustrious and noble-race, or who by their great virtue have been
elevated to the honours of the kingdom--to them I will render an account
of my actions.  And it shall appear that I have more ability and more
desire to do my duty, to her Majesty than those who render her lip-
service only, and only make use of her sacred name to fill their purses,
while I and, mine have been ever ready to employ our lives, and what
remains of our fortunes, in the cause of God, her Majesty, and our
country."

Certainly no man had a better right: to speak with consciousness of the
worth of race than the son of William the Silent, the nephew of Lewis,
Adolphus, and Henry of Nassau,  who had all laid down their lives for
the liberty of their country.  But Elizabeth continued to threaten the
States-General, through the mouth of Willoughby, with the loss of her
protection, if they should continue thus to requite her favours with
ingratitude and insubordination: and Maurice once more respectfully but
firmly replied that Sonoy's rebellion could not and would not be
tolerated; appealing boldly to her sense of justice, which was the
noblest attribute of kings.

At last the Queen informed Willoughby, that--as the cause of Sonoy's
course seemed to be his oath of obedience to Leicester, whose resignation
of office had not yet been received in the Netherlands--she had now
ordered Councillor Killigrew to communicate the fact of that resignation.
She also wrote to Sonoy, requiring him to obey the States and Count
Maurice, and to accept a fresh commission from them, or at least to
surrender Medenblik, and to fulfil all their orders with zeal and
docility.

This act of abdication by Leicester, which had been received on the 22nd
of January by the English envoy, Herbert, at the moment of his departure
from the Netherlands, had been carried back by him to England, on the
ground that its communication to the States at that moment would cause
him inconveniently to postpone his journey.  It never officially reached
the States-General until the 31st of March, so that this most dangerous
crisis was protracted nearly five months long--certainly without
necessity or excuse--and whether through design, malice, wantonness,
or incomprehensible carelessness, it is difficult to say.

So soon as the news reached Sonoy, that contumacious chieftain found his
position untenable, and he allowed the States' troops to take possession
of Medenblik, and with it the important territory of North Holland.

Maurice now saw himself undisputed governor.  Sonoy was in the course of
the summer deprived of all office, and betook himself to England.  Here
he was kindly received by the Queen, who bestowed upon him a ruined
tower, and a swamp among the fens of Lincolnshire.  He brought over some
of his countrymen, well-skilled in such operations, set himself to
draining and dyking, and hoped to find himself at home and comfortable in
his ruined tower.  But unfortunately, as neither he nor his wife,
notwithstanding their English proclivities, could speak a word of the
language; they found their social enjoyments very limited.  Moreover,
as his work-people were equally without the power of making their wants
understood, the dyking operations made but little progress.  So the
unlucky colonel soon abandoned his swamp, and retired to East Friesland,
where he lived a morose and melancholy life on a pension of one thousand
florins, granted him by the States of Holland, until the year 1597, when
he lost his mind, fell into the fire, and thus perished.

And thus; in the Netherlands, through hollow negotiations between enemies
and ill-timed bickerings among friends, the path of Philip and Parma had
been made comparatively smooth during the spring and early summer of
1588.  What was the aspect of affairs in Germany and France?

The adroit capture of Bonn by Martin Schenk had given much trouble.
Parma was obliged to detach a strong force; under Prince Chimay, to
attempt the recovery of that important place, which--so long as it
remained in the power of the States--rendered the whole electorate
insecure and a source of danger to the Spanish party.  Farnese
endeavoured in vain to win back the famous partizan by most liberal
offers, for he felt bitterly the mistake he had made in alienating so
formidable a freebooter.  But the truculent Martin remained obdurate and
irascible.  Philip, much offended that the news of his decease had proved
false, ordered rather than requested the Emperor Rudolph to have a care
that nothing was done in Germany to interfere with the great design upon
England.  The King gave warning that he would suffer no disturbance from
that quarter, but certainly the lethargic condition of Germany rendered
such threats superfluous.  There were riders enough, and musketeers
enough, to be sold to the highest bidder.  German food for powder was
offered largely in the market to any foreign consumer, for the trade in
their subjects', lives was ever a prolific source of revenue to the petty
sovereigns--numerous as the days of the year--who owned Germany and the
Germans.

The mercenaries who had so recently been, making their inglorious
campaign in France had been excluded from that country at the close of
1587, and furious were the denunciations of the pulpits and the populace
of Paris that the foreign brigands who had been devastating the soil of
France, and attempting to oppose the decrees of the Holy Father of Rome,
should; have made their escape so easily.  Rabid Lincestre and other
priests and monks foamed with rage, as they execrated and anathematized
the devil-worshipper Henry of Valois, in all the churches of that
monarch's capital.  The Spanish ducats were flying about, more profusely
than ever, among the butchers and porters, and fishwomen, of the great
city; and Madam League paraded herself in the day-light with still
increasing insolence.  There was scarcely a pretence at recognition of
any authority, save that of Philip and Sixtus.  France had become a
wilderness--an uncultivated, barbarous province of Spain.  Mucio--Guise
had been secretly to Rome, had held interviews with the Pope and
cardinals, and had come back with a sword presented by his Holiness,
its hilt adorned with jewels, and its blade engraved with tongues of
fire.  And with this flaming sword the avenging messenger of the holy
father was to smite the wicked, and to drive them into outer darkness.

And there had been fresh conferences among the chiefs of the sacred
League within the Lorraine territory, and it was resolved to require of
the Valois an immediate extermination of heresy and heretics throughout
the kingdom, the publication of the Council of Trent, and the formal
establishment of the Holy Inquisition in every province of France.  Thus,
while doing his Spanish master's bidding, the great Lieutenant of the
league might, if he was adroit enough, to outwit Philip, ultimately carve
out a throne for himself.

Yet Philip felt occasional pangs of uneasiness lest there should, after
all, be peace in France, and lest his schemes against Holland and England
might be interfered with from that quarter.  Even Farnese, nearer the
scene, could, not feel completely secure that a sudden reconciliation
among contending factions might not give rise to a dangerous inroad
across the Flemish border.  So Guise was plied more vigourously than ever
by the Duke with advice and encouragement, and assisted with such Walloon
carabineers as could be spared, while large subsidies and larger promises
came from Philip, whose prudent policy was never to pay excessive sums,
until the work contracted for was done.  "Mucio must do the job long
since agreed upon," said Philip to Farnese, "and you and Mendoza must see
that he prevents the King of France from troubling me in my enterprize
against England."  If the unlucky Henry III. had retained one spark of
intelligence, he would have seen that his only chance of rescue lay in
the arm of the Bearnese, and in an honest alliance with England.  Yet
so strong was his love for the monks, who were daily raving against him,
that he was willing to commit any baseness, in order to win back their
affection.  He was ready to exterminate heresy and to establish the
inquisition, but he was incapable of taking energetic measures of any
kind, even when throne and life were in imminent peril.  Moreover, he
clung to Epernon and the 'politiques,' in whose swords he alone found
protection, and he knew that Epernon and the 'politiques' were the
objects of horror to Paris and to the League.  At the same time he looked
imploringly towards England and towards the great Huguenot chieftain,
Elizabeth's knight-errant.  He had a secret interview with Sir Edward
Stafford, in the garden of the Bernardino convent, and importuned that
envoy to implore the Queen to break off her negotiations with Philip, and
even dared to offer the English ambassador a large reward, if such a
result could be obtained.  Stafford was also earnestly, requested to
beseech the Queen's influence with Henry of Navarre, that he should
convert himself to Catholicism, and thus destroy the League.

On the other hand, the magniloquent Mendoza, who was fond of describing
himself as "so violent and terrible to the French that they wished to be
rid of him," had--as usual--been frightening the poor King, who, after a
futile attempt at dignity, had shrunk before the blusterings of the
ambassador.  "This King," said Don Bernardino, "thought that he could
impose, upon me and silence me, by talking loud, but as I didn't talk
softly to him, he has undeceived himself .  .  .  . I have had another
interview with him, and found him softer than silk, and he made me many
caresses, and after I went out, he said that I was a very skilful
minister."

It was the purpose of the League to obtain possession of the King's
person, and, if necessary, to dispose of the 'politiques' by a general
massacre, such as sixteen years before had been so successful in the case
of Coligny and the Huguenots.  So the populace--more rabid than ever--
were impatient that their adored Balafre should come to Paris and begin
the holy work.

He came as far as Gonesse to do the job he had promised to Philip, but
having heard that Henry had reinforced himself with four thousand Swiss
from the garrison of Lagny, he fell back to Soissons.  The King sent him
a most abject message, imploring him not to expose his sovereign to so
much danger, by setting his foot at that moment in the capital.  The
Balafre hesitated, but the populace raved and roared for its darling.
The Queen-Mother urged her unhappy son to yield his consent, and the
Montpensier--fatal sister of Guise, with the famous scissors ever at her
girdle--insisted that her brother had as good a right as any man to come
to the city.  Meantime the great chief of the 'politiques,' the hated and
insolent Epernon, had been appointed governor of Normandy, and Henry had
accompanied his beloved minion a part of the way towards Rouen.  A plot
contrived by the Montpensier to waylay the monarch on his return, and to
take him into the safe-keeping of the League, miscarried, for the King
reentered the city before the scheme was ripe.  On the other hand,
Nicholas Poulain, bought for twenty thousand crowns by the 'politiques,'
gave the King and his advisers-full information of all these intrigues,
and, standing in Henry's cabinet, offered, at peril of his life, if he
might be confronted with the conspirators--the leaders of the League
within the city--to prove the truth of the charges which he had made.

For the whole city was now thoroughly organized.  The number of its
districts had been reduced from sixteen to five, the better to bring it
under the control of the League; and, while it could not be denied that
Mucio, had, been doing his master's work very thoroughly, yet it was
still in the power of the King--through the treachery of Poulain--to
strike a blow for life and freedom, before he was quite, taken in the
trap.  But he stood helpless, paralyzed, gazing in dreamy stupor--like
one fascinated at the destruction awaiting him.

At last, one memorable May morning, a traveller alighted outside the gate
of Saint Martin, and proceeded on foot through the streets of Paris.  He
was wrapped in a large cloak, which he held carefully over his face.
When he had got as far as the street of Saint Denis, a young gentleman
among the passers by, a good Leaguer, accosted the stranger, and with
coarse pleasantry, plucked the cloak from his face, and the hat from his
head.  Looking at the handsome, swarthy features, marked with a deep
scar, and the dark, dangerous eyes which were then revealed, the
practical jester at once recognized in the simple traveller the terrible
Balafre, and kissed the hem of his garments with submissive rapture.
Shouts of "Vive Guise" rent the air from all the bystanders, as the Duke,
no longer affecting concealment, proceeded with a slow and stately step
toward the residence of Catharine de' Medici.'  That queen of compromises
and of magic had been holding many a conference with the leaders of both
parties; had been increasing her son's stupefaction by her enigmatical
counsels; had been anxiously consulting her talisman of goat's and human
blood, mixed with metals melted under the influence of the star of her
nativity, and had been daily visiting the wizard Ruggieri, in whose magic
circle--peopled with a thousand fantastic heads--she had held high
converse with the world of spirits, and derived much sound advice as to
the true course of action to be pursued between her son and Philip, and
between the politicians and the League.  But, in spite of these various
sources of instruction, Catharine--was somewhat perplexed, now that
decisive action seemed necessary--a dethronement and a new massacre
impending, and judicious compromise difficult.  So after a hurried
conversation with Mucio, who insisted on an interview with the King, she
set forth for the Louvre, the Duke lounging calmly by the aide of her,
sedan chair, on foot, receiving the homage of the populace, as men,
women, and children together, they swarmed around him as he walked,
kissing his garments, and rending the air with their shouts.  For that
wolfish mob of Paris, which had once lapped the blood of ten thousand
Huguenots in a single night, and was again rabid with thirst, was most
docile and fawning to the great Balafre.  It grovelled before him, it
hung upon his look, it licked his hand, and, at the lifting of his
finger, or the glance of his eye, would have sprung at the throat of King
or Queen-Mother, minister, or minion, and devoured them all before his
eyes.  It was longing for the sign, for, much as Paris adored and was
besotted with Guise and the League, even more, if possible, did it hate
those godless politicians, who had grown fat on extortions from the poor,
and who had converted their substance into the daily bread of luxury.

Nevertheless the city was full of armed men, Swiss and German
mercenaries, and burgher guards, sworn to fidelity to the throne.  The
place might have been swept clean, at that moment, of rebels who were not
yet armed or fortified in their positions.  The Lord had delivered Guise
into Henry's hands.  "Oh, the madman!"--cried Sixtus V., when he heard
that the Duke had gone to Paris, "thus to put himself into the clutches
of the King whom he had so deeply offended!"  And, "Oh, the wretched
coward, the imbecile?"  he added, when he heard how the King had dealt
with his great enemy.

For the monarch was in his cabinet that May morning, irresolutely
awaiting the announced visit of the Duke.  By his aide stood Alphonse
Corse, attached as a mastiff to his master, and fearing not Guise nor
Leaguer, man nor devil.

"Sire, is the Duke of Guise your friend or enemy?"  said Alphonse.  The
King answered by an expressive shrug.

"Say the word, Sire," continued Alphonse, "and I pledge myself to bring
his head this instant, and lay it at your feet."

And he would have done it.  Even at the side of Catharine's sedan chair,
and in the very teeth of the worshipping mob, the Corsican would have had
the Balafre's life, even though he laid down his own.

But Henry--irresolute and fascinated--said it was not yet time for such a
blow.

Soon afterward; the Duke was announced.  The chief of the League and the
last of the Valois met, face to face; but not for the last time.  The
interview--was coldly respectful on the part of Mucio, anxious and
embarrassed on that of the King.  When the visit, which was merely one
of ceremony, was over, the Duke departed as he came, receiving the
renewed homage of the populace as he walked to his hotel.

That night precautions were taken.  All the guards were doubled around
the palace and through the streets.  The Hotel de Ville and the Place de
la Greve were made secure, and the whole city was filled with troops.
But the Place Maubert was left unguarded, and a rabble rout--all night
long--was collecting in that distant spot.  Four companies of burgher-
guards went over to the League at three o'clock in the morning.  The rest
stood firm in the cemetery of the Innocents, awaiting the orders of the
King.  At day-break on the 11th the town was still quiet.  There was an
awful pause of expectation.  The shops remained closed all the morning,
the royal troops were drawn up in battle-array, upon the Greve and around
the Hotel de Ville, but they stood motionless as statues, until the
populace began taunting them with cowardice, and then laughing them to
scorn.  For their sovereign lord and master still sat paralyzed in his
palace.

The mob had been surging through all the streets and lanes, until,
as by a single impulse, chains were stretched across the streets, and
barricades thrown up in all the principal thoroughfares.  About noon the
Duke of Guise, who had been sitting quietly in his hotel, with a very few
armed followers, came out into the street of the Hotel Montmorency, and
walked calmly up and down, arm-in-aim with the Archbishop of Lyons,
between a double hedge-row of spectators and admirers, three or four
ranks thick.  He was dressed in a white slashed doublet and hose, and
wore a very large hat.  Shouts of triumph resounded from a thousand
brazen throats, as he moved calmly about, receiving, at every instant,
expresses from the great gathering in the Place Maubert.

"Enough, too much, my good friends," he said, taking off the great hat--
("I don't know whether he was laughing in it," observed one who was
looking on that day)--"Enough of 'Long live Guise!' Cry 'Long live the
King!'"

There was no response, as might be expected, and the people shouted more
hoarsely than ever for Madam League and the Balafre.  The Duke's face was
full of gaiety; there was not a shadow of anxiety upon it in that
perilous and eventful moment.  He saw that the day was his own.

For now, the people, ripe, ready; mustered, armed, barricaded; awaited
but a signal to assault the King's mercenaries, before rushing to the
palace: On every house-top missiles were provided to hurl upon their
heads.  There seemed no escape for Henry or his Germans from impending
doom, when Guise, thoroughly triumphant, vouchsafed them their lives.

"You must give me these soldiers as a present, my friends," said he to
the populace.

And so the armed Swiss, French, and German troopers and infantry,
submitted to be led out of Paris, following with docility the aide-de-
camp of Guise, Captain St. Paul, who walked quietly before them, with his
sword in its scabbard, and directing their movements with a cane.  Sixty
of them were slain by the mob, who could not, even at the command of
their beloved chieftain, quite forego their expected banquet.  But this
was all the blood shed on the memorable day of Barricades, when another
Bartholomew massacre had been, expected.

Meantime; while Guise was making his promenade through the city,
exchanging embraces with the rabble; and listening to the coarse
congratulations and obscene jests of the porters and fishwomen, the poor
King sat crying all day long in the Louvre.  The Queen-Mother was with
him, reproaching him bitterly with his irresolution and want of
confidences in her, and scolding him for his tears.  But the unlucky
Henry only wept the more as he cowered in a corner.

"These are idle tears," said Catherine.  "This is no time for crying.
And for myself, though women weep so easily; I feel my heart too deeply
wrung for tears.  If they came to my eyes they would be tears of blood."

Next day the last Valois walked-out, of the Louvre; as if for a promenade
in, the Tuileries, and proceeded straightway to the stalls, where his
horse stood saddled.  Du Halde, his equerry, buckled his master's spurs
on upside down.  "No; matter;" said Henry; "I am not riding to see my
mistress.  I have a longer journey before me."

And so, followed by a rabble rout of courtiers, without boots or cloaks;
and mounted on, sorry hacks--the King-of France rode forth from his
capital post-haste, and turning as he left the gates, hurled back
impotent imprecations upon Paris and its mob.  Thenceforth, for a long
interval, there: was no king in that country.  Mucio had done his work,
and earned his wages, and Philip II. reigned in Paris.  The commands
of the League were now complied with.  Heretics were doomed to
extermination.  The edict of 19th July, 1588, was published with the most
exclusive and stringent provisions that the most bitter Romanist could
imagine, and, as a fair beginning; two young girls, daughters of Jacques
Forcade, once 'procureur au parlement,' were burned in Paris, for the
crime, of Protestantism.  The Duke of Guise was named Generalissimo of
the Kingdom (26th August, 1588).  Henry gave in his submission to
the Council of Trent, the edicts, the Inquisition, and the rest of
the League's infernal machinery, and was formally reconciled.
to Guise, with how much sincerity time was soon to show.

     [The King bound himself by oath to extirpate heresy, to remove all
     persons suspected of that crime from office, and never to lay down
     arms so long as a single, heretic remained.  By secret articles,'two
     armies against the Huguenots were agreed upon, one under the Duke of
     Mayenne, the other under some general to be appointed by the grog.
     The Council of Trent was forthwith to be proclaimed, and by a
     refinement of malice the League stipulated that all officers
     appointed in Paris by the Duke of Guise on the day after the
     barricades should resign their powers, and be immediately re-
     appointed by the King himself (DeThou, x.1.  86, pp. 324-325.)]

Meantime Philip, for whom and at whose expense all this work had been
done by he hands of the faithful Mucio, was constantly assuring his royal
brother of France, through envoy Longlee, at Madrid, of his most
affectionate friendship, and utterly repudiating all knowledge of these
troublesome and dangerous plots.  Yet they had been especially organized
--as we have seen--by himself and the Balafre, in order that France might
be kept a prey to civil war, and thus rendered incapable of offering any
obstruction to his great enterprise against England.  Any complicity of
Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador in Paris, or, of the Duke of Parma, who
were important agents in all these proceedings, with the Duke of Guise,
was strenuously--and circumstantially--denied; and the Balafre, on the
day of the barricades, sent Brissac to Elizabeth's envoy, Sir Edward
Stafford, to assure him as to his personal safety; and as to the deep
affection with which England and its Queen were regarded by himself and
all his friends.  Stafford had also been advised to accept a guard for
his house of embassy.  His reply was noble.

"I represent the majesty of England," he said, "and can take no safeguard
from a subject of the sovereign to whom I am accredited."

To the threat of being invaded, and to the advice to close his gates, he
answered, "Do you see these two doors? now, then, if I am attacked, I am
determined to defend myself to the last drop of my blood, to serve as an
example to the universe of the law of nations, violated in my person.  Do
not imagine that I shall follow your advice.  The gates of an ambassador
shall be open to all the world."

Brissac returned with this answer to Guise, who saw that it was hopeless
to attempt making a display in the eyes of Queen Elizabeth, but gave
private orders that the ambassador should not be molested.

Such were the consequences of the day of the barricades--and thus the
path of Philip was cleared of all obstructions on, the part of France.
His Mucio was now, generalissimo.  Henry was virtually deposed.  Henry of
Navarre, poor and good-humoured as ever, was scarcely so formidable at
that moment as he might one day become.  When the news of the day of
barricades was brought at night to that cheerful monarch, he started from
his couch.  "Ha," he exclaimed with a laugh, "but they havn't yet caught
the Bearnese!"

And it might be long before the League would catch the Bearnese; but,
meantime, he could render slight assistance to Queen Elizabeth.

In England there had been much fruitless negotiation between the
government of that country and the commissioners from the States-General.
There was perpetual altercation on the subject of Utrecht, Leyden, Sonoy,
and the other causes of contention; the Queen--as usual--being imperious
and choleric, and the envoys, in her opinion, very insolent.  But the
principal topic of discussion was the peace-negotiations, which the
States-General, both at home and through their delegation in England, had
been doing their best to prevent; steadily refusing her Majesty's demand
that commissioners, on their part, should be appointed to participate in
the conferences at Ostend.  Elizabeth promised that there should be as
strict regard paid to the interests of Holland as to those of England,
in case of a pacification, and that she would never forget her duty to
them, to herself, and to the world, as the protectress of the reformed
religion.  The deputies, on the other hand, warned her that peace with
Spain was impossible; that the intention of the Spanish court was to
deceive her, while preparing her destruction and theirs; that it was
hopeless to attempt the concession of any freedom of conscience from
Philip II.; and that any stipulations which might be made upon that, or
any other subject, by the Spanish commissioners, would be tossed to the
wind.  In reply to the Queen's loud complaints that the States had been
trifling with her, and undutiful to her, and that they had kept her
waiting seven months long for an answer to her summons to participate in
the negotiations, they replied, that up to the 15th October of the
previous year, although there had been flying rumours of an intention on
the part of her Majesty's government to open those communications with
the enemy, it had, "nevertheless been earnestly and expressly, and with
high words and oaths, denied that there was any truth in those rumours."
Since that time the States had not once only, but many times, in private
letters, in public documents, and in conversations with Lord Leicester
and other eminent personages, deprecated any communications whatever with
Spain, asserting uniformly their conviction that such proceedings would
bring ruin on their country, and imploring her Majesty not to give ear to
any propositions whatever.

And not only were the envoys, regularly appointed by the States-General,
most active in England, in their, attempts to prevent the negotiations,
but delegates from the Netherland churches were also sent to the Queen,
to reason with her on the subject, and to utter solemn warnings that the
cause of the reformed religion would be lost for ever, in case of a
treaty on her part with Spain.  When these clerical envoys reached
England the Queen was already beginning to wake from her delusion;
although her commissioners were still--as we have seen--hard at work,
pouring sand through their sieves at Ostend, and although the steady
protestations, of the Duke of Parma, and the industrious circulation of
falsehoods by Spanish emissaries, had even caused her wisest statesmen,
for a time, to participate in that delusion.

For it is not so great an impeachment on the sagacity of the great Queen
of England, as it would now appear to those who judge by the light of
subsequent facts, that she still doubted whether the armaments,
notoriously preparing in Spain and Flanders, were intended against
herself; and that even if such were the case--she still believed in the
possibility of averting the danger by negotiation.

So late as the beginning of May, even the far-seeing and anxious
Walsingham could say, that in England "they were doing nothing but
honouring St. George, of whom the Spanish Armada seemed to be afraid.
We hear," he added, "that they will not be ready to set forward before
the midst of May, but I trust that it will be May come twelve months.
The King of Spain is too old and too sickly to fall to conquer kingdoms.
If he be well counselled, his best course will be to settle his own
kingdoms in his own hands."

And even much later, in the middle of July--when the mask was hardly,
maintained--even then there was no certainty as to the movements of the
Armada; and Walsingham believed, just ten days before the famous fleet
was to appear off Plymouth, that it had dispersed and returned to Spain,
never to re-appear.  As to Parma's intentions, they were thought to lie
rather in the direction: of Ostend than of England; and Elizabeth; on the
20th July, was more anxious for that city than for her own kingdom.
"Mr. Ned, I am persuaded," she wrote to Morris, "that if a Spanish fleet
break, the Prince of Parma's enterprise for England will fall to the
ground, and then are you to look to Ostend.  Haste your works."

All through the spring and early summer, Stafford, in Paris, was kept in
a state of much perplexity as to the designs of Spain--so contradictory
were the stories circulated--and so bewildering the actions of men known
to be hostile to England.  In, the last days of April he intimated it as
a common opinion in Paris, that these naval preparations of Philip were
an elaborate farce; "that the great elephant would bring forth but a
mouse--that the great processions, prayers, and pardons, at Rome, for the
prosperous success of the Armada against England; would be of no effect;
that the King of Spain was laughing in his sleeve at the Pope, that he
could make such a fool of him; and that such an enterprise was a thing
the King never durst think of in deed, but only in show to feed the
world."

Thus, although furnished with minute details as to these, armaments, and
as to the exact designs of Spain against his country, by the ostentatious
statements of the; Spanish ambassador in Paris himself, the English,
envoy was still inclined to believe that these statements were a figment,
expressly intended to deceive.  Yet he was aware that Lord Westmoreland,
Lord Paget, Sir Charles Paget, Morgan, and other English refugees, were
constantly meeting with Mendoza, that they were told to get themselves in
readiness, and to go down--as well appointed as might be--to the Duke of
Parma; that they had been "sending for their tailor to make them apparel,
and to put themselves in equipage;" that, in particular, Westmoreland had
been assured of being restored by Philip to his native country in better
condition than before.  The Catholic and Spanish party in Paris were
however much dissatisfied with the news from Scotland, and were getting
more and more afraid that King James would object to the Spaniards
getting a foot-hold in his country, and that "the Scots would soon be
playing them a Scottish trick."

Stafford was plunged still more inextricably into doubt by the accounts
from Longlee in Madrid.  The diplomatist, who had been completely
convinced by Philip as to his innocence of any participation in the
criminal enterprise of Guise against Henry III., was now almost staggered
by the unscrupulous mendacity of that monarch with regard to any supposed
designs against England.  Although the Armada was to be ready by the 15th
May, Longlee was of opinion--notwithstanding many bold announcements of
an attack upon Elizabeth--that the real object of the expedition was
America.  There had recently been discovered, it was said, "a new
country, more rich in gold and silver than any yet found, but so full of
stout people that they could not master them."  To reduce these stout
people beyond the Atlantic, therefore, and to get possession of new gold
mines, was the real object at which Philip was driving, and Longlee and
Stafford were both very doubtful whether it were worth the Queen's while
to exhaust her finances in order to protect herself against an imaginary
invasion.  Even so late as the middle of July, six to one was offered on
the Paris exchange that the Spanish fleet would never be seen in the
English seas, and those that offered the bets were known to be well-
wishers to the Spanish party.

Thus sharp diplomatists and statesmen like Longlee, Stafford, and
Walsingham, were beginning to lose their fear of the great bugbear by
which England had so long been haunted.  It was, therefore no deep stain
on the Queen's sagacity that she, too, was willing to place credence in
the plighted honour of Alexander Farnese, the great prince who prided
himself on his sincerity, and who, next to the King his master, adored
the virgin Queen of England.

The deputies of the Netherland churches had come, with the permission of
Count Maurice and of the States General; but they represented more
strongly than any other envoys could do, the English and the monarchical
party.  They were instructed especially to implore the Queen to accept
the sovereignty of their country; to assure her that the restoration of
Philip--who had been a wolf instead of a shepherd to his flock--was an
impossibility, that he had been solemnly and for ever deposed, that
under her sceptre only could the Provinces ever recover their ancient
prosperity; that ancient and modern history alike made it manifest
that a free republic could never maintain itself, but that it must,
of necessity, run its course through sedition, bloodshed, and anarchy,
until liberty was at last crushed by an absolute despotism; that equality
of condition, the basis of democratic institutions, could never be made
firm; and that a fortunate exception, like that of Switzerland, whose
historical and political circumstances were peculiar, could never serve
as a model to the Netherlands, accustomed as those Provinces had ever
been to a monarchical form of government; and that the antagonism of
aristocratic and democratic elements in the States had already produced
discord, and was threatening destruction to the whole country.  To avert
such dangers the splendour of royal authority was necessary, according to
the venerable commands of Holy Writ; and therefore the Netherland
churches acknowledged themselves the foster-children of England, and
begged that in political matters also the inhabitants of the Provinces
might be accepted as the subjects of her Majesty.  They also implored the
Queen to break off these accursed negotiations with Spain, and to provide
that henceforth in the Netherlands the reformed religion might be freely
exercised, to the exclusion of any other.

Thus it was very evident that these clerical envoys, although they were
sent by permission of the States, did not come as the representatives of
the dominant party.  For that 'Beelzebub,' Barneveld, had different
notions from theirs as to the possibility of a republic, and as to the
propriety of tolerating other forms of worship than his own.  But it was
for such pernicious doctrines, on religious matters in particular, that
he was called Beelzebub, Pope John, a papist in disguise, and an atheist;
and denounced, as leading young Maurice and the whole country to
destruction.

On the basis of these instructions, the deputies drew up a memorial of
pitiless length, filled with astounding parallels between their own
position and that of the Hebrews, Assyrians, and other distinguished
nations of antiquity.  They brought it to Walsingham on the 12th July,
1588, and the much enduring man heard it read from beginning to end.
He expressed his approbation of its sentiments, but said it was too long.
It must be put on one sheet of paper, he said, if her Majesty was
expected to read it.

"Moreover," said the Secretary of State, "although your arguments are
full of piety, and your examples from Holy Writ very apt, I must tell you
the plain truth.  Great princes are not always so zealous in religious
matters as they might be.  Political transactions move them more deeply,
and they depend too much on worldly things.  However there is no longer
much danger, for our envoys will return from Flanders in a few days."

"But," asked a deputy, "if the Spanish fleet does not succeed in its
enterprise, will the peace-negotiations be renewed?"

"By no means," said Walsingham; "the Queen can never do that,
consistently with her honour.  They have scattered infamous libels
against her--so scandalous, that you would be astounded should you read
them.  Arguments drawn from honour are more valid with princes than any
other."

He alluded to the point in their memorial touching the free exercise of
the reformed religion in the Provinces.

"'Tis well and piously said," he observed; "but princes and great lords
are not always very earnest in such matters.  I think that her Majesty's
envoys will not press for the free exercise of the religion so very much;
not more than for two or three years.  By that time--should our
negotiations succeed--the foreign troops will have evacuated the
Netherlands on condition that the States-General shall settle the
religious question."

"But," said Daniel de Dieu, one of the deputies, "the majority of the
States is Popish."

"Be it so," replied Sir Francis; "nevertheless they will sooner permit
the exercise of the reformed religion than take up arms and begin the war
anew."

He then alluded to the proposition of the deputies to exclude all
religious worship but that of the reformed church--all false religion--
as they expressed themselves.

"Her Majesty," said he, "is well disposed to permit some exercise of
their religion to the Papists.  So far as regards my own feelings, if we
were now in the beginning, of the reformation, and the papacy were still
entire, I should willingly concede such exercise; but now that the Papacy
has been overthrown, I think it would not be safe to give such
permission.  When we were disputing, at the time of the pacification of
Ghent, whether the Popish religion should be partially permitted, the
Prince of Orange was of the affirmative opinion; but I, who was then at
Antwerp, entertained the contrary conviction."

"But," said one of the deputies--pleased to find that Walsingham was more
of their way of thinking on religious toleration than the great Prince
of Orange had been, or than Maurice and Barneveld then were--"but her
Majesty will, we hope, follow the advice of her good and faithful
counsellors."

"To tell you the truth," answered Sir Francis, "great princes are not
always inspired with a sincere and upright zeal;"--it was the third
time he had made this observation"--although, so far as regards the
maintenance of the religion in the Netherlands, that is a matter of
necessity.  Of that there is no fear, since otherwise all the pious would
depart, and none would remain but Papists, and, what is more, enemies of
England.  Therefore the Queen is aware that the religion must be
maintained."

He then advised the deputies to hand in the memorial to her Majesty,
without any long speeches, for which there was then no time or
opportunity; and it was subsequently arranged that they should be
presented to the Queen as she would be mounting her horse at St. James's
to ride to Richmond.

Accordingly on the 15th July, as her Majesty came forth at the gate, with
a throng of nobles and ladies--some about to accompany her and some
bidding her adieu--the deputies fell on their knees before her.
Notwithstanding the advice of Walsingham, Daniel de Dieu was bent upon an
oration.

"Oh illustrious Queen!"  he began, "the churches of the United
Netherlands----"

He had got no further, when the Queen, interrupting, exclaimed, "Oh!  I
beg you--at another time--I cannot now listen to a speech.  Let me see
the memorial."

Daniel de Dieu then humbly presented that document, which her Majesty
graciously received, and then, getting on horseback, rode off to
Richmond.'

The memorial was in the nature of an exhortation to sustain the religion,
and to keep clear of all negotiations with idolaters and unbelievers;
and the memorialists supported themselves by copious references to
Deuteronomy, Proverbs, Isaiah, Timothy, and Psalms, relying mainly on the
case of Jehosaphat, who came to disgrace and disaster through his treaty
with the idolatrous King Ahab.  With regard to any composition with
Spain, they observed, in homely language, that a burnt cat fears the
fire; and they assured the Queen that, by following their advice, she
would gain a glorious and immortal name, like those of David, Ezekiel,
Josiah, and others, whose fragrant memory, even as precious incense from
the apothecary's, endureth to the end of the world.

It was not surprising that Elizabeth, getting on horseback on the 15th
July, 1588, with her head full of Tilbury Fort and Medina Sidonia, should
have as little relish for the affairs of Ahab and Jehosophat, as for
those melting speeches of Diomede and of Turnus, to which Dr. Valentine
Dale on his part was at that moment invoking her attention.

On the 20th July, the deputies were informed by Leicester that her
Majesty would grant them an interview, July 20, and that they must
come into his quarter of the palace and await her arrival.

Between six and seven in the evening she came into the throne-room, and
the deputies again fell on their knees before her.

She then seated herself--the deputies remaining on their knees on her
right side and the Earl of Leicester standing at her left--and proceeded
to make many remarks touching her earnestness in the pending negotiations
to provide for their religious freedom.  It seemed that she must have
received a hint from Walsingham on the subject.

"I shall provide," she said, "for the maintenance of the reformed
worship."

De Dieu--"The enemy will never concede it."

The Queen.--"I think differently."

De Dieu.--"There is no place within his dominions where he has permitted
the exercise of the pure religion.  He has never done so."

The Queen.--"He conceded it in the pacification of Ghent."

De Dieu.--"But he did not keep his agreement.  Don John had concluded
with the States, but said he was not held to his promise, in case he
should repent; and the King wrote afterwards to our States, and said that
he was no longer bound to his pledge."

The Queen.--"That is quite another thing."

De Dieu.--"He has very often broken his faith."

The Queen.--"He shall no longer be allowed to do so.  If he does not keep
his word, that is my affair, not yours.  It is my business to find the
remedy.  Men would say, see in what a desolation the Queen of England has
brought this poor people.  As to the freedom of worship, I should have
proposed three or four years' interval--leaving it afterwards to the
decision of the States."

De Dieu.--"But the majority of the States is Popish."

The Queen.--"I mean the States-General, not the States of any particular
Province."

De Dieu.--"The greater part of the States-General is Popish."

The Queen.--"I mean the three estates--the clergy, the nobles, and the
cities."  The Queen--as the deputies observed--here fell into an error.
She thought that prelates of the reformed Church, as in England, had
seats in the States-General.  Daniel de Dieu explained that they had no
such position.

The Queen.--"Then how were you sent hither?"

De Dieu.--"We came with the consent of Count Maurice of Nassau."

The Queen.--"And of the States?"

De Dieu.--"We came with their knowledge."

The Queen.--"Are you sent only from Holland and Zeeland?  Is there no
envoy from Utrecht and the other Provinces?"

Helmichius.--"We two," pointing to his colleague Sossingius, "are from
Utrecht."

The Queen.--"What?  Is this young man also a minister?"  She meant
Helmichius, who had a very little beard, and looked young.

Sossingius.--"He is not so young as he looks."

The Queen.--"Youths are sometimes as able as old men."

De Dieu.--"I have heard our brother preach in France more than fourteen
years ago."

The Queen.--"He must have begun young.  How old were you when you first
became a preacher?"

Helmichius.--"Twenty-three or twenty-four years of age."

The Queen.--"It was with us, at first, considered a scandal that a man so
young as that should be admitted to the pulpit.  Our antagonists
reproached us with it in a book called 'Scandale de l'Angleterre,' saying
that we had none but school-boys for ministers.  I understand that you
pray for me as warmly as if I were your sovereign princess.  I think I
have done as much for the religion as if I were your Queen."

Helmichius.--"We are far from thinking otherwise.  We acknowledge
willingly your Majesty's benefits to our churches."

The Queen.--"It would else be ingratitude on your part."

Helmichius.--"But the King of Spain will never keep any promise about the
religion."

The Queen.--"He will never come so far: he does nothing but make a noise
on all sides.  Item, I don't think he has much confidence in himself."

De Dieu.--"Your Majesty has many enemies.  The Lord hath hitherto
supported you, and we pray that he may continue to uphold your Majesty."

The Queen.--"I have indeed many enemies; but I make no great account of
them.  Is there anything else you seek?"

De Dieu.--"There is a special point: it concerns our, or rather your
Majesty's, city of Flushing.  We hope that Russelius--(so he called Sir
William Russell)--may be continued in its government, although he wishes
his discharge."

"Aha!" said the Queen, laughing and rising from her seat, "I shall not
answer you; I shall call some one else to answer you."

She then summoned Russell's sister, Lady Warwick.

"If you could speak French," said the Queen to that gentlewoman,
"I should bid you reply to these gentlemen, who beg that your brother
may remain in Flushing, so very agreeable has he made himself to them."

The Queen was pleased to hear this good opinion of Sir William, and this
request that he might continue to be governor of Flushing, because he had
uniformly supported the Leicester party, and was at that moment in high
quarrel with Count Maurice and the leading members of the States.

As the deputies took their leave, they requested an answer to their
memorial, which was graciously promised.

Three days afterwards, Walsingham gave them a written answer to their
memorial--conceived in the same sense as had been the expressions of her
Majesty and her counsellors.  Support to the Netherlands and stipulations
for the free exercise of their religion were promised; but it was
impossible for these deputies of the churches to obtain a guarantee from
England that the Popish religion should be excluded from the Provinces,
in case of a successful issue to the Queen's negotiation with Spain.

And thus during all those eventful days-the last weeks of July and the
first weeks of August--the clerical deputation remained in England,
indulging in voluminous protocols and lengthened conversations with the
Queen and the principal members of her government.  It is astonishing, in
that breathless interval of history, that so much time could be found for
quill-driving and oratory.

Nevertheless, both in Holland and England, there had been other work than
protocolling.  One throb of patriotism moved the breast of both nations.
A longing to grapple, once for all, with the great enemy of civil and
religious liberty inspired both.  In Holland, the States-General and all
the men to whom the people looked for guidance, had been long deprecating
the peace-negotiations.  Extraordinary supplies--more than had ever been
granted before--were voted for the expenses of the campaign; and Maurice
of Nassau, fitly embodying the warlike tendencies of his country and
race, had been most importunate with Queen Elizabeth that she would
accept his services and his advice.  Armed vessels of every size, from
the gun-boat to the galleon of 1200 tons--then the most imposing ship
in those waters--swarmed in all the estuaries and rivers, and along the
Dutch and Flemish coast, bidding defiance to Parma and his armaments;
and offers of a large contingent from the fleets of Jooat de Moor and
Justinua de Nassau, to serve under Seymour and Howard, were freely made
to the States-General.

It was decided early in July, by the board of admiralty, presided over by
Prince Maurice, that the largest square-rigged vessels of Holland and
Zeeland should cruise between England and the Flemish coast, outside the
banks; that a squadron of lesser ships should be stationed within the
banks; and that a fleet of sloops and fly-boats should hover close in
shore, about Flushing and Rammekens.  All the war-vessels of the little
republic were thus fully employed.  But, besides this arrangement,
Maurice was empowered to lay an embargo--under what penalty he chose and
during his pleasure--on all square-rigged vessels over 300 tons, in order
that there might be an additional supply in case of need.  Ninety ships
of war under Warmond, admiral, and Van der Does, vice-admiral of Holland;
and Justinus de Nassau, admiral, and Joost de Moor, vice-admiral of
Zeeland; together with fifty merchant-vessels of the best and strongest,
equipped and armed for active service, composed a formidable fleet.

The States-General, a month before, had sent twenty-five or thirty good
ships, under Admiral Rosendael, to join Lord Henry Seymour, then cruising
between Dover and Calais.  A tempest, drove them back, and their absence
from Lord Henry's fleet being misinterpreted by the English, the States
were censured for ingratitude and want of good faith.  But the injustice
of the accusation was soon made manifest, for these vessels, reinforcing
the great Dutch fleet outside the banks, did better service than they
could have done; in the straits.  A squadron of strong well-armed
vessels, having on board, in addition to their regular equipment,
a picked force of twelve hundred musketeers, long accustomed to this
peculiar kind of naval warfare, with crews of, grim Zeelanders, who had
faced Alva, and Valdez in their day, now kept close watch over Farnese,
determined that he should never thrust his face out of any haven or nook
on the coast so long as they should be in existence to prevent him.

And in England the protracted diplomacy at Ostend, ill-timed though
it was, had not paralyzed the arm or chilled the heart of the nation.
When the great Queen, arousing herself from the delusion in which the
falsehoods of Farnese and of Philip had lulled her, should once more.
represent--as no man or woman better than Elizabeth Tudor could represent
--the defiance of England to foreign insolence; the resolve of a whole
people to die rather than yield; there was a thrill of joy through the
national heart.  When the enforced restraint was at last taken off, there
was one bound towards the enemy.  Few more magnificent spectacles have
been seen in history than the enthusiasm which pervaded the country as
the great danger, so long deferred, was felt at last to be closely
approaching.  The little nation of four millions, the merry England of
the sixteenth century, went forward to the death-grapple with its
gigantic antagonist as cheerfully as to a long-expected holiday.
Spain was a vast empire, overshadowing the world; England, in comparison,
but a province; yet nothing could surpass the steadiness with which the
conflict was awaited.

For, during all the months of suspense; the soldiers and sailors, and
many statesman of England, had deprecated, even as the Hollanders had
been doing, the dangerous delays of Ostend.  Elizabeth was not embodying
the national instinct, when she talked of peace; and shrank penuriously
from the expenses of war.  There was much disappointment, even
indignation, at the slothfulness with which the preparations for defence
went on, during the period when there was yet time to make them.  It was
feared with justice that England, utterly unfortified as were its cities,
and defended only by its little navy without, and by untaught enthusiasm
within, might; after all, prove an easier conquest than Holland and
Zeeland, every town, in whose territory bristled with fortifications.
If the English ships--well-trained and swift sailors as they were--were
unprovided with spare and cordage, beef and biscuit, powder and shot,
and the militia-men, however enthusiastic, were neither drilled nor
armed, was it so very certain, after all, that successful resistance
would be made to the great Armada, and to the veteran pikemen and
musketeers of Farnese, seasoned on a hundred, battlefields, and equipped
as for a tournament?  There was generous confidence and chivalrous
loyalty on the part of Elizabeth's naval and military commanders; but
there had been deep regret and disappointment at her course.

Hawkins was anxious, all through the winter and spring, to cruise with a
small squadron off the coast of Spain.  With a dozen vessels he undertook
to "distress anything that went through the seas."  The cost of such a
squadron, with eighteen hundred men, to be relieved every four months, he
estimated at two thousand seven hundred pounds sterling the month, or a
shilling a day for each man; and it would be a very unlucky month, he
said, in which they did not make captures to three times that amount; for
they would see nothing that would not be presently their own.  "We might
have peace, but not with God," said the pious old slave-trader; "but
rather than serve Baal, let us die a thousand deaths.  Let us have open
war with these Jesuits, and every man will contribute, fight, devise, or
do, for the liberty of our country."

And it was open war with the Jesuits for which those stouthearted sailors
longed.  All were afraid of secret mischief.  The diplomatists--who were
known to be flitting about France, Flanders, Scotland, and England--were
birds of ill omen.  King James was beset by a thousand bribes and
expostulations to avenge his mother's death; and although that mother had
murdered his father, and done her best to disinherit himself, yet it was
feared that Spanish ducats might induce him to be true to his mother's
revenge, and false to the reformed religion.  Nothing of good was hoped
for from France.  "For my part," said Lord Admiral Howard, "I have made
of the French King, the Scottish King, and the King of Spain, a trinity
that I mean never to trust to be saved by, and I would that others were
of my opinion."

The noble sailor, on whom so much responsibility rested, yet who was so
trammelled and thwarted by the timid and parsimonious policy of Elizabeth
and of Burghley, chafed and shook his chains like a captive.  "Since
England was England," he exclaimed, "there was never such a stratagem
and mask to deceive her as this treaty of peace.  I pray God that we do
not curse for this a long grey beard with a white head witless, that will
make all the world think us heartless.  You know whom I mean."  And it
certainly was not difficult to understand the allusion to the pondering
Lord-Treasurer."  'Opus est aliquo Daedalo,' to direct us out of the
maze," said that much puzzled statesman; but he hardly seemed to be
making himself wings with which to lift England and himself out of the
labyrinth.  The ships were good ships, but there was intolerable delay in
getting a sufficient number of them as ready for action as was the spirit
of their commanders.

"Our ships do show like gallants here," said Winter; "it would do a man's
heart good to behold them.  Would to God the Prince of Parma were on the
seas with all his forces, and we in sight of them.  You should hear that
we would make his enterprise very unpleasant to him."

And Howard, too, was delighted not only with his own little flag-ship the
Ark-Royal--"the odd ship of the world for all conditions,"--but with all
of his fleet that could be mustered.  Although wonders were reported, by
every arrival from the south, of the coming Armada, the Lord-Admiral was
not appalled.  He was perhaps rather imprudent in the defiance he flung
to the enemy.  "Let me have the four great ships and twenty hoys, with
but twenty men a-piece, and each with but two iron pieces, and her
Majesty shall have a good account of the Spanish forces; and I will make
the King wish his galleys home again.  Few as we are, if his forces be
not hundreds, we will make good sport with them."

But those four great ships of her Majesty, so much longed for by Howard,
were not forthcoming.  He complained that the Queen was "keeping them to
protect Chatham Church withal, when they should be serving their turn
abroad."  The Spanish fleet was already reported as numbering from 210
sail, with 36,000 men,' to 400 or 500 ships, and 80,000 soldiers and
mariners; and yet Drake was not ready with his squadron.  "The fault is
not in him," said Howard, "but I pray God her Majesty do not repent her
slack dealing.  We must all lie together, for we shall be stirred very
shortly with heave ho!  I fear ere long her Majesty will be sorry she
hath believed some so much as she hath done."

Howard had got to sea, and was cruising all the stormy month of March in
the Channel with his little unprepared squadron; expecting at any moment
--such was the profound darkness which, enveloped the world at that day--
that the sails of the Armada might appear in the offing.  He made a visit
to the Dutch coast, and was delighted with the enthusiasm with which he
was received.  Five thousand people a day came on board his ships, full
of congratulation and delight; and he informed the Queen that she was not
more assured of the Isle of Sheppey than of Walcheren.

Nevertheless time wore on, and both the army and navy of England were
quite unprepared, and the Queen was more reluctant than ever to incur the
expense necessary to the defence of her kingdom.  At least one of those
galleys, which, as Howard bitterly complained, seemed destined to defend
Chatham Church, was importunately demanded; but it was already Easter-Day
(17th April), and she was demanded in vain.  "Lord! when should she
serve," said the Admiral, "if not at such a time as this?  Either she is
fit now to serve, or fit for the fire.  I hope never in my time to see so
great a cause for her to be used.  I dare say her Majesty will look that
men should fight for her, and I know they will at this time.  The King of
Spain doth not keep any ship at home, either of his own or any other,
that he can get for money.  Well, well, I must pray heartily for peace,"
said Howard with increasing spleen, "for I see the support of an
honourable, war will never appear.  Sparing and war have no affinity
together."

In truth Elizabeth's most faithful subjects were appalled at the ruin
which she seemed by her mistaken policy to be rendering inevitable.  "I
am sorry," said the Admiral, "that her Majesty is so careless of this
most dangerous time.  I fear me much, and with grief I think it, that she
relieth on a hope that will deceive her, and greatly endanger her, and
then it will not be her money nor her jewels that will help; for as they
will do good in time, so they will help nothing for the redeeming of
time."

The preparations on shore were even more dilatory than those on the sea.
We have seen that the Duke of Parma, once landed, expected to march
directly upon London; and it was notorious that there were no fortresses
to oppose a march of the first general in Europe and his veterans upon
that unprotected and wealthy metropolis.  An army had been enrolled--a
force of 86,016 foot, and 13,831 cavalry; but it was an army on paper
merely.  Even of the 86,000, only 48,000 were set down as trained;
and it is certain that the training had been of the most meagre and
unsatisfactory description.  Leicester was to be commander-in-chief; but
we have already seen that nobleman measuring himself, not much to his
advantage, with Alexander Farnese, in the Isle of Bommel, on the sands of
Blankenburg, and at the gates of Sluys.  His army was to consist of
27,000 infantry, and 2000 horse; yet at midsummer it had not reached half
that number.  Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon was to protect the Queen's person
with another army of 36,000; but this force, was purely an imaginary one;
and the lord-lieutenant of each county was to do his best with the
militia.  But men were perpetually escaping out of the general service,
in order to make themselves retainers for private noblemen, and be kept
at their expense.  "You shall hardly believe," said Leicester, "how many
new liveries be gotten within these six weeks, and no man fears the
penalty.  It would be better that every nobleman did as Lord Dacres, than
to take away from the principal service such as are set down to serve."

Of enthusiasm and courage, then, there was enough, while of drill and
discipline, of powder and shot, there was a deficiency.  No braver or
more competent soldier could be found than Sir Edward Stanley--the man
whom we have seen in his yellow jerkin, helping himself into Fort Zutphen
with the Spanish soldier's pike--and yet Sir Edward Stanley gave but a
sorry account of the choicest soldiers of Chester and Lancashire, whom he
had been sent to inspect.  "I find them not," he said, "according to your
expectation, nor mine own liking.  They were appointed two years past to
have been trained six days by the year or more, at the discretion of the
muster-master, but, as yet, they have not been trained one day, so that
they have benefited nothing, nor yet know their leaders.  There is now
promise of amendment, which, I doubt, will be very slow, in respect to my
Lord Derby's absence."

My Lord Derby was at that moment, and for many months afterwards,
assisting Valentine Dale in his classical prolusions on the sands of
Bourbourg.  He had better have been mustering the trainbands of
Lancashire.  There was a general indisposition in the rural districts to
expend money and time in military business, until the necessity should
become imperative.  Professional soldiers complained bitterly of the
canker of a long peace.  "For our long quietness, which it hath pleased
God to send us," said Stanley, "they think their money very ill bestowed
which they expend on armour or weapon, for that they be in hope they
shall never have occasion to use it, so they may pass muster, as they
have done heretofore.  I want greatly powder, for there is little or none
at all."

The day was fast approaching when all the power in England would be too
little for the demand.  But matters had not very much mended even at
midsummer.  It is true that Leicester, who was apt to be sanguine-
particularly in matters under his immediate control--spoke of the handful
of recruits assembled at his camp in Essex, as "soldiers of a year's
experience, rather than a month's camping; "but in this opinion he
differed from many competent authorities, and was somewhat in
contradiction to himself.  Nevertheless he was glad that the Queen had
determined to visit him, and encourage his soldiers.

"I have received in secret," he said, "those news that please me, that
your Majesty doth intend to behold the poor and bare company that lie
here in the field, most willingly to serve you, yea, most ready to die
for you.  You shall, dear Lady, behold as goodly, loyal, and as able men
as any prince Christian can show you, and yet but a handful of your own,
in comparison of the rest you have.  What comfort not only these shall
receive who shall be the happiest to behold yourself I cannot express;
but assuredly it will give no small comfort to the rest, that shall be
overshined with the beams of so gracious and princely a party, for what
your royal Majesty shall do to these will be accepted as done to all.
Good sweet Queen, alter not your purpose, if God give you health.  It
will be your pain for the time, but your pleasure to behold such people.
And surely the place must content you, being as fair a soil and as goodly
a prospect as may be seen or found, as this extreme weather hath made
trial, which doth us little annoyance, it is so firm and dry a ground.
Your usher also liketh your lodging--a proper, secret, cleanly house.
Your camp is a little mile off, and your person will be as sure as at St.
James's, for my life."

But notwithstanding this cheerful view of the position expressed by the
commander-in-chief, the month of July had passed, and the early days of
August had already arrived; and yet the camp was not formed, nor anything
more than that mere handful of troops mustered about Tilbury, to defend
the road from Dover to London.  The army at Tilbury never, exceeded
sixteen or seventeen thousand men.

The whole royal navy-numbering about thirty-four vessels in all--of
different sizes, ranging from 1100 and 1000 tons to 30, had at last been
got ready for sea.  Its aggregate tonnage was 11,820; not half so much as
at the present moment--in the case of one marvellous merchant-steamer--
floats upon a single keel.

These vessels carried.  837 guns and 6279 men.  But the navy was
reinforced by the patriotism and liberality of English merchants and
private gentlemen.  The city of London having been requested to furnish
15 ships of war and 5000 men, asked two days for deliberation, and then
gave 30 ships and 10,000 men of which number 2710 were seamen.  Other
cities, particularly Plymouth, came forward with proportionate
liberality, and private individuals, nobles, merchants, and men of
humblest rank, were enthusiastic in volunteering into the naval service,
to risk property and life in defence of the country.  By midsummer there
had been a total force of 197 vessels manned, and partially equipped,
with an aggregate of 29,744 tons, and 15,785 seamen.  Of this fleet a
very large number were mere coasters of less than 100 tons each; scarcely
ten ships were above 500, and but one above 1000 tons--the Triumph,
Captain Frobisher, of 1100 tons, 42 guns, and 500 sailors.

Lord Howard of Effingham, Lord High-Admiral of England, distinguished for
his martial character, public spirit, and admirable temper, rather than
for experience or skill as a seaman, took command of the whole fleet, in
his "little odd ship for all conditions," the Ark-Royal, of 800 tons, 425
sailors, and 55 guns.

Next in rank was Vice-Admiral Drake, in the Revenge, of 500 tons, 250 men
and 40 guns.  Lord Henry Seymour, in the Rainbow, of precisely the same
size and strength, commanded the inner squadron, which cruised in the
neighbourhood of the French and Flemish coast.

The Hollanders and Zeelanders had undertaken to blockade the Duke of
Parma still more closely, and pledged themselves that he should never
venture to show himself upon the open sea at all.  The mouth of the
Scheldt, and the dangerous shallows off the coast of Newport and Dunkirk,
swarmed with their determined and well-seasoned craft, from the flybooter
or filibuster of the rivers, to the larger armed vessels, built to
confront every danger, and to deal with any adversary.

Farnese, on his part, within that well-guarded territory, had, for months
long, scarcely slackened in his preparations, day or night.  Whole
forests had been felled in the land of Waas to furnish him with
transports and gun-boats, and with such rapidity, that--according to his
enthusiastic historiographer--each tree seemed by magic to metamorphose
itself into a vessel at the word of command.  Shipbuilders, pilots, and
seamen, were brought from the Baltic, from Hamburgh, from Genoa.  The
whole surface of the obedient Netherlands, whence wholesome industry had
long been banished, was now the scene of a prodigious baleful activity.
Portable bridges for fording the rivers of England, stockades for
entrenchments, rafts and oars, were provided in vast numbers, and
Alexander dug canals and widened natural streams to facilitate his
operations.  These wretched Provinces, crippled, impoverished,
languishing for peace, were forced to contribute out of their poverty,
and to find strength even in their exhaustion, to furnish the machinery
for destroying their own countrymen, and for hurling to perdition their
most healthful neighbour.

And this approaching destruction of England--now generally believed in--
was like the sound of a trumpet throughout Catholic Europe.  Scions of
royal houses, grandees of azure blood, the bastard of Philip II., the
bastard of Savoy, the bastard of Medici, the Margrave of Burghaut, the
Archduke Charles, nephew of the Emperor, the Princes of Ascoli and of
Melfi, the Prince of Morocco, and others of illustrious name, with many
a noble English traitor, like Paget, and Westmoreland, and Stanley, all
hurried to the camp of Farnese, as to some famous tournament, in which it
was a disgrace to chivalry if their names were not enrolled.  The roads
were trampled with levies of fresh troops from Spain, Naples, Corsica,
the States of the Church, the Milanese, Germany, Burgundy.

Blas Capizucca was sent in person to conduct reinforcements from the
north of Italy.  The famous Terzio of Naples, under Carlos Pinelo,
arrived 3500 strong--the most splendid regiment ever known in the history
of war.  Every man had an engraved corslet and musket-barrel, and there
were many who wore gilded armour, while their waving plumes and festive
caparisons made them look like holiday-makers, rather than real
campaigners, in the eyes of the inhabitants of the various cities through
which their road led them to Flanders.  By the end of April the Duke of
Parma saw himself at the head of 60,000 men, at a monthly expense of
454,315 crowns or dollars.  Yet so rapid was the progress of disease--
incident to northern climates--among those southern soldiers, that we
shall find the number woefully diminished before they were likely to set
foot upon the English shore.

Thus great preparations, simultaneously with pompous negotiations, had
been going forward month after month, in England, Holland, Flanders.
Nevertheless, winter, spring, two-thirds of summer, had passed away, and
on the 29th July, 1588, there remained the same sickening uncertainty,
which was the atmosphere in which the nations had existed for a
twelvemonth.

Howard had cruised for a few weeks between England and Spain, without any
results, and, on his return, had found it necessary to implore her
Majesty, as late as July, to "trust no more to Judas' kisses, but to her
sword, not her enemy's word."




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

A burnt cat fears the fire
A free commonwealth--was thought an absurdity
Baiting his hook a little to his appetite
Canker of a long peace
Englishmen and Hollanders preparing to cut each other's throats
Faction has rarely worn a more mischievous aspect
Hard at work, pouring sand through their sieves
She relieth on a hope that will deceive her
Sparing and war have no affinity together
The worst were encouraged with their good success
Trust her sword, not her enemy's word




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v56
by John Lothrop Motley







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, Volume 57, 1588



CHAPTER XIX.  Part 1.

     Philip Second in his Cabinet--His System of Work and Deception--His
     vast but vague Schemes of Conquest--The Armada sails--Description of
     the Fleet--The Junction with Parma unprovided for--The Gale off
     Finisterre--Exploits of David Gwynn--First Engagements in the
     English Channel--Considerable Losses of the Spaniards--General
     Engagement near Portland--Superior Seamanship of the English

It is now time to look in upon the elderly letter-writer in the Escorial,
and see how he was playing his part in the drama.

His counsellors were very few.  His chief advisers were rather like
private secretaries than cabinet ministers; for Philip had been
withdrawing more and more into seclusion and mystery as the webwork of
his schemes multiplied and widened.  He liked to do his work, assisted by
a very few confidential servants.  The Prince of Eboli, the famous Ruy
Gomez, was dead.  So was Cardinal Granvelle.  So were Erasso and Delgado.
His midnight council--junta de noche--for thus, from its original hour of
assembling, and the all of secrecy in which it was enwrapped, it was
habitually called--was a triumvirate.  Don Juan de Idiaquez was chief
secretary of state and of war; the Count de Chinchon was minister for the
household, for Italian affairs, and for the kingdom of Aragon; Don
Cristoval de Moura, the monarch's chief favourite, was at the head of the
finance department, and administered the affairs of Portugal and Castile!

The president of the council of Italy, after Granvelle's death, was
Quiroga, cardinal of Toledo, and inquisitor-general.  Enormously long
letters, in the King's: name, were prepared chiefly by the two
secretaries, Idiaquez and Moura.  In their hands was the vast
correspondence with Mendoza and Parma, and Olivarez at Rome, and with
Mucio; in which all the stratagems for the subjugation of Protestant
Europe were slowly and artistically contrived.  Of the great conspiracy
against human liberty, of which the Pope and Philip were the double head,
this midnight triumvirate was the chief executive committee.

These innumerable despatches, signed by Philip, were not the emanations
of his own mind.  The King had a fixed purpose to subdue Protestantism
and to conquer the world; but the plans for carrying the purpose into
effect were developed by subtler and more comprehensive minds than his
own.  It was enough for him to ponder wearily over schemes which he was
supposed to dictate, and to give himself the appearance of supervising
what he scarcely comprehended.  And his work of supervision was often
confined to pettiest details.  The handwriting of Spain and Italy at that
day was beautiful, and in our modern eyes seems neither antiquated nor
ungraceful.  But Philip's scrawl was like that of 'a' clown just admitted
to a writing-school, and the whole margin of a fairly penned despatch
perhaps fifty pages long; laid before him for comment and signature by
Idiaquez or Moura, would be sometimes covered with a few awkward
sentences, which it was almost impossible to read, and which, when
deciphered, were apt to reveal suggestions of astounding triviality.

Thus a most important despatch--in which the King, with his own hand, was
supposed to be conveying secret intelligence to Mendoza concerning the
Armada, together with minute directions for the regulation of Guise's
conduct at the memorable epoch of the barricades--contained but a single
comment from the monarch's own pen.  "The Armada has been in Lisbon about
a month--quassi un mes"--wrote the secretary.  "There is but one s in
quasi," said Philip.

Again, a despatch of Mendoza to the King contained the intelligence that
Queen Elizabeth was, at the date of the letter, residing at St. James's.
Philip, who had no objection to display his knowledge of English affairs
--as became the man who had already been almost sovereign of England, and
meant to be entirely so--supplied a piece of information in an apostille
to this despatch.  "St. James is a house of recreation," he said, "which
was once a monastery.  There is a park between it, and the palace which
is called Huytal; but why it is called Huytal, I am sure I don't know."
His researches in the English language had not enabled him to recognize
the adjective and substantive out of which the abstruse compound White-
Hall (Huyt-al), was formed.

On another occasion, a letter from England containing important
intelligence concerning the number of soldiers enrolled in that country
to resist the Spanish invasion, the quantity of gunpowder and various
munitions collected, with other details of like nature, furnished besides
a bit of information of less vital interest.  "In the windows of the
Queen's presence-chamber they have discovered a great quantity of lice,
all clustered together," said the writer.

Such a minute piece of statistics could not escape the microscopic eye
of Philip.  So, disregarding the soldiers and the gunpowder, he commented
only on this last-mentioned clause of the letter; and he did it
cautiously too, as a King surnamed the Prudent should:--

"But perhaps they were fleas," wrote Philip.

Such examples--and many more might be given--sufficiently indicate the
nature of the man on whom such enormous responsibilities rested, and who
had been, by the adulation of his fellow-creatures, elevated into a god.
And we may cast a glance upon him as he sits in his cabinet-buried among
those piles of despatches--and receiving methodically, at stated hours,
Idiaquez, or Moura, or Chincon, to settle the affairs of so many millions
of the human race; and we may watch exactly the progress of that scheme,
concerning which so many contradictory rumours were circulating in
Europe.  In the month of April a Walsingham could doubt, even in August
an ingenuous comptroller could disbelieve, the reality of the great
project, and the Pope himself, even while pledging himself to assistance,
had been systematically deceived.  He had supposed the whole scheme
rendered futile by the exploit of Drake at Cadiz, and had declared that
"the Queen of England's distaff was worth more than Philip's sword, that
the King was a poor creature, that he would never be able to come to a
resolution, and that even if he should do so, it would be too late;" and
he had subsequently been doing his best, through his nuncio in France, to
persuade the Queen to embrace the Catholic religion, and thus save
herself from the impending danger.  Henry III. had even been urged by the
Pope to send a special ambassador to her for this purpose--as if the
persuasions of the wretched Valois were likely to be effective with
Elizabeth Tudor--and Burghley had, by means of spies in Rome, who
pretended to be Catholics, given out intimations that the Queen was
seriously contemplating such a step.  Thus the Pope, notwithstanding
Cardinal Allan, the famous million, and the bull, was thought by Mendoza
to be growing lukewarm in the Spanish cause, and to be urging upon the
"Englishwoman" the propriety of converting herself, even at the late hour
of May, 1588.

But Philip, for years, had been maturing his scheme, while reposing
entire confidence--beyond his own cabinet doors--upon none but Alexander
Farnese; and the Duke--alone of all men--was perfectly certain that the
invasion would, this year, be attempted.

The captain-general of the expedition was the Marquis of Santa Cruz, a
man of considerable naval experience, and of constant good fortune, who,
in thirty years, had never sustained a defeat.  He had however shown no
desire to risk one when Drake had offered him the memorable challenge in
the year 1587, and perhaps his reputation of the invincible captain had
been obtained by the same adroitness on previous occasions.  He was no
friend to Alexander Farnese, and was much disgusted when informed of
the share allotted to the Duke in the great undertaking.  A course of
reproach and perpetual reprimand was the treatment to which he was, in
consequence, subjected, which was not more conducive to the advancement
of the expedition than it was to the health of the captain-general.
Early in January the Cardinal Archduke was sent to Lisbon to lecture him,
with instructions to turn a deaf ear to all his remonstrances, to deal
with him peremptorily, to forbid his writing letters on the subject to
his Majesty, and to order him to accept his post or to decline it without
conditions, in which latter contingency he was to be informed that his
successor was already decided upon.

This was not the most eligible way perhaps for bringing the captain-
general into a cheerful mood; particularly as he was expected to be
ready in January to sail to the Flemish coast.  Nevertheless the Marquis
expressed a hope to accomplish his sovereign's wishes; and great had
been the bustle in all the dockyards of Naples, Sicily, and Spain;
particularly in the provinces of Guipuzcoa, Biscay, and Andalusia,
and in the four great cities of the coast.  War-ships of all dimensions,
tenders, transports, soldiers, sailors, sutlers, munitions of war,
provisions, were all rapidly concentrating in Lisbon as the great place
of rendezvous; and Philip confidently believed, and as confidently
informed the Duke of Parma, that he, might be expecting the Armada at any
time after the end of January.

Perhaps in the history of mankind there has never been a vast project of
conquest conceived and matured in so protracted and yet so desultory a
manner, as was this famous Spanish invasion.  There was something almost
puerile in the whims rather than schemes of Philip for carrying out his
purpose.  It was probable that some resistance would be offered, at least
by the navy of England, to the subjugation of that country, and the King
had enjoyed an opportunity, the preceding summer, of seeing the way in
which English sailors did their work.  He had also appeared to understand
the necessity of covering the passage of Farnese from the Flemish ports
into the Thames, by means of the great Spanish fleet from Lisbon.
Nevertheless he never seemed to be aware that Farnese could not invade
England quite by himself, and was perpetually expecting to hear that he
had done so.

"Holland and Zeeland," wrote Alexander to Philip, "have been arming with
their accustomed promptness; England has made great preparations.  I have
done my best to make the impossible possible; but your letter told me to
wait for Santa Cruz, and to expect him very shortly.  If, on the
contrary, you had told me to make the passage without him, I would have
made the attempt, although we had every one of us perished.  Four ships
of war could sink every one of my boats.  Nevertheless I beg to be
informed of your Majesty's final order.  If I am seriously expected to
make the passage without Santa Cruz, I am ready to do it, although I
should go all alone in a cock-boat."

But Santa Cruz at least was not destined to assist in the conquest
of England; for, worn out with fatigue and vexation, goaded by the
reproaches and insults of Philip, Santa Cruz was dead.  He was replaced
in the chief command of the fleet by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, a
grandee of vast wealth, but with little capacity and less experience.
To the iron marquis it was said that a golden duke had succeeded;
but the duke of gold did not find it easier to accomplish impossibilities
than his predecessor had done.  Day after day, throughout the months of
winter and spring, the King had been writing that the fleet was just on
the point of sailing, and as frequently he had been renewing to Alexander
Farnese the intimation that perhaps, after all, he might find an
opportunity of crossing to England, without waiting for its arrival.
And Alexander, with the same regularity, had been informing his master
that the troops in the Netherlands had been daily dwindling from sickness
and other causes, till at last, instead of the 30,000 effective infantry,
with which it had been originally intended to make the enterprise, he had
not more than 17,000 in the month of April.  The 6000 Spaniards, whom he
was to receive from the fleet of Medina Sidonia, would therefore be the
very mainspring of his army.  After leaving no more soldiers in the
Netherlands than were absolutely necessary for the defence of the
obedient Provinces against the rebels, he could only take with him to
England 23,000 men, even after the reinforcements from Medina.  "When we
talked of taking England by surprise," said Alexander, "we never thought
of less than 30,000.  Now that she is alert and ready for us, and that it
is certain we must fight by sea and by land, 50,000 would be few."  He
almost ridiculed the King's suggestion that a feint might be made by way
of besieging some few places in Holland or Zeeland.  The whole matter in
hand, he said, had become as public as possible, and the only efficient
blind was the peace-negotiation; for many believed, as the English
deputies were now treating at Ostend, that peace would follow.

At last, on the 28th, 29th, and 30th May, 1588, the fleet, which had been
waiting at Lisbon more than a month for favourable weather, set sail from
that port, after having been duly blessed by the Cardinal Archduke
Albert, viceroy of Portugal.

There were rather more than one hundred and thirty ships in all, divided
into ten squadrons.  There was the squadron of Portugal, consisting of
ten galleons, and commanded by the captain-general, Medina Sidonia.  In
the squadron of Castile were fourteen ships of various sizes, under
General Diego Flores de Valdez.  This officer was one of the most
experienced naval officers in the Spanish service, and was subsequently
ordered, in consequence, to sail with the generalissimo in his flag-ship.
In the squadron of Andalusia were ten galleons and other vessels, under
General Pedro de Valdez.  In the squadron of Biscay were ten galleons and
lesser ships, under General Juan Martinet de Recalde, upper admiral of
the fleet.  In the squadron of Guipuzcoa were ten galleons, under General
Miguel de Oquendo.  In the squadron of Italy were ten ships, under
General Martin de Bertendona.  In the squadron of Urcas, or store-ships,
were twenty-three sail, under General Juan Gomez de Medina.  The squadron
of tenders, caravels, and other vessels, numbered twenty-two sail, under
General Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza.  The squadron of four galeasses was
commanded by Don Hugo de Moncada.  The squadron of four galeras, or
galleys, was in charge of Captain Diego de Medrado.

Next in command to Medina Sidonia was Don Alonzo de Leyva, captain-
general of the light horse of Milan.  Don Francisco de Bobadilla was
marshal-general of the camp.  Don Diego de Pimentel was marshal of the
camp to the famous Terzio or legion of Sicily.

The total tonnage of the fleet was 59,120: the number of guns was 3165.
Of Spanish troops there were 19,295 on board: there were 8252 sailors
and 2088 galley-slaves.  Besides these, there was a force of noble
volunteers, belonging to the most illustrious houses of Spain, with their
attendants amounting to nearly 2000 in all.  There was also Don Martin
Alaccon, administrator and vicar-general of the Holy Inquisition, at the
head of some 290 monks of the mendicant orders, priests and familiars.
The grand total of those embarked was about 30,000.  The daily expense of
the fleet was estimated by Don Diego de Pimentel at 12,000 ducats a-day,
and the daily cost of the combined naval and military force under Farnese
and Medina Sidonia was stated at 30,000 ducats.

The size of the ships ranged from 1200 tons to 300.  The galleons, of
which there were about sixty, were huge round-stemmed clumsy vessels,
with bulwarks three or four feet thick, and built up at stem and stern,
like castles.  The galeasses of which there were four--were a third
larger than the ordinary galley, and were rowed each by three hundred
galley-slaves.  They consisted of an enormous towering fortress at the
stern; a castellated structure almost equally massive in front, with
seats for the rowers amidships.  At stem and stern and between each of
the slaves' benches were heavy cannon.  These galeasses were floating
edifices, very wonderful to contemplate.  They were gorgeously decorated.
There were splendid state-apartments, cabins, chapels, and pulpits in
each, and they were amply provided with awnings, cushions, streamers,
standards, gilded saints, and bands of music.  To take part in an
ostentatious pageant, nothing could be better devised.  To fulfil the
great objects of a war-vessel--to sail and to fight--they were the worst
machines ever launched upon the ocean.  The four galleys were similar to
the galeasses in every respect except that of size, in which they were by
one-third inferior.

All the ships of the fleet--galeasses, galleys, galleons, and hulks--were
so encumbered with top-hamper, so overweighted in proportion to their
draught of water, that they could bear but little canvas, even with
smooth seas and light and favourable winds.  In violent tempests,
therefore, they seemed likely to suffer.  To the eyes of the 16th century
these vessels seemed enormous.  A ship of 1300 tons was then a monster
rarely seen, and a fleet, numbering from 130 to 150 sail, with an
aggregate tonnage of 60,000, seemed sufficient to conquer the world, and
to justify the arrogant title, by which it had baptized itself, of the
Invincible.

Such was the machinery which Philip had at last set afloat, for the
purpose of dethroning Elizabeth and establishing the inquisition in
England.  One hundred and forty ships, eleven thousand Spanish veterans,
as many more recruits, partly Spanish, partly Portuguese, 2000 grandees,
as many galley-slaves, and three hundred barefooted friars and
inquisitors.

The plan was simple.  Medina Sidonia was to proceed straight from Lisbon
to Calais roads: there he was to wait: for the Duke of Parma, who was to
come forth from Newport, Sluys, and Dunkerk, bringing with him his 17,000
veterans, and to assume the chief command of the whole expedition.  They
were then to cross the channel to Dover, land the army of Parma,
reinforced with 6000 Spaniards from the fleet, and with these 23,000 men
Alexander was to march at once upon London.  Medina Sidonia was to seize
and fortify the Isle of Wight, guard the entrance of the harbours against
any interference from the Dutch and English fleets, and--so soon as the
conquest of England had been effected--he was to proceed to Ireland.
It had been the wish of Sir William Stanley that Ireland should be
subjugated first, as a basis of operations against England; but this had
been overruled.  The intrigues of Mendoza and Farnese, too, with the
Catholic nobles of Scotland, had proved, after all, unsuccessful.  King
James had yielded to superior offers of money and advancement held out to
him by Elizabeth, and was now, in Alexander's words, a confirmed heretic.

There was no course left, therefore, but to conquer England at once.
A strange omission had however been made in the plan from first to last.
The commander of the whole expedition was the Duke of Parma: on his head
was the whole responsibility.  Not a gun was to be fired--if it could be
avoided--until be had come forth with his veterans to make his junction
with the Invincible Armada off Calais.  Yet there was no arrangement
whatever to enable him to come forth--not the slightest provision to
effect that junction.  It would almost seem that the letter-writer of the
Escorial had been quite ignorant of the existence of the Dutch fleets off
Dunkerk, Newport, and Flushing, although he had certainly received
information enough of this formidable obstacle to his plan.

"Most joyful I shall be," said Farnese-writing on one of the days when
he had seemed most convinced by Valentine Dale's arguments, and driven
to despair by his postulates--"to see myself with these soldiers on
English ground, where, with God's help, I hope to accomplish your
Majesty's demands."  He was much troubled however to find doubts
entertained at the last moment as to his 6000 Spaniards; and certainly
it hardly needed an argument to prove that the invasion of England with
but 17,000 soldiers was a somewhat hazardous scheme.  Yet the pilot
Moresini had brought him letters from Medina Sidonia, in which the Duke
expressed hesitation about parting with these 6000 veterans; unless the
English fleet should have been previously destroyed, and had also again
expressed his hope that Parma would be punctual to the rendezvous.
Alexander immediately combated these views in letters to Medina and to
the King.  He avowed that he would not depart one tittle from the plan
originally laid down.  The 6000 men, and more if possible, were to be
furnished him, and the Spanish Armada was to protect his own flotilla,
and to keep the channel clear of enemies.  No other scheme was possible,
he said, for it was clear that his collection of small flat-bottomed
river-boats and hoys could not even make the passage, except in smooth
weather.  They could not contend with a storm, much less with the enemy's
ships, which would destroy them utterly in case of a meeting, without his
being able to avail himself of his soldiers--who would be so closely
packed as to be hardly moveable--or of any human help.  The preposterous
notion that he should come out with his flotilla to make a junction with
Medina off Calais, was over and over again denounced by Alexander with
vehemence and bitterness, and most boding expressions were used by him as
to the probable result, were such a delusion persisted in.

Every possible precaution therefore but one had been taken.  The King of
France--almost at the same instant in which Guise had been receiving his
latest instructions from the Escorial for dethroning and destroying that
monarch--had been assured by Philip of his inalienable affection; had
been informed of the object of this great naval expedition--which was not
by any means, as Mendoza had stated to Henry, an enterprise against
France or England, but only a determined attempt to clear the sea, once
for all, of these English pirates who had done so much damage for years
past on the high seas--and had been requested, in case any Spanish ship
should be driven by stress of weather into French ports, to afford them
that comfort and protection to which the vessels of so close and friendly
an ally were entitled.

Thus there was bread, beef, and powder enough--there were monks and
priests enough--standards, galley-slaves, and inquisitors enough; but
there were no light vessels in the Armada, and no heavy vessels in
Parma's fleet.  Medina could not go to Farnese, nor could Farnese come to
Medina.  The junction was likely to be difficult, and yet it had never
once entered the heads of Philip or his counsellors to provide for that
difficulty.  The King never seemed to imagine that Farnese, with 40,000
or 50,000 soldiers in the Netherlands, a fleet of 300 transports, and
power to dispose of very large funds for one great purpose, could be kept
in prison by a fleet of Dutch skippers and corsairs.

With as much sluggishness as might have been expected from their clumsy
architecture, the ships of the Armada consumed nearly three weeks in
sailing from Lisbon to the neighbourhood of Cape Finisterre.  Here they
were overtaken by a tempest, and were scattered hither and thither,
almost at the mercy of the winds and waves; for those unwieldy hulks were
ill adapted to a tempest in the Bay of Biscay.  There were those in the
Armada, however, to whom the storm was a blessing.  David Gwynn, a Welsh
mariner, had sat in the Spanish hulks a wretched galley-slave--as
prisoner of war for more than eleven years, hoping, year after year,
for a chance of escape from bondage.  He sat now among the rowers of the
great galley, the Trasana, one of the humblest instruments by which the
subjugation of his native land to Spain and Rome was to be effected.

Very naturally, among the ships which suffered most in the gale were the
four huge unwieldy galleys--a squadron of four under Don Diego de
Medrado--with their enormous turrets at stem and stern, and their low and
open waists.  The chapels, pulpits, and gilded Madonnas proved of little
avail in a hurricane.  The Diana, largest of the four, went down with all
hands; the Princess was labouring severely in the trough of the sea, and
the Trasana was likewise in imminent danger.  So the master of this
galley asked the Welsh slave, who had far more experience and seamanship
than he possessed himself, if it were possible to save the vessel.  Gwynn
saw an opportunity for which he had been waiting eleven years.  He was
ready to improve it.  He pointed out to the captain the hopelessness of
attempting to overtake the Armada.  They should go down, he said, as the
Diana had already done, and as the Princess was like at any moment to do,
unless they took in every rag of sail, and did their best with their oars
to gain the nearest port.  But in order that the rowers might exert
themselves to the utmost, it was necessary that the soldiers, who were a
useless incumbrance on deck, should go below.  Thus only could the ship
be properly handled.  The captain, anxious to save his ship and his life,
consented.  Most of the soldiers were sent beneath the hatches: a few
were ordered to sit on the benches among the slaves.  Now there had been
a secret understanding for many days among these unfortunate men, nor
were they wholly without weapons.  They had been accustomed to make
toothpicks and other trifling articles for sale out of broken sword-
blades and other refuse bits of steel.  There was not a man among them
who had not thus provided himself with a secret stiletto.

At first Gwynn occupied himself with arrangements for weathering the
gale.  So soon however as the ship had been made comparatively easy, he
looked around him, suddenly threw down his cap, and raised his hand to
the rigging.  It was a preconcerted signal.  The next instant he stabbed
the captain to the heart, while each one of the galley-slaves killed the
soldier nearest him; then, rushing below, they surprised and overpowered
the rest of the troops, and put them all to death.

Coming again upon deck, David Gwynn descried the fourth galley of the
squadron, called the Royal, commanded by Commodore Medrado in person,
bearing down upon them, before the wind.  It was obvious that the Vasana
was already an object of suspicion.

"Comrades," said Gwynn, "God has given us liberty, and by our courage we
must prove ourselves worthy of the boon."

As he spoke there came a broadside from the galley Royal which killed
nine of his crew.  David, nothing daunted; laid his ship close alongside
of the Royal, with such a shock that the timbers quivered again.  Then at
the head of his liberated slaves, now thoroughly armed, he dashed on
board the galley, and, after a furious conflict, in which he was assisted
by the slaves of the Royal, succeeded in mastering the vessel, and
putting all the Spanish soldiers to death.  This done, the combined
rowers, welcoming Gwynn as their deliverer from an abject slavery which
seemed their lot for life, willingly accepted his orders.  The gale had
meantime abated, and the two galleys, well conducted by the experienced
and intrepid Welshman, made their way to the coast of France, and landed
at Bayonne on the 31st, dividing among them the property found on board
the two galleys.  Thence, by land, the fugitives, four hundred and sixty-
six in number--Frenchmen, Spaniards, Englishmen, Turks, and Moors, made
their way to Rochelle.  Gwynn had an interview with Henry of Navarre, and
received from that chivalrous king a handsome present.  Afterwards he
found his way to England, and was well commended by the Queen.  The rest
of the liberated slaves dispersed in various directions.

This was the first adventure of the invincible Armada.  Of the squadron
of galleys, one was already sunk in the sea, and two of the others had
been conquered by their own slaves.  The fourth rode out the gale with
difficulty, and joined the rest of the fleet, which ultimately re-
assembled at Coruna; the ships having, in distress, put in at first at
Vivera, Ribadeo, Gijon, and other northern ports of Spain.  At the
Groyne--as the English of that day were accustomed to call Coruna--they
remained a month, repairing damages and recruiting; and on the 22nd of
July 3 (N.S.) the Armada set sail: Six days later, the Spaniards took
soundings, thirty leagues from the Scilly Islands, and on--Friday, the
29th of July, off the Lizard, they had the first glimpse of the land of
promise presented them by Sixtus V., of which they had at last come to
take possession.

     [The dates in the narrative will be always given according to the
     New Style, then already adopted by Spain, Holland, and France,
     although not by England.  The dates thus given are, of course, ten
     days later than they appear in contemporary English records.]

On the same day and night the blaze and smoke of ten thousand beacon-
fires from the Land's End to Margate, and from the Isle of Wight to
Cumberland, gave warning to every Englishman that the enemy was at last
upon them.  Almost at that very instant intelligence had been brought
from the court to the Lord-Admiral at Plymouth, that the Armada,
dispersed and shattered by the gales of June, was not likely to make its
appearance that year; and orders had consequently been given to disarm
the four largest ships, and send them into dock.  Even Walsingham, as
already stated, had participated in this strange delusion.

Before Howard had time to act upon this ill-timed suggestion--even had he
been disposed to do so--he received authentic intelligence that the great
fleet was off the Lizard.  Neither he nor Francis Drake were the men to
lose time in such an emergency, and before that Friday, night was spent,
sixty of the best English ships had been warped out of Plymouth harbour.

On Saturday, 30th July, the wind was very light at southwest, with a mist
and drizzling rain, but by three in the afternoon the two fleets could
descry and count each other through the haze.

By nine o'clock, 31st July, about two miles from Looe, on the Cornish
coast, the fleets had their first meeting.  There were 136 sail of the
Spaniards, of which ninety were large ships, and sixty-seven of the
English.  It was a solemn moment.  The long-expected Armada presented a
pompous, almost a theatrical appearance.  The ships seemed arranged for a
pageant, in honour of a victory already won.  Disposed in form of a
crescent, the horns of which were seven miles asunder, those gilded,
towered, floating castles, with their gaudy standards and their martial
music, moved slowly along the channel, with an air of indolent pomp.
Their captain-general, the golden Duke, stood in his private shot-proof
fortress, on the--deck of his great galleon the Saint Martin, surrounded
by generals of infantry, and colonels of cavalry, who knew as little as
he did himself of naval matters.  The English vessels, on the other
hand--with a few exceptions, light, swift, and easily handled--could sail
round and round those unwieldy galleons, hulks, and galleys rowed by
fettered slave-gangs.  The superior seamanship of free Englishmen,
commanded by such experienced captains as Drake, Frobisher, and Hawkins--
from infancy at home on blue water--was manifest in the very, first
encounter.  They obtained the weather-gage at once, and cannonaded the
enemy at intervals with considerable effect, easily escaping at will out
of range of the sluggish Armada, which was incapable of bearing sail in
pursuit, although provided with an armament which could sink all its
enemies at close quarters.  "We had some small fight with them that
Sunday afternoon," said Hawkins.

Medina Sidonia hoisted the royal standard at the fore, and the whole
fleet did its utmost, which was little, to offer general battle.  It was
in vain.  The English, following at the heels of the enemy, refused all
such invitations, and attacked only the rear-guard of the Armada, where
Recalde commanded.  That admiral, steadily maintaining his post, faced
his nimble antagonists, who continued to teaze, to maltreat, and to elude
him, while the rest of the fleet proceeded slowly up the Channel closely,
followed by the enemy.  And thus the running fight continued along the
coast, in full view of Plymouth, whence boats with reinforcements and
volunteers were perpetually arriving to the English ships, until the
battle had drifted quite out of reach of the town.

Already in this first "small fight" the Spaniards had learned a lesson,
and might even entertain a doubt of their invincibility.  But before the
sun set there were more serious disasters.  Much powder and shot had been
expended by the Spaniards to very little purpose, and so a master-gunner
on board Admiral Oquendo's flag-ship was reprimanded for careless ball-
practice.  The gunner, who was a Fleming, enraged with his captain, laid
a train to the powder-magazine, fired it, and threw himself into the sea.
Two decks blew up.  The into the clouds, carrying with it the paymaster-
general of the fleet, a large portion of treasure, and nearly two hundred
men.'  The ship was a wreck, but it was possible to save the rest of the
crew.  So Medina Sidonia sent light vessels to remove them, and wore with
his flag-ship, to defend Oquendo, who had already been fastened upon by
his English pursuers.  But the Spaniards, not being so light in hand as
their enemies, involved themselves in much embarrassment by this
manoeuvre; and there was much falling foul of each other, entanglement of
rigging, and carrying away of yards.  Oquendo's men, however, were
ultimately saved, and taken to other ships.

Meantime Don Pedro de Valdez, commander of the Andalusian squadron,
having got his galleon into collision with two or three Spanish ships
successively, had at last carried away his fore-mast close to the deck,
and the wreck had fallen against his main-mast.  He lay crippled and
helpless, the Armada was slowly deserting him, night was coming on, the
sea was running high, and the English, ever hovering near, were ready
to grapple with him.  In vain did Don Pedro fire signals of distress.
The captain-general, even as though the unlucky galleon had not been
connected with the Catholic fleet--calmly fired a gun to collect his
scattered ships, and abandoned Valdez to his fate.  "He left me
comfortless in sight of the whole fleet," said poor Pedro, "and greater
inhumanity and unthankfulness I think was never heard of among men."

Yet the Spaniard comported himself most gallantly.  Frobisher, in the
largest ship of the English fleet, the Triumph, of 1100 tons, and Hawkins
in the Victory, of 800, cannonaded him at a distance, but, night coming
on, he was able to resist; and it was not till the following morning that
he surrendered to the Revenge.

Drake then received the gallant prisoner on board his flagship--much to
the disgust and indignation of Frobisher and Hawkins, thus disappointed
of their prize and ransom-money--treated him with much courtesy, and gave
his word of honour that he and his men should be treated fairly like good
prisoners of war.  This pledge was redeemed, for it was not the English,
as it was the Spanish custom, to convert captives into slaves, but only
to hold them for ransom.  Valdez responded to Drake's politeness by
kissing his hand, embracing him, and overpowering him with magnificent
compliments.  He was then sent on board the Lord-Admiral, who received
him with similar urbanity, and expressed his regret that so distinguished
a personage should have been so coolly deserted by the Duke of Medina.
Don Pedro then returned to the Revenge, where, as the guest of Drake, he
was a witness to all subsequent events up to the 10th of August, on which
day he was sent to London with some other officers, Sir Francis claiming
his ransom as his lawful due.

Here certainly was no very triumphant beginning for the Invincible
Armada.  On the very first day of their being in presence of the English
fleet--then but sixty-seven in number, and vastly their inferior in size
and weight of metal--they had lost the flag ships of the Guipuzcoan and
of the Andalusian squadrons, with a general-admiral, 450 officers and,
men, and some 100,000 ducats of treasure.  They had been out-manoeuvred,
out-sailed, and thoroughly maltreated by their antagonists, and they had
been unable to inflict a single blow in return.  Thus the "small fight"
had been a cheerful one for the opponents of the Inquisition, and the
English were proportionably encouraged.

On Monday, 1st of August, Medina Sidonia placed the rear-guard-consisting
of the galeasses, the galleons St. Matthew, St. Luke, St. James, and the
Florence and other ships, forty-three in all--under command of Don
Antonio de Leyva.  He was instructed to entertain the enemy--
so constantly hanging on the rear--to accept every chance of battle, and
to come to close quarters whenever it should be possible.  The Spaniards
felt confident of sinking every ship in the English navy, if they could
but once come to grappling; but it was growing more obvious every hour
that the giving or withholding battle was entirely in the hands of their
foes.  Meantime--while the rear was thus protected by Leyva's division--
the vanguard and main body of the Armada, led by the captain-general,
would steadily pursue its way, according to the royal instructions, until
it arrived at its appointed meeting-place with the Duke of Parma.
Moreover, the Duke of Medina--dissatisfied with the want of discipline
and of good seamanship hitherto displayed in his fleet--now took occasion
to send a serjeant-major, with written sailing directions, on board each
ship in the Armada, with express orders to hang every captain, without
appeal or consultation, who should leave the position assigned him; and
the hangmen were sent with the sergeant-majors to ensure immediate
attention to these arrangements.  Juan Gil was at the name time sent off
in a sloop to the Duke of Parma, to carry the news of the movements of
the Armada, to request information as to the exact spot and moment of the
junction, and to beg for pilots acquainted with the French and Flemish
coasts.  "In case of the slightest gale in the world," said Medina, "I
don't know how or where to shelter such large ships as ours."

Disposed in this manner; the Spaniards sailed leisurely along the English
coast with light westerly breezes, watched closely by the Queen's fleet,
which hovered at a moderate distance to windward, without offering, that
day, any obstruction to their course.

By five o'clock on Tuesday morning, 2nd of August, the Armada lay between
Portland Bill and St. Albans' Head, when the wind shifted to the north-
east, and gave the Spaniards the weather-gage.  The English did their
beat to get to windward, but the Duke, standing close into the land with
the whole Armada, maintained his advantage.  The English then went about,
making a tack seaward, and were soon afterwards assaulted by the
Spaniards.  A long and spirited action ensued.  Howard in his little Ark-
Royal--"the odd ship of the world for all conditions"--was engaged at
different times with Bertendona, of the Italian squadron, with Alonzo de
Leyva in the Batta, and with other large vessels.  He was hard pressed
for a time, but was gallantly supported by the Nonpareil, Captain Tanner;
and after a long and confused combat, in which the St. Mark, the St.
Luke, the St. Matthew, the St. Philip, the St. John, the St. James, the
St. John Baptist, the St. Martin, and many other great galleons, with
saintly and apostolic names, fought pellmell with the Lion, the Bear, the
Bull, the Tiger, the Dreadnought, the Revenge, the Victory, the Triumph,
and other of the more profanely-baptized English ships, the Spaniards
were again baffled in all their attempts to close with, and to board,
their ever-attacking, ever-flying adversaries.  The cannonading was
incessant.  "We had a sharp and a long fight," said Hawkins.  Boat-loads
of men and munitions were perpetually arriving to the English, and many,
high-born volunteers--like Cumberland, Oxford, Northumberland, Raleigh,
Brooke, Dudley, Willoughby, Noel, William Hatton, Thomas Cecil, and
others--could no longer restrain their impatience, as the roar of battle
sounded along the coasts of Dorset, but flocked merrily on board the
ships of Drake,--Hawkins, Howard, and Frobisher, or came in small vessels
which they had chartered for themselves, in order to have their share in
the delights of the long-expected struggle.

The action, irregular, desultory, but lively, continued nearly all day,
and until the English had fired away most of their powder and shot.  The
Spaniards, too, notwithstanding their years of preparation, were already
sort of light metal, and Medina Sidonia had been daily sending to Parma
for a Supply of four, six, and ten pound balls.  So much lead and
gunpowder had never before been wasted in a single day; for there was no
great damage inflicted on either side.  The artillery-practice was
certainly not much to the credit of either nation.

"If her Majesty's ships had been manned with a full supply of good
gunners," said honest William Thomas, an old artilleryman, "it would have
been the woefullest time ever the Spaniard took in hand, and the most
noble victory ever heard of would have been her Majesty's.  But our sins
were the cause that so much powder and shot were spent, so long time in
fight, and in comparison so little harm done.  It were greatly to be
wished that her Majesty were no longer deceived in this way."

Yet the English, at any rate, had succeeded in displaying their
seamanship, if not their gunnery, to advantage.  In vain the unwieldly
hulks and galleons had attempted to grapple with their light-winged foes,
who pelted them, braved them, damaged their sails and gearing; and then
danced lightly off into the distance; until at last, as night fell, the
wind came out from the west again, and the English regained and kept the
weather-gage.

The Queen's fleet, now divided into four squadrons, under Howard, Drake,
Hawkins, and Frobisher, amounted to near one hundred sail, exclusive of
Lord Henry Seymour's division, which was cruising in the Straits of
Dover.  But few of all this number were ships of war however, and the
merchant vessels; although zealous and active enough, were not thought
very effective.  "If you had seen the simple service done by the
merchants and coast ships," said Winter, "you would have said we had been
little holpen by them, otherwise than that they did make a show."

All night the Spaniards, holding their course towards Calais, after the
long but indecisive conflict had terminated, were closely pursued by
their wary antagonists.  On Wednesday, 3rd of August, there was some
slight cannonading, with but slender results; and on Thursday, the 4th,
both fleets were off Dunnose, on the Isle of Wight.  The great hulk
Santana and a galleon of Portugal having been somewhat damaged the
previous day, were lagging behind the rest of the Armada, and were
vigorously attacked by the Triumph, and a few other vessels.  Don Antonio
de Leyva, with some of the galeasses and large galleons, came to the
rescue, and Frobisher, although in much peril, maintained an unequal
conflict, within close range, with great spirit.

Seeing his danger, the Lord Admiral in the Ark-Royal, accompanied by
the Golden Lion; the White Bear, the Elizabeth, the Victory, and the
Leicester, bore boldly down into the very midst of the Spanish fleet,
and laid himself within three or four hundred yards of Medina's flag
ship, the St. Martin, while his comrades were at equally close quarters
with Vice-Admiral Recalde and the galleons of Oquendo, Mexia, and
Almanza.  It was the hottest conflict which had yet taken place.  Here at
last was thorough English work.  The two, great fleets, which were there
to subjugate and to defend the realm of Elizabeth, were nearly yard-arm
and yard-arm together--all England on the lee.  Broadside after broadside
of great guns, volley after volley of arquebusry from maintop and
rigging, were warmly exchanged, and much damage was inflicted on the
Spaniards, whose gigantic ships, were so easy a mark to aim at, while
from their turreted heights they themselves fired for the most part
harmlessly over the heads of their adversaries.  The leaders of the
Armada, however, were encouraged, for they expected at last to come to
even closer quarters, and there were some among the English who were mad
enough to wish to board.

But so soon as Frobisher, who was the hero of the day, had extricated
himself from his difficulty, the Lord-Admiral--having no intention of
risking the existence of his fleet, and with it perhaps of the English
crown, upon the hazard of a single battle, and having been himself
somewhat damaged in the fight--gave the signal for retreat, and caused
the Ark-Royal to be towed out of action.  Thus the Spaniards were
frustrated of their hopes, and the English; having inflicted much.
punishment at comparatively small loss to themselves, again stood off to
windward; and the Armada continued its indolent course along the cliffs
of Freshwater and Blackgang.

On Friday; 5th August, the English, having received men and munitions
from shore, pursued their antagonists at a moderate distance; and the
Lord-Admiral; profiting by the pause--for, it was almost a flat calm--
sent for Martin Frobisher, John Hawkins, Roger Townsend, Lord Thomas
Howard, son of the Duke of Norfolk, and Lord Edmund Sheffield; and on the
deck of the Royal Ark conferred the honour of knighthood on each for his
gallantry in the action of the previous day.  Medina Sidonia, on his
part, was again despatching messenger after messenger to the Duke of
Parma, asking for small shot, pilots, and forty fly-boats, with which to
pursue the teasing English clippers.  The Catholic Armada, he said, being
so large and heavy, was quite in the power of its adversaries, who could
assault, retreat, fight, or leave off fighting, while he had nothing for
it but to proceed, as expeditiously as might be; to his rendezvous in
Calais roads.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Inquisitors enough; but there were no light vessels in The Armada




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v57
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 58, 1588


     Both Fleets off Calais--A Night of Anxiety--Project of Howard and
     Winter--Impatience of the Spaniards--Fire-Ships sent against the
     Armada--A great Galeasse disabled--Attacked and captured by English
     Boats--General Engagement of both Fleets--Loss of several Spanish
     Ships--Armada flies, followed by the English--English insufficiently
     provided--Are obliged to relinquish the Chase--A great Storm
     disperses the Armada--Great Energy of Parma Made fruitless by
     Philip's Dulness--England readier at Sea than on Shore--The
     Lieutenant--General's Complaints--His Quarrels with Norris and
     Williams--Harsh Statements as to the English Troops--Want of
     Organization in England--Royal Parsimony and Delay--Quarrels of
     English Admirals--England's narrow Escape from great Peril--Various
     Rumours as to the Armada's Fate--Philip for a long Time in Doubt--He
     believes himself victorious--Is tranquil when undeceived.


CHAPTER XIX.  Part 2.


And in Calais roads the great fleet--sailing slowly all next day in
company with the English, without a shot being fired on either side--at
last dropped anchor on Saturday afternoon, August 6th.

Here then the Invincible Armada had arrived at its appointed resting-
place.  Here the great junction--of Medina Sidonia with the Duke of Parma
was to be effected; and now at last the curtain was to rise upon the last
act of the great drama so slowly and elaborately prepared.

That Saturday afternoon, Lord Henry Seymour and his squadron of sixteen
lay between Dungeness and Folkestone; waiting the approach of the two
fleets.  He spoke several-coasting vessels coming from the west; but they
could give him no information--strange to say--either of the Spaniards
or, of his own countrymen,--Seymour; having hardly three days' provision
in his fleet, thought that there might be time to take in supplies; and
so bore into the Downs.  Hardly had he been there half an hour; when a
pinnace arrived from the Lord-Admiral; with orders for Lord Henry's
squadron to hold itself in readiness.  There was no longer time for
victualling, and very soon afterwards the order was given to make sail
and bear for the French coast.  The wind was however so light; that the
whole day was spent before Seymour with his ships could cross the
channel.  At last, towards seven in the evening; he saw the great Spanish
Armada, drawn up in a half-moon, and riding at anchor--the ships very
near each other--a little to the eastward of Calais, and very near the
shore.  The English, under Howard Drake, Frobisher, and Hawkins, were
slowly following, and--so soon as Lord Henry, arriving from the opposite
shore; had made his junction with them--the whole combined fleet dropped
anchor likewise very near Calais, and within one mile and a half of the
Spaniards.  That invincible force had at last almost reached its
destination.  It was now to receive the cooperation of the great Farnese,
at the head of an army of veterans, disciplined on a hundred battle-
fields, confident from countless victories, and arrayed, as they had been
with ostentatious splendour, to follow the most brilliant general in
Christendom on his triumphal march into the capital of England.  The
long-threatened invasion was no longer an idle figment of politicians,
maliciously spread abroad to poison men's minds as to the intentions of
a long-enduring but magnanimous, and on the whole friendly sovereign.
The mask had been at last thrown down, and the mild accents of Philip's
diplomatists and their English dupes, interchanging protocols so
decorously month after month on the sands of Bourbourg, had been drowned
by the peremptory voice of English and Spanish artillery, suddenly
breaking in upon their placid conferences.  It had now become
supererogatory to ask for Alexander's word of honour whether he had,
ever heard of Cardinal Allan's pamphlet, or whether his master
contemplated hostilities against Queen Elizabeth.

Never, since England was England, had such a sight been seen as now
revealed itself in those narrow straits between Dover and Calais.  Along
that long, low, sandy shore, and quite within the range of the Calais
fortifications, one hundred and thirty Spanish ships--the greater number
of them the largest and most heavily armed in the world lay face to face,
and scarcely out of cannon-shot, with one hundred and fifty English
sloops and frigates, the strongest and swiftest that the island could
furnish, and commanded by men whose exploits had rung through the world.

Farther along the coast, invisible, but known to be performing a post
perilous and vital service, was a squadron of Dutch vessels of all sizes,
lining both the inner and outer edges of the sandbanks off the Flemish
coasts, and swarming in all the estuaries and inlets of that intricate
and dangerous cruising-ground between Dunkerk and Walcheren.  Those
fleets of Holland and Zeeland, numbering some one hundred and fifty
galleons, sloops, and fly-boats, under Warmond, Nassau, Van der Does, de
Moor, and Rosendael, lay patiently blockading every possible egress from
Newport, or Gravelines; or Sluys, or Flushing, or Dunkerk, and longing to
grapple with the Duke of Parma, so soon as his fleet of gunboats and
hoys, packed with his Spanish and Italian veterans, should venture to set
forth upon the sea for their long-prepared exploit.

It was a pompous spectacle, that midsummer night, upon those narrow seas.
The moon, which was at the full, was rising calmly upon a scene of
anxious expectation.  Would she not be looking, by the morrow's night,
upon a subjugated England, a re-enslaved Holland--upon the downfall of
civil and religious liberty?  Those ships of Spain, which lay there with
their banners waving in the moonlight, discharging salvoes of anticipated
triumph and filling the air with strains of insolent music; would they
not, by daybreak, be moving straight to their purpose, bearing the
conquerors of the world to the scene of their cherished hopes?

That English fleet, too, which rode there at anchor, so anxiously on the
watch--would that swarm of, nimble, lightly-handled, but slender
vessels,--which had held their own hitherto in hurried and desultory
skirmishes--be able to cope with their great antagonist now that the
moment had arrived for the death grapple?  Would not Howard, Drake,
Frobisher, Seymour, Winter, and Hawkins, be swept out of the straits at
last, yielding an open passage to Medina, Oquendo, Recalde, and Farnese?
Would those Hollanders and Zeelanders, cruising so vigilantly among their
treacherous shallows, dare to maintain their post, now that the terrible
'Holofernese,' with his invincible legions, was resolved to come forth?

So soon as he had cast anchor, Howard despatched a pinnace to the
Vanguard, with a message to Winter to come on board the flag-ship.  When
Sir William reached the Ark, it was already nine in the evening.  He was
anxiously consulted by the Lord-Admiral as to the course now to be taken.
Hitherto the English had been teasing and perplexing an enemy, on the
retreat, as it were, by the nature of his instructions.  Although anxious
to give battle, the Spaniard was forbidden to descend upon the coast
until after his junction with Parma.  So the English had played a
comparatively easy game, hanging upon their enemy's skirts, maltreating
him as they doubled about him, cannonading him from a distance, and
slipping out of his reach at their pleasure.  But he was now to be met
face to face, and the fate of the two free commonwealths of the world was
upon the issue of the struggle, which could no longer be deferred.

Winter, standing side by aide with the Lord-Admiral on the deck of the
little Ark-Royal, gazed for the first time on those enormous galleons and
galleys with which his companion, was already sufficiently familiar.

"Considering their hugeness," said he, "twill not be possible to remove
them but by a device."

Then remembering, in a lucky moment, something that he had heard four
years before of the fire ships sent by the Antwerpers against Parma's
bridge--the inventor of which, the Italian Gianibelli, was at that very
moment constructing fortifications on the Thames to assist the English
against his old enemy Farnese--Winter suggested that some stratagem of
the same kind should be attempted against the Invincible Armada.  There
was no time nor opportunity to prepare such submarine volcanoes as had
been employed on that memorable occasion; but burning ships at least
might be sent among the fleet.  Some damage would doubtless be thus
inflicted by the fire, and perhaps a panic, suggested by the memories of
Antwerp and by the knowledge that the famous Mantuan wizard was then a
resident of England, would be still more effective.  In Winter's opinion,
the Armada might at least be compelled to slip its cables, and be thrown
into some confusion if the project were fairly carried out.

Howard approved of the device, and determined to hold, next morning, a
council of war for arranging the details of its execution.

While the two sat in the cabin, conversing thus earnestly, there had well
nigh been a serious misfortune.  The ship, White Bear, of 1000 tons
burthen, and three others of the English fleet, all tangled together,
came drifting with the tide against the Ark.  There were many yards
carried away; much tackle spoiled, and for a time there was great danger;
in the opinion of Winter, that some of the very best ships in the fleet
would be crippled and quite destroyed on the eve of a general engagement.
By alacrity and good handling, however, the ships were separated, and the
ill-consequences of an accident--such as had already proved fatal to
several Spanish vessels--were fortunately averted.

Next day, Sunday, 7th August, the two great fleets were still lying but a
mile and a half apart, calmly gazing at each other, and rising and
falling at their anchors as idly as if some vast summer regatta were the
only purpose of that great assemblage of shipping.  Nothing as yet was
heard of Farnese.  Thus far, at least, the Hollanders had held him at
bay, and there was still breathing-time before the catastrophe.  So
Howard hung out his signal for council early in the morning, and very
soon after Drake and Hawkins, Seymour, Winter, and the rest, were gravely
consulting in his cabin.

It was decided that Winter's suggestion should be acted upon, and Sir
Henry Palmer was immediately despatched in a pinnace to Dover, to bring
off a number of old vessels fit to be fired, together with a supply of
light wood, tar, rosin, sulphur, and other combustibles, most adapted to
the purpose.'  But as time wore away, it became obviously impossible for
Palmer to return that night, and it was determined to make the most of
what could be collected in the fleet itself.  Otherwise it was to be
feared that the opportunity might be for ever lost.  Parma, crushing all
opposition, might suddenly appear at any moment upon the channel; and the
whole Spanish Armada, placing itself between him and his enemies, would
engage the English and Dutch fleets, and cover his passage to Dover.  It
would then be too late to think of the burning ships.

On the other hand, upon the decks of the Armada, there was an impatience
that night which increased every hour.  The governor of Calais; M. de
Gourdon, had sent his nephew on board the flag-ship of Medina Sidonia,
with courteous salutations, professions of friendship, and bountiful
refreshments.  There was no fear--now that Mucio was for the time in the
ascendency--that the schemes of Philip would be interfered with by
France.  The governor, had, however, sent serious warning of--the
dangerous position in which the Armada had placed itself.  He was quite
right.  Calais roads were no safe anchorage for huge vessels like those
of Spain and Portugal; for the tides and cross-currents to which they
were exposed were most treacherous.  It was calm enough at the moment,
but a westerly gale might, in a few hours, drive the whole fleet
hopelessly among the sand-banks of the dangerous Flemish coast.
Moreover, the Duke, although tolerably well furnished with charts and
pilots for the English coast, was comparatively unprovided against the
dangers which might beset him off Dunkerk, Newport, and Flushing.  He had
sent messengers, day after day, to Farnese, begging for assistance of
various kinds, but, above all, imploring his instant presence on the
field of action.  It was the time and, place for Alexander to assume the
chief command.  The Armada was ready to make front against the English
fleet on the left, while on the right, the Duke, thus protected, might
proceed across the channel and take possession of England.

And the impatience of the soldiers and sailors on board the fleet was
equal to that of their commanders.  There was London almost before their
eyes--a huge mass of treasure, richer and more accessible than those
mines beyond the Atlantic which had so often rewarded Spanish chivalry
with fabulous wealth.  And there were men in those galleons who
remembered the sack of Antwerp, eleven years before--men who could tell,
from personal experience, how helpless was a great commercial city, when
once in the clutch of disciplined brigands--men who, in that dread 'fury
of Antwerp,' had enriched themselves in an hour with the accumulations of
a merchant's life-time, and who had slain fathers and mothers, sons and
daughters, brides and bridegrooms, before each others' eyes, until the
number of inhabitants butchered in the blazing streets rose to many
thousands; and the plunder from palaces and warehouses was counted by
millions; before the sun had set on the 'great fury.'  Those Spaniards,
and Italians, and Walloons, were now thirsting for more gold, for more
blood; and as the capital of England was even more wealthy and far more
defenceless than the commercial metropolis of the Netherlands had been,
so it was resolved that the London 'fury' should be more thorough and
more productive than the 'fury' of Antwerp, at the memory--of which the
world still shuddered.  And these professional soldiers had been taught
to consider the English as a pacific, delicate, effeminate race,
dependent on good living, without experience of war, quickly fatigued and
discouraged, and even more easily to be plundered and butchered than were
the excellent burghers of Antwerp.

And so these southern conquerors looked down from their great galleons
and galeasses upon the English vessels.  More than three quarters of them
were merchantmen.  There was no comparison whatever between the relative
strength of the fleets.  In number they were about equal being each from
one hundred and thirty to one hundred and fifty strong--but the Spaniards
had twice the tonnage of the English, four times the artillery, and
nearly three times the number of men.

Where was Farnese?  Most impatiently the Golden Duke paced the deck of
the Saint Martin.  Most eagerly were thousands of eyes strained towards
the eastern horizon to catch the first glimpse of Parma's flotilla.  But
the day wore on to its close, and still the same inexplicable and
mysterious silence prevailed.  There was utter solitude on the waters in
the direction of Gravelines and Dunkerk--not a sail upon the sea in the
quarter where bustle and activity had been most expected.  The mystery
was profound, for it had never entered the head of any man in the Armada
that Alexander could not come out when he chose.

And now to impatience succeeded suspicion and indignation; and there were
curses upon sluggishness and upon treachery.  For in the horrible
atmosphere of duplicity, in which all Spaniards and Italians of that
epoch lived, every man: suspected his brother, and already Medina Sidonia
suspected Farnese of playing him false.  There were whispers of collusion
between the Duke and the English commissioners at Bourbourg.  There were
hints that Alexander was playing his own game, that he meant to divide
the sovereignty of the Netherlands with the heretic Elizabeth, to desert
his great trust, and to effect, if possible, the destruction of his
master's Armada, and the downfall of his master's sovereignty in the
north.  Men told each other, too, of a vague rumour, concerning which
Alexander might have received information, and in which many believed,
that Medina Sidonia was the bearer of secret orders to throw Farnese into
bondage, so soon as he should appear, to send him a disgraced captive
back to Spain for punishment, and to place the baton of command in the
hand of the Duke of Pastrana, Philip's bastard by the Eboli.  Thus, in
the absence of Alexander, all was suspense and suspicion.  It seemed
possible that disaster instead of triumph was in store for them through
the treachery of the commander-in-chief.  Four and twenty hours and more,
they had been lying in that dangerous roadstead, and although the weather
had been calm and the sea tranquil, there seemed something brooding in
the atmosphere.

As the twilight deepened, the moon became totally obscured, dark cloud-
masses spread over the heavens, the sea grew black, distant thunder
rolled, and the sob of an approaching tempest became distinctly audible.
Such indications of a westerly gale, were not encouraging to those
cumbrous vessels, with the treacherous quicksands of Flanders under their
lee.

At an hour past midnight, it was so dark that it was difficult for the
most practiced eye to pierce far into the gloom.  But a faint drip of
oars now struck the ears of the Spaniards as they watched from the decks.
A few moments afterwards the sea became, suddenly luminous, and six
flaming vessels appeared at a slight distance, bearing steadily down upon
them before the wind and tide.

There were men in the Armada who had been at the siege of Antwerp only
three years before.  They remembered with horror the devil-ships of
Gianibelli, those floating volcanoes, which had seemed to rend earth and
ocean, whose explosion had laid so many thousands of soldiers dead at a
blow, and which had shattered the bridge and floating forts of Farnese,
as though they had been toys of glass.  They knew, too, that the famous
engineer was at that moment in England.

In a moment one of those horrible panics, which spread with such
contagious rapidity among large bodies of men, seized upon the Spaniards.
There was a yell throughout the fleet--"the fire-ships of Antwerp, the
fire-ships of Antwerp!" and in an instant every cable was cut, and
frantic attempts were made by each galleon and galeasse to escape what
seemed imminent destruction.  The confusion was beyond description.  Four
or five of the largest ships became entangled with each other.  Two
others were set on fire by the flaming--vessels, and were consumed.
Medina Sidonia, who had been warned, even, before his departure from
Spain, that some such artifice would probably be attempted, and who had
even, early that morning, sent out a party of sailors in a pinnace to
search for indications of the scheme, was not surprised or dismayed.
He gave orders--as well as might be that every ship, after the danger
should be passed, was to return to its post, and, await his further
orders.  But it was useless, in that moment of unreasonable panic to
issue commands.  The despised Mantuan, who had met with so many rebuffs
at Philip's court, and who--owing to official incredulity had been but
partially successful in his magnificent enterprise at Antwerp, had now;
by the mere terror of his name, inflicted more damage on Philip's Armada
than had hitherto been accomplished by Howard and Drake, Hawkins and
Frobisher, combined.

So long as night and darkness lasted, the confusion and uproar continued.
When the Monday morning dawned, several of the Spanish vessels lay
disabled, while the rest of the fleet was seen at a distance of two
leagues from Calais, driving towards the Flemish coast.  The threatened
gale had not yet begun to blow, but there were fresh squalls from the
W.S.W., which, to such awkward sailers as the Spanish vessels; were
difficult to contend with.  On the other hand, the English fleet were all
astir; and ready to pursue the Spaniards, now rapidly drifting into the
North Sea.  In the immediate neighbourhood of Calais, the flagship of the
squadron of galeasses, commanded by Don Hugo de Moncada, was discovered
using her foresail and oars, and endeavouring to enter the harbour.
She had been damaged by collision with the St. John of Sicily and other
ships, during the night's panic, and had her rudder quite torn away. She
was the largest and most splendid vessel in the Armada--the show-ship of
the fleet,--"the very glory and stay of the Spanish navy," and during the
previous two days she had been visited and admired by great numbers of
Frenchmen from the shore.

Lord Admiral Howard bore dawn upon her at once, but as she was already in
shallow water, and was rowing steadily towards the town, he saw that the
Ark could not follow with safety.  So he sent his long-boat to cut her
out, manned with fifty or sixty volunteers, most of them "as valiant in
courage as gentle in birth"--as a partaker in the adventure declared.
The Margaret and Joan of London, also following in pursuit, ran herself
aground, but the master despatched his pinnace with a body of musketeers,
to aid in the capture of the galeasse.

That huge vessel failed to enter the harbour, and stuck fast upon the
bar.  There was much dismay on board, but Don Hugo prepared resolutely to
defend himself.  The quays of Calais and the line of the French shore
were lined with thousands of eager spectators, as the two boats-rowing
steadily toward a galeasse, which carried forty brass pieces of
artillery, and was manned with three hundred soldiers and four hundred
and fifty slaves--seemed rushing upon their own destruction.  Of these
daring Englishmen, patricians and plebeians together, in two open
pinnaces, there were not more than one hundred in number, all told.
They soon laid themselves close to the Capitana, far below her lofty
sides, and called on Don Hugo to surrender.  The answer was, a smile of
derision from the haughty Spaniard, as he looked down upon them from what
seemed an inaccessible height.  Then one Wilton, coxswain of the Delight;
of Winter's squadron, clambered up to the enemy's deck and fell dead
the same instant.  Then the English volunteers opened a volley upon the
Spaniards; "They seemed safely ensconced in their ships," said bold Dick
Tomson, of the Margaret and Joan, "while we in our open pinnaces, and far
under them, had nothing to shroud and cover us."  Moreover the numbers
were, seven hundred and fifty to one hundred.  But, the Spaniards, still
quite disconcerted by the events of the preceding night, seemed under a
spell.  Otherwise it would have been an easy matter for the great
galeasse to annihilate such puny antagonists in a very short space of
time.

The English pelted the Spaniards quite cheerfully, however, with arquebus
shot, whenever they showed themselves above the bulwarks, picked off a
considerable number, and sustained a rather severe loss themselves,
Lieutenant Preston of the Ark-Royal, among others, being dangerously
wounded.   "We had a pretty skirmish for half-an-hour," said Tomson.
At last Don Hugo de Moncada, furious at the inefficiency of his men, and
leading them forward in person, fell back on his deck with a bullet
through both eyes.  The panic was instantaneous, for, meantime, several
other English boats--some with eight, ten; or twelve men on board--were
seen pulling--towards the galeasse; while the dismayed soldiers at once
leaped overboard on the land side, and attempted to escape by swimming
and wading to the shore. Some of them succeeded, but the greater number
were drowned.  The few who remained--not more, than twenty in all--
hoisted two handkerchiefs upon two rapiers as a signal of truce.  The
English, accepting it as a signal of defeat; scrambled with great
difficulty up the lofty sides of the Capitana, and, for an hour and a
half, occupied themselves most agreeably in plundering the ship and in
liberating the slaves.

It was their intention, with the flood-tide, to get the vessel off, as
she was but slightly damaged, and of very great value.  But a serious
obstacle arose to this arrangement.  For presently a boat came along-
side, with young M. de Gourdon and another French captain, and hailed the
galeasse.  There was nobody on board who could speak French but Richard
Tomson.  So Richard returned the hail, and asked their business.  They
said they came from the governor.

"And what is the--governor's pleasure?"  asked Tomson, when they had come
up the side.

"The governor has stood and beheld your fight, and rejoiced in your
victory," was the reply; "and he says that for your prowess and manhood
you well deserve the pillage of the galeasse.  He requires and commands
you, however, not to attempt carrying off either the ship or its
ordnance; for she lies a-ground under the battery of his castle, and
within his jurisdiction, and does of right appertain to him."

This seemed hard upon the hundred volunteers, who, in their two open
boats, had so manfully carried a ship of 1200 tons, 40 guns, and 750 men;
but Richard answered diplomatically.

"We thank M. de Gourdon," said he, "for granting the pillage to mariners
and soldiers who had fought for it, and we acknowledge that without his
good-will we cannot carry away anything we have got, for the ship lies on
ground directly under his batteries and bulwarks.  Concerning the ship
and ordnance, we pray that he would send a pinnace to my Lord Admiral
Howard, who is here in person hard by, from whom he will have an
honourable and friendly answer, which we shall all-obey."

With this--the French officers, being apparently content, were about to
depart, and it is not impossible that the soft answer might have obtained
the galeasse and the ordnance, notwithstanding the arrangement which
Philip II. had made with his excellent friend Henry III. for aid and
comfort to Spanish vessels in French ports.  Unluckily, however, the
inclination for plunder being rife that morning, some of the Englishmen
hustled their French visitors, plundered them of their rings and jewels,
as if they had been enemies, and then permitted them to depart.  They
rowed off to the shore, vowing vengeance, and within a few minutes after
their return the battery of the fort was opened upon the English, and
they were compelled to make their escape as they could with the plunder
already secured, leaving the galeasse in the possession of M. de Gourdon.

This adventure being terminated, and the pinnaces having returned to the
fleet, the Lord-Admiral, who had been lying off and on, now bore away
with all his force in pursuit of the Spaniards.  The Invincible Armada,
already sorely crippled, was standing N.N.E. directly before a fresh
topsail-breeze from the S.S.W.   The English came up with them soon after
nine o'clock A.M. off Gravelines, and found them sailing in a half-moon,
the admiral and vice-admiral in the centre, and the flanks protected by
the three remaining galeasses and by the great galleons of Portugal.

Seeing the enemy approaching, Medina Sidonia ordered his whole fleet to
luff to the wind, and prepare for action.  The wind shifting a few
points, was now at W.N.W., so that the English had both the weather-gage
and the tide in their favour.  A general combat began at about ten, and
it was soon obvious to the Spaniards that their adversaries were
intending warm work.  Sir Francis Drake in the Revenge, followed by,
Frobisher in the Triumph, Hawkins in the Victory, and some smaller
vessels, made the first attack upon the Spanish flagships.  Lord Henry in
the Rainbow, Sir Henry Palmer in the Antelope, and others, engaged with
three of the largest galleons of the Armada, while Sir William Winter in
the Vanguard, supported by most of his squadron, charged the starboard
wing.

The portion of the fleet thus assaulted fell back into the main body.
Four of the ships ran foul of each other, and Winter, driving into their
centre, found himself within musket-shot of many of their most
formidable' ships.

"I tell you, on the credit of a poor gentleman," he said, "that there
were five hundred discharges of demi-cannon, culverin, and demi-culverin,
from the Vanguard; and when I was farthest off in firing my pieces, I was
not out of shot of their harquebus, and most time within speech, one of
another."

The battle lasted six hours long, hot and furious; for now there was no
excuse for retreat on the part of the Spaniards, but, on the contrary, it
was the intention of the Captain-General to return to his station off
Calais, if it were within his power.  Nevertheless the English still
partially maintained the tactics which had proved so successful, and
resolutely refused the fierce attempts of the Spaniards to lay themselves
along-side.  Keeping within musket-range, the well-disciplined English
mariners poured broadside after broadside against the towering ships of
the Armada, which afforded so easy a mark; while the Spaniards, on their
part, found it impossible, while wasting incredible quantities of powder
and shot, to inflict any severe damage on their enemies.  Throughout the
action, not an English ship was destroyed, and not a hundred men were
killed.  On the other hand, all the best ships of the Spaniards were
riddled through and through, and with masts and yards shattered, sails
and rigging torn to shreds, and a north-went wind still drifting them
towards the fatal sand-batiks of Holland, they, laboured heavily in a
chopping sea, firing wildly, and receiving tremendous punishment at the
hands of Howard Drake, Seymour, Winter, and their followers.  Not even
master-gunner Thomas could complain that day of "blind exercise" on the
part of the English, with "little harm done" to the enemy.  There was
scarcely a ship in the Armada that did not suffer severely; for nearly
all were engaged in that memorable action off the sands of Gravelines.
The Captain-General himself, Admiral Recalde, Alonzo de Leyva, Oquendo,
Diego Flores de Valdez, Bertendona, Don Francisco de Toledo, Don Diego de
Pimentel, Telles Enriquez, Alonzo de Luzon, Garibay, with most of the
great galleons and galeasses, were in the thickest of the fight, and one
after the other each of those huge ships was disabled.  Three sank before
the fight was over, many others were soon drifting helpless wrecks
towards a hostile shore, and, before five o'clock, in the afternoon, at
least sixteen of their best ships had been sacrificed, and from four to
five thousand soldiers killed.

     ["God hath mightily preserved her Majesty's forces with the least
     losses that ever hath been heard of, being within the compass of so
     great volleys of shot, both small and great.  I verily believe there
     is not threescore men lost of her Majesty's forces."  Captain J.
     Fenner to Walsingham, 4/14 Aug. 1588.  (S. P. Office MS.)]

Nearly all the largest vessels of the Armada, therefore, having, been
disabled or damaged--according to a Spanish eye-witness--and all their
small shot exhausted,  Medina Sidonia reluctantly gave orders to retreat.
The Captain-General was a bad sailor; but he was, a chivalrous Spaniard
of ancient Gothic blood, and he felt deep mortification at the plight of
his invincible fleet, together with undisguised: resentment against
Alexander Farnese, through whose treachery and incapacity, he considered.
the great Catholic cause to have been, so foully sacrificed.  Crippled,
maltreated, and diminished in number, as were his ships; he would have
still faced, the enemy, but the winds and currents were fast driving him
on, a lee-shore, and the pilots, one and all, assured him that it would
be inevitable destruction to remain.  After a slight and very ineffectual
attempt to rescue Don Diego de Pimentel in the St. Matthew--who refused
to leave his disabled ship--and Don Francisco de Toledo; whose great
galleon, the St. Philip, was fast driving, a helpless wreck, towards
Zeeland, the Armada bore away N.N.E. into the open sea, leaving those,
who could not follow, to their fate.

The St. Matthew, in a sinking condition, hailed a Dutch fisherman, who
was offered a gold chain to pilot her into Newport.  But the fisherman,
being a patriot; steered her close to the Holland fleet, where she was
immediately assaulted by Admiral Van der Does, to whom, after a two
hours' bloody fight, she struck her flag.  Don Diego, marshal of the camp
to the famous legion of Sicily, brother, of the Marquis of Tavera, nephew
of the Viceroy of Sicily, uncle to the Viceroy of Naples, and numbering
as many titles, dignities; and high affinities as could be expected of a
grandee of the first class, was taken, with his officers, to the Hague.
"I was the means," said Captain Borlase, "that the best sort were saved,
and the rest were cast overboard and slain at our entry.  He, fought with
us two hours; and hurt divers of our men, but at, last yielded."

John Van der Does, his captor; presented the banner; of the Saint Matthew
to the great church of Leyden, where--such was its prodigious length--it
hung; from floor to ceiling without being entirely unrolled; and there
hung, from generation to generation; a worthy companion to the Spanish
flags which had been left behind when Valdez abandoned the siege of that
heroic city fifteen years before.

The galleon St. Philip, one of the four largest ships in the Armada,
dismasted and foundering; drifted towards Newport, where camp-marshal Don
Francisco de Toledo hoped in, vain for succour.  La Motte made a feeble
attempt at rescue, but some vessels from the Holland fleet, being much
more active, seized the unfortunate galleon, and carried her into
Flushing.  The captors found forty-eight brass cannon and other things of
value on board, but there were some casks of Ribadavia wine which was
more fatal to her enemies than those pieces of artillery had proved.  For
while the rebels were refreshing themselves, after the fatigues of the
capture, with large draughts of that famous vintage, the St. Philip,
which had been bored through and through with English shot, and had been
rapidly filling with water, gave a sudden lurch, and went down in a
moment, carrying with her to the bottom three hundred of those convivial
Hollanders.

A large Biscay galleon, too, of Recalde's squadron, much disabled in
action, and now, like many others, unable to follow the Armada, was
summoned by Captain Cross of the Hope, 48 guns, to surrender.  Although
foundering, she resisted, and refused to strike her flag.  One of her
officers attempted to haul down her colours, and was run through the body
by the captain, who, in his turn, was struck dead by a brother of the
officer thus slain.  In the midst of this quarrel the ship went down with
all her crew.

Six hours and more, from ten till nearly five, the fight had lasted--
a most cruel battle, as the Spaniard declared.  There were men in the
Armada who had served in the action of Lepanto, and who declared that
famous encounter to have been far surpassed in severity and spirit by
this fight off Gravelines.  "Surely every man in our fleet did well,"
said Winter, "and the slaughter the enemy received was great." Nor
would the Spaniards have escaped even worse punishment, had not, most
unfortunately, the penurious policy of the Queen's government rendered
her ships useless at last, even in this supreme moment.  They never
ceased cannonading the discomfited enemy until the ammunition was
exhausted.  "When the cartridges were all spent," said Winter, "and the
munitions in some vessels gone altogether, we ceased fighting, but
followed the enemy, who still kept away."  And the enemy--although still
numerous, and seeming strong enough, if properly handled, to destroy the
whole English fleet--fled before them.  There remained more than fifty
Spanish vessels, above six hundred tons in size, besides sixty hulks and
other vessels of less account; while in the whole English navy were but
thirteen ships of or above that burthen.  "Their force is wonderful great
and strong," said Howard, "but we pluck their feathers by little and
little."

For Medina Sidonia had now satisfied himself that he should never succeed
in boarding those hard-fighting and swift-sailing craft, while, meantime,
the horrible panic of Sunday night and the succession of fights
throughout the following day, had completely disorganized his followers.
Crippled, riddled, shorn, but still numerous, and by no means entirely
vanquished, the Armada was flying with a gentle breeze before an enemy
who, to save his existence; could not have fired a broadside.

"Though our powder and shot was well nigh spent," said the Lord-Admiral,
"we put on a brag countenance and gave them chase, as though we had
wanted nothing."  And the brag countenance was successful, for that "one
day's service had much appalled the enemy" as Drake observed; and still
the Spaniards fled with a freshening gale all through the Monday night.
"A thing greatly to be regarded," said Fenner, of the Nonpariel, "is
that that the Almighty had stricken them with a wonderful fear.  I have
hardly, seen any of their companies succoured of the extremities which
befell them after their fights, but they have been left, at utter ruin,
while they bear as much sail as ever they possibly can."

On Tuesday morning, 9th August, the English ships were off the isle of
Walcheren, at a safe distance from the shore.  "The wind is hanging
westerly," said Richard Tomson, of the Margaret and Joan, "and we drive
our enemies apace, much marvelling in what port they will direct
themselves.  Those that are left alive are so weak and heartless that
they could be well content to lose all charges and to be at home, both
rich and poor."

"In my, conscience," said Sir William Winter, "I think the Duke would
give his dukedom to be in Spain again."

The English ships, one-hundred and four in number, being that morning
half-a-league to windward, the Duke gave orders for the whole Armada to
lay to and, await their approach.  But the English had no disposition to
engage, for at, that moment the instantaneous destruction of their
enemies seemed inevitable.  Ill-managed, panic-struck, staggering before
their foes, the Spanish fleet was now close upon the fatal sands of
Zeeland.  Already there were but six and a-half fathoms of water, rapidly
shoaling under their keels, and the pilots told Medina that all were
irretrievably lost, for the freshening north-welter was driving them
steadily upon the banks.  The English, easily escaping the danger, hauled
their wind, and paused to see the ruin of the proud Armada accomplished
before their eyes.  Nothing but a change of wind at the instant could
save them from perdition.  There was a breathless shudder of suspense,
and then there came the change.  Just as the foremost ships were about to
ground on the Ooster Zand, the wind suddenly veered to the south-west,
and the Spanish ships quickly squaring their sails to the new impulse,
stood out once more into the open sea.

All that day the galleons and galeasses, under all the canvas which they
dared to spread, continued their flight before the south-westerly breeze,
and still the Lord-Admiral, maintaining the brag countenance, followed,
at an easy distance, the retreating foe.  At 4 p. m., Howard fired a
signal gun, and ran up a flag of council.  Winter could not go, for he
had been wounded in action, but Seymour and Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher,
and the rest were present, and it was decided that Lord Henry should
return, accompanied by Winter and the rest of the inner, squadron, to
guard the Thames mouth against any attempt of the Duke of Parma, while
the Lord Admiral and the rest of the navy should continue the pursuit of
the Armada.

Very wroth was Lord Henry at being deprived of his share in the chase.
"The Lord-Admiral was altogether desirous to have me strengthen him,"
said he, "and having done so to the utmost of my good-will and the
venture of my life, and to the distressing of the Spaniards, which was
thoroughly done on the Monday last, I now find his Lordship jealous and
loath to take part of the honour which is to come.  So he has used his
authority to command me to look to our English coast, threatened by the
Duke of Parma.  I pray God my Lord Admiral do not find the lack of the
Rainbow and her companions, for I protest before God I vowed I would be
as near or nearer with my little ship to encounter our enemies as any of
the greatest ships in both armies."

There was no insubordination, however, and Seymour's squadron; at
twilight of Tuesday evening, August 9th--according to orders, so that
the enemy might not see their departure--bore away for Margate.  But
although Winter and Seymour were much disappointed at their enforced
return, there was less enthusiasm among the sailors of the fleet.
Pursuing the Spaniards without powder or fire, and without beef and
bread to eat, was not thought amusing by the English crews.  Howard had
not three days' supply of food in his lockers, and Seymour and his
squadron had not food for one day.  Accordingly, when Seymour and Winter
took their departure, "they had much ado," so Winter said; "with the
staying of many ships that would have returned with them, besides their
own company."  Had the Spaniards; instead of being panic-struck, but
turned on their pursuers, what might have been the result of a conflict
with starving and unarmed men?

Howard, Drake, and Frobisher, with the rest of the fleet, followed the
Armada through the North Sea from Tuesday night (9th August) till Friday
(the 12th), and still, the strong southwester swept the Spaniards before
them, uncertain whether to seek refuge, food, water, and room to repair
damages, in the realms of the treacherous King of Scots, or on the iron-
bound coasts of Norway.  Medina Sidonia had however quite abandoned his
intention of returning to England, and was only anxious for a safe
return: to Spain.  So much did he dread that northern passage; unpiloted,
around the grim Hebrides, that he would probably have surrendered, had
the English overtaken him and once more offered battle.  He was on the
point of hanging out a white flag as they approached him for the last
time--but yielded to the expostulations of the ecclesiastics on board
the Saint Martin, who thought, no doubt, that they had more to fear
from England than from the sea, should they be carried captive to that
country, and who persuaded him that it would be a sin and a disgrace
to surrender before they had been once more attacked.

On the other hand, the Devonshire skipper, Vice-Admiral Drake, now
thoroughly in his element, could not restrain his hilarity, as he saw the
Invincible Armada of the man whose beard he had so often singed, rolling
through the German Ocean, in full flight from the country which was to
have been made, that week, a Spanish province.  Unprovided as were his
ships, he was for risking another battle, and it is quite possible that
the brag countenance might have proved even more successful than Howard
thought.

"We have the army of Spain before us," wrote Drake, from the Revenge,
"and hope with the grace of God to wrestle a pull with him.  There never
was any thing pleased me better than seeing the enemy flying with a
southerly wind to the northward.  God grant you have a good eye to the
Duke of Parma, for with the grace of God, if we live, I doubt not so to
handle the matter with the Duke of Sidonia as he shall wish himself at
St. Mary's Port among his orange trees."

But Howard decided to wrestle no further pull.  Having followed the
Spaniards till Friday, 12th of August, as far as the latitude of 56d. 17'
the Lord Admiral called a council.  It was then decided, in order to save
English lives and ships, to put into the Firth of Forth for water and
provisions, leaving two "pinnaces to dog, the fleet until it should be
past the Isles of Scotland."  But the next day, as the wind shifted to
the north-west, another council decided to take advantage of the change,
and bear away for the North Foreland, in order to obtain a supply of
powder, shot, and provisions.

Up to this period, the weather, though occasionally threatening, had been
moderate.  During the week which succeeded the eventful night off.
Calais, neither the 'Armada nor the English ships had been much impeded
in their manoeuvres by storms of heavy seas.  But on the following
Sunday, 14th of August, there was a change.  The wind shifted again to
the south-west, and, during the whole of that day and the Monday, blew
a tremendous gale.  "'Twas a more violent storm," said Howard, "than was
ever seen before at this time of the year."  The retreating English fleet
was, scattered, many ships were in peril, "among the ill-favoured sands
off Norfolk," but within four or five days all arrived safely in Margate
roads.

Far different was the fate of the Spaniards.  Over their Invincible
Armada, last seen by the departing English midway between the coasts of
Scotland and Denmark, the blackness of night seemed suddenly to descend.
A mystery hung for a long time over their fate.  Damaged, leaking,
without pilots, without a competent commander, the great fleet entered
that furious storm, and was whirled along the iron crags of Norway and
between the savage rocks of Faroe and the Hebrides.  In those regions of
tempest the insulted North wreaked its full vengeance on the insolent
Spaniards.  Disaster after disaster marked their perilous track; gale
after gale swept them hither and thither, tossing them on sandbanks or
shattering them against granite cliffs.  The coasts of Norway, Scotland,
Ireland, were strewn with the wrecks of that pompous fleet, which claimed
the dominion of the seas with the bones of those invincible legions which
were to have sacked London and made England a Spanish vice-royalty.

Through the remainder of the month of August there, was a succession of
storms.  On the 2nd September a fierce southwester drove Admiral Oquendo
in his galleon, together with one of the great galeasses, two large
Venetian ships, the Ratty and the Balauzara, and thirty-six other
vessels, upon the Irish coast, where nearly every soul on board perished,
while the few who escaped to the shore--notwithstanding their religious
affinity with the inhabitants--were either butchered in cold blood, or
sent coupled in halters from village to village, in order to be shipped
to England.  A few ships were driven on the English coast; others went
ashore near Rochelle.

Of the four galeasses and four galleys, one of each returned to Spain.
Of the ninety-one great galleons and hulks, fifty-eight were lost and
thirty-three returned.  Of the tenders and zabras, seventeen were lost.
and eighteen returned.  Of one hundred and, thirty-four vessels, which
sailed from Corona in July, but fifty-three, great and small, made their
escape to Spain, and these were so damaged as to be, utterly worthless.
The invincible Armada had not only been vanquished but annihilated.

Of the 30,000 men who sailed in the fleet; it is probable that not more
than 10,000 ever saw their native land again.  Most of the leaders of the
expedition lost their lives.  Medina Sidonia reached Santander in
October, and, as Philip for a moment believed, "with the greater part of
the Armada," although the King soon discovered his mistake.  Recalde,
Diego Flores de Valdez, Oquendo, Maldonado, Bobadilla, Manriquez, either
perished at sea, or died of exhaustion immediately after their return.
Pedro de Valdez, Vasco de Silva, Alonzo de Sayas, Piemontel, Toledo, with
many other nobles, were prisoners in England and Holland.  There was
hardly a distinguished family in Spain not placed in mourning, so that,
to relieve the universal gloom, an edict was published, forbidding the
wearing of mourning at all.  On the other hand, a merchant of Lisbon, not
yet reconciled to the Spanish conquest of his country, permitted himself
some tokens of hilarity at the defeat of the Armada, and was immediately
hanged by express command of Philip.  Thus--as men said--one could
neither cry nor laugh within the Spanish dominions.

This was the result of the invasion, so many years preparing, and at an
expense almost incalculable.  In the year 1588 alone, the cost of
Philip's armaments for the subjugation of England could not have been
less than six millions of ducats, and there was at least as large a sum
on board the Armada itself, although the Pope refused to pay his promised
million.  And with all this outlay, and with the sacrifice of so many
thousand lives, nothing had been accomplished, and Spain, in a moment,
instead of seeming terrible to all the world, had become ridiculous.

"Beaten and shuffled together from the Lizard to Calais, from Calais
driven with squibs from their anchors, and chased out of sight of England
about Scotland and Ireland," as the Devonshire skipper expressed himself,
it must be confessed that the Spaniards presented a sorry sight.  "Their
invincible and dreadful navy," said Drake, "with all its great and
terrible ostentation, did not in all their sailing about England so much
as sink or take one ship, bark, pinnace, or cock-boat of ours, or even
burn so much as one sheep-tote on this land."

Meanwhile Farnese sat chafing under the unjust reproaches heaped upon
him, as if he, and not his master, had been responsible for the gigantic
blunders of the invasion.

"As for the Prince of Parma," said Drake, "I take him to be as a bear
robbed of her whelps."  The Admiral was quite right.  Alexander was
beside himself with rage.  Day after day, he had been repeating to Medina
Sidonia and to Philip that his flotilla and transports could scarcely
live in any but the smoothest sea, while the supposition that they could
serve a warlike purpose he pronounced absolutely ludicrous.  He had
always counselled the seizing of a place like Flushing, as a basis of
operations against England, but had been overruled; and he had at least
reckoned upon the Invincible Armada to clear the way for him, before he
should be expected to take the sea.

With prodigious energy and at great expense he had constructed or
improved internal water-communications from Ghent to Sluy's, Newport, and
Dunkerk.  He had, thus transported all his hoys, barges, and munitions
for the invasion, from all points of the obedient Netherlands to the sea-
coast, without coming within reach of the Hollanders and Zeelanders, who
were keeping close watch on the outside.  But those Hollanders and
Zeelanders, guarding every outlet to the ocean, occupying every hole and
cranny of the coast, laughed the invaders of England to scorn, braving
them, jeering them, daring them to come forth, while the Walloons and
Spaniards shrank before such amphibious assailants, to whom a combat on
the water was as natural as upon dry land.  Alexander, upon one occasion,
transported with rage, selected a band of one thousand musketeers, partly
Spanish, partly Irish, and ordered an assault upon those insolent
boatmen.  With his own hand--so it was related--he struck dead more than
one of his own officers who remonstrated against these commands; and then
the attack was made by his thousand musketeers upon the Hollanders, and
every man of the thousand was slain.

He had been reproached for not being ready, for not having embarked his
men; but he had been ready for a month, and his men could be embarked in
a single day.  "But it was impossible," he said, "to keep them long
packed up on board vessels, so small that there was no room to turn about
in the people would sicken, would rot, would die."  So soon as he had
received information of the arrival of the fleet before Calais--which was
on the 8th August--he had proceeded the same night to Newport and
embarked 16,000 men, and before dawn he was at Dunkerk, where the troops
stationed in that port were as rapidly placed on board the transports.
Sir William Stanley, with his 700 Irish kernes, were among the first
shipped for the enterprise.  Two-days long these regiments lay heaped.
together, like sacks of corn, in the boats--as one of their officers
described it--and they lay cheerfully hoping that the Dutch fleet would
be swept out of the sea by the Invincible Armada, and patiently expecting
the signal for setting sail to England.  Then came the Prince of Ascoli,
who had gone ashore from the Spanish fleet at Calais, accompanied by
serjeant-major Gallinato and other messengers from Medina Sidonia,
bringing the news of the fire-ships and the dispersion and flight of the
Armada.

"God knows," said Alexander, "the distress in which this event has
plunged me, at the very moment when I expected to be sending your Majesty
my congratulations on the success of the great undertaking.  But these
are the works of the Lord, who can recompense your Majesty by giving you
many victories, and the fulfilment of your Majesty's desires, when He
thinks the proper time arrived.  Meantime let Him be praised for all, and
let your Majesty take great care of your health, which is the most
important thing of all."

Evidently the Lord did not think the proper time yet arrived for
fulfilling his Majesty's desires for the subjugation of England,
and meanwhile the King might find what comfort he could in pious
commonplaces and in attention to his health.

But it is very certain that, of all the high parties concerned, Alexander
Farnese was the least reprehensible for the over-throw of Philips hopes.
No man could have been more judicious--as it has been sufficiently made
evident in the course of this narrative--in arranging all the details of
the great enterprise, in pointing out all the obstacles, in providing for
all emergencies.  No man could have been more minutely faithful to his
master, more treacherous to all the world beside.  Energetic, inventive,
patient, courageous; and stupendously false, he had covered Flanders with
canals and bridges, had constructed flotillas, and equipped a splendid
army, as thoroughly as he had puzzled Comptroller Croft.  And not only
had that diplomatist and his wiser colleagues been hoodwinked, but
Elizabeth and Burghley, and, for a moment, even Walsingham, were in the,
dark, while Henry III. had been his passive victim, and the magnificent
Balafre a blind instrument in his hands.  Nothing could equal Alexander's
fidelity, but his perfidy.  Nothing could surpass his ability to command
but his obedience.  And it is very possible that had Philip followed his
nephew's large designs, instead of imposing upon him his own most puerile
schemes; the result far England, Holland, and, all Christendom might have
been very different from the actual one.  The blunder against which
Farnese had in vain warned his master, was the stolid ignorance in which
the King and all his counsellors chose to remain of the Holland and
Zeeland fleet.  For them Warmond and Nassau, and Van der Does and Joost
de Moor; did not exist, and it was precisely these gallant sailors, with
their intrepid crews, who held the key to the whole situation.

To the Queen's glorious naval-commanders, to the dauntless mariners of
England, with their well-handled vessels; their admirable seamanship,
their tact and their courage, belonged the joys of the contest, the
triumph, and the glorious pursuit; but to the patient Hollanders and
Zeelanders, who, with their hundred vessels held Farneae, the chief of
the great enterprise, at bay, a close prisoner with his whole army in
his own ports, daring him to the issue, and ready--to the last plank of
their fleet and to the last drop of their blood--to confront both him
and the Duke of Medina Sidona, an equal share of honour is due.  The
safety of the two free commonwealths of the world in that terrible
contest was achieved by the people and the mariners of the two states
combined.

Great was the enthusiasm certainly of the English people as the
volunteers marched through London to the place of rendezvous, and
tremendous were the cheers when the brave Queen rode on horseback along
the lines of Tilbury.  Glowing pictures are revealed to us of merry
little England, arising in its strength, and dancing forth to encounter
the Spaniards, as if to a great holiday.  "It was a pleasant sight," says
that enthusiastic merchant-tailor John Stowe, "to behold the cheerful
countenances, courageous words, and gestures, of the soldiers, as they
marched to Tilbury, dancing, leaping wherever they came, as joyful at the
news of the foe's approach as if lusty giants were to run a race.  And
Bellona-like did the Queen infuse a second spirit of loyalty, love, and
resolution, into every soldier of her army, who, ravished with their
sovereign's sight, prayed heartily that the Spaniards might land quickly,
and when they heard they were fled, began to lament."

But if the Spaniards had not fled, if there had been no English navy in
the Channel, no squibs at Calais, no Dutchmen off Dunkerk, there might
have been a different picture to paint.  No man who has, studied the
history of those times, can doubt the universal and enthusiastic
determination of the English nation to repel the invaders.  Catholics
and Protestants felt alike on the great subject.  Philip did not flatter,
himself with assistance from any English Papists, save exiles and
renegades like Westmoreland, Paget, Throgmorton, Morgan, Stanley,
and the rest.  The bulk of the Catholics, who may have constituted half
the population of England, although malcontent, were not rebellious; and
notwithstanding the precautionary measures taken by government against
them, Elizabeth proudly acknowledged their loyalty.

But loyalty, courage, and enthusiasm, might not have sufficed to supply
the want of numbers and discipline.  According to the generally accepted
statement of contemporary chroniclers, there were some 75,000 men under
arms: 20,000 along the southern coast, 23,000 under Leicester, and 33,000
under Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon, for the special defence of the Queen's
person.

But it would have been very difficult, in the moment of danger, to bring
anything like these numbers into the field.  A drilled and disciplined
army--whether of regulars or of militia-men--had no existence whatever.
If the merchant vessels, which had been joined to the royal fleet, were
thought by old naval commanders to be only good to make a show, the
volunteers on land were likely to be even less effective than the marine
militia, so much more accustomed than they to hard work.  Magnificent was
the spirit of the great feudal lords as they rallied round their Queen.
The Earl of Pembroke offered to serve at the head of three hundred horse
and five hundred footmen, armed at his own cost, and all ready to "hazard
the blood of their hearts" in defence of her person.  "Accept hereof most
excellent sovereign," said the Earl, "from a person desirous to live no
longer than he may see your Highness enjoy your blessed estate, maugre
the beards of all confederated leaguers."

The Earl of Shrewsbury, too, was ready to serve at the head of his
retainers, to the last drop of his blood.  "Though I be old," he said,
"yet shall your quarrel make me young again.  Though lame in body, yet
lusty in heart to lend your greatest enemy one blow, and to stand near
your defence, every way wherein your Highness shall employ me."

But there was perhaps too much of this feudal spirit.  The lieutenant-
general complained bitterly that there was a most mischievous tendency
among all the militia-men to escape from the Queen's colours, in order to
enrol themselves as retainers to the great lords.  This spirit was not
favourable to efficient organization of a national army.  Even, had the
commander-in-chief been a man, of genius and experience it would have
been difficult for him, under such circumstances, to resist a splendid
army, once landed, and led by Alexander Farnese, but even Leicester's
most determined flatterers hardly ventured to compare him in-military
ability with that first general of his age.  The best soldier in England
was un-questionably Sir John Norris, and Sir John was now marshal of the
camp to Leicester.  The ancient quarrel between the two had been smoothed
over, and--as might be expected--the Earl hated Norris more bitterly than
before, and was perpetually vituperating him, as he had often done in the
Netherlands.  Roger William, too, was entrusted with the important duties
of master of the horse, under the lieutenant-general, and Leicester
continued to bear the grudge towards that honest Welshman, which had
begun in Holland.  These were not promising conditions in a camp, when
an invading army was every day expected; nor was the completeness or
readiness of the forces sufficient to render harmless the quarrels of
the commanders.

The Armada had arrived in Calais roads on Saturday afternoon; the 6th
August.  If it had been joined on that day, or the next--as Philip and
Medina Sidonia fully expected--by the Duke of Parma's flotilla, the
invasion would have been made at once.  If a Spanish army had ever landed
in England at all, that event would have occurred on the 7th August.  The
weather was not unfavourable; the sea was smooth, and the circumstances
under which the catastrophe of the great drama was that night
accomplished, were a profound mystery to every soul in England.  For
aught that Leicester, or Burghley, or Queen Elizabeth, knew at the time,
the army of Farnese might, on Monday, have been marching upon London.
Now, on that Monday morning, the army of Lord Hunsdon was not assembled
at all, and Leicester with but four thousand men, under his command, was
just commencing his camp at Tilbury.  The.  "Bellona-like" appearance of
the Queen on her white palfrey,--with truncheon in hand, addressing her
troops, in that magnificent burst of eloquence which has so often been
repeated, was not till eleven days afterwards; not till the great Armada,
shattered and tempest-tossed, had been, a week long, dashing itself
against the cliffs of Norway and the Faroes, on, its forlorn retreat to
Spain.

Leicester, courageous, self-confident, and sanguine as ever; could not
restrain his indignation at the parsimony with which his own impatient
spirit had to contend.  "Be you assured," said he, on the 3rd August,
when the Armada was off the Isle of Wight, "if the Spanish fleet arrive
safely in the narrow seas, the Duke of Parma will join presently with all
his forces, and lose no time in invading this realm.  Therefore I beseech
you, my good Lords, let no man, by hope or other abuse; prevent your
speedy providing defence against, this mighty enemy now knocking at our
gate."

For even at this supreme moment doubts were entertained at court as to
the intentions of the Spaniards:

Next day he informed Walsingham that his four thousand men had arrived.
"They be as forward men and willing to meet the enemy as I ever saw,"
said he.  He could not say as much in, praise of the commissariat: "Some
want the captains showed," he observed, "for these men arrived without
one meal of victuals so that on their-arrival, they had not one barrel
of beer nor loaf of bread--enough after twenty miles' march to have
discouraged them, and brought them to mutiny.  I see many causes to
increase my former opinion of the dilatory wants you shall find upon all
sudden hurley burleys.  In no former time was ever so great a cause, and
albeit her Majesty hath appointed an army to resist her enemies if they
land, yet how hard a matter it will be to gather men together, I find it
now. If it will be five days to gather these countrymen, judge what it
will be to look in short space for those that dwell forty, fifty, sixty
miles off."

He had immense difficulty in feeding even this slender force.
"I made proclamation," said he, "two days ago, in all market towns,
that victuallers should come to the camp and receive money for their
provisions, but there is not one victualler come in to this hour.  I have
sent to all the justices of peace about it from place to place.  I speak
it that timely consideration be had of these things, and that they be not
deferred till the worst come.  Let her Majesty not defer the time, upon
any supposed hope, to assemble a convenient force of horse and foot about
her.  Her Majesty cannot be strong enough too soon, and if her navy had
not been strong and abroad as it is, what care had herself and her whole
realm been in by this time!  And what care she will be in if her forces
be not only assembled, but an army presently dressed to withstand the
mighty enemy that is to approach her gates."

"God doth know, I speak it not to bring her to charges.  I would she had
less cause to spend than ever she had, and her coffers fuller than ever
they were; but I will prefer her life and safety, and the defence of the
realm, before all sparing of charges in the present danger."

Thus, on the 5th August, no army had been assembled--not even the body-
guard of the Queen--and Leicester, with four thousand men, unprovided
with a barrel of beer or a loaf of bread, was about commencing his
entrenched camp at Tilbury.  On the 6th August the Armada was in Calais
roads, expecting Alexander Farnese to lead his troops upon London!

Norris and Williams, on the news of Medina Sidonia's approach, had rushed
to Dover, much to the indignation of Leicester, just as the Earl was
beginning his entrenchments at Tilbury.  "I assure you I am angry with
Sir John Norris and Sir Roger Williams," he said.  "I am here cook,
caterer, and huntsman.  I am left with no one to supply Sir John's place
as marshal, but, for a day or two, am willing to work the harder myself.
I ordered them both to return this day early, which they faithfully
promised.  Yet, on arriving this morning, I hear nothing of either, and
have nobody to marshal the camp either for horse or foot.  This manner of
dealing doth much mislike me in them both.  I am ill-used. 'Tis now four
o'clock, but here's not one of them.  If they come not this night, I
assure you I will not receive them into office, nor bear such loose
careless dealing at their hands.  If you saw how weakly I am assisted you
would be sorry to think that we here, should be the front against the
enemy that is so mighty, if he should land here.  And seeing her Majesty
hath appointed me her lieutenant-general, I look that respect be used
towards me, such as is due to my place."

Thus the ancient grudge--between Leicester and the Earl of Sussex's son
was ever breaking forth, and was not likely to prove beneficial at this
eventful season.

Next day the Welshman arrived, and Sir John promised to come back in the
evening.  Sir Roger brought word from the coast that Lord Henry Seymour's
fleet was in want both of men and powder.  "Good Lord!"  exclaimed
Leicester, "how is this come to pass, that both he and, my Lord-Admiral
are so weakened of men.  I hear they be running away.  I beseech you,
assemble your forces, and play not away this kingdom by delays.  Hasten
our horsemen hither and footmen: .  .  .  .  If the Spanish fleet come to
the narrow seas the, Prince of Parma will play another part than is
looked for."

As the Armada approached Calais, Leicester was informed that the soldiers
at Dover began to leave the coast.  It seemed that they were dissatisfied
with the penuriousness of the government.  Our soldiers do break away at
Dover, or are not pleased.  I assure you, without wages, the people will
not tarry, and contributions go hard with them.  Surely I find that her
Majesty must needs deal liberally, and be at charges to entertain her
subjects that have chargeably, and liberally used, themselves to serve
her."  The lieutenant-general even thought it might be necessary for him
to proceed to Dover in person, in order to remonstrate with these
discontented troops; for it was possible that those ill-paid,
undisciplined, and very meagre forces, would find much difficulty in
opposing Alexander's march, to London, if he should once succeed in
landing.  Leicester had a very indifferent opinion too of the train-bands
of the metropolis.  "For your Londoners," he said, "I see their service
will be little, except they have their own captains, and having them, I
look for none at all by them, when we shall meet the enemy.  This was not
complimentary, certainly, to the training of the famous Artillery Garden,
and furnished a still stronger motive for defending the road over which
the capital was to be approached.  But there was much jealousy, both
among citizens and nobles, of any authority entrusted to professional
soldiers.  "I know what burghers be, well enough," said the Earl, "as
brave and well-entertained as ever the Londoners were.  If they should
go forth from the city they should have good leaders.  You know the
imperfections of the time, how few-leaders you have, and the gentlemen
of the counties are very loth to have any captains placed with them.  So
that the beating out of our best captains is like to be cause of great
danger."'

Sir John Smith, a soldier of experience, employed to drill and organize
some of the levies, expressed still more disparaging opinions than those
of Leicester concerning the probable efficiency in the field of these
English armies.  The Earl was very angry with the knight, however, and
considered, him incompetent, insolent, and ridiculous.  Sir John seemed,
indeed, more disposed to keep himself out of harm's way, than to render
service to the Queen by leading awkward recruits against Alexander
Farnese.  He thought it better to nurse himself.

"You would laugh to see how Sir John Smith has dealt since my coming,"
said Leicester.  "He came to me, and told me that his disease so grew
upon him as he must needs go to the baths.  I told him I would not be
against his health, but he saw what the time was, and what pains he had
taken with his countrymen, and that I had provided a good place for him.
Next day he came again, saying little to my offer then, and seemed
desirous, for his health, to be gone.  I told him what place I did
appoint, which was a regiment of a great part of his countrymen.
He said his health was dear to him, and he desired to take leave of me,
which I yielded unto.  Yesterday, being our muster-day, he came again to
me to dinner; but such foolish and vain-glorious paradoxes he burst
withal, without any cause offered, as made all that knew anything smile
and answer little, but in sort rather to satisfy men present than to
argue with him."

And the knight went that day to review Leicester's choice troops--the
four thousand men of Essex--but was not much more deeply impressed with
their proficiency than he had been with that of his own regiment.  He
became very censorious.

"After the muster," said the lieutenant-general, "he entered again into
such strange cries for ordering of men, and for the fight with the
weapon, as made me think he was not well.  God forbid he should have
charge of men that knoweth so little, as I dare pronounce that he doth."

Yet the critical knight was a professional--campaigner, whose opinions
were entitled to respect; and the more so, it would seem, because they
did not materially vary from those which Leicester himself was in the
habit of expressing.  And these interior scenes of discord, tumult,
parsimony, want of organization, and unsatisfactory mustering of troops,
were occurring on the very Saturday and Sunday when the Armada lay in
sight of Dover cliffs, and when the approach of the Spaniards on the
Dover road might at any moment be expected.

Leicester's jealous and overbearing temper itself was also proving a
formidable obstacle to a wholesome system of defence.  He was already
displeased with the amount of authority entrusted to Lord Hunsdon,
disposed to think his own rights invaded; and desirous that the Lord
Chamberlain should accept office under himself.  He wished saving clauses
as to his own authority inserted in Hunsdon's patent.  "Either it must be
so, or I shall have wrong," said he, "if he absolutely command where my
patent doth give me power.  You may easily conceive what absurd dealings
are likely to fall out, if you allow two absolute commanders."

Looking at these pictures of commander-in-chief, officers, and rank and
file--as painted by themselves--we feel an inexpressible satisfaction
that in this great crisis of England's destiny, there were such men as
Howard, Drake, Frobisher, Hawkins, Seymour, Winter, Fenner, and their
gallant brethren, cruising that week in the Channel, and that Nassau and
Warmond; De Moor and Van der Does, were blockading the Flemish coast.

There was but little preparation to resist the enemy once landed.  There
were no fortresses, no regular army, no population trained to any weapon.
There were patriotism, loyalty, courage, and enthusiasm, in abundance;
but the commander-in-chief was a queen's favourite, odious to the people,
with very moderate abilities, and eternally quarrelling with officers
more competent than himself; and all the arrangements were so hopelessly
behind-hand, that although great disasters might have been avenged, they
could scarcely have been avoided.

Remembering that the Invincible Armada was lying in Calais roads on the
6th of August, hoping to cross to Dover the next morning, let us ponder
the words addressed on that very day to Queen Elizabeth by the
Lieutenant-General of England.

"My most dear and gracious Lady," said the Earl, "it is most true that
those enemies that approach your kingdom and person are your undeserved
foes, and being so, and hating you for a righteous cause, there is the
less fear to be had of their malice or their forces; for there is a most
just God that beholdeth the innocence of that heart.  The cause you are
assailed for is His and His Church's, and He never failed any that
faithfully do put their chief trust in His goodness.  He hath, to comfort
you withal, given you great and mighty means to defend yourself, which
means I doubt not but your Majesty will timely and princely use them,
and your good God that ruleth all will assist you and bless you with
victory."

He then proceeded to give his opinion on two points concerning which the
Queen had just consulted him--the propriety of assembling her army, and
her desire to place herself at the head of it in person.

On the first point one would have thought discussion superfluous on the
6th of August.  "For your army, it is more than time it were gathered and
about you," said Leicester, "or so near you as you may have the use of it
at a few hours' warning.  The reason is that your mighty enemies are at
hand, and if God suffers them to pass by your fleet, you are sure they
will attempt their purpose of landing with all expedition.  And albeit
your navy be very strong, but, as we have always heard, the other is not
only far greater, but their forces of men much beyond yours.  No doubt if
the Prince of Parma come forth, their forces by sea shall not only be
greatly, augmented, but his power to land shall the easier take effect
whensoever he shall attempt it.  Therefore it is most requisite that your
Majesty at all events have as great a force every way as you can devise;
for there is no dalliance at such a time, nor with such an enemy. You
shall otherwise hazard your own honour, besides your person and country,
and must offend your gracious God that gave you these forces and power,
though you will not use them when you should."

It seems strange enough that such phrases should be necessary when the
enemy was knocking at the gate; but it is only too, true that the land-
forces were never organized until the hour, of danger had, most
fortunately and unexpectedly, passed by.  Suggestions at this late moment
were now given for the defence of the throne, the capital, the kingdom,
and the life of the great Queen, which would not have seemed premature
had they been made six months before, but which, when offered in August,
excite unbounded amazement.  Alexander would have had time to, march from
Dover to Duxham before these directions, now leisurely stated with all
the air of novelty, could be carried into effect.

"Now for the placing of your army," says the lieutenant-general on the
memorable Saturday, 6th of August, "no doubt but I think about London
the, meetest, and I suppose that others will be of the same mind.  And
your Majesty should forthwith give the charge thereof to some special
nobleman about you, and likewise place all your chief officers that every
man may know what he shall do, and gather as many good horse above all
things as you can, and the oldest, best, and assuredest captains to lead;
for therein will consist the greatest hope of good success under God.
And so soon as your army is assembled, let them by and by be exercised,
every man to know his weapon, and that there be all other things prepared
in readiness, for your army, as if they should march upon a day's
warning, especially carriages, and a commissary of victuals, and a master
of ordnance."

Certainly, with Alexander of Parma on his way to London, at the head of
his Italian pikemen, his Spanish musketeers, his famous veteran legion--
"that nursing mother of great soldiers"--it was indeed more than time.
that every man should know what he should do, that an army of Englishmen
should be-assembled, and that every man should know his weapon.  "By and
by" was easily said, and yet, on the 6th of August it was by and by that
an army, not yet mustered, not yet officered, not yet provided with a
general, a commissary of victuals, or a master of ordinance, was to be
exercised, "every man to know his weapon."

English courage might ultimately triumph over, the mistakes of those who
governed the country, and over those disciplined brigands by whom it was
to be invaded.  But meantime every man of those invaders had already
learned on a hundred battle-fields to know his weapon.

It was a magnificent determination on the part of Elizabeth to place
herself at the head of her troops; and the enthusiasm which her attitude
inspired, when she had at last emancipated herself from the delusions of
diplomacy and the seductions of thrift, was some recompense at least for
the perils caused by her procrastination.  But Leicester could not
approve of this hazardous though heroic resolution.

The danger passed away.  The Invincible Armada was driven out of the
Channel by the courage; the splendid seamanship, and the enthusiasm of
English sailors and volunteers.  The Duke of Parma was kept a close
prisoner by the fleets of Holland and Zeeland; and the great storm of the
14th and 15th of August at last completed the overthrow of the Spaniards.

It was, however, supposed for a long time that they would come back, for
the disasters which had befallen them in the north were but tardily known
in England.  The sailors, by whom England had been thus defended in her
utmost need, were dying by hundreds, and even thousands, of ship-fever,
in the latter days of August.  Men sickened one day, and died the next,
so that it seemed probable that the ten thousand sailors by whom the
English ships of war were manned, would have almost wholly disappeared,
at a moment when their services might be imperatively required.  Nor had
there been the least precaution taken for cherishing and saving these
brave defenders of their country.  They rotted in their ships, or died in
the streets of the naval ports, because there were no hospitals to
receive them.

"'Tis a most pitiful sight," said the Lord-Admiral, "to see here at
Margate how the men, having no place where they can be received, die in,
the streets.  I am driven of force myself to come on land to see them
bestowed in some lodgings; and the best I can get is barns and such
outhouses, and the relief is small that I can provide for them here.  It
would grieve any man's heart to see men that have served so valiantly die
so miserably."

The survivors, too, were greatly discontented; for, after having been
eight months at sea, and enduring great privations, they could not get
their wages.  "Finding it to come thus scantily," said Howard, "it breeds
a marvellous alteration among them."

But more dangerous than the pestilence or the discontent was the
misunderstanding which existed at the moment between the leading admirals
of the English fleet.  Not only was Seymour angry with Howard, but
Hawkins and Frobisher were at daggers drawn with Drake; and Sir Martin--
if contemporary, affidavits can be trusted--did not scruple to heap the
most virulent abuse upon Sir Francis, calling him, in language better
fitted for the forecastle than the quarter-deck, a thief and a coward,
for appropriating the ransom for Don Pedro Valdez in which both Frobisher
and Hawkins claimed at least an equal share with himself.

And anxious enough was the Lord-Admiral with his sailors perishing by
pestilence, with many of his ships so weakly manned that as Lord Henry
Seymour declared there were not mariners enough to weigh the anchors,
and with the great naval heroes, on whose efforts the safety of the realm
depended, wrangling like fisherwomen among themselves, when rumours came,
as they did almost daily, of the return of the Spanish Armada, and of new
demonstrations on the part of Farnese.  He was naturally unwilling that
the fruits of English valour on the seas should now be sacrificed by the
false economy of the government.  He felt that, after all that had been
endured and accomplished, the Queen and her counsellors were still
capable of leaving England at the mercy of a renewed attempt, "I know not
what you think at the court," said he; "but I think, and so do all here,
that there cannot be too great forces maintained for the next five or six
weeks.  God knoweth whether the Spanish fleet will not, after refreshing
themselves in Norway; Denmark, and the Orkneys, return.  I think they
dare not go back to Sprain with this, dishonour, to their King and
overthrow of the Pope's credit.  Sir, sure bind, sure find.  A kingdom
is a grand wager.  Security is dangerous; and, if God had not been our
best friend; we should have found it so."

     [Howard to Walsingham, Aug.8/18 1588. (S. P. Office MS.)]

     ["Some haply may say that winter cometh on apace," said Drake, "but
     my poor opinion is that I dare not advise her Majesty to hazard a
     kingdom with the saving of a little charge."  (Drake to Walsingham,
     Aug. 8/18 1588.)]

Nothing could be more replete, with sound common sense than this simple
advice, given as it was in utter ignorance of the fate of the Armada;
after it had been lost sight of by the English vessels off the Firth of
Forth, and of the cold refreshment which: it had found in Norway and the
Orkneys.  But, Burghley had a store of pithy apophthegms, for which--he
knew he could always find sympathy in the Queen's breast, and with which
he could answer these demands of admirals and generals.  "To spend in
time convenient is wisdom;" he observed--"to continue charges without
needful cause bringeth, repentance;"--"to hold on charges without
knowledge of the certainty thereof and of means how to support them, is
lack of wisdom;" and so on.

Yet the Spanish fleet might have returned into the Channel for ought the
Lord-Treasurer on the 22nd August knew--or the Dutch fleet might have
relaxed, in its vigilant watching of Farnese's movements.  It might have
then seemed a most plentiful lack of wisdom to allow English sailors to
die of plague in the streets for want of hospitals; and to grow mutinous
for default of pay.  To have saved under such circumstances would,
perhaps have brought repentance.

The invasion of England by Spain had been most portentous.  That the
danger was at last averted is to be ascribed to the enthusiasm of the
English, nation--both patricians and plebeians--to the heroism of the
little English fleet, to the spirit of the naval commanders and
volunteers, to the stanch, and effective support of the Hollanders; and
to the hand of God shattering the Armada at last; but very little credit
can be conscientiously awarded to the diplomatic or the military efforts
of the Queen's government.  Miracles alone, in the opinion of Roger
Williams, had saved England on this occasion from perdition.

Towards the end of August, Admiral de Nassau paid a visit to Dover with
forty ships, "well appointed and furnished."  He dined and conferred with
Seymour, Palmer, and other officers--Winter being still laid up with his
wound--and expressed the opinion that Medina Sidonia would hardly return
to the Channel, after the banquet he had received from her Majesty's navy
between Calais and Gravelines.  He also gave the information that the
States had sent fifty Dutch vessels in pursuit of the Spaniards, and had
compelled all the herring-fishermen for the time to serve in the ships of
war, although the prosperity of the country depended on that industry.
"I find the man very wise, subtle, and cunning," said Seymour of the
Dutch Admiral, "and therefore do I trust him."

Nassau represented the Duke of Parma as evidently discouraged, as having
already disembarked his troops, and as very little disposed to hazard
any further enterprise against England.  "I have left twenty-five
Kromstevens," said he, "to prevent his egress from Sluys, and I am
immediately returning thither myself.  The tide will not allow his
vessels at present to leave Dunkerk, and I shall not fail--before the
next full moon--to place myself before that place, to prevent their
coming out, or to have a brush with them if they venture to put to sea."

But after the scenes on which the last full moon had looked down in those
waters, there could be no further pretence on the part of Farnese to
issue from Sluys and Dunkerk, and England and Holland were thenceforth
saved from all naval enterprises on the part of Spain.

Meantime, the same uncertainty which prevailed in England as to the
condition and the intentions of the Armada was still more remarkable
elsewhere.  There was a systematic deception practised not only upon
other governments; but upon the King of Spain as well.  Philip, as he
sat at his writing-desk, was regarding himself as the monarch of England,
long after his Armada had been hopelessly dispersed.

In Paris, rumours were circulated during the first ten days of August
that England was vanquished, and that the Queen was already on her way to
Rome as a prisoner, where she was to make expiation, barefoot, before his
Holiness.  Mendoza, now more magnificent than ever--stalked into Notre
Dame with his drawn sword in his hand, crying out with a loud voice,
"Victory, victory!" and on the 10th of August ordered bonfires to be made
before his house; but afterwards thought better of that scheme.  He had
been deceived by a variety of reports sent to him day after day by agents
on the coast; and the King of France--better informed by Stafford, but
not unwilling thus to feed his spite against the insolent ambassador--
affected to believe his fables.  He even confirmed them by intelligence,
which he pretended to have himself received from other sources, of the
landing of the Spaniards in England without opposition, and of the entire
subjugation of that country without the striking of a blow.

Hereupon, on the night of August 10th, the envoy--"like a wise man," as
Stafford observed--sent off four couriers, one after another, with the
great news to Spain, that his master's heart might be rejoiced, and
caused a pamphlet on the subject to be printed and distributed over
Paris!  "I will not waste a large sheet of paper to express the joy
which we must all feel," he wrote to Idiaquez, "at this good news.  God
be praised for all, who gives us small chastisements to make us better,
and then, like a merciful Father, sends us infinite rewards."  And in the
same strain he wrote; day after day, to Moura and Idiaquez, and to Philip
himself.

Stafford, on his side, was anxious to be informed by his government of
the exact truth, whatever it were, in order that these figments of
Mendoza might be contradicted.  "That which cometh from me," he said,
"Will be believed; for I have not been used to tell lies, and in very
truth I have not the face to do it."

And the news of the Calais squibs, of the fight off Gravelines, and
the retreat of the Armada towards the north; could not be very long
concealed.  So soon, therefore, as authentic intelligence reached, the
English envoy of those events--which was not however for nearly ten days
after their--occurrence--Stafford in his turn wrote a pamphlet, in answer
to that of Mendoza, and decidedly the more successful one of the two.
It cost him but five crowns, he said, to print 'four hundred copies of
it; but those in whose name it was published got one hundred crowns by
its sale.  The English ambassador was unwilling to be known as the
author--although "desirous of touching up the impudence of the Spaniard"
--but the King had no doubt of its origin.  Poor Henry, still smarting
under the insults of Mendoza and 'Mucio,--was delighted with this blow
to Philip's presumption; was loud in his praises of Queen Elizabeth's
valour, prudence, and marvellous fortune, and declared that what she had
just done could be compared to the greatest: exploits of the most
illustrious men in history.

"So soon as ever he saw the pamphlet," said Stafford; "he offered to lay
a wager it was my doing; and laughed at it heartily."  And there were
malicious pages about the French; court; who also found much amusement in
writing to the ambassador, begging his interest with the Duke of Parma
that they might obtain from that conqueror some odd-refuse town or so in:
England, such as York, Canterbury, London, or the like--till the luckless
Don Bernardino was ashamed to show his face.

A letter, from Farnese, however, of 10th August, apprized Philip before
the end of August of the Calais disasters and caused him great
uneasiness, without driving him to despair.  "At the very moment," wrote
the King to Medina Sidonia; "when I was expecting news of the effect
hoped for from my Armada, I have learned the retreat from before Calais,
to which it was compelled by the weather; [!] and I have received a
very great shock which keeps, me in anxiety not to be exaggerated.
Nevertheless I hope in our Lord that he will have provided a remedy;
and that if it was possible for you to return upon the enemy to come
back to the appointed posts and to watch an opportunity for the great
stroke; you will have done as the case required; and so I am expecting
with solicitude, to hear what has happened, and please God it may be that
which is so suitable for his service."

His Spanish children the sacking of London, and the butchering of the
English nation-rewards and befits similar to those which they bad
formerly enjoyed in the Netherlands.

And in the same strain, melancholy yet hopeful, were other letters
despatched on that day to the Duke of Parma.  "The satisfaction caused by
your advices on the 8th August of the arrival of the Armada near Calais,
and of your preparations to embark your troops, was changed into a
sentiment which you can imagine, by your letter of the 10th.  The anxiety
thus occasioned it would be impossible to exaggerate, although the cause
being such as it is--there is no ground for distrust.  Perhaps the
Armada, keeping together, has returned upon the enemy, and given a good
account of itself, with the help of the Lord.  So I still promise myself
that you will have performed your part in the enterprise in such wise as
that the service intended to the Lord may have been executed, and repairs
made to the reputation of all; which has been so much compromised."

And the King's drooping spirits were revived by fresh accounts which
reached him in September, by way of France.  He now learned that the
Armada had taken captive four Dutch men-of-war and many English ships;
that, after the Spaniards had been followed from Calais roads by the
enemy's fleet, there had been an action, which the English had attempted
in vain to avoid; off Newcastle; that Medina Sidonia had charged upon
them so vigorously, as to sink twenty of their ships, and to capture
twenty-six others, good and sound; that the others, to escape perdition,
had fled, after suffering great damage, and had then gone to pieces, all
hands perishing; that the Armada had taken a port in Scotland, where it
was very comfortably established; that the flag-ship of Lord-admiral
Howard, of Drake; and of that "distinguished mariner Hawkins," had all
been sunk in action, and that no soul had been saved except Drake, who
had escaped in a cock-boat.  "This is good news," added the writer;
"and it is most certain."

The King pondered seriously over these conflicting accounts, and remained
very much in the dark.  Half, the month of September went by, and he had
heard nothing--official since the news of the Calais catastrophe.  It may
be easily understood that Medina Sidonia, while flying round the Orkneys
had not much opportunity for despatching couriers to Spain, and as
Farnese had not written since the 10th August, Philip was quite at a loss
whether to consider himself triumphant or defeated.  From the reports by
way of Calais, Dunkerk, and Rouen, he supposed that the Armada, had
inflicted much damage on the enemy.  He suggested accordingly, on the 3rd
September, to the Duke of Parma, that he might now make the passage to
England, while the English fleet, if anything was left of it was
repairing its damages.  "'Twill be easy enough to conquer the country,"
said Philip,"  so soon as you set foot on the soil.  Then perhaps our
Armada can come back and station itself in the Thames to support you."

Nothing could be simpler.  Nevertheless the King felt a pang of doubt
lest affairs, after all, might not be going on so swimmingly; so he
dipped his pen in the inkstand again, and observed with much pathos,
"But if this hope must be given up, you must take the Isle of Walcheren:
something must be done to console me."

And on the 15th September he was still no wiser.  "This business of the
Armada leaves me no repose," he said; "I can think of nothing else.  I
don't content myself with what I have written, but write again and again,
although in great want of light.  I hear that the Armada has sunk and
captured many English ships, and is refitting in a Scotch pert.  If this
is in the territory, of Lord Huntley, I hope he will stir up the
Catholics of that country."

And so, in letter after letter, Philip clung to the delusion that
Alexander could yet, cross to England, and that the Armada might sail up
the Thames.  The Duke was directed to make immediate arrangements to that
effect with Medina Sidonia, at the very moment when that tempest-tossed
grandee was painfully-creeping back towards the Bay of Biscay, with what
remained of his invincible fleet.

Sanguine and pertinacious, the King refused to believe in, the downfall
of his long-cherished scheme; and even when the light was at last dawning
upon him, he was like a child, crying for a fresh toy, when the one which
had long amused him had been broken.  If the Armada were really very much
damaged, it was easy enough, he thought, for the Duke of Parma to make
him a new one, while the old, one was repairing.  "In case the Armada is
too much shattered to come out," said Philip, "and winter compels it to
stay in that port, you must cause another Armada to be constructed at
Emden and the adjacent towns, at my expense, and, with the two together,
you will certainly be able to conquer England."

And he wrote to Medina Sidonia in similar terms.  That naval commander
was instructed to enter the Thames at once, if strong enough.  If not, he
was to winter in the Scotch port which he was supposed to have captured.
Meantime Farnese would build a new fleet at Emden, and in the spring the
two dukes would proceed to accomplish the great purpose.

But at last the arrival of Medina Sidonia at Santander dispelled these
visions, and now the King appeared in another attitude.  A messenger,
coming post-haste from the captain-general, arrived in the early days of
October at the Escorial.  Entering the palace he found Idiaquez and Moura
pacing up and down the corridor, before the door of Philip's cabinet,
and was immediately interrogated by those counsellors, most anxious,
of course, to receive authentic intelligence at last as to the fate,
of the Armada.  The entire overthrow of the great project was now, for
the first time, fully revealed in Spain; the fabulous victories over the
English, and the annihilation of Howard and all his ships, were dispersed
in air.  Broken, ruined, forlorn, the invincible Armada--so far as it
still existed--had reached a Spanish port.  Great was the consternation
of Idiaquez and Moura, as they listened to the tale, and very desirous
was each of the two secretaries that the other should, discharge the
unwelcome duty of communicating the fatal intelligence to the King.

At last Moura consented to undertake the task, and entering the cabinet,
he found Philip seated at his desk.  Of course he was writing letters.
Being informed of the arrival of a messenger from the north, he laid down
his pen, and inquired the news.  The secretary replied that the accounts,
concerning the Armada were by no means so favourable as, could be wished.
The courier was then introduced, and made his dismal report.  The King
did not change countenance.  "Great thanks," he observed, "do I render to
Almighty God, by whose generous hand I am gifted with such power, that I
could easily, if I chose, place another fleet upon the seas.  Nor is it
of very great importance that a running stream should be sometimes
intercepted, so long as the fountain from which it flows remains
inexhaustible."

So saying he resumed his pen, and serenely proceeded with his letters.
Christopher Moura stared with unaffected amazement at his sovereign,
thus tranquil while a shattered world was falling on his head, and then
retired to confer with his colleague.

"And how did his Majesty receive the blow?"  asked Idiaquez.

"His Majesty thinks nothing of the blow," answered Moura, "nor do I,
consequently, make more of this great calamity than does his Majesty."

So the King--as fortune flew away from him, wrapped himself in his
virtue; and his counsellors, imitating their sovereign, arrayed
themselves in the same garment.  Thus draped, they were all prepared
to bide the pelting of the storm which was only beating figuratively on
their heads, while it had been dashing the King's mighty galleons on the
rocks, and drowning by thousands the wretched victims of his ambition.
Soon afterwards, when the particulars of the great disaster were
thoroughly known, Philip ordered a letter to be addressed in his name to
all the bishops of Spain, ordering a solemn thanksgiving to the Almighty
for the safety of that portion of the invincible Armada which it had
pleased Him to preserve.

And thus, with the sound of mourning throughout Spain--for there was
scarce a household of which some beloved member had not perished in the
great catastrophe--and with the peals of merry bells over all England
and Holland, and with a solemn 'Te Deum' resounding in every church,
the curtain fell upon the great tragedy of the Armada.



ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Forbidding the wearing of mourning at all
Hardly a distinguished family in Spain not placed in mourning
Invincible Armada had not only been vanquished but annihilated
Nothing could equal Alexander's fidelity, but his perfidy
One could neither cry nor laugh within the Spanish dominions
Security is dangerous
Sixteen of their best ships had been sacrificed
Sure bind, sure find




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v58
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 59, 1588-1589


CHAPTER XX.

     Alexander besieges Bergen-op-Zoom--Pallavicini's Attempt to seduce
     Parma--Alexander's Fury--He is forced to raise the Siege, of Bergen
     --Gertruydenberg betrayed to Parma--Indignation of the States--
     Exploits, of Schenk--His Attack on Nymegen--He is defeated and
     drowned--English-Dutch Expedition to Spain--Its meagre Results--
     Death of Guise and of the Queen--Mother--Combinations after the
     Murder of Henry III.--Tandem fit Surculus Arbor.

The fever of the past two years was followed by comparative languor.
The deadly crisis was past, the freedom of Europe was saved, Holland and
England breathed again; but tension now gave place to exhaustion.  The
events in the remainder of the year 1588, with those of 1589--although
important in themselves--were the immediate results of that history which
has been so minutely detailed in these volumes, and can be indicated in a
very few pages.

The Duke of Parma, melancholy, disappointed, angry stung to the soul by
calumnies as stupid as they were venomous, and already afflicted with a
painful and lingering disease, which his friends attributed to poison
administered by command of the master whom he had so faithfully served--
determined, if possible, to afford the consolation which that master was
so plaintively demanding at his hands.

So Alexander led the splendid army which had been packed in, and unpacked
from, the flat boats of Newport and Dunkerk, against Bergen-op-Zoom, and
besieged that city in form.  Once of great commercial importance,
although somewhat fallen away from its original prosperity, Bergen was
well situate on a little stream which connected it with the tide-waters
of the Scheldt, and was the only place in Brabant, except Willemstad,
still remaining to the States.  Opposite lay the Isle of Tholen from
which it was easily to be supplied and reinforced.  The Vosmeer, a branch
of the Scheldt, separated the island from the main, and there was a path
along the bed of that estuary, which, at dead low-water, was practicable
for wading.  Alexander, accordingly, sent a party of eight hundred
pikemen, under Montigny, Marquis of Renty, and Ottavio Mansfeld,
supported on the dyke by three thousand musketeers, across; the dangerous
ford, at ebb-tide, in order to seize this important island.  It was an
adventure similar to those, which, in the days of the grand commander,
and under the guidance of Mondragon; had been on two occasions so
brilliantly successful.  But the Isle of Tholen was now defended by Count
Solms and a garrison of fierce amphibious Zeelanders--of those determined
bands which had just been holding Farnese and his fleet in prison, and
daring him to the issue--and the invading party, after fortunately
accomplishing their night journey along the bottom of the Vosmeer, were
unable to effect a landing, were driven with considerable loss into the
waves again, and compelled to find their way back as best they could,
along their dangerous path, and with a rapidly rising tide.  It was a
blind and desperate venture, and the Vosmeer soon swallowed four hundred
of the Spaniards.  The rest, half-drowned or smothered, succeeded in
reaching the shore--the chiefs of the expedition, Renty and Mansfeld,
having been with difficulty rescued by their followers, when nearly
sinking in the tide.

The Duke continued the siege, but the place was well defended by an
English and Dutch garrison, to the number of five thousand, and commanded
by Colonel Morgan, that bold and much experienced Welshman, so well known
in the Netherland wars.  Willoughby and Maurice of Nassau, and Olden-
Barneveld were, at different times, within the walls; for the Duke
had been unable to invest the place so closely as to prevent all
communications from without; and, while Maurice was present, there were
almost daily sorties from the town, with many a spirited skirmish, to
give pleasure to the martial young Prince.  The English, officers, Vere
and Baskerville, and two Netherland colonels, the brothers Bax, most
distinguished themselves on these occasions.  The siege was not going on
with the good fortune which had usually attended the Spanish leaguer.  of
Dutch cities, while, on the 29th September, a personal incident came to
increase Alexander's dissatisfaction and melancholy.

On that day the Duke was sitting in his tent, brooding, as he was apt to
do, over the unjust accusations which had been heaped upon him in regard
to the failure of the Armada, when a stranger was announced.  His name,
he said, was Giacomo Morone, and he was the bearer of a letter from Sir
Horace Pallavicini, a Genoese gentleman long established in London; and
known to be on confidential terms with the English government.  Alexander
took the letter, and glancing at the bottom of the last page, saw that it
was not signed.

"How dare you bring me a dispatch without a signature?"  he exclaimed.
The messenger, who was himself a Genoese, assured the Duke that the
letter was most certainly written by Pallavicini--who had himself placed
it, sealed, in his hands--and that he had supposed it signed, although he
had of course, not seen the inside.

Alexander began to read the note, which was not a very long one, and his
brow instantly darkened.  He read a line or two more, when, with an
exclamation of fury, he drew his dagger, and, seizing the astonished
Genoese by the throat, was about to strike him dead.  Suddenly mastering
his rage, however, by a strong effort, and remembering that the man might
be a useful witness; he flung Morone from him.

"If I had Pallavicini here," he said, "I would treat, him as I have just
refrained from using you.  And if I had any suspicion that you were aware
of the contents of this letter, I would send you this instant to be
hanged."

The unlucky despatch-bearer protested his innocence of all complicity
with Pallavicini, and his ignorance of the tenor of the communication by
which the Duke's wrath had been so much excited.  He was then searched
and cross-examined most carefully by Richardot and other counsellors,
and his innocence being made apparent-he was ultimately discharged.

The letter of Pallavicini was simply an attempt to sound Farnese as to
his sentiments in regard to a secret scheme, which could afterwards be
arranged in form, and according, to which he was to assume the
sovereignty of the Netherlands himself, to the exclusion of his King, to
guarantee to England the possession of the cautionary towns, until her
advances to the States should be refunded, and to receive the support and
perpetual alliance of the Queen in his new and rebellious position.

Here was additional evidence, if any were wanting, of the universal
belief in his disloyalty; and Alexander, faithful, if man ever were to
his master--was cut to the heart, and irritated almost to madness, by
such insolent propositions.  There is neither proof nor probability that
the Queen's government was implicated in this intrigue of Pallavicini,
who appears to have been inspired by the ambition of achieving a bit of
Machiavellian policy, quite on his own account.  Nothing came of the
proposition, and the Duke; having transmitted to the King a minute
narrative of, the affair, together with indignant protestations of the
fidelity, which all the world seemed determined to dispute, received
most affectionate replies from that monarch, breathing nothing but
unbounded confidence in his nephew's innocence and devotion.

Such assurances from any other man in the world might have disarmed
suspicion, but Alexander knew his master too well to repose upon his
word, and remembered too bitterly the last hours of Don John of Austria
--whose dying pillow he had soothed, and whose death had been hastened,
as he knew, either by actual poison or by the hardly less fatal venom
of slander--to regain tranquillity as to his own position.

The King was desirous that Pallavicini should be invited over to
Flanders, in order that Alexander, under pretence of listening to his
propositions, might draw from the Genoese all the particulars of his
scheme, and then, at leisure, inflict the punishment which he had
deserved.  But insuperable obstacles presented themselves, nor was
Alexander desirous of affording still further pretexts for his
slanderers.

Very soon after this incident--most important as showing the real
situation of various parties, although without any immediate result--
Alexander received a visit in his tent from another stranger.  This time
the visitor was an Englishman, one Lieutenant Grimstone, and the object
of his interview with the Duke was not political, but had, a direct
reference to the siege of Bergen.  He was accompanied by a countryman
of his own, Redhead by name, a camp-suttler by profession.  The two
represented themselves as deserters from the besieged city, and offered,
for a handsome reward, to conduct a force of Spaniards, by a secret path,
into one of the gates.  The Duke questioned them narrowly, and being
satisfied with their intelligence and coolness, caused them to take an
oath on the Evangelists, that they were not playing him false.  He then
selected a band of one hundred musketeers, partly Spaniards, partly
Walloons--to be followed at a distance by a much, more considerable
force; two thousand in number, under Sancho de Leyva: and the Marquis of
Renti--and appointed the following night for an enterprise against the
city, under the guidance of Grimstone.

It was a wild autumnal night, moonless, pitch-dark, with a storm of
wind and rain.  The waters were out--for the dykes had been cut in all
'directions by the defenders of the city--and, with exception of some
elevated points occupied by Parma's forces, the whole country was
overflowed.  Before the party set forth on their daring expedition,
the two Englishmen were tightly bound with cords, and led, each by two
soldiers, instructed to put them to instant death if their conduct should
give cause for suspicion.  But both Grimstone and Redhead preserved a
cheerful countenance, and inspired a strong confidence in their honest
intention to betray their countrymen.  And thus the band of bold
adventurers plunged at once into the darkness, and soon found themselves
contending with the tempest, and wading breast high in the black waters
of the Scheldt.

After a long and perilous struggle, they at length reached the appointed
gate, The external portcullis was raised and the fifteen foremost of the
band rushed into tho town.  At the next moment, Lord Willoughby, who had
been privy to the whole scheme, cut with his own hand the cords which,
held the portcullis, and entrapped the leaders of the expedition, who
were all, at once put to the sword, while their followers were thundering
at the gate.  The lieutenant and suttler who had thus overreached that
great master of dissimulation; Alexander Farnese; were at the same time
unbound by their comrades, and rescued from the fate intended for them.

Notwithstanding the probability--when the portcullis fell--that the whole
party, had been deceived by an artifice of war the adventurers, who had
come so far, refused to abandon the enterprise, and continued an
impatient battery upon the gate.  At last it was swung wide open, and
a furious onslaught was made by the garrison upon the Spaniards.  There
was--a fierce brief struggle, and then the assailants were utterly
routed.  Some were killed under the walls, while the rest were hunted
into the waves.  Nearly every one of the, expedition (a thousand in
number) perished.

It had now become obvious to the Duke that his siege must be raised.
The days were gone when the walls of Dutch towns seemed to melt before
the first scornful glance of the Spanish invader; and when a summons
meant a surrender, and a surrender a massacre.  Now, strong in the
feeling of independence, and supported by the courage and endurance of
their English allies, the Hollanders had learned to humble the pride of
Spain as it had never been humbled before.  The hero of a hundred battle-
fields, the inventive and brilliant conqueror of Antwerp, seemed in the
deplorable issue of the English invasion to have lost all his genius, all
his fortune.  A cloud had fallen upon his fame, and he now saw himself;
at the head of the best army in Europe, compelled to retire, defeated and
humiliated, from the walls of Bergen.  Winter was coming on apace; the
country was flooded; the storms in that-bleak region and inclement season
were incessant; and he was obliged to retreat before his army should be
drowned.

On the night of 12-13 November he set fire to his camp; and took his
departure.  By daybreak he was descried in full retreat, and was hotly
pursued by the English and Dutch from the city, who drove the great
Alexander and his legions before them in ignominious flight. Lord
Willoughby, in full view of the retiring enemy, indulged the allied
forces with a chivalrous spectacle.  Calling a halt, after it had become
obviously useless, with their small force of cavalry; to follow any
longer, through a flooded country, an enemy who had abandoned his design,
he solemnly conferred the honour of knighthood, in the name of Queen
Elizabeth, on the officers who had most distinguished themselves during
the siege, Francis Vere, Baskerville, Powell, Parker, Knowles, and on the
two Netherland brothers, Paul and Marcellus Bax.

The Duke of Parma then went into winter quarters in Brabant, and, before
the spring, that obedient Province had been eaten as bare as Flanders had
already been by the friendly Spaniards.

An excellent understanding between England and Holland had been the
result of their united and splendid exertions against the Invincible
Armada.  Late in the year 1588 Sir John Norris had been sent by the Queen
to offer her congratulations and earnest thanks to the States for their
valuable assistance in preserving her throne, and to solicit their
cooperation in some new designs against the common foe.  Unfortunately,
however, the epoch of good feeling was but of brief duration.  Bitterness
and dissension seemed the inevitable conditions of the English-Dutch
alliance.  It will be, remembered, that, on the departure of Leicester,
several cities had refused to acknowledge the authority of Count Maurice
and the States; and that civil war in the scarcely-born commonwealth had
been the result.  Medenblik, Naarden, and the other contumacious cities,
had however been reduced to obedience after the reception of the Earl's
resignation, but the important city of Gertruydenberg had remained in a
chronic state of mutiny.  This rebellion had been partially appeased
during the year 1588 by the efforts of Willoughby, who had strengthened,
the garrison by reinforcements of English troops under command of his
brother-in-law, Sir John Wingfield.  Early in 1589 however, the whole
garrison became rebellious, disarmed and maltreated the burghers, and
demanded immediate payment of the heavy arrearages still due to the
troops.  Willoughby, who--much disgusted with his career in the
Netherlands--was about leaving for England, complaining that the States
had not only left him without remuneration for his services, but had not
repaid his own advances, nor even given him a complimentary dinner, tried
in vain to pacify them.  A rumour became very current, moreover, that the
garrison had opened negotiations with Alexander Farnese, and accordingly
Maurice of Nassau--of whose patrimonial property the city of
Gertruydenberg made a considerable proportion, to the amount of eight
thousand pounds sterling a years--after summoning the garrison, in his
own name and that of the States, to surrender, laid siege to the place
in form.  It would have been cheaper, no doubt, to pay the demands of the
garrison in full, and allow them to depart.  But Maurice considered his
honour at stake.  His letters of summons, in which he spoke of the
rebellious commandant and his garrison as self-seeking foreigners and
mercenaries, were taken in very ill part.  Wingfield resented the
statement in very insolent language, and offered to prove its falsehood
with his sword against any man and in any place whatever.  Willoughby
wrote to his brother-in-law, from Flushing, when about to embark,
disapproving of his conduct and of his language; and to Maurice,
deprecating hostile measures against a city under the protection of Queen
Elizabeth.  At any rate, he claimed that Sir John Wingfield and his wife,
the Countess of Kent, with their newly-born child, should be allowed to
depart from the place.  But Wingfield expressed great scorn at any
suggestion of retreat, and vowed that he would rather surrender the city
to the Spaniards than tolerate the presumption of Maurice and the States.
The young Prince accordingly, opened his batteries, but before an
entrance could be effected into the town, was obliged to retire at the
approach of Count Mansfield with a much superior force.  Gertruydenberg
was now surrendered to the Spaniards in accordance with a secret
negotiation which had been proceeding all the spring, and had been
brought to a conclusion at last.  The garrison received twelve months'
pay in full and a gratuity of five months in addition, and the city was
then reduced into obedience to Spain and Rome on the terms which had been
usual during the government of Farnese.

The loss of this city was most severe to the republic, for the enemy had
thus gained an entrance into the very heart of Holland.  It was a more
important acquisition to Alexander than even Bergen-op-Zoom would have
been, and it was a bitter reflection that to the treachery of
Netherlanders and of their English allies this great disaster was owing.
All the wrath aroused a year before by the famous treason of York and
Stanley, and which had been successfully extinguished, now flamed forth
afresh.  The States published a placard denouncing the men who had thus
betrayed the cause of freedom, and surrendered the city of Gertruydenberg
to the Spaniards, as perjured traitors whom it was made lawful to hang,
whenever or wherever caught, without trial or sentence, and offering
fifty florins a-head for every private soldier and one hundred florins
for any officer of the garrison.  A list of these Englishmen and
Netherlanders, so far as known, was appended to the placard, and the
catalogue was headed by the name of Sir John Wingfield.

Thus the consequences of the fatal event were even more deplorable than
the loss of the city itself.  The fury of Olden-Barneveld at the treason
was excessive, and the great Advocate governed the policy of the
republic, at this period, almost like a dictator.  The States, easily
acknowledging the sway of the imperious orator, became bitter--and
wrathful with the English, side by side with whom they had lately been
so cordially standing.

Willoughby, on his part, now at the English court, was furious with the
States, and persuaded the leading counsellors of the Queen as well as her
Majesty herself, to adopt his view of the transaction.  Wingfield, it was
asserted, was quite innocent in the matter; he was entirely ignorant of
the French language, and therefore was unable to read a word of the
letters addressed to him by Maurice and the replies which had been signed
by himself.  Whether this strange excuse ought to be accepted or not, it
is quite certain that he was no traitor like York and Stanley, and no
friend to Spain; for he had stipulated for himself the right to return
to England, and had neither received nor desired any reward.  He hated
Maurice and he hated the States, but he asserted that he had been held
in durance, that the garrison was mutinous, and that he was no more
responsible for the loss of the city than Sir Francis Vere had been, who
had also been present, and whose name had been subsequently withdrawn, in
honourable fashion from the list of traitors, by authority of the States.
His position--so far as he was personally concerned--seemed defensible,
and the Queen was thoroughly convinced of his innocence.  Willoughby
complained that the republic was utterly in the hands of Barneveld, that
no man ventured to lift his voice or his eyes in presence of the terrible
Advocate who ruled every Netherlander with a rod of iron, and that his
violent and threatening language to Wingfield and himself at the dinner-
table in Bergen-op-Zoom on the subject of the mutiny (when one hundred of
the Gertruydenberg garrison were within sound of his voice) had been the
chief cause of the rebellion.  Inspired by these remonstrances, the Queen
once more emptied the vials of her wrath upon the United Netherlands.
The criminations and recriminations seemed endless, and it was most
fortunate that Spain had been weakened, that Alexander, a prey to
melancholy and to lingering disease, had gone to the baths of Spa to
recruit his shattered health, and that his attention and the schemes of
Philip for the year 1589 and the following period were to be directed
towards France.  Otherwise the commonwealth could hardly have escaped
still more severe disasters than those already experienced in this
unfortunate condition of its affairs, and this almost hopeless
misunderstanding with its most important and vigorous friend.

While these events had been occurring in the heart of the republic,
Martin Schenk, that restless freebooter, had been pursuing a bustling and
most lucrative career on its outskirts.  All the episcopate of Cologne--
that debatable land of the two rival paupers, Bavarian Ernest and Gebhard
Truchsess--trembled before him.  Mothers scared their children into
quiet with the terrible name of Schenk, and farmers and land-younkers
throughout the electorate and the land of Berg, Cleves, and Juliers, paid
their black-mail, as if it were a constitutional impost, to escape the
levying process of the redoubtable partisan.

But Martin was no longer seconded, as he should have been, by the States,
to whom he had been ever faithful since he forsook the banner of Spain
for their own; and he had even gone to England and complained to the
Queen of the short-comings of those who owed him so much.  His ingenious
and daring exploit--the capture of Bonn--has already been narrated, but
the States had neglected the proper precautions to secure that important
city.  It had consequently, after a six months' siege, been surrendered
to the Spaniards under Prince Chimay, on the 19th of September; while, in
December following, the city of Wachtendonk, between the Rhine and Meuse,
had fallen into Mansfeld's hands.  Rheinberg, the only city of the
episcopate which remained to the deposed Truchsess, was soon afterwards
invested by the troops of Parma, and Schenk in vain summoned the States-
General to take proper measures for its defence.  But with the enemy now
eating his way towards the heart of Holland, and with so many dangers
threatening them on every side, it was thought imprudent to go so far
away to seek the enemy.  So Gebhard retired in despair into Germany,
and Martin did what he could to protect Rheinberg, and to fill his own
coffers at the expense of the whole country side.

He had built a fort, which then and long afterwards bore his name-
Schenken Schans, or Schenk's Sconce--at that important point where the
Rhine, opening its two arms to enclose the "good meadow" island of
Batavia, becomes on the left the Waal, while on the right it retains its
ancient name; and here, on the outermost edge of the republic, and
looking straight from his fastness into the fruitful fields of Munster,
Westphalia, and the electorate, the industrious Martin devoted himself
with advantage to his favourite pursuits.

On the 7th of August, on the heath of Lippe, he had attacked a body of
Spanish musketeers, more than a thousand strong, who were protecting a
convoy of provisions, treasure, and furniture, sent by Farnese to
Verdugo, royal governor of Friesland.  Schenk, without the loss of a
single man, had put the greater part of these Spaniards and Walloons to
the sword, and routed the rest.  The leader of the expedition, Colonel
Aristotle Patton, who had once played him so foul a trick in the
surrender of Gelder, had soon taken to flight, when he found his ancient
enemy upon him, and, dashing into the Lippe, had succeeded, by the
strength and speed of his horse, in gaining the opposite bank, and
effecting his escape.  Had he waited many minutes longer it is probable
that the treacherous Aristotle would have passed a comfortless half-hour
with his former comrade.  Treasure to the amount of seven thousand crowns
in gold, five hundred horses, with jewels, plate, and other articles of
value, were the fruit of this adventure, and Schenk returned with his
followers, highly delighted, to Schenkenschans, and sent the captured
Spanish colours to her Majesty of England as a token.

A few miles below his fortress was Nymegen, and towards that ancient and
wealthy city Schenk had often cast longing eyes.  It still held for the
King, although on the very confines of Batavia; but while acknowledging
the supremacy of Philip, it claimed the privileges of the empire.  From
earliest times it had held its head very high among imperial towns, had
been one of the three chief residences of the Emperor.  Charlemagne, and
still paid the annual tribute of a glove full of pepper to the German
empire.

On the evening of the 10th of August, 1589, there was a wedding feast in
one of the splendid mansions of the stately city.  The festivities were
prolonged until deep in the midsummer's night, and harp and viol were
still inspiring the feet of the dancers, when on a sudden, in the midst
of the holiday-groups, appeared the grim visage of Martin Schenk, the man
who never smiled.  Clad in no wedding-garment, but in armour of proof,
with morion on head, and sword in hand, the great freebooter strode
heavily through the ball-room, followed by a party of those terrible
musketeers who never gave or asked for quarter, while the affrighted
revellers fluttered away before them.

Taking advantage of a dark night, he had just dropped down the river from
his castle, with five-and-twenty barges, had landed with his most trusted
soldiers in the foremost vessels, had battered down the gate of St.
Anthony, and surprised and slain the guard.  Without waiting for the rest
of his boats, he had then stolen with his comrades through the silent
streets, and torn away the lattice-work, and other slight defences on the
rear of the house which they had now entered, and through which they
intended to possess themselves of the market-place.  Martin had long
since selected this mansion as a proper position for his enterprise, but
he had not been bidden to the wedding, and was somewhat disconcerted when
he found himself on the festive scene which he had so grimly interrupted.
Some of the merry-makers escaped from the house, and proceeded to alarm
the town; while Schenk hastily fortified his position; and took
possession of the square.  But the burghers and garrison were soon on
foot, and he was driven back into the house.  Three times he recovered
the square by main strength of his own arm, seconded by the handful of
men whom he had brought with him, and three times he was beaten back by
overwhelming numbers into the wedding mansion.  The arrival of the
greater part of his followers, with whose assistance he could easily have
mastered the city in the first moments of surprise, was mysteriously
delayed.  He could not account for their prolonged, absence, and was
meanwhile supported only by those who had arrived with him in the
foremost barges.

The truth--of which he was ignorant--was, that the remainder of the
flotilla, borne along by the strong and deep current of the Waal, then in
a state of freshet, had shot past the landing-place, and had ever since
been vainly struggling against wind and tide to force their way back to
the necessary point.  Meantime Schenk and his followers fought
desperately in the market-place, and desperately in the house which he
had seized.  But a whole garrison, and a town full of citizens in arms
proved too much for him, and he was now hotly besieged in the mansion,
and at last driven forth into the streets.

By this time day was dawning, the whole population, soldiers and
burghers, men, women, and children, were thronging about the little band
of marauders, and assailing them with every weapon and every missile to
be found.  Schenk fought with his usual ferocity, but at last the
musketeers, in spite of his indignant commands, began rapidly to retreat
towards the quay.  In vain Martin stormed and cursed, in vain with his
own hand he struck more than one of his soldiers dead.  He was swept
along with the panic-stricken band, and when, shouting and gnashing his
teeth with frenzy, he reached the quay at last, he saw at a glance why
his great enterprise had failed.  The few empty barges of his own party
were moored at the steps; the rest were half a mile off, contending
hopelessly against the swollen and rapid Waal.  Schenk, desperately
wounded, was left almost alone upon the wharf, for his routed followers
had plunged helter skelter into the boats, several of which, overladen in
the panic, sank at once, leaving the soldiers to drown or struggle with
the waves.  The game was lost.  Nothing was left the freebooter but
retreat.  Reluctantly turning his back on his enemies, now in full cry
close behind him, Schenk sprang into the last remaining boat just pushing
from the quay.  Already overladen, it foundered with his additional
weight, and Martin Schenk, encumbered with his heavy armour, sank at once
to the bottom of the Waal.

Some of the fugitives succeeded in swimming down the stream, and were
picked up by their comrades in the barges below the town, and so made
their escape.  Many were drowned with their captain.  A few days
afterwards, the inhabitants of Nymegen fished up the body of the famous
partisan.  He was easily recognized by his armour, and by his truculent
face, still wearing the scowl with which he had last rebuked his
followers.  His head was taken off at once, and placed on one of the
turrets of the town, and his body, divided in four, was made to adorn
other portions of the battlements; so that the burghers were enabled to
feast their eyes on the remnants of the man at whose name the whole
country had so often trembled.

This was the end of Sir Martin Schenk of Niddegem, knight, colonel, and
brigand; save that ultimately his dissevered limbs were packed in a
chest, and kept in a church tower, until Maurice of Nassau, in course of
time becoming master of Nymegen, honoured the valiant and on the whole
faithful freebooter with a Christian and military burial.

A few months later (October, 1589) another man who had been playing an
important part in the Netherlands' drama lost his life.  Count Moeurs and
Niewenaar, stadholder of Utrecht, Gelderland, and Overysael, while
inspecting some newly-invented fireworks, was suddenly killed by their
accidental ignition and explosion.  His death left vacant three great
stadholderates, which before long were to be conferred upon a youth whose
power henceforth was rapidly to grow greater.

The misunderstanding between Holland and England continuing, Olden-
Barneveld, Aerssens, and Buys, refusing to see that they had done wrong
in denouncing the Dutch and English traitors who had sold Gertruydenberg
to the enemy, and the Queen and her counsellors persisting in their anger
at so insolent a proceeding, it may easily be supposed that there was no
great heartiness in the joint expedition against Spain, which had been
projected in the autumn of 1588, and was accomplished in the spring and
summer of 1589.

Nor was this well-known enterprise fruitful of any remarkable result.
It had been decided to carry the war into Spain itself, and Don Antonio,
prior of Crato, bastard of Portugal, and pretender to its crown, had
persuaded himself and the English government that his name would be
potent to conjure with in that kingdom, hardly yet content with the
Spanish yoke.  Supported by a determined force of English and Dutch
adventurers, he boasted that he should excite a revolution by the magic
of his presence, and cause Philip's throne to tremble, in return for the
audacious enterprise of that monarch against England.

If a foray were to be made into Spain, no general and no admiral could be
found in the world so competent to the adventure as Sir John Norris and
Sir Francis Drake.  They were accompanied, too, by Sir Edward Norris, and
another of those 'chickens of Mars,' Henry Norris; by the indomitable and
ubiquitous Welshman, Roger Williams, and by the young Earl of Essex, whom
the Queen in vain commanded to remain at home, and who, somewhat to the
annoyance of the leaders of the expedition, concealed himself from her
Majesty's pursuit, and at last embarked in a vessel which he had
equipped, in order not to be cheated of his share in the hazard and
the booty.  "If I speed well," said the spendthrift but valiant youth;
"I will adventure to be rich; if not, I will never live, to see the end
of my poverty."

But no great riches were to be gathered in the expedition.  With some
fourteen thousand men, and one hundred and sixty vessels--of which six
were the Queen's ships of war, including the famous Revenge and the
Dreadnought, and the rest armed merchantmen, English, and forty
Hollanders--and with a contingent of fifteen hundred Dutchmen under
Nicolas van Meetkerke and Van Laen, the adventurers set sail from
Plymouth on the 18th of April, 1589.

They landed at Coruna--at which place they certainly could not expect to
create a Portuguese revolution, which was the first object of the
expedition--destroyed some shipping in the harbour, captured and sacked
the lower town, and were repulsed in the upper; marched with six thousand
men to Burgos, crossed the bridge at push of pike, and routed ten
thousand Spaniards under Andrada and Altamira--Edward Norris receiving a
desperate blow on the head at the passage' of the bridge, and being
rescued from death by his brother John--took sail for the south after
this action, in which they had killed a thousand Spaniards, and had lost
but two men of their own; were joined off Cape Finisterre by Essex;
landed a force at Peniche, the castle of which place surrendered to them,
and acknowledged the authority of Don Antonio; and thence marched with
the main body of the troops, under Sir John Norris, forty-eight miles to
Lisbon, while Drake, with the fleet, was to sail up the Tagus.

Nothing like a revolution had been effected in Portugal.  No one seemed
to care for the Pretender, or even to be aware that he had ever existed,
except the governor of Peniche Castle, a few ragged and bare-footed
peasants, who, once upon the road, shouted "Viva Don Antonio," and one
old gentleman by the way side, who brought him a plate of plums.  His
hopes of a crown faded rapidly, and when the army reached Lisbon it had
dwindled to not much more than four thousand effective men--the rest
being dead of dysentery, or on the sick-list from imprudence in eating
and drinking--while they found that they had made an unfortunate omission
in their machinery for assailing the capital, having not a single
fieldpiece in the whole army.  Moreover, as Drake was prevented by bad
weather and head-winds from sailing up the Tagus, it seemed a difficult
matter to carry the city.  A few cannon, and the co-operation of the
fleet, were hardly to be dispensed with on such an occasion.
Nevertheless it would perhaps have proved an easier task than it
appeared--for so great was the panic within the place that a large number
of the inhabitants had fled, the Cardinal Viceroy Archduke Albert had but
a very insufficient guard, and there were many gentlemen of high station
who were anxious to further the entrance of the English, and who were
afterwards hanged or garotted for their hostile sentiments to the Spanish
government.

While the leaders were deliberating what course to take, they were
informed that Count Fuentes and Henriquez de Guzman, with six thousand
men, lay at a distance of two miles from Lisbon, and that they had been
proclaiming by sound of trumpet that the English had been signally
defeated before Lisbon, and that they were in full retreat.

Fired at this bravado, Norris sent a trumpet to Fuentes and Guzman,
with a letter signed and sealed, giving them the lie in plainest terms,
appointing the next day for a meeting of the two forces, and assuring
them that when the next encounter should take place, it should be seen
whether a Spaniard or an Englishman would be first to fly; while Essex,
on his part, sent a note, defying either or both those boastful generals
to single combat.  Next day the English army took the field, but the
Spaniards retired before them; and nothing came of this exchange of
cartels, save a threat on the part of Fuentes to hang the trumpeter who
had brought the messages.  From the execution of this menace he
refrained, however, on being assured that the deed would be avenged by
the death of the Spanish prisoner of highest rank then in English hands,
and thus the trumpeter escaped.

Soon afterwards the fleet set sail from the Tagus, landed, and burned
Vigo on their way homeward, and returned to Plymouth about the middle of
July.

Of the thirteen thousand came home six thousand, the rest having perished
of dysentery and other disorders.  They had braved and insulted Spain,
humbled her generals, defied her power, burned some defenceless villages,
frightened the peasantry, set fire to some shipping, destroyed wine, oil,
and other merchandize, and had divided among the survivors of the
expedition, after landing in England, five shillings a head prize-money;
but they had not effected a revolution in Portugal.  Don Antonio had been
offered nothing by his faithful subjects but a dish of plums--so that he
retired into obscurity from that time forward--and all this was scarcely
a magnificent result for the death of six or seven thousand good English
and Dutch soldiers, and the outlay of considerable treasure.

As a free-booting foray--and it was nothing else--it could hardly be
thought successful; although it was a splendid triumph compared with the
result of the long and loudly heralded Invincible Armada.

In France, great events during the remainder of 1588 and the following
year, and which are well known even to the most superficial student of
history, had much changed the aspect of European affairs.  It was
fortunate for the two commonwealths of Holland and England, engaged in
the great struggle for civil and religious liberty, and national
independence, that the attention of Philip became more and more absorbed-
as time wore on--with the affairs of France.  It seemed necessary for him
firmly to establish his dominion in that country before attempting once
more the conquest of England, or the recovery of the Netherlands.  For
France had been brought more nearly to anarchy and utter decomposition
than ever.  Henry III., after his fatal forgiveness of the deadly offence
of Guise, felt day by day more keenly that he had transferred his
sceptre--such as it was--to that dangerous intriguer.  Bitterly did the
King regret having refused the prompt offer of Alphonse Corse on the day
of the barricades; for now, so long as the new generalissimo should live,
the luckless Henry felt himself a superfluity in his own realm.  The
halcyon days were for ever past, when, protected by the swords of Joyeuse
and of Epernon, the monarch of France could pass his life playing at cup
and ball, or snipping images out of pasteboard, or teaching his parrots-
to talk, or his lap-dogs to dance.  His royal occupations were gone, and
murder now became a necessary preliminary to any future tranquillity or
enjoyment.  Discrowned as he felt himself already, he knew that life or
liberty was only held by him now at the will of Guise.  The assassination
of the Duke in December was the necessary result of the barricades in
May; and accordingly that assassination was arranged with an artistic
precision of which the world had hardly suspected the Valois to be
capable, and which Philip himself might have envied.

The story of the murders of Blois--the destruction of Guise and his
brother the Cardinal, and the subsequent imprisonment of the Archbishop
of Lyons, the Cardinal Bourbon, and the Prince de Joinville, now, through
the death of his father, become the young Duke of Guise--all these events
are too familiar in the realms of history, song, romance, and painting,
to require more than this slight allusion here.

Never had an assassination been more technically successful; yet its
results were not commensurate with the monarch's hopes.  The deed which
he had thought premature in May was already too late in December.  His
mother denounced his cruelty now, as she had, six months before,
execrated his cowardice.  And the old Queen, seeing that her game was
played out--that the cards had all gone against her--that her son was
doomed, and her own influence dissolved in air, felt that there was
nothing left for her but to die.  In a week she was dead, and men spoke
no more of Catharine de' Medici, and thought no more of her than if--in
the words of a splenetic contemporary--"she had been a dead she-goat."
Paris howled with rage when it learned the murders of Blois, and the
sixteen quarters became more furious than ever against the Valois.  Some
wild talk there was of democracy and republicanism after the manner of
Switzerland, and of dividing France into cantons--and there was an
earnest desire on the part of every grandee, every general, every soldier
of fortune, to carve out a portion of French territory with his sword,
and to appropriate it for himself and his heirs.  Disintegration was
making rapid progress, and the epoch of the last Valois seemed mare dark
and barbarous than the times of the degenerate Carlovingians had been.
The letter-writer of the Escorial, who had earnestly warned his faithful
Mucio, week after week, that dangers were impending over him, and that
"some trick would be played upon him," should he venture into the royal
presence, now acquiesced in his assassination, and placidly busied
himself with fresh combinations and newer tools.

Baked, hunted, scorned by all beside, the luckless Henry now threw
himself into the arms of the Bearnese--the man who could and would have
protected him long before, had the King been capable of understanding
their relative positions and his own true interests.  Could the Valois
have conceived the thought of religious toleration, his throne even then
might have been safe.  But he preferred playing the game of the priests
and bigots, who execrated his name and were bent upon his destruction.
At last, at Plessis les Tours, the Bearnese, in his shabby old chamois
jacket and his well-dinted cuirass took the silken Henry in his arms, and
the two--the hero and the fribble--swearing eternal friendship, proceeded
to besiege Paris.  A few weeks later, the dagger of Jacques Clement put
an end for ever to, the line of Valois.  Luckless Henry III. slept with
his forefathers, and Henry of Bourbon and Navarre proclaimed himself King
of France.  Catharine and her four sons had all past away at last, and it
would be a daring and a dexterous schemer who should now tear the crown,
for which he had so long and so patiently waited, from the iron grasp of
the Bearnese.  Philip had a more difficult game than ever to play in
France.  It would be hard for him to make valid the claims of the Infanta
and any husband he might select for her to the crown of her grandfather
Henry II.  It seemed simple enough for him, while waiting the course of
events, to set up a royal effigy before the world in the shape of an
effete old Cardinal Bourbon, to pour oil upon its head and to baptize it
Charles X.; but meantime the other Bourbon was no effigy, and he called
himself Henry IV.

It was easy enough for Paris, and Madam League, and Philip the Prudent,
to cry wo upon the heretic; but the cheerful leader of the Huguenots was
a philosopher, who in the days of St. Bartholomew had become orthodox to
save his life, and who was already "instructing himself" anew in order to
secure his crown.  Philip was used to deal with fanatics, and had often
been opposed by a religious bigotry as fierce as his own; but he might
perhaps be baffled by a good-humoured free-thinker, who was to teach him
a lesson in political theology of which he had never dreamed.

The Leaguers were not long in doubt as to the meaning of "instruction,"
and they were thoroughly persuaded that--so soon as Henry IV. should
reconcile himself with Rome--their game was likely to become desperate.

Nevertheless prudent Philip sat in his elbow-chairs writing his
apostilles, improving himself and his secretaries in orthography, but
chiefly confining his attention to the affairs of France.  The departed
Mucio's brother Mayenne was installed as chief stipendiary of Spain and
lieutenant-general for the League in France, until Philip should
determine within himself in what form to assume the sovereignty of that
kingdom.  It might be questionable however whether that corpulent Duke,
who spent more time in eating than Henry IV. did in sleeping, and was
longer in reading a letter than Henry in winning a battle, were likely to
prove a very dangerous rival even with all Spain at his back--to the
lively Bearnese.  But time would necessarily be consumed before the end
was reached, and time and Philip were two.  Henry of Navarre and France
was ready to open his ears to instruction; but even he had declared,
several years before, that "a religion was not to be changed like a
shirt."  So while the fresh garment was airing for him at Rome, and while
he was leisurely stripping off the old, he might perhaps be taken at
a disadvantage.  Fanaticism on both sides, during this process of
instruction, might be roused.  The Huguenots on their part might denounce
the treason of their great chief, and the Papists, on theirs, howl at the
hypocrisy of the pretended conversion.  But Henry IV. had philosophically
prepared himself for the denunciations of the Protestants, while
determined to protect them against the persecutions of the Romanism to
which he meant to give his adhesion.  While accepting the title of
renegade, together with an undisputed crown, he was not the man to
rekindle those fires of religious bigotry which it was his task to
quench, now that they had lighted his way to the throne.  The demands
of his Catholic supporters for the exclusion from the kingdom of all
religions but their own, were steadily refused.

And thus the events of 1588 and 1589 indicated that the great game of
despotism against freedom would be played, in the coming years, upon the
soil of France.  Already Elizabeth had furnished the new King with
L22,000 in gold--a larger sum; as he observed, than he had ever seen
before in his life,  and the States of the Netherlands had provided him
with as much more.  Willoughby too, and tough Roger Williams, and
Baskerville, and Umpton, and Vere, with 4000 English pikemen at their
back, had already made a brief but spirited campaign in France; and the
Duke of Parma, after recruiting his health; so, far as it was possible;
at Spa, was preparing himself to measure swords with that great captain
of Huguenots; who now assumed the crown of his ancestors, upon the same
ground.  It seemed probable that for the coming years England would be
safe from Spanish invasion, and that Holland would have a better
opportunity than it had ever enjoyed before of securing its liberty and
perfecting its political organization.  While Parma, Philip; and Mayenne
were fighting the Bearnese for the crown of France, there might be a
fairer field for the new commonwealth of the United Netherlands.

And thus many of the personages who have figured in these volumes have
already passed away.  Leicester had died just after the defeat of the
Armada, and the thrifty Queen, while dropping a tear upon the grave of
'sweet Robin,' had sold his goods at auction to defray his debts to
herself; and Moeurs, and Martin Schenk, and 'Mucio,' and Henry III., and
Catharine de' Medici, were all dead.  But Philip the Prudent remained,
and Elizabeth of England, and Henry of France and Navarre, and John of
Olden-Barneveld; and there was still another personage, a very young man
still, but a deep-thinking, hard-working student, fagging steadily at
mathematics and deep in the works of Stevinus, who, before long, might
play a conspicuous part in the world's great drama.  But, previously to
1590, Maurice of Nassau seemed comparatively insignificant, and he could
be spoken of by courtiers as a cipher, and as an unmannerly boy just let
loose from school.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

I will never live, to see the end of my poverty
Religion was not to be changed like a shirt
Tension now gave place to exhaustion




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v59
by John Lothrop Motley






ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS, ENTIRE 1586-89 UNITED NETHERLANDS:

A burnt cat fears the fire
A free commonwealth--was thought an absurdity
Act of Uniformity required Papists to assist
All business has been transacted with open doors
And thus this gentle and heroic spirit took its flight
Are wont to hang their piety on the bell-rope
Arminianism
As lieve see the Spanish as the Calvinistic inquisition
As logical as men in their cups are prone to be
Baiting his hook a little to his appetite
Beacons in the upward path of mankind
Been already crimination and recrimination more than enough
Bungling diplomatists and credulous dotards
Canker of a long peace
Casting up the matter "as pinchingly as possibly might be"
Defect of enjoying the flattery, of his inferiors in station
Disposed to throat-cutting by the ministers of the Gospel
During this, whole war, we have never seen the like
Elizabeth (had not) the faintest idea of religious freedom
Englishmen and Hollanders preparing to cut each other's throats
Even to grant it slowly is to deny it utterly
Evil is coming, the sooner it arrives the better
Faction has rarely worn a more mischievous aspect
Fitter to obey than to command
Five great rivers hold the Netherland territory in their coils
Fool who useth not wit because he hath it not
Forbidding the wearing of mourning at all
Full of precedents and declamatory commonplaces
God, whose cause it was, would be pleased to give good weather
Guilty of no other crime than adhesion to the Catholic faith
Hard at work, pouring sand through their sieves
Hardly a distinguished family in Spain not placed in mourning
Heretics to the English Church were persecuted
High officers were doing the work of private, soldiers
I did never see any man behave himself as he did
I am a king that will be ever known not to fear any but God
I will never live, to see the end of my poverty
Individuals walking in advance of their age
Infamy of diplomacy, when diplomacy is unaccompanied by honesty
Inquisitors enough; but there were no light vessels in The Armada
Invincible Armada had not only been vanquished but annihilated
Look for a sharp war, or a miserable peace
Loving only the persons who flattered him
Mendacity may always obtain over innocence and credulity
Never peace well made, he observed, without a mighty war
Never did statesmen know better how not to do
Not many more than two hundred Catholics were executed
Nothing could equal Alexander's fidelity, but his perfidy
One could neither cry nor laugh within the Spanish dominions
Only citadel against a tyrant and a conqueror was distrust
Pray here for satiety, (said Cecil) than ever think of variety
Rebuked him for his obedience
Religion was not to be changed like a shirt
Respect for differences in religious opinions
Sacrificed by the Queen for faithfully obeying her orders
Security is dangerous
She relieth on a hope that will deceive her
Simple truth was highest skill
Sixteen of their best ships had been sacrificed
Sparing and war have no affinity together
Stake or gallows (for) heretics to transubstantiation
States were justified in their almost unlimited distrust
Strength does a falsehood acquire in determined and skilful hand
Succeeded so well, and had been requited so ill
Sure bind, sure find
Sword in hand is the best pen to write the conditions of peace
Tension now gave place to exhaustion
That crowned criminal, Philip the Second
The worst were encouraged with their good success
The blaze of a hundred and fifty burning vessels
The sapling was to become the tree
Their existence depended on war
There is no man fitter for that purpose than myself
They chose to compel no man's conscience
Tolerating religious liberty had never entered his mind
Torturing, hanging, embowelling of men, women, and children
Trust her sword, not her enemy's word
Undue anxiety for impartiality
Universal suffrage was not dreamed of at that day
Waiting the pleasure of a capricious and despotic woman
We were sold by their negligence who are now angry with us
Wealthy Papists could obtain immunity by an enormous fine
Who the "people" exactly were




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext Entire 1586-89 United Netherlands
by John Lothrop Motley






HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609

By John Lothrop Motley



MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, Project Gutenberg Edition, Vol. 72

History of the United Netherlands, 1590-1599, Complete


CHAPTER XXI.

     Effect of the Assassination of Henry III.--Concentration of forces
     for the invasion of France--The Netherlands determine on striking a
     blow for freedom--Organization of a Dutch army--Stratagem to
     surprise the castle of Breda--Intrepidity and success of the
     enterprise.

The dagger of Jacques Clement had done much, and was likely to do
more, to change the face of Europe.  Another proof was afforded that
assassination had become a regular and recognised factor in the political
problems of the sixteenth century.  Another illustration was exhibited of
the importance of the individual--even although that individual was in
himself utterly despicable--to the working out of great historical
results.  It seemed that the murder of Henry III.--that forlorn
caricature of kingship and of manhood--was likely to prove eminently
beneficial to the cause of the Netherland commonwealth.  Five years
earlier, the murder of William the Silent had seemed to threaten its
very existence.

For Philip the Prudent, now that France was deprived of a head, conceived
that the time had arrived when he might himself assume the sovereignty of
that kingdom.  While a thing of straw, under the name of Charles X. and
shape of a Cardinal Bourbon, was set up to do battle with that living
sovereign and soldier, the heretic Bearnese, the Duke of Parma was
privately ordered to bend all his energies towards the conquest of the
realm in dispute, under pretence of assisting the Holy League.

Accordingly, early in the year 1590, Alexander concentrated a
considerable force on the French frontier in Artois and Hainault,
apparently threatening Bergen-op-Zoom and other cities in South Holland,
but in reality preparing to invade France.  The Duke of Mayenne, who had
assumed the title of lieutenant-general of that kingdom, had already
visited him at Brussels in order to arrange the plan of the campaign.

While these measures were in preparation, an opportunity was likely to be
afforded to the Netherlanders of striking a blow or two for liberty and
independence; now that all the force that possibly could be spared was to
be withdrawn by their oppressors and to be used for the subjugation of
their neighbours.  The question was whether there would be a statesman
and a soldier ready to make use of this golden opportunity.

There was a statesman ripe and able who, since the death of the Taciturn,
had been growing steadily in the estimation of his countrymen and who
already was paramount in the councils of the States-General.  There was a
soldier, still very young, who was possessed of the strongest hereditary
claims to the confidence and affection of the United Provinces and who
had been passing a studious youth in making himself worthy of his father
and his country.  Fortunately, too, the statesman and the soldier were
working most harmoniously together.  John of Olden-Barneveld, with his
great experience and vast and steady intellect, stood side by side with
young Maurice of Nassau at this important crisis in the history of the
new commonwealth.

At length the twig was becoming the tree--'tandem fit surculus arbor'--
according to the device assumed by the son of William the Silent after
his father's death.

The Netherlands had sore need of a practical soldier to contend with the
scientific and professional tyrants against whom they had so long been
struggling, and Maurice, although so young, was pre-eminently a practical
man.  He was no enthusiast; he was no poet.  He was at that period
certainly no politician.  Not often at the age of twenty has a man
devoted himself for years to pure mathematics for the purpose of saving
his country.  Yet this was Maurice's scheme.  Four years long and more,
when most other youths in his position and at that epoch would have been
alternating between frivolous pleasures and brilliant exploits in the
field, the young prince had spent laborious days and nights with the
learned Simon Stevinus of Bruges.  The scientific work which they
composed in common, the credit of which the master assigned to the pupil,
might have been more justly attributed perhaps to the professor than to
the prince, but it is certain that Maurice was an apt scholar.

In that country, ever held in existence by main human force against the
elements, the arts of engineering, hydrostatics and kindred branches were
of necessity much cultivated.  It was reserved for the young
mathematician to make them as potent against a human foe.

Moreover, there were symptoms that the military discipline, learning and
practical skill, which had almost made Spain the mistress of the world,
were sinking into decay.  Farnese, although still in the prime of life,
was broken in health, and there seemed no one fit to take the place of
himself and his lieutenants when they should be removed from the scene
where they had played.  their parts so consummately.  The army of the
Netherlands was still to be created.  Thus far the contest had been
mainly carried on by domestic militia and foreign volunteers or
hirelings.  The train-bands of the cities were aided in their struggles
against Spanish pikemen and artillerists, Italian and Albanian cavalry by
the German riders, whom every little potentate was anxious to sell to
either combatant according to the highest bid, and by English
mercenaries, whom the love of adventure or the hope of plunder sent forth
under such well-seasoned captains as Williams and Morgan, Vere and the
Norrises, Baskerville and Willoughby.

But a Dutch army there was none and Maurice had determined that at last
a national force should be created.  In this enterprise he was aided and
guided by his cousin Lewis William, Stadtholder of Friesland--the quaint,
rugged little hero, young in years but almost a veteran in the wars of
freedom, who was as genial and intellectual in council as he was reckless
and impulsive in the field.

Lewis William had felt that the old military art was dying out and that--
there was nothing to take its place.  He was a diligent student of
antiquity.  He had revived in the swamps of Friesland the old manoeuvres,
the quickness of wheeling, the strengthening, without breaking ranks or
columns, by which the ancient Romans had performed so much excellent work
in their day, and which seemed to have passed entirely into oblivion.
Old colonels and rittmasters, who had never heard of Leo the Thracian nor
the Macedonian phalanx, smiled and shrugged their shoulders, as they
listened to the questions of the young count, or gazed with profound
astonishment at the eccentric evolutions to which he was accustoming his
troops.  From the heights of superior wisdom they looked down with pity
upon these innovations on the good old battle order.  They were
accustomed to great solid squares of troops wheeling in one way,
steadily, deliberately, all together, by one impulse and as one man.
It was true that in narrow fields, and when the enemy was pressing, such
stately evolutions often became impossible or ensured defeat; but when
the little Stadtholder drilled his soldiers in small bodies of various
shapes, teaching them to turn, advance; retreat; wheel in a variety of
ways, sometimes in considerable masses, sometimes man by man, sending the
foremost suddenly to the rear, or bringing the hindmost ranks to the
front, and began to attempt all this in narrow fields as well as in wide
ones, and when the enemy was in sight, men stood aghast at his want of
reverence, or laughed at him as a pedant.  But there came a day when they
did not laugh, neither friends nor enemies.  Meantime the two cousins,
who directed all the military operations in the provinces, understood
each other thoroughly and proceeded to perfect their new system, to be
adopted at a later period by all civilized nations.

The regular army of the Netherlands was small in number at that moment--
not more than twenty thousand foot with two thousand horse--but it was
well disciplined, well equipped, and, what was of great importance,
regularly paid.  Old campaigners complained that in the halcyon days of
paper enrolments, a captain could earn more out of his company than a
colonel now received for his whole regiment.  The days when a thousand
men were paid for, with a couple of hundred in the field, were passing
away for the United Provinces and existed only for Italians and
Spaniards.  While, therefore, mutiny on an organised and extensive scale
seemed almost the normal condition of the unpaid legions of Philip, the
little army of Maurice was becoming the model for Europe to imitate.

The United Provinces were as yet very far from being masters of their own
territory.  Many of their most important cities still held for the king.
In Brabant, such towns as Breda with its many dependencies and
Gertruydenberg; on the Waal, the strong and wealthy Nymegen which Martin
Schenk had perished in attempting to surprise; on the Yssel, the thriving
city of Zutphen, whose fort had been surrendered by the traitor York, and
the stately Deventer, which had been placed in Philip's possession by the
treachery of Sir William Stanley; on the borders of Drenthe, the almost
impregnable Koevorden, key to the whole Zwollian country; and in the very
heart of ancient Netherland, Groningen, capital of the province of the
same name, which the treason of Renneberg had sold to the Spanish tyrant;
all these flourishing cities and indispensable strongholds were
garrisoned by foreign troops, making the idea of Dutch independence
a delusion.

While Alexander of Parma, sorely against his will and in obedience to
what, he deemed the insane suggestions of his master, was turning his
back on the Netherlands in order to relieve Paris, now hard pressed
by the Bearnese, an opportunity offered itself of making at least a
beginning in the great enterprise of recovering these most valuable
possessions.

The fair and pleasant city of Breda lies on the Merk, a slender stream,
navigable for small vessels, which finds its way to the sea through the
great canal of the Dintel.  It had been the property of the Princes of
Orange, Barons of Breda, and had passed with the other possessions of
the family to the house of Chalons-Nassau.  Henry of Nassau had, half a
century before, adorned and strengthened it by a splendid palace-fortress
which, surrounded by a deep and double moat, thoroughly commanded the
town.  A garrison of five companies of Italian infantry and one of
cavalry lay in this castle, which was under the command of Edward
Lanzavecchia, governor both of Breda and of the neighbouring
Gertruydenberg.

Breda was an important strategical position.  It was moreover the feudal
superior of a large number of adjacent villages as well as of the cities
Osterhout, Steenberg and Rosendaal.  It was obviously not more desirable
for Maurice of Nassau to recover his patrimonial city than it was for the
States-General to drive the Spaniards from so important a position!

In the month of February, 1590, Maurice, being then at the castle of
Voorn in Zeeland, received a secret visit from a boatman, Adrian van der
Berg by name, who lived at the village of Leur, eight or ten miles from
Breda, and who had long been in the habit of supplying the castle with
turf.  In the absence of woods and coal mines, the habitual fuel of the
country was furnished by those vast relics of the antediluvian forests
which abounded in the still partially submerged soil.  The skipper
represented that his vessel had passed so often into and out of the
castle as to be hardly liable to search by the guard on its entrance.
He suggested a stratagem by which it might be possible to surprise the
stronghold.

The prince approved of the scheme and immediately consulted with
Barneveld.  That statesman at once proposed, as a suitable man to
carry out the daring venture, Captain Charles de Heraugiere, a nobleman
of Cambray, who had been long in the service of the States, had
distinguished himself at Sluys and on other occasions, but who had been
implicated in Leicester's nefarious plot to gain possession of the city
of Leyden a few years before.  The Advocate expressed confidence that he
would be grateful for so signal an opportunity of retrieving a somewhat
damaged reputation.  Heraugiere, who was with his company in Voorn at the
moment, eagerly signified his desire to attempt the enterprise as soon as
the matter was communicated to him; avowing the deepest devotion to the
house of William the Silent and perfect willingness to sacrifice his
life, if necessary, in its cause and that of the country.  Philip Nassau,
cousin of Prince Maurice and brother of Lewis William, governor of
Gorcum, Dorcum, and Lowenstein Castle and colonel of a regiment of
cavalry, was also taken into the secret, as well as Count Hohenlo,
President Van der Myle and a few others; but a mystery was carefully
spread and maintained over the undertaking.

Heraugiere selected sixty-eight men, on whose personal daring and
patience he knew that he could rely, from the regiments of Philip Nassau
and of Famars, governor of the neighbouring city of Heusden, and from his
own company.  Besides himself, the officers to command the party were
captains Logier and Fervet, and lieutenant Matthew Held.  The names of
such devoted soldiers deserve to be commemorated and are still freshly
remembered by their countrymen.

On the 25th of February, Maurice and his staff went to Willemstad on the
Isle of Klundert, it having been given out on his departure from the
Hague that his destination was Dort.  On the same night at about eleven
o'clock, by the feeble light of a waning moon, Heraugiere and his band
came to the Swertsenburg ferry, as agreed upon, to meet the boatman.
They found neither him nor his vessel, and they wandered about half the
night, very cold, very indignant, much perplexed.  At last, on their way
back, they came upon the skipper at the village of Terheyde, who made the
extraordinary excuse that he had overslept himself and that he feared the
plot had been discovered.  It being too late to make any attempt that
night, a meeting was arranged for the following evening.  No suspicion of
treachery occurred to any of the party, although it became obvious that
the skipper had grown faint-hearted.  He did not come on the next night
to the appointed place but he sent two nephews, boatmen like himself,
whom he described as dare-devils.

On Monday night, the 26th of February, the seventy went on board the
vessel, which was apparently filled with blocks of turf, and packed
themselves closely in the hold.  They moved slowly during a little time
on their perilous voyage; for the winter wind, thick with fog and sleet,
blew directly down the river, bringing along with it huge blocks of ice
and scooping the water out of the dangerous shallows, so as to render the
vessel at any moment liable to be stranded.  At last the navigation
became impossible and they came to a standstill.  From Monday night till
Thursday morning those seventy Hollanders lay packed like herrings in the
hold of their little vessel, suffering from hunger, thirst, and deadly
cold; yet not one of them attempted to escape or murmured a wish to
abandon the enterprise.  Even when the third morning dawned there was no
better prospect of proceeding; for the remorseless east wind still blew a
gale against them, and the shoals which beset their path had become more
dangerous than ever.  It was, however, absolutely necessary to recruit
exhausted nature, unless the adventurers were to drop powerless on the
threshold when they should at last arrive at their destination.  In all
secrecy they went ashore at a lonely castle called Nordam, where they
remained to refresh themselves until about eleven at night, when one of
the boatmen came to them with the intelligence that the wind had changed
and was now blowing freshly in from the sea.  Yet the voyage of a few
leagues, on which they were embarked, lasted nearly two whole days
longer.  On Saturday afternoon they passed through the last sluice, and
at about three o'clock the last boom was shut behind them.  There was no
retreat possible for them now.  The seventy were to take the strong
castle and city of Breda or to lay down their lives, every man of them.
No quarter and short shrift--such was their certain destiny, should that
half-crippled, half-frozen little band not succeed in their task before
another sunrise.

They were now in the outer harbour and not far from the Watergate which
led into the inner castle-haven.  Presently an officer of the guard put
off in a skiff and came on board the vessel.  He held a little
conversation with the two boatmen, observed that the castle was--much
in want of full, took a survey of the turf with which the ship was
apparently laden, and then lounged into the little cabin.  Here he was
only separated by a sliding trap-door from the interior of the vessel.
Those inside could hear and see his every movement.  Had there been a
single cough or sneeze from within, the true character of the cargo,
then making its way into the castle, would have been discovered and
every man would within ten minutes have been butchered.  But the officer,
unsuspecting, soon took his departure, saying that he would send some men
to warp the vessel into the castle dock.

Meantime, as the adventurers were making their way slowly towards the
Watergate, they struck upon a hidden obstruction in the river and the
deeply laden vessel sprang a leak.  In a few minutes those inside were
sitting up to their knees in water--a circumstance which scarcely
improved their already sufficiently dismal condition.  The boatmen
vigorously plied the pumps to save the vessel from sinking outright;
a party of Italian soldiers soon arrived on the shore, and in the course
of a couple of hours they had laboriously dragged the concealed
Hollanders into the inner harbour and made their vessel fast, close to
the guard-house of the castle.

And now a crowd of all sorts came on board.  The winter nights had been
long and fearfully cold, and there was almost a dearth of fuel both in
town and fortress.  A gang of labourers set to work discharging the turf
from the vessel with such rapidity that the departing daylight began to
shine in upon the prisoners much sooner than they wished.  Moreover, the
thorough wetting, to which after all their other inconveniences they had
just been exposed in their narrow escape from foundering, had set the
whole party sneezing and coughing.  Never was a catarrh so sudden, so
universal, or so ill-timed.  Lieutenant Held, unable to control the
violence of his cough, drew his dagger and eagerly implored his next
neighbour to stab him to the heart, lest his infirmity should lead to the
discovery of the whole party.  But the calm and wary skipper who stood on
the deck instantly commanded his companion to work at the pump with as
much clatter as possible, assuring the persons present that the hold was
nearly full of water.  By this means the noise of the coughing was
effectually drowned.  Most thoroughly did the bold boatman deserve the
title of dare-devil, bestowed by his more fainthearted uncle.  Calmly
looking death in the face, he stood there quite at his ease, exchanging
jokes with his old acquaintances, chaffering with the eager purchasers of
peat shouting most noisy and superfluous orders to the one man who
composed his crew, doing his utmost, in short, to get rid of his
customers and to keep enough of the turf on board to conceal the
conspirators.

At last, when the case seemed almost desperate, he loudly declared that
sufficient had been unladen for that evening and that it was too dark
and he too tired for further work.  So, giving a handful of stivers among
the workmen, he bade them go ashore at once and have some beer and come
next morning for the rest of the cargo.  Fortunately, they accepted his
hospitable proposition and took their departure.  Only the servant of the
captain of the guard lingered behind, complaining that the turf was not
as good as usual and that his master would never be satisfied with it.

"Ah!"  returned the cool skipper, "the best part of the cargo is
underneath.  This is expressly reserved for the captain.  He
is sure to get enough of it to-morrow."

Thus admonished, the servant departed and the boatman was left to
himself.  His companion had gone on shore with secret orders to make the
best of his way to Prince Maurice, to inform him of the arrival of the
ship within the fortress, and of the important fact which they had just
learned, that Governor Lanzavecchia, who had heard rumours of some
projected enterprise and who suspected that the object aimed at was
Gertruydenberg, had suddenly taken his departure for that city, leaving
as his lieutenant his nephew Paolo, a raw lad quite incompetent to
provide for the safety of Breda.

A little before midnight, Captain Heraugiere made a brief address to his
comrades in the vessel, telling them that the hour for carrying out their
undertaking had at length arrived.  Retreat was impossible, defeat was
certain death, only in complete victory lay their own safety and a great
advantage for the commonwealth.  It was an honor to them to be selected
for such an enterprise.  To show cowardice now would be an eternal shame
for them, and he would be the man to strike dead with his own hand any
traitor or poltroon.  But if, as he doubted not, every one was prepared
to do his duty, their success was assured, and he was himself ready to
take the lead in confronting every danger.

He then divided the little band into two companies, one under himself to
attack the main guard-house, the other under Fervet to seize the arsenal
of the fortress.

Noiselessly they stole out of the ship where they had so long been
confined, and stood at last on the ground within the precincts of the
castle.  Heraugiere marched straight to the guard-house.

"Who goes there?"  cried a sentinel, hearing some movement in the
darkness.

"A friend," replied the captain, seizing him, by the throat, and
commanding him, if he valued his life, to keep silence except when
addressed and then to speak in a whisper.

"How many are there in the garrison?"  muttered Heraugiere.

"Three hundred and fifty," whispered the sentinel.

"How many?"  eagerly demanded the nearest followers, not hearing the
reply.

"He says there are but fifty of them," said Heraugiere, prudently
suppressing the three hundred, in order to encourage his comrades.

Quietly as they had made their approach, there was nevertheless a stir
in the guard-house.  The captain of the watch sprang into the courtyard.

"Who goes there?"  he demanded in his turn.

"A friend," again replied Heraugiere, striking him dead with a single
blow as he spoke.

Others emerged with torches.  Heraugiere was slightly wounded, but
succeeded, after a brief struggle, in killing a second assailant.  His
followers set upon the watch who retreated into the guard-house.
Heraugiere commanded his men to fire through the doors and windows, and
in a few minutes every one of the enemy lay dead.

It was not a moment for making prisoners or speaking of quarter.
Meantime Fervet and his band had not been idle.  The magazine-house of
the castle was seized, its defenders slain.  Young Lanzavecchia made a
sally from the palace, was wounded and driven back together with a few of
his adherents.

The rest of the garrison fled helter-skelter into the town.  Never had
the musketeers of Italy--for they all belonged to Spinola's famous
Sicilian Legion--behaved so badly.  They did not even take the precaution
to destroy the bridge between the castle and the town as they fled panic-
stricken before seventy Hollanders.  Instead of encouraging the burghers
to their support they spread dismay, as they ran, through every street.

Young Lanzavecchia, penned into a corner of the castle; began to parley;
hoping for a rally before a surrender should be necessary.  In the midst
of the negotiation and a couple of hours before dawn, Hohenlo; duly
apprised by the boatman, arrived with the vanguard of Maurice's troops
before the field-gate of the fort.  A vain attempt was made to force this
portal open, but the winter's ice had fixed it fast.  Hohenlo was obliged
to batter down the palisade near the water-gate and enter by the same
road through which the fatal turf-boat had passed.

Soon after he had marched into the town at the head of a strong
detachment, Prince Maurice himself arrived in great haste, attended by
Philip Nassau, the Admiral Justinus Nassau, Count Solms, Peter van der
Does, and Sir Francis Vere, and followed by another body of picked
troops; the musicians playing merrily that national air, then as now so
dear to Netherlanders--

                   "Wilhelmus van Nassouwen
                    Ben ick van Duytaem bloed."

The fight was over.  Some forty of the garrison had been killed, but not
a man of the attacking party.  The burgomaster sent a trumpet to the
prince asking permission to come to the castle to arrange a capitulation;
and before sunrise, the city and fortress of Breda had surrendered to the
authority of the States-General and of his Excellency.

The terms were moderate.  The plundering was commuted for the payment of
two months' wages to every soldier engaged in the affair.  Burghers who
might prefer to leave the city were allowed to do so with protection to
life, and property.  Those who were willing to remain loyal citizens were
not to be molested, in their consciences or their households, in regard
to religion.  The public exercise of Catholic rites was however suspended
until the States-General should make some universal provision on this
subject.

Subsequently, it must be allowed, the bargain of commutation proved a bad
one for the burghers.  Seventy men had in reality done the whole work,
but so many soldiers, belonging to the detachments who marched in after
the fortress had been taken, came forward to claim their months' wages
as to bring the whole amount required above one hundred thousand florins.
The Spaniards accordingly reproached Prince Maurice with having fined his
own patrimonial city more heavily than Alexander Farnese had mulcted
Antwerp, which had been made to pay but four hundred thousand florins,
a far less sum in proportion to the wealth and importance of the place.

Already the Prince of Parma, in the taking of Breda, saw verified his
predictions of the disasters about to fall on the Spanish interests in
the Netherlands, by reason of Philip's obstinate determination to
concentrate all his energies on the invasion of France.  Alexander had
been unable, in the midst of preparations for his French campaign, to
arrest this sudden capture, but his Italian blood was on fire at the
ignominy which had come upon the soldiership of his countrymen.  Five
companies of foot and one of horse-picked troops of Spain and Italy--had
surrendered a wealthy, populous town and a well-fortified castle to a
mud-scow, and had fled shrieking in dismay from the onset of seventy
frost-bitten Hollanders.

It was too late to save the town, but he could punish, as it deserved,
the pusillanimity of the garrison.

Three captains--one of them rejoicing in the martial name of Cesar
Guerra--were publicly beheaded in Brussels.  A fourth, Ventimiglia,
was degraded but allowed to escape with life, on account of his near
relationship to the Duke of Terranova, while Governor Lanzavecchia was
obliged to resign the command of Gertruydenberg.  The great commander
knew better than to encourage the yielding up of cities and fortresses
by a mistaken lenity to their unlucky defenders.

Prince Maurice sent off letters the same night announcing his success to
the States-General.  Hohenlo wrote pithily to Olden-Barneveld--"The
castle and town of Breda are ours, without a single man dead on our side.
The garrison made no resistance but ran distracted out of the town."

The church bells rang and bonfires blazed and cannon thundered in every
city in the United Provinces to commemorate this auspicious event.
Olden-Barneveld, too, whose part in arranging the scheme was known to
have been so valuable, received from the States-General a magnificent
gilded vase with sculptured representations of the various scenes in the
drama, and it is probable that not more unmingled satisfaction had been
caused by any one event of the war than by this surprise of Breda.

The capture of a single town, not of first-rate importance either, would
hardly seem too merit so minute a description as has been given in the
preceding pages.  But the event, with all its details, has been preserved
with singular vividness in Netherland story.  As an example of daring,
patience, and complete success, it has served to encourage the bold
spirits of every generation and will always inspire emulation in
patriotic hearts of every age and clime, while, as the first of a series
of audacious enterprises by which Dutch victories were to take the place
of a long procession of Spanish triumphs on the blood-stained soil of the
provinces, it merits, from its chronological position, a more than
ordinary attention.

In the course of the summer Prince Maurice, carrying out into practice
the lessons which he had so steadily been pondering, reduced the towns
and strong places of Heyl, Flemert, Elshout, Crevecoeur, Hayden,
Steenberg, Rosendaal, and Osterhout.  But his time, during the remainder
of the year 1590, was occupied with preparations for a campaign on an
extended scale and with certain foreign negotiations to which it will
soon be necessary to direct the reader's attention.




CHAPTER XXII.

     Struggle of the United Provinces against Philip of Spain--Progress
     of the Republic--Influence of Geographical position on the fate of
     the Netherlands--Contrast offered by America--Miserable state of the
     so--called "obedient" provinces--Prosperity of the Commonwealth--Its
     internal government--Tendency to provincialism--Quibbles of the
     English Members of the Council, Wilkes and Bodley--Exclusion of
     Olden-Barneveld from the State Council--Proposals of Philip for
     mediation with the United Provinces--The Provinces resolutely
     decline all proffers of intervention.

The United Provinces had now been engaged in unbroken civil war for a
quarter of a century.  It is, however, inaccurate to designate this great
struggle with tyranny as a civil war.  It was a war for independence,
maintained by almost the whole population of the United Provinces against
a foreigner, a despot, alien to their blood, ignorant of their language,
a hater of their race, a scorner of their religion, a trampler upon their
liberties, their laws, and institutions--a man who had publicly declared
that he would rather the whole nation were exterminated than permitted to
escape from subjection to the Church of Rome.  Liberty of speech, liberty
of the press, liberty of thought on political, religious, and social
questions existed within those Dutch pastures and Frisian swamps to a far
greater degree than in any other part of the world at that day; than in
very many regions of Christendom in our own time.  Personal slavery was
unknown.  In a large portion of their territory it had never existed.
The free Frisians, nearest blood-relations of, in this respect, the less
favoured Anglo-Saxons, had never bowed the knee to the feudal system, nor
worn nor caused to be worn the collar of the serf.  In the battles for
human liberty no nation has stood with cleaner hands before the great
tribunal, nor offered more spotless examples of patriotism to be emulated
in all succeeding ages, than the Netherlanders in their gigantic struggle
with Philip of Spain.  It was not a class struggling for their own
privileges, but trampling on their fellow-men in a lower scale of
humanity.  Kings and aristocrats sneered at the vulgar republic where
Hans Miller, Hans Baker, and Hans Brewer enjoyed political rights end
prated of a sovereignty other than that of long-descended races and of
anointed heads.  Yet the pikemen of Spain and the splendid cavalry and
musketeers of Italy and Burgundy, who were now beginning to show their
backs both behind entrenchments and in the open field to their republican
foes, could not deny the valour with which the battles of liberty were
fought; while Elizabeth of England, maintainer, if such ever were, of
hereditary sovereignty and hater of popular freedom, acknowledged that
for wisdom in council, dignity and adroitness in diplomatic debate, there
were none to surpass the plain burgher statesmen of the new republic.

And at least these Netherlanders were consistent with themselves.  They
had come to disbelieve in the mystery of kingcraft, in the divine
speciality of a few transitory mortals to direct the world's events and
to dictate laws to their fellow-creatures.  What they achieved was for
the common good of all.  They chose to live in an atmosphere of blood and
fire for generation after generation rather than flinch from their
struggle with despotism, for they knew that, cruel as the sea, it would
swallow them all at last in one common destruction if they faltered or
paused.  They fought for the liberty of all.  And it is for this reason
that the history of this great conflict deserved to be deeply pondered by
those who have the instinct of human freedom.  Had the Hollanders basely
sunk before the power of Spain, the proud history of England, France, and
Germany would have been written in far different terms.  The blood and
tears which the Netherlanders caused to flow in their own stormy days
have turned to blessings for remotest climes and ages.  A pusillanimous
peace, always possible at any period of their war, would have been hailed
with rapture by contemporary statesmen, whose names have vanished from
the world's memory; but would have sown with curses and misery the soil
of Europe for succeeding ages.  The territory of the Netherlands is
narrow and meagre.  It is but a slender kingdom now among the powers of
the earth.  The political grandeur of nations is determined by physical
causes almost as much as by moral ones.  Had the cataclysm which
separated the fortunate British islands from the mainland happened to
occur, instead, at a neighbouring point of the earth's crust; had the
Belgian, Dutch, German and Danish Netherland floated off as one island
into the sea, while that famous channel between two great rival nations
remained dry land, there would have been a different history of the
world.

But in the 16th century the history of one country was not an isolated
chapter of personages and events.  The history of the Netherlands is
history of liberty.  It was now combined with the English, now with
French, with German struggles for political and religious freedom, but it
is impossible to separate it from the one great complex which makes up
the last half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth
centuries.

At that day the Netherland republic was already becoming a power of
importance in the political family of Christendom.  If, in spite of her
geographical disadvantages, she achieved so much, how much vaster might
her power have grown, how much stronger through her example might popular
institutions throughout the world have become, and how much more pacific
the relations of European tribes, had nature been less niggard in her
gifts to the young commonwealth.  On the sea she was strong, for the
ocean is the best of frontiers; but on land her natural boundaries faded
vaguely away, without strong physical demarcations and with no sharply
defined limits of tongue, history or race.  Accident or human caprice
seemed to have divided German Highland from German Netherland; Belgic
Gaul from the rest of the Gallic realm.  And even from the slender body,
which an arbitrary destiny had set off for centuries into a separate
organism, tyranny and religious bigotry had just hewn another portion
away.  But the commonwealth was already too highly vitalized to permit
peaceful dismemberment.  Only the low organisms can live in all their
parts after violent separations.  The trunk remained, bleeding but alive
and vigorous, while the amputated portion lay for centuries in fossilized
impotence.

Never more plainly than in the history of this commonwealth was the
geographical law manifested by which the fate of nations is so deeply
influenced.  Courage, enterprise amounting almost to audacity, and a
determined will confronted for a long lapse of time the inexorable, and
permitted a great empire to germinate out of a few sand-banks held in
defiance of the ocean, and protected from human encroachments on the
interior only by the artificial barrier of custom-house and fort.

Thus foredoomed at birth, it must increase our admiration of human energy
and of the sustaining influence of municipal liberty that the republic,
even if transitory, should yet have girdled the earth with its
possessions and held for a considerable period so vast a portion
of the world in fee.

What a lesson to our transatlantic commonwealth, whom bountiful nature
had blessed at her birth beyond all the nations of history and seemed to
speed upon an unlimited career of freedom and peaceful prosperity, should
she be capable at the first alarm on her track to throw away her
inestimable advantages!  If all history is not a mockery and a fable,
she may be sure that the nation which deliberately carves itself in
pieces and, substitutes artificial boundaries for the natural and
historic ones, condemns itself either to extinction or to the lower life
of political insignificance and petty warfare, with the certain loss of
liberty and national independence at last.  Better a terrible struggle,
better the sacrifice of prosperity and happiness for years, than the
eternal setting of that great popular hope, the United American Republic.

I speak in this digression only of the relations of physical nature to
liberty and nationality, making no allusion to the equally stringent
moral laws which no people can violate and yet remain in health and
vigour.

Despite a quarter of a century of what is commonly termed civil war,
the United Netherlands were prosperous and full of life.  It was in the
provinces which had seceded from the union of Utrecht that there was
silence as of the grave, destitution, slavery, abject submission to a
foreign foe.  The leaders in the movement which had brought about the
scission of 1579--commonly called the 'Reconciliation'--enjoyed military
and civil posts under a foreign tyrant, but were poorly rewarded for
subserviency in fighting against their own brethren by contumely on the
part of their masters.  As for the mass of the people it would be
difficult to find a desolation more complete than that recorded of the
"obedient" provinces.  Even as six years before, wolves littered their
whelps in deserted farmhouses, cane-brake and thicket usurped the place
of cornfield and, orchard, robbers swarmed on the highways once thronged
by a most thriving population, nobles begged their bread in the streets
of cities whose merchants once entertained emperors and whose wealth and
traffic were the wonder of the world, while the Spanish viceroy formally
permitted the land in the agricultural districts to be occupied and
farmed by the first comer for his own benefit, until the vanished
proprietors of the soil should make their re-appearance.

"Administered without justice or policy," said a Netherlander who was
intensely loyal to the king and a most uncompromising Catholic, "eaten up
and abandoned for that purpose to the arbitrary will of foreigners who
suck the substance and marrow of the land without benefit to the king,
gnaw the obedient cities to the bones, and plunder the open defenceless
country at their pleasure, it may be imagined how much satisfaction these
provinces take in their condition.  Commerce and trade have ceased in a
country which traffic alone has peopled, for without it no human
habitation could be more miserable and poor than our land."--[Discours
du Seigneur de Champagny sur les affaires des Pays Bas, 21 Dec. 1589.
Bibl. de Bourgogne, MS. No. 12,962.]

Nothing could be more gloomy than the evils thus described by the
Netherland statesman and soldier, except the remedy which he suggested.
The obedient provinces, thus scourged and blasted for their obedience,
were not advised to improve their condition by joining hands with their
sister States, who had just constituted themselves by their noble
resistance to royal and ecclesiastical tyranny into a free and powerful
commonwealth.  On the contrary, two great sources of regeneration and
prosperity were indicated, but very different ones from those in which
the republic had sought and found her strength.  In the first place, it
was suggested as indispensable that the obedient provinces should have
more Jesuits and more Friars.  The mendicant orders should be summoned to
renewed exertions, and the king should be requested to send seminary
priests to every village in numbers proportionate to the population, who
should go about from house to house, counting the children, and seeing
that they learned their catechism if their parents did not teach them,
and, even in case they did, examining whether it was done thoroughly and
without deception.

In the second place it was laid down as important that the bishops should
confirm no one who had not been sufficiently catechized.  "And if the
mendicant orders," said Champagny, "are not numerous enough for these
catechizations, the Jesuits might charge themselves therewith, not more
and not less than the said mendicants, some of each being deputed to each
parish.  To this end it would be well if his Majesty should obtain from
the Pope a command to the Jesuits to this effect, since otherwise they
might not be willing to comply.  It should also be ordered that all
Jesuits, natives of these provinces, should return hither, instead of
wandering about in other regions as if their help were not so necessary
here."--[Ibid.]

It was also recommended that the mendicant friars should turn their
particular attention to Antwerp, and that one of them should preach in
French, another in German, another in English, every day at the opening
of the Exchange.

With these appliances it was thought that Antwerp would revive out of
its ruins and, despite the blockade of its river, renew its ancient
commercial glories.  Founded on the substantial rocks of mendicancy and
jesuitism, it might again triumph over its rapidly rising rival, the
heretic Amsterdam, which had no better basis for its grandeur than
religious and political liberty, and uncontrolled access to the ocean.

Such were the aspirations of a distinguished and loyal Netherlander for
the regeneration of his country.  Such were his opinions as to the true
sources of the wealth and greatness of nations.  Can we wonder that the
country fell to decay, or that this experienced, statesman and brave
soldier should himself, after not many years, seek to hide his
dishonoured head under the cowl of a monk?

The coast of the obedient provinces was thoroughly blockaded.  The United
Provinces commanded the sea, their cruisers, large and small, keeping
diligent watch off every port and estuary of the Flemish coast, so that
not a herringboat could enter without their permission.  Antwerp, when it
fell into the hands of the Spaniard, sank for ever from its proud
position.  The city which Venetians but lately had confessed with a sigh
to be superior in commercial grandeur to their own magnificent capital,
had ceased to be a seaport.  Shut in from the ocean by Flushing--firmly
held by an English garrison as one of the cautionary towns for the
Queen's loan--her world-wide commerce withered before men's eyes.  Her
population was dwindling to not much more than half its former numbers,
while Ghent, Bruges, and other cities were diminished by two-thirds.

On the other hand, the commerce and manufactures of the United Republic
had enormously augmented.  Its bitterest enemies bore witness to the
sagacity and success by which its political affairs were administered,
and to its vast superiority in this respect over the obedient provinces.
"The rebels are not ignorant of our condition," said Champagny, "they are
themselves governed with consummate wisdom, and they mock at those who
submit themselves to the Duke of Parma.  They are the more confirmed in
their rebellion, when they see how many are thronging from us to them,
complaining of such bad government, and that all take refuge in flight
who can from the misery and famine which it has caused throughout these
provinces!"  The industrial population had flowed from the southern
provinces into the north, in obedience to an irresistible law.  The
workers in iron, paper, silk, linen, lace, the makers of brocade,
tapestry, and satin, as well as of all the coarser fabrics, had fled from
the land of oppression to the land of liberty.  Never in the history of
civilisation had there been a more rapid development of human industry
than in Holland during these years of bloodiest warfare.  The towns were
filled to overflowing.  Amsterdam multiplied in wealth and population as
fast as Antwerp shrank.  Almost as much might be said of Middelburg,
Enkhuyzen, Horn, and many other cities.  It is the epoch to which the
greatest expansion of municipal architecture is traced.  Warehouses,
palaces, docks, arsenals, fortifications, dykes, splendid streets and
suburbs, were constructed on every side, and still there was not room for
the constantly increasing population, large numbers of which habitually
dwelt in the shipping.  For even of that narrow span of earth called the
province of Holland, one-third was then interior water, divided into five
considerable lakes, those of Harlem, Schermer, Beemster, Waert, and
Purmer.  The sea was kept out by a magnificent system of dykes under
the daily superintendence of a board of officers, called dyke-graves,
while the rain-water, which might otherwise have drowned the soil thus
painfully reclaimed, was pumped up by windmills and drained off through
sluices opening and closing with the movement of the tides.

The province of Zeeland was one vast "polder."  It was encircled by an
outer dyke of forty Dutch equal to one hundred and fifty English, miles
in extent, and traversed by many interior barriers.  The average cost of
dyke-building was sixty florins the rod of twelve feet, or 84,000 florins
the Dutch mile.  The total cost of the Zeeland dykes was estimated at
3,360,000 florins, besides the annual repairs.

But it was on the sea that the Netherlanders were really at home, and
they always felt it in their power--as their last resource against
foreign tyranny--to bury their land for ever in the ocean, and to seek a
new country at the ends of the earth.  It has always been difficult to
doom to political or personal slavery a nation accustomed to maritime
pursuits.  Familiarity with the boundless expanse of ocean, and the habit
of victoriously contending with the elements in their stormy strength,
would seem to inspire a consciousness in mankind of human dignity and
worth.  With the exception of Spain, the chief seafaring nations of the
world were already protestant.  The counter-league, which was to do
battle so strenuously with the Holy Confederacy, was essentially a
maritime league.  "All the maritime heretics of the world, since heresy
is best suited to navigators, will be banded together," said Champagny,
"and then woe to the Spanish Indies, which England and Holland are
already threatening."

The Netherlanders had been noted from earliest times for a free-spoken
and independent personal demeanour.  At this epoch they were taking the
lead of the whole world in marine adventure.  At least three thousand
vessels of between one hundred and four hundred tons, besides innumerable
doggers, busses, cromstevens, and similar craft used on the rivers and in
fisheries, were to be found in the United Provinces, and one thousand,
it was estimated, were annually built.

They traded to the Baltic regions for honey, wax, tallow, lumber, iron,
turpentine, hemp.  They brought from farthest Indies and from America all
the fabrics of ancient civilisation, all the newly discovered products of
a virgin soil, and dispensed them among the less industrious nations of
the earth.  Enterprise, led on and accompanied by science, was already
planning the boldest flights into the unknown yet made by mankind, and
it will soon be necessary to direct attention to those famous arctic
voyages, made by Hollanders in pursuit of the north-west passage to
Cathay, in which as much heroism, audacity, and scientific intelligence
were displayed as in later times have made so many men belonging to both
branches of the Anglo-Saxon race illustrious.  A people, engaged in
perennial conflict with a martial and sacerdotal despotism the most
powerful in the world, could yet spare enough from its superfluous
energies to confront the dangers of the polar oceans, and to bring back
treasures of science to enrich the world.

Such was the spirit of freedom.  Inspired by its blessed influence this
vigorous and inventive little commonwealth triumphed over all human, all
physical obstacles in its path.  It organised armies on new principles
to drive the most famous legions of history from its soil.  It built
navies to help rescue, at critical moments, the cause of England, of
Protestantism, of civil liberty, and even of French nationality.  More
than all, by its trade with its arch-enemy, the republic constantly
multiplied its resources for destroying his power and aggrandizing its
own.

The war navy of the United Provinces was a regular force of one hundred
ships--large at a period when a vessel of thirteen hundred tons was a
monster--together with an indefinite number of smaller craft, which could
be put into the public service on short notice?  In those days of close
quarters and light artillery a merchant ship was converted into a cruiser
by a very simple, process.  The navy was a self-supporting one, for it
was paid by the produce of convoy fees and licenses to trade.  It must be
confessed that a portion of these revenues savoured much of black-mail to
be levied on friend and foe; for the distinctions between, freebooter,
privateer, pirate, and legitimate sea-robber were not very closely drawn
in those early days of seafaring.

Prince Maurice of Nassau was lord high admiral, but he was obliged to
listen to the counsels of various provincial boards of admiralty, which
often impeded his action and interfered with his schemes.

It cannot be denied that the inherent vice of the Netherland polity was
already a tendency to decentralisation and provincialism.  The civil
institutions of the country, in their main characteristics, have been
frequently sketched in these pages.  At this period they had entered
almost completely into the forms which were destined to endure until the
commonwealth fell in the great crash of the French Revolution.  Their
beneficial effects were more visible now--sustained and bound together as
the nation was by the sense of a common danger, and by the consciousness
of its daily developing strength--than at a later day when prosperity and
luxury had blunted the fine instincts of patriotism.

The supreme power, after the deposition of Philip, and the refusal by
France and by England to accept the sovereignty of the provinces, was
definitely lodged in the States-General.  But the States-General did not
technically represent the, people.  Its members were not elected by the
people.  It was a body composed of, delegates from each provincial
assembly, of which there were now five: Holland, Zeeland, Friesland,
Utrecht, and Gelderland.  Each provincial assembly consisted again of
delegates, not from the inhabitants of the provinces, but from the
magistracies of the cities.  Those, magistracies, again, were not elected
by the citizens.  They elected themselves by renewing their own
vacancies, and were, in short, immortal corporations.  Thus, in final
analysis, the supreme power was distributed and localised among the
mayors and aldermen of a large number of cities, all independent alike
of the people below and of any central power above.

It is true that the nobles, as, a class, had a voice in the provincial
and, in the general assembly, both for themselves and as technical
representatives of the smaller towns and of the rural population.  But,
as a matter of fact, the influence of this caste had of late years very
rapidly diminished, through its decrease in numbers, and the far more
rapid increase in wealth and power of the commercial and manufacturing
classes.  Individual nobles were constantly employed in the military,
civil, and diplomatic service of the republic, but their body had ceased
to be a power.  It had been.  the policy of William the Silent to
increase the number of cities entitled to send deputies to the States;
for it was among the cities that his resistance to the tyranny of Spain,
and his efforts to obtain complete independence for his country, had been
mainly supported.  Many of the great nobles, as has been seen in these
pages, denounced the liberator and took sides with the tyrant.  Lamoral
Egmont had walked to the scaffold to which Philip had condemned him,
chanting a prayer for Philip's welfare.  Egmont's eldest son was now
foremost in the Spanish army, doing battle against his own country in
behalf of the tyrant who had taken his father's life.  Aremberg and
Ligny, Arachot, Chimay, Croy, Caprea, Montigny, and most of the great
patrician families of the Netherlands fought on the royal side.

The revolution which had saved the country from perdition and created the
great Netherland republic was a burgher revolution, and burgher statesmen
now controlled the State.  The burgher class of Europe is not the one
that has been foremost in the revolutionary movements of history,
or that has distinguished itself--especially in more modern times--
by a passionate love of liberty.  It is always easy to sneer at Hans
Miller and Hans Baker, and at the country where such plebeians are
powerful.  Yet the burghers played a prominent part in the great drama
which forms my theme, and there has rarely been seen a more solid or
powerful type of their class than the burgher statesman, John of Olden-
Barneveld, who, since the death of William the Silent and the departure
of Lord Leicester, had mainly guided the destinies of Holland.  Certainly
no soldier nor statesman who ever measured intellects with that potent
personage was apt to treat his genius otherwise than with profound
respect.

But it is difficult to form a logical theory of government except on the
fiction of divine right as a basis, unless the fact of popular
sovereignty, as expressed by a majority, be frankly accepted in spite of
philosophical objections.

In the Netherlands there was no king, and strictly speaking no people.
But this latter and fatal defect was not visible in the period of danger
and of contest.  The native magistrates of that age were singularly pure,
upright, and patriotic.  Of this there is no question whatever.  And the
people acquiesced cheerfully in their authority, not claiming a larger
representation than such as they virtually possessed in the multiple
power exercised over them, by men moving daily among them, often of
modest fortunes and of simple lives.  Two generations later, and in the
wilderness of Massachusetts, the early American colonists voluntarily
placed in the hands of their magistrates, few in number, unlimited
control of all the functions of government, and there was hardly an
instance known of an impure exercise of authority.  Yet out of that
simple kernel grew the least limited and most powerful democracy ever
known.

In the later days of Netherland history a different result became
visible, and with it came the ruin of the State.  The governing class, of
burgher origin, gradually separated itself from the rest of the citizens,
withdrew from commercial pursuits, lived on hereditary fortunes in the
exercise of functions which were likewise virtually hereditary, and so
became an oligarchy.  This result, together with the physical causes
already indicated, made the downfall of the commonwealth probable
whenever it should be attacked by an overwhelming force from without.

The States-General, however, at this epoch--although they had in a manner
usurped the sovereignty, which in the absence of a feudal lord really
belonged to the whole people, and had silently repossessed themselves of
those executive functions which they had themselves conferred upon the
state council--were at any rate without self-seeking ambition.  The
Hollanders, as a race, were not office seekers, but were singularly
docile to constituted authority, while their regents--as the municipal
magistrates were commonly called--were not very far removed above the
mass by birth or habitual occupation.  The republic was a social and
political fact, against which there was no violent antagonism either of
laws or manners, and the people, although not technically existing, in
reality was all in all.  In Netherland story the People is ever the true
hero.  It was an almost unnoticed but significant revolution--that by
which the state council was now virtually deprived of its authority.
During Leicester's rule it had been a most important college of
administration.  Since his resignation it had been entrusted by the
States-General with high executive functions, especially in war matters.
It was an assembly of learned counsellors appointed from the various
provinces for wisdom and experience, usually about eighteen in number,
and sworn in all things to be faithful to the whole republic.  The
allegiance of all was rendered to the nation.  Each individual member was
required to "forswear his native province in order to be true to the
generality."  They deliberated in common for the general good, and were
not hampered by instructions from the provincial diets, nor compelled to
refer to those diets for decision when important questions were at issue.
It was an independent executive committee for the whole republic.

But Leicester had made it unpopular.  His intrigues, in the name of
democracy, to obtain possession of sovereign power, to inflame the lower
classes against the municipal magistracies, and to excite the clergy to
claim a political influence to which they were not entitled and which was
most mischievous in its effects, had exposed the state council, with
which he had been in the habit of consulting, to suspicion.

The Queen of England, by virtue of her treaty had the right to appoint
two of her subjects to be members of the council.  The governor of her
auxiliary forces was also entitled to a seat there.  Since the
malpractices of Leicester and the danger to which the country had been,
subjected in consequence had been discovered, it was impossible that
there should be very kindly feeling toward England in the public mind,
however necessary a sincere alliance between the two countries was known
to be for the welfare of both.

The bickering of the two English councillors, Wilkes and Bodley,
and of the governor of the English contingent with the Hollanders,
was incessant.  The Englishmen went so far as to claim the right of
veto upon all measures passed by the council, but the States-General
indignantly replied that the matters deliberated and decided upon by that
board were their own affairs, not the state affairs of England.  The two
members and the military officer who together represented her Majesty
were entitled to participate in the deliberations and to vote with their
brother members.  For them to claim the right, however, at will to annul
the proceedings was an intolerable assumption, and could not be listened
to for a moment.  Certainly it would have been strange had two Dutchmen
undertaken to veto every measure passed by the Queen's council at
Richmond or Windsor, and it was difficult to say on what article of the
contract this extraordinary privilege was claimed by Englishmen at the
Hague.

Another cause of quarrel was the inability of the Englishmen to
understand the language in which the debates of the state council were
held.

According to a custom not entirely unexampled in parliamentary history
the members of assembly and council made use of their native tongue in
discussing the state affairs of their native land.  It was however
considered a grievance by the two English members that the Dutchmen
should speak Dutch, and it was demanded in the Queen's name that they
should employ some other language which a foreigner could more easily
understand.

The Hollanders however refused this request, not believing that in a
reversed case her Majesty's Council or Houses of Parliament would be
likely or competent to carry on their discussions habitually in Italian
or Latin for the benefit of a couple of strangers who might not be
familiar with English.  The more natural remedy would have been for the
foreigners to take lessons in the tongue of the country, or to seek for
an interpreter among their colleagues; especially as the States, when all
the Netherlands were but provinces, had steadily refused to adopt any
language but their mother tongue, even at the demand of their sovereign
prince.

At this moment, Sir Thomas Bodley was mainly entrusted with her Majesty's
affairs at the Hague, but his overbearing demeanour, intemperate
language, and passionate style of correspondence with the States and with
the royal government, did much injury to both countries.  The illustrious
Walsingham--whose death in the spring of this year England had so much
reason to deplore--had bitterly lamented, just before his death, having
recommended so unquiet a spirit for so important a place.  Ortel, envoy
of the States to London, expressed his hopes that affairs would now be
handled more to the satisfaction of the States; as Bodley would be
obliged, since the death of Sir Francis, to address his letters to the
Lord High Treasurer, with whom it would be impossible for him to obtain
so much influence as he had enjoyed with the late Secretary of State.

Moreover it was exactly at this season that the Advocate of Holland,
Olden-Barneveld, was excluded from the state council.  Already the
important province of Holland was dissatisfied with its influence in that
body.  Bearing one-half of the whole burthen of the war it was not
content with one-quarter of the council vote, and very soon it became the
custom for the States-General to conduct all the most important affairs
of the republic.   The state council complained that even in war matters
it was not consulted, and that most important enterprises were undertaken
by Prince Maurice without its knowledge, and on advice of the Advocate
alone.  Doubtless this was true, and thus, most unfortunately, the
commonwealth was degraded to a confederacy instead of becoming an
incorporate federal State.  The members of the States-General--as it
has been seen were responsible only to their constituents, the separate
provinces.  They avowed allegiance, each to his own province, none to the
central government.  Moreover they were not representatives, but envoys,
appointed by petty provinces, bound by written orders, and obliged to
consult at every step with their sovereigns at home.  The Netherland
polity was thus stamped almost at its birth with a narrow provincialism:
Delay and hesitation thus necessarily engendered were overcome in the
days of danger by patriotic fervour.  The instinct of union for the
sake of the national existence was sufficiently strong, and the robust,
practical common sense of the people sufficiently enlightened to prevent
this weakness from degenerating into impotence so long as the war
pressure remained to mould them into a whole.  But a day was to come for
bitterly rueing this paralysis of the imperial instincts of the people,
this indefinite decentralisation of the national strength.

For the present, the legislative and executive body was the States-
General.  But the States-General were in reality the States provincial,
and the States provincial were the city municipalities, among which the
magistracies of Holland were preponderant.

Ere long it became impossible for an individual to resist the decrees of
the civic authorities.  In 1591, the States-General passed a resolution
by which these arrogant corporations virtually procured their exemption
from any process at the suit of a private person to be placed on record.
So far could the principle of sovereignty be pulverized.  City council
boards had become supreme.

It was naturally impossible during the long continuance of this great
struggle, that neutral nations should not be injuriously affected by it
in a variety of ways.  And as a matter of course neutral nations were
disposed to counsel peace.  Peace, peace; peace was the sigh of the
bystanders whose commerce was impeded, whose international relations.
were complicated, and whose own security was endangered in the course of
the bloody conflict.  It was however not very much the fashion of that
day for governments to obtrude advice upon each other; or to read to each
other moral lectures.  It was assumed that when the expense and sacrifice
of war had been incurred, it was for cause, and the discovery had not yet
been made that those not immediately interested in the fray were better
acquainted with its merits than, the combatants themselves, and were
moreover endued with, superhuman wisdom to see with perfect clearness
that future issue which to the parties themselves was concealed.

Cheap apothegms upon the blessings of peace and upon the expediency of
curbing the angry passions, uttered by the belligerents of yesterday to
the belligerents of to-day, did not then pass current for profound
wisdom.

Still the emperor Rudolph, abstaining for a time from his star-gazing,
had again thought proper to make a feeble attempt at intervention in
those sublunary matters which were supposed to be within his sphere.

It was perfectly well known that Philip was incapable of abating one jot
of his pretensions, and that to propose mediation to the United Provinces
was simply to request them, for the convenience of other powers, to
return to the slavery out of which, by the persistent efforts of a
quarter of a century, they had struggled.  Nevertheless it was formally
proposed to re-open those lukewarm fountains of diplomatic commonplace in
which healing had been sought during the peace negotiations of Cologne in
the year 1579.  But the States-General resolutely kept them sealed.  They
simply answered his imperial Majesty by a communication of certain
intercepted correspondence between--the King of Spain and his ambassador
at Vienna, San Clemente, through which it was satisfactorily established
that any negotiation would prove as gigantic a comedy on the part of
Spain as had been the memorable conferences at Ostend, by which the
invasion of England had been masked.

There never was a possibility of mediation or of compromise except by
complete submission on the part of the Netherlanders to Crown and Church.
Both in this, as well as in previous and subsequent attempts at
negotiations, the secret instructions of Philip forbade any real
concessions on his side.  He was always ready to negotiate, he was
especially anxious to obtain a suspension of arms from the rebels during
negotiation; but his agents were instructed to use great dexterity and
dissimulation in order that the proposal for such armistice, as well as
for negotiation at all, should appear to proceed, not from himself as was
the fact, but from the emperor as a neutral potentate.  The king
uniformly proposed three points; firstly, that the rebels should
reconvert themselves to the Catholic religion; secondly, that they should
return to their obedience to himself; thirdly, that they should pay the
expenses of the war.  Number three was, however, usually inserted in
order that, by conceding it subsequently, after much contestation, he
might appear conciliatory.  It was a vehicle of magnanimity towards men
grown insolent with temporary success.  Numbers one and two were
immutable.

Especially upon number one was concession impossible.  "The Catholic
religion is the first thing," said Philip, "and although the rebels do
not cease to insist that liberty of conscience should be granted them,
in order that they may preserve that which they have had during these
past years, this is never to be thought of in any event."  The king
always made free use of the terrible weapon which the Protestant princes
of Germany had placed in his hands.  For indeed if it were right that one
man, because possessed of hereditary power over millions of his fellow
creatures, should compel them all to accept the dogmas of Luther or of
Calvin because agreeable to himself, it was difficult to say why another
man, in a similarly elevated position, might not compel his subjects to
accept the creed of Trent, or the doctrines of Mahomet or Confucius.
The Netherlanders were fighting--even more than they knew-for liberty
of conscience, for equality of all religions; not for Moses, nor for
Melancthon; for Henry, Philip, or Pius; while Philip justly urged that no
prince in Christendom permitted license.  "Let them well understand,"
said his Majesty, "that since others who live in error, hold the opinion
that vassals are to conform to the religion of their master, it is
insufferable that it should be proposed to me that my vassals should have
a different religion from mine--and that too being the true religion,
proved by so many testimonies and miracles, while all others are
deception.  This must be arranged with the authority of the commissioners
of the emperor, since it is well understood by them that the vassal is
never to differ from the opinion of his master."  Certainly it was worth
an eighty years' war to drive such blasphemous madness as this out of
human heads, whether crowned or shaven.

There was likewise a diet held during the summer of this year, of the
circles of the empire nearest to the Netherlands--Westphalia, Cleves,
Juliers, and Saxony--from which commissioners were deputed both to
Brussels and to the Hague, to complain of the misfortunes suffered by
neutral and neighbouring nations in consequence of the civil war.

They took nothing by their mission to the Duke of Parma.  At the Hague
the deputies were heard on the 22nd August, 1590.  They complained to the
States-General of "brandschatting" on the border, of the holding of forts
beyond the lines, and of other invasions of neutral territory, of the
cruising of the war-vessels of the States off the shores and on the
rivers, and of their interference with lawful traders.  Threats were made
of forcible intervention and reprisals.

The united States replied on the 13th September.  Expressing deep regret
that neutral nations should suffer, they pronounced it to be impossible
but that some sparks from the great fire, now desolating their land,
should fly over into their neighbours' ground.  The States were fighting
the battle of liberty against slavery, in which the future generations of
Germany, as well as of the Netherlands were interested.  They were
combating that horrible institution, the Holy Inquisition.  They were
doing their best to strike down the universal monarchy of Spain, which
they described as a bloodthirsty, insatiable, insolent, absolute dominion
of Saracenic, Moorish Christians.  They warred with a system which placed
inquisitors on the seats of judges, which made it unlawful to read the
Scriptures, which violated all oaths, suppressed all civic freedom,
trampled, on all laws and customs, raised inordinate taxes by arbitrary
decree, and subjected high and low to indiscriminate murder.  Spain had
sworn the destruction of the provinces and their subjugation to her
absolute dominion, in order to carry out her scheme of universal empire.

These were the deeds and designs against which the States were waging
that war, concerning some inconvenient results of which their neighbours,
now happily neutral, were complaining.  But the cause of the States was
the cause of humanity itself.  This Saracenic, Moorish, universal
monarchy had been seen by Germany to murder, despoil, and trample upon
the Netherlands.  It had murdered millions of innocent Indians and
Granadians.  It had kept Naples and Milan in abject slavery.  It had
seized Portugal.  It had deliberately planned and attempted an accursed
invasion of England and Ireland.  It had overrun and plundered many
cities of the empire.  It had spread a web of secret intrigue about
Scotland.  At last it was sending great armies to conquer France and
snatch its crown.  Poor France now saw the plans of this Spanish tyranny
and bewailed her misery.  The subjects of her lawful king were ordered to
rise against him, on account of religion and conscience.  Such holy
pretexts were used by these Saracenic Christians in order to gain
possession of that kingdom.

For all these reasons, men should not reproach the inhabitants of the
Netherlands, because seeing the aims of this accursed tyranny, they had
set themselves to resist it.  It was contrary to reason to consider them
as disturbers of the general peace, or to hold them guilty of violating
their oaths or their duty to the laws of the holy empire.  The States-
General were sure that they had been hitherto faithful and loyal, and
they were resolved to continue in that path.

As members of the holy empire, in part--as of old they were considered to
be--they had rather the right to expect, instead of reproaches,
assistance against the enormous power and inhuman oppression of their
enemies.  They had demanded it heretofore by their ambassadors, and they
still continued to claim it.  They urged that, according to the laws of
the empire, all foreign soldiers, Spaniards, Saracens, and the like
should be driven out of the limits of the empire.  Through these means
the German Highland and the German Netherland might be restored once more
to their old friendship and unity, and might deal with each other again
in amity and commerce.

If, however, such requests could not be granted they at least begged his
electoral highness and the other dukes, lords, and states to put on the
deeds of Netherlanders in this laborious and heavy war the best
interpretation, in order that they might, with the better courage and
resolution, bear those inevitable burthens which were becoming daily
heavier in this task of resistance and self-protection; in order that the
provinces might not be utterly conquered, and serve, with their natural
resources and advantageous situation, as 'sedes et media belli' for the
destruction of neighbouring States and the building up of the
contemplated universal, absolute monarchy.

The United Provinces had been compelled by overpowering necessity to
take up arms.  That which had resulted was and remained in 'terminis
defensionis.'  Their object was to protect what belonged to them, to
recover that which by force or fraud had been taken from them.

In regard to excesses committed by their troops against neutral
inhabitants on the border, they expressed a strong regret, together with
a disposition to make all proper retribution and to cause all crimes to
be punished.

They alluded to the enormous sins of this nature practised by the enemy
against neutral soil.  They recalled to mind that the Spaniards paid
their troops ill or not at all, and that they allowed them to plunder the
innocent and the neutral, while the United States had paid their troops
better wages, and more punctually, than had ever been done by the
greatest potentates of Europe.  It was true that the States kept many
cruisers off the coasts and upon the rivers, but these were to protect
their own citizens and friendly traders against pirates and against the
common foe.  Germany derived as much benefit from this system as did the
Provinces themselves.

Thus did the States-General, respectfully but resolutely, decline all
proffers of intervention, which, as they were well aware, could only
enure to the benefit of the enemy.  Thus did they avoid being entrapped
into negotiations which could only prove the most lamentable of comedies.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

A pusillanimous peace, always possible at any period
At length the twig was becoming the tree
Being the true religion, proved by so many testimonies
Certainly it was worth an eighty years' war
Chief seafaring nations of the world were already protestant
Conceding it subsequently, after much contestation
Fled from the land of oppression to the land of liberty
German Highland and the German Netherland
Little army of Maurice was becoming the model for Europe
Luxury had blunted the fine instincts of patriotism
Maritime heretics
Portion of these revenues savoured much of black-mail
The divine speciality of a few transitory mortals
The history of the Netherlands is history of liberty
The nation which deliberately carves itself in pieces
They had come to disbelieve in the mystery of kingcraft
Worn nor caused to be worn the collar of the serf




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v61
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 62, 1590


CHAPTER XXIII.

     Philip's scheme of aggrandizement--Projected invasion of France--
     Internal condition of France--Character of Henry of Navarre--
     Preparation for action--Battle of Ivry--Victory of the French king
     over the League--Reluctance of the King to attack the French
     capital--Siege of Paris--The pope indisposed towards the League--
     Extraordinary demonstration of ecclesiastics--Influence of the
     priests--Extremities of the siege--Attempted negotiation--State of
     Philip's army--Difficult position of Farnese--March of the allies to
     the relief of Paris--Lagny taken and the city relieved--Desertion of
     the king's army--Siege of Corbeil--Death of Pope Sixtus V.--
     Re-capture of Lagny and Corbeil--Return of Parma to the Netherlands
     --Result of the expedition.

The scene of the narrative shifts to France.  The history of the United
Netherlands at this epoch is a world-history.  Were it not so, it would
have far less of moral and instruction for all time than it is really
capable of affording.  The battle of liberty against despotism was now
fought in the hop-fields of Brabant or the polders of Friesland, now in
the: narrow seas which encircle England, and now on the sunny plains of
Dauphiny, among the craggy inlets of Brittany, or along the high roads
and rivers which lead to the gates of Paris.  But everywhere a noiseless,
secret, but ubiquitous negotiation was speeding with never an instant's
pause to accomplish the work which lansquenettes and riders, pikemen and
carabineers were contending for on a hundred battle-fields and amid a din
of arms which for a quarter of a century had been the regular hum of
human industry.  For nearly a generation of mankind, Germans and
Hollanders, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, Spaniards and
Italians seemed to be born into the world mainly to fight for or against
a system of universal monarchy, conceived for his own benefit by a quiet
old man who passed his days at a writing desk in a remote corner of
Europe.  It must be confessed that Philip II. gave the world work enough.
Whether--had the peoples governed themselves--their energies might not
have been exerted in a different direction, and on the whole have
produced more of good to the human race than came of all this blood and
awoke, may be questioned.

But the divine right of kings, associating itself with the power supreme
of the Church, was struggling to maintain that old mastery of mankind
which awakening reason was inclined to dispute.  Countries and nations
being regarded as private property to be inherited or bequeathed by a few
favoured individuals--provided always that those individuals were
obedient to the chief-priest--it had now become right and proper for the
Spanish monarch to annex Scotland, England, and France to the very
considerable possessions which were already his own.  Scotland he claimed
by virtue of the expressed wish of Mary to the exclusion of her heretic
son.

France, which had been unjustly usurped by another family in times past
to his detriment, and which only a mere human invention--a "pleasantry"
as Alva had happily termed it, called the "Salic law"--prevented from
passing quietly to his daughter, as heiress to her mother, daughter of
Henry II., he was now fully bent upon making his own without further loss
of time.  England, in consequence of the mishap of the year eighty-eight,
he was inclined to defer appropriating until the possession of the French
coasts, together with those of the Netherlands, should enable him to risk
the adventure with assured chances of success.

The Netherlands were fast slipping beyond his control, to be sure, as he
engaged in these endless schemes; and ill-disposed people of the day said
that the king was like Aesop's dog, lapping the river dry in order to get
at the skins floating on the surface.  The Duke of Parma was driven to
his wits' ends for expedients, and beside himself with vexation, when
commanded to withdraw his ill-paid and mutinous army from the Provinces
for the purpose of invading France.  Most importunate were the appeals
and potent the arguments by which he attempted to turn Philip from his
purpose.  It was in vain.  Spain was the great, aggressive, overshadowing
power at that day, before whose plots and whose violence the nations
alternately trembled, and it was France that now stood in danger of being
conquered or dismembered by the common enemy of all.  That unhappy
kingdom, torn by intestine conflict, naturally invited the ambition and
the greediness of foreign powers.  Civil war had been its condition, with
brief intervals, for a whole generation of mankind.  During the last few
years, the sword had been never sheathed, while "the holy Confederacy"
and the Bearnese struggled together for the mastery.  Religion was the
mantle under which the chiefs on both sides concealed their real designs
as they led on their followers year after year to the desperate conflict.
And their followers, the masses, were doubtless in earnest.  A great
principle--the relation of man to his Maker and his condition in a future
world as laid down by rival priesthoods--has in almost every stage of
history had power to influence the multitude to fury and to deluge the
world in blood.  And so long as the superstitious element of human nature
enables individuals or combinations of them to dictate to their fellow-
creatures those relations, or to dogmatize concerning those conditions--
to take possession of their consciences in short, and to interpose their
mummeries between man and his Creator--it is, probable that such scenes
as caused the nations to shudder, throughout so large a portion of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries will continue to repeat themselves at
intervals in various parts of the earth.  Nothing can be more sublime
than the self-sacrifice, nothing more demoniac than the crimes, which
human creatures have seemed always ready to exhibit under the name of
religion.

It was and had been really civil war in France.  In the Netherlands it
had become essentially a struggle for independence against a foreign
monarch; although the germ out of which both conflicts had grown to their
enormous proportions was an effort of the multitude to check the growth
of papacy.  In France, accordingly, civil war, attended by that gaunt
sisterhood, murder, pestilence, and famine, had swept from the soil
almost everything that makes life valuable.  It had not brought in its
train that extraordinary material prosperity and intellectual development
at which men wondered in the Netherlands, and to which allusion has just
been made.  But a fortunate conjunction of circumstances had now placed
Henry of Navarre in a position of vantage.  He represented the principle
of nationality, of French unity.  It was impossible to deny that he was
in the regular line of succession, now that luckless Henry of Valois
slept with his fathers, and the principle of nationality might perhaps
prove as vital a force as attachment to the Roman Church.  Moreover, the
adroit and unscrupulous Bearnese knew well how to shift the mantle of
religion from one shoulder to the other, to serve his purposes or the
humours of those whom he addressed.

"The King of Spain would exclude me from the kingdom and heritage of my
father because of my religion," he said to the Duke of Saxony; "but in
that religion I am determined to persist so long as I shall live."  The
hand was the hand of Henry, but it was the voice of Duplessis Mornay.

"Were there thirty crowns to win," said he, at about the same time to the
States of France, "I would not change my religion on compulsion, the
dagger at my throat.  Instruct me, instruct me, I am not obstinate."
There spoke the wily freethinker, determined not to be juggled out of
what he considered his property by fanatics or priests of either church.
Had Henry been a real devotee, the fate of Christendom might have been
different.  The world has long known how much misery it is in the power
of crowned bigots to inflict.

On the other hand, the Holy League, the sacred Confederacy, was catholic
or nothing.  Already it was more papist than the pope, and loudly
denounced Sixtus V. as a Huguenot because he was thought to entertain a
weak admiration both for Henry the heretic and for the Jezebel of
England.

But the holy confederacy was bent on destroying the national government
of France, and dismembering the national domain.  To do this the pretext
of trampling out heresy and indefinitely extending the power of Rome, was
most influential with the multitude, and entitled the leaders to enjoy
immense power for the time being, while maturing their schemes for
acquiring permanent possession of large fragments of the national
territory.  Mayenne, Nemours, Aumale, Mercoeur longed to convert
temporary governments into independent principalities.  The Duke of
Lorraine looked with longing eyes on Verdun, Sedan, and, the other fair
cities within the territories contiguous--to his own domains.  The
reckless house of Savoy; with whom freebooting and landrobbery seemed
geographical, and hereditary necessities, was busy on the southern
borders, while it seemed easy enough for Philip, II., in right of his
daughter, to secure at least the duchy of Brittany before entering on
the sovereignty of the whole kingdom.

To the eyes of the world at large: France might well seem in a condition
of hopeless disintegration; the restoration of its unity and former
position among the nations, under the government of a single chief, a
weak and wicked dream.  Furious and incessant were the anathemas hurled
on the head of the Bearnese for his persistence in drowning the land in
blood in the hope of recovering a national capital which never could be
his, and of wresting from the control of the confederacy that power.
which, whether usurped or rightful, was considered, at least by the
peaceably inclined, to have become a solid fact.

The poor puppet locked in the tower of Fontenay, and entitled Charles X.;
deceived and scared no one.  Such money as there was might be coined, in
its name, but Madam League reigned supreme in Paris.  The confederates,
inspired by the eloquence of a cardinal legate, and supplied with funds
by the faithful, were ready to dare a thousand  deaths rather than submit
to the rule of a tyrant and heretic.

What was an authority derived from the laws of the land and the history
of the race compared with the dogmas of Rome and the trained veterans of
Spain?  It remained to be seen whether nationality or bigotry would
triumph.  But in the early days of 1590 the prospects of nationality were
not encouraging.

Francois de Luxembourg, due de Pincey, was in Rome at that moment,
deputed by such catholic nobles of France as were friendly to Henry of
Navarre.  Sixtus might perhaps be influenced as to the degree of respect
to be accorded to the envoy's representations by the events of the
campaign about to open.  Meantime the legate Gaetano, young, rich,
eloquent, unscrupulous, distinguished alike for the splendour of his
house and the brilliancy of his intellect, had arrived in Paris.

Followed by a great train of adherents he had gone down to the House of
Parliament, and was about to seat himself under the dais reserved for the
king, when Brisson, first President of Parliament, plucked him back by
the arm, and caused him to take a seat immediately below his own.

Deeply was the bold president to expiate this defence of king and law
against the Holy League.  For the moment however the legate contented
himself with a long harangue, setting forth the power of Rome, while
Brisson replied by an oration magnifying the grandeur of France.

Soon afterwards the cardinal addressed himself to the counteraction
of Henry's projects of conversion.  For, well did the subtle priest
understand that in purging himself of heresy, the Bearnese was about to
cut the ground from beneath his enemies' feet.  In a letter to the
archbishops and bishops of France, he argued the matter at length.
Especially he denied the necessity or the legality of an assembly of all
the prelates of France, such as Henry desired to afford him the requisite
"instruction" as to the respective merits of the Roman and the reformed
Church.  Certainly, he urged, the Prince of Bearne could hardly require
instruction as to the tenets of either, seeing that at different times he
had faithfully professed both.

But while benches of bishops and doctors of the Sorbonne were burnishing
all the arms in ecclesiastical and legal arsenals for the approaching
fray, the sound of louder if not more potent artillery began to be heard
in the vicinity of Paris.  The candid Henry, while seeking ghostly
instruction with eagerness from his papistical patrons, was equally
persevering in applying for the assistance of heretic musketeers and
riders from his protestant friends in England, Holland, Germany, and
Switzerland.

Queen Elizabeth and the States-General vied with each other in generosity
to the great champion of protestantism, who was combating the holy league
so valiantly, and rarely has a great historical figure presented itself
to the world so bizarre of aspect, and under such shifting perplexity of
light and shade, as did the Bearnese in the early spring of 1590.

The hope of a considerable portion of the catholic nobility of his realm,
although himself an excommunicated heretic; the mainstay of Calvinism
while secretly bending all his energies to effect his reconciliation with
the pope; the idol of the austere and grimly puritanical, while himself a
model of profligacy; the leader of the earnest and the true, although
false as water himself in every relation in which human beings can stand
to each other; a standardbearer of both great branches of the Christian
Church in an age when religion was the atmosphere of men's daily lives,
yet finding his sincerest admirer, and one of his most faithful allies,
in the Grand Turk,

     [A portion of the magnificently protective letter of Sultan Amurath,
     in which he complimented Henry on his religious stedfastness, might
     almost have made the king's cheek tingle.]

the representative of national liberty and human rights against regal and
sacerdotal absolutism, while himself a remorseless despot by nature and
education, and a believer in no rights of the people save in their
privilege to be ruled by himself; it seems strange at first view that
Henry of Navarre should have been for centuries so heroic and popular an
image.  But he was a soldier, a wit, a consummate politician; above all,
he was a man, at a period when to be a king was often to be something
much less or much worse.

To those accustomed to weigh and analyse popular forces it might well
seem that he was now playing an utterly hopeless game.  His capital
garrisoned by the Pope and the King of Spain, with its grandees and its
populace scoffing at his pretence of authority and loathing his name;
with an exchequer consisting of what he could beg or borrow from Queen
Elizabeth--most parsimonious of sovereigns reigning over the half of a
small island--and from the States-General governing a half-born, half-
drowned little republic, engaged in a quarter of a century's warfare with
the greatest monarch in the world; with a wardrobe consisting of a dozen
shirts and five pocket-handkerchiefs, most of them ragged, and with a
commissariat made up of what could be brought in the saddle-bags of his
Huguenot cavaliers who came to the charge with him to-day, and to-morrow
were dispersed again to their mountain fastnesses; it did not seem likely
on any reasonable theory of dynamics that the power of the Bearnese was
capable of outweighing Pope and Spain, and the meaner but massive
populace of France, and the Sorbonne, and the great chiefs of the
confederacy, wealthy, long descended, allied to all the sovereigns of
Christendom, potent in territorial possessions and skilful in wielding
political influences.

"The Bearnese is poor but a gentleman of good family," said the cheerful
Henry, and it remained to-be seen whether nationality, unity, legitimate
authority, history, and law would be able to neutralise the powerful
combination of opposing elements.

The king had been besieging Dreux and had made good progress in reducing
the outposts of the city.  As it was known that he was expecting
considerable reinforcements of English ships, Netherlanders, and Germans,
the chiefs of the league issued orders from Paris for an attack before he
should thus be strengthened.

For Parma, unwillingly obeying the stringent commands of his master, had
sent from Flanders eighteen hundred picked cavalry under Count Philip
Egmont to join the army of Mayenne.  This force comprised five hundred
Belgian heavy dragoons under the chief nobles of the land, together with
a selection, in even proportions, of Walloon, German, Spanish, and
Italian troopers.

Mayenne accordingly crossed the Seine at Mantes with an army of ten
thousand foot, and, including Egmont's contingent, about four thousand
horse.  A force under Marshal d'Aumont, which lay in Ivry at the passage
of the Eure, fell back on his approach and joined the remainder of the
king's army.  The siege of Dreux was abandoned; and Henry withdrew to the
neighbourhood of Nonancourt.  It was obvious that the duke meant to offer
battle, and it was rare that the king under any circumstances could be
induced to decline a combat.

On the night of the 12th-13th March, Henry occupied Saint Andre, a
village situated on an elevated and extensive plain four leagues from
Nonancourt, in the direction of Ivry, fringed on three sides by villages
and by a wood, and commanding a view of all the approaches from the
country between the Seine and Eure.  It would have been better had
Mayenne been beforehand with him, as the sequel proved; but the duke was
not famed for the rapidity of his movements.  During the greater part of
the night, Henry was employed in distributing his orders for that
conflict which was inevitable on the following day.  His army was drawn
up according to a plan prepared by himself, and submitted to the most
experienced of his generals for their approval.  He then personally
visited every portion of the encampment, speaking words of encouragement
to his soldiers, and perfecting his arrangements for the coming conflict.
Attended by Marshals d'Aumont and Biron he remained on horseback during a
portion of the night, having ordered his officers to their tents and
reconnoitred as well as he could the position of the enemy.  Towards
morning he retired to his headquarters at Fourainville, where he threw
himself half-dressed on his truckle bed, and although the night was
bitterly cold, with no covering but his cloak.  He was startled from his
slumber before the dawn by a movement of lights in the enemy's camp, and
he sprang to his feet supposing that the duke was stealing a march upon
him despite all his precautions.  The alarm proved to be a false one, but
Henry lost no time in ordering his battle.  His cavalry he divided in
seven troops or squadrons.  The first, forming the left wing, was a body
of three hundred under Marshal d'Aumont, supported by two regiments of
French infantry.  Next, separated by a short interval, was another troop
of three hundred under the Duke of Montpensier, supported by two other
regiments of foot, one Swiss and one German.  In front of Montpensier was
Baron Biron the younger, at the head of still another body of three
hundred.  Two troops of cuirassiers, each four hundred strong, were on
Biron's left, the one commanded by the Grand Prior of France, Charles
d'Angouleme, the other by Monsieur de Givry.  Between the Prior and Givry
were six pieces of heavy artillery, while the battalia, formed of eight
hundred horse in six squadrons, was commanded by the king in person, and
covered on both sides by English and Swiss infantry, amounting to some
four thousand in all.  The right wing was under the charge of old Marshal
Biron, and comprised three troops of horse, numbering one hundred and
fifty each, two companies of German riders, and four regiments of French
infantry.  These numbers, which are probably given with as much accuracy
as can be obtained, show a force of about three thousand horse and twelve
thousand foot.

The Duke of Mayenne, seeing too late the advantage of position which he
might have easily secured the day before, led his army forth with the
early light, and arranged it in an order not very different from that
adopted by the king, and within cannon-shot of his lines.  The right wing
under Marshal de la Chatre consisted of three regiments of French and one
of Germans, supporting three regiments of Spanish lancers, two cornets of
German riders under the Bastard of Brunswick, and four hundred
cuirassiers.  The battalia, which was composed of six hundred splendid
cavalry, all noblemen of France, guarding the white banner of the Holy
League, and supported by a column of three thousand Swiss and two
thousand French infantry, was commanded by Mayenne in person, assisted by
his half-brother, the Duke of Nemours.  In front of the infantry was a
battery of six cannon and three culverines.  The left wing was commanded
by Marshal de Rene, with six regiments of French and Lorrainers, two
thousand Germans, six hundred French cuirassiers, and the mounted
troopers of Count Egmont.  It is probable that Mayenne's whole force,
therefore, amounted to nearly four thousand cavalry and at least thirteen
thousand foot.

Very different was the respective appearance of the two armies, so far,
especially, as regarded the horsemen on both sides.  Gay in their gilded
armour and waving plumes, with silken scarves across their shoulders, and
the fluttering favours of fair ladies on their arms or in their helmets,
the brilliant champions of the Holy Catholic Confederacy clustered around
the chieftains of the great house of Guise, impatient for the conflict.
It was like a muster for a brilliant and chivalrous tournament.  The
Walloon and Flemish nobles, outrivalling even the self-confidence of
their companions in arms, taunted them with their slowness.  The,
impetuous Egmont, burning to eclipse the fame of his ill-fated father at
Gravelines and St. Quintin in the same holy cause, urged on the battle
with unseemly haste, loudly proclaiming that if the French were faint-
hearted he would himself give a good account of the Navarrese prince
without any assistance from them.

A cannon-shot away, the grim puritan nobles who had come forth from their
mountain fastnesses to do battle for king and law and for the rights of
conscience against the Holy League--men seasoned in a hundred battle-
fields, clad all in iron, with no dainty ornaments nor holiday luxury of
warfare--knelt on the ground, smiting their mailed breasts with iron
hands, invoking blessings on themselves and curses and confusion on their
enemies in the coming conflict, and chanting a stern psalm of homage to
the God of battles and of wrath.  And Henry of France and Navarre,
descendant of Lewis the Holy and of Hugh the Great, beloved chief of the
Calvinist cavaliers, knelt among his heretic brethren, and prayed and
chanted with them.  But not the staunchest Huguenot of them all, not
Duplessis, nor D'Aubigne, nor De la Noue with the iron arm, was more
devoted on that day to crown and country than were such papist supporters
of the rightful heir as had sworn to conquer the insolent foreigner on
the soil of France or die.

When this brief prelude was over, Henry made an address to his soldiers,
but its language has not been preserved.  It is known, however, that he
wore that day his famous snow-white plume, and that he ordered his
soldiers, should his banner go down in the conflict, to follow wherever
and as long as that plume should be seen waving on any part of the field.
He had taken a position by which his troops had the sun and wind in their
backs, so that the smoke rolled toward the enemy and the light shone in
their eyes.  The combat began with the play of artillery, which soon
became so warm that Egmont, whose cavalry--suffering and galled--soon
became impatient, ordered a charge.  It was a most brilliant one.  The
heavy troopers of Flanders and Hainault, following their spirited
chieftain, dashed upon old Marshal Biron, routing his cavalry, charging
clean up to the Huguenot guns and sabring the cannoneers.  The shock was
square, solid, irresistible, and was followed up by the German riders
under Eric of Brunswick, who charged upon the battalia of the royal army,
where the king commanded in person.

There was a panic.  The whole royal cavalry wavered, the supporting
infantry recoiled, the day seemed lost before the battle was well begun.
Yells of "Victory!  Victory!  up with the Holy League, down with the
heretic Bearnese," resounded through the Catholic squadrons.  The king
and Marshal Biron, who were near each other, were furious with rage, but
already doubtful of the result.  They exerted themselves to rally the
troops under their immediate command, and to reform the shattered ranks.

The German riders and French lancers under Brunswick and Bassompierre
had, however, not done their work as thoroughly as Egmont had done.  The
ground was so miry and soft that in the brief space which separated the
hostile lines they had not power to urge their horses to full speed.
Throwing away their useless lances, they came on at a feeble canter,
sword in hand, and were unable to make a very vigorous impression on the
more heavily armed troopers opposed to them.  Meeting with a firm
resistance to their career, they wheeled, faltered a little and fell a
short distance back.  Many of the riders being of the reformed religion,
refused moreover to fire upon the Huguenots, and discharged their
carbines in the air.

The king, whose glance on the battle-field was like inspiration, saw the
blot and charged upon them in person with his whole battalia of cavalry.
The veteran Biron followed hard upon the snow-white plume.  The scene was
changed, victory succeeded to impending defeat, and the enemy was routed.
The riders and cuirassiers, broken into a struggling heap of confusion,
strewed the ground with their dead bodies, or carried dismay into the
ranks of the infantry as they strove to escape.  Brunswick went down in
the melee, mortally wounded as it was believed.  Egmont renewing the
charge at the head of his victorious Belgian troopers, fell dead with a
musket-ball through his heart.  The shattered German and Walloon cavalry,
now pricked forward by the lances of their companions, under the
passionate commands of Mayenne and Aumale, now fading back before the
furious charges of the Huguenots, were completely overthrown and cut to
pieces.

Seven times did Henry of Navarre in person lead his troopers to the
charge; but suddenly, in the midst of the din of battle and the cheers of
victory, a message of despair went from lip to lip throughout the royal
lines.  The king had disappeared.  He was killed, and the hopes of
Protestantism and of France were fallen for ever with him.  The white
standard of his battalia had been seen floating wildly and purposelessly
over the field; for his bannerman, Pot de Rhodes, a young noble of
Dauphiny, wounded mortally in the head, with blood streaming over his
face and blinding his sight, was utterly unable to control his horse, who
gallopped hither and thither at his own caprice, misleading many troopers
who followed in his erratic career.  A cavalier, armed in proof, and
wearing the famous snow-white plume, after a hand-to-hand struggle with
a veteran of Count Bossu's regiment, was seen to fall dead by the side of
the bannerman: The Fleming, not used to boast, loudly asserted that he
had slain the Bearnese, and the news spread rapidly over the battle-
field.  The defeated Confederates gained new courage, the victorious
Royalists were beginning to waver, when suddenly, between the hostile
lines, in the very midst of the battle, the king gallopped forward,
bareheaded, covered with blood and dust, but entirely unhurt.  A wild
shout of "Vive le Roi!"  rang through the air.  Cheerful as ever, he
addressed a few encouraging words to his soldiers, with a smiling face,
and again led a charge.  It was all that was necessary to complete the
victory.  The enemy broke and ran away on every side in wildest
confusion, followed by the royalist cavalry, who sabred them as they
fled.  The panic gained the foot-soldiers, who should have supported the
cavalry, but had not been at all engaged in the action.  The French
infantry threw away their arms as they rushed from the field and sought
refuge in the woods.  The Walloons were so expeditious in the race, that
they never stopped till they gained their own frontier.  The day was
hopelessly lost, and although Mayenne had conducted himself well in the
early part of the day, it was certain that he was excelled by none in the
celerity of his flight when the rout had fairly begun.  Pausing to draw
breath as he gained the wood, he was seen to deal blows with his own
sword among the mob of fugitives, not that he might rally them to their
flag and drive them back to another encounter, but because they
encumbered his own retreat.

The Walloon carbineers, the German riders, and the French lancers,
disputing as to the relative blame to be attached to each corps, began
shooting and sabring each other, almost before they were out of the
enemy's sight.  Many were thus killed.  The lansquenets were all put to
the sword.  The Swiss infantry were allowed to depart for their own
country on pledging themselves not again to bear arms against Henry IV.

It is probable that eight hundred of the leaguers were either killed on
the battle-field or drowned in the swollen river in their retreat.  About
one-fourth of that number fell in the army of the king.  It is certain
that of the contingent from the obedient Netherlands, two hundred and
seventy, including their distinguished general, lost their lives.  The
Bastard of Brunswick, crawling from beneath a heap of slain, escaped with
life.  Mayenne lost all his standards and all the baggage of his army,
while the army itself was for a time hopelessly dissolved.

Few cavalry actions have attained a wider celebrity in history than the
fight of Ivry.  Yet there have been many hard-fought battles, where the
struggle was fiercer and closer, where the issue was for a longer time
doubtful, where far more lives on either side were lost, where the final
victory was immediately productive of very much greater results, and
which, nevertheless, have sunk into hopeless oblivion.  The, personal
details which remain concerning the part enacted by the adventurous king
at this most critical period of his career, the romantic interest which
must always gather about that ready-witted, ready-sworded Gascon, at the
moment when, to contemporaries, the result of all his struggles seemed so
hopeless or at best so doubtful; above all, the numerous royal and
princely names which embellished the roll-call of that famous passage of
arms, and which were supposed, in those days at least, to add such lustre
to a battle-field, as humbler names, however illustrious by valour or
virtue, could never bestow, have made this combat for ever famous.

Yet it is certain that the most healthy moral, in military affairs, to be
derived from the event, is that the importance of a victory depends less
upon itself than on the use to be made of it.  Mayenne fled to Mantes,
the Duke of Nemours to Chartres, other leaders of the League in various
directions, Mayenne told every body he met that the Bearnese was killed,
and that although his own army was defeated, he should soon have another
one on foot.  The same intelligence was communicated to the Duke of
Parma, and by him to Philip.  Mendoza and the other Spanish agents went
about Paris spreading the news of Henry's death, but the fact seemed
woefully to lack confirmation, while the proofs of the utter overthrow
and shameful defeat of the Leaguers were visible on every, side.  The
Parisians--many of whom the year before had in vain hired windows in the
principal streets, in order to witness the promised entrance of the
Bearnese, bound hand and foot, and with a gag in his mouth, to swell the
triumph of Madam League--were incredulous as to the death now reported to
them of this very lively heretic, by those who had fled so ignominiously
from his troopers.

De la None and the other Huguenot chieftains, earnestly urged upon Henry
the importance of advancing upon Paris without an instant's delay, and it
seems at least extremely probable that, had he done so, the capital would
have fallen at once into his hands.  It is the concurrent testimony of
contemporaries that the panic, the destitution, the confusion would have
made resistance impossible had a determined onslaught been made.  And
Henry had a couple of thousand horsemen flushed with victory, and a dozen
thousand foot who had been compelled to look upon a triumph in which they
had no opportunity of sharing: Success and emulation would have easily
triumphed over dissension and despair.

But the king, yielding to the councils of Biron and other Catholics,
declined attacking the capital, and preferred waiting the slow, and in
his circumstances eminently hazardous, operations of a regular siege.
Was it the fear of giving a signal triumph to the cause of Protestantism
that caused the Huguenot leader--so soon to become a renegade--to pause
in his career?  Was it anxiety lest his victorious entrance into Paris
might undo the diplomacy of his catholic envoys at Rome? or was it simply
the mutinous condition of his army, especially of the Swiss mercenaries,
who refused to advance a step unless their arrears of pay were at once
furnished them out of the utterly empty exchequer of the king?  Whatever
may have been the cause of the delay, it is certain that the golden fruit
of victory was not plucked, and that although the confederate army had
rapidly dissolved, in consequence of their defeat, the king's own forces
manifested as little cohesion.

And now began that slow and painful siege, the details of which are as
terrible, but as universally known, as those of any chapters in the
blood-stained history of the century.  Henry seized upon the towns
guarding the rivers Seine and Marne, twin nurses of Paris.  By
controlling the course of those streams as well as that of the Yonne and
Oise--especially by taking firm possession of Lagny on the Marne, whence
a bridge led from the Isle of France to the Brie country--great
thoroughfare of wine and corn--and of Corbeil at the junction of the
little river Essonne with the Seine-it was easy in that age to stop the
vital circulation of the imperial city.

By midsummer, Paris, unquestionably the first city of Europe at that day,
was in extremities, and there are few events in history in which our
admiration is more excited by the power of mankind to endure almost
preternatural misery, or our indignation more deeply aroused by the
cruelty with which the sublimest principles of human nature may be made
to serve the purposes of selfish ambition and grovelling superstition,
than this famous leaguer.

Rarely have men at any epoch defended their fatherland against foreign
oppression with more heroism than that which was manifested by the
Parisians of 1590 in resisting religious toleration, and in obeying a
foreign and priestly despotism.  Men, women, and children cheerfully laid
down their lives by thousands in order that the papal legate and the king
of Spain might trample upon that legitimate sovereign of France who was
one day to become the idol of Paris and of the whole kingdom.

A census taken at the beginning of the siege had showed a populace of two
hundred thousand souls, with a sufficiency of provisions, it was thought,
to last one month.  But before the terrible summer was over--so
completely had the city been invested--the bushel of wheat was worth
three hundred and sixty crowns, rye and oats being but little cheaper.
Indeed, grain might as well have cost three thousand crowns the bushel,
for the prices recorded placed it beyond the reach of all but the
extremely wealthy.  The flesh of horses, asses, dogs, cats, rats had
become rare luxuries.  There was nothing cheap, said a citizen bitterly,
but sermons.  And the priests and monks of every order went daily about
the streets, preaching fortitude in that great resistance to heresy, by
which Paris was earning for itself a crown of glory, and promising the
most direct passage to paradise for the souls of the wretched victims
who fell daily, starved to death, upon the pavements.  And the monks and
priests did their work nobly, aiding the general resolution by the
example of their own courage.  Better fed than their fellow citizens,
they did military work in trench, guard-house and rampart, as the
population became rapidly unfit, from physical exhaustion, for the
defence of the city.

The young Duke of Nemours, governor of the place, manifested as much
resolution and conduct in bringing his countrymen to perdition as if the
work in which he was engaged had been the highest and holiest that ever
tasked human energies.  He was sustained in his task by that proud
princess, his own and Mayenne's mother, by Madame Montpensier, by the
resident triumvirate of Spain, Mendoza, Commander Moreo, and John Baptist
Tasais, by the cardinal legate Gaetano, and, more than all, by the
sixteen chiefs of the wards, those municipal tyrants of the unhappy
populace.

Pope Sixtus himself was by no means eager for the success of the League.
After the battle of Ivry, he had most seriously inclined his ear to the
representations of Henry's envoy, and showed much willingness to admit
the victorious heretic once more into the bosom of the Church.  Sixtus
was not desirous of contributing to the advancement of Philip's power.
He feared his designs on Italy, being himself most anxious at that time
to annex Naples to the holy see.  He had amassed a large treasure, but he
liked best to spend it in splendid architecture, in noble fountains, in
magnificent collections of art, science, and literature, and, above all,
in building up fortunes for the children of his sister the washerwoman,
and in allying them all to the most princely houses of Italy, while never
allowing them even to mention the name of their father, so base was his
degree; but he cared not to disburse from his hoarded dollars to supply
the necessities of the League.

But Gaetano, although he could wring but fifty thousand crowns from his
Holiness after the fatal fight of Ivry, to further the good cause, was
lavish in expenditures from his own purse and from other sources, and
this too at a time when thirty-three per cent. interest was paid to the
usurers of Antwerp for one month's loan of ready money.  He was
indefatigable, too, and most successful in his exhortations and ghostly
consolations to the people.  Those proud priests and great nobles were
playing a reckless game, and the hopes of mankind beyond the grave were
the counters on their table.  For themselves there were rich prizes for
the winning.  Should they succeed in dismembering the fair land where
they were enacting their fantastic parts, there were temporal
principalities, great provinces, petty sovereignties, to be carved out
of the heritage which the Bearnese claimed for his own.  Obviously then,
their consciences could never permit this shameless heretic, by a
simulated conversion at the critical moment, to block their game and
restore the national unity and laws.  And even should it be necessary to
give the whole kingdom, instead of the mere duchy of Brittany, to Philip
of Spain, still there were mighty guerdons to be bestowed on his
supporters before the foreign monarch could seat himself on the throne of
Henry's ancestors.

As to the people who were fighting, starving, dying by thousands in
this great cause, there were eternal rewards in another world profusely
promised for their heroism instead of the more substantial bread and
beef, for lack of which they were laying down their lives.

It was estimated that before July twelve thousand human beings in Paris
had died, for want of food, within three months.  But as there were no
signs of the promised relief by the army of Parma and Mayenne, and as the
starving people at times appeared faint-hearted, their courage was
strengthened one day by a stirring exhibition.

An astonishing procession marched through the streets of the city, led by
the Bishop of Senlis and the Prior of Chartreux, each holding a halberd
in one hand and a crucifix in the other, and graced by the presence of
the cardinal-legate, and of many prelates from Italy.  A lame monk,
adroitly manipulating the staff of a drum major, went hopping and limping
before them, much to the amazement of the crowd.  Then came a long file
of monks-Capuchins, Bernardists, Minimes, Franciscans, Jacobins,
Carmelites, and other orders--each with his cowl thrown back, his long
robes trussed up, a helmet on his head, a cuirass on his breast, and a
halberd in his hand.  The elder ones marched first, grinding their teeth,
rolling their eyes, and making other ferocious demonstrations.  Then came
the younger friars, similarly attired, all armed with arquebusses, which
they occasionally and accidentally discharged to the disadvantage of the
spectators, several of whom were killed or wounded on the spot.  Among
others a servant of Cardinal Gaetano was thus slain, and the even caused
much commotion, until the cardinal proclaimed that a man thus killed in
so holy a cause had gone straight to heaven and had taken his place among
the just.  It was impossible, thus argued the people in their simplicity,
that so wise and virtuous a man as the cardinal should not know what was
best.

The procession marched to the church of our Lady of Loretto, where they
solemnly promised to the blessed Virgin a lamp and ship of gold--should
she be willing to use her influence in behalf of the suffering city--to
be placed on her shrine as soon as the siege should be raised.

But these demonstrations, however cheering to the souls, had
comparatively little effect upon the bodies of the sufferers.  It was
impossible to walk through the streets of Paris without stumbling over
the dead bodies of the citizens.  Trustworthy eye-witnesses of those
dreadful days have placed the number of the dead during the summer at
thirty thousand.  A tumultuous assemblage of the starving and the forlorn
rushed at last to the municipal palace, demanding peace or bread.  The
rebels were soon dispersed however by a charge, headed by the Chevalier
d'Aumale, and assisted by the chiefs of the wards, and so soon as the
riot was quelled, its ringleader, a leading advocate, Renaud by name, was
hanged.

Still, but for the energy of the priests, it is doubtful whether the city
could have been held by the Confederacy.  The Duke of Nemours confessed
that there were occasions when they never would have been able to sustain
a determined onslaught, and they were daily expecting to see the Prince
of Bearne battering triumphantly at their gates.

But the eloquence of the preachers, especially of the one-eyed father
Boucher, sustained the fainting spirits of the people, and consoled the
sufferers in their dying agonies by glimpses of paradise.  Sublime was
that devotion, superhuman that craft; but it is only by weapons from the
armoury of the Unseen that human creatures can long confront such horrors
in a wicked cause.  Superstition, in those days at least, was a political
force absolutely without limitation, and most adroitly did the agents of
Spain and Rome handle its tremendous enginery against unhappy France.
For the hideous details of the most dreadful sieges recorded in ancient
or modern times were now reproduced in Paris.  Not a revolutionary
circumstance, at which the world had shuddered in the accounts of the
siege of Jerusalem, was spared.  Men devoured such dead vermin as could
be found lying in the streets.  They crowded greedily around stalls in
the public squares where the skin, bones, and offal of such dogs, cats
and unclean beasts as still remained for the consumption of the wealthier
classes were sold to the populace.  Over the doorways of these flesh
markets might be read "Haec runt munera pro iis qui vitam pro Philippo
profuderunt."  Men stood in archways and narrow passages lying in wait
for whatever stray dogs still remained at large, noosed them, strangled
them, and like savage beasts of prey tore them to pieces and devoured
them alive.  And it sometimes happened, too, that the equally hungry dog
proved the more successful in the foul encounter, and fed upon the man.
A lady visiting the Duchess of Nemours--called for the high pretensions
of her sons by her two marriages the queen-mother--complained bitterly
that mothers in Paris had been compelled to kill their own children
outright to save them from starving to death in lingering agony.  "And if
you are brought to that extremity," replied the duchess, "as for the sake
of our holy religion to be forced to kill your own children, do you think
that so great a matter after all?  What are your children made of more
than other people's children?  What are we all but dirt and dust?"  Such
was the consolation administered by the mother of the man who governed
Paris, and defended its gates against its lawful sovereign at the command
of a foreigner; while the priests in their turn persuaded the populace
that it was far more righteous to kill their own children, if they had no
food to give them, than to obtain food by recognising a heretic king.

It was related too, and believed, that in some instances mothers had
salted the bodies of their dead children and fed upon them, day by day,
until the hideous repast would no longer support their own life.  They
died, and the secret was revealed by servants who had partaken of the
food.  The Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, advised recourse to an article of
diet which had been used in some of the oriental sieges.  The counsel at
first was rejected as coming from the agent of Spain, who wished at all
hazards to save the capital of France from falling out of the hands of
his master into those of the heretic.  But dire necessity prevailed, and
the bones of the dead were taken in considerable quantities from the
cemeteries, ground into flour, baked into bread, and consumed.  It was
called Madame Montpensier's cake, because the duchess earnestly
proclaimed its merits to the poor Parisians.  "She was never known to
taste it herself, however," bitterly observed one who lived in Paris
through that horrible summer.  She was right to abstain, for all who ate
of it died, and the Montpensier flour fell into disuse.

Lansquenets and other soldiers, mad with hunger and rage, when they could
no longer find dogs to feed on, chased children through the streets, and
were known in several instances to kill and devour them on the spot.   To
those expressing horror at the perpetration of such a crime, a leading
personage, member of the Council of Nine, maintained that there was less
danger to one's soul in satisfying one's hunger with a dead child, in
case of necessity, than in recognizing the heretic Bearnese, and he added
that all the best theologians and doctors of Paris were of his opinion.

As the summer wore on to its close, through all these horrors, and as
there were still no signs of Mayenne and Parma leading their armies to
the relief of the city, it became necessary to deceive the people by a
show of negotiation with the beleaguering army.  Accordingly, the Spanish
ambassador, the legate, and the other chiefs of the Holy League appointed
a deputation, consisting of the Cardinal Gondy, the Archbishop of Lyons,
and the Abbe d'Elbene, to Henry.  It soon became evident to the king,
however, that these commissioners were but trifling with him in order to
amuse the populace.  His attitude was dignified and determined throughout
the interview.  The place appointed was St. Anthony's Abbey, before the
gates of Paris.  Henry wore a cloak and the order of the Holy Ghost, and
was surrounded by his council, the princes of the blood, and by more than
four hundred of the chief gentlemen of his army.  After passing the
barricade, the deputies were received by old Marshal Biron, and conducted
by him to the king's chamber of state.  When they had made their
salutations, the king led the way to an inner cabinet, but his progress
was much impeded by the crowding of the nobles about him.  Wishing to
excuse this apparent rudeness, he said to the envoys: "Gentlemen, these
men thrust me on as fast to the battle against the foreigner as they now
do to my cabinet.  Therefore bear with them."  Then turning to the crowd,
he said: "Room, gentlemen, for the love of me," upon which they all
retired.

The deputies then stated that they had been sent by the authorities of
Paris to consult as to the means of obtaining a general peace in France.
They expressed the hope that the king's disposition was favourable to
this end, and that he would likewise permit them to confer with the Duke
of Mayenne.  This manner of addressing him excited his choler.  He told
Cardinal Gondy, who was spokesman of the deputation, that he had long
since answered such propositions.  He alone could deal with his subjects.
He was like the woman before Solomon; he would have all the child or none
of it.  Rather than dismember his kingdom he would lose the whole.  He
asked them what they considered him to be.  They answered that they knew
his rights, but that the Parisians had different opinions.  If Paris
would only acknowledge him to be king there could be no more question of
war.  He asked them if they desired the King of Spain or the Duke of
Mayenne for their king, and bade them look well to themselves.  The King
of Spain could not help them, for he had too much business on hand; while
Mayenne had neither means nor courage, having been within three leagues
of them for three weeks doing nothing.  Neither king nor duke should have
that which belonged to him, of that they might be assured.  He told them
he loved Paris as his capital, as his eldest daughter.  If the Parisians
wished to see the end of their miseries it was to him they should appeal,
not to the Spaniard nor to the Duke of Mayenne.  By the grace of God and
the swords of his brave gentlemen he would prevent the King of Spain from
making a colony of France as he had done of Brazil.  He told the
commissioners that they ought to die of shame that they, born Frenchmen,
should have so forgotten their love of country and of liberty as thus to
bow the head to the Spaniard, and--while famine was carrying off
thousands of their countrymen before their eyes--to be so cowardly as not
to utter one word for the public welfare from fear of offending Cardinal.
Gaetano, Mendoza, and Moreo.  He said that he longed for a combat to
decide the issue, and that he had charged Count de Brissac to tell
Mayenne that he would give a finger of his right hand for a battle, and
two for a general peace.  He knew and pitied the sufferings of Paris, but
the horrors now raging there were to please the King of Spain.  That
monarch had told the Duke of Parma to trouble himself but little about
the Netherlands so long as he could preserve for him his city of Paris.
But it was to lean on a broken reed to expect support from this old,
decrepit king, whose object was to dismember the flourishing kingdom of
France, and to divide it among as many tyrants as he had sent viceroys to
the Indies.  The crown was his own birthright.  Were it elective he
should receive the suffrages of the great mass of the electors.  He hoped
soon to drive those red-crossed foreigners out of his kingdom.  Should he
fail, they would end by expelling the Duke of Mayenne and all the rest
who had called them in, and Paris would become the theatre of the
bloodiest tragedy ever yet enacted.  The king then ordered Sir Roger
Williams to see that a collation was prepared for the deputies, and the
veteran Welshman took occasion to indulge in much blunt conversation with
the guests.  He informed them that he, Mr. Sackville, and many other
strangers were serving the king from the hatred they bore the Spaniards
and Mother League, and that his royal mistress had always 8000 Englishmen
ready to maintain the cause.

While the conferences were going on, the officers and soldiers of the
besieging army thronged to the gate, and had much talk with the townsmen.
Among others, time-honoured La None with the iron arm stood near the gate
and harangued the Parisians.  "We are here," said he, "five thousand
gentlemen; we desire your good, not your ruin.  We will make you rich:
let us participate in your labour and industry.  Undo not yourselves to
serve the ambition of a few men."  The townspeople hearing the old
warrior discoursing thus earnestly, asked who he was.  When informed that
it was La Noue they cheered him vociferously, and applauded his speech
with the greatest vehemence.  Yet La Noue was the foremost Huguenot that
the sun shone upon, and the Parisians were starving themselves to death
out of hatred to heresy.  After the collation the commissioners were
permitted to go from the camp in order to consult Mayenne.

Such then was the condition of Paris during that memorable summer of
tortures.  What now were its hopes of deliverance out of this Gehenna?
The trust of Frenchmen was in Philip of Spain, whose legions, under
command of the great Italian chieftain, were daily longed for to save
them from rendering obedience to their lawful prince.

For even the king of straw--the imprisoned cardinal--was now dead, and
there was not even the effigy of any other sovereign than Henry of
Bourbon to claim authority in France.  Mayenne, in the course of long
interviews with the Duke of Parma at Conde and Brussels, had expressed
his desire to see Philip king of France, and had promised his best
efforts to bring about such a result.  In that case he stipulated for
the second place in the kingdom for himself, together with a good rich
province in perpetual sovereignty, and a large sum of money in hand.
Should this course not run smoothly, he would be willing to take the
crown himself, in which event he would cheerfully cede to Philip the
sovereignty of Brittany and Burgundy, besides a selection of cities to be
arranged for at a later day.  Although he spoke of himself with modesty,
said Alexander, it was very plain that he meant to arrive at the crown
himself: Well had the Bearnese alluded to the judgment of Solomon.  Were
not children, thus ready to dismember their mother, as foul and unnatural
as the mother who would divide her child?

And what was this dependence on a foreign tyrant really worth?  As we
look back upon those dark days with the light of what was then the almost
immediate future turned full and glaring upon them, we find it difficult
to exaggerate the folly of the chief actors in those scenes of crime.
Did not the penniless adventurer, whose keen eyesight and wise
recklessness were passing for hallucination and foolhardiness in the eyes
of his contemporaries, understand the game he was playing better than did
that profound thinker, that mysterious but infallible politician, who sat
in the Escorial and made the world tremble at every hint of his lips,
every stroke of his pen?

The Netherlands--that most advanced portion of Philip's domain, without
the possession of which his conquest of England and his incorporation of
France were but childish visions, even if they were not monstrous
chimeras at best--were to be in a manner left to themselves, while their
consummate governor and general was to go forth and conquer France at the
head of a force with which he had been in vain attempting to hold those
provinces to their obedience.  At that very moment the rising young
chieftain of the Netherlands was most successfully inaugurating his
career of military success.  His armies well drilled, well disciplined,
well paid, full of heart and of hope, were threatening their ancient
enemy in every quarter, while the veteran legions of Spain and Italy,
heroes of a hundred Flemish and Frisian battle-fields, were disorganised,
starving, and mutinous.  The famous ancient legion, the terzo viejo, had
been disbanded for its obstinate and confirmed unruliness.  The legion of
Manrique, sixteen hundred strong, was in open mutiny at Courtray.
Farnese had sent the Prince of Ascoli to negotiate with them, but his
attempts were all in vain.  Two years' arrearages--to be paid, not in
cloth at four times what the contractors had paid for it, but in solid
gold--were their not unreasonable demands after years of as hard fighting
and severe suffering as the world has often seen.  But Philip, instead of
ducats or cloth, had only sent orders to go forth and conquer a new
kingdom for him.  Verdugo, too, from Friesland was howling for money,
garrotting and hanging his mutinous veterans every day, and sending
complaints and most dismal forebodings as often as a courier could make
his way through the enemy's lines to Farnese's headquarters.  And
Farnese, on his part, was garrotting and hanging the veterans.

Alexander did not of course inform his master that he was a mischievous
lunatic, who upon any healthy principle of human government ought long
ago to have been shut up from all communion with his species.  It was
very plain, however, from his letters, that such was his innermost,
thought, had it been safe, loyal, or courteous to express it in plain
language.

He was himself stung almost to madness moreover by the presence of
Commander Moreo, who hated him, who was perpetually coming over from
France to visit him, who was a spy upon all his actions, and who was
regularly distilling his calumnies into the ears of Secretary Idiaquez
and of Philip himself.  The king was informed that Farnese was working
for his own ends, and was disgusted with his sovereign; that there never
had been a petty prince of Italy that did not wish to become a greater
one, or that was not jealous of Philip's power, and that there was not a
villain in all Christendom but wished for Philip's death.  Moreo followed
the prince about to Antwerp, to Brussels, to Spa, whither he had gone to
drink the waters for his failing health, pestered him, lectured him,
pried upon him, counselled him, enraged him.  Alexander told him at last
that he cared not if the whole world came to an end so long as Flanders
remained, which alone had been entrusted to him, and that if he was
expected to conquer France it would be as well to give him the means of
performing that exploit.  So Moreo told the king that Alexander was
wasting time and wasting money, that he was the cause of Egmont's
overthrow, and that he would be the cause of the loss of Paris and of
the downfall of the whole French scheme; for that he was determined to
do nothing to assist Mayenne, or that did not conduce to his private
advantage.

Yet Farnese had been not long before informed in sufficiently plain
language, and by personages of great influence, that in case he wished to
convert his vice-royalty of the Netherlands into a permanent sovereignty,
he might rely on the assistance of Henry of Navarre, and perhaps of Queen
Elizabeth.  The scheme would not have been impracticable, but the duke
never listened to it for a moment.

If he were slow in advancing to the relief of starving, agonising
Paris, there were sufficient reasons for his delay.  Most decidedly and
bitterly, but loyally, did he denounce the madness of his master's course
in all his communications to that master's private ear.

He told him that the situation in which he found himself was horrible.
He had no money for his troops, he had not even garrison bread to put in
their mouths.  He had not a single stiver to advance them on account.
From Friesland, from the Rhine country, from every quarter, cries of
distress were rising to heaven, and the lamentations were just.  He was
in absolute penury.  He could not negotiate a bill on the royal account,
but had borrowed on his own private security a few thousand crowns which
he had given to his soldiers.  He was pledging his jewels and furniture
like a bankrupt, but all was now in vain to stop the mutiny at Courtray.
If that went on it would be of most pernicious example, for the whole
army was disorganised, malcontent, and of portentous aspect.  "These
things," said he, "ought not to surprise people of common understanding,
for without money, without credit, without provisions, and in an
exhausted country, it is impossible to satisfy the claims, or even to
support the life of the army."  When he sent the Flemish cavalry to
Mayenne in March, it was under the impression that with it that prince
would have maintained his reputation and checked the progress of the
Bearnese until greater reinforcements could be forwarded.  He was now
glad that no larger number had been sent, for all would have been
sacrificed on the fatal field of Ivry.

The country around him was desperate, believed itself abandoned, and was
expecting fresh horrors everyday.  He had been obliged to remove portions
of the garrisons at Deventer and Zutphen purely to save them from
starving and desperation.  Every day he was informed by his garrisons
that they could feed no longer on fine words or hopes, for in them they
found no sustenance.

But Philip told him that he must proceed forthwith to France, where he
was to raise the siege of Paris, and occupy Calais and Boulogne in order
to prevent the English from sending succour to the Bearnese, and in order
to facilitate his own designs on England.  Every effort was to be made
before the Bearnese climbed into the seat.  The Duke of Parma was to talk
no more of difficulties, but to conquer them; a noble phrase on the
battle field, but comparatively easy of utterance at the writing-desk!

At last, Philip having made some remittances, miserably inadequate for
the necessities of the case, but sufficient to repress in part the
mutinous demonstrations throughout the army, Farnese addressed himself
with a heavy heart to the work required of him.  He confessed the deepest
apprehensions of the result both in the Netherlands and in France.  He
intimated a profound distrust of the French, who had, ever been Philip's
enemies, and dwelt on the danger of leaving the provinces, unable to
protect themselves, badly garrisoned, and starving.  "It grieves me to
the soul, it cuts me to the heart," he said, "to see that your Majesty
commands things which are impossible, for it is our Lord alone that can
work miracles.  Your Majesty supposes that with the little money you have
sent me, I can satisfy all the soldiers serving in these provinces,
settle with the Spanish and the German mutineers--because, if they are
to be used in the expedition, they must at least be quieted--give money
to Mayenne and the Parisians, pay retaining wages (wartgeld) to the
German Riders for the protection of these provinces, and make sure of the
maritime places where the same mutinous language is held as at Courtray.
The poverty, the discontent, and the desperation of this unhappy
country," he added, "have, been so often described to your Majesty that I
have nothing to add.  I am hanging and garrotting my veterans everywhere,
only because they have rebelled for want of pay without committing any
excess.  Yet under these circumstances I am to march into France with
twenty thousand troops--the least number to effect anything withal.  I am
confused and perplexed because the whole world is exclaiming against me,
and protesting that through my desertion the country entrusted to my care
will come to utter perdition.  On the other hand, the French cry out upon
me that I am the cause that Paris is going to destruction, and with it
the Catholic cause in France.  Every one is pursuing his private ends.
It is impossible to collect a force strong enough for the necessary work.
Paris has reached its extreme unction, and neither Mayenne nor any one of
the confederates has given this invalid the slightest morsel to support
her till your Majesty's forces should arrive."

He reminded his sovereign that the country around Paris was eaten bare of
food and forage, and yet that it was quite out of the question for him to
undertake the transportation of supplies for his army all the way--
supplies from the starving Netherlands to starving France.  Since the
king was so peremptory, he had nothing for it but to obey, but he
vehemently disclaimed all responsibility for the expedition, and, in case
of his death, he called on his Majesty to vindicate his honour, which his
enemies were sure to assail.

The messages from Mayenne becoming daily more pressing, Farnese hastened
as much as possible those preparations which at best were so woefully
inadequate, and avowed his determination not to fight the Bearnese if it
were possible to avoid an action.  He feared, however, that with totally
insufficient forces he should be obliged to accept the chances of an
engagement.

With twelve thousand foot and three thousand horse Farnese left the
Netherlands in the beginning of August, and arrived on the 3rd of that
month at Valenciennes.  His little army, notwithstanding his bitter
complaints, was of imposing appearance.  The archers and halberdiers of
his bodyguard were magnificent in taffety and feathers and surcoats of
cramoisy velvet.  Four hundred nobles served in the cavalry.  Arenberg
and Barlaymont and Chimay, and other grandees of the Netherlands, in
company with Ascoli and the sons of Terranova and Pastrana, and many more
great lords of Italy and Spain were in immediate attendance on the
illustrious captain.  The son of Philip's Secretary of State, Idiaquez,
and the nephew of the cardinal-legate, Gaetano, were among the marshals
of the camp.

Alexander's own natural authority and consummate powers of organisation
had for the time triumphed over the disintegrating tendencies which, it
had been seen, were everywhere so rapidly destroying the foremost
military establishment of the world.  Nearly half his forces, both
cavalry and infantry, were Netherlanders; for--as if there were not
graves enough in their own little territory--those Flemings, Walloons,
and Hollanders were destined to leave their bones on both sides of every
well-stricken field of that age between liberty and despotism.  And thus
thousands of them had now gone forth under the banner of Spain to assist
their own tyrant in carrying out his designs upon the capital of France,
and to struggle to the death with thousands of their own countrymen who
were following the fortunes of the Bearnese.  Truly in that age it was
religion that drew the boundary line between nations.

The army was divided into three portions.  The vanguard was under the
charge of the Netherland General, Marquis of Renty.  The battalia was
commanded by Farnese in person, and the rearguard was entrusted to that
veteran Netherlander, La Motte, now called the Count of Everbeck.  Twenty
pieces of artillery followed the last division.  At Valenciennes
Farnese remained eight days, and from this place Count Charles Mansfeld
took his departure in a great rage--resigning his post as chief of
artillery because La Motte had received the appointment of general-
marshal of the camp--and returned to his father, old Peter Ernest
Mansfeld, who was lieutenant-governor of the Netherlands in Parma's
absence.

Leaving Valenciennes on the 11th, the army proceeded by way of Quesney,
Guise, Soissons, Fritemilon to Meaux.  At this place, which is ten
leagues from Paris, Farnese made his junction, on the 22nd of August,
with Mayenne, who was at the head of six thousand infantry--one half of
them Germans under Cobalto, and the other half French--and of two
thousand horse.

On arriving at Meaux, Alexander proceeded straightway to the cathedral,
and there, in presence of all, he solemnly swore that he had not come
to France in order to conquer that kingdom or any portion of it, in the
interests of his master, but only to render succour to the Catholic cause
and to free the friends and confederates of his Majesty from violence and
heretic oppression.  Time was to show the value of that oath.

Here the deputation from Paris--the Archbishop of Lyons and his
colleagues, whose interview with Henry has just been narrated--were
received by the two dukes.  They departed, taking with them promises of
immediate relief for the starving city.  The allies remained five days at
Meaux, and leaving that place on the 27th, arrived in the neighbourhood
of Chelles, on the last day but one of the summer.  They had a united
force of five thousand cavalry and eighteen thousand foot.

The summer of horrors was over, and thus with the first days of autumn
there had come a ray of hope for the proud city which was lying at its
last gasp.  When the allies, came in sight of the monastery of Chellea
they found themselves in the immediate neighbourhood of the Bearnese.

The two great captains of the age had at last met face to face.  They
were not only the two first commanders of their time, but there was not a
man in Europe at that day to be at all compared with either of them.  The
youth, concerning whose earliest campaign an account will be given in the
following chapter, had hardly yet struck his first blow.  Whether that
blow was to reveal the novice or the master was soon to be seen.
Meantime in 1590 it would have been considered a foolish adulation to
mention the name of Maurice of Nassau in the same breath with that of
Navarre or of Farnese.

The scientific duel which was now to take place was likely to task the
genius and to bring into full display the peculiar powers and defects of
the two chieftains of Europe.  Each might be considered to be still in
the prime of life, but Alexander, who was turned of forty-five, was
already broken in health, while the vigorous Henry was eight years
younger, and of an iron constitution.  Both had passed then lives in the
field, but the king, from nature, education, and the force of
circumstances, preferred pitched battles to scientific combinations,
while the duke, having studied and practised his art in the great Spanish
and Italian schools of warfare, was rather a profound strategist than a
professional fighter, although capable of great promptness and intense
personal energy when his judgment dictated a battle.  Both were born with
that invaluable gift which no human being can acquire, authority, and
both were adored and willingly obeyed by their soldiers, so long as
those soldiers were paid and fed.

The prize now to be contended for was a high one.  Alexander's complete
success would tear from Henry's grasp the first city of Christendom, now
sinking exhausted into his hands, and would place France in the power of
the Holy League and at the feet of Philip.  Another Ivry would shatter
the confederacy, and carry the king in triumph to his capital and his
ancestral throne.  On the approach of the combined armies under Parma and
Mayenne, the king had found himself most reluctantly compelled to suspend
the siege of Paris.  His army, which consisted of sixteen thousand foot
and five thousand horse, was not sufficiently numerous to confront at the
same time the relieving force and to continue the operations before the
city.  So long, however, as he held the towns and bridges on the great
rivers, and especially those keys to the Seine and Marne, Corbeil and
Lagny, he still controlled the life-blood of the capital, which indeed
had almost ceased to flow.

On the 31st August he advanced towards the enemy.  Sir Edward Stafford,
Queen Elizabeth's ambassador, arrived at St. Denis in the night of the
30th August.  At a very early hour next morning he heard a shout under
his window, and looking down beheld King Henry at the head of his troops,
cheerfully calling out to his English friend as he passed his door.
"Welcoming us after his familiar manner," said Stafford, "he desired us,
in respect of the battle every hour expected, to come as his friends to
see and help him, and not to treat of anything which afore, we meant,
seeing the present state to require it, and the enemy so near that we
might well have been interrupted in half-an-hour's talk, and necessity
constrained the king to be in every corner, where for the most part we
follow him."

That day Henry took up his headquarters at the monastery of Chelles, a
fortified place within six leagues of Paris, on the right bank of the
Marne.  His army was drawn up in a wide valley somewhat encumbered with
wood and water, extending through a series of beautiful pastures towards
two hills of moderate elevation.  Lagny, on the left bank of the river,
was within less than a league of him on his right hand.  On the other
side of the hills, hardly out of cannon-shot, was the camp of the allies.
Henry, whose natural disposition in this respect needed no prompting, was
most eager for a decisive engagement.  The circumstances imperatively
required it of him.  His infantry consisted of Frenchmen, Netherlanders,
English, Germans, Scotch; but of his cavalry four thousand were French
nobles, serving at their own expense, who came to a battle as to a
banquet, but who were capable of riding off almost as rapidly, should the
feast be denied them.  They were volunteers, bringing with them rations
for but a few days, and it could hardly be expected that they would
remain as patiently as did Parma's veterans, who, now that their mutiny
had been appeased by payment of a portion of their arrearages, had become
docile again.  All the great chieftains who surrounded Henry, whether
Catholic or Protestant--Montpensier, Nevers, Soissons, Conti, the Birons,
Lavradin, d'Aumont, Tremouille, Turenne, Chatillon, La Noue--were urgent
for the conflict, concerning the expediency of which there could indeed
be no doubt, while the king was in raptures at the opportunity of dealing
a decisive blow at the confederacy of foreigners and rebels who had so
long defied his authority and deprived him of his rights.

Stafford came up with the king, according to his cordial invitation, on
the same day, and saw the army all drawn up in battle array.  While Henry
was "eating a morsel in an old house," Turenne joined him with six or
seven hundred horsemen and between four and five thousand infantry.
"They were the likeliest footmen," said Stafford, "the best
countenanced, the best furnished that ever I saw in my life; the best
part of them old soldiers that had served under the king for the Religion
all this while."

The envoy was especially enthusiastic, however, in regard to the French
cavalry.  "There are near six thousand horse," said he, "whereof
gentlemen above four thousand, about twelve hundred other French, and
eight hundred reiters.  I never saw, nor I think never any man saw, in
prance such a company of gentlemen together so well horsed and so well
armed."

Henry sent a herald to the camp of the allies, formally challenging them
to a general engagement, and expressing a hope that all differences might
now be settled by the ordeal of battle, rather than that the sufferings
of the innocent people should be longer protracted.

Farnese, on arriving at Meaux, had resolved to seek the enemy and take
the hazards of a stricken field.  He had misgivings as to the possible
result, but he expressly announced this intention in his letters to
Philip, and Mayenne confirmed him in his determination.  Nevertheless,
finding the enemy so eager and having reflected more maturely, he saw no
reason for accepting the chivalrous cartel.  As commanderin-chief--for
Mayenne willingly conceded the supremacy which it would have been absurd
in him to dispute--he accordingly replied that it was his custom to
refuse a combat when a refusal seemed advantageous to himself, and to
offer battle whenever it suited his purposes to fight.  When that moment
should arrive the king would find him in the field.  And, having sent
this courteous, but unsatisfactory answer to the impatient Bearnese, he
gave orders to fortify his camp, which was already sufficiently strong.
Seven days long the two armies lay face to face--Henry and his chivalry
chafing in vain for the longed-for engagement--and nothing occurred
between those forty or fifty thousand mortal enemies, encamped within a
mile or two of each other, save trifling skirmishes leading to no result.

At last Farnese gave orders for an advance.  Renty, commander of the
vanguard, consisting of nearly all the cavalry, was instructed to move
slowly forward over the two hills, and descending on the opposite side,
to deploy his forces in two great wings to the right and left.  He was
secretly directed in this movement to magnify as much as possible the
apparent dimensions of his force.  Slowly the columns moved over the
hills.  Squadron after squadron, nearly all of them lancers, with their
pennons flaunting gaily in the summer wind, displayed themselves
deliberately and ostentatiously in the face of the Royalists.  The
splendid light-horse of Basti, the ponderous troopers of the Flemish
bands of ordnance under Chimay and Berlaymont, and the famous Albanian
and Italian cavalry, were mingled with the veteran Leaguers of France who
had fought under the Balafre, and who now followed the fortunes of his
brother Mayenne.  It was an imposing demonstration.

Henry could hardly believe his eyes as the much-coveted opportunity,
of which he had been so many days disappointed, at last presented itself,
and he waited with more than his usual caution until the plan of attack
should be developed by his great antagonist.  Parma, on his side, pressed
the hand of Mayenne as he watched the movement, saying quietly, "We have
already fought our battle and gained the victory."  He then issued orders
for the whole battalia--which, since the junction, had been under command
of Mayenne, Farnese reserving for himself the superintendence of the
entire army--to countermarch rapidly towards the Marne and take up a
position opposite Lagny.  La Motte, with the rearguard, was directed
immediately to follow.  The battalia had thus become the van, the
rearguard the battalia, while the whole cavalry corps by this movement
had been transformed from the vanguard into the rear.  Renty was
instructed to protect his manoeuvres, to restrain the skirmishing as much
as possible, and to keep the commander-in-chief constantly informed of
every occurrence.  In the night he was to entrench and fortify himself
rapidly and thoroughly, without changing his position.

Under cover of this feigned attack, Farnese arrived at the river side on
the 15th September, seized an open village directly opposite Lagny, which
was connected with it by a stone bridge, and planted a battery of nine
pieces of heavy artillery directly opposite the town.  Lagny was
fortified in the old-fashioned manner, with not very thick walls, and
without a terreplain.  Its position, however, and its command of the
bridge, seemed to render an assault impossible, and De la Fin, who lay
there with a garrison of twelve hundred French, had no fear for the
security of the place.  But Farnese, with the precision and celerity
which characterized his movements on special occasions, had thrown
pontoon bridges across the river three miles above, and sent a
considerable force of Spanish and Walloon infantry to the other side.
These troops were ordered to hold themselves ready for an assault, so
soon as the batteries opposite should effect a practicable breach.  The
next day Henry, reconnoitering the scene, saw, with intense indignation,
that he had been completely out-generalled.  Lagny, the key to the Marne,
by holding which he had closed the door on nearly all the food supplies
for Paris, was about to be wrested from him.  What should he do?  Should
he throw himself across the river and rescue the place before it fell?
This was not to be thought of even by the audacious Bearnese.  In the
attempt to cross the river, under the enemy's fire, he was likely to lose
a large portion of his army.  Should he fling himself upon Renty's
division which had so ostentatiously offered battle the day before?  This
at least might be attempted, although not so advantageously as would have
been the case on the previous afternoon.  To undertake this was the
result of a rapid council of generals.  It was too late.  Renty held the
hills so firmly entrenched and fortified that it was an idle hope to
carry them by assault.  He might hurl column after column against those
heights, and pass the day in seeing his men mowed to the earth without
result.

His soldiers, magnificent in the open field, could not be relied upon to
carry so strong a position by sudden storm; and there was no time to be
lost.  He felt the enemy a little.  There was some small skirmishing, and
while it was going on, Farnese opened a tremendous fire across the river
upon Lagny.  The weak walls soon crumbled; a breach was effected, the
signal for assault was given, and the troops posted on the other side,
after a brief but sanguinary straggle, overcame all, resistance, and were
masters of the town.  The whole garrison, twelve hundred strong, was
butchered, and the city thoroughly sacked; for Farnese had been brought
up in the old-fashioned school of Alva; and Julian Romero and Com-.
wander Requesens.

Thus Lagny was seized before the eyes of Henry, who was forced to look
helplessly on his great antagonist's triumph.  He had come forth in full
panoply and abounding confidence to offer battle.  He was foiled of his
combat; and he had lost the prize.  Never was blow more successfully
parried, a counter-stroke more ingeniously planted.  The bridges of
Charenton and St. Maur now fell into Farnese's hands without a contest.
In an incredibly short space of time provisions and munitions were poured
into the starving city; two thousand boat-loads arriving in a single day.
Paris was relieved.  Alexander had made his demonstration, and solved the
problem.  He had left the Netherlands against his judgment, but he had at
least accomplished his French work as none but he could have done it.
The king was now in worse plight than ever.  His army fell to pieces.
His cavaliers, cheated of their battle; and having neither food nor
forage, rode off by hundreds every day.  "Our state is such," said
Stafford; on the 16th September, "and so far unexpected and wonderful,
that I am almost ashamed to write, because methinks everybody should
think I dream.  Myself seeing of it methinketh that I dream.  For, my
lord, to see an army such a one I think as I shall never see again--
especially for horsemen and gentlemen to take a mind to disband upon the
taking of such a paltry thing as Lagny, a town no better indeed than
Rochester, it is a thing so strange to me that seeing of it I can scarce
believe it.  They make their excuses of their want, which I know indeed
is great--for there were few left with one penny in their purses--but yet
that extremity could not be such but that they might have tarried ten
days or fifteen at the most that the king desired of them . . . . . From
six thousand horse that we were and above, we are come to two thousand
and I do not see an end of our leave-takers, for those be hourly.

"The most I can see we can make account of to tarry are the Viscount
Turenne's troops, and Monsieur de Chatillon's, and our Switzers, and
Lanaquenettes, which make very near five thousand.  The first that went
away, though he sent word to the king an hour before he would tarry, was
the Count Soissons, by whose parting on a sudden and without leave-taking
we judge a discontentment."

The king's army seemed fading into air.  Making virtue of necessity he
withdrew to St. Denis, and decided to disband his forces, reserving to
himself only a flying camp with which to harass the enemy as often as
opportunity should offer.

It must be confessed that the Bearnese had been thoroughly out-
generalled.  "It was not God's will," said Stafford, who had been in
constant attendance upon Henry through the whole business; "we deserved
it not; for the king might as easily have had Paris as drunk, four or
five times.  And at the last, if he had not committed those faults that
children would not have done, only with the desire to fight and give the
battle (which the other never meant), he had had it in the Duke of
Parma's eight as he took Lagny in ours."  He had been foiled of the
battle on which he had set his heart, and, in which he felt confident of
overthrowing the great captain of the age, and trampling the League under
his feet.  His capital just ready to sink exhausted into his hands had
been wrested from his grasp, and was alive with new hope and new
defiance.  The League was triumphant, his own army scattering to the four
winds.  Even a man of high courage and sagacity might have been in
despair.  Yet never were the magnificent hopefulness, the wise audacity
of Henry more signally manifested than now when he seemed most blundering
and most forlorn.  His hardy nature ever met disaster with so cheerful a
smile as almost to perplex disaster herself.

Unwilling to relinquish his grip without a last effort, he resolved on a
midnight assault upon Paris.  Hoping that the joy at being relieved, the
unwonted feasting which had succeeded the long fasting, and the
conciousness of security from the presence of the combined armies of the
victorious League, would throw garrison and citizens off their guard, he
came into the neighbourhood of the Faubourgs St. Jacques, St. Germain,
St. Marcel, and St. Michel on the night of 9th September.  A desperate
effort was made to escalade the walls between St. Jacques and St.
Germain.  It was foiled, not by the soldiers nor the citizens, but by the
sleepless Jesuits, who, as often before during this memorable siege, had
kept guard on the ramparts, and who now gave the alarm.  The first
assailants were hurled from their ladders, the city was roused, and the
Duke of Nemours was soon on the spot, ordering burning pitch hoops,
atones, and other missiles to be thrown down upon the invaders.  The
escalade was baffled; yet once more that night, just before dawn, the
king in person renewed the attack on the Faubourg St. Germain.  The
faithful Stafford stood by his side in the trenches, and was witness to
his cool determination, his indomitable hope.  La None too was there,
and was wounded in the leg--an accident the results of which were soon
to cause much weeping through Christendom.  Had one of those garlands of
blazing tar which all night had been fluttering from the walls of Paris
alighted by chance on the king's head there might have been another
history of France.  The ladders, too, proved several feet too short,
and there were too few, of them.  Had they been more numerous and longer,
the tale might have been a different one.  As it was, the king was forced
to retire with the approaching daylight.

The characteristics of the great commander of the Huguenots and of the
Leaguers' chieftain respectively were well illustrated in several
incidents of this memorable campaign.  Farnese had been informed by
scouts and spies of this intended assault by Henry on the walls of Paris.
With his habitual caution he discredited the story.  Had he believed it,
he might have followed the king in overwhelming force and taken him
captive.  The penalty of Henry's unparalleled boldness was thus remitted
by Alexander's exuberant discretion.

Soon afterwards Farnese laid siege to Corbeil.  This little place--owing
to the extraordinary skill and determination of its commandant, Rigaut,
an old Huguenot officer, who had fought with La Noue in Flanders--
resisted for nearly four weeks.  It was assaulted at last, Rigaut killed,
the garrison of one thousand French soldiers put to the sword, and the
town sacked.  With the fall of Corbeil both the Seine and Marne were re-
opened.

Alexander then made a visit to Paris, where he was received with great
enthusiasm.  The legate, whose efforts and whose money had so much
contributed to the successful defence of the capital had returned to
Italy to participate in the election of a new pope.  For the "Huguenot
pope," Sixtus V., had died at the end of August, having never bestowed
on the League any of his vast accumulated treasures to help it in its
utmost need.  It was not surprising that Philip was indignant, and had
resorted to menace of various kinds against the holy father, when he
found him swaying so perceptibly in the direction of the hated Bearnese.
Of course when he died his complaint was believed to be Spanish poison.
In those days, none but the very obscure were thought capable of dying
natural deaths, and Philip was esteemed too consummate an artist to allow
so formidable an adversary as Sixtus to pass away in God's time only.
Certainly his death was hailed as matter of great rejoicing by the
Spanish party in Rome, and as much ignominy bestowed upon his memory as
if he had been a heretic; while in Paris his decease was celebrated with
bonfires and other marks of popular hilarity.

To circumvent the great Huguenot's reconciliation with the Roman Church
was of course an indispensable portion of Philip's plan; for none could
be so dull as not to perceive that the resistance of Paris to its heretic
sovereign would cease to be very effective, so soon as the sovereign had
ceased to be heretic.  It was most important therefore that the successor
of Sixtus should be the tool of Spain.  The leading confederates were
well aware of Henry's intentions to renounce the reformed faith, and to
return to the communion of Rome whenever he could formally accomplish
that measure.  The crafty Bearnese knew full well that the road to Paris
lay through the gates of Rome.  Yet it is proof either of the privacy
with which great public matters were then transacted, or of the
extraordinary powers of deceit with which Henry was gifted, that the
leaders of protestantism were still hoodwinked in regard to his attitude.
Notwithstanding the embassy of Luxembourg, and the many other indications
of the king's intentions, Queen Elizabeth continued to regard him as the
great champion of the reformed faith.  She had just sent him an emerald,
which she had herself worn, accompanied by the expression of her wish
that the king in wearing it might never strike a blow without demolishing
an enemy, and that in his farther progress he might put all his enemies
to rout and confusion.  "You will remind the king, too," she added, "that
the emerald has this virtue, never to break so long as faith remains
entire and firm."

And the shrewd Stafford, who was in daily attendance upon him, informed
his sovereign that there were no symptoms of wavering on Henry's part.
"The Catholics here," said he, "cry hard upon the king to be a Catholic
or else that he is lost, and they would persuade him that for all their
calling in the Spaniards, both Paris and all other towns will yield to
him, if he will but assure them that he will become a Catholic.  For my
part, I think they would laugh at him when he had done so, and so I find
he believeth the same, if he had mind to it, which I find no disposition
in him unto it."  The not very distant future was to show what the
disposition of the bold Gascon really was in this great matter, and
whether he was likely to reap nothing but ridicule from his apostasy,
should it indeed become a fact.  Meantime it was the opinion of the
wisest sovereign in Europe, and of one of the most adroit among her
diplomatists, that there was really nothing in the rumours as to the
king's contemplated conversion.

It was, of course, unfortunate for Henry that his staunch friend and
admirer Sixtus was no more.  But English diplomacy could do but little in
Rome, and men were trembling with apprehension lest that arch-enemy of
Elizabeth, that devoted friend of Philip, the English Cardinal Allen,
should be elected to the papal throne.  "Great ado is made in Rome," said
Stafford, "by the Spanish ambassador, by all corruptions and ways that
may be, to make a pope that must needs depend and be altogether at the
King of Spain's devotion.  If the princes of Italy put not their hands
unto it, no doubt they will have their wills, and I fear greatly our
villainous Allen, for, in my judgment, I can comprehend no man more with
reason to be tied altogether to the King of Spain's will than he.
I pray God send him either to God or the Devil first.  An evil-minded
Englishman, tied to the King of Spain by necessity, finding almost four
millions of money, is a dangerous beast for a pope in this time."

Cardinal Allen was doomed to disappointment.  His candidacy was not
successful, and, after the brief reign--thirteen days long--of Urban VII,
Sfondrato wore the triple tiara with the title of Gregory XIV.  Before
the year closed, that pontiff had issued a brief urging the necessity of
extirpating heresy in France, and of electing a Catholic king, and
asserting his determination to send to Paris--that bulwark of the
Catholic faith--not empty words alone but troops, to be paid fifteen
thousand crowns of gold each month, so long as the city should need
assistance.  It was therefore probable that the great leader of the
Huguenots, now that he had been defeated by Farnese, and that his
capital was still loyal to the League, would obtain less favour--however
conscientiously he might instruct himself--from Gregory XIV. than he had
begun to find in the eyes of Sixtus after the triumph of Ivry.

Parma refreshed his army by a fortnight's repose, and early in November
determined on his return to the Netherlands.  The Leaguers were aghast at
his decision, and earnestly besought him to remain.  But the duke had
given them back their capital, and although this had been accomplished
without much bloodshed in their army or his own, sickness was now making
sad ravages among his troops, and there was small supply of food or
forage for such large forces as had now been accumulated, in the
neighbourhood of Paris.  Moreover, dissensions were breaking out.
between the Spaniards, Italians, and Netherlanders of the relieving army
with their French allies.  The soldiers and peasants hated the foreigners
who came there as victors, even although to assist the Leaguers in
overthrowing the laws, government, and nationality of France.  The
stragglers and wounded on Farnese's march were killed by the country
people in considerable numbers, and it was a pure impossibility for him
longer to delay his return to the provinces which so much against his
will he had deserted.

He marched back by way of Champagne rather than by that of Picardy, in
order to deceive the king.  Scarcely had he arrived in Champagne when he
heard of the retaking of Lagny and Corbeil.  So soon as his back was
turned, the League thus showed its impotence to retain the advantage
which his genius had won.  Corbeil, which had cost him a month of hard
work, was recaptured in two days.  Lagny fell almost as quickly.
Earnestly did the confederates implore him to return to their rescue,
but he declined almost contemptuously to retrace his steps.  His march
was conducted in the same order and with the same precision which--had
marked his advance.  Henry, with his flying camp, hung upon his track,
harassing him now in front, now in rear, now in flank.  None of the
skirmishes were of much military importance.  A single cavalry combat,
however, in which old Marshal Biron was nearly surrounded and was in
imminent danger of death or capture, until chivalrously rescued by the
king in person at the head of a squadron of lancers, will always possess
romantic interest.  In a subsequent encounter, near Baroges on the Yesle,
Henry had sent Biron forward with a few companies of horse to engage some
five hundred carabineers of Farnese on their march towards the frontier,
and had himself followed close upon the track with his usual eagerness to
witness or participate in every battle.  Suddenly Alphonse Corse, who
rode at Henry's aide, pointed out to him, not more than a hundred paces
off, an officer wearing a felt hat, a great ruff, and a little furred
cassock, mounted on a horse without armour or caparisons, galloping up
and down and brandishing his sword at the carabineers to compel them to
fall back.

This was the Duke of Parma, and thus the two great champions of the
Huguenots and of the Leaguers--the two foremost captains of the age--had
met face to face.  At that moment La Noue, riding up, informed the king
that he had seen the whole of the enemy's horse and foot in battle array,
and Henry, suspecting the retreat of Farnese to be a feint for the
purpose of luring him on with his small force to an attack, gave orders
to retire as soon as possible.

At Guise, on the frontier, the duke parted with Mayenne, leaving with him
an auxiliary force of four thousand foot and five hundred horse, which he
could ill spare.  He then returned to Brussels, which city he reached on
the 4th December, filling every hotel and hospital with his sick
soldiers, and having left one-third of his numbers behind him.  He had
manifested his own military skill in the adroit and successful manner in
which he had accomplished the relief of Paris, while the barrenness of
the result from the whole expedition vindicated the political sagacity
with which he had remonstrated against his sovereign's infatuation.

Paris, with the renewed pressure on its two great arteries at Lagny and
Corbeil, soon fell into as great danger as before; the obedient
Netherlands during the absence of Farnese had been sinking rapidly to
ruin, while; on the other hand, great progress and still greater
preparations in aggressive warfare had been made by the youthful general
and stadtholder of the Republic.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Alexander's exuberant discretion
Divine right of kings
Ever met disaster with so cheerful a smile
Future world as laid down by rival priesthoods
Invaluable gift which no human being can acquire, authority
King was often to be something much less or much worse
Magnificent hopefulness
Myself seeing of it methinketh that I dream
Nothing cheap, said a citizen bitterly, but sermons
Obscure were thought capable of dying natural deaths
Philip II. gave the world work enough
Righteous to kill their own children
Road to Paris lay through the gates of Rome
Shift the mantle of religion from one shoulder to the other
Thirty-three per cent. interest was paid (per month)
Under the name of religion (so many crimes)




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v62
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 63, 1590-1592



CHAPTER XXIV.

     Prince Maurice--State of the Republican army--Martial science of the
     period--Reformation of the military system by Prince Maurice--His
     military genius--Campaign in the Netherlands--The fort and town of
     Zutphen taken by the States' forces--Attack upon Deventer--Its
     capitulation--Advance on Groningen, Delfzyl, Opslag, Yementil,
     Steenwyk, and other places--Farnese besieges Fort Knodsenburg--
     Prince Maurice hastens to its relief--A skirmish ensues resulting in
     the discomfiture of the Spanish and Italian troops--Surrender of
     Hulat and Nymegen--Close of military, operations of the year.

While the events revealed in the last chapter had been occupying the
energies of Farnese and the resources of his sovereign, there had been
ample room for Prince Maurice to mature his projects, and to make a
satisfactory beginning in the field.  Although Alexander had returned to
the Netherlands before the end of the year 1590, and did not set forth on
his second French campaign until late in the following year, yet the
condition of his health, the exhaustion of his funds, and the dwindling
of his army, made it impossible for him to render any effectual
opposition to the projects of the youthful general.

For the first time Maurice was ready to put his theories and studies into
practice on an extensive scale.  Compared with modern armaments, the
warlike machinery to be used for liberating the republic from its foreign
oppressors would seem almost diminutive.  But the science and skill of a
commander are to be judged by the results he can work out with the
materials within reach.  His progress is to be measured by a comparison
with the progress of his contemporaries--coheirs with him of what Time
had thus far bequeathed.

The regular army of the republic, as reconstructed, was but ten thousand
foot and two thousand horse, but it was capable of being largely expanded
by the trainbands of the cities, well disciplined and enured to hardship,
and by the levies of German reiters and other, foreign auxiliaries in
such numbers as could be paid for by the hard-pressed exchequer of the
provinces.

To the state-council, according to its original constitution, belonged
the levying and disbanding of troops, the conferring of military offices,
and the supervision of military operations by sea and land.  It was its
duty to see that all officers made oath of allegiance to the United
Provinces.

The course of Leicester's administration, and especially the fatal
treason of Stanley and of York, made it seem important for the true
lovers of their country to wrest from the state-council, where the
English had two seats, all political and military power.  And this, as
has been seen, was practically but illegally accomplished.  The silent
revolution by which at this epoch all the main attributes of government
passed into the hands of the States-General-acting as a league of
sovereignties--has already been indicated.  The period during which the
council exercised functions conferred on it by the States-General
themselves was brief and evanescent.  The jealousy of the separate
provinces soon prevented the state-council--a supreme executive body
entrusted with the general defence of the commonwealth--from causing
troops to pass into or out of one province or another without a patent
from his Excellency the Prince, not as chief of the whole army, but as
governor and captain-general of Holland, or Gelderland, or Utrecht, as
the case might be.

The highest military office in the Netherlands was that of captain-
general or supreme commander.  This quality was from earliest times
united to that of stadholder, who stood, as his title implied, in the
place of the reigning sovereign, whether count, duke, king, or emperor.
After the foundation of the Republic this dynastic form, like many
others, remained, and thus Prince Maurice was at first only captain-
general of Holland and Zeeland, and subsequently of Gelderland, Utrecht,
and Overyssel, after he had been appointed stadholder of those three
provinces in 1590 on the death of Count Nieuwenaar.  However much in
reality he was general-in-chief of the army, he never in all his life
held the appointment of captain-general of the Union.

To obtain a captain's commission in the army, it was necessary to have
served four years, while three years' service was the necessary
preliminary to the post of lieutenant or ensign.  Three candidates were
presented by the province for each office, from whom the stadholder
appointed one.--The commissions, except those of the highest commanders,
were made out in the name of the States-General, by advice and consent of
the council of state.  The oath of allegiance, exacted from soldiers as
well as officers; mentioned the name of the particular province to which
they belonged, as well as that of the States-Generals.  It thus appears
that, especially after Maurice's first and successful campaigns; the
supreme authority over the army really belonged to the States-General,
and that the powers of the state-council in this regard fell, in the
course of four years, more and more into the back-ground, and at last
disappeared almost entirely.  During the active period of the war,
however; the effect of this revolution was in fact rather a greater
concentration of military power than its dispersion, for the States-
General meant simply the province of Holland.  Holland was the republic.

The organisation of the infantry was very simple.  The tactical unit
was the company.  A temporary combination of several companies--made a
regiment, commanded by a colonel or lieutenant-colonel, but for such
regiments there was no regular organisation.  Sometimes six or seven
companies were thus combined, sometimes three times that number, but the
strength of a force, however large, was always estimated by the number of
companies, not of regiments.

The normal strength of an infantry company, at the beginning of Maurice's
career, may be stated at one hundred and thirteen, commanded by one
captain, one lieutenant, one ensign, and by the usual non-commissioned
officers.  Each company was composed of musketeers, harquebusseers,
pikemen, halberdeers, and buckler-men.  Long after, portable firearms had
come into use, the greater portion of foot soldiers continued to be armed
with pikes, until the introduction of the fixed bayonet enabled the
musketeer to do likewise the duty of pikeman.  Maurice was among the
first to appreciate the advantage of portable firearms, and he
accordingly increased the proportion of soldiers armed with the musket
in his companies.  In a company of a hundred and thirteen, including
officers, he had sixty-four armed with firelocks to thirty carrying pikes
and halberds.  As before his time the proportion between the arms had
been nearly even; he thus more than doubled the number of firearms.

Of these weapons there were two sorts, the musket and the harquebus.  The
musket was a long, heavy, unmanageable instrument.  When fired it was-
placed upon an iron gaffle or fork, which: the soldier carried with him,
and stuck before him into the ground.  The bullets of the musket were
twelve to the pound.

The harquebus--or hak-bus, hook-gun, so called because of the hook in the
front part of the barrel to give steadiness in firing--was much lighter,
was discharged from the hand; and carried bullets of twenty-four to the
pound.  Both weapons had matchlocks.

The pike was eighteen feet long at least, and pikemen as well as
halberdsmen carried rapiers.

There were three buckler-men to each company, introduced by Maurice for
the personal protection of the leader of the company.  The prince was
often attended by one himself, and, on at least one memorable occasion,
was indebted to this shield for the preservation of his life.

The cavalry was divided into lancers and carabineers.  The unit was the
squadron, varying in number from sixty to one hundred and fifty, until
the year 1591, when the regular complement of the squadron was fixed at
one hundred and twenty.

As the use of cavalry on the battle-field at that day, or at least in the
Netherlands, was not in rapidity of motion, nor in severity of shock--the
attack usually taking place on a trot--Maurice gradually displaced the
lance in favour of the carbine.  His troopers thus became rather mounted
infantry than regular cavalry.

The carbine was at least three feet long, with wheel-locks, and carried
bullets of thirty to the pound.

The artillery was a peculiar Organisation.  It was a guild of citizens,
rather than a strictly military force like the cavalry and infantry.  The
arm had but just begun to develop itself, and it was cultivated as a
special trade by the guild of the holy Barbara existing in all the
principal cities.  Thus a municipal artillery gradually organised itself,
under the direction of the gun-masters (bus-meesters), who in secret
laboured at the perfection of their art, and who taught it to their
apprentices and journeymen; as the principles of other crafts were
conveyed by master to pupil.  This system furnished a powerful element of
defence at a period when every city had in great measure to provide for
its own safety.

In the earlier campaigns of Maurice three kinds of artillery were used;
the whole cannon (kartow) of forty-eight pounds; the half-cannon, or
twenty-four pounder, and the field-piece carrying a ball of twelve
pounds.  The two first were called battering pieces or siege-guns.  All
the guns were of bronze.

The length of the whole cannon was about twelve feet; its weight one
hundred and fifty times that of the ball, or about seven thousand pounds.
It was reckoned that the whole kartow could fire from eighty to one
hundred shots in an hour.  Wet hair cloths were used to cool the piece
after every, ten or twelve discharges.  The usual charge was twenty
pounds of powder.

The whole gun was drawn by thirty-one horses, the half-cannon by twenty-
three.

The field-piece required eleven horses, but a regular field-artillery, as
an integral part of the army, did not exist, and was introduced in much
later times.  In the greatest pitched battle ever fought by Maurice, that
of Nieuport, he had but six field-pieces.

The prince also employed mortars in his sieges, from which were thrown
grenades, hot shot, and stones; but no greater distance was reached than
six hundred yards.  Bomb-shells were not often used although they had
been known for a century.

Before the days of Maurice a special education for engineers had never
been contemplated.  Persons who had privately acquired a knowledge of
fortification and similar branches of the science were employed, upon
occasion, but regular corps of engineers there were none.  The prince
established a course of instruction in this profession at the University
of Leyden, according to a system drawn up by the celebrated Stevinus.

Doubtless the most important innovation of the prince, and the one which
required the most energy to enforce, was the use of the spade.  His
soldiers were jeered at by the enemy as mere boors and day labourers who
were dishonouring themselves and their profession by the use of that
implement instead of the sword.  Such a novelty was a shock to all the
military ideas of the age, and it was only the determination and vigour
of the prince and of his cousin Lewis William that ultimately triumphed
over the universal prejudice.

The pay of the common soldier varied from ten to twenty florins the
month, but every miner had eighteen florins, and, when actually working
in the mines, thirty florins monthly.  Soldiers used in digging trenches
received, over and above their regular pay, a daily wage of from ten to
fifteen styvers, or nearly a shilling sterling.

Another most wholesome improvement made by the prince was in the payment
of his troops.  The system prevailing in every European country at that
day, by which Governments were defrauded and soldiers starved, was most
infamous.  The soldiers were paid through the captain, who received the
wages of a full company, when perhaps not one-third of the names on the
master-roll were living human beings.  Accordingly two-thirds of all the
money stuck to the officer's fingers, and it was not thought a disgrace
to cheat the Government by dressing and equipping for the day a set of
ragamuffins, caught up in the streets for the purpose, and made to pass
muster as regular soldiers.

These parse-volants, or scarecrows, were passed freely about from one
company to another, and the indecency of the fraud was never thought a
disgrace to the colours of the company.

Thus, in the Armada year, the queen had demanded that a portion of her
auxiliary force in the Netherlands should be sent to England.  The States
agreed that three thousand of these English troops, together with a few
cavalry companies, should go, but stipulated that two thousand should
remain in the provinces.  The queen accepted the proposal, but when the
two thousand had been counted out, it appeared that there was scarcely a
man left for the voyage to England.  Yet every one of the English
captains had claimed full pay for his company from her Majesty's
exchequer.

Against this tide of peculation and corruption the strenuous Maurice set
himself with heart and soul, and there is no doubt that to his
reformation in this vital matter much of his military success was owing.
It was impossible that roguery and venality should ever furnish a solid
foundation for the martial science.

To the student of military history the campaigns and sieges of Maurice,
and especially the earlier: ones, are of great importance.  There is no
doubt whatever, that the youth who now, after deep study and careful
preparation, was measuring himself against the first captains of the age,
was founding the great modern school of military science.  It was in this
Netherland academy, and under the tuition of its consummate professor,
that the commanders of the seventeenth century not only acquired the
rudiments, but perfected themselves in the higher walks of their art.
Therefore the siege operations, in which all that had been invented by
modern genius, or rescued from the oblivion which had gathered over
ancient lore during the more vulgar and commonplace practice of the
mercenary commanders of the day was brought into successful application,
must always engage the special attention of the military student.

To the general reader, more interested in marking the progress of
civilisation and the advance of the people in the path of development
and true liberty, the spectacle of tho young stadholder's triumphs has
an interest of another kind.  At the moment when a thorough practical
soldier was most needed by the struggling little commonwealth, to enable
it to preserve liberties partially secured by its unparalleled sacrifices
of blood and treasure during a quarter of a century, and to expel the
foreign invader from the soil which he had so long profaned, it was
destined that a soldier should appear.

Spade in hand, with his head full of Roman castrametation and geometrical
problems, a prince, scarce emerged from boyhood, presents himself on that
stage where grizzled Mansfelds, drunken Hohenlos, and truculent Verdugos
have been so long enacting, that artless military drama which consists
of hard knocks and wholesale massacres.  The novice is received with
universal hilarity.  But although the machinery of war varies so steadily
from age to age that a commonplace commander of to-day, rich in the
spoils of preceding time, might vanquish the Alexanders, and Caesars,
and Frederics, with their antiquated enginery, yet the moral stuff out of
which great captains, great armies, great victories are created, is the
simple material it was in the days of Sesostris or Cyrus.  The moral and
physiological elements remain essentially the same as when man first
began to walk up and down the earth and destroy his fellow-creatures.

To make an army a thorough mowing-machine, it then seemed necessary that
it should be disciplined into complete mechanical obedience.  To secure
this, prompt payment of wages and inexorable punishment of delinquencies
were indispensable.  Long arrearages were now converting Farnese's
veterans into systematic marauders; for unpaid soldiers in every age
and country have usually degenerated into highwaymen, and it is an
impossibility for a sovereign, with the strictest intentions, to persist
in starving his soldiers and in killing them for feeding themselves.  In
Maurice's little army, on the contrary, there were no back-wages and no
thieving.  At the siege of Delfzyl Maurice hung two of his soldiers for
stealing, the one a hat and the other a poniard, from the townsfolk,
after the place had capitulated.  At the siege of Hulst he ordered
another to be shot, before the whole camp, for robbing a woman.

This seems sufficiently harsh, but war is not a pastime nor a very humane
occupation.  The result was, that robbery disappeared, and it is better
for all that enlisted men should be soldiers rather than thieves.  To
secure the ends which alone can justify war--and if the Netherlanders
engaged in defending national existence and human freedom against foreign
tyranny were not justifiable then a just war has never been waged--
a disciplined army is vastly more humane in its operations than a band
of brigands.  Swift and condign punishments by the law-martial, for even
trifling offences, is the best means of discipline yet devised.

To bring to utmost perfection the machinery already in existence,
to encourage invention, to ponder the past with a practical application
to the present, to court fatigue, to scorn pleasure, to concentrate the
energies on the work in hand, to cultivate quickness of eye and calmness
of nerve in the midst of danger, to accelerate movements, to economise
blood even at the expense of time, to strive after ubiquity and
omniscience in the details of person and place, these were the
characteristics of Maurice, and they have been the prominent traits of
all commanders who have stamped themselves upon their age.  Although his
method of war-making differed as far as possible from that quality in
common, of the Bearnese, yet the two had one personal insensibility to
fear.  But in the case of Henry, to confront danger for its own sake
was in itself a pleasure, while the calmer spirit of Maurice did not
so much seek the joys of the combat as refuse to desist from scientific
combinations in the interests of his personal safety.  Very frequently,
in the course of his early campaigns, the prince was formally and
urgently requested by the States-General not to expose his life so
recklessly, and before he had passed his twenty-fifth year he had
received wounds which, but for fortunate circumstances, would have proved
mortal, because he was unwilling to leave special operations on which
much was depending to other eyes than his own.  The details of his
campaigns are, of necessity, the less interesting to a general reader
from their very completeness.  Desultory or semi-civilised warfare, where
the play of the human passions is distinctly visible, where individual
man, whether in buff jerkin or Milan coat of proof, meets his fellow man
in close mortal combat, where men starve by thousands or are massacred by
town-fulls, where hamlets or villages blaze throughout whole districts or
are sunk beneath the ocean--scenes of rage, hatred, vengeance, self-
sacrifice, patriotism, where all the virtues and vices of which humanity
is capable stride to and fro in their most violent colours and most
colossal shape where man in a moment rises almost to divinity, or sinks
beneath the beasts of the field--such tragical records of which the
sanguinary story of mankind is full--and no portion of them more so than
the Netherland chronicles appeal more vividly to the imagination than the
neatest solution of mathematical problems.  Yet, if it be the legitimate
end of military science to accomplish its largest purposes at the least
expense of human suffering; if it be progress in civilisation to acquire
by scientific combination what might be otherwise attempted, and perhaps
vainly attempted, by infinite carnage, then is the professor with his
diagrams, standing unmoved amid danger, a more truly heroic image than
Coeur-de-Lion with his battle-axe or Alva with his truncheon.

The system--then a new one--which Maurice introduced to sustain that
little commonwealth from sinking of which he had become at the age of
seventeen the predestined chief, was the best under the circumstances
that could have been devised.  Patriotism the most passionate, the most
sublime, had created the republic.  To maintain its existence against
perpetual menace required the exertion of perpetual skill.

Passionless as algebra, the genius of Maurice was ready for the task.
Strategic points of immense value, important cities and fortresses, vital
river-courses and communications--which foreign tyranny had acquired
during the tragic past with a patient iniquity almost without a parallel,
and which patriotism had for years vainly struggled to recover--were the
earliest trophies and prizes of his art.  But the details of his
victories may be briefly indicated, for they have none of the
picturesqueness of crime.  The sieges of Naarden, Harlem, Leyden, were
tragedies of maddening interest, but the recovery of Zutphen, Deventer,
Nymegen, Groningen, and many other places--all important though they
were--was accomplished with the calmness of a consummate player, who
throws down on the table the best half dozen invincible cards which it
thus becomes superfluous to play.

There were several courses open to the prince before taking the field.
It was desirable to obtain control of the line of the Waal, by which that
heart of the republic--Holland--would be made entirely secure.  To this
end, Gertruydenberg--lately surrendered to the enemy by the perfidy of
the Englishman Wingfield, to whom it had been entrusted--Bois le Duc, and
Nymegen were to be wrested from Spain.

It was also important to hold the Yssel, the course of which river led
directly through the United Netherlands, quite to the Zuyder Zee, cutting
off Friesland, Groningen, and Gelderland from their sister provinces of
Holland and Zeeland.  And here again the keys to this river had been lost
by English treason.  The fort of Zutphen and the city of Deventer had
been transferred to the Spaniard by Roland York and Sir William Stanley,
in whose honour the republic had so blindly confided, and those cities it
was now necessary to reduce by regular siege before the communications
between the eastern and western portions of the little commonwealth could
ever be established.

Still farther in the ancient Frisian depths, the memorable treason of
that native Netherlander, the high-born Renneberg, had opened the way
for the Spaniard's foot into the city of Groningen.  Thus this whole
important province--with its capital--long subject to the foreign
oppressor, was garrisoned with his troops.

Verdugo, a veteran officer of Portuguese birth, who had risen from the
position of hostler to that of colonel and royal stadholder, commanded in
Friesland.  He had in vain demanded reinforcements and supplies from
Farnese, who most reluctantly was obliged to refuse them in order that he
might obey his master's commands to neglect everything for the sake of
the campaign in France.

And Verdugo, stripped of all adequate forces to protect his important
province, was equally destitute of means for feeding the troops that were
left to him.  "I hope to God that I may do my duty to the king and your
Highness," he cried, "but I find myself sold up and pledged to such an
extent that I am poorer than when I was a soldier at four crowns a month.
And everybody in the town is as desperate as myself."

Maurice, after making a feint of attacking Gertruydenberg and Bois le
Duc, so that Farnese felt compelled, with considerable difficulty, to
strengthen the garrison of those places, came unexpectedly to Arnhem
with a force of nine thousand foot and sixteen hundred horse.  He had
previously and with great secrecy sent some companies of infantry under
Sir Francis Vere to Doesburg.

On the 23rd May (1591) five peasants and six peasant women made their
appearance at dawn of day before the chief guard-house of the great fort
in the Badmeadow (Vel-uwe), opposite Zutphen, on the west side of the
Yssel.  It was not an unusual occurrence.  These boors and their wives
had brought baskets of eggs, butter, and cheese, for the garrison, and
they now set themselves quietly down on the ground before the gate,
waiting for the soldiers of the garrison to come out and traffic with
them for their supplies.  Very soon several of the guard made their
appearance, and began to chaffer with the peasants, when suddenly one of
the women plucked a pistol from under her petticoats and shot dead the
soldier who was cheapening her eggs.  The rest of the party, transformed
in an instant from boors to soldiers, then sprang upon the rest of the
guard, overpowered and bound them, and took possession of the gate.  A
considerable force, which had been placed in ambush by Prince Maurice
near the spot, now rushed forward, and in a few minutes the great fort of
Zutphen was mastered by the States' forces without loss of a man.  It was
a neat and perfectly successful stratagem.

Next day Maurice began the regular investment of the city.  On the 26th,
Count Lewis William arrived with some Frisian companies.  On the 27th,
Maurice threw a bridge of boats from the Badmeadow side, across the river
to the Weert before the city.  On the 28th he had got batteries, mounting
thirty-two guns, into position, commanding the place at three points.  On
the 30th the town capitulated.  Thus within exactly one week from the
firing of the pistol shot by the supposed butterwoman, this fort and
town, which had so long resisted the efforts of the States, and were such
important possessions of the Spaniards, fell into the hands of Maurice.
The terms of surrender were easy.  The city being more important than
its garrison, the soldiers were permitted to depart with bag and baggage.
The citizens were allowed three days to decide whether to stay under
loyal obedience to the States-General, or to take their departure.
Those who chose to remain were to enjoy all the privileges of citizens
of the United Provinces.

But very few substantial citizens were left, for such had been the
tyranny, the misery, and the misrule during the long occupation by a
foreign soldiery of what was once a thriving Dutch town, that scarcely
anybody but paupers and vagabonds were left.  One thousand houses were
ruined and desolate.  It is superfluous to add that the day of its
restoration to the authority of the Union was the beginning of its
renewed prosperity.

Maurice, having placed a national garrison in the place, marched the same
evening straight upon Deventer, seven miles farther down the river,
without pausing to sleep upon his victory.  His artillery and munitions
were sent rapidly down the Yssel.

Within five days he had thoroughly invested the city, and brought twenty-
eight guns to bear upon the weakest part of its defences.

It was a large, populous, well-built town, once a wealthy member of the
Hanseatic League, full of fine buildings, both public and private, the
capital of the rich and fertile province of Overyssel, and protected by a
strong wall and moat--as well-fortified a place as could be found in the
Netherlands.  The garrison consisted of fourteen hundred Spaniards and
Walloons, under the command of Count Herman van den Berg, first cousin of
Prince Maurice.

No sooner had the States army come before the city than a Spanish captain
observed--"We shall now have a droll siege--cousins on the outside,
cousins on the inside.  There will be a sham fight or two, and then the
cousins will make it up, and arrange matters to suit themselves."

Such hints had deeply wounded Van den Berg, who was a fervent Catholic,
and as loyal a servant to Philip II. as he could have been, had that
monarch deserved, by the laws of nature and by his personal services and
virtues, to govern all the swamps of Friesland.  He slept on the gibe,
having ordered all the colonels and captains of the garrison to attend at
solemn mass in the great church the next morning.  He there declared to
them all publicly that he felt outraged at the suspicions concerning his
fidelity, and after mass he took the sacrament, solemnly swearing never
to give up the city or even to speak of it until he had made such
resistance that he must be carried from the breach.  So long as he could
stand or sit he would defend the city entrusted to his care.

The whole council who had come from Zutphen to Maurice's camp were
allowed to deliberate concerning the siege.  The, enemy had been seen
hovering about the neighbourhood in considerable numbers, but had not
ventured an attempt to throw reinforcements into the place.  Many of the
counsellors argued against the siege.  It was urged that the resistance
would be determined and protracted, and that the Duke of Parma was sure
to take the field in person to relieve so important a city, before its
reduction could be effected.

But Maurice had thrown a bridge across the Yssel above, and another below
the town, had carefully and rapidly taken measures in the success of
which he felt confident, and now declared that it would be cowardly and
shameful to abandon an enterprise so well begun.

The city had been formally summoned to surrender, and a calm but most
decided refusal had been returned.

On the 9th June the batteries began playing, and after four thousand six
hundred shots a good breach had been effected in the defences along the
Kaye--an earthen work lying between two strong walls of masonry.

The breach being deemed practicable, a storm was ordered.  To reach the
Kaye it was necessary to cross a piece of water called the Haven, over
which a pontoon bridge was hastily thrown.  There was now a dispute among
the English, Scotch, and Netherlanders for precedence in the assault.
It was ultimately given to the English, in order that the bravery of that
nation might now on the same spot wipe out the disgrace inflicted upon
its name by the treason of Sir William Stanley.  The English did their
duty well and rushed forward merrily, but the bridge proved too short.
Some sprang over and pushed boldly for the breach.  Some fell into the
moat and were drowned.  Others, sustained by the Netherlanders under
Solms, Meetkerke, and Brederode, effected their passage by swimming,
leaping, or wading, so that a resolute attack was made.  Herman van den
Berg met them in the breach at the head of seven companies.  The
defenders were most ferocious in their resistance.  They were also very
drunk.  The count had placed many casks of Rhenish and of strong beer
within reach, and ordered his soldiers to drink their fill as they
fought.  He was himself as vigorous in his potations as he was chivalrous
with sword and buckler.  Two pages and two lieutenants fell at his side,
but still he fought at the head of his men with a desperation worthy of
his vow, until he fell wounded in the eye and was carried from the place.
Notwithstanding this disaster to the commander of the town, the
assailants were repulsed, losing two hundred-and twenty-five in killed
and wounded--Colonel Meetkerke and his brother, two most valuable Dutch
officers, among them.

During the whole of the assault, a vigorous cannonade had been kept up
upon other parts of the town, and houses and church-towers were toppling
down in all directions.  Meanwhile the inhabitants--for it was Sunday--
instead of going to service were driven towards the breach by the
serjeant-major, a truculent Spaniard, next in command to Van den Berg,
who ran about the place with a great stick, summoning the Dutch burghers
to assist the Spanish garrison on the wall.  It was thought afterwards
that this warrior would have been better occupied among the soldiers, at
the side of his commander.

A chivalrous incident in the open field occurred during the assault.
A gigantic Albanian cavalry officer came prancing out of Deventer into
the spaces between the trenches, defying any officer in the States' army
to break a lance with him.  Prince Maurice forbade any acceptance of the
challenge, but Lewis van der Cathulle, son of the famous Ryhove of Ghent,
unable to endure the taunts and bravado of this champion, at last
obtained permission to encounter him in single combat.  They met
accordingly with much ceremony, tilted against each other, and shivered
their lances in good style, but without much effect.  The Albanian then
drew a pistol.  Cathulle had no weapon save a cutlass, but with this
weapon he succeeded in nearly cutting off the hand which held the pistol.
He then took his enemy prisoner, the vain-glorious challenger throwing
his gold chain around his conqueror's neck in token of his victory.
Prince Maurice caused his wound to be bound up and then liberated him,
sending him into the city with a message to the governor.

During the following night the bridge, over which the  assailants had
nearly forced their way into the town, was vigorously attacked by the
garrison, but Count Lewis William, in person, with a chosen band defended
it stoutly till morning, beating back the Spaniards with heavy loss in a
sanguinary midnight contest.

Next morning there was a unanimous outcry on the part of the besieged for
a capitulation.  It was obvious that, with the walls shot to ruins as
they had been, the place was no longer tenable against Maurice's superior
forces.  A trumpet was sent to the prince before the dawn of day, and on
the 10th of June, accordingly, the place capitulated.

It was arranged that the garrison should retire with arms and baggage
whithersoever they chose.  Van den Berg stipulated nothing in favour of
the citizens, whether through forgetfulness or spite does not distinctly
appear.  But the burghers were received like brothers.  No plunder was
permitted, no ransom demanded, and the city took its place among its
sisterhood of the United Provinces.

Van den Berg himself was received at the prince's head, quarters with
much cordiality.  He was quite blind; but his wound seemed to be the
effect of exterior contusions, and he ultimately recovered the sight of
one eye.  There was mach free conversation between himself and his
cousins during the brief interval in which he was their guest.

"I've often told Verdugo," said he, "that the States had no power to make
a regular siege, nor to come with proper artillery into the field, and he
agreed with me.  But we were both wrong, for I now see the contrary."

To which Count Lewis William replied with a laugh: "My dear cousin, I've
observed that in all your actions you were in the habit of despising us
Beggars, and I have said that you would one day draw the shortest straw
in consequence.  I'm glad to hear this avowal from your own lips."
Herman attempted no reply but let the subject drop, seeming to regret
having said so much.

Soon afterwards he was forwarded by Maurice in his own coach to Ulff,
where he was attended by the prince's body physician till he was re-
established in health.

Thus within ten days of his first appearance before its walls, the city
of Deventer, and with it a whole province, had fallen into the hands of
Maurice.  It began to be understood that the young pedant knew something
about his profession, and that he had not been fagging so hard at the
science of war for nothing.

The city was in a sorry plight when the States took possession of it.
As at Zutphen, the substantial burghers had wandered away, and the
foreign soldiers bivouacking there so long had turned the stately old
Hanseatic city into a brick and mortar wilderness.  Hundreds of houses
had been demolished by the garrison, that the iron might be sold and the
woodwork burned for fuel; for the enemy had conducted himself as if
feeling in his heart that the occupation could not be a permanent one,
and as if desirous to make the place as desolate as possible for the
Beggars when they should return.

The dead body of the traitor York, who had died and been buried in
Deventer, was taken from the tomb, after the capture of the city, and
with the vulgar ferocity so characteristic of the times, was hung, coffin
and all, on the gibbet for the delectation of the States' soldiery.

Maurice, having thus in less than three weeks recovered two most
important cities, paused not an instant in his career but moved at once
on Groningen.  There was a strong pressure put upon him to attempt the
capture of Nymegen, but the understanding with the Frisian stadholders
and his troops had been that the enterprise upon Groningen should follow
the reduction of Deventer.

On the 26th June Maurice appeared before Groningen.  Next day, as a
precautionary step, he moved to the right and attacked the strong city of
Delfzyl.  This place capitulated to him on the 2nd July.  The fort of
Opslag surrendered on the 7th July.  He then moved to the west of
Groningen, and attacked the forts of Yementil and Lettebaest, which fell
into his hands on the 11th July.  He then moved along the Nyenoort
through the Seven Wolds and Drenthe to Steenwyk, before which strongly
fortified city he arrived on the 15th July.

Meantime, he received intercepted letters from Verdugo to the Duke of
Parma, dated 19th June from Groningen.  In these, the Spanish stadholder
informed Farnese that the enemy was hovering about his neighbourhood, and
that it would be necessary for the duke to take the field in person in
considerable force, or that Groningen would be lost, and with it the
Spanish forces in the province.  He enclosed a memorial of the course
proper to be adopted by the duke for his relief.

Notwithstanding the strictness by which Philip had tied his great
general's hands, Farnese felt the urgency of the situation.  By the end
of June, accordingly, although full of his measures for marching to the
relief of the Leaguers in Normandy, he moved into Gelderland, coming by
way of Xanten, Rees, and neighbouring places.  Here he paused for a
moment perplexed, doubting whether to take the aggressive in Gelderland
or to march straight to the relief of Groningen.  He decided that it was
better for the moment to protect the line of the Waal.  Shipping his army
accordingly into the Batavian Island or Good-meadow (Bet-uwe), which lies
between the two great horns of the Rhine, he laid siege to Fort
Knodsenburg, which Maurice had built the year before, on the right bank
of the Waal for the purpose of attacking Nymegen.  Farnese, knowing that
the general of the States was occupied with his whole army far away to
the north, and separated from him by two great rivers, wide and deep, and
by the whole breadth of that dangerous district called the Foul-meadow
(Vel-uwe), and by the vast quagmire known as the Rouvenian morass, which
no artillery nor even any organised forces had ever traversed since the
beginning of the world, had felt no hesitation in throwing his army in
boats across the Waal.  He had no doubt of reducing a not very powerful
fortress long before relief could be brought to it, and at the same time
of disturbing by his presence in Batavia the combinations of his young
antagonist in Friesland and Groningen.

So with six thousand foot and one thousand horse, Alexander came before
Knodsenburg.  The news reached Maurice at Steenwyk on the 15th July.
Instantly changing his plans, the prince decided that Farnese must be
faced at once, and, if possible, driven from the ground, thinking it more
important to maintain, by concentration, that which had already been
gained, than to weaken and diffuse his forces in insufficient attempts to
acquire more.  Before two days had passed, he was on the march southward,
having left Lewis William with a sufficient force to threaten Groningen.
Coming by way of Hasselt Zwol to Deventer, he crossed the Yssel on a
bridge of boats on the 18th of July, 1591 and proceeded to Arnhem.
His army, although excessively fatigued by forced marches in very hot
weather, over nearly impassable roads, was full of courage and
cheerfulness, having learned implicit confidence in their commander.
On the 20th he was at Arnhem.  On the 22nd his bridge of boats was made,
and he had thrown his little army across the Rhine into Batavia, and
entrenched himself with his six thousand foot and fourteen hundred horse
in the immediate neighbourhood of Farnese--Foul-meadow and Good-meadow,
dyke, bog, wold, and quagmire, had been successfully traversed, and
within one week of his learning that the great viceroy of Philip had
reached the Batavian island, Maurice stood confronting that famous
chieftain in battle-array.

On the 22nd July, Farnese, after firing two hundred and eighty-five shots
at Fort Knodsenburg, ordered an assault, expecting that so trifling a
work could hardly withstand a determined onslaught by his veterans.
To his surprise they were so warmly received that two hundred of the
assailants fell at the first onset, and the attack was most conclusively
repulsed.

And now Maurice had appeared upon the scene, determined to relieve a
place so important for his ulterior designs.  On the 24th July he sent
out a small but picked force of cavalry to reconnoitre the enemy.  They
were attacked by a considerable body of Italian and Spanish horse from
the camp before Knodsenburg, including Alexander's own company of lancers
under Nicelli.  The States troops fled before them in apparent dismay for
a little distance, hotly pursued by the royalists, until, making a sudden
halt, they turned to the attack, accompanied by five fresh companies of
cavalry and a thousand musketeers, who fell upon the foe from all
directions.  It was an ambush, which had been neatly prepared by Maurice
in person, assisted by Sir Francis Vere.  Sixty of the Spaniards and
Italians were killed and one hundred and fifty prisoners, including
Captain Nicelli, taken, while the rest of the party sought safety in
ignominious flight.  This little skirmish, in which ten companies of the
picked veterans of Alexander Farnese had thus been utterly routed before
his eyes, did much to inspire the States troops with confidence in
themselves and their leader.

Parma was too experienced a campaigner, and had too quick an eye, not to
recognise the error which he had committed in placing the dangerous river
Waal, without a bridge; between himself and his supplies.  He had not
dreamed that his antagonist would be capable of such celerity of movement
as he had thus displayed, and his first business now was to extricate
himself from a position which might soon become fatal.  Without
hesitation, he did his best to amuse the enemy in front of the fort, and
then passed the night in planting batteries upon the banks of the river,
under cover of which he succeeded next day in transporting in ferry-boats
his whole force, artillery and: baggage, to the opposite shore, without
loss, and with his usual skill.

He remained but a short time in Nymegen, but he was hampered by the
express commands of the king.  Moreover, his broken health imperatively
required that he should once more seek the healing influence of the
waters of Spa, before setting forth on his new French expedition.
Meanwhile, although he had for a time protected the Spanish possessions
in the north by his demonstration in Gelderland, it must be confessed
that the diversion thus given to the plans of Maurice was but a feeble
one.

Having assured the inhabitants of Nymegen that he would watch over the
city like the apple of, his eye, he took his departure on the 4th of
August for Spa.  He was accompanied on his journey by his son, Prince
Ranuccio, just arrived from Italy.

After the retreat of Farnese, Maurice mustered his forces at Arnhem, and
found himself at the head of seven thousand foot and fifteen hundred
horse.  It was expected by all the world that, being thus on the very
spot, he would forthwith proceed to reduce the ancient, wealthy, imperial
city of Nynegen.  The garrison and burghers accordingly made every
preparation to resist the attack, disconcerted as they were, however,
by the departure of Parma, and by the apparent incapacity of Verdugo to
bring them effectual relief.

But to the surprise of all men, the States forces suddenly disappeared
from the scene, having been, as it were, spirited away by night-time,
along those silent watery highways and crossways of canal, river, and
estuary--the military advantages of which to the Netherlands, Maurice was
the first thoroughly to demonstrate.  Having previously made great
preparations of munitions and provisions in Zeeland, the young general,
who was thought hard at work in Gelderland, suddenly presented himself
on the 19th September, before the gates of Hulst, on the border of
Zeeland and Brabant.

It was a place of importance from its situation, its possession by the
enemy being a perpetual thorn in the side of the States, and a constant
obstacle to the plans of Maurice.  His arrangements having been made with
the customary, neatness, celerity, and completeness, he received the
surrender of the city on the fifth day after his arrival.

Its commander, Castillo, could offer no resistance; and was subsequently,
it is said, beheaded by order of the Duke of Parma for his negligence.
The place is but a dozen miles from Antwerp, which city was at the very,
moment keeping great holiday and outdoing itself in magnificent festivals
in honour of young Ranuccio.  The capture of Hulst before his eyes was a
demonstration quite unexpected by the prince, and great was the wrath of
old Mondragon, governor of Antwerp, thus bearded in his den.  The veteran
made immediate preparations for chastising the audacious Beggars of
Zeeland and their, pedantic young commander, but no sooner had the
Spaniards taken the field than the wily foe had disappeared as magically
as he had come.

The Flemish earth seemed to have bubbles as the water hath, and while
Mondragon was beating the air in vain on the margin of the Scheld,
Maurice was back again upon the Waal, horse, foot, and artillery, bag,
baggage, and munition, and had fairly set himself down in earnest to
besiege Nymegen, before the honest burghers and the garrison had finished
drawing long breaths at their recent escape.  Between the 14th and 16th
October he had bridged the deep, wide, and rapid river, had transported
eight thousand five hundred infantry and, sixteen companies of cavalry to
the southern side, had entrenched his camp and made his approaches, and
had got sixty-eight pieces of artillery into three positions commanding
the weakest part of the defences of the city between the Falcon Tower and
the Hoender gate.  The fort of Knodsenburg was also ready to throw hot
shot across the river into the town.  Not a detail in all these
preparations escaped the vigilant eye of the Commander-in-Chief, and
again and again was he implored not so recklessly to expose a life
already become precious to his country.  On the 20th October, Maurice
sent to demand the surrender of the city.  The reply was facetious but
decisive.

The prince was but a young suitor, it was said, and the city a spinster
not so lightly to be won.  A longer courtship and more trouble would be
necessary.

Whereupon the suitor opened all his batteries without further delay, and
the spinster gave a fresh example of the inevitable fate of talking
castles and listening ladies.

Nymegen, despite her saucy answer on the 20th, surrendered on the 21st.
Relief was impossible.  Neither Parma, now on his way to France, nor
Verdugo, shut up in Friesland, could come to the rescue of the place,
and the combinations of Maurice were an inexorable demonstration.

The terms of the surrender were similar to those accorded to Zutphen and
Deventer.  In regard to the religious point it was expressly laid down by
Maurice that the demand for permission to exercise publicly the Roman
Catholic religion should be left to the decision of the States-General.

And thus another most important city had been added to the domains of the
republic.  Another triumph was inscribed on the record of the young
commander.  The exultation was very great throughout the United
Netherlands, and heartfelt was the homage rendered by all classes of his
countrymen to the son of William the Silent.

Queen Elizabeth wrote to congratulate him in warmest terms on his great
successes, and even the Spaniards began to recognise the merits of the
new chieftain.  An intercepted letter from Verdugo, who had been foiled
in his efforts to arrest the career of Maurice, indicated great respect
for his prowess.  "I have been informed," said the veteran, "that Count
Maurice of Nassau wishes to fight me.  Had I the opportunity I assure you
that I should not fail him, for even if ill luck were my portion, I
should at least not escape the honour of being beaten by such a
personage.  I beg you to tell him so with my affectionate compliments.
Yours, FRANCIS VERDUGO."

These chivalrous sentiments towards Prince Maurice had not however
prevented Verdugo from doing his best to assassinate Count Lewis William.
Two Spaniards had been arrested in the States camp this summer, who came
in as deserters, but who confessed "with little, or mostly without
torture," that they had been sent by their governor and colonel with
instructions to seize a favourable opportunity to shoot Lewis William and
set fire to his camp.  But such practices were so common on the part of
the Spanish commanders as to occasion no surprise whatever.

It will be remembered that two years before, the famous Martin Schenk had
come to a tragic end at Nymegen.  He had been drowned, fished up, hanged,
drawn, and quartered; after which his scattered fragments, having been
exposed on all the principal towers of the city, had been put in
pickle and deposited in a chest.  They were now collected and buried
triumphantly in the tomb of the Dukes of Gelderland.  Thus the shade
of the grim freebooter was at last appeased.

The government of the city was conferred upon Count Lewis William, with
Gerard de Jonge as his lieutenant.  A substantial garrison was placed in
the city, and, the season now far advanced Maurice brought the military
operations of the year, saving a slight preliminary demonstration against
Gertruydenberg, to a close.  He had deserved and attained--considerable
renown.  He had astonished the leisurely war-makers and phlegmatic
veterans of the time, both among friends and foes, by the unexampled
rapidity of his movements and the concentration of his attacks.  He had
carried great waggon trains and whole parks of siege artillery--the
heaviest then known--over roads and swamps which had been deemed
impassable even for infantry.  He had traversed the length and breadth of
the republic in a single campaign, taken two great cities in Overyssel,
picked up cities and fortresses in the province of Groningen, and
threatened its capital, menaced Steenwyk, relieved Knodsenburg though
besieged in person by the greatest commander of the age, beaten the most
famous cavalry of Spain and Italy under the eyes of their chieftain,
swooped as it were through the air upon Brabant, and carried off an
important city almost in the sight of Antwerp, and sped back again in the
freezing weather of early autumn, with his splendidly served and
invincible artillery, to the imperial city of Nymegen, which Farnese had
sworn to guard like the apple of his eye, and which, with consummate
skill, was forced out of his grasp in five days.

"Some might attribute these things to blind fortune," says an honest
chronicler who had occupied important posts in the service of the prince
and of his cousin Lewis William, "but they who knew the prince's constant
study and laborious attention to detail, who were aware that he never
committed to another what he could do himself, who saw his sobriety,
vigilance, his perpetual study and holding of council with Count Lewis
William (himself possessed of all these good gifts, perhaps even in
greater degree), and who never found him seeking, like so many other
commanders, his own ease and comfort, would think differently."




CHAPTER XXV.

     War in Brittany and Normandy--Death of La Noue--Religious and
     political persecution in Paris--Murder of President Brisson,
     Larcher, and Tardif--The sceptre of France offered to Philip--The
     Duke of Mayenne punishes the murderers of the magistrates--Speech of
     Henry's envoy to the States-General--Letter of Queen Elizabeth to
     Henry--Siege of Rouen--Farnese leads an army to its relief--The king
     is wounded in a skirmish--Siege of Rue by Farnese--Henry raises the
     siege of Rouen--Siege of Caudebec--Critical position of Farnese and
     his army--Victory of the Duke of Mercoeur in Brittany.

Again the central point towards which the complicated events to be
described in this history gravitate is found on the soil of France.
Movements apparently desultory and disconnected--as they may have seemed
to the contemporaneous observer, necessarily occupied with the local and
daily details which make up individual human life--are found to be
necessary parts of a whole, when regarded with that breadth and clearness
of vision which is permitted to human beings only when they can look
backward upon that long sequence of events which make up the life of
nations and which we call the Past.  It is only by the anatomical study
of what has ceased to exist that we can come thoroughly to comprehend the
framework and the vital conditions of that which lives.  It is only by
patiently lifting the shroud from the Past that we can enable ourselves
to make even wide guesses at the meaning of the dim Present and the
veiled Future.  It is only thus that the continuity of human history
reveals itself to us as the most important of scientific facts.

If ever commonwealth was apparently doomed to lose that national
existence which it had maintained for a brief period at the expense of
infinite sacrifice of blood and treasure, it was the republic of the
United Netherlands in the period immediately succeeding the death of
William the Silent.  Domestic treason, secession of important provinces,
religious-hatred, foreign intrigue, and foreign invasion--in such a sea
of troubles was the republic destined generations long to struggle.  Who
but the fanatical, the shallow-minded, or the corrupt could doubt the
inevitable issue of the conflict?  Did not great sages and statesmen
whose teachings seemed so much wiser in their generation than the
untaught impulses of the great popular heart, condemn over and over again
the hopeless struggles and the atrocious bloodshed which were thought to
disgrace the age, and by which it was held impossible that the cause of
human liberty should ever be advanced?

To us who look back from the vantage summit which humanity has reached--
thanks to the toil and sacrifices of those who have preceded us--it may
seem doubtful whether premature peace in the Netherlands, France, and
England would have been an unmitigated blessing, however easily it might
have been purchased by the establishment all over Europe of that holy
institution called the Inquisition, and by the tranquil acceptance of the
foreign domination of Spain.

If, too; ever country seemed destined to the painful process of national
vivisection and final dismemberment, it was France: Its natural guardians
and masters, save one, were in secret negotiation with foreign powers to
obtain with their assistance a portion of the national territory under
acknowledgment of foreign supremacy.  There was hardly an inch of French
soil that had not two possessors.  In Burgundy Baron Biron was battling
against the Viscount Tavannes; in the Lyonese and Dauphiny Marshal des
Digiueres was fighting with the Dukes of Savoy and Nemours; in Provence,
Epernon was resisting Savoy; in Languedoc, Constable Montmorency
contended with the Duke of Joyeuse; in Brittany, the Prince of Dombes was
struggling with the Duke of Mercoeur.

But there was one adventurer who thought he could show a better legal
title to the throne of France than all the doctors of the Sorbonne could
furnish to Philip II. and his daughter, and who still trusted, through
all the disasters which pursued him, and despite the machinations of
venal warriors and mendicant princes, to his good right and his good
sword, and to something more potent than both, the cause of national
unity.  His rebuke to the intriguing priests at the interview of St.
Denis, and his reference to the judgment of Solomon, formed the text to
his whole career.

The brunt of the war now fell upon Brittany and Normandy.  Three thousand
Spaniards under Don John de Aquila had landed in the port of Blavet which
they had fortified, as a stronghold on the coast.  And thither, to defend
the integrity of that portion of France, which, in Spanish hands, was a
perpetual menace to her realm, her crown, even to her life, Queen
Elizabeth had sent some three thousand Englishmen, under commanders well
known to France and the Netherlands.  There was black Norris again
dealing death among the Spaniards and renewing his perpetual squabbles
with Sir Roger Williams.  There was that doughty Welshman himself,
truculent and caustic as ever--and as ready with sword or pen, foremost
in every mad adventure or every forlorn hope, criticising with sharpest
tongue the blunders and shortcomings of friend and foe, and devoting the
last drop in his veins with chivalrous devotion to his Queen.  "The world
cannot deny," said he, "that any carcase living ventured himself freer
and oftener for his prince, state, and friends than I did mine.  There is
no more to be had of a poor beast than his skin, and for want of other
means I never respected mine in the least respect towards my sovereign's
service, or country."  And so passing his life in the saddle and under
fire, yet finding leisure to collect the materials for, and to complete
the execution of, one of the most valuable and attractive histories of
the age, the bold Welshman again and again appears, wearing the same
humorous but truculent aspect that belonged to him when he was wont to
run up and down in a great morion and feathers on Flemish battlefields,
a mark for the Spanish sharpshooters.

There, too, under the banner of the Bearnese, that other historian of
those sanguinary times, who had fought on almost every battle-field where
tyranny and liberty had sought to smite each other dead, on French or
Flemish soil, and who had prepared his famous political and military
discourses in a foul dungeon swarming with toads and rats and other
villainous reptiles to which the worse than infernal tyranny of Philip
II. had consigned him for seven years long as a prisoner of war--the
brave and good La Noue, with the iron arm, hero of a hundred combats,
was fighting his last fight.  At the siege of Lamballe in Brittany, he
had taken off his calque and climbed a ladder to examine the breach
effected by the batteries.  An arquebus shot from the town grazed his
forehead, and, without inflicting a severe wound, stunned him so much
that he lost his balance and fell head foremost towards the ground; his
leg, which had been wounded at the midnight assault upon Paris, where he
stood at the side of King Henry, caught in the ladder and held him
suspended.  His head was severely bruised, and the contusions and shock
to his war-worn frame were so great that he died after lingering eighteen
days.

His son de Teligny; who in his turn had just been exchanged and released
from the prison where he had lain since his capture before Antwerp, had
hastened with joy to join his father in the camp, but came to close his
eyes.  The veteran caused the chapter in Job on the resurrection of the
body to be read to him on his death-bed, and died expressing his firm
faith in a hereafter.  Thus passed away, at the age of sixty, on the 4th
August, 1591, one of the most heroic spirits of France.  Prudence,
courage, experience, military knowledge both theoretic and practical,
made him one of the first captains of the age, and he was not more
distinguished for his valour than for the purity of his life, and the
moderation, temperance, and justice of his character.  The Prince of
Dombes, in despair at his death, raised the siege of Lamballe.

There was yet another chronicler, fighting among the Spaniards, now in
Brittany, now in Normandy, and now in Flanders, and doing his work as
thoroughly with his sword as afterwards with his pen, Don Carlos Coloma,
captain of cavalry, afterwards financier, envoy, and historian.  For it
was thus that those writers prepared themselves for their work.  They
were all actors in the great epic, the episodes of which they have
preserved.  They lived and fought, and wrought and suffered and wrote.
Rude in tongue; aflame with passion, twisted all awry by prejudice,
violent in love and hate, they have left us narratives which are at
least full of colour and thrilling with life.

Thus Netherlanders, Englishmen, and Frenchmen were again mingling their
blood and exhausting their energies on a hundred petty battle-fields of
Brittany and Normandy; but perhaps to few of those hard fighters was it
given to discern the great work which they were slowly and painfully
achieving.

In Paris the League still maintained its ascendancy.  Henry, having again
withdrawn from his attempts to reduce the capital, had left the sixteen
tyrants who governed it more leisure to occupy themselves with internal
politics.  A network of intrigue was spread through the whole atmosphere
of the place.  The Sixteen, sustained by the power of Spain and Rome, and
fearing nothing so much as the return of peace, by which their system of
plunder would come to an end, proceeded with their persecution of all
heretics, real or supposed, who were rich enough to offer a reasonable
chance of spoil.  The soul of all these intrigues was the new legate,
Sego, bishop of Piacenza.  Letters from him to Alexander Farnese,
intercepted by Henry, showed a determination to ruin the Duke of Mayenne
and Count Belin governor of Paris, whom he designated as Colossus and
Renard, to extirpate the magistrates, and to put Spanish partizans in
their places, and in general to perfect the machinery by which the
authority of Philip was to be established in France.  He was perpetually
urging upon that monarch the necessity of spending more money among his
creatures in order to carry out these projects.

Accordingly the attention of the Sixteen had been directed to President
Brisson, who had already made himself so dangerously conspicuous by his
resistance to the insolent assumption of the cardinal-legate.  This
eminent juris-consult had succeeded Pomponne de Bellievre as first
president of the Parliament of Paris.  He had been distinguished for
talent, learning, and eloquence as an advocate; and was the author of
several important legal works.  His ambition to fill the place of first
president had caused him to remain in Paris after its revolt against
Henry III.  He was no Leaguer; and, since his open defiance of the ultra-
Catholic party, he had been a marked man--doomed secretly by the
confederates who ruled the capital.  He had fondly imagined that he could
govern the Parisian populace as easily as he had been in the habit of
influencing the Parliament or directing his clients.  He expected to
restore the city to its obedience to the constituted authorities.  He
hoped to be himself the means of bringing Henry IV. in triumph to the
throne of his ancestors.  He found, however, that a revolution was more
difficult to manage than a law case; and that the confederates of the
Holy League were less tractable than his clients had usually been found.

On the night of the 14th November; 1591; he was seized on the bridge St.
Michel, while on his way to parliament, and was told that he was expected
at the Hotel de Ville.  He was then brought to the prison of the little
Chatelet.

Hardly had he been made secure in the dimly-lighted dungeon, when Crome,
a leader among the Parisian populacey made his appearance, accompanied by
some of his confederates, and dressed in a complete suit of mail.  He
ordered the magistrate to take off his hat and to kneel.  He then read a
sentence condemning him to death.  Profoundly astonished, Brisson
demanded to know of what crime he was accused; and under what authority.
The answer was a laugh; and an assurance that he had no time to lose.
He then begged that at least he might be imprisoned long enough to enable
him to complete a legal work on which he was engaged, and which, by his
premature death, would be lost to the commonwealth.  This request
produced no doubt more merriment than his previous demands.  His judges
were inflexible; and allowed him hardly time to confess himself.  He was
then hanged in his dungeon.

Two other magistrates, Larcher and Tardif, were executed in the same
way, in the same place, and on the same night.  The crime charged against
them was having spoken in a public assembly somewhat freely against the
Sixteen, and having aided in the circulation in Paris of a paper drawn
up by the Duke of Nevers, filled with bitterness against the Lorraine
princes and the League, and addressed to the late Pope Sixtus.

The three bodies were afterwards gibbeted on the Greve in front of the
Hotel de Ville, and exposed for two days to the insults and fury of the
populace.

This was the culminating point of the reign of terror in Paris.  Never
had the sixteen tyrants; lords of the market halls, who governed the
capital by favour of and in the name of the populace, seemed more
omnipotent.  As representatives or plenipotentiaries of Madam League they
had laid the crown.  at the feet of the King of Spain, hoping by still
further drafts on his exchequer and his credulity to prolong indefinitely
their own ignoble reign.  The extreme democratic party, which had
hitherto supported the House of Lorraine and had seemed to idolize that
family in the person of the great Balafre, now believed themselves
possessed of sufficient power to control the Duke of Mayenne and all his
adherents.  They sent the Jesuit Claude Mathieu with a special memorial
to Philip II.  That monarch was implored to take, the sceptre of France,
and to reign over them, inasmuch as they most willingly threw themselves
into his arms?  They assured him that all reasonable people, and
especially the Holy League, wished him to take the reins of Government,
on condition of exterminating heresy throughout the kingdom by force of
arms, of publishing the Council of Trent, and of establishing everywhere
the Holy inquisition--an institution formidable only to the wicked and
desirable for the good.  It was suggested that Philip should not call
himself any longer King of Spain nor adopt the title of King of France,
but that he should proclaim himself the Great King, or make use of some
similar designation, not indicating any specialty but importing universal
dominion.

Should Philip, however, be disinclined himself to accept the monarchy,
it was suggested that the young Duke of Guise, son of the first martyr
of France, would be the most appropriate personage to be honoured with
the hand of the legitimate Queen of France, the Infanta Clara Isabella.

But the Sixteen were reckoning without the Duke of Mayenne.  That great
personage, although an indifferent warrior and an utterly unprincipled
and venal statesman, was by no means despicable as a fisherman in the
troubled waters of revolution.  He knew how to manage intrigues with both
sides for his own benefit.  Had he been a bachelor he might have obtained
the Infanta and shared her prospective throne.  Being encumbered with a
wife he had no hope of becoming the son-in-law of Philip, and was
determined that his nephew Guise should not enjoy a piece of good fortune
denied to himself.  The escape of the young duke from prison had been the
signal for the outbreak of jealousies between uncle and nephew, which
Parma and other agents had been instructed by their master to foster to
the utmost.  "They must be maintained in such disposition in regard to
me," he said, "that the one being ignorant of my relations to the other,
both may without knowing it do my will."

But Mayenne, in this grovelling career of self-seeking, in this perpetual
loading of dice and marking of cards, which formed the main occupation of
so many kings and princes of the period, and which passed for
Machiavellian politics, was a fair match for the Spanish king and his
Italian viceroy.  He sent President Jeannin on special mission to Philip,
asking for two armies, one to be under his command, the other under that
of Farnese, and assured him that he should be king himself, or appoint
any man he liked to the vacant throne.  Thus he had secured one hundred
thousand crowns a month to carry on his own game withal.  "The
maintenance of these two armies costs me 261,000 crowns a month," said
Philip to his envoy Ybarra.

And what was the result of all this expenditure of money, of all this
lying and counter-lying, of all this frantic effort on the part of the
most powerful monarch of the age to obtain property which did not belong
to him--the sovereignty of a great kingdom, stocked with a dozen millions
of human beings--of all this endless bloodshed of the people in the
interests of a high-born family or two, of all this infamous brokerage
charged by great nobles for their attempts to transfer kingdoms like
private farms from one owner to another?  Time was to show.  Meanwhile
men trembled at the name of Philip II., and grovelled before him as the
incarnation of sagacity, high policy, and king-craft.

But Mayenne, while taking the brokerage, was less anxious about the
transfer.  He had fine instinct enough to suspect that the Bearnese,
outcast though he seemed, might after all not be playing so desperate a
game against the League as it was the fashion to suppose.  He knew
whether or not Henry was likely to prove a more fanatical Huguenot in
1592 than he bad shown himself twenty years before at the Bartholomew
festival.  And he had wit enough to foresee that the "instruction" which
the gay free-thinker held so cautiously in his fingers might perhaps turn
out the trump card.  A bold, valorous Frenchman with a flawless title,
and washed whiter than snow by the freshet of holy water, might prove a
more formidable claimant to the allegiance of Frenchmen than a foreign
potentate, even though backed by all the doctors of the Sorbonne.

The murder of President Brisson and his colleagues by the confederates of
the sixteen quarters, was in truth the beginning of the end.  What seemed
a proof of supreme power was the precursor of a counter-revolution,
destined ere long to lead farther than men dreamed.  The Sixteen believed
themselves omnipotent.  Mayenne being in their power, it was for them to
bestow the crown at their will, or to hold it suspended in air as long as
seemed best to them.  They felt no doubt that all the other great cities
in the kingdom would follow the example of Paris.

But the lieutenant-general of the realm felt it time for him to show that
his authority was not a shadow--that he was not a pasteboard functionary
like the deceased cardinal-king, Charles X.  The letters entrusted by the
Sixteen to Claude Mathieu were intercepted by Henry, and, very probably,
an intimation of their contents was furnished to Mayenne.  At any rate,
the duke, who lacked not courage nor promptness when his own interests
were concerned, who felt his authority slipping away from him, now that
it seemed the object of the Spaniards to bind the democratic party to
themselves by a complicity in crime, hastened at once to Paris,
determined to crush these intrigues and to punish the murderers of the
judges.  The Spanish envoy Ybarra, proud, excitable, violent, who had
been privy to the assassinations, and was astonished that the deeds had
excited indignation and fury instead of the terror counted upon,
remonstrated with Mayenne, intimating that in times of civil commotion it
was often necessary to be blind and deaf.

In vain.  The duke carried it with a high and firm hand.  He arrested the
ringleaders, and hanged four of them in the basement of the Louvre within
twenty days after the commission of their crime.  The energy was well-
timed and perfectly successful.  The power of the Sixteen was struck to
the earth at a blow.  The ignoble tyrants became  in a moment as
despicable as they had been formidable and insolent.  Crome, more
fortunate than many of his fellows, contrived to make his escape
out of the kingdom.

Thus Mayenne had formally broken with the democratic party, so called-
with the market-halls oligarchy.  In thus doing, his ultimate rupture
with the Spaniards was foreshadowed.  The next combination for him to
strive for would be one to unite the moderate Catholics and the Bearnese.
Ah! if Henry would but "instruct" himself out of hand, what a game the
duke might play!

The burgess-party, the mild royalists, the disgusted portion of the
Leaguers, coalescing with those of the Huguenots whose fidelity might
prove stanch even against the religious apostasy contemplated by their
chief--this combination might prove an over-match for the ultra-leaguers,
the democrats, and the Spaniards.  The king's name would be a tower of
strength for that "third party," which began to rear its head very boldly
and to call itself "Politica."  Madam League might succumb to this new
rival in the fickle hearts of the French.

At the beginning of the year 1591; Buzanval had presented his credentials
to the States-General at the Hague as envoy of Henry IV.  In the speech
which he made on this occasion he expressed the hope that the mission of
the Viscount Turenne, his Majesty's envoy to England and to the
Netherlands, had made known the royal sentiments towards the States and
the great satisfaction of the king with their energetic sympathy and
assistance.  It was notorious, said Buzanval, that the King of Spain for
many years had been governed by no other motive than to bring all the
rest of Christendom under his dominion, while at the same time he forced
upon those already placed under his sceptre a violent tyranny, passing
beyond all the bounds that God, nature, and reason had set to lawful
forms of government.  In regard to nations born under other laws than
his, he had used the pretext of religion for reducing them to servitude.
The wars stirred up by his family in Germany, and his recent invasion of
England, were proofs of this intention, still fresh in the memory of all
men.  Still more flagrant were his machinations in the present troubles
of France.  Of his dealings with his hereditary realms, the condition of
the noble provinces of the Netherlands, once so blooming under reasonable
laws, furnished, a sufficient illustration.  You see, my masters,
continued the envoy, the subtle plans of the Spanish king and his
counsellors to reach with certainty the object of their ambition.
They have reflected that Spain, which is the outermost corner of Europe,
cannot conveniently make war upon other Christian realms.  They have seen
that a central position is necessary to enable them to stretch their arms
to every side.  They have remembered that princes who in earlier days
were able to spread their wings over all Christendom had their throne in
France, like Charles the Great and his descendants.  Therefore the king
is now earnestly bent on seizing this occasion to make himself master of
France.  The death of the late king (Henry III.) had no sooner occurred,
than--as the blood through great terror rushes from the extremities and
overflows the heart--they here also, fearing to lose their opportunity
and astonished at the valour of our present king, abandoned all their
other enterprises in order to pour themselves upon France.

Buzanval further reminded the States that Henry had received the most
encouraging promises from the protestant princes of Germany, and that so
great a personage as the Viscount Turenne, who had now gone thither to
reap the fruit of those promises, would not have been sent on such a
mission except that its result was certain.  The Queen of England, too,
had promised his Majesty most liberal assistance.

It was not necessary to argue as to the close connection between the
cause of the Netherlands and that of France.  The king had beaten down
the mutiny of his own subjects, and repulsed the invasion of the Dukes of
Savoy and of Lorraine.  In consideration of the assistance promised by
Germany and England--for a powerful army would be at the command of Henry
in the spring--it might be said that the Netherlands might repose for a
time and recruit their exhausted energies, under the shadow of these
mighty preparations.

"I do not believe, however," said the minister, "that you will all answer
me thus.  The faint-hearted and the inexperienced might flatter
themselves with such thoughts, and seek thus to cover their cowardice,
but the zealous and the courageous will see that it is time to set sail
on the ship, now that the wind is rising so freshly and favourably.

"For there are many occasions when an army might be ruined for want of
twenty thousand crowns.  What a pity if a noble edifice, furnished to the
roof-tree, should fall to decay for want of a few tiles.  No doubt your
own interests are deeply connected with our own.  Men may say that our
proposals should be rejected on the principle that the shirt is nearer
to the skin than the coat, but it can be easily proved that our cause
is one.  The mere rumour of this army will prevent the Duke of Parma from
attacking you.  His forces will be drawn to France.  He will be obliged
to intercept the crash of this thunderbolt.  The assistance of this army
is worth millions to you, and has cost you nothing.  To bring France into
hostility with Spain is the very policy that you have always pursued and
always should pursue in order to protect your freedom.  You have always
desired a war between France and Spain, and here is a fierce and cruel
one in which you have hazarded nothing.  It cannot come to an end without
bringing signal advantages to yourselves.

"You have always desired an alliance with a French sovereign, and here is
a firm friendship offered you by our king, a natural alliance.

"You know how unstable are most treaties that are founded on shifting
interests, and do not concern the freedom of bodies and souls.  The first
are written with pen upon paper, and are generally as light as paper.
They have no roots in the heart.  Those founded on mutual assistance on
trying occasions have the perpetual strength of nature.  They bring
always good and enduring fruit in a rich soil like the heart of our king;
that heart which is as beautiful and as pure from all untruth as the lily
upon his shield.

"You will derive the first profits from the army thus raised.  From the
moment of its mustering under a chief of such experience as Turenne, it
will absorb the whole attention of Spain, and will draw her thoughts from
the Netherlands to France."

All this and more in the same earnest manner did the envoy urge upon the
consideration of the States-General, concluding with a demand of 100,000
florins as their contribution towards the French campaign.

His eloquence did not fall upon unwilling ears; for the States-General,
after taking time to deliberate, replied to the propositions by an
expression of the strongest sympathy with, and admiration for, the heroic
efforts of the King of France.  Accordingly, notwithstanding their own
enormous expenses, past and present, and their strenuous exertions at
that very moment to form an army of foot and horse for the campaign, the
brilliant results of which have already been narrated, they agreed to
furnish the required loan of 100,000 florins to be repaid in a year,
besides six or seven good ships of war to co-operate with the fleets of
England and France upon the coasts of Normandy.  And the States were
even better than their word.

Before the end of autumn of the year 1591, Henry had laid siege to Rouen,
then the second city of the kingdom.  To leave much longer so important a
place--dominating, as it did, not only Normandy but a principal portion
of the maritime borders of France--under the control of the League and of
Spain was likely to be fatal to Henry's success.  It was perfectly sound
in Queen Elizabeth to insist as she did, with more than her usual
imperiousness towards her excellent brother, that he should lose no more
time before reducing that city.  It was obvious that Rouen in the hands
of her arch-enemy was a perpetual menace to the safety of her own
kingdom.  It was therefore with correct judgment, as well as with that
high-flown gallantry so dear to the heart of Elizabeth, that her royal
champion and devoted slave assured her of his determination no longer to
defer obeying her commands in this respect.

The queen had repeatedly warned him of the necessity of defending the
maritime frontier of his kingdom, and she was not sparing of her
reproaches that the large sums which she expended in his cause had been
often ill bestowed.  Her criticisms on what she considered his military
mistakes were not few, her threats to withdraw her subsidies frequent.
"Owning neither the East nor the West Indies," she said, "we are unable
to supply the constant demands upon us; and although we have the
reputation of being a good housewife, it does not follow that we can be a
housewife for all the world."  She was persistently warning the king of
an attack upon Dieppe, and rebuking him for occupying himself with petty
enterprises to the neglect of vital points.  She expressed her surprise
that after the departure of Parma, he had not driven the Spaniards out of
Brittany, without allowing them to fortify themselves in that country.
"I am astonished," she said to him, "that your eyes are so blinded as not
to see this danger.  Remember, my dear brother," she frankly added, "that
it is not only France that I am aiding, nor are my own natural realms of
little consequence to me.  Believe me, if I see that you have no more
regard to the ports and maritime places nearest to us, it will be
necessary that my prayers should serve you in place of any other
assistance, because it does not please me to send my people to the
shambles where they may perish before having rendered you any assistance.
I am sure the Spaniards will soon besiege Dieppe.  Beware of it, and
excuse my bluntness, for if in the beginning you had taken the maritime
forts, which are the very gates of your kingdom, Paris would not have
been so well furnished, and other places nearer the heart of the kingdom
would not have received so much foreign assistance, without which the
others would have soon been vanquished.  Pardon my simplicity as
belonging to my own sex wishing to give a lesson to one who knows better,
but my experience in government makes me a little obstinate in believing
that I am not ignorant of that which belongs to a king, and I persuade
myself that in following my advice you will not fail to conquer your
assailants."

Before the end of the year Henry had obtained control of the, Seine, both
above and below the city, holding Pont de l'Arche on the north--where was
the last bridge across the river; that of Rouen, built by the English
when they governed Normandy, being now in ruins--and Caudebec on the
south in an iron grasp.  Several war-vessels sent by the Hollanders,
according to the agreement with Buzanval, cruised in the north of the
river below Caudebec, and rendered much service to the king in cutting
off supplies from the beleaguered place, while the investing army of
Henry, numbering twenty-five thousand foot--inclusive of the English
contingent, and three thousand Netherlanders--and ten thousand cavalry,
nearly all French, was fast reducing the place to extremities.

Parma, as usual, in obedience to his master's orders, but entirely
against his own judgment, had again left the rising young general of the
Netherlands to proceed from one triumph to another, while he transferred
beyond the borders of that land which it was his first business to
protect, the whole weight of his military genius and the better portion
of his well disciplined forces.

Most bitterly and indignantly did he express himself, both at the outset
and during the whole progress of the expedition, concerning the utter
disproportions between the king's means and aims.  The want of money was
the cause of wholesale disease, desertion, mutiny, and death in his
slender army.

Such great schemes as his master's required, as he perpetually urged,
liberality of expenditure and measures of breadth.  He protested that he
was not to blame for the ruin likely to come upon the whole enterprise.
He had besought, remonstrated, reasoned with the king in vain.  He had
seen his beard first grow, he said, in the king's service, and he had
grown gray in that service, but rather than be kept longer in such a
position, without money, men, or means to accomplish the great purposes
on which he was sent, he protested that he would "abandon his office and
retire into the woods to feed on roots."  Repeatedly did he implore his
master for a large and powerful army; for money and again money.  The
royal plans should be enforced adequately or abandoned entirely.  To
spend money in small sums, as heretofore, was only throwing it into the
sea.

It was deep in the winter however before he could fairly come to the
rescue of the besieged city.  Towards the end of January, 1592, he moved
out of Hainault, and once more made his junction at Guise with the Duke
of Mayenne.  At a review of his forces on 16th January, 1592, Alexander
found himself at the head of thirteen thousand five hundred and sixteen
infantry and four thousand and sixty-one cavalry.  The Duke of Mayenne's
army, for payment of which that personage received from Philip 100,000
dollars a month, besides 10,000 dollars a month for his own pocket, ought
to have numbered ten thousand foot and three thousand horse, according to
contract, but was in reality much less.

The Duke of Montemarciano, nephew of Gregory XIV., had brought two
thousand Swiss, furnished by the pontiff to the cause of the League,
and the Duke of Lorraine had sent his kinsmen, the Counts Chaligny and
Vaudemont, with a force of seven hundred lancers and cuirassiers.

The town of Fere was assigned in pledge to Farnese to hold as a
convenient: mustering-place and station in proximity to his own borders,
and, as usual, the chief command over the united armies was placed in his
hands.  These arrangements concluded, the allies moved slowly forward
much in the same order as in the previous year.  The young Duke of Guise,
who had just made his escape from the prison of Tours, where he had been
held in durance since the famous assassination of his father and uncle,
and had now come to join his uncle Mayenne, led the vanguard.  Ranuccio,
son of the duke, rode also in the advance, while two experienced
commanders, Vitry and De la Chatre, as well as the famous Marquis del
Vasto, formerly general of cavalry in the Netherlands, who had been
transferred to Italy but was now serving in the League's army as a
volunteer, were associated with the young princes.  Parma, Mayenne, and
Montemarciano rode in the battalia, the rear being under command of the
Duke of Aumale and the Count Chaligny.  Wings of cavalry protected the
long trains of wagons which were arranged on each flank of the invading
army.  The march was very slow, a Farnese's uniform practice to guard
himself scrupulously against any possibility of surprise and to entrench
himself thoroughly at nightfall.

By the middle of February they reached the vicinity of Aumale in Picardy.
Meantime Henry, on the news of the advance of the relieving army, had
again the same problem to solve that had been presented to him before
Paris in the summer of 1590.  Should he continue in the trenches,
pressing more and more closely the city already reduced to great straits?
Should he take the open field against the invaders and once more attempt
to crush the League and its most redoubtable commander in a general
engagement?  Biron strenuously advised the continuance of the siege.
Turenne, now, through his recent marriage with the heiress, called Duc
de Bouillon, great head of the Huguenot party in France, counselled as
warmly the open attack.  Henry, hesitating more than was customary with
him, at last decided on a middle course.  The resolution did not seem a
very wise one, but the king, who had been so signally out-generalled in
the preceding campaign by the great Italian, was anxious to avoid his
former errors, and might perhaps fall into as great ones by attempting
two inconsistent lines of action.  Leaving Biron in command of the
infantry and a portion of the horse to continue the siege, he took the
field himself with the greater part of the cavalry, intending to
intercept and harass the enemy and to prevent his manifest purpose of
throwing reinforcements and supplies into the invested city.

Proceeding to Neufchatel and Aumale, he soon found himself in the
neighbourhood of the Leaguers, and it was not long before skirmishing
began.  At this time, on a memorable occasion, Henry, forgetting as
usual, in his eagerness for the joys of the combat that he was not a
young captain of cavalry with his spurs to win by dashing into every mad
adventure that might present itself, but a king fighting for his crown,
with the welfare of a whole people depending on his fortunes, thought
proper to place himself at the head of a handful of troopers to
reconnoitre in person the camp of the Leaguers.  Starting with five
hundred horse, and ordering Lavardin and Givry to follow with a larger
body, while the Dukes of Nevers and Longueville were to move out, should
it prove necessary, in force, the king rode forth as merrily as to a
hunting party, drove in the scouts and pickets of the confederated
armies, and, advancing still farther in his investigations, soon found
himself attacked by a cavalry force of the enemy much superior to his
own.  A skirmish began, and it was necessary for the little troop to beat
a hasty retreat, fighting as it ran.  It was not long before Henry was
recognised by the enemy, and the chase became all the more lively; George
Basti, the famous Albanian trooper, commanding the force which pressed
most closely upon the king.  The news spread to the camp of the League
that the Bearnese was the leader of the skirmishers.  Mayenne believed
it, and urged the instant advance of the flying squadron and of the whole
vanguard.  Farnese refused.  It was impossible that the king should be
there, he said, doing picket duty at the head of a company.  It was a
clumsy ambush to bring on a general engagement in the open field, and he
was not to be drawn out of his trenches into a trap by such a shallow
device.  A French captain, who by command of Henry had purposely allowed
himself to be taken, informed his captors that the skirmishers were in
reality supported by a heavy force of infantry.  This suggestion of the
ready Bearnese confirmed the doubts of Alexander.  Meantime the
skirmishing steeplechase went on before his eyes.  The king dashing down
a hill received an arquebus shot in his side, but still rode for his
life.  Lavardin and Givry came to the rescue, but a panic seized their
followers as the rumour flew that the king was mortally wounded--was
already dead--so that they hardly brought a sufficient force to beat back
the Leaguers.  Givry's horse was soon killed under him, and his own thigh
crushed; Lavardin was himself dangerously wounded.  The king was more
hard pressed than ever, men were falling on every side of him, when four
hundred French dragoons--as a kind of musketeers who rode on hacks to the
scene of action but did their work on foot, were called at that day--now
dismounted and threw themselves between Henry and his pursuers.  Nearly
every man of them laid down his life, but they saved the king's.  Their
vigorous hand to hand fighting kept off the assailants until Nevers and
Longueville received the king at the gates of Aumale with a force before
which the Leaguers were fain to retreat as rapidly as they had come.

In this remarkable skirmish of Aumale the opposite qualities of Alexander
and of Henry were signally illustrated.  The king, by his constitutional
temerity, by his almost puerile love of confronting danger for the
danger's sake, was on the verge of sacrificing himself with all the hopes
of his house and of the nobler portion of his people for an absolute
nothing; while the duke, out of his superabundant caution, peremptorily
refused to stretch out his hand and seize the person of his great enemy
when directly within his, grasp.  Dead or alive, the Bearnese was
unquestionably on that day in the power of Farnese, and with him the
whole issue of the campaign and of the war.  Never were the narrow limits
that separate valour on the one side and discretion on the other from
unpardonable lunacy more nearly effaced than on that occasion.'

When would such an opportunity occur again?

The king's wound proved not very dangerous, although for many days
troublesome, and it required, on account of his general state of health,
a thorough cure.  Meantime the royalists fell back from Aumale and
Neufchatel, both of which places were at once occupied by the Leaguers:
In pursuance of his original plan, the Duke of Parma advanced with his
customary steadiness and deliberation towards Rouen.  It was his
intention to assault the king's army in its entrenchments in combination
with a determined sortie to be made by the besieged garrison.  His
preparations for the attack were ready on the 26th February, when he
suddenly received a communication from De Villars, who had thus far most
ably and gallantly conducted the defence of the place, informing him that
it was no longer necessary to make a general attack.  On the day before
he had made a sally from the four gates of the city, had fallen upon the
besiegers in great force, had wounded Biron and killed six hundred of his
soldiers, had spiked several pieces of artillery and captured others
which he had successfully brought into the town, and had in short so
damaged the enemy's works and disconcerted him in all his plans, that he
was confident of holding the place longer than the king could afford to
stay in front of him.  All he wished was a moderate reinforcement of men
and munitions.  Farnese by no means sympathized with the confident tone
of Villars nor approved of his proposition.  He had come to relieve Rouen
and to raise the siege, and he preferred to do his work thoroughly.
Mayenne was however most heartily in favour of taking the advice of
Villars.  He urged that it was difficult for the Bearnese to keep an army
long in the field, still more so in the trenches.  Let them provide for
the immediate wants of the city; then the usual process of decomposition
would soon be witnessed in the ill-paid, ill-fed, desultory forces of the
heretic pretender.

Alexander deferred to the wishes of Mayenne, although against his better
judgment.  Eight hundred infantry, were successfully sent into Rouen.
The army of the League then countermarched into Picardy near the confines
of Artois.

They were closely followed by Henry at the head of his cavalry, and
lively skirmishes were of frequent occurrence.  In a military point of
view none of these affairs were of consequence, but there was one which
partook at once of the comic and the pathetic.  For it chanced that in a
cavalry action of more than common vivacity the Count Chaligny found
himself engaged in a hand to hand conflict with a very dashing swordsman,
who, after dealing and receiving many severe blows, at last succeeded in
disarming the count and taking him prisoner.  It was the fortune of war,
and, but a few days before, might have been the fate of the great Henry
himself.  But Chaligny's mortification at his captivity became intense
when he discovered that the knight to whom he had surrendered was no
other than the king's jester.  That he, a chieftain of the Holy League,
the long-descended scion of the illustrious house of Lorraine, brother of
the great Duke of Mercoeur, should become the captive of a Huguenot
buffoon seemed the most stinging jest yet perpetrated since fools had
come in fashion.  The famous Chicot--who was as fond of a battle as of a
gibe, and who was almost as reckless a rider as his master--proved on
this occasion that the cap and bells could cover as much magnanimity as
did the most chivalrous crest.  Although desperately wounded in the
struggle which had resulted in his triumph, he generously granted to the
Count his freedom without ransom.  The proud Lorrainer returned to his
Leaguers and the poor fool died afterwards of his wounds.

The army of the allies moved through Picardy towards the confines of
Artois, and sat down leisurely to beleaguer Rue, a low-lying place on the
banks and near the mouth of the Somme, the only town in the province
which still held for the king.  It was sufficiently fortified to
withstand a good deal of battering, and it certainly seemed mere trifling
for the great Duke of Parma to leave the Netherlands in such confusion,
with young Maurice of Nassau carrying everything before him, and to come
all the way into Normandy in order, with the united armies of Spain and
the League, to besiege the insignificant town of Rue.

And this was the opinion of Farnese, but he had chosen throughout the
campaign to show great deference to the judgment of Mayenne.  Meantime
the month of March wore away, and what had been predicted came to pass.
Henry's forces dwindled away as usual.  His cavaliers rode off to forage
for themselves, when their battles were denied them, and the king was now
at the head of not more than sixteen thousand foot and five thousand
horse.  On the other hand the Leaguers' army had been melting quite as
rapidly.  With the death of Pope Sfondrato, his nephew Montemarciano had
disappeared with his two thousand Swiss; while the French cavalry and
infantry, ill-fed and uncomfortable, were diminishing daily.  Especially
the Walloons, Flemings, and other Netherlanders of Parma's army, took
advantage of their proximity to the borders and escaped in large numbers
to their own homes.  It was but meagre and profitless campaigning on both
sides during those wretched months of winter and early spring, although
there was again an opportunity for Sir Roger Williams, at the head of two
hundred musketeers and one hundred and fifty pikemen, to make one of his
brilliant skirmishes under the eye of the Bearnese.  Surprised and
without armour, he jumped, in doublet and hose, on horseback, and led his
men merrily against five squadrons of Spanish and Italian horse, and six
companies of Spanish infantry; singled out and unhorsed the leader of the
Spanish troopers, and nearly cut off the head, of the famous Albanian
chief George Basti with one swinging blow of his sword.  Then, being
reinforced by some other English companies, he succeeded in driving the
whole body of Italians and Spaniards, with great loss, quite into their
entrenchments.  "The king doth commend him very highly," said Umton,
"and doth more than wonder at the valour of our nation.  I never heard
him give more honour to any service nor to any man than he doth to Sir
Roger Williams and the rest, whom he held as lost men, and for which he
has caused public thanks to be given to God."

At last Villars, who had so peremptorily rejected assistance at the end
of February, sent to say that if he were not relieved by the middle of
April he should be obliged to surrender the city.  If the siege were not
raised by the twentieth of the month he informed Parma, to his profound
astonishment, that Rouen would be in Henry's hands.

In effecting this result the strict blockade maintained by the Dutch
squadron at the mouth of the river, and the resolute manner in which
those cruisers dashed at every vessel attempting to bring relief to
Rouen, were mainly instrumental.  As usual with the stern Hollanders and
Zeelanders when engaged at sea with the Spaniards, it was war to the
knife.  Early in April twelve large vessels, well armed and manned,
attempted to break the blockade.  A combat ensued, at the end of which
eight of the Spanish ships were captured, two were sunk, and two were set
on fire in token of victory, every man on board of all being killed and
thrown into the sea.  Queen Elizabeth herself gave the first news of this
achievement to the Dutch envoy in London.  "And in truth," said he, "her
Majesty expressed herself, in communicating these tidings, with such
affection and extravagant joy to the glory and honour of our nation and
men-of-war's-men, that it wonderfully delighted me, and did me good into
my very heart to hear it from her."

Instantly Farnese set himself to the work which, had he followed his own
judgment, would already have been accomplished.  Henry with his cavalry
had established himself at Dieppe and Arques, within a distance of five
or six leagues from the infantry engaged in the siege of Rouen.
Alexander saw the profit to be derived from the separation between the
different portions of the enemy's forces, and marched straight upon the
enemy's entrenchments.  He knew the disadvantage of assailing a strongly
fortified camp, but believed that by a well-concerted, simultaneous
assault by Villars from within and the Leaguers from without, the king's
forces would be compelled to raise the siege or be cut up in their
trenches.

But Henry did not wait for the attack.  He had changed his plan, and,
for once in his life, substituted extreme caution for his constitutional
temerity.  Neither awaiting the assault upon his entrenchments nor
seeking his enemy in the open field, he ordered the whole camp to be
broken up, and on the 20th of April raised the siege.

Farnese marched into Rouen, where the Leaguers were received with
tumultuous joy, and this city, most important for the purposes of the
League and for Philip's ulterior designs, was thus wrested from the grasp
just closing upon it.  Henry's main army now concentrated itself in the
neighbourhood of Dieppe, but the cavalry under his immediate
superintendence continued to harass the Leaguers.  It was now determined
to lay siege to Caudebec, on the right bank of the Seine, three leagues
below Rouen; the possession of this place by the enemy being a constant.
danger and difficulty to Rouen, whose supplies by the Seine were thus cut
off.

Alexander, as usual, superintended the planting of the batteries against
the place.  He had been suffering during the whole campaign with those
dropsical ailments which were making life a torture to him; yet his
indomitable spirit rose superior to his physical disorders, and he
wrought all day long on foot or on horseback, when he seemed only fit to
be placed on his bed as a rapid passage to his grave.  On this occasion,
in company with the Italian engineer Properzio, he had been for some time
examining with critical nicety the preliminaries, for the siege, when it
was suddenly observed by those around him that he was growing pale.  It
then appeared that he had received a musket-ball between the wrist and
the elbow, and had been bleeding profusely; but had not indicated by a
word or the movement of a muscle that he had been wounded, so intent was
he upon carrying out the immediate task to which he had set himself.  It
was indispensable, however, that he should now take to his couch.  The
wound was not trifling, and to one in his damaged and dropsical condition
it was dangerous.  Fever set in, with symptoms of gangrene, and it became
necessary to entrust the command of the League to Mayenne.  But it was
hardly concealed from Parma that the duke was playing a double game.
Prince Ranuccio, according to his father's express wish, was placed
provisionally at the head of the Flemish forces.  This was conceded;
however, with much heart-burning, and with consequences easily to be
imagined.

Meantime Caudebec fell at once.  Henry did nothing to relieve it, and the
place could offer but slight resistance to the force arrayed against it.
The bulk of the king's army was in the neighbourhood of Dieppe, where
they had been recently strengthened by twenty companies of Netherlanders
and Scotchmen brought by Count Philip Nassau.  The League's headquarters
were in the village of Yvetot, capital of the realm of the whimsical
little potentate so long renowned under that name.

The king, in pursuance of the plan he had marked out for himself,
restrained his skirmishing more than was his wont.  Nevertheless he lay
close to Yvetot.  His cavalry, swelling and falling as usual like an
Alpine torrent, had now filled up its old channels again, for once more
the mountain chivalry had poured themselves around their king.  With ten
thousand horsemen he was now pressing the Leaguers, from time to time,
very hard, and on one occasion the skirmishing became so close and so
lively that a general engagement seemed imminent.  Young Ranuccio had a
horse shot under him, and his father--suffering as he was--had himself
dragged out of bed and brought on a litter into the field, where he was
set on horseback, trampling on wounds and disease, and, as it were, on
death itself, that he might by his own unsurpassed keenness of eye and
quickness of resource protect the army which had been entrusted to his
care.  The action continued all day; young Bentivoglio, nephew of the
famous cardinal, historian and diplomatist, receiving a bad wound in the
leg, as he fought gallantly at the side of Ranuccio.  Carlo Coloma also
distinguished himself in the engagement.  Night separated the combatants
before either side had gained a manifest advantage, and on the morrow it
seemed for the interest of neither to resume the struggle.

The field where this campaign was to be fought was a narrow peninsula
enclosed between the sea and the rivers Seine and Dieppe.  In this
peninsula, called the Land of Caux, it was Henry's intention to shut up
his enemy.  Farnese had finished the work that he had been sent to do,
and was anxious, as Henry was aware, to return to the Netherlands.  Rouen
was relieved, Caudebec had fallen.  There was not food or forage enough
in the little peninsula to feed both the city and the whole army of the
League.  Shut up in this narrow area, Alexander must starve or surrender.
His only egress was into Picardy and so home to Artois, through the base
of the isosceles triangle between the two rivers and on the borders of
Picardy.  On this base Henry had posted his whole army.  Should Farnese
assail him, thus provided with a strong position and superiority of
force, defeat was certain.  Should he remain where he was, he must
inevitably starve.  He had no communications with the outside.  The
Hollanders lay with their ships below Caudebec, blockading the river's
mouth and the coast.  His only chance of extrication lay across the
Seine.  But Alexander was neither a bird nor a fish, and it was
necessary, so Henry thought, to be either the one or the other to cross
that broad, deep, and rapid river, where there were no bridges, and where
the constant ebb and flow of the tide made transportation almost
impossible in face of a powerful army in rear and flank.  Farnese's
situation seemed, desperate; while the shrewd Bearnese sat smiling
serenely, carefully watching at the mouth of the trap into which he had
at last inveigled his mighty adversary.  Secure of his triumph, he seemed
to have changed his nature, and to have become as sedate and wary as, by
habit, he was impetuous and hot.

And in truth Farnese found himself in very narrow quarters.  There was no
hay for his horses, no bread for his men.  A penny loaf was sold for two
shillings.  A jug of water was worth a crown.  As for meat or wine, they
were hardly to be dreamed of.  His men were becoming furious at their
position.  They had enlisted to fight, not to starve, and they murmured
that it was better for an army to fall with weapons in its hands than to
drop to pieces hourly with the enemy looking on and enjoying their agony.

It was obvious to Farnese that there were but two ways out of his
dilemma.  He might throw himself upon Henry--strongly entrenched as he
was, and with much superior forces to his own, upon ground deliberately
chosen for himself--defeat him utterly, and march over him back to the
Netherlands.  This would be an agreeable result; but the undertaking
seemed difficult, to say the least.  Or he might throw his army across
the Seine and make his escape through the isle of France and Southern
Picardy back to the so-called obedient provinces.  But it seemed,
hopeless without bridges or pontoons to attempt the passage of the Seine.

There was; however, no time left, for hesitation.  Secretly he took his
resolution and communicated it in strict confidence to Mayenne, to
Ranuccio, and to one or two other chiefs.  He came to Caudebec, and
there, close to the margin of the river, he threw up a redoubt.  On the
opposite bank, he constructed another.  On both he planted artillery,
placing a force of eight hundred Netherlanders under Count Bossu in the
one, and an equal number of the same nation, Walloons chiefly, under
Barlotte in the other.  He collected all the vessels, flatboats,--
wherries,--and rafts that could be found or put together at Rouen, and
then under cover of his forts he transported all the Flemish infantry,
and the Spanish, French, and Italian cavalry, during the night of 22nd
May to the 22 May, opposite bank of the Seine.  Next morning he sent up
all the artillery together with the Flemish cavalry to Rouen, where,
making what use he could by temporary contrivances of the broken arches
of the broken bridge, in order to shorten the distance from shore to
shore, he managed to convey his whole army with all its trains across the
river.

A force was left behind, up to the last moment, to engage in the
customary skirmishes, and to display themselves as largely as possible
for the purpose of imposing upon the enemy.  The young Prince of Parma
had command of this rearguard.  The device was perfectly successful.  The
news of the movement was not brought to the ears of Henry until after it
had been accomplished.  When the king reached the shore of the Seine, he
saw to his infinite chagrin and indignation that the last stragglers of
the army, including the garrison of the fort on the right bank, were just
ferrying themselves across under command of Ranuccio.

Furious with disappointment, he brought some pieces of artillery to bear
upon the triumphant fugitives.  Not a shot told, and the Leaguers had the
satisfaction of making a bonfire in the king's face of the boats which
had brought them over.  Then, taking up their line of march rapidly
inland, they placed themselves completely out of the reach of the
Huguenot guns.

Henry had a bridge at Pont de l'Arche, and his first impulse was to
pursue with his cavalry, but it was obvious that his infantry could never
march by so circuitous a route fast enough to come up with the enemy, who
had already so prodigious a stride in advance.

There was no need to disguise it to himself.  Henry saw himself for the
second time out-generalled by the consummate Farnese.  The trap was
broken, the game had given him the slip.  The manner in which the duke
had thus extricated himself from a profound dilemma; in which his
fortunes seemed hopelessly sunk, has usually been considered one of the
most extraordinary exploits of his life.

Precisely at this time, too, ill news reached Henry from Brittany and the
neighbouring country.  The Princes Conti and Dombes had been obliged, on
the 13th May, 1592, to raise the siege of Craon, in consequence of the
advance of the Duke of Mercoeur, with a force of seven thousand men.

They numbered, including lanzknechts and the English contingent, about
half as many, and before they could effect their retreat, were attacked
by Mercoeur, and utterly routed.  The English, who alone stood to their
colours, were nearly all cut to pieces.  The rest made a disorderly
retreat,  but were ultimately, with few exceptions, captured or slain.
The duke, following up his victory, seized Chateau Gontier and La Val,
important crossing places on the river Mayenne, and laid siege to
Mayenne, capital city of that region.  The panic, spreading through
Brittany and Maine, threatened the king's cause there with complete
overthrow, hampered his operations in Normandy, and vastly encouraged the
Leaguers.  It became necessary for Henry to renounce his designs upon
Rouen, and the pursuit of Parma, and to retire to Vernon, there to occupy
himself with plans for the relief of Brittany.  In vain had the Earl of
Essex, whose brother had already been killed in the campaign, manifested
such headlong gallantry in that country as to call forth the sharpest
rebukes from the admiring but anxious Elizabeth.  The handful of brave
Englishmen who had been withdrawn from the Netherlands, much to the
dissatisfaction of the States-General, in order to defend the coasts of
Brittany, would have been better employed under Maurice of Nassau.  So
soon as the heavy news reached the king, the faithful Umton was sent for.
"He imparted the same unto me," said the envoy, "with extraordinary
passion and discontent.  He discoursed at large of his miserable estate,
of the factions of his servants, and of their ill-dispositions, and then
required my opinion touching his course for Brittan, as also what further
aid he might expect from her Majesty; alleging that unless he were
presently strengthened by England it was impossible for him, longer to
resist the greatness of the King of Spain, who assailed his country by
Brittany, Languedoc, the Low Countries by the Duke of Saxony and the Duke
of Lorraine, and so ended his speech passionately."  Thus adjured, Sir
Henry spoke to the king firmly but courteously, reminding him how,
contrary to English advice, he had followed other counsellors to the
neglect of Brittany, and had broken his promises to the queen.  He
concluded by urging him to advance into that country in person, but did
not pledge himself on behalf of her Majesty to any further assistance.
"To this," said Umton, "the king gave a willing ear, and replied, with
many thanks, and without disallowing of anything that I alleged, yielding
many excuses of his want of means, not of disposition, to provide a
remedy, not forgetting to acknowledge her Majesty's care of him and his
country, and especially of Brittany, excusing much the bad disposition of
his counsellors, and inclining much to my motion to go in person thither,
especially because he might thereby give her Majesty better satisfaction;
.  .  .  .  and protesting that he would either immediately himself make
war there in those parts or send an army thither.  I do not doubt," added
the ambassador, "but with good handling her Majesty may now obtain any
reasonable matter for the conservation of Brittany, as also for a place
of retreat for the English, and I urge continually the yielding of Brest
into her Majesty's hands, whereunto I find the king well inclined, if he
might bring it to pass."

Alexander passed a few days in Paris, where he was welcomed with much
cordiality, recruiting his army for a brief period in the land of Brie,
and then--broken in health but entirely successful--he dragged himself
once more to Spa to drink the waters.  He left an auxiliary force with
Mayenne, and promised--infinitely against his own wishes--to obey his
master's commands and return again before the winter to do the League's
work.

And thus Alexander had again solved a difficult problem.  He had saved
for his master and for the League the second city of France and the whole
coast of Normandy.  Rouen had been relieved in masterly manner even as
Paris had been succoured the year before.  He had done this, although
opposed by the sleepless energy and the exuberant valour of the quick-
witted Navarre, and although encumbered by the assistance of the
ponderous Duke of Mayenne.  His military reputation, through these
two famous reliefs and retreats, grew greater than ever.

No commander of the age was thought capable of doing what he had thus
done.  Yet, after all, what had he accomplished?  Did he not feel in his
heart of hearts that he was but a strong and most skilful swimmer
struggling for a little while against an ocean-tide which was steadily
sweeping him and his master and all their fortunes far out into the
infinite depths?

Something of this breathed ever in his most secret utterances.  But, so
long as life was in him, his sword and his genius were at the disposal of
his sovereign, to carry out a series of schemes as futile as they were
nefarious.

For us, looking back upon the Past, which was then the Future, it is
easy to see how remorselessly the great current of events was washing
away the system and the personages seeking to resist its power and to
oppose the great moral principles by which human affairs in the long run
are invariably governed.  Spain and Rome were endeavouring to obliterate
the landmarks of race, nationality, historical institutions, and the
tendencies of awakened popular conscience, throughout Christendom,
and to substitute for them a dead level of conformity to one regal
and sacerdotal despotism.

England, Holland, the Navarre party in France, and a considerable part of
Germany were contending for national unity and independence, for vested
and recorded rights.  Much farther than they themselves or their
chieftains dreamed those millions of men were fighting for a system
of temperate human freedom; for that emancipation under just laws from
arbitrary human control, which is the right--however frequently trampled
upon--of all classes, conditions, and races of men; and for which it is
the instinct of the human race to continue to struggle under every
disadvantage, and often against all hope, throughout the ages, so long
as the very principle of humanity shall not be extinguished in those
who have been created after their Maker's image.

It may safely be doubted whether the great Queen, the Bearnese, Alexander
Farnese, or his master, with many of their respective adherents, differed
very essentially from each other in their notions of the right divine and
the right of the people.  But history has shown us which of them best
understood the spirit of the age, and had the keenest instinct to keep
themselves in the advance by moving fastest in the direction whither it
was marshalling all men.  There were many, earnest, hard-toiling men in
those days, men who believed in the work to which they devoted their
lives.  Perhaps, too, the devil-worshippers did their master's work as
strenuously and heartily as any, and got fame and pelf for their pains.
Fortunately, a good portion of what they so laboriously wrought for has
vanished into air; while humanity has at least gained something from
those who deliberately or instinctively conformed themselves to her
eternal laws.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Anatomical study of what has ceased to exist
Artillery
Bomb-shells were not often used although known for a century
Court fatigue, to scorn pleasure
For us, looking back upon the Past, which was then the Future
Hardly an inch of French soil that had not two possessors
Holy institution called the Inquisition
Inevitable fate of talking castles and listening ladies
Life of nations and which we call the Past
Often necessary to be blind and deaf
Picturesqueness of crime
Royal plans should be enforced adequately or abandoned entirely
Toil and sacrifices of those who have preceded us
Use of the spade
Utter disproportions between the king's means and aims
Valour on the one side and discretion on the other
Walk up and down the earth and destroy his fellow-creatures
We have the reputation of being a good housewife
Weapons




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v63
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 64, 1592


CHAPTER XXVI.

     Return of Prince Maurice to the siege of Steenwyck--Capitulation of
     the besieged--Effects of the introduction of mining operations--
     Maurice besieges Coeworden--Verdugo attempts to relieve the city,
     but fails--The city capitulates, and Prince Maurice retreats into
     winter quarters.

While Farnese had thus been strengthening the bulwarks of Philip's
universal monarchy in that portion of his proposed French dominions which
looked towards England, there had been opportunity for Prince Maurice to
make an assault upon the Frisian defences of this vast realm.  It was
difficult to make half Europe into one great Spanish fortification,
guarding its every bastion and every point of the curtain, without far
more extensive armaments than the "Great King," as the Leaguers proposed
that Philip should entitle himself, had ever had at his disposal.  It
might be a colossal scheme to stretch the rod of empire over so large a
portion of the earth, but the dwarfish attempts to carry the design into
execution hardly reveal the hand of genius.  It is astonishing to
contemplate the meagre numbers and the slender funds with which this
world-empire was to be asserted and maintained.  The armies arrayed at
any important point hardly exceeded a modern division or two; while the
resources furnished for a year would hardly pay in later days for a few
weeks' campaign.

When Alexander, the first commander of his time, moved out of Flanders
into France with less than twenty thousand men, he left most vital
portions of his master's hereditary dominions so utterly unprotected that
it was possible to attack them with a handful of troops.  The young
disciple of Simon Stevinus now resumed that practical demonstration of
his principles which had been in the previous year so well begun.

On the 28th May, 1592, Maurice, taking the field with six thousand foot
and two thousand horse, came once more before Steenwyck.  It will be
remembered that he had been obliged to relinquish the siege of this place
in order to confront the Duke of Parma in July, 1591, at Nymegen.

The city--very important from its position, being the key to the province
of Drenthe as well as one of the safeguards of Friesland--had been
besieged in vain by Count Renneberg after his treasonable surrender of
Groningen, of which he was governor, to the Spaniards, but had been
subsequently surprised by Tassis.  Since that time it had held for the
king.  Its fortifications were strong, and of the best description known
at that day.  Its regular garrison was sixteen companies of foot and some
cavalry under Antoine de Quocqueville, military governor.  Besides these
troops were twelve hundred Walloon infantry, commanded by Lewis, youngest
Count van den Berg, a brave lad of eighteen years, with whom were the
lord of Waterdyck and other Netherland nobles.

To the military student the siege may possess importance as marking a
transitional epoch in the history of the beleaguering science.  To the
general reader, as in most of the exploits of the young Poliorcetes, its
details have but slender interest.  Perhaps it was here that the spade
first vindicated its dignity, and entitled itself to be classed as a
military weapon of value along with pike and arquebus.  It was here that
the soldiers of Maurice, burrowing in the ground at ten stuyvers a day,
were jeered at by the enemy from the battlements as boors and ditchers,
who had forfeited their right to be considered soldiers--but jeered at
for the last time.

From 30th May to 9th June the prince was occupied in throwing up
earthworks on the low grounds in order to bring his guns into position.
On the 13th June he began to batter with forty-five pieces, but effected
little more than to demolish some of the breast-works.  He threw hot shot
into the town very diligently, too, but did small damage.  The
cannonading went on for nearly a week, but the practice was so very
indifferent--notwithstanding the protection of the blessed Barbara and
the tuition of the busmasters--that the besieged began to amuse
themselves with these empty and monotonous salvos of the honourable
Artillery Guild.  When all this blazing and thundering had led to no
better result than to convert a hundred thousand good Flemish florins
into noise and smoke, the thrifty Netherlanders on both sides of the
walls began to disparage the young general's reputation.  After all,
they said, the Spaniards were right when they called artillery mere
'espanta-vellacos' or scare-cowards.  This burrowing and bellowing must
at last give place to the old-fashioned push of pike, and then it would
be seen who the soldiers were.  Observations like these were freely made
under a flag of truce; for on the 19th June--notwithstanding their
contempt for the 'espanta-vellacos'--the besieged had sent out a
deputation to treat for an honourable surrender.  Maurice entertained the
negotiators hospitably in his own tent, but the terms suggested to him
were inadmissible.  Nothing came of the conference therefore but mutual
criticisms, friendly enough, although sufficiently caustic.

Maurice now ceased cannonading, and burrowed again for ten days without
interruption.  Four mines, leading to different points of the defences,
were patiently constructed, and two large chambers at the terminations,
neatly finished off and filled respectively with five thousand and
twenty-five hundred pounds of powder, were at last established under two
of the principal bastions.

During all this digging there had been a couple of sorties in which the
besieged had inflicted great damage on their enemy, and got back into the
town with a few prisoners, having lost but six of their own men.  Sir
Francis Vere had been severely wounded in the leg, so that he was obliged
to keep his bed during the rest of the siege.  Verdugo, too, had made a
feeble attempt to reinforce the place with three hundred men, sixty or
seventy of whom had entered, while the rest had been killed or captured.
On such a small scale was Philip's world-empire contended for by his
stadholder in Friesland; yet it was certainly not the fault of the stout
old Portuguese.  Verdugo would rather have sent thirty thousand men to
save the front door of his great province than three hundred.  But every
available man--and few enough of them they were--had been sent out of the
Netherlands, to defend the world-empire in its outposts of Normandy and
Brittany.

This was Philip the Prudent's system for conquering the world, and men
looked upon him as the consummation of kingcraft.

On the 3rd July Maurice ordered his whole force to be in readiness for
the assault.  The mines were then sprung.

The bastion of the east gate was blown to ruins.  The mine under the
Gast-Huys bulwark, burst outwardly, and buried alive many Hollanders
standing ready for the assault.  At this untoward accident Maurice
hesitated to give the signal for storming the breach, but the panic
within the town was so evident that Lewis William lost no time in seizing
the overthrown eastern bulwark, from the ruins of which he looked over
the whole city. The other broken bastion was likewise easily mastered,
and the besieged, seeing the storm about to burst upon them with
irresistible fury, sent a trumpet.  Meantime Maurice, inspecting the
effects of the explosion and preparing for the assault, had been shot
through the left cheek.  The wound was not dangerous, and the prince
extracted the bullet with his own hand, but the change of half an inch
would have made it fatal.  He was not incapacitated--after his wound had
been dressed, amidst the remonstrances of his friends for his temerity-
from listening to the propositions of the city.  They were refused, for
the prince was sure of having his town on his own terms.

Next day he permitted the garrison to depart; the officers and soldiers
promising not to serve the King of Spain on the Netherland side of the
Rhine for six months.  They were to take their baggage, but to leave
arms, flags, munitions, and provisions.  Both Maurice and Lewis William
were for insisting on sterner conditions, but the States' deputies and
members of the council who were present, as usual, in camp urged the
building of the golden bridge.  After all, a fortified city, the second
in importance after Groningen of all those regions, was the real prize
contended for.  The garrison was meagre and much reduced during the
siege.  The fortifications, of masonry and earthwork combined, were
nearly as strong as ever.  Saint Barbara had done them but little damage,
but the town itself was in a sorry plight.  Churches and houses were
nearly all shot to pieces, and the inhabitants had long been dwelling in
the cellars.  Two hundred of the garrison remained, severely wounded, in
the town; three hundred and fifty had been killed, among others the young
cousin of the Nassaus, Count Lewis van den Berg.  The remainder of the
royalists marched out, and were treated with courtesy by Maurice, who
gave them an escort, permitting the soldiers to retain their side-arms,
and furnishing horses to the governor.

In the besieging army five or six hundred had been killed and many
wounded, but not in numbers bearing the same proportion to the slain as
in modern battles.

The siege had lasted forty-four days.  When it was over, and men came out
from the town to examine at leisure the prince's camp and his field of
operations, they were astounded at the amount of labor performed in so
short a time.  The oldest campaigners confessed that they never before
had understood what a siege really was, and they began to conceive a
higher respect for the art of the engineer than they had ever done
before.  "Even those who were wont to rail at science and labour," said
one who was present in the camp of Maurice, "declared that the siege
would have been a far more arduous undertaking had it not been for those
two engineers, Joost Matthes of Alost, and Jacob Kemp of Gorcum.  It is
high time to take from soldiers the false notion that it is shameful to
work with the spade; an error which was long prevalent among the
Netherlanders, and still prevails among the French, to the great
detriment of the king's affairs, as may be seen in his sieges."

Certainly the result of Henry's recent campaign before Rouen had proved
sufficiently how much better it would have been for him had there been
some Dutch Joosts and Jacobs with their picks and shovels in his army at
that critical period.  They might perhaps have baffled Parma as they had
done Verdugo.

Without letting the grass grow under his feet, Maurice now led his army
from Steenwyck to Zwol and arrived on the 26th July before Coeworden.

This place, very strong by art and still stronger by-nature, was the
other key to all north Netherland--Friesland, Groningen, and Drenthe.
Should it fall into the hands of the republic it would be impossible for
the Spaniards to retain much longer the rich and important capital of all
that country, the city of Groningen.  Coeworden lay between two vast
morasses, one of which--the Bourtange swamp--extended some thirty miles
to the bay of the Dollart; while the other spread nearly as far in a
westerly direction to the Zuyder Zee.  Thus these two great marshes were
a frame--an almost impassable barrier--by which the northern third of the
whole territory of the republic was encircled and defended.  Throughout
this great morass there was not a hand-breadth of solid ground--not a
resting-place for a human foot, save the road which led through
Coeworden.  This passage lay upon a natural deposit of hard, dry sand,
interposed as if by a caprice of nature between the two swamps; and was
about half a mile in width.

The town itself was well fortified, and Verdugo had been recently
strengthening the position with additional earthworks.  A thousand
veterans formed the garrison under command of another Van den Berg, the
Count Frederic.  It was the fate of these sister's-children of the great
founder of the republic to serve the cause of foreign despotism with
remarkable tenacity against their own countrymen, and against their
nearest blood relations.  On many conspicuous occasions they were almost
as useful to Spain and the Inquisition as the son and nearly all the
other kinsmen of William the Silent had rendered themselves to the cause
of Holland and of freedom.

Having thoroughly entrenched his camp before Coeworden and begun the
regular approaches, Maurice left his cousin Lewis William to superintend
the siege operations for the moment, and advanced towards Ootmarsum, a
frontier town which might give him trouble if in the hands of a relieving
force.  The place fell at once, with the loss of but one life to the
States army, but that a very valuable one; General de Famars, one of the
original signers of the famous Compromise; and a most distinguished
soldier of the republic, having been killed before the gates.

On the 31st July, Maurice returned to his entrenchments.  The enemy
professed unbounded confidence; Van den Berg not doubting that he should
be relieved by Verdugo, and Verdugo being sure that Van den Berg would
need no relief.  The Portuguese veteran indeed was inclined to wonder at
Maurice's presumption in attacking so impregnable a fortress.  "If
Coeworden does not hold," said he, "there is no place in the world that
can hold."

Count Peter Ernest, was still acting as governor-general for Alexander
Farnese, on returning from his second French campaign, had again betaken
himself, shattered and melancholy, to the waters of Spa, leaving the
responsibility for Netherland affairs upon the German octogenarian.  To
him; and to the nonagenarian Mondragon at Antwerp, the veteran Verdugo
now called loudly for aides against the youthful pedant, whom all men had
been laughing at a twelvemonth or so before.  The Macedonian phalanx,
Simon Stevinus and delving Dutch boors--unworthy of the name of soldiers-
-seemed to be steadily digging the ground from under Philip's feet in his
hereditary domains.

What would become of the world-empire, where was the great king--not of
Spain alone, nor of France alone--but the great monarch of all
Christendom, to plant his throne securely, if his Frisian strongholds,
his most important northern outposts, were to fall before an almost
beardless youth at the head of a handful of republican militia?

Verdugo did his best, but the best was little.  The Spanish and Italian
legions had been sent out of the Netherlands into France.  Many had died
there, many were in hospital after their return, nearly all the rest were
mutinous for want of pay.

On the 16th August, Maurice formally summoned Coeworden to surrender.
After the trumpeter had blown thrice; Count Van den Berg, forbidding all
others, came alone upon the walls and demanded his message.  "To claim
this city in the name of Prince Maurice of Nassau and of the States-
General," was the reply.

"Tell him first to beat down my walls as flat as the ditch," said Van den
Berg, "and then to bring five or six storms.  Six months after that I
will think whether I will send a trumpet."

The prince proceeded steadily with his approaches, but he was infinitely
chagrined by the departure out of his camp of Sir Francis Vere with his
English contingent of three regiments, whom Queen Elizabeth had
peremptorily ordered to the relief of King Henry in Brittany.

Nothing amazes the modern mind so much as the exquisite paucity of forces
and of funds by which the world-empire was fought for and resisted in
France, Holland, Spain, and England.  The scenes of war were rapidly
shifted--almost like the slides of a magic-lantern--from one country to
another; the same conspicuous personages, almost the same individual
armies, perpetually re-appearing in different places, as if a wild
phantasmagoria were capriciously repeating itself to bewilder the
imagination.  Essex, and Vere, and Roger Williams, and Black Norris-Van
der Does, and Admiral Nassau, the Meetkerks and Count Philip-Farnese and
Mansfeld, George Basti, Arenberg, Berlaymont, La None and Teligny, Aquila
and Coloma--were seen alternately fighting, retreating, triumphant,
beleaguering, campaigning all along the great territory which extends
from the Bay of Biscay to the crags of Brittany, and across the narrow
seas to the bogs of Ireland, and thence through the plains of Picardy and
Flanders to the swamps of Groningen and the frontiers of the Rhine.

This was the arena in which the great struggle was ever going on, but the
champions were so few in number that their individual shapes become
familiar to us like the figures of an oft-repeated pageant.  And now the
withdrawal of certain companies of infantry and squadrons of cavalry from
the Spanish armies into France, had left obedient Netherland too weak to
resist rebellious Netherland, while, on the other hand, the withdrawal of
some twenty or thirty companies of English auxiliaries--most hard-
fighting veterans it is true, but very few in number--was likely to
imperil the enterprise of Maurice in Friesland.

The removal of these companies from the Low Countries to strengthen the
Bearnese in the north of France, formed the subject of much bitter
diplomatic conference between the States and England; the order having
been communicated by the great queen herself in many a vehement epistle
and caustic speech, enforced by big, manly oaths.

Verdugo, although confident in the strength of the place, had represented
to Parma and to Mansfeld the immense importance of relieving Coeworden.
The city, he said, was more valuable than all the towns taken the year
before.  All Friesland hung upon it, and it would be impossible to save
Groningen should Coeworden fall.

Meantime Count Philip Nassau arrived from the campaign in France with his
three regiments which he threw into garrison, and thus set free an equal
number of fresh troops, which were forthwith sent to the camp of Maurice.
The prince at the same time was made aware that Verdugo was about to
receive important succour, and he was advised by the deputies of the
States-General present at his headquarters to send out his German Reiters
to intercept them.  Maurice refused.  Should his cavalry be defeated, he
said, his whole army would be endangered.  He determined to await within
his fortified camp the attack of the relieving force.

During the whole month of August he proceeded steadily with his sapping
and mining.  By the middle of the month his lines had come through the
ditch, which he drained of water into the counterscarp.  By the beginning
of September he had got beneath the principal fort, which, in the course
of three or four days, he expected to blow into the air.  The rainy
weather had impeded his operations and the march of the relieving army.
Nevertheless that army was at last approaching.  The regiments of
Mondragon, Charles Mansfeld, Gonzaga, Berlaymont, and Arenberg had been
despatched to reinforce Verdugo.  On the 23rd August, having crossed the
Rhine at Rheinberg, they reached Olfen in the country of Benthem, ten
miles from Coeworden.  Here they threw up rockets and made other signals
that relief was approaching the town.  On the 3rd of September Verdugo,
with the whole force at his disposal, amounting to four thousand foot and
eighteen hundred horse, was at the village of Emblichen, within a league
of the besieged city.  That night a peasant was captured with letters
from Verdugo to the Governor of Coeworden, giving information that he
intended to make an assault on the besiegers on the night of 6th-7th
September.

Thus forewarned, Maurice took the best precautions and calmly within his
entrenchments awaited the onslaught.  Punctual to his appointment,
Verdugo with his whole force, yelling "Victoria!  Victoria!"  made a
shirt-attack, or camiciata--the men wearing their shirts outside their
armour to distinguish each other in the darkness--upon that portion of
the camp which was under command of Hohenlo.  They were met with
determination and repulsed, after fighting all night, with a loss of
three hundred killed and a proportionate number of wounded.  The
Netherlanders had but three killed and six wounded.  Among the latter,
however, was Lewis William, who received a musket-ball in the belly, but
remained on the ground until the enemy had retreated.  It was then
discovered that his wound was not mortal--the intestines not having been
injured--and he was soon about his work again.  Prince Maurice, too, as
usual, incurred the remonstrances of the deputies and others for the
reckless manner in which he exposed himself wherever the fire was hottest
He resolutely refused, however, to permit his cavalry to follow the
retreating enemy.  His object was Coeworden--a prize more important than
a new victory over the already defeated Spaniards would prove--and this
object he kept ever before his eyes.

This was Verdugo's first and last attempt to relieve the city.  He had
seen enough of the young prince's tactics and had no further wish to
break his teeth against those scientific entrenchments.  The Spaniards at
last, whether they wore their shirts inside or outside their doublets,
could no longer handle the Dutchmen at pleasure.  That people of butter,
as the iron duke of Alva was fond of calling the Netherlanders, were
grown harder with the pressure of a twenty-five years' war.

Five days after the sanguinary 'camiciata' the besieged offered to
capitulate.  The trumpet at which the proud Van den Berg had hinted for
six months later arrived on the 12th September.  Maurice was glad to get
his town.  His "little soldiers" did not insist, as the Spaniards and
Italians were used to do in the good old days, on unlimited murder, rape,
and fire, as the natural solace and reward of their labours in the
trenches.  Civilization had made some progress, at least in the
Netherlands.  Maurice granted good terms, such as he had been in the
habit of conceding to all captured towns.  Van den Berg was courteously
received by his cousins, as he rode forth from the place at the head of
what remained of his garrison, five hundred in number, with colours
flying, matches burning, bullet in mouth, and with all their arms and
baggage except artillery and ammunition, and the heroic little Lewis,
notwithstanding the wound in his belly, got on horseback and greeted him
with a cousinly welcome in the camp.

The city was a most important acquisition, as already sufficiently set
forth, but Queen Elizabeth, much misinformed on this occasion, was
inclined to undervalue it.  She wrote accordingly to the States,
reproaching them for using all that artillery and that royal force
against a mere castle and earthheap, instead of attempting some
considerable capital, or going in force to the relief of Brittany.  The
day was to come when she would acknowledge the advantage of not leaving
this earth-heap in the hands of the Spaniard.  Meantime, Prince Maurice--
the season being so far advanced--gave the world no further practical
lessons in the engineering science, and sent his troops into winter
quarters.

These were the chief military phenomena in France and Flanders during
three years of the great struggle to establish Philip's universal
dominion.




CHAPTER XXVII.

     Negotiations between Queen Elizabeth and the States--Aspect of
     affair between England and the Netherlands--Complaints of the
     Hollanders on the piratical acts of the English--The Dutch Envoy and
     the English Government--Caron's interview with Elizabeth--The Queen
     promises redress of grievances.

It is now necessary to cast a glance at certain negotiations on delicate
topics which had meantime been occurring between Queen Elizabeth and the
States.

England and the republic were bound together by ties so close that it was
impossible for either to injure the other without inflicting a
corresponding damage on itself.  Nevertheless this very community of
interest, combined with a close national relationship--for in the
European family the Netherlanders and English were but cousins twice
removed--with similarity of pursuits, with commercial jealousy, with an
intense and ever growing rivalry for that supremacy on the ocean towards
which the monarchy and the republic were so earnestly struggling, with a
common passion for civil and religious freedom, and with that inveterate
habit of self-assertion--the healthful but not engaging attribute of all
vigorous nations--which strongly marked them both, was rapidly producing
an antipathy between the two countries which time was likely rather to
deepen than efface.  And the national divergences were as potent as the
traits of resemblance in creating this antagonism.

The democratic element was expanding itself in the republic so rapidly
as to stifle for a time the oligarchical principle which might one day
be developed out of the same matrix; while, despite the hardy and
adventurous spirit which characterised the English nation throughout all
its grades, there was never a more intensely aristocratic influence in
the world than the governing and directing spirit of the England of that
age.

It was impossible that the courtiers of Elizabeth and the burgher-
statesmen of Holland and Friesland should sympathize with each other in
sentiment or in manner.  The republicans in their exuberant consciousness
of having at last got rid of kings and kingly paraphernalia in their own,
land--for since the rejection of the sovereignty offered to France and
England in 1585 this feeling had become so predominant as to make it
difficult to believe that those offers had been in reality so recent--
were insensibly adopting a frankness, perhaps a roughness, of political
and social demeanour which was far from palatable to the euphuistic
formalists of other, countries.

Especially the English statesmen, trained to approach their sovereign
with almost Oriental humility, and accustomed to exact for themselves
a large amount of deference, could ill brook the free and easy tone
occasionally adopted in diplomatic and official intercourse by these
upstart republicans.

     [The Venetian ambassador Contarin relates that in the reign of James
     I.  the great nobles of England were served at table by lackeys on
     they knees.]

A queen, who to loose morals, imperious disposition, and violent temper
united as inordinate a personal vanity as was ever vouchsafed to woman,
and who up to the verge of decrepitude was addressed by her courtiers in
the language of love-torn swain to blooming shepherdess, could naturally
find but little to her taste in the hierarchy of Hans Brewer and Hans
Baker.  Thus her Majesty and her courtiers, accustomed to the faded
gallantries with which the serious affairs of State were so grotesquely
intermingled, took it ill when they were bluntly informed, for instance,
that the State council of the Netherlands, negotiating on Netherland
affairs, could not permit a veto to the representatives of the queen,
and that this same body of Dutchmen discussing their own business
insisted upon talking Dutch and not Latin.

It was impossible to deny that the young Stadholder was a gentleman of a
good house, but how could the insolence of a common citizen like John of
Olden-Barneveld be digested?  It was certain that behind those shaggy,
overhanging brows there was a powerful brain stored with legal and
historic lore, which supplied eloquence to an ever-ready tongue and pen.
Yet these facts, difficult to gainsay, did not make the demands so
frequently urged by the States-General upon the English Government for
the enforcement of Dutch rights and the redress of English wrongs the
more acceptable.

Bodley, Gilpin, and the rest were in a chronic state of exasperation
with the Hollanders, not only because of their perpetual complaints,
but because their complaints were perpetually just.

The States-General were dissatisfied, all the Netherlanders were
dissatisfied--and not entirely without reason--that the English, with
whom the republic was on terms not only of friendship but of alliance,
should burn their ships on the high seas, plunder their merchants, and
torture their sea-captains in order to extort information as to the most
precious portions of their cargoes.  Sharp language against such
malpractices was considered but proof of democratic vulgarity.  Yet it
would be hard to maintain that Martin Frobisher, Mansfield, Grenfell, and
the rest of the sea-kings, with all their dash and daring and patriotism,
were not as unscrupulous pirates as ever sailed blue water, or that they
were not apt to commit their depredations upon friend and foe alike.

On the other hand; by a liberality of commerce in extraordinary contrast
with the practice of modern times, the Netherlanders were in the habit of
trading directly with the arch-enemy of both Holland and England, even in
the midst of their conflict with him, and it was complained of that even
the munitions of war and the implements of navigation by which Spain had
been enabled to effect its foot-hold in Brittany, and thus to threaten
the English coast, were derived from this very traffic.

The Hollanders replied, that, according to their contract with England,
they were at liberty to send as many as forty or fifty vessels at a time
to Spain and Portugal, that they had never exceeded the stipulated
number, that England freely engaged in the same traffic herself with the
common enemy, that it was not reasonable to consider cordage or dried
fish or shooks and staves, butter, eggs, and corn as contraband of war,
that if they were illegitimate the English trade was vitiated to the same
degree, and that it would be utterly hopeless for the provinces to
attempt to carry on the war, except by enabling themselves, through the
widest and most unrestricted foreign commerce, even including the enemy's
realms, to provide their nation with the necessary wealth to sustain so
gigantic a conflict.

Here were ever flowing fountains of bitterest discussion and
recrimination.  It must be admitted however that there was occasionally
an advantage in the despotic and summary manner in which the queen took
matters into her own hands.  It was refreshing to see this great
sovereign--who was so well able to grapple with questions of State, and
whose very imperiousness of temper impelled her to trample on shallow
sophistries and specious technicalities--dealing directly with cases of
piracy and turning a deaf ear to the counsellors, who in that, as in
every age, were too prone to shove by international justice in order to
fulfil municipal forms.

It was, however, with much difficulty that the envoy of the republic was
able to obtain a direct hearing from her Majesty in order to press the
long list of complaints on account of the English piratical proceedings
upon her attention.  He intimated that there seemed to be special reasons
why the great ones about her throne were disposed to deny him access to
the queen, knowing as they did in what intent he asked for interviews.
They described in strong language the royal wrath at the opposition
recently made by the States to detaching the English auxiliaries in the
Netherlands for the service of the French king in Normandy, hoping
thereby to deter him from venturing into her presence with a list of
grievances on the part of his government.  "I did my best to indicate the
danger incurred by such transferring of troops at so critical a moment,"
said Noel de Canon, "showing that it was directly in opposition to the
contract made with her Majesty.  But I got no answer save very high words
from the Lord Treasurer, to the effect that the States-General were never
willing to agree to any of her Majesty's prepositions, and that this
matter was as necessary to the States' service as to that of the French
king.  In effect, he said peremptorily that her Majesty willed it and
would not recede from her resolution."

The envoy then requested an interview with the queen before her departure
into the country.

Next day, at noon, Lord Burghley sent word that she was to leave between
five and six o'clock that evening, and that the minister would be welcome
meantime at any hour.

"But notwithstanding that I presented myself," said Caron, "at two
o'clock in the afternoon, I was unable to speak to her Majesty until a
moment before she was about to mount her horse.  Her language was then
very curt.  She persisted in demanding her troops, and strongly expressed
her dissatisfaction that we should have refused them on what she called
so good an occasion for using them.  I was obliged to cut my replies very
short, as it was already between six and seven o'clock, and she was to
ride nine English miles to the place where she was to pass the night.
I was quite sensible, however; that the audience was arranged to be thus
brief, in order that I should not be able to stop long enough to give
trouble, and perhaps to find occasion to renew our complaints touching
the plunderings and robberies committed upon us at sea.  This is what
some of the great personages here, without doubt, are afraid of, for they
were wonderfully well overhauled in my last audience.  I shall attempt to
speak to her again before she goes very deep into the country."

It was not however before the end of the year, after Caron had made a
voyage to Holland and had returned, that he 14 Nov. was able to bring the
subject thoroughly before her Majesty.  On the 14th November he had
preliminary interviews with the Lord High Admiral and the Lord Treasurer
at Hampton Court, where the queen was then residing.  The plundering
business was warmly discussed between himself and the Admiral, and there
was much quibbling and special pleading in defence of the practices which
had created so much irritation and pecuniary loss in Holland.  There was
a good deal of talk about want of evidence and conflict of evidence,
which, to a man who felt as sure of the facts and of the law as the Dutch
envoy did--unless it were according to public law for one friend and,
ally to plunder and burn the vessels of another friend and ally--was not
encouraging as to the probable issue of his interview with her Majesty.
It would be tedious to report the conversation as fully as it was laid by
Noel de Caron before the States-General; but at last the admiral
expressed a hope that the injured parties would be able to make good
their, case.  At any rate he assured the envoy that he would take care of
Captain Mansfield for the present, who was in prison with two other
captains, so that proceedings might be had against them if it was thought
worth while.

Caron answered with Dutch bluntness.  "I recommended him very earnestly
to do this," he said, "and told him roundly that this was by all means
necessary for the sake of his own honour.  Otherwise no man could ever be
made to believe that his Excellency was not seeking to get his own profit
out of the affair.  But he vehemently swore and protested that this was
not the case."

He then went to the Lord Treasurer's apartment, where a long and stormy
interview followed on the subject of the withdrawal of the English
troops.  Caron warmly insisted that the measure had been full of danger,
for the States; that they had been ordered out of Prince Maurice's camp
at a most critical moment; that; had it not, been for the Stallholder's
promptness and military skill; very great disasters to the common cause
must have ensued; and that, after all, nothing had been done by the
contingent in any other field, for they had been for six months idle and
sick, without ever reaching Brittany at all.

"The Lord Treasurer, who, contrary to his custom," said the envoy, "had
been listening thus long to what I had to say, now observed that the
States had treated her Majesty very ill, that they had kept her running
after her own troops nearly half a year, and had offered no excuse for
their proceedings."

It would be superfluous to repeat the arguments by which Caron
endeavoured to set forth that the English troops, sent to the Netherlands
according to a special compact, for a special service, and for a special
consideration and equivalent, could not honestly be employed, contrary to
the wishes of the States-General, upon a totally different service and in
another country.  The queen willed it, he was informed, and it was ill-
treatment of her Majesty on the part of the Hollanders to oppose her
will.  This argument was unanswerable.

Soon afterwards, Caron was admitted to the presence of Elizabeth.  He
delivered, at first, a letter from the States-General, touching the
withdrawal of the troops.  The queen, instantly broke the seal and read
the letter to the end.  Coming to the concluding passage, in which the
States observed that they had great and just cause highly to complain on
that subject, she paused, reading the sentences over twice or thrice, and
then remarked:

"Truly these are comical people.  I have so often been complaining that
they refused to send my troops, and now the States complain that they are
obliged to let them go.  Yet my intention is only to borrow them for a
little while, because I can give my brother of France no better succour
than by sending him these soldiers, and this I consider better than if I
should send him four thousand men.  I say again, I am only borrowing
them, and surely the States ought never to make such complaints, when
the occasion was such a favourable one, and they had received already
sufficient aid from these troops, and had liberated their whole country.
I don't comprehend these grievances.  They complain that I withdraw my
people, and meantime they are still holding them and have brought them
ashore again.  They send me frivolous excuses that the skippers don't
know the road to my islands, which is, after all, as easy to find as the
way to Caen, for it is all one.  I have also sent my own pilots; and I
complain bitterly that by making this difficulty they will cause the loss
of all Brittany.  They run with their people far away from me, and
meantime they allow the enemy to become master of all the coasts lying
opposite me.  But if it goes badly with me they will rue it deeply
themselves."

There was considerable reason, even if there were but little justice,
in this strain of remarks.  Her Majesty continued it for some little time
longer, and it is interesting to see the direct and personal manner in
which this great princess handled the weightiest affairs of state.  The
transfer of a dozen companies of English infantry from Friesland to
Brittany was supposed to be big with the fate of France, England, and the
Dutch republic, and was the subject of long and angry controversy, not as
a contested point of principle, in regard to which numbers, of course,
are nothing, but as a matter of practical and pressing importance.

"Her Majesty made many more observations of this nature," said Caron,
"but without getting at all into a passion, and, in my opinion, her
discourse was sensible, and she spoke with more moderation than she is
wont at other times."

The envoy then presented the second letter from the States-General in
regard to the outrages inflicted on the Dutch merchantmen.  The queen
read it at once, and expressed herself as very much displeased with her
people.  She said that she had received similar information from
Counsellor Bodley, who had openly given her to understand that the
enormous outrages which her people were committing at sea upon the
Netherlanders were a public scandal.  It had made her so angry, she said,
that she knew not which way to turn.  She would take it in hand at once,
for she would rather make oath never more to permit a single ship of war
to leave her ports than consent to such thieveries and villanies.  She
told Caron that he would do well to have his case in regard to these
matters verified, and then to give it into her own hands, since otherwise
it would all be denied her and she would find herself unable to get at
the truth."

"I have all the proofs and documents of the merchants by me, "replied the
envoy, "and, moreover, several of the sea-captains who have been robbed
and outraged have come over with me, as likewise some merchants who were
tortured by burning of the thumbs and other kinds of torments."

This disturbed the queen very much, and she expressed her wish that Caron
should not allow himself to be put off with, delays by the council, but
should insist upon all due criminal punishment, the infliction of which
she promised in the strongest terms to order; for she could never enjoy
peace of mind, she said; so long as such scoundrels were tolerated in her
kingdom.

The envoy had brought with him a summary of the cases, with the names of
all the merchants interested, and a list of all the marks on the sacks of
money which had been stolen.  The queen looked over it very carefully,
declaring it to be her intention that there should be no delays
interposed in the conduct of this affair by forms of special pleading,
but that speedy cognizance should be taken of the whole, and that the
property should forthwith be restored.

She then sent for Sir Robert Cecil, whom she directed to go at once and
tell his father, the Lord Treasurer, that he was to assist Caron in this
affair exactly as if it were her own.  It was her intention, she said,
that her people were in no wise to trouble the Hollanders in legitimate
mercantile pursuits.  She added that it was not enough for her people to
say that they had only been seizing Spaniards' goods and money, but she
meant that they should prove it, too, or else they should swing for it.

Caron assured her Majesty that he had no other commission from his
masters than to ask for justice, and that he had no instructions to claim
Spanish property or enemy's goods.  He had brought sufficient evidence
with him, he said, to give her Majesty entire satisfaction.

It is not necessary to pursue the subject any farther.  The great nobles
still endeavoured to interpose delays, and urged the propriety of taking
the case before the common courts of law.  Carom strong in the support of
the queen, insisted that it should be settled, as her Majesty had
commanded, by the council, and it was finally arranged that the judge of
admiralty should examine the evidence on both sides, and then communicate
the documents at once to the Lord Treasurer.  Meantime the money was to
be deposited with certain aldermen of London, and the accused parties
kept in prison.  The ultimate decision was then to be made by the
council, "not by form of process but by commission thereto ordained."
In the course of the many interviews which followed between the Dutch
envoy and the privy counsellors, the Lord Admiral stated that an English
merchant residing in the Netherlands had sent to offer him a present of
two thousand pounds sterling, in case the affair should be decided
against the Hollanders.  He communicated the name of the individual to
Caron, under seal of secrecy, and reminded the Lord Treasurer that he too
had seen the letter of the Englishman.  Lord Burghley observed that he
remembered the fact that certain letters had been communicated to him by
the Lord Admiral, but that he did not know from whence they came, nor
anything about the person of the writer.

The case of the plundered merchants was destined to drag almost as slowly
before the council as it might have done in the ordinary tribunals, and
Caron was "kept running," as he expressed it, "from the court to London,
and from London to the court," and it was long before justice was done to
the sufferers.  Yet the energetic manner in which the queen took the case
into her own hands, and the intense indignation with which she denounced
the robberies and outrages which had been committed by her subjects upon
her friends and allies, were effective in restraining such wholesale
piracy in the future.

On the whole, however, if the internal machinery is examined by which the
masses of mankind were moved at epoch in various parts of Christendom, we
shall not find much reason to applaud the conformity of Governments to
the principles of justice, reason, or wisdom.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Accustomed to the faded gallantries
Conformity of Governments to the principles of justice
Considerable reason, even if there were but little justice
Disciple of Simon Stevinus
Self-assertion--the healthful but not engaging attribute




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v64
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 65, 1592-1594





CHAPTER XXVIII.

     Influence of the rule and character of Philip II.--Heroism of the
     sixteenth century--Contest for the French throne--Character and
     policy of the Duke of Mayenne--Escape of the Duke of Guise from
     Castle Tours--Propositions for the marriage of the Infanta--Plotting
     of the Catholic party--Grounds of Philip's pretensions to the crown
     of France--Motives of the Duke of Parma maligned by Commander Moreo
     --He justifies himself to the king--View of the private relations
     between Philip and the Duke of Mayenne and their sentiments towards
     each other--Disposition of the French politicians and soldiers
     towards Philip--Peculiar commercial pursuits of Philip--Confused
     state of affairs in France--Treachery of Philip towards the Duke of
     Parma--Recall of the duke to Spain--His sufferings and death.

The People--which has been generally regarded as something naturally
below its rulers, and as born to be protected and governed, paternally or
otherwise, by an accidental selection from its own species, which by some
mysterious process has shot up much nearer to heaven than itself--is
often described as brutal, depraved, self-seeking, ignorant, passionate,
licentious, and greedy.

It is fitting, therefore, that its protectors should be distinguished, at
great epochs of the world's history, by an absence of such objectionable
qualities.

It must be confessed, however, that if the world had waited for heroes--
during the dreary period which followed the expulsion of something that
was called Henry III. of France from the gates of his capital, and
especially during the time that followed hard upon the decease of that
embodiment of royalty--its axis must have ceased to turn for a long
succession of years.  The Bearnese was at least alive, and a man. He
played his part with consummate audacity and skill; but alas for an epoch
or a country in which such a shape--notwithstanding all its engaging and
even commanding qualities--looked upon as an incarnation of human
greatness!

But the chief mover of all things--so far as one man can be prime mover--
was still the diligent scribe who lived in the Escorial.  It was he whose
high mission it was to blow the bellows of civil war, and to scatter
curses over what had once been the smiling abodes of human creatures,
throughout the leading countries of Christendom.  The throne of France
was vacant, nominally as well as actually, since--the year 1589.  During
two-and-twenty years preceding that epoch he had scourged the provinces,
once constituting the richest and most enlightened portions of his
hereditary domains, upon the theory that without the Spanish Inquisition
no material prosperity was possible on earth, nor any entrance permitted
to the realms of bliss beyond the grave.  Had every Netherlander
consented to burn his Bible, and to be burned himself should he be found
listening to its holy precepts if read to him in shop, cottage, farm-
house, or castle; and had he furthermore consented to renounce all the
liberal institutions which his ancestors had earned, in the struggle of
centuries, by the sweat of their brows and the blood of, their hearts;
his benignant proprietor and master, who lived at the ends of the earth,
would have consented at almost any moment to peace.  His arms were ever
open.  Let it not be supposed that this is the language of sarcasm or
epigram.  Stripped of the decorous sophistication by which human beings
are so fond of concealing their naked thoughts from each other, this was
the one simple dogma always propounded by Philip.  Grimace had done its
worst, however, and it was long since it had exercised any power in the
Netherlands.  The king and the Dutchmen understood each other; and the
plain truths with which those republicans answered the imperial proffers
of mediation, so frequently renewed, were something new, and perhaps not
entirely unwholesome in diplomacy.

It is not an inviting task to abandon the comparatively healthy
atmosphere of the battle-field, the blood-stained swamp, the murderous
trench--where human beings, even if communing only by bullets and push of
pike, were at least dealing truthfully with each other--and to descend
into those subterranean regions where the effluvia of falsehood becomes
almost too foul for ordinary human organisation.

Heroes in those days, in any country, there were few.  William the Silent
was dead.  De la Noue was dead.  Duplessis-Mornay was living, but his
influence over his royal master was rapidly diminishing.  Cecil, Hatton,
Essex, Howard, Raleigh, James Croft, Valentine Dale, John Norris, Roger
Williams, the "Virgin Queen" herself--does one of these chief agents in
public affairs, or do all of them together, furnish a thousandth part of
that heroic whole which the England of the sixteenth century presents to
every imagination?  Maurice of Nassau-excellent soldier and engineer as
he had already proved himself--had certainly not developed much of the
heroic element, although thus far he was walking straightforward like a
man, in the path of duty, with the pithy and substantial Lewis William
ever at his side.  Olden-Barneveld--tough burgher-statesman, hard-headed,
indomitable man of granite--was doing more work, and doing it more
thoroughly, than any living politician, but he was certainly not of the
mythological brotherhood who inhabit the serene regions of space beyond
the moon.  He was not the son of god or goddess, destined, after removal
from this sphere, to shine with planetary lustre, among other
constellations, upon the scenes of mortal action.  Those of us who are
willing to rise-or to descend if the phrase seems wiser--to the idea of
a self-governing people must content ourselves, for this epoch, with the
fancy of a hero-people and a people-king.

A plain little republic, thrusting itself uninvited into the great
political family-party of heaven-anointed sovereigns and long-descended
nobles, seemed a somewhat repulsive phenomenon.  It became odious and
dangerous when by the blows it could deal in battle, the logic it could
chop in council, it indicated a remote future for the world, in which
right divine and regal paraphernalia might cease to be as effective
stage-properties as they had always been considered.

Yet it will be difficult for us to find the heroic individualised very
perceptibly at this period, look where we may.  Already there seemed
ground for questioning the comfortable fiction that the accidentally
dominant families and castes were by nature wiser, better, braver than
that much-contemned entity, the People.  What if the fearful heresy
should gain ground that the People was at least as wise, honest, and
brave as its masters?  What if it should become a recognised fact that
the great individuals and castes, whose wealth and station furnished them
with ample time and means for perfecting themselves in the science of
government, were rather devoting their leisure to the systematic filling
of their own pockets than to the hiving up of knowledge for the good of
their fellow creatures?  What if the whole theory of hereditary
superiority should suddenly exhale?  What if it were found out that we
were all fellow-worms together, and that those which had crawled highest
were not necessarily the least slimy?

Meantime it will be well for us, in order to understand what is called
the Past, to scrutinise somewhat closely that which was never meant to be
revealed.  To know the springs which once controlled the world's
movements, one must ponder the secret thoughts, purposes, aspirations,
and baffled attempts of the few dozen individuals who once claimed that
world in fee-simple.  Such researches are not in a cheerful field; for
the sources of history are rarely fountains of crystal, bubbling through
meadows of asphodel.  Vast and noisome are the many sewers which have
ever run beneath decorous Christendom.

Some of the leading military events in France and Flanders, patent to all
the world, which grouped themselves about the contest for the French
throne, as the central point in the history of Philip's proposed world-
empire, have already been indicated.

It was a species of triangular contest--so far as the chief actors were
concerned--for that vacant throne.  Philip, Mayenne, Henry of Navarre,
with all the adroitness which each possessed, were playing for the
splendid prize.

Of Philip it is not necessary to speak.  The preceding volumes of this
work have been written in vain, if the reader has not obtained from
irrefragable testimony--the monarch's own especially--a sufficient
knowledge of that human fetish before which so much of contemporary
humanity grovelled.

The figure of Navarre is also one of the most familiar shapes in history.

As for the Duke of Mayenne, he had been, since the death of his brother
the Balafre, ostensible leader of the League, and was playing, not
without skill, a triple game.

Firstly, he hoped for the throne for himself.

Secondly, he was assisting the King of Spain to obtain that dignity.

Thirdly, he was manoeuvring in dull, dumb, but not ineffective manner, in
favour of Navarre.

So comprehensive and self-contradictory a scheme would seem to indicate
an elasticity of principle and a fertility of resource not often
vouchsafed to man.

Certainly one of the most pregnant lessons of history is furnished in
the development of these cabals, nor is it, in this regard, of great
importance whether the issue was to prove them futile or judicious.  It
is sufficient for us now, that when those vanished days constituted the
Present--the vital atmosphere of Christendom--the world's affairs were
controlled by those plotters and their subordinates, and it is therefore
desirable for us to know what manner of men they were, and how they
played their parts.

Nor should it ever be forgotten that the leading motive with all was
supposed to be religion.  It was to maintain the supremacy of the Roman
Church, or to vindicate, to a certain extent, liberty of conscience,
through the establishment of a heterodox organisation, that all these
human beings of various lineage and language throughout Christendom had
been cutting each other's throats for a quarter of a century.

Mayenne was not without courage in the field when he found himself there,
but it was observed of him that he spent more time at table than the
Bearnese in sleep, and that he was so fat as to require the assistance of
twelve men to put him in the saddle again whenever he fell from his
horse.  Yet slow fighter as he was, he was a most nimble intriguer.  As
for his private character, it was notoriously stained with every vice,
nor was there enough of natural intelligence or superior acquirement to
atone for his, crapulous; licentious, shameless life.  His military
efficiency at important emergencies was impaired and his life endangered
by vile diseases.  He was covetous and greedy beyond what was considered
decent even in that cynical age.  He received subsidies and alms with
both hands from those who distrusted and despised him, but who could not
eject him from his advantageous position.

He wished to arrive at the throne of France.  As son of Francis of Guise,
as brother of the great Balafre, he considered himself entitled to the
homage of the fishwomen and the butchers' halls.  The constitution of the
country in that age making a People impossible, the subtle connection
between a high-born intriguer and the dregs of a populace, which can only
exist in societies of deep chasms and precipitous contrasts, was easily
established.

The duke's summary dealing with the sixteen tyrants of Paris in the
matter of the president's murder had, however, loosened his hold on what
was considered the democracy; but this was at the time when his schemes
were silently swinging towards the Protestant aristocracy; at the moment
when Politica was taking the place of Madam League in his secret
affections.  Nevertheless, so long as there seemed a chance, he was
disposed to work the mines for his own benefit.  His position as
lieutenant-general gave him an immense advantage for intriguing with both
sides, and--in case his aspirations for royalty were baffled--for
obtaining the highest possible price for himself in that auction in which
Philip and the Bearnese were likely to strain all their resources in
outbidding each other.

On one thing his heart was fixed.  His brother's son should at least not
secure the golden prize if he could prevent it.  The young Duke of Guise,
who had been immured in Castle Tours since the famous murder of his
father and uncle, had made his escape by a rather neat stratagem.  Having
been allowed some liberty for amusing himself in the corridors in the
neighbourhood of his apartment, he had invented a game of hop, skip, and
jump up stairs and down, which he was wont to play with the soldiers of
the guard, as a solace to the tediousness of confinement.  One day he
hopped and skipped up the staircase with a rapidity which excited the
admiration of the companions of his sport, slipped into his room, slammed
and bolted the doors, and when the guard, after in vain waiting a
considerable tine for him to return and resume the game, at last forced
an entrance, they found the bird flown out of window.  Rope-ladders,
confederates, fast-galloping post-horses did the rest, and at last the
young duke joined his affectionate uncle in camp, much to that eminent
relative's discomfiture.  Philip gave alternately conflicting
instructions to Farnese--sometimes that he should encourage the natural
jealousy between the pair; sometimes that he should cause them to work
harmoniously together for the common good--that common good being the
attainment by the King of Spain of the sovereignty of France.

But it was impossible, as already intimated, for Mayenne to work
harmoniously with his nephew.  The Duke of Guise might marry with the
infanta and thus become King of France by the grace of God and Philip.
To such a consummation in the case of his uncle there stood, as we know,
an insuperable obstacle in the shape of the Duchess of Mayenne.  Should
it come to this at last, it was certain that the Duke would make any and
every combination to frustrate such a scheme.  Meantime he kept his own
counsel, worked amiably with Philip, Parma, and the young duke, and
received money in overflowing measure, and poured into his bosom from
that Spanish monarch whose veterans in the Netherlands were maddened by
starvation into mutiny.

Philip's plans were a series of alternatives.  France he regarded as the
property of his family.  Of that there could be no doubt at all.  He
meant to put the crown upon his own head, unless the difficulties in the
way should prove absolutely insuperable.  In that case he claimed France
and all its inhabitants as the property of his daughter.  The Salic law
was simply a pleasantry, a bit of foolish pedantry, an absurdity.  If
Clara Isabella, as daughter of Isabella of France, as grandchild of Henry
II., were not manifestly the owner of France--queen-proprietary, as the
Spanish doctors called it--then there was no such thing, so he thought,
as inheritance of castle, farm-house, or hovel--no such thing as property
anywhere in the world.  If the heiress of the Valois could not take that
kingdom as her private estate, what security could there ever be for any
possessions public or private?

This was logical reasoning enough for kings and their counsellors.  There
was much that might be said, however, in regard to special laws.  There
was no doubt that great countries, with all their livestock--human or
otherwise--belonged to an individual, but it was not always so clear who
that individual was.  This doubt gave much work and comfortable fees to
the lawyers.  There was much learned lore concerning statutes of descent,
cutting off of entails, actions for ejectment, difficulties of enforcing
processes, and the like, to occupy the attention of diplomatists,
politicians and other sages.  It would have caused general hilarity,
however, could it have been suggested that the live-stock had art or part
in the matter; that sheep, swine, or men could claim a choice of their
shepherds and butchers.

Philip--humbly satisfied, as he always expressed himself, so long as the
purity of the Roman dogmas and the supremacy of the Romish Church over
the whole earth were maintained--affected a comparative indifference as
to whether he should put the crown of St. Louis and of Hugh Capet upon
his own grey head or whether he should govern France through his daughter
and her husband.  Happy the man who might exchange the symbols of mutual
affection with Philip's daughter.

The king had various plans in regard to the bestowal of the hand thus
richly endowed.  First and foremost it was suggested--and the idea was
not held too monstrous to be even believed in by some conspicuous
individuals--that he proposed espousing his daughter himself.  The pope
was to be relied on, in this case, to give a special dispensation.  Such
a marriage, between parties too closely related to be usually united in
wedlock, might otherwise shock the prejudices of the orthodox.  His late
niece and wife was dead, so that there was no inconvenience on that
score, should the interests of his dynasty, his family, and, above all,
of the Church, impel him, on mature reflection, to take for his fourth
marriage one step farther within the forbidden degrees than he had done
in his third.  Here is the statement, which, if it have no other value,
serves to show the hideous designs of which the enemies of Philip
sincerely believed that monarch capable.

"But God is a just God," wrote Sir Edward Stafford, "and if with all
things past, that be true that the king ('videlicet' Henry IV.) yesterday
assured me to be true, and that both his ambassador from Venice writ to
him and Monsieur de Luxembourg from Rome, that the Count Olivarez had
made a great instance to the pope (Sixtus V.) a little afore his death,
to permit his master to marry his daughter, no doubt God will not leave
it long unpunished."

Such was the horrible tale which was circulated and believed in by Henry
the Great of France and by eminent nobles and ambassadors, and at least
thought possible by the English envoy.  By such a family arrangement it
was obvious that the conflicting claims of father and daughter to the
proprietorship of France would be ingeniously adjusted, and the children
of so well assorted a marriage might reign in undisputed legitimacy over
France and Spain, and the rest of the world-monarchy.  Should the king
decide on the whole against this matrimonial project, should Innocent or
Clement prove as intractable as Sixtus, then it would be necessary to
decide among various candidates for the Infanta's hand.

In Mayenne's Opinion the Duke of Guise was likely to be the man; but
there is little doubt that Philip, in case these more cherished schemes
should fail, had made up his mind--so far as he ever did make up his mind
upon anything--to select his nephew the Archduke Ernest, brother of the
Emperor Rudolph, for his son-in-law.  But it was not necessary to make an
immediate choice.  His quiver was full of archdukes, any one of whom
would be an eligible candidate, while not one of them would be likely to
reject the Infanta with France on her wedding-finger.  Meantime there was
a lion in the path in the shape of Henry of Navarre.

Those who disbelieve in the influence of the individual on the fate of
mankind may ponder the possible results to history and humanity, had the
dagger of Jacques Clement entered the stomach of Henry IV. rather than of
Henry III. in the summer of 1589, or the perturbations in the world's
movements that might have puzzled philosophers had there been an
unsuspected mass of religious conviction revolving unseen in the mental
depths of the Bearnese.  Conscience, as it has from time to time
exhibited itself on this planet of ours, is a powerful agent in
controlling political combinations; but the instances are unfortunately
not rare, so far as sublunary progress is concerned, in which the absence
of this dominant influence permits a prosperous rapidity to individual
careers.  Eternal honour to the noble beings, true chieftains among men,
who have forfeited worldly power or sacrificed life itself at the dictate
of religious or moral conviction--even should the basis of such
conviction appear to some of us unsafe or unreal.  Shame on the tongue
which would malign or ridicule the martyr or the honest convert to any
form of Christian faith!  But who can discover aught that is inspiring to
the sons of men in conversions--whether of princes or of peasants--
wrought, not at risk of life and pelf, but for the sake of securing and
increasing the one and the other?

Certainly the Bearnese was the most candid of men.  It was this very
candour, this freedom from bigotry, this want of conviction, and this
openness to conviction, that made him so dangerous and caused so much
anxiety to Philip.  The Roman Church might or might not be strengthened
by the re-conversion of the legitimate heir of France, but it was certain
that the claims of Philip and the Infanta to the proprietorship of that
kingdom would be weakened by the process.  While the Spanish king knew
himself to be inspired in all his actions by a single motive, the
maintenance of the supremacy of the Roman Church, he was perfectly aware
that the Prince of Bearne was not so single-hearted nor so conscientious
as himself.

The Prince of Bearne--heretic, son of heretics, great chieftain of
heretics--was supposed capable of becoming orthodox whenever the Pope
would accept his conversion.  Against this possibility Philip struggled
with all his strength.

Since Pope Sixtus V., who had a weakness for Henry, there had been
several popes.  Urban VII., his immediate successor, had reigned but
thirteen days.  Gregory XIV.  (Sfondrato) had died 15th October, 1591,
ten months after his election.  Fachinetti, with the title of Innocent
IX., had reigned two months, from 29th October to 29th December, 1591.
He died of "Spanish poison," said Envoy Umton, as coolly as if speaking
of gout, or typhus, or any other recognised disorder.  Clement VIII.
(Aldobrandini) was elected 30th January, 1592.  He was no lover of Henry,
and lived in mortal fear of Philip, while it must be conceded that the
Spanish ambassador at Rome was much given to brow-beating his Holiness.
Should he dare to grant that absolution which was the secret object of
the Bearnese, there was no vengeance, hinted the envoy, that Philip would
not wreak on the holy father.  He would cut off his supplies from Naples
and Sicily, and starve him and all-his subjects; he would frustrate all
his family schemes, he would renounce him, he would unpope him, he would
do anything that man and despot could do, should the great shepherd dare
to re-admit this lost sheep, and this very black sheep, into the fold of
the faithful.

As for Henry himself, his game--for in his eyes it was nothing but a
game--lay every day plainer and plainer before him.  He was indispensable
to the heretics.  Neither England, nor Holland, nor Protestant Germany,
could renounce him, even should he renounce "the religion."  Nor could
the French Huguenots exist without that protection which, even although
Catholic, he could still extend to them when he should be accepted as
king by the Catholics.

Hereditary monarch by French law and history, released from his heresy by
the authority that could bind and loose, purged as with hyssop and washed
whiter than snow, it should go hard with him if Philip, and Farnese, and
Mayenne, and all the pikemen and reiters they might muster, could keep
him very long from the throne of his ancestors.

Nothing could match the ingenuousness with which he demanded the
instruction whenever the fitting time for it should arrive; as if,
instead of having been a professor both of the Calvinist and Catholic
persuasion, and having relapsed from both, he had been some innocent
Peruvian or Hindoo, who was invited to listen to preachings and to
examine dogmas for the very first time in his life.

Yet Philip had good grounds for hoping a favourable result from his
political and military manoeuvre.  He entertained little doubt that
France belonged to him or to his daughter; that the most powerful party
in the country was in favour of his claims, provided he would pay the
voters liberally enough for their support, and that if the worst came to
the worst it would always be in his power to dismember the kingdom, and
to reserve the lion's share for himself, while distributing some of the
provinces to the most prominent of his confederates.

The sixteen tyrants of Paris had already, as we have seen, urged the
crown upon him, provided he would establish in France the Inquisition,
the council of Trent, and other acceptable institutions, besides
distributing judiciously a good many lucrative offices among various
classes of his adherents.

The Duke of Mayenne, in his own name and that of all the Catholics of
France, formally demanded of him to maintain two armies, forty thousand
men in all, to be respectively under command of the duke himself and of
Alexander Farnese, and regularly to pay for them.  These propositions,
as has been seen, were carried into effect as nearly as possible, at
enormous expense to Philip's exchequer, and he naturally expected as good
faith on the part of Mayenne.

In the same paper in which the demand was made Philip was urged to
declare himself king of France.  He was assured that the measure could
be accomplished "by freely bestowing marquisates, baronies, and peerages,
in order to content the avarice and ambition of many persons, without at
the same time dissipating the greatness from which all these members
depended.  Pepin and Charlemagne," said the memorialists, "who were
foreigners and Saxons by nation, did as much in order to get possession
of a kingdom to which they had no other right except that which they
acquired there by their prudence and force, and after them Hugh Capet,
much inferior to them in force and authority, following their example,
had the same good fortune for himself and his posterity, and one which
still endures.

"If the authority of the holy see could support the scheme at the same
time," continued Mayenne and friends, "it would be a great help.  But it
being perilous to ask for that assistance before striking the blow, it
would be better to obtain it after the execution."

That these wholesome opinions were not entirely original on the
part of Mayenne, nor produced spontaneously, was plain from the secret
instructions given by Philip to his envoys, Don Bernardino de Mendoza,
John Baptist de Tassis, and the commander Moreo, whom he had sent soon
after the death of Henry III. to confer with Cardinal Gaetano in Paris.

They were told, of course, to do everything in their power to prevent the
election of the Prince of Bearne, "being as he was a heretic, obstinate
and confirmed, who had sucked heresy with his mother's milk."  The legate
was warned that "if the Bearnese should make a show of converting
himself, it would be frigid and fabricated."

If they were asked whom Philip desired for king--a question which
certainly seemed probable under the circumstances--they were to reply
that his foremost wish was to establish the Catholic religion in the
kingdom, and that whatever was most conducive to that end would be most
agreeable to him.  "As it is however desirable, in order to arrange
matters, that you should be informed of everything," said his Majesty,
"it is proper that you should know that I have two kinds of right to all
that there is over there.  Firstly, because the crown of France has been
usurped from me, my ancestors having been unjustly excluded by foreign
occupation of it; and secondly, because I claim the same crown as first
male of the house of Valois."

Here certainly were comprehensive pretensions, and it was obvious that
the king's desire for the establishment of the Catholic religion must
have been very lively to enable him to invent or accept such astonishing
fictions.

But his own claims were but a portion of the case.  His daughter and
possible spouse had rights of her own, hard, in his opinion, to be
gainsaid.  "Over and above all this," said Philip, "my eldest daughter,
the Infanta, has two other rights; one to all the states which as dower-
property are joined by matrimony and through females to this crown, which
now come to her in direct line, and the other to the crown itself, which
belongs directly to the said Infanta, the matter of the Salic law being a
mere invention."

Thus it would appear that Philip was the legitimate representative, not
only of the ancient races of French monarchs--whether Merovingians,
Carlovingians, or otherwise was not stated but also of the usurping
houses themselves, by whose intrusion those earlier dynasties had been
ejected, being the eldest male heir of the extinct line of Valois, while
his daughter was, if possible, even more legitimately the sovereign and
proprietor of France than he was himself.

Nevertheless in his magnanimous desire for the peace of the world and
the advancement of the interests of the Church, he was, if reduced to
extremities, willing to forego his own individual rights--when it should
appear that they could by no possibility be enforced--in favour of his
daughter and of the husband whom he should select for her.

"Thus it may be seen," said the self-denying man, "that I know how, for
the sake of the public repose, to strip myself of my private property."

Afterwards, when secretly instructing the Duke of Feria, about to proceed
to Paris for the sake of settling the sovereignty of the kingdom, he
reviewed the whole subject, setting forth substantially the same
intentions.  That the Prince of Bearne could ever possibly succeed to the
throne of his ancestors was an idea to be treated only with sublime scorn
by all right-minded and sensible men.  "The members of the House of
Bourbon," said he, "pretend that by right of blood the crown belongs to
them, and hence is derived the pretension made by the Prince of Bearne;
but if there were wanting other very sufficient causes to prevent this
claim--which however are not wanting--it is quite enough that he is
a relapsed heretic, declared to be such by the Apostolic See, and
pronounced incompetent, as well as the other members of his house, all
of them, to say the least, encouragers of heresy; so that not one of them
can ever be king of France, where there have been such religious princes
in time past, who have justly merited the name of Most Christian; and so
there is no possibility of permitting him or any of his house to aspire
to the throne, or to have the subject even treated of in the estates.
It should on the contrary be entirely excluded as prejudicial to the
realm and unworthy to be even mentioned among persons so Catholic as
those about to meet in that assembly."

The claims of the man whom his supporters already called Henry the
Fourth of France being thus disposed of, Philip then again alluded with
his usual minuteness to the various combinations which he had formed for
the tranquillity and good government of that kingdom and of the other
provinces of his world-empire.

It must moreover be never forgotten that what he said passed with his
contemporaries almost for oracular dispensations.  What he did or ordered
to be done was like the achievements or behests of a superhuman being.
Time, as it rolls by, leaves the wrecks of many a stranded reputation to
bleach in the sunshine of after-ages.  It is sometimes as profitable to
learn what was not done by the great ones of the earth, in spite of all
their efforts, as to ponder those actual deeds which are patent to
mankind.  The Past was once the Present, and once the Future, bright with
rainbows or black with impending storm; for history is a continuous whole
of which we see only fragments.

He who at the epoch with which we are now occupied was deemed greatest
and wisest among the sons of earth, at whose threats men quailed, at
whose vast and intricate schemes men gasped in palefaced awe, has left
behind him the record of his interior being.  Let us consider whether he
was so potent as his fellow mortals believed, or whether his greatness
was merely their littleness; whether it was carved out, of the
inexhaustible but artificial quarry of human degradation.  Let us see
whether the execution was consonant with the inordinate plotting; whether
the price in money and blood--and certainly few human beings have
squandered so much of either as did Philip the Prudent in his long
career--was high or low for the work achieved.

Were after generations to learn, only after curious research,
of a pretender who once called himself, to the amusement of his
contemporaries, Henry the Fourth of France; or was the world-empire for
which so many armies were marshalled, so many ducats expended, so many
falsehoods told, to prove a bubble after all?  Time was to show.
Meantime wise men of the day who, like the sages of every generation,
read the future like a printed scroll, were pitying the delusion and
rebuking the wickedness of Henry the Bearnese; persisting as he did in
his cruel, sanguinary, hopeless attempt to establish a vanished and
impossible authority over a land distracted by civil war.

Nothing could be calmer or more reasonable than the language of the great
champion of the Inquisition.

"And as President Jeannin informs me," he said, "that the Catholics have
the intention of electing me king, that appearing to them the gentlest
and safest method to smooth all rivalries likely to arise among the
princes aspiring to the crown, I reply, as you will see by the copy
herewith sent.  You will observe that after not refusing myself to that
which may be the will of our Lord, should there be no other mode of
serving Him, above all I desire that which concerns my daughter, since to
her belongs the kingdom.  I desire nothing else nor anything for myself,
nor for anybody else, except as a means for her to arrive at her right."

He had taken particular pains to secure his daughter's right in Brittany,
while the Duchess of Mercoeur, by the secret orders of her husband, had
sent a certain ecclesiastic to Spain to make over the sovereignty of this
province to the Infanta.  Philip directed that the utmost secrecy should
be observed in regard to this transaction with the duke and duchess,
and promised the duke, as his reward for these proposed services in
dismembering his country, the government of the province for himself and
his heirs.

For the king was quite determined--in case his efforts to obtain the
crown for himself or for his daughter were unsuccessful--to dismember
France, with the assistance of those eminent Frenchmen who were now so
industriously aiding him in his projects.

"And in the third place," said he, in his secret instructions to Feria,
"if for the sins of all, we don't manage to make any election, and if
therefore the kingdom (of France) has to come to separation and to be
divided into many hands; in this case we must propose to the Duke of
Mayenne to assist him in getting possession of Normandy for himself, and
as to the rest of the kingdom, I shall take for myself that which seems
good to me--all of us assisting each other."

But unfortunately it was difficult for any of these fellow-labourers to
assist each other very thoroughly, while they detested each other so
cordially and suspected each other with such good reason.

Moreo, Ybarra, Feria, Parma, all assured their master that Mayenne was
taking Spanish money as fast as he could get it, but with the sole
purpose of making himself king.  As to any of the House of Lorraine
obtaining the hand of the Infanta and the throne with it, Feria assured
Philip that Mayenne "would sooner give the crown to the Grand Turk."

Nevertheless Philip thought it necessary to continue making use of the
duke.  Both were indefatigable therefore in expressing feelings of
boundless confidence each in the other.

It has been seen too how entirely the king relied on the genius and
devotion of Alexander Farnese to carry out his great schemes; and
certainly never had monarch a more faithful, unscrupulous, and dexterous
servant.  Remonstrating, advising, but still obeying--entirely without
conscience, unless it were conscience to carry out his master's commands,
even when most puerile or most diabolical--he was nevertheless the object
of Philip's constant suspicion, and felt himself placed under perpetual
though secret supervision.

Commander Moreo was unwearied in blackening the duke's character, and in
maligning his every motive and action, and greedily did the king incline
his ear to the calumnies steadily instilled by the chivalrous spy.

"He has caused all the evil we are suffering," said Moreo.  "When he sent
Egmont to France 'twas without infantry, although Egmont begged hard for
it, as did likewise the Legate, Don Bernardino, and Tassis.  Had he done
this there is no doubt at all that the Catholic cause in France would
have been safe, and your Majesty would now have the control over that
kingdom which you desire.  This is the opinion of friends and foes.  I
went to the Duke of Parma and made free to tell him that the whole world
would blame him for the damage done to Christianity, since your Majesty
had exonerated yourself by ordering him to go to the assistance of the
French Catholics with all the zeal possible.  Upon this he was so
disgusted that he has never shown me a civil face since.  I doubt whether
he will send or go to France at all, and although the Duke of Mayenne
despatches couriers every day with protestations and words that would
soften rocks, I see no indications of a movement."

Thus, while the duke was making great military preparations far invading
France without means; pawning his own property to get bread for his
starving veterans, and hanging those veterans whom starving had made.
mutinous, he was depicted, to the most suspicious and unforgiving mortal
that ever wore a crown, as a traitor and a rebel, and this while he was
renouncing his own judicious and well-considered policy in obedience to
the wild schemes of his master.

"I must make bold to remind your Majesty," again whispered the spy, "that
there never was an Italian prince who failed to pursue his own ends, and
that there are few in the world that are not wishing to become greater
than they are.  This man here could strike a greater blow than all the
rest of them put together.  Remember that there is not a villain anywhere
that does not desire the death of your Majesty.  Believe me, and send to
cut off my head if it shall be found that I am speaking from passion, or
from other motive than pure zeal for your royal service."

The reader will remember into what a paroxysm of rage Alexander was
thrown on, a former occasion, when secretly invited to listen to
propositions by which the sovereignty over the Netherlands was to be
secured to himself, and how near he was to inflicting mortal punishment
with his own hand on the man who had ventured to broach that treasonable
matter.

Such projects and propositions were ever floating, as it were, in the
atmosphere, and it was impossible for the most just men to escape
suspicion in the mind of a king who fed upon suspicion as his daily
bread.  Yet nothing could be fouler or falser than the calumny which
described Alexander as unfaithful to Philip.  Had he served his God as he
served his master perhaps his record before the highest tribunal would
have been a clearer one.

And in the same vein in which he wrote to the monarch in person did the
crafty Moreo write to the principal secretary of state, Idiaquez, whose
mind, as well as his master's, it was useful to poison, and who was in
daily communication with Philip.

"Let us make sure of Flanders," said he, "otherwise we shall all of us be
well cheated.  I will tell you something of that which I have already
told his Majesty, only not all, referring you to Tassis, who, as a
personal witness to many things, will have it in his power to undeceive
his Majesty, I have seen very clearly that the duke is disgusted with his
Majesty, and one day he told me that he cared not if the whole world went
to destruction, only not Flanders."

"Another day he told me that there was a report abroad that his Majesty
was sending to arrest him, by means of the Duke of Pastrana, and looking
at me he said: 'See here, seignior commander, no threats, as if it were
in the power of mortal man to arrest me, much less of such fellows as
these.'"

"But this is but a small part of what I could say," continued the
detective knight-commander, "for I don't like to trust these ciphers.
But be certain that nobody in Flanders wishes well to these estates or to
the Catholic cause, and the associates of the Duke of Parma go about
saying that it does not suit the Italian potentates to have his Majesty
as great a monarch as he is trying to be."

This is but a sample of the dangerous stuff with which the royal mind was
steadily drugged, day after day, by those to whom Farnese was especially
enjoined to give his confidence.

Later on it will be seen how-much effect was thus produced both upon the
king and upon the duke.  Moreo, Mendoza, and Tasais were placed about the
governor-general, nominally as his counsellors, in reality as police-
officers.

"You are to confer regularly with Mendoza, Tassis, and Moreo," said
Philip to Farnese.

"You are to assist, correspond, and harmonize in every way with the Duke
of Parma," wrote Philip to Mendoza, Tassis, and Moreo. And thus cordially
and harmoniously were the trio assisting and corresponding with the duke.

But Moreo was right in not wishing to trust the ciphers, and indeed he
had trusted them too much, for Farnese was very well aware of his
intrigues, and complained bitterly of them to the king and to Idiaquez.

Most eloquently and indignantly did he complain of the calumnies, ever
renewing themselves, of which he was the subject.  "'Tis this good Moreo
who is the author of the last falsehoods," said he to the secretary; "and
this is but poor payment for my having neglected my family, my parents
and children for so many years in the king's service, and put my life
ever on the hazard, that these fellows should be allowed to revile me
and make game of me now, instead of assisting me."

He was at that time, after almost superhuman exertions, engaged in the
famous relief of Paris.  He had gone there, he said, against his judgment
and remonstrating with his Majesty on the insufficiency of men and money
for such an enterprise.  His army was half-mutinous and unprovided with
food, artillery, or munitions; and then he found himself slandered,
ridiculed, his life's life lied away.  'Twas poor payment for his
services, he exclaimed, if his Majesty should give ear to these
calumniators, and should give him no chance of confronting his accusers
and clearing his reputation.  Moreo detested him, as he knew, and Prince
Doria said that the commander once spoke so ill of Farnese in Genoa that
he was on the point of beating him; while Moreo afterwards told the story
as if he had been maltreated because of defending Farnese against Doria's
slanders.

And still more vehemently did he inveigh against Moreo in his direct
appeals to Philip.  He had intended to pass over his calumnies, of which
he was well aware, because he did not care to trouble the dead--for Moreo
meantime had suddenly died, and the gossips, of course, said it was of
Farnese poison--but he had just discovered by documents that the
commander had been steadily and constantly pouring these his calumnies
into the monarch's ears.  He denounced every charge as lies, and demanded
proof.  Moreo had further been endeavouring to prejudice the Duke of
Mayenne against the King of Spain and himself, saying that he, Farnese,
had been commissioned to take Mayenne into custody, with plenty of
similar lies.

"But what I most feel," said Alexander, with honest wrath, "is to see
that your Majesty gives ear to them without making the demonstration
which my services merit, and has not sent to inform me of them, seeing
that they may involve my reputation and honour.  People have made more
account of these calumnies than of my actions performed upon the theatre
of the world.  I complain, after all my toils and dangers in your
Majesty's service, just when I stood with my soul in my mouth and death
in my teeth, forgetting children, house, and friends, to be treated thus,
instead of receiving rewards and honour, and being enabled to leave to my
children, what was better than all the riches the royal hand could
bestow, an unsullied and honourable name."

He protested that his reputation had so much suffered that he would
prefer to retire to some remote corner as a humble servant of the king,
and leave a post which had made him so odious to all.  Above all, he
entreated his Majesty to look upon this whole affair "not only like a
king but like a gentleman."

Philip answered these complaints and reproaches benignantly, expressed
unbounded confidence in the duke, assured him that the calumnies of his
supposed enemies could produce no effect upon the royal mind, and coolly
professed to have entirely forgotten having received any such letter as
that of which his nephew complained.  "At any rate I have mislaid it," he
said, "so that you see how much account it was with me."

As the king was in the habit of receiving such letters every week, not
only from the commander, since deceased, but from Ybarra and others, his
memory, to say the least, seemed to have grown remarkably feeble.  But
the sequel will very soon show that he had kept the letters by him and
pondered them to much purpose.  To expect frankness and sincerity from
him, however, even in his most intimate communications to his most
trusted servants, would have been to "swim with fins of lead."

Such being the private relations between the conspirators, it is
instructive to observe how they dealt with each other in the great game
they were playing for the first throne in Christendom.  The military
events have been sufficiently sketched in the preceding pages, but the
meaning and motives of public affairs can be best understood by
occasional glances behind the scenes.  It is well for those who would
maintain their faith in popular Governments to study the workings of the
secret, irresponsible, arbitrary system; for every Government, as every
individual, must be judged at last by those moral laws which no man born
of woman can evade.

During the first French expedition-in the course of which Farnese had
saved Paris from falling into, the hands of Henry, and had been doing his
best to convert it prospectively into the capital of his master's empire-
-it was his duty, of course, to represent as accurately as possible the
true state of France.  He submitted his actions to his master's will, but
he never withheld from him the advantage that he might have derived, had
he so chosen, from his nephew's luminous intelligence and patient
observation.

With the chief personage he had to deal with he professed himself, at
first, well satisfied.  "The Duke of Mayenne," said he to Philip,
"persists in desiring your Majesty only as King of France, and will hear
of no other candidate, which gives me satisfaction such as can't be
exaggerated."  Although there were difficulties in the way, Farnese
thought that the two together with God's help might conquer them.
"Certainly it is not impossible that your Majesty may succeed," he said,
"although very problematical; and in case your Majesty does succeed in
that which we all desire and are struggling for, Mayenne not only demands
the second place in the kingdom for himself, but the fief of some great
province for his family."

Should it not be possible for Philip to obtain the crown, Farnese was,
on the whole, of opinion that Mayenne had better be elected.  In that
event he would make over Brittany and Burgundy to Philip, together with
the cities opposite the English coast.  If they were obliged to make the
duke king, as was to be feared, they should at any rate exclude the
Prince of Bearne, and secure, what was the chief point, the Catholic
religion.  "This," said Alexander, "is about what I can gather of
Mayenne's views, and perhaps he will put them down in a despatch to your
Majesty."

After all, the duke was explicit enough.  He was for taking all he could
get--the whole kingdom if possible--but if foiled, then as large a slice
of it as Philip would give him as the price of his services.  And
Philip's ideas were not materially different from those of the other
conspirator.

Both were agreed on one thing.  The true heir must be kept out of his
rights, and the Catholic religion be maintained in its purity.  As to the
inclination of the majority of the inhabitants, they could hardly be in
the dark.  They knew that the Bearnese was instinctively demanded by the
nation; for his accession to the throne would furnish the only possible
solution to the entanglements which had so long existed.

As to the true sentiments of the other politicians and soldiers of the
League with whom Bearnese came in contact in France, he did not disguise
from his master that they were anything but favourable.

"That you may know, the, humour of this kingdom," said he, "and the
difficulties in which I am placed, I must tell you that I am by large
experience much confirmed in that which I have always suspected.  Men
don't love nor esteem the royal name of your Majesty, and whatever the
benefits and assistance they get from you they have no idea of anything
redounding to your benefit and royal service, except so far as implied in
maintaining the Catholic religion and keeping out the Bearne.  These two
things, however, they hold to be so entirely to your Majesty's profit,
that all you are doing appears the fulfilment of a simple obligation.
They are filled with fear, jealousy, and suspicion of your Majesty.  They
dread your acquiring power here.  Whatever negotiations they pretend
in regard to putting the kingdom or any of their cities under your
protection, they have never had any real intention of doing it, but their
only object is to keep up our vain hopes while they are carrying out
their own ends.  If to-day they seem to have agreed upon any measure,
tomorrow they are sure to get out of it again.  This has always been the
case, and all your Majesty's ministers that have had dealings here would
say so, if they chose to tell the truth.  Men are disgusted with the
entrance of the army, and if they were not expecting a more advantageous
peace in the kingdom with my assistance than without it, I don't know
what they would do; for I have heard what I have heard and seen what I
have seen.  They are afraid of our army, but they want its assistance and
our money."

Certainly if Philip desired enlightenment as to the real condition of the
country he had determined to, appropriate; and the true sentiments of its
most influential inhabitants, here, was the man most competent of all the
world to advise him; describing the situation for him, day by day, in the
most faithful manner.  And at every, step the absolutely puerile
inadequacy of the means, employed by the king to accomplish his gigantic
purposes became apparent.  If the crime of subjugating or at least
dismembering the great kingdom of France were to, be attempted with any
hope of success, at least it might have been expected that the man
employed to consummate the deed would be furnished with more troops and
money than would be required to appropriate a savage island off the
Caribbean, or a German.  principality.  But Philip expected miracles to
be accomplished by the mere private assertion of his will.  It was so
easy to conquer realms the writing table.

"I don't say," continued Farnese, "if I could have entered France with a
competent army, well paid and disciplined, with plenty of artillery, and
munitions, and with funds enough to enable Mayenne to buy up the nobles
of his party, and to conciliate the leaders generally with presents and
promises, that perhaps they might not have softened.  Perhaps interest
and fear would have made that name agreeable which pleases them so
little, now that the very reverse of all this has occurred.  My want of
means is causing a thousand disgusts among the natives of the country,
and it is this penury that will be the chief cause of the disasters which
may occur."

Here was sufficiently plain speaking.  To conquer a war-like nation
without an army; to purchase a rapacious nobility with an empty purse,
were tasks which might break the stoutest heart.  They were breaking
Alexander's.

Yet Philip had funds enough, if he had possessed financial ability
himself, or any talent for selecting good financiers.  The richest
countries of the old world and the new were under his sceptre; the mines
of Peru and Mexico; the wealth of farthest Ind, were at his disposition;
and moreover he drove a lucrative traffic in the sale of papal bulls and
massbooks, which were furnished to him at a very low figure, and which he
compelled the wild Indians of America and the savages of the Pacific to
purchase of him at an enormous advance.  That very year, a Spanish
carrack had been captured by the English off the Barbary coast, with an
assorted cargo, the miscellaneous nature of which gives an idea of royal
commercial pursuits at that period.  Besides wine in large quantities
there were fourteen hundred chests of quicksilver, an article
indispensable to the working of the silver mines, and which no one but
the king could, upon pain of death, send to America.  He received,
according to contract; for every pound of quicksilver thus delivered a
pound of pure silver, weight for weight.  The ship likewise contained ten
cases of gilded mass-books and papal bulls.  The bulls, two million and
seventy thousand in number, for the dead and the living, were intended
for the provinces of New Spain, Yucatan, Guatemala, Honduras, and the
Philippines.  The quicksilver and the bulls cost the king three hundred
thousand florins, but he sold them for five million.  The .price at,
which the bulls were to be sold varied-according to the letters of advice
found in the ships--from two to four reals a piece, and the inhabitants
of those conquered regions were obliged to buy them.  "From all this,"
says a contemporary chronicler; "is to be seen what a thrifty trader was
the king."

The affairs of France were in such confusion that it was impossible for
them, according to Farnese, to remain in such condition much longer
without bringing about entire decomposition.  Every man was doing as he
chose--whether governor of a city, commander of a district, or gentleman
in his castle.  Many important nobles and prelates followed the Bearnese
party, and Mayenne was entitled to credit for doing as well as he did.
There was no pretence, however, that his creditable conduct was due to
anything but the hope of being well paid.  "If your Majesty should decide
to keep Mayenne," said Alexander, "you can only do it with large: sums of
money.  He is a good Catholic and very firm in his purpose, but is so
much opposed by his own party, that if I had not so stimulated him by
hopes of his own grandeur, he would have grown desperate--such small
means has he of maintaining his party--and, it is to be feared, he would
have made arrangements with Bearne, who offers him carte-blanche."

The disinterested man had expressed his assent to the views of Philip in
regard to the assembly of the estates and the election of king, but had
claimed the sum of six hundred thousand dollars as absolutely necessary
to the support of himself and followers until those events should occur.
Alexander not having that sum at his disposal was inclined to defer
matters, but was more and more confirmed in his opinion that the Duke was
a "man of truth, faith, and his word."  He had distinctly agreed that no
king should be elected, not satisfactory to Philip, and had "stipulated
in return that he should have in this case, not only the second place in
the kingdom, but some very great and special reward in full property."

Thus the man of truth, faith, and his word had no idea of selling himself
cheap, but manifested as much commercial genius as the Fuggers themselves
could have displayed, had they been employed as brokers in these
mercantile transactions.

Above all things, Alexander implored the king to be expeditious,
resolute, and liberal; for, after all, the Bearnese might prove a more
formidable competitor than he was deemed.  "These matters must be
arranged while the iron is hot," he said, "in order that the name and
memory of the Bearne and of all his family may be excluded at once and
forever; for your Majesty must not doubt that the whole kingdom inclines
to him, both because he is natural successor, to the crowns and because
in this way the civil war would cease.  The only thing that gives trouble
is the religions defect, so that if this should be remedied in
appearance, even if falsely, men would spare no pains nor expense in his
cause."

No human being at that moment, assuredly, could look into the immediate
future accurately enough to see whether the name and memory of the man,
whom his adherents called Henry the Fourth of France, and whom Spaniards,
legitimists and enthusiastic papists, called the Prince of Bearne, were
to be for ever excluded from the archives of France; whether Henry, after
spending the whole of his life as a pretender, was destined to bequeath
the same empty part to his descendants, should they think it worth their
while to play it.  Meantime the sages smiled superior at his delusion;
while Alexander Farnese, on the contrary, better understanding the
chances of the great game which they were all playing, made bold to tell
his master that all hearts in France were inclining to their natural
lord.  "Differing from your Majesty," said he, "I am of opinion that
there is no better means of excluding him than to make choice of the Duke
of Mayenne, as a person agreeable to the people, and who could only reign
by your permission and support."

Thus, after much hesitation and circumlocution, the nephew made up his
mind to chill his uncle's hopes of the crown, and to speak a decided
opinion in behalf of the man of his word, faith and truth.

And thus through the whole of the two memorable campaigns made by
Alexander in France, he never failed to give his master the most accurate
pictures of the country, and an interior view of its politics; urging
above all the absolute necessity of providing much more liberal supplies
for the colossal adventure in which he was engaged.  "Money and again
money is what is required," he said.  "The principal matter is to be
accomplished with money, and the particular individuals must be bought
with money.  The good will of every French city must be bought with
money.  Mayenne must be humoured.  He is getting dissatisfied.  Very
probably he is intriguing with Bearne.  Everybody is pursuing his private
ends.  Mayenne has never abandoned his own wish to be king, although he
sees the difficulties in the way; and while he has not the power to do us
as much good as is thought, it is certainly in his hands to do us a great
deal of injury."

When his army was rapidly diminishing by disease, desertion, mutiny, and
death, he vehemently and perpetually denounced the utter inadequacy of
the king's means to his vast projects.  He protested that he was not to
blame for the ruin likely to come upon the whole enterprise.  He had
besought, remonstrated, reasoned with Philip--in vain.  He assured his
master that in the condition of weakness in which they found themselves,
not very triumphant negotiations could be expected, but that he would do
his best.  "The Frenchmen," he said, "are getting tired of our disorders,
and scandalized by our weakness, misery, and poverty.  They disbelieve
the possibility of being liberated through us."

He was also most diligent in setting before the king's eyes the dangerous
condition of the obedient Netherlands, the poverty of the finances, the
mutinous degeneration of the once magnificent Spanish army, the misery of
the country, the ruin of the people, the discontent of the nobles, the
rapid strides made by the republic, the vast improvement in its military
organization, the rising fame of its young stadholder, the thrift of its
exchequer, the rapid development of its commerce, the menacing aspect
which it assumed towards all that was left of Spanish power in those
regions.

Moreover, in the midst of the toils and anxieties of war-making and
negotiation, he had found time to discover and to send to his master
the left leg of the glorious apostle St. Philip, and the head of the
glorious martyr St. Lawrence, to enrich his collection of relics; and it
may be doubted whether these treasures were not as welcome to the king as
would have been the news of a decisive victory.

During the absence of Farnese in his expeditions against the Bearnese,
the government of his provinces was temporarily in the hands of Peter
Ernest Mansfeld.

This grizzled old fighter--testy, choleric, superannuated--was utterly
incompetent for his post.  He was a mere tool in the hands of his son.
Count Charles hated Parma very cordially, and old Count Peter was made
to believe himself in danger of being poisoned or poniarded by the duke.
He was perpetually wrangling with, importuning and insulting him in
consequence, and writing malicious letters to the king in regard to him.
The great nobles, Arschot, Chimay, Berlaymont, Champagny, Arenberg, and
the rest, were all bickering among themselves, and agreeing in nothing
save in hatred to Farnese.

A tight rein, a full exchequer, a well-ordered and well-paid army, and
his own constant patience, were necessary, as Alexander too well knew,
to make head against the republic, and to hold what was left of the
Netherlands.  But with a monthly allowance, and a military force not
equal to his own estimates for the Netherland work, he was ordered to go
forth from the Netherlands to conquer France--and with it the dominion of
the world--for the recluse of the Escorial.

Very soon it was his duty to lay bare to his master, still more
unequivocally than ever, the real heart of Mayenne. No one could surpass
Alexander in this skilful vivisection of political characters; and he
soon sent the information that the Duke was in reality very near closing
his bargain with the Bearnese, while amusing Philip and drawing largely
from his funds.

Thus, while faithfully doing his master's work with sword and pen, with
an adroitness such as no other man could have matched, it was a necessary
consequence that Philip should suspect, should detest, should resolve to
sacrifice him.  While assuring his nephew, as we have seen, that
elaborate, slanderous reports and protocols concerning him, sent with
such regularity by the chivalrous Moreo and the other spies, had been
totally disregarded, even if they had ever met his eye, he was quietly
preparing--in the midst of all these most strenuous efforts of Alexander,
in the field at peril of his life, in the cabinet at the risk of his
soul--to deprive him of his office, and to bring him, by stratagem if
possible, but otherwise by main force, from the Netherlands to Spain.

This project, once-resolved upon, the king proceeded to execute with
that elaborate attention to detail, with that feline stealth which
distinguished him above all kings or chiefs of police that have ever
existed.  Had there been a murder at the end of the plot, as perhaps
there was to be--Philip could not have enjoyed himself more.  Nothing
surpassed the industry for mischief of this royal invalid.

The first thing to be done was of course the inditing of a most
affectionate epistle to his nephew.

"Nephew," said he, "you know the confidence which I have always placed in
you and all that I have put in your hands, and I know how much you are to
me, and how earnestly you work in my service, and so, if I could have you
at the same time in several places, it would be a great relief to me.
Since this cannot be however, I wish to make use of your assistance,
according to the times and occasions, in order that I may have some
certainty as to the manner in which all this business is to be managed,
may see why the settlement of affairs in France is thus delayed, and what
the state of things in Christendom generally is, and may consult with,
you about an army which I am getting levied here, and about certain
schemes now on foot in regard to the remedy for all this; all which makes
me desire your presence here for some time, even if a short time, in
order to resolve upon and arrange with the aid of your advice and
opinion, many affairs concerning the public good and facilitate their
execution by means of your encouragement and presence, and to obtain the
repose which I hope for in putting them into your hands.  And so I charge
and command you that, if you desire to content me, you use all possible
diligence to let me see you here as soon as possible, and that you start
at once for Genoa."

He was further directed to leave Count Mansfeld at the head of affairs
during this temporary absence, as had been the case so often before,
instructing him to make use of the Marquis of Cerralbo, who was already
there, to lighten labours that might prove too much for a man of
Mansfeld's advanced age.

"I am writing to the marquis," continued the king, "telling him that he
is to obey all your orders.  As to the reasons of your going away, you
will give out that it is a decision of your own, founded on good cause,
or that it is a summons of mine, but full of confidence and good will
towards you, as you see that it is."

The date of this letter was 20th February, 1592.

The secret instructions to the man who was thus to obey all the duke's
orders were explicit enough upon that point, although they were wrapped
in the usual closely-twisted phraseology which distinguished Philip's
style when his purpose was most direct.

Cerralbo was entrusted with general directions as to the French matter,
and as to peace negotiations with "the Islands;" but the main purport of
his mission was to remove Alexander Farnese.  This was to be done by fair
means, if possible; if not, he was to be deposed and sent home by force.

This was to be the reward of all the toil and danger through which he had
grown grey and broken in the king's service.

"When you get to the Netherlands" (for the instructions were older than
the letter to Alexander just cited), "you are," said the king, "to treat
of the other two matters until the exact time arrives for the third,
taking good care not to, cut the thread of good progress in the affairs
of France if by chance they are going on well there.

"When the time arrives to treat of commission number three," continued
his Majesty, "you will take occasion of the arrival of the courier of
20th February, and will give with much secrecy the letter of that date to
the duke; showing him at the same time the first of the two which you
will have received."

If the duke showed the letter addressed to him by his uncle--which the
reader has already seen--then the marquis was to discuss with him the
details of the journey, and comment upon the benefits and increased
reputation which would be the result of his return to Spain.

"But if the duke should not show you the letter," proceeded Philip, "and
you suspect that he means to conceal and equivocate about the particulars
of it, you can show him your letter number two, in which it is stated
that you have received a copy of the letter to the duke.  This will make
the step easier."

Should the duke declare himself ready to proceed to Spain on the ground
indicated--that the king had need of his services--the marquis was then
to hasten his departure as earnestly as possible.  Every pains were to be
taken to overcome any objections that might be made by the duke on the
score of ill health, while the great credit which attached to this
summons to consult with the king in such arduous affairs was to be duly
enlarged upon.  Should Count Mansfeld meantime die of old age, and should
Farnese insist the more vehemently, on that account, upon leaving his son
the Prince Ranuccio in his post as governor, the marquis was authorised
to accept the proposition for the moment--although secretly instructed
that such an appointment was really quite out of the question--if by so
doing the father could be torn from the place immediately.

But if all would not do, and if it should become certain that the duke
would definitively refuse to take his departure, it would then become
necessary to tell him clearly, but secretly, that no excuse would be
accepted, but that go he must; and that if he did not depart voluntarily
within a fixed time, he would be publicly deprived of office and
conducted to Spain by force.

But all these things were to be managed with the secrecy and mystery so
dear to the heart of Philip.  The marquis was instructed to go first to
the castle of Antwerp, as if upon financial business, and there begin his
operations.  Should he find at last all his private negotiations and
coaxings of no avail, he was then to make use of his secret letters from
the king to the army commanders, the leading nobles of the country, and
of the neighbouring princes, all of whom were to be undeceived in regard
to the duke, and to be informed of the will of his majesty.

The real successor of Farnese was to be the Archduke Albert, Cardinal of
Austria, son of Archduke Ferdinand, and the letters on this subject were
to be sent by a "decent and confidential person" so soon as it should
become obvious that force would be necessary in order to compel the
departure of Alexander.  For if it came to open rupture, it would be
necessary to have the cardinal ready to take the place.  If the affair
were arranged amicably, then the new governor might proceed more at
leisure.  The marquis was especially enjoined, in case the duke should be
in France, and even if it should be necessary for him to follow him there
on account of commissions number one and two, not to say a word to him
then of his recall, for fear of damaging matters in that kingdom.  He was
to do his best to induce him to return to Flanders, and when they were
both there, he was to begin his operations.

Thus, with minute and artistic treachery, did Philip provide for the
disgrace and ruin of the man who was his near blood relation, and who had
served him most faithfully from earliest youth.  It was not possible to
carry out the project immediately, for, as it has already been narrated,
Farnese, after achieving, in spite of great obstacles due to the dulness
of the king alone, an extraordinary triumph, had been dangerously
wounded, and was unable for a brief interval to attend to public affairs.

On the conclusion of his Rouen campaign he had returned to the
Netherlands, almost immediately betaking himself to the waters of Spa.
The Marquis de Cerralbo meanwhile had been superseded in his important
secret mission by the Count of Fuentes, who received the same
instructions as had been provided for the marquis.

But ere long it seemed to become unnecessary to push matters to
extremities.  Farnese, although nominally the governor, felt himself
unequal to take the field against the vigorous young commander who was
carrying everything before him in the north and east.  Upon the Mansfelds
was the responsibility for saving Steenwyk and Coeworden, and to the
Mansfelds did Verdugo send piteously, but in vain, for efficient help.
For the Mansfelds and other leading personages in the obedient
Netherlands were mainly occupied at that time in annoying Farnese,
calumniating his actions, laying obstacles in the way of his
administration, military and civil, and bringing him into contempt with
the populace. When the weary soldier--broken in health, wounded and
harassed with obtaining triumphs for his master such as no other living
man could have gained with the means placed at his disposal--returned
to drink the waters, previously to setting forth anew upon the task of
achieving the impossible, he was made the mark of petty insults on the
part of both the Mansfelds.  Neither of them paid their respects to him;
ill as he was, until four days after his arrival.  When the duke
subsequently called a council; Count Peter refused to attend it on
account of having slept ill the night before.  Champagny; who was one of,
the chief mischief-makers, had been banished by Parma to his house in
Burgundy.  He became very much alarmed, and was afraid of losing his
head.  He tried to conciliate the duke, but finding it difficult he
resolved to turn monk, and so went to the convent of Capuchins, and
begged hard to be admitted a member.  They refused him on account of his
age and infirmities.  He tried a Franciscan monastery with not much
better success, and then obeyed orders and went to his Burgundy mansion;
having been assured by Farnese that he was not to lose his head.
Alexander was satisfied with that arrangement, feeling sure, he said,
that so soon as his back was turned Champagny would come out of his
convent before the term of probation had expired, and begin to make
mischief again.  A once valiant soldier, like Champagny, whose conduct in
the famous "fury of Antwerp" was so memorable; and whose services both in
field and-cabinet had, been so distinguished, fallen so low as to, be
used as a tool by the Mansfelds against a man like Farnese; and to be
rejected as unfit company by Flemish friars, is not a cheerful spectacle
to contemplate.

The walls of the Mansfeld house and gardens, too, were decorated by Count
Charles with caricatures, intending to illustrate the indignities put
upon his father: and himself.

Among others, one picture represented Count Peter lying tied hand and
foot, while people were throwing filth upon him; Count Charles being
pourtrayed as meantime being kicked away from the command of a battery
of cannon by, De la Motte.  It seemed strange that the Mansfelds should,
make themselves thus elaborately ridiculous, in order to irritate
Farnese; but thus it was.  There was so much stir, about these works of
art that Alexander transmitted copies of them to the king, whereupon
Charles Mansfeld, being somewhat alarmed, endeavoured to prove that they
had been entirely misunderstood.  The venerable personage lying on the
ground, he explained, was not his father, but Socrates.  He found it
difficult however to account for the appearance of La Motte, with his one
arm wanting and with artillery by his side, because, as Farnese justly
remarked, artillery had not been invented in the time of Socrates, nor
was it recorded that the sage had lost an arm.

Thus passed the autumn of 1592, and Alexander, having as he supposed
somewhat recruited his failing strength, prepared, according to his
master's orders for a new campaign in France.  For with almost
preterhuman malice Philip was employing the man whom he had doomed to
disgrace, perhaps to death, and whom he kept under constant secret
supervision, in those laborious efforts to conquer without an army and
to purchase a kingdom with an empty purse, in which, as it was destined,
the very last sands of Parma's life were to run away.

Suffering from a badly healed wound, from water on the chest,
degeneration of the heart, and gout in the limbs, dropsical, enfeebled,
broken down into an old man before his time, Alexander still confronted
disease and death with as heroic a front as he had ever manifested in the
field to embattled Hollanders and Englishmen, or to the still more
formidable array of learned pedants and diplomatists in the hall of
negotiation.  This wreck of a man was still fitter to lead armies and
guide councils than any soldier or statesman that Philip could call into
his service, yet the king's cruel hand was ready to stab the dying man in
the dark.

Nothing could surpass the spirit with which the soldier was ready to do
battle with his best friend, coming in the guise of an enemy.  To the
last moment, lifted into the saddle, he attended personally as usual to
the details of his new campaign, and was dead before he would confess
himself mortal.  On the 3rd of December, 1592, in the city of Arran, he
fainted after retiring at his usual hour to bed, and thus breathed his
last.

According to the instructions in his last will, he was laid out barefoot
in the robe and cowl of a Capuchin monk.  Subsequently his remains were
taken to Parma, and buried under the pavement of the little Franciscan
church.  A pompous funeral, in which the Italians and Spaniards
quarrelled and came to blows for precedence, was celebrated in Brussels,
and a statue of the hero was erected in the capitol at Rome.

The first soldier and most unscrupulous diplomatist of his age, he died
when scarcely past his prime, a wearied; broken-hearted old man.  His
triumphs, military and civil, have been recorded in these pages, and his
character has been elaborately pourtrayed.  Were it possible to conceive
of an Italian or Spaniard of illustrious birth in the sixteenth century,
educated in the school of Machiavelli, at the feet of Philip, as anything
but the supple slave of a master and the blind instrument of a Church,
one might for a moment regret that so many gifts of genius and valour had
been thrown away or at least lost to mankind.  Could the light of truth
ever pierce the atmosphere in which such men have their being; could the
sad music of humanity ever penetrate to their ears; could visions of a
world--on this earth or beyond it--not exclusively the property of kings
and high-priests be revealed to them, one might lament that one so
eminent among the sons of women had not been a great man.  But it is a
weakness to hanker for any possible connection between truth and Italian
or Spanish statecraft of that day.  The truth was not in it nor in him,
and high above his heroic achievements, his fortitude, his sagacity, his
chivalrous self-sacrifice, shines forth the baleful light of his
perpetual falsehood.

     [I pass over, as beneath the level of history, a great variety of
     censorious and probably calumnious reports as to the private
     character of Farnese, with which the secret archives of the times
     are filled.  Especially Champagny, the man by whom the duke was most
     hated and feared, made himself busy in compiling the slanderous
     chronicle in which the enemies of Farnese, both in Spain and the
     Netherlands, took so much delight.  According to the secret history
     thus prepared for the enlightenment of the king and his ministers,
     the whole administration of the Netherlands--especially the
     financial department, with the distribution of offices--was in the
     hands of two favourites, a beardless secretary named Cosmo e Massi,
     and a lady of easy virtue called Franceline, who seems to have had a
     numerous host of relatives and friends to provide for at the public
     expense.  Towards the latter end of the duke's life, it was even
     said that the seal of the finance department was in the hands of his
     valet-de-chambre, who, in his master's frequent absences, was in the
     habit of issuing drafts upon the receiver-general.  As the valet-
     dechambre was described as an idiot who did not know how to read, it
     may be believed that the finances fell into confusion.  Certainly,
     if such statements were to be accepted, it would be natural enough
     that for every million dollars expended by the king in the
     provinces, not more than one hundred thousand were laid out for the
     public service; and this is the estimate made by Champagny, who, as
     a distinguished financier and once chief of the treasury in the
     provinces, might certainly be thought to know something of the
     subject.  But Champagny was beside himself with rage, hatred.]




CHAPTER XXIX.

     Effect of the death of Farnese upon Philip's schemes--Priestly
     flattery and counsel--Assembly of the States-General of France--
     Meeting of the Leaguers at the Louvre--Conference at Surene between
     the chiefs of the League and the "political" leaders--Henry convokes
     an assembly of bishops, theologians, and others--Strong feeling on
     all sides on the subject of the succession--Philip commands that the
     Infanta and the Duke of Guise be elected King and Queen of France--
     Manifesto of the Duke of Mayenne--Formal re-admission of Henry to
     the Roman faith--The pope refuses to consent to his reconciliation
     with the Church--His consecration with the sacred oil--Entry of the
     king into Paris--Departure of the Spanish garrison from the capital
     --Dissimulation of the Duke of Mayenne--He makes terms with Henry--
     Grief of Queen Elizabeth on receipt of the communications from
     France.

During the past quarter of a century there had been tragic scenes enough
in France, but now the only man who could have conducted Philip's schemes
to a tragic if not a successful issue was gone.  Friendly death had been
swifter than Philip, and had removed Alexander from the scene before his
master had found fitting opportunity to inflict the disgrace on which he
was resolved.  Meantime, Charles Mansfeld made a feeble attempt to lead
an army from the Netherlands into France, to support the sinking fortunes
of the League; but it was not for that general-of-artillery to attempt
the well-graced part of the all-accomplished Farnese with much hope of
success.  A considerable force of Spanish infantry, too, had been sent to
Paris, where they had been received with much enthusiasm; a very violent
and determined churchman, Sega, archbishop of Piacenza, and cardinal-
legate, having arrived to check on the part of the holy father any
attempt by the great wavering heretic to get himself readmitted into the
fold of the faithful.

The King of Spain considered it his duty, as well as his unquestionable
right, to interfere in the affairs of France, and to save the cause of
religion, civilization and humanity, in the manner so dear to the
civilization-savers, by reducing that distracted country--utterly unable
to govern itself--under his sceptre.  To achieve this noble end no
bribery was too wholesale, no violence too brutal, no intrigue too
paltry.  It was his sacred and special mission to save France from
herself.  If he should fail, he could at least carve her in pieces, and
distribute her among himself and friends.  Frenchmen might assist him in
either of these arrangements, but it was absurd to doubt that on him
devolved the work and the responsibility.  Yet among his advisers were
some who doubted whether the purchase of the grandees of France was
really the most judicious course to pursue.  There was a general and
uneasy feeling that the grandees were making sport of the Spanish
monarch, and that they would be inclined to remain his stipendiaries for
an indefinite period, without doing their share of the work.  A keen
Jesuit, who had been much in France, often whispered to Philip that he
was going astray.  "Those who best understand the fit remedy for this
unfortunate kingdom, and know the tastes and temper of the nation," said
he, "doubt giving these vast presents and rewards in order that the
nobles of France may affect your cause and further your schemes.  It is
the greatest delusion, because they love nothing but their own interest,
and for this reason wish for no king at all, but prefer that the kingdom
should remain topsy-turvy in order that they may enjoy the Spanish
doubloons, as they say themselves almost publicly, dancing and feasting;
that they may take a castle to-day, and to-morrow a city, and the day,
after a province, and so on indefinitely.  What matters it to them that
blood flows, and that the miserable people are destroyed, who alone are
good for anything?"

"The immediate cause of the ruin of France," continued the Jesuit, "comes
from two roots which must be torn up; the one is the extreme ignorance
and scandalous life of the ecclesiastics, the other is the tyranny and
the abominable life of the nobility, who with sacrilege and insatiable
avarice have entered upon the property of the Church.  This nobility is
divided into three factions.  The first, and not the least, is heretic;
the second and the most pernicious is politic or atheist; the third and
last is catholic.  All these, although they differ in opinion, are the
same thing in corruption of life and manners, so that there is no choice
among them."  He then proceeded to set forth how entirely, the salvation
of France depended on the King of Spain.  "Morally speaking," he said,
"it is impossible for any Frenchman to apply the remedy.  For this two
things are wanting; intense zeal for the honour of God, and power.  I ask
now what Frenchman: has both these, or either of them.  No one certainly
that we know.  It is the King of Spain who alone in the world has the
zeal and the power.  No man who knows the insolence and arrogance of the
French nature will believe that even if a king should be elected out of
France he would be obeyed by the others.  The first to oppose him would
be Mayenne; even if a king were chosen from his family, unless everything
should be given him that he asked; which would be impossible."

Thus did the wily Priest instil into the ready ears of Philip additional
reasons for believing himself the incarnate providence of God.  When were
priestly flatterers ever wanting to pour this poison into the souls of
tyrants?  It is in vain for us to ask why it is permitted that so much
power for evil should be within the grasp of one wretched human creature,
but it is at least always instructive to ponder the career of these
crowned conspirators, and sometimes consoling to find its conclusion
different from the goal intended.  So the Jesuit advised the king not to
be throwing away his money upon particular individuals, but with the
funds which they were so unprofitably consuming to form a jolly army
('gallardo egercito') of fifteen thousand foot, and five thousand-horse,
all Spaniards, under a Spanish general--not a Frenchman being admitted
into it--and then to march forward, occupy all the chief towns, putting
Spanish garrisons into them, but sparing the people, who now considered
the war eternal, and who were eaten up by both armies.  In a short time
the king might accomplish all he wished, for it was not in the power of
the Bearnese to make considerable resistance for any length of time.

This was the plan of Father Odo for putting Philip on the throne of
France, and at the same time lifting up the downtrodden Church, whose
priests, according to his statement, were so profligate, and whose tenets
were rejected by all but a small minority of the governing classes of the
country.  Certainly it did not lack precision, but it remained to be seen
whether the Bearnese was to prove so very insignificant an antagonist as
the sanguine priest supposed.

For the third party--the moderate Catholics--had been making immense
progress in France, while the diplomacy of Philip had thus far steadily
counteracted their efforts at Rome.  In vain had the Marquis Pisani,
envoy of the politicians' party, endeavoured to soften the heart of
Clement towards Henry.  The pope lived in mortal fear of Spain, and the
Duke of Sessa, Philip's ambassador to the holy see, denouncing all these
attempts on the part of the heretic, and his friends, and urging that it
was much better for Rome that the pernicious kingdom of France should be
dismembered and subdivided, assured his holiness that Rome should be
starved, occupied, annihilated, if such abominable schemes should be for
an instant favoured.

Clement took to his bed with sickness brought on by all this violence,
but had nothing for it but to meet Pisani and other agents of the same
cause with a peremptory denial, and send most, stringent messages to his
legate in Paris, who needed no prompting.

There had already been much issuing of bulls by the pope, and much
burning of bulls by the hangman, according to decrees of the parliament
of Chalons and other friendly tribunals, and burning of Chalons decrees
by Paris hangmen, and edicts in favour of Protestants at Nantz and other
places--measures the enactment, repeal, and reenactment of which were to
mark the ebb and flow of the great tide of human opinion on the most
important of subjects, and the traces of which were to be for a long time
visible on the shores of time.

Early in 1593 Mayenne, yielding to the pressure of the Spanish party,
reluctantly consented to assemble the States-General of France, in order
that a king might be chosen.  The duke, who came to be thoroughly known
to Alexander Farnese before the death of that subtle Italian, relied on
his capacity to outwit all the other champions of the League and agents
of Philip now that the master-spirit had been removed.  As firmly opposed
as ever to the election of any other candidate but himself, or possibly
his son, according to a secret proposition which he had lately made to
the pope,  he felt himself obliged to confront the army of Spanish
diplomatists, Roman prelates, and learned doctors, by whom it was
proposed to exclude the Prince of Bearne from his pretended rights.  But
he did not, after all, deceive them as thoroughly as he imagined.  The
Spaniards shrewdly suspected the French tactics, and the whole business
was but a round game of deception, in which no one was much deceived, who
ever might be destined ultimately, to pocket the stakes: "I know from a
very good source," said Fuentes, "that Mayenne, Guise, and the rest of
them are struggling hard in order not to submit to Bearne, and will
suffer everything your Majesty may do to them, even if you kick them in
the mouth, but still there is no conclusion on the road we are
travelling, at least not the one which your Majesty desires. They will go
on procrastinating and gaining time, making authority for themselves out
of your Majesty's grandeur, until the condition of things comes which
they are desiring.  Feria tells me that they are still taking your
Majesty's money, but I warn your Majesty that it is only to fight off
Bearne, and that they are only pursuing their own ends at your Majesty's
expense."

Perhaps Mayenne had already a sufficiently clear insight into the not
far-distant future, but he still presented himself in Spanish cloak and
most ultramontane physiognomy.  His pockets were indeed full of Spanish
coin at that moment, for he had just claimed and received eighty-eight
thousand-nine hundred dollars for back debts, together with one hundred
and eighty, thousand dollars more to distribute among the deputies of the
estates.  "All I can say about France," said Fuentes, "is that it is one
great thirst for money.  The Duke of Feria believes in a good result, but
I think that Mayenne is only trying to pocket as much money as he can."

Thus fortified, the Duke of Mayenne issued the address to the States-
General of the kingdom, to meet at an early day in order to make
arrangements to secure religion and peace, and to throw off the possible
yoke of the heretic pretender.  The great seal affixed to the document
represented an empty throne, instead of the usual effigy of a king.

The cardinal-legate issued a thundering manifesto at the same time
sustaining Mayenne and virulently denouncing the Bearnese.

The politicians' party now seized the opportunity to impress upon Henry
that the decisive moment was come.

The Spaniard, the priest; and the League, had heated the furnace.
The iron was at a white heat.  Now was the time to strike.  Secretary
of State Revol Gaspar de Schomberg, Jacques Auguste de Thou, the eminent
historian, and other influential personages urged the king to give to
the great question the only possible solution.

Said the king with much meekness, "If I am in error, let those who attack
me with so much fury instruct me, and show me the way of salvation.  I
hate those who act against their conscience.  I pardon all those who are
inspired by truly religious motives, and I am ready to receive all into
favour whom the love of peace, not the chagrin of ill-will, has disgusted
with the war."

There was a great meeting of Leaguers at the Louvre, to listen to
Mayenne, the cardinal-legate, Cardinal Pelleve, the Duke of Guise, and
other chieftains.  The Duke of Feria made a long speech in Latin, setting
forth the Spanish policy, veiled as usual, but already sufficiently well
known, and assuring the assembly that the King of Spain desired nothing
so much as the peace of France and of all the world, together with the
supremacy of the Roman Church.  Whether these objects could best be
attained by the election of Philip or of his daughter, as sovereign, with
the Archduke Ernest as king-consort, or with perhaps the Duke of Guise
or some other eligible husband, were fair subjects for discussion.
No selfish motive influenced the king, and he placed all his wealth and
all his armies at the disposal of the League to carry out these great
projects.

Then there was a conference at Surene between the chiefs the League and
the "political" leaders; the Archbishop of Lyons, the cardinal-legate,
Villars, Admiral of France and defender of Rouen, Belin, Governor of
Paris, President Jeannin, and others upon one side; upon the other, the
Archbishop of Bourges, Bellievre, Schomberg, Revol, and De Thou.

The Archbishop of Lyons said that their party would do nothing either to
frustrate or to support the mission of Pisani, and that the pope would,
as ever, do all that could be done to maintain the interests of the true
religion.

The Archbishop of Bourges, knowing well the meaning of such fine phrases,
replied that he had much respect for the holy father, but that popes had
now, become the slaves and tools of the King of Spain, who, because he
was powerful, held them subject to his caprice.

At an adjourned meeting at the same place, the Archbishop of Lyons said
that all questions had been asked and answered.  All now depended on the
pope, whom the League would always obey.  If the pope would accept the
reconciliation of the Prince of Bearne it was well.  He, hoped that his
conversion would be sincere.

The political archbishop (of Bourges) replied to the League's archbishop,
that there was no time for delays, and for journeys by land and sea to
Rome.  The least obstruction might prove fatal to both parties.  Let the
Leaguers now show that the serenity of their faces was but the mirror of
their minds.

But the Leaguers' archbishop said that he could make no further advances.
So ended the conference.'

The chiefs of the politicians now went to the king and informed him that
the decisive moment had arrived.

Henry had preserved: his coolness throughout.  Amid all the hubbub of
learned doctors of law, archbishops-Leaguer and political-Sorbonne
pedants, solemn grandees from Spain with Latin orations in their pockets,
intriguing Guises, huckstering Mayennes, wrathful Huguenots, sanguinary
cardinal-legates, threatening world-monarchs--heralded by Spanish
musketeers, Italian lancers, and German reiters--shrill screams of
warning from the English queen, grim denunciations from Dutch Calvinists,
scornful repulses from the holy father; he kept his temper and his eye-
sight, as perfectly as he had ever done through the smoke and din of
the wildest battle-field.  None knew better than he how to detect the
weakness of the adversary, and to sound the charge upon his wavering
line.

He blew the blast--sure that loyal Catholics and Protestants alike would
now follow him pell-mell.

On the 16th, May, 1593, he gave notice that he consented to get himself
instructed, and that he summoned an assembly at Mantes on the 15th July,
of bishops, theologians, princes, lords, and courts of parliament to hold
council, and to advise him what was best to do for religion and the
State.

Meantime he returned to the siege of Dreux, made an assault on the place,
was repulsed, and then hung nine prisoners of war in full sight of the
garrison as a punishment for their temerity in resisting him.  The place
soon after capitulated (8th July, 1593).

The interval between the summons and the assembling of the clerical and
lay notables at Mantes was employed by the Leaguers in frantic and
contradictory efforts to retrieve a game which the most sagacious knew to
be lost.  But the politicians were equal to the occasion, and baffled
them at every point.

The Leaguers' archbishop inveighed bitterly against the abominable edicts
recently issued in favour of the Protestants.

The political archbishop (of Bourges) replied not by defending; but by
warmly disapproving, those decrees of toleration, by excusing the king
for having granted them for a temporary purpose, and by asserting
positively that, so soon as the king should be converted, he would no
longer countenance such measures.

It is superfluous to observe that very different language was held on the
part of Henry to the English and Dutch Protestants, and to the Huguenots
of his own kingdom.

And there were many meetings of the Leaguers in Paris, many belligerent
speeches by the cardinal legate, proclaiming war to the knife rather
than that the name of Henry the heretic should ever be heard of again as
candidate for the throne, various propositions spasmodically made in full
assembly by Feria, Ybarra, Tassis, the jurisconsult Mendoza, and other
Spanish agents in favour of the Infanta as queen of France, with Archduke
Ernest or the Duke of Guise, or any other eligible prince, for her
husband.

The League issued a formal and furious invective in answer to Henry's
announcement; proving by copious citations from Jeremiah, St. Epiphany;
St. Jerome, St. Cyprian, and St. Bernard, that it was easier for a
leopard to change his spots or for a blackamoor to be washed white; than
for a heretic to be converted, and that the king was thinking rather of
the crown of France than of a heavenly crown, in his approaching
conversion--an opinion which there were few to gainsay.

And the Duke of Nemours wrote to his half-brother, the Duke of Mayenne;
offering to use all his influence to bring about Mayenne's election as
king on condition that if these efforts failed, Mayenne should do his
best to procure the election of Nemours.

And the Parliament of Paris formally and prospectively proclaimed any
election of a foreigner null and void, and sent deputies to Mayenne
urging him never to consent to the election of the Infanta.

What help, said they, can the League expect from the old and broken
Philip; from a king who in thirty years has not been able, with all the
resources of his kingdoms, to subdue the revolted provinces of the
Netherlands?  How can he hope to conquer France?  Pay no further heed
to the legate, they said, who is laughing in his sleeve at the miseries
and distractions of our country.  So spake the deputies of the League-
Parliament to the great captain of the League, the Duke of Mayenne.
It was obvious that the "great and holy confederacy" was becoming less
confident of its invincibility.  Madame League was suddenly grown
decrepit in the eyes of her adorers.

Mayenne was angry at the action of the Parliament, and vehemently swore
that he would annul their decree.  Parliament met his threats with
dignity, and resolved to stand by the decree, even if they all died in
their places.

At the same time the Duke of Feria suddenly produced in full assembly
of Leaguers a written order from Philip that the Duke of Guise and the
Infanta should at once be elected king and queen.  Taken by surprise,
Mayenne dissembled his rage in masterly-fashion, promised Feria to
support the election, and at once began to higgle for conditions.  He
stipulated that he should have for himself the governments of Champagne,
Burgundy, and La Brie, and that they should be hereditary in his family:
He furthermore demanded that Guise should cede to him the principality
of Joinville, and that they should pay him on the spot in hard money two
hundred thousand crowns in gold, six hundred thousand more in different
payments, together with an annual payment of fifty thousand crowns.

It was obvious that the duke did not undervalue himself; but he had after
all no intention of falling into the trap set for him.  "He has made
these promises (as above given) in writing," said the Duke of Savoy's
envoy to his master, but he will never keep them.  The Duchess of Mayenne
could not help telling me that her husband will never consent that the
Duke of Guise should have the throne."  From this resolve he had never
wavered, and was not likely to do so now.  Accordingly the man "of his
word, of faith, and truth," whom even the astute Farnese had at times
half believed in, and who had received millions of Philip's money, now
thought it time to break with Philip.  He issued a manifesto, in which he
observed that the States-General of France had desired that Philip should
be elected King of France, and carry out his design of a universal
monarchy, as the only-means of ensuring the safety of the Catholic
religion and the pacification of the world.  It was feared, however, said
Mayenne; that the king might come to the same misfortunes which befell
his father, who, when it was supposed that he was inspired only by
private ambition; and by the hope of placing a hereditary universal crown
in his family, had excited the animosity of the princes of the empire.
"If a mere suspicion had caused so great a misfortune in the empire,"
continued the man of his word, "what will the princes of all Europe do
when they find his Majesty elected king of France, and grown by increase
of power so formidable to the world?  Can it be doubted that they will
fly to arms at once, and give all their support to the King of Navarre,
heretic though he be?  What motive had so many princes to traverse
Philip's designs in the Netherlands, but desire to destroy the enormous
power which they feared?  Therefore had the Queen, of England, although
refusing the sovereignty, defended the independence of the Netherlands
these fifteen years.

"However desirable," continued Mayenne, "that this universal monarchy,
for which the house of Austria has so long been working, should be
established, yet the king is too prudent not to see the difficulties
in his way.  Although he has conquered Portugal, he is prevented by the
fleets of Holland and England from taking possession of the richest of
the Portuguese possessions, the islands and the Indies.  He will find in
France insuperable objections to his election as king, for he could in
this case well reproach the Leaguers with having been changed from
Frenchmen into Spaniards.  He must see that his case is hopeless in
France, he who for thirty years has been in vain endeavouring to re-
establish his authority in the Netherlands.  It would be impossible in
the present position of affairs to become either the king or the
protector of France.  The dignity of France allows it not."

Mayenne then insisted on the necessity of a truce with the royalists or
politicians, and, assembling the estates at the Louvre on the 4th July,
he read a written paper declining for the moment to hold an election for
king.

John Baptist Tassis, next day, replied by declaring that in this case
Philip would send no more succours of men or money; for that the only
effectual counter-poison to the pretended conversion of the Prince of
Bearne was the immediate election of a king.

Thus did Mayenne escape from the snare in which the Spaniards thought to
catch the man who, as they now knew, was changing every day, and was true
to nothing save his own interests.

And now the great day had come.  The conversion of Henry to the Roman
faith, fixed long before for--the 23rd July,--1593, formally took place
at the time appointed.

From six in the morning till the stroke of noon did Henry listen to the
exhortations and expoundings of the learned prelates and doctors whom he
had convoked, the politic Archbishop of Bourges taking the lead in this
long-expected instruction.  After six mortal hours had come to an end,
the king rose from his knees, somewhat wearied, but entirely instructed
and convinced.  He thanked the bishops for having taught him that of
which he was before quite ignorant, and assured them that; after having
invoked the light, of the Holy Ghost upon his musings, he should think
seriously over what they had just taught him, in order to come to a
resolution salutary to himself and to the State.

Nothing could be more candid.  Next day, at eight in the morning, there
was a great show in the cathedral of Saint Denis, and the population of
Paris, notwithstanding the prohibition of the League authorities, rushed
thither in immense crowds to witness the ceremony of the reconciliation
of the king.  Henry went to the church, clothed as became a freshly
purified heretic, in white satin doublet and hose, white silk stockings,
and white silk shoes with white roses in them; but with a black hat and
a black mantle.  There was a great procession with blare of trumpet and
beat of drum.  The streets were strewn with flowers.

As Henry entered the great portal of the church, he found the Archbishop
of Bourges, seated in state, effulgent in mitre and chasuble, and
surrounded by other magnificent prelates in gorgeous attire.

"Who are you, and what do you want?"  said the arch-bishop.

"I am the king," meekly replied Henry, "and I demand to be received into
the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church."

"Do you wish it sincerely?"  asked the prelate.

"I wish it with all my heart," said the king.

Then throwing himself on his knees, the Bearne--great champion of the
Huguenots--protested before God that he would live and die in the
Catholic faith, and that he renounced all heresy.  A passage was with
difficulty opened through the crowd, and he was then led to the high
altar, amid the acclamations of the people.  Here he knelt devoutly and
repeated his protestations.  His unction and contrition were most
impressive, and the people, of course, wept piteously.  The king, during
the progress of the ceremony, with hands clasped together and adoring the
Eucharist with his eyes, or, as the Host was elevated, smiting himself
thrice upon the breast, was a model of passionate devotion.

Afterwards he retired to a pavilion behind the altar, where the
archbishop confessed and absolved him.  Then the Te Deum sounded,
and high mass was celebrated by the Bishop of Nantes.  Then, amid
acclamations and blessings, and with largess to the crowd, the king
returned to the monastery of Saint Denis, where he dined amid a multitude
of spectators, who thronged so thickly around him that his dinner-table
was nearly overset.  These were the very Parisians, who, but three years
before, had been feeding on rats and dogs and dead men's bones, and the
bodies of their own children, rather than open their gates to this same
Prince of Bearne.

Now, although Mayenne had set strong guards at those gates, and had most
strictly prohibited all egress, the city was emptied of its populace,
which pressed in transports of adoration around the man so lately the
object of their hate.  Yet few could seriously believe that much change
had been effected in the inner soul of him, whom the legate, and the
Spaniard, and the holy father at Rome still continued to denounce as the
vilest of heretics and the most infamous of impostors.

The comedy was admirably played out and was entirely successful.  It may
be supposed that the chief actor was, however, somewhat wearied.  In
private, he mocked at all this ecclesiastical mummery, and described
himself as heartily sick of the business.  "I arrived here last evening,"
he wrote to the beautiful Gabrielle, "and was importuned with 'God save
you' till bed-time.  In regard to the Leaguers I am of the order of St.
Thomas.  I am beginning to-morrow morning to talk to the bishops, besides
those I told you about yesterday.  At this moment of writing I have a
hundred of these importunates on my shoulders, who will make me hate
Saint Denis as much as you hate Mantes.  'Tis to-morrow that I take the
perilous leap.  I kiss a million times the beautiful hands of my angel
and the mouth of my dear mistress."

A truce--renewed at intervals--with the Leaguers lasted till the end of
the year.  The Duke of Nevers was sent on special mission to Rome to
procure the holy father's consent to the great heretic's reconciliation
to the Church, and he was instructed to make the king's submission in
terms so wholesale and so abject that even some of the life-long papists
of France were disgusted, while every honest Protestant in Europe shrank
into himself for shame.  But Clement, overawed by Philip and his
ambassador, was deaf to all the representations of the French envoy.
He protested that he would not believe in the sincerity of the Bearne's
conversion unless an angel from Heaven should reveal it to him.  So
Nevers left Rome, highly exasperated, and professing that he would rather
have lost a leg, that he would rather have been sewn in a sack and tossed
into the Tiber, than bear back such a message.  The pope ordered the
prelates who had accompanied Nevers to remain in Rome and be tried by
the Inquisition for misprision of heresy, but the duke placed them by
his side and marched out of the Porta del Popolo with them, threatening
to kill any man who should attempt to enforce the command.

Meantime it became necessary to follow up the St. Denis comedy with a
still more exhilarating popular spectacle.  The heretic had been
purified, confessed, absolved.  It was time for a consecration.  But
there was a difficulty.  Although the fever of loyalty to the ancient
house of Bourbon, now redeemed from its worship of the false gods, was
spreading contagiously through the provinces; although all the white silk
in Lyons had been cut into scarves and banners to celebrate the
reconciliation of the candid king with mother Church; although that
ancient city was ablaze with bonfires and illuminations, while its
streets ran red, with blood no longer, but with wine; and although Madam
League, so lately the object of fondest adoration, was now publicly
burned in the effigy of a grizzly hag; yet Paris still held for that
decrepit beldame, and closed its gates to the Bearnese.

The city of Rheims, too, had not acknowledged the former Huguenot,
and it was at Rheims, in the church of St. Remy, that the Holy Bottle was
preserved.  With what chrism, by what prelate, should the consecration of
Henry be performed?  Five years before, the League had proposed in the
estates of Blois to place among the fundamental laws of the kingdom that
no king should be considered a legitimate sovereign whose head had not
been anointed by the bishop at Rheims with oil from that holy bottle.
But it was now decided that to ascribe a monopoly of sanctity to that
prelate and to that bottle would be to make a schism in the Church.

Moreover it was discovered that there was a chrism in existence still
more efficacious than the famous oil of St. Remy.  One hundred and twelve
years before the baptism of Clovis, St. Martin had accidentally tumbled
down stairs, and lay desperately bruised and at the point of death.  But,
according to Sulpicius Severus, an angel had straightway descended from
heaven, and with a miraculous balsam had anointed the contusions of the
saint, who next day felt no farther inconveniences from his fall.  The
balsam had ever since been preserved in the church of Marmoutier near
Tours.  Here, then, was the most potent of unguents brought directly from
heaven.  To mix a portion thereof with the chrism of consecration was
clearly more judicious than to make use of the holy bottle, especially as
the holy bottle was not within reach.  The monks of Marmoutier consented
to lend the sacred phial containing the famous oil of St. Martin for the
grand occasion of the royal consecration.

Accompanied by a strong military escort provided by Giles de Souvri,
governor of Touraine, a deputation of friars brought the phial to
Chartres, where the consecration was to take place.  Prayers were offered
up, without ceasing, in the monastery during their absence that no mishap
should befal the sacred treasure.  When the monks arrived at Chartres,
four young barons of the first nobility were assigned to them as hostages
for the safe restoration of the phial, which was then borne in triumph to
the cathedral, the streets through which it was carried being covered
with tapestry.  There was a great ceremony, a splendid consecration; six
bishops, with mitres on their heads and in gala robes, officiating; after
which the king knelt before the altar and took the customary oath.

Thus the champion of the fierce Huguenots, the well-beloved of the dead
La Noue and the living Duplessis Mornay, the devoted knight of the
heretic Queen Elizabeth, the sworn ally of the stout Dutch Calvinists,
was pompously reconciled to that Rome which was the object of their
hatred and their fear.

The admirably arranged spectacles of the instruction at St. Denis and the
consecration at Chartres were followed on the day of the vernal equinox
by a third and most conclusive ceremony:

A secret arrangement had been made with De Cosse-Brissac, governor of
Paris, by the king, according to which the gates of Paris were at last to
be opened to him.  The governor obtained a high price for his services--
three hundred thousand livres in hard cash, thirty thousand a year for
his life, and the truncheon of marshal of France.   Thus purchased,
Brissac made his preparations with remarkable secrecy and skill.  Envoy
Ybarra, who had scented something suspicious in the air, had gone
straight to the governor for information, but the keen Spaniard was
thrown out by the governor's ingenuous protestations of ignorance.  The
next morning, March 22nd, was stormy and rainy, and long before daylight
Ybarra, still uneasy despite the statements of Brissac, was wandering
about the streets of Paris when he became the involuntary witness of an
extraordinary spectacle.

Through the wind and the rain came trampling along the dark streets of
the capital a body of four thousand troopers and lansquenettes.  Many
torch-bearers attended on the procession, whose flambeaux threw a lurid
light upon the scene.

There, surrounded by the swart and grizzly bearded visages of these
strange men-at-arms, who were discharging their arquebuses, as they
advanced upon any bystanders likely to oppose their progress; in the very
midst of this sea of helmed heads, the envoy was enabled to recognise the
martial figure of the Prince of Bearne.  Armed to the teeth, with sword
in hand and dagger at side, the hero of Ivry rode at last through the
barriers which had so long kept him from his capital.  "'Twas like
enchantment," said Ybarra.  The first Bourbon entered the city through
the same gate out of which the last Valois had, five years before, so
ignominiously fled.  It was a midnight surprise, although not fully
accomplished until near the dawn of day.  It was not a triumphal
entrance; nor did Henry come as the victorious standard-bearer of a great
principle.  He had defeated the League in many battle-fields, but the
League still hissed defiance at him from the very hearthstone of his
ancestral palace.  He had now crept, in order to conquer, even lower
than the League itself; and casting off his Huguenot skin at last,
he had soared over the heads of all men, the presiding genius of the
holy Catholic Church.

Twenty-one years before, he had entered the same city on the conclusion
of one of the truces which had varied the long monotony of the religious
wars of France.  The youthful son of Antony Bourbon and Joan of Albret
had then appeared as the champion and the idol of the Huguenots.  In the
same year had come the fatal nuptials with the bride of St. Bartholomew,
the first Catholic conversion of Henry and the massacre at which the
world still shudders.

Now he was chief of the "Politicians," and sworn supporter of the Council
of Trent.  Earnest Huguenots were hanging their heads in despair.

He represented the principle of national unity against national
dismemberment by domestiv, treason and foreign violence.  Had that
principle been his real inspiration, as it was in truth his sole support,
history might judge him more leniently.  Had he relied upon it entirely
it might have been strong enough to restore him to the throne of his
ancestors, without the famous religious apostacy with which his name is
for ever associated.  It is by no means certain that permanent religious
toleration might not have been the result of his mounting the throne,
only when he could do so without renouncing the faith of his fathers.
A day of civilization may come perhaps, sooner or later, when it will be
of no earthly cousequence to their fellow creatures to what creed, what
Christian church, what religious dogma kings or humbler individuals may
be partial; when the relations between man and his Maker shall be
undefiled by political or social intrusion.  But the day will never
come when it will be otherwise than damaging to public morality and
humiliating to human dignity to forswear principle for a price, and to
make the most awful of mysteries the subject of political legerdemain and
theatrical buffoonery.

The so-called conversion of the king marks an epoch in human history.
It strengthened the Roman Church and gave it an indefinite renewal of
life; but it sapped the foundations of religious faith.  The appearance
of Henry the Huguenot as the champion of the Council of Trent was of
itself too biting an epigram not to be extensively destructive.  Whether
for good or ill, religion was fast ceasing to be the mainspring of
political combinations, the motive of great wars and national
convulsions.  The age of religion was to be succeeded by the
age of commerce.

But the king was now on his throne.  All Paris was in rapture.  There was
Te Deum with high mass in Notre Dame, and the populace was howling itself
hoarse with rapture in honour of him so lately the object of the general
curse.  Even the Sorbonne declared in favour of the reclaimed heretic,
and the decision of those sages had vast influence with less enlightened
mortals.  There was nothing left for the Duke of Feria but to take
himself off and make Latin orations in favour of the Infanta elsewhere,
if fit audience elsewhere could be found.  A week after the entrance of
Henry, the Spanish garrison accordingly was allowed to leave Paris with
the honours of war.

"We marched out at 2 P.M.," wrote the duke to his master, "with closed
ranks, colours displayed, and drums beating.  First came the Italians and
then the Spaniards, in the midst of whom was myself on horseback, with
the Walloons marching near me.  The Prince of Bearne"--it was a solace to
the duke's heart, of which he never could be deprived, to call the king
by that title--"was at a window over the gate of St. Denis through which
we took our departure.  He was dressed in light grey, with a black hat
surmounted by a great white feather.  Our displayed standards rendered
him no courteous salute as we passed."

Here was another solace!

Thus had the game been lost and won, but Philip as usual did not
acknowledge himself beaten.  Mayenne, too, continued to make the most
fervent promises to all that was left of the confederates.  He betook
himself to Brussels, and by the king's orders was courteously received by
the Spanish authorities in the Netherlands.  In the midst of the tempest
now rapidly destroying all rational hopes, Philip still clung to Mayenne
as to a spar in the shipwreck.  For the king ever possessed the virtue,
if it be one, of continuing to believe himself invincible and infallible,
when he had been defeated in every quarter, and when his calculations had
all proved ridiculous mistakes.

When his famous Armada had been shattered and sunk, have we not seen him
peevishly requiring Alexander Farnese to construct a new one immediately
and to proceed therewith to conquer England out of hand?  Was it to be
expected that he would renounce his conquest of France, although the
legitimate king had entered his capital, had reconciled himself to the
Church, and was on the point of obtaining forgiveness of the pope?  If
the Prince of Bearne had already destroyed the Holy League, why should
not the Duke of Mayenne and Archduke Ernest make another for him,
and so conquer France without further delay?

But although it was still possible to deceive the king, who in the
universality of his deceptive powers was so prone to delude himself,
it was difficult even for so accomplished an intriguer as Mayenne to
hoodwink much longer the shrewd Spaniards who were playing so losing a
game against him.

"Our affairs in France," said Ybarra, "are in such condition that
we are losing money and character there, and are likely to lose all the
provinces here, if things are not soon taken up in a large and energetic
manner.  Money and troops are what is wanted on a great scale for France.
The king's agents are mightily discontented with Mayenne, and with
reason; but they are obliged to dissimulate and to hold their tongues.
We can send them no assistance from these regions, unless from down
yonder you send us the cloth and the scissors to cut it with."

And the Archduke Ernest, although he invited Mayenne to confer with him
at Brussels, under the impression that he could still keep him and the
Duke of Guise from coming to an arrangement with Bearne, hardly felt more
confidence in the man than did Feria or Ybarra.  "Since the loss of
Paris," said Ernest, "I have had a letter from Mayenne, in which, deeply
affected by that event, he makes me great offers, even to the last drop
of his blood, vowing never to abandon the cause of the League.  But of
the intentions and inner mind of this man I find such vague information,
that I don't dare to expect more stability from him than may be founded
upon his own interest."

And so Mayenne came to Brussels and passed three days with the archduke.
"He avows himself ready to die in our cause," said Ernest.  "If your
Majesty will give men and money enough, he will undertake so to deal
with Bearne that he shall not think himself safe in his own house."
The archduke expressed his dissatisfaction to Mayenne that with the money
he had already received, so little had been accomplished, but he still
affected a confidence which he was far from feeling, "because," said he,
"it is known that Mayenne is already treating with Bearne.  If he has not
concluded those arrangements, it is because Bearne now offers him less
money than before."  The amount of dissimulation, politely so-called,
practised by the grandees of that age, to say nothing of their infinite
capacity for pecuniary absorption, makes the brain reel and enlarges
one's ideas of the human faculties as exerted in certain directions.  It
is doubtful whether plain Hans Miller or Hans Baker could have risen to
such level.

Feria wrote a despatch to the king, denouncing Mayenne as false,
pernicious to the cause of Spain and of catholicism, thoroughly self-
seeking and vile, and as now most traitorous to the cause of the
confederacy, engaged in surrendering its strong places to the enemy,
and preparing to go over to the Prince of Bearne.

"If," said he, "I were to recount all his base tricks, I should go on
till midnight, and perhaps till to-morrow morning."

This letter, being intercepted, was sent with great glee by Henry IV.,
not to the royal hands for which it was destined, but to the Duke of
Mayenne.  Great was the wrath of that injured personage as he read such
libellous truths.  He forthwith fulminated a scathing reply, addressed
to Philip II., in which he denounced the Duke of Feria as "a dirty
ignoramus, an impudent coward, an impostor, and a blind thief;" adding,
after many other unsavoury epithets, "but I will do him an honour which
he has not merited, proving him a liar with my sword; and I humbly pray
your Majesty to grant me this favour and to pardon my just grief, which
causes me to depart from the respect due to your Majesty, when I speak of
this impostor who has thus wickedly torn my reputation."

His invectives were, however, much stronger than his arguments in defence
of that tattered reputation.  The defiance to mortal combat went for
nothing; and, in the course of the next year, the injured Mayenne turned
his back on Philip and his Spaniards, and concluded his bargain with the
Prince of Bearne.  He obtained good terms: the government of Burgundy,
payment of his debts, and a hundred and twenty thousand crowns in hard
cash.  It is not on record that the man of his word, of credit, and of
truth, ever restored a penny of the vast sums which he had received from
Philip to carry on the business of the League.

Subsequently the duke came one very hot summer's-day to Monceaux to thank
the king, as he expressed it, for "delivering him from Spanish arrogance
and Italian wiles;" and having got with much difficulty upon his knees,
was allowed to kiss the royal hand.  Henry then insisted upon walking
about with him through the park at a prodigious rate, to show him all the
improvements, while the duke panted, groaned, and perspired in his vain
efforts to keep pace with his new sovereign.

"If I keep this fat fellow walking about in the sun much longer,"
whispered the king to De Bethune, who was third in the party, "I shall be
sufficiently avenged for all the mischief he has done us."

At last, when the duke was forced to admit himself to be on the point of
expiring with fatigue, he was dismissed to the palace with orders to
solace himself with a couple of bottles of excellent wine of Arbois,
expressly provided for him by the king's direction.  And this was all the
punishment ever inflicted by the good-humoured monarch on the corpulent
conspirator.

The Duke of Guise made his arrangements with the ex-Huguenot on even
better terms and at a still earlier day; while Joyeuse and Mercoeur stood
out a good while and higgled hard for conditions.  "These people put such
a high price on themselves," said one of Henry's diplomatists, "that one
loses almost more than one gains in buying them.  They strip and plunder
us even in our nakedness, and we are obliged, in order to conciliate such
harpies, to employ all that we can scrape out of our substance and our
blood.  I think, however, that we ought to gain them by whatever means
and at whatever price."

Thus Henry IV., the man whom so many contemporary sages had for years
been rebuking or ridiculing for his persistency in a hopeless attempt to
save his country from dismemberment, to restore legitimate authority, and
to resist the "holy confederacy" of domestic traitors, aided by foreign
despots and sympathizers, was at last successful, and the fratricidal war
in France was approaching its only possible conclusion.

But, alas! the hopes of those who loved the reformed Church as well as
they loved their country were sadly blasted by the apostasy of their
leader.  From the most eminent leaders of the Huguenots there came a
wail, which must have penetrated even to the well-steeled heart of the
cheerful Gascon.  "It will be difficult," they said, "to efface very soon
from your memory the names of the men whom the sentiment of a common
religion, association in the same perils and persecutions, a common joy
in the same deliverance, and the long experience of so many faithful
services, have engraved there with a pencil of diamond.  The remembrance
of these things pursues you and accompanies you everywhere; it interrupts
your most important affairs, your most ardent pleasures, your most
profound slumber, to represent to you, as in a picture, yourself to
yourself: yourself not as you are to-day, but such as you were when,
pursued to the death by the greatest princes of Europe, you went on
conducting to the harbour of safety the little vessel against which so
many tempests were beating."

The States of the Dutch republic, where the affair of Henry's conversion
was as much a matter of domestic personal interest as it could be in
France--for religion up to that epoch was the true frontier between
nation and nation--debated the question most earnestly while it was yet
doubtful.  It was proposed to send a formal deputation to the king, in
order to divert him, if possible, from the fatal step which he was about
to take.  After ripe deliberation however, it was decided to leave the
matter "in the hands of God Almighty, and to pray Him earnestly to guide
the issue to His glory and the welfare of the Churches."

The Queen of England was, as might be supposed, beside herself with
indignation, and, in consequence of the great apostasy, and of her
chronic dissatisfaction with the manner in which her contingent of
troops had been handled in France, she determined to withdraw every
English soldier from the support of Henry's cause.  The unfortunate
French ambassador in London was at his wits' ends.  He vowed that he
could not sleep of nights, and that the gout and the cholic, to which
he was always a martyr, were nothing to the anguish which had now come
upon his soul and brain, such as he had never suffered since the bloody
day of St. Bartholomew.

"Ah, my God!"  said he to Burghley, "is it possible that her just choler
has so suddenly passed over the great glory which she has acquired by so
many benefits and liberalities?"  But he persuaded himself that her
majesty would after all not persist in her fell resolution.  To do so,
he vowed, would only be boiling milk for the French papists, who would be
sure to make the most of the occasion in order to precipitate the king
into the, abyss, to the border of which they had already brought him.
He so dreaded the ire of the queen that he protested he was trembling
all over merely to see the pen of his secretary wagging as he dictated
his despatches.  Nevertheless it was his terrible duty to face her in her
wrath, and he implored the lord treasurer to accompany him and to shield
him at the approaching interview.  "Protect me," he cried, "by your
wisdom from the ire of this great princess; for by the living God,
when I see her enraged against any person whatever I wish myself
in Calcutta, fearing her anger like death itself."

When all was over, Henry sent De Morlans as special envoy to communicate
the issue to the Governments of England and of Holland.  But the queen,
although no longer so violent, was less phlegmatic than the States-
General, and refused to be comforted.  She subsequently receded,
however, from her determination to withdraw her troops from France.

"Ah! what grief; ah! what regrets; ah! what groans, have I felt in my
soul," she wrote, "at the sound of the news brought to me by Morlans!
My God! Is it possible that any wordly respect can efface the terror
of Divine wrath?  Can we by reason even expect a good sequel to such
iniquitous acts?  He who has maintained and preserved you by His mercy,
can you imagine that he permits you to walk alone in your utmost need?
'Tis bad to do evil that good may come of it.  Meantime I shall not cease
to put you in the first rank of my devotions, in order that the hands of
Esau may not spoil the blessings of Jacob.  As to your promises to me of
friendship and fidelity, I confess to have dearly deserved them, nor do I
repent, provided you do not change your Father--otherwise I shall be your
bastard sister by the father's side--for I shall ever love a natural
better than an adopted one.  I desire that God may guide you in a
straight road and a better path.  Your most sincere sister in the old
fashion.  As to the new, I have nothing to do with it.   ELIZABETH R."




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

All fellow-worms together
Continuing to believe himself invincible and infallible
He spent more time at table than the Bearnese in sleep
Henry the Huguenot as the champion of the Council of Trent
Highest were not necessarily the least slimy
His invectives were, however, much stronger than his arguments
History is a continuous whole of which we see only fragments
Infinite capacity for pecuniary absorption
Leading motive with all was supposed to be religion
Past was once the Present, and once the Future
Sages of every generation, read the future like a printed scroll
Sewers which have ever run beneath decorous Christendom
Wrath of that injured personage as he read such libellous truths




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v65
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 66, 1594



CHAPTER XXX.

     Prince Maurice lays siege to Gertruydenberg--Advantages of the new
     system of warfare--Progress of the besieging operations--Superiority
     of Maurice's manoeuvres--Adventure of Count Philip of Nassau--
     Capitulation of Gertruydenberg--Mutiny among the Spanish troops--
     Attempt of Verdugo to retake Coeworden--Suspicions of treason in the
     English garrison at Ostend--Letter of Queen Elizabeth to Sir Edward
     Norris on the subject--Second attempt on Coeworden--Assault on
     Groningen by Maurice--Second adventure of Philip of Nassau--Narrow
     escape of Prince Maurice--Surrender of Groningen--Particulars of the
     siege--Question of religious toleration--Progress of the United
     Netherlands--Condition of  the "obedient" Netherlands--Incompetency
     of Peter Mansfeld as Governor--Archduke Ernest, the successor of
     Farnese--Difficulties of his position--His unpopularity--Great
     achievements of the republicans--Triumphal entry of Ernest into
     Brussels and Antwerp--Magnificence of the spectacle--Disaffection of
     the Spanish troops--Great military rebellion--Philip's proposal to
     destroy the English fleet--His assassination plans--Plot to poison
     Queen Elizabeth--Conspiracies against Prince  Maurice--Futile
     attempts at negotiation--Proposal of a marriage between Henry and
     the Infanta--Secret mission from Henry to the King of Spain--Special
     dispatch to England and the Staten--Henry obtains further aid from
     Queen Elizabeth and the States--Council--Anxiety of the Protestant
     countries to bring about a war with Spain--Aspect of affairs at the
     close of the year 1594.

While Philip's world-empire seemed in one direction to be so rapidly
fading into cloudland there were substantial possessions of the Spanish
crown which had been neglected in Brabant and Friesland.

Two very important cities still held for the King of Spain within the
territories of what could now be fairly considered the United Dutch
Republic--St. Gertruydenberg and Groningen.

Early in the spring of 1593, Maurice had completed his preparations for a
siege, and on the 24th March appeared before Gertruydenberg.

It was a stately, ancient city, important for its wealth, its strength,
and especially for its position.  For without its possession even the
province of Holland could hardly consider itself mistress of its own
little domains.  It was seated on the ancient Meuse, swollen as it
approached the sea almost to the dimension of a gulf, while from the
south another stream, called the Donge, very brief in its course, but
with considerable depth of water, came to mingle itself with the Meuse,
exactly under the walls of the city.

The site of the place was so low that it was almost hidden and protected
by its surrounding dykes.  These afforded means of fortification, which
had been well improved.  Both by nature and art the city was one of the
strongholds of the Netherlands.

Maurice had given the world a lesson in the beleaguering science at the
siege of Steenwyk, such as had never before been dreamt of; but he was
resolved that the operations before Gertruydenberg should constitute a
masterpiece.

Nothing could be more beautiful as a production of military art, nothing,
to the general reader, more insipid than its details.

On the land side, Hohenlo's headquarters were at Ramsdonck, a village
about a German mile to the east of Gertruydenberg.  Maurice himself was
established on the west side of the city.  Two bridges constructed across
the Donge facilitated the communications between the two camps, while
great quantities of planks and brush were laid down across the swampy
roads to make them passable for waggon-trains and artillery.  The first
care of the young general, whose force was not more than twenty thousand
men, was to protect himself rather than to assail the town.

His lines extended many miles in a circuit around the place, and his
forts, breastworks, and trenches were very numerous.

The river was made use of as a natural and almost impassable ditch of
defence, and windmills were freely employed to pump water into the
shallows in one direction, while in others the outer fields, in quarters
whence a relieving force might be expected, were turned into lakes by the
same machinery.  Farther outside, a system of palisade work of caltrops
and man-traps--sometimes in the slang of the day called Turkish
ambassadors--made the country for miles around impenetrable or very
disagreeable to cavally.  In a shorter interval than would have seemed
possible, the battlements and fortifications of the besieging army had
risen like an exhalation out of the morass.  The city of Gertruydenberg
was encompassed by another city as extensive and apparently as
impregnable as itself.  Then, for the first time in that age, men
thoroughly learned the meaning of that potent implement the spade.

Three thousand pioneers worked night and day with pickaxe and shovel.
The soldiers liked the business; for every man so employed received his
ten stivers a day additional wages, punctually paid, and felt moreover
that every stioke was bringing the work nearer to its conclusion.

The Spaniards no longer railed at Maurice as a hedger and ditcher.  When
he had succeeded in bringing a hundred great guns to bear upon the
beleaguered city they likewise ceased to sneer at heavy artillery.

The Kartowen and half Kartowen were no longer considered "espanta
vellacos."

Meantime, from all the country round, the peasants flocked within the
lines.  Nowhere in Europe were provisions so plentiful and cheap as in
the Dutch camp.  Nowhere was a readier market for agricultural products,
prompter payment, or more perfect security for the life and property of
non-combatants.  Not so much as a hen's egg was taken unlawfully.  The
country people found themselves more at ease within Maurice's lines than
within any other part of the provinces, obedient or revolted.  They
ploughed and sowed and reaped at their pleasure, and no more striking
example was ever afforded of the humanizing effect of science upon the
barbarism of war, than in this siege of Gertruydenberg.

Certainly it was the intention of the prince to take his city, and when
he fought the enemy it was his object to kill; but, as compared with the
bloody work which Alva, and Romero, and Requesens, and so many others had
done in those doomed provinces, such war-making as this seemed almost
like an institution for beneficent and charitable purposes.

Visitors from the neighbourhood, from other provinces, from foreign
countries, came to witness the extraordinary spectacle, and foreign
generals repaired to the camp of Maurice to take practical lessons in the
new art of war.

Old Peter Ernest Mansfeld, who was nominal governor of the Spanish
Netherlands since the death of Farnese, rubbed his eyes and stared aghast
when the completeness of the preparations for reducing the city at last
broke in upon his mind.  Count Fuentes was the true and confidential
regent however until the destined successor to Parma should arrive; but
Fuentes, although he had considerable genius for assassination, as will
hereafter appear, and was an experienced and able commander of the old-
fashioned school, was no match for Maurice in the scientific combinations
on which the new system was founded.

In vain did the superannuated Peter call aloud upon his sofa and
governor, Count Charles, to assist him in this dire dilemma.  That
artillery general had gone with a handful of Germans, Walloons; and other
obedient Netherlanders--too few to accomplish anything abroad, too many
to be spared from the provinces--to besiege Noyon in France.  But what
signified the winning or losing of such a place as Noyon at exactly the
moment when the Prince of Bearne, assisted by the able generalship of the
Archbishop of Bourges, had just executed those famous flanking movements
in the churches of St. Denis and Chartres, by which the world-empire had
been effectually shattered, and Philip and the Pope completely out-
manoeuvred.

Better that the five thousand fighters under Charles Mansfeld had been
around Gertruydenberg.  His aged father did what he could.  As many men
as could be spared from the garrison of Antwerp and its neighbourhood
were collected; but the Spaniards were reluctant to march, except under
old Mondragon.  That hero, who had done much of the hardest work, and had
fought in most of the battles of the century, was nearly as old as the
century.  Being now turned of ninety, he thought best to keep house in
Antwerp Castle: Accordingly twelve thousand foot and three thousand horse
took the field under the more youthful Peter Ernest?  But Peter Ernest,
when his son was not there to superintend his operations, was nothing
but a testy octogenarian, while the two together were not equal to the
little finger of Farnese, whom Philip would have displaced, had he not
fortunately died.

"Nothing is to be expected out of this place but toads and poison,"
wrote Ybarra in infinite disgust to the two secretaries of state at
Madrid.  "I have done my best to induce Fuentes to accept that which the
patent secured him, and Count Peter is complaining that Fuentes showed
him the patent so late only to play him a trick.  There is a rascally
pack of meddlers here, and the worst of them all are the women, whom I
particularly give to the devil.  There is no end to the squabbles as to
who shall take the lead in relieving Gertruydenberg."

Mansfeld at last came ponderously up in the neighbourhood of Turnhout.
There was a brilliant little skirmish, in the, neighbourhood of this
place, in which a hundred and fifty Dutch cavalry under the famous
brothers Bax defeated four hundred picked lancers of Spain and Italy.
But Mansfeld could get nothing but skirmishes.  In vain he plunged
about among the caltrops and man-traps.  In vain he knocked at the
fortifications of Hohenlo on the east and of Maurice on the west.
He found them impracticable, impregnable, obdurate.  It was Maurice's
intention to take his town at as small sacrifice of life as possible.
A trumpet was sent on some trifling business to Mansfeld, in reply to
a communication made by the general to Maurice.

"Why does your master," said the choleric veteran to the trumpeter, "why
does Prince Maurice, being a lusty young commander as he is, not come out
of his trenches into the open field and fight me like a man, where honour
and fame await him?"

"Because my master," answered the trumpeter, "means to live to be a lusty
old commander like your excellency, and sees no reason to-day to give you
an advantage."

At this the bystanders laughed, rather at the expense of the veteran.

Meantime there were not many incidents within the lines or within the
city to vary the monotony of the scientific siege.

On the land side, as has been seen, the city was enclosed and built out
of human sight by another Gertruydenberg.  On the wide estuary of the
Meuse, a chain of war ships encircled the sea-front, in shape of a half
moon, lying so close to each other that it was scarcely possible even for
a messenger to swim out of a dark night.

The hardy adventurers who attempted that feat with tidings of despair
were almost invariably captured.

This blockading fleet took regular part in the daily cannonade; while, on
the other hand, the artillery practice from the landbatteries of Maurice
and Hohenlo was more perfect than anything ever known before in the
Netherlands or France.

And the result was that in the course of the cannonade which lasted
nearly ninety days, not more than four houses in the city escaped injury.
The approaches were brought, every hour, nearer and nearer to the walls.
With subterranean lines converging in the form of the letter Y, the
prince had gradually burrowed his way beneath the principal bastion.

Hohenlo, representative of the older school of strategy, had on one
occasion ventured to resist the authority of the commander-in-chief.  He
had constructed a fort at Ramsdonck.  Maurice then commanded the erection
of another, fifteen hundred yards farther back.  It was as much a part of
his purpose to defend himself against the attempts of Mansfeld's
relieving force, as to go forward against the city.  Hohenlo objected
that it would be impossible to sustain himself against a sudden attack in
so isolated a position.  Maurice insisted.  In the midst of the
altercation Hohenlo called to the men engaged in throwing up the new
fortifications: "Here, you captains and soldiers," he cried, "you are
delivered up here to be butchered.  You may drop work and follow me to
the old fort."

"And I swear to you," said Maurice quietly, "that the first man who moves
from this spot shall be hanged."

No one moved.  The fort was completed and held to the and; Hohenlo
sulkily acquiescing in the superiority which this stripling--his former
pupil--had at last vindicated over all old-fashioned men-at-arms.

From the same cause which was apt to render Hohenlo's services
inefficient, the prince was apt to suffer inconvenience in the persons
placed in still nearer relation to himself.  Count Philip of Nassau,
brother of the wise and valiant Lewis William, had already done much
brilliant campaigning against the Spaniards both in France and the
provinces.  Unluckily, he was not only a desperate fighter but a mighty
drinker, and one day, after a dinner-party and potent carouse at Colonel
Brederode's quarters, he thought proper, in doublet and hose, without
armour of any kind, to mount his horse, in order to take a solitary
survey of the enemy's works.  Not satisfied with this piece of
reconnoitering--which he effected with much tipsy gravity, but probably
without deriving any information likely to be of value to the commanding
general--he then proceeded to charge in person a distant battery.  The
deed was not commendable in a military point of view.  A fire was opened
upon him at long range so soon as he was discovered, and at the same time
the sergeant-major of his regiment and an equerry of Prince Maurice
started in pursuit, determined to bring him off if possible, before his
life had been thus absurdly sacrificed.  Fortunately for him they came to
the rescue in time, pulled him from his horse, and succeeded in bringing
him away unharmed.  The sergeant-major, however, Sinisky by name, while
thus occupied in preserving the count's life, was badly wounded in the
leg by a musket-shot from the fort; which casualty was the only result of
this after-dinner assault.

As the siege proceeded, and as the hopes of relief died away, great
confusion began to reign within the city.  The garrison, originally
of a thousand veterans, besides burgher militia, had been much
diminished.  Two commandants of the place, one after another, had lost
their lives.  On the 1st of June, Governor De Masieres, Captain Mongyn,
the father-confessor of the garrison, and two soldiers, being on the top
of the great church tower taking observations, were all brought down with
one cannon-shot.  Thus the uses of artillery were again proved to be
something more than to scare cowards.

The final result seemed to have been brought about almost by accident,
if accident could be admitted as a factor in such accurate calculations
as those of Maurice.  On the 24th June Captains Haen and Bievry were
relieving watch in the trenches near the great north ravelin of the town
--a bulwark which had already been much undermined from below and
weakened above.  Being adventurous officers, it occurred to them suddenly
to scale the wall of the fort and reconnoitre what was going on in the
town.  It was hardly probable that they would come back alive from the
expedition, but they nevertheless threw some planks across the ditch, and
taking a few soldiers with them, climbed cautiously up.  Somewhat to his
own surprise, still more to that of the Spanish sentinels, Bievry in a
few minutes found himself within the ravelin.  He was closely followed by
Captain Haen, Captain Kalf, and by half a company of soldiers.  The alarm
was given.  There was a fierce hand-to-hand struggle.  Sixteen of the
bold stormers fell, and nine of the garrison of the fort.  The rest fled
into the city.  The governor of the place, Captain Gysant, rushing to the
rescue without staying to put on his armour, was killed.  Count Solms, on
the other hand, came from the besieging camp into the ravelin to
investigate the sudden uproar.  To his profound astonishment he was met
there, after a brief interval, by a deputation from the city, asking for
terms of surrender.  The envoys had already been for some little time
looking in vain for a responsible person with whom to treat.  When
Maurice was informed of the propositions he thought it at first a trick;
for he had known nothing of the little adventure of the three captains.
Soon afterwards he came into a battery whither the deputies had been
brought, and the terms of capitulation were soon agreed upon.

Next day the garrison were allowed to go out with sidearms and personal
baggage, and fifty waggons were lent them by the victor to bring their
wounded men to Antwerp.

Thus was Gertruydenberg surrendered in the very face of Peter Mansfeld,
who only became aware of the fact by the salvos of artillery fired in
honour of the triumph, and by the blaze of illumination which broke forth
over camp and city.

The sudden result was an illustration of the prince's perfect
arrangements.  When Maurice rode into the town, he found it strong
enough and sufficiently well provisioned to have held out many a long
day.  But it had been demonstrated to the besieged that relief was
impossible, and that the surrender on one day or another, after the siege
operations should be brought to their close, was certain.  The inexorable
genius of the commander--skilled in a science which to the coarser war-
makers of that age seemed almost superhuman--hovered above them like a
fate.  It was as well to succumb on the 24th June as to wait till the
24th July.

Moreover the great sustaining principle--resistance to the foreigner--
which had inspired the deeds of daring, the wonders of endurance, in the
Dutch cities beleaguered so remorselessly by the Spaniard twenty years
earlier in the century, was wanting.

In surrendering to the born Netherlander--the heroic chieftain of the
illustrious house of Nassau--these Netherlanders were neither sullying
their flag nor injuring their country.  Enough had been done for military
honour in the gallant resistance, in which a large portion of the
garrison had fallen.  Nor was that religious superstition so active
within the city, which three years before had made miracles possible in
Paris when a heretic sovereign was to be defied by his own subjects.  It
was known that even if the public ceremonies of the Catholic Church were
likely to be suspended for a time after the surrender, at least the
rights of individual conscience and private worship within individual
households would be tolerated, and there was no papal legate with fiery
eloquence persuading a city full of heroic dupes that it was more
virtuous for men or women to eat their own children than to forego one
high mass, or to wink at a single conventicle.

After all, it was no such bitter hardship for the citizens of
Gertruydenberg to participate in the prosperity of the rising and
thriving young republic, and to enjoy those municipal and national
liberties which her sister cities had found so sweet.

Nothing could be calmer or more reasonable than such a triumph, nothing
less humiliating or less disastrous than such a surrender.

The problem was solved, the demonstration was made.  To open their gates
to the soldiers of the Union was not to admit the hordes of a Spanish
commander with the avenging furies of murder, pillage, rape, which ever
followed in their train over the breach of a captured city.

To an enemy bated or dreaded to the uttermost mortal capacity, that well-
fortified and opulent city might have held out for months, and only when
the arms and the fraud of the foe without, and of famine within, had done
their work, could it have bowed its head to the conqueror, and submitted
to the ineffable tortures which would be the necessary punishment of its
courage.

Four thousand shots had been fired from the siege-guns upon the city, and
three hundred upon the relieving force.

The besieging army numbered in all nine thousand one hundred and fifty
men of all arms, and they lost during the eighty-five days' siege three
hundred killed and four hundred wounded.

After the conclusion of these operations, and the thorough remodelling
of the municipal government of the important city thus regained to the
republic, Maurice occupied himself with recruiting and refreshing his
somewhat exhausted little army.  On the other hand, old Count Mansfeld,
dissatisfied with the impotent conclusion to his attempts, retired to
Brussels to be much taunted by the insolent Fuentes.  He at least escaped
very violent censure on the part of his son Charles, for that general,
after his superfluous conquest of Noyon, while returning towards the
Netherlands, far too tardily to succour Gertruydenberg, had been
paralyzed in all his movements by a very extensive mutiny which broke out
among the Spanish troops in the province of Artois.  The disorder went
through all its regular forms.  A town was taken, an Eletto was
appointed.  The country-side was black-mailed or plundered, and the
rebellion lasted some thirteen months.  Before it was concluded there was
another similar outbreak among the Italians, together with the Walloons
and other obedient Netherlanders in Hainault, who obliged the city of
Mons to collect nine hundred florins a day for them.  The consequence
of these military rebellions was to render the Spanish crown almost
powerless during the whole year, within the provinces nominally subject
to its sway.  The cause--as always--was the non-payment of these
veterans' wages, year after year.  It was impossible for Philip, with
all the wealth of the Indies and Mexico pouring through the Danaid sieve
of the Holy League in France, to find the necessary funds to save the
bronzed and war-worn instruments of his crimes in the Netherlands from
starving and from revolt.

Meantime there was much desultory campaigning in Friesland.  Verdugo
and Frederic van den Berg picked up a few cities, and strong places
which had thrown off their allegiance September, to the king--Auerzyl,
Schlochteren, Winschoten, Wedde, Ootmarzum--and invested the much more
important town of Coeworden, which Maurice had so recently reduced to the
authority of the Union.  Verdugo's force was insufficient, however, and
he had neither munitions nor provisions for a long siege.  Winter was
coming on; and the States, aware that he would soon be obliged to retire
from before the well-garrisoned and fortified place, thought it
unnecessary to interfere with him.  After a very brief demonstration
the Portuguese veteran was obliged to raise the siege.

There were also certain vague attempts made by the enemy to re-possess
himself of those most important seaports which had been pledged to the
English queen.  On a previous page the anxiety has been indicated with
which Sir Robert Sydney regarded the withdrawal of the English troops in
the Netherlands for the sake of assisting the French king.  This palpable
breach of the treaty had necessarily weakened England's hold on the
affections of the Netherlanders, and awakened dark suspicions that
treason might be impending at Flushing or Ostend.  The suspicions were
unjust--so far as the governors of those places were concerned--for
Sydney and Norris were as loyal as they were intelligent and brave; but
the trust in their characters was not more implicit than it had been in
that of Sir William Stanley before the commission of his crime.  It was
now believed that the enemy was preparing for a sudden assault upon
Ostend, with the connivance, it was feared, of a certain portion of the
English garrison.  The intelligence was at once conveyed to her Majesty's
Government by Sir Edward Norris, and they determined to take a lesson
from past experience.  Norris was at once informed that in view of the
attack which he apprehended, his garrison should be strengthened by five
hundred men under Sir Conyers Clifford from certain companies in
Flushing, and that other reinforcements should be sent from the English
troops in Normandy.  The governor was ordered to look well after his
captains and soldiers, to remind them, in the queen's name, of their duty
to herself and to the States, to bid all beware of sullying the English
name, to make close investigations into any possible intrigues of the
garrison with the enemy, and, should any culprits be found, to bring them
at once to condign punishment.

The queen, too, determined that there should be no blighting of English
honour, if she could prevent it by her warnings, indited with her own
hand a characteristic letter to Sir Edward Norris, to accompany the more
formal despatch of Lord Burghley.  Thus it ran "Ned!--

"Though you have some tainted sheep among your flock, let not that serve
for excuse for the rest.  We trust you are so carefully regarded as
nought shall be left for your excuses, but either ye lack heart or want
will; for of fear we will not make mention, as that our soul abhors, and
we assure ourselves you will never discern suspicion of it.  Now or never
let for the honour of us and our nation, each man be so much of bolder
heart as their cause is good, and their honour must be according,
remembering the old goodness of our God, who never yet made us fail His
needful help, who ever bless you as I with my prince's hand beseech Him."

The warnings and preparations proved sufficiently effective, and the
great schemes with which the new royal governor of the Netherlands was
supposed to be full--a mere episode in which was the conquest of Ostend--
seemed not so formidable as their shadows had indicated.  There was, in
the not very distant future, to be a siege of Ostend, which the world
would not soon forget, but perhaps the place would not yield to a sudden
assault.  Its resistance, on the contrary, might prove more protracted
than was then thought possible.  But the chronicle of events must not be
anticipated.  For the present, Ostend was safe.

Early in the following spring, Verdugo again appeared before Coeworden in
force.  It was obvious that the great city of Groningen, the mistress of
all the north-eastern provinces, would soon be attacked, and Coeworden
was the necessary base of any operations against the place.  Fortunately
for the States, William Lewis had in the preceding autumn occupied and
fortified the only avenue through the Bourtange morass, so that when
Verdugo sat down before Coeworden, it was possible for Maurice, by moving
rapidly, to take the royal governor at a disadvantage.

Verdugo had eight thousand picked troops, including two thousand Walloon
cavalry, troopers who must have been very formidable, if they were to be
judged by the prowess of one of their captains, Gaucier by name.  This
obedient Netherlander was in the habit of boasting that he had slain four
hundred and ten men with his own hand, including several prisoners and
three preachers; but the rest of those warriors were not so famed for
their martial achievements.

The peril, however, was great, and Prince Maurice, trifling not a moment,
threw himself with twelve thousand infantry, Germans, Frisians, Scotch,
English, and Hollanders, and nearly two thousand horse, at once upon the
road between the Vecht and the Bourtange morass.  On the 6th of May,
Verdugo found the States' commander-in-chief trenched and impregnable,
squarely established upon his line of communications.  He reconnoitred,
called a council of war, and decided that to assail him were madness; to
remain, destruction.  On the night of the 6th of May, he broke up his
camp and stole away in the darkness, without sound of drum or trumpet,
leaving all his fortifications and burning all his huts.

Thus had Maurice, after showing the world how strong places were to be
reduced, given a striking exhibition of the manner in which they were to
be saved.

Coeworden, after thirty-one weeks' investment, was relieved.

The stadholder now marched upon Groningen.  This city was one of the most
splendid and opulent of all the Netherland towns.  Certainly it should
have been one of the most ancient in Europe, since it derived its name--
according to that pains-taking banker, Francis Guicciardini--"from Grun,
a Trojan gentleman," who, nevertheless, according to Munster, was "a
Frenchman by birth."--"Both theories, however, might be true," added the
conscientious Florentine, "as the French have always claimed to be
descended from the relics of Troy."  A simpler-minded antiquary might
have babbled of green fields, since 'groenighe,' or greenness, was a
sufficiently natural appellation for a town surrounded as was Groningen
on the east and west by the greenest and fattest of pastures.  In
population it was only exceeded by Antwerp and Amsterdam.  Situate on
the line where upper and nether Germany blend into one, the capital of
a great province whose very name was synonymous with liberty, and whose
hardy sons had clone fierce battle with despotism in every age, so long
as there had been human record of despotism and of battles, Groningen had
fallen into the hands of the foreign foe, not through the prowess of the
Spaniard but the treason of the Netherlander.  The baseness of the
brilliant, trusted, valiant, treacherous young Renneberg has been
recorded on a previous page of these volumes.  For thirteen years long
the republic had chafed at this acquisition of the hated enemy within
its very heart.  And now the day had come when a blow should be struck
for its deliverance by the ablest soldier that had ever shown himself
in those regions, one whom the commonwealth had watched over from his
cradle.

For in Groningen there was still a considerable party in favour of the
Union, although the treason of Renneberg had hitherto prevented both city
and province from incorporating themselves in the body politic of the
United Netherlands.  Within the precincts were five hundred of Verdugo's
veterans under George Lanckema, stationed at a faubourg called
Schuytendiess.  In the city there was, properly speaking, no garrison,
for the citizens in the last few years had come to value themselves on
their fidelity to church and king, and to take a sorry pride in being
false to all that was noble in their past.  Their ancestors had wrested
privilege after privilege at the sword's point from the mailed hands of
dukes and emperors, until they were almost a self-governing republic;
their courts of justice recognizing no appeal to higher powers, even
under the despotic sway of Charles V.  And now, under the reign of his
son, and in the feebler days of that reign, the capital of the free
Frisians--the men whom their ancient pagan statutes had once declared to
be "free so long as the wind blew out of the clouds"--relied upon the
trained bands of her burghers enured to arms and well-provided with all.
munitions of war to protect her, not against foreign tyranny nor domestic
sedition, but against liberty and against law.

For the representative of the most ancient of the princely houses of
Europe, a youth whose ancestors had been emperors when the forefathers of
Philip, long-descended as he was, were but country squires, was now
knocking at their gates.  Not as a conqueror and a despot, but as the
elected first magistrate and commander-in-chief of the freest
commonwealth in the world, Maurice of Nassau, at the head of fifteen
thousand Netherlanders, countrymen of their own, now summoned the
inhabitants of the town and province to participate with their fellow
citizens in all the privileges and duties of the prosperous republic.

It seemed impossible that such an appeal could be resisted by force of
arms.  Rather it would seem that the very walls should have fallen at his
feet at the first blast of the trumpet; but there was military honour,
there was religious hatred, there was the obstinacy of party.  More than
all, there were half a dozen Jesuits within the town, and to those ablest
of generals in times of civil war it was mainly owing that the siege of
Groningen was protracted longer than under other circumstances would have
been possible.

It is not my purpose to describe in detail the scientific operations
during the sixty-five days between the 20th May and the 24th July.  Again
the commander-in-chief enlightened the world by an exhibition of a more
artistic and humane style of warfare than previously to his appearance
on the military stage had been known.  But the daily phenomena of the
Leaguer--although they have been minutely preserved by most competent
eyewitnesses--are hardly entitled to a place except in special military
histories where, however, they should claim the foremost rank.

The fortifications of the city were of the most splendid and substantial
character known to the age.  The ditches, the ravelins, the curtains,
the towers were as thoroughly constructed as the defences of any place
in Europe.  It was therefore necessary that Maurice and his cousin Lewis
should employ all their learning, all their skill, and their best
artillery to reduce this great capital of the Eastern Netherlands.
Again the scientific coil of approaches wound itself around and around
the doomed stronghold; again were constructed the galleries, the covered
ways, the hidden mines, where soldiers, transformed to gnomes, burrowed
and fought within the bowels of the earth; again that fatal letter Y
advanced slowly under ground, stretching its deadly prongs nearer and
nearer up to the walls; and again the system of defences against a
relieving force was so perfectly established that Verdugo or Mansfield,
with what troops they could muster, seemed as powerless as the pewter
soldiers with which Maurice in his boyhood--not yet so long passed away
--was wont to puzzle over the problems which now practically engaged
his early manhood.  Again, too, strangely enough, it is recorded that
Philip Nassau, at almost the same period of the siege as in that of
Gertruydenberg, signalized himself by a deed of drunken and superfluous
daring.  This time the dinner party was at the quarters of Count Solms,
in honour of the Prince of Anhalt, where, after potations pottle deep,
Count Philip rushed from the dinner-table to the breach, not yet
thoroughly practicable, of the north ravelin, and, entirely without
armour, mounted pike in hand to the assault, proposing to carry the fort
by his own unaided exertions.  Another officer, one Captain Vaillant,
still more beside himself than was the count, inspired him to these deeds
of valour by assuring him that the mine was to be sprung under the
ravelin that afternoon, and that it was a plot on the part of the Holland
boatmen to prevent the soldiers who had been working so hard and so long
in the mines from taking part in the honours of the assault.  The count
was with difficulty brought off with a whole skin and put to bed.  Yet
despite these disgraceful pranks there is no doubt that a better and
braver officer than he was hardly to be found even among the ten noble
Nassaus who at that moment were fighting for the cause of Dutch liberty--
fortunately with more sobriety than he at all times displayed.  On the
following day, Prince Maurice, making a reconnoissance of the works with
his usual calmness, yet with the habitual contempt of personal danger
which made so singular a contrast with the cautious and painstaking
characteristics of his strategy, very narrowly escaped death.  A shot
from the fort struck so hard upon the buckler under cover of which he was
taking his observations as to fell him to the ground.  Sir Francis Vere,
who was with the prince under the same buckler, likewise measured his
length in the trench, but both escaped serious injury.

Pauli, one of the States commissioners present in the camp, wrote to
Barneveld that it was to be hoped that the accident might prove a warning
to his Excellency.  He had repeatedly remonstrated with him, he said,
against his reckless exposure of himself to unnecessary danger, but he
was so energetic and so full of courage that it was impossible to
restrain him from being everywhere every day.

Three days later, the letter Y did its work.  At ten o'clock 15 July, of
the night of the 15th July, Prince Maurice ordered the mines to be
sprung, when the north ravelin was blown into the air, and some forty of
the garrison with it.  Two of them came flying into the besiegers' camp,
and, strange to say, one was alive and sound.  The catastrophe finished
the sixty-five days' siege, the breach was no longer defensible, the
obstinacy of the burghers was exhausted, and capitulation followed.
In truth, there had been a subterranean intrigue going on for many weeks,
which was almost as effective as the mine.  A certain Jan to Boer had
been going back and forth between camp and city, under various pretexts
and safe-conducts, and it had at last appeared that the Jesuits and the
five hundred of Verdugo's veterans were all that prevented Groningen from
returning to the Union.  There had been severe fighting within the city
itself, for the Jesuits had procured the transfer of the veterans from
the faubourg to the town itself, and the result of all these operations,
political, military, and jesuitical, was that on 22nd July articles of
surrender were finally agreed upon between Maurice and a deputation from
the magistrates, the guilds, and commander Lanckema.

The city was to take its place thenceforth as a member of the Union.
William Lewis, already stadholder of Friesland for the united States, was
to be recognised as chief magistrate of the whole province, which was
thus to retain all its ancient privileges, laws, and rights of self-
government, while it exchanged its dependence on a distant, foreign, and
decaying despotism for incorporation with a young and vigorous
commonwealth.

It was arranged that no religion but the reformed religion, as then
practised in the united republic, should be publicly exercised in the
province, but that no man should be questioned as to his faith, or
troubled in his conscience: Cloisters and ecclesiastical property were to
remain 'in statu quo,' until the States-General should come to a definite
conclusion on these subjects.

Universal amnesty was proclaimed for all offences and quarrels.  Every
citizen or resident foreigner was free to remain in or to retire from the
town or province, with full protection to his person and property, and it
was expressly provided in the articles granted to Lanckema that his
soldiers should depart with arms and baggage, leaving to Prince Maurice
their colours only, while the prince furnished sufficient transportation
for their women and their wounded.  The property of Verdugo, royal
stadholder of the province, was to be respected, and to remain in the
city, or to be taken thence under safe conduct, as might be preferred.

Ten thousand cannon-shot had been fired against the city.  The cost of
powder and shot consumed was estimated at a hundred thousand florins.
Four hundred of the besiegers had been killed, and a much larger number
wounded.  The army had been further weakened by sickness and numerous
desertions.  Of the besieged, three hundred soldiers in all were killed,
and a few citizens.

Thirty-six cannon were taken, besides mortars, and it was said that eight
hundred tons of powder, and plenty of other ammunition and provisions
were found in the place.

On the 23rd July Maurice and William Lewis entered the city.  Some of the
soldiers were disappointed at the inexorable prohibition of pillage; but
it was the purpose of Maurice, as of the States-General, to place the
sister province at once in the unsullied possession of the liberty and
the order for which the struggle with Spain had, been carried on so long.
If the limitation of public religious worship seemed harsh, it should be
remembered that Romanism in a city occupied by Spanish troops had come to
mean unmitigated hostility to the republic.  In the midst of civil war,
the hour for that religious liberty which was the necessary issue of the
great conflict had not yet struck.  It was surely something gained for
humanity that no man should be questioned at all as to his creed in
countries where it was so recently the time-honoured practice to question
him on the rack, and to burn him if the answer was objectionable to the
inquirer.

It was something that the holy Inquisition had been for ever suppressed
in the land.  It must be admitted, likewise, that the terms of surrender
and the spectacle of re-established law and order which succeeded the
capture of Groningen furnished a wholesome contrast to the scenes of
ineffable horror that had been displayed whenever a Dutch town had fallen
into the hands of Philip.

And thus the commonwealth of the United Netherlands, through the
practical military genius and perseverance of Maurice and Lewis William,
and the substantial statesmanship of Barneveld and his colleagues, had at
last rounded itself into definite shape; while in all directions toward
which men turned their eyes, world-empire, imposing and gorgeous as it
had seemed for an interval, was vanishing before its votaries like a
mirage.  The republic, placed on the solid foundations of civil liberty,
self-government, and reasonable law, was steadily consolidating itself.

No very prominent movements were undertaken by the forces of the Union
during the remainder of the year.  According to the agreements with Henry
IV. it had been necessary to provide that monarch with considerable
assistance to carry on his new campaigns, and it was therefore difficult
for Maurice to begin for the moment upon the larger schemes which he had
contemplated.

Meantime the condition of the obedient Netherlands demands a hasty
glance.

On the death of brother Alexander the Capuchin, Fuentes produced a patent
by which Peter Ernest Mansfeld was provisionally appointed governor, in
case the post should become vacant.  During the year which followed, that
testy old campaigner had indulged himself in many petty feuds with all
around him, but had effected, as we have seen, very little to maintain
the king's authority either in the obedient or disobedient provinces.

His utter incompetency soon became most painfully apparent.  His more
than puerile dependence upon his son, and the more than paternal severity
exercised over him by Count Charles, were made manifest to all the world.
The son ruled the trembling but peevish old warrior with an iron rod, and
endless was their wrangling with Fuentes and all the other Spaniards.
Between the querulousness of the one and the ferocity of the other, poor
Fuentes became sick of his life.

"'Tis a diabolical genius, this count Charles," said Ybarra, "and so full
of ambition that he insists on governing everybody just as he rules his
father.  As for me, until the archduke comes I am a fish out of water."

The true successor to Farnese was to be, the Archduke Ernest, one of the
many candidates for the hand of the Infanta, and for the throne of that
department of the Spanish dominions which was commonly called France.
Should Philip not appropriate the throne without further scruple, in
person, it was on the, whole decided that his favorite nephew should be
the satrap of that outlying district of the Spanish empire.  In such case
obedient France might be annexed to obedient Netherlands, and united
under the sway of Archduke Ernest.

But these dreams had proved in the cold air of reality but midsummer
madness.  When the name of the archduke was presented to the estates as
King Ernest I. of France, even the most unscrupulous and impassioned
Leaguers of that country fairly hung their heads.  That a foreign prince,
whose very name had never been before heard of by the vast bulk of the
French population, should be deliberately placed upon the throne of St.
Louis and Hugh Capet, was a humiliation hard to defend, profusely as
Philip had scattered the Peruvian and Mexican dollars among the great
ones of the nation, in order to accomplish his purpose.

So Archduke Ernest, early in the year 1594, came to Brussels, but he
came as a gloomy, disappointed man.  To be a bachelor-governor of the
impoverished, exhausted, half-rebellious, and utterly forlorn little
remnant of the Spanish Netherlands, was a different position from that
of husband of Clara Isabella and king of France, on which his imagination
had been feeding so long.

For nearly the whole twelvemonth subsequent to the death of Farnese,
the Spanish envoy to the Imperial court had been endeavouring to arrange
for the departure of the archduke to his seat of government in the
Netherlands.  The prince himself was willing enough, but there were many
obstacles on the part of the emperor and his advisers.  "Especially there
is one very great impossibility," said San Clemente, "and that is the
poverty of his Highness, which is so great that my own is not greater in
my estate.  So I don't see how he can stir a step without money.  Here
they'll not furnish him with a penny, and for himself he possesses
nothing but debts."  The emperor was so little pleased with the adventure
that in truth, according to the same authority, he looked upon the new
viceroy's embarrassments with considerable satisfaction, so that it was
necessary for Philip to provide for his travelling expenses.

Ernest was next brother of the Emperor Rudolph, and as intensely devoted
to the interests of the Roman Church as was that potentate himself, or
even his uncle Philip.

He was gentle, weak, melancholy, addicted to pleasure, a martyr to the
gout.  He brought no soldiers to the provinces, for the emperor,
threatened with another world-empire on his pagan flank, had no funds nor
troops to send to the assistance of his Christian brother-in-law and
uncle.  Moreover, it may be imagined that Rudolph, despite the bonds of
religion and consanguinity, was disposed to look coldly on the colossal
projects of Philip.

So Ernest brought no troops, but he brought six hundred and seventy
gentlemen, pages, and cooks, and five hundred and thirty-four horses, not
to charge upon the rebellious Dutchmen withal, but to draw coaches and
six.

There was trouble enough prepared for the new governor at his arrival.
The great Flemish and Walloon nobles were quarrelling fiercely with the
Spaniards and among themselves for office and for precedence.  Arschot
and his brother Havre both desired the government of Flanders; so did
Arenberg.  All three, as well as other gentlemen, were scrambling for
the majordomo's office in Ernest's palace.  Havre wanted the finance
department as well, but Ybarra, who was a financier, thought the public
funds in his hands would be in a perilous condition, inasmuch as he was
provinces was accounted the most covetous man in all the provinces.

So soon as the archduke was known to be approaching the capital there was
a most ludicrous race run by all these grandees, in order to be the first
to greet his Highness.  While Mansfeld and Fuentes were squabbling, as
usual, Arschot got the start of both, and arrived at Treves.  Then the
decrepit Peter Ernest struggled as far as Luxembourg, while Fuentes
posted on to Namur.  The archduke was much perplexed as to the arranging
of all these personages on the day of his entrance into Brussels.  In the
council of state it was still worse.  Arschot claimed the first place as
duke and as senior member, Peter Ernest demanded it as late governor-
general and because of his grey hairs.  Never was imperial highness more
disturbed, never was clamour for loaves and fishes more deafening.  The
caustic financier--whose mind was just then occupied with the graver
matter of assassination on a considerable scale--looked with profound
contempt at the spectacle thus presented to him.  "There has been the
devil's own row," said he, "between these counts about offices, and also
about going out to receive the most serene archduke.  I have had such
work with them that by the salvation of my soul I swear if it were to
last a fortnight longer I would go off afoot to Spain, even if I were
sure of dying in jail after I got there.  I have reconciled the two
counts (Fuentes and Mansfeld) with each other a hundred times, and
another hundred times they have fallen out again, and behaved themselves
with such vulgarity that I blushed for them.  They are both to blame,
but at any rate we have now got the archduke housed, and he will get
us out of this embarrassment."

The archduke came with rather a prejudice against the Spaniards--
the result doubtless of his disappointment in regard to France--and he
manifested at first an extreme haughtiness to those of that nation with
whom he came in contact.  A Castilian noble of high rank, having audience
with him on one occasion, replaced his hat after salutation, as he had
been accustomed to do--according to the manner of grandees of Spain--
during the government of Farnese.  The hat was rudely struck from his
head by the archduke's chamberlain, and he was himself ignominiously
thrust out of the presence.  At another time an interview was granted to
two Spanish gentlemen who had business to transact.  They made their
appearance in magnificent national costume, splendidly embroidered in
gold.  After a brief hearing they were dismissed, with appointment of
another audience for a few days later.  When they again presented
themselves they found the archduke with his court jester standing at his
side, the buffoon being attired in a suit precisely similar to their own,
which in the interval had been prepared by the court tailor.

Such amenities as these did not increase the popularity of Ernest with
the high-spirited Spaniards, nor was it palatable to them that it should
be proposed to supersede the old fighting Portuguese, Verdugo, as
governor and commander-in-chief for the king in Friesland, by Frederic
van den Berg, a renegade Netherlander, unworthy cousin of the Nassaus,
who had never shown either military or administrative genius.

Nor did he succeed in conciliating the Flemings or the Germans by these
measures.  In truth he was, almost without his own knowledge, under the
controlling influence of Fuentes, the most unscrupulous and dangerous
Spaniard of them all, while his every proceeding was closely watched not
only by Diego and Stephen Ybarra, but even by Christoval de Moura, one
of Philip's two secretaries of state who at this crisis made a visit
to Brussels.

These men were indignant at the imbecility of the course pursued in the
obedient provinces.  They knew that the incapacity of the Government to
relieve the sieges of Gertruydenberg and Groningen had excited the
contempt of Europe, and was producing a most damaging effect an Spanish
authority throughout Christendom.  They were especially irritated by the
presence of the arch-intrigues, Mayenne, in Brussels, even after all his
double dealings had been so completely exposed that a blind man could
have read them.  Yet there was Mayenne, consorting with the archduke, and
running up a great bill of sixteen thousand florins at the hotel, which
the royal paymaster declined to settle for want of funds, notwithstanding
Ernest's order to that effect, and there was no possibility of inducing
the viceroy to arrest him, much as he had injured and defrauded the king.

How severely Ybarra and Feria denounced Mayenne has been seen; but
remonstrances about this and other grave mistakes of administration
were lost upon Ernest, or made almost impossible by his peculiar temper.
"If I speak of these things to his Highness," said Ybarra, "he will begin
to cry, as he always does."

Ybarra, however, thought it his duty secretly to give the king frequent
information as to the blasted and forlorn condition of the provinces.
"This sick man will die in our arms," he said, "without our wishing to
kill him."  He also left no doubt in the royal mind as to the utter
incompetency of the archduke for his office.  Although he had much
Christianity, amiability, and good intentions, he was so unused to
business, so slow and so lazy, so easily persuaded by those around him,
as to be always falling into errors.  He was the servant of his own
servants, particularly of those least disposed to the king's service
and most attentive to their own interests.  He had endeavoured to make
himself beloved by the natives of the country, while the very reverse
of this had been the result.

"As to his agility and the strength of his body," said the Spaniard, as
if he were thinking of certain allegories which were to mark the
archduke's triumphal entry, "they are so deficient as to leave him unfit
for arms.  I consider him incapable of accompanying an army to the field,
and we find him so new to all such affairs as constitute government and
the conduct of warlike business, that he could not steer his way without
some one to enlighten and direct him."

It was sometimes complained of in those days--and the thought has even
prolonged itself until later times--that those republicans of the United
Netherlands had done and could do great things; but that, after all,
there was no grandeur about them.  Certainly they had done great things.
It was something to fight the Ocean for ages, and patiently and firmly to
shut him out from his own domain.  It was something to extinguish the
Spanish Inquisition--a still more cruel and devouring enemy than the sea.
It was something that the fugitive spirit of civil and religious liberty
had found at last its most substantial and steadfast home upon those
storm-washed shoals and shifting sandbanks.

It was something to come to the rescue of England in her great agony, and
help to save her from invasion.  It was something to do more than any
nation but England, and as much as she, to assist Henry the Huguenot to
the throne of his ancestors and to preserve the national unity of France
which its own great ones had imperilled.  It was something to found two
magnificent universities, cherished abodes of science and of antique
lore, in the midst of civil commotions and of resistance to foreign
oppression.  It was something, at the same period, to lay the foundation
of a systew of common schools--so cheap as to be nearly free--for rich
and poor alike, which, in the words of one of the greatest benefactors
to the young republic, "would be worth all the soldiers, arsenals,
armouries, munitions, and alliances in the world."  It was something to
make a revolution, as humane as it was effective, in military affairs,
and to create an army whose camps were European academies.  It was
something to organize, at the same critical period, on the most skilful
and liberal scale, to carry out with unexampled daring, sagacity, and
fortitude, great voyages of discovery to the polar regions, and to open
new highways for commerce, new treasures for science.  Many things of
this nature had been done by the new commonwealth; but, alas! she did not
drape herself melodramatically, nor stalk about with heroic wreath and
cothurn.  She was altogether without grandeur.

When Alva had gained his signal victories, and followed them up by
those prodigious massacres which, but for his own and other irrefragable
testimony, would seem too monstrous for belief, he had erected a colossal
statue to himself, attired in the most classical of costumes, and
surrounded with the most mythological of attributes.  Here was grandeur.
But William the Silent, after he had saved the republic, for which he had
laboured during his whole lifetime and was destined to pour out his
heart's blood, went about among the brewers and burghers with unbuttoned
doublet and woollen bargeman's waistcoat.  It was justly objected to his
clothes, by the euphuistic Fulke Greville, that a meanborn student of the
Inns of Court would have been ashamed to walk about London streets in
them.

And now the engineering son of that shabbily-dressed personage had been
giving the whole world lessons in the science of war, and was fairly
perfecting the work which William and his great contemporaries had so
well begun.  But if all this had been merely doing great things without
greatness, there was one man in the Netherlands who knew what grandeur
was.  He was not a citizen of the disobedient republic, however, but a
loyal subject of the obedient provinces, and his name was John Baptist
Houwaerts, an eminent schoolmaster of Brussels.  He was still more
eminent as a votary of what was called "Rhetoric" and as an arranger of
triumphal processions and living pictures.

The arrival of Archduke Ernest at the seat of the provincial Government
offered an opportunity, which had long been wanting, for a display of
John Baptist's genius.  The new viceroy was in so shattered a condition
of health, so crippled with the gout, as to be quite unable to stand, and
it required the services of several lackeys to lift him into and out of
his carriage.  A few days of repose therefore were indispensable to him
before he could make his "joyous entrance" into the capital.  But the day
came at last, and the exhibition was a masterpiece.

It might have seemed that the abject condition of the Spanish provinces--
desolate, mendicant, despairing--would render holiday making impossible.
But although almost every vestige of the ancient institutions had
vanished from the obedient Netherlands as a reward for their obedience;
although to civil and religious liberty, law, order, and a thriving
commercial and manufacturing existence, such as had been rarely witnessed
in the world, had succeeded the absolute tyranny of Jesuits, universal
beggary, and a perennial military mutiny--setting Government at defiance
and plundering the people--there was one faithful never deserted Belgica,
and that was Rhetoric.

Neither the magnificence nor the pedantry of the spectacles by which the
entry of the mild and inefficient Ernest into Brussels and Antwerp was
now solemnized had ever been surpassed.  The town councils, stimulated by
hopes absolutely without foundation as to great results to follow the
advent of the emperor's brother, had voted large sums and consumed many
days in anxious deliberation upon the manner in which they should be
expended so as most to redound to the honour of Ernest and the reputation
of the country.

In place of the "bloody tragedies of burning, murdering, and ravishing,"
of which the provinces had so long been the theatre, it was resolved
that, "Rhetoric's sweet comedies, amorous jests, and farces," should
gladden all eyes and hearts.  A stately procession of knights and
burghers in historical and mythological costumes, followed by ships,
dromedaries, elephants, whales, giants, dragons, and other wonders of
the sea and shore, escorted the archduke into the city.  Every street and
square was filled with triumphal arches, statues and platforms, on which
the most ingenious and thoroughly classical living pictures were
exhibited.  There was hardly an eminent deity of Olympus, or hero of
ancient history, that was not revived and made visible to mortal eyes
in the person of Ernestus of Austria.

On a framework fifty-five feet high and thirty-three feet in breadth he
was represented as Apollo hurling his darts at an enormous Python, under
one of whose fore-paws struggled an unfortunate burgher, while the other
clutched a whole city; Tellus, meantime, with her tower on her head,
kneeling anxious and imploring at the feet of her deliverer.  On another
stage Ernest assumed the shape of Perseus; Belgica that of the bound and
despairing Andromeda.  On a third, the interior of Etna was revealed,
when Vulcan was seen urging his Cyclops to forge for Ernest their most
tremendous thunderbolts with which to smite the foes of the provinces,
those enemies being of course the English and the Hollanders.  Venus, the
while, timidly presented an arrow to her husband, which he was requested
to sharpen, in order that when the wars were over Cupid, therewith might
pierce the heart of some beautiful virgin, whose charms should reward
Ernest--fortunately for the female world, still a bachelor--for his
victories and his toils.

The walls of every house were hung with classic emblems and inscribed
with Latin verses.  All the pedagogues of Brussels and Antwerp had been
at work for months, determined to amaze the world with their dithyrambics
and acrostics, and they had outdone themselves.

Moreover, in addition to all these theatrical spectacles and pompous
processions--accompanied as they were by blazing tar-barrels, flying
dragons, and leagues of flaring torches--John Baptist, who had been
director-in-chief of all the shows successively arranged to welcome Don
John of Austria, Archduke Matthias, Francis of Alengon, and even William
of Orange, into the capital, had prepared a feast of a specially
intellectual character for the new governor-general.

The pedant, according to his own account, so soon as the approach of
Ernest had been announced, fell straightway into a trance.  While he was
in that condition, a beautiful female apparition floated before his eyes,
and, on being questioned, announced her name to be Moralization.  John
Baptist begged her to inform him whether it were true, as had been
stated, that Jupiter had just sent Mercury to the Netherlands.  The
phantom, correcting his mistake, observed that the king of gods and men
had not sent Hermes but the Archduke Ernestus, beloved of the three
Graces, favourite of the nine Muses, and, in addition to these
advantages, nephew and brother-in-law of the King of Spain, to the relief
of the suffering provinces.  The Netherlands, it was true, for their
religious infidelity, had justly incurred great disasters and misery; but
benignant Jove, who, to the imagination of this excited Fleming, seemed
to have been converted to Catholicism while still governing the universe,
had now sent them in mercy a deliverer.  The archduke would speedily
relieve "bleeding Belgica" from her sufferings, bind up her wounds, and
annihilate her enemies.  The spirit further informed the poet that the
forests of the Low Countries--so long infested by brigands, wood-beggars,
and malefactors of all kinds--would thenceforth swarm with "nymphs,
rabbits, hares, and animals of that nature."

A vision of the conquering Ernest, attended by "eight-and-twenty noble
and pleasant females, marching two and two, half naked, each holding a
torch in one hand and a laurel-wreath in the other," now swept before the
dreamer's eyes."  He naturally requested the "discreet spirit" to mention
the names of this bevy of imperfectly attired ladies thronging so
lovingly around the fortunate archduke, and was told that "they were
the eight-and-twenty virtues which chiefly characterized his serene
Highness."  Prominent in this long list, and they were all faithfully
enumerated, were Philosophy, Audacity, Acrimony, Virility, Equity, Piety,
Velocity, and Alacrity."  The two last-mentioned qualities could hardly
be attributed to the archduke in his decrepit condition, except in an
intensely mythological sense.  Certainly, they would have been highly
useful virtues to him at that moment.  The prince who had just taken
Gertruydenberg, and was then besieging Groningen, was manifesting his
share of audacity, velocity, and other good gifts on even a wider
platform than that erected for Ernest by John Baptist Houwaerts; and
there was an admirable opportunity for both to develope their respective
characteristics for the world's judgment.

Meantime the impersonation of the gentle and very gouty invalid as
Apollo, as Perseus, as the feather-heeled Mercury, was highly applauded
by the burghers of Brussels.

And so the dreamer dreamed on, and the discreet nymph continued to
discourse, until John Baptist, starting suddenly from his trance beheld
that it was all a truth and no vision.  Ernest was really about to enter
the Netherlands, and with him the millennium.  The pedant therefore
proceeded to his desk, and straightway composed the very worst poem that
had ever been written in any language, even Flemish.

There were thousands of lines in it, and not a line without a god or a
goddess.

Mars, Nemesis, and Ate, Pluto, Rhadamanthus, and Minos, the Fates and
the Furies, together with Charon, Calumnia, Bellona, and all such
objectionable divinities, were requested to disappear for ever from the
Low Countries; while in their stead were confidently invoked Jupiter,
Apollo, Triptolemus, and last, though not least, Rhetorica.

Enough has been said of this raree-show to weary the reader's patience,
but not more than enough to show the docile and enervated nature of this
portion of a people who had lost everything for which men cherish their
fatherland, but who could still find relief--after thirty years of
horrible civil war in painted pageantry, Latin versification, and the
classical dictionary.

Yet there was nothing much more important achieved by the archduke in the
brief period for which his administration was destined to endure.
Three phenomena chiefly marked his reign, but his own part in the three
was rather a passive than an active one--mutiny, assassination, and
negotiation--the two last attempted on a considerable scale but ending
abortively.

It is impossible to exaggerate the misery of the obedient provinces at
this epoch.  The insane attempt of the King of Spain, with such utterly
inadequate machinery, to conquer the world has been sufficiently dilated
upon.  The Spanish and Italian and Walloon soldiers were starving in
Brabant and Flanders in order that Spanish gold might be poured into the
bottomless pit of the Holy League in France.

The mutiny that had broken forth the preceding year in Artois and Hamault
was now continued on a vast scale in Brabant.  Never had that national
institution--a Spanish mutiny--been more thoroughly organized, more
completely carried out in all its details.  All that was left of the
famous Spanish discipline and military science in this their period of
rapid decay, seemed monopolized by the mutineers.  Some two thousand
choice troops (horse and foot), Italians and Spanish, took possession of
two considerable cities, Sichem and Arschot, and ultimately concentrated
themselves at Sichem, which they thoroughly fortified.  Having chosen
their Eletto and other officers they proceeded regularly to business.
To the rallying point came disaffected troops of all nations from far
and near.  Never since the beginning of the great war had there been so
extensive a military rebellion, nor one in which so many veteran
officers, colonels, captains, and subalterns took part.  The army of
Philip had at last grown more dangerous to himself than to the
Hollanders.

The council at Brussels deliberated anxiously upon the course to be
pursued, and it was decided at last to negotiate with instead of
attacking them.  But it was soon found that the mutineers were as hard
to deal with as were the republicans on the other side the border.  They
refused to hear of anything short of complete payment of the enormous
arrears due to them, with thorough guarantees and hostages that any
agreement made between themselves and the archduke should be punctually
carried out.  Meanwhile they ravaged the country far and near, and levied
their contributions on towns and villages, up to the very walls of
Brussels, and before the very eyes of the viceroy.

Moreover they entered into negotiation with Prince Maurice of Nassau, not
offering to enlist under his flag, but asking for protection against the
king in exchange for a pledge meanwhile not to serve his cause.  At last
the archduke plucked up a heart and sent some troops against the rebels,
who had constructed two forts on the river Demer near the city of Sichem.
In vain Velasco, commander of the expedition, endeavoured to cut off the
supplies for these redoubts.  The vigour and audacity of the rebel
cavalry made the process impossible.  Velasco then attempted to storm the
lesser stronghold of the two, but was repulsed with the loss of two
hundred killed.  Among these were many officers, one of whom, Captain
Porto Carrero, was a near relative of Fuentes.  After a siege, Velasco,
who was a marshal of the camp of considerable distinction, succeeded in
driving the mutineers out of the forts; who, finding their position
thus weakened, renewed their negotiations with Maurice.  They at last
obtained permission from the prince to remain under the protection of
Gertruydenberg and Breda until they could ascertain what decision the
archduke would take.  More they did not ask of Maurice, nor did he
require more of them.

The mutiny, thus described in a few lines, had occupied nearly a year,
and had done much to paralyze for that period all the royal operations in
the Netherlands.  In December the rebellious troops marched out of Sichem
in perfect order, and came to Langstraet within the territory of the
republic.

The archduke now finding himself fairly obliged to treat with them sent
an offer of the same terms which had been proposed to mutineers on
previous occasions.  At first they flatly refused to negotiate at all,
but at last, with the permission of Maurice, who conducted himself
throughout with scrupulous delicacy, and made no attempts to induce them
to violate their allegiance to the king, they received Count Belgioso,
the envoy of the archduke.  They held out for payment of all their
arrears up to the last farthing, and insisted on a hostage of rank until
the debt should be discharged.  Full forgiveness of their rebellious
proceedings was added as a matter of course.  Their terms were accepted,
and Francisco Padiglia was assigned as a hostage.  They then established
themselves, according to agreement, at Tirlemont, which they were allowed
to fortify at the expense of the province and to hold until the money for
their back wages could be scraped together.  Meantime they received daily
wages and rations from the Government at Brussels, including thirty
stivers a day for each horseman, thirteen crowns a day for the Eletto,
and ten crowns a day for each counsellor, making in all five hundred
crowns a day.  And here they remained, living exceedingly at their ease
and enjoying a life of leisure for eighteen months, and until long after
the death of the archduke, for it was not until the administration of
Cardinal Albert that the funds, amounting to three hundred and sixty
thousand crowns, could be collected.

These were the chief military exploits of the podagric Perseus in behalf
of the Flemish Andromeda.

A very daring adventure was however proposed to the archduke.  Philip
calmly suggested that an expedition should be rapidly fitted out in
Dunkirk, which should cross the channel, ascend the Thames as far as
Rochester, and burn the English fleet.  "I am informed by persons well
acquainted with the English coast," said the king, "that it would be an
easy matter for a few quick-sailing vessels to accomplish this.  Two or
three thousand soldiers might be landed at Rochester who might burn or
sink all the unarmed vessels they could find there, and the expedition
could return and sail off again before the people of the country could
collect in sufficient numbers to do them any damage."  The archduke was
instructed to consult with Fuentes and Ybarra as to whether this little
matter, thus parenthetically indicated, could be accomplished without too
much risk and trouble.

Certainly it would seem as if the king believed in the audacity,
virility, velocity, alacrity, and the rest of the twenty-eight virtues
of his governor-general, even more seriously than did John Baptist
Houwaerts.  The unfortunate archduke would have needed to be, in all
earnestness, a mythological demigod to do the work required of him.  With
the best part of his army formally maintained by him in recognised
mutiny, with the great cities of the Netherlands yielding themselves to
the republic with hardly an attempt on the part of the royal forces to
relieve them, and with the country which he was supposed to govern, the
very centre of the obedient provinces, ruined, sacked, eaten up by the
soldiers of Spain; villages, farmhouses, gentlemen's castles, churches
plundered; the male population exposed to daily butchery, and the women
to outrages worse than death; it seemed like the bitterest irony to
propose that he should seize that moment to outwit the English and Dutch
sea-kings who were perpetually cruising in the channel, and to undertake
a "beard-singeing" expedition such as even the dare-devil Drake would
hardly have attempted.

Such madcap experiments might perhaps one day, in the distant future, be
tried with reasonable success, but hardly at the beck of a Spanish king
sitting in his easy chair a thousand miles off, nor indeed by the
servants of any king whatever.

The plots of murder arranged in Brussels during this administration were
on a far more extensive scale than were the military plans.

The Count of Fuentes, general superintendant of foreign affairs, was
especially charged with the department of assassination.  This office was
no sinecure; for it involved much correspondence, and required great
personal attention to minute details.  Philip, a consummate artist in
this branch of industry, had laid out a good deal of such work which he
thought could best be carried out in and from the Netherlands.
Especially it was desirable to take off, by poison or otherwise, Henry
IV., Queen Elizabeth, Maurice of Nassau, Olden-Barneveld, St. Aldegonde,
and other less conspicuous personages.

Henry's physician-in-chief, De la Riviere, was at that time mainly
occupied with devising antidotes to poison, which he well knew was
offered to his master on frequent occasions, and in the most insidious
ways.  Andrada, the famous Portuguese poisoner, amongst others is said,
under direction of Fuentes and Ybarra, to have attempted his life by a
nosegay of roses impregnated with so subtle a powder that its smell alone
was relied upon to cause death, and De la Riviere was doing his best to
search for a famous Saxon drug, called fable-powder, as a counter-poison.
"The Turk alarms us, and well he may," said a diplomatic agent of Henry,
"but the Spaniard allows us not to think of the Turk.  And what a strange
manner is this to exercise one's enmities and vengeance by having
recourse to such damnable artifices, after force and arms have not
succeeded, and to attack the person of princes by poisonings and
assassinations."

A most elaborate attempt upon the life of Queen Elizabeth early in this
year came near being successful.  A certain Portuguese Jew, Dr. Lopez,
had for some time been her physician-in-ordinary.  He had first been
received into her service on the recommendation of Don Antonio, the
pretender, and had the reputation of great learning and skill.  With this
man Count Fuentes and Stephen Ybarra, chief of the financial department
at Brussels, had a secret understanding.  Their chief agent was Emanuel
Andrada, who was also in close communication with Bernardino de Mendoza
and other leading personages of the Spanish court.  Two years previously,
Philip, by the hands of Andrada, had sent a very valuable ring of rubies
and diamonds as a present to Lopez, and the doctor had bound himself to
do any service for the king of Spain that might be required of him.
Andrada accordingly wrote to Mendoza that he had gained over this eminent
physician, but that as Lopez was poor and laden with debt, a high price
would be required for his work.  Hereupon Fuentes received orders from
the King of Spain to give the Jew all that he could in reason demand, if
he would undertake to poison the queen.

It now became necessary to handle the matter with great delicacy, and
Fuentes and Ybarra entered accordingly into a correspondence, not with
Lopez, but with a certain Ferrara de Gama.  These letters were entrusted
to one Emanuel Lewis de Tinoco, secretly informed of the plot, for
delivery to Ferrara.  Fuentes charged Tinoco to cause Ferrara to
encourage Lopez to poison her Majesty of England, that they might all
have "a merry Easter."  Lopez was likewise requested to inform the King
of Spain when he thought he could accomplish the task.  The doctor
ultimately agreed to do the deed for fifty thousand crowns, but as he had
daughters and was an affectionate parent, he stipulated for a handsome
provision in marriage for those young ladies.  The terms were accepted,
but Lopez wished to be assured of the money first.

"Having once undertaken the work," said Lord Burghley, if he it were, "he
was so greedy to perform it that he would ask Ferrara every day, 'When
will the money come?  I am ready to do the service if the answer were
come out of Spain.'"

But Philip, as has been often seen, was on principle averse to paying
for work before it had been done.  Some delay occurring, and the secret,
thus confided to so many, having floated as it were imperceptibly into
the air, Tinoco was arrested on suspicion before he had been able to
deliver the letters of Fuentes and Ybarra to Ferrara, for Ferrara, too,
had been imprisoned before the arrival of Tinoco.  The whole
correspondence was discovered, and both Ferrara and Tinoco confessed the
plot.  Lopez, when first arrested, denied his guilt very stoutly, but
being confronted with Ferrara, who told the whole story to his face in
presence of the judges, he at last avowed the crime.

They were all condemned, executed, and quartered at London in the spring
of 1594.  The queen wished to send a special envoy to the archduke at
Brussels, to complain that Secretary of State Cristoval de Moura, Count
Fuentes, and Finance Minister Ybarra--all three then immediately about
his person--were thus implicated in the plot against her life, to demand
their punishment, or else, in case of refusals to convict the king and
the archduke as accomplices in the crime.  Safe conduct was requested for
such an envoy, which was refused by Ernest as an insulting proposition
both to his uncle and himself.  The queen accordingly sent word to
President Richardot by one of her council, that the whole story would be
published, and this was accordingly done.

Early in the spring of this same year, a certain Renichon, priest and
schoolmaster of Namur, was summoned from his school to a private
interview with Count Berlaymont.  That nobleman very secretly informed
the priest that the King of, Spain wished to make use of him in an affair
of great importance, and one which would be very profitable to himself.
The pair then went together to Brussels, and proceeded straightway to the
palace.  They were secretly admitted to the apartments of the archduke,
but the priest, meaning to follow his conductor into the private chamber,
where he pretended to recognize the person of Ernest, was refused
admittance.  The door was, however, not entirely closed, and he heard, as
he declared, the conversation between his Highness and Berlaymont, which
was carried on partly in Latin and partly in Spanish.  He heard them
discussing the question--so he stated--of the recompense to be awarded
for the business about to be undertaken, and after a brief conversation,
distinctly understood the archduke to say, as the count was approaching
the door, "I will satisfy him abundantly and with interest."

Berlaymont then invited his clerical guest to supper--so ran his
statement--and, after that repast was finished, informed him that he was
requested by the archduke to kill Prince Maurice of Nassau.  For this
piece of work he was to receive one hundred Philip-dollars in hand, and
fifteen thousand more, which were lying ready for him, so soon as the
deed should be done.

The schoolmaster at first objected to the enterprise, but ultimately
yielded to the persuasions of the count.  He was informed that Maurice
was a friendly, familiar gentleman, and that there would be opportunities
enough for carrying out the project if he took his time.  He was to buy a
good pair of pistols and remove to the Hague, where he was to set up a
school, and wait for the arrival of his accomplices, of whom there were
six.  Berlaymont then caused to be summoned and introduced to the
pedagogue a man whom he described as one of the six.  The new comer,
hearing that Renichon had agreed to the propositions made to him, hailed
him cordially as comrade and promised to follow him very soon into
Holland.  Berlaymont then observed that there were several personages to
be made away with, besides Prince Maurice--especially Barneveld, and St.
Aldegonde and that the six assassins had, since the time of the Duke of
Parma, been kept in the pay of the King of Spain as nobles, to be
employed as occasion should serve.

His new comrade accompanied Renichon to the canal boat, conversing by the
way, and informed him that they were both to be sent to Leyden in order
to entice away and murder the young brother of Maurice, Frederic Henry,
then at school at that place, even as Philip William, eldest of all the
brothers, had been kidnapped five-and-twenty years before from the same
town.

Renichon then disguised himself as a soldier, proceeded to Antwerp, where
he called himself Michael de Triviere, and thence made his way to Breda,
provided with letters from Berlaymont.  He was, however, arrested on
suspicion not long after his arrival there, and upon trial the whole plot
was discovered.  Having unsuccessfully attempted to hang himself, he
subsequently, without torture, made a full and minute confession, and was
executed on the 3rd June, 1594.

Later in the year, one Pierre du Four, who had been a soldier both in the
States and the French service, was engaged by General La Motte and
Counsellor Assonleville to attempt the assassination of Prince Maurice.
La Motte took the man to the palace, and pretended at least to introduce
him to the chamber of the archduke, who was said to be lying ill in bed.
Du Four was advised to enrol himself in the body-guard at the Hague, and
to seek an opportunity when the prince went hunting, or was mounting his
horse, or was coming from church, or at some such unguarded moment, to
take a shot at him.  "Will you do what I ask," demanded from the bed the
voice of him who was said to be Ernest, "will you kill this tyrant?"--
"I will," replied the soldier.  "Then my son," was the parting
benediction of the supposed archduke, "you will go straight to paradise."

Afterwards he received good advice from Assonleville, and was assured
that if he would come and hear a mass in the royal chapel next morning,
that religious ceremony would make him invisible when he should make his
attempt on the life of Maurice, and while he should be effecting his
escape.  The poor wretch accordingly came next morning to chapel, where
this miraculous mass was duly performed, and he then received a certain
portion of his promised reward in ready money.  He was also especially
charged, in case he should be arrested, not to make a confession--as had
been done by those previously employed in such work--as all complicity
with him on part of his employers would certainly be denied.

The miserable dupe was arrested, convicted, executed; and of course
the denial was duly made on the part of the archduke, La Motte, and
Assonleville.  It was also announced, on behalf of Ernest, that some
one else, fraudulently impersonating his Highness, had lain in the bed
to which the culprit had been taken, and every one must hope that the
statement was a true one.

Enough has been given to show the peculiar school of statesmanship
according to the precepts of which the internal concerns and foreign
affairs of the obedient Netherlands were now administered.  Poison and
pistols in the hands of obscure priests and deserters were relied on to
bring about great political triumphs, while the mutinous royal armies,
entrenched and defiant, were extorting capitulations from their own
generals and their own sovereign upon his own soil.

Such a record as this seems rather like the exaggeration of a diseased
fancy, seeking to pander to a corrupt public taste which feeds greedily
upon horrors; but, unfortunately, it is derived from the register of
high courts of justice, from diplomatic correspondence, and from the
confessions, without torture or hope of free pardon, of criminals.  For a
crowned king and his high functionaries and generals to devote so much of
their time, their energies, and their money to the murder of brother and
sister sovereigns, and other illustrious personages, was not to make
after ages in love with the monarchic and aristocratic system, at least
as thus administered.  Popular governments may be deficient in polish,
but a system resting for its chief support upon bribery and murder cannot
be considered lovely by any healthy mind.  And this is one of the lessons
to be derived from the history of Philip II. and of the Holy League.

But besides mutiny and assassination there were also some feeble attempts
at negotiation to characterize the Ernestian epoch at Brussels.  The
subject hardly needs more than a passing allusion.

Two Flemish juris-consults, Otto Hertius and Jerome Comans, offered their
services to the archduke in the peacemaking department.  Ernest accepted
the proposition,--although it was strongly opposed by Fuentes, who relied
upon the more practical agency of Dr. Lopez, Andrada, Renichon, and the
rest--and the peace-makers accordingly made their appearance at the
Hague, under safe conduct, and provided with very conciliatory letters
from his Highness to the States-General.  In all ages and under all
circumstances it is safe to enlarge, with whatever eloquence may be at
command, upon the blessings of peace and upon the horrors of war; for
the appeal is not difficult to make, and a response is certain in almost
every human breast.  But it is another matter to descend from the general
to the particular, and to demonstrate how the desirable may be attained
and the horrible averted.  The letters of Ernest were full of benignity
and affection, breathing a most ardent desire that the miserable war, now
a quarter of a century old, should be then and there terminated.  But not
one atom of concession was offered, no whisper breathed that the
republic, if it should choose to lay down its victorious arms, and
renounce its dearly gained independence, should share any different fate
from that under which it saw the obedient provinces gasping before its
eyes.  To renounce religious and political liberty and self-government,
and to submit unconditionally to the authority of Philip II. as
administered by Ernest and Fuentes, was hardly to be expected as the
result of the three years' campaigns of Maurice of Nassau.

The two doctors of law laid the affectionate common-places of the
archduke before the States-General, each of them making, moreover,
a long and flowery oration in which the same protestations of good will
and hopes of future good-fellowship were distended to formidable
dimensions by much windy rhetoric.  The accusations which had been made
against the Government of Brussels of complicity in certain projects of
assassination were repelled with virtuous indignation.

The answer of the States-General was wrathful and decided.  They informed
the commissioners that they had taken up arms for a good cause and meant
to retain them in their hands.  They expressed their thanks for the
expressions of good will which had been offered, but avowed their right
to complain before God and the world of those who under pretext of peace
were attempting to shed the innocent blood of Christians, and to procure
the ruin and destruction of the Netherlands.  To this end the state-
council of Spain was more than ever devoted, being guilty of the most
cruel and infamous proceedings and projects.  They threw out a rapid and
stinging summary of their wrongs; and denounced with scorn the various
hollow attempts at negotiation during the preceding twenty-five years.
Coming down to the famous years 1587 and 1588, they alluded in vehement
terms to the fraudulent peace propositions which had been thrown as a
veil over the Spanish invasion of England and the Armada; and they
glanced at the mediation-projects of the emperor in 1591 at the desire of
Spain, while armies were moving in force from Germany, Italy, and the
Netherlands to crush the King of France, in order that Philip might
establish his tyranny over all kings, princes, provinces, and republics.
That the Spanish Government was secretly dealing with the emperor and
other German potentates for the extension of his universal empire
appeared from intercepted letters of the king--copies of which were
communicated--from which it was sufficiently plain that the purpose of
his Majesty was not to bestow peace and tranquillity upon the
Netherlands.  The names of Fuentes, Clemente, Ybarra, were sufficient in
themselves to destroy any such illusion.  They spoke in blunt terms of
the attempt of Dr. Lopez to poison Queen Elizabeth, at the instigation of
Count Fuentes for fifty thousand crowns to be paid by the King of Spain:
they charged upon the same Fuentes and upon Ybarra that they had employed
the same Andrada to murder the King of France with a nosegay of roses;
and they alluded further to the revelations of Michael Renichon, who was
to murder Maurice of Nassau and kidnap Frederic William, even as their
father and brother had been already murdered and kidnapped.

For such reasons the archduke might understand by what persons and what
means the good people of the Netherlands were deceived, and how difficult
it was for the States to forget such lessons, or to imagine anything
honest in the present propositions.

The States declared themselves, on the contrary, more called upon than
ever before to be upon the watch against the stealthy proceedings of the
Spanish council of state--bearing in mind the late execrable attempts at
assassination, and the open war which was still carried on against the
King of France.

And although it was said that his Highness was displeased with such
murderous and hostile proceedings, still it was necessary for the States
to beware of the nefarious projects of the King of Spain and his council.

After the conversion of Henry IV. to the Roman Church had been duly
accomplished that monarch had sent a secret envoy to Spain.  The mission
of this agent--De Varenne by name--excited intense anxiety and suspicion
in England and Holland and among the Protestants of France and Germany.
It was believed that Henry had not only made a proposition of a separate
peace with Philip, but that he had formally but mysteriously demanded the
hand of the Infanta in marriage.  Such a catastrophe as this seemed to
the heated imaginations of the great body of Calvinists throughout
Europe, who had so faithfully supported the King of Navarre up to the
moment of his great apostasy, the most cruel and deadly treachery of all.
That the princess with the many suitors should come to reign over France
after all--not as the bride of her own father, not as the queen-consort
of Ernest the Habsburger or of Guise the Lorrainer, but as the lawful
wife of Henry the Huguenot--seemed almost too astounding for belief, even
amid the chances and changes of that astonishing epoch.  Yet Duplessis
Mornay avowed that the project was entertained, and that he had it from
the very lips of the secret envoy who was to negotiate the marriage.
"La Varenne is on his way to Spain," wrote Duplessis to the Duke of
Bouillon, "in company with a gentleman of Don Bernardino de Mendoza, who
brought the first overtures.  He is to bring back the portrait of the
Infanta.  'Tis said that the marriage is to be on condition that the
Queen and the Netherlands are comprised in the peace, but you know that
this cannot be satisfactorily arranged for those two parties.  All this
was once guess-work, but is now history."

That eminent diplomatist and soldier Mendoza had already on his return
from France given the King of Spain to understand that there were no
hopes of his obtaining the French crown either for himself or for his
daughter, that all the money lavished on the chiefs of the League was
thrown away, and that all their promises were idle wind.  Mendoza in
consequence had fallen into contempt at court, but Philip, observing
apparently that there might have been something correct in his
statements, had recently recalled him, and, notwithstanding his blindness
and other infirmities, was disposed to make use of him in secret
negotiations.  Mendoza had accordingly sent a confidential agent to Henry
IV. offering his good offices, now that the king had returned to the
bosom of the Church.

This individual, whose name was Nunez, was admitted by De Bethune
(afterwards the famous Due de Sully) to the presence of the king,
but De Bethune, believing it probable that the Spaniard had been sent to
assassinate Henry, held both the hands of the emissary during the whole
interview, besides subjecting him to a strict personal visitation
beforehand.  Nunez stated that he was authorized to propose to his
Majesty a marriage with the Infanta Clara Isabella, and Henry, much to
the discontent of De Bethune, listened eagerly to the suggestion, and
promised to send a secret agent to Spain to confer on the subject with
Mendoza.

The choice he made of La Varenne, whose real name was Guillaume Fouquet,
for this mission was still more offensive to De Bethune.  Fouquet had
originally been a cook in the service of Madame Catherine, and was famous
for his talent for larding poultry, but he had subsequently entered the
household of Henry, where he had been employed in the most degrading
service which one man can render to another.

     ["La Varenne," said Madame Catherine on one occasion "tu as plus
     gagne ti porter les poulets de men frere, qu'a piquer les miens."
     Memoires de Sully, Liv. vi.  p. 296, note 6.  He accumulated a large
     fortune in these dignified pursuits--having, according to Winwood,
     landed estates to the annual amount of sixty thousand francs a-year
     --and gave large dowries to his daughters, whom he married into
     noblest families; "which is the more remarkable," adds Winwood,
     "considering the services wherein he is employed about the king,
     which is to be the Mezzano for his loves; the place from whence he
     came, which is out of the kitchen of Madame the king's sister."--
     Memorials, i. 380.]

On his appointment to this offce of secret diplomacy he assumed all the
airs of an ambassador, while Henry took great pains to contradict the
reports which were spread as to the true nature of this mission to Spain.

Duplessis was, in truth, not very far wrong in his conjectures, but,
as might be supposed, Henry was most anxious to conceal these secret
negotiations with his Catholic Majesty from the Huguenot chiefs whom he
had so recently deserted.  "This is all done without the knowledge of
the Duke of Bouillon," said Calvaert, "or at least under a very close
disguise, as he, himself keenly feels and confesses to me."  The envoy
of the republic, as well as the leaders of the Protestant party in
France, were resolved if possible to break off these dark and dangerous
intrigues, the nature of which they so shrewdly suspected, and to
substitute for them an open rupture of Henry with the King of Spain,
and a formal declaration of war against him.  None of the diplomatists
or political personages engaged in these great affairs, in which the
whole world was so deeply interested, manifested more sagacity and
insight on this occasion than did the Dutch statesmen.  We have seen that
even Sir Edward Stafford was deceived up to a very late moment, as to the
rumoured intentions of Henry to enter the Catholic Church.  Envoy Edmonds
was now equally and completely in the dark as to the mission of Varenne,
and informed his Government that the only result of it was that the
secret agent to Spain was favoured, through the kindness of Mendoza,
with a distant view of Philip II. with his son and daughter at their
devotions in the chapel of the Escorial.  This was the tale generally
recounted and believed after the agent's return from Spain, so that
Varenne was somewhat laughed at as having gone to Spain on a fool's
errand, and as having got nothing from Mendoza but a disavowal of his
former propositions.  But the shrewd Calvaert, who had entertained
familiar relations with La Varenne, received from that personage after
his return a very different account of his excursion to the Escorial from
the one generally circulated.  "Coming from Monceaus to Paris in his
company," wrote Calvaert in a secret despatch to the States, "I had the
whole story from him.  The chief part of his negotiations with Don
Bernardino de Mendoza was that if his Majesty (the French king) would
abandon the Queen of England and your Highnesses (the States of the
Netherlands), there were no conditions that would be refused the king,
including the hand of the Infanta, together with a good recompense for
the kingdom of Navarre.  La Varenne maintained that the King of Spain had
caused these negotiations to be entered upon at this time with him in the
certain hope and intention of a definite conclusion, alleging to me many
pertinent reasons, and among others that he, having been lodged at
Madrid, through the adroitness of Don Bernardino, among all the agents of
the League, and hearing all their secrets and negotiations, had never
been discovered, but had always been supposed to be one of the League
himself.  He said also that he was well assured that the Infanta in her
heart had an affection for the French king, and notwithstanding any
resolutions that might be taken (to which I referred, meaning the
projects for bestowing her on the house of Austria) that she with her
father's consent or in case of his death would not fail to carry out
this marriage.  You may from all this, even out of the proposal for
compensation for the kingdom of Navarre (of which his Majesty also let
out something to me inadvertently); collect the reasons why such feeble
progress is made in so great an occasion as now presents itself for a
declaration of war and an open alliance with your Highnesses.  I shall
not fail to watch these events, even in case of the progress of the said
resolutions, notwithstanding the effects of which it is my opinion that
this secret intrigue is not to be abandoned.  To this end, besides the
good intelligence which one gets by means of good friends, a continual
and agreeable presentation of oneself to his Majesty, in order to see and
hear everything, is necessary."

Certainly, here were reasons more than sufficient why Henry should be
making but feeble preparations for open war in alliance with England and
the republic against Philip, as such a step was hardly compatible with
the abandonment of England and the republic and the espousal of Philip's
daughter--projects which Henry's commissioner had just been discussing
with Philip's agent at Madrid and the Escorial.

Truly it was well for the republican envoy to watch events as closely as
possible, to make the most of intelligence from his good friends, and to
present himself as frequently and as agreeably as possible to his
Majesty, that he might hear and see everything.  There was much to see
and to hear, and it needed adroitness and courage, not to slip or stumble
in such dark ways where the very ground seemed often to be sliding from
beneath the feet.

To avoid the catastrophe of an alliance between Henry, Philip, and the
Pope against Holland and England, it was a pressing necessity for Holland
and England to force Henry into open war against Philip.  To this end the
Dutch statesmen were bending all their energies.  Meantime Elizabeth
regarded the campaign in Artois and Hainault with little favour.

As he took leave on departing for France, La Varenne had requested
Mendoza to write to King Henry, but the Spaniard excused himself--
although professing the warmest friendship for his Majesty--on the ground
of the impossibility of addressing him correctly.  "If I call him here
King of Navarre, I might as well put my head on the block at once," he
observed; "if I call him King of France, my master has not yet recognized
him as such; if I call him anything else, he will himself be offended."

And the vision of Philip in black on his knees, with his children about
him, and a rapier at his side, passed with the contemporary world as the
only phenomenon of this famous secret mission.

But Henry, besides this demonstration towards Spain, lost no time in
despatching a special minister to the republic and to England, who was
instructed to make the most profuse, elaborate, and conciliatory
explanations as to his recent conversion and as to his future intentions.
Never would he make peace, he said, with Spain without the full consent
of the States and of England; the dearest object of his heart in making
his peace with Rome having been to restore peace to his own distracted
realm, to bring all Christians into one brotherhood, and to make a united
attack upon the grand Turk--a vision which the cheerful monarch hardly
intended should ever go beyond the ivory gate of dreams, but which
furnished substance enough for several well-rounded periods in the
orations of De Morlans.

That diplomatist, after making the strongest representations to Queen
Elizabeth as to the faithful friendship of his master, and the necessity
he was under of pecuniary and military assistance, had received generous
promises of aid both in men and money--three thousand men besides the
troops actually serving in Brittany--from that sagacious sovereign,
notwithstanding the vehement language in which she had rebuked her royal
brother's apostasy.   He now came for the same purpose to the Hague,
where he made very eloquent harangues to the States-General,
acknowledging that the republic had ever been the most upright, perfect,
and undisguised friend to his master and to France in their darkest days
and deepest affliction; that she had loved the king and kingdom for
themselves, not merely hanging on to their prosperity, but, on the
contrary, doing her best to produce that prosperity by her contributions
in soldiers, ships, and subsidies.  "The king," said De Morlans, "is
deeply grieved that he can prove his gratitude only in words for so many
benefits conferred, which are absolutely without example, but he has
commissioned me to declare that if God should ever give him the occasion,
he will prove how highly he places your friendship."

The envoy assured the States that all fears entertained by those of the
reformed religion on account of the conversion of his Majesty were
groundless.  Nothing was farther from the king's thoughts than to injure
those noble spirits with whom his soul had lived so long, and whom he so
much loved and honoured.  No man knew better than the king did, the
character of those who professed the Religion, their virtue, valour,
resolution, and patience in adversity.  Their numbers had increased in
war, their virtues had been purified by affliction, they had never
changed their position, whether battles had been won or lost.  Should
ever an attempt be made to take up arms against them within his realms,
and should there be but five hundred of them against ten thousand, the
king, remembering their faithful and ancient services, would leave the
greater number in order to die at the head of his old friends.  He was
determined that they should participate in all the honours of the
kingdom, and with regard to a peace with Spain, he would have as much
care for the interests of the United Provinces as for his own.  But a
peace was impossible with that monarch, whose object was to maintain his
own realms in peace while he kept France in perpetual revolt against the
king whom God had given her.  The King of Spain had trembled at Henry's
cradle, at his youth, at the bloom of his manhood, and knew that he had
inflicted too much injury upon him ever to be on friendly terms with him.
The envoy was instructed to say that his master never expected to be in
amity with one who had ruined his house confiscated his property, and
caused so much misery to France; and he earnestly hoped--without
presuming to dictate--that the States-General would in this critical
emergency manifest their generosity.  If the king were not assisted now,
both king and kingdom would perish.  If he were assisted, the succour
would bear double fruit.

The sentiments expressed on the part of Henry towards his faithful
subjects of the Religion, the heretic Queen of England, and the stout
Dutch Calvinists who had so long stood by him, were most noble.  It was
pity that, at the same moment, he was proposing to espouse the Infanta,
and to publish the Council of Trent.

The reply of the States-General to these propositions of the French envoy
was favourable, and it was agreed that a force of three thousand foot and
five hundred horse should be sent to the assistance of the king.
Moreover, the state-paper drawn up on this occasion was conceived with so
much sagacity and expressed with so much eloquence, as particularly to
charm the English queen when it was communicated to her Majesty.  She
protested very loudly and vehemently to Noel de Caron, envoy from the
provinces at London, that this response on the part of his Government to
De Morlans was one of the wisest documents that she had ever seen.  "In
all their actions," said she, "the States-General show their sagacity,
and indeed, it is the wisest Government ever known among republics.  I
would show you," she added to the gentlemen around her, "the whole of the
paper if it were this moment at hand."

After some delays, it was agreed between the French Government and that
of the United Provinces, that the king should divide his army into three
parts, and renew the military operations against Spain with the
expiration of the truce at the end of the year (1593).

One body, composed of the English contingent, together with three
thousand French horse, three thousand Swiss, and four thousand French
harquebus-men, were to be under his own immediate command, and were to
act against the enemy wherever it should appear to his Majesty most
advantageous.  A second, army was to expel the rebels and their foreign
allies from Normandy and reduce Rouen to obedience.  A third was to make
a campaign in the provinces of Artois and Hainault, under the Duke of
Bouillon (more commonly called the Viscount Turenne), in conjunction with
the forces to be supplied by the republic.  "Any treaty of peace on our
part with the King of Spain," said the States-General, "is our certain
ruin.  This is an axiom.  That monarch's object is to incorporate into
his own realms not only all the states and possessions of neighbouring
kings, principalities, and powers, but also all Christendom, aye, the
whole world, were it possible.  We joyfully concur then in your Majesty's
resolution to carry on the war in Artois and Hainault, and agree to your
suggestion of diversions on our part by sieges and succour by
contingents."

Balagny, meantime, who had so long led an independent existence at
Cambray, now agreed to recognise Henry's authority, in consideration of
sixty-seven thousand crowns yearly pension and the dignity of Marshal of
France.

Towards the end of the year 1594, Buzanval, the regular French envoy at
the Hague, began to insist more warmly than seemed becoming that the
campaign in Artois and Hainault--so often the base of military operations
on the part of Spain against France--should begin.  Further achievements
on the part of Maurice after the fall of Groningen were therefore
renounced for that year, and his troops went into garrison and winter-
quarters.  The States-General, who had also been sending supplies,
troops, and ships to Brittany to assist the king, now, after soundly
rebuking Buzanval for his intemperate language, entrusted their
contingent for the proposed frontier campaign to Count Philip Nassau,
who accordingly took the field toward the end of the year at the head of
twenty-eight companies of foot and five squadrons of cavalry.  He made
his junction with Turenne-Bouillon, but the duke, although provided with
a tremendous proclamation, was but indifferently supplied with troops.
The German levies, long-expected, were slow in moving, and on the whole
it seemed that the operations might have been continued by Maurice with
more effect, according to his original plan, than in this rather
desultory fashion.  The late winter campaign on the border was feeble and
a failure.

The bonds of alliance, however, were becoming very close between Henry
and the republic.  Despite the change in religion on the part of the
king, and the pangs which it had occasioned in the hearts of leading
Netherlanders, there was still the traditional attraction between France
and the States, which had been so remarkably manifested during the
administration of William the Silent.  The republic was more restive than
ever under the imperious and exacting friendship of Elizabeth, and,
feeling more and more its own strength, was making itself more and more
liable to the charge of ingratitude; so constantly hurled in its face by
the queen.  And Henry, now that he felt himself really king of France,
was not slow to manifest a similar ingratitude or an equal love of
independence.  Both monarch and republic, chafing under the protection of
Elizabeth, were drawn into so close a union as to excite her anger and
jealousy--sentiments which in succeeding years were to become yet more
apparent.  And now; while Henry still retained the chivalrous and flowery
phraseology, so sweet to her ears, in his personal communications to the
queen, his ministers were in the habit of using much plainer language.
"Mr. de Sancy said to me," wrote the Netherland minister in France,
Calvaert, "that his Majesty and your Highnesses (the States-General)
must without long delay conclude an alliance offensive and defensive.
In regard to England, which perhaps might look askance at this matter,
he told me it would be invited also by his Majesty into the same
alliance; but if, according to custom, it shilly-shallied, and without
coming to deeds or to succour should put him off with words, he should in
that case proceed with our alliance without England, not doubting that
many other potentates in Italy and Germany would join in it likewise.
He said too, that he, the day before the departure of the English
ambassador, had said these words to him in the presence of his Majesty;
namely, that England had entertained his Majesty sixteen months long with
far-fetched and often-repeated questions and discontents, that one had
submitted to this sort of thing so long as his Majesty was only king of
Mantes, Dieppe, and Louviers, but that his Majesty being now king of
Paris would be no longer a servant of those who should advise him to
suffer it any longer or accept it as good payment; that England must
treat his Majesty according to his quality, and with deeds, not words.
He added that the ambassador had very anxiously made answer to these
words, and had promised that when he got back to England he would so
arrange that his Majesty should be fully satisfied, insisting to the last
on the alliance then proposed."

In Germany, meanwhile, there was much protocolling, and more hard
drinking, at the Diet of Ratisbon.  The Protestant princes did little
for their cause against the new designs of Spain and the moribund League,
while the Catholics did less to assist Philip.  In truth, the holy Roman
Empire, threatened with a Turkish invasion, had neither power nor
inclination to help the new universal empire of the west into existence.
So the princes and grandees of Germany, while Amurath was knocking at the
imperial gates, busied themselves with banquetting and other diplomatic
work, but sent few reiters either to the east or west.

Philip's envoys were indignant at the apathy displayed towards the great
Catholic cause, and felt humbled at the imbecility exhibited by Spain in
its efforts against the Netherlands and France.  San Clemente, who was
attending the Diet at Ratisbon, was shocked at the scenes he witnessed.
"In less than three months," said that temperate Spaniard, "they have
drunk more than five million florins' worth of wine, at a time when the
Turk has invaded the frontiers of Germany; and among those who have done
the most of this consumption of wine, there is not one who is going to
give any assistance on the frontier.  In consequence of these disorders
my purse is drained so low, that unless the king helps me I am ruined.
You must tell our master that the reputation of his grandeur and strength
has never been so low as it is now in Germany.  The events in France and
those which followed in the Netherlands have thrown such impediments in
the negotiations here, that not only our enemies make sport of Marquis
Havre and myself, but even our friends--who are very few--dare not go
to public feasts, weddings, and dinners, because they are obliged to
apologize for us."

Truly the world-empire was beginning to crumble.  "The emperor has been
desiring twenty times," continued the envoy, "to get back to Prague from
the Diet, but the people hold him fast like a steer.  As I think over all
that passes, I lose all judgment, for I have no money, nor influence, nor
reputation.  Meantime, I see this rump of an empire keeping itself with
difficulty upon its legs.  'Tis full of wrangling and discord about
religion, and yet there is the Turk with two hundred thousand men
besieging a place forty miles from Vienna, which is the last outpost.
God grant it may last!"

Such was the aspect of the Christian world at the close of the year 1594




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Beneficent and charitable purposes (War)
Chronicle of events must not be anticipated
Eat their own children than to forego one high mass
Humanizing effect of science upon the barbarism of war
Slain four hundred and ten men with his own hand



End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v66
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 67, 1595



CHAPTER XXXI.

     Formal declaration of war against Spain--Marriage festivities--Death
     of Archduke Ernest--His year of government--Fuentes declared
     governor-general--Disaffection of the Duke of Arschot and Count
     Arenberg--Death of the Duke of Arschot----Fuentes besieges Le
     Catelet--The fortress of Ham, sold to the Spanish by De Gomeron,
     besieged and taken by the Duke of Bouillon--Execution of De
     Gomeron--Death of Colonel Verdugo--Siege of Dourlens by Fuentes--
     Death of La Motte--Death of Charles Mansfeld--Total defeat of the
     French--Murder of Admiral De Pillars--Dourlens captured, and the
     garrison and citizens put to the sword--Military operations in
     eastern Netherlands and on the Rhine--Maurice lays siege to Groento
     --Mondragon hastening to its relief, Prince Maurice raises the
     siege--Skirmish between Maurice and Mondragon--Death of Philip of
     Nassau--Death of Mondragon--Bombardment and surrender of Weerd
     Castle--Maurice retires into winter quarters--Campaign of Henry Iv.-
     --He besieges Dijon--Surrender of Dijon--Absolution granted to Henry
     by the pope--Career of Balagny at Cambray--Progress of the siege--
     Capitulation of the town--Suicide of the Princess of Cambray, wife
     of Balagny

The year 1595 Opened with a formal declaration of war by the King of
France against the King of Spain.  It would be difficult to say for
exactly how many years the war now declared had already been waged,
but it was a considerable advantage to the United Netherlands that the
manifesto had been at last regularly issued.  And the manifesto was
certainly not deficient in bitterness.  Not often in Christian history
has a monarch been solemnly and officially accused by a brother sovereign
of suborning assassins against his life.  Bribery, stratagem, and murder,
were, however, so entirely the commonplace machinery of Philip's
administration as to make an allusion to the late attempt of Chastel
appear quite natural in Henry's declaration of war.  The king further
stigmatized in energetic language the long succession of intrigues by
which the monarch of Spain, as chief of the Holy League, had been making
war upon him by means of his own subjects, for the last half dozcn years.
Certainly there was hardly need of an elaborate statement of grievances.
The deeds of Philip required no herald, unless Henry was prepared to
abdicate his hardly-earned title to the throne of France.

Nevertheless the politic Gascon subsequently regretted the fierce style
in which he had fulminated his challenge.  He was accustomed to observe
that no state paper required so much careful pondering as a declaration
of war, and that it was scarcely possible to draw up such a document
without committing many errors in the phraseology.  The man who never
knew fear, despondency, nor resentment, was already instinctively acting
on the principle that a king should deal with his enemy as if sure to
become his friend, and with his friends as if they might easily change
to foes.

The answer to the declaration was delayed for two months.  When the
reply came it of course breathed nothing but the most benignant
sentiments in regard to France, while it expressed regret that it was
necessary to carry fire and sword through that country in order to avert
the unutterable woe which the crimes of the heretic Prince of Bearne were
bringing upon all mankind.

It was a solace for Philip to call the legitimate king by the title
borne by him when heir-presumptive, and to persist in denying to him that
absolution which, as the whole world was aware, the Vicar of Christ was
at that very moment in the most solemn manner about to bestow upon him.

More devoted to the welfare of France than were the French themselves,
he was determined that a foreign prince himself, his daughter, or one of
his nephews--should supplant the descendant of St. Louis on the French
throne.  More catholic than the pope he could not permit the heretic,
whom his Holiness was just washing whiter than snow, to intrude himself
into the society of Christian sovereigns.

The winter movements by Bouillon in Luxembourg, sustained by Philip
Nassau campaigning with a meagre force on the French frontier, were not
very brilliant.  The Netherland regiments quartered at Yssoire, La Ferte,
and in the neighbourhood accomplished very little, and their numbers were
sadly thinned by dysentery.  A sudden and successful stroke, too, by
which that daring soldier Heraugiere, who had been the chief captor of
Breda, obtained possession of the town, and castle of Huy, produced no
permanent advantage.  This place, belonging to the Bishop of Liege, with
its stone bridge over the Meuse, was an advantageous position from which
to aid the operations of Bouillon in Luxembourg.  Heraugiere was,
however, not sufficiently reinforced, and Huy was a month later
recaptured by La Motte.  The campaigning was languid during that winter
in the United Netherlands, but the merry-making was energetic.  The
nuptials of Hohenlo with Mary, eldest daughter of William the Silent and
own sister of the captive Philip William; of the Duke of Bouillon with
Elizabeth, one of the daughters of the same illustrious prince by his
third wife, Charlotte of Bourbon; and of Count Everard Solms, the famous
general of the Zeeland troops, with Sabina, daughter of the unfortunate
Lamoral Egmont, were celebrated with much pomp during the months of
February and March.  The States of Holland and of Zeeland made
magnificent presents of diamonds to the brides; the Countess Hohenlo
receiving besides a yearly income of three thousand florins for the lives
of herself and her husband.

In the midst of these merry marriage bells at the Hague a funeral knell
was sounding in Brussels.  On the 20th February, the governor-general of
the obedient Netherlands, Archduke Ernest, breathed his last.  His career
had not been so illustrious as the promises of the Spanish king and the
allegories of schoolmaster Houwaerts had led him to expect.  He had not
espoused the Infanta nor been crowned King of France.  He had not blasted
the rebellious Netherlands with Cyclopean thunderbolts, nor unbound the
Belgic Andromeda from the rock of doom.  His brief year of government
had really been as dismal as, according to the announcement of his
sycophants, it should have been amazing.  He had accomplished nothing,
and all that was left him was to die at the age of forty-two, over head
and ears in debt, a disappointed, melancholy man.  He was very indolent,
enormously fat, very chaste, very expensive, fond of fine liveries and
fine clothes, so solemn and stately as never to be known to laugh, but
utterly without capacity either as a statesman or a soldier.  He would
have shone as a portly abbot ruling over peaceful friars, but he was not
born to ride a revolutionary whirlwind, nor to evoke order out of chaos.
Past and Present were contending with each other in fierce elemental
strife within his domain.  A world was in dying agony, another world was
coming, full-armed, into existence within the hand-breadth of time and of
space where he played his little part, but he dreamed not of it.  He
passed away like a shadow, and was soon forgotten.

An effort was made, during the last illness of Ernest, to procure from
him the appointment of the elector of Cologne as temporary successor to
tho government, but Count Fuentes was on the spot and was a man of
action.  He produced a power in the French language from Philip, with a
blank for the name.  This had been intended for the case of Peter Ernest
Mansfeld's possible death during his provisional administration, and
Fuentes now claimed the right of inserting his own name.

The dying Ernest consented, and upon his death Fuentes was declared
governor-general until the king's further pleasure should be known.

Pedro de Guzman, Count of Fuentes, a Spaniard of the hard and antique
type, was now in his sixty-fourth year.  The pupil and near relative of
the Duke of Alva, he was already as odious to the Netherlanders as might
have been inferred from such education and such kin.  A dark, grizzled,
baldish man, with high steep forehead, long, haggard, leathern visage,
sweeping beard, and large, stern, commanding, menacing eyes, with his
Brussels ruff of point lace and his Milan coat of proof, he was in
personal appearance not unlike the terrible duke whom men never named
without a shudder, although a quarter of a century had passed since he
had ceased to curse the Netherlands with his presence.  Elizabeth of
England was accustomed to sneer at Fuentes because he had retreated
before Essex in that daring commander's famous foray into Portugal.
The queen called the Spanish general a timid old woman.  If her gibe
were true, it was fortunate for her, for Henry of France, and for the
republic, that there were not many more such old women to come from
Spain to take the place of the veteran chieftains who were destined to
disappear so rapidly during this year in Flanders.  He was a soldier of
fortune, loved fighting, not only for the fighting's sake, but for the
prize-money which was to be accumulated by campaigning, and he was wont
to say that he meant to enter Paradise sword in hand.

Meantime his appointment excited the wrath of the provincial magnates.
The Duke of Arschot was beside himself with frenzy, and swore that he
would never serve under Fuentes nor sit at his council-board.  The duke's
brother, Marquis Havre, and his son-in-law, Count Arenberg, shared in the
hatred, although they tried to mitigate the vehemence of its expression.
But Arschot swore that no man had the right to take precedence of him in
the council of state, and that the appointment of this or any Spaniard
was a violation of the charters of the provinces and of the promises of
his Majesty.  As if it were for the nobles of the obedient provinces to
prate of charters and of oaths!  Their brethren under the banner of the
republic had been teaching Philip for a whole generation how they could
deal with the privileges of freemen and with the perjury of tyrants.
It was late in the day for the obedient Netherlanders to remember their
rights.  Havre and Arenberg, dissembling their own wrath, were abused and
insulted by the duke when they tried to pacify him.  They proposed a
compromise, according to which Arschot should be allowed to preside in
the council of state while Fuentes should content himself with the
absolute control of the army.  This would be putting a bit of fat in
the duke's mouth, they said.  Fuentes would hear of no such arrangement.
After much talk and daily attempts to pacify this great Netherlander, his
relatives at last persuaded him to go home to his country place.  He even
promised Arenberg and his wife that he would go to Italy, in pursuance of
a vow made to our lady of Loretto.  Arenberg privately intimated to
Stephen Ybarra that there was a certain oil, very apt to be efficacious
in similar cases of irritation, which might be applied with prospect of
success.  If his father-in-law could only receive some ten thousand
florins which he claimed as due to him from Government, this would do
more to quiet him than a regiment of soldiers could.  He also suggested
that Fuentes should call upon the duke, while Secretary Ybarra should
excuse himself by sickness for not having already paid his respects.
This was done.  Fuentes called.  The duke returned the call, and the two
conversed amicably about the death of the archduke, but entered into no
political discussion.

Arschot then invited the whole council of state, except John Baptist
Tassis, to a great dinner.  He had prepared a paper to read to them in
which he represented the great dangers likely to ensue from such an
appointment as this of Fuentes, but declared that he washed his hands of
the consequences, and that he had determined to leave a country where he
was of so little account.  He would then close his eyes and ears to
everything that might occur, and thus escape the infamy of remaining in a
country where so little account was made of him.  He was urged to refrain
from reading this paper and to invite Tassis.  After a time he consented
to suppress the document, but he manfully refused to bid the
objectionable diplomatist to his banquet.

The dinner took place and passed off pleasantly enough.  Arschot did not
read his manifesto, but, as he warmed with wine, he talked a great deal
of nonsense which, according to Stephen Ybarra, much resembled it, and he
vowed that thenceforth he would be blind and dumb to all that might
occur.  A few days later, he paid a visit to the new governor-general,
and took a peaceful farewell of him.  "Your Majesty knows very well what
he is," wrote Fuentes: "he is nothing but talk."  Before leaving the
country he sent a bitter complaint to Ybarra, to the effect that the king
had entirely forgotten him, and imploring that financier's influence
to procure for him some gratuity from his Majesty.  He was in such
necessity, he said, that it was no longer possible for him to maintain
his household.

And with this petition the grandee of the obedient provinces shook the
dust from his shoes, and left his natal soil for ever.  He died on the
11th December of the same year in Venice.

His son the Prince of Chimay, his brother, and son-inlaw, and the other
obedient nobles, soon accommodated themselves to the new administration,
much as they had been inclined to bluster at first about their
privileges.  The governor soon reported that matters were proceeding
very, smoothly.  There was a general return to the former docility now
that such a disciplinarian as Fuentes held the reins.

The opening scenes of the campaign between the Spanish governor and
France were, as usual, in Picardy.  The Marquis of Varambon made a
demonstration in the neighbourhood of Dourlens--a fortified town on the
river Authie, lying in an open plain, very deep in that province--while
Fuentes took the field with eight thousand men, and laid siege to Le
Catelet.  He had his eye, however, upon Ham.  That important stronghold
was in the hands of a certain nobleman called De Gomeron, who had been
an energetic Leaguer, and was now disposed, for a handsome consideration,
to sell himself to the King of Spain.  In the auction of governors and
generals then going on in every part of France it had been generally
found that Henry's money was more to be depended upon in the long run,
although Philip's bids were often very high, and, for a considerable
period, the payments regular.  Gomeron's upset price for himself was
twenty-five thousand crowns in cash, and a pension of eight thousand a
year.  Upon these terms he agreed to receive a Spanish garrison into the
town, and to cause the French in the citadel to be sworn into the service
of the Spanish king.  Fuentes agreed to the bargain and paid the adroit
tradesman, who knew so well how to turn a penny for himself, a large
portion of the twenty-five thousand crowns upon the nail.

De Gomeron was to proceed to Brussels to receive the residue.  His
brother-in-law, M. d'Orville, commanded in the citadel, and so soon as
the Spanish troops had taken possession of the town its governor claimed
full payment of his services.

But difficulties awaited him in Brussels.  He was informed that a French
garrison could not be depended upon for securing the fortress, but that
town and citadel must both be placed in Spanish hands.  De Gomeron loudly
protesting that this was not according to contract, was calmly assured,
by command of Fuentes, that unless the citadel were at once evacuated and
surrendered, he would not receive the balance of his twenty-five thousand
crowns, and that he should instantly lose his head.  Here was more than
De Gomeron had bargained for; but this particular branch of commerce
in revolutionary times, although lucrative, has always its risks.
De Gomeron, thus driven to the wall, sent a letter by a Spanish messenger
to his brother-in-law, ordering him to surrender the fortress.
D'Orville--who meantime had been making his little arrangements with
the other party--protested that the note had been written under duress,
and refused to comply with its directions.

Time was pressing, for the Duke of Bouillon and the Count of St. Pol lay
with a considerable force in the neighbourhood, obviously menacing Ham.

Fuentes accordingly sent that distinguished soldier and historian, Don
Carlos Coloma, with a detachment of soldiers to Brussels, with orders
to bring Gomeron into camp.  He was found seated at supper with his two
young brothers, aged respectively sixteen and eighteen years, and was
just putting a cherry into his mouth as Coloma entered the room.  He
remained absorbed in thought, trifling with the cherry without eating it,
which Don Carlos set down as a proof of guilt: The three brothers were at
once put in a coach, together with their sister, a nun of the age of
twenty, and conveyed to the head-quarters of Fuentes, who lay before Le
Catelet, but six leagues from Ham.

Meantime D'Orville had completed his negotiations with Bouillon, and had
agreed to surrender the fortress so soon as the Spanish troops should be
driven from the town.  The duke knowing that there was no time to lose,
came with three thousand men before the place.  His summons to surrender
was answered by a volley of cannon-shot from the town defences.  An
assault was made and repulsed, D'Humieres, a most gallant officer and a
favourite of King Henry, being killed, besides at least two hundred
soldiers.  The next attack was successful, the town was carried, and the
Spanish garrison put to the sword.

D'Orville then, before giving up the citadel, demanded three hostages for
the lives of his three brothers-in-law.

The hostages availed him little.  Fuentes had already sent word to
Gomeron's mother, that if the bargain were not fulfilled he would send
her the heads of her three sons on three separate dishes.  The distracted
woman made her way, to D'Orville, and fell at his feet with tears and
entreaties.  It was too late, and D'Orville, unable to bear her
lamentations, suddenly rushed from the castle, and nearly fell into
the hands of the Spaniards as he fled from the scene.  Two of the four
cuirassiers, who alone of the whole garrison accompanied him, were taken
prisoners.  The governor escaped to unknown regions.  Madame de Gomeron
then appeared before Fuentes, and tried in vain to soften him.  De
Gomeron was at once beheaded in the sight of the whole camp.  The two
younger sons were retained in prison, but ultimately set at liberty.
The town and citadel were thus permanently acquired by their lawful king,
who was said to be more afflicted at the death of D'Humieres than
rejoiced at the capture of Ham.

Meantime Colonel Verdugo, royal governor of Friesland, whose occupation
in those provinces, now so nearly recovered by the republic, was gone,
had led a force of six thousand foot, and twelve hundred horse across the
French border, and was besieging La Ferte on the Cher.  The siege was
relieved by Bouillon on the 26th May, and the Spanish veteran was then
ordered to take command in Burgundy.  But his days were numbered.  He had
been sick of dysentery at Luxembourg during the summer, but after
apparent recovery died suddenly on the 2nd September, and of course was
supposed to have been poisoned.  He was identified with the whole history
of the Netherland wars.  Born at Talavera de la Reyna, of noble
parentage, as he asserted--although his mother was said to have sold
dogs' meat, and he himself when a youth was a private soldier--he rose
by steady conduct and hard fighting to considerable eminence in his
profession.  He was governor of Harlem after the famous siege, and
exerted himself with some success to mitigate the ferocity of the
Spaniards towards the Netherlanders at that epoch.  He was marshal-
general of the camp under Don John of Austria, and distinguished himself
at the battle of Gemblours.  He succeeded Count Renneberg as governor of
Friesland and Groningen, and bore a manful part in most of the rough
business that had been going on for a generation of mankind among those
blood-stained wolds and morasses.  He was often victorious, and quite as
often soundly defeated; but he enjoyed campaigning, and was a glutton of
work.  He cared little for parade and ceremony, but was fond of recalling
with pleasure the days when he was a soldier at four crowns a month, with
an undivided fourth of one cloak, which he and three companions wore by
turns on holidays.  Although accused of having attempted to procure the
assassination of William Lewis Nassau, he was not considered ill-natured,
and he possessed much admiration for Prince Maurice.  An iron-clad man,
who had scarcely taken harness from his back all his life, he was a type
of the Spanish commanders who had implanted international hatred deeply
in the Netherland soul, and who, now that this result and no other had
been accomplished, were rapidly passing away.  He had been baptised
Franco, and his family appellation of Verdugo meant executioner.  Punning
on these names he was wont to say, that he was frank for all good people,
but a hangman for heretics; and he acted up to his gibe.

Foiled at Ham, Fuentes had returned to the siege of Catelet, and had soon
reduced the place.  He then turned his attention again to Dourlens, and
invested that city.  During the preliminary operations, another veteran
commander in these wars, Valentin Pardieu de la Motte, recently created
Count of Everbecque by Philip, who had been for a long time general-in-
chief of the artillery, and was one of the most famous and experienced
officers in the Spanish service, went out one fine moonlight night to
reconnoitre the enemy, and to superintend the erection of batteries.  As
he was usually rather careless of his personal safety, and rarely known
to put on his armour when going for such purposes into the trenches, it
was remarked with some surprise, on this occasion, that he ordered his
page to bring his, accoutrements, and that he armed himself cap-a pie
before leaving his quarters.  Nevertheless, before he had reached the
redoubt, a bullet from the town struck him between the fold of his morion
and the edge of his buckler and he fell dead without uttering a sound.

Here again was a great loss to the king's service.  La Motte, of a noble
family in Burgundy, had been educated in the old fierce traditions of the
Spanish system of warfare in the Netherlands, and had been one of the
very hardest instruments that the despot could use for his bloody work.
He had commanded a company of horse at the famous battle of St. Quintin,
and since that opening event in Philip's reign he had been unceasingly--
engaged in the Flemish wars.  Alva made him a colonel of a Walloon
regiment; the grand commander Requesena appointed him governor of
Gravelines.  On the whole he had been tolerably faithful to his colours;
having changed sides but twice.  After the pacification of Ghent he swore
allegiance to the States-General, and assisted in the bombardment of the
citadel of that place.  Soon afterwards he went over to Don John of
Austria, and surrendered to him the town and fortress of Gravelines, of
which he then continued governor in the name of the king.  He was
fortunate in the accumulation of office and of money; rather unlucky in
his campaigning.  He was often wounded in action, and usually defeated
when commanding in chief.  He lost an arm at the siege of Sluy's, and had
now lost his life almost by an accident.  Although twice married he left
no children to inherit his great estates, while the civil and military
offices left vacant by his death were sufficient to satisfy the claims of
five aspiring individuals.  The Count of Varax succeeded him as general
of artillery; but it was difficult to find a man to replace La Motte,
possessing exactly the qualities which had made that warrior so valuable
to his king.  The type was rapidly disappearing, and most fortunately
for humanity, if half the stories told of him by grave chroniclers,
accustomed to discriminate between history and gossip, are to be
believed.  He had committed more than one cool homicide.  Although not
rejoicing in the same patronymic as his Spanish colleague of Friesland,
he too was ready on occasion to perform hangman's work.  When sergeant-
major in Flanders, he had himself volunteered--so ran the chronicle--
to do execution on a poor wretch found guilty of professing the faith of
Calvin; and, with his own hands, had prepared a fire of straw, tied his
victim to the stake, and burned him to cinders.  Another Netherlander
for the name crime of heresy had been condemned to be torn to death by
horses.  No one could be found to carry out the sentence.  The soldiers
under La Motte's command broke into mutiny rather than permit themselves
to be used for such foul purposes; but the ardent young sergeant-major
came forward, tied the culprit by the arms and legs to two horses, and
himself whipped them to their work till it was duly accomplished.  Was it
strange that in Philip's reign such energy should be rewarded by wealth,
rank, and honour?  Was not such a labourer in the vineyard worthy of his
hire?

Still another eminent chieftain in the king's service disappeared at this
time--one who, although unscrupulous and mischievous enough in his day,
was however not stained by any suspicion of crimes like these.  Count
Charles Mansfeld, tired of governing his decrepit parent Peter Ernest,
who, since the appointment of Fuentes, had lost all further chance of
governing the Netherlands, had now left Philip's service and gone to the
Turkish wars.  For Amurath III., who had died in the early days of the
year, had been succeeded by a sultan as warlike as himself.  Mahomet
III., having strangled his nineteen brothers on his accession, handsomely
buried them in cypress coffins by the side of their father, and having
subsequently sacked and drowned ten infant princes posthumously born to
Amurath, was at leisure to carry the war through Transylvania and
Hungary, up to the gates of Vienna, with renewed energy.  The Turk,
who could enforce the strenuous rules of despotism by which all
secundogenitures and collateral claimants in the Ottoman family were
thus provided for, was a foe to be dealt with seriously.  The power of
the Moslems at that day was a full match for the holy Roman Empire.  The
days were far distant when the grim Turk's head was to become a mockery
and a show; and when a pagan empire, born of carnage and barbarism, was
to be kept alive in Europe when it was ready to die, by the collective
efforts of Christian princes.  Charles Mansfeld had been received with
great enthusiasm at the court of Rudolph, where he was created a prince
of the Empire, and appointed to the chief command of the Imperial armies
under the Archduke Matthias.  But his warfare was over.  At the siege of
Gran he was stricken with sickness and removed to Comorn, where he
lingered some weeks.  There, on the 24th August, as he lay half-dozing on
his couch, he was told that the siege was at last successful; upon which
he called for a goblet of wine, drained it eagerly, and then lay resting
his head on his hand, like one absorbed in thought.  When they came to
arouse him from his reverie they found that he was dead.  His father
still remained superfluous in the Netherlands, hating and hated by
Fuentes; but no longer able to give that governor so much annoyance as
during his son's life-time the two had been able to create for Alexander
Farnese.  The octogenarian was past work and past mischief now; but there
was one older soldier than he still left upon the stage, the grandest
veteran in Philip's service, and now the last survivor, except the
decrepit Peter Ernest, of the grim commanders of Alva's school.
Christopher Mondragon--that miracle of human endurance, who had been
an old man when the great duke arrived in the Netherlands--was still
governor of Antwerp citadel, and men were to speak of him yet once
more before he passed from the stage.

I return from this digression to the siege of Dourlens.  The death of La
Motte made no difference in the plans of Fuentes.  He was determined to
reduce the place preparatively to more important operations.  Bouillon
was disposed to relieve it, and to that end had assembled a force of
eight thousand men within the city of Amiens.  By midsummer the Spaniards
had advanced with their mines and galleries close to the walls of the
city.  Meantime Admiral Villars, who had gained so much renown by
defending Rouen against Henry IV., and who had subsequently made such an
excellent bargain with that monarch before entering his service, arrived
at Amiens.  On the 24th July an expedition was sent from that city
towards Dourlens.  Bouillon and St. Pol commanded in person a force of
six hundred picked cavalry.  Pillars and Sanseval each led half as many,
and there was a supporting body of twelve hundred musketeers.  This
little army convoyed a train of wagons, containing ammunition and other
supplies for the beleaguered town.  But Fuentes, having sufficiently
strengthened his works, sallied forth with two thousand infantry, and a
flying squadron of Spanish horse, to intercept them.  It was the eve of
St. James, the patron saint of Spain, at the sound, of whose name as a
war-cry so many battle-fields had been won in the Netherlands, so many
cities sacked, so many wholesale massacres perpetrated.  Fuentes rode in
the midst of his troops with the royal standard of Spain floating above
him. On the other hand Yillars, glittering in magnificent armour and
mounted on a superbly caparisoned charger came on, with his three hundred
troopers, as if about to ride a course in a tournament.  The battle which
ensued was one of the most bloody for the numbers engaged, and the
victory one of the most decisive recorded in this war.  Villars charged
prematurely, furiously, foolishly.  He seemed jealous of Bouillon, and
disposed to show the sovereign to whom he had so recently given his
allegiance that an ancient Leaguer and Papist was a better soldier for
his purpose than the most grizzled Huguenot in his army.  On the other
hand the friends of Villars accused the duke of faintheartedness, or at
least of an excessive desire to save himself and his own command.  The
first impetuous onset of the admiral was successful, and he drove half-
a-dozen companies of Spaniards before him.  But he had ventured too far
from his supports.  Bouillon had only intended a feint, instead of a
desperate charge; the Spaniards were rallied, and the day was saved by
that cool and ready soldier, Carlos Coloma.  In less than an hour the
French were utterly defeated and cut to pieces.  Bouillon escaped to
Amiens with five hundred men; this was all that was left of the
expedition.  The horse of Villars was shot under him and the admiral's
leg was broken as he fell.  He was then taken prisoner by two lieutenants
of Carlos Coloma; but while these warriors were enjoying,
by anticipation, the enormous ransom they should derive from so
illustrious a captive, two other lieutenants in the service of Marshal de
Rosnes came up and claimed their share in the prize.  While the four were
wrangling, the admiral called out to them in excellent Spanish not to
dispute, for he had money enough to satisfy them all.  Meantime the
Spanish commissary--general of cavalry, Contreras, came up, rebuked this
unseemly dispute before the enemy had been fairly routed, and, in order
to arrange the quarrel impartially, ordered his page to despatch De
Villars on the spot.  The page, without a word, placed his arquebus to
the admiral's forehead and shot him dead.

So perished a bold and brilliant soldier, and a most unscrupulous
politician.  Whether the cause of his murder was mere envy on the part
of the commissary at having lost a splendid opportunity for prize-money,
or hatred to an ancient Leaguer thus turned renegade, it is fruitless
now to enquire.

Villars would have paid two hundred thousand crowns for his ransom, so
that the assassination was bad as a mercantile speculation; but it was
pretended by the friends of Contreras that rescue was at hand.  It is
certain, however, that nothing was attempted by the French to redeem
their total overthrow.  Count Belin was wounded and fell into the hands
of Coloma.  Sanseval was killed; and a long list of some of the most
brilliant nobles in France was published by the Spaniards as having
perished on that bloody field.  This did not prevent a large number of
these victims, however, from enjoying excellent health for many long
years afterwards, although their deaths have been duly recorded in
chronicle from that day to our own times.

But Villars and Sanseval were certainly slain, and Fuentes sent their
bodies, with a courteous letter, to the Duke of Nevers, at Amiens, who
honoured them with a stately funeral.

There was much censure cast on both Bouillon and Villars respectively
by the antagonists of each chieftain; and the contest as to the cause of
the defeat was almost as animated as the skirmish itself.  Bouillon was
censured for grudging a victory to the Catholics, and thus leaving the
admiral to his fate.  Yet it is certain that the Huguenot duke himself
commanded a squadron composed almost entirely of papists.  Villars, on
the other hand, was censured for rashness, obstinacy, and greediness for
distinction; yet it is probable that Fuentes might have been defeated had
the charges of Bouillon been as determined and frequent as were those of
his colleague.  Savigny de Rosnes, too, the ancient Leaguer, who
commanded under Fuentes, was accused of not having sufficiently followed
up the victory, because unwilling that his Spanish friends should
entirely trample upon his own countrymen.  Yet there is no doubt whatever
that De Rosnes was as bitter an enemy to his own country as the most
ferocious Spaniard of them all.  It has rarely been found in civil war
that the man who draws his sword against his fatherland, under the banner
of the foreigner, is actuated by any lingering tenderness for the nation
he betrays; and the renegade Frenchman was in truth the animating spirit
of Fuentes during the whole of his brilliant campaign.  The Spaniard's
victories were, indeed, mainly attributable to the experience, the
genius, and the rancour of De Rosnes.

But debates over a lost battle are apt to be barren.  Meantime Fuentes,
losing no time in controversy, advanced upon the city of Dourlens, was
repulsed twice, and carried it on the third assault, exactly one week
after the action just recounted.  The Spaniards and Leaguers, howling
"Remember Ham!"  butchered without mercy the garrison and all the
citizens, save a small number of prisoners likely to be lucrative.  Six
hundred of the townspeople and two thousand five hundred French soldiers
were killed within a few hours.  Well had Fuentes profited by the
relationship and tuition of Alva!

The Count of Dinant and his brother De Ronsoy were both slain, and two or
three hundred thousand florins were paid in ransom by those who escaped
with life.  The victims were all buried outside of the town in one vast
trench, and the effluvia bred a fever which carried off most of the
surviving inhabitants.  Dourlens became for the time a desert.

Fuentes now received deputies with congratulations from the obedient
provinces, especially from Hainault, Artois, and Lille.  He was also
strongly urged to attempt the immediate reduction of Cambray, to which
end those envoys were empowered to offer contributions of four hundred
and fifty thousand florins and a contingent of seven thousand infantry.
Berlaymont, too, bishop of Tournay and archbishop of Cambray, was ready
to advance forty thousand florins in the same cause.

Fuentes, in the highest possible spirits at his success, and having just
been reinforced by Count Bucquoy with a fresh Walloon regiment of fifteen
hundred foot and with eight hundred and fifty of the mutineers from
Tirlemont and Chapelle, who were among the choicest of Spanish veterans,
was not disposed to let the grass grow under his feet.  Within four days
after the sack of Dourlens he broke up his camp, and came before Cambray
with an army of twelve thousand foot and nearly four thousand horse.  But
before narrating the further movements of the vigorous new governor-
general, it is necessary to glance at the military operations in the
eastern part of the Netherlands and upon the Rhine.

The States-General had reclaimed to their authority nearly all that
important region lying beyond the Yssel--the solid Frisian bulwark of the
republic--but there were certain points nearer the line where Upper and
Nether Germany almost blend into one, which yet acknowledged the name of
the king.  The city of Groenlo, or Grol, not a place of much interest or
importance in itself, but close to the frontier, and to that destined
land of debate, the duchies of Cleves, Juliers, and Berg, still retained
its Spanish garrison.  On the 14th July Prince Maurice of Nassau came
before the city with six thousand infantry, some companies of cavalry,
and sixteen pieces of artillery.  He made his approaches in form, and
after a week's operations he fired three volleys, according to his
custom, and summoned the place to capitulate.  Governor Jan van Stirum
replied stoutly that he would hold the place for God and the king to the
last drop of his blood.  Meantime there was hope of help from the
outside.

Maurice was a vigorous young commander, but there was a man to be dealt
with who had been called the "good old Mondragon" when the prince was in
his cradle; and who still governed the citadel of Antwerp, and was still
ready for an active campaign.

Christopher Mondragon was now ninety-two years old.  Not often in the
world's history has a man of that age been capable of personal,
participation in the joys of the battlefield, whatever natural reluctance
veterans are apt to manifest at relinquishing high military control.

But Mondragon looked not with envy but with admiration on the growing
fame of the Nassau chieftain, and was disposed, before he himself left
the stage, to match himself with the young champion.

So soon as he heard of the intended demonstration of Maurice against
Grol, the ancient governor of Antwerp collected a little army by throwing
together all the troops that could be spared from the various garrisons
within his command.  With two Spanish regiments, two thousand Swiss, the
Walloon troops of De Grisons, and the Irish regiment of Stanley--in all
seven thousand foot and thirteen hundred horse--Mondragon marched
straight across Brabant and Gelderland to the Rhine.  At Kaiserworth he
reviewed his forces, and announced his intention of immediately crossing
the river.  There was a murmur of disapprobation among officers and men
at what they considered the foolhardy scheme of mad old Mondragon.  But
the general had not campaigned a generation before, at the age of sixty-
nine, in the bottom of the sea, and waded chin-deep for six hours long of
an October night, in the face of a rising tide from the German Ocean and
of an army of Zeelanders, to be frightened now at the summer aspect of
the peaceful Rhine.

The wizened little old man, walking with difficulty by the aid of a
staff, but armed in proof, with plumes waving gallantly from his iron
headpiece, and with his rapier at his side, ordered a chair to be brought
to the river's edge.  Then calmly seating himself in the presence of his
host, he stated that he should not rise from that chair until the last
man had crossed the river.  Furthermore, he observed that it was not only
his purpose to relieve the city of Grol, but to bring Maurice to an
action, and to defeat him, unless he retired.  The soldiers ceased to
murmur, the pontoons were laid, the, river was passed, and on the 25th
July, Maurice, hearing of the veteran's approach, and not feeling safe
in his position, raised the siege of the city.  Burning his camp and
everything that could not be taken with him on his march, the prince came
in perfect order to Borkelo, two Dutch miles from Grol.  Here he occupied
himself for some time in clearing the country of brigands who in the
guise of soldiers infested that region and made the little cities of
Deutecom, Anholt, and Heerenberg unsafe.  He ordered the inhabitants of
these places to send out detachments to beat the bushes for his cavalry,
while Hohenlo was ordered to hunt the heaths and wolds thoroughly with
packs of bloodhounds until every man and beast to be found lurking in
those wild regions should be extirpated.  By these vigorous and cruel,
but perhaps necessary, measures the brigands were at last extirpated, and
honest people began to sleep in their beds.

On the 18th August Maurice took up a strong position at Bislich, not
far from Wesel, where the River Lippe empties itself into the Rhine.
Mondragon, with his army strengthened by reinforcements from garrisons
in Gelderland, and by four hundred men brought by Frederic, van den Berg
from Grol, had advanced to a place called Walston in den Ham, in the
neighbourhood of Wesel.  The Lippe flowed between the two hostile forces.
Although he had broken up his siege, the prince was not disposed to
renounce his whole campaign before trying conclusions with his veteran
antagonist.  He accordingly arranged an ambush with much skill, by means
of which he hoped to bring on a general engagement and destroy Mondragon
and his little army.

His cousin and favourite lieutenant, Philip Nassau, was entrusted with
the preliminaries.  That adventurous commander, with a picked force of
seven hundred cavalry, moved quietly from the camp on the evening of the
1st September.  He took with him his two younger brothers, Ernest and
Lewis Gunther, who, as has been seen, had received the promise of the
eldest brother of the family, William Lewis, that they should be employed
from time to time in any practical work that might be going, forward.
Besides these young gentlemen, several of the most famous English and
Dutch commanders were on, the expedition; the brothers Paul and Marcellus
Bax, Captains Parker, Cutler, and Robert Vere, brother of Sir Francis,
among the number.

Early in the morning of the 2nd September the force crossed the Lippe,
according to orders, keeping a pontoon across the stream to secure their
retreat.

They had instructions thus to feel the enemy at early dawn, and, as he
was known to have foraging parties out every morning along the margin of
the river, to make a sudden descent upon their pickets, and to capture
those companies before they could effect their escape or be reinforced.
Afterwards they were to retreat across the Lippe, followed, as it was
hoped would be the case, by the troops: of Mondragon, anxious to punish
this piece of audacity.  Meantime Maurice with five thousand infantry,
the rest of his cavalry, and several pieces of artillery, awaited their
coming, posted behind some hills in the neighbourhood of Wesel.

The plot of the young commander was an excellent one, but the ancient
campaigner on the other side of the river had not come all the way from
his comfortable quarters in Antwerp to be caught napping on that
September morning.  Mondragon had received accurate information from his
scouts as to what was going on in the enemy's camp; and as to the exact
position of Maurice.  He was up long before daybreak--"the good old
Christopher"--and himself personally arranged a counter-ambush.  In the
fields lying a little back from the immediate neighbourhood of, the Lippe
he posted the mass of his cavalry, supported by a well-concealed force of
infantry.  The pickets on the stream and the foraging companies were left
to do their usual work as if nothing were likely to happen.

Philip Nassau galloped cheerfully forward; according to the well-
concerted plan, sending Cutler and Marcellus Bax with a handful of
troopers to pounce upon the enemy's pickets.  When those officers got to
the usual foraging ground they, came upon a much larger cavalry force
than they had looked for; and, suspecting something wrong; dashed back--
again to give information to Count Philip.  That impatient commander,
feeling sure of his game unless this foolish delay should give the
foraging companies time to, escape; ordered an immediate advance with his
whole cavalry force: The sheriff of Zallant was ordered to lead the way.
He objected that the pass, leading through a narrow lane and opening by a
gate into an open field, was impassable for more than two troopers
abreast; and that the enemy was in force beyond.  Philips scorning these
words of caution, and exclaiming that seventy-five lancers were enough to
put fifty carabineers to rout; put on his casque, drew his sword; and
sending his brother Lewis to summon Kinski and Donck; dashed into the
pass, accompanied by the two counts and, a couple of other nobles. The
sheriff, seeing this, followed him at full gallop; and after him came the
troopers of Barchon, of Du Bois, and of Paul Bax; riding single file but
in much disorder.  When they had all entered inextricably into the lane,
with the foremost of the lancers already passing through the gate, they
discovered the enemy's cavalry and infantry drawn up in force upon the
watery, heathery pastures beyond.  There was at once a scene of
confusion.   To use lances was impossible, while they were all struggling
together through the narrow passage offering themselves an easy prey to
the enemy as they slowly emerged into the gelds.  The foremost defended
themselves with sabre and pistol as well as they could.  The hindmost did
their best to escape, and rode for their lives to the other side of the
river.  All trampled upon each other and impeded each other's movements.
There was a brief engagement, bloody, desperate, hand to hand, and many
Spaniards fell before the entrapped Netherlanders.  But there could not
be a moment's doubt as to the issue.  Count Philip went down in the
beginning of the action, shot through the body by an arquebus, discharged
so close to him that his clothes were set on fire.  As there was no water
within reach the flames could be extinguished at last only by rolling him
over, and over, wounded as he was, among the sand and heather.  Count
Ernest Solms was desperately wounded at the same time.  For a moment both
gentlemen attempted to effect their escape by mounting on one horse, but
both fell to the ground exhausted and were taken prisoners.  Ernest
Nassau was also captured.  His young brother, Lewis Gunther, saved
himself by swimming the river.  Count Kinski was mortally wounded.
Robert Vere, too, fell into the enemy's hands, and was afterwards
murdered in cold blood.  Marcellus Bax, who had returned to the field by
a circuitous path, still under the delusion that he was about handsomely
to cut off the retreat of the foraging companies, saved himself and a
handful of cavalry by a rapid flight, so soon as he discovered the enemy
drawn up in line of battle.  Cutler and Parker were equally fortunate.
There was less than a hundred of the States' troops killed, and it is
probable that a larger number of the Spaniards fell.  But the loss of
Philip Nassau, despite the debauched life and somewhat reckless valour.
of that soldier, was a very severe one to the army and to his family.
He was conveyed to Rheinberg, where his wounds were dressed.  As he lay
dying he was courteously visited by Mondragon, and by many other Spanish
officers, anxious to pay their respects to so distinguished and warlike a
member of an illustrious house.  He received them with dignity, and
concealed his physical agony so as to respond to their conversation as
became a Nassau.  His cousin, Frederic van den Berg, who was among the
visitors, indecently taunted him with his position; asking him what he
had expected by serving the cause of the Beggars.  Philip turned from him
with impatience and bade him hold his peace.  At midnight he died.

William of Orange and his three brethren had already laid down their
lives for the republic, and now his eldest brother's son had died in the
same cause.  "He has carried the name of Nassau with honour into the
grave," said his brother Lewis William, to their father.  Ten others of
the house, besides many collateral relations, were still in arms for
their adopted country.  Rarely in history has a single noble race so
entirely identified itself with a nation's record in its most heroic
epoch as did that of Orange-Nassau with the liberation of Holland.

Young Ernest Solms, brother of Count Everard, lay in the same chamber
with Philip Nassau, and died on the following day.  Their bodies were
sent by Mondragon with a courteous letter to Maurice at Bisslich.  Ernest
Nassau was subsequently ransomed for ten thousand florins.

This skirmish on the Lippe has no special significance in a military
point of view, but it derives more than a passing interest, not only from
the death of many a brave and distinguished soldier, but for the
illustration of human vigour triumphing, both physically and mentally,
over the infirmities of old age, given by the achievement of Christopher
Mondragon.  Alone he had planned his expedition across the country from
Antwerp, alone he had insisted on crossing the Rhine, while younger
soldiers hesitated; alone, with his own active brain and busy hands, he
had outwitted the famous young chieftain of the Netherlands, counteracted
his subtle policy, and set the counter-ambush by which his choicest
cavalry were cut to pieces, and one of his bravest generals slain.  So
far could the icy blood of ninety-two prevail against the vigour of
twenty-eight.

The two armies lay over against each other, with the river between them,
for some days longer, but it was obvious that nothing further would be
attempted on either side.  Mondragon had accomplished the object for
which he had marched from Brabant.  He had, spoiled the autumn campaign
of Maurice, and, was, now disposed to return before winter to, his own
quarters.  He sent a trumpet accordingly to his antagonist, begging him,
half in jest, to have more consideration for his infirmities than to keep
him out in his old age in such foul weather, but to allow him the
military honour of being last to break up camp.  Should Maurice consent
to move away, Mondragon was ready to pledge himself not to pursue him,
and within three days to leave his own entrenchments.

The proposition was not granted, and very soon afterwards the Spaniard,
deciding to retire, crossed the Rhine on the 11th October.  Maurice made
a slight attempt at pursuit, sending Count William Lewis with some
cavalry, who succeeded in cutting off a few wagons.  The army, however,
returned safely, to be dispersed into various garrisons.

This was Mondragon's last feat of, arms.  Less than three months
afterwards, in Antwerp citadel, as the veteran was washing his hands
previously to going to the dinner-table, he sat down and died.  Strange
to say, this man--who had spent almost a century on the battlefield, who
had been a soldier in nearly every war that had been waged in any part of
Europe during that most belligerent age, who had come an old man to the
Netherlands before Alva's arrival, and had ever since been constantly and
personally engaged in the vast Flemish tragedy which had now lasted well
nigh thirty years--had never himself lost a drop of blood.  His battle-
fields had been on land and water, on ice, in fire, and at the bottom of
the sea, but he had never received a wound.  Nay, more; he had been blown
up in a fortress--the castle of Danvilliers in Luxembourg, of which he
was governor--where all perished save his wife and himself, and, when
they came to dig among the ruins, they excavated at last the ancient
couple, protected by the framework of a window in the embrasure of which
they had been seated, without a scratch or a bruise.  He was a Biscayan
by descent, but born in Medina del Campo.  A strict disciplinarian, very
resolute and pertinacious, he had the good fortune to be beloved by his
inferiors, his equals, and his superiors.  He was called the father of
his soldiers, the good Mondragon, and his name was unstained by any of
those deeds of ferocity which make the chronicles of the time resemble
rather the history of wolves than of men.  To a married daughter, mother
of several children, he left a considerable fortune.

Maurice broke up his camp soon after the departure of his antagonist, and
paused for a few days at Arnheim to give honourable burial to his cousin
Philip and Count Solms.  Meantime Sir Francis Vere was detached, with
three regiments, which were to winter in Overyssel, towards Weerd castle,
situate at a league's distance from Ysselsburg, and defended by a
garrison of twenty-six men under Captain Pruys.  That doughty commandant,
on being summoned to surrender, obstinately refused.  Vere, according to
Maurice's orders, then opened with his artillery against the place, which
soon capitulated in great panic and confusion.  The captain demanded the
honours of war.  Vere told him in reply that the honours of war were
halters for the garrison who had dared to defend such a hovel against
artillery.  The twenty-six were accordingly ordered to draw black and
white straws.  This was done, and the twelve drawing white straws were
immediately hanged; the thirteenth receiving his life on consenting to
act as executioner for his comrades.  The commandant was despatched first
of all.  The rope broke, but the English soldiers held him under the
water of the ditch until he was drowned.  The castle was then thoroughly
sacked, the women being sent unharmed to Ysselsburg.

Maurice then shipped the remainder of his troops along the Rhine and Waal
to their winter quarters and returned to the Hague.  It was the feeblest
year's work yet done by the stadholder.

Meantime his great ally, the Huguenot-Catholic Prince of Bearne, was
making a dashing, and, on the whole, successful campaign in the heart of
his own kingdom.  The constable of Castile, Don Ferdinando de Velasco,
one of Spain's richest grandees and poorest generals, had been sent with
an army of ten thousand men to take the field in Burgundy against the man
with whom the great Farnese had been measuring swords so lately, and with
not unmingled success, in Picardy.  Biron, with a sudden sweep, took
possession of Aussone, Autun, and Beaune, but on one adventurous day
found himself so deeply engaged with a superior force of the enemy in the
neighbourhood of Fontaine Francaise, or St. Seine, where France's great
river takes its rise, as to be nearly cut off and captured.  But Henry
himself was already in the field, and by one of those mad, reckless
impulses which made him so adorable as a soldier and yet so profoundly
censurable as a commander-in-chief, he flung himself, like a young
lieutenant, with a mere handful of cavalry, into the midst of the fight,
and at the imminent peril of his own life succeeded in rescuing the
marshal and getting off again unscathed.  On other occasions Henry said
he had fought for victory, but on that for dear life; and, even as in the
famous and foolish skirmish at Aumale three years before, it was absence
of enterprise or lack of cordiality on the part of his antagonists, that
alone prevented a captive king from being exhibited as a trophy of
triumph for the expiring League.

But the constable of Castile was not born to cheer the heart of his
prudent master with such a magnificent spectacle.  Velasco fell back to
Gray and obstinately refused to stir from his entrenchments, while Henry
before his eyes laid siege to Dijon.  On the 28th June the capital of
Burgundy surrendered to its sovereign, but no temptations could induce
the constable to try the chance of a battle.  Henry's movements in the
interior were more successful than were the operations nearer the
frontier, but while the monarch was thus cheerfully fighting for his
crown in France, his envoys were winning a still more decisive campaign
for him in Rome.

D'Ossat and Perron had accomplished their diplomatic task with consummate
ability, and, notwithstanding the efforts and the threats of the Spanish
ambassador and the intrigues of his master, the absolution was granted.
The pope arose early on the morning of the 5th August, and walked
barefoot from his palace of Mount Cavallo to the church of Maria
Maggiore, with his eyes fixed on the ground, weeping loudly and praying
fervently.  He celebrated mass in the church, and then returned as he
went, saluting no one on the road and shutting himself up in his palace
afterwards.  The same ceremony was performed ten days later on the
festival of our Lady's Ascension.  In vain, however, had been the
struggle on the part of his Holiness to procure from the ambassador the
deposition of the crown of France in his hands, in order that the king
might receive it back again as a free gift and concession from the chief
pontiff.  Such a triumph was not for Rome, nor could even the publication
of the Council of Trent in France be conceded except with a saving clause
"as to matters which could not be put into operation without troubling
the repose of the kingdom."  And to obtain this clause the envoys
declared "that they had been obliged to sweat blood and water."

On the 17th day of September the absolution was proclaimed with great
pomp and circumstance from the gallery of St. Peter's, the holy father
seated on the highest throne of majesty, with his triple crown on has
head, and all his cardinals and bishops about him in their most effulgent
robes.

The silver trumpets were blown, while artillery roared from the castle
of St. Angelo, and for two successive nights Rome was in a blaze of
bonfires and illumination, in a whirl of bell-ringing, feasting, and
singing of hosannaha.  There had not been such a merry-making in the
eternal city since the pope had celebrated solemn thanksgiving for the
massacre of St. Bartholomew.  The king was almost beside himself with
rapture when the great news reached him, and he straightway wrote
letters, overflowing with gratitude and religious enthusiasm, to the
pontiff and expressed his regret that military operations did not allow
him to proceed at once to Rome in person to kiss the holy father's feet.


The narrative returns to Fuentes, who was left before the walls of
Cambray.

That venerable ecclesiastical city; pleasantly seated amid gardens,
orchards, and green pastures, watered, by the winding Scheld, was well
fortified after the old manner, but it was especially defended and
dominated by a splendid pentagonal citadel built by Charles V.  It was
filled with fine churches, among which the magnificent cathedral was
pre-eminent, and with many other stately edifices.  The population was
thrifty, active, and turbulent, like that of all those Flemish and
Walloon cities which the spirit of mediaeval industry had warmed for a
time into vehement little republics.

But, as has already been depicted in these pages, the Celtic element had
been more apt to receive than consistent to retain the generous impress
which had once been stamped on all the Netherlands.  The Walloon
provinces had fallen away from their Flemish sisters and seemed likely to
accept a permanent yoke, while in the territory of the united States, as
John Baptist Tassis was at that very moment pathetically observing in a
private letter to Philip, "with the coming up of a new generation
educated as heretics from childhood, who had never heard what the word
king means, it was likely to happen at last that the king's memory, being
wholly forgotten nothing would remain in the land but heresy alone."
From this sad fate Cambray had been saved.  Gavre d'Inchy had seventeen
years before surrendered the city to the Duke of Alencon during that
unlucky personage's brief and base career in the Netherlands, all, that
was left of his visit being the semi-sovereignty which the notorious
Balagny had since that time enjoyed, in the archiepiscopal city.  This
personage, a natural son of Monluc, Bishop of Valence, and nephew of the,
distinguished Marshal Monluci was one of the most fortunate and the most
ignoble of all the soldiers of fortune who had played their part at this
epoch in the Netherlands.  A poor creature himself, he had a heroine for
a wife.  Renee, the sister of Bussy d'Amboise, had vowed to unite herself
to a man who would avenge the assassination of her brother by the Count
Montsoreau?  Balagny readily agreed to perform the deed, and accordingly
espoused the high-born dame, but it does not appear that he ever wreaked
her vengeance on the murderer.  He had now governed Cambray until the
citizens and the whole countryside were galled and exhausted by his
grinding tyranny, his inordinate pride, and his infamous extortions.
His latest achievement had been to force upon his subjects a copper
currency bearing the nominal value of silver, with the same blasting
effects which such experiments in political economy are apt to produce
on princes and peoples.  He had been a Royalist, a Guisist, a Leaguer,
a Dutch republican, by turns, and had betrayed all the parties, at whose
expense he had alternately filled his coffers.  During the past year he
had made up his mind--like most of the conspicuous politicians and
campaigners of France--that the moribund League was only fit to be
trampled upon by its recent worshippers, and he had made accordingly one
of the very best bargains with Henry IV. that had yet been made, even at
that epoch of self-vending grandees.

Henry, by treaty ratified in August, 1594, had created him Prince of
Cambray and Marshal of France, so that the man who had been receiving
up to that very moment a monthly subsidy of seven thousand two hundred
dollars from the King of Spain was now gratified with a pension to about
the same yearly amount by the King of France.  During the autumn Henry
had visited Cambray, and the new prince had made wondrous exhibitions of
loyalty to the sovereign whom he had done his best all his life to
exclude from his kingdom.  There had been a ceaseless round of
tournaments, festivals, and masquerades in the city in honour of the
Huguenot chieftain, now changed into the most orthodox and most
legitimate of monarchs, but it was not until midsummer of the present
year that Balagny was called on to defend his old possessions and his new
principality against a well-seasoned army and a vigorous commander.
Meanwhile his new patron was so warmly occupied in other directions that
it might be difficult for him to send assistance to the beleaguered city.

On the 14th August Fuentes began his siege operations.  Before the
investment had been completed the young Prince of Rhetelois, only fifteen
years of age, son of the Duke of Nevers, made his entrance into the city
attended by thirty of his father's archers.  De Vich, too, an experienced
and faithful commander, succeeded in bringing four or five hundred
dragoons through the enemy's lines.  These meagre reinforcements were all
that reached the place; for, although the States-General sent two or
three thousand Scotchmen and Zeelanders, under Justinus of Nassau, to
Henry, that he might be the better enabled to relieve this important
frontier city, the king's movements were not sufficiently prompt to turn
the force to good account Balagny was left with a garrison of three
thousand French and Walloons in the city, besides five hundred French in
the fortress.

After six weeks steady drawing of parallels and digging of mines Fuentes
was ready to open his batteries.  On the 26th September, the news, very
much exaggerated, of Mondragon's brilliant victory near Wessel, and of
the deaths of Philip Nassau and Ernest Solms, reached the Spanish camp.
Immense was the rejoicing.  Triumphant salutes from eighty-seven cannon
and many thousand muskets shook the earth and excited bewilderment and
anxiety within the walls of the city.  Almost immediately afterwards a
tremendous cannonade was begun and so vigorously sustained that the
burghers, and part of the garrison, already half rebellious with hatred
to Balagny, began loudly to murmur as the balls came flying into their
streets.  A few days later an insurrection broke out.  Three thousand
citizens, with red flags flying, and armed to the teeth were discovered
at daylight drawn up in the market place.  Balagny came down from the
citadel and endeavoured to calm the tumult, but was received with
execrations.  They had been promised, shouted the insurgents, that
every road about Cambray was to swarm with French soldiers under their
formidable king, kicking the heads of the Spaniards in all directions.
And what had they got? a child with thirty archers, sent by his father,
and half a man at the head of four hundred dragoons.  To stand a siege
under such circumstances against an army of fifteen thousand Spaniards,
and to take Balagny's copper as if it were gold, was more than could be
asked of respectable burghers.

The allusion to the young prince Rhetelois and to De Vich, who had lost a
leg in the wars, was received with much enthusiasm.  Balagny, appalled at
the fury of the people, whom he had so long been trampling upon while
their docility lasted, shrank back before their scornful denunciations
into the citadel.

But his wife was not appalled.  This princess had from the beginning of
the siege showed a courage and an energy worthy of her race.  Night and
day she had gone the rounds of the ramparts, encouraging and directing
the efforts of the garrison.  She had pointed batteries against the
enemy's works, and, with her own hands, had fired the cannon.  She now
made her appearance in the market-place, after her husband had fled, and
did her best to assuage the tumult, and to arouse the mutineers to a
sense of duty or of shame.  She plucked  from her bosom whole handfuls
of gold which she threw among the bystanders, and she was followed by a
number of carts filled with sacks of coin ready to be exchanged for the
debased currency.

Expressing contempt for the progress made by the besieging army, and for
the, slight impression so far produced upon the defences of the city, she
snatched a pike from a soldier and offered in person to lead the garrison
to the breach.  Her audience knew full well that this was no theatrical
display, but that the princess was ready as the boldest warrior to lead
a forlorn hope or to repel the bloodiest assault.  Nor, from a military
point of view, was their situation desperate.  But their hatred and scorn
for Balagny could not be overcome by any passing sentiment of admiration
for his valiant though imperious wife.  No one followed her to the
breach.  Exclaiming that she at least would never surrender, and that
she would die a sovereign princess rather than live a subject, Renee de
Balagny retained to the citadel.

The town soon afterwards capitulated, and as the Spanish soldiers, on
entering, observed the slight damage that had been caused by their
batteries, they were most grateful to the faint-hearted or mutinous
condition by which they had been spared the expense of an assault.

The citadel was now summoned to surrender; and Balagny agreed, in case he
should not be relieved within six days, to accept what was considered
honourable terms.  It proved too late to expect succour from Henry, and
Balagny, but lately a reigning prince, was fain to go forth on the
appointed day and salute his conqueror.  But the princess kept her vow.
She had done her best to defend her dominions and to live a sovereign,
and now there was nothing left her but to die.  With bitter reproaches on
her husband's pusillanimity, with tears and sobs of rage and shame, she
refused food, spurned the idea of capitulation, and expired before the
9th of October.

On that day a procession moved out of the citadel gates.  Balagny,
with a son of eleven years of age, the Prince of Rhetelois, the Commander
De Vich; and many other distinguished personages, all magnificently
attired, came forth at the head of what remained of the garrison.  The
soldiers, numbering thirteen hundred foot and two hundred and forty
horse, marched with colours flying, drums beating, bullet in mouth, and
all the other recognised palliatives of military disaster.  Last of all
came a hearse, bearing the coffin of the Princess of Cambray.  Fuentes
saluted the living leaders of the procession, and the dead heroine; with
stately courtesy, and ordered an escort as far as Peronne.

Balagny met with a cool reception from Henry at St. Quintin, but
subsequently made his peace, and espoused the sister of the king's
mistress, Gabrielle d'Estrees.  The body of Gavre d'Inchy, which had been
buried for years, was dug up and thrown into a gutter.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Deal with his enemy as if sure to become his friend
Mondragon was now ninety-two years old
More catholic than the pope
Octogenarian was past work and past mischief
Sacked and drowned ten infant princes
Strangled his nineteen brothers on his accession




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v67
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 68, 1595-1596



CHAPTER XXXII.

     Archduke Cardinal Albert appointed governor of the Netherlands--
     Return of Philip William from captivity--His adherence to the King
     of Spain--Notice of the Marquis of Varambon, Count Varax, and other
     new officers--Henry's communications with Queen Elizabeth--Madame de
     Monceaux--Conversation of Henry with the English ambassador--
     Marseilles secured by the Duke of Guise--The fort of Rysbank taken
     by De Roane Calais in the hands of the Spanish--Assistance from
     England solicited by Henry--Unhandsome conditions proposed by
     Elizabeth--Annexation of Calais to the obedient provinces--Pirates
     of Dunkirk--Uneasiness of the Netherlanders with regard to the
     designs of Elizabeth--Her protestations of sincerity--Expedition of
     Dutch and English forces to Spain--Attack on the Spanish war-ships--
     Victory of the allies--Flag of the Republic planted on the fortress
     of Cadiz--Capitulation of the city--Letter of Elizabeth to the Dutch
     Admirals--State of affairs in France--Proposition of the Duke of
     Montpensier for the division of the kingdom--Successes of the
     Cardinal Archduke in Normandy--He proceeds to Flanders--Siege and
     capture of Hulat--Projected alliance against Spain--Interview of De
     Sancy with Lord Burghley--Diplomatic conference at Greenwich--
     Formation of a league against Spain--Duplicity of the treaty--
     Affairs in Germany--Battle between the Emperor and the Grand Turk--
     Endeavours of Philip to counteract the influence of the league--His
     interference in the affairs of Germany--Secret intrigue of Henry
     with Spain--Philip's second attempt at the conquest of England.

Another governor-general arrived in the early days of the year 1596, to
take charge of the obedient provinces.  It had been rumoured for many
months that Philip's choice was at last fixed upon the Archduke Cardinal
Albert, Archbishop of Toledo, youngest of the three surviving brothers,
of the Emperor Rudolph, as the candidate for many honours.  He was to
espouse the Infanta, he was to govern the Netherlands, and, as it was
supposed, there were wider and wilder schemes for the aggrandizement of
this fortunate ecclesiastic brooding in the mind of Philip than yet had
seen the light.

Meantime the cardinal's first care was to unfrock himself.  He had also
been obliged to lay down the most lucrative episcopate in Christendom,
that of Toledo, the revenues of which amounted to the enormous sum of
three hundred thousand dollars a year.  Of this annual income, however,
he prudently reserved to himself fifty thousand dollars, by contract with
his destined successor.

The cardinal reached the Netherlands before the end of January.  He
brought with him three thousand Spanish infantry, and some companies of
cavalry, while his personal baggage was transported on three hundred and
fifty mules.  Of course there was a triumphal procession when, on the
11th February, the new satrap entered the obedient Netherlands, and there
was the usual amount of bell-ringing, cannon-firing, trumpet-blowing,
with torch-light processions, blazing tar-barrels, and bedizened
platforms, where Allegory, in an advanced state of lunacy, performed its
wonderful antics.  It was scarcely possible for human creatures to bestow
more adulation, or to abase themselves more thoroughly, than the honest
citizens of Brussels had so recently done in honour of the gentle, gouty
Ernest, but they did their best.  That mythological conqueror and demigod
had sunk into an unhonoured grave, despite the loud hosannaha sung to him
on his arrival in Belgica, and the same nobles, pedants, and burghers
were now ready and happy to grovel at the feet of Albert.  But as it
proved as impossible to surpass the glories of the holiday which had been
culled out for his brother, so it would be superfluous now to recall the
pageant which thus again delighted the capital.

But there was one personage who graced this joyous entrance whose
presence excited perhaps more interest than did that of the archduke
himself.  The procession was headed by three grandees riding abreast.
There was the Duke of Aumale, pensionary of Philip, and one of the last
of the Leaguers, who had just been condemned to death and executed in
effigy at Paris, as a traitor to his king and country; there was the
Prince of Chimay, now since the recent death of his father at Venice
become Duke of Arschot; and between the two rode a gentleman forty-two
years of age, whose grave; melancholy features--although wearing a
painful expression of habitual restraint and distrust suggested, more
than did those of the rest of his family, the physiognomy of William
the Silent to all who remembered that illustrious rebel.

It was the eldest son of the great founder of the Dutch republic.  Philip
William, Prince of Orange, had at last, after twenty-eight years of
captivity in Spain, returned to the Netherlands, whence he had been
kidnapped while a school boy at Louvain, by order of the Duke of Alva.
Rarely has there been a more dreary fate, a more broken existence than
his.  His almost life-long confinement, not close nor cruel, but strict
and inexorable, together with the devilish arts of the Jesuits, had
produced nearly as blighting an effect upon his moral nature as a closer
dungeon might have done on his physical constitution.  Although under
perpetual arrest in Madrid, he had been allowed to ride and to hunt, to
go to mass, and to enjoy many of the pleasures of youth.  But he had been
always a prisoner, and his soul--a hopeless captive--could no longer be
liberated now that the tyrant, in order to further his own secret
purposes; had at last released his body from gaol.  Although the eldest-
born of his father, and the inheritor of the great estates of Orange and
of Buren, he was no longer a Nassau except in name.  The change wrought
by the pressure of the Spanish atmosphere was complete.  All that was
left of his youthful self was a passionate reverence for his father's
memory, strangely combined with a total indifference to all that his
father held dear, all for which his father had laboured his whole
lifetime, and for which his heart's blood had been shed.  On being at
last set free from bondage he had been taken to the Escorial, and
permitted to kiss the hand of the king--that hand still reeking with his
father's murder.  He had been well received by the Infante and the
Infanta, and by the empress-mother, daughter of Charles V., while the
artistic treasures of the palace and cloister were benignantly pointed
out to him.  It was also signified to him that he was to receive the
order of the Golden Fleece, and to enter into possession of his paternal
and maternal estates.  And Philip William had accepted these conditions
as if a born loyal subject of his Most Catholic Majesty.

Could better proof be wanting that in that age religion was the only
fatherland, and that a true papist could sustain no injury at the hands
of his Most Catholic Majesty.  If to be kidnapped in boyhood, to be
imprisoned during a whole generation of mankind, to be deprived of vast
estates, and to be made orphan by the foulest of assassinations, could
not engender resentment against, the royal, perpetrator of these crimes
in the bosom of his victim, was it strange that Philip should deem
himself, something far, more than man, and should placidly accept the
worship rendered to him by inferior beings, as to the holy impersonation
of Almighty Wrath?

Yet there is no doubt that the prince had a sincere respect for his
father, and had bitterly sorrowed at his death.  When a Spanish officer,
playing chess with him, in prison, had ventured to speak lightly of that
father, Philip William had seized him bodily, thrown him from the window,
and thus killed him on the spot.  And when on his arrival in Brussels it
was suggested to him by President Riehardat that it was the king's
intention to reinstate him in the possession of his estates, but that a
rent-charge of eighteen thousand florins a year was still to be paid from
them; to the heirs of Balthazar Gerard, his father's assassin, he flamed
into a violent rage, drew his poniard, and would have stabbed the
president; had not the bystanders forcibly inteferred.  In consequence of
this refusal--called magnanimous by contemporary writers--to accept his
property under such conditions, the estates were detained from him for a
considerable time longer.  During the period of his captivity he had been
allowed an income of fifteen thousand livres; but after his restoration
his household, gentlemen, and servants alone cost him eighty thousand
livres annually.  It was supposed that the name of Orange-Nassau might
now be of service to the king's designs in the Netherlands.  Philip
William had come by way of Rome, where he had been allowed to kiss the
pope's feet and had received many demonstrations of favour, and it was
fondly thought that he would now prove an instrument with which king and
pontiff might pipe back the rebellious republic to its ancient
allegiance.  But the Dutchmen and Frisians were deaf.  They had tasted
liberty too long, they had dealt too many hard blows on the head of regal
and sacerdotal despotism, to be deceived by coarse artifices.  Especially
the king thought that something might be done with Count Hohenlo.  That
turbulent personage having recently married the full sister of Philip
William, and being already at variance with Count Maurice, both for
military and political causes, and on account of family and pecuniary
disputes, might, it was thought, be purchased by the king, and perhaps
a few towns and castles in the united Netherlands might be thrown into
the bargain.  In that huckstering age, when the loftiest and most valiant
nobles of Europe were the most shameless sellers of themselves, the most
cynical mendicants for alms and the most infinite absorbers of bribes in
exchange for their temporary fealty; when Mayenne, Mercoeur, Guise,
Pillars, Egmont, and innumerable other possessors of ancient and
illustrious names alternately and even simultaneously drew pensions from
both sides in the great European conflict, it was not wonderful that
Philip should think that the boisterous Hohenlo might be bought as well
as another.  The prudent king, however, gave his usual order that nothing
was to be paid beforehand, but that the service was to be rendered first;
and the price received afterwards.

The cardinal applied himself to the task on his first arrival, but was
soon obliged to report that he could make but little progress in the
negotiation.

The king thought, too, that Heraugiere, who had commanded the memorable
expedition against Breda, and who was now governor of that stronghold,
might be purchased, and he accordingly instructed the cardinal to make
use of the Prince of Orange in the negotiations to be made for that
purpose.  The cardinal, in effect, received an offer from Heraugiere in
the course of a few months not only to surrender Breda, without previous
recompense, but likewise to place Gertruydenberg, the governor of which
city was his relative, in the king's possession.  But the cardinal was
afraid of a trick, for Heraugiere was known to be as artful as he was
brave, and there can be little doubt that the Netherlander was only
disposed to lay an ambush for the governor-general.

And thus the son of William the Silent made his reappearance in the
streets of Brussels, after twenty-eight years of imprisonment, riding in
the procession of the new viceroy.  The cardinal-archduke came next, with
Fuentes riding at his left hand.  That vigorous soldier and politician
soon afterwards left the Netherlands to assume the government of Milan.

There was a correspondence between the Prince of Orange and the States-
General, in which the republican authorities after expressing themselves
towards him with great propriety, and affectionate respect, gave him
plainly but delicately to understand that his presence at that time in
the United Provinces would neither be desirable, nor, without their
passports, possible.  They were quite aware of the uses to which the king
was hoping to turn their reverence for the memory and the family of the
great martyr, and were determined to foil such idle projects on the
threshold.

The Archduke Albert, born on 3rd of November, 1560, was now in his
thirty-sixth year.  A small, thin, pale-faced man, with fair hair, and
beard, commonplace features, and the hereditary underhanging Burgundian
jaw prominently developed, he was not without a certain nobility of
presence.  His manners were distant to haughtiness and grave to
solemnity.  He spoke very little and very slowly.  He had resided long in
Spain, where he had been a favourite with his uncle--as much as any man
could be a favourite with Philip--and he had carefully formed himself on
that royal model.  He looked upon the King of Spain as the greatest,
wisest, and best of created beings, as the most illustrious specimen of
kingcraft ever yet vouchsafed to the world.  He did his best to look
sombre and Spanish, to turn his visage into a mask; to conceal his
thoughts and emotions, not only by the expression of his features but by
direct misstatements of his tongue, and in all things to present to the
obedient Flemings as elaborate a reproduction of his great prototype as
copy can ever recall inimitable original.  Old men in the Netherlands;
who remembered in how short a time Philip had succeeded, by the baleful
effect of his personal presence, in lighting up a hatred which not the
previous twenty years of his father's burnings, hangings, and butcherings
in those provinces had been able to excite, and which forty subsequent
years of bloodshed had not begun to allay, might well shake their heads
when they saw this new representative of Spanish authority.  It would
have been wiser--so many astute politicians thought--for Albert to take
the Emperor Charles for his model, who had always the power of making his
tyranny acceptable to the Flemings, through the adroitness with which he
seemed to be entirely a Fleming himself.

But Albert, although a German, valued himself on appearing like a
Spaniard.  He was industrious, regular in his habits, moderate in eating
and drinking, fond of giving audiences on business.  He spoke German,
Spanish, and Latin, and understood French and Italian.  He had at times
been a student, and, especially, had some knowledge of mathematics.  He
was disposed to do his duty--so far as a man can do his duty, who
imagines himself so entirely lifted above his fellow creatures as to owe
no obligation except to exact their obedience and to personify to them
the will of the Almighty.  To Philip and the Pope he was ever faithful.
He was not without pretensions to military talents, but his gravity,
slowness, and silence made him fitter to shine in the cabinet than in the
field.  Henry IV., who loved his jests whether at his own expense or that
of friend or foe, was wont to observe that there were three things which
nobody would ever believe, and which yet were very true; that Queen
Elizabeth deserved her title of the, throned vestal, that he was himself
a good Catholic, and that Cardinal Albert was a good general.  It is
probable that the assertions were all equally accurate.

The new governor did not find a very able group of generals or statesmen
assembled about him to assist in the difficult task which he had
undertaken.  There were plenty of fine gentlemen, with ancient names and
lofty pretensions, but the working men in field or council had mostly
disappeared.  Mondragon, La Motte, Charles Mansfeld, Frank Verdugo were
all dead.  Fuentes was just taking his departure for Italy.  Old Peter
Ernest was a cipher; and his son's place was filled by the Marquis of
Varambon; as principal commander in active military operations.  This was
a Burgundian of considerable military ability, but with an inordinate
opinion of himself and of his family.  "Accept the fact that his lineage
is the highest possible, and that he has better connections than those of
anybody else in the whole world, and he will be perfectly contented,"
said a sharp, splenetic Spaniard in the cardinal's confidence.  "'Tis a
faithful and loyal cavalier, but full of impertinences."  The brother of
Varambon, Count Varax, had succeeded la Motte as general of artillery,
and of his doings there was a, tale ere long to be told.  On the whole,
the best soldier in the archduke's service for the moment was the
Frenchman Savigny de Rosne, an ancient Leaguer, and a passionate hater of
the Bearnese, of heretics, and of France as then constituted.  He had
once made a contract with Henry by which he bound himself to his service;
but after occasioning a good deal of injury by his deceitful attitude,
he had accepted a large amount of Spanish dollars, and had then thrown
off the mask and proclaimed himself the deadliest foe of his lawful
sovereign.  "He was foremost," said Carlos Coloma, "among those who were
successfully angled for by the Commander Moreo with golden hooks."
Although prodigiously fat, this renegade was an active and experienced
campaigner; while his personal knowledge of his own country made his
assistance of much value to those who were attempting its destruction.

The other great nobles, who were pressing themselves about the new
viceroy with enthusiastic words of welcome, were as like to give him
embarrassment as support.  All wanted office, emoluments, distinctions,
nor could, much dependence be placed on the ability or the character of
any of them.  The new duke of Arschot had in times past, as prince of
Chimay, fought against the king, and had even imagined himself a
Calvinist, while his wife was still a determined heretic.  It is true
that she was separated from her husband.  He was a man of more quickness
and acuteness than his father had been, but if possible more mischievous
both to friend and foe; being subtle, restless, intriguing, fickle;
ambitious, and deceitful.  The Prince of Orange was considered a man of
very ordinary intelligence, not more than half witted, according to Queen
Elizabeth, and it was probable that the peculiar circumstances of his
life would extinguish any influence that he might otherwise have attained
with either party.  He was likely to affect a neutral position and, in
times of civil war, to be neutral is to be nothing.

Arenberg, unlike the great general on the Catholic side who had made
the name illustrious in the opening scenes of the mighty contest, was
disposed to quiet obscurity so far as was compatible with his rank.
Having inherited neither fortune nor talent with his ancient name, he
was chiefly occupied with providing for the wants of his numerous family.
A good papist, well-inclined and docile, he was strongly recommended for
the post of admiral, not because he had naval acquirements, but because
he had a great many children.  The Marquis of Havre, uncle to the Duke of
Arschot, had played in his time many prominent parts in the long
Netherland tragedy.  Although older than he was when Requesens and Don
John of Austria had been governors, he was not much wiser, being to the
full as vociferous, as false, as insolent, as self-seeking, and as
mischievous as in his youth.  Alternately making appeals to popular
passions in his capacity of high-born demagogue, or seeking crumbs of
bounty as the supple slave of his sovereign, he was not more likely to
acquire the confidence of the cardinal than he had done that of his
predecessors.

The most important and opulent grandee of all the provinces was the Count
de Ligne, who had become by marriage or inheritance Prince of Espinay,
Seneschal of Hainault, and Viscount of Ghent.  But it was only his
enormous estates that gave him consideration, for he was not thought
capable of either good or bad intentions.  He had, however, in times
past, succeeded in the chief object of his ambition, which was to keep
out of trouble, and to preserve his estates from confiscation.  His wife,
who governed him, and had thus far guided him safely, hoped to do so to
the end.  The cardinal was informed that the Golden Fleece would be all-
sufficient to keep him upon the right track.

Of the Egmonts, one had died on the famous field of Ivry, another was an
outlaw, and had been accused of participation in plots of assassination
against William of Orange; the third was now about the archduke's court,
and was supposed, to be as dull a man--as Ligne, but likely to be
serviceable so long as he could keep his elder brother out of his
inheritance.  Thus devoted to Church and King were the sons of the man
whose head Philip had taken off on a senseless charge of treason.  The
two Counts Van den Berg--Frederic and Herman--sons of the sister of
William the Silent, were, on the whole, as brave, efficient, and
trustworthy servants of the king and cardinal as were to be found in the
obedient, provinces.

The new governor had come well provided with funds, being supplied for
the first three-quarters of the year with a monthly: allowance of
1,100,000 florins.  For reasons soon to appear, it was not probable that
the States-General would be able very, soon to make a vigorous campaign,
and it was thought best for the cardinal to turn his immediate attention
to France.

The negotiations for, effecting an alliance offensive and defensive,
between the three powers most interested in opposing the projects of
Spain for universal empire, were not yet begun, and will be reserved for
a subsequent chapter.  Meantime there had been much informal discussion
and diplomatic trifling between France and England for the purpose of
bringing about a sincere co-operation of the two crowns against the Fifth
Monarchy--as it was much the fashion to denominate Philip's proposed
dominion.

Henry had suggested at different times to Sir Robert Sidney, during his
frequent presence in France as special envoy for the queen, the necessity
of such a step, but had not always found a hearty sympathy.  But as the
king began to cool in his hatred to Spain, after his declaration of war
against that power, it seemed desirable to Elizabeth to fan his
resentment afresh, and to revert to those propositions which had been so
coolly received when made.  Sir Harry Umton, ambassador from her Majesty,
was accordingly provided with especial letters on the subject from the
queen's own hand, and presented them early in the year at Coucy (Feb.
13, 1596).  No man in the world knew better the tone to adopt in his
communications with Elizabeth than did the chivalrous king.  No man knew
better than he how impossible it was to invent terms of adulation too
gross for her to accept as spontaneous and natural effusions, of the
heart.  He received the letters from the hands of Sir Henry, read them
with rapture, heaved a deep sigh, and exclaimed.  "Ah!  Mr. Ambassador,
what shall I say to you?  This letter of the queen, my sister, is full of
sweetness and affection.  I see that she loves me, while that I love her
is not to be doubted.  Yet your commission shows me the contrary, and
this proceeds from her, ministers.  How else can these obliquities stand
with her professions of love?  I am forced, as a king, to take a course
which, as Henry, her loving brother, I could never adopt."

They then walked out into the park, and the king fell into frivolous
discourse, on purpose to keep the envoy from the important subject which
had been discussed in the cabinet.  Sir Henry brought him back to
business, and insisted that there was no disagreement between her Majesty
and her counsellors, all being anxious to do what she wished.  The envoy,
who shared in the prevailing suspicions that Henry was about to make a
truce with Spain, vehemently protested against such a step, complaining
that his ministers, whose minds were distempered with jealousy,
were inducing him to sacrifice her friendship to a false and hollow
reconciliation with Spain.  Henry protested that his preference would be
for England's amity, but regretted that the English delays were so great,
and that such dangers were ever impending over his head, as to make it
impossible for him, as a king, to follow the inclinations of his heart.

They then met Madame de Monceaux, the beautiful Gabrielle, who was
invited to join in the walk, the king saying that she was no meddler in
politics, but of a tractable spirit.

This remark, in Sir Henry's opinion, was just, for, said he to Burghley,
she is thought incapable of affairs, and, very simple.

The duchess unmasked very graciously as the ambassador was presented;
but, said the splenetic diplomatist, "I took no pleasure in it, nor held
it any grace at all."  "She was attired in a plain satin gown," he
continued, "with a velvet hood to keep her from the weather, which became
her very ill.  In my opinion, she is altered very much for the worse, and
was very grossly painted."  The three walked together discoursing of
trifles, much to the annoyance of Umton.  At last, a shower forced the
lady into the house, and the king soon afterwards took the ambassador to
his cabinet.  "He asked me how I liked his mistress," wrote Sir Henry to
Burghley, "and I answered sparingly in her praise, and told him that if
without offence I might speak it, I had the picture of a far more
excellent mistress, and yet did her picture come far from the perfection
of her beauty."

"As you love me," cried the king, "show it me, if you have it about you!"

"I made some difficulty," continued Sir Henry, "yet upon his importunity
I offered it to his view very secretly, still holding it in my hand.  He
beheld it with passion and admiration, saying that I was in the right."
"I give in," said the king, "Je me rends."

Then, protesting that he had never seen such beauty all his life, he
kissed it reverently twice or thrice, Sir Henry still holding the
miniature firmly in his hand.

The king then insisted upon seizing the picture, and there was a charming
struggle between the two, ending in his Majesty's triumph.  He then told
Sir Henry that he might take his leave of the portrait, for he would
never give it up again for any treasure, and that to possess the favour
of the original he would forsake all the world.  He fell into many more
such passionate and incoherent expressions of rhapsody, as of one
suddenly smitten and spell-bound with hapless love, bitterly reproaching
the ambassador for never having brought him any answers to the many
affectionate letters which he had written to the queen, whose silence had
made him so wretched.  Sir Henry, perhaps somewhat confounded at being
beaten at his own fantastic game, answered as well as he could, "but I
found," said he, "that the dumb picture did draw on more speech and
affection from him than all my best arguments and eloquence.  This was
the effect of our conference, and, if infiniteness of vows and outward
professions be a strong argument of inward affection, there is good
likelihood of the king's continuance of amity with her Majesty; only I
fear lest his necessities may inconsiderately draw him into some
hazardous treaty with Spain, which I hope confidently it is yet in the
power of her Majesty to prevent."

The king, while performing these apish tricks about the picture of a lady
with beady black eyes, a hooked nose, black teeth, and a red wig, who was
now in the sixty-fourth year of her age, knew very well that the whole
scene would be at once repeated to the fair object of his passion by her
faithful envoy; but what must have been the opinion entertained of
Elizabeth by contemporary sovereigns and statesmen when such fantastic
folly could be rehearsed and related every day in the year!

And the king knew, after all, and was destined very soon to acquire proof
of it which there was no gainsaying, that the beautiful Elizabeth had
exactly as much affection for him as he had for her, and was as capable
of sacrificing his interests for her own, or of taking advantage of his
direct necessities as cynically and as remorselessly, as the King of
Spain, or the Duke of Mayenne, or the Pope had ever done.

Henry had made considerable progress in re-establishing his authority
over a large portion of the howling wilderness to which forty years of
civil war had reduced his hereditary kingdom.  There was still great
danger, however, at its two opposite extremities.  Calais, key to the
Norman gate of France, was feebly held; while Marseilles, seated in such
dangerous proximity to Spain on the one side, and to the Republic of
Genoa, that alert vassal of Spain, on the other, was still in the
possession of the League.  A concerted action was undertaken by means of
John Andrew Doria, with a Spanish fleet from Genoa on the outside and a
well-organised conspiracy from within, to carry the city bodily over to
Philip.  Had it succeeded, this great Mediterranean seaport would have
become as much a Spanish 'possession as Barcelona or Naples, and infinite
might have been the damage to Henry's future prospects in consequence.
But there was a man in Marseilles; Petrus Libertas by name, whose
ancestors had gained this wholesome family appellation by a successful
effort once made by them to rescue the little town of Calvi, in Corsica,
from the tyranny of Genoa.  Peter Liberty needed no prompting to
vindicate, on a fitting occasion, his right to his patronymic.  In
conjunction with men in Marseilles who hated oppression, whether of
kings, priests, or renegade republics, as much as he did, and with a
secret and well-arranged understanding with the Duke of Guise, who was
burning with ambition to render a signal benefit to the cause which he
had just espoused, this bold tribune of the people succeeded in stirring
the population to mutiny at exactly the right moment, and in opening the
gates of Marseilles to the Duke of Guise and his forces before it was
possible for the Leaguers to admit the fleet of Doria into its harbour.
Thus was the capital of Mediterranean France lost and won.  Guise gained
great favour in Henry's eyes; and with reason; for the son of the great
Balafre, who was himself the League, had now given the League the stroke
of mercy.  Peter Liberty became consul of Marseilles, and received a
patent of nobility.  It was difficult, however, for any diploma to confer
anything more noble upon him than the name which he hade inherited, and
to which he had so well established his right.

But while Henry's cause had thus been so well served in the south,
there was danger impending in the north.  The king had been besieging,
since autumn, the town of La Fere, an important military and strategic
position, which had been Farnese's basis of operations during his
memorable campaigns in France, and which had ever since remained in
the hands of the League.

The cardinal had taken the field with an army of fifteen thousand foot
and three thousand horse, assembled at Valenciennes, and after hesitating
some time whether, or not he should attempt to relieve La Fere, he
decided instead on a diversion.  In the second week of April; De Rosne
was detached at the head of four thousand men, and suddenly appeared
before Calais.  The city had been long governed by De Gordan, but this
wary and experienced commander had unfortunately been for two years dead.
Still more unfortunately, it had been in his power to bequeath, not
only his fortune, which was very large, but the government of Calais,
considered the most valuable command in France, to his nephew,
De Vidosan.  He had, however, not bequeathed to him his administrative
and military genius.

The fortress called the Risban, or Rysbank, which entirely governed the
harbour, and the possession of which made Calais nearly impregnable, as
inexhaustible supplies could thus be poured into it by sea, had fallen
into comparative decay.  De Gordan had been occupied in strengthening
the work, but since his death the nephew had entirely neglected the task.
On the land side, the bridge of Nivelet was the key to the place.  The
faubourg was held by two Dutch companies, under Captains Le Gros and
Dominique, who undertook to prevent the entrance of the archduke's
forces.  Vidosan, however; ordered these faithful auxiliaries into the
citadel.

De Rosne, acting with great promptness; seized both the bridge of Nivelet
and the fort of Rysbank by a sudden and well-concerted movement.  This
having been accomplished, the city was in his power, and, after
sustaining a brief cannonade, it surrendered.  Vidosan, with his
garrison, however, retired into the citadel, and it was agreed between,
himself and De Rosne that unless succour should be received from the
French king before the expiration of six days; the citadel should also
be-evacuated.

Meantime Henry, who was at Boulogne, much disgusted at this unexpected
disaster, had sent couriers to the Netherlands, demanding assistance of
the States-General and of the stadholder.  Maurice had speedily responded
to the appeal.  Proceeding himself to Zeeland, he had shipped fifteen
companies of picked troops from Middelburg, together with a flotilla
laden with munitions and provisions enough to withstand a siege of
several weeks.  When the arrangements were completed, he went himself on
board of a ship of war to take command of the expedition in person.  On
the 17th of April he arrived with his succours off the harbour of Calais,
and found to his infinite disappointment that the Rysbank fort was in the
hands of the enemy.  As not a vessel could pass the bar without almost
touching that fortress, the entrance to Calais was now impossible.  Had
the incompetent Vidosan heeded the advice of his brave Dutch officers;
the place might still have been saved, for it had surrendered in a panic
on the very day when the fleet of Maurice arrived off the port.

Henry had lost no time in sending, also, to his English allies for
succour.  The possession of Calais by the Spaniards might well seem
alarming to Elizabeth, who could not well forget that up to the time of
her sister this important position had been for two centuries an English
stronghold.  The defeat of the Spanish husband of an English queen had
torn from England the last trophies of the Black Prince, and now the
prize had again fallen into the hands of Spain; but of Spain no longer
in alliance, but at war, with England.  Obviously it was most dangerous
to the interests and to the safety of the English realm, that this
threatening position, so near the gates of London, should be in the hands
of the most powerful potentate in the world and the dire enemy of
England.  In response to Henry's appeal, the Earl of Essex was despatched
with a force of six thousand men--raised by express command of the queen
on Sunday when the people were all at church--to Dover, where shipping
was in readiness to transport the troops at once across the Channel.  At
the same time, the politic queen and some of her counsellors thought the
opening a good one to profit by the calamity of their dear ally,
Certainly it was desirable to prevent Calais from falling into the grasp
of Philip.  But it was perhaps equally desirable, now that the place
without the assistance of Elizabeth could no longer be preserved by
Henry, that Elizabeth, and not Henry, should henceforth be its possessor.
To make this proposition as clear to the French king as it seemed to the
English queen, Sir Robert Sidney was despatched in all haste to Boulogne,
even while the guns of De Rosne were pointed at Calais citadel, and while
Maurice's fleet, baffled by the cowardly surrender of the Risban, was on
its retreat from the harbour.

At two o'clock in the afternoon of the 21st of April, Sidney landed at
Boulogne.  Henry, who had been intensely impatient to hear from England,
and who suspected that the delay was boding no good to his cause, went
down to the strand to meet the envoy, with whom then and there he engaged
instantly in the most animated discourse.

As there was little time to be lost, and as Sidney on getting out of the
vessel found himself thus confronted with the soldier-king in person, he
at once made the demand which he had been sent across the Channel to
make.  He requested the king to deliver up the town and citadel of Calais
to the Queen of England as soon as, with her assistance, he should
succeed in recovering the place.  He assigned as her Majesty's reasons
for this peremptory summons that she would on no other terms find it in
her power to furnish the required succour.  Her subjects, she said, would
never consent to it except on these conditions.  It was perhaps not very
common with the queen to exhibit so much deference to the popular will,
but on this occasion the supposed inclinations of the nation furnished
her with an excellent pretext for carrying out her own.  Sidney urged
moreover that her Majesty felt certain of being obliged--in case she did
not take Calais into her own safe-keeping and protection--to come to the
rescue again within four or six months to prevent it once more from being
besieged, conquered, and sacked by the enemy.

The king had feared some such proposition as this, and had intimated as
much to the States' envoy, Calvaert, who had walked with him down to the
strand, and had left him when the conference began.  Henry was not easily
thrown from his equanimity nor wont to exhibit passion on any occasion,
least of all in his discussions with the ambassadors of England, but the
cool and insolent egotism of this communication was too much for him.

He could never have believed, he said in reply, that after the repeated
assurances of her Majesty's affection for him which he had received from
the late Sir Henry Umton in their recent negotiations, her Majesty would
now so discourteously seek to make her profit out of his misery.  He had
come to Boulogne, he continued, on the pledge given by the Earl of Essex
to assist him with seven or eight thousand men in the recovery of Calais.
If this after all should fail him--although his own reputation would be
more injured by the capture of the place thus before his eyes than if it
had happened in his absence--he would rather a hundred times endure the
loss of the place than have it succoured with such injurious and
dishonourable conditions.  After all, he said, the loss of Calais was
substantially of more importance to the queen than to himself.  To him
the chief detriment would be in the breaking up of his easy and regular
communications with his neighbours through this position, and especially
with her Majesty.  But as her affection for him was now proved to be so
slender as to allow her to seek a profit from his misfortune and
dishonour, it would be better for him to dispense with her friendship
altogether and to strengthen his connections with truer and more
honourable friends.  Should the worst come to the worst, he doubted not
that he should be able, being what he was and much more than he was of
old, to make a satisfactory arrangement with, the King of Spain.  He was
ready to save Calais at the peril of his life, to conquer it in person,
and not by the hands of any of his lieutenants; but having done so, he
was not willing--at so great a loss of reputation without and at so much
peril within--to deliver it to her Majesty or to any-one else.  He would
far rather see it fall into the hands of the Spaniards.

Thus warmly and frankly did Henry denounce the unhandsome proposition
made in the name of the queen, while, during his vehement expostulations,
Sidney grew red with shame, and did not venture to look the king for one
moment in the face.  He then sought to mitigate the effect of his demand
by intimating, with much embarrassment of demeanour, that perhaps her
Majesty would be satisfied with the possession of Calais for her own
life-time, and--as this was at once plumply refused--by the suggestion of
a pledge of it for the term of one year.  But the king only grew the more
indignant as the bargaining became more paltry, and he continued to heap
bitter reproaches upon the queen, who, without having any children or
known inheritor of her possessions, should nevertheless, be so desirous
of compassing his eternal disgrace and of exciting the discontent of his
subjects for the sake of an evanescent gain for herself.  At such a
price, he avowed, he had no wish to purchase her Majesty'a friendship.

After this explosion the conference became more amicable.  The English
envoy assured the king that there could be, at all events, no doubt of
the arrival of Essex with eight thousand men on the following Thursday
to assist in the relief of the citadel; notwithstanding the answer which,
he had received to the demand of her Majesty.

He furthermore expressed the strong desire which he felt that the king
might be induced to make a personal visit to the queen at Dover, whither
she would gladly come to receive him, so soon as Calais should have been
saved.  To this the king replied with gallantry, that it was one of the
things in the world that he had most at heart.  The envoy rejoined that
her Majesty would consider such a visit a special honour and favour.  She
had said that she could leave this world more cheerfully, when God should
ordain, after she had enjoyed two hours' conversation with his Majesty.

Sidney on taking his departure repeated the assurance that the troops
under Essex would arrive before Calais by Thursday, and that they were
fast marching to the English coast; forgetting, apparently, that, at the
beginning of the interview, he had stated, according to the queen's
instructions, that the troops had been forbidden to march until a
favourable answer had been returned by the king to her proposal.

Henry then retired to his headquarters for the purpose of drawing up
information for his minister in England, De Saucy, who had not yet been
received by the queen, and who had been kept in complete ignorance of
this mission of Sidney and of its purport.

While the king was thus occupied, the English envoy was left in the
company of Calvaert, who endeavoured, without much success, to obtain
from him the result of the conference which had just taken place.
Sidney was not to be pumped by the Dutch diplomatist, adroit as he
unquestionably was, but, so soon as the queen's ambassador was fairly
afloat again on his homeward track--which was the case within three hours
after his arrival at Boulogne--Calvaert received from the king a minute
account of the whole conversation.

Henry expressed unbounded gratitude to the States-General of the republic
for their prompt and liberal assistance, and he eagerly contrasted the
conduct of Prince Maurice--sailing forth in person so chivalrously to
his rescue--with the sharp bargainings and shortcomings of the queen.
He despatched a special messenger to convey his thanks to the prince,
and he expressed his hope to Calvaert that the States might be willing
that their troops should return to the besieged place under the command
of Maurice, whose, presence alone, as he loudly and publicly protested,
was worth four thousand men.

But it was too late.  The six days were rapidly passing, away.  The
governor of Boulogne, Campagnolo, succeeded, by Henry's command, in
bringing a small reinforcement of two or three hundred men into the
citadel of Calais during the night of the 22nd of April.  This devoted
little band made their way, when the tide was low, along the flats which
stretched between the fort of Rysbank and the sea.  Sometimes wading up
to the neck in water, sometimes swimming for their lives, and during a
greater part of their perilous, march clinging so close to the hostile
fortress as almost to touch its guns, the gallant adventurers succeeded
in getting into the citadel in time to be butchered with the rest of the
garrison on the following day.  For so soon as the handful of men had
gained admittance to the gates--although otherwise the aspect of affairs
was quite unchanged--the rash and weak De Vidosan proclaimed that the
reinforcements stipulated in his conditional capitulation having arrived,
he should now resume hostilities.  Whereupon he opened fire, upon the
town, and a sentry was killed.  De Rosne, furious, at what he considered
a breach of faith, directed a severe cannonade against the not very
formidable walls of the castle.  During the artillery engagement which
ensued the Prince of Orange, who had accompanied De Rosne to the siege,
had a very narrow escape.  A cannon-ball from the town took off the heads
of two Spaniards standing near him, bespattering him with their blood and
brains.  He was urged to retire, but assured those about him that he came
of too good a house to be afraid.  His courage was commendable, but it
seems not to have occurred to him that the place for his father's son was
not by the aide of the general who was doing the work of his father's
murderer.  While his brother Maurice with a fleet of twenty Dutch war-
ships was attempting in vain to rescue Calais from the grasp of the
Spanish king, Philip William of Nassau was looking on, a pleased and
passive spectator of the desperate and unsuccessful efforts at defence.
The assault was then ordered?  The-first storm was repulsed, mainly by
the Dutch companies, who fought in the breach until most of their numbers
were killed or wounded, their captains Dominique and Le Gros having both
fallen.  The next attack was successful, the citadel was carried; and the
whole garrison, with exception of what remained of the Hollanders and
Zeelanders, put to the sword.  De Vidosan himself perished.  Thus Calais
was once more a Spanish city, and was re-annexed to the obedient
provinces of Flanders.  Of five thousand persons, soldiers and citizens,
who had taken refuge in the castle, all were killed or reduced to
captivity.'

The conversion of this important naval position into a Spanish-Flemish
station was almost as disastrous to the republic as it was mortifying to
France and dangerous to England.  The neighbouring Dunkirk had long been
a nest of pirates, whence small, fast-sailing vessels issued, daily and
nightly, to prey indiscriminately upon the commerce of all nations.
These corsairs neither gave nor took quarter, and were in the habit,
after they had plundered their prizes, of setting them adrift, with the
sailors nailed to the deck or chained to the rigging; while the dfficers
were held for ransom.  In case the vessels themselves were wanted, the
crews were indiscriminately tossed overboard; while, on the ether hand,
the buccaneers rarely hesitated to blow up their own ships, when unable
to escape from superior force.  Capture was followed by speedy execution,
and it was but recently that one of these freebooters having been brought
into Rotterdam, the whole crew, forty-four in number, were hanged on the
day of their arrival, while some five and twenty merchant-captains held
for ransom by the pirates thus obtained their liberty.

And now Calais was likely to become a second and more dangerous sea-
robbers' cave than even Dunkirk had been.

Notwithstanding this unlucky beginning of the campaign for the three
allies, it was determined to proceed with a considerable undertaking
which had been arranged between England and the republic.  For the time,
therefore, the importunate demands of the queen for repayments by the
States of her disbursements during the past ten years were suspended.
It had, indeed, never been more difficult than at that moment for the
republic to furnish extraordinary sums of money.  The year 1595 had not
been prosperous.  Although the general advance in commerce, manufactures,
and in every department of national development had been very remark
able, yet there had recently been, for exceptional causes, an apparent
falling off; while, on the other hand, there had been a bad harvest in
the north of Europe.  In Holland, where no grain was grown, and which yet
was the granary of the world, the prices were trebled.  One hundred and
eight bushels (a last) of rye, which ordinarily was worth fifty florins,
now sold for one hundred and fifty florins, and other objects of
consumption were equally enhanced in value.  On the other hand, the
expenses of the war were steadily increasing, and were fixed for this
year at five millions of florins.  The republic, and especially the
States of Holland, never hesitated to tax heroically.  The commonwealth
had no income except that which the several provinces chose to impose
upon themselves in order to fill the quota assigned to them by the
States-General; but this defect in their political organization was not
sensibly felt so long as the enthusiasm for the war continued in full
force.  The people of the Netherlands knew full well that there was no
liberty for them without fighting, no fighting without an army, no army
without wages, and no wages without taxation; and although by the end of
the century the imposts had become so high that, in the language of that
keen observer, Cardinal Bentivoglio; nuncio at Brussels, they could
scarcely be imagined higher, yet, according to the same authority, they
were laid unflinchingly and paid by the people without a murmur.  During
this year and the next the States of Holland, whose proportion often
amounted to fifty per cent. of the whole contribution of the United
Provinces, and who ever set a wholesome example in taxation, raised the
duty on imports and all internal taxes by one-eighth, and laid a fresh
impost on such articles of luxury as velvets and satins, pleas and
processes.  Starch, too, became a source of considerable revenue.
With the fast-rising prosperity of the country luxury had risen likewise,
and, as in all ages and countries of the world of which there is record,
woman's dress signalized itself by extravagant and very often tasteless
conceptions.  In a country where, before the doctrine of popular
sovereignty had been broached in any part of the world by the most
speculative theorists, very vigorous and practical examples of democracy
had been afforded to Europe; in a country where, ages before the science
of political economy had been dreamed of, lessons of free trade on the
largest scale had been taught to mankind by republican traders
instinctively breaking in many directions through the nets by which
monarchs and oligarchs, guilds and corporations, had hampered the
movements of commerce; it was natural that fashion should instinctively
rebel against restraint.  The honest burgher's vrow of Middelburg or
Enkhuyzen claimed the right to make herself as grotesque as Queen
Elizabeth in all her glory.  Sumptuary laws were an unwholesome part of
feudal tyranny, and, as such, were naturally dropping into oblivion on
the free soil of the Netherlands.  It was the complaint therefore of
moralists that unproductive consumption was alarmingly increasing.
Formerly starch had been made of the refuse parts of corn, but now the
manufacturers of that article made use of the bloom of the wheat and
consumed as much of it as would have fed great cities.  In the little
village of Wormer the starch-makers used between three and four thousand
bushels a week.  Thus a substantial gentlewoman in fashionable array
might bear the food of a parish upon her ample bosom.  A single
manufacturer in Amsterdam required four hundred weekly bushels.  Such was
the demand for the stiffening of the vast ruffs, the wonderful head-gear,
the elaborate lace-work, stomachers and streamers, without which no lady
who respected herself could possibly go abroad to make her daily
purchases of eggs and poultry in the market-place.

"May God preserve us," exclaimed a contemporary chronicler, unreasonably
excited on the starch question, "from farther luxury and wantonness, and
abuse of His blessings and good gifts, that the punishment of Jeroboam,
which followed upon Solomon's fortunate reign and the gold-ships of Ophir
may not come upon us."

The States of Holland not confounding--as so often has been the case--
the precepts of moral philosophy with those of political economy, did
not, out of fear for the doom of Jeroboam, forbid the use of starch.
They simply laid a tax of a stiver a pound on the commodity, or about six
per cent, ad valorem; and this was a more wholesome way of serving the
State than by abridging the liberty of the people in the choice of
personal attire.  Meantime the preachers were left to thunder from their
pulpits upon the sinfulness of starched rues and ornamental top-knots,
and to threaten their fair hearers with the wrath to come, with as much
success as usually attends such eloquence.

There had been uneasiness in the provinces in regard to the designs of
the queen, especially since the States had expressed their inability to
comply in full with her demands for repayment.  Spanish emissaries had
been busily circulating calumnious reports that her Majesty was on the
eve of concluding a secret peace with Philip, and that it was her
intention to deliver the cautionary towns to the king.  The Government
attached little credence to such statements, but it was natural that
Envoy Caron should be anxious at their perpetual recurrence both in
England and in the provinces.  So, one day, he had a long conversation
with the Earl of Essex on the subject; for it will be recollected that
Lord Leicester had strenuously attempted at an earlier day to get
complete possession, not only of the pledged cities but of Leyden also,
in order to control the whole country.  Essex was aflame with indignation
at once, and, expressed himself with his customary recklessness.
He swore that if her Majesty were so far forsaken of God and so forgetful
of her own glory, as through evil counsel to think of making any treaty
with Spain without the knowledge of the States-General and in order to
cheat them, he would himself make the matter as public as it was possible
to do, and would place himself in direct opposition to such a measure, so
as to show the whole world that his heart and soul were foreign at least
to any vile counsel of the kind that might have been given to his
Sovereign.  Caron and Essex conversed much in this vein, and although the
envoy, especially requested him not to do so, the earl, who was not
distinguished, for his powers of dissimulation, and who suspected
Burleigh of again tampering, as he had often before tampered, with secret
agents of Philip, went straight to the queen with the story.  Next day,
Essex invited Caron to dine and to go with him after dinner to the queen.
This was done, and, so soon as the States' envoy was admitted to the
royal presence, her Majesty at once opened the subject.  She had heard,
she said, that the reports in question had been spread through the
provinces, and she expressed much indignation in regard to them.  She
swore very vehemently, as usual, and protested that she had better never
have been born than prove so miserable a princess as these tales would
make her.  The histories of England, she said, should never describe her
as guilty of such falsehood.  She could find a more honourable and
fitting means of making peace than by delivering up cities and
strongholds so sincerely and confidingly placed in her hands.  She hoped
to restore them as faithfully as they had loyally been entrusted to her
keeping.  She begged Caron to acquaint the States-General with these
asseverations; declaring that never since she had sent troops to the
Netherlands had she lent her ear to those who had made such underhand
propositions.  She was aware that Cardinal Albert had propositions to
make, and that he was desirous of inducing both the French king and,
herself to consent to a peace with Spain: but she promised, the States'
envoy solemnly before God to apprise him of any such overtures, so soon
as they should be made known to herself.

Much more in this strain, with her usual vehemence and mighty oaths, did
the great queen aver, and the republican envoy, to whom she was on this
occasion very gracious, was fain to believe in her sincerity.  Yet the
remembrance of the amazing negotiations between the queen's ministers and
the agents of Alexander Farnese, by which the invasion of the Armada had
been masked; could not but have left an uneasy feeling in the mind of
every Dutch statesman.  "I trust in God," said Caron, "that He may never
so abandon her as to permit her to do the reverse of what she now
protests with so much passion.  Should it be otherwise--which God forbid
--I should think that He would send such chastisement upon her and her
people that other princes would see their fate therein as in a mirror,
should they make and break such oaths and promises.  I tell you these
things as they occur, because, as I often feel uneasiness myself, I
imagine that my friends on the other side the water may be subject to the
same anxiety.  Nevertheless, beat the bush as I may, I can obtain no
better information than this which I am now sending you."

It had been agreed that for a time the queen should desist from her
demands for repayment--which, according to the Treaty of 1585, was to be
made only after conclusion of peace between Spain and the provinces, but
which Elizabeth was frequently urging on the ground that the States could
now make that peace when they chose--and in return for such remission the
republic promised to furnish twenty-four ships of war and four tenders
for a naval expedition which was now projected against the Spanish coast.
These war-ships were to be of four hundred, three hundred, and two
hundred tons-eight of each dimension--and the estimated expense of their
fitting out for five months was 512,796 florins.

Before the end of April, notwithstanding the disappointment occasioned
in the Netherlands by the loss of Calais, which the States had so
energetically striven to prevent, the fleet under Admiral John of
Duvenwoord, Seigneur of Warmond, and Vice-Admirals Jan Gerbrantz and
Cornelius Leusen, had arrived at Plymouth, ready to sail with their
English allies.  There were three thousand sailors of Holland and Zeeland
on board, the best mariners in the world, and two thousand two hundred
picked veterans from the garrisons of the Netherlands.  These land-troops
were English, but they belonged to the States' army, which was composed
of Dutch, German, Walloon, Scotch, and Irish soldiers, and it was a
liberal concession on the part of the republican Government to allow them
to serve on the present expedition.  By the terms of the treaty the queen
had no more power to send these companies to invade Spain than to
campaign against Tyr Owen in Ireland, while at a moment when the cardinal
archduke had a stronger and better-appointed army in Flanders than had
been seen for many years in the provinces, it was a most hazardous
experiment for the States to send so considerable a portion of their land
and naval forces upon a distant adventure.  It was also a serious blow to
them to be deprived for the whole season of that valiant and experienced
commander, Sir Francis Vere, the most valuable lieutenant, save Lewis
William, that Maurice had at his disposition.  Yet Vere was to take
command of this contingent thus sent to the coast of Spain, at the very
moment when the republican army ought to issue from their winter quarters
and begin active operations in the field.  The consequence of this
diminution of their strength and drain upon their resources was that the
States were unable to put an army in the field during the current year,
or make any attempt at a campaign.

The queen wrote a warm letter of thanks to Admiral Warmond for the
promptness and efficiency with which he had brought his fleet to the
place of rendezvous, and now all was bustle and preparation in the
English ports for the exciting expedition resolved upon.  Never during
Philip's life-time, nor for several years before his birth, had a hostile
foot trod the soil of Spain, except during the brief landing at Corunna
in 1590, and, although the king's beard had been well singed ten years
previously by Sir Francis Drake, and although the coast of Portugal had
still more recently been invaded by Essex and Vere, yet the present
adventure was on a larger scale, and held out brighter prospects of
success than any preceding expedition had done.  In an age when the line
between the land and sea service, between regular campaigners and
volunteers, between public and private warfare, between chivalrous
knights-errant and buccaneers, was not very distinctly drawn, there could
be nothing more exciting to adventurous spirits, more tempting to the
imagination of those who hated the Pope and Philip, who loved fighting,
prize-money, and the queen, than a foray into Spain.

It was time to return the visit of the Armada.  Some of the sea-kings
were gone.  Those magnificent freebooters, Drake and Hawkins, had just
died in the West Indies, and doughty Sir Roger Williams had left the
world in which he had bustled so effectively, bequeathing to posterity a
classic memorial of near a half century of hard fighting, written, one
might almost imagine, in his demi-pique saddle.  But that most genial,
valiant, impracticable, reckless, fascinating hero of romance, the Earl
of Essex--still a youth although a veteran in service--was in the spring-
tide of favour and glory, and was to command the land-forces now
assembled at Plymouth.  That other "corsair"--as the Spaniards called
him--that other charming and heroic shape in England's chequered
chronicle of chivalry and crime--famous in arts and arms, politics,
science, literature, endowed with so many of the gifts by which men
confer lustre on their age and country, whose name was already a part of
England's eternal glory, whose tragic destiny was to be her undying
shame--Raleigh, the soldier, sailor, scholar, statesman, poet, historian,
geographical discoverer, planter of empires yet unborn--was also present,
helping to organize the somewhat chaotic elements of which the chief
Anglo-Dutch enterprise for this year against--the Spanish world-dominion
was compounded.

And, again, it is not superfluous to recal the comparatively slender
materials, both in bulk and numbers, over which the vivid intelligence
and restless energy of the two leading Protestant powers, the Kingdom and
the Republic, disposed.  Their contest against the overshadowing empire,
which was so obstinately striving to become the fifth-monarchy of
history, was waged by land: and naval forces, which in their aggregate
numbers would scarce make a startling list of killed and wounded in a
single modern battle; by ships such that a whole fleet of them might be
swept out of existence with half-a-dozen modern broadsides; by weapons
which would seem to modern eyes like clumsy toys for children.  Such was
the machinery by which the world was to be lost and won, less than three
centuries ago.  Could science; which even in that age had made gigantic
strides out of the preceding darkness, have revealed its later miracles,
and have presented its terrible powers to the despotism which was seeking
to crush all Christendom beneath its feet, the possible result might have
been most tragical to humanity.  While there are few inventions in
morals, the demon Intellect is ever at his work, knowing no fatigue and
scorning contentment in his restless demands upon the infinite Unknown.
Yet moral truth remains unchanged, gradually through the ages extending
its influence, and it is only by conformity to its simple and, eternal
dictates that nations, like individuals, can preserve a healthful
existence.  In the unending warfare between right and wrong, between
liberty and despotism; Evil has the advantage of rapidly assuming many
shapes.  It has been well said that constant vigilance is the price of
liberty.  The tendency of our own times, stimulated by scientific
discoveries and their practical application, is to political
consolidation, to the absorption of lesser communities in greater; just
as disintegration was the leading characteristic of the darker ages.  The
scheme of Charlemagne to organize Europe into a single despotism was a
brilliant failure because the forces which were driving human society
into local and gradual reconstruction around various centres of
crystallization: were irresistible to any countervailing enginry which
the emperor had at his disposal.  The attempt of Philip, eight centuries
later, at universal monarchy, was frivolous, although he could dispose of
material agencies which in the hands of Charlemagne might have made the
dreams of Charlemagne possible.  It was frivolous because the rising
instinct of the age was for religious, political, and commercial freedom
in a far intenser degree than those who lived in that age were themselves
aware.  A considerable republic had been evolved as it were involuntarily
out of the necessities of the time almost without self-consciousness that
it was a republic, and even against the desire of many who were guiding
its destinies.  And it found itself in constant combination with two
monarchs, despotic at heart and of enigmatical or indifferent religious
convictions, who yet reigned over peoples, largely influenced by
enthusiasm for freedom.  Thus liberty was preserved for the world; but,
as the law of human progress would seem to be ever by a spiral movement,
it; seems strange to the superficial observer not prone to generalizing,
that Calvinism, which unquestionably was the hard receptacle in which the
germ of human freedom was preserved in various countries and at different
epochs, should have so often degenerated into tyranny.  Yet
notwithstanding the burning of Servetus at Geneva, and the hanging of
Mary Dyer at Boston, it is certain that France, England, the Netherlands,
and America, owe a large share of such political liberty as they have
enjoyed to Calvinism.  It may be possible for large masses of humanity to
accept for ages the idea of one infallible Church, however tyrannical but
the idea once admitted that there may be many churches; that what is
called the State can be separated from what is called the Church; the
plea of infallibility and of authority soon becomes ridiculous--a mere
fiction of political or fashionable quackery to impose upon the
uneducated or the unreflecting.

And now Essex, Raleigh and Howard, Vere, Warmond and Nassau were about to
invade the shores of the despot who sat in his study plotting to annex
England, Scotland, Ireland, France, the Dutch republic, and the German
empire to the realms of Spain, Portugal, Naples, Milan, and the Eastern
and Western Indies, over which he already reigned.

The fleet consisted of fifty-seven ships of war, of which twenty-four
were Dutch vessels under Admiral Warmond, with three thousand sailors of
Holland and Zeeland.  Besides the sailors, there was a force of six
thousand foot soldiers, including the English veterans from the
Netherlands under Sir Francis Vere.  There were also fifty transports
laden with ammunition and stores.  The expedition was under the joint
command of Lord High Admiral Howard and of the Earl of Essex.  Many noble
and knightly volunteers, both from England and the republic, were on
board, including, besides those already mentioned, Lord Thomas Howard,
son of the Duke of Norfolk, Sir John Wingfield, who had commanded at
Gertruydenburg, when it had been so treacherously surrendered to Farnese;
Count Lewis Gunther of Nassau, who had so recently escaped from the
disastrous fight with Mondragon in the Lippe, and was now continuing his
education according to the plan laid down for him by his elder brother
Lewis William; Nicolas Meetkerk, Peter Regesmortes, Don Christopher of
Portugal, son of Don Antonio, and a host of other adventurers.

On the last day of June the expedition arrived off Cadiz.  Next morning
they found a splendid Spanish fleet in the harbour of that city,
including four of the famous apostolic great galleons, St. Philip, St.
Matthew, St. Thomas, and St. Andrew, with twenty or thirty great war-
ships besides, and fifty-seven well-armed Indiamen, which were to be
convoyed on their outward voyage, with a cargo estimated at twelve
millions of ducats.

The St. Philip was the phenomenon of naval architecture of that day,
larger and stronger than any ship before known.  She was two thousand
tons burthen, carried eighty-two bronze cannon, and had a crew of twelve
hundred men.  The other three apostles carried each fifty guns and four
hundred men.  The armament of the other war-ships varied from fifty-two
to eighteen guns each.  The presence of such a formidable force might
have seemed a motive for discouragement, or at least of caution.  On the
contrary, the adventurers dashed at once upon their prey; thus finding a
larger booty than they had dared to expect.  There was but a brief
engagement.  At the outset a Dutch ship accidentally blew up, and gave
much encouragement to the Spaniards.  Their joy was but short-lived.  Two
of the great galleons were soon captured, the other two, the St. Philip
and the St. Thomas, were run aground and burned.  The rest of the war-
ships were driven within the harbour, but were unable to prevent a
landing of the enemy's forces.  In the eagerness of the allies to seize
the city, they unluckily allowed many of the Indiamen to effect their
escape through the puente del Zuazzo, which had not been supposed a
navigable passage for ships of such burthen.  Nine hundred soldiers under
Essex, and four hundred noble volunteers under Lewis Gunther of Nassau,
now sprang on shore, and drove some eleven hundred Spanish skirmishers
back within the gates of the city, or into a bastion recently raised to
fortify the point when the troops had landed.  Young Nassau stormed the
bulwark sword in hand, carried it at the first assault, and planted his
colours on its battlement.  It was the flag of William the Silent; for
the republican banner was composed of the family colours of the founder
of the new commonwealth.  The blazonry of the proscribed and assassinated
rebel waved at last defiantly over one of the chief cities of Spain.
Essex and Nassau and all the rest then entered the city.  There was
little fighting.  Twenty-five English and Hollanders were killed, and
about as many Spaniards.  Essex knighted about fifty gentlemen,
Englishmen and Hollanders, in the square of Cadiz for their gallantry.
Among the number were Lewis Gunther of Nassau, Admiral Warmond, and Peter
Regesmortes.  Colonel Nicolas Meetkerke was killed in the brief action,
and Sir John Wingfield, who insisted in prancing about on horseback
without his armour, defying the townspeople and neglecting the urgent
appeal of Sir Francis Vere, was also slain.  The Spanish soldiers,
discouraged by the defeat of the ships on which they had relied for
protection of the town, retreated with a great portion of the inhabitants
into the citadel.  Next morning the citadel capitulated without striking
a blow, although there, were six thousand able-bodied, well-armed men
within its walls.  It was one of the most astonishing panics ever
recorded.  The great fleet, making a third of the king's navy, the city
of Cadiz and its fortress, were surrendered to this audacious little
force, which had only arrived off the harbour thirty-six hours before.
The invaders had, however, committed a great mistake.  They had routed,
and, as it were, captured the Spanish galleons, but they had not taken
possession of them, such had been their eagerness to enter the city.  It
was now agreed that the fleet should be ransomed for two million ducats,
but the proud Duke of Medina Sidonia, who had already witnessed the
destruction of one mighty armada, preferred that these splendid ships
too should perish rather than that they should pay tribute to the enemy.
Scorning the capitulation of the commandant of the citadel, he ordered
the fleet to be set on fire.  Thirty-two ships, most of them vessels of
war of the highest class, were burned, with all their equipments.  Twelve
hundred cannon sunk at once to the bottom of the Bay of Cadiz, besides
arms for five or six thousand men.  At least one-third of Philip's
effective navy was thus destroyed.

The victors now sacked the city very thoroughly, but the results
were disappointing.  A large portion of the portable wealth of the
inhabitants, their gold and their jewelry, had been so cunningly
concealed that, although half a dozen persons were tortured till they
should reveal hidden treasures, not more than five hundred thousand
ducats worth of-plunder was obtained.  Another sum of equal amount
having been levied upon the citizens; forty notable personages; among
them eighteen ecclesiastical dignitaries, were carried off as hostages
for its payment.  The city was now set on fire by command of Essex in
four different quarters.  Especially the cathedral and other churches,
the convents and the hospitals, were burned.  It was perhaps not
unnatural: that both Englishmen and Hollanders should be disposed to
wreak a barbarous vengeance on everything representative of the Church
which they abhorred, and from which such endless misery had issued to
the, uttermost corners of their own countries.  But it is at any rate
refreshing to record amid these acts of pillage and destruction, in
which, as must ever be the case, the innocent and the lowly were made
to suffer for the crimes of crowned and mitred culprits, that not many
special acts of cruelty were committed upon individuals:

No man was murdered in cold blood, no woman was outraged.  The beautiful
city was left a desolate and blackened ruin, and a general levy of spoil
was made for the benefit of the victors, but there was no infringement
of the theory and practice of the laws of war as understood in that day
or in later ages.  It is even recorded that Essex ordered one of his
soldiers, who was found stealing a woman's gown, to be hanged on the
spot, but that, wearied by the intercession of an ecclesiastic of Cadiz,
the canon Quesada, he consented at last to pardon the marauder.

It was the earnest desire of Essex to hold Cadiz instead of destroying
it.  With three thousand men, and with temporary supplies from the fleet,
the place could be maintained against all comers; Holland and England
together commanding the seas.  Admiral Warmond and all the Netherlanders
seconded the scheme, and offered at once to put ashore from their vessels
food and munitions enough to serve two thousand men for two months.  If
the English admiral would do as much, the place might be afterwards
supplied without limit and held till doomsday, a perpetual thorn in
Philip's side.  Sir Francis Vere was likewise warmly in favour of the
project, but he stood alone.  All the other Englishmen opposed it as
hazardous, extravagant, and in direct contravention of the minute
instructions of the queen.  With a sigh or a curse for what he considered
the superfluous caution of his royal mistress, and the exaggerated
docility of Lord High Admiral Howard, Essex was fain to content himself
with the sack and the conflagration, and the allied fleet sailed away
from Cadiz.

On their way towards Lisbon they anchored off Faro, and landed a force,
chiefly of Netherlanders, who expeditiously burned and plundered the
place.  When they reached the neighbourhood of Lisbon, they received
information that a great fleet of Indiamen, richly laden, were daily
expected from the Flemish islands, as the Azores were then denominated.
Again Essex was vehemently disposed to steer at once for that station,
in order to grasp so tempting a prize; again he was strenuously supported
by the Dutch admiral and Yere, and again Lord Howard peremptorily
interdicted the plan.  It was contrary to his instructions and to his
ideas of duty, he said, to risk so valuable a portion of her Majesty's
fleet on so doubtful a venture.  His ships were not fitted for a winter's
cruise, he urged.  Thus, although it was the very heart of midsummer,
the fleet was ordered to sail homeward.  The usual result of a divided
command was made manifest, and it proved in the sequel that, had they
sailed for the islands, they would have pounced at exactly the right
moment upon an unprotected fleet of merchantmen, with cargoes valued at
seven millions of ducats.  Essex, not being willing to undertake the
foray to the Azores with the Dutch ships alone, was obliged to digest
his spleen as: best he could.  Meantime the English fleet bore away for
England, leaving Essex in his own ship, together with the two captured
Spanish galleons, to his fate.  That fate might, have been a disastrous
one, for his prizes were not fully manned, his own vessel was far from
powerful, and there were many rovers and cruisers upon the seas.  The
Dutch admiral, with all his ships, however, remained in company, and
safely convoyed him to Plymouth, where they arrived only a day or two
later than Howard and his fleet.  Warmond, who had been disposed to sail
up the Thames in order to pay his respects to the queen, was informed
that his presence would not be desirable but rather an embarrassment.
He, however, received the following letter from the hand of Elizabeth.

MONSIEUR DUYENWOORD,--The report made to me by the generals of our
fleet, just happily arrived from the coast of Spain, of the devoirs of
those who have been partakers in so, famous a victory, ascribes so much
of it to the valour, skill, and readiness exhibited by yourself and our
other friends from the Netherlands under your command, during the whole
course of the expedition, as to fill our mind with special joy and
satisfaction, and, with a desire to impart these feelings to you.  No
other means presenting themselves at this moment than that of a letter
(in some sense darkening the picture of the conceptions of our soul), we
are willing to make use of it while waiting for means more effectual.
Wishing thus to disburthen ourselves we find ourselves confused, not-
knowing where to begin, the greatness of each part exceeding the merit
of the other.  For, the vigour and promptness with which my lords the
States-General stepped into the enterprise, made us acknowledge that the
good favour, which we have always borne the United Provinces and the
proofs thereof which we have given in the benefits conferred by us upon
them, had not been ill-bestowed.  The valour, skill, and discipline
manifested by you in this enterprise show that you and your, whole nation
are worthy the favour and protection of princes against those who wish to
tyrannize over you.  But the honourableness and the valour shown by you,
Sir Admiral, towards our cousin the Earl of Essex on his return, when he
unfortunately was cut off from the fleet, and deep in the night was
deprived of all support, when you kept company with him and gave him
escort into the harbour of Plymouth, demonstrate on the one hand your
foresight in providing thus by your pains and patience against all
disasters, which through an accident falling upon one of the chiefs of
our armada might have darkened the great victory; and on the other hand
the fervour and fire of the affection which you bear us, increasing thus,
through a double bond, the obligations we are owing you, which is so
great in our hearts that we have felt bound to discharge a part of it by
means of this writing, which we beg you to communicate to the whole
company of our friends under your command; saying to them besides, that
they may feel assured that even as we have before given proof of our
goodwill to their fatherland, so henceforth--incited by their devoirs and
merits--we are ready to extend our bounty and affection in all ways which
may become a princess recompensing the virtues and gratitude of a nation
so worthy as yours.
                                        "ELIZABETH R.

"14th August, 1596."

This letter was transmitted by the admiral to the States-General; who,
furnished him with a copy of it, but enrolled the original in their
archives; recording as it did, in the hand of the great English queen,
so striking a testimony to the valour and the good conduct of
Netherlanders.

The results of this expedition were considerable, for the king's navy was
crippled, a great city was destroyed, and some millions of plunder had
been obtained.  But the permanent possession of Cadiz, which, in such
case, Essex hoped to exchange for Calais, and the destruction of the
fleet at the Azores--possible achievements both, and unwisely neglected
--would have been far more profitable, at least to England.  It was also
matter of deep regret that there was much quarrelling between the
Netherlanders and the Englishmen as to their respective share of the
spoils; the Netherlanders complaining loudly that they had been
defrauded.  Moreover the merchants of Middelburg, Amsterdam, and other
commercial cities of Holland and Zeeland were, as it proved, the real
owners of a large portion of the property destroyed or pillaged at Cadiz;
so that a loss estimated as high as three hundred thousand florins fell
upon those unfortunate traders through this triumph of the allies.

The internal consequences of the fall of Calais had threatened at the
first moment to be as disastrous as the international results of that
misfortune had already proved.  The hour for the definite dismemberment
and partition of the French kingdom, not by foreign conquerors but among
its own self-seeking and disloyal grandees, seemed to have struck.  The
indomitable Henry, ever most buoyant when most pressed by misfortune, was
on the way to his camp at La Fere, encouraging the faint-hearted, and
providing as well as he could for the safety of the places most menaced,
when he was met at St. Quentin by a solemn deputation of the principal
nobles, military commanders, and provincial governors of France.  The
Duke of Montpensier was spokesman of the assembly, and, in an harangue
carefully prepared for the occasion, made an elaborate proposition to the
king that the provinces, districts, cities, castles; and other strong-
holds throughout the kingdom should now be formally bestowed upon the
actual governors and commandants thereof in perpetuity, and as hereditary
property, on condition of rendering a certain military service to the
king and his descendants.  It seemed so amazing that this temporary
disaster to the national arms should be used as a pretext for parcelling
out France, and converting a great empire into a number of insignificant
duchies and petty principalities; that this movement should be made, not
by the partisans of Spain, but by the adherents of the king; and that its
leader should be his own near relative, a prince of the blood, and a
possible successor to the crown, that Henry was struck absolutely dumb.
Misinterpreting his silence, the duke proceeded very confidently with his
well-conned harangue; and was eloquently demonstrating that, under such a
system, Henry, as principal feudal chief, would have greater military
forces at his disposal whenever he chose to summon his faithful vassals
to the field than could be the case while the mere shadow of royal power
or dignity was allowed to remain; when the king, finding at last a
tongue, rebuked his cousin; not angrily, but with a grave melancholy
which was more impressive than wrath.

He expressed his pity for the duke that designing intriguers should have
thus taken advantage of his facility of character to cause him to enact
a part so entirely unworthy a Frenchman, a gentleman, and a prince of the
blood.  He had himself, at the outset of his career, been much farther
from the throne than Montpensier was at that moment; but at no period of
his life would he have consented to disgrace himself by attempting the
dismemberment of the realm.  So far from entering for a moment into the
subject-matter of the duke's discourse, he gave him and all his
colleagues distinctly to understand that he would rather die a thousand
deaths than listen to suggestions which would cover his family and the
royal dignity with infamy.

Rarely has political cynicism been displayed in more revolting shape than
in this deliberate demonstration by the leading patricians and generals
of France, to whom patriotism seemed an unimaginable idea.  Thus signally
was their greediness to convert a national disaster into personal profit
rebuked by the king.  Henry was no respecter of the People, which he
regarded as something immeasurably below his feet.  On the contrary, he
was the most sublime self-seeker of them all; but his courage, his
intelligent ambition, his breadth and strength of purpose, never
permitted him to doubt that his own greatness was inseparable from the
greatness of France.  Thus he represented a distinct and wholesome
principle--the national integrity of a great homogeneous people at a
period when that integrity seemed, through domestic treason and foreign
hatred, to be hopelessly lost.  Hence it is not unnatural that he should
hold his place in the national chronicle as Henry the Great.

Meantime, while the military events just recorded had been occurring in
the southern peninsula, the progress of the archduke and his lieutenants
in the north against the king and against the republic had been
gratifying to the ambition of that martial ecclesiastic.  Soon after the
fall of Calais, De Rosne had seized the castles of Guynes and Hames,
while De Mexia laid siege to the important stronghold of Ardres.  The
garrison, commanded by Count Belin, was sufficiently numerous and well
supplied to maintain the place until Henry, whose triumph at La Fere
could hardly be much longer delayed, should come to its relief.  To the
king's infinite dissatisfaction, however, precisely as Don Alvario de
Osorio was surrendering La Fere to him, after a seven months' siege,
Ardres was capitulating to De Mexia.  The reproaches upon Belin for
cowardice, imbecility, and bad faith, were bitter and general.  All his
officers had vehemently protested against the surrender, and Henry at
first talked of cutting off his head.  It was hardly probable, however--
had the surrender been really the result of treachery--that the governor
would have put himself, as he did at once in the king's power; for the
garrison marched out of Ardres with the commandant at their head, banners
displayed, drums beating, matches lighted and bullet in mouth, twelve
hundred fighting men strong, besides invalids.  Belin was possessed of
too much influence, and had the means of rendering too many pieces of
service to the politic king, whose rancour against Spain was perhaps not
really so intense as was commonly supposed, to meet with the condign
punishment which might have been the fate of humbler knaves.

These successes having been obtained in Normandy, the cardinal with a
force of nearly fifteen thousand men now took the field in Flanders;
and, after hesitating for a time whether he should attack Breda, Bergen,
Ostend, or Gertruydenburg,--and after making occasional feints in various
directions, came, towards the end of June, before Hulst.  This rather
insignificant place, with a population of but one thousand inhabitants,
was defended by a strong garrison under command of that eminent and
experienced officer Count Everard Solms.  Its defences were made more
complete by a system of sluices, through which the country around could
be laid under water; and Maurice, whose capture of the town in the year
1591 had been one of his earliest military achievements, was disposed to
hold it at all hazards.  He came in person to inspect the fortifications,
and appeared to be so eager on the subject, and so likely to encounter
unnecessary hazards, that the States of Holland passed a resolution
imploring him "that he would not, in his heroic enthusiasm and laudable
personal service, expose a life on which the country so much depended to
manifest dangers."  The place was soon thoroughly invested, and the usual
series of minings and counter-minings, assaults, and sorties followed,
in the course of which that courageous and corpulent renegade, De Rosne,
had his head taken off by a cannon-ball, while his son, a lad of sixteen,
was fighting by his side.  On the 16th August the cardinal formally
demanded the surrender of the place, and received the magnanimous reply
that Hulst would be defended to the death.  This did not, however,
prevent the opening of negotiations the very same day.  All the officers,
save one, united in urging Solms to capitulate; and Solms, for somewhat
mysterious reasons, and, as was stated, in much confusion, gave his
consent.  The single malcontent was the well-named Matthew Held, whose
family name meant Hero, and who had been one of the chief actors in the
far-famed capture of Breda.  He was soon afterwards killed in an
unsuccessful attack made by Maurice upon Venlo.

Hulst capitulated on the 18th August.  The terms were honourable; but the
indignation throughout the country against Count Solms was very great.
The States of Zeeland, of whose regiment he had been commander ever,
since the death of Sir Philip Sidney, dismissed him from their service,
while a torrent of wrath flowed upon him from every part of the country.
Members of the States-General refused to salute him in the streets;
eminent person, ages turned their backs upon him, and for a time there
was no one willing to listen to a word in his defence.  The usual
reaction in such cases followed; Maurice sustained the commander, who had
doubtless committed a grave error, but who had often rendered honourable
service to the republic, and the States-General gave him a command as
important as that of which he had been relieved by the Zeeland States.
It was mainly on account of the tempest thus created within the
Netherlands, that an affair of such slight importance came to occupy so
large a space in contemporary history.  The defenders of Solmstold wild
stories about the losses of the besieging army.  The cardinal, who was
thought prodigal of blood, and who was often quoted as saying "his
soldiers' lives belonged to God and their bodies to the king," had
sacrificed, it, was ridiculously said, according to the statement of the
Spaniards themselves, five thousand soldiers before the walls of Hulst.
It was very logically deduced therefrom that the capture of a few more
towns of a thousand inhabitants each would cost him his whole army.
People told each other, too, that the conqueror had refused a triumph
which the burghers of Brussels wished to prepare for him on his entrance
into the capital, and that he had administered the very proper rebuke
that, if they had more money than they knew what to do with, they should
expend it in aid of the wounded and of the families of the fallen, rather
than in velvets and satins and triumphal arches.  The humanity of the
suggestion hardly tallied with the blood-thirstiness of which he was at
the same time so unjustly accused--although it might well be doubted
whether the commander-in-chief, even if he could witness unflinchingly
the destruction of five thousand soldiers on the battle-field, would dare
to confront a new demonstration of schoolmaster Houwaerts and his
fellowpedants.

The fact was, however, that the list of casualties in the cardinal's camp
during the six weeks' siege amounted to six hundred, while the losses
within the city were at least as many.  There was no attempt to relieve
the place; for the States, as before observed, had been too much cramped
by the strain upon their resources and by the removal of so many veterans
for the expedition against Cadiz to be able to muster any considerable
forces in the field during the whole of this year.

For a vast war in which the four leading powers of the earth were
engaged, the events, to modern eyes, of the campaign of 1596 seem
sufficiently meagre.  Meantime, during all this campaigning by land and
sea in the west, there had been great but profitless bloodshed in the
east.  With difficulty did the holy Roman Empire withstand the terrible,
ever-renewed assaults of the unholy realm of Ottoman--then in the full
flush of its power--but the two empires still counterbalanced each other,
and contended with each'other at the gates of Vienna.

As the fighting became more languid, however, in the western part of
Christendom, the negotiations and intrigues grew only the more active.
It was most desirable for the republic to effect, if possible, a formal
alliance offensive and defensive with France and England against Spain.
The diplomacy of the Netherlands had been very efficient in bringing
about the declaration of war by Henry against Philip, by which the
current year had opened, after Henry and Philip had been doing their best
to destroy each other and each other's subjects during the half-dozen
previous years.  Elizabeth, too, although she had seen her shores invaded
by Philip with the most tremendous armaments that had ever floated on the
seas, and although she had herself just been sending fire and sword into
the heart of Spain, had very recently made the observation that she and
Philip were not formally at war with each other.  It seemed, therefore,
desirable to the States-General that this very practical warfare should
be, as it were, reduced to a theorem.  In this case the position of the
republic to both powers and to Spain itself might perhaps be more
accurately defined.

Calvaert, the States' envoy--to use his own words--haunted Henry like his
perpetual shadow, and was ever doing his best to persuade him of the
necessity of this alliance.  De Saucy, as we have seen, had just arrived
in England, when the cool proposition of the queen to rescue Calais from
Philip on condition of keeping it for herself had been brought to
Boulogne by Sidney.  Notwithstanding the indignation of the king, he had
been induced directly afterwards to send an additional embassy to
Elizabeth, with the Duke of Bouillon at its head; and he had insisted
upon Calvaert's accompanying the mission.  He had, as he frequently
observed, no secrets from the States-General, or from Calvaert, who had
been negotiating upon these affairs for two years past and was so well
acquainted with all their bearings.  The Dutch envoy was reluctant to go,
for he was seriously ill and very poor in purse, but Henry urged the
point so vehemently, that Calvaert found himself on board ship within six
hours of the making of the proposition.  The incident shows of how much
account the republican diplomatist was held by so keen a judge of mankind
as the Bearnese; but it will subsequently appear that the candour of the
king towards the States-General and their representative was by no means
without certain convenient limitations.

De Sancy had arrived just as--without his knowledge--Sidney had been
despatched across the channel with the brief mission already mentioned.
When he was presented to the queen, the next day, she excused herself for
the propositions by which Henry had been so much enraged, by assuring the
envoy that it had been her intention only to keep Calais out of the
enemy's hand, so long as the king's forces were too much occupied at a
distance to provide for its safety.  As diplomatic conferences were about
to begin in which--even more than in that age, at least, was usually the
case--the object of the two conferring powers was to deceive each other,
and at the same time still more decidedly to defraud other states, Sancy
accepted the royal explanation, although Henry's special messenger,
Lomenie, had just brought him from the camp at Boulogne a minute account
of the propositions of Sidney.

The envoy had, immediately afterwards, an interview with Lord Burghley,
and at once perceived that he was no friend to his master.  Cecil
observed that the queen had formerly been much bound to the king for
religion's sake.  As this tie no longer existed, there was nothing now to
unite them save the proximity of the two States to each other and their
ancient alliances, a bond purely of interest which existed only so long
as princes found therein a special advantage.

De Sancy replied that the safety of the two crowns depended upon their
close alliance against a very powerful foe who was equally menacing to
them both.  Cecil rejoined that he considered the Spaniards deserving of
the very highest praise for having been able to plan so important an
enterprise, and to have so well deceived the King of France by the
promptness and the secrecy of their operations as to allow him to
conceive no suspicion as to their designs.

To this not very friendly sarcasm the envoy, indignant that France should
thus be insulted in her misfortunes, exclaimed that he prayed to God that
the affairs of Englishmen might never be reduced to such a point as to
induce the world to judge by the result merely, as to the sagacity of
their counsels.  He added that there were many passages through which to
enter France, and that it was difficult to be present everywhere, in
order to defend them all against the enemy.

A few days afterwards the Duke of Bouillon arrived in London.  He had
seen Lord Essex at Dover as he passed, and had endeavoured without
success to dissuade him from his expedition against the Spanish coast.
The conferences opened on the 7th May, at Greenwich, between Burghley,
Cobham, the Lord Chamberlain, and one or two other commissioners on the
part of the queen, and Bouillon, Sancy, Du Yair, and Ancel, as
plenipotentiaries of Henry.

There was the usual indispensable series of feints at the outset, as if
it were impossible for statesmen to meet around a green table except as
fencers in the field or pugilists in the ring.

"We have nothing to do," said Burghley, "except to listen to such
propositions as may be made on the part of the king, and to repeat them
to her Highness the queen."

"You cannot be ignorant," replied Bouillon, "of the purpose for which we
have been sent hither by his Very Christian Majesty.  You know very well
that it is to conclude a league with England.  'Tis necessary, therefore,
for the English to begin by declaring whether they are disposed to enter
into such an alliance.  This point once settled, the French can make
their propositions, but it would be idle to dispute about the conditions
of a treaty, if there is after all no treaty to be made."

To this Cecil rejoined, that, if the king were reduced to the necessity
of asking succour from the queen, and of begging for her alliance, it was
necessary for them, on the other hand, to see what he was ready to do for
the queen in return, and to learn what advantage she could expect from
the league.

The duke said that the English statesmen were perfectly aware of the
French intention of proposing a league against the common enemy of both
nations, and that it would be unquestionably for the advantage of both
to unite their forces for a vigorous attack upon Spain, in which case it
would be more difficult for the Spanish to resist them than if each were
acting separately.  It was no secret that the Spaniards would rather
attack England than France, because their war against England, being
coloured by a religious motive, would be much less odious, and would even
have a specious pretext.  Moreover the conquest of England would give
them an excellent vantage ground to recover what they had lost in the
Netherlands.  If, on the contrary, the enemy should throw himself with
his whole force upon France, the king, who would perhaps lose many places
at once, and might hardly be able to maintain himself single-handed
against domestic treason and a concentrated effort on the part of Spain,
would probably find it necessary to make a peace with that power.
Nothing could be more desirable for Spain than such a result, for she
would then be free to attack England and Holland, undisturbed by any fear
of France.  This was a piece of advice, the duke said, which the king
offered, in the most friendly spirit, and as a proof of his affection,
to her Majesty's earnest consideration.

Burghley replied that all this seemed to him no reason for making a
league.  "What more can the queen do," he observed, "than she is already
doing?  She has invaded Spain by land and sea, she has sent troops to
Spain, France, and the Netherlands; she has lent the king fifteen hundred
thousand crowns in gold.  In short, the envoys ought rather to be
studying how to repay her Majesty for her former benefits than to be
soliciting fresh assistance."  He added that the king was so much
stronger by the recent gain of Marseilles as to be easily able to bear
the loss of places of far less importance, while Ireland, on the
contrary, was a constant danger to the queen.  The country was already
in a blaze, on account of the recent landing effected there by the
Spaniards, and it was a very ancient proverb among the English, that to
attack England it was necessary to take the road of Ireland.

Bouillon replied that in this war there was much difference between the
position of France and that of England.  The queen, notwithstanding
hostilities, obtained her annual revenue as usual, while the king was cut
off from his resources and obliged to ruin his kingdom in order to wage
war.  Sancy added, that it must be obvious to the English ministers that
the peril of Holland was likewise the peril of England and of France, but
that at the same time they could plainly see that the king, if not
succoured, would be forced to a peace with Spain.  All his counsellors
were urging him to this, and it was the interest of all his neighbours
to prevent such a step.  Moreover, the proposed league could not but be
advantageous to the English; whether by restraining the Spaniards from
entering England, or by facilitating a combined attack upon the common
enemy.  The queen might invade any portion of the Flemish coast at her
pleasure, while the king's fleet could sail with troops from his ports to
prevent any attack upon her realms.

At this Burghley turned to his colleagues and said, in English, "The
French are acting according to the proverb; they wish to sell us the
bear-skin before they have killed the bear."  Sancy, who understood
English, rejoined, "We have no bear-skin to sell, but we are giving you
a very good and salutary piece of advice.  It is for you to profit by it
as you may."

"Where are these ships of war, of which you were speaking?" asked
Burghley.

"They are at Rochelle, at Bordeaux, and at St. Malo," replied de Sancy.

"And these ports are not in the king's possession," said the Lord
Treasurer.

The discussion was growing warm.  The Duke of Bouillon, in order to, put
an end to it, said that what England had most to fear was a descent by
Spain upon her coasts, and that the true way to prevent this was to give
occupation to Philip's army in Flanders.  The soldiers in the fleet then
preparing were raw levies with which he would not venture to assail her
kingdom.  The veterans in Flanders were the men on whom he relied for
that purpose.  Moreover the queen, who had great influence with the
States-General, would procure from them a prohibition of all commerce
between the provinces and Spain; all the Netherlands would be lost to
Philip, his armies would disperse of their own accord; the princes of
Italy, to whom the power of Spain was a perpetual menace, would secretly
supply funds to the allied powers, and the Germans, declared enemies of
Philip, would furnish troops.

Burghley asserted confidently that this could never be obtained from the
Hollanders, who lived by commerce alone.  Upon which Saucy, wearied with
all these difficulties, interrupted the Lord Treasurer by exclaiming,
"If the king is to expect neither an alliance nor any succour on your
part, he will be very much obliged to the queen if she will be good
enough to inform him of the decision taken by her, in order that he may,
upon his side, take the steps most suitable to the present position of
his affairs."

The session then terminated.  Two days afterwards, in another conference,
Burghley offered three thousand men on the part of the queen, on
condition that they should be raised at the king's expense, and that
they should not leave England until they had received a month's pay
in advance.

The Duke of Bouillon said this was far from being what had been expected
of the generosity of her Majesty, that if the king had money he would
find no difficulty in raising troops in Switzerland and Germany, and that
there was a very great difference between hired princes and allies.  The
English ministers having answered that this was all the queen could do,
the duke and Saucy rose in much excitement, saying that they had then no
further business than to ask for an audience of leave, and to return to
France as fast as possible.

Before they bade farewell to the queen, however, the envoys sent a memoir
to her Majesty, in which they set forth that the first proposition as to
a league had been made by Sir Henry Umton, and that now, when the king
had sent commissioners to treat concerning an alliance, already
recommended by the queen's ambassador in France, they had been received
in such a way as to indicate a desire to mock them rather than to treat
with them.  They could not believe, they said, that it was her Majesty's
desire to use such language as had been addressed to them, and they
therefore implored her plainly to declare her intentions, in order that
they might waste no more time unnecessarily, especially as the high
offices with which their sovereign had honoured them did not allow them
to remain for a long time absent from France.

The effect of this memoir upon the queen was, that fresh conferences were
suggested, which took place at intervals between the 11th and the 26th
of May.  They were characterized by the same mutual complaints of
overreachings and of shortcomings by which all the previous discussions
had been distinguished.  On the 17th May the French envoys even insisted
on taking formal farewell of the queen, and were received by her Majesty
for that purpose at a final audience.  After they had left the presence--
the preparations for their homeward journey being already made--the queen
sent Sir Robert Cecil, Henry Brooke, son of Lord Cobham, and La Fontaine,
minister of a French church in England, to say to them how very much
mortified she was that the state of her affairs did not permit her to
give the king as much assistance as he desired, and to express her wish
to speak to them once more before their departure.

The result of the audience given accordingly to the envoys, two days
later, was the communication of her decision to enter into the league
proposed, but without definitely concluding the treaty until it should be
ratified by the king.

On the 26th May articles were finally agreed upon, by which the king and
queen agreed to defend each other's dominions, to unite in attacking the
common enemy, and to invite other princes and states equally interested
with themselves in resisting the ambitious projects of Spain, to join in
the league.  It was arranged that an army should be put in the field as
soon as possible, at the expense of the king and queen, and of such other
powers as should associate themselves in the proposed alliance; that this
army should invade the dominions of the Spanish monarch, that the king
and queen were never, without each other's consent, to make peace or
truce with Philip; that the queen should immediately raise four thousand
infantry to serve six months of every year in Picardy and Normandy, with
the condition that they were never to be sent to a distance of more than
fifty leaguas from Boulogna; that when the troubles of Ireland should be
over the queen should be at liberty to add new troops to the four
thousand men thus promised by her to the league; that the queen was to
furnish to these four thousand men six months' pay in advance before they
should leave England, and that the king should agree to repay the amount
six months afterwards, sending meanwhile four nobles to England as
hostages.  If the dominions of the queen should be attacked it was
stipulated that, at two months' notice, the king should raise four
thousand men at the expense of the queen and send them to her assistance,
and that they were to serve for six months at her charge, but were not to
be sent to a distance of more than fifty leagues from the coasts of
France.

The English were not willing that the States-General should be
comprehended among the powers to be invited to join the league, because
being under the protection of the Queen of England they were supposed to
have no will but hers.  Burghley insisted accordingly that, in speaking
of those who were thus to be asked, no mention was to be made of peoples
nor of states, for fear lest the States-General might be included under
those terms.  The queen was, however, brought at last to yield the point,
and consented, in order to satisfy the French envoys, that to the word
princes should be added the general expression orders or estates.  The
obstacle thus interposed to the formation of the league by the hatred of
the queen and of the privileged classes of England to popular liberty,
and by the secret desire entertained of regaining that sovereignty over
the provinces which had been refused ten years before by Elizabeth, was
at length set aside.  The republic, which might have been stifled at its
birth, was now a formidable fact, and could neither be annexed to the
English dominions nor deprived of its existence as a new member of the
European family.

It being no longer possible to gainsay the presence of the young
commonwealth among the nations, the next best thing--so it was thought--
was to defraud her in the treaty to which she was now invited to accede.
This, as it will presently appear, the King of France and the Queen of
England succeeded in doing very thoroughly, and they accomplished it
notwithstanding the astuteness and the diligence of the States' envoy,
who at Henry's urgent request had accompanied the French mission to
England.  Calvaert had been very active in bringing about the
arrangement, to assist in which he had, as we have seen, risen from a
sick bed and made the journey to England: "The proposition for an
offensive and defensive alliance was agreed to by her Majesty's Council,
but under intolerable and impracticable conditions," said he, "and, as
such, rejected by the duke and Sancy, so that they took leave of her
Majesty.  At last, after some negotiation in which, without boasting, I
may say that I did some service, it was again taken in hand, and at last,
thank God, although with much difficulty, the league has been concluded."

When the task was finished the French envoys departed to obtain their
master's ratification of the treaty.  Elizabeth expressed herself warmly
in regard to her royal brother, inviting him earnestly to pay her a
visit, in which case she said she would gladly meet him half way; for a
sight of him would be her only consolation in the midst of her adversity
and annoyance.  "He may see other princesses of a more lovely
appearance," she added, "but he will never make a visit to a more
faithful friend."

But the treaty thus concluded was for the public.  The real agreement
between France and England was made by a few days later, and reduced the
ostensible arrangement to a sham, a mere decoy to foreign nations,
especially to the Dutch republic, to induce them to imitate England in
joining the league, and to emulate her likewise in affording that
substantial assistance to the league which in reality England was very
far from giving.

"Two contracts were made," said Secretary of State Villeroy; "the one
public, to give credit and reputation to the said league, the other
secret, which destroyed the effects and the promises of the first.  By
the first his Majesty was to be succoured by four thousand infantry,
which number was limited by the second contract to two thousand, who were
to reside and to serve only in the cities of Boulogne and Montreuil,
assisted by an equal number of French, and not otherwise, and on
condition of not being removed from those towns unless his Majesty should
be personally present in Picardy with an army, in which case they might
serve in Picardy, but nowhere else."

An English garrison in a couple of French seaports, over against the
English coast, would hardly have seemed a sufficient inducement to other
princes and states to put large armies in the field to sustain the
Protestant league, had they known that this was the meagre result of the
protocolling and disputations that had been going on all the summer at
Greenwich.

Nevertheless the decoy did its work, The envoys returned to France, and
it was not until three months later that the Duke of Bouillon again made
his appearance in England, bringing the treaty duly ratified by Henry.
The league was then solemnized, on, the 26th August, by the queen with
much pomp and ceremony.  Three peers of the realm waited upon the French
ambassador at his lodgings, and escorted him and his suite in seventeen
royal coaches to the Tower.  Seven splendid barges then conveyed them
along the Thames to Greenwich.  On the pier the ambassador was received
by the Earl of Derby at the head of a great suite of nobles and high
functionaries, and conducted to the palace of Nonesuch.

There was a religious ceremony in the royal chapel, where a special
pavilion had been constructed.  Standing, within this sanctuary, the
queen; with her hand on her breast, swore faithfully to maintain the
league just concluded.  She then gave her hand to the Duke of Bouillon,
who held it in both his own, while psalms were sung and the organ
resounded through the chapel.  Afterwards there was a splendid banquet in
the palace, the duke sitting in solitary grandeur at the royal table,
being placed at a respectful distance from her Majesty, and the dishes
being placed on the board by the highest nobles of the realm, who, upon
their knees, served the queen with wine.  No one save the ambassador sat
at Elizabeth's table, but in the same hall was spread another, at which
the Earl of Essex entertained many distinguished guests, young Count
Lewis Gunther of Nassau among the number.

In the midsummer twilight the brilliantly decorated barges were again
floating on the historic river, the gaily-coloured lanterns lighting the
sweep of the oars, and the sound of lute and viol floating merrily across
the water.  As the ambassador came into the courtyard of his house, he
found a crowd of several thousand people assembled, who shouted welcome
to the representative of Henry, and invoked blessings on the head of
Queen Elizabeth and of her royal brother of France.  Meanwhile all the
bells of London were ringing, artillery was thundering, and bonfires were
blazing, until the night was half spent.

Such was the holiday-making by which the league between the great
Protestant queen and the ex-chief of the Huguenots of France was
celebrated within a year after the pope had received him, a repentant
sinner, into the fold of the Church.  Truly it might be said that
religion was rapidly ceasing to be the line of demarcation among the
nations, as had been the case for the two last generations of mankind.

The Duke of Bouillon soon afterwards departed for the Netherlands, where
the regular envoy to the commonwealth, Paul Chouart Seigneur de Buzanval,
had already been preparing the States-General for their entrance into the
league.  Of course it was duly impressed upon those republicans that they
should think themselves highly honoured by the privilege of associating
themselves with so august an alliance.  The queen wrote an earnest letter
to the States, urging them to join the league.  "Especially should you do
so," she said, "on account of the reputation which you will thereby gain
for your affairs with the people who are under you, seeing you thus
sustained (besides the certainty which you have of our favour) by the
friendship of other confederated princes, and particularly by that of the
most Christian king."

On the 31st October the articles of agreement under which the republic
acceded to the new confederation were signed at the Hague.  Of course
it was not the exact counterpart of the famous Catholic association.
Madam League, after struggling feebly for the past few years, a decrepit
beldame, was at last dead and buried.  But there had been a time when she
was filled with exuberant and terrible life.  She, at least, had known
the object of her creation, and never, so long as life was in her, had
she faltered in her dread purpose.  To extirpate Protestantism, to murder
Protestants, to burn, hang, butcher, bury them alive, to dethrone every
Protestant sovereign in Europe, especially to assassinate the Queen of
England, the Prince of Orange, with all his race, and Henry of Navarre,
and to unite in the accomplishment of these simple purposes all the
powers of Christendom under the universal monarchy of Philip of Spain--
for all this, blood was shed in torrents, and the precious metals of the
"Indies" squandered as fast as the poor savages, who were thus taking
their first lessons in the doctrines of Jesus of Nazareth, could dig it
from the mines.  For this America had been summoned, as it were by
almighty fiat, out of previous darkness, in order that it might furnish
money with which to massacre all the heretics of the earth.  For this
great purpose was the sublime discovery of the Genoese sailor to be
turned to account.  These aims were intelligible, and had in part been
attained.  William of Orange had fallen, and a patent of nobility, with a
handsome fortune, had been bestowed upon his assassin.  Elizabeth's life
had been frequently attempted.  So had those of Henry, of Maurice, of
Olden-Barneveld.  Divine providence might perhaps guide the hand of
future murderers with greater accuracy, for even if Madam League were
dead, her ghost still walked among the Jesuits and summoned them to
complete the crimes left yet unfinished.

But what was the design of the new confederacy?  It was not a Protestant
league.  Henry of Navarre could no longer be the chief of such an
association, although it was to Protestant powers only that he could turn
for assistance.  It was to the commonwealth of the Netherlands, to the
northern potentates and to the Calvinist and Lutheran princes of Germany,
that the king and queen could alone appeal in their designs against
Philip of Spain.

The position of Henry was essentially a false one from the beginning.
He felt it to be so, and the ink was scarce dry with which he signed the
new treaty before he was secretly casting about him to, make peace with
that power with which he was apparently summoning all the nations of the
earth to do battle.  Even the cautious Elizabeth was deceived by the
crafty Bearnese, while both united to hoodwink the other states and
princes.

On the 31st October, accordingly, the States-General agreed to go into
the league with England and France; "in order to resist the enterprises
and ambitious designs of the King of Spain against all the princes and
potentates of Christendom."  As the queen had engaged--according to the
public treaty or decoy--to furnish four thousand infantry to the league,
the States now agreed to raise and pay for another four thousand to be
maintained in the king's service at a cost of four hundred and fifty
thousand florins annually, to be paid by the month.  The king promised,
in case the Netherlands should be invaded by the enemy with the greater
part of his force, that these four thousand soldiers should return to the
Netherlands.  The king further bound himself to carry on a sharp
offensive war in Artois and Hainault.

The States-General would have liked a condition inserted in the treaty
that no peace should be made with Spain by England or France without the
consent of the provinces; but this was peremptorily refused.

Perhaps the republic had no special reason to be grateful for the
grudging and almost contemptuous manner in which it had thus been
virtually admitted into the community of sovereigns; but the men who
directed its affairs were far too enlightened not to see how great a step
was taken when their political position, now conceded to them, had been
secured.  In good faith they intended to carry out the provisions of the
new treaty, and they immediately turned their attention to the vital
matters of making new levies and of imposing new taxes, by means of which
they might render themselves useful to their new allies.

Meantime Ancel was deputed by Henry to visit the various courts of
Germany and the north in order to obtain, if possible, new members for
the league?  But Germany was difficult to rouse.  The dissensions among
Protestants were ever inviting the assaults of the Papists.  Its
multitude of sovereigns were passing their leisure moments in wrangling
among themselves as usual on abstruse points of theology, and devoting
their serious hours to banquetting, deep drinking, and the pleasures of
the chase.  The jeremiads of old John of Nassau grew louder than ever,
but his voice was of one crying in the wilderness.  The wrath to come of
that horrible Thirty Years' War, which he was not to witness seemed to
inspire all his prophetic diatribes.  But there were few to heed them.
Two great dangers seemed ever impending over Christendom, and it is
difficult to decide which fate would have been the more terrible, the
establishment of the universal monarchy of Philip II., or the conquest of
Germany by the Grand Turk.  But when Ancel and other emissaries sought to
obtain succour against the danger from the south-west, he was answered by
the clash of arms and the shrieks of horror which came daily from the
south-east.  In vain was it urged, and urged with truth, that the Alcoran
was less cruel than the Inquisition, that the soil of Europe might be
overrun by Turks and Tartars, and the crescent planted triumphantly in
every village, with less disaster to the human race, and with better hope
that the germs of civilization and the precepts of Christianity might
survive the invasion, than if the system of Philip, of Torquemada, and of
Alva, should become the universal law.  But the Turk was a frank enemy of
Christianity, while Philip murdered Christians in the name of Christ.
The distinction imposed upon the multitudes, with whom words were things.
Moreover, the danger from the young and enterprising Mahomet seemed more
appalling to the imagination than the menace, from which experience had
taken something of its terrors, of the old and decrepit Philip.

The Ottoman empire, in its exact discipline, in its terrible
concentration of purpose, in its contempt for all arts and sciences, and
all human occupation save the trade of war and the pursuit of military
dominion, offered a strong contrast to the distracted condition of
the holy Roman empire, where an intellectual and industrious people,
distracted by half a century of religious controversy and groaning under
one of the most elaborately perverse of all the political systems ever
invented by man, seemed to offer itself an easy prey to any conqueror.
The Turkish power was in the fulness of its aggressive strength, and
seemed far more formidable than it would have done had there been clearer
perceptions of what constitutes the strength and the wealth of nations.
Could the simple truth have been thoroughly, comprehended that a realm
founded upon such principles was the grossest of absurdities, the Eastern
might have seemed less terrible than the Western danger.

But a great campaign, at no considerable distance from the walls of
Vienna, had occupied the attention of Germany during the autumn.  Mahomet
had taken the field in person with a hundred thousand men, and the
emperor's brother, Maximilian, in conjunction with the Prince of
Transylvania, at the head of a force of equal magnitude, had gone forth
to give him battle.  Between the Theiss and the Danube, at Keveste, not
far from the city of Erlau, on the 26th October, the terrible encounter
on which the fate of Christendom seemed to hang at last took place, and
Europe held its breath in awful suspense until its fate should be
decided.  When the result at last became known, a horrible blending of
the comic and the tragic, such as has rarely been presented in history,
startled the world.  Seventy thousand human beings--Moslems and
Christians--were lying dead or wounded on the banks of a nameless little
stream which flows into the Theisa, and the commanders-in-chief of both
armies were running away as fast as horses could carry them.  Each army
believed itself hopelessly defeated, and abandoning tents, baggage,
artillery, ammunition, the remnants of each, betook themselves to panic-
stricken flight.  Generalissimo Maximilian never looked behind him as he
fled, until he had taken refuge in Kaschan, and had thence made his way,
deeply mortified and despondent, to Vienna.  The Prince of Transylvania
retreated into the depths of his own principality.  Mahomet, with his
principal officers, shut himself up in Buda, after which he returned to
Constantinople and abandoned himself for a time to a voluptuous ease,
inconsistent with the Ottoman projects of conquering the world.  The
Turks, less prone to desperation than the Christians, had been utterly
overthrown in the early part of the action, but when the victors were,
as usual, greedily bent upon plunder before the victory had been fairly
secured, the tide of battle was turned by the famous Italian renegade
Cicala.  The Turks, too, had the good sense to send two days afterwards
and recover their artillery, trains, and other property, which ever since
the battle had been left at the mercy of the first comers.

So ended the Turkish campaign of the year 1596.  Ancel, accordingly,
fared ill in his negotiations with Germany.  On the other hand Mendoza,
Admiral of Arragon, had been industriously but secretly canvassing the
same regions as the representative of the Spanish king. It was important
for Philip, who put more faith in the league of the three powers than
Henry himself did, to lose no time in counteracting its influence.  The
condition of the holy Roman empire had for some time occupied his most
serious thoughts.  It seemed plain that Rudolph would never marry.
Certainly he would never marry the Infanta, although he was very angry
that his brother should aspire to the hand which he himself rejected.
In case of his death without children, Philip thought it possible that
there might be a Protestant revolution in Germany, and that the house of
Habsburg might lose the imperial crown altogether.  It was even said that
the emperor himself was of that opinion, and preferred that the empire
should end with his own life."  Philip considered that neither Matthias
nor Maximilian was fit to succeed their brother, being both of them
lukewarm in the Catholic faith."  In other words, he chose that his
destined son-in-law, the Cardinal Albert, should supersede them, and he
was anxious to have him appointed as soon as possible King of the Romans.

"His Holiness the Pope and the King of Spain," said the Admiral of
Arragon, "think it necessary to apply most stringent measures to the
emperor to compel him to appoint a successor, because, in case of his
death without one, the administration during the vacancy would fall to
the elector palatine,--a most perverse Calvinistic heretic, and as great
an enemy of the house of Austria and of our holy religion as the Turk
himself--as sufficiently appears in those diabolical laws of his
published in the palatinate a few months since.  A vacancy is so
dreadful, that in the north of Germany the world would come to an end;
yet the emperor, being of rather a timid nature than otherwise, is
inclined to quiet, and shrinks from the discussions and conflicts likely
to be caused by an appointment.  Therefore his Holiness and his Catholic
Majesty, not choosing that we should all live in danger of the world's
falling in ruins, have resolved to provide the remedy.  They are to
permit the electors to use the faculty which they possess of suspending
the emperor and depriving him of his power; there being examples of this
in other times against emperors who governed ill."

The Admiral farther alluded to the great effort made two years before to
elect the King of Denmark emperor, reminding Philip that in Hamburg they
had erected triumphal arches, and made other preparations to receive him.
This year, he observed, the Protestants were renewing their schemes.  On
the occasion of the baptism of the child of the elector palatine, the
English envoy being present, and Queen Elizabeth being god-mother, they
had agreed upon nine articles of faith much more hostile to the Catholic
creed than anything ever yet professed.  In case of the death of the
emperor, this elector palatine would of course make much trouble, and
the emperor should therefore be induced, by fair means if possible, on
account of the great inconvenience of forcing him, but not without a hint
of compulsion, to acquiesce in the necessary measures.  Philip was
represented as willing to assist the empire with considerable force
against the Turk--as there could be no doubt that Hungary was in great
danger--but in recompense it was necessary to elect a King of the Romans
in all respects satisfactory to him.  There were three objections to the
election of Albert, whose recent victories and great abilities entitled
him in Philip's opinion to the crown.  Firstly, there was a doubt whether
the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia were elective or hereditary, and it
was very important that the King of the Romans should succeed to those
two crowns, because the electors and other princes having fiefs within
those kingdoms would be unwilling to swear fealty to two suzerains, and
as Albert was younger than his brothers he could scarcely expect to take
by inheritance.

Secondly, Albert had no property of his own, but the Admiral suggested
that the emperor might be made to abandon to him the income of the Tyrol.

Thirdly, it was undesirable for Albert to leave the Netherlands at that
juncture.  Nevertheless, it was suggested by the easy-going Admiral, with
the same tranquil insolence which marked all his proposed arrangements,
that as Rudolph would retire from the government altogether, Albert, as
King of the Romans and acting emperor, could very well take care of the
Netherlands as part of his whole realm.  Albert being moreover about to
marry the Infanta, the handsome dowry which he would receive with her
from the king would enable him to sustain his dignity.

Thus did Philip who had been so industrious during the many past years
in his endeavours to expel the heretic Queen of England and the Huguenot
Henry from the realms of their ancestors, and to seat himself or his
daughter, or one or another of his nephews, in their places, now busy
himself with schemes to discrown Rudolph of Habsburg, and to place the
ubiquitous Infanta and her future husband on his throne.  Time would show
the result.

Meantime, while the Protestant Ancel and other agents of the new league
against Philip were travelling about from one court of Europe to another
to gain adherents to their cause, the great founder of the confederacy
was already secretly intriguing for a peace with that monarch.  The ink
was scarce dry on the treaty to which he had affixed his signature before
he was closeted with the agents of the Archduke Albert, and receiving
affectionate messages and splendid presents from that military
ecclesiastic.

In November, 1596, La Balvena, formerly a gentleman of the Count de la
Fera, came to Rouen.  He had a very secret interview with Henry IV. at
three o'clock one morning, and soon afterwards at a very late hour in the
night.  The king asked him why the archduke was not willing to make a
general peace, including England and Holland.  Balvena replied that he
had no authority to treat on that subject; it being well known, however,
that the King of Spain would never consent to a peace with the rebels,
except on the ground of the exclusive maintenance of the Catholic
religion.

He is taking the very course to destroy that religion, said Henry.  The
king then avowed himself in favour of peace for the sake of the poor
afflicted people of all countries.  He was not tired of arms, he said,
which were so familiar to him, but his wish was to join in a general
crusade against the Turk.  This would be better for the Catholic religion
than the present occupations of all parties.  He avowed that the Queen of
England was his very good friend, and said he had never yet broken his
faith with her, and never would do so.  She had sent him the Garter, and
he had accepted it, as his brother Henry III. had done before him, and he
would negotiate no peace which did not include her.  The not very distant
future was to show how much these stout professions of sincerity were
worth.  Meantime Henry charged Balvena to keep their interviews a
profound secret, especially from every one in France.  The king expressed
great anxiety lest the Huguenots should hear of it, and the agent
observed that any suspicion of peace negotiations would make great
disturbance among the heretics, as one of the conditions of the king's
absolution by the pope was supposed to be that he should make war upon
his Protestant subjects.  On his return from Rouen the emissary made a
visit to Monlevet, marshal of the camp to Henry IV. and a Calvinist.
There was much conversation about peace, in the course of which Monlevet
observed, "We are much afraid of you in negotiation, for we know that you
Spaniards far surpass us in astuteness."

"Nay," said Balvena, "I will only repeat the words of the Emperor Charles
V.--'The Spaniards seem wise, and are madmen; the French seem madmen, and
are wise.'"

A few weeks later the archduke sent Balvena again to Rouen.  He had
another interview with the king, at which not only Villeroy and other
Catholics were present, but Monlevet also.  This proved a great obstacle
to freedom of conversation.  The result was the same as before.

There were strong professions of a desire on the part of the king for a
peace but it was for a general peace; nothing further.

On the 4th December Balvena was sent for by the king before daylight,
just as he was mounting his horse for the chase.

"Tell his Highness," said Henry, "that I am all frankness, and incapable
of dissimulation, and that I believe him too much a man of honour to wish
to deceive me.  Go tell him that I am most anxious for peace, and that I
deeply regret the defeat that has been sustained against the Turk.  Had I
been there I would have come out dead or victorious.  Let him arrange an
agreement between us, so that presto he may see me there with my brave
nobles, with infantry and with plenty of Switzers.  Tell him that I am
his friend: Begone.  Be diligent."

On the last day but two of the year, the archduke, having heard this
faithful report of Henry's affectionate sentiments, sent him a suit of
splendid armour, such as was then made better in Antwerp than anywhere
else, magnificently burnished of a blue colour, according to an entirely
new fashion.

With such secret courtesies between his most Catholic Majesty's
vicegerent and himself was Henry's league with the two Protestant
powers accompanied.

Exactly at the same epoch Philip was again preparing an invasion of the
queen's dominions.  An armada of a hundred and twenty-eight ships, with a
force of fourteen thousand infantry and three thousand horse, had been
assembled during the autumn of this year at Lisbon, notwithstanding the
almost crushing blow that the English and Hollanders had dealt the king's
navy so recently at Cadiz.  This new expedition was intended for Ireland,
where it was supposed that the Catholics would be easily roused.  It was
also hoped that the King of Scots might be induced to embrace this
opportunity of wreaking vengeance on his mother's destroyer.  "He was on
the watch the last time that my armada went forth against the English,"
said Philip, "and he has now no reason to do the contrary, especially if
he remembers that here is a chance to requite the cruelty which was
practised on his mother."

The fleet sailed on the 5th October under the command of the Count Santa
Gadea.  Its immediate destination was the coast of Ireland, where they
were to find some favourable point for disembarking the troops.  Having
accomplished this, the ships, with the exception of a few light vessels,
were to take their departure and pass the winter in Ferrol.  In case the
fleet should be forced by stress of weather on the English coast, the
port of Milford Haven in Wales was to be seized, "because," said Philip,
"there are a great many Catholics there well affected to our cause, and
who have a special enmity to the English."  In case the English fleet
should come forth to give battle, Philip sent directions that it was to
be conquered at once, and that after the victory Milford Haven was to be
firmly held.

This was easily said.  But it was not fated that this expedition should
be more triumphant than that of the unconquerable armada which had been
so signally conquered eight years before.  Scarcely had the fleet put to
sea when it was overtaken by a tremendous storm, in which forty ships
foundered with five thousand men.  The shattered remnants took refuge in
Ferrol.  There the ships were to refit, and in the spring the attempt was
to be renewed.  Thus it was ever with the King of Spain.  There was a
placid unconsciousness on his part of defeat which sycophants thought
sublime.  And such insensibility might have been sublimity had the
monarch been in person on the deck of a frigate in the howling tempest,
seeing ship after ship go down before his eyes; and exerting himself with
tranquil energy and skill to encourage his followers, and to preserve
what remained afloat from destruction.  Certainly such exhibitions of
human superiority to the elements are in the highest degree inspiring.
His father had shown himself on more than one occasion the master of his
fate.  The King of France, too, bare-headed, in his iron corslet, leading
a forlorn hope, and, by the personal charm of his valour, changing
fugitives into heroes and defeat into victory, had afforded many examples
of sublime unconsciousness of disaster, such as must ever thrill the
souls of mankind.  But it is more difficult to be calm in battle and
shipwreck than at the writing desk; nor is that the highest degree of
fortitude which enables a monarch--himself in safety--to endure without
flinching the destruction of his fellow creatures.

No sooner, however, was the remnant of the tempest-tost fleet safe in
Ferrol than the king requested the cardinal to collect an army at Calais
and forthwith to invade England.  He asked his nephew whether he could
not manage to send his troops across the channel in vessels of light
draught, such as he already had at command, together with some others
which might be furnished him from Spain.  In this way he was directed to
gain a foot-hold in England, and he was to state immediately whether he
could accomplish this with his own resources or should require the
assistance of the fleet at Ferrol.  The king further suggested that the
enemy, encouraged by his success at Cadiz the previous summer, might be
preparing a fresh expedition against Spain, in which case the invasion of
England would be easier to accomplish.

Thus on the last day of 1596, Philip, whose fleet sent forth for the
conquest of Ireland and England had been too crippled to prosecute the
adventure, was proposing to his nephew to conquer England without any
fleet at all.  He had given the same advice to Alexander Farnese so soon
as he heard of the destruction of the invincible armada.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Allow her to seek a profit from his misfortune
Burning of Servetus at Geneva
Constant vigilance is the price of liberty
Evil has the advantage of rapidly assuming many shapes
French seem madmen, and are wise
Hanging of Mary Dyer at Boston
Imposed upon the multitudes, with whom words were things
Impossible it was to invent terms of adulation too gross
In times of civil war, to be neutral is to be nothing
Meet around a green table except as fencers in the field
One-third of Philip's effective navy was thus destroyed
Patriotism seemed an unimaginable idea
Placid unconsciousness on his part of defeat
Plea of infallibility and of authority soon becomes ridiculous
Religion was rapidly ceasing to be the line of demarcation
So often degenerated into tyranny (Calvinism)
Spaniards seem wise, and are madmen
The Alcoran was less cruel than the Inquisition
There are few inventions in morals
To attack England it was necessary to take the road of Ireland
Tranquil insolence
Unproductive consumption was alarmingly increasing
Upon their knees, served the queen with wine
Wish to sell us the bear-skin before they have killed the bear




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v68
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 69, 1597-1598



CHAPTER XXXIII.

     Straggle of the Netherlands against Spain--March to Turnhout--
     Retreat of the Spanish commander--Pursuit and attack--Demolition of
     the Spanish army--Surrender of the garrison of Turnhout--Improved
     military science--Moral effect of the battle--The campaign in
     France--Attack on Amiens by the Spaniards--Sack and burning of the
     city--De Rosny's plan for reorganization of the finances--Jobbery
     and speculation--Philip's repudiation of his debts--Effects of the
     measure--Renewal of persecution by the Jesuits--Contention between
     Turk and Christian--Envoy from the King of Poland to the Hague to
     plead for reconciliation with Philip--His subsequent presentation to
     Queen Elizabeth--Military events Recovery of Amiens--Feeble
     operations of the confederate powers against Spain--Marriage of the
     Princess Emilia, sister of Maurice--Reduction of the castle and town
     of Alphen--Surrender of Rheinberg--Capitulation of Meurs--Surrender
     of Grol--Storming and taking of Brevoort Capitulation of Enschede,
     Ootmaxsum, Oldenzaal, and Lingen--Rebellion of the Spanish garrisons
     in Antwerp and Ghent--Progress of the peace movement between Henry
     and Philip--Relations of the three confederate powers--Henry's
     scheme for reconciliation with Spain--His acceptance of Philip's
     offer of peace announced to Elizabeth--Endeavours for a general
     peace.

The old year had closed with an abortive attempt of Philip to fulfil his
favourite dream--the conquest of England.  The new year opened with a
spirited effort of Prince Maurice to measure himself in the open field
with the veteran legions of Spain.

Turnhout, in Brabant, was an open village--the largest in all the
Netherlands lying about twenty-five English miles in almost a direct line
south from Gertruydenburg.  It was nearly as far distant in an easterly
direction from Antwerp, and was about five miles nearer Breda than it was
to Gertruydenberg.

At this place the cardinal-archduke had gathered a considerable force,
numbering at least four thousand of his best infantry, with several
squadrons of cavalry, the whole under-command of the general-in-chief of
artillery, Count Varax.  People in the neighbourhood were growing uneasy,
for it was uncertain in what direction it might be intended to use this
formidable force.  It was perhaps the cardinal's intention to make a
sudden assault upon Breda, the governor of which seemed not inclined to
carry out his proposition to transfer that important city to the king,
or it was thought that he might take advantage of a hard frost and cross
the frozen morasses and estuaries into the land of Ter Tholen, where he
might overmaster some of the important strongholds of Zeeland.

Marcellus Bax, that boldest and most brilliant of Holland's cavalry
officers, had come to Maurice early in January with an urgent suggestion
that no time might be lost in making an attack upon the force of
Turnhout, before they should succeed in doing any mischief.  The prince
pondered the proposition, for a little time, by himself, and then
conferred very privately upon the subject with the state-council.  On the
14th January it was agreed with that body that the enterprise should be
attempted, but with the utmost secrecy.  A week later the council sent
an express messenger to Maurice urging him not to expose his own life to
peril, but to apprise them as soon as possible as to the results of the
adventure.

Meantime, patents had been sent to the various garrisons for fifty
companies of foot and sixteen squadrons of horse.  On the 22nd January
Maurice came to Gertruydenberg, the place of rendezvous, attended by Sir
Francis Vere and Count Solms.  Colonel Kloetingen was already there with
the transports of ammunition and a few pieces of artillery from Zeeland,
and in the course of the day the whole infantry force had assembled.
Nothing could have been managed with greater promptness or secrecy.

Next day, before dawn, the march began.  The battalia was led by Van der
Noot, with six companies of Hollanders.  Then came Vere, with eight
companies of the reserve, Dockray with eight companies of Englishmen,
Murray with eight companies of Scotch, and Kloetingen and
La Corde with twelve companies of Dutch and Zeelanders.  In front of the
last troop under La Corde marched the commander of the artillery, with
two demi-cannon and two field-pieces, followed by the ammunition and,
baggage trains.  Hohenlo arrived just as the march was beginning, to whom
the stadholder, notwithstanding their frequent differences, communicated
his plans, and entrusted the general command of the cavalry.  That force
met the expedition at Osterhout, a league's distance from Gertruydenberg,
and consisted of the best mounted companies, English and Dutch, from the
garrisons of Breda, Bergen, Nymegen, and the Zutphen districts.

It was a dismal, drizzly, foggy morning; the weather changing to steady
rain as the expedition advanced.  There had been alternate frost and thaw
for the few previous weeks, and had that condition of the atmosphere
continued the adventure could not have been attempted.  It had now turned
completely to thaw.  The roads were all under water, and the march was
sufficiently difficult.  Nevertheless, it was possible; so the stout
Hollanders, Zeelanders, and Englishmen struggled on manfully, shoulder to
shoulder, through the mist and the mire.  By nightfall the expedition had
reached Ravels, at less than a league's distance from Turnhout, having
accomplished, under the circumstances, a very remarkable march of over
twenty miles.  A stream of water, the Neethe, one of the tributaries of
the Scheld, separated Ravels from Turnhout, and was crossed by a stone
bridge.  It was an anxious moment.  Maurice discovered by his scouts that
he was almost within cannon-shot of several of the most famous regiments
in the Spanish army lying fresh, securely posted, and capable of making
an attack at any moment.  He instantly threw forward Marcellus Bax with
four squadrons of Bergen cavalry, who, jaded as they were by their day's
work, were to watch the bridge that night, and to hold it against all
comers and at every hazard.

The Spanish commander, on his part, had reconnoitred the advancing, foe,
for it was impossible for the movement to have been so secret or so swift
over those inundated roads as to be shrouded to the last moment in
complete mystery.  It was naturally to be expected therefore that those
splendid legions--the famous Neapolitan tercio of Trevico, the veteran
troops of Sultz and Hachicourt, the picked Epirote and Spanish cavalry of
Nicolas Basta and Guzman--would be hurled upon the wearied, benumbed,
bemired soldiers of the republic, as they came slowly along after their
long march through the cold winter's rain.

Varax took no such heroic resolution.  Had he done so that January
afternoon, the career of Maurice of Nassau might have been brought to a
sudden close, despite the affectionate warning of the state-council.
Certainly it was difficult for any commander to be placed in a more
perilous position than that in which the stadholder found himself.  He
remained awake and afoot the whole night, perfecting his arrangements for
the morning, and watching every indication of a possible advance on the
part of the enemy.  Marcellus Bax and his troopers remained at the bridge
till morning, and were so near the Spaniards that they heard the voices
of their pickets, and could even distinguish in the distance the various
movements in their camp.

But no attack was made, and the little army of Maurice was allowed
to sleep off its fatigue.  With the dawn of the 24th January,
a reconnoitring party, sent out from the republican camp, discovered that
Varax, having no stomach for an encounter, had given his enemies the
slip.  Long before daylight his baggage and ammunition trains had been
sent off in a southerly direction, and his whole force had already left
the village of Turnhout.  It was the intention of the commander to take
refuge in the fortified city of Herenthals, and there await the attack of
Maurice.  Accordingly, when the stadholder arrived on the fields beyond
the immediate precincts of the village, he saw the last of the enemy's
rearguard just disappearing from view.  The situation was a very peculiar
one.

The rain and thaw, following upon frosty weather, had converted the fenny
country in many directions into a shallow lake.  The little river which
flowed by the village had risen above its almost level banks, and could
with difficulty be traversed at any point, while there was no permanent
bridge, such as there was at Ravels.  The retreating Spaniards had made
their way through a narrow passage, where a roughly-constructed causeway
of planks had enabled the infantry to cross the waters almost in single
file, while the cavalry had floundered through as best they might.  Those
who were acquainted with the country reported that beyond this defile
there was an upland heath, a league in extent, full of furze and
thickets, where it would be easy enough for Varax to draw up his army in
battle array, and conceal it from view.  Maurice's scouts, too, brought
information that the Spanish commander had left a force of musketeers to
guard the passage at the farther end.

This looked very like an ambush.  In the opinion of Hohenlo, of Solms,
and of Sidney, an advance was not to be thought of; and if the adventure
seemed perilous to such hardy and experienced campaigners as these three,
the stadholder might well hesitate.  Nevertheless, Maurice had made up
his mind.  Sir Francis Vere and Marcellus Bax confirmed him in his
determination, and spoke fiercely of the disgrace which would come upon
the arms of the republic if now, after having made a day's march to meet
the enemy, they should turn their backs upon him just as he was doing his
best to escape.

On leave obtained from the prince, these two champions, the Englishman
and the Hollander, spurred their horses through the narrow pass, with the
waters up to the saddle-bow, at the head of a mere handful of troopers,
not more than a dozen men in all.  Two hundred musketeers followed,
picking their way across the planks.  As they emerged into the open
country beyond, the Spanish soldiers guarding the passage fled without
firing a shot.  Such was already the discouraging effect produced upon
veterans by the unexpected order given that morning to retreat.  Vere and
Bax sent word for all the cavalry to advance at once, and meantime
hovered about the rearguard of the retreating enemy, ready to charge
upon him so soon as they should be strong enough.

Maurice lost no time in plunging with his whole mounted force through the
watery defile; directing the infantry to follow as fast as practicable.
When the commander-in-chief with his eight hundred horsemen, Englishmen,
Zeelanders, Hollanders, and Germans, came upon the heath, the position
and purpose of the enemy were plainly visible.  He was not drawn up in
battle order, waiting to sweep down upon his rash assailants so soon as,
after struggling through the difficult pass, they should be delivered
into his hands.  On the contrary, it was obvious at a glance that his
object was still to escape.  The heath of Tiel, on which Spaniards,
Italians, Walloons, Germans, Dutchmen, English; Scotch, and Irishmen now
all found themselves together, was a ridgy, spongy expanse of country,
bordered on one side by the swollen river, here flowing again through
steeper banks which were overgrown with alders and pollard willows.
Along the left of the Spanish army, as they moved in the direction of
Herenthals, was a continuous fringe of scrub-oaks, intermixed with tall
beeches, skirting the heath, and forming a leafless but almost impervious
screen for the movements of small detachments of troops.  Quite at the
termination of the open apace, these thickets becoming closely crowded,
overhung another extremely narrow passage, which formed the only outlet
from the plain.  Thus the heath of Tiel, upon that winter's morning, had
but a single entrance and a single exit, each very dangerous or very
fortunate for those capable of taking or neglecting the advantages
offered by the position.

The whole force of Varax, at least five thousand strong, was advancing in
close marching order towards the narrow passage by which only they could
emerge from the heath.  Should they reach this point in time, and thus
effect their escape, it would be useless to attempt to follow them, for,
as was the case with the first defile, it was not possible for two
abreast to go through, while beyond was a swampy-country in which
military operations were impossible.  Yet there remained less than half
a league's space for the retreating soldiers to traverse, while not a
single foot-soldier Of Maurice's army had thus far made his appearance on
the heath.  All were still wallowing and struggling, single file, in the
marshy entrance, through which only the cavalry had forced their way.
Here was a dilemma.  Should Maurice look calmly on while the enemy, whom
he had made so painful a forced march to meet, moved off out of reach
before his eyes?  Yet certainly this was no slight triumph in itself.
There sat the stadholder on his horse at the head of eight hundred
carabineers, and there marched four of Philip's best infantry regiments,
garnished with some of his most renowned cavalry squadrons, anxious not
to seek but to avoid a combat.  First came the Germans of Count Sultz,
the musketeers in front, and the spearsmen, of which the bulk of this and
of all the regiments was composed, marching in closely serried squares,
with the company standards waving over each.  Next, arranged in the same
manner, came the Walloon regiments of Hachicourt and of La Barlotte.
Fourth and last came the famous Neapolitans of Marquis Trevico.  The
cavalry squadrons rode on the left of the infantry, and were commanded by
Nicolas Basta, a man who had been trampling upon the Netherlanders ever
since the days of Alva, with whom he had first come to the country.

And these were the legions--these very men or their immediate
predecessors--these Italians, Spaniards, Germans, and Walloons, who
during so many terrible years had stormed and sacked almost every city
of the Netherlands, and swept over the whole breadth of those little
provinces as with the besom of destruction.

Both infantry and cavalry, that picked little army of Varax was of the
very best that had shared in the devil's work which had been the chief
industry practised for so long in the obedient Netherlands.  Was it not
madness for the stadholder, at the head of eight hundred horsemen, to
assail such an army as this?  Was it not to invoke upon his head the
swift vengeance of Heaven?  Nevertheless, the painstaking, cautious
Maurice did not hesitate.  He ordered Hohenlo, with all the Brabantine
cavalry, to ride as rapidly as their horses could carry them along the
edge of the plain, and behind the tangled woodland, by which the movement
would be concealed.  He was at all hazards to intercept the enemy's
vanguard before it should reach the fatal pass.  Vere and Marcellus Bax
meanwhile, supported now by Edmont with the Nymegen squadrons, were to
threaten the Spanish rear.  A company of two under Laurentz was kept by
Maurice near his person in reserve.

The Spaniards steadily continued their march, but as they became aware of
certain slight and indefinite movements on their left, their cavalry,
changing their position, were transferred from the right to the left of
the line of march, and now rode between the infantry and the belt of
woods.

In a few minutes after the orders given to Hohenlo, that dashing soldier
had circumvented the Spaniards, and emerged upon the plain between them
and the entrance to the defile, The next instant the trumpets sounded a
charge, and Hohenlo fell upon the foremost regiment, that of Sultz, while
the rearguard, consisting of Trevico's Neapolitan regiment, was assailed
by Du Bois, Donck, Rysoir, Marcellus Bax, and Sir Francis Vere.  The
effect seemed almost supernatural.  The Spanish cavalry--those far-famed
squadrons of Guzman and Basta--broke at the first onset and galloped off
for the pass as if they had been riding a race.  Most of them escaped
through the hollow into the morass beyond.  The musketeers of Sultz's
regiment hardly fired a shot, and fell back in confusion upon the thickly
clustered pikemen.  The assailants, every one of them in complete armour,
on powerful horses, and armed not with lances but with carbines, trampled
over the panic-struck and struggling masses of leather jerkined pikemen
and shot them at arm's length.  The charge upon Trevico's men at the same
moment was just as decisive.  In less time than it took afterwards to
describe the scene, those renowned veterans were broken into a helpless
mass of dying, wounded, or fugitive creatures, incapable of striking a
blow.

Thus the Germans in the front and the Neapolitans in the rear had been
simultaneously shattered, and rolled together upon the two other
regiments, those of Hachicourt and La Barlotte, which were placed between
them.  Nor did these troops offer any better resistance, but were
paralysed and hurled out of existence like the rest.  In less than an
hour the Spanish army was demolished.  Varax himself lay dead upon the
field, too fortunate not to survive his disgrace.  It was hardly more
than daylight on that dull January morning; nine o'clock had scarce
chimed from the old brick steeples of Turnhout, yet two thousand
Spaniards had fallen before the blows of eight hundred Netherlanders, and
there were five hundred prisoners beside.  Of Maurice's army not more
than nine or ten were slain.  The story sounds like a wild legend.  It
was as if the arm of each Netherlander had been nerved by the memory of
fifty years of outrage, as if the spectre of their half-century of crime
had appalled the soul of every Spaniard.  Like a thunderbolt the son of
William the Silent smote that army of Philip, and in an instant it lay
blasted on the heath of Tiel.  At least it could hardly be called
sagacious generalship on the part of the stadholder.  The chances were
all against him, and if instead of Varax those legions had been commanded
that morning by old Christopher Mondragon, there might perhaps have been
another tale to tell.  Even as it was, there had been a supreme moment
when the Spanish disaster had nearly been changed to victory.  The fight
was almost done, when a small party of Staten' cavalry, who at the
beginning of the action had followed the enemy's horse in its sudden
retreat through the gap, came whirling back over the plain in wild
confusion, pursued by about forty of the enemy's lancers.  They swept by
the spot where Maurice, with not more than ten horsemen around him, was
directing and watching the battle, and in vain the prince threw himself
in front of them and strove to check their flight.  They were panic-
struck, and Maurice would himself have been swept off the field, had not
Marcellus Bax and Edmont, with half a dozen heavy troopers, come to
the rescue.  A grave error had been committed by Parker, who, upon being
ordered by Maurice to cause Louis Laurentz to charge, had himself charged
with the whole reserve and left the stadholder almost alone upon the
field.  Thus the culprits--who after pursuing the Spanish cavalry through
the pass had been plundering the enemy's baggage until they were set upon
by the handful left to guard it, and had become fugitives in their turn--
might possibly have caused the lose of the day after the victory had been
won, had there been a man on the Spanish side to take in the situation at
a glance.  But it is probable that the rout had been too absolute to
allow of any such sudden turning to account of the serious errors of the
victors.  The cavalry, except this handful, had long disappeared, at
least half the infantry lay dead or wounded in the field, while the
remainder, throwing away pipe and matchlock, were running helter-skelter
for their lives.

Besides Prince Maurice himself, to whom the chief credit of the whole
expedition justly belonged, nearly all the commanders engaged obtained
great distinction by their skill and valour.  Sir Francis Vere, as usual,
was ever foremost in the thickest of the fray, and had a horse killed
under him.  Parker erred by too much readiness to engage, but bore
himself manfully throughout the battle.  Hohenlo, Solma, Sidney, Louis
Laurentz, Du Bois, all displayed their usual prowess; but the real hero
of the hour, the personal embodiment of the fortunate madness which
prompted and won the battle, was undoubtedly Marcellus Bax.

Maurice remained an hour or two on the field of battle, and then,
returning towards the village of Turnhout, summoned its stronghold.  The
garrison of sixty, under Captain Van der Delf, instantly surrendered.
The victor allowed these troops to go off scot free, saying that there
had been blood enough shed that day.  Every standard borne by the
Spaniards in the battle-thirty-eight in number--was taken, besides nearly
all their arms.  The banners were sent to the Hague to be hung up in the
great hall of the castle.  The dead body of Varax was sent to the
archduke with a courteous letter, in which, however, a categorical
explanation was demanded as to a statement in circulation that Albert
had decided to give the soldiers of the republic no quarter.

No answer being immediately returned, Maurice ordered the five hundred
prisoners to be hanged or drowned unless ransomed within twenty days, and
this horrible decree appears from official documents to be consistent
with the military usages of the period.  The arrival of the letter from
the cardinal-archduke, who levied the money for the ransom on the
villagers of Brabant, prevented, however, the execution of the menace,
which could hardly have been seriously intended.

Within a week from the time of his departure from the Hague to engage
in this daring adventure, the stadholder had returned to that little
capital, having achieved a complete success.  The enthusiastic
demonstrations throughout the land on account of so signal a victory
can easily be imagined.  Nothing like this had ever before been recorded
in the archives of the young commonwealth.  There had been glorious
defences of beleaguered cities, where scenes of heroic endurance and
self-sacrifice had been enacted, such as never can be forgotten so long
as the history of human liberty shall endure, but a victory won in the
open field over the most famous legions of Spain and against overwhelming
numbers, was an achievement entirely without example.  It is beyond all
doubt that the force under Varax was at least four times as large as that
portion of the States' army which alone was engaged; for Maurice had not
a foot-soldier on the field until the battle was over, save the handful
of musketeers who had followed Vere and Bax at the beginning of the
action.

Therefore it is that this remarkable action merits a much more attentive
consideration than it might deserve, regarded purely as a military
exploit.  To the military student a mere cavalry affair, fought out upon
an obscure Brabantine heath between a party of Dutch carabineers and
Spanish pikemen, may seem of little account--a subject fitted by
picturesque costume and animated action for the pencil of a Wouvermanns
or a Terburg, but conveying little instruction.  As illustrating a period
of transition in which heavy armoured troopers--each one a human iron-
clad fortress moving at speed and furnished with the most formidable
portable artillery then known--could overcome the resistance of almost
any number of foot-soldiers in light marching gear and armed with the
antiquated pike, the affair may be worthy of a moment's attention; and
for this improvement--itself now as obsolete as the slings and
cataphracts of Roman legions--the world was indebted to Maurice.  But the
shock of mighty armies, the manoeuvring of vast masses in one magnificent
combination, by which the fate of empires, the happiness or the misery of
the peoples for generations, may perhaps be decided in a few hours,
undoubtedly require a higher constructive genius than could be displayed
in any such hand-to-hand encounter as that of Turnhout, scientifically
managed as it unquestionably was.  The true and abiding interest of the
battle is derived from is moral effect, from its influence on the people
of the Netherlands.  And this could scarcely be exaggerated.  The nation
was electrified, transformed in an instant.  Who now should henceforth
dare to say that one Spanish fighting-man was equal to five or ten
Hollanders?  At last the days of Jemmingen and Mooker-heath needed no
longer to be remembered by every patriot with a shudder of shame.  Here
at least in the open field a Spanish army, after in vain refusing a
combat and endeavouring to escape, had literally bitten the dust before
one fourth of its own number.  And this effect was a permanent one.
Thenceforth for foreign powers to talk of mediation between the republic
and the ancient master, to suggest schemes of reconciliation and of a
return to obedience, was to offer gratuitous and trivial insult, and we
shall very soon have occasion to mark the simple eloquence with which the
thirty-eight Spanish standards of Turnhout, hung up in the old hall of
the Hague, were made to reply to the pompous rhetoric of an interfering
ambassador.

This brief episode was not immediately followed by other military events
of importance in the provinces during what remained of the winter.  Very
early in the spring, however, it was probable that the campaign might
open simultaneously in France and on the frontiers of Flanders.  Of all
the cities in the north of France there was none, after Rouen, so
important, so populous, so wealthy as Amiens.  Situate in fertile fields,
within three days march of Paris, with no intervening forests or other
impediments of a physical nature to free communication, it was the key to
the gates of the capital.  It had no garrison, for the population
numbered fifteen thousand men able to bear arms, and the inhabitants
valued themselves on the prowess of their trained militiamen, five
thousand of whom they boasted to be able to bring into the field at an
hour's notice--and they were perfectly loyal to Henry.

One morning in March there came a party of peasants, fifteen or twenty in
number, laden with sacks of chestnuts and walnuts, to the northernmost
gate of the town.  They offered them for sale, as usual, to the soldiers
at the guard-house, and chaffered and jested--as boors and soldiers are
wont to do--over their wares.  It so happened that in the course of the
bargaining one of the bags became untied, and its contents, much to the
dissatisfaction of the proprietor, were emptied on the ground.  There was
a scramble for the walnuts, and much shouting, kicking, and squabbling
ensued, growing almost into a quarrel between the burgher-soldiers and
the peasants.  As the altercation was at its height a heavy wagon, laden
with long planks, came towards the gate for the use of carpenters and
architects within the town.  The portcullis was drawn up to admit this
lumbering vehicle, but in the confusion caused by the chance medley going
on at the guard-house, the gate dropped again before the wagon had fairly
got through the passage, and remained resting upon the timber with which
it was piled.

At that instant a shrill whistle was heard; and as if by magic the twenty
chestnut-selling peasants were suddenly transformed to Spanish and
Walloon soldiers.  armed to the teeth, who were presently reinforced by
as many more of their comrades, who sprang from beneath the plank-work by
which the real contents of the wagon had thus been screened.  Captain
Dognano, his brother the sergeant-major, Captain d'Arco, and other
officers of a Walloon regiment stationed in Dourlans, were the leaders of
the little party, and while they were busily occupied in putting the
soldiers of the watch, thus taken unawares, to death, the master-spirit
of the whole adventure suddenly made his appearance and entered the city
at the head of fifteen hundred men.  This was an extremely small, yellow,
dried up, energetic Spanish captain, with a long red beard, Hernan Tello
de Porto Carrero by came, governor of the neighbouring city of Dourlens,
who had conceived this plan for obtaining possession of Amiens.  Having
sent these disguised soldiers on before him, he had passed the night with
his men in ambush until the signal should sound.  The burghers of the
town were mostly in church; none were dreaming of an attack, as men
rarely do--for otherwise how should they ever be surprised--and in half
an hour Amiens was the property of Philip of Spain.  There were not very
many lives lost, for the resistance was small, but great numbers were
tortured for ransom and few women escaped outrage.  The sack was famous,
for the city was rich and the captors were few in number, so that each
soldier had two or three houses to plunder for his own profit.

When the work was done, the faubourgs were all destroyed, for it was the
intention of the conquerors to occupy the place, which would be a most
convenient basis of operations for any attack upon Paris, and it was
desirable to contract the limits to be defended.  Fifteen hundred houses,
many of them beautiful villas surrounded with orchards and pleasure
gardens,--were soon in flames, and afterwards razed to the ground.  The
governor of the place, Count St. Pol, managed to effect his escape.  His
place was now supplied by the Marquis of Montenegro, an Italian in the
service of the Spanish king.  Such was the fate of Amiens in the month of
March, 1597; such the result of the refusal by the citizens to accept the
garrison urged upon them by Henry.

It would be impossible to exaggerate the consternation produced.
throughout France by this astounding and altogether unlooked for event.
"It seemed," said President De Thou, "as if it had extinguished in a
moment the royal majesty and the French name."  A few nights later than
the date of this occurrence, Maximilian de Bethune (afterwards Duke of
Sully, but then called Marquis de Rosny) was asleep in his bed in Paris.
He had returned, at past two o'clock in the morning, from a magnificent
ball given by the Constable of France.  The capital had been uncommonly
brilliant during the winter with banquets and dances, tourneys and
masquerades, as if to cast a lurid glare over the unutterable misery of
the people and the complete desolation of the country; but this
entertainment--given by Montmorency in honour of a fair dame with whom he
supposed himself desperately in love, the young bride of a very ancient
courtier--surpassed in splendour every festival that had been heard of
for years.  De Bethune had hardly lost himself in slumber when he was
startled by Beringen, who, on drawing his curtains in this dead hour of
the night, presented such a ghastly visage that the faithful friend of
Henry instantly imagined some personal disaster to his well-beloved
sovereign.  "Is the King dead?" he cried.

Being re-assured as to, this point and told to hasten to the Louvre,
Rosny instantly complied with the command.  When he reached the palace he
was admitted at once to the royal bed-chamber, where he found the king in
the most unsophisticated of costumes, striding up and down the room, with
his hands clasped together behind his head, and with an expression of
agony upon his face: Many courtiers were assembled there, stuck all of
them like images against the wall, staring before them in helpless
perplexity.

Henry rushed forward as Rosny entered, and wringing him by the hand,
exclaimed, "Ah, my friend, what a misfortune, Amiens is taken!"

"Very well," replied the financier, with unperturbed visage; "I have just
completed a plan which will restore to your Majesty not only Amiens but
many other places."

The king drew a great sigh of relief and asked for his project.
Rosny, saying that he would instantly go and fetch his papers, left
the apartment for an interval, in order to give vent to the horrible
agitation which he had been enduring and so bravely concealing ever since
the fatal words had been spoken.  That a city so important, the key to
Paris, without a moment's warning, without the semblance of a siege,
should thus fall into the hands of the enemy, was a blow as directly to
the heart of De Bethune as it could have been to any other of Henry's
adherents.  But while they had been distracting the king by unavailing
curses or wailings, Henry, who had received the intelligence just as he
was getting into bed, had sent for support and consolation to the tried
friend of years, and he now reproachfully contrasted their pusillanimity
with De Rosny's fortitude.

A great plan for reorganising the finances of the kingdom was that very
night submitted by Rosny to the king, and it was wrought upon day by day
thereafter until it was carried into effect.

It must be confessed that the crudities and immoralities which the
project revealed do not inspire the political student of modern days with
so high a conception of the financial genius of the great minister as his
calm and heroic deportment on trying occasions, whether on the battle-
field or in the council-chamber, does of his natural authority over his
fellow-men.  The scheme was devised to put money in the king's coffers,
which at that moment were completely empty.  Its chief features were to
create a great many new offices in the various courts of justice and
tribunals of administration, all to be disposed of by sale to the highest
bidder; to extort a considerable loan from the chief courtiers and from
the richest burghers in the principal towns; to compel all the leading
peculators--whose name in the public service was legion--to disgorge a
portion of their ill-gotten gains, on being released from prosecution;
and to increase the tax upon salt.

Such a project hardly seems a masterpiece of ethics or political economy,
but it was hailed with rapture by the needy monarch.  At once there was
a wild excitement amongst the jobbers and speculators in places.  The
creation of an indefinite number of new judgeships and magistracies, to
be disposed of at auction, was a tempting opportunity even in that age of
corruption.  One of the most notorious traders in the judicial ermine,
limping Robin de Tours by name, at once made a private visit to Madame de
Rosny and offered seventy-two thousand crowns for the exclusive right to
distribute these new offices.  If this could be managed to his
satisfaction, he promised to give her a diamond worth two thousand
crowns, and another, worth six thousand, to her husband.  The wife of the
great minister, who did not comprehend the whole amount of the insult,
presented Robin to her husband.  She was enlightened, however, as to the
barefaced iniquity of the offer, when she heard De Bethune's indignant.
reply, and saw the jobber limp away, crest-fallen and amazed.  That a
financier or a magistrate should decline a bribe or interfere with the
private sale of places, which were after all objects of merchandise, was
to him incomprehensible.  The industrious Robin, accordingly, recovering
from his discomfiture, went straightway to the chancellor, and concluded
the same bargain in the council chamber which had been rejected by De
Bethune, with the slight difference that the distribution of the places.
was assigned to the speculator for seventy-five thousand instead of
seventy-two thousand crowns.  It was with great difficulty
that De Bethune, who went at once to the king with complaints and
insinuations as to the cleanness of the chancellor's hands, was able to
cancel the operation.  The day was fast approaching when the universal
impoverishment of the great nobles and landholders--the result of the
long, hideous, senseless massacres called the wars of religion--was to
open the way for the labouring classes to acquire a property in the soil.
Thus that famous fowl in every pot was to make its appearance, which
vulgar tradition ascribes to the bounty of a king who hated everything
like popular rights, and loved nothing but his own glory and his own
amusement.  It was not until the days of his grandchildren and great-
grandchildren that Privilege could renew those horrible outrages on the
People, which were to be avenged by a dread series of wars, massacres,
and crimes, compared to which even the religious conflicts of the
sixteenth century grow pale.

Meantime De Bethune comforted his master with these financial plans,
and assured him in the spirit of prophecy that the King of Spain, now
tottering as it was thought to his grave, would soon be glad to make a
favourable peace with France even if he felt obliged to restore not only
Amiens but every other city or stronghold that he had ever conquered in
that kingdom.  Time would soon show whether this prediction were correct
or delusive; but while the secret negotiations between Henry and the Pope
were vigorously proceeding for that peace with Spain which the world in
general and the commonwealth of the Netherlands in particular thought to
be farthest from the warlike king's wishes, it was necessary to set about
the siege of Amiens.

Henry assembled a force of some twelve or fifteen thousand men for that
purpose, while the cardinal-archduke, upon his part, did his best to put
an army in the field in order to relieve the threatened city so recently
acquired by a coarse but successful artifice.

But Albert was in even a worse plight than that in which his great
antagonist found himself.  When he had first arrived in the provinces,
his exchequer was overflowing, and he was even supposed to devote a
considerable portion of the military funds to defray the expenses of his
magnificent housekeeping at Brussels.  But those halcyon days were over.
A gigantic fraud, just perpetrated by Philip; had descended like a
thunderbolt upon the provinces and upon all commercial Europe, and had
utterly blasted the unfortunate viceroy.  In the latter days of the
preceding year the king had issued a general repudiation of his debts.

He did it solemnly, too, and with great religious unction, for it was a
peculiarity of this remarkable sovereign that he was ever wont to
accomplish his darkest crimes, whether murders or stratagems, as if they
were acts of virtue.  Perhaps he really believed them to be such, for a
man, before whom so many millions of his fellow worms had been writhing
for half a century in the dust, might well imagine himself a deity.

So the king, on the 20th November, 1596, had publicly revoked all the
assignments, mortgages, and other deeds by which the royal domains;
revenues, taxes, and other public property had been transferred or
pledged for moneys already advanced to merchants, banker, and other
companies or individuals, and formally took them again into his own
possession, on the ground that his exertions in carrying on this long
war to save Christianity from destruction had reduced him to beggary,
while the money-lenders, by charging him exorbitant interest, had all
grown rich at his expense.

This was perfectly simple.  There was no attempt to disguise the villany
of the transaction.  The massacre of so many millions of Protestants,
the gigantic but puerile attempts to subjugate the Dutch republic, and to
annex France, England, and the German empire to his hereditary dominions,
had been attended with more expense than Philip had calculated upon.
The enormous wealth which a long series of marriages, inheritances,
conquests, and maritime discoveries had heaped upon Spain had been
exhausted by the insane ambition of the king to exterminate heresy
throughout the world, and to make himself the sovereign of one undivided,
universal, catholic monarchy.  All the gold and silver of America had not
sufficed for this purpose, and he had seen, with an ever rising
indignation, those very precious metals which, in his ignorance of the
laws of trade, he considered his exclusive property flowing speedily into
the coffers of the merchants of Europe, especially those of the hated
commonwealth of the rebellious Netherlands.

Therefore he solemnly renounced all his contracts, and took God to
witness that it was to serve His Divine will.  How else could he hope to
continue his massacre of the Protestants?

The effect of the promulgation of this measure was instantaneous.  Two
millions and a half of bills of exchange sold by the Cardinal Albert came
back in one day protested.  The chief merchants and bankers of Europe
suspended payment.  Their creditors became bankrupt.  At the Frankfort
fair there were more failures in one day than there had ever been in all
the years since Frankfort existed.  In Genoa alone a million dollars of
interest were confiscated.  It was no better in Antwerp; but Antwerp was
already ruined.  There was a general howl of indignation and despair upon
every exchange, in every counting-room, in every palace, in every cottage
of Christendom.  Such a tremendous repudiation of national debts was
never heard of before.  There had been debasements of the currency, petty
frauds by kings upon their unfortunate peoples, but such a crime as this
had never been conceived by human heart before.

The archduke was fain to pawn his jewelry, his plate, his furniture, to
support the daily expenses of his household.  Meantime he was to set an
army in the field to relieve a city, beleaguered by the most warlike
monarch in Christendom.  Fortunately for him, that prince was in very
similar straits, for the pressure upon the public swindlers and the
auction sales of judicial ermine throughout his kingdom were not as
rapidly productive as had been hoped.

It was precisely at this moment, too, that an incident of another nature
occurred in Antwerp, which did not tend to make the believers in the
possibility of religious or political freedom more in love with the
system of Spain and Rome.  Those blood-dripping edicts against heresy
in the Netherlands, of which enough has been said in previous volumes
of this history, and which had caused the deaths, by axe, faggot, halter,
or burial alive, of at least fifty thousand human creatures--however
historical scepticism may shut its eyes to evidence--had now been,
dormant for twenty years.  Their activity had ceased with the
pacification of Ghent; but the devilish spirit which had inspired them
still lived in the persons of the Jesuits, and there were now more
Jesuits in the obedient provinces than there had been for years.
We have seen that Champagny's remedy for the ills the country was
enduring was "more Jesuits."  And this, too, was Albert's recipe.  Always
"more Jesuits."  And now the time had come when the Jesuits thought that
they might step openly with their works into the daylight again.  Of late
years they had shrouded themselves in comparative mystery, but from their
seminaries and colleges had gone forth a plentiful company of assassins
against Elizabeth and Henry, Nassau, Barneveld, and others who, whether
avowedly or involuntarily, were prominent in the party of human progress.
Some important murders had already been accomplished, and the prospect
was fair that still others might follow, if the Jesuits persevered.
Meantime those ecclesiastics thought that a wholesome example might
be by the spectacle of a public execution.

Two maiden ladies lived on the north rampart of Antwerp.  They had
formerly professed the Protestant religion, and had been thrown into
prison for that crime; but the fear of further persecution, human
weakness, or perhaps sincere conviction, had caused them to renounce
the error of their ways, and they now went to mass.  But they had a
maidservant, forty years of age, Anna van den Hove by name, who was
staunch in that reformed faith in which she had been born and bred.
The Jesuits denounced this maid-servant to the civil authority, and
claimed her condemnation and execution under the edicts of 1540, decrees
which every one had supposed as obsolete as the statutes of Draco, which
they had so entirely put to shame.

The sentence having been obtained from the docile and priest-ridden
magistrates, Anna van den Hove was brought to Brussels and informed that
she was at once to be buried alive.  At the same time, the Jesuits told
her that by converting herself to the Church she might escape punishment.

When King Henry IV. was summoned to renounce that same Huguenot faith,
of which he was the political embodiment and the military champion, the
candid man answered by the simple demand to be instructed.  When the
proper moment came, the instruction was accomplished by an archbishop
with the rapidity of magic.  Half an hour undid the work of half a life-
time.  Thus expeditiously could religious conversion be effected when an
earthly crown was its guerdon.  The poor serving-maid was less open to
conviction.  In her simple fanaticism she too talked of a crown, and saw
it descending from Heaven on her poor forlorn head as the reward, not of
apostasy, but of steadfastness.  She asked her tormentors how they could
expect her to abandon her religion for fear of death.  She had read her
Bible every day, she said, and had found nothing there of the pope or
purgatory, masses, invocation of saints, or the absolution of sins except
through the blood of the blessed Redeemer.  She interfered with no one
who thought differently; she quarrelled with no one's religious belief.
She had prayed for enlightenment from Him, if she were in error, and the
result was that she felt strengthened in her simplicty, and resolved to
do nothing against her conscience.  Rather than add this sin to the
manifold ones committed by her, she preferred, she said, to die the
death.  So Anna van den Hove was led, one fine midsummer morning, to the
hayfield outside of Brussels, between two Jesuits, followed by a number
of a peculiar kind of monks called love-brothers.  Those holy men goaded
her as she went, telling her that she was the devil's carrion, and
calling on her to repent at the last moment, and thus save her life and
escape eternal damnation beside.  But the poor soul had no ear for them,
and cried out that, like Stephen, she saw the heavens opening, and the
angels stooping down to conduct her far away from the power of the evil
one.  When they came to the hay-field they found the pit already dug, and
the maid-servant was ordered to descend into it.  The executioner then
covered her with earth up to the waist, and a last summons was made to
her to renounce her errors.  She refused, and then the earth was piled
upon her, and the hangman jumped upon the grave till it was flattened and
firm.

Of all the religious murders done in that hideous sixteenth century in
the Netherlands; the burial of the Antwerp servantmaid was the last and
the worst.  The worst, because it was a cynical and deliberate attempt to
revive the demon whose thirst for blood had been at last allayed, and who
had sunk into repose.  And it was a spasmodic revival only, for, in the
provinces at least, that demon had finished his work.

Still, on the eastern borders of what was called civilization, Turk and
Christian were contending for the mastery.  The great battle of Kovesd
had decided nothing, and the crescent still shone over the fortified and
most important Hungarian stronghold of Raab, within arm's length of
Vienna.  How rapidly might that fatal and menacing emblem fill its horns,
should it once be planted on the walls of the Imperial capital!  It was
not wonderful that a sincere impatience should be felt by all the
frontier States for the termination of the insurrection of the
Netherlands.  Would that rebellious and heretical republic only consent
to go out of existence, again bow its stubborn knee to Philip and the
Pope, what a magnificent campaign might be made against Mahomet!  The
King of Spain was the only potentate at all comparable in power to the
grand Turk.  The King of France, most warlike of men, desired nothing
better, as he avowed, than to lead his brave nobles into Hungary to smite
the unbelievers.  Even Prince Maurice, it was fondly hoped, might be
induced to accept a high command in the united armies of Christendom,
and seek for glory by campaigning, in alliance with Philip; Rudolph, and
Henry, against the Ottoman, rather than against his natural sovereign.
Such were the sagacity, the insight, the power of forecasting the future
possessed in those days by monarchs, statesmen, and diplomatists who were
imagining that they held the world's destiny in their hands.

There was this summer a solemn embassy from the emperor to the States-
General proposing mediation referring in the usual conventional
phraseology to the right of kings to command, and to the duty of the
people to submit, and urging the gentle-mindedness and readiness to
forgive which characterised the sovereign of the Netherlands and of
Spain.

And the statesmen of the republic had answered as they always did,
showing with courteous language, irresistible logic, and at, unmerciful
length, that there never had been kings in the Netherlands at all, and
that the gentle-mindedness of Philip had been exhibited in the massacre
of a hundred thousand Netherlanders in various sieges and battles, and in
the murder, under the Duke of Alva alone, of twenty thousand human beings
by the hangman.

They liked not such divine right nor such gentle-mindedness.  They
recognised no duty on their part to consent to such a system.  Even the
friendly King of Denmark sent a legation for a similar purpose, which was
respectfully but very decidedly allowed to return as it came; but the
most persistent in schemes of interference for the purpose of putting an
end to the effusion of blood in the Netherlands was Sigismund of Poland.
This monarch, who occupied two very incompatible positions, being
sovereign at once of fanatically Protestant Sweden and of orthodox
Poland, and who was, moreover, son-in-law of Archduke Charles of Styria
whose other daughter was soon to be espoused by the Prince of Spain--was
personally and geographically interested in liberating Philip from the
inconvenience of his Netherland war.  Only thus could he hope to bring
the Spanish power to the rescue of Christendom against the Turk.
Troubles enough were in store for Sigismund in his hereditary northern
realms, and he was to learn that his intermarriage with the great
Catholic and Imperial house did not enable him to trample out
Protestantism in those hardy Scandinavian and Flemish regions where it
had taken secure root.  Meantime he despatched, in solemn mission to the
republic and to the heretic queen, a diplomatist whose name and whose
oratorical efforts have by a caprice of history been allowed to endure to
our times.

Paul Dialyn was solemnly received at the Hague on the 21st July.
A pragmatical fop, attired in a long, magnificent Polish robe, covered
with diamonds and other jewels, he was yet recognised by some of those
present as having been several years before a student at Leyden under a
different name, and with far less gorgeous surroundings.  He took up his
position in the council-chamber, in the presence of the stadholder and
the leading members of the States-General, and pronounced a long Latin
oration, in the manner, as it was said, of a monk delivering a sermon
from the pulpit.  He kept his eyes steadily fixed on the ceiling, never
once looking at the men whom he was addressing, and speaking in a loud,
nasal, dictatorial tone, not at all agreeable to the audience.  He dwelt
in terms of extravagant eulogy on the benignity and gentleness of the
King of Spain--qualities in which he asserted that no prince on earth
could be compared to him--and he said this to the very face of Maurice of
Nassau.  That the benignant and gentle king had caused the stadholder's
father to be assassinated, and that he had rewarded the murderer's family
with a patent of nobility, and with an ample revenue taken from the
murdered man's property, appeared of no account to the envoy in the full
sweep of his rhetoric.  Yet the reminiscence caused a shudder of disgust
in all who heard him.

He then stated the wish of his master the Polish king to be that, in
regard to the Turk, the provinces might reconcile themselves to their
natural master, who was the most powerful monarch in Christendom, and the
only one able to make head against the common foe.  They were solemnly
warned of the enormous power and resources of the great king, with whom
it was hopeless for them to protract a struggle sure to end at last in
their uttermost destruction.  It was for kings to issue commands; he
said, and for the people to obey; but Philip was full of sweetness, and
would accord them full forgiveness for their manifold sins against him.
The wish to come to the rescue of Christendom, in this extreme peril from
the Turk, was with him paramount to all other considerations.

Such; in brief, was the substance of the long Latin harangue by which it
was thought possible to induce those sturdy republicans and Calvinists to
renounce their vigorous national existence and to fal on their knees
before the most Catholic king.  This was understood to be mediation,
statesmanship, diplomacy, in deference to which the world was to pause
and the course of events to flow backwards.  Truly, despots and their
lackeys were destined to learn some rude lessons from that vigorous
little commonwealth in the North Sea, before it should have accomplished
its mission on earth.

The States-General dissembled their disgust, however, for it was not
desirable to make open enemies of Sigismund or Rudolph.  They refused to
accept a copy of the oration, but they promised to send him a categorical
answer to it in writing.  Meantime the envoy had the honour of walking
about the castle with the stadholder, and, in the course of their
promenade, Maurice pointed to the thirty-eight standards taken at the
battle of Turnhout, which hung from the cedarn rafters of the ancient
banquetting hall.  The mute eloquence of those tattered banners seemed a
not illogical reply to the diplomatic Paul's rhetoric in regard to the
hopelessness of a contest with Spanish armies.

Next, Van der Werken--pensionary of Leyden, and a classical scholar--
waited upon the envoy with a Latin reply to his harangue, together
with a courteous letter for Sigismund.  Both documents were scathing
denunciations of the policy pursued by the King of Spain and by all his
aiders and abettors, and a distinct but polished refusal to listen to a
single word in favour of mediation or of peace.

Paul Dialyn then received a courteous permission to leave the territory
of the republic, and was subsequently forwarded in a States' vessel of
war to England.

His reception, about a month later, by Queen Elizabeth is an event on
which all English historians are fond of dwelling.  The pedant, on being
presented to that imperious and accomplished sovereign, deported himself
with the same ludicrous arrogance which had characterised him at the
Hague.  His Latin oration, which had been duly drawn up for him by the
Chancellor of Sweden, was quite as impertinent as his harangue to the
States-General had been, and was delivered with the same conceited air.
The queen replied on the instant in the same tongue.  She was somewhat in
a passion, but spoke with majestic moderation?

"Oh, how I have been deceived!"  she exclaimed.  "I expected an
ambassador, and behold a herald!  In all my life I never heard of such
an oration.  Your boldness and unadvised temerity I cannot sufficiently
admire.  But if the king your master has given you any such thing in
charge--which I much doubt--I believe it is because, being but a young
man, and lately advanced to the crown, not by ordinary succession of
blood, but by election, he understandeth not yet the way of such
affairs."  And so on--for several minutes longer.

Never did envoy receive such a setting down from sovereign.

"God's death, my lords!"  said the queen to her ministers; as she
concluded, "I have been enforced this day to scour up my old Latin that
hath lain long in rusting."

This combination of ready wit, high spirit, and good Latin, justly
excited the enthusiasm of the queen's subjects, and endeared her still
more to every English heart.  It may, however, be doubted whether the
famous reply was in reality so entirely extemporaneous as it has usually
been considered.  The States-General had lost no time in forwarding to
England a minute account of the proceedings of Paul Dialyn at the Hague,
together with a sketch of his harangue and of the reply on behalf of the
States.  Her Majesty and her counsellors therefore, knowing that the same
envoy was on his way to England with a similar errand, may be supposed to
have had leisure to prepare the famous impromptu.  Moreover, it is
difficult to understand, on the presumption that these classic utterances
were purely extemporaneous, how they have kept their place in all
chronicles and histories from that day to the present, without change of
a word in the text.  Surely there was no stenographer present to take
down the queen's words as they fell from her lips.

The military events of the year did not testify to a much more successful
activity on the part of the new league in the field than it had displayed
in the sphere of diplomacy.  In vain did the envoy of the republic urge
Henry and his counsellors to follow up the crushing blow dealt to the
cardinal at Turnhout by vigorous operations in conjunction with the
States' forces in Artois and Hainault.  For Amiens had meantime been
taken, and it was now necessary for the king to employ all his energy and
all his resources to recover that important city.  So much damage to the
cause of the republic and of the new league had the little yellow Spanish
captain inflicted in an hour, with his bags of chestnuts and walnuts.
The siege of Amiens lasted nearly six months, and was the main event of
the campaign, so far as Henry was concerned.  It is true--as the reader
has already seen, and as will soon be more clearly developed--that
Henry's heart had been fixed on peace from the moment that he consented
in conjunction with the republic to declare war, and that he had entered
into secret and separate negotiations for that purpose with the agents of
Philip so soon as he had bound himself by solemn covenant with Elizabeth
to have no negotiations whatever with him except with her full knowledge
and consent.

The siege of Amiens, however, was considered a military masterpiece, and
its whole progress showed the revolution which the stadholder of Holland
had already effected in European warfare.  Henry IV. beleaguered Amiens
as if he were a pupil of Maurice, and contemporaries were enthusiastic
over the science, the patience, the inventive ingenuity which were at
last crowned with success.  The heroic Hernan Tello de Porto Carrero was
killed in a sortie during the defence of the place which he had so
gallantly won, and when the city was surrendered to the king on the 19th
of September it was stipulated in the first article of the capitulation
that the tomb, epitaph, and trophies, by which his memory was honoured in
the principal church, should not be disturbed, and that his body might be
removed whenever and whither it seemed good to his sovereign.  In vain
the cardinal had taken the field with an army of eighteen thousand foot
and fifteen hundred light cavalry.  The king had learned so well to
entrench himself and to moderate his ardour for inopportune pitched
battles, that the relieving force could find, no occasion to effect its
purpose.  The archduke retired.  He came to Amiens like a soldier, said
Henry, but he went back like a priest.  Moreover, he was obliged to
renounce, besides the city, a most tempting prize which he thought that
he had secured within the city.  Alexander Farnese, in his last French
campaign, had procured and sent to his uncle the foot of St. Philip and
the head of St. Lawrence; but what was Albert's delight when he learned
that in Amiens cathedral there was a large piece of the head of John the
Baptist!  "There will be a great scandal about it in this kingdom," he
wrote to Philip, "if I undertake to transport it out of the country, but
I will try to contrive it as your Majesty desires."

But the military events of the year prevented the cardinal from
gratifying the king in regard to these choice curiosities.

After the reduction of the city Henry went a considerable distance with
his army towards the frontier of Flanders, in order to return, as he
said, "his cousin's visit."  But the recovery of Amiens had placed too
winning a card in the secret game which he was then playing to allow him
to push his nominal adversary to extremities.

The result, suspected very early in the year by the statesmen of the
republic, was already very plainly foreshadowing itself as the winter
advanced.

Nor had the other two members of the league affected much in the field.
Again an expedition had been fitted forth under Essex against the Spanish
coast to return the compliment which Philip had intended with the unlucky
armada under Santa Gadea; and again Sir Francis Vere, with two thousand
veterans from the Netherlands, and the Dutch admirals, with ten ships of
war and a large number of tenders and transports, had faithfully taken
part in the adventure.

The fleet was tempest-tossed for ten days, during which it reached the
threatened coast and was blown off again.  It returned at last into the
English ports, having accomplished nothing, and having expended
superfluously a considerable amount of money and trouble.  Essex, with a
few of the vessels, subsequently made a cruise towards the Azores, but,
beyond the capture of a Spanish merchantman or two, gained no glory and
inflicted no damage.

Nothing could be feebler than the military operations of the three
confederated powers ever since they had so solemnly confederated
themselves.

Sick at heart with the political intrigues of his allies which had--
brought a paralysis upon his arms which the blows of the enemy could
hardly have effected, Maurice took the field in August: for an autumnal
campaign on the eastern frontier of the republic.  Foiled in his efforts
for a combined attack by the whole force of the league upon Philip's
power in the west, he thought it at least expedient to liberate the
Rhine, to secure the important provinces of Zutphen, Gelderland, and
Overyssel from attack, and to provide against the dangerous intrigues and
concealed warfare carried on by Spain in the territories of the mad Duke
of Juliers, Clever and Berg.  For the seeds of the Thirty Years' War of
Germany were already sown broadcast in those fatal duchies, and it was
the determination of the agents of Spain to acquire the mastery of that
most eligible military position, that excellent 'sedes belli,' whenever
Protestantism was to be assailed in England, the Netherlands, or Germany.

Meantime the Hispaniolated counsellors of Duke John had strangled--as it
was strongly suspected--his duchess, who having gone to bed in perfect
health one evening was found dead in her bed next morning, with an ugly
mark on her throat; and it was now the purpose of these statesmen to
find a new bride for their insane sovereign in the ever ready and ever
orthodox house of Lorrain.  And the Protestant brothers-in-law and
nephews and nieces were making every possible combination in order to
check such dark designs, and to save these important territories from
the ubiquitous power of Spain.

The stadholder had also family troubles at this period.  His sister
Emilia had conceived a desperate passion for Don Emmanuel, the pauper
son of the forlorn pretender to Portugal, Don Antonio, who had at last
departed this life.  Maurice was indignant that a Catholic, an outcast,
and, as it was supposed, a bastard, should dare to mate with the daughter
of William of Orange-Nassau; and there were many scenes of tenderness,
reproaches, recriminations, and 'hysterica passio,' in which not only the
lovers, the stadholder and his family, but also the high and mighty
States-General, were obliged to enact their parts.  The chronicles are
filled with the incidents, which, however, never turned to tragedy, nor
even to romance, but ended, without a catastrophe, in a rather insipid
marriage.  The Princess Emilia remained true both to her religion and her
husband during a somewhat obscure wedded life, and after her death Don
Emmanuel found means to reconcile himself with the King of Spain and to
espouse, in second nuptials, a Spanish lady.  On the 4th of August,
Maurice arrived at Arnhem with a force of seven thousand foot and twelve
hundred horse.  Hohenlo was with him, and William Lewis, and there was
yet another of the illustrious house of Nassau in the camp, Frederick
Henry, a boy in his thirteenth year, the youngest born of William the
Silent, the grandson of Admiral de Coligny, now about; in this his first
campaign, to take the first step in a long and noble career.

Having reduced the town and castle of Alphen, the stadholder came before
Rheinberg, which he very expeditiously invested.  During a preliminary
skirmish William Lewis received a wound in the leg, while during the
brief siege Maurice had a narrow escape from death, a cannon-ball passing
through his tent and over his head as he lay taking a brief repose upon
his couch.

On the 19th, Rheinberg, the key to that portion of the river,
surrendered.  On the 31st the stadholder opened his batteries upon the
city of Meurs, which capitulated on the 2nd of September; the commandant,
Andrew Miranda, stipulating that he should carry off an old fifty-
pounder, the only piece of cannon in the place.  Maurice gave his
permission with a laugh, begging Miranda not to batter down any cities
with his big gun.

On the 8th September the stadholdet threw a bridge over the Rhine, and
crossing that river and the Lippe, came on the 11th before Grol.  There
was no Christopher Mondragon now in his path to check his progress and
spoil his campaign, so that in seventeen days the city, being completely
surrounded with galleries and covered ways up to its walls, surrendered.
Count van Stirum, royal governor of the place, dined with the stadholder
on that day, and the garrison, from twelve hundred to fifteen hundred
strong; together with such of the townsfolk as chose to be subjects of
Philip rather than citizens of the republic, were permitted to depart in
peace.

On the 9th October the town and castle of Brevoort were taken by storm
and the town was burned.

On the 18th October, Maurice having summoned Enschede, the commandant
requested permission to examine the artillery by which it was proposed to
reduce the city.  Leave being granted, two captains were deputed
accordingly as inspectors, who reported that resistance was useless.
The place accordingly capitulated at once.

Here, again, was an improvement on the heroic practice of Alva and
Romero.

On the 21st and 22nd October, Ootmarsum and Oldenzaal were taken, and on
the 28th the little army came before Lingen.  This important city
surrendered after a fortnight's siege.

Thus closed a sagacious, business-like, three-months' campaign, in the
course of which the stadholder, although with a slender force, had by
means of his excellent organization and his profound practical science,
achieved very considerable results.  He had taken nine strongly-fortified
cities and five castles, opened the navigation of the Rhine, and
strengthened the whole eastern bulwarks of the republic.  He was censured
by the superficial critics of the old school for his humanity towards the
conquered garrisons.  At least it was thought quite superfluous to let
these Spanish soldiers go scot free.  Five thousand veterans had thus
been liberated to swell the ranks of the cardinal's army, but the result
soon proved the policy of Maurice to be, in many ways, wholesome.  The
great repudiation by Philip, and the consequent bankruptcy of Alberta
converted large numbers of the royal troops into mutineers, and these
garrisons from the eastern frontier were glad to join in the game.

After the successful siege of Hulst in the previous year the cardinal had
reduced the formidable mutiny which had organized itself at Tirlemont and
Chapelle in the days of his luckless predecessor.  Those rebels had been
paid off and had mainly returned to Italy and other lands to spend their
money.  But soon a new rebellion in all the customary form's established
itself in Antwerp citadel during the temporary absence of Mexia, the
governor, and great was the misery of the unhappy burghers thus placed at
the mercy of the guns of that famous pentagon.  They were obliged to
furnish large sums to the whole garrison, paying every common foot-
soldier twelve stivers a day and the officers in proportion, while the
great Eletto demanded, beside his salary, a coach and six, a state bed
with satin curtains and fine linen, and the materials for banquetting
sumptuously every day.  At the slightest demur to these demands the
bombardment from the citadel would begin, and the accurate artillery
practice of those experienced cannoneers soon convinced the loyal
citizens of the propriety of the arrangement.  The example spread.  The
garrison of Ghent broke into open revolt, and a general military
rebellion lasted for more than a year.

While the loyal cities of the obedient provinces were thus enjoying the
fruits of their loyalty and obedience, the rebellious capital of the
republic was receiving its stadholder with exuberant demonstrations of
gratitude.  The year, begun with the signal victory of Turnhout, had
worthily terminated, so far as military events were concerned, with the
autumnal campaign on the Rhine, and great were the rejoicings throughout
the little commonwealth.

Thus, with diminished resources, had the republic been doing its share of
the work which the anti-Spanish league had been called into existence to
accomplish.  But, as already intimated, this league was a mere fraud upon
the Netherlands, which their statesmen were not slow in discovering.  Of
course it was the object of Philip and of the pope to destroy this
formidable triple alliance as soon as formed, and they found potent
assistance, not only in Henry's counsellors, but in the bosom of that
crafty monarch himself.  Clement hated Philip as much as he feared him,
so that the prospect both of obtaining Henry as a counterpoise to his own
most oppressive and most Catholic protector, and of breaking up the great
convert's alliance with the heretic queen and the rebellious republic,
was a most tempting one to his Holiness.  Therefore he employed,
indefatigably, the matchless powers of intrigue possessed by Rome to
effect this great purpose.  As for Elizabeth, she was weary of the war,
most anxious to be reimbursed her advances to the States, and profoundly
jealous of the rising commercial and naval greatness of the new
commonwealth.  If the league therefore proved impotent from the
beginning, certainly it was not the fault of the United Netherlands.
We have seen how much the king deplored, in intimate conversation with
De Bethune,  his formal declaration of war against Spain which the Dutch
diplomatists had induced him to make; and indeed nothing can be more
certain than that this public declaration of war, and this solemn
formation of the triple alliance against Philip, were instantly
accompanied on Henry's part by secret peace negotiations with Philip's
agents.  Villeroy, told Envoy Calvaert that as for himself he always
trembled when he thought on what he had done, in seconding the will of
his Majesty in that declaration at the instance of the States-General, of
which measure so many losses and such bitter fruits had been the result.
He complained, too, of the little assistance or co-operation yielded by
England.  Calvaert replied that he had nothing to say in defence of
England, but that certainly the king could have no cause to censure the
States.  The republic, however, had good ground, he said, to complain
that nothing had been done by France, that all favourable occasions had
been neglected, and that there was a perpetual change of counsels.  The
envoy, especially, and justly, reproached the royal government for having
taken no advantage of the opportunity offered by the victory of Turnhout,
in which the republic had utterly defeated the principal forces of the
common enemy.  He bluntly remarked, too, that the mysterious comings and
goings of Balvena had naturally excited suspicions in the Netherlands,
and that it would be better that all such practices should be at once
abandoned.  They did his Majesty no service, and it was no wonder that
they caused uneasiness to his allies.  Villeroy replied that the king had
good reasons to give satisfaction to those who were yearning for peace.

As Henry himself was yearning in this regard as much as any of his
subjects, it was natural enough that he should listen to Balvena and all
other informal negotiators whom Cardinal Ilbert might send from Brussels
or Clement from Rome.  It will be recollected that Henry's parting words
to Balvena at Rouen had been: "Tell the archduke that I am very much his
friend.  Let him arrange a peace.  Begone.  Be diligent."

But the king's reply to Calvaert, when, after the interview with
Villeroy, that envoy was admitted to the royal dressing room for private
conversation and took the occasion to remonstrate with his Majesty on
these intrigues with the Spanish agent, was that he should send off
Balvena in such fashion that it would take from the cardinal-archduke all
hope of troubling him with any further propositions.

It has been seen, too, with what an outbreak of wrath the proposition,
made by Elizabeth through Robert Sydney, that she should succour Calais
on condition of keeping it for herself, had been received by Henry.
At a somewhat later moment, when Calais had passed entirely into the
possession of Spain, the queen offered to lay siege to that city with
twelve thousand men, but with the understanding that the success was to
be entirely for her own profit.  Again the king bad expressed great
astonishment and indignation at the proposition.

Nevertheless, after Amiens had been lost, Henry had sent Fonquerolles on
a special mission to England, asking Elizabeth's assistance in the siege
for its recovery, and offering that she should keep Calais as a pledge
for expenses thus incurred, on the same terms as those on which she held
the Brill and Flushing in the Netherlands.  This proposal, however, to
make a considerable campaign in Picardy, and to be indemnified by Henry
for her trouble with the pledge of a city which was not his property, did
not seem tempting to Elizabeth: The mission of Fonquerolles was
fruitless, as might have been supposed.  Nothing certainly in the queen's
attitude, up to that moment, could induce the supposition that she would
help to reduce Amiens for the sake of the privilege of conquering Calais
if she could.

So soon as her refusal was made certain, Henry dropped the mask.
Buzanval, the regular French envoy at the Hague--even while amazing the
States by rebukes for their short-comings in the field and by demands for
immediate co-operation in the king's campaign, when the king was doing
nothing but besiege Amiens--astonished the republican statesmen still
further by telling them--that his master was listening seriously to the
pope's secret offers.

His Holiness had assured the king, through the legate at Paris, that he
could easily bring about a peace between him and Philip, if Henry would
agree to make it alone, and he would so manage it that the king's name
should not be mixed up with the negotiations, and that he should not
appear as seeking for peace.  It was to be considered however--so Henry's
envoy intimated both at Greenwich and the Hague--that if the king should
accept the pope's intervention he would be obliged to exclude from a
share in it the queen and all others not of the Catholic religion, and it
was feared that the same necessity which had compelled him to listen to
these overtures would force him still further in the same path.  He
dreaded lest, between peace and war, he might fall into a position in
which the law would be dictated to him either by the enemy or by those
who had undertaken to help him out of danger.

Much more information to this effect did Buzanval communicate to the
States on the authority of a private letter from the king, telling him of
the ill-success of the mission of Fonquerolles.  That diplomatist had
brought back nothing from England, it appeared, save excuses, general
phrases, and many references to the troubles in Ireland and to the danger
of a new Spanish Armada.

It was now for the first time, moreover, that the States learned how they
had been duped both by England and France in the matter of the League.
To their surprise they were informed that while they were themselves
furnishing four thousand men, according to the contract signed by the
three powers, the queen had in reality only agreed to contribute two
thousand soldiers, and these only for four months' service, within a very
strict territorial limit, and under promise of immediate reimbursement of
the expenses thus incurred.

These facts, together with the avowal that their magnanimous ally had
all along been secretly treating for peace with the common enemy, did not
make a cheerful impression upon those plain-spoken republicans, nor was
it much consolation to them to receive the assurance that "after the
king's death his affection and gratitude towards the States would be
found deeply engraved upon his heart."

The result of such a future autopsy might seem a matter of comparative
indifference, since meantime the present effect to the republic of those
deep emotions was a treacherous desertion.  Calvaert, too, who had so
long haunted the king like his perpetual shadow, and who had believed
him--at least so far as the Netherlands were concerned--to be almost
without guile, had been destined after all to a rude awakening.  Sick and
suffering, he did not cease, so long as life was in him, to warn the
States-General of the dangers impending over them from the secret
negotiations which their royal ally was doing his best to conceal from
them, and as to which he had for a time succeeded so dexterously in
hoodwinking their envoy himself.  But the honest and energetic agent of
the republic did not live to see the consummation of these manceuvres of
Henry and the pope.  He died in Paris during the month of June of this
year.

Certainly the efforts of Spanish and Papal diplomacy had not been
unsuccessful in bringing about a dissolution of the bonds of amity by
which the three powers seemed so lately to be drawing themselves very
closely together.  The republic and Henry IV.  were now on a most
uncomfortable footing towards each other.  On the other hand, the queen
was in a very ill humour with the States and very angry with Henry.
Especially the persistent manner in which the Hollanders carried on trade
with Spain and were at the same time making fortunes for themselves and
feeding the enemy, while Englishmen, on pain of death, were debarred from
participation in such traffic, excited great and general indignation in
England.  In vain was it represented that this trade, if prohibited to
the commonwealth would fall into the hands of neutral powers, and that
Spain would derive her supplies from the Baltic and other regions as
regularly as ever, while the republic, whose whole life was in her
foreign commerce, would not only become incapable of carrying on the war
but would perish of inanition.  The English statesmen threatened to
declare all such trade contraband, and vessels engaging in it lawful
prize to English cruisers.

Burghley declared, with much excitement, to Canon, that he, as well
as all the council, considered the conduct of the Hollanders so
unjustifiable as to make them regret that their princess had ever
embarked with a State which chose to aid its own enemies in the
destruction of itself and its allies.  Such conduct was so monstrous that
those who were told of it would hardly believe it.

The Dutch envoy observed that there were thirty thousand sailors engaged
in this trade, and he asked the Lord Treasurer whether he proposed that
these people should all starve or be driven into the service of the
enemy.  Burghley rejoined that the Hollanders had the whole world beside
to pursue their traffic in, that they did indeed trade over the whole
world, and had thereby become so extraordinarily, monstrously rich that
there was no believing it.

Caron declared his sincere wish that this was true, but said, on the
contrary, that he knew too well what extreme trouble and labour the
States-General had in providing for the expenses of the war and in
extracting the necessary funds from the various communities.  This would
hardly be the case were such great wealth in the land as was imagined.
But still the English counsellors protested that they would stop this
trading with the enemy at every hazard.

On the question of peace or war itself the republican diplomatists were
often baffled as to the true intentions of the English Government.  "As
the queen is fine and false," said Marquis Havre, observing and aiding in
the various intrigues which were weaving at Brussels, "and her council
much the same, she is practising towards the Hollanders a double
stratagem.  On the one hand she induces them to incline to a general
peace.  On the other, her adherents, ten or twelve in number of those who
govern Holland and have credit with the people, insist that the true.
interest of the State is in a continuation of the war."

But Havre, adept in diplomatic chicane as he undoubtedly was, would have
found it difficult to find any man of intelligence or influence in that
rebellious commonwealth, of which he was once a servant, who had any
doubt on that subject.  It needed no English argument to persuade Olden-
Barneveld, and the other statesmen who guided the destiny of the
republic, that peace would be destruction.  Moreover, there is no
question that both the queen and Burghley would have been truly grateful
had the States-General been willing to make peace and return to the
allegiance which they had long since spurned.

Nevertheless it is difficult to say whether there were at this moment
more of animosity in Elizabeth's mind towards her backsliding ally, with
whom she had so recently and so pompously sworn an eternal friendship,
or towards her ancient enemy.  Although she longed for peace, she hardly
saw her way to it, for she felt that the secret movements of Henry had in
a manner barred the path.  She confessed to the States' envoy that it was
as easy for her to make black white as to make peace with Spain.  To this
Caron cordially assented, saying with much energy, "There is as much
chance for your Majesty and for us to make peace, during the life of the
present King of Spain, as to find redemption in hell."

To the Danish ambassadors, who had come to England with proposals of
mediation, the queen had replied that the King of Spain had attacked her
dominions many times, and had very often attempted her assassination,
that after long patience she had begun to defend herself, and had been
willing to show him that she had the courage and the means, not only to
maintain herself against his assaults, but also to invade his realms;
that, therefore, she was not disposed to speak first; nor to lay down any
conditions.  Yet, if she saw that the King of Spain had any remorse for
his former offences against her, and wished to make atonement for them,
she was willing to declare that her heart was not so alienated from
peace; but that she could listen to propositions on the subject.

She said, too, that such a peace must be a general one, including both
the King of France and the States of the Netherlands, for with these
powers she had but lately made an offensive and defensive league against
the King of Spain, from which she protested that for no consideration in
the world would she ever swerve one jot.

Certainly these were words of Christian charity and good faith, but such
professions are the common staple of orations and documents for public
consumption.  As the accounts became more and more minute, however, of
Henry's intrigues with Albert, Philip, and Clement, the queen grew more
angry.

She told Caron that she was quite aware that the king had long been in
communication with the cardinal's emissaries, and that he had even sent
some of his principal counsellors to confer with the cardinal himself at
Arras, in direct violation of the stipulations of the league.  She
expressed her amazement at the king's conduct; for she knew very well,
she said, that the league had hardly been confirmed and sworn to, before
he was treating with secret agents sent to him by the cardinal.  "And
now," she continued, "they propose to send an ambassador to inform me of
the whole proceeding, and to ask my advice and consent in regard to
negotiations which they have, perchance, entirely concluded."

She further informed the republican envoy that the king had recently been
taking the ground in these dealings with the common enemy; that the two
kingdoms of France and England must first be provided for; that when the
basis between these powers and Spain had been arranged, it would be time
to make arrangements for the States, and that it would probably be found
advisable to obtain a truce of three or four years between them and
Spain, in which interval the government of the provinces might remain on
its actual footing.  During this armistice the King of Spain was to
withdraw all Spanish troops from the Netherlands, in consequence of which
measure all distrust would by degrees vanish, and the community, becoming
more and more encouraged, would in time recognise the king for their
sovereign once more.

This, according to the information received by Elizabeth from her
resident minister in France, was Henry's scheme for carrying out the
principles of the offensive and defensive league, which only the year
before he had so solemnly concluded with the Dutch republic.  Instead of
assisting that commonwealth in waging her war of independence against
Spain, he would endeavour to make it easy for her to return peacefully to
her ancient thraldom.

The queen asked Caron what he thought of the project.  How could that
diplomatist reply but with polite scorn?  Not a year of such an armistice
would elapse, he said, before the Spanish partisans would have it all
their own way in the Netherlands, and the King of Spain would be master
of the whole country.  Again and again he repeated that peace, so long as
Philip lived, was an impossibility for the States.  No doubt that monarch
would gladly consent to the proposed truce, for it, would be indeed
strange if by means of it he could not so establish himself in the
provinces as to easily overthrow the sovereigns who were thus helping him
to so advantageous a position.

The queen listened patiently to a long and earnest remonstrance in this
vein made by the envoy, and assured him that not even to gain another
kingdom would she be the cause of a return of the provinces to the
dominion of Spain.  She would do her best to dissuade the king from his
peace negotiations; but she would listen to De Maisae, the new special
envoy from Henry, and would then faithfully report to Caron, by word of
mouth, the substance of the conversation.  The States-General did not
deserve to be deceived, nor would she be a party to any deception, unless
she were first cheated herself.  "I feel indeed," she added, "that
matters are not always managed as they should be by your Government, and
that you have not always treated princes, especially myself, as we
deserve to be treated.  Nevertheless, your State is not a monarchy, and
so we must take all things into consideration, and weigh its faults
against its many perfections."

With this philosophical--and in the mouth of Elizabeth Tudor, surely very
liberal--reflection, the queen terminated the interview with the
republican envoy.

Meantime the conferences with the special ambassador of France proceeded.
For, so soon as Henry had completed all his arrangements, and taken his
decision to accept the very profitable peace offered to him by Spain, he
assumed that air of frankness which so well became him, and candidly
avowed his intention of doing what he had already done.  Hurault de
Maisse arrived in England not long before the time when the peace-
commissioners were about assembling at Vervins.  He was instructed to
inform her Majesty that he had done his best to bring about a general
alliance of the European powers from which alone the league concluded
between England, France, and the Netherlands would have derived
substantial strength.

But as nothing was to be hoped for from Germany, as England offered but
little assistance, and as France was exhausted by her perpetual
conflicts, it had become necessary for the king to negotiate for a peace.
He now wished to prove, therefore, to the queen, as to a sister to whom
he was under such obligations, that the interests of England were as dear
to him as those of France.

The proof of these generous sentiments did not, however, seem so clear as
could be wished, and there were very stormy debates, so soon as the
ambassador found himself in conference with her Majesty's counsellors.
The English statesmen bitterly reproached the French for having thus
lightly thrown away the alliance between the two countries, and they
insisted upon the duty of the king to fulfil his solemn engagements.

The reply was very frank and very decided.  Kings, said De Maisse, never
make treaties except with the tacit condition to embrace every thing that
may be useful to them, and carefully to avoid every thing prejudicial to
their interests.

The corollary from this convenient and sweeping maxim was simple enough.
The king could not be expected, by his allies to reject an offered peace
which was very profitable, nor to continue a war which, was very
detrimental.  All that they could expect was that he should communicate
his intentions to them, and this he was now very cheerfully doing.  Such
in brief were the statements of De Maisse.

The English were indignant.  They also said a stout word for the
provinces, although it has been made sufficiently clear that they did not
love that upstart republic.  But the French ambassador replied that his,
master really meant secretly to assist the States in carrying on the war
until they should make an arrangement.  He should send them very powerful
succours for this purpose, and he expected confidently that England would
assist him in this line of conduct.  Thus Henry was secretly pledging
himself, to make underhand but substantial war against Spain, with which
power he was at that instant concluding peace, while at the same time he
was abandoning his warlike league with the queen and the republic, in
order to affect that very pacification.  Truly the morality of the
governing powers of the earth was not entirely according to the apostolic
standard.

The interviews between the queen and the new ambassador were, of course,
on his part, more courteous in tone than those with the counsellors, but
mainly to the same effect.  De Maisse stated that the Spanish king had
offered to restore every place that he held in France, including Calais,
Brittany, and the Marquisate of Saluces, and as he likewise manifested a
willingness to come to favourable terms with her Majesty and with the
States, it was obviously the duty of Henry to make these matters known to
her Majesty, in whose hands was thus placed the decision between peace or
continuation of the war.  The queen asked what was the authority for the
supposition that England was to be included by Spain in the pacification.
De Maisse quoted President Richardot.  In that case, the queen remarked,
it was time for her to prepare for a third Spanish armada.  When a former
envoy from France had alluded to Richardot as expressing the same
friendly sentiments on the part of his sovereign and himself, she had
replied by referring to the sham negotiations of Bourbourg, by which
the famous invasion of 1588 had been veiled, and she had intimated her
expectation that another Spanish fleet would soon be at her throat.  And
within three weeks of the utterance of her prophecy the second armada,
under Santa Gadea, had issued from Spain to assail her realms.  Now then,
as Richardot was again cited as a peace negotiator, it was time to look
for a third invasion.  It was an impertinence for Secretary of State
Villeroy to send her word about Richardot.  It was not an impertinence in
King Henry, who understood war-matters better than he did affairs of
state, in which kings were generally governed by their counsellors and
secretaries, but it was very strange that Villeroy should be made quiet
with a simple declaration of Richardot.

The queen protested that she would never consent to a peace with Spain,
except with the knowledge and consent of the States.  De Maisse replied
that the king was of the same mind, upon which her Majesty remarked that
in that case he had better have apprised her and the States of his
intentions before treating alone and secretly with the enemy.  The envoy
denied that the king had been treating.  He had only been listening to
what the King of Spain had to propose, and suggesting his own wishes and
intentions.  The queen rejoined that this was treating if anything was,
and certainly her Majesty was in the right if the term has any meaning at
all.

Elizabeth further reproachfully observed, that although the king talked
about continuing the war, he seemed really tired of that dangerous
pursuit, in which he had exercised himself so many long years, and that
he was probably beginning to find a quiet and agreeable life more to his
taste.  She expressed the hope, however, that he would acquit himself
honourably towards herself and her allies, and keep the oaths which he
had so solemnly sworn before God.

Such was the substance of the queen's conversations with De Maisse, as
she herself subsequently reported them to the States' envoy.

The republican statesmen had certainly cause enough to suspect Henry's
intentions, but they did not implicitly trust Elizabeth.  They feared
that both king and queen were heartily sick of the war, and disposed to
abandon the league, while each was bent on securing better terms than the
other in any negotiations for peace.  Barneveld--on the whole the most
sagacious of the men then guiding the affairs of Europe, although he
could dispose of but comparatively slender resources, and was merely the
chief minister of a scarcely-born little commonwealth of some three
million souls--was doing his best to save the league and to divert Henry
from thoughts of peace.  Feeling that the queen, notwithstanding her
professions to Caron and others, would have gladly entered into
negotiations with Philip, had she found the door as wide open as Henry
had found it, he did his best to prevent both his allies from proceeding
farther in that direction.  He promised the French envoy at the Hague
that not only would the republic continue to furnish the four thousand
soldiers as stipulated in the league, but that if Henry would recommence
active operations, a States' army of nine thousand foot and two thousand
horse should at once take the field on the Flemish frontier of France,
and aid in the campaign to the full extent of their resources.  If the
king were disposed to undertake the siege of Calais, the Advocate engaged
that he should be likewise energetically assisted in that enterprise.

Nor was it suggested in case the important maritime stronghold were
recovered that it should be transferred, not to the sovereign of France,
but to the dominions of the republic.  That was the queen's method of
assisting an ally, but it was not the practice of the States.  Buzanval,
who was quite aware of his master's decision to conclude peace, suggested
Henry's notion of a preliminary and general truce for six months.  But of
course Barneveld rejected the idea with horror.  He felt, as every
intelligent statesman of the commonwealth could not but feel, that an
armistice would be a death-blow.  It would be better, he said, for the
States to lose one or two towns than to make a truce, for there were so
many people in the commonwealth sure to be dazzled by the false show of a
pacification, that they would be likely, after getting into the suburbs,
to wish to enter the heart of the city.  "If," said the Advocate, "the
French and the English know what they are doing when they are,
facilitating the Spanish dominion in the provinces, they would prefer to
lose a third of their own kingdoms to seeing the Spaniard absolute master
here."

It was determined, in this grave position of affairs, to send a special
mission both to France and to England with the Advocate as its chief.
Henry made no objections to this step, but, on the contrary, affected
much impatience for the arrival of the envoys, and ascribed the delay to
the intrigues of Elizabeth.  He sent word to Prince Maurice and to
Barneveld that he suspected the queen of endeavouring to get before him
in negotiating with Spain in order to obtain Calais for herself.  And,
in truth, Elizabeth very soon afterwards informed Barneveld that she
might really have had Calais, and have got the better of the king in
these secret transactions.

Meantime, while the special mission to France and England was getting
ready to depart, an amateur diplomatist appeared in Brussels, and made a
feeble effort to effect a reconciliation between the republic and the
cardinal.

This was a certain Van der Meulen, an Antwerp merchant who, for religious
reasons, had emigrated to Leyden, and who was now invited by the cardinal
archduke to Brussels to confer with his counsellors as to the possibility
of the rebellious States accepting his authority.  For, as will soon be
indicated, Philip had recently resolved on a most important step.  He was
about to transfer the sovereignty of all the Netherlands to his daughter
Isabella and her destined husband, Cardinal Albert.  It would, obviously,
therefore, be an excessively advantageous arrangement for those new
sovereigns if the rebellious States would join hands with the obedient
provinces, accept the dominion of Albert and Isabella and give up their
attempt to establish a republican government.  Accordingly the cardinal
had intimated that the States would be allowed the practice of their
religion, while the military and civil functionaries might retain office.
He even suggested that he would appoint Maurice of Nassau his stadholder
for the northern provinces, unless he should prefer a high position in
the Imperial armies.  Such was the general admiration felt in Spain and
elsewhere for the military talents of the prince, that he would probably
be appointed commander-in-chief of the forces against Mahomet.  Van der
Meulen duly reported all these ingenious schemes to the States, but the
sturdy republicans only laughed at them.  They saw clearly enough through
such slight attempts to sow discord in their commonwealth, and to send
their great chieftain to Turkey.

A most affectionate letter, written by the cardinal-archduke to the
States-General, inviting them to accept his sovereignty, and another from
the obedient provinces to the united States of the same purport, remained
unanswered.

But the Antwerp merchant, in his interviews with the crafty politicians
who surrounded the cardinal, was able at least to obtain some insight
into the opinions prevalent at Brussels; and these were undoubtedly to
the effect that both England and France were willing enough to abandon
the cause of the Netherlands, provided only that they could obtain
satisfactory arrangements for themselves.

Van der Meulen remarked to Richardot that in all their talk about a
general peace nothing had been said of the Queen of England, to whom the
States were under so great obligations, and without whom they would never
enter into any negotiations.

Richardot replied that the queen had very sagaciously provided for the
safety of her own kingdom, and had kept up the fire everywhere else in
order to shelter herself.  There was more difficulty for this lady, he
said, than for any of the rest.  She had shown herself very obstinate,
and had done them a great deal of mischief.  They knew very well that the
King of France did not love her.  Nevertheless, as they had resolved upon
a general peace, they were willing to treat with her as well as with the
others.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Auction sales of judicial ermine
Decline a bribe or interfere with the private sale of places
Famous fowl in every pot
Fellow worms had been writhing for half a century in the dust
For his humanity towards the conquered garrisons (censured)
Historical scepticism may shut its eyes to evidence
Imagining that they held the world's destiny in their hands
King had issued a general repudiation of his debts
Loud, nasal, dictatorial tone, not at all agreeable
Peace would be destruction
Repudiation of national debts was never heard of before
Some rude lessons from that vigorous little commonwealth
Such a crime as this had never been conceived (bankruptcy)
They liked not such divine right nor such gentle-mindedness
Whether murders or stratagems, as if they were acts of virtue




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v69
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 70, 1598





CHAPTER XXXIV.

     Mission of the States to Henry to prevent the consummation of peace
     with Spain--Proposal of Henry to elevate Prince Maurice to the
     sovereignty, of the States--Embarkation of the States' envoys for
     England--Their interview with Queen Elizabeth--Return of the envoys
     from England--Demand of Elizabeth for repayment of her advances to
     the republic--Second embassy to England--Final arrangement between
     the Queen and the States.

The great Advocate was now to start on his journey in order to make a
supreme effort both with Henry and with Elizabeth to prevent the
consummation of this fatal peace.  Admiral Justinus of Nassau, natural
son of William the Silent, was associated with Barneveld in the mission,
a brave fighting man, a staunch patriot, and a sagacious counsellor; but
the Advocate on this occasion, as in other vital emergencies of the
commonwealth, was all in all.

The instructions of the envoys were simple.  They were to summon the
king to fulfil his solemnly sworn covenants with the league.  The States-
General had never doubted, they said, that so soon as the enemy had begun
to feel the effects, of that league he would endeavour to make a
composition with one or other of the parties in order to separate them,
and to break up that united strength which otherwise he could never
resist.  The king was accordingly called upon to continue the war against
the common enemy, and the States-General offered, over and above the four
hundred and fifty thousand florins promised by them for the support of
the four thousand infantry for the year 1598, to bring their whole
military power, horse and foot, into the field to sustain his Majesty in
the war, whether separately or in conjunction, whether in the siege of
cities or in open campaigns.  Certainly they could hardly offer fairer
terms than these.

Henry had complained, and not unreasonably, that Elizabeth had made no
offers of assistance for carrying on the war either to Fonquerolles or to
Hurault de Maisse; but he certainly could make no reproach of that nature
against the republic, nor assign their lukewarmness as an excuse for his
desertion.

The envoys were ready to take their departure for France on the last day
of January.

It might be a curious subject to consider how far historical events are
modified and the world's destiny affected by the different material
agencies which man at various epochs has had at his disposal.  The human
creature in his passions and ambitions, his sensual or sordid desires,
his emotional and moral nature, undergoes less change than might be hoped
from age to age.  The tyrant; the patriot, the demagogue, the voluptuary,
the peasant, the trader, the intriguing politician, the hair-splitting
diplomatist, the self-sacrificing martyr, the self-seeking courtier,
present essentially one type in the twelfth, the sixteenth, the
nineteenth, or any other century.  The human tragi-comedy seems ever
to repeat itself with the same bustle, with the same excitement for
immediate interests, for the development of the instant plot or passing
episode, as if the universe began and ended with each generation--as in
reality it would appear to do for the great multitude of the actors.
There seems but a change of masks, of costume, of phraseology, combined
with a noisy but eternal monotony.  Yet while men are produced and are
whirled away again in endless succession, Man remains, and to all
appearance is perpetual and immortal even on this earth.  Whatever
science acquires man inherits.  Whatever steadfastness is gained for
great moral truths which change not through the ages--however they may be
thought, in dark or falsely brilliant epochs, to resolve themselves into
elemental vapour--gives man a securer foothold in his onward and upward
progress.  The great, continuous history of that progress is not made up
of the reigns of kings or the lives of politicians, with whose names
history has often found it convenient to mark its epochs.  These are but
milestones on the turnpike.  Human progress is over a vast field, and it
is only at considerable intervals that a retrospective view enables us to
discern whether the movement has been slow or rapid, onward or
retrograde.

The record of our race is essentially unwritten.  What we call history is
but made up of a few scattered fragments, while it is scarcely given to
human intelligence to comprehend the great whole.  Yet it is strange to
reflect upon the leisurely manner in which great affairs were conducted
in the period with which we are now occupied, as compared with the fever
and whirl of our own times, in which the stupendous powers of steam and
electricity are ever-ready to serve the most sublime or the most vulgar
purposes of mankind.  Whether there were ever a critical moment in which
a rapid change might have been effected in royal or national councils,
had telegraphic wires and express trains been at the command of Henry,
or Burghley, or Barneveld, or the Cardinal Albert, need not and cannot
be decided.  It is almost diverting, however, to see how closely the
intrigues of cabinets, the movements of armies, the plans of patriots,
were once dependent on those natural elements over which man has now
gained almost despotic control.

Here was the republic intensely eager to prevent, with all speed, the
consummation of a treaty between its ally and its enemy--a step which it
was feared might be fatal to its national existence, and concerning which
there seemed a momentary hesitation.  Yet Barneveld and Justinus of
Nassau, although ready on the last day of January, were not able to sail
from the Brill to Dieppe until the 18th March, on account of a persistent
south-west wind.

After forty-six days of waiting, the envoys, accompanied by Buzanval,
Henry's resident at the Hague, were at last, on the 18th March, enabled
to set sail with a favourable breeze.  As it was necessary for travellers
in that day to provide themselves with every possible material for their
journey--carriages, horses, hosts of servants, and beds, fortunate enough
if they found roads and occasionally food--Barneveld and Nassau were
furnished with three ships of war, while another legation on its way to
England had embarked in two other vessels of the same class.  A fleet of
forty or fifty merchantmen sailed under their convoy.  Departing from the
Brill in this imposing manner, they sailed by Calais, varying the
monotony of the voyage by a trifling sea-fight with some cruisers from
that Spanish port, neither side receiving any damage.

Landing at Dieppe on the morning of the 20th, the envoys were received
with much ceremony at the city gates by the governor of the place, who
conducted them in a stately manner to a house called the king's mansion,
which he politely placed at their disposal.  "As we learned, however,"
says Barneveld, with grave simplicity; "that there was no furniture
whatever in that royal abode, we thanked his Excellency, and declared
that we would rather go to a tavern."

After three days of repose and preparation in Dieppe, they started at
dawn on their journey to Rouen, where they arrived at sundown.

On the next morning but one they set off again on their travels, and
slept that night at Louviers.  Another long day's journey brought them to
Evreux.  On the 27th they came to Dreux, on the 28th to Chartres, and on
the 29th to Chateaudun.  On the 30th, having started an hour before
sunrise, they were enabled after a toilsome journey to reach Blois at an
hour after dark.  Exhausted with fatigue, they reposed in that city for a
day, and on the 1st April proceeded, partly by the river Loire and partly
by the road, as far as Tours.  Here they were visited by nobody, said
Barneveld, but fiddlers and drummers, and were execrably lodged.
Nevertheless they thought the town in other respects agreeable, and
apparently beginning to struggle out of the general desolation of,
France.  On the end April they slept at Langeais, and on the night of the
3rd reached Saumur, where they were disappointed at the absence of the
illustrious Duplessis Mornay, then governor of that city.  A glance at
any map of France will show the course of the journey taken by the
travellers, which, after very hard work and great fatigue, had thus
brought them from Dieppe to Saumur in about as much time as is now
consumed by an average voyage from Europe to America.  In their whole
journey from Holland to Saumur, inclusive of the waiting upon the wind
and other enforced delays, more than two months had been consumed.
Twenty-four hours would suffice at present for the excursion.

At Saumur they received letters informing them that the king was
"expecting them with great devotion at Angiers."  A despatch from Cecil,
who was already with Henry, also apprised them that he found "matters
entirely arranged for a peace."  This would be very easily accomplished,
he said, for France and England, but the great difficulty was for the
Netherlands.  He had come to France principally for the sake of managing
affairs for the advantage of the States, but he begged the envoys not to
demean themselves as if entirely bent on war.

They arrived at Angiers next day before dark, and were met at a league's
distance from the gates by the governor of the castle, attended by young
Prince Frederic Henry of Nassau; followed by a long train of nobles and
mounted troops.  Welcomed in this stately manner on behalf of the king,
the envoys were escorted to the lodgings provided for them in the city.
The same evening they waited on the widowed princess of Orange, Louisa of
Coligny, then residing temporarily with her son in Angiera, and were
informed by her that the king's mind was irrevocably fixed on peace.  She
communicated, however, the advice of her step-son in law, the Duke of
Bouillon, that they should openly express their determination to continue
the war, notwithstanding that both their Majesties of England and France
wished to negotiate.  Thus the counsels of Bouillon to the envoys were
distinctly opposed to those of Cecil, and it was well known to them that
the duke was himself sincerely anxious that the king should refuse the
pacific offers of Spain.

Next morning, 5th April, they were received at the gates of the castle
by the governor of Anjou and the commandant of the citadel of Angiers,
attended by a splendid retinue, and were conducted to the king, who was
walking in the garden of the fortress.  Henry received them with great
demonstrations of respect, assuring them that he considered the States-
General the best and most faithful friends that he possessed in the
world, and that he had always been assisted by them in time of his
utmost need with resoluteness and affection.

The approach of the English ambassador, accompanied by the Chancellor of
France and several other persons, soon brought the interview to a
termination.  Barneveld then presented several gentlemen attached to the
mission, especially his son and Hugo Grotius, then a lad of fifteen, but
who had already gained such distinction at Leyden that Scaliger,
Pontanus; Heinsius, Dousa, and other professors, foretold that he would
become more famous than Erasmus.  They were all very cordially received
by the king, who subsequently bestowed especial marks of his
consideration upon the youthful Grotius.

The same day the betrothal of Monsieur Caesar with the daughter of the
Duke of Mercoeur was celebrated, and there was afterwards much dancing
and banqueting at the castle.  It was obvious enough to the envoys that
the matter of peace and war was decided.  The general of the Franciscans,
sent by the pope, had been flitting very busily for many months between
Rome, Madrid, Brussels, and Paris, and there could be little doubt that
every detail of the negotiations between France and Spain had been
arranged while Olden-Barneveld and his colleague had been waiting
for the head-wind to blow itself out at the Brill.

Nevertheless no treaty had as yet been signed, and it was the business of
the republican diplomatists to prevent the signature if possible.  They
felt, however, that they were endeavouring to cause water to run up hill.
Villeroy, De Maisse, and Buzanval came to them to recount, by the king's
order, everything that had taken place.  This favour was, however, the
less highly appreciated by them, as they felt that the whole world was
in a very short time to be taken as well into the royal confidence.

These French politicians stated that the king, after receiving the most
liberal offers of peace on the part of Spain, had communicated all the
facts to the queen, and had proposed, notwithstanding these most
profitable overtures, to continue the war as long as her Majesty and the
States-General would assist him in it.  De Maisse had been informed,
however, by the queen that she had no means to assist the king withal,
and was, on the contrary, very well disposed to make peace.  The lord
treasurer had avowed the same opinions as his sovereign, had declared
himself to be a man of peace, and had exclaimed that peace once made he
would sing "Nunc dimitte servum tuum Domine."  Thereupon, at the
suggestion of the legate, negotiations had begun at Vervins, and although
nothing was absolutely concluded, yet Sir Robert Cecil, having just been
sent as special ambassador from the queen, had brought no propositions
whatever of assistance in carrying on the war, but plenty of excuses
about armadas, Irish rebellions, and the want of funds.  There was
nothing in all this, they said, but want of good will.  The queen had
done nothing and would do nothing for the league herself, nor would she
solicit for it the adherence of other kings and princes.  The king, by
making peace, could restore his kingdom to prosperity, relieve the
distress of his subjects, and get back all his lost cities--Calais,
Ardres, Dourlens, Blavet, and many more--without any expense of treasure
or of blood.

Certainly there was cogency in this reasoning from the point of view of
the French king, but it would have been as well to state, when he was so
pompously making a league for offensive and defensive war, that his real
interests and his real purposes were peace.  Much excellent diplomacy,
much ringing of bells, firing of artillery, and singing of anthems in
royal chapels, and much disappointment to honest Dutchmen, might have
thus been saved.  It is also instructive to observe the difference
between the accounts of De Maisse's negotiations in England given by that
diplomatist himself, and those rendered by the queen to the States'
envoy.

Of course the objurgations of the Hollanders that the king, in a very
fallacious hope of temporary gain to himself, was about to break his
solemn promises to his allies and leave them to their fate, drew but few
tears down the iron cheeks of such practised diplomatists as Villeroy and
his friends.

The envoys visited De Rosuy, who assured them that he was very much their
friend, but gave them to understand that there was not the slightest
possibility of inducing the king to break off the negotiations.

Before taking final leave of his Majesty they concluded, by advice of the
Princess of Orange and of Buzanval, to make the presents which they had
brought with them from the States-General.  Accordingly they sent,
through the hands of the princess, four pieces of damask linen and two
pieces of fine linen to the king's sister, Madame Catherine, two pieces
of linen to Villeroy, and two to the beautiful Gabrielle.  The two
remaining pieces were bestowed upon Buzanval for his pains in
accompanying them on the journey and on their arrival at court.

The incident shows the high esteem in which the Nethcrland fabrics were
held at that period.

There was a solemn conference at last between the leading counsellors of
the king, the chancellor, the Dukes of Espernon and Bouillon, Count
Schomberg, and De Sancy, Plessis, Buzanval, Maisse, the Dutch envoys, and
the English ambassador and commissioner Herbert.  Cecil presided, and
Barneveld once more went over the whole ground, resuming with his usual
vigour all the arguments by which the king's interest and honour were
proved to require him to desist from the peace negotiations.  And the
orator had as much success as is usual with those who argue against a
foregone conclusion.  Everyone had made up his mind.  Everyone knew that
peace was made.  It is unnecessary, therefore, to repeat the familiar
train of reasoning.  It is superfluous to say that the conference was
barren.  On the same evening Villeroy called on the States' envoys, and
informed them plainly, on the part of the king, that his Majesty had
fully made up his mind.

On the 23rd April--three mortal weeks having thus been wasted in
diplomatic trilling--Barneveld was admitted to his Majesty's dressing-
room.  The Advocate at the king's request came without his colleague,
and was attended only by his son.  No other persons were present in the
chamber save Buzanval and Beringen.  The king on this occasion confirmed
what had so recently been stated by Villeroy.  He had thoroughly
pondered, he said, all the arguments used by the States to dissuade him
from the negotiation, and had found them of much weight.  The necessities
of his kingdom, however, compelled him to accept a period of repose.  He
would not, however, in the slightest degree urge the States to join in
the treaty.  He desired their security, and would aid in maintaining it.
What had most vexed him was that the Protestants with great injustice
accused him of intending to make war upon them.  But innumerable and
amazing reports were flying abroad, both among his own subjects, the
English, and the enemies' spies, as to these secret conferences.  He then
said that he would tell the Duke of Bouillon to speak with Sir Robert
Cecil concerning a subject which now for the first time he would mention
privately to Olden-Barneveld.

The king then made a remarkable and unexpected suggestion.  Alluding
to the constitution of the Netherlands, he remarked that a popular
government in such emergencies as those then existing was subject to more
danger than monarchies were, and he asked the Advocate if he thought
there was no disposition to elect a prince.  Barneveld replied that the
general inclination was rather for a good republic.  The government,
however, he said, was not of the people, but aristocratic, and the state
was administered according to laws and charters by the principal
inhabitants, whether nobles or magistrates of cities.  Since the death
of the late Prince of Orange, and the offer made to the King of France,
and subsequently to the Queen of England, of the sovereignty, there had
been no more talk on that subject, and to discuss again so delicate a
matter might cause divisions and other difficulties in the State.

Henry then spoke of Prince Maurice, and asked whether, if he should be
supported by the Queen of England and the King of France, it would not be
possible to confer the sovereignty upon him.

Here certainly was an astounding question to be discharged like a pistol-
shot full in the face of a republican minister.

The answer of the Advocate was sufficiently adroit if not excessively
sincere.

If your Majesty, said he, together with her Majesty the queen, think the
plan expedient, and are both willing on this footing to continue the war,
to rescue all the Netherlands from the hands of the Spaniards and their
adherents, and thus render the States eternally obliged to the sovereigns
and kingdoms of France and England, my lords the States-General would
probably be willing to accept this advice.

But the king replied by repeating that repose was indispensable to him.

Without inquiring for the present whether the project of elevating
Maurice to the sovereignty of the Netherlands, at the expense of the
republican constitution, was in harmony or not with the private opinions
of Barneveld at that period, it must be admitted that the condition he
thus suggested was a very safe one to offer.  He had thoroughly satisfied
himself during the period in which he had been baffled by the southwest
gales at the Brill and by the still more persistent head-winds which he
had found prevailing at the French court, that it was hopeless to strive
for that much-desired haven, a general war.  The admiral and himself
might as well have endeavoured to persuade Mahomet III. and Sigismund of
Poland to join the States in a campaign against Cardinal Albert, as to
hope for the same good offices from Elizabeth and Henry.

Having received exactly the answer which he expected, he secretly
communicated, next day, to Cecil the proposition thus made by the king.
Subsequently he narrated the whole conversation to the Queen of England.

On the 27th April both Barneveld and Nassau were admitted to the royal
dressing-room in Nantes citadel for a final audience.  Here, after the
usual common places concerning his affection for the Netherlands, and the
bitter necessity which compelled him to desert the alliance, Henry again
referred to his suggestion in regard to Prince Maurice; urging a change
from a republican to a monarchical form of government as the best means
of preserving the State.

The envoys thanked the king for all the honours conferred upon them, but
declared themselves grieved to the heart by his refusal to grant their
request.  The course pursued by his Majesty, they said, would be found
very hard of digestion by the States, both in regard to the whole force
of the enemy which would now come upon their throats, and because of the
bad example thus set for other powers.

They then took leave, with the usual exchange of compliments.
At their departure his Majesty personally conducted them through various
apartments until they came to the chamber of his mistress, the Duchess
of Beaufort, then lying in childbed.  Here he drew wide open the bed-
curtains, and bade them kiss the lady.  They complied, and begging the
duchess to use her influence in their behalf, respectfully bade her
farewell.  She promised not to forget their request, and thanked them
for the presents of damask and fine linen.

Such was the result of the mission of the great Advocate and his
colleague to Henry IV., from which so much had been hoped; and for
anything useful accomplished, after such an expenditure of time, money,
and eloquence, the whole transaction might have begun and ended in this
touching interview with the beautiful Gabrielle.

On the 19th of May the envoys embarked at Dieppe for England, and on the
25th were safely lodged with the resident minister of the republic, Noel
de Caron, at the village of Clapham.

Having so ill-succeeded in their attempts to prevent the treaty between
France and Spain, they were now engaged in what seemed also a forlorn
hope, the preservation of their offensive and defensive alliance with
England.  They were well aware that many of the leading counsellors of
Elizabeth, especially Burghley and Buckhurst, were determined upon peace.
They knew that the queen was also heartily weary of the war and of the
pugnacious little commonwealth which had caused her so much expense.  But
they knew, too, that Henry, having now secured the repose of his own
kingdom, was anything but desirous that his deserted allies should enjoy
the same advantage.  The king did not cease to assure the States that he
would secretly give them assistance in their warfare against his new
ally, while Secretary of State Villeroy, as they knew, would place every
possible impediment in the way of the queen's negotiations with Spain.

Elizabeth, on her part, was vexed with everybody.  What the States most
feared was that she might, in her anger or her avarice, make use of the
cautionary towns in her negotiations with Philip.  At any rate, said
Francis Aerssens, then States' minister in France, she will bring us to
the brink of the precipice, that we may then throw ourselves into
her arms in despair.

The queen was in truth resolved to conclude a peace if a peace could be
made.  If not, she was determined to make as good a bargain with the
States as possible, in regard to the long outstanding account of her
advances.  Certainly it was not unreasonable that she should wish to see
her exchequer reimbursed by people who, as she believed, were rolling in
wealth, the fruit of a contraband commerce which she denied to her own
subjects, and who were in honour bound to pay their debts to her now, if
they wished her aid to be continued.  Her subjects were impoverished and
panting for peace, and although, as she remarked, "their sense of duty
restrained them from the slightest disobedience to her absolute
commands," still she could not forgive herself for thus exposing them to
perpetual danger.

She preferred on the whole, however, that the commonwealth should consent
to its own dissolution; for she thought it unreasonable that--after this
war of thirty years, during fifteen of which she had herself actively
assisted them--these republican Calvinists should, refuse to return to
the dominion of their old tyrant and the pope.  To Barneveld, Maurice
of Nassau, and the States-General this did not seem a very logical
termination to so much hard fighting.

Accordingly, when on the 26th of May the two envoys fell on their knees--
as the custom was--before the great queen, and had been raised by her to
their feet again, they found her Majesty in marvellously ill-humour.
Olden-Barneveld recounted to her the results of their mission to France,
and said that from beginning to end it had been obvious that there could
be no other issue.  The king was indifferent, he had said, whether the
States preferred peace or war, but in making his treaty he knew that he
had secured a profit for himself, iuflicted damage on his enemy, and done
no harm to his friends.

Her Majesty then interrupted the speaker by violent invectives against
the French king for his treachery.  She had written with her own hand,
she said, to tell him that she never had believed him capable of doing
what secretaries and other servants had reported concerning him, but
which had now proved true.

Then she became very abusive to the Dutch envoys, telling them that they
were quite unjustifiable in not following Sir Robert Cecil's advice,
and in not engaging with him at once in peace negotiations; at least so
far as to discover what the enemy's intentions might be.  She added,
pettishly, that if Prince Maurice and other functionaries were left in
the enjoyment of their offices, and if the Spaniards were sent out of the
country, there seemed no reason why such terms should not be accepted.

Barneveld replied that such accommodation was of course impossible,
unless they accepted their ancient sovereign as prince.  Then came the
eternal two points--obedience to God, which meant submission to the pope;
and obedience to the king, that was to say, subjection to his despotic
authority.  Thus the Christian religion would be ruined throughout the
provinces, and the whole land be made a bridge and a ladder for Spanish
ambition.

The queen here broke forth into mighty oaths, interrupting the envoy's
discourse, protesting over and over again by the living God that she
would not and could not give the States any further assistance; that she
would leave them to their fate; that her aid rendered in their war had
lasted much longer than the siege of Troy did, and swearing that she had
been a fool to help them and the king of France as she had done, for it
was nothing but evil passions that kept the States so obstinate.

The envoy endeavoured to soothe her, urging that as she had gained the
reputation over the whole world of administering her affairs with
admirable, yea with almost divine wisdom, she should now make use of that
sagacity in the present very difficult matter.  She ought to believe that
it was not evil passion, nor ambition, nor obstinacy that prevented the
States from joining in these negotiations, but the determination to
maintain their national existence, the Christian religion, and their
ancient liberties and laws.  They did not pretend, he said, to be wiser
than great monarch or their counsellors, but the difference between their
form of government and a monarchy must be their excuse.

Monarchs, when they made treaties, remained masters, and could protect
their realms and their subjects from danger.  The States-General could
not accept a prince without placing themselves under his absolute
authority, and the Netherlanders would never subject themselves to
their deadly enemy, whom they had long ago solemnly renounced.

Surely these remarks of the Advocate should have seemed entirely
unanswerable.  Surely there was no politician in Europe so ignorant as
not to know that any treaty of peace between Philip and the States meant
their unconditional subjugation and the complete abolition of the
Protestant religion.  Least of all did the Queen of England require
information on this great matter of state.  It was cruel trifling
therefore, it was inhuman insolence on her part, to suggest anything
like a return of the States to the dominion of Spain.

But her desire for peace and her determination to get back her money
overpowered at that time all other considerations.

The States wished to govern themselves, she said; why then could they not
make arrangements against all dangers, and why could they not lay down
conditions under which the king would not really be their master;
especially if France and England should guarantee them against any
infraction of their rights.  By the living God! by the living God! by the
living God! she swore over and over again as her anger rose, she would
never more have anything to do with such people; and she deeply regretted
having thrown away her money and the lives of her subjects in so stupid a
manner.

Again the grave and experienced envoy of the republic strove with calm
and earnest words to stay the torrent of her wrath; representing that her
money and her pains had by no means been wasted, that the enemy had been
brought to shame and his finances to confusion; and urging her, without
paying any heed to the course pursued by the King of France, to allow the
republic to make levies of troops, at its own expense, within her
kingdom.

But her Majesty was obdurate.  "How am I to defend myself?" she cried;
"how are the affairs of Ireland to be provided for? how am I ever to get
back my money?  who is to pay the garrisons of Brill and Flushing?"
And with this she left the apartment, saying that her counsellors
would confer with the envoys.'

From the beginning to the end of the interview the queen was in a very
evil temper, and took no pains to conceal her dissatisfaction with all
the world.

Now there is no doubt whatever that the subsidies furnished by England
to the common cause were very considerable, amounting in fourteen years,
according to the queen's calculation, to nearly fourteen hundred thousand
pounds sterling.  But in her interviews with the republican statesmen she
was too prone to forget that it was a common cause, to forget that the
man who had over and over again attempted her assassination, who had
repeatedly attempted the invasion of her realms with the whole strength
of the most powerful military organization in the world, whose dearest
wish on earth was still to accomplish her dethronement and murder, to
extirpate from England the religion professed by the majority of living
Englishmen, and to place upon her vacant throne a Spanish, German, or
Italian prince, was as much her enemy as he was the foe of his ancient
subjects in the Netherlands.  At that very epoch Philip was occupied in
reminding the pope that the two had always agreed as to the justice of
the claims of the Infanta Isabella to the English crown, and calling on
his Holiness to sustain those pretensions, now that she had been obliged,
in consequence of the treaty with the Prince of Bearne, to renounce her
right to reign over France.

Certainly it was fair enough for the queen and her, counsellors to stand
out for an equitable arrangement of the debt; but there was much to
dispute in the figures.  When was ever an account of fifteen years'
standing adjusted, whether between nations or individuals, without much
wrangling?  Meantime her Majesty held excellent security in two thriving
and most important Netherland cities.  But had the States consented to
re-establish the Spanish authority over the whole of their little
Protestant republic, was there an English child so ignorant of arithmetic
or of history as not to see how vast would be the peril, and how
incalculable the expense, thus caused to England?

Yet besides the Cecils and the lord high admiral, other less influential
counsellors of the crown--even the upright and accomplished Buckhurst,
who had so often proved his friendship for the States--were in favour of
negotiation.  There were many conferences with meagre results.  The
Englishmen urged that the time had come for the States to repay the
queen's advances, to relieve her from future subsidies, to assume the
payment of the garrisons in the cautionary towns, and to furnish a force
in defence of England when attacked.  Such was the condition of the
kingdom, they said--being, as it was, entirely without fortified cities--
that a single battle would imperil the whole realm, so that it was
necessary to keep the enemy out of it altogether.

These arguments were not unreasonable, but the inference was surely
illogical.  The special envoys from the republic had not been instructed
to treat about the debt.  This had been the subject of perpetual
negotiation.  It was discussed almost every day by the queen's
commissioners at the Hague and by the States' resident minister at
London.  Olden-Barneveld and the admiral had been sent forth by the
Staten in what in those days was considered great haste to prevent a
conclusion of a treaty between their two allies and the common enemy.
They had been too late in France, and now, on arriving in England, they
found that government steadily drifting towards what seemed the hopeless
shipwreck of a general peace.

What must have been the grief of Olden-Barneveld when he heard from the
lips of the enlightened Buckhurst that the treaty of 1585 had been
arranged to expire--according to the original limitation--with a peace,
and that as the States could now make peace and did not choose to do so,
her Majesty must be considered as relieved from her contract of alliance,
and as justified in demanding repayment of her advances!

To this perfidious suggestion what could the States' envoy reply but that
as a peace such as the treaty of 1585 presupposed--to wit, with security
for the Protestant religion and for the laws and liberties of the
provinces--was impossible, should the States now treat with the king or
the cardinal?

The envoys had but one more interview with, the queen, in which she was
more benignant in manner but quite as peremptory in her demands.  Let the
States either thoroughly satisfy her as to past claims and present
necessities, or let them be prepared for her immediate negotiation with
the enemy.  Should she decide to treat, she would not be unmindful of
their interests, she said, nor deliver them over into the enemy's hands.
She repeated, however, the absurd opinion that there were means enough of
making Philip nominal sovereign of all the Netherlands, without allowing
him to exercise any authority over them.  As if the most Catholic and
most absolute monarch that ever breathed could be tied down by the
cobwebs of constitutional or treaty stipulations; as if the previous
forty years could be effaced from the record of history.

She asked, too, in case the rumours of the intended transfer of the
Netherlands to the cardinal or the Infanta should prove true, which she
doubted, whether this arrangement would make any difference in the
sentiments of the States.

Barneveld replied that the transfer was still uncertain, but that they
had no more confidence in the cardinal or the Infants than in the King of
Spain himself.

On taking leave of the queen the envoys waited upon Lord Burghley, whom
they found sitting in an arm-chair in his bedchamber, suffering from the
gout and with a very fierce countenance.   He made no secret of his
opinions in favour of negotiation, said that the contracts made by
monarchs should always be interpreted reasonably, and pronounced a warm
eulogy on the course pursued by the King of France.  It was his Majesty's
duty, he said, to seize the best opportunity for restoring repose to his
subjects and his realms, and it was the duty of other sovereigns to do
the same.

The envoys replied that they were not disposed at that moment to sit in
judgment upon the king's actions.  They would content themselves with
remarking that in their opinion even kings and princes were bound by
their, contracts, oaths, and pledges before God and man; and with this
wholesome sentiment they took leave of the lord high treasurer.

They left London immediately, on the last day of May, without, passports.
or despatches of recal, and embarked at Gravesend in the midst of a gale
of wind.

Lord Essex, the sincere friend of the republic, was both surprised and
disturbed at their sudden departure, and sent a special courier, after
them to express his regrets at the unsatisfactory termination to their
mission: "My mistress knows very well," said he, "that she is an absolute
princess, and that, when her ministers have done their extreme duty, she
wills what she wills."

The negotiations between England and Spain were deferred, however, for a
brief space, and a special message was despatched to the Hague as to the
arrangement of the debt.  "Peace at once with Philip," said the queen,
"or else full satisfaction of my demands."

Now it was close dealing between such very thrifty and acute bargainers
as the queen and the Netherland republic.

Two years before, the States had offered to pay twenty thousand pounds a
year on her Majesty's birthday so long as the war should last, and after
a peace, eighty thousand pounds annually for four years.  The queen, on
her part, fixed the sum total of the debt at nearly a million and a half
sterling, and required instant payment of at least one hundred thousand
pounds on account, besides provision for a considerable annual refunding,
assumption by the States of the whole cost of the garrisons in the
cautionary towns, and assurance of assistance in case of an attack upon
England.  Thus there was a whole ocean between the disputants.

Vere and Gilpin were protocolling and marshalling accounts at the Hague,
and conducting themselves with much arrogance and bitterness, while,
meantime, Barneveld had hardly had time to set his foot on his native
shores before he was sent back again to England at the head of another
solemn legation.  One more effort was to be made to arrange this
financial problem and to defeat the English peace party.

The offer of the year 1596 just alluded to was renewed and instantly
rejected.  Naturally enough, the Dutch envoys were disposed, in the
exhausting warfare which was so steadily draining their finances, to pay
down as little as possible on the nail, while providing for what they
considered a liberal annual sinking fund.

The English, on the contrary, were for a good round sum in actual cash,
and held the threatened negotiation with Spain over the heads of the
unfortunate envoys like a whip.

So the queen's counsellors and the republican envoys travelled again and
again over the well-worn path.

On the 29th June, Buckhurst took Olden-Barneveld into his cabinet, and
opened his heart to him, not as a servant of her Majesty, he said, but
as a private Englishman.  He was entirely for peace.  Now that peace was
offered to her Majesty, a continuance of the war was unrighteous, and the
Lord God's blessing could not be upon it.  Without God's blessing no
resistance could be made by the queen nor by the States to the enemy,
who was ten times more powerful than her Majesty in kingdoms, provinces,
number of subjects, and money.  He had the pope, the emperor, the Dukes
of Savoy and Lorraine, and the republic of Genoa, for his allies.  He
feared that the war might come upon England, and that they might be fated
on one single day to win or lose all.  The queen possessed no mines, and
was obliged to carry on the war by taxing her people.  The king had ever-
flowing fountains in his mines; the queen nothing but a stagnant pool,
which, when all the water was pumped out, must in the end be dry.  He
concluded, therefore, that as her Majesty had no allies but the
Netherlands, peace was best for England, and advisable for the provinces.
Arrangements could easily be made to limit the absolute authority of
Spain.

This highly figurative view of the subject--more becoming to the author
of Ferrex and Porrex than to so, experienced a statesman as Sackville had
become since his dramatic days--did not much impress Barneveld.  He
answered that, although the King of Spain was unquestionably very
powerful, the Lord God was still stronger; that England and the
Netherlands together could maintain the empire of the seas, which was
of the utmost importance, especially for England; but that if the
republic were to make her submission to Spain, and become incorporate
with that power, the control of the seas was lost for ever to England.

The Advocate added the unanswerable argument that to admit Philip as
sovereign, and then to attempt a limitation of his despotism was a
foolish dream.

Buckhurst repeated that the republic was the only ally of England, that
there was no confidence to be placed by her in any other power, and that
for himself, he was, as always, very much the friend of the States.

Olden-Barneveld might well have prayed, however, to be delivered from
such friends.  To thrust one's head into the lion's mouth, while one's
friends urge moderation on the noble animal, can never be considered a
cheerful or prudent proceeding.

At last, after all offers had been rejected which the envoys had ventured
to make, Elizabeth sent for Olden-Barneveld and Caron and demanded their
ultimatum within twenty-four hours.  Should it prove unsatisfactory, she
would at once make peace with Spain.

On the 1st August the envoys accordingly proposed to Cecil and the other
ministers to pay thirty thousand pounds a year, instead of twenty
thousand, so long as the war should last, but they claimed the right of
redeeming the cautionary towns at one hundred thousand pounds each.  This
seemed admissible, and Cecil and his colleagues pronounced the affair
arranged.  But they had reckoned without the queen after all.

Elizabeth sent for Caron as soon as she heard of the agreement, flew into
a great rage, refused the terms, swore that she would instantly make
peace with Spain, and thundered loudly against her ministers.

"They were great beasts," she said, "if they had stated that she would
not treat with the enemy.  She had merely intended to defer the
negotiations."

So the whole business was to be done over again.  At last the sum claimed
by the queen, fourteen hundred thousand pounds, was reduced by agreement
to eight hundred thousand, and one-half of this the envoys undertook on
the part of the States to refund in annual payments of thirty thousand
pounds, while the remaining four hundred thousand should be provided for
by some subsequent arrangement.  All attempts, however, to obtain a
promise from the queen to restore the cautionary towns to the republic in
case of a peace between Spain and England remained futile.

That was to be a bone of contention for many years.

It was further agreed by the treaty, which was definitely signed on the
16th August, that, in case England were invaded by the common enemy, the
States should send to the queen's assistance at least thirty ships of
war, besides five thousand infantry and five squadrons of horse.




CHAPTER XXXV.

     Negotiations between France and Spain--Conclusion of the treaty of
     peace--Purchase of the allegiance of the French nobles--Transfer of
     the Netherlands to Albert and Isabella--Marriage of the Infante and
     the Infanta--Illness of Philip II.--Horrible nature of his malady--
     His last hours and death--Review of his reign--Extent of the Spanish
     dominions--Causes of the greatness of Spain, and of its downfall--
     Philip's wars and their expenses--The Crown revenues of Spain--
     Character of the people--Their inordinate self-esteem--Consequent
     deficiency of labour--Ecclesiastical Government--Revenues of the
     Church--Characteristics of the Spanish clergy--Foreign commerce of
     Spain--Governmental system of Philip II.--Founded on the popular
     ignorance and superstition--Extinction of liberty in Spain--The Holy
     Inquisition--The work and character of Philip.

While the utterly barren conferences had been going on at Angiers and
Nantes between Henry IV. and the republican envoys, the negotiations had
been proceeding at Vervins.

President Richardot on behalf of Spain, and Secretary of State Villeroy
as commissioner of Henry, were the chief negotiators.

Two old acquaintances, two ancient Leaguers, two bitter haters of
Protestants and rebels, two thorough adepts in diplomatic chicane, they
went into this contest like gladiators who thoroughly understood and
respected each other's skill.

Richardot was recognized by all as the sharpest and most unscrupulous
politician in the obedient Netherlands.  Villeroy had conducted every
intrigue of France during a whole generation of mankind.  They scarcely
did more than measure swords and test each other's objects, before
arriving at a conviction as to the inevitable result of the encounter.

It was obvious at once to Villeroy that Philip was determined to make
peace with France in order that the triple alliance might be broken up.
It was also known to the French diplomatist that the Spanish king was
ready for, almost every concession to Henry, in order that this object
might be accomplished.

All that Richardot hoped to save out of the various conquests made by
Spain over France was Calais.

But Villeroy told him that it was useless to say a word on that subject.
His king insisted on the restoration of the place.  Otherwise he would
make no peace.  It was enough, he said, that his Majesty said nothing
about Navarre.

Richardot urged that at the time when the English had conquered Calais
it had belonged to Artois, not to France.  It was no more than equitable,
then, that it should be retained by its original proprietor.

The general of the Franciscans, who acted as a kind of umpire in the
transactions, then took each negotiator separately aside and whispered in
his ear.

Villeroy shook his head, and said he had given his ultimatum.  Richardot
acknowledged that he had something in reserve, upon which the monk said
that it was time to make it known.

Accordingly--the two being all ears--Richardot observed that what he was
about to state he said with fear and trembling.  He knew not what the
King of Spain would think of his proposition, but he would, nevertheless,
utter the suggestion that Calais should be handed over to the pope.

His Holiness would keep the city in pledge until the war with the rebels
was over, and then there would be leisure enough to make definite
arrangements on the subject.

Now Villeroy was too experienced a practitioner to be imposed upon, by
this ingenious artifice.  Moreover, he happened to have an intercepted
letter in his possession in which Philip told the cardinal that Calais
was to be given up if the French made its restitution a sine qua non.
So Villeroy did make it a sine qua non, and the conferences soon after
terminated in an agreement on the part of Spain to surrender all its
conquests in France.

Certainly no more profitable peace than this could have been made by the
French king under such circumstances, and Philip at the last moment had
consented to pay a heavy price for bringing discord between the three
friends.  The treaty was signed at Vervins on the 2nd May, and contained
thirty-five articles.  Its basis was that of the treaty of Cateau
Cambresis of 1559.  Restitution of all places conquered by either party
within the dominions of the other since the day of that treaty was
stipulated.  Henry recovered Calais, Ardres, Dourlens, Blavet, and many
other places, and gave up the country of Charolois.  Prisoners were to be
surrendered on both sides without ransom, and such of those captives of
war as had been enslaved at the galleys should be set free.

The pope, the emperor, all states, and cities under their obedience or
control, the Duke of Savoy, the King of Poland and Sweden, the Kings of
Denmark and Scotland, the Dukes of Lorraine and Tuscany, the Doge of
Venice, the republic of Genoa, and many lesser states and potentates,
were included in the treaty.  The famous Edict of Nantes in favour of
the Protestant subjects of the French king was drawn up and signed in
the city of which it bears the name at about the same time with these
negotiations.  Its publication was, however, deferred until after the
departure of the legate from France in the following year.

The treaty of Cateau Cambresis had been pronounced the most disgraceful
and disastrous one that had ever been ratified by a French monarch; and
surely Henry had now wiped away that disgrace and repaired that disaster.
It was natural enough that he should congratulate himself on the rewards
which he had gathered by deserting his allies.

He had now sufficient occupation for a time in devising ways and means,
with the aid of the indefatigable Bethune, to pay the prodigious sums
with which he had purchased the allegiance of the great nobles and lesser
gentlemen of France.  Thirty-two millions of livres were not sufficient
to satisfy the claims of these patriots, most of whom had been drawing
enormous pensions from the King of Spain up to the very moment, or beyond
it, when they consented to acknowledge the sovereign of their own
country.  Scarcely a, great name in the golden book of France but was
recorded among these bills of sale.

Mayenne, Lorraine, Guise, Nemours, Mercoeur, Montpensier, Joyeuse,
Epernon, Brissac, D'Arlincourt, Balagny, Rochefort, Villeroy, Villars,
Montespan, Leviston, Beauvillars, and countless others, figured in the
great financier's terrible account-book, from Mayenne, set down at the
cool amount of three and a half millions, to Beauvoir or Beauvillars at
the more modest price of a hundred and sixty thousand livres.  "I should
appal my readers," said De Bethune, "if I should show to them that this
sum makes but a very small part of the amounts demanded from the royal
treasury, either by Frenchmen or by strangers, as pay and pension, and
yet the total was thirty-two millions's."

And now the most Catholic king, having brought himself at last to
exchange the grasp of friendship with the great ex-heretic, and to
recognize the Prince of Bearne as the legitimate successor of St. Louis,
to prevent which consummation he had squandered so many thousands of
lives, so many millions of treasure, and brought ruin to so many
prosperous countries, prepared himself for another step which he had
long hesitated to take.

He resolved to transfer the Netherlands to his daughter Isabella and to
the Cardinal Archduke Albert, who, as the king had now decided, was to
espouse the Infanta.

The deed of cession was signed at Madrid on the 6th May, 1598.  It was
accompanied by a letter of the same date from the Prince Philip, heir
apparent to the crown.

On the 30th May the Infanta executed a procuration by which she gave
absolute authority to her future husband to rule over the provinces of
the Netherlands, Burgundy, and Charolois, and to receive the oaths of the
estates and of public functionaries.

     [See all the deeds and documents in Bor, IV.  461-466.  Compare
     Herrera, iii.  766-770.  Very elaborate provisions were made in
     regard to the children and grand-children to spring from this
     marriage, but it was generally understood at the time that no issue
     was to be expected.  The incapacity of the cardinal seems to have
     been revealed by an indiscretion of the General of Franciscans--
     diplomatist and father confessor--and was supported by much
     collateral evidence.  Hence all these careful stipulations were a
     solemn jest, like much of the diplomatic work of this reign.]

It was all very systematically done.  No transfer of real estate, no
'donatio inter vivos' of mansions and messuages, parks and farms, herds
and flocks, could have been effected in a more business-like manner than
the gift thus made by the most prudent king to his beloved daughter.

The quit-claim of the brother was perfectly regular.

So also was the power of attorney, by which the Infanta authorised the
middle-aged ecclesiastic whom she was about to espouse to take possession
in her name of the very desirable property which she had thus acquired.

It certainly never occurred, either to the giver or the receivers, that
the few millions of Netherlanders, male and female, inhabiting these
provinces in the North Sea, were entitled to any voice or opinion as to
the transfer of themselves and their native land to a young lady living
in a remote country.  For such was the blasphemous system of Europe at
that day.  Property had rights.  Kings, from whom all property emanated,
were enfeoffed directly from the Almighty; they bestowed certain
privileges on their vassals, but man had no rights at all.  He was
property, like the ox or the ass, like the glebe which he watered with
the sweat of his brow.

The obedient Netherlands acquiesced obediently in these new arrangements.
They wondered only that the king should be willing thus to take from his
crown its choicest jewels--for it is often the vanity of colonies and
dependencies to consider themselves gems.

The republican Netherlanders only laughed at these arrangements, and
treated the invitation to transfer themselves to the new sovereigns of
the provinces with silent contempt.

The cardinal-archduke left Brussels in September, having accomplished the
work committed to him by the power of attorney, and having left Cardinal
Andrew of Austria, bishop of Constantia, son of the Archduke Ferdinand,
to administer affairs during his absence.  Francis de Mendoza, Admiral of
Arragon, was entrusted with the supreme military command for the same
interval.

The double marriage of the Infante of Spain with the Archduchess Margaret
of Austria, and of the unfrocked Cardinal Albert of Austria with the
Infanta Clara Eugenia Isabella, was celebrated by proxy, with immense
pomp, at Ferrara, the pope himself officiating with the triple crown upon
his head.

Meantime, Philip II., who had been of delicate constitution all his life,
and who had of late years been a confirmed valetudinarian, had been
rapidly failing ever since the transfer of the Netherlands in May.
Longing to be once more in his favourite retirement of the Escorial,
he undertook the journey towards the beginning of June, and was carried
thither from Madrid in a litter borne by servants, accomplishing the
journey of seven leagues in six days.

When he reached the palace cloister, he was unable to stand.  The gout,
his life-long companion, had of late so tortured him in the hands and
feet that the mere touch of a linen sheet was painful to him.  By the
middle of July a low fever had attacked him, which rapidly reduced his
strength.  Moreover, a new and terrible symptom of the utter
disintegration of his physical constitution had presented itself.
Imposthumes, from which he had suffered on the breast and at the joints,
had been opened after the usual ripening applications, and the result was
not the hoped relief, but swarms of vermin, innumerable in quantities,
and impossible to extirpate, which were thus generated and reproduced in
the monarch's blood and flesh.

The details of the fearful disorder may have attraction for the
pathologist, but have no especial interest for the general reader.  Let
it suffice, that no torture ever invented by Torquemada or Peter Titelman
to serve the vengeance of Philip and his ancestors or the pope against
the heretics of Italy or Flanders, could exceed in acuteness the agonies
which the most Catholic king was now called upon to endure.  And not one
of the long line of martyrs, who by decree of Charles or Philip had been
strangled, beheaded, burned, or buried alive, ever faced a death of
lingering torments with more perfect fortitude, or was sustained by more
ecstatic visions of heavenly mercy, than was now the case with the great
monarch of Spain.

That the grave-worms should do their office before soul and body were
parted, was a torment such as the imagination of Dante might have
invented for the lowest depths of his "Inferno."

     [A great English poet has indeed expressed the horrible thought:--

                   "It is as if the dead could feel
                    The icy worm about them steal:"--BYRON.]

On the 22nd July, the king asked Dr. Mercado if his sickness was likely
to have a fatal termination.  The physician, not having the courage at
once to give the only possible reply, found means to evade the question.
On the 1st August his Majesty's confessor, father Diego de Yepes, after
consultation with Mercado, announced to Philip that the only issue to his
malady was death.  Already he had been lying for ten days on his back, a
mass of sores and corruption, scarcely able to move, and requiring four
men to turn him in his bed.

He expressed the greatest satisfaction at the sincerity which had now
been used, and in the gentlest and most benignant manner signified his
thanks to them for thus removing all doubts from his mind, and for giving
him information which it was of so much importance for his eternal
welfare to possess.

His first thought was to request the papal nuncio, Gaetano, to despatch a
special courier to Rome to request the pope's benediction.  This was
done, and it was destined that the blessing of his Holiness should arrive
in time.

He next prepared himself to make a general confession, which lasted three
days, father Diego having drawn up at his request a full and searching
interrogatory.  The confession may have been made the more simple,
however, by the statement which he made to the priest, and subsequently
repeated to the Infante his son, that in all his life he had never
consciously done wrong to any one.  If he had ever committed an act of
injustice, it was unwittingly, or because he had been deceived in the
circumstances.  This internal conviction of general righteousness was
of great advantage to him in the midst of his terrible sufferings, and
accounted in great degree for the gentleness, thoughtfulness for others,
and perfect benignity, which, according to the unanimous testimony of
many witnesses, characterised his conduct during this whole sickness.

After he had completed his long general confession, the sacrament of the
Lord's Supper was administered to him.  Subsequently, the same rites were
more briefly performed every few days.

His sufferings were horrible, but no saint could have manifested in them
more gentle resignation or angelic patience.  He moralized on the
condition to which the greatest princes might thus be brought at last by
the hand of God, and bade the prince observe well his father's present
condition, in order that, when he too should be laid thus low, he might
likewise be sustained by a conscience void of offence.  He constantly
thanked his assistants and nurses for their care, insisted upon their
reposing themselves after their daily fatigues, and ordered others to
relieve them in their task.

He derived infinite consolation from the many relics of saints, of which,
as has been seen, he had made plentiful prevision during his long reign.
Especially a bone of St. Alban, presented to him by Clement VIII., in
view of his present straits, was of great service.  With this relic, and
with the arm of St. Vincent of Ferrara, and the knee-bone of St.
Sebastian, he daily rubbed his sores, keeping the sacred talismans ever
in his sight on the altar, which was not far from his bed.  He was much
pleased when the priests and other bystanders assured him that the
remains of these holy men would be of special efficacy to him, because he
had cherished and worshipped them in times when misbelievers and heretics
had treated them with disrespect.

On a sideboard in his chamber a human skull was placed, and upon this
skull--in ghastly mockery of royalty, in truth, yet doubtless in the
conviction that such an exhibition showed the superiority of anointed
kings even over death--he ordered his servants to place a golden crown.
And thus, during the whole of his long illness, the Antic held his state,
while the poor mortal representative of absolute power lay living still,
but slowly mouldering away.

With perfect composure, and with that minute attention to details which
had characterised the king all his lifetime, and was now more evident
than ever, he caused the provisions for his funeral obsequies to be read
aloud one day by Juan Ruys de Velasco, in order that his children, his
ministers, and the great officers of state who were daily in attendance
upon him, might thoroughly learn their lesson before the time came for
performing the ceremony.

"Having governed my kingdom for forty years," said he, "I now give it
back, in the seventy-first year of my age, to God Almighty, to whom it
belongs, recommending my soul into His blessed hands, that His Divine
Majesty may do what He pleases therewith."

He then directed that after his body should have been kept as long as the
laws prescribed, it should be buried thus:--

The officiating bishop was to head the procession, bearing the crucifix,
and followed by the clergy.

The Adelantado was to come next, trailing the royal standard along the
ground.  Then the Duke of Novara was to appear, bearing the crown on an
open salver, covered with a black cloth, while the Marquis of Avillaer
carried the sword of state.

The coffin was to be borne by eight principal grandees, clad in mourning
habiliments, and holding lighted torches.

The heir apparent was to follow, attended by Don Garcia de Loyasa, who
had just been consecrated, in the place of Cardinal Albert, as Archbishop
of Toledo.

The body was to be brought to the church, and placed in the stately tomb
already prepared for its reception.  "Mass being performed," said the
king, "the prelate shall place me in the grave which shall be my last
house until I go to my eternal dwelling.  Then the prince, third king of
my name, shall go into the cloister of St. Jerome at Madrid, where he
shall keep nine days mourning.  My daughter, and her aunt--my sister,
the ex-empress--shall for the same purpose go to the convent of the grey
sisters."

The king then charged his successor to hold the Infanta in especial
affection and consideration; "for," said he, "she has been my mirror,
yea; the light of my eyes."  He also ordered that the Marquis of Mondejar
be taken from prison and set free, on condition never to show himself at
Court.  The wife of Antonio Perez was also to be released from prison, in
order that she might be immured in a cloister, her property being
bestowed upon her daughters.

As this unfortunate lady's only crime consisted in her husband's intrigue
with the king's mistress, Princess Eboli, in which she could scarcely be
considered an accomplice, this permission to exchange one form of
incarceration for another did not seem an act of very great benignity.

Philip further provided that thirty thousand masses should be said for
his soul, five hundred slaves liberated from the galleys, and five
hundred maidens provided with marriage portions.

After these elaborate instructions had been read, the king ordered a
certain casket to be brought to him and opened in his presence.  From
this he took forth a diamond of great price and gave it to the Infanta,
saying that it had belonged to her mother, Isabella of France.  He asked
the prince if he consented to the gift.  The prince answered in the
affirmative.

He next took from the coffer a written document, which he handed to his
son, saying, "Herein you will learn how to govern your kingdoms."

Then he produced a scourge, which he said was the instrument with which
his father, the emperor, had been in the habit of chastising himself
during his retreat at the monastery of Juste.  He told the by-standers to
observe the imperial blood by which the lash was still slightly stained.

As the days wore on he felt himself steadily sinking, and asked to
receive extreme unction.  As he had never seen that rite performed he
chose to rehearse it beforehand, and told Ruys Velasco; who was in
constant attendance upon him, to go for minute instructions on the
subject to the Archbishop of Toledo.  The sacrament having been duly.
administered; the king subsequently, on the 1st September, desired to
receive it once more.  The archbishop, fearing that the dying monarch's
strength would be insufficient for the repetition of the function,
informed him that the regulations of the Church required in such cases
only a compliance with certain trifling forms, as the ceremony had been
already once thoroughly carried out.  But the king expressed himself as
quite determined that the sacrament should be repeated in all its parts;
that he should once more--be anointed--to use the phrase of brother
Francis Neyen--with the oil which holy athletes require in their wrestle
with death.

This was accordingly done in the presence of his son and daughter, and,
of his chief secretaries, Christopher de Moura and John de Idiaquez,
besides the Counts Chinchon, Fuensalido, and several other conspicuous
personages.  He was especially desirous that his son should be present,
in order that; when he too should come to die, he might not find himself,
like his father, in ignorance of the manner in which this last sacrament
was to be performed.

When it was finished he described himself as infinitely consoled, and as
having derived even more happiness from the rite than he had dared to
anticipate.

Thenceforth he protested that he would talk no more of the world's
affairs.  He had finished with all things below, and for the days or
hours still remaining to him he would keep his heart exclusively fixed
upon Heaven.  Day by day as he lay on his couch of unutterable and almost
unexampled misery, his confessors and others read to him from religious
works, while with perfect gentleness he would insist that one reader
should relieve another, that none might be fatigued.

On the 11th September he dictated these words to Christopher de Moura,
who was to take them to Diego de Yepes, the confessor:--

"Father Confessor, you are in the place of God, and I protest thus
before His presence that I will do all that you declare necessary for my
salvation.  Thus upon you will be the, responsibility for my omissions,
because I am ready to do all."

Finding that the last hour was approaching, he informed Don Fernando de
Toledo where: he could find some candles of our lady of Montserrat, one
of which he desered to keep in his hand at the supreme moment.  He also
directed Ruys de Velasco to take from a special shrine--which he had
indicated to him six years before--a crucifix which the emperor his
father had held upon his death-bed.  All this was accomplished according
to his wish.

He had already made arrangements for his funeral procession, and had
subsequently provided all the details of his agony.  It was now necessary
to give orders as to the particulars of his burial.

He knew that decomposition had made such progress even while he was still
living as to render embalming impossible: He accordingly instructed Don
Christopher to see his body wrapped in a shroud just as it lay, and to
cause it to be placed in a well-soldered metallic coffin already
provided.  The coffin of state, in which the leaden one was to be
enclosed, was then brought into the chamber by his command, that he might
see if it was entirely to his taste.  Having examined it, he ordered that
it should be lined with white satin and ornamented with gold nails and
lace-work.  He also described a particular brocade of black and gold, to
be found in the jewelroom, which he desired for the pall.

Next morning he complained to Don Christopher that the Sacrament of the
Lord's Supper had not been administered to him for several days.  It was
urged that his strength was deemed insufficient, and that, as he had
received that rite already four times during his illness, and extreme
unction twice, it was thought that the additional fatigue might be spared
him.  But as the king insisted, the sacrament was once more performed and
prayers were read.  He said with great fervour many times, "Pater, non
mea voluntas, sed tux fiat."  He listened, too, with much devotion to the
Psalm, "As the hart panteth for the water-brooks;" and he spoke faintly
at long intervals of the Magdalen, of the prodigal son, and of the
paralytic.

When these devotional exercises had been concluded, father Diego
expressed the hope to him that he might then pass away, for it would be a
misfortune by temporary convalescence to fall from the exaltation of
piety which he had then reached.  The remark was heard by Philip with an
expression of entire satisfaction.

That day both the Infanta and the prince came for the last time to his
bedside to receive his blessing.  He tenderly expressed his regret to his
daughter that he had not been permitted to witness her marriage, but
charged her never to omit any exertion to augment and sustain the holy
Roman Catholic religion in the Netherlands.  It was in the interest of
that holy Church alone that he had endowed her with those provinces, and
he now urged it upon her with his dying breath to impress upon her future
husband these his commands to both.

His two children took leave of him with tears and sobs: As the prince
left the chamber he asked Don Christopher who it was that held the key to
the treasury.

The secretary replied, "It is I, Sir."  The prince demanded that he
should give it into his hands.  But Don Christopher excused himself,
saying that it had been entrusted to him by the king, and that without
his consent he could not part with it.  Then the prince returned to the
king's chamber, followed by the secretary, who narrated to the dying
monarch what had taken place.

"You have done wrong," said Philip; whereupon Don Christopher, bowing to
the earth, presented the key to the prince.

The king then feebly begged those about his bedside to repeat the dying
words of our Saviour on the cross, in order that he might hear them and
repeat them in his heart as his soul was taking flight.

His father's crucifix was placed in his hands, and he said distinctly,
"I die like a good Catholic, in faith and obedience to the holy Roman
Church."  Soon after these last words had been spoken, a paroxysm,
followed by faintness, came over him, and he lay entirely still.

They had covered his face with a cloth, thinking that he had already
expired, when he suddenly started, with great energy, opened his eyes,
seized the crucifix again from the hand of Don Fernando de Toledo, kissed
it, and fell back again into agony.

The archbishop and the other priests expressed the opinion that he must
have had, not a paroxysm, but a celestial vision, for human powers would
not have enabled him to arouse himself so quickly and so vigorously as he
had done at that crisis.

He did not speak again, but lay unconsciously dying for some hours, and
breathed his last at five in the morning of Sunday the 13th September.

His obsequies were celebrated according to the directions which he had so
minutely given.

               ------------------------------------

These volumes will have been written in vain if it be now necessary to
recal to my readers the leading events in the history of the man who had
thus left the world where, almost invisible himself, he had so long
played a leading part.  It may not be entirely useless, however, to throw
a parting glance at a character which it has been one of the main objects
of this work, throughout its whole course, to pourtray.  My theme has
been the reign of Philip II., because, as the less is included in the
greater, the whole of that reign, with the exception of a few episodes,
is included in the vast movement out of which the Republic of the United
Netherlands was born and the assailed independence of France and England
consolidated.  The result of Philip's efforts to establish a universal
monarchy was to hasten the decline of the empire which he had inherited,
by aggravating the evils which had long made that downfall inevitable.

It is from no abstract hatred to monarchy that I have dwelt with emphasis
upon the crimes of this king, and upon the vices of the despotic system,
as illustrated during his lifetime.  It is not probable that the
military, monarchical system--founded upon conquests achieved by
barbarians and pirates of a distant epoch over an effete civilization and
over antique institutions of intolerable profligacy--will soon come to an
end in the older world.  And it is the business of Europeans so to deal
with the institutions of their inheritance or their choice as to ensure
their steady melioration and to provide for the highest interests of the
people.  It matters comparatively little by what name a government is
called, so long as the intellectual and moral development of mankind, and
the maintenance of justice among individuals, are its leading principles.
A government, like an individual, may remain far below its ideal; but,
without an ideal, governments and individuals are alike contemptible.
It is tyranny only--whether individual or popular--that utters its feeble
sneers at the ideologists, as if mankind were brutes to whom instincts
were all in all and ideas nothing.  Where intellect and justice are
enslaved by that unholy trinity--Force; Dogma, and Ignorance--the
tendency of governments, and of those subjected to them, must of
necessity be retrograde and downward.

There can be little doubt to those who observe the movements of mankind
during the course of the fourteen centuries since the fall of the Roman
Empire--a mere fragment of human history--that its progress, however
concealed or impeded, and whether for weal or woe, is towards democracy;
for it is the tendency of science to liberate and to equalize the
physical and even the intellectual forces of humanity.  A horse and a
suit of armour would now hardly enable the fortunate possessor of such
advantages to conquer a kingdom, nor can wealth and learning be
monopolised in these latter days by a favoured few.  Yet veneration for a
crown and a privileged church--as if without them and without their close
connection with each other law and religion were impossible--makes
hereditary authority sacred to great masses of mankind in the old world.
The obligation is the more stringent, therefore, on men thus set apart
as it were by primordial selection for ruling and instructing their
fellow-creatures, to keep their edicts and their practice in harmony with
divine justice.  For these rules cannot be violated with impunity during
along succession of years, and it is usually left for a comparatively
innocent generation, to atone for the sins of their forefathers.  If
history does not teach this it teaches nothing, and as the rules of
morality; whether for individuals or for nations, are simple and devoid
of mystery; there is the less excuse for governments which habitually and
cynically violate the eternal law.

Among self-evident truths not one is more indisputable than that which,
in the immortal words of our Declaration of Independence, asserts the
right of every human being to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness; but the only happiness that can be recognised by a true
statesman as the birthright of mankind is that which comes from
intellectual and moral development, and from the subjugation of the
brutal instincts.

A system according to which clowns remain clowns through all the ages,
unless when extraordinary genius or fortunate accident enables an
exceptional individual to overleap the barrier of caste, necessarily
retards the result to which the philosopher looks forward with perfect
faith.

For us, whose business it is to deal with, and, so far as human
fallibility will permit, to improve our inevitable form of government-
which may degenerate into the most intolerable of polities unless we are
ever mindful that it is yet in its rudimental condition; that, although
an immense step has been taken in the right direction by the abolition of
caste, the divorce of Church and State, and the limitation of intrusion
by either on the domain of the individual, it is yet only a step from
which, without eternal vigilance, a falling back is very easy; and that
here, more than in other lands, ignorance of the scientific and moral
truths on--which national happiness and prosperity depend, deserves
bitter denunciation--for us it is wholesome to confirm our faith in
democracy, and to justify our hope that the People will prove itself
equal to the awful responsibility of self-government by an occasional
study of the miseries which the opposite system is capable of producing.
It is for this reason that the reign of the sovereign whose closing
moments have just been recorded is especially worthy of a minute
examination, and I still invite a parting glance at the spectacle thus
presented, before the curtain falls.

The Spanish monarchy in the reign of Philip II.  was not only the most
considerable empire then existing, but probably the most powerful and
extensive empire that had ever been known.  Certainly never before had so
great an agglomeration of distinct and separate sovereignties been the
result of accident.  For it was owing to a series of accidents--in the
common acceptation of that term--that Philip governed so mighty a realm.
According to the principle that vast tracts: of the earth's surface, with
the human beings feeding upon: them, were transferable in fee-simple from
one man or woman to another by marriage, inheritance, or gift, a
heterogeneous collection of kingdoms, principalities, provinces, and:
wildernesses had been consolidated, without geographical continuity, into
an artificial union--the populations differing from each other as much as
human beings can differ, in race, language, institutions, and historical
traditions, and resembling each other in little, save in being the
property alike of the same fortunate individual.

Thus the dozen kingdoms of Spain, the seventeen provinces of the
Netherlands, the kingdoms of the Two Sicilies, the duchy of Milan, and
certain fortresses and districts of Tuscany, in Europe; the kingdom of
Barbary, the coast of Guinea, and an indefinite and unmeasured expanse.
of other territory, in Africa; the controlling outposts and cities all
along the coast of the two Indian peninsulas, with as much of the country
as it seemed good to occupy, the straits and the, great archipelagoes, so
far as they had--been visited'by Europeans, in Asia; Peru, Brazil,
Mexico, the Antilles--the whole recently discovered fourth quarter of the
world in short, from the "Land of Fire" in the South to the frozen
regions of the North--as much territory as the Spanish and Portuguese
sea-captains could circumnavigate and the pope in the plentitude of his
power and his generosity could bestow on his fortunate son, in America;
all this enormous proportion of the habitable globe was the private
property, of Philip; who was the son of Charles, who was the son of
Joanna, who was the daughter of Isabella, whose husband was Ferdinand.
By what seems to us the most whimsical of political arrangements, the
Papuan islander, the Calabrian peasant, the Amsterdam merchant, the semi-
civilized Aztec, the Moor of Barbary, the Castilian grandee, the roving
Camanche, the Guinea negro, the Indian Brahmin, found themselves--could
they but have known it--fellow-citizens of one commonwealth.  Statutes of
family descent, aided by fraud, force, and chicane, had annexed the
various European sovereignties to the crown of Spain; the genius of a
Genoese sailor had given to it the New World, and more recently the
conquest of Portugal, torn from hands not strong enough to defend the
national independence, had vested in the same sovereignty those Oriental
possessions which were due to the enterprise of Vasco de Gama, his
comrades and successors.  The, voyager, setting forth from the straits of
Gibraltar, circumnavigating the African headlands and Cape Comorin, and
sailing through the Molucca channel and past the isles which bore the
name of Philip in the Eastern sea, gave the hand at last to his
adventurous comrade, who, starting from the same point, and following
westward in the track of Magellaens and under the Southern Cross, coasted
the shore of Patagonia, and threaded his path through unmapped and
unnumbered clusters of islands in the Western Pacific; and during this
spanning of the earth's whole circumference not an inch of land or water
was traversed that was not the domain of Philip.

For the sea, too, was his as well as the dry land.

From Borneo to California the great ocean was but a Spanish lake, as much
the king's private property as his fish-ponds at the Escorial with their
carp and perch.  No subjects but his dared to navigate those sacred
waters.  Not a common highway of the world's commerce, but a private path
for the gratification of one human being's vanity, had thus been laid out
by the bold navigators of the sixteenth century.

It was for the Dutch rebels to try conclusions upon this point, as they
had done upon so many others, with the master of the land and sea.  The
opening scenes therefore in the great career of maritime adventure and
discovery by which these republicans were to make themselves famous will
soon engage the reader's attention.

Thus the causes of what is called the greatness of Spain are not far to
seek.  Spain was not a nation, but a temporary and factitious conjunction
of several nations, which it was impossible to fuse into a permanent
whole, but over whose united resources a single monarch for a time
disposed.  And the very concentration of these vast and unlimited,
powers, fortuitous as it was, in this single hand, inspiring the
individual, not unnaturally, with a consciousness of superhuman grandeur;
impelled him to those frantic and puerile efforts to achieve the
impossible which resulted, in the downfall of Spain.  The man who
inherited so much material greatness believed himself capable of
destroying the invisible but omnipotent spirit of religious and political
liberty in the Netherlands, of trampling out the national existence of
France and of England, and of annexing those realms to his empire: It has
been my task to relate, with much minuteness, how miserably his efforts
failed.

But his resources were great.  All Italy was in his hands, with the
single exception of the Venetian republic; for the Grand Duke of Florence
and the so-called republic of Genoa were little more than his vassals,
the pope was generally his other self, and the Duke of Savoy was his son-
in-law.  Thus his armies, numbering usually a hundred thousand men, were
supplied from the best possible sources.  The Italians were esteemed the
best soldiers for siege; assault, light skirmishing.  The German heavy
troopers and arquebuseers were the most effective for open field-work,
and these were to be purchased at reasonable prices and to indefinite
amount from any of the three or four hundred petty sovereigns to whom
what was called Germany belonged.  The Sicilian and Neapolitan pikemen,
the Milanese light-horse, belonged exclusively to Philip, and were used,
year after year, for more than a generation of mankind, to fight battles
in which they had no more interest than had their follow-subjects in the
Moluccas or in Mexico, but which constituted for them personally as
lucrative a trade on the whole as was afforded them at that day by
any branch of industry.

Silk, corn, wine, and oil were furnished in profusion from these favoured
regions, not that the inhabitants might enjoy life, and, by accumulating
wealth, increase the stock of human comforts and contribute to
intellectual and scientific advancement, but in order that the proprietor
of the soil might feed those eternal armies ever swarming from the south
to scatter desolation over the plains of France, Burgundy, Flanders, and
Holland, and to make the crown of Spain and the office of the Holy
Inquisition supreme over the world.  From Naples and Sicily were derived
in great plenty the best materials and conveniences for ship-building and
marine equipment.  The galleys and the galley-slaves furnished by these
subject realms formed the principal part of the royal navy.  From distant
regions, a commerce which in Philip's days had become oceanic supplied
the crown with as much revenue as could be expected in a period of gross
ignorance as to the causes of the true grandeur and the true wealth of
nations.  Especially from the mines of Mexico came an annual average of
ten or twelve millions of precious metals, of which the king took twenty-
five per cent. for himself.

It would be difficult and almost superfluous to indicate the various
resources placed in the hands of this one personage, who thus controlled
so large a portion of the earth.  All that breathed or grew belonged to
him, and most steadily was the stream of blood and treasure poured
through the sieve of his perpetual war.  His system was essentially a
gigantic and perpetual levy of contributions in kind, and it is only in
this vague and unsatisfactory manner that the revenues of his empire can
be stated.  A despot really keeps no accounts, nor need to do so, for he
is responsible to no man for the way in which he husbands or squanders
his own.  Moreover, the science of statistics had not a beginning of
existence in those days, and the most common facts can hardly be
obtained, even by approximation.  The usual standard of value, the
commodity which we call money--gold or silver--is well known to be at
best a fallacious guide for estimating the comparative wealth--of
individuals or of nations at widely different epochs.  The dollar of
Philip's day was essentially the same bit of silver that it is in our
time in Spain, Naples, Rome, or America, but even should an elaborate
calculation be made as to the quantity of beef, or bread or broadcloth to
be obtained for that bit of silver in this or that place in the middle of
the sixteenth century, the result, as compared with prices now prevalent,
would show many remarkable discrepancies.  Thus a bushel of wheat at
Antwerp during Philip's reign might cost a quarter of a dollar, in
average years, and there have been seasons in our own time when two
bushels of wheat could have been bought for a quarter of a dollar in
Illinois.  Yet if, notwithstanding this, we should allow a tenfold value
in exchange to the dollar of Philip's day, we should be surprised at the
meagreness of his revenues, of his expenditures, and of the debts which
at the close of his career brought him to bankruptcy; were the sums
estimated in coin.

Thus his income was estimated by careful contemporary statesmen at what
seemed to them the prodigious annual amount of sixteen millions of
dollars.  He carried on a vast war without interruption during the whole
of his forty-three years' reign against the most wealthy and military
nations of Christendom not recognising his authority, and in so doing he
is said to have expended a sum total of seven hundred millions of
dollars--a statement which made men's hair stand on their heads.  Yet the
American republic, during its civil war to repress the insurrection of
the slaveholders, has spent nominally as large a sum as this every year;
and the British Empire in time of profound peace spends half as much
annually.  And even if we should allow sixteen millions to have
represented the value of a hundred and sixty millions--a purely arbitrary
supposition--as compared with our times, what are a hundred and sixty,
millions of dollars, or thirty-three millions of pounds sterling--as the
whole net revenue of the greatest empire that had ever existed in the
world, when compared with the accumulated treasures over which civilized
and industrious countries can now dispose?  Thus the power of levying men
and materials in kind constituted the chief part of the royal power, and,
in truth, very little revenue in money was obtained from Milan or Naples,
or from any of the outlying European possessions of the crown.

Eight millions a year were estimated as the revenue from the eight
kingdoms incorporated under the general name of Castile, while not more
than six hundred thousand came from the three kingdoms which constituted
Arragon.  The chief sources of money receipts were a tax of ten per cent.
upon sales, paid by the seller, called Alcavala, and the Almoxarifalgo or
tariff upon both imports and exports.  Besides these imposts he obtained
about eight hundred thousand dollars a year by selling to his subjects
the privilege of eating eggs upon fast-days, according to the permission
granted him by the pope, in the bull called the Cruzada.  He received
another annual million from the Sussidio and the Excusado.  The first was
a permission originally given by the popes to levy six hundred thousand
dollars a year upon ecclesiastical property for equipment of a hundred
war-galleys against the Saracens, but which had more recently established
itself as a regular tax to pay for naval hostilities against Dutch and
English heretics--a still more malignant species of unbelievers in the
orthodox eyes of the period.  The Excusado was the right accorded to the
king always to select from the Church possessions a single benefice and
to appropriate its fruit--a levy commuted generally for four hundred
thousand dollars a year.  Besides these regular sources of income, large
but irregular amounts of money were picked up by his Majesty in small
sums, through monks sent about the country simply as beggars, under no
special license, to collect alms from rich and poor for sustaining the
war against the infidels of England and Holland.  A certain Jesuit,
father Sicily by name, had been industrious enough at one period in
preaching this crusade to accumulate more than a million and a half, so
that a facetious courtier advised his sovereign to style himself
thenceforth king, not of the two, but of the three Sicilies, in honour of
the industrious priest.

It is worthy of remark that at different periods during Philip's reign,
and especially towards its close, the whole of his regular revenue was
pledged to pay the interest, on his debts, save only the Sussidio and the
Cruzada.  Thus the master of the greatest empire of the earth had at
times no income at his disposal except the alma he could solicit from his
poorest subjects to maintain his warfare against foreign miscreants, the
levy on the Church for war-galleys; and the proceeds of his permission to
eat meat on Fridays.  This sounds like an epigram, but it is a plain,
incontestable fact.

Thus the revenues of his foreign dominions being nearly consumed by their
necessary expenses, the measure of his positive wealth was to be found in
the riches of Spain.  But Spain at that day was not an opulent country.
It was impossible that it should be rich, for nearly every law, according
to which the prosperity of a country becomes progressive; was habitually
violated.  It is difficult to state even by approximation the amount of
its population, but the kingdoms united under the crown of Castile were
estimated by contemporaries to contain eight millions, while the kingdom
of Portugal, together with those annexed to Arragon and the other
provinces of the realm, must have numbered half as many.  Here was a
populous nation in a favoured land, but the foundation of all wealth was
sapped by a perverted moral sentiment.

Labour was esteemed dishonourable.  The Spaniard, from highest to lowest,
was proud, ignorant, and lazy.  For a people endowed by nature with many
noble qualities--courage, temperance, frugality, endurance, quickness of
perception; a high sense of honour, a reverence for law--the course of
the national history had proved as ingeniously bad a system of general
education as could well be invented.

The eternal contests, century after century, upon the soil of Spain
between the crescent and the cross, and the remembrance of the ancient
days in which Oriental valour and genius had almost extirpated Germanic
institutions and Christian faith from the peninsula, had inspired one
great portion of the masses with a hatred, amounting almost to insanity,
towards every form of religion except the Church of Rome, towards every
race of mankind except the Goths and Vandals.  Innate reverence for
established authority had expanded into an intensity of religious emotion
and into a fanaticism of loyalty which caused the anointed monarch
leading true believers against infidels to be accepted as a god.  The
highest industrial and scientific civilization that had been exhibited
upon Spanish territory was that of Moors and Jews.  When in the course of
time those races had been subjugated, massacred, or driven into exile,
not only was Spain deprived of its highest intellectual culture and its
most productive labour, but intelligence, science, and industry were
accounted degrading, because the mark of inferior and detested peoples.

The sentiment of self-esteem, always a national characteristic, assumed
an almost ludicrous shape.  Not a ragged Biscayan muleteer, not a
swineherd of Estremadura, that did not imagine himself a nobleman because
he was not of African descent.  Not a half-starved, ignorant brigand,
gaining his living on the highways and byways by pilfering or
assassination, that did not kneel on the church pavement and listen to
orisons in an ancient tongue, of which he understood not a syllable, with
a sentiment of Christian self-complacency to which Godfrey of Bouillon
might have been a stranger.  Especially those born towards the northern
frontier, and therefore farthest removed from Moorish contamination, were
proudest of the purity of their race.  To be an Asturian or a Gallician,
however bronzed by sun and wind, was to be furnished with positive proof
against suspicion of Moorish blood; but the sentiment was universal
throughout the peninsula.

It followed as a matter of course that labour of any kind was an
impeachment against this gentility of descent.  To work was the province
of Moors, Jews, and other heretics; of the Marani or accursed, miscreants
and descendants of miscreants; of the Sanbeniti or infamous, wretches
whose ancestors had been convicted by the Holy Inquisition of listening,
however secretly, to the Holy Scriptures as expounded by other lips than
those of Roman priests.  And it is a remarkable illustration of this
degradation of labour and of its results, that in the reign of Philip
twenty-five thousand individuals of these dishonoured and comparatively
industrious classes, then computed at four millions in number in the
Castilian kingdoms alone, had united in a society which made a formal
offer to the king to pay him two thousand dollars a head if the name and
privileges of hidalgo could be conferred upon them.  Thus an
inconsiderable number of this vilest and most abject of the population--
oppressed by taxation which was levied exclusively upon the low, and from
which not only the great nobles but mechanics and other hidalgos were,
exempt--had been able to earn and to lay by enough to offer the monarch
fifty millions of dollars to purchase themselves out of semi-slavery into
manhood, and yet found their offer rejected by an almost insolvent king.
Nothing could exceed the idleness and the frivolity of the upper classes,
as depicted by contemporary and not unfriendly observers.  The nobles
were as idle and as ignorant as their inferiors.  They were not given to
tournays nor to the delights of the chase and table, but were fond of
brilliant festivities, dancing, gambling, masquerading, love-making, and
pompous exhibitions of equipage, furniture, and dress.  These diversions
--together with the baiting of bulls and the burning of Protestants--made
up their simple round of pleasures.  When they went to the wars they
scorned all positions but that of general, whether by land or sea, and as
war is a trade which requires an apprenticeship; it is unnecessary to
observe that these grandees were rarely able to command, having never
learned to obey.  The poorer Spaniards were most honourably employed
perhaps--so far as their own mental development was concerned--when they
were sent with pike and arquebus to fight heretics in France and
Flanders.  They became brave and indomitable soldiers when exported to
the seat of war, and thus afforded proof--by strenuously doing the
hardest physical work that human beings can be called upon to perform,
campaigning year after year amid the ineffable deprivations, dangers, and
sufferings which are the soldier's lot--that it was from no want of
industry or capacity that the lower masses of Spaniards in that age were
the idle, listless, dice-playing, begging, filching vagabonds into which
cruel history and horrible institutions had converted them at home.

It is only necessary to recal these well-known facts to understand why
one great element of production--human labour--was but meagrely supplied.
It had been the deliberate policy of the Government for ages to extirpate
the industrious classes, and now that a great portion of Moors and Jews
were exiles and outcasts, it was impossible to supply their place by
native workmen.  Even the mechanics, who condescended to work with their
hands in the towns, looked down alike upon those who toiled in the field
and upon those who, attempted to grow rich by traffic.  A locksmith or a
wheelwright who could prove four descents of western, blood called
himself a son of somebody--a hidalgo--and despised the farmer and the
merchant.  And those very artisans were careful not to injure themselves
by excessive industry, although not reluctant by exorbitant prices to
acquire in one or-two days what might seem a fair remuneration for a
week, and to impress upon their customers that it was rather by way of
favour that they were willing to serve them at all.

Labour being thus deficient, it is obvious that there could hardly have
been a great accumulation, according to modern ideas, of capital.  That
other chief element of national wealth, which is the result of
generations of labour and of abstinence, was accordingly not abundant.
And even those accretions of capital, which in the course of centuries
had been inevitable, were as clumsily and inadequately diffused as the
most exquisite human perverseness could desire.  If the object of civil
and political institutions had been to produce the greatest ill to the
greatest number, that object had been as nearly attained at last in Spain
as human imperfection permits; the efforts of government and of custom
coming powerfully to the aid of the historical evils already indicated.

It is superfluous to say that the land belonged not to those who lived
upon it--but subject to the pre-eminent right of the crown--to a small
selection of the human species.  Moderate holdings, small farms, peasant
proprietorship's, were unknown.  Any kind of terrestrial possession; in
short, was as far beyond the reach of those men who held themselves so
haughtily and esteemed themselves so inordinately, as were the mountains
in the moon.

The great nobles--and of real grandees of Spain there were but forty-
nine, although the number of titled families was much larger--owned all
the country, except that vast portion of it which had reposed for ages in
the dead-hand of the Church.  The law of primogeniture, strictly
enforced, tended with every generation to narrow the basis of society.
Nearly every great estate was an entail, passing from eldest son to
eldest son, until these were exhausted, in which case a daughter
transferred the family possessions to a new house.  Thus the capital of
the country--meagre at best in comparison with what it might have been,
had industry been honoured instead of being despised, had the most
intelligent and most diligent classes been cherished rather than hunted
to death or into obscure dens like vermin--was concentrated in very few
hands.  Not only was the accumulation less than it should have been, but
the slenderness of its diffusion had nearly amounted to absolute
stagnation.  The few possessors of capital wasted their revenues in
unproductive consumption.  The millions of the needy never dreamed of the
possibility of deriving benefit from the capital of the rich, nor would
have condescended to employ it, nor known how to employ it, had its use
in any form been vouchsafed to them.  The surface of Spain, save only
around the few royal residences, exhibited no splendour of architecture,
whether in town or country, no wonders of agricultural or horticultural
skill, no monumentsof engineering and constructive genius in roads,
bridges, docks, warehouses, and other ornamental and useful fabrics, or
in any of the thousand ways in which man facilitates intercourse among
his kind and subdues nature to his will.

Yet it can never be too often repeated that it, is only the Spaniard of
the sixteenth century, such as extraneous circumstances had made him,
that is here depicted; that he, even like his posterity and his
ancestors, had been endowed by Nature with some of her noblest gifts.
Acuteness of intellect, wealth of imagination, heroic qualities of heart,
and hand, and brain, rarely surpassed in any race, and manifested on a
thousand battle-fields, and in the triumphs of a magnificent and most
original literature, had not been able to save a whole nation from the
disasters and the degradation which the mere words Philip II, and the
Holy Inquisition suggest to every educated mind.

Nor is it necessary for my purpose to measure exactly the space which
separated Spain from the other leading monarchies of the day.  That the
standard of civilization was a vastly higher one in England, Holland, or
even France--torn as they all were with perpetual civil war--no thinker
will probably deny; but as it is rather my purpose at this moment to
exhibit the evils which may spring from a perfectly bad monarchical
system, as administered by a perfectly bad king, I prefer not to wander
at present from the country which was ruled for almost half a century by
Philip II.

Besides the concentration of a great part of the capital of the country
in a very small number of titled families, still another immense portion
of the national wealth belonged, as already intimated, to the Church.

There were eleven archbishops, at the head of whom stood the Archbishop
of Toledo, with the enormous annual revenue of three hundred thousand
dollars.  Next to him came the Archbishop of Seville, with one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars yearly, while the income of the others varied
from fifty thousand to twenty thousand dollars respectively.

There were sixty-two bishops, with annual incomes ranging from fifty
thousand to six thousand dollars.  The churches, also, of these various
episcopates were as richly endowed as the great hierarchs themselves.
But without fatiguing the reader with minute details, it is sufficient to
say that one-third of the whole annual income of Spain and Portugal
belonged to the ecclesiastical body.  In return for this enormous
proportion of the earth's fruits, thus placed by the caprice of destiny
at their disposal, these holy men did very little work in the world.
They fed their flocks neither with bread nor with spiritual food.
They taught little, preached little, dispensed little in charity.
Very few of the swarming millions of naked and hungry throughout the land
were clothed or nourished out of these prodigious revenues of the Church.
The constant and avowed care of those prelates was to increase their
worldly, possessions, to build up the fortunes of their respective
families, to grow richer and richer at the expense of the people whom for
centuries they had fleeced.  Of gross crime, of public ostentatious
immorality, such as had made the Roman priesthood of that and preceding
ages loathsome in the sight of man and God, the Spanish Church-
dignitaries were innocent.  Avarice; greediness, and laziness were
their characteristics.  It is almost superfluous to say that, while the
ecclesiastical princes were rolling in this almost fabulous wealth, the
subordinate clergy, the mob of working priests, were needy, half-starved
mendicants.

From this rapid survey of the condition of the peninsula it will seem
less surprising than it might do at first glance that the revenue of the
greatest monarch of the world was rated at the small amount--even after
due allowance for the difference of general values between the sixteenth
and nineteenth centuries--of sixteen millions of dollars.  The King of
Spain was powerful and redoubtable at home and abroad, because accident
had placed the control of a variety of separate realms in his single
hand.  At the same time Spain was poor and weak, because she had lived
for centuries in violation of the principles on which the wealth and
strength of nations depend.  Moreover, every one of those subject and
violently annexed nations hated Spain with undying fervour, while an
infernal policy--the leading characteristics of which were to sow
dissensions among the nobles, to confiscate their property on all
convenient occasions, and to bestow it upon Spaniards and other
foreigners; to keep the discontented masses in poverty, but to deprive
them of the power or disposition to unite with their superiors in rank
in demonstrations against the crown--had sufficed to suppress any
extensive revolt in the various Italian states united under Philip's
sceptre.  Still more intense than the hatred of the Italians was the
animosity which was glowing in every Portuguese breast against the
Spanish sway; while even the Arragonese were only held in subjection by
terror, which, indeed, in one form or another, was the leading instrument
of Philip's government.

It is hardly necessary to enlarge upon the regulations of Spain's foreign
commerce; for it will be enough to repeat the phrase that in her eyes the
great ocean from east to west was a Spanish lake, sacred to the ships of
the king's subjects alone.  With such a simple code of navigation coming
in aid of the other causes which impoverished the land, it may be
believed that the maritime traffic of the country would dwindle into the
same exiguous proportions which characterised her general industry.

Moreover, it should never be forgotten that, although the various
kingdoms of Spain were politically conjoined by their personal union
under one despot, they were commercially distinct.  A line of custom-
houses separated each province from the rest, and made the various
inhabitants of the peninsula practically strangers to each other.  Thus
there was less traffic between Castile, Biscay, and Arragon than there
was between any one of them and remote foreign nations.  The Biscayans,
for example, could even import and export commodities to and from remote
countries by sea, free of duty, while their merchandize to and from
Castile was crushed by imposts.  As this ingenious perversity of positive
arrangements came to increase the negative inconveniences caused by the
almost total absence of tolerable roads, canals, bridges, and other means
of intercommunication, it may be imagined that internal traffic--the very
life-blood of every prosperous nation--was very nearly stagnant in Spain.
As an inevitable result, the most thriving branch of national industry
was that of the professional smuggler, who, in the pursuit of his
vocation, did his best to aid Government in sapping the wealth of the
nation.

The whole accumulated capital of Spain, together with the land--in the
general sense which includes not only the soil but the immovable property
of a country being thus exclusively owned by the crown, the church, and
a very small number of patrician families, while the supply of labour
owing to the special causes which had converted the masses of the people
into paupers ashamed to work but not unwilling to beg or to rob--was
incredibly small, it is obvious that, so long as the same causes
continued in operation, the downfall of the country was a logical result
from which there was no escape.  Nothing but a general revolution of mind
and hand against the prevalent system, nothing but some great destructive
but regenerating catastrophe, could redeem the people.

And it is the condition of the people which ought always to be the
prominent subject of interest to those who study the records of the Past.
It is only by such study that we can derive instruction from history,
and enable ourselves, however dimly and feebly, to cast the horoscope
of younger nations.  Human history, so far as it has been written, is at
best a mere fragment; for the few centuries or year-thousands of which
there is definite record are as nothing compared to the millions of
unnumbered years during which man has perhaps walked the earth.  It may
be as practicable therefore to derive instruction from a minute
examination in detail of a very limited period of time and space, and
thus to deduce general rules for the infinite future, during which our
species may be destined to inhabit this planet, as by a more extensive
survey, which must however be at best a limited one.  Men die, but Man is
immortal, and it would be a sufficiently forlorn prospect for humanity if
we were not able to discover causes in operation which would ultimately
render the system of Philip II. impossible in any part of the globe.
Certainly, were it otherwise, the study of human history would be the
most wearisome and unprofitable of all conceivable occupations.  The
festivities of courts, the magnificence of an aristocracy, the sayings
and doings of monarchs and their servants, the dynastic wars, the solemn
treaties; the Ossa upon Pelion of diplomatic and legislative rubbish by
which, in the course of centuries, a few individuals or combinations of
individuals have been able to obstruct the march of humanity, and have
essayed to suspend the operation of elemental laws--all this contains but
little solid food for grown human beings.  The condition of the brave and
quickwitted Spanish people in the latter half of the sixteenth century
gives more matter for reflection and possible instruction.

That science is the hope of the world, that ignorance is the real
enslaver of mankind, and therefore the natural ally of every form of
despotism, may be assumed as an axiom, and it was certainly the ignorance
and superstition of the people upon which the Philippian policy was
founded.

A vast mass, entirely uneducated, half fed, half clothed, unemployed; and
reposing upon a still lower and denser stratum--the millions namely of
the "Accursed," of the Africans, and last and vilest of all, the
"blessed" descendants of Spanish protestants whom the Holy Office had
branded with perpetual infamy because it had burned their progenitors--
this was the People; and it was these paupers and outcasts, nearly the
whole nation, that paid all the imposts of which the public revenue was
composed.  The great nobles, priests, and even the hidalgos, were exempt
from taxation.  Need more be said to indicate the inevitable ruin of both
government and people?

And it was over such a people, and with institutions like these, that
Philip II. was permitted to rule during forty-three years.  His power was
absolute.  With this single phrase one might as well dismiss any attempt
at specification.  He made war or peace at will with foreign nations.
He had power of life and death over all his subjects.  He had unlimited
control of their worldly goods.  As he claimed supreme jurisdiction over
their religious opinions also, he was master of their minds, bodies, and
estates.  As a matter of course, he nominated and removed at will every
executive functionary, every judge, every magistrate, every military or
civil officer; and moreover, he not only selected, according to the
license tacitly conceded to him by the pontiff, every archbishop, bishop,
and other Church dignitary, but, through his great influence at Rome,
he named most of the cardinals, and thus controlled the election of the
popes.  The whole machinery of society, political, ecclesiastical,
military, was in his single hand.  There was a show of provincial
privilege here and there in different parts of Spain, but it was but the
phantom of that ancient municipal liberty which it had been the especial
care of his father and his great-grandfather to destroy.  Most patiently
did Philip, by his steady inactivity, bring about the decay of the
last ruins of free institutions in the peninsula.  The councils and
legislative assemblies were convoked and then wearied out in waiting
for that royal assent to their propositions and transactions, which was
deferred intentionally, year after year, and never given.  Thus the time
of the deputies was consumed in accomplishing infinite nothing, until the
moment arrived when the monarch, without any violent stroke of state,
could feel safe in issuing decrees and pragmatic edicts; thus reducing
the ancient legislative and consultative bodies to nullity, and
substituting the will of an individual for a constitutional fabric.  To
criticise the expenses of government or to attempt interference with the
increase of taxation became a sorry farce.  The forms remained in certain
provinces after the life had long since fled.  Only in Arragon had the
ancient privileges seemed to defy the absolute authority of the monarch;
and it was reserved for Antonio Perez to be the cause of their final
extirpation.  The grinning skulls of the Chief Justice of that kingdom
and of the boldest and noblest advocates and defenders of the national
liberties, exposed for years in the market-place, with the record of
their death-sentence attached, informed the Spaniards, in language which
the most ignorant could read, that the crime of defending a remnant of
human freedom and constitutional law was sure to draw down condign
punishment.  It was the last time in that age that even the ghost of
extinct liberty was destined to revisit the soil of Spain.  It mattered
not that the immediate cause for pursuing Perez was his successful amour
with the king's Mistress, nor that the crime of which he was formally
accused was the deadly offence of Calvinism, rather than his intrigue
with the Eboli and his assassination of Escovedo; for it was in the
natural and simple sequence of events that the last vestige of law or
freedom should be obliterated wherever Philip could vindicate his sway.
It must be admitted, too, that the king seized this occasion to strike a
decisive blow with a promptness very different from his usual artistic
sluggishness.  Rarely has a more terrible epigram been spoken by man than
the royal words which constituted the whole trial and sentence of the
Chief Justice of Arragon, for the crime of defending the law of his
country: "You will take John of Lanuza, and you will have his head cut
off."  This was the end of the magistrate and of the constitution which
he had defended.

His power, was unlimited.  A man endowed with genius and virtue, and
possessing the advantages of a consummate education, could have perhaps
done little more than attempt to mitigate the general misery, and to
remove some of its causes.  For it is one of the most pernicious dogmas
of the despotic system, and the one which the candid student of history
soonest discovers to be false, that the masses of mankind are to look to
any individual, however exalted by birth or intellect, for their
redemption.  Woe to the world if the nations are never to learn that
their fate is and ought to be in their own hands; that their
institutions, whether liberal or despotic, are the result of the
national biography and of the national character, not the work of a few
individuals whose names have been preserved by capricious Accident as
heroes and legislators.  Yet there is no doubt that, while comparatively
powerless for good, the individual despot is capable of almost infinite
mischief.  There have been few men known to history who have been able to
accomplish by their own exertions so vast an amount of evil as the king
who had just died.  If Philip possessed a single virtue it has eluded the
conscientious research of the writer of these pages.  If there are vices
--as possibly there are from which he was exempt, it is because it is not
permitted to human nature to attain perfection even in evil.  The only
plausible explanation--for palliation there is none--of his infamous
career is that the man really believed himself not a king but a god.  He
was placed so high above his fellow-creatures as, in good faith perhaps,
to believe himself incapable of doing wrong; so that, whether indulging
his passions or enforcing throughout the world his religious and
political dogmas, he was ever conscious of embodying divine inspirations
and elemental laws.  When providing for the assassination of a monarch,
or commanding the massacre of a townfill of Protestants; when trampling
on every oath by which a human being can bind himself; when laying
desolate with fire and sword, during more than a generation, the
provinces which he had inherited as his private property, or in carefully
maintaining the flames of civil war in foreign kingdoms which he hoped to
acquire; while maintaining over all Christendom a gigantic system of
bribery, corruption, and espionage, keeping the noblest names of England
and Scotland on his pension-lists of traitors, and impoverishing his
exchequer with the wages of iniquity paid in France to men of all
degrees, from princes of blood like Guise and Mayenne down to the
obscurest of country squires, he ever felt that these base or bloody
deeds were not crimes, but the simple will of the godhead of which he was
a portion.  He never doubted that the extraordinary theological system
which he spent his life in enforcing with fire and sword was right, for
it was a part of himself.  The Holy Inquisition, thoroughly established
as it was in his ancestral Spain, was a portion of the regular working
machinery by which his absolute kingship and his superhuman will
expressed themselves.  A tribunal which performed its functions with a
celerity, certainty, and invisibility resembling the attributes of
Omnipotence; which, like the pestilence, entered palace or hovel at will,
and which smote the wretch guilty or suspected of heresy with a precision
against which no human ingenuity or sympathy could guard--such an
institution could not but be dear to his heart.  It was inevitable that
the extension and perpetuation of what he deemed its blessings throughout
his dominions should be his settled purpose.  Spain was governed by an
established terrorism.  It is a mistake to suppose that Philip was
essentially beloved in his native land, or that his religious and
political system was heartily accepted because consonant to the national
character.  On the contrary, as has been shown, a very large proportion
of the inhabitants were either secretly false to the Catholic faith, or
descended at least from those who had expiated their hostility to it with
their lives.  But the Grand Inquisitor was almost as awful a personage;
as the king or the pope.  His familiars were in every village and at
every fireside, and from their fangs there was no escape.  Millions of
Spaniards would have rebelled against the crown or accepted the reformed
religion, had they not been perfectly certain of being burned or hanged
at the slightest movement in such a direction.  The popular force in the
course of the political combinations of centuries seemed at last to have
been eliminated.  The nobles, exempt from taxation, which crushed the
people to the earth, were the enemies rather than the chieftains and
champions of the lower classes in any possible struggle with a crown to
which they were united by ties of interest as well as of affection, while
the great churchmen, too, were the immediate dependants and of course the
firm supporters of the king.  Thus the people, without natural leaders,
without organisation, and themselves divided into two mutually hostile
sections, were opposed by every force in the State.  Crown, nobility, and
clergy; all the wealth and all that there was of learning, were banded
together to suppress the democratic principle.  But even this would
hardly have sufficed to extinguish every spark of liberty, had it not
been for the potent machinery of the Inquisition; nor could that
perfection of terrorism have become an established institution but for
the extraordinary mixture of pride and superstition of which the national
character had been, in the course of the national history, compounded.
The Spanish portion of the people hated the nobles, whose petty exactions
and oppressions were always visible; but they had a reverential fear of
the unseen monarch, as the representative both of the great unsullied
Christian nation to which the meanest individual was proud to belong, and
of the God of wrath who had decreed the extermination of all unbelievers.
The "accursed" portion of the people were sufficiently disloyal at heart,
but were too much crushed by oppression and contempt to imagine
themselves men.  As to the Netherlanders, they did not fight originally
for independence.  It was not until after a quarter of a century of
fighting that they ever thought of renouncing their allegiance to Philip.
They fought to protect themselves against being taxed by the king without
the consent of those constitutional assemblies which he had sworn to
maintain, and to save themselves and their children from being burned
alive if they dared to read the Bible.  Independence followed after
nearly a half-century of fighting, but it would never have been obtained,
or perhaps demanded, had those grievances of the people been redressed.

Of this perfect despotism Philip was thus the sole administrator.
Certainly he looked upon his mission with seriousness, and was
industrious in performing his royal functions.  But this earnestness and
seriousness were, in truth, his darkest vices; for the most frivolous
voluptuary that ever wore a crown would never have compassed a thousandth
part of the evil which was Philip's life-work.  It was because he was a
believer in himself, and in what he called his religion, that he was
enabled to perpetrate such a long catalogue of crimes.  When an humble
malefactor is brought before an ordinary court of justice, it is not
often, in any age or country, that he escapes the pillory or the gallows
because, from his own point of view, his actions, instead of being
criminal, have been commendable, and because the multitude and continuity
of his offences prove him to have been sincere.  And because anointed
monarchs are amenable to no human tribunal, save to that terrible assize
which the People, bursting its chain from time to time in the course of
the ages, sets up for the trial of its oppressors, and which is called
Revolution, it is the more important for the great interests of humanity
that before the judgment-seat of History a crown should be no protection
to its wearer.  There is no plea to the jurisdiction of history, if
history be true to itself.

As for the royal criminal called Philip II., his life is his arraignment,
and these volumes will have been written in vain if a specification is
now required.

Homicide such as was hardly ever compassed before by one human being was
committed by Philip when in the famous edict of 1568 he sentenced every
man, woman, and child in the Netherlands to death.  That the whole of
this population, three millions or more, were not positively destroyed
was because no human energy could suffice to execute the diabolical
decree.  But Alva, toiling hard, accomplished much of this murderous
work.  By the aid of the "Council of Blood," and of the sheriffs and
executioners of the Holy Inquisition, he was able sometimes to put eight
hundred human beings to death in a single week for the crimes of
Protestantism or of opulence, and at the end of half a dozen years he
could boast of having strangled, drowned, burned, or beheaded somewhat
more than eighteen thousand of his fellow-creatures.  These were some of
the non-combatant victims; for of the tens of thousands who perished
during his administration alone, in siege and battle, no statistical
record has been preserved.

In face of such wholesale crimes, of these forty years of bloodshed, it
is superfluous to refer to such isolated misdeeds as his repeated
attempts to procure the assassination of the Prince of Orange, crowned at
last by the success of Balthazar Gerard, nor to his persistent efforts to
poison the Queen of England; for the enunciation of all these murders or
attempts at murder would require a repetition of the story which it has
been one of the main purposes of these volumes to recite.

For indeed it seems like mere railing to specify his crimes.  Their very
magnitude and unbroken continuity, together with their impunity, give
them almost the appearance of inevitable phenomena.  The horrible
monotony of his career stupefies the mind until it is ready to accept the
principle of evil as the fundamental law of the world.

His robberies, like his murders, were colossal.  The vast, system of
confiscation set up in the Netherlands was sufficient to reduce
unnumbered innocent families to beggary, although powerless to break
the spirit of civil and religious liberty or to pay the expenses of
subjugating a people.  Not often in the world's history have so many
thousand individual been plundered by a foreign tyrant for no crime, save
that they were rich enough to be worth robbing.  For it can never be too
often repeated that those confiscations and extortions were perpetrated
upon Catholics as well as Protestants, monarchists as well as rebels; the
possession of property making proof of orthodoxy or of loyalty well-nigh
impossible.

Falsehood was the great basis of the king's character, which perhaps
derives its chief importance, as a political and psychological study,
from this very fact.  It has been shown throughout the whole course of
this history, by the evidence of his most secret correspondence, that he
was false, most of all, to those to whom he gave what he called his
heart.  Granvelle, Alva, Don John, Alexander Farnese, all those, in
short, who were deepest in his confidence experienced in succession his
entire perfidy, while each in turn was sacrificed to his master's
sleepless suspicion.  The pope himself was often as much the dupe of the
Catholic monarch's faithlessness as the vilest heretic had ever been.
Could the great schoolmaster of iniquity for the sovereigns and
politicians of the south have lived to witness the practice of the
monarch who had most laid to heart the precepts of the "Prince," he would
have felt that he had not written in vain, and that his great paragon of
successful falsehood, Ferdinand of Arragon, had been surpassed by the
great grandson.  For the ideal perfection of perfidy, foreshadowed by the
philosopher who died in the year of Philip's birth, was thoroughly
embodied at last by this potentate.  Certainly Nicholas Macchiavelli
could have hoped for no more docile pupil.  That all men are vile, that
they are liars; scoundrels, poltroons, and idiots alike--ever ready to
deceive and yet easily to be duped, and that he only is fit to be king
who excels his kind in the arts of deception; by this great maxim of the
Florentine, Philip was ever guided.  And those well-known texts of
hypocrisy, strewn by the same hand, had surely not fallen on stony ground
when received into Philip's royal soul.

"Often it is necessary, in order to maintain power, to act contrary to
faith, contrary to charity, contrary to humanity, contrary to religion
.  .  .  .  .  .  A prince ought therefore to have great care that from
his mouth nothing should ever come that is not filled with those five
qualities, and that to see and hear him he should appear all piety, all
faith, all integrity, all humanity, all religion.  And nothing is more
necessary than to seem to have this last-mentioned quality.  Every one
sees what you seem, few perceive what you are."

Surely this hand-book of cant had been Philip's 'vade mecum' through his
life's pilgrimage.

It is at least a consolation to reflect that a career controlled by such
principles came to an ignominious close.  Had the mental capacity of this
sovereign been equal to his criminal intent, even greater woe might have
befallen the world.  But his intellect was less than mediocre.  His
passion for the bureau, his slavery to routine, his puerile ambition
personally to superintend details which could have been a thousand times
better administered by subordinates, proclaimed every day the narrowness
of his mind.  His diligence in reading, writing, and commenting upon
despatches may excite admiration only where there has been no opportunity
of judging of his labours by personal inspection.  Those familiar with
the dreary displays of his penmanship must admit that such work could
have been at least as well done by a copying clerk of average capacity.
His ministers were men of respectable ability, but he imagined himself,
as he advanced in life, far superior to any counsellor that he could
possibly select, and was accustomed to consider himself the first
statesman in the world.

His reign was a thorough and disgraceful failure.  Its opening scene was
the treaty of Catean Cambresis, by which a triumph over France had been
achieved for him by the able generals and statesmen of his father, so
humiliating and complete as to make every French soldier or politician
gnash his teeth.  Its conclusion was the treaty of Vervins with the same
power, by which the tables were completely turned, and which was as
utterly disgraceful to Spain as that of Cateau Cambresis had been to
France.  He had spent his life in fighting with the spirit of the age--
that invincible power of which he had not the faintest conception--while
the utter want of adaptation of his means to his ends often bordered, not
on the ludicrous, but the insane.

He attempted to reduce the free Netherlands to slavery and to papacy.
Before his death they had expanded into an independent republic, with a
policy founded upon religious toleration and the rights of man.  He had
endeavoured all his life to exclude the Bearnese from his heritage and
to place himself or his daughter on the vacant throne; before his death
Henry IV. was the most powerful and popular sovereign that had ever
reigned in France.  He had sought to invade and to conquer England, and
to dethrone and assassinate its queen.  But the queen outwitted,
outgeneralled, and outlived, him; English soldiers and sailors, assisted.
by their Dutch comrades in arms, accomplished on the shores of Spain what
the Invincible Armada had in vain essayed against England and Holland;
while England, following thenceforth the opposite system to that of
absolutism and the Inquisition, became, after centuries of struggles
towards the right, the most powerful, prosperous, and enlightened kingdom
in the world.

His exchequer, so full when he ascended the throne as to excite the awe
of contemporary financiers, was reduced before his death to a net income
of some four millions of dollars.  His armies; which had been the wonder
of the age in the earlier period of his reign for discipline, courage,
and every quality on which military efficiency depends, were in his later
years a horde of starving, rebellious brigands, more formidable to their
commanders than to the foe.  Mutiny was the only organised military
institution that was left in his dominions, while the Spanish
Inquisition, which it was the fell purpose of his life from youth upwards
to establish over the world, became a loathsome and impossible nuisance
everywhere but in its natal soil.

If there be such a thing as historical evidence, then is Philip II.,
convicted before the tribunal of impartial posterity of every crime
charged in his indictment.  He lived seventy-one years and three months,
he reigned forty-three years.  He endured the martyrdom of his last
illness with the heroism of a saint, and died in the certainty of
immortal bliss as the reward of his life of evil.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

A despot really keeps no accounts, nor need to do so
All Italy was in his hands
Every one sees what you seem, few perceive what you are
God of wrath who had decreed the extermination of all unbeliever
Had industry been honoured instead of being despised
History is but made up of a few scattered fragments
Hugo Grotius
Idle, listless, dice-playing, begging, filching vagabonds
Ignorance is the real enslaver of mankind
Innocent generation, to atone for the sins of their forefathers
Intelligence, science, and industry were accounted degrading
Labour was esteemed dishonourable
Man had no rights at all  He was property
Matters little by what name a government is called
Moral nature, undergoes less change than might be hoped
Names history has often found it convenient to mark its epochs
National character, not the work of a few individuals
Proceeds of his permission to eat meat on Fridays
Rarely able to command, having never learned to obey
Rich enough to be worth robbing
Seems but a change of masks, of costume, of phraseology
Selling the privilege of eating eggs upon fast-days
Sentiment of Christian self-complacency
Spain was governed by an established terrorism
That unholy trinity--Force; Dogma, and Ignorance
The great ocean was but a Spanish lake
The most thriving branch of national industry (Smuggler)
The record of our race is essentially unwritten
Thirty thousand masses should be said for his soul
Those who argue against a foregone conclusion
Three or four hundred petty sovereigns (of Germany)
Utter want of adaptation of his means to his ends
While one's friends urge moderation
Whole revenue was pledged to pay the interest, on his debts




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v70
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 71, 1598-1599




CHAPTER XXXVI.

     Commercial prospects of Holland--Travels of John Huygen van
     Linschoten Their effect on the trade and prosperity of the
     Netherlands--Progress of nautical and geographical science--Maritime
     exploration--Fantastic notions respecting the polar regions--State
     of nautical science--First arctic expedition--Success of the
     voyagers--Failure of the second expedition--Third attempt to
     discover the north-east passage--Discovery of Spitzbergen--
     Scientific results of the voyage--Adventures in the frozen regions--
     Death of William Barendz--Return of the voyagers to Amsterdam--
     Southern expedition against the Spanish power--Disasters attendant
     upon it--Extent of Dutch discovery.

During a great portion of Philip's reign the Netherlanders, despite their
rebellion, had been permitted to trade with Spain.  A spectacle had thus
been presented of a vigorous traffic between two mighty belligerents, who
derived from their intercourse with each other the means of more
thoroughly carrying on their mutual hostilities.  The war fed their
commerce, and commerce fed their war.  The great maritime discoveries at
the close of the fifteenth century had enured quite as much to the
benefit of the Flemings and Hollanders as to that of the Spaniards and
Portuguese, to whom they were originally due.  Antwerp and subsequently
Amsterdam had thriven on the great revolution of the Indian trade which
Vasco de Gama's voyage around the Cape had effected.  The nations of the
Baltic and of farthest Ind now exchanged their products on a more
extensive scale.  and with a wider sweep across the earth than when the
mistress of the Adriatic alone held the keys of Asiatic commerce.  The
haughty but intelligent oligarchy of shopkeepers, which had grown so rich
and attained so eminent a political position from its magnificent
monopoly, already saw the sources of its grandeur drying up before its
eyes, now that the world's trade--for the first time in human history--
had become oceanic.

In Holland, long since denuded of forests, were great markets of timber,
whither shipbuilders and architects came from all parts of the world to
gather the utensils for their craft.  There, too, where scarcely a pebble
had been deposited in the course of the geological transformations of our
planet, were great artificial quarries of granite, and marble, and
basalt.  Wheat was almost as rare a product of the soil as cinnamon, yet
the granaries of Christendom, and the Oriental magazines of spices and
drugs, were found chiefly on that barren spot of earth.  There was the
great international mart where the Osterling, the Turk, the Hindoo, the
Atlantic and the Mediterranean traders stored their wares and negotiated
their exchanges; while the curious and highly-prized products of
Netherland skill--broadcloths, tapestries, brocades, laces, substantial
fustians, magnificent damasks, finest linens--increased the mass of
visible wealth piled mountains high upon that extraordinary soil which
produced nothing and teemed with everything.

After the incorporation of Portugal with Spain however many obstacles
were thrown in the way of the trade from the Netherlands to Lisbon and
the Spanish ports.  Loud and bitter were the railings uttered, as we
know, by the English sovereign and her statesmen against the nefarious
traffic which the Dutch republic persisted in carrying on with the common
enemy.  But it is very certain that although the Spanish armadas would
have found it comparatively difficult to equip themselves without the tar
and the timber, the cordage, the stores, and the biscuits furnished by
the Hollanders, the rebellious commonwealth, if excluded from the world's
commerce, in which it had learned to play so controlling a part, must
have ceased to exist.  For without foreign navigation the independent
republic was an inconceivable idea.  Not only would it have been
incapable of continuing the struggle with the greatest monarch in the
world, but it might as well have buried itself once and for ever beneath
the waves from which it had scarcely emerged.  Commerce and Holland were
simply synonymous terms.  Its morsel of territory was but the wharf to
which the republic was occasionally moored; its home was in every ocean
and over all the world.  Nowhere had there ever existed before so large a
proportion of population that was essentially maritime.  They were born
sailors--men and women alike--and numerous were the children who had
never set foot on the shore.  At the period now treated of the republic
had three times as many ships and sailors as any one nation in the world.
Compared with modern times, and especially with the gigantic commercial
strides of the two great Anglo-Saxon families, the statistics both of
population and of maritime commerce in that famous and most vigorous
epoch would seem sufficiently meagre.  Yet there is no doubt that in the
relative estimate of forces then in activity it would be difficult to
exaggerate the naval power of the young commonwealth.  When therefore,
towards the close of Philip II.'s reign, it became necessary to renounce
the carrying trade with Spain and Portugal, by which the communication
with India and China was effected, or else to submit to the confiscation
of Dutch ships in Spanish ports, and the confinement of Dutch sailors in
the dungeons of the Inquisition, a more serious dilemma was presented to
the statesmen of the Netherlands than they had ever been called upon to
solve.

For the splendid fiction of the Spanish lake was still a formidable fact.
Not only were the Portuguese and Spaniards almost the only direct traders
to the distant East, but even had no obstacles been interposed by
Government, the exclusive possession of information as to the course of
trade, the pre-eminent practical knowledge acquired by long experience of
that dangerous highway around the world at a time when oceanic navigation
was still in its infancy, would have given a monopoly of the traffic to
the descendants of the bold discoverers who first opened the great path
to the world's commerce.

The Hollanders as a nation had never been engaged in the direct trade
around the Cape of Good Hope.  Fortunately however at this crisis in
their commercial destiny there was a single Hollander who had thoroughly
learned the lesson which it was so necessary that all his countrymen
should now be taught.  Few men of that period deserve a more kindly and
more honourable remembrance by posterity for their contributions to
science and the progress of civilization than John Huygen van Linschoten,
son of a plain burgher of West Friesland.  Having always felt a strong
impulse to study foreign history and distant nations and customs; he
resolved at the early age of seventeen "to absent himself from his
fatherland, and from the conversation of friends and relatives," in order
to gratify this inclination for self-improvement.  After a residence of
two years in Lisbon he departed for India in the suite of the Archbishop
of Goa, and remained in the East for nearly thirteen years.  Diligently
examining all the strange phenomena which came under his observation and
patiently recording the results of his researches day by day and year by
year, he amassed a fund of information which he modestly intended for the
entertainment of his friends when he should return to his native country.
It was his wish that "without stirring from their firesides or counting-
houses" they might participate with him in the gratification and
instruction to be derived fiom looking upon a world then so strange, and
for Europeans still so new.  He described the manners and customs, the
laws, the religions, the social and political institutions, of the
ancient races who dwelt in either peninsula of India.  He studied the
natural history, the botany, the geography of all the regions which he
visited.  Especially the products which formed the material of a great
traffic; the system of culture, the means of transportation, and the
course of commerce, were examined by him with minuteness, accuracy, and
breadth of vision.  He was neither a trader nor a sailor, but a man of
letters, a scientific and professional traveller.  But it was obvious
when he returned, rich with the spoils of oriental study during thirteen
years of life, that the results of his researches were worthy of a wider
circulation than that which he had originally contemplated.  His work was
given to the public in the year 1596, and was studied with avidity not
only by men of science but by merchants and seafarers.  He also added to
the record of his Indian experiences a practical manual for navigators.
He described the course of the voyage from Lisbon to the East, the
currents, the trade-winds and monsoons, the harbours, the islands, the
shoals, the sunken rocks and dangerous quicksands, and he accompanied
his work with various maps and charts, both general and special, of land
and water, rarely delineated before his day, as well as by various
astronomical and mathematical calculations.  Already a countryman of
his own, Wagenaar of Zeeland, had laid the mariners of the world under
special obligation by a manual which came into such universal use that
for centuries afterwards the sailors of England and of other countries
called their indispensable 'vade-mecum' a Wagenaar.  But in that text-
book but little information was afforded to eastern voyagers, because,
before the enterprise of Linschoten, little was known of the Orient
except to the Portuguese and Spaniards, by whom nothing was communicated.

The work of Linschoten was a source of wealth, both from the scientific
treasures which it diffused among an active and intelligent people, and
the impulse which it gave to that direct trade between the Netherlands
and the East which had been so long deferred, and which now came to
relieve the commerce of the republic, and therefore the republic itself,
from the danger of positive annihilation.

It is not necessary for my purpose to describe in detail the series of
voyages by way of the Cape of Good Hope which, beginning with the
adventures of the brothers Houtmann at this period, and with the
circumnavigation of the world by Olivier van Noord, made the Dutch for
a long time the leading Christian nation in those golden regions, and
which carried the United Netherlands to the highest point of prosperity
and power.  The Spanish monopoly of the Indian and the Pacific Ocean was
effectually disposed of, but the road was not a new road, nor did any
striking discoveries at this immediate epoch illustrate the enterprise of
Holland in the East.  In the age just opening the homely names most dear
to the young republic were to be inscribed on capes, islands, and
promontories, seas, bays, and continents.  There was soon to be a "Staten
Island" both in the frozen circles of the northern and of the southern
pole, as well as in that favoured region where now the mighty current of
a worldwide commerce flows through the gates of that great metropolis of
the western world, once called New Amsterdam.  Those well-beloved words,
Orange and Nassau, Maurice and William, intermingled with the names of
many an ancient town and village, or with the simple patronymics of hardy
navigators or honoured statesmen, were to make the vernacular of the new
commonwealth a familiar sound in the remotest corners of the earth; while
a fifth continent, discovered by the enterprise of Hollanders, was soon
to be fitly baptized with the name of the fatherland.  Posterity has been
neither just nor grateful, and those early names which Dutch genius and
enterprise wrote upon so many prominent points of the earth's surface,
then seen for the first time by European eyes, are no longer known.

The impulse given to the foreign trade of the Netherlands by the
publication of Linschoten's work was destined to be a lasting one.
Meantime this most indefatigable and enterprising voyager--one of those
men who had done nothing in his own estimation so long as aught remained
to do--was deeply pondering the possibility of a shorter road to the
opulent kingdoms of Cathay and of China than the one which the genius of
De Gama had opened to his sovereigns.  Geography as a science was
manifesting the highest activity at that period, but was still in a
rudimentary state.  To the Hollanders especially much of the progress
already made by it was owing.  The maps of the world by Mercator of
Leyden, published on a large scale, together with many astronomical and
geographical charts, delineations of exploration, and other scientific
works, at the magnificent printing establishment of William Blaeuw, in
Amsterdam, the friend and pupil of Tycho Brahe, and the first in that
line of typographers who made the name famous, constituted an epoch in
cosmography.  Another ardent student of geography lived in Amsterdam,
Peter Plancius by name, a Calvinist preacher, and one of the most zealous
and intolerant of his cloth.  In an age and a country which had not yet
thoroughly learned the lesson taught by hundreds of thousands of murders
committed by an orthodox church, he was one of those who considered the
substitution of a new dogma and a new hierarchy, a new orthodoxy and a
new church, in place of the old ones, a satisfactory result for fifty,
years of perpetual bloodshed.  Nether Torquemada nor Peter Titelmann
could have more thoroughly abhorred a Jew or a Calvinist than Peter
Plancius detested a Lutheran, or any other of the unclean tribe of
remonstranta.  That the intolerance of himself and his comrades was
confined to fiery words, and was not manifested in the actual burning
alive of the heterodox, was a mark of the advance made by the mass of
mankind in despite of bigotry.  It was at any rate a solace to those who
believed in human progress; even in matters of conscience, that no other
ecclesiastical establishment was ever likely to imitate the matchless
machinery for the extermination of heretical vermin which the Church of
Rome had found in the Spanish Inquisition.  The blasts of denunciation
from the pulpit of Plancius have long since mingled with empty air and
been forgotten, but his services in the cause of nautical enterprise and
geographical science, which formed, as it were, a relaxation to what he
deemed the more serious pursuits of theology, will endear his name for
ever to the lovers of civilization.

Plancius and Dr. Francis Maalzoon--the enlightened pensionary of
Enkhuizen--had studied long and earnestly the history and aspects of the
oceanic trade, which had been unfolding itself then for a whole century,
but was still comparatively new, while Barneveld, ever ready to assist in
the advancement of science, and to foster that commerce which was the
life of the commonwealth, was most favourably disposed towards projects
of maritime exploration.  For hitherto, although the Hollanders had been
among the hardiest and the foremost in the art of navigation they had
contributed but little to actual discovery.  A Genoese had led the way to
America, while one Portuguese mariner had been the first to double the
southern cape of Africa, and another, at the opposite side of the world,
had opened what was then supposed the only passage through the vast
continent which, according to ideas then prevalent, extended from the
Southern Pole to Greenland, and from Java to Patagonia.  But it was
easier to follow in the wake of Columbus, Gama, or Magellan, than to
strike out new pathways by the aid of scientific deduction and audacious
enterprise.  At a not distant day many errors, disseminated by the
boldest of Portuguese navigators, were to be corrected by the splendid
discoveries of sailors sent forth by the Dutch republic, and a rich
harvest in consequence was to be reaped both by science and commerce.  It
is true, too, that the Netherlanders claimed to have led the way to the
great voyages of Columbus by their discovery of the Azores.  Joshua van
den Berg, a merchant of Bruges, it was vigorously maintained, had landed
in that archipelago in the year 1445.  He had found there, however, no
vestiges of the human race, save that upon the principal island, in the
midst of the solitude, was seen--so ran the tale--a colossal statue of a
man on horseback, wrapped in a cloak, holding the reins of his steed in
his left hand, and solemnly extending his right arm to the west.  This
gigantic and solitary apparition on a rock in the ocean was supposed
to indicate the existence of a new world, and the direction in which it
was to be sought, but it is probable that the shipwrecked Fleeting was
quite innocent of any such magnificent visions.  The original designation
of the Flemish Islands, derived from their first colonization by
Netherlanders, was changed to Azores by Portuguese mariners, amazed at
the myriads of hawks which they found there.  But if the Netherlanders
had never been able to make higher claims as discoverers than the
accidental and dubious landing upon an unknown shore of a tempest-tost
mariner, their position in the records of geographical exploration would
not be so eminent as it certainly is.

Meantime the eyes of Linschoten, Plancius, Maalzoon, Barneveld, and of
many other ardent philosophers and patriots, were turned anxiously
towards the regions of the North Pole.  Two centuries later--and still
more recently in our own day and generation--what heart has not thrilled
with sympathy and with pride at the story of the magnificent exploits,
the heroism, the contempt of danger and of suffering which have
characterized the great navigators whose names are so familiar to the
world; especially the arctic explorers of England and of our own country?
The true chivalry of an advanced epoch--recognizing that there can be no
sublimer vocation for men of action than to extend the boundary of human
knowledge in the face of perils and obstacles more formidable and more
mysterious than those encountered by the knights of old in the cause of
the Lord's sepulchre or the holy grail--they have thus embodied in a form
which will ever awaken enthusiasm in imaginative natures, the noble
impulses of our latter civilization.  To win the favour of that noblest
of mistresses, Science; to take authoritative possession, in her name,
of the whole domain of humanity; to open new pathways to commerce; to
elevate and enlarge the human intellect, and to multiply indefinitely the
sum of human enjoyments; to bring the inhabitants of the earth into
closer and more friendly communication, so that, after some yet
unimagined inventions and discoveries, and after the lapse of many years,
which in the sight of the Omnipotent are but as one day, the human race
may form one pacific family, instead of being broken up, as are the most
enlightened of peoples now, into warring tribes of internecine savages,
prating of the advancement of civilization while coveting each other's
possessions, intriguing against each other's interests, and thoroughly in
earnest when cutting each other's throats; this is truly to be the
pioneers of a possible civilization, compared to which our present
culture may seem but a poor barbarism.  If the triumphs and joys of the
battle-field have been esteemed among the noblest themes for poet,
painter, or chronicler, alike in the mists of antiquity and in the full
glare of later days, surely a still more encouraging spectacle for those
who believe in the world's progress is the exhibition of almost infinite
valour, skill, and endurance in the cause of science and humanity.

It was believed by the Dutch cosmographers that some ten thousand miles
of voyaging might be saved, could the passage to what was then called the
kingdoms of Cathay be effected by way of the north.  It must be
remembered that there were no maps of the unknown regions lying beyond
the northern headlands of Sweden.  Delineations of continents, islands,
straits, rivers, and seas, over which every modern schoolboy pores, were
not attempted even by the hand of fancy.  It was perhaps easier at the
end of the sixteenth century than it is now, to admit the possibility of
a practical path to China and India across the pole; for delusions as to
climate and geographical configuration then prevalent have long since
been dispelled.  While, therefore, at least as much heroism was required
then as now to launch into those unknown seas, in hope to solve the dread
mystery of the North; there was even a firmer hope than can ever be
cherished again of deriving an immediate and tangible benefit from the
enterprise.  Plancius and Maalzoon, the States-General and Prince
Maurice, were convinced that the true road to Cathay would be found by
sailing north-east.  Linschoten, the man who knew India and the beaten
paths to India better than any other living Christian, was so firmly
convinced of the truth of this theory, that he volunteered to take the
lead in the first expedition.  Many were the fantastic dreams in which
even the wisest thinkers of the age indulged as to the polar regions.
Four straits or channels, pierced by a magic hand, led, it was thought,
from the interior of Muscovy towards the arctic seas.  According to some
speculators, however, those seas enclosed a polar continent where
perpetual summer and unbroken daylight reigned, and whose inhabitants,
having obtained a high degree of culture; lived in the practice of every
virtue and in the enjoyment of every blessing.  Others peopled these
mysterious regions with horrible savages, having hoofs of horses and
heads of dogs, and with no clothing save their own long ears coiled
closely around their limbs and bodies; while it was deemed almost certain
that a race of headless men, with eyes in their breasts, were the most
enlightened among those distant tribes.  Instead of constant sunshine,
it was believed by such theorists that the wretched inhabitants of that
accursed zone were immersed in almost incessant fogs or tempests, that
the whole population died every winter and were only recalled to
temporary existence by the advent of a tardy and evanescent spring.
No doubt was felt that the voyager in those latitudes would have to
encounter volcanoes of fire and mountains of ice, together with land and
sea monsters more ferocious than the eye of man had ever beheld; but it
was universally admitted that an opening, either by strait or sea, into
the desired Indian haven would reveal itself at last.

The instruments of navigation too were but rude and defective compared to
the beautiful machinery with which modern art and science now assist
their votaries along the dangerous path of discovery.  The small yet
unwieldy, awkward, and, to the modern mind, most grotesque vessels in
which such audacious deeds were performed in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries awaken perpetual astonishment.  A ship of a hundred
tons burden, built up like a tower, both at stem and stern, and
presenting in its broad bulbous prow, its width of beam in proportion to
its length, its depression amidships, and in other sins against symmetry,
as much opposition to progress over the waves as could well be imagined,
was the vehicle in which those indomitable Dutchmen circumnavigated the
globe and confronted the arctic terrors of either pole.  An astrolabe--
such as Martin Beheim had invented for the Portuguese, a clumsy
astronomical ring of three feet in circumference--was still the chief
machine used for ascertaining the latitude, and on shipboard a most
defective one.  There were no logarithms, no means of determining at sea
the variations of the magnetic needle, no system of dead reckoning by
throwing the log and chronicling the courses traversed.  The firearms
with which the sailors were to do battle with the unknown enemies that
might beset their path were rude and clumsy to handle.  The art of
compressing and condensing provisions was unknown.  They had no tea nor
coffee to refresh the nervous system in its terrible trials; but there
was one deficiency which perhaps supplied the place of many positive
luxuries.  Those Hollanders drank no ardent spirits.  They had beer
and wine in reasonable quantities, but no mention is ever made in the
journals of their famous voyages of any more potent liquor; and to
this circumstance doubtless the absence of mutinous or disorderly
demonstrations, under the most trying circumstances, may in a great
degree be attributed.

Thus, these navigators were but slenderly provided with the appliances
with which hazardous voyages have been smoothed by modern art; but they
had iron hearts, faith in themselves, in their commanders, in their
republic, and in the Omnipotent; perfect discipline and unbroken
cheerfulness amid toil, suffering, and danger.  No chapter of history
utters a more beautiful homily an devotion to duty as the true guiding
principle of human conduct than the artless narratives which have been
preserved of many of these maritime enterprises.  It is for these noble
lessons that they deserve to be kept in perpetual memory.

And in no individual of that day were those excellent qualities more
thoroughly embodied than in William Barendz, pilot and burgher of
Amsterdam.  It was partly under his charge that the first little
expedition set forth on the 5th of June, 1594, towards those unknown
arctic seas, which no keel from Christendom had ever ploughed, and to
those fabulous regions where the foot of civilized men had never trod.
Maalzoon, Plancius, and Balthaser Moucheron, merchant of Middelburg, were
the chief directors of the enterprise; but there was a difference of
opinion between them.

The pensionary was firm in the faith that the true path to China would be
found by steering through the passage which was known to exist between
the land of Nova Zembla and the northern coasts of Muscovy, inhabited by
the savage tribes called Samoyedes.  It was believed that, after passing
those straits, the shores of the great continent would be found to trend
in a south-easterly direction, and that along that coast it would
accordingly be easy to make the desired voyage to the eastern ports of
China.  Plancius, on the contrary, indicated as the most promising
passage the outside course, between the northern coast of Nova Zembla and
the pole.  Three ships and a fishing yacht were provided by the cities of
Enkhuizen, Amsterdam, and by the province of Zeeland respectively.
Linschoten was principal commissioner on board the Enkhuizen vessel,
having with him an experienced mariner, Brandt Ijsbrantz by name, as
skipper.  Barendz, with the Amsterdam ship and the yacht, soon parted
company with the others, and steered, according to the counsels of
Plancius and his own convictions; for the open seas of the north.  And in
that memorable summer, for the first time in the world's history, the
whole desolate region of Nova Zembla was visited, investigated, and
thoroughly mapped out.  Barendz sailed as far as latitude 77 deg. and to
the extreme north-eastern point of the island.  In a tremendous storm off
a cape, which he ironically christened Consolationhook (Troost-hoek), his
ship, drifting under bare poles amid ice and mist and tempest, was nearly
dashed to pieces; but he reached at last the cluster of barren islets
beyond the utmost verge of Nova Zembla, to which he hastened to affix the
cherished appellation of Orange.  This, however, was the limit of his
voyage.  His ship was ill-provisioned, and the weather had been severe
beyond expectation.  He turned back on the 1st of August, resolving to
repeat his experiment early in the following year.

Meantime Linschoten, with the ships Swan and Mercury, had entered the
passage which they called the Straits of Nassau, but which are now
known to all the world as the Waigats.  They were informed by the
Samoyedes of the coast that, after penetrating the narrow channel, they
would find themselves in a broad and open sea.  Subsequent discoveries
showed the correctness of the statement, but it was not permitted to the
adventurers on this occasion to proceed so far.  The strait was already
filled with ice-drift, and their vessels were brought to a standstill,
after about a hundred and fifty English miles of progress beyond the
Waigats; for the whole sea of Tartary, converted into a mass of ice-
mountains and islands, and lashed into violent agitation by a north
easterly storm, seemed driving down upon the doomed voyagers.  It was
obvious that the sunny clime of Cathay was not thus to be reached, at
least upon that occasion.  With difficulty they succeeded in extricating
themselves from the dangers surrounding them, and emerged at last from
the Waigats.

On the 15th of August, in latitude 69 deg. 15', they met the ship of
Barendz and returned in company to Holland, reaching Amsterdam on the
16th of September.  Barendz had found the seas and coasts visited by him
destitute of human inhabitants, but swarming with polar bears, with
seals, with a terrible kind of monsters, then seen for the first time, as
large as oxen, with almost human faces and with two long tusks protruding
from each grim and grotesque visage.  These mighty beasts, subsequently
known as walrusses or sea-horses, were found sometimes in swarms of two
hundred at a time, basking in the arctic sun, and seemed equally at home
on land, in the sea, and on icebergs.  When aware of the approach of
their human visitors, they would slide off an iceblock into the water,
holding their cubs in their arms, and ducking up and down in the sea as
if in sport.  Then tossing the young ones away, they would rush upon the
boats, and endeavour to sink the strangers, whom they instinctively
recognised as their natural enemies.  Many were the severe combats
recorded by the diarist of that voyage of Barendz with the walrusses and
the bears.

The chief result of this first expedition was the geographical
investigation made, and, with unquestionable right; these earliest arctic
pilgrims bestowed the names of their choice upon the regions first
visited by themselves.  According to the unfailing and universal impulse
on such occasions, the names dear to the fatherland were naturally
selected.  The straits were called Nassau, the island at its mouth became
States or Staten Island; the northern coasts of Tartary received the
familiar appellations of New Holland, New Friesland, New Walcheren; while
the two rivers, beyond which Linschoten did not advance, were designated
Swan and Mercury respectively, after his two ships.  Barendz, on his
part, had duly baptized every creek, bay, islet, and headland of Nova
Zembla, and assuredly Christian mariner had never taken the latitude of
77 deg. before.  Yet the antiquary, who compares the maps soon afterwards
published by William Blaeuw with the charts now in familiar use, will
observe with indignation the injustice with which the early geographical
records have been defaced, and the names rightfully bestowed upon those
terrible deserts by their earliest discoverers rudely torn away.  The
islands of Orange can still be recognized, and this is almost the only
vestige left of the whole nomenclature.  But where are Cape Nassau,
William's Island, Admiralty Island, Cape Plancius, Black-hook, Cross-
hook, Bear's-hook, Ice-hook, Consolation-hook, Cape Desire, the Straits
of Nassau, Maurice Island, Staten Island, Enkhuizen Island, and many
other similar appellations.

The sanguine Linschoten, on his return, gave so glowing an account of the
expedition that Prince Maurice and Olden-Barneveld, and prominent members
of the States-General, were infected with his enthusiasm.  He considered
the north-east passage to China discovered and the problem solved.  It
would only be necessary to fit out another expedition on a larger scale
the next year, provide it with a cargo of merchandize suitable for the
China market, and initiate the direct polar-oriental trade without
further delay.  It seems amazing that so incomplete an attempt to
overcome such formidable obstacles should have been considered a decided
success.  Yet there is no doubt of the genuineness of the conviction by
which Linschoten was actuated.  The calmer Barendz, and his friend and
comrade Gerrit de Veer, were of opinion that the philosopher had made
"rather a free representation" of the enterprise of 1594 and of the
prospects for the future.

Nevertheless, the general Government, acting on Linschoten's suggestion,
furnished a fleet of seven ships: two from Enkhuizen, two from Zeeland,
two from Amsterdam; and a yacht which was to be despatched homeward with
the news, so soon as the expedition should have passed through the
straits of Nassau, forced its way through the frozen gulf of Tartary,
doubled Cape Tabin, and turned southward on its direct course to China.
The sublime credulity which accepted Linschoten's hasty solution of the
polar enigma as conclusive was fairly matched by the sedateness with
which the authorities made the preparations for the new voyage.  So
deliberately were the broadcloths, linens, tapestries, and other assorted
articles for this first great speculation to Cathay, via the North Pole,
stowed on board the fleet, that nearly half the summer had passed before
anchor was weighed in the Meuse.  The pompous expedition was thus
predestined to an almost ridiculous failure.  Yet it was in the hands of
great men, both on shore and sea.  Maurice, Barneveld, and Maalzoon had
personally interested themselves in the details of its outfitting,
Linschoten sailed as chief commissioner, the calm and intrepid Barendz
was upper pilot of the whole fleet, and a man who was afterwards destined
to achieve an immortal name in the naval history of his country, Jacob
Heemskerk, was supercargo of the Amsterdam ship.  In obedience to the
plans of Linschoten and of Maalzoon, the passage by way of the Waigats
was of course attempted.  A landing was effected on the coast of Tartary.
Whatever geographical information could be obtained from such a source
was imparted by the wandering Samoyedes.  On the 2nd of September a party
went ashore on Staten Island and occupied themselves in gathering some
glistening pebbles which the journalist of the expedition describes with
much gravity as a "kind of diamonds, very plentiful upon the island."
While two of the men were thus especially engaged in a deep hollow, one
of them found himself suddenly twitched from behind.  "What are you
pulling at me for, mate?"  he said, impatiently to his comrade as he
supposed.  But his companion was a large, long, lean white bear, and in
another instant the head of the unfortunate diamond-gatherer was off and
the bear was sucking his blood.  The other man escaped to his friends,
and together a party of twenty charged upon the beast.  Another of the
combatants was killed and half devoured by the hungry monster before a
fortunate bullet struck him in the head.  But even then the bear
maintained his grip upon his two victims, and it was not until his brains
were fairly beaten out with the butt end of a snaphance by the boldest of
the party that they were enabled to secure the bodies of their comrades
and give them a hurried kind of Christian burial.  They flayed the bear
and took away his hide with them, and this, together with an ample supply
of the diamonds of Staten Island, was the only merchandize obtained upon
the voyage for which such magnificent preparations had been made.  For,
by the middle of September, it had become obviously hopeless to attempt
the passage of the frozen sea that season, and the expedition returned,
having accomplished nothing.  It reached Amsterdam upon the 18th of
November, 1595.

The authorities, intensely disappointed at this almost ridiculous result,
refused to furnish direct assistance to any farther attempts at arctic
explorations.  The States-General however offered a reward of twenty-five
thousand florins to any navigators who might succeed in discovering the
northern passage, with a proportionate sum to those whose efforts in that
direction might be deemed commendable, even if not crowned with success.

Stimulated by the spirit of adventure and the love of science far more
than by the hope of gaining a pecuniary prize, the undaunted Barendz, who
was firm in the faith that a pathway existed by the north of Nova Zembla
and across the pole to farthest Ind, determined to renew the attempt the
following summer.  The city of Amsterdam accordingly, early in the year
1596, fitted out two ships.  Select crews of entirely unmarried men
volunteered for the enterprise.  John Cornelisz van der Ryp, an
experienced sea-captain, was placed in charge of one of the vessels,
William Barendz was upper pilot of the other, and Heemskerk, "the man who
ever steered his way through ice or iron," was skipper and supercargo.

The ships sailed from the Vlie on the 18th May.  The opinions of Peter
Plancius prevailed in this expedition at last; the main object of both
Ryp and Barendz being to avoid the fatal, narrow, ice-clogged Waigats.
Although identical in this determination, their views as to the
configuration of the land and sea, and as to the proper course to be
steered, were conflicting.  They however sailed in company mainly in a
N.E.  by N. direction, although Barendz would have steered much more to
the east.

On the 5th June the watch on deck saw, as they supposed, immense flocks
of white swans swimming towards the ships, and covering the sea as far as
the eye could reach.  All hands came up to look at the amazing spectacle,
but the more experienced soon perceived that the myriads of swans were
simply infinite fields of ice, through which however they were able to
steer their course without much impediment, getting into clear sea beyond
about midnight, at which hour the sun was one degree above the horizon.

Proceeding northwards two days more they were again surrounded by ice,
and, finding the "water green as grass, they believed themselves to be
near Greenland."  On the 9th June they discovered an island in latitude,
according to their observation, 74 deg. 30', which seemed about five
miles long.  In this neighbourhood they remained four days, having on one
occasion a "great fight which lasted four glasses" with a polar bear, and
making a desperate attempt to capture him in order to bring him as a show
to Holland.  The effort not being successful, they were obliged to take
his life to save their own; but in what manner they intended, had they
secured him alive, to provide for such a passenger in the long voyage
across the North Pole to China, and thence back to Amsterdam, did not
appear.  The attempt illustrated the calmness, however, of those hardy
navigators.  They left the island on the 13th June, having baptised it
Bear Island in memory of their vanquished foe, a name which was
subsequently exchanged for the insipid appellation of Cherry Island, in
honour of a comfortable London merchant who seven years afterwards sent a
ship to those arctic regions.

Six days later they saw land again, took the sun, and found their
latitude 80 deg. 11'.  Certainly no men had ever been within less than
ten degrees of the pole before.  On the longest day of the year they
landed on this newly discovered country, which they at first fancied to
be a part of Greenland.  They found its surface covered with eternal
snow, broken into mighty glaciers, jagged with precipitous ice-peaks; and
to this land of almost perpetual winter, where the mercury freezes during
ten months in the year, and where the sun remains four months beneath the
horizon, they subsequently gave the appropriate and vernacular name of
Spitzbergen.  Combats with the sole denizens of these hideous abodes,
the polar bears, on the floating ice, on the water, or on land, were
constantly occurring, and were the only events to disturb the monotony of
that perpetual icy sunshine, where no night came to relieve the almost
maddening glare.  They rowed up a wide inlet on the western coast, and
came upon great numbers of wild-geese sitting on their eggs.  They proved
to be the same geese that were in the habit of visiting Holland in vast
flocks every summer, and it had never before been discovered where they
laid and hatched their eggs.  "Therefore," says the diarist of the
expedition, "some voyagers have not scrupled to state that the eggs grow
on trees in Scotland, and that such of the fruits of those trees as fall
into the water become goslings, while those which drop on the ground
burst in pieces and come to nothing.  We now see that quite the contrary
is the case," continues De Veer, with perfect seriousness, "nor is it to
be wondered at, for nobody has ever been until now where those birds lay
their eggs.  No man, so far as known, ever reached the latitude of eighty
degrees before.  This land was hitherto unknown."

The scientific results of this ever-memorable voyage might be deemed
sufficiently meagre were the fact that the eggs of wild geese did not
grow on trees its only recorded discovery.  But the investigations made
into the dread mysteries of the north, and the actual problems solved,
were many, while the simplicity of the narrator marks the infantine
character of the epoch in regard to natural history.  When so illustrious
a mind as Grotius was inclined to believe in a race of arctic men whose
heads grew beneath their shoulders; the ingenuous mariner of Amsterdam
may be forgiven for his earnestness in combating the popular theory
concerning goslings.

On the 23rd June they went ashore again, and occupied themselves, as well
as the constant attacks of the bears would permit, in observing the
variation of the needle, which they ascertained to be sixteen degrees.
On the same day, the ice closing around in almost infinite masses, they
made haste to extricate themselves from the land and bore southwards
again, making Bear Island once more on the 1st July.  Here Cornelius Ryp
parted company with Heemskerk and Barendz, having announced his intention
to sail northward again beyond latitude 80 deg. in search of the coveted
passage.  Barendz, retaining his opinion that the true inlet to the
circumpolar sea, if it existed, would be found N.E. of Nova Zembla,
steered in that direction.  On the 13th July they found themselves by
observation in latitude 73 deg., and considered themselves in the
neighbourhood of Sir Hugh Willoughby's land.  Four days later they were
in Lomms' Bay, a harbour of Nova Zembla, so called by them from the
multitude of lomms frequenting it, a bird to which they gave the
whimsical name of arctic parrots.  On the 20th July the ice obstructed
their voyage; covering the sea in all directions with floating mountains
and valleys, so that they came to an anchor off an islet where on a
former voyage the Hollanders had erected the precious emblem of Christian
faith, and baptised the dreary solitude Cross Island.  But these
pilgrims, as they now approached the spot, found no worshippers there,
while, as if in horrible mockery of their piety, two enormous white bears
had reared themselves in an erect posture, in order the better to survey
their visitors, directly at the foot of the cross.  The party which had
just landed were unarmed, and were for making off as fast as possible to
their boats.  But Skipper Heemskerk, feeling that this would be death to
all of them, said simply, "The first man that runs shall have this boat-
hook of mine in his hide.  Let us remain together and face them off."  It
was done.  The party moved slowly towards their boats, Heemskerlk
bringing up the rear, and fairly staring the polar monsters out of
countenance, who remained grimly regarding them, and ramping about the
cross.

The sailors got into their boat with much deliberation, and escaped to
the ship, "glad enough," said De Veer, "that they were alive to tell the
story, and that they had got out of the cat-dance so fortunately."

Next day they took the sun, and found their latitude 76 deg. 15', and the
variation of the needle twenty-six degrees.

For seventeen days more they were tossing about in mist and raging snow-
storms, and amidst tremendous icebergs, some of them rising in steeples
and pinnacles to a hundred feet above the sea, some grounded and
stationary, others drifting fearfully around in all directions,
threatening to crush them at any moment or close in about them and
imprison them for ever.  They made fast by their bower anchor on the
evening of 7th August to a vast iceberg which was aground, but just as
they had eaten their supper there was a horrible groaning, bursting, and
shrieking all around them, an indefinite succession of awful, sounds
which made their hair stand on end, and then the iceberg split beneath
the water into more than four hundred pieces with a crash "such as no
words could describe."  They escaped any serious damage, and made their
way to a vast steepled and towered block like a floating cathedral, where
they again came to anchor.

On the 15th August they reached the isles of Orange, on the extreme
north-eastern verge of Nova Zembla.  Here a party going ashore climbed to
the top of a rising ground, and to their infinite delight beheld an open
sea entirely free from ice, stretching to the S. E.  and E.S.E.  as far
as eye could reach.  At last the game was won, the passage to Cathay was
discovered.  Full of joy, they pulled back in their boat to the ship,
"not knowing how to get there quick enough to tell William Barendz."
Alas!  they were not aware of the action of that mighty ocean river, the
Gulf-stream, which was sweeping around those regions with its warm
dissolving current.

Three days later they returned baffled in their sanguine efforts to sail
through the open sea.  The ice had returned upon them, setting
southwardly in obedience to the same impulse which for a moment had
driven it away, and they found themselves imprisoned again near the "Hook
of Desire."

On the 25th August they had given up all the high hopes by which they had
been so lately inspired, and, as the stream was again driving the ice
from the land, they trusted to sail southward and westward back towards
the Waigats.  Having passed by Nova Zembla, and found no opening into the
seas beyond, they were disposed in the rapidly waning summer to effect
their retreat by the south side of the island, and so through the Straits
of Nassau home.  In vain.  The catastrophe was upon them.  As they
struggled slowly past the "Ice-haven," the floating mountains and
glaciers, impelled by the mighty current, once more gathered around and
forced them back to that horrible harbour.  During the remaining days of
August the ship struggled, almost like a living creature, with the perils
that, beset her; now rearing in the air, her bows propped upon mighty
blocks, till she absolutely sat erect upon her stern, now lying prostrate
on her side, and anon righting again as the ice-masses would for a moment
float away and leave her breathing space and room to move in.  A blinding
snow-storm was raging the while, the ice was cracking and groaning in all
directions, and the ship was shrieking, so that the medley of awful
sights and sounds was beyond the power of language.  "'Twas enough to
make the hair stand on end," said Gerrit de Veer, "to witness the hideous
spectacle."

But the agony was soon over.  By the 1st September the ship was hard and
fast.  The ice was as immoveable as the dry land, and she would not move
again that year even if she ever floated.  Those pilgrims from the little
republic were to spend the winter in their arctic harbour.  Resigning
themselves without a murmur to their inevitable fate, they set about
their arrangements with perfect good humour and discipline.  Most
fortunately a great quantity of drift wood, masses of timber, and great
trees torn away with their roots from distant shores, lay strewn along
the coast, swept thither by the wandering currents.  At once they
resolved to build a house in which they might shelter themselves from the
wild beasts, and from their still more cruel enemy, the cold.  So
thanking God for the providential and unexpected supply of building
material and fuel, they lost no time in making sheds, in hauling timber,
and in dragging supplies from the ship before the dayless winter should
descend upon them.

Six weeks of steady cheerful labour succeeded.  Tremendous snow-storms,
accompanied by hurricanes of wind, often filled the atmosphere to
suffocation, so that no human being could move a ship's length without
perishing; while, did any of their number venture forth, as the tempest
subsided, it was often to find himself almost in the arms of a polar bear
before the dangerous snow-white form could be distinguished moving
sluggishly through the white chaos.

For those hungry companions never left them so long as the sun remained
above the horizon, swarming like insects and birds in tropical lands.
When the sailors put their meat-tubs for a moment out upon the ice a
bear's intrusive muzzle would forthwith be inserted to inspect the
contents.  Maddened by hunger, and their keen scent excited by the salted
provisions, and by the living flesh and blood of these intruders upon
their ancient solitary domains, they would often attempt to effect their
entrance into the ship.

On one such occasion, when Heemskerk and two companions were the whole
garrison, the rest being at a distance sledding wood, the future hero of
Gibraltar was near furnishing a meal to his Nova Zembla enemies.  It was
only by tossing sticks and stones and marling-spikes across the ice,
which the bears would instantly turn and pursue, like dogs at play with
children, that the assault could be diverted until a fortunate shot was
made.

Several were thus killed in the course of the winter, and one in
particular was disembowelled and set frozen upon his legs near their
house, where he remained month after month with a mass of snow and ice
accumulated upon him, until he had grown into a fantastic and gigantic
apparition, still wearing the semblance of their mortal foe.

By the beginning of October the weather became so intensely cold that it
was almost impossible to work.  The carpenter died before the house was
half completed.  To dig a grave was impossible, but they laid him in a
cleft of the ice, and he was soon covered with the snow.  Meantime the
sixteen that were left went on as they best might with their task, and on
October 2nd they had a house-raising.  The frame-work was set up, and in
order to comply with the national usage in such cases, they planted,
instead of the May-pole with its fluttering streamers, a gigantic icicle
before their new residence.  Ten days later they moved into the house and
slept there for the first time, while a bear, profiting by their absence,
passed the night in the deserted ship.

On the 4th November the sun rose no more, but the moon at first shone day
and night, until they were once in great perplexity to know whether it
were midday or midnight.  It proved to be exactly noon.  The bears
disappeared with the sun, but white foxes swarmed in their stead, and all
day and night were heard scrambling over their roof.  These were caught
daily in traps and furnished them food, besides furs for raiment.  The
cold became appalling, and they looked in each other's faces sometimes in
speechless amazement.  It was obvious that the extreme limit of human
endurance had been reached.  Their clothes were frozen stiff.  Their
shoes were like iron, so that they were obliged to array themselves from
head to foot in the skins of the wild foxes.  The clocks stopped.  The
beer became solid.  The Spanish wine froze and had to be melted in
saucepans.  The smoke in the house blinded them.  Fire did not warm them,
and their garments were often in a blaze while their bodies were half
frozen.  All through the month of December an almost perpetual snow-
deluge fell from the clouds.  For days together they were unable to
emerge, and it was then only by most vigorous labour that they could
succeed in digging a passage out of their buried house.  On the night of
the 7th December sudden death had nearly put an end to the sufferings of
the whole party.  Having brought a quantity of seacoal from the ship,
they had made a great fire, and after the smoke was exhausted, they had
stopped up the chimney and every crevice of the house.  Each man then
turned into his bunk for the night, "all rejoicing much in the warmth and
prattling a long time with each other."  At last an unaccustomed
giddiness and faintness came over them, of which they could not guess the
cause, but fortunately one of the party had the instinct, before he lost
consciousness, to open the chimney, while another forced open the door
and fell in a swoon upon the snow.  Their dread enemy thus came to their
relief, and saved their lives.

As the year drew to a close, the frost and the perpetual snow-tempest
became, if that were possible, still more frightful.  Their Christmas was
not a merry one, and for the first few days of the new year, it was
impossible for them to move from the house.  On the 25th January, the
snow-storms having somewhat abated, they once more dug themselves as it
were out of their living grave, and spent the whole day in hauling wood
from the shore.  As their hour-glasses informed them that night was
approaching, they bethought themselves that it was Twelfth Night, or
Three Kings' Eve.  So they all respectfully proposed to Skipper
Heemskerk, that, in the midst of their sorrow they might for once have a
little diversion.  A twelfth-night feast was forthwith ordained.  A
scanty portion of the wine yet remaining to them was produced.  Two
pounds weight of flour, which they had brought to make paste with for
cartridges, was baked into pancakes with a little oil, and a single hard
biscuit was served out to each man to be sopped in his meagre allowance
of wine.  "We were as happy," said Gerrit de veer, with simple pathos,
"as if we were having a splendid banquet at home.  We imagined ourselves
in the fatherland with all our friends, so much did we enjoy our repast."

That nothing might be omitted, lots were drawn for king, and the choice
fell on the gunner, who was forthwith proclaimed monarch of Nova Zembla.
Certainly no men, could have exhibited more undaunted cheerfulness amid
bears and foxes, icebergs and cold--such as Christians had never
conceived of before--than did these early arctic pilgrims.  Nor did
Barendz neglect any opportunity of studying the heavens.  A meridian was
drawn near the house, on which the compass was placed, and observations
of various stars were constantly made, despite the cold, with
extraordinary minuteness.  The latitude, from concurrent measurement of
the Giant, the Bull, Orion, Aldebaran, and other constellations--in the
absence of the sun--was ascertained to be a little above seventy-six
degrees, and the variations of the needle were accurately noted.

On the 24th January it was clear weather and comparatively mild, so that
Heemskerk, with De Veer and another, walked to the strand.  To their
infinite delight and surprise they again saw the disk of the sun on the
edge of the horizon, and they all hastened back with the glad tidings.
But Barendz shook his head.  Many days must elapse, he said, before the
declination of the sun should be once more 14 deg., at which point in the
latitude of 76 deg. they had lost sight of the luminary on the 4th
November, and at which only it could again be visible.  This, according
to his calculations, would be on the 10th February.  Two days of mirky
and stormy atmosphere succeeded, and those who had wagered in support of
the opinion of Barendz were inclined to triumph over those who believed
in the observation of Heemskerk.  On the 27th January there was, however,
no mistake.  The sky was bright, and the whole disk of the sun was most
distinctly seen by all, although none were able to explain the
phenomenon, and Barendz least of all.  They had kept accurate diaries
ever since their imprisonment, and although the clocks sometimes had
stopped, the hour-glasses had regularly noted the lapse of time.
Moreover, Barendz knew from the Ephemerides for 1589 to 1600, published
by Dr. Joseph Scala in Venice, a copy of which work he had brought with
him, that on the 24th January, 1597, the moon would be seen at one
o'clock A.M. at Venice, in conjunction with Jupiter.  He accordingly took
as good an observation as could be done with the naked eye and found that
conjunction at six o'clock A.M. Of the same day, the two bodies appearing
in the same vertical line in the sign of Taurus.  The date was thus
satisfactorily established, and a calculation of the longitude of the
house was deduced with an accuracy which in those circumstances was
certainly commendable.  Nevertheless, as the facts and the theory of
refraction were not thoroughly understood, nor Tycho Brahe's tables of
refraction generally known, pilot Barendz could not be expected to be
wiser than his generation.

The startling discovery that in the latitude of 76 deg. the sun
reappeared on the 24th January, instead of the 10th February, was
destined to awaken commotion throughout the whole scientific world,
and has perhaps hardly yet been completely explained.

But the daylight brought no mitigation of their sufferings.  The
merciless cold continued without abatement, and the sun seemed to mock
their misery.  The foxes disappeared, and the ice-bears in their stead
swarmed around the house, and clambered at night over the roof.  Again
they constantly fought with them for their lives.  Daily the grave
question was renewed whether the men should feed on the bears or the
bears on the men.  On one occasion their dead enemy proved more dangerous
to them than in life, for three of their number, who had fed on bear's
liver, were nearly poisoned to death.  Had they perished, none of the
whole party would have ever left Nova Zembla.  "It seemed," said the
diarist, "that the beasts had smelt out that we meant to go away, and had
just begin to have a taste for us."

And thus the days wore on.  The hour-glass and the almanac told them
that winter had given place to spring, but nature still lay in cold
obstruction.  One of their number, who had long been ill, died.  They
hollowed a grave for him in the frozen snow, performing a rude burial
service, and singing a psalm; but the cold had nearly made them all
corpses before the ceremony was done.

At last, on the 17th April, some of them climbing over the icebergs to
the shore found much open sea.  They also saw a small bird diving in the
water, and looked upon it as a halcyon and harbinger of better fortunes.
The open weather continuing, they began to hanker for the fatherland.  So
they brought the matter, "not mutinously but modestly and reasonably,
before William Barendz; that he might suggest it to Heemskerk, for they
were all willing to submit to his better judgment."  It was determined to
wait through the month of May.  Should they then be obliged to abandon
the ship they were to make the voyage in the two open boats, which had
been carefully stowed away beneath the snow.  It was soon obvious that
the ship was hard and fast, and that she would never float again, except
perhaps as a portion of the icebergs in which she had so long been
imbedded, when they should be swept off from the shore.

As they now set to work repairing and making ready the frail skiffs which
were now their only hope, and supplying them with provisions and even
with merchandize from the ship, the ravages made by the terrible winter
upon the strength of the men became painfully apparent.  But Heemskerk
encouraged them to persevere; "for," said he, "if the boats are not got
soon under way we must be content to make our graves here as burghers of
Nova Zembla."

On the 14th June they launched the boats, and "trusting themselves to
God," embarked once more upon the arctic sea.  Barendz, who was too ill
to walk, together with Claas Anderson, also sick unto death, were dragged
to the strand in sleds, and tenderly placed on board.

Barendz had, however, despite his illness, drawn up a triple record of
their voyage; one copy being fastened to the chimney of their deserted
house, and one being placed in each of the boats.  Their voyage was full
of danger as they slowly retraced their way along the track by which they
reached the memorable Ice Haven, once more doubling the Cape of Desire
and heading for the Point of Consolation--landmarks on their desolate
progress, whose nomenclature suggests the immortal apologue so familiar
to Anglo-Saxon ears.

Off the Ice-hook, both boats came alongside each other, and Skipper
Heemskerk called out to William Barendz to ask how it was with him.

"All right, mate," replied Barendz, cheerfully; "I hope to be on my legs
again before we reach the Ward-huis."  Then' he begged De Veer to lift
him up, that he might look upon the Ice-hook once more.  The icebergs
crowded around them, drifting this way and that, impelled by mighty
currents and tossing on an agitated sea.  There was "a hideous groaning
and bursting and driving of the ice, and it seemed every moment as if the
boats were to be dashed into a hundred pieces."  It was plain that their
voyage would now be finished for ever, were it not possible for some one
of their number to get upon the solid ice beyond and make fast a line.
"But who is to bell the cat?" said Gerrit de Veer, who soon, however,
volunteered himself, being the lightest of all.  Leaping from one
floating block to another at the imminent risk of being swept off into
space, he at last reached a stationary island, and fastened his rope.
Thus they warped themselves once more into the open sea.

On the 20th June William Barendz lay in the boat studying carefully the
charts which they had made of the land and ocean discovered in their
voyage.  Tossing about in an open skiff upon a polar sea, too weak to sit
upright, reduced by the unexampled sufferings of that horrible winter
almost to a shadow, he still preserved his cheerfulness, and maintained
that he would yet, with God's help, perform his destined task.  In his
next attempt he would steer north-east from the North Cape, he said, and
so discover the passage.

While he was "thus prattling," the boatswain of the other boat came on
board, and said that Claas Anderson would hold out but little longer.

"Then," said William Barendz, "methinks I too shall last but a little
while.  Gerrit, give me to drink."  When he had drunk, he turned his eyes
on De Veer and suddenly breathed his last.

Great was the dismay of his companions, for they had been deceived by
the dauntless energy of the man, thus holding tenaciously to his great
purpose, unbaffled by danger and disappointment, even to the last instant
of life.  He was their chief pilot and guide, "in whom next to God they
trusted."

And thus the hero, who for vivid intelligence, courage, and perseverance
amid every obstacle, is fit to be classed among the noblest of maritime
adventurers, had ended his career.  Nor was it unmeet that the man who
had led those three great although unsuccessful enterprises towards the
North Pole, should be laid at last to rest--like the soldier dying in a
lost battle--upon the field of his glorious labours.

Nearly six weeks longer they struggled amid tempestuous seas.  Hugging
the shore, ever in danger of being dashed to atoms by the ice, pursued by
their never-failing enemies the bears, and often sailing through enormous
herds of walrusses, which at times gave chase to the boats, they at last
reached the Schanshoek on the 28th July.

Here they met with some Russian fishermen, who recognised Heemskerk and
De Veer, having seen them on their previous voyage.  Most refreshing it
was to see other human faces again, after thirteen months' separation
from mankind, while the honest Muscovites expressed compassion for the
forlorn and emaciated condition of their former acquaintance.  Furnished
by them with food and wine, the Hollanders sailed in company with the
Russians as far as the Waigats.

On the 18th August they made Candenoes, at the mouth of the White Sea,
and doubling that cape stood boldly across the gulf for Kildin.  Landing
on the coast they were informed by the Laps that there were vessels from
Holland at Kola.

On the 25th August one of the party, guided by a Lap, set forth on foot
for that place.  Four days later the guide was seen returning without
their comrade; but their natural suspicion was at once disarmed as the
good-humoured savage straightway produced a letter which he handed to
Heemakerk.

Breaking the seal, the skipper found that his correspondent expressed
great surprise at the arrival of the voyagers, as he he had supposed them
all to be long since dead.  Therefore he was the more delighted with
their coming, and promised to be with them soon, bringing with him plenty
of food and drink.

The letter was signed--
                              "By me, JAN CORNELISZ RYP."

The occurrence was certainly dramatic, but, as one might think,
sufficiently void of mystery.  Yet, astonishing to relate, they all fell
to pondering who this John Ryp might be who seemed so friendly and
sympathetic.  It was shrewdly suggested by some that it might perhaps be
the sea-captain who had parted company with them off Bear Island fourteen
months before in order to sail north by way of Spitzbergen.  As his
Christian name and surname were signed in full to the letter, the
conception did not seem entirely unnatural, yet it was rejected on the
ground that they had far more reasons to believe that he had perished
than he for accepting their deaths as certain.  One might imagine it to
have been an every day occurrence for Hollanders to receive letters by a
Lapland penny postman in those, desolate regions.  At last Heemskerk
bethought himself that among his papers were several letters from their
old comrade, and, on comparison, the handwriting was found the same as
that of the epistle just received.  This deliberate avoidance of any
hasty jumping at conclusions certainly inspires confidence in the general
right accuracy of the adventurers, and we have the better right to
believe that on the 24th January the sun's disk was really seen by them
in the ice harbour--a fact long disputed by the learned world--when the
careful weighing of evidence on the less important matter of Ryp's letter
is taken into account.

Meantime while they were slowly admitting the identity of their friend
and correspondent, honest John Cornelius Ryp himself arrived--no
fantastic fly-away Hollander, but in full flesh and blood, laden with
provisions, and greeting them heartily.

He had not pursued his Spitzbergen researches of the previous year, but
he was now on a trading voyage in a stout vessel, and he conveyed them
all by way of the Ward-huis, where he took in a cargo, back to the
fatherland.

They dropped anchor in the Meuse on the 29th October, and on the 1st
November arrived at Amsterdam.  Here, attired in their robes and caps of
white fox-skin which they had worn while citizens of Nova Zembla, they
were straightway brought before the magistrates to give an account of
their adventures.

They had been absent seventeen months, they had spent a whole autumn,
winter, and spring--nearly ten months--under the latitude of 76 deg. in a
frozen desert, where no human beings had ever dwelt before, and they had
penetrated beyond 80 deg. north--a farther stride towards the pole than
had ever been hazarded.  They had made accurate geographical,
astronomical, and meteorological observations of the regions visited.
They had carefully measured latitudes and longitudes and noted the
variations of the magnet.  They had thoroughly mapped out, described, and
designated every cape, island, hook, and inlet of those undiscovered
countries, and more than all, they had given a living example of courage,
endurance, patience under hardship, perfect discipline, fidelity, to
duty, and trust in God, sufficient to inspire noble natures with
emulation so long as history can read moral lessons to mankind.

No farther attempt was made to discover the north-eastern passage.  The
enthusiasm of Barendz had died with him, and it may be said that the
stern negation by which this supreme attempt to solve the mystery of the
pole was met was its best practical result.  Certainly all visions of a
circumpolar sea blessed with a gentle atmosphere and eternal
tranquillity, and offering a smooth and easy passage for the world's
commerce between Europe and Asia, had been for ever dispelled.

The memorable enterprise of Barendz and Heemskerk has been thought worthy
of a minute description because it was a voyage of discovery, and
because, however barren of immediate practical results it may, seem to
superficial eyes, it forms a great landmark in the history of human
progress and the advancement of science.

Contemporaneously with these voyages towards the North Pole, the
enlightened magistrates of the Netherland municipalities, aided by
eminent private citizens, fitted out expeditions in the opposite
direction.  It was determined to measure strength with the lord of the
land and seas, the great potentate against whom these republicans had
been so long in rebellion, in every known region of the globe.  Both from
the newly discovered western world, and from the ancient abodes of
oriental civilization, Spanish monopoly had long been furnishing the
treasure to support Spanish tyranny, and it was the dearest object of
Netherland ambition to confront their enemy in both those regions, and
to clip both those overshadowing wings of his commerce at once.

The intelligence, enthusiasm, and tenacity in wrestling against immense
obstacles manifested by the young republic at this great expanding era of
the world's history can hardly be exaggerated.  It was fitting that the
little commonwealth, which was foremost among the nations in its hatred
of tyranny, its love of maritime adventure, and its aptitude for foreign
trade, should take the lead in the great commercial movements which
characterized the close of the sixteenth and the commencement of the
seventeenth centuries.

While Barendz and Heemskerk were attempting to force the frozen gates
which were then supposed to guard the northern highway of commerce,
fleets were fitting out in Holland to storm the Southern Pole, or at
least to take advantage of the pathways already opened by the genius and
enterprise of the earlier navigators of the century.  Linschoten had
taught his countrymen the value of the technical details of the Indian
trade as then understood.  The voyages of the brothers Houtmann, 1595-
1600, the first Dutch expeditions to reach the East by doubling the Cape
of Good Hope, were undertaken according to his precepts, and directed by
the practical knowledge obtained by the Houtmanns during a residence in
Portugal, but were not signalized by important discoveries.  They are
chiefly memorable as having laid the foundation of the vast trade out of
which the republic was to derive so much material power, while at the
same time they mark the slight beginnings of that mighty monopoly, the
Dutch East India Company, which was to teach such tremendous lessons in
commercial restriction to a still more colossal English corporation,
that mercantile tyrant only in our own days overthrown.

At the same time and at the other side of the world seven ships, fitted
out from Holland by private enterprise, were forcing their way to the
South Sea through the terrible strait between Patagonia and Fire Land;
then supposed the only path around the globe.  For the tortuous mountain
channel, filled with whirlpools and reefs, and the home of perpetual
tempest, which had been discovered in the early part of the century by
Magellan, was deemed the sole opening pierced by nature through the
mighty southern circumpolar continent.  A few years later a daring
Hollander was to demonstrate the futility of this theory, and to give his
own name to a broader pathway, while the stormy headland of South
America, around which the great current of universal commerce was
thenceforth to sweep, was baptized by the name of the tranquil town in
West Friesland where most of his ship's company were born.

Meantime the seven ships under command of Jacob Mahu, Simon de Cordes,
and Sebald de Weerdt; were contending with the dangers of the older
route.  The expedition sailed from Holland in June, 1598, but already the
custom was forming itself of directing those navigators of almost unknown
seas by explicit instructions from those who remained on shore, and who
had never navigated the ocean at all.  The consequence on this occasion
was that the voyagers towards the Straits of Magellan spent a whole
summer on the coast of Africa, amid pestiferous heats and distracting
calms, and reached the straits only in April of the following year.
Admiral Mahu and a large proportion of the crew had meantime perished of
fevers contracted by following the course marked out for them by their
employers, and thus diminished in numbers, half-stripped of provisions,
and enfeebled by the exhausting atmosphere of the tropics, the survivors
were ill prepared to confront the antarctic ordeal which they were
approaching.  Five months longer the fleet, under command of Admiral de
Cordes, who had succeeded to the command, struggled in those straits,
where, as if in the home of Eolus, all the winds of heaven seemed holding
revel; but indifference to danger, discipline, and devotion to duty
marked the conduct of the adventurers, even as those qualities had just
been distinguishing their countrymen at the other pole.  They gathered no
gold, they conquered no kingdoms, they made few discoveries, they
destroyed no fleets, yet they were the first pioneers on a path on which
thereafter were to be many such achievements by the republic.

At least one heroic incident, which marked their departure from the
straits, deserves to be held in perpetual remembrance.  Admiral de Cordes
raised on the shore, at the western mouth of the channel, a rude memorial
with an inscription that the Netherlanders were the first to effect this
dangerous passage with a fleet of heavy ships.  On the following day, in
commemoration of the event, he founded an order of knighthood.  The chief
officers of the squadron were the knights-commanders, and the most
deserving of the crew were the knights-brethren.  The members of the
fraternity made solemn oath to De Cordes, as general, and to each other,
that "by no danger, no necessity, nor by the fear of death, would they
ever be moved to undertake anything prejudicial to their honour, to, the
welfare of the fatherland, or to the success of the enterprise in which
they were engaged; pledging themselves to stake their lives in order,
consistently with honour, to inflict every possible damage on the
hereditary enemy, and to plant the banner of Holland in all those
territories whence the King of Spain gathered the treasures with which he
had carried on this perpetual war against the Netherlands."

Thus was instituted on the desolate shores of Fire Land the order of
Knights of the Unchained Lion, with such rude solemnities as were
possible in those solitudes.  The harbour where the fleet was anchored
was called the Chevaliers' Bay, but it would be in vain to look on modern
maps for that heroic appellation.  Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego
know the honest knights of the Unchained Lion no more; yet to an
unsophisticated mind no stately brotherhood of sovereigns and patricians
seems more thoroughly inspired with the spirit of Christian chivalry than
were those weather-beaten adventurers.  The reefs and whirlwinds of
unknown seas, polar cold, Patagonian giants, Spanish cruisers, a thousand
real or fabulous dangers environed them.  Their provisions were already
running near exhaustion; and they were feeding on raw seal-flesh, on
snails and mussels, and on whatever the barren rocks and niggard seas
would supply, to save them from absolutely perishing, but they held their
resolve to maintain their honour unsullied, to be true to each other and
to the republic, and to circumnavigate the globe to seek the proud enemy
of their fatherland on every sea, and to do battle with him in every
corner of the earth.  The world had already seen, and was still to see,
how nobly Netherlanders could keep their own.  Meantime disaster on
disaster descended on this unfortunate expedition.  One ship after
another melted away and was seen no more.  Of all the seven, only one,
that of Sebald de Weerdt, ever returned to the shores of Holland.
Another reached Japan, and although the crew fell into hostile hands, the
great trade with that Oriental empire was begun.  In a third--the Blyde
Boodachaft, or Good News--Dirk Gerrits sailed nearer the South Pole than
man had ever been before, and discovered, as he believed, a portion of
the southern continent, which he called, with reason good, Gerrit's Land.
The name in course of time faded from maps and charts, the existence of
the country was disputed, until more than two centuries later the
accuracy of the Dutch commander was recognised.  The rediscovered land
however no longer bears his name, but has been baptized South Shetland.

Thus before the sixteenth century had closed, the navigators of Holland
had reached almost the extreme verge of human discovery at either pole.




CHAPTER XXXVII.

     Military Operations in the Netherlands--Designs of the Spanish
     Commander--Siege of Orsoy--Advance upon Rheinberg--Murder of the
     Count of Broeck and his garrison--Capture of Rees and Emmerich--
     Outrages of the Spanish soldiers in the peaceful provinces--
     Inglorious attempt to avenge the hostilities--State of trade in the
     Provinces--Naval expedition under van der Does--Arrival of Albert
     and Isabella at Brussels--Military operations of Prince Maurice--
     Negotiation between London and Brussels--Henry's determination to
     enact the Council of Trent--His projected marriage--Queen Elizabeth
     and Envoy Caron--Peace proposals of Spain to Elizabeth--Conferences
     at Gertruydenberg--Uncertain state of affairs.

The military operations in the Netherlands during the whole year 1598
were on a comparatively small scale and languidly conducted.  The States
were exhausted by the demands made upon the treasury, and baffled by the
disingenuous policy of their allies.  The cardinal-archduke, on the other
hand, was occupied with the great events of his marriage, of his father-
in-law's death, and of his own succession in conjunction with
his wife to the sovereignty of the provinces.

In the autumn, however, the Admiral of Arragon, who, as has been stated,
was chief military commander during the absence of Albert, collected an
army of twenty-five thousand foot and two thousand cavalry, crossed the
Meuse at Roermond, and made his appearance before a small town called
Orsoy, on the Rhine.  It was his intention to invade the duchies of
Clever, Juliers, and Berg, taking advantage of the supposed madness of
the duke, and of the Spanish inclinations of his chief counsellors, who
constituted a kind of regency.  By obtaining possession of these
important provinces--wedged as they were between the territory of the
republic, the obedient Netherlands, and Germany--an excellent military
position would be gained for making war upon the rebellious districts
from the east, for crushing Protestantism in the duchies, for holding
important passages of the Rhine, and for circumventing the designs of the
Protestant sons-in-law and daughters of the old Duke of Cleves.  Of
course, it was the determination of Maurice and the States-General to
frustrate these operations.  German and Dutch Protestantism gave battle
on this neutral ground to the omnipotent tyranny of the papacy and Spain.

Unfortunately, Maurice had but a very slender force that autumn at his
command.  Fifteen hundred horse and six thousand infantry were all his
effective troops, and with these he took the field to defend the borders
of the republic, and to out-manceuvre, so far as it might lie in his
power, the admiral with his far-reaching and entirely unscrupulous
designs.

With six thousand Spanish veterans, two thousand Italians, and many
Walloon and German regiments under Bucquoy, Hachincourt, La Bourlotte,
Stanley, and Frederic van den Berg, the admiral had reached the frontiers
of the mad duke's territory.  Orsoy was garrisoned by a small company of
"cocks' feathers," or country squires, and their followers.

Presenting himself in person before the walls of the town, with a priest
at his right hand and a hangman holding a bundle of halters at the other,
he desired to be informed whether the governor would prefer to surrender
or to hang with his whole garrison.  The cock feathers surrendered.
The admiral garrisoned and fortified Orsoy as a basis and advanced upon
Rheinberg, first surprising the Count of Broeck in his castle, who was at
once murdered in cold blood with his little garrison.

He took Burik on the 11th October, Rheinberg on the 15th of the same
month, and compounded with Wesel for a hundred and twenty thousand
florins.  Leaving garrisons in these and a few other captured places, he
crossed the Lippe, came to Borhold, and ravaged the whole country side.
His troops being clamorous for pay were only too eager to levy black-mail
on this neutral territory.  The submission of the authorities to this
treatment brought upon them a reproach of violation of neutrality by the
States-General; the Governments of Munster and of the duchies being
informed that, if they aided and abetted the one belligerent, they must
expect to be treated as enemies by the other.

The admiral took Rees on the 30th October, and Emmerich on the 2nd
November--two principal cities of Cleves.  On the 8th November he crossed
into the territory of the republic and captured Deutekom, after a very
short siege.  Maurice, by precaution, occupied Sevenaer in Cleves.  The
prince--whose difficult task was to follow up and observe an enemy by
whom he was outnumbered nearly four to one, to harass him by skirmishes,
to make forays on his communications, to seize important points before he
could reach them, to impose upon him by an appearance of far greater
force than the republican army could actually boast, to protect the
cities of the frontier like Zutphen, Lochem, and Doesburg, and to prevent
him from attempting an invasion of the United Provinces in force, by
crossing any of the rivers, either in the autumn or after the winter's
ice had made them passable for the Spanish army-succeeded admirably in
all his strategy.  The admiral never ventured to attack him, for fear of
risking a defeat of his whole army by an antagonist whom he ought to have
swallowed at a mouthful, relinquished all designs upon the republic,
passed into Munster, Cleves, and Berg, and during the whole horrible
winter converted those peaceful provinces into a hell.  No outrage which
even a Spanish army could inflict was spared the miserable inhabitants.
Cities and villages were sacked and burned, the whole country was placed
under the law of black-mail.  The places of worship, mainly Protestant,
were all converted at a blow of the sword into Catholic churches.  Men
were hanged, butchered, tossed in sport from the tops of steeples,
burned, and buried alive.  Women of every rank were subjected by
thousands to outrage too foul and too cruel for any but fiends or Spanish
soldiers to imagine.

Such was the lot of thousands of innocent men and women at the hands of
Philip's soldiers in a country at peace with Philip, at the very moment
when that monarch was protesting with a seraphic smile on his expiring
lips that he had never in his whole life done injury to a single human
being.

In vain did the victims call aloud upon their sovereign, the Emperor
Rudolph.  The Spaniards laughed the feeble imperial mandates to scorn,
and spurned the word neutrality.  "Oh, poor Roman Empire!" cried John
Fontanus, "how art thou fallen!  Thy protector has become thy despoiler,
and, although thy members see this and know it, they sleep through it
all.  One day they may have a terrible awakening from their slumbers
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  The Admiral of Arragon has entirely changed the
character of the war, recognizes no neutrality, saying that there must be
but one God, one pope, and one king, and that they who object to this
arrangement must be extirpated with fire and sword, let them be where
they may."

The admiral, at least, thoroughly respected the claims of the dead Philip
to universal monarchy.

Maurice gained as much credit by the defensive strategy through which he
saved the republic from the horrors thus aficting its neighbours, as he
had ever done by his most brilliant victories.  Queen Elizabeth was
enchanted with the prowess of the prince, and with the sagacious
administration of those republican magistrates whom she never failed to
respect, even when most inclined to quarrel with them.  "Never before was
it written or heard of," said the queen, "that so great an extent of
country could be defended with so few troops, that an invasion of so
superior a hostile force could be prevented, especially as it appeared
that all the streams and rivers were frozen."  This, she added, was owing
to the wise and far-seeing counsels of the States-General, and to the
faithful diligence of their military commander, who now, as she declared,
deserved the title of the first captain of all Christendom.

A period of languor and exhaustion succeeded.  The armies of the States
had dwindled to an effective force of scarcely four or five thousand men,
while the new levies came in but slowly.  The taxation, on the other
hand, was very severe.  The quotas for the provinces had risen to the
amount of five million eight hundred thousand florins for the year 1599,
against an income of four millions six hundred thousand, and this deficit
went on increasing, notwithstanding a new tax of one-half per cent. on
the capital of all estates above three thousand florins in value, and
another of two and a half per cent. on all sales of real property.  The
finances of the obedient provinces were in a still worse condition, and
during the absence of the cardinal-archduke an almost universal mutiny,
occasioned by the inability of the exchequer to provide payment for the
troops, established itself throughout Flanders and Brabant.  There was
much recrimination on the subject of the invasion of the Rhenish duchies,
and a war of pamphlets and manifestos between the archduke's Government
and the States-General succeeded to those active military operations by
which so much misery had been inflicted on the unfortunate inhabitants of
that border land.  There was a slight attempt on the part of the Princes
of Brunswick, Hesse, and Brandenburg to counteract and to punish the
hostilities of the Spanish troops committed upon German soil.  An army
--very slowly organized, against the wishes of the emperor, the bishops,
and the Catholic party--took the field, and made a feeble demonstration
upon Rheinberg and upon Rees entirely without result and then disbanded
itself ingloriously.

Meantime the admiral had withdrawn from German territory, and was amusing
himself with a variety of blows aimed at vital points of the republic.
An excursion into the Isle of Bommel was not crowned with much success.
The assault on the city was repulsed.  The fortress of Crevecoeur was,
however, taken, and the fort of St. Andrew constructed--in spite of the
attempts of the States to frustrate the design--at a point commanding the
course of both the Waal and the Meuse.  Having placed a considerable
garrison in each of those strongholds, the admiral discontinued his
labours and went into winter-quarters.

The States-General for political reasons were urgent that Prince Maurice
should undertake some important enterprise, but the stadholder, sustained
by the opinion of his cousin Lewis William, resisted the pressure.  The
armies of the Commonwealth were still too slender in numbers and too
widely scattered for active service on a large scale, and the season for
active campaigning was wisely suffered to pass without making any attempt
of magnitude during the year.

The trade of the provinces, moreover, was very much hampered, and their
revenues sadly diminished by the severe prohibitions which had succeeded
to the remarkable indulgence hitherto accorded to foreign commerce.
Edicts in the name of the King of Spain and of the Archdukes Albert and
Isabella, forbidding all intercourse between the rebellious provinces and
the obedient Netherlands or any of the Spanish possessions, were met by
countervailing decrees of the States-General.  Free trade with its
enemies and with all the world, by means of which the commonwealth had
prospered in spite of perpetual war, was now for a season destroyed, and
the immediate results were at once visible in its diminished resources.
To employ a portion of the maritime energies of the Hollanders and
Zeelanders, thus temporarily deprived of a sufficient field, a naval
expedition of seventy-five war vessels under Admiral van der Does was
fitted out, but met with very trifling success.  They attacked and
plundered the settlements and forts of the Canary Islands, inflicted much
damage on the inhabitants, sailed thence to the Isle of St. Thomas, near
the equator, where the towns and villages were sacked and burned, and
where a contagious sickness broke out in the fleet, sweeping off in a
very brief period a large proportion of the crew.  The admiral himself
fell a victim to the disease and was buried on the island.  The fleet put
to sea again under Admiral Storm van Wena, but the sickness pursued the
adventurers on their voyage towards Brazil, one thousand of them dying at
sea in fifteen days.  At Brazil they accomplished nothing, and, on their
homeward voyage, not only the new commander succumbed to the same
contagion, but the mortality continued to so extraordinary an extent
that, on the arrival of the expedition late in the winter in Holland,
there were but two captains left alive, and, in many of the vessels, not
more than six sound men to each.  Nothing could be more wretched than
this termination of a great and expensive voyage, which had occasioned
such high hopes throughout the provinces; nothing more dismal than the
political atmosphere which surrounded the republic during the months
which immediately ensued.  It was obvious to Barneveld and the other
leading personages, in whose hands was the administration of affairs,
that a great military success was absolutely indispensable, if the
treacherous cry of peace, when peace was really impossible, should
not become universal and fatal.

Meantime affairs were not much more cheerful in the obedient provinces.
Archduke Albert arrived with his bride in the early days of September,
1599, at Brussels, and was received with great pomp and enthusiastic
rejoicings.  When are pomp and enthusiasm not to be obtained by imperial
personages, at brief notice and in vast quantities, if managers
understand their business?  After all, it may be doubted whether the
theatrical display was as splendid as that which marked the beginning of
the Ernestian era.  Schoolmaster Houwaerts had surpassed himself on that
occasion, and was no longer capable of deifying the new sovereign as
thoroughly as he had deified his brother.

Much real discontent followed close upon the fictitious enthusiasm.  The
obedient provinces were poor and forlorn, and men murmured loudly at the
enormous extravagance of their new master's housekeeping.  There were one
hundred and fifty mules, and as many horses in their sovereign's stables,
while the expense of feeding the cooks; lackeys, pages, and fine
gentlemen who swelled the retinue of the great household, was estimated,
without, wages or salaries, at two thousand florins a day.  Albert
had wished to be called a king, but had been unable to obtain the
gratification of his wish.  He had aspired to be emperor, and he was at
least sufficiently imperial in his ideas of expense.  The murmurers were
loftily rebuked for their complaints, and reminded of the duty of
obedient provinces to contribute at least as much for the defence of
their masters as the rebels did in maintenance of their rebellion.
The provincial estates were summoned accordingly to pay roundly for the
expenses of the war as well as of the court, and to enable the new
sovereigns to suppress the military mutiny, which amid the enthusiasm
greeting their arrival was the one prominent and formidable fact.

The archduke was now thirty-nine years of age, the Infanta Isabella six
years younger.  She was esteemed majestically beautiful by her courtiers,
and Cardinal Bentivoglio, himself a man of splendid intellect, pronounced
her a woman of genius, who had grown to be a prodigy of wisdom, under the
tuition of her father, the most sagacious statesman of the age.  In
attachment to the Roman faith and ritual, in superhuman loftiness of
demeanour, and in hatred of heretics, she was at least a worthy child of
that sainted sovereign.  In a moral point of view she was his superior.
The archdukes--so Albert and Isabella were always designated--were a
singularly attached couple, and their household, if extravagant and
imperial, was harmonious.  They loved each other--so it was believed--
as sincerely as they abhorred heretics and rebels, but it does not appear
that they had a very warm affection for their Flemish subjects.  Every
characteristic of their court was Spanish.  Spanish costume, Spanish
manners, the Spanish tongue, were almost exclusively predominant, and
although the festivals, dances, banquets, and tourneys, were all very
magnificent, the prevailing expression of the Brabantine capital
resembled that of a Spanish convent, so severely correct, so stately, and
so grim, was the demeanour of the court.

The earliest military operations of the stadholder in the first year of
the new century were successful.  Partly by menace; but more effectually
by judicious negotiation.  Maurice recovered Crevecoeur, and obtained the
surrender of St. Andrew, the fort which the admiral had built the
preceding year in honour of Albert's uncle.  That ecclesiastic, with whom
Mendoza had wrangled most bitterly during the whole interval of Albert's
absence, had already taken his departure for Rome, where he soon
afterwards died.  The garrisons of the forts, being mostly Walloon
soldiers, forsook the Spanish service for that of the States, and were
banded together in a legion some twelve hundred strong, which became
known as the "New Beggars," and were placed under the nominal command of
Frederick Henry of Nassau, youngest child of William the Silent.  The
next military event of the year was a mad combat, undertaken by formal
cartel, between Breaute, a young Norman noble in the service of the
republic, and twenty comrades, with an equal number of Flemish warriors
from the obedient provinces, under Grobbendonck.  About one half of the
whole number were killed, including the leaders, but the encounter,
although exciting much interest at the time, had of course no permanent
importance.

There was much negotiation, informal and secret, between Brussels and
London during this and a portion of the following year.  Elizabeth,
naturally enough, was weary of the war, but she felt, after all, as did
the Government of France, that a peace between the United Netherlands and
Spain would have for its result the restoration of the authority of his
most Catholic Majesty over all the provinces.  The statesmen of France
and England, like most of the politicians of Europe, had but slender
belief in the possibility of a popular government, and doubted therefore
the continued existence of the newly-organized republic.  Therefore they
really deprecated the idea of a peace which should include the States,
notwithstanding that from time to time the queen or some of her
counsellors had so vehemently reproached the Netherlanders with their
unwillingness to negotiate.  "At the first recognition that these people
should make of the mere shadow of a prince," said Buzanval, the keenly
observing and experienced French envoy at the Hague, "they lose the form
they have.  All the blood of the body would flow to the head, and the
game would be who should best play the valet. . . . . The house of
Nassau would lose its credit within a month in case of peace."  As such
statesmen could not imagine a republic, they ever dreaded the restoration
in the United Provinces of the subverted authority of Spain.

France and England were jealous of each other, and both were jealous of
Spain.  Therefore even if the republican element, the strength and
endurance of which was so little suspected, had been as trifling a factor
in the problem, as was supposed, still it would have been difficult for
any one of these powers to absorb the United Netherlands.  As for
France, she hardly coveted their possession.  "We ought not to flatter
ourselves," said Buzanval, "that these maritime peoples will cast
themselves one day into our nets, nor do I know that it would be
advisable to pull in the net if they should throw themselves in."

Henry was full of political schemes and dreams at this moment--as much as
his passion for Mademoiselle d'Entraigues, who had so soon supplanted the
image of the dead Gabrielle in his heart, would permit.  He was very well
disposed to obtain possession of the Spanish Netherlands, whenever he
should see his way to such an acquisition, and was even indulging in
visions of the imperial crown.

He was therefore already, and for the time at least, the most intense
of papists.  He was determined to sacrifice the Huguenot chiefs, and
introduce the Council of Trent, in order, as he told Du Plessis, that all
might be Christians.  If he still retained any remembrance of the ancient
friendship between himself and the heretic republic, it was not likely
to exhibit itself, notwithstanding his promises and his pecuniary
liabilities to her, in anything more solid than words.  "I repeat it,"
said the Dutch envoy at Paris; "this court cares nothing for us, for all
its cabals tend to close union with Rome, whence we can expect nothing
but foul weather.  The king alone has any memory of our past services."
But imperturbable and self-confident as ever, Henry troubled himself
little with fears in regard to the papal supremacy, even when his
Parliament professed great anxiety in regard to the consequences of the
Council of Trent, if not under him yet under his successors.  "I will so
bridle the popes," said he, cheerfully, "that they will never pass my
restrictions. My children will be still more virtuous and valiant than I.
If I have none, then the devil take the hindmost.  Nevertheless I choose
that the council shall be enacted.  I desire it more ardently than I
pressed the edict for the Protestants."  Such being the royal humour at
the moment, it may well be believed that Duplessis Mornay would find but
little sunshine from on high on the occasion of his famous but forgotten
conferences with Du Perron, now archbishop of Evreux, before the king and
all the court at Fontainebleau.  It was natural enough that to please the
king the king's old Huguenot friend should be convicted of false
citations from the fathers; but it would seem strange, were the motives
unknown, that Henry should have been so intensely interested in this most
arid and dismal of theological controversies.  Yet those who had known
and observed the king closely for thirty years, declared that he had
never manifested so much passion, neither on the eve of battles nor of
amorous assignations, as he then did for the demolition of Duplessis and
his deductions.  He had promised the Nuncius that the Huguenot should be
utterly confounded, and with him the whole fraternity, "for," said the
king, "he has wickedly and impudently written against the pope, to whom I
owe as much as I do to God."

These were not times in which the Hollanders, battling as stoutly against
Spain and the pope as they had done during the years when the republic
stood shoulder to shoulder with Henry the Huguenot, could hope for aid
and comfort from their ancient ally.

It is very characteristic of that age of dissimulation and of reckless
political gambling, that at the very moment when Henry's marriage with
Marie de Medicis was already arranged, and when that princess was soon
expected in Lyons, a cabal at the king's court was busy with absurd
projects to marry their sovereign to the Infanta of Spain.  It is true
that the Infanta was already the wife of the cardinal-archduke, but it
was thought possible--for reasons divulged through the indiscretions or
inventions of the father confessor--to obtain the pope's dispensation on
the ground of the nullity of the marriage.  Thus there were politicians
at the French court seriously occupied in an attempt to deprive the
archduke of his wife, of his Netherland provinces, and of the crown of,
the holy Roman empire, which he still hoped to inherit.  Yet the ink was
scarcely dry with which Henry had signed the treaty of amity with Madrid
and Brussels.

The Queen of England, on the other hand--although often listenting to
secret agents from Brussels and Madrid who offered peace, and although
perfectly aware that the great abject of Spain in securing peace with
England was to be able to swoop down at once upon the republic, thus
deprived of any allies was beside herself with rage, whenever she
suspected, with or without reason, that Brussels or Madrid had been
sending peace emissaries to the republic.

"Before I could get into the room," said Caron, on one such occasion,
"she called out, 'Have you not always told me that the States never
could, would, or should treat for peace with the enemy?  Yet now it
is plain enough that they have proceeded only too far in negotiations.'
And she then swore a big oath that if the States were to deceive her she
meant to take such vengeance that men should talk of it for ever and
ever."  It was a long time before the envoy could induce her to listen
to a single word, although the, perfect sincerity of the States in their
attitude to the queen and to Spain was unquestionable, and her ill-humour
on the subject continued long after it had been demonstrated how much she
had been deceived.

Yet it was impossible in the nature of things for the States to play her
false, even if no reliance were to be placed on their sagacity and their
honour.  Even the recent naval expedition of the republic against the
distant possessions of Spain--which in its result had caused so much
disappointment to the States, and cost them so many lives, including that
of the noble admiral whom every sailor in the Netherlands adored had been
of immense advantage to England.  The queen acknowledged that the Dutch
Navy had averted the storm which threatened to descend upon her kingdom
out of Spain, the Spanish ships destined for the coast of Ireland having
been dispersed and drawn to the other aide of the world by these
demonstrations of her ally.  For this she vowed that she would be
eternally grateful, and she said as much in "letters full of sugar and
honey"--according to the French envoy--which she sent to the States by
Sir Francis Vere.  She protested, in short, that she had been better and
more promptly served in her necessities by the Netherlands than by her
own subjects.

All this sugar and honey however did not make the mission of Envoy
Edmonds less bitter to the States.  They heard that he was going about
through half the cities of the obedient Netherlands in a sort of
triumphal procession, and it was the general opinion of the politicians
and financiers of the continent that peace between Spain and England was
as good as made.  Naturally therefore, notwithstanding the exuberant
expressions of gratitude on the part of Elizabeth, the republican
Government were anxious to know what all this parleying meant.  They
could not believe that people would make a raree-show of the English
envoy except for sufficient reason.  Caron accordingly presented himself
before the queen, with respectful inquiries on the subject.  He found her
in appearance very angry, not with him, but with Edmonds, from whom she
had received no advices.  "I don't know what they are doing with him,"
said her Majesty, "I hear from others that they are ringing the church
bells wherever he goes, and that they have carried him through a great
many more places than was necessary.  I suppose that they think him a
monster, and they are carrying him about to exhibit him.  All this is
done," she continued, "to throw dust in the eyes of the poor people, and
to put it into their heads that the Queen of England is suing for peace,
which is very wide of the mark."

She further observed that, as the agents of the Spanish Government had
been perpetually sending to her, she had been inclined once for all to
learn what they had to say.  Thus she should make manifest to all the
world that she was not averse to a treaty such as might prove a secure
peace for herself and for Christendom; otherwise not.

It subsequently appeared that what they had to say was that if the queen
would give up to the Spanish Government the cautionary towns which she
held as a pledge for her advances to the republic, forbid all traffic and
intercourse between her subjects and the Netherlanders, and thenceforth
never allow an Englishman to serve in or with the armies of the States,
a peace might be made.

Surely it needed no great magnanimity on the queen's part to spurn such
insulting proposals, the offer of which showed her capable, in the
opinion of Verreycken, the man who made them, of sinking into the very
depths of dishonour.  And she did spurn them.  Surely, for the ally, the
protrectress, the grateful friend of the republic, to give its chief
seaports to its arch-enemy, to shut the narrow seas against its ships,
so that they never more could sail westward, and to abandon its whole
population to their fate, would be a deed of treachery such as history,
full of human baseness as it is, has rarely been obliged to record.

Before these propositions had been made by Verreycken Elizabeth protested
that, should he offer them, she would send him home with such an answer
that people should talk of it for some time to come.  "Before I consent
to a single one of those points," said the queen, "I wish myself taken
from this world.  Until now I have been a princess of my word, who would
rather die than so falsely deceive such good people as the States." And
she made those protestations with such expression and attitude that the
Dutch envoy believed her incapable at that moment of dissimulation.

Nevertheless her indignation did not carry her so far as to induce her to
break off the negotiations.  The answer of which mankind was to talk in
time to come was simply that she would not send her commissioners to
treat for peace unless the Spanish Government should recede from the
three points thus offered by Verreycken.  This certainly was not a very
blasting reply, and the Spanish agents were so far from losing heart in
consequence that the informal conferences continued for a long time, much
to the discomfort of the Netherlanders.

For more than an hour and a half on one occasion of an uncommonly hot
afternoon in April did Noel de Caron argue with her Majesty against these
ill-boding negotiations, and ever and anon, oppressed by the heat of the
weather and the argument, did the queen wander from one room of the
palace to the other in search of cool air, still bidding the envoy follow
her footsteps.  "We are travelling about like pilgrims," said Elizabeth,
"but what is life but a pilgrimage?"

Yet, notwithstanding this long promenade and these moral reflections,
Caron could really not make out at the end of the interview whether or no
she intended to send her commissioners.  At last he asked her the
question bluntly.

"Hallo!  Hallo!"  she replied.  "I have only spoken to my servant once,
and I must obtain more information and think over the matter before I
decide.  Be assured however that I shall always keep you informed of the
progress of the negotiations, and do you inform the States that they may
build upon me as upon a rock."

After the envoy had taken his leave, the queen said to him in Latin,
"Modicae fidei quare dubitasti?"  Caron had however so nearly got out
of the door that he did not hear this admonition.

This the queen perceived, and calling him by name repeated, "O Caron!
modicae fidei quare dubitasti?" adding the injunction that he should
remember this dictum, for he well knew what she meant by it.

Thus terminated the interview, while the negotiations with Spain, not for
lack of good-will on her part, and despite the positive assertions to the
contrary of Buzanval and other foreign agents, were destined to come to
nothing.

At a little later period, at the time of certain informal and secret
conferences at Gertruydenberg, the queen threatened the envoy with her
severest displeasure, should the States dare to treat with Spain without
her permission.  "Her Majesty called out to me," said Caron, "as soon as
I entered the room, that I had always assured her that the States neither
would nor could make peace with the enemy.  Yet it was now looking very
differently, she continued, swearing with a mighty oath that if the
States should cheat her in that way she meant to revenge herself in such
a fashion that men would talk of it through all eternity."

The French Government was in a similar state of alarm in consequence of
the Gertruydenberg conferences.

The envoy of the archdukes, Marquis d'Havre, reported on the other
hand that all attempts to negotiate had proved fruitless, that Olden-
Barneveld, who spoke for all his colleagues, was swollen with pride, and
made it but too manifest that the States had no intention to submit to
any foreign jurisdiction, but were resolved to maintain themselves in the
form of a republic.



ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Children who had never set foot on the shore
Done nothing so long as aught remained to do
Fed on bear's liver, were nearly poisoned to death
Inhabited by the savage tribes called Samoyedes




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v71
by John Lothrop Motley






ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS, ENTIRE 1590-99 UNITED NETHERLANDS:

A pusillanimous peace, always possible at any period
A despot really keeps no accounts, nor need to do so
Accustomed to the faded gallantries
Alexander's exuberant discretion
All Italy was in his hands
All fellow-worms together
Allow her to seek a profit from his misfortune
Anatomical study of what has ceased to exist
Artillery
At length the twig was becoming the tree
Auction sales of judicial ermine
Being the true religion, proved by so many testimonies
Beneficent and charitable purposes (War)
Bomb-shells were not often used although known for a century
Burning of Servetus at Geneva
Certainly it was worth an eighty years' war
Chief seafaring nations of the world were already protestant
Children who had never set foot on the shore
Chronicle of events must not be anticipated
Conceding it subsequently, after much contestation
Conformity of Governments to the principles of justice
Considerable reason, even if there were but little justice
Constant vigilance is the price of liberty
Continuing to believe himself invincible and infallible
Court fatigue, to scorn pleasure
Deal with his enemy as if sure to become his friend
Decline a bribe or interfere with the private sale of places
Disciple of Simon Stevinus
Divine right of kings
Done nothing so long as aught remained to do
Eat their own children than to forego one high mass
Ever met disaster with so cheerful a smile
Every one sees what you seem, few perceive what you are
Evil has the advantage of rapidly assuming many shapes
Famous fowl in every pot
Fed on bear's liver, were nearly poisoned to death
Fellow worms had been writhing for half a century in the dust
Fled from the land of oppression to the land of liberty
For his humanity towards the conquered garrisons (censured)
For us, looking back upon the Past, which was then the Future
French seem madmen, and are wise
Future world as laid down by rival priesthoods
German Highland and the German Netherland
God of wrath who had decreed the extermination of all unbeliever
Had industry been honoured instead of being despised
Hanging of Mary Dyer at Boston
Hardly an inch of French soil that had not two possessors
He spent more time at table than the Bearnese in sleep
Henry the Huguenot as the champion of the Council of Trent
Highest were not necessarily the least slimy
His invectives were, however, much stronger than his arguments
Historical scepticism may shut its eyes to evidence
History is but made up of a few scattered fragments
History is a continuous whole of which we see only fragments
Holy institution called the Inquisition
Hugo Grotius
Humanizing effect of science upon the barbarism of war
Idle, listless, dice-playing, begging, filching vagabonds
Ignorance is the real enslaver of mankind
Imagining that they held the world's destiny in their hands
Imposed upon the multitudes, with whom words were things
Impossible it was to invent terms of adulation too gross
In times of civil war, to be neutral is to be nothing
Inevitable fate of talking castles and listening ladies
Infinite capacity for pecuniary absorption
Inhabited by the savage tribes called Samoyedes
Innocent generation, to atone for the sins of their forefathers
Intelligence, science, and industry were accounted degrading
Invaluable gift which no human being can acquire, authority
King was often to be something much less or much worse
King had issued a general repudiation of his debts
Labour was esteemed dishonourable
Leading motive with all was supposed to be religion
Life of nations and which we call the Past
Little army of Maurice was becoming the model for Europe
Loud, nasal, dictatorial tone, not at all agreeable
Luxury had blunted the fine instincts of patriotism
Magnificent hopefulness
Man had no rights at all  He was property
Maritime heretics
Matters little by what name a government is called
Meet around a green table except as fencers in the field
Mondragon was now ninety-two years old
Moral nature, undergoes less change than might be hoped
More catholic than the pope
Myself seeing of it methinketh that I dream
Names history has often found it convenient to mark its epochs
National character, not the work of a few individuals
Nothing cheap, said a citizen bitterly, but sermons
Obscure were thought capable of dying natural deaths
Octogenarian was past work and past mischief
Often necessary to be blind and deaf
One-third of Philip's effective navy was thus destroyed
Past was once the Present, and once the Future
Patriotism seemed an unimaginable idea
Peace would be destruction
Philip II. gave the world work enough
Picturesqueness of crime
Placid unconsciousness on his part of defeat
Plea of infallibility and of authority soon becomes ridiculous
Portion of these revenues savoured much of black-mail
Proceeds of his permission to eat meat on Fridays
Rarely able to command, having never learned to obey
Religion was rapidly ceasing to be the line of demarcation
Repudiation of national debts was never heard of before
Rich enough to be worth robbing
Righteous to kill their own children
Road to Paris lay through the gates of Rome
Royal plans should be enforced adequately or abandoned entirely
Sacked and drowned ten infant princes
Sages of every generation, read the future like a printed scroll
Seems but a change of masks, of costume, of phraseology
Self-assertion--the healthful but not engaging attribute
Selling the privilege of eating eggs upon fast-days
Sentiment of Christian self-complacency
Sewers which have ever run beneath decorous Christendom
Shift the mantle of religion from one shoulder to the other
Slain four hundred and ten men with his own hand
So often degenerated into tyranny (Calvinism)
Some rude lessons from that vigorous little commonwealth
Spain was governed by an established terrorism
Spaniards seem wise, and are madmen
Strangled his nineteen brothers on his accession
Such a crime as this had never been conceived (bankruptcy)
That unholy trinity--Force; Dogma, and Ignorance
The history of the Netherlands is history of liberty
The great ocean was but a Spanish lake
The divine speciality of a few transitory mortals
The Alcoran was less cruel than the Inquisition
The nation which deliberately carves itself in pieces
The most thriving branch of national industry (Smuggler)
The record of our race is essentially unwritten
There are few inventions in morals
They liked not such divine right nor such gentle-mindedness
They had come to disbelieve in the mystery of kingcraft
Thirty thousand masses should be said for his soul
Thirty-three per cent. interest was paid (per month)
Those who argue against a foregone conclusion
Three or four hundred petty sovereigns (of Germany)
To attack England it was necessary to take the road of Ireland
Toil and sacrifices of those who have preceded us
Tranquil insolence
Under the name of religion (so many crimes)
Unproductive consumption was alarmingly increasing
Upon their knees, served the queen with wine
Use of the spade
Utter want of adaptation of his means to his ends
Utter disproportions between the king's means and aims
Valour on the one side and discretion on the other
Walk up and down the earth and destroy his fellow-creatures
We have the reputation of being a good housewife
Weapons
Whether murders or stratagems, as if they were acts of virtue
While one's friends urge moderation
Whole revenue was pledged to pay the interest, on his debts
Wish to sell us the bear-skin before they have killed the bear
Worn nor caused to be worn the collar of the serf
Wrath of that injured personage as he read such libellous truths




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Entire United Netherlands 1590-99
by John Lothrop Motley






HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609

By John Lothrop Motley



MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, Project Gutenberg Edition, Vol. 84

History of the United Netherlands, 1600-1609, Complete




CHAPTER, XXXVIII.

     Military events--Aggressive movement of the Netherlanders--State of
     the Archdukes provinces--Mutiny of the Spanish forces--Proposed
     invasion of Flanders by the States-General--Disembarkation of the
     troops on the Spanish coasts--Capture of Oudenburg and other places
     --Surprise of Nieuport--Conduct of the Archduke--Oudenburg and the
     other forts re-taken--Dilemma of the States' army--Attack of the
     Archduke on Count Ernest's cavalry--Panic and total overthrow of the
     advance-guard of the States' army--Battle of Nieuport--Details of
     the action--Defeat of the Spanish army--Results of the whole
     expedition.

The effect produced in the republic by the defensive and uneventful
campaigning of the year 1599 had naturally been depressing.  There was
murmuring at the vast amount of taxation, especially at the new
imposition of one-half per cent. upon all property, and two-and-a-half
per cent. on all sales, which seemed to produce so few results.  The
successful protection of the Isle of Bommel and the judicious purchase of
the two forts of Crevecoeur and St. Andrew; early in the following year,
together with their garrisons, were not military events of the first
magnitude, and were hardly enough to efface the mortification felt at the
fact that the enemy had been able so lately to construct one of those
strongholds within the territory of the commonwealth.

It was now secretly determined to attempt an aggressive movement on a
considerable scale, and to carry the war once for all into the heart of
the obedient provinces.  It was from Flanders that the Spanish armies
drew a great portion of their supplies.  It was by the forts erected on
the coast of Flanders in the neighbourhood of Ostend that this important
possession of the States was rendered nearly valueless.  It was by
privateers swarming from the ports of Flanders, especially from Nieuport
and Dunkirk, that the foreign trade of the republic was crippled, and its
intercommunications by river and estuary rendered unsafe.  Dunkirk was
simply a robbers' cave, a station from which an annual tax was levied
upon the commerce of the Netherlands, almost sufficient, had it been paid
to the national treasury instead of to the foreign freebooters, to
support the expenses of a considerable army.

On the other hand the condition of the archdukes seemed deplorable.
Never had mutiny existed before in so well-organised and definite a form
even in the Spanish Netherlands.

Besides those branches of the "Italian republic," which had been
established in the two fortresses of Crevecoeur and St. Andrew, and which
had already sold themselves to the States, other organisations quite as
formidable existed in various other portions of the obedient provinces.
Especially at Diest and Thionville the rebellious Spaniards and Italians
were numbered by thousands, all veterans, well armed, fortified in strong
cities; and supplying themselves with perfect regularity by contributions
levied upon the peasantry, obeying their Eletto and other officers with
exemplary promptness; and paying no more heed to the edicts or the
solicitations of the archduke than if he had been the Duke of Muscovy.

The opportunity seemed tempting to strike a great blow.  How could Albert
and Isabella, with an empty exchequer and a mutinous army, hope either to
defend their soil from attack or to aim a counter blow at the republic,
even if, the republic for a season should be deprived of a portion of its
defenders?

The reasoning was plausible, the prize tempting.  The States-General, who
habitually discountenanced rashness, and were wont to impose superfluous
restraints upon the valiant but discreet Lewis William, and upon the
deeply pondering but energetic Maurice, were now grown as ardent as
they had hitherto been hesitating.  In the early days of June it was
determined in secret session to organize a great force in Holland and
Zeeland, and to embark suddenly for Nieuport, to carry that important
position by surprise or assault, and from that basis to redeem Dunkirk.
The possession of these two cities, besides that of Ostend, which had
always been retained by the Republic, would ensure the complete
subjugation of Flanders.  The trifling force of two thousand men under
Rivas--all that the archduke then had in that province--and the sconces
and earthworks which had been constructed around Ostend to impede the
movements and obstruct the supplies of the garrison, would be utterly
powerless to prevent the consummation of the plan.  Flanders once
subjugated, it would not be long before the Spaniards were swept from the
obedient Netherlands as thoroughly as they had been from the domains of
the commonwealth, and all the seventeen provinces, trampling out every
vestige of a hated foreign tyranny, would soon take their natural place
as states of a free; prosperous, and powerful union.

But Maurice of Nassau did not share the convictions of the States-
General.  The unwonted ardour of Barneveld did not inflame his
imagination.  He urged that the enterprise was inexcusably rash; that its
execution would require the whole army of the States, except the slender
garrisons absolutely necessary to protect important places from surprise;
that a defeat would not be simply disaster, but annihilation; that
retreat without absolute triumph would be impossible, and that amid such
circumstances the archduke, in spite of his poverty and the rebellious
condition of his troops, would doubtless assemble a sufficient force to
dispute with reasonable prospects of victory, this invasion of his
territory.

Sir Francis Vere, too, was most decidedly opposed to the plan.  He
pointed out with great clearness its dangerous and possibly fatal
character; assuring the Staten that, within a fortnight after the
expedition had begun, the archduke would follow upon their heels with an
army fully able to cope with the best which they could put into the
field.  But besides this experienced and able campaigner, who so
thoroughly shared the opinions of Prince Maurice, every military man in
the provinces of any consideration, was opposed to, the scheme.
Especially Lewis William--than whom no more sagacious military critic or
accomplished strategist existed in Europe, denounced it with energy and
even with indignation.  It was, in the opinion of the young stadholder of
Friesland, to suspend the existence of the whole commonwealth upon a
silken thread.  Even success, he prophesied, would bring no permanent,
fruits, while the consequences of an overthrow, were fearful to
contemplate.  The immediate adherents and most trusted counsellors of
William Lewis were even more unmeasured in their denunciations than he
was himself.  "'Tis all the work of Barneveld and the long-gowns," cried
Everard van Reyd.  "We are led into a sack from which there is no
extrication.  We are marching to the Caudine Forks."

Certainly it is no small indication of the vast influence and the
indomitable resolution of Barneveld that he never faltered in this storm
of indignation.  The Advocate had made up his mind to invade Flanders and
to capture Nieuport; and the decree accordingly went forth, despite all
opposition.  The States-General were sovereign, and the Advocate and the
States-General were one.

It was also entirely characteristic of Maurice that he should submit his
judgment on this great emergency to that of Olden-Barneveld.  It was
difficult for him to resist the influence of the great intellect to which
he had always willingly deferred in affairs of state, and from which;
even in military matters, it was hardly possible for him to escape.  Yet
in military matters Maurice was a consummate professor, and the Advocate
in comparison but a school-boy.

The ascendency of Barneveld was the less wholesome, therefore, and it
might have been better had the stadholder manifested more resolution.
But Maurice had not a resolute character.  Thorough soldier as he was, he
was singularly vacillating, at times almost infirm of purpose, but never
before in his career had this want of decision manifested itself in so
striking a manner.

Accordingly the States-General, or in other words John of Olden-Barneveld
proposed to invade Flanders, and lay siege, to Nieuport.  The States-
General were sovereign, and Maurice bowed to their authority.  After the
matter had been entirely decided upon the state-council was consulted,
and the state-council attempted no opposition to the project. The
preparations were made with matchless energy and extraordinary secrecy.
Lewis William, who meanwhile was to defend the eastern frontier of the
republic against any possible attack, sent all the troops that it was
possible to spare; but he sent, them with a heavy heart.  His forebodings
were dismal.  It seemed to him that all was about to be staked upon a
single cast of the dice.  Moreover it was painful to him while the
terrible game, was playing to be merely a looker on and a prophet of
evil from a distance, forbidden to contribute by his personal skill and
experience to a fortunate result.  Hohenlo too was appointed to protect
the southern border, and was excluded from, all participation in the
great expedition.

As to the enemy, such rumors as might came to them from day to day of
mysterious military, preparations on the part of the rebels only served
to excite suspicion in others directions.  The archduke was uneasy in,
regard to the Rhine and the Gueldrian; quarter, but never dreamt of a
hostile descent upon the Flemish coast.

Meantime, on the 19th June Maurice of Nassau made his appearance at
Castle Rammekens, not far from Flushing, at the mouth of the Scheld, to
superintend the great movement.  So large a fleet as was there assembled
had never before been seen or heard of in Christendom.  Of war-ships,
transports, and flat-bottomed barges there were at least thirteen
hundred.  Many eye-witnesses, who counted however with their
imaginations, declared that there were in all at least three thousand
vessels, and the statement has been reproduced by grave and trustworthy
chroniclers.  As the number of troops to be embarked upon the enterprise
certainly did not exceed fourteen thousand, this would have been an
allowance of one vessel to every five soldiers, besides the army
munitions and provisions--a hardly reasonable arrangement.

Twelve thousand infantry and sixteen hundred cavalry, the consummate
flower of the States' army, all well-paid, well-clad, well-armed, well-
disciplined veterans, had been collected in this place of rendezvous and
were ready to embark.  It would be unjust to compare the dimensions of
this force and the preparations for ensuring the success of the
enterprise with the vast expeditions and gigantic armaments of later
times, especially with the tremendous exhibitions of military and naval
energy with which our own civil war has made us familiar.  Maurice was an
adept in all that science and art had as yet bequeathed to humanity for
the purpose of human' destruction, but the number of his troops was small
compared to the mighty hosts which the world since those days has seen
embattled.  War, as a trade, was then less easily learned.  It was a
guild in which apprenticeship was difficult, and in which enrolment was
usually for life.  A little republic of scarce three million souls, which
could keep always on foot a regular well-appointed army of twenty-five
thousand men and a navy of one or two hundred heavily armed cruisers, was
both a marvel and a formidable element in the general polity of the
world.  The lesson to be derived both in military and political
philosophy from the famous campaign of Nieuport does not depend for its
value on the numbers of the ships or soldiers engaged in the undertaking.
Otherwise, and had it been merely a military expedition like a thousand
others which have been made and forgotten, it would not now deserve more
than a momentary attention.  But the circumstances were such as to make
the issue of the impending battle one of the most important in human
history.  It was entirely possible that an overwhelming defeat of the
republican forces on this foreign expedition would bring with it an
absolute destruction of the republic, and place Spain once more in
possession of the heretic "islands," from which basis she would menace
the very existence of England more seriously than she had ever done
before.  Who could measure the consequences to Christendom of such a
catastrophe?

The distance from the place where the fleet and army were assembled to
Nieuport--the objective point of the enterprise--was but thirty-five
miles as the crow flies.  And the crow can scarcely fly in a straighter
line than that described by the coast along which the ships were to shape
their course.

And here it is again impossible not to reflect upon the change which
physical science has brought over the conduct of human affairs.  We have
seen in a former chapter a most important embassy sent forth from the
States for the purpose of preventing the consummation of a peace between
their ally and their enemy.  Celerity was a vital element in the success
of such a mission; for the secret negotiations which it was intended to
impede were supposed to be near their termination.  Yet months were
consumed in a journey which in our day would have been accomplished in
twenty-four hours.  And now in this great military expedition the
essential and immediate purpose was to surprise a small town almost
within sight from the station at which the army was ready to embark.
Such a midsummer voyage in this epoch of steam-tugs and transports would
require but a few hours.  Yet two days long the fleet lay at anchor while
a gentle breeze blew persistently from the south-west.  As there seemed
but little hope that the wind would become more favourable, and as the
possibility of surprise grew fainter with every day's delay, it was
decided to make a landing upon the nearest point of Flemish coast placed
by circumstances within their reach: Count Ernest of Nassau; with the
advance-guard, was accordingly, despatched on the 21st June to the
neighbourhood of the Sas-of Ghent, where he seized a weakly guarded fort,
called Philippine, and made thorough preparations, for the arrival of the
whole army.  On the following day the rest of the troops made their
appearance, and in the course of five hours were safely disembarked.

The army, which consisted of Zeelanders, Frisians, Hollanders, Walloons,
Germans, English, and Scotch, was divided into three corps.  The advance
was under the command of Count Ernest, the battalia under that of Count
George Everard Solms, while the rear-guard during the march was entrusted
to that experienced soldier Sir Francis Vere.  Besides Prince Maurice,
there were three other members of the house of Nassau serving in the
expedition--his half-brother Frederic Henry, then a lad of sixteen, and
the two brothers of the Frisian stadholder, Ernest and Lewis Gunther,
whom Lewis William had been so faithfully educating in the arts of peace
and war both by precept and example.  Lewis Gunther, still a mere youth,
but who had been the first to scale the fort of Cadiz, and to plant on
its height the orange banner of the murdered rebel, and whose gallantry
during the whole expedition had called forth the special commendations of
Queen Elizabeth--expressed in energetic and affectionate terms to his
father--now commanded all the cavalry.  Certainly if the doctrine of
primordial selection could ever be accepted among human creatures, the
race of Nassau at that day might have seemed destined to be chiefs of the
Netherland soil.  Old John of Nassau, ardent and energetic as ever in the
cause of the religious reformation of Germany and the liberation of
Holland, still watched from his retirement the progress of the momentous
event.  Four of his brethren, including the great founder of the
republic, had already laid down their lives for the sacred cause.  His
son Philip had already fallen under the banner in the fight of Bislich,
and three other sons were serving the republic day and night, by sea and
land, with sword, and pen, and purse, energetically, conscientiously, and
honourably.  Of the stout hearts and quick intellects on which the safety
of the commonwealth then depended, none was more efficient or true than
the accomplished soldier and statesman Lewis William.  Thoroughly
disapproving of the present invasion of Flanders, he was exerting
himself, now that it had been decided upon by his sovereigns the States-
Generals, with the same loyalty as that of Maurice, to bring it to a
favourable issue, although not personally engaged in the adventure.

So soon as the troops had been landed the vessels were sent off as
expeditiously as possible, that none might fall into, the enemy's hands;
the transports under a strong convoy of war-ships having been directed to
proceed as fast as the wind would permit in the direction of Nieuport.
The march then began.  On the 23rd they advanced a league and halted for
the night at Assenede.  The next day brought them three leagues further,
to a place called Eckerloo.  On the 25th they marched to Male, a distance
of three leagues and a half, passing close to the walls of Bruges, in
which they had indulged faint hopes of exciting an insurrection, but
obtained nothing but a feeble cannonade from the fortifications which did
no damage except the killing of one muleteer.  The next night was passed
at Jabbeke, four leagues from Male, and on the 27th, after marching
another league, they came before the fort of Oudenburg.

This important post on the road which the army would necessarily traverse
in coming from the interior to the coast was easily captured and then
strongly garrisoned.  Maurice with the main army spent the two following
days at the fortress, completing his arrangements.  Solms was sent
forward to seize the sconces and redoubts of the enemy around Ostend, at
Breedene, Snaaskerk, Plassendaal, and other points, and especially to
occupy the important fort called St. Albert, which was in the downs at
about a league from that city.  All this work was thoroughly
accomplished; little or no resistance having been made to the occupation
of these various places.  Meantime the States-General, who at the special
request of Maurice were to accompany the expedition in order to observe
the progress of events for which they were entirely responsible, and to
aid the army when necessary by their advice and co-operation, had
assembled to the number of thirteen in Ostend.  Solms having strengthened
the garrison of that place then took up his march along the beach to
Nieuport.  During the progress of the army through Holland and Zeeland
towards its place of embarkation there had been nothing but dismal
prognostics, with expressions of muttered indignation, wherever the
soldiers passed.  It seemed to the country people, and to the inhabitants
of every town and village, that their defenders were going to certain
destruction; that the existence of the commonwealth was hanging by a
thread soon to be snapped asunder.  As the forces subsequently marched
from the Sas of Ghent towards the Flemish coast there was no rising of
the people in their favour, and although Maurice had issued distinct
orders that the peasantry were to be dealt with gently and justly, yet
they found neither peasants nor villagers to deal with at all.  The whole
population on their line of march had betaken themselves to the woods,
except the village sexton of Jabbeke and his wife, who were too old to
run.  Lurking in the thickets and marshes, the peasants fell upon all
stragglers from the army and murdered them without mercy--so difficult
is it in times of civil war to make human brains pervious to the light of
reason.  The stadholder and his soldiers came to liberate their brethren
of the same race, and speaking the same language, from abject submission
to a foreign despotism.  The Flemings had but to speak a word, to lift a
finger, and all the Netherlands, self-governed, would coalesce into one
independent confederation of States, strong enough to defy all the
despots of Europe.  Alas! the benighted victims of superstition hugged
their chains, and preferred the tyranny under which their kindred had
been tortured, burned, and buried alive for half-a-century long, to the
possibility of a single Calvinistic conventicle being opened in any
village of obedient Flanders.  So these excellent children of Philip and
the pope, whose language was as unintelligible to them as it was to
Peruvians or Iroquois, lay in wait for the men who spoke their own mother
tongue, and whose veins were filled with their own blood, and murdered
them, as a sacred act of duty.  Retaliation followed as a matter of
course, so that the invasion of Flanders, in this early stage of its
progress, seemed not likely to call forth very fraternal feelings
between the two families of Netherlanders.

The army was in the main admirably well supplied, but there was a
deficiency of drink.  The water as they advanced became brackish and
intolerably bad, and there was great difficulty in procuring any
substitute.  At Male three cows were given for a pot of beer, and more of
that refreshment might have been sold at the same price, had there been
any sellers.

On the 30th June Maurice marched from Oudenburg, intending to strike a
point called Niewendam--a fort in the neighbourhood of Nieuport--and so
to march along the walls of that city and take up his position
immediately in its front.  He found the ground, however, so marshy and
impracticable as he advanced, that he was obliged to countermarch, and to
spend that night on the downs between forts Isabella and St. Albert.

On the 1st July he resumed his march, and passing a bridge over a small
stream at a place called Leffingen, laying down a road as he went with
sods and sand, and throwing bridges over streams and swamps, he arrived
in the forenoon before Nieuport.  The, fleet had reached the roadstead
the same morning.

This was a strong, well-built, and well-fortified little city, situate
half-a-league from the sea coast on low, plashy ground.  At high water it
was a seaport, for a stream or creek of very insignificant dimensions was
then sufficiently filled by the tide to admit vessels of considerable
burthen.  This haven was immediately taken possession of by the
stadholder, and two-thirds of his army were thrown across to the western
side of the water, the troops remaining on the Ostend side being by a
change of arrangement now under command of Count Ernest.

Thus the army which had come to surprise Nieuport had, after
accomplishing a distance of nearly forty miles in thirteen days,
at last arrived before that place.  Yet there was no more expeditious
or energetic commander in Christendom than Maurice, nor troops better
trained in marching and fighting than his well-disciplined army.

It is now necessary to cast a glance towards the interior of Flanders,
in order to observe how the archduke conducted himself in this emergency.
So soon as the news of the landing of the States' army at the port of
Ghent reached the sovereign's ears, he awoke from the delusion that
danger was impending on his eastern border, and lost no time in
assembling such troops as could be mustered from far and near to protect
the western frontier.  Especially he despatched messengers well charged
with promises, to confer with the authorities of the "Italian Republic"
at Diest and Thionville.  He appealed to them in behalf of the holy
Catholic religion, he sought to arouse their loyalty to himself and the
Infanta Isabella--daughter of the great and good Philip II., once
foremost of earthly potentates, and now eminent among the saints of
heaven--by whose fiat he and his wife had now become legitimate
sovereigns of all the Netherlands.  And those mutineers responded with
unexpected docility.  Eight hundred foot soldiers and six hundred cavalry
men came forth at the first summons, making but two conditions in
addition to the stipulated payment when payment should be possible--that
they should be commanded by their own chosen officers, and that they
should be placed in the first rank in the impending conflict.  The
example spread.  Other detachments of mutineers in various strongholds,
scenting the battle from afar, came in with offers to serve in the
campaign on similar terms.  Before the last week of June the archduke had
a considerable army on foot.  On the 29th of that month, accompanied by
the Infanta, he reviewed a force of ten thousand foot and nearly two
thousand cavalry in the immediate vicinity of Ghent.  He addressed them
in a few stirring words, reminding them of their duty to the Church and
to himself, and assuring them--as commanders of every nation and every
age are wont to assure their troops at the eve of every engagement--that
the cause in which they were going forth to battle was the most sacred
and inspiring for which human creatures could possibly lay down their
lives.  Isabella, magnificently attired, and mounted on a white palfrey,
galloped along the lines, and likewise made an harangue.  She spoke to
the soldiers as "her lions," promised them boundless rewards in this
world and the next, as the result of the great victory which they were
now about to gain over the infidels; while as to their wages, she vowed
that, rather than they should remain unpaid, she would sacrifice all her
personal effects, even to the plate from which she ate her daily bread,
and to the jewels which she wore in her ears.

Thousands of hoarse voices greeted the eloquence of the archdukes with
rude acclamations, while the discharge of arquebus and volleys of cannon
testified to the martial ardour with which the troops were inspired; none
being more enthusiastic than the late mutineers.  The army marched at
once, under many experienced leaders--Villars, Zapena, and Avalos among
the most conspicuous.  The command of the artillery was entrusted to
Velasco; the marshal-general of the camp was Frederic van den Berg, in
place of the superannuated Peter Ernest; while the Admiral of Arragon,
Francisco de Mendoza, "terror of Germany and of Christendom," a little
man with flowing locks, long hooked nose, and a sinister glance from his
evil black eyes, was general of the cavalry.  The admiral had not
displayed very extraordinary genius in his recent campaigning in the
Rhenish duchies, but his cruelty had certainly been conspicuous.  Not
even Alva could have accomplished more murders and other outrages in the
same space of time than had been perpetrated by the Spanish troops during
the infamous winter of 1598-9.  The assassination of Count Broeck at his
own castle had made more stir than a thousand other homicides of nameless
wretches at the same period had done, because the victim had been a man
of rank and large possessions, but it now remained to be seen whether
Mendoza was to gain fresh laurels of any kind in the battle which was
probably impending.

On the 1st of July the archduke came before Oudenburg.  Not a soul within
that fortress nor in Ostend dreamed of an enemy within twenty miles of
them, nor had it been supposed possible that a Spanish army could take
the field for many weeks to come.  The States-General at Ostend were
complacently waiting for the first bulletin from Maurice announcing his
capture of Nieuport and his advance upon Dunkirk, according to the
program so succinctly drawn up for him, and meantime were holding
meetings and drawing up comfortable protocols with great regularity.
Colonel Piron, on his part, who had been left with several companies of
veterans to hold Oudenburg and the other forts, and to protect the rear
of the invading army, was accomplishing that object by permitting a large
portion of his force to be absent on foraging parties and general
marauding.  When the enemy came before Oudenburg they met with no
resistance.  The fort was surrendered at once, and with it fell the
lesser sconces of Breedene, Snaaskerk, and Plassendaal--all but the more
considerable fort St. Albert.  The archduke, not thinking it advisable to
delay his march by the reduction of this position, and having possession
of all the other fortifications around Ostend, determined to push forward
next morning at daybreak.  He had granted favourable terms of surrender
to the various garrisons, which, however, did not prevent them from being
dearly--every man of them immediately butchered in cold blood.

Thus were these strong and well-manned redoubts, by which Prince Maurice
had hoped to impede for many days the march of a Spanish army--should a
Spanish army indeed be able to take the field at all--already swept off
in an hour.  Great was the dismay in Ostend when Colonel Piron and a few
stragglers brought the heavy news of discomfiture and massacre to the
high and mighty States-General in solemn meeting assembled.

Meanwhile, the States' army before Nieuport, not dreaming of any pending
interruption to their labours, proceeded in a steady but leisurely manner
to invest the city.  Maurice occupied himself in tracing the lines of
encampment and entrenchment, and ordered a permanent bridge to be begun
across the narrowest part of the creek, in order that the two parts of
his army might not be so dangerously divided from each other as they now
were, at high water, by the whole breadth and depth of the harbour.
Evening came on before much had been accomplished on this first day of
the siege.  It was scarcely dusk when a messenger, much exhausted and
terrified, made his appearance at Count Ernest's tent. He was a straggler
who had made his escape from Oudenburg, and he brought the astounding
intelligence that the archduke had already possession of that position
and of all the other forts.  Ernest instantly jumped into a boat and had
himself rowed, together with the messenger, to the headquarters of Prince
Maurice on the other side of the river.  The news was as unexpected as it
was alarming.  Here was the enemy, who was supposed incapable of mischief
for weeks to come, already in the field, and planted directly on their
communications with Ostend.  Retreat, if retreat were desired, was
already impossible, and as to surprising the garrison of Nieuport and so
obtaining that stronghold as a basis for further aggressive operations,
it is very certain that if any man in Flanders was more surprised than
another at that moment it was Prince Maurice himself.  He was too good a
soldier not to see at a glance that if the news brought by the straggler
were true, the whole expedition was already a failure, and that, instead
of a short siege and an easy victory, a great battle was to be fought
upon the sands of Nieuport, in which defeat was destruction of the whole
army of the republic, and very possibly of the republic itself.

The stadholder hesitated.  He was prone in great emergencies to hesitate
at first, but immovable when his resolution was taken.  Vere, who was
asleep in his tent, was sent for and consulted.  Most of the generals
were inclined to believe that the demonstrations at Oudenburg, which had
been so successful, were merely a bravado of Rivas, the commander of the
permanent troops in that district, which were comparatively insignificant
in numbers.  Vere thought otherwise.  He maintained that the archduke was
already in force within a few hours' march of them, as he had always
supposed would be the case.  His opinion was not shared by the rest,
and he went back to his truckle-bed, feeling that a brief repose was
necessary for the heavy work which would soon be upon him.  At midnight
the Englishman was again called from his slumbers.  Another messenger,
sent directly from the States-General at Ostend, had made his way to the
stadholder.  This time there was no possibility of error, for Colonel
Piron had sent the accord with the garrison commanders of the forts which
had been so shamefully violated, and which bore the signature of the
archduke.

It was now perfectly obvious that a pitched battle was to be fought
before another sunset, and most anxious were the deliberations in that
brief midsummer's night.  The dilemma was as grave a one as commander-in-
chief had ever to solve in a few hours.  A portentous change had come
over the prospects of the commonwealth since the arrival of these
despatches.  But a few hours before, and never had its destiny seemed so
secure, its attitude more imposing.  The little republic, which Spain had
been endeavouring forty years long to subjugate, had already swept every
Spanish soldier out of its territory, had repeatedly carried fire and
sword into Spain itself, and even into its distant dependencies, and at
that moment--after effecting in a masterly manner the landing of a great
army in the very face of the man who claimed to be sovereign of all the
Netherlands, and after marching at ease through the heart of his
territory--was preparing a movement, with every prospect of success,
which should render the hold of that sovereign on any portion of
Netherland soil as uncertain and shifting as the sands on which the
States army was now encamped.

The son of the proscribed and murdered rebel stood at the head of as
powerful and well-disciplined an army as had ever been drawn up in line
of battle on that blood-stained soil.  The daughter of the man who had so
long oppressed the provinces might soon be a fugitive from the land over
which she had so recently been endowed with perpetual sovereignty.  And
now in an instant these visions were fading like a mirage.

The archduke, whom poverty and mutiny were to render powerless against
invasion, was following close up upon the heels of the triumphant army of
the stadholder.  A decision was immediately necessary.  The siege of
Nieuport was over before it had begun.  Surprise had failed, assault for
the moment was impossible, the manner how best to confront the advancing
foe the only question.

Vere advised that the whole army should at once be concentrated and led
without delay against the archduke before he should make further
progress.  The advice involved an outrageous impossibility, and it
seems incredible that it could have been given in good faith; still more
amazing that its rejection by Maurice should have been bitterly censured.
Two-thirds of the army lay on the other side of the harbour, and it was
high water at about three o'clock.  While they were deliberating, the sea
was rising, and, so soon as daybreak should make any evolutions possible,
they would be utterly prohibited during several hours by the inexorable
tide.  More time would be consumed by the attempt to construct temporary
bridges (for of course little progress had been made in the stone bridge
hardly begun) or to make use of boats than in waiting for the falling of
the water, and, should the enemy make his appearance while they were
engaged in such confusing efforts, the army would be hopelessly lost.

Maurice, against the express advice of Vere, decided to send his cousin
Ernest, with the main portion of the force established on the right bank
of the harbour, in search of the archduke, for the purpose of holding him
in check long enough to enable the rest of the army to cross the water
when the tide should serve.  The enemy, it was now clear, would advance
by precisely the path over which the States' army had marched that
morning.  Ernest was accordingly instructed to move with the greatest
expedition in order to seize the bridge at Leffingen before the archduke
should reach the deep, dangerous, and marshy river, over which it was the
sole passage to the downs.  Two thousand infantry, being the Scotch
regiment of Edmonds and the Zeelanders of Van der Noot, four squadrons of
Dutch cavalry, and two pieces of artillery composed the force with which
Ernest set forth at a little before dawn on his hazardous but heroic
enterprise.

With a handful of troops he was to make head against an army, and the
youth accepted the task in the cheerful spirit of self-sacrifice which
characterized his house.  Marching as rapidly as the difficult ground
would permit, he had the disappointment, on approaching the fatal point
at about eight o'clock, to see the bridge at Leffingen in the possession
of the enemy.  Maurice had sent off a messenger early that morning with
a letter marked post haste (cito, cito) to Ostend ordering up some four
hundred cavalry-men then stationed in that city under Piron and Bruges,
to move up to the support of Ernest, and to destroy the bridge and dams
at Leffingen before the enemy should arrive.  That letter, which might
have been so effective, was delivered, as it subsequently appeared,
exactly ten days after it was written.  The States, of their own
authority, had endeavoured to send out those riders towards the scene of
action, but it was with great difficulty that they could be got into the
saddle at all, and they positively refused to go further than St. Albert
fort.

What course should he now pursue?  He had been sent to cut the archduke's
road.  He had failed.  Had he remained in his original encampment his
force would have been annihilated by the overwhelming numbers of the
enemy so soon as they reached the right bank of Nieuport haven, while
Maurice could have only looked hopelessly on from the opposite shore.
At least nothing worse than absolute destruction could befal him now.
Should he accept a combat of six or eight to one the struggle would be
hopeless, but the longer it was protracted the better it would be for his
main army, engaged at that very moment as he knew in crossing the haven
with the ebbing tide.  Should he retreat, it might be possible for him to
escape into Fort Albert or even Ostend, but to do so would be to purchase
his own safety and that of his command at the probable sacrifice of the
chief army of the republic.  Ernest hesitated but an instant.  Coming
within carbine-shot of the stream, where he met his cavalry which had
been sent forward at full speed, in the vain hope of seizing or
destroying the bridge before it should be too late, he took up a position
behind a dyke, upon which he placed his two field-pieces, and formed his
troops in line of battle exactly across the enemy's path.  On the right
he placed the regiment of Scots.  On the left was Van der Noot's Zeeland
infantry, garnished with four companies of riders under Risoir, which
stood near St. Mary's church.  The passage from the stream to the downs
was not more than a hundred yards wide, being skirted on both sides by a
swamp.  Here Ernest with his two thousand men awaited the onset of the
archduke's army.  He was perfectly aware that it was a mere question of
time, but he was sure that his preparations must interpose a delay to the
advance of the Spaniards, should his troops, as he felt confident, behave
themselves as they had always done, and that the delay would be of
inestimable value to his friends at the haven of Nieuport.

The archduke paused; for he, too, could not be certain, on observing the
resolute front thus presented to him, that he was not about to engage the
whole of the States' army.  The doubt was but of short duration, however,
and the onset was made.  Ernest's artillery fired four volleys into the
advancing battalions with such effect as to stagger them for a moment,
but they soon afterwards poured over the dyke in over whelming numbers,
easily capturing the cannon.  The attack began upon Ernest's left, and
Risoir's cavalry, thinking that they should be cut off from all
possibility of retreat into Fort St. Albert, turned their backs in the
most disgraceful manner, without even waiting for the assault.  Galloping
around the infantry on the left they infected the Zeelanders with their
own cowardice.  Scarcely a moment passed before Van der Noot's whole
regiment was running away as fast as the troopers, while the Scots on the
right hesitated not for an instant to follow their example.  Even before
the expected battle had begun, one of those hideous and unaccountable
panics which sometimes break out like a moral pestilence to destroy all
the virtue of an army, and to sweep away the best-considered schemes of
a general, had spread through Ernest's entire force.  So soon as the
demi-cannon had discharged their fourth volley, Scots, Zeelanders,
Walloons, pikemen, musketeers, and troopers, possessed by the demon of
cowardice, were running like a herd of swine to throw themselves into the
sea.  Had they even kept the line of the downs in the direction of the
fort many of them might have saved their lives, although none could have
escaped disgrace.  But the Scots, in an ecstasy of fear, throwing away
their arms as they fled, ran through the waters behind the dyke, skimmed
over the sands at full speed, and never paused till such as survived the
sabre and musket of their swift pursuers had literally drowned themselves
in the ocean.  Almost every man of them was slain or drowned.  All the
captains--Stuart, Barclay, Murray, Kilpatrick, Michael, Nesbit--with the
rest of the company officers, doing their best to rally the fugitives,
were killed.  The Zeelanders, more cautious in the midst of their panic,
or perhaps knowing better the nature of the country, were more successful
in saving their necks.  Not more than a hundred and fifty of Van der
Noot's regiment were killed, while such of the cavalry of Bruges and
Piron as had come to the neighbourhood of Fort Albert, not caring to
trust themselves to the shelter of that redoubt, now fled as fast as
their horses' legs would carry them, and never pulled bridle till they
found themselves in Ostend.  And so beside themselves with panic were
these fugitives, and so virulent was the contagion, that it was difficult
to prevent the men who had remained in the fort from joining in the
flight towards Ostend.  Many of them indeed threw themselves over the
walls and were sabred by the enemy when they might have been safe within
the fortifications.  Had these cavalry companies of Bruges and Piron been
even tolerably self-possessed, had they concentrated themselves in the
fort instead of yielding to the delirium which prompted them to
participate in their comrades' flight, they would have had it entirely in
their power, by making an attack, or even the semblance of an attack, by
means of a sudden sally from the fort, to have saved, not the battle
indeed, but a large number of lives.  But the panic was hopeless and
universal, and countless fugitives scrambling by the fort were shot in
a leisurely manner by a comparative few of the enemy as easily as the
rabbits which swarmed in those sands were often knocked down in
multitudes by half-a-dozen sportsmen.

And thus a band of patriots, who were not cowards by nature, and who had
often played the part of men, had horribly disgraced themselves, and were
endangering the very existence of their country, already by mistaken
councils brought within the jaws of death.  The glory of Thermopyla;
might have hung for ever over that bridge of Leffingen.  It was now a
pass of infamy, perhaps of fatal disaster.  The sands were covered with
weapons-sabre, pike, and arquebus--thrown away by almost every soldier as
he fled to save the life which after all was sacrificed.  The artillery,
all the standards and colours, all the baggage and ammunition, every
thing was lost.  No viler panic, no more complete defeat was ever
recorded.  Such at half-past eight in the morning was that memorable
Sunday of the 2nd July, 1600, big with the fate of the Dutch republic
--the festival of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary, always thought of
happy augury for Spanish arms.

Thus began the long expected battle of Nieuport.  At least a thousand of
the choicest troops of the stadholder were slain, while the Spanish had
hardly lost a man.

The archduke had annihilated his enemy, had taken his artillery and
thirty flags.  In great exultation he despatched a messenger to the
Infanta at Ghent, informing her that he had entirely defeated the
advance-guard of the States' army, and that his next bulletin would
announce his complete triumph and the utter overthrow of Maurice, who had
now no means of escape.  He stated also that he would very soon send the
rebel stadholder himself to her as a prisoner.  The Infanta, much pleased
with the promise, observed to her attendants that she was curious to see
how Nassau would conduct himself when he should be brought a captive into
her presence.  As to the Catholic troops, they were informed by the
archduke that after the complete victory which they were that day to
achieve, not a man should be left alive save Maurice and his brother
Frederic Henry.  These should be spared to grace the conqueror's triumph,
but all else should be put to the sword.

Meantime artillery thundered, bonfires blazed, and bells rang their
merriest peals in Ghent, Bruges, and the other obedient cities as the
news of the great victory spread through the land.

When the fight was done the archduke called a council of war.  It was a
grave question whether the army should at once advance in order to
complete the destruction of the enemy that day, or pause for an interval
that the troops fatigued with hard marching and with the victorious
combat in which they just had been engaged, should recover their full
strength.  That the stadholder was completely in their power was certain.
The road to Ostend was barred, and Nieuport would hold him at bay, now
that the relieving army was close upon his heels.  All that was necessary
in order to annihilate his whole force, was that they should entrench
themselves for the night on the road which he must cross.  He would then
be obliged to assault their works with troops inferior in number to
theirs and fatigued by the march.  Should he remain where he was he would
soon be starved into submission, and would be obliged to surrender his
whole army.  On the other hand, by advancing now, in the intolerable heat
of a July sun over the burning and glaring sands, the troops already
wearied would arrive on the field of battle utterly exhausted, and would
be obliged to attack an enemy freshly and cheerfully awaiting them on
ground of his own selection.

Moreover it was absolutely certain that Fort Albert would not hold an
hour if resolutely assaulted in the midst of the panic of Ernest's
defeat, and, with its capture, the annihilalation of Maurice was certain.

Meantime the three thousand men under Velasco, who had been detached to
protect the rear, would arrive to reinforce the archduke's main army,
should he pause until the next day.

These arguments, which had much logic in them, were strongly urged by
Zapena, a veteran marshal of the camp who had seen much service, and
whose counsels were usually received with deference.  But on this
occasion commanders and soldiers were hot for following up their victory.
They cared nothing for the numbers of their enemy, they cried, "The more
infidels the greater glory in destroying them."  Delay might after all
cause the loss of the prize, it was eagerly shouted.  The archduke ought
to pray that the sun might stand still for him that morning, as for
Joshua in the vale of Ajalon.  The foe seeing himself entrapped, with
destruction awaiting him, was now skulking towards his ships, which still
offered him the means of escape.  Should they give him time he would
profit by their negligence, and next morning when they reached Nieuport,
the birds would be flown.  Especially the leaders of the mutineers of
Diest and Thionville were hoarse with indignation at the proposed delay.
They had not left their brethren, they shouted, nor rallied to the
archduke's banner in order to sit down and dig in the sand like
ploughmen.  There was triumph for the Holy Church, there was the utter
overthrow of the heretic army, there was rich booty to be gathered, all
these things were within their reach if they now advanced and smote the
rebels while, confused and panic-stricken, they were endeavouring to
embark in their ships.

While these vehement debates were at the hottest, sails were descried in
the offing; for the archduke's forces already stood upon the edge of the
downs.  First one ship, then another and another, moved steadily along
the coast, returning from Nieuport in the direction of Ostend.

This was more than could be borne.  It was obvious that the rebels were
already making their escape, and it was urged upon the cardinal that
probably Prince Maurice and the other chieftains were on board one of
those very vessels, and were giving him the slip.  With great expedition
it would still be possible to overtake them before the main body could
embark, and the attack might yet be made at the most favourable moment.
Those white sails gleaming in the distance were more eloquent than Zapena
or any other advocate of delay, and the order was given to advance.  And
it was exactly at this period that it still lay within the power of the
States' cavalry at Ostend to partially redeem their character, and to
render very effective service.  Had four or five hundred resolute
troopers hung upon the rear of the Spanish army now, as it moved toward
Nieuport, they might, by judiciously skirmishing, advancing and
retreating according to circumstances, have caused much confusion, and
certainly have so harassed the archduke as to compel the detachment of a
very considerable force of his own cavalry to protect himself against
such assaults.  But the terror was an enduring one.  Those horsemen
remained paralyzed and helpless, and it was impossible for the States,
with all their commands or entreaties, to induce them to mount and ride
even a half mile beyond the city gates.

While these events had been occurring in the neighbourhood of Ostend,
Maurice had not been idle at Nieuport.  No sooner had Ernest been
despatched on his desperate errand than his brother Lewis Gunther was
ordered by the stadholder to get on horseback and ride through the
quarters of the army.  On the previous afternoon there had been so little
thought of an enemy that large foraging parties had gone out from camp in
all directions, and had not returned.  Lewis gave notice that a great
battle was to be expected on the morrow, instead of the tranquil
commencement of a leisurely siege, and that therefore no soul was
henceforth to leave the camp, while a troop of horse was despatched at
the first gleam of daylight to scour the country in search of all the
stragglers.  Maurice had no thought of retreating, and his first care was
to bring his army across the haven.  The arrangements were soon
completed, but it was necessary to wait until nearly low water.  Soon
after eight o'clock Count Lewis began to cross with eight squadrons of
cavalry, and partly swimming, partly wading, effected the passage in
safety.  The advanced guard of infantry, under Sir Francis Vere--
consisting of two thousand six hundred Englishmen, and two thousand eight
hundred Frisians, with some companies of horse, followed by the battalia
under Solms, and the rearguard under Tempel--then slowly and with
difficulty moved along the same dangerous path with the water as high as
their armpits, and often rising nearly over their heads.  Had the
archduke not been detained near the bridge of Leffingen by Ernest's
Scotchmen and Zeelanders during three or four precious hours that
morning; had he arrived, as he otherwise might have done, just as the
States' army--horse, foot, and artillery--was floundering through that
treacherous tide, it would have fared ill for the stadholder and the
republic.  But the devotion of Ernest had at least prevented the attack
of the archduke until Maurice and his men stood on dry land.

Dripping from head to foot, but safe and sound, the army had at last
reached the beach at Nieuport.  Vere had refused his soldiers permission
to denude themselves in crossing of their shoes and lower garments.
There was no time for that, he said, and they would either earn new
clothes for themselves that day, or never need doublet and hose again
any more in the world.  Some hours had elapsed before the tedious and
difficult crossing of infantry, cavalry, artillery, and munition trains
had been accomplished.

Lewis Gunther, with eight squadrons of picked cavalry, including his own
company, Maurice's own, Frederic Henry's own, with Batenburg's arquebus-
men, and other veterans, was first to place himself in battle order on
the beach.  His squadrons in iron corslet and morion, and armed with
lances, carbines, and sabres, stretched across from the water to the
downs.  He had not been long stationed there when he observed that far
away in the direction of Ostend the beach was growing black with troops.
He believed them at first to be his brother Ernest and his forces
returning victorious from their hazardous expedition, but he was soon
undeceived.

A couple of troopers from Ostend came spurring full gallop along the
strand, and almost breathless with dismay, announced that it was the
whole army of the archduke advancing in line of battle.  They were
instantly sent to the rear, without being allowed to speak further, in
order that they might deliver their message in private to the commander-
in-chief.  And most terrible were the tidings to which Maurice now
listened in very secret audience.  Ernest was utterly defeated, his
command cut to pieces, the triumphant foe advancing rapidly, and already
in full sight.  The stadholder heard the tale without flinching, and
having quietly ordered the messengers upon their lives not to open their
lips on the subject to living soul, sent them securely guarded in a boat
on board one of the war-ships in the offing.  With perfect cheerfulness
he then continued his preparations, consulting with Vere, on whom he
mainly relied for the marshalling of the army in the coming conflict.
Undecided as he had sometimes shown himself, he was resolute now.  He
called no council of war, for he knew not how much might be known or
suspected of the disaster already sustained, and he had fully made up
his mind as to the course to be pursued.  He had indeed taken a supreme
resolution.  Entirely out of his own breast, without advising with any
man, he calmly gave directions that every war-ship, transport, barge, or
wherry should put to sea at once.  As the tide had now been long on the
flood, the few vessels that had been aground--within the harbour were got
afloat, and the whole vast, almost innumerable armada, was soon standing
out to sea.  No more heroic decision was ever taken by fighting man.

Sir Francis gave advice that entrenchments should be thrown up on the
north-east, and that instead of advancing towards the enemy they should
await his coming, and refuse the battle that day if possible.  The
Englishman, not aware of the catastrophe at Leffingen, which Maurice had
locked up in his own breast, was now informed by the stadholder that
there were to be no entrenchments that day but those of pike and
arquebus.  It was not the fault of Maurice that the fate of the
commonwealth had been suspended on a silken thread that morning, but he
knew that but one of two issues was possible.  They must fight their way
through the enemy back to Ostend, or perish, every man of them.  The
possibility of surrender did not enter his mind, and he felt that it was
better to hasten the action before the news of Ernest's disaster should
arrive to chill the ardour of the troops.

Meantime Lewis Gunther and his cavalry had been sitting motionless upon
their horses on the beach.  The enemy was already in full view, and the
young general, most desirous to engage in a preliminary skirmish, sent
repeated messages to the stadholder for permission to advance.  Presently
Sir Francis Vere rode to the front, to whom he eagerly urged his request
that the infantry of the vanguard might be, brought up at once to support
him.  On the contrary the English general advised that the cavalry should
fall back to the infantry, in order to avoid a premature movement.  Lewis
strongly objected to this arrangement, on the ground that the mere
semblance of retreat, thus upon the eve of battle, would discourage all
the troops.  But he was over-ruled, for Maurice had expressly enjoined
upon his cousin that morning to defer in all things to the orders of
Vere.  These eight squadrons of horse accordingly shifted their position,
and were now placed close to the edge of the sea, on the left flank of
the vanguard, which Vere had drawn up across the beach and in the downs.
On the edge of the downs, on the narrow slip of hard sand above high-
water mark, and on Vere's right, Maurice had placed a battery of six
demi-cannon.

Behind the advance was the battalia, or centre, under command of that
famous fighter, George Everard Solms, consisting of Germans, Swiss,
French, and Walloons.  The "New Beggars," as the Walloons were called,
who had so recently surrendered the forts of Crevecoeur and St. Andrew,
and gone over from the archduke's service to the army of the States, were
included in this division, and were as eager to do credit to their new
chief as were the mutineers in the archduke's army to merit the
approbation of their sovereign.

The rearguard under Tempel was made up, like the other divisions,
of the blended nationalities of German, Briton, Hollander, and Walloon,
and, like the others, was garnished at each flank with heavy cavalry.

The Spanish army, after coming nearly within cannon-shot of their
adversary, paused.  It was plain that the States' troops were not in so
great a panic as the more sanguine advisers of the archduke had hoped.
They were not cowering among the shipping, preparing to escape.  Still
less had any portion of them already effected their retreat in those
vessels, a few of which had so excited the enemy's ardour when they came
in sight.  It was obvious that a great struggle, in which the forces were
very evenly balanced, was now to be fought out upon those sands.  It was
a splendid tournament--a great duel for life and death between the
champions of the Papacy and of Protestantism, of the Republic and of
absolutism, that was to be fought out that midsummer's day.  The lists
were closed.  The trumpet signal for the fray would soon be blown.

The archduke, in Milanese armour, on a wonderfully beautiful snow-white
Spanish stallion, moved in the centre of his army.  He wore no helmet,
that his men might the more readily recognize him as he rode gallantly to
and fro, marshalling, encouraging, exhorting the troops.  Never before
had he manifested such decided military talent, combined with
unquestionable personal valour, as he had done since this campaign began.
Friend and foe agreed that day that Albert fought like a lion.  He was at
first well seconded by Mendoza, who led the van, and by Villars, La
Bourlotte, Avalos, Zapena, and many other officers of note.  The mutinous
Spanish and Italian cavalry, combined with a few choice squadrons of
Walloon and German horse, were placed in front and on the flanks.  They
were under the special supervision of the admiral, who marshalled their
squadrons and directed their charging, although mounted on a hackney
himself, and not intending to participate in the action.  Then came the
battalia and rear, crowding very closely upon each other.

Face to face with them stood the republican host, drawn up in great solid
squares of infantry, their standards waving above each closely planted
clump of pikemen, with the musketeers fringing their skirts, while the
iron-clad ponderous cavalry of Count Lewis and Marcellus Bax, in black
casque and, corslet, were in front, restlessly expecting the signal for
the onset.  The volunteers of high rank who were then serving on the
staff of the stadholder--the Duke of Holstein, the Prince of Anhalt, two
young Counts Solms, and others--had been invited and even urged to
abandon the field while there was yet time for setting them on board the
fleet.  Especially it was thought desirable that young Frederic Henry,
a mere boy, on whom the hopes of the Orange-Nassau house would rest if
Maurice fell in the conflict, should be spared the fate which seemed
hanging over the commonwealth and her defenders.  But the son of William
the Silent implored his brother with clasped hands not to send him from
his side at that moment, so that Maurice granted his prayer, and caused
him to be provided with a complete suit of armour.  Thus in company with
young Coligny--a lad of his own age, and like himself a grandson of the
great admiral--the youth who was one day to play so noble a part on the
stage of the world's affairs was now to be engaged in his first great
passage of arms.  No one left the field but Sir Robert Sidney, who had
come over from Ostend, from irrepressible curiosity to witness the
arrangements, but who would obviously have been guilty of unpardonable
negligence had he been absent at such a crisis from the important post of
which he was governor for the queen.

The arena of the conflict seemed elaborately prepared by the hand of
nature.  The hard, level, sandy beach, swept clean and smooth by the
ceaseless action of the tides, stretched out far as the eye could reach
in one long, bold, monotonous line.  Like the whole coast of Flanders and
of Holland, it seemed drawn by a geometrical rule, not a cape, cove, or
estuary breaking the perfect straightness of the design.  On the right,
just beyond high-water mark, the downs, fantastically heaped together
like a mimic mountain chain, or like tempestuous ocean-waves suddenly
changed to sand, rolled wild and confused, but still in a regularly
parallel course with the line of the beach.  They seemed a barrier thrown
up to protect the land from being bitten quite away by the ever-restless
and encroaching sea.  Beyond the downs, which were seven hundred yards in
width; extended a level tract of those green fertile meadows,
artificially drained, which are so characteristic a feature of the
Netherland landscapes, the stream which ran from Ostend towards the town
of Nieuport flowing sluggishly through them. It was a bright warm
midsummer day.  The waves of the German Ocean came lazily rolling in upon
the crisp yellow sand, the surf breaking with its monotonous music at the
very feet of the armies.  A gentle south-west breeze was blowing, just
filling the sails of more than a thousand ships in the offing, which
moved languidly along the sparkling sea.  It was an atmosphere better
befitting a tranquil holiday than the scene of carnage which seemed
approaching.

Maurice of Nassau, in complete armour, rapier in hand, with the orange-
plumes waving from his helmet and the orange-scarf across his breast,
rode through the lines, briefly addressing his soldiers with martial
energy.  Pointing to the harbour of Nieuport behind them, now again
impassable with the flood, to the ocean on the left where rode the fleet,
carrying with it all hope of escape by sea, and to the army of the
archduke in front, almost within cannon-range, he simply observed that
they had no possible choice between victory and death.  They must either
utterly overthrow the Spanish army, he said, or drink all the waters of
the sea.  Either drowning or butchery was their doom if they were
conquered, for no quarter was to be expected from their unscrupulous and
insolent foe.  He was there to share their fate, to conquer or to perish
with them, and from their tried valour and from the God of battles he
hoped a more magnificent victory than had ever before been achieved in
this almost perpetual war for independence.  The troops, perfectly
enthusiastic, replied with a shout that they were ready to live or die
with their chieftain, and eagerly demanded to be led upon the foe.
Whether from hope or from desperation they were confident and cheerful.
Some doubt was felt as to the Walloons, who had so lately transferred
themselves from the archduke's army, but their commander, Marquette, made
them all lift up their hands, and swear solemnly to live or die that day
at the feet of Prince Maurice.

Two hours long these two armies had stood looking each other in the face.
It was near two o'clock when the arch duke at last gave the signal to
advance.  The tide was again almost at the full.  Maurice stood firm,
awaiting the assault; the enemy slowly coming nearer, and the rising tide
as steadily lapping away all that was left of the hard beach which
fringed the rugged downs.  Count Lewis chafed with impatience as it
became each moment more evident that there would be no beach left for
cavalry fighting, while in the downs the manoeuvring of horse was
entirely impossible.  Meantime, by command of Vere, all those sandy
hillocks and steeps had been thickly sown with musketeers and pikemen.
Arquebus-men and carabineers were planted in every hollow, while on the
highest and most advantageous elevation two pieces of cannon had been
placed by the express direction of Maurice.  It seemed obvious that the
battle would, after all, be transferred to the downs.  Not long before
the action began, a private of the enemy's cavalry was taken, apparently
with his own consent, in a very trifling preliminary skirmish.  He
bragged loudly of the immense force of the archduke, of the great victory
already gained over Ernest, with the utter annihilation of his forces,
and of the impending destruction of the whole States' army.  Strange to
say, this was the first intimation received by Count Lewis of that grave
disaster, although it had been for some hours known to Maurice.  The
prisoner was at once gagged, that he might spread his disheartening news
no further, but as he persisted by signs and gestures in attempting to
convey the information which he had evidently been sent forward to
impart, he was shot by command of the stadholder, and so told no further
tales.

The enemy had now come very close, and it was the desire of Count Lewis
that a couple of companies of horse, in accordance with the commands of
Maurice, should charge the cavalry in front, and that after a brief
skirmish they should retreat as if panic-stricken behind the advance
column, thus decoying the Spanish vanguard in hot pursuit towards the
battery upon the edge of the downs.  The cannon were then suddenly to
open upon them, and during the confusion sure to be created in their
ranks, the musketeers, ambushed among the hollows, were to attack them
in flank, while the cavalry in one mass should then make a concentrated
charge in front.  It seemed certain that the effect of this movement
would be to hurl the whole of the enemy's advance, horse and foot, back
upon his battalia, and thus to break up his army in irretrievable rout.
The plan was a sensible one, but it was not ingeniously executed.  Before
the handful of cavalry had time to make the proposed feint the
cannoneers, being unduly excited, and by express command of Sir Francis
Vere, fired a volley into the advancing columns of the archduke.  This
precipitated the action; almost in an instant changed its whole
character, and defeated the original plan of the republican leader.
The enemy's cavalry broke at the first discharge from the battery, and
wheeled in considerable disorder, but without panic, quite into and
across the downs.  The whole army of the archduke, which had already been
veering in the same direction, as it advanced, both because the tide was
so steadily devouring the even surface of the sands, and because the
position of a large portion of the States' forces among the hillocks
exposed him to an attack in flank, was now rapidly transferred to the
downs.  It was necessary for that portion of Maurice's army which still
stood on what remained of the beach to follow this movement.  A rapid
change of front was then undertaken, and--thanks to the careful system
of wheeling, marching, and counter-marching in which the army had been
educated by William Lewis and Maurice--was executed with less confusion
than might have been expected.

But very few companies of infantry now remained on the strip of beach
still bare of the waves, and in the immediate vicinity of the artillery
planted high and dry beyond their reach.

The scene was transformed as if by magic, and the battle was now to be
fought out in those shifting, uneven hills and hollows, where every
soldier stood mid-leg deep in the dry and burning sand.  Fortunately for
the States' army, the wind was in its back, blowing both sand and smoke
into the faces of its antagonists, while the already weltering sun glared
fiercely in their eyes.  Maurice had skilfully made use of the great
advantage which accident had given him that day, and his very refusal to
advance and to bring on a premature struggle thus stood him in stead in a
variety of ways Lewis Gunther was now ordered, with Marcellus Bax and six
squadrons of horse, to take position within the belt of pasture land on
the right of the downs.  When he arrived there the van of the archduke's
infantry had already charged the States' advance under Vere, while just
behind and on the side of the musketeers and pikemen a large portion of
the enemy's cavalry was standing stock still on the green.  Without
waiting for instructions Lewis ordered a charge.  It was brilliantly
successful.  Unheeding a warm salutation in flank from the musketeers as
they rode by them, and notwithstanding that they were obliged to take
several ditches as they charged, they routed the enemy's cavalry at the
first onset, and drove them into panic-stricken flight.  Some fled for
protection quite to the rear of their infantry, others were hotly pursued
across the meadows till they took refuge under the walls of Nieuport.
The very success of the attack was nearly fatal however to Count Lewis;
for, unable to restrain the ardour of his troopers in the chase, he found
himself cut off from the army with only ten horsemen to support him, and
completely enveloped by the enemy.  Fortunately Prince Maurice had
foreseen the danger, and had ordered all the cavalry to the meadows so
soon as the charge was made.  Captain Kloet, with a fresh company of
mounted carabineers, marked the little squad of States' cavalry careering
about in the midst of the Catholics, recognized their leader by the
orange-plumes on his calque, and dashed forward to the rescue.  Lewis
again found himself at the head of his cavalry, but was obliged to wait
a long time for the return of the stragglers.

While this brilliant diversion had been enacting as it were on the fringe
of the battle, its real bustle and business had been going on in the
downs.  Just as Lewis made his charge in the pastures, the infantry of
the archduke and the advance guard of the republicans met in deadly
shock.  More than an hour long they contended with varying success.
Musketeers, pikemen, arquebusmen, swordmen, charged, sabred, or shot each
other from the various hollows or heights of vantage, plunging knee-deep
in the sand, torn and impeded by the prickly broom-plant which grew
profusely over the whole surface, and fighting breast to breast and hand
to hand in a vast series of individual encounters.  Thrice were the
Spaniards repulsed in what for a moment seemed absolute rout, thrice they
rallied and drove their assailants at push of pike far beyond their
original position; and again the conquered republicans recovered their
energy and smote their adversaries as if the contest were just begun.
The tide of battle ebbed and flowed like the waves of the sea, but it
would be mere pedantry to affect any technical explanation of its various
changes.  It was a hot struggle of twenty thousand men, pent up in a
narrow space, where the very nature of the ground had made artistic
evolutions nearly impracticable.  The advance, the battalia, even the
rearguard on both sides were mixed together pell-mell, and the downs were
soon covered at every step with the dead and dying-Briton, Hollander,
Spaniard, Italian, Frisian, Frenchman, Walloon, fighting and falling
together, and hotly contesting every inch of those barren sands.

It seemed, said one who fought there, as if the last day of the world had
come.

Political and religious hatred, pride of race, remembrance of a half-
century of wrongs, hope, fury, and despair; these were the real elements
contending with each other that summer's day.  It was a mere trial of
ferocity and endurance, not more scientific than a fight between packs of
wolves and of bloodhounds.

No doubt the brunt of the conflict fell upon Vere, with his Englishmen
and Frisians, for this advance-guard made up nearly one-half of the
States' army actually engaged.  And most nobly, indefatigably, did the
hardy veteran discharge his duty.  Having personally superintended almost
all the arrangements in the morning, he fought all day in the front,
doing the work both of a field-marshal and a corporal.

He was twice wounded, shot each time through the same leg, yet still
fought on as if it were some one else's blood and not his own that was
flowing from "those four holes in his flesh."  He complained that he was
not sufficiently seconded, and that the reserves were not brought up
rapidly enough to his support.  He was manifestly unjust, for although
it could not be doubted that the English and the Frisians did their best,
it was equally certain that every part of the army was as staunch as the
vanguard.  It may be safely asserted that it would not have benefited the
cause of the States, had every man been thrown into the fight at one and
the same moment.

During this "bloody bit," as Vere called it, between the infantry on both
sides, the little battery of two field-pieces planted on the highest
hillock of the downs had been very effective.  Meantime, while the
desperate and decisive struggle had been going on, Lewis Gunther, in the
meadow, had again rallied all the cavalry, which, at the first stage of
the action, had been dispersed in pursuit of the enemy's horse.
Gathering them together in a mass, he besought Prince Maurice to order
him to charge.  The stadholder bade him pause yet a little longer.  The
aspect of the infantry fight was not yet, in his opinion, sufficiently
favourable.  Again and again Lewis sent fresh entreaties, and at last
received the desired permission.  Placing three picked squadrons in
front, the young general made a furious assault upon the Catholic
cavalry, which had again rallied and was drawn up very close to the
musketeers.  Fortune was not so kind to him as at the earlier stage of
the combat.  The charge was received with dauntless front by the Spanish
and Italian horse, while at the same moment the infantry poured a severe
fire into their assailants.  The advancing squadrons faltered, wheeled
back upon the companies following them, and the whole mass of the
republican cavalry broke into wild and disorderly retreat.  At the same
moment the archduke, observing his advantage, threw in his last reserves
of infantry, and again there was a desperate charge upon Vere's wearied
troops, as decisive as the counter charge of Lewis's cavalry had been
unsuccessful.  The English and Frisians, sorely tried during those hours
of fighting with superior numbers in the intolerable heat, broke at last
and turned their backs upon the foe.  Some of them fled panic-stricken
quite across the downs and threw themselves into the sea, but the mass
retreated in a comparatively orderly manner, being driven from one down
to another, and seeking a last refuge behind the battery placed on the
high-water line of the beach.  In the confusion and panic Sir Francis
Vere went down at last.  His horse, killed by a stray shot fell with and
upon him, and the heroic Englishman would then and there have finished
his career--for he would hardly have found quarter from the Spaniards--
had not Sir Robert Drury, riding by in the tumult, observed him as he lay
almost exhausted in the sand.  By his exertion and that of his servant
Higham, Vere was rescued from his perilous situation, placed on the
crupper of Sir Robert's horse, and so borne off the field.

The current of the retreating and pursuing hosts swept by the spot where
Maurice sat on horseback, watching and directing the battle.  His bravest
and best general, the veteran Vere, had fallen; his cousin Lewis was now
as utterly overthrown as his brother Ernest had been but a few hours
before at the fatal bridge of Leffingen; the whole army, the only army,
of the States was defeated, broken, panic-struck; the Spanish shouts of
victory rang on every side.  Plainly the day was lost, and with it the
republic.  In the blackest hour that the Netherland commonwealth had ever
known, the fortitude of the stadholder did not desert him.  Immoveable
as a rock in the torrent he stemmed the flight of his troops.  Three
squadrons of reserved cavalry, Balen's own, Vere's own, and Cecil's, were
all that was left him, and at the head of these he essayed an advance.
He seemed the only man on the field not frightened; and menacing,
conjuring, persuading the fugitives for the love of fatherland, of
himself and his house, of their own honour, not to disgrace and destroy
themselves for ever; urging that all was not yet lost, and beseeching
them at least to take despair for their master, and rather to die like
men on the field than to drown like dogs in the sea, he succeeded in
rallying a portion of those nearest him.  The enemy paused in their mad
pursuit, impressed even more than were the States' troops at the
dauntless bearing of the prince.  It was one of those supreme moments
in battle and in history which are sometimes permitted to influence the
course of events during a long future.  The archduke and his generals
committed a grave error in pausing for an instant in their career.  Very
soon it was too late to repair the fault, for the quick and correct eye
of the stadholder saw the point to which the whole battle was tending,
and he threw his handful of reserved cavalry, with such of the fugitives
as had rallied, straight towards the battery on the beach.

It was arranged that Balen should charge on the strand, Horace Vere
through the upper downs, and Cecil along the margin of the beach.  Balen
rode slowly through the heavy sand, keeping his horses well in wind, and
at the moment he touched the beach, rushed with fury upon the enemy's
foot near the battery.  The moment was most opportune, for the last shot
had been fired from the guns, and they had just been nearly abandoned in
despair.  The onset of Balen was successful: the Spanish infantry, thus
suddenly attached, were broken, and many were killed and taken.  Cecil
and Vere were equally fortunate, so that the retreating English and
Frisians began to hold firm again.  It was the very crisis of the battle,
which up to that instant seemed wholly lost by the republic, so universal
was the overthrow and the flight.  Some hundred and fifty Frisian pikemen
now rallied from their sullen retreat, and drove the enemy off one
hillock or dune.

Foiled in their attempt to intercept the backward movement of the States'
army and to seize this vital point and the artillery with it, the
Spaniards hesitated and were somewhat discouraged.  Some Zeeland sailors,
who had stuck like wax to those demi-cannon during the whole conflict,
now promptly obeyed orders to open yet once more upon the victorious foe.
At the first volley the Spaniards were staggered, and the sailors with a
lively shout of "Ian-fall on," inspired the defeated army with a portion
of their own cheerfulness.  Others vehemently shouted victory without any
reason whatever.  At that instant Maurice ordered a last charge by those
few cavalry squadrons, while the enemy was faltering under the play of
the artillery.  It was a forlorn hope, yet such was the shifting fortune
of that memorable day that the charge decided the battle.  The whole line
of the enemy broke, the conquered became the victors, the fugitives
quickly rallying and shouting victory almost before they had turned their
faces to the foe, became in their turn the pursuers.  The Catholic army
could no longer be brought to a stand, but fled wildly in every
direction, and were shot and stabbed by the republicans as they fled.
The Admiral of Arragon fell with his hackney in this last charge.
Unwounded, but struggling to extricate himself from his horse that had
been killed, he was quickly surrounded by the enemy.

Two Spaniards, Mendo and Villalobos by name, who had recently deserted
to the States, came up at the moment and recognised the fallen admiral.
They had reason to recognise him, for both had been in his service, and
one of them, who was once in immediate household attendance upon him,
bore the mark of a wound which he had received from his insolent master.
"Admiral, look at this," cried Villalobos, pointing to the scar on his
face.  The admiral looked and knew his old servants, and gave his scarf
to the one and the hanger of his sword-belt to the other, as tokens that
he was their prisoner.  Thus his life was saved for heavy ransom, of
which those who had actually captured him would receive a very trifling
portion.  The great prisoner was carried to the rear, where he
immediately asked for food and drink, and fell to with an appetite,
while the pursuit and slaughter went on in all directions.

The archduke, too, whose personal conduct throughout the day was
admirable, had been slightly wounded by a halberd stroke on the ear.
This was at an earlier stage of the action, and he had subsequently
mounted another horse, exchanged his splendid armour for a plain black
harness, over which he wore a shabby scarf.  In the confusion of the rout
he was hard beset.  "Surrender, scoundrel!"  cried a Walloon pikeman,
seizing his horse by the bridle.  But a certain Flemish Captain Kabbeljaw
recognising his sovereign and rushing to his rescue, slew his assailant
and four others with his own hand.  He was at last himself killed, but
Albert escaped, and, accompanied by the Duke of Aumale, who was also
slightly wounded, by Colonel La Bourlotte, and half a dozen troopers rode
for their life in the direction of Bruges.  When they reached the fatal
bridge of Leffingen, over which the archduke had marched so triumphantly
but a few hours before to annihilate Count Ernest's division, he was
nearly taken prisoner.  A few soldiers, collected from the scattered
garrisons, had occupied the position, but knowing nothing of the result
of the action in the downs, took to their heels and fled as the little
party of cavaliers advanced.  Had the commander at Ostend or the States-
General promptly sent out a company or two so soon as the news of the
victory reached them to seize this vital point, the doom of the archduke
would have been sealed.  Nothing then could have saved him from capture.
Fortunately escaping this danger, he now pushed on, and never pulled
bridle till he reached Bruges.  Thence without pausing he was conveyed to
Ghent, where he presented himself to the Infanta.  He was not accompanied
by the captive Maurice of Nassau, and the curiosity of the princess to
know how that warrior would demean himself as a prisoner was not destined
on this occasion to be gratified.

Isabella bore the disappointment and the bitter intelligence of the
defeat with a stoicism worthy of her departed father.  She had already
had intimations that the day was going against her army, and had
successively received tidings that her husband was killed, was
dangerously wounded, was a prisoner; and she was now almost relieved
to receive him, utterly defeated, but still safe and sound.

Meantime the mad chase continued along the beach and through the downs.
Never was a rout more absolute than that of Albert's army.  Never had so
brilliant a victory been achieved by Hollander or Spaniard upon that
great battleground of Europe--the Netherlands.

Maurice, to whom the chief credit of the victory was unquestionably due,
had been firm and impassive during the various aspects of the battle,
never losing his self-command when affairs seemed blackest.  So soon,
however, as the triumph, after wavering so long, was decided in his
favour--the veteran legions of Spain and Italy, the picked troops of
Christendom, all flying at last before his troops--the stadholder was
fairly melted.  Dismounting from his horse, he threw himself on his knees
in the sand, and with streaming eyes and uplifted hands exclaimed,
"O God, what are we human creatures to whom Thou hast brought such
honour, and to whom Thou hast vouchsafed such a victory!"

The slaughter went on until nightfall, but the wearied conquerors were
then obliged to desist from the pursuit.  Three thousand Spaniards were
slain and about six hundred prisoners were taken.  The loss of the
States' army; including the affair in the morning at Leffingen, was about
two thousand killed.  Maurice was censured for not following up his
victory more closely, but the criticism seems unjust.  The night which
followed the warm summer's day was singularly black and cloudy, the army
was exhausted, the distance for the enemy to traverse before they found
themselves safe within their own territory was not great.  In such
circumstances the stadholder might well deem himself sufficiently
triumphant to have plucked a splendid victory out of the very jaws of
death.  All the artillery of the archduke--seven pieces besides the two
captured from Ernest in the morning--one hundred and twenty standards,
and a long list of distinguished prisoners, including the Admiral Zapena
and many other officers of note, were the trophies of the conqueror.
Maurice passed the night on the battle-field; the admiral supping with
him in his tent.  Next morning he went to Ostend, where a great
thanksgiving was held, Uytenbogart preaching an eloquent sermon on the
116th Psalm.  Afterwards there was a dinner at the house of the States-
General, in honour of the stadholder, to which the Admiral of Arragon was
likewise bidden.  That arrogant but discomfited personage was obliged to
listen to many a rough martial joke at his disaster as they sat at table,
but he bore the brunt of the encounter with much fortitude.

"Monsieur the Admiral of Arragon," said the stadholder in French, "is
more fortunate than many of his army.  He has been desiring these four
years to see Holland.  Now he will make his entrance there without
striking a blow."  The gibe was perhaps deficient in delicacy towards a
fallen foe, but a man who had passed a whole winter in murdering his
prisoners in cold blood might be satisfied if he were stung only by a
sharp sarcasm or two, when he had himself become a captive.

Others asked him demurely what he thought of these awkward apprentices
of Holland and Zeeland, who were good enough at fighting behind dykes and
ramparts of cities, but who never ventured to face a Spanish army in the
open field.  Mendoza sustained himself with equanimity however, and found
plenty of answers.  He discussed the battle with coolness, blamed the
archduke for throwing the whole of his force prematurely into the
contest, and applauded the prudence of Maurice in keeping his reserves in
hand.  He ascribed a great share of the result to the States' artillery,
which had been well placed upon wooden platforms and well served, while
the archduke's cannon, sinking in the sands, had been of comparatively
little use.  Especially he expressed a warm admiration for the heroism of
Maurice in sending away his ships, and in thus leaving himself and his
soldiers no alternative but death or triumph.

While they still sat at table many of the standards taken from the enemy
were brought in and exhibited; the stadholder and others amusing
themselves with reading the inscriptions and devices emblazoned upon
them.

And thus on the 2nd July, 1600, the army of the States-General, led by
Maurice of Nassau, had utterly defeated Albert of Austria.

     ["Enfin l'affaire vint auix mains et fut combattu bien furieusement
     de deux costes l'espace de deux heures.  Enfin Dieu par sa grace
     voulut que la victoire demeura de more coste."  Such were the simple
     words in which Maurice announced to his cousin Lewis William his
     victory in the most important battle that had been fought for half a
     century.  Not even General Ulysses Grant could be more modest in the
     hour of immense triumph.]

Strange to say--on another 2nd July, three centuries and two years
before, a former Albert of Austria had overthrown the emperor Adolphus of
Nassau, who had then lost both crown and life in the memorable battle of
Worms.  The imperial shade of Maurice's ancestor had been signally
appeased.

In Ostend, as may well be imagined, ineffable joy had succeeded to the
horrible gloom in which the day had been passed, ever since the tidings
had been received of Ernest's overthrow.

Those very cavalry men, who had remained all day cowering behind the
walls of the city, seeing by the clouds of dust which marked the track of
the fugitives that the battle had been won by the comrades whom they had
so basely deserted in the morning, had been eager enough to join in the
pursuit.  It was with difficulty that the States, who had been unable to
drive them out of the town while the fight was impending or going on,
could keep enough of them within the walls to guard the city against
possible accident, now that the work was done.  Even had they taken the
field a few hours earlier, without participating in the action, or
risking their own lives, they might have secured the pass of Leffingen,
and made the capture of the archduke or his destruction inevitable.

The city, which had seemed deserted, swarmed with the garrison and with
the lately trembling burghers, for it seemed to all as if they had been
born again.  Even the soldiers on the battle-field had embraced each
other like comrades who had met in another world.  "Blessed be His holy
name," said the stadholder's chaplain, "for His right hand has led us
into hell and brought us forth again.  I know not," he continued, "if I
am awake or if I dream, when I think how God has in one moment raised us
from the dead."

Lewis Gunther, whose services had been so conspicuous, was well rewarded.
"I hope," said that general, writing to his brother Lewis William, "that
this day's work will not have been useless to me, both for what I have
learned in it and for another thing.  His Excellency has done me
the honour to give me the admiral for my prisoner."  And equally
characteristic was the reply of the religious and thrifty stadholder
of Friesland.

"I thank God," he said, "for His singular grace in that He has been
pleased to make use of your person as the instrument of so renowned and
signal a victory, for which, as you have derived therefrom not mediocre
praise, and acquired a great reputation, it should be now your duty to
humble yourself before God, and to acknowledge that it is He alone who
has thus honoured you .  .  .  .  You should reverence Him the more, that
while others are admonished of their duty by misfortunes and miseries,
the good God invites you to His love by benefits and honours .  .  .  .
I am very glad, too, that his Excellency has given you the admiral for
your prisoner, both because of the benefit to you, and because it is a
mark of your merit on that day.  Knowing the state of our affairs, you
will now be able to free your patrimony from encumbrances, when otherwise
you would have been in danger of remaining embarrassed and in the power
of others.  It will therefore be a perpetual honour to you that you, the
youngest of us all, have been able by your merits to do more to raise up
our house out of its difficulties than your predecessors or myself have
been able to do."

The beautiful white horse which the archduke had ridden during the battle
fell into the hands of Lewis Gunther, and was presented by him to Prince
Maurice, who had expressed great admiration of the charger.  It was a
Spanish horse, for which the archduke had lately paid eleven hundred
crowns.

A white hackney of the Infanta had also been taken, and became the
property of Count Ernest.

The news of the great battle spread with unexampled rapidity, not only
through the Netherlands but to neighbouring countries.  On the night of
the 7th July (N.S.) five days after the event, Envoy Caron, in England,
received intimations of the favourable news from the French ambassador,
who had received a letter from the Governor of Calais.  Next morning,
very early, he waited on Sir Robert Cecil at Greenwich, and was admitted
to his chamber, although the secretary was not yet out of bed.  He, too,
had heard of the battle, but Richardot had informed the English
ambassador in Paris that the victory had been gained, not by the
stadholder, but by the archduke.  While they were talking, a despatch-
bearer arrived with letters from Vere to Cecil, and from the States-
General to Caron, dated on the 3rd July.  There could no longer be any
doubt on the subject, and the envoy of the republic had now full details
of the glorious triumph which the Spanish agent in Paris had endeavoured
for a time to distort into a defeat.

While the two were conversing, the queen, who had heard of Caron's
presence in the palace, sent down for the latest intelligence.  Cecil
made notes of the most important points in the despatches to be forthwith
conveyed to her Majesty.  The queen, not satisfied however, sent for
Caron himself.  That diplomatist, who had just ridden down from London in
foul weather, was accordingly obliged to present himself--booted and
spurred and splashed with mud from head to foot--before her Majesty.
Elizabeth received him with such extraordinary manifestations of delight
at the tidings that he was absolutely amazed, and she insisted upon his
reading the whole of the letter just received from Olden-Barneveld, her
Majesty listening very patiently as he translated it out of Dutch into
French.  She then expressed unbounded admiration of the States-General
and of Prince Maurice.  The sagacious administration of the States'
government is so full of good order and policy," she said, "as to far
surpass in its wisdom the intelligence of all kings and potentates."
We kings," she said, "understand nothing of such affairs in comparison,
but require, all of us, to go to school to the States-General."  She
continued to speak in terms of warm approbation of the secrecy and
discretion with which the invasion of Flanders had been conducted, and
protested that she thanked God on both knees for vouchsafing such a
splendid victory to the United Provinces.

Yet after all, her Majesty, as mankind in general, both wise and simple,
are apt to do, had judged only according to the result, and the immediate
result.  No doubt John of Barneveld was second to no living statesman in
breadth of view and adroitness of handling, yet the invasion of Flanders,
which was purely his work, was unquestionably a grave mistake, and might
easily have proved a fatal one.  That the deadly peril was escaped was
due, not to his prudence, but to the heroism of Maurice, the gallantry of
Vere, Count Lewis Gunther, and the forces under them, and the noble self-
devotion of Ernest.  And even, despite the exertions of these brave men,
it seems certain that victory would have been impossible had the archduke
possessed that true appreciation of a situation which marks the
consummate general.

Surely the Lord seemed to have delivered the enemy into his hands that
morning.  Maurice was shut in between Nieuport on one side and the
archduke's army on the other, planted as it was on the only road of
retreat.  Had Albert entrenched himself, Maurice must either have
attacked at great disadvantage or attempted embarkation in the face of
his enemy.  To stay indefinitely where he was would have proved an
impossibility, and amid the confusion necessary to the shipping of his
army, how could he have protected himself by six demi-cannon placed on
the sea-beach?

That Maurice was able to extricate himself from the horrible dilemma in
which he had been placed, through no fault of his own, and to convert
imminent disaster into magnificent victory, will always redound to his
reputation as a great military chief.  And this was all the fruit of the
expedition, planned, as Elizabeth thought, with so much secrecy and
discretion.  Three days after the battle the stadholder came again before
Nieuport, only to find the garrison strengthened meantime by La Bourlotte
to three thousand men.  A rainy week succeeded, and Maurice then
announced to the States-General the necessity of abandoning an
enterprise, a successful issue to which was in his opinion impossible.
The States-General, grown more modest in military matters, testified
their willingness to be governed by his better judgment, and left Ostend
for the Hague on the 18th July.  Maurice, after a little skirmishing with
some of the forts around that city, in one of which the archduke's
general La Bourlotte was killed, decided to close the campaign, and he
returned with his whole army on the last day of July into Holland.

The expedition was an absolute failure, but the stadholder had gained a
great victory.  The effect produced at home and abroad by this triumphant
measuring of the republican forces, horse, foot, and artillery, in a
pitched battle and on so conspicuous an arena, with the picked veterans
of Spain and Italy, was perhaps worth the cost, but no other benefit was
derived from the invasion of Flanders.

The most healthy moral to be drawn from this brief but memorable campaign
is that the wisest statesmen are prone to blunder in affairs of war,
success in which seems to require a special education and a distinct
genius.  Alternation between hope and despair, between culpable audacity
and exaggerated prudence, are but too apt to mark the warlike counsels of
politicians who have not been bred soldiers.  This, at least, had been
eminently the case with Barneveld and his colleagues of the States-
General.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Alas! the benighted victims of superstition hugged their chains
Culpable audacity and exaggerated prudence
The wisest statesmen are prone to blunder in affairs of war



End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v73
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 74, 1600-1602





CHAPTER XXXIX.

     Effects of the Nieuport campaign--The general and the statesman--
     The Roman empire and the Turk--Disgraceful proceedings of the
     mutinous soldiers in Hungary--The Dunkirk pirates--Siege of Ostend
     by the Archduke--Attack on Rheinberg by Prince Maurice--Siege and
     capitulation of Meura--Attempt on Bois-le-Duc--Concentration of the
     war at Ostend--Account of the belligerents--Details of the siege--
     Feigned offer of Sir Francis Vere to capitulate--Arrival of
     reinforcements from the States--Attack and overthrow of the
     besiegers.

The Nieuport campaign had exhausted for the time both belligerents.
The victor had saved the republic from impending annihilation, but was
incapable of further efforts during the summer.  The conquered cardinal-
archduke, remaining essentially in the same position as before, consoled
himself with the agreeable fiction that the States, notwithstanding their
triumph, had in reality suffered the most in the great battle.  Meantime
both parties did their best to repair damages and to recruit their
armies.

The States--or in other words Barneveld, who was the States--had learned
a lesson.  Time was to show whether it would be a profitable one, or
whether Maurice, who was the preceptor of Europe in the art of war, would
continue to be a docile pupil of the great Advocate even in military
affairs.  It is probable that the alienation between the statesman and
the general, which was to widen as time advanced, may be dated from the
day of Nieuport.

Fables have even been told which indicated the popular belief in an
intensity of resentment on the part of the prince, which certainly did
not exist till long afterwards.

"Ah, scoundrel!"  the stadholder was said to have exclaimed, giving the
Advocate a box on the ear as he came to wish him joy of his great
victory, "you sold us, but God prevented your making the transfer."

History would disdain even an allusion to such figments--quite as
disgraceful, certainly to Maurice as to Barneveld--did they not point the
moral and foreshadow some of the vast but distant results of events which
had already taken place, and had they not been so generally repeated that
it is a duty for the lover of truth to put his foot upon the calumny,
even at the risk for a passing moment of reviving it.

The condition of the war in Flanders had established a temporary
equilibrium among the western powers--France and England discussing,
intriguing, and combining in secret with each other, against each other,
and in spite of each other, in regard to the great conflict--while Spain
and the cardinal-archduke on the one side, and the republic on the other,
prepared themselves for another encounter in the blood-stained arena.

Meantime, on the opposite verge of what was called European civilization,
the perpetual war between the Roman Empire and the Grand Turk had for the
moment been brought into a nearly similar equation.  Notwithstanding the
vast amount of gunpowder exploded during so many wearisome years, the
problem of the Crescent and the Cross was not much nearer a solution in
the East than was that of mass and conventicle in the West.  War was the
normal and natural condition of mankind.  This fact, at least, seemed to
have been acquired and added to the mass of human knowledge.

From the prolific womb of Germany came forth, to swell impartially the
Protestant and Catholic hosts, vast swarms of human creatures.  Sold by
their masters at as high prices as could be agreed upon beforehand, and
receiving for themselves five stivers a day, irregularly paid, until the
carrion-crow rendered them the last service, they found at times more
demand for their labor in the great European market than they could fully
supply.  There were not Germans enough every year for the consumption of
the Turk, and the pope, and the emperor, and the republic, and the
Catholic king, and the Christian king, with both ends of Europe ablaze at
once.  So it happened that the Duke of Mercoeur and other heroes of the
League, having effected their reconciliation with the Bearnese, and for a
handsome price paid down on the nail having acknowledged him to be their
legitimate and Catholic sovereign, now turned their temporary attention
to the Turk.  The sweepings of the League--Frenchmen, Walloons, Germans,
Italians, Spaniards--were tossed into Hungary, because for a season the
war had become languid in Flanders.  And the warriors grown grey in the
religious wars of France astonished the pagans on the Danube by a variety
of crimes and cruelties such as Christians only could imagine.  Thus,
while the forces of the Sultan were besieging Buda, a detachment of
these ancient Leaguers lay in Pappa, a fortified town not far from Raab,
which Archduke Maximilian had taken by storm two years before.  Finding
their existence monotonous and payments unpunctual, they rose upon the
governor; Michael Maroti, and then entered into a treaty with the Turkish
commander outside the walls.  Bringing all the principal citizens of the
town, their wives and children, and all their moveable property into the
market-place, they offered to sell the lot, including the governor, for a
hundred thousand rix dollars.  The bargain was struck, and the Turk,
paying him all his cash on hand and giving hostages for the remainder,
carried off six hundred of the men and women, promising soon to
return and complete the transaction.  Meantime the imperial general,
Schwartzenberg, came before the place, urging the mutineers with promises
of speedy payment, and with appeals to their sense of shame, to abstain
from the disgraceful work.  He might as well have preached to the wild
swine swarming in the adjacent forests.  Siege thereupon was laid to the
place.  In a sortie the brave Schwartzenberg was killed, but Colonitz
coming up in force the mutineers were locked up in the town which they
had seized, and the Turk never came to their relief.  Famine drove them
at last to choose between surrender and a desperate attempt to cut their
way out.  They took the bolder course, and were all either killed or
captured.  And now--the mutineers having given the Turk this lesson in
Christian honour towards captives--their comrades and the rest of the
imperial forces showed them the latest and most approved Christian method
of treating mutineers.  Several hundred of the prisoners were distributed
among the different nationalities composing the army to be dealt with at
pleasure.  The honest Germans were the most straightforward of all
towards their portion of the prisoners, for they shot them down at once,
without an instant's hesitation.  But the Lorrainers, the remainder of
the French troops, the Walloons, and especially the Hungarians--whose
countrymen and women had been sold into captivity--all vied with each
other in the invention of cruelties at which the soul sickens, and which
the pen almost refuses to depict.

These operations and diversions had no sensible effect upon the progress
of the war, which crept on with the same monotonous and sluggish cruelty
as ever; but the incidents narrated paint the course of civilization more
vividly than the detailed accounts of siege and battle; mining and
countermining, assaults and ambuscades can do, of which the history books
are full.  The leaguers of Buda and of other cities and fortresses in
Hungary went their course; and it was destined to remain for a still
longer season doubtful whether Cross or Crescent should ultimately wave
over the whole territory of Eastern Europe, and whether the vigorous
Moslem, believing in himself, his mission, his discipline, and his
resources, should ultimately absorb what was left of the ancient Roman
Empire.

Meantime, such of the Walloons, Lorrainers, Germans, and Frenchmen as had
grown wearied of the fighting on the Danube and the Theiss--might have
recourse for variety to the perpetual carnage on the Meuse, the Rhine,
and the Scheld.  If there was not bloodshed enough for all, it was surely
not the fault of Mahomet, nor Clement, nor Philip.

During the remainder of the year not much was done in of the stadholder
or the cardinal, but there was immense damage done to the Dutch shipping
by the famous privateersman, Van der Waecken, with his squadron of twelve
or fourteen armed cruisers.  In vain had the States exerted themselves to
destroy the robbers cave, Dunkirk.  Shiploads of granite had been brought
from Norway, and stone fleets had been sunk in the channel, but the
insatiable quicksands had swallowed them as fast as they could be
deposited, the tide rolled as freely as before, and the bold pirates
sailed forth as gaily as ever to prey upon the defenceless trading
vessels and herring-smacks of the States.  For it was only upon non-
combatants that Admiral Van der Waecken made war, and the fishermen
especially, who mainly belonged to the Memnonite religion, with its
doctrines of non-resistance--not a very comfortable practice in that
sanguinary age--were his constant victims.  And his cruelties might have
almost served as a model to the Christian warriors on the Turkish
frontier.  After each vessel had been rifled of everything worth
possessing, and then scuttled, the admiral would order the crews to be,
thrown overboard at once, or, if he chanced to be in a merry mood, would
cause them to be fastened to the cabin floor, or nailed crossways on the
deck and then would sail away leaving ship and sailors to sink at
leisure.  The States gave chase as well as they could to the miscreant--
a Dutchman born, and with a crew mainly composed of renegade
Netherlanders and other outcasts, preying for base lucre on their
defenceless countryman--and their cruisers were occasionally fortunate
enough to capture and bring in one of the pirate ships.  In such cases,
short shrift was granted, and the buccaneers were hanged without mercy,
thirty-eight having been executed in one morning at Rotterdam.  The
admiral with most of his vessels escaped, however, to the coast of Spain,
where his crews during the autumn mainly contrived to desert, and where
he himself died in the winter, whether from malady, remorse, or
disappointment at not being rewarded by a high position in the Spanish
navy.

The war was in its old age.  The leaf of a new century had been turned,
and men in middle life had never known what the word Peace meant.
Perhaps they could hardly imagine such a condition.  This is easily said,
but it is difficult really to picture to ourselves the moral constitution
of a race of mankind which had been born and had grown up, marrying and
giving in marriage, dying and burying their dead, and so passing on from
the cradle towards the grave, accepting the eternal clang of arms, and
the constant participation by themselves and those nearest to them in the
dangers, privations, and horrors of siege and battle-field as the
commonplaces of life.  At least, those Netherlanders knew what fighting
for independence of a foreign tyrant meant.  They must have hated Spain
very thoroughly, and believed in the right of man to worship God
according to the dictates of his conscience, and to govern himself upon
his own soil, however meagre, very earnestly, or they would hardly have
spent their blood and treasure, year after year; with such mercantile
regularity when it was always in their power to make peace by giving up
the object for which they had been fighting.

Yet the war, although in its old age, was not fallen into decrepitude.
The most considerable and most sanguinary pitched battle of what then
were modern times had just been fought, and the combatants were preparing
themselves for a fresh wrestle, as if the conflict had only begun.  And
now--although the great leaguers of Harlem, Leyden, and Antwerp, as well
as the more recent masterpieces of Prince Maurice in Gelderland and
Friesland were still fresh in men's memory--there was to be a siege,
which for endurance, pertinacity, valour, and bloodshed on both sides,
had not yet been foreshadowed, far less equalled, upon the fatal
Netherland soil.

That place of fashionable resort, where the fine folk of Europe now
bathe, and flirt, and prattle politics or scandal so cheerfully during
the summer solstice--cool and comfortable Ostend--was throughout the
sixteenth century as obscure a fishing village as could be found in
Christendom.  Nothing, had ever happened there, nobody had ever lived
there, and it was not until a much later period that the famous oyster,
now identified with its name, had been brought to its bay to be educated.
It was known for nothing except for claiming to have invented the
pickling of herrings, which was not at all the fact.  Towards the latter
part of the century, however, the poor little open village had been
fortified to such purpose as to enable it to beat off the great Alexander
Farnese, when he had made an impromptu effort to seize it in the year
1583, after his successful enterprise against Dunkirk and Nieuport, and
subsequent preparation had fortunately been made against any further
attempt.  For in the opening period of the new century thousands and tens
of thousands were to come to those yellow sands, not for a midsummer
holiday, but to join hands in one of the most enduring struggles that
history had yet recorded, and on which the attention of Europe was for a
long time to be steadily fixed.

Ostend--East-end--was the only possession of the republic in Flanders.
Having been at last thoroughly fortified according to the principles of
the age, it was a place whence much damage was inflicted upon the enemy,
and whence forays upon the obedient Flemings could very successfully be
conducted.  Being in the hands of so enterprising a naval power, it
controlled the coast, while the cardinal-archduke on the other side
fondly hoped that its possession would give him supremacy on the sea.
The States of Flanders declared it to be a thorn in the Belgic lion's
foot, and called urgently upon their sovereign to remove the annoyance.

They offered Albert 300,000 florins a month so long as the siege should
last, besides an extraordinary sum of 300,000, of which one third was to
be paid when the place should be invested, one-third when the breach had
been made, and one-third after the town had been taken.  It was obvious
that, although they thought the extraction of the thorn might prove
troublesome, the process would be accomplished within a reasonable time.
The cardinal-archduke, on his part, was as anxious as the "members" of
Flanders.  Asking how long the Duke of Parma had been in taking Antwerp,
and being told "eighteen months," he replied that, if necessary, he was
willing to employ eighteen years in reducing Ostend.

The town thus about to assume so much importance in the world's eye had
about three thousand inhabitants within its lowly; thatch-roofed houses.
It fronted directly upon the seacoast and stretched backward in a
southerly direction, having the sandy downs on the right and left, and a
swampy, spongy soil on the inner verge, where it communicated with the
land.  Its northern part, small and scarcely inhabited, was lashed by the
ocean, and exposed to perpetual danger from its storms and flood-tides,
but was partially protected from these encroachments by a dyke stretching
along the coast on the west.  Here had hitherto been the harbour formed
by the mouth of the river Iperleda as it mingled with the sea, but this
entrance had become so choked with sand as to be almost useless at low
water.  This circumstance would have rendered the labours of the archduke
comparatively easy, and much discouraged the States, had there not
fortunately been a new harbour which had formed itself on the eastern
side exactly at the period of threatened danger.  The dwarf mountain
range of dunes which encircled the town on the eastern side had been
purposely levelled, lest the higher summits should offer positions of
vantage to a besieging foe.  In consequence of this operation, the sea
had burst over the land and swept completely around the place, almost
converting it into an island, while at high water there opened a wide and
profound gulf which with the ebb left an excellent channel quite deep
enough for even the ships of war of those days.  The next care of the
States authorities was to pierce their fortifications on this side at a
convenient point, thus creating a safe and snug haven within the walls
for the fleets of transports which were soon to arrive by open sea, laden
with soldiers and munitions.

The whole place was about half an hour's walk in circumference.  It was
surrounded with a regular counterscarp, bastions, and casemates, while
the proximity of the ocean and the humid nature of the soil ensured it a
network of foss and canal on every side.  On the left or western side,
where the old harbour had once been, and which was the most vulnerable by
nature, was a series of strong ravelins, the most conspicuous of which
were called the Sand Hill, the Porcupine, and Hell's Mouth.  Beyond
these, towards the southwest, were some detached fortifications, resting
for support, however, upon the place itself, called the Polder, the
Square, and the South Square.  On the east side, which was almost
inaccessible, as it would seem, by such siege machinery as then existed,
was a work called the Spanish half-moon, situate on the new harbour
called the Guele or Gullet.

Towards the west and southwest, externally, upon the territory of
Flanders--not an inch of which belonged to the republic, save the sea-
beaten corner in which nestled the little town-eighteen fortresses had
been constructed by the archduke as a protection against hostile
incursions from the place.  Of these, the most considerable were
St. Albert, often mentioned during the Nieuport campaign, St. Isabella
St. Clara, and Great-Thirst.

On the 5th July, 1601, the archduke came before the town, and formally
began the siege.  He established his headquarters in the fort which bore
the name of his patron saint.  Frederic van den Berg meanwhile occupied
fort Breden on the eastern side, with the intention, if possible, of
getting possession of the Gullet, or at least of rendering the entrance
to that harbour impossible by means of his hostile demonstrations.  Under
Van den Berg was Count Bucquoy-Longueval, a Walloon officer of much
energy and experience, now general-in-chief of artillery in the
archduke's army.

The numbers with which Albert took the field at first have not been
accurately stated, but it is probable that his object was to keep as many
as twenty thousand constantly engaged in the siege, and that in this
regard he was generally successful.

Within the town were fifty-nine companies of infantry, to which were soon
added twenty-three more under command of young Chatillon, grandson of the
great Coligny.  It was "an olla podrida of nationalities," according to
the diarist of the siege--[Meteren].  English, Scotch, Dutch, Flemings,
Frenchmen, Germans, mixed in about equal proportions.  Commander-in-
chief at the outset was Sir Francis Vere, who established himself by the
middle of July in the place, sent thither by order of the States-General.
It had been the desire of that assembly that the stadholder should make
another foray in Flanders for the purpose of driving off the archduke
before he should have time to complete his preliminary operations.  But
for that year at least Maurice was resolved not to renounce his own
schemes in deference to those so much more ignorant than himself of the
art of war, even if Barneveld and his subordinates on their part had not
learned a requisite lesson of modesty.

So the prince, instead of risking another Nieuport campaign, took the
field with a small but well-appointed force, about ten thousand men in
all, marched to the Rhine, and early in June, laid siege to Rheinberg.
It was his purpose to leave the archduke for the time to break his teeth
against the walls of Ostend, while he would himself protect the eastern
frontier, over which came regular reinforcements and supplies for the
Catholic armies.  His works were laid out with his customary precision
and neatness.  But, standing as usual, like a professor at his
blackboard, demonstrating his proposition to the town, he was disturbed
in his calculations by the abstraction from his little army of two
thousand English troops ordered by the States-General to march to the
defence of Ostend.  The most mathematical but most obedient of princes,
annoyed but not disconcerted, sent off the troops but continued his
demonstration.

"By this specimen," cried the French envoy, with enthusiasm, "judge of
the energy of this little commonwealth.  They are besieging Berg with an
army of twelve thousand men, a place beyond the frontier, and five days'
march from the Hague.  They are defending another important place,
besieged by the principal forces of the archdukes, and there is good
chance of success at both points.  They are doing all this too with such
a train of equipages of artillery, of munitions, of barks, of ships of
war, that I hardly know of a monarch in the world who would not be
troubled to furnish such a force of warlike machinery."

By the middle of July he sprang a mine under the fortifications, doing
much damage and sending into the air a considerable portion of the
garrison.  Two of the soldiers were blown into his own camp, and one of
them, strangely enough, was but slightly injured.  Coming as he did
through the air at cannon-ball speed, he was of course able to bring the
freshest intelligence from the interior of the town.

His news as to the condition of the siege confirmed the theory of the
stadholder.  He persisted in his operations for three weeks longer, and
the place was then surrendered.  The same terms--moderate and honourable
were given to the garrison and the burghers as in all Maurice's
victories.  Those who liked to stay were at liberty to do so, accepting
the prohibition of public worship according to the Roman ritual, but
guaranteed against inquisition into household or conscience.  The
garrison went out with the honours of war, and thus the place, whose
military value caused it to change hands almost as frequently as a
counter in a game, was once more in possession of the republic.  In the
course of the following week Maurice laid siege to the city of Meurs, a
little farther up the Rhine, which immediately capitulated.  Thus the
keys to the debatable land of Cleves and Juliers, the scene of the
Admiral of Arragon's recent barbarities, were now held by the stadholder.

These achievements were followed by an unsuccessful attempt upon
Bois-le-Duc in the course of November.  The place would have fallen
notwithstanding the slenderness of the besieging army had not a sudden
and severe frost caused the prudent prince to raise the siege.  Feeling
that his cousin Frederic van den Berg, who had been despatched from
before Ostend to command the relieving force near Bois-le-Duc, might take
advantage of the prematurely frozen canals and rivers to make an
incursion into Holland, he left his city just as his works had been
sufficiently advanced to ensure possession of the prize, and hastened to
protect the heart of the republic from possible danger.

Nothing further was accomplished by Maurice that year, but meantime
something had been doing within and around Ostend.

For now the siege of Ostend became the war, and was likely to continue
to be the war for a long time to come; all other military operations
being to a certain degree suspended, as if by general consent of both
belligerants, or rendered subsidiary to the main design.  So long as this
little place should be beleaguered it was the purpose of the States, and
of Maurice, acting in harmony with those authorities, to concentrate
their resources so as to strengthen the grip with which the only scrap of
Flanders was held by the republic,

And as time wore on, the supposed necessities of the wealthy province,
which, in political importance, made up a full half of the archduke's
dominions, together with self-esteem and an exaggerated idea of military
honour, made that prelate more and more determined to effect his purpose.

So upon those barren sands was opened a great academy in which the
science and the art of war were to be taught by the most skilful
practitioners to all Europe; for no general, corporal, artillerist,
barber-surgeon, or engineer, would be deemed to know his trade if he had
not fought at Ostend; and thither resorted month after month warriors of
every rank, from men of royal or of noblest blood to adventurers of
lowlier degree, whose only fortune was buckled at their sides.  From
every land, of every religion, of every race, they poured into the town
or into the besiegers' trenches.  Habsburg and Holstein; Northumberland,
Vere, and Westmoreland; Fairfax and Stuart; Bourbon, Chatillon, and
Lorraine; Bentivoglio, Farnese, Spinola, Grimaldi, Arragon, Toledo,
Avila, Berlaymont, Bucquoy, Nassau, Orange, Solms--such were the historic
names of a few only of the pupils or professors in that sanguinary high
school, mingled with the plainer but well known patronymics of the Baxes,
Meetkerkes, Van Loons, Marquettes, Van der Meers, and Barendrechts, whose
bearers were fighting, as they long had fought, for all that men most
dearly prize on earth, and not to win honour or to take doctors' degrees
in blood.  Papist, Calvinist, Lutheran, Turk, Jew and Moor, European,
Asiatic, African, all came to dance in that long carnival of death; and
every incident, every detail throughout the weary siege could if
necessary be reproduced; for so profound and general was the attention
excited throughout Christendom by these extensive operations, and so new
and astonishing were many of the inventions and machines employed--most
of them now as familiar as gunpowder or as antiquated as a catapult--that
contemporaries have been most bountiful in their records for the benefit
of posterity, feeling sure of a gratitude which perhaps has not been
rendered to their shades.

Especially the indefatigable Philip Fleming-auditor and secretary of
Ostend before and during the siege, bravest, most conscientious, and most
ingenious of clerks--has chronicled faithfully in his diary almost every
cannon-shot that was fired, house that was set on fire, officer that was
killed, and has pourtrayed each new machine that was invented or imagined
by native or foreign genius.  For the adepts or, pretenders who swarmed
to town or camp from every corner of the earth, bringing in their hands
or brains to be disposed of by either belligerents infallible recipes for
terminating the siege at a single blow, if only their theories could be
understood and their pockets be filled, were as prolific and as sanguine
as in every age.  But it would be as wearisome, and in regard to the
history of human culture as superfluous, to dilate upon the technics of
Targone and Giustianini, and the other engineers, Italian and Flemish,
who amazed mankind at this period by their successes, still more by their
failures, or to describe every assault, sortie, and repulse, every
excavation, explosion, and cannonade, as to disinter the details of the
siege of Nineveh or of Troy.  But there is one kind of enginry which
never loses its value or its interest, and which remains the same in
every age--the machinery by which stout hearts act directly upon willing
hands--and vast were the results now depending on its employment around
Ostend.

On the outside and at a distance the war was superintended of course by
the stadholder and commander-in-chief, while his cousin William Lewis,
certainly inferior to no living man in the science of war, and whose
studies in military literature, both ancient and modern, during the brief
intervals of his active campaigning, were probably more profound than
those of any contemporary, was always alert and anxious to assist with
his counsels or to mount and ride to the fray.

In the town Sir Francis Vere commanded.  Few shapes are more familiar to
the student of those times than this veteran campaigner, the offshoot of
a time-honoured race.  A man of handsome, weather-beaten, battle-bronzed
visage, with massive forehead, broad intelligent eyes, a high straight
nose, close-clipped hair, and a great brown beard like a spade; captious,
irascible, but most resolute, he seemed, in his gold inlaid Milan corslet
and ruff of point-lace, the very image of a partizan chieftain; one of
the noblest relics of a race of fighters slowly passing off the world's
stage.

An efficient colonel, he was not a general to be relied upon in great
affairs either in council or the field.  He hated the Nassaus, and the
Nassaus certainly did not admire him, while his inordinate self-esteem,
both personal and national, and his want of true sympathy for the cause
in which, he fought, were the frequent source of trouble and danger to
the republic.

Of the seven or eight thousand soldiers in the town when the siege began,
at least two thousand were English.  The queen, too intelligent, despite
her shrewishness to the Staten; not to be faithful to the cause in which
her own interests were quite as much involved as theirs, had promised
Envoy Caron that although she was obliged to maintain twenty thousand men
in Ireland to keep down the rebels, directly leagued as they were with
Spain and the archdukes, the republic might depend upon five thousand
soldiers from England.  Detachment after detachment, the soldiers came as
fast as the London prisons could be swept and the queen's press-gang
perform its office.  It may be imagined that the native land of those
warriors was not inconsiderably benefited by the grant to the republic
of the right to make and pay for these levies.  But they had all red
uniforms, and were as fit as other men to dig trenches, to defend them;
and to fill them afterwards, and none could fight more manfully or
plunder friend and foe with greater cheerfulness of impartiality than did
those islanders.

The problem which the archduke had set himself to solve was not an easy
one.  He was to reduce a town, which he could invest and had already
succeeded very thoroughly in investing on the land aide, but which was
open to the whole world by sea; while the besieged on their part could
not only rely upon their own Government and people, who were more at home
on the ocean than was any nation in the world, but upon their alliance
with England, a State hardly inferior in maritime resources to the
republic itself.

On the western side, which was the weakest, his progress was from the
beginning the more encouraging, and his batteries were soon able to make
some impression upon the outer works, and even to do considerable damage
to the interior of the town.  In the course of a few months he had fifty
siege-guns in position, and had constructed a practicable road all around
the place, connecting his own fortifications on the west and south with
those of Bucquoy on the east.

Albert's leading thought however was to cut off the supplies.  The freaks
of nature, as already observed, combined with his own exertions, had
effectually disposed of the western harbour as a means of ingress.  The
tide ebbed and flowed through the narrow channel, but it was clogged with
sand and nearly, dry at low water.  Moreover, by an invention then
considered very remarkable, a foundation was laid for the besiegers'
forts and batteries by sinking large and deep baskets of wicker-work,
twenty feet in length, and filled with bricks and sand, within this
abandoned harbour.  These clumsy machines were called sausages,21 and
were the delight of the camp and of all Europe.  The works thus
established on the dry side crept slowly on towards the walls, and some
demi-cannon were soon placed upon, them, but the besieged, not liking
these encroachments, took the resolution to cut the pea-dyke along the
coast which had originally protected the old harbour.  Thus the sea, when
the tides were high and winds boisterous, was free to break in upon the
archduke's works, and would often swallow sausages, men, and cannon far
more rapidly than it was possible to place them there.

Yet still those human ants toiled on, patiently restoring what the
elements so easily destroyed; and still, despite the sea; the cannonade,
and the occasional sorties of the garrison, the danger came nearer and
nearer.  Bucquoy on the other side was pursuing the same system, but his
task was immeasurably more difficult.  The Gullet, or new eastern
entrance, was a whirlpool at high tide, deep, broad, and swift as a
millrace.  Yet along its outer verge he too laid his sausages, protecting
his men at their work as well as he could with gabions, and essayed to
build a dyke of wicker-work upon which he might place a platform for
artillery to prevent the ingress of the republican ships.

And his soldiers were kept steadily at work, exposed all the time to the
guns of the Spanish half-moon from which the besieged never ceased to
cannonade those industrious pioneers.  It was a bloody business.  Night
and day the men were knee-deep in the trenches delving in mud and sand,
falling every instant into the graves which they were thus digging for
themselves, while ever and anon the sea would rise in its wrath and sweep
them with their works away.  Yet the victims were soon replaced by
others, for had not the cardinal-archduke sworn to extract the thorn from
the Belgic lion's paw even if he should be eighteen years about it, and
would military honour permit him to break his vow?  It was a piteous
sight, even for the besieged, to see human life so profusely squandered.
It is a terrible reflection, too, that those Spaniards, Walloons,
Italians, confronted death so eagerly, not from motives of honour,
religion, discipline, not inspired by any kind of faith or fanaticism,
but because the men who were employed in this horrible sausage-making and
dyke-building were promised five stivers a day instead of two.

And there was always an ample supply of volunteers for the service so
long as the five stivers were paid.

But despite all Bucquoy's exertions the east harbour remained as free as
ever.  The cool, wary Dutch skippers brought in their cargoes as
regularly as if there had been no siege at all.  Ostend was rapidly
acquiring greater commercial importance, and was more full of bustle and
business than had ever been dreamed of in that quiet nook since the days
of Robert the Frisian, who had built the old church of Ostend, as one of
the thirty which he erected in honour of St. Peter, five hundred years
before.

For the States did not neglect their favourite little city.  Fleets of
transports arrived day after day, week after week, laden with every
necessary and even luxury for the use of the garrison.  It was perhaps
the cheapest place in all the Netherlands, so great was the abundance.
Capons, bares, partridges, and butcher's meat were plentiful as
blackberries, and good French claret was but two stivers the quart.
Certainly the prospect was not promising of starving the town into a
surrender.

But besides all this digging and draining there was an almost daily
cannonade.  Her Royal Highness the Infanta was perpetually in camp by the
side of her well-beloved Albert, making her appearance there in great
state, with eighteen coaches full of ladies of honour, and always
manifesting much impatience if she did not hear the guns.

She would frequently touch off a forty-pounder with her own serene
fingers in order to encourage the artillerymen, and great was the
enthusiasm which such condescension excited.

Assaults, sorties, repulses, ambuscades were also of daily occurrence,
and often with very sanguinary results; but it would be almost as idle
now to give the details of every encounter that occurred, as to describe
the besieging of a snow-fort by schoolboys.

It is impossible not to reflect that a couple of Parrots and a Monitor or
two would have terminated the siege in half an hour in favor of either
party, and levelled the town or the besiegers' works as if they had been
of pasteboard.

Bucquoy's dyke was within a thousand yards of the harbour's entrance, yet
the guns on his platform never sank a ship nor killed a man on board,
while the archduke's batteries were even nearer their mark.  Yet it was
the most prodigious siege of modern days.  Fifty great guns were in
position around the place, and their balls weighed from ten to forty
pounds apiece.  It was generally agreed that no such artillery practice
had ever occurred before in the world.

For the first six months, and generally throughout the siege, there was
fired on an average a thousand of such shots a day.  In the sieges of the
American civil war there were sometimes three thousand shots an hour, and
from guns compared to which in calibre and power those cannon and demi-
cannon were but children's toys.

Certainly the human arm was of the same length then as now, a pike-thrust
was as effective as the stab of the most improved bayonet, and when it
came, as it was always the purpose to do, to the close embrace of foemen,
the work was done as thoroughly as it could be in this second half of the
nineteenth century.

Nevertheless it is impossible not to hope that such progress in science
must at last render long wars impossible.  The Dutch war of independence
had already lasted nearly forty years.  Had the civil war in America upon
the territory of half a continent been waged with the Ostend machinery it
might have lasted two centuries.  Something then may have been gained for
humanity by giving war such preter-human attributes as to make its
demands of gold and blood too exhaustive to become chronic.

Yet the loss of human life during that summer and winter was sufficiently
wholesale as compared with the meagre results.  Blood flowed in torrents,
for no man could be more free of his soldiers' lives than was the
cardinal-archduke, hurling them as he did on the enemy's works before the
pretence of a practical breach had been effected, and before a reasonable
chance existed of purchasing an advantage at such a price.  Five hundred
were killed outright in half-an-hour's assault on an impregnable position
one autumn evening, and lay piled in heaps beneath the Sand Hill fort-
many youthful gallants from Spain and Italy among them, noble volunteers
recognised by their perfumed gloves and golden chains, and whose pockets
were worth rifling.  The Dutch surgeons, too, sallied forth in strength
after such an encounter, and brought in great bags filled with human fat
esteemed the sovereignst remedy in the world for wounds and disease.

Leaders were killed on both sides.  Catrici, chief of the Italian
artillery, and Braccamonte, commander of a famous Sicilian legion, with
many less-known captains, lost their lives before the town.  The noble
young Chatillon, grandson of Coligny, who had distinguished himself at
Nieuport, fell in the Porcupine fort, his head carried off by a cannon-
ball, which destroyed another officer at his side, and just grazed the
ear of the distinguished Colonel Uchtenbroek.  Sir Francis Vere, too, was
wounded in the head by a fragment of iron, and was obliged to leave the
town for six weeks till his wound should heal.

The unfortunate inhabitants--men, women, and children--were of course
exposed to perpetual danger, and very many were killed.  Their houses
were often burned to the ground, in which cases the English auxiliaries
were indefatigable, not in rendering assistance, but in taking possession
of such household goods as the flames had spared.  Nor did they always
wait for such opportunities, but were apt, at the death of an eminent
burgher, to constitute themselves at once universal legatees.  Thus,
while honest Bartholomew Tysen, a worthy citizen grocer, was standing
one autumn morning at his own door, a stray cannon-ball took off his
head, and scarcely had he been put in a coffin before his house was
sacked from garret to cellar and all the costly spices, drugs, and other
valuable merchandize of his warehouse--the chief magazine in the town--
together with all his household furniture, appropriated by those London
warriors.  Bartholomew's friends and relatives appealed to Sir Francis
Vere for justice, but were calmly informed by that general that Ostend
was like a stranded ship, on its beamends on a beach, and that it was
impossible not to consider it at the mercy of the wreckers.  So with this
highly figurative view of the situation from the lips of the governor of
the place and the commander-in-chief of the English as well as the Dutch
garrison, they were fain to go home and bury their dead, finding when
they returned that another cannonball had carried away poor Bartholomew's
coffin-lid.  Thus was never non-combatant and grocer, alive or dead, more
out of suits with fortune than this citizen of Ostend; and such were the
laws of war, as understood by one of the most eminent of English
practitioners in the beginning of the seventeenth century.  It is true,
however, that Vere subsequently hanged a soldier for stealing fifty
pounds of powder and another for uttering counterfeit money, but
robberies upon the citizens were unavenged.

Nor did the deaths by shot or sword-stroke make up the chief sum of
mortality.  As usual the murrain-like pestilence which swept off its
daily victims both within an without the town, was more effective than
any direct agency of man.  By the month of December the number of the
garrison had been reduced to less than three thousand, while it is
probable that the archduke had not eight thousand effective men left in
his whole army.

It was a black and desolate scene.  The wild waves of the German ocean,
lashed by the wintry gales, would often sweep over the painfully
constructed works of besieger and besieged and destroy in an hour the
labour of many weeks.  The Porcupine's small but vitally-important
ravelin lying out in the counterscarp between the old town and the new,
guarding the sluices by which the water for the town moats and canals was
controlled, and preventing the pioneers of the enemy from undermining the
western wall--was so damaged by the sea as to be growing almost
untenable.  Indefatigably had the besieged attempted with wicker-work and
timber and palisades to strengthen this precious little fort, but they
had found, even as Bucquoy and the archduke on their part had learned,
that the North Sea in winter was not to be dammed by bulrushes.
Moreover, in a bold and successful assault the besiegers had succeeded
in setting fire to the inflammable materials heaped about the ravelin to
such effect that the fire burned for days, notwithstanding the flooding
of the works at each high tide.  The men, working day and night,
scorching in the flames, yet freezing kneedeep in the icy slush of the
trenches and perpetually under fire of the hostile batteries, became
daily more and more exhausted, notwithstanding their determination to
hold the place.  Christmas drew nigh, and a most gloomy, festival it was
like to be, for it seemed as if the beleaguered garrison had been
forgotten by the States.  Weeks had passed away without a single company
being sent to repair the hideous gaps made daily in the ranks of those
defenders of a forlorn hope.  It was no longer possible to hold the
external works; the Square, the Polder, and the other forts on the
southwest which Vere had constructed with so much care and where he had
thus far kept his headquarters.  On Sunday morning,--23rd December, he
reluctantly gave orders that they should be abandoned on the following
day and the whole garrison concentrated within the town.

The clouds were gathering darkly over the head of the gallant Vere; for
no sooner had he arrived at this determination than he learned from a
deserter that the archduke had fixed upon that very Sunday evening for
a general assault upon the place.  It was hopeless for the garrison to
attempt to hold these outer forts, for they required a far larger number
of soldiers than could be spared from the attenuated little army.  Yet
with those forts in the hands of the enemy there would be nothing left
but to make the best and speediest terms that might be obtained.  The
situation was desperate.  Sir Francis called his principal officers
together, announced his resolve not to submit to the humiliation of a
surrender after all their efforts, if there was a possibility of escape
from their dilemma, reminded them that reinforcements might be expected
to arrive at any moment, and that with even a few hundred additional
soldiers the outer works might still be manned and the city saved.
The officers English, Dutch, and French, listened respectfully to his
remarks, but, without any suggestions on their own part, called on him
as their Alexander to untie the Gordian knot.  Alexander solved it, not
with the sword, but with a trick which he hoped might prove sharper than
a sword.  He announced his intention of proposing at once to treat, and
to protract the negotiations as long as possible, until the wished-for
sails should be discerned in the offing, when he would at once break
faith with them, resume hostilities, and so make fools of the besiegers.

This was a device worthy of a modern Alexander whose surname was Farnese.
Even in that loose age such cynical trifling with the sacredness of
trumpets of truce and offers of capitulation were deemed far from
creditable among soldiers and statesmen, yet the council of war highly
applauded the scheme, and importuned the general to carry it at once into
effect.

When it came, however, to selecting the hostages necessary for the
proposed negotiations, they became less ardent and were all disposed to
recede.  At last, after much discussion, the matter was settled, and
before nightfall a drummer was set upon the external parapet of the
Porcupine, who forthwith began to beat vigorously for a parley.  The
rattle was a welcome sound in the ears of the weary besiegers, just drawn
up in column for a desperate assault, and the tidings were at once
communicated to the archduke in Fort St. Albert.  The prince manifested
at first some unwillingness to forego the glory of the attack, from
which he confidently expected a crowning victory, but yielding to the
representations of his chief generals that it was better to have his town
without further bloodshed, he consented to treat.  Hostages were
expeditiously appointed on both sides, and Captains Ogle and Fairfax were
sent that same evening to the headquarters of the besieging army.  It was
at once agreed as a preliminary that the empty outer works of the place
should remain unmolested.  The English officers were received with much
courtesy.  The archduke lifted his hat as they were presented, asked them
of what nation they were, and then inquired whether they were authorized
to agree upon terms of capitulation.  They answered in the negative;
adding, that the whole business would be in the hands of commissioners to
be immediately sent by his Highness, as it was supposed, into the town.
Albert then expressed the hope that there was no fraudulent intention
in the proposition just made to negotiate.  The officers professed
themselves entirely ignorant of any contemplated deception; although
Captain Ogle had been one of the council, had heard every syllable of
Vere's stratagem, and had heartily approved of the whole plot.  The
Englishmen were then committed to the care of a Spanish nobleman of the
duke's staff, and were treated with perfect politeness and hospitality.

Meantime no time was lost in despatching hostages, who should be at the
same time commissioners, to Ostend.  The quartermaster-general of the
army, Don Matteo Antonio, and Matteo Serrano, governor of Sluys, but
serving among the besiegers, were selected for this important business
as personages of ability, discretion, and distinction.

They reached the town, coming in of course from the western side, as
expeditiously as possible, but after nightfall.  Before they arrived at
headquarters there suddenly arose, from some unknown cause, a great alarm
and beating to arms on the opposite or eastern side of the city.  They
were entirely innocent of any participation in this uproar and ignorant
of its cause, but when they reached the presence of Sir Francis Vere they
found that warrior in a towering passion.  There was cheating going on,
he exclaimed.  The Spaniards, he cried, were taking advantage of these
negotiations, and were about, by dishonourable stratagem, to assault the
town.

Astounded, indignant, but utterly embarrassed, the grave Spaniards knew
not how to reply.  They were still more amazed when the general, rising
to a still higher degree of exasperation, absolutely declined to exchange
another word with them, but ordered Captains Carpentier and St. Hilaire,
by whom they had been escorted to his quarters, to conduct them out of
the town again by the same road which had brought them there.  There was
nothing for it but to comply, and to smother their resentment at such
extraordinary treatment as best they could.  When they got to the old
harbour on the western side the tide had risen so high that it was
impossible to cross.

Nobody knew better than Vere, when he gave the order, that this would be
the case; so that when the escorting officers returned to state the fact,
he simply ordered them to take the Spaniards back by the Gullet or
eastern side.  The strangers were not very young men, and being much
fatigued with wandering to and fro in the darkness over the muddy roads,
they begged permission to remain all night in Ostend, if it were only
in a guardhouse.  But Vere was inexorable, after the duplicity which
he affected to have discovered on the part of the enemy.  So the
quartermaster-general and the governor of Sluys, much to the detriment
of their dignity, were forced once more to tramp through the muddy
streets.  And obeying their secret instructions, the escort led them
round and round through the most miry and forlorn parts of the town, so
that, sinking knee-deep at every step into sloughs and quicksands, and
plunging about through the mist and sleet of a dreary December's night,
they at last reached the precincts of the Spanish half-moon on the
Gullet, be-draggled from head to foot and in a most dismal and exhausted
condition.

"Ah, the villainous town of Ostend!" exclaimed Serrano, ruefully
contemplating his muddy boots and imploring at least a pipe of tobacco.
He was informed, however, that no such medical drugs were kept in the
fort, but that a draught of good English ale was much at their service.
The beer was brought in four foaming flagons, and, a little refreshed by
this hospitality, the Spaniards were put in a boat and rowed under the
guns of the fort across the Gullet and delivered to their own sentries on
the outposts of Bucquoy's entrenchments.  By this time it was midnight,
so that it was necessary for them to remain for the night in the eastern
encampment before reporting themselves at Fort St. Albert.

Thus far Vere's comedy had been eminently successful, and by taking
advantage of the accidental alarm and so adroitly lashing himself into a
fictitious frenzy, the general had gained nearly twenty-four additional
hours of precious time on which he had not reckoned.

Next morning, after Serrano and Antonio had reported to the archduke, it
was decided, notwithstanding the very inhospitable treatment which they
had received, that those commissioners should return to their labours.
Ogle and Fairfax still remained as hostages in camp, and of course
professed entire ignorance of these extraordinary proceedings,
attributing them to some inexplicable misunderstanding.  So on Monday,
24th, December, the quartermaster and the governor again repaired to
Ostend with orders to bring about the capitulation of the place as soon
as possible.  The same sergeant-major was again appointed by Vere to
escort the strangers, and on asking by what way he should bring them in,
was informed by Sir Francis that it would never do to allow those
gentlemen, whose feet were accustomed to the soft sand of the sea-beach
and downs, to bruise themselves upon the hard paving-stones of Ostend,
but that the softest and muddiest road must be carefully selected for
them.  These reasons accordingly were stated with perfect gravity to the
two Spaniards, who, in spite of their solemn remonstrances, were made to
repeat a portion of their experiences and to accept it as an act of
special courtesy from the English general.  Thus so much time had been
spent in preliminaries and so much more upon the road that the short
winter's day was drawing to a close before they were again introduced to
the presence of Vere.

They found that fiery personage on this occasion all smiles and
blandishments.  The Spaniards were received with most dignified courtesy,
to which they gravely responded; and the general then proceeded to make
excuses for the misunderstanding of the preceding day with its
uncomfortable consequences.  Thereupon arose much animated discussion
as to the causes and the nature of the alarm on the east side which had
created such excitement.  Much time was ingeniously consumed in this
utterly superfluous discussion; but at last the commissioners of the
archduke insisted on making allusion to the business which had brought
them to the town.  "What terms of negotiation do you propose?"  they
asked Sir Francis.  "His Highness has only to withdraw from before
Ostend," coolly replied the general, "and leave us, his poor neighbours,
in peace and quietness.  This would be the most satisfactory negotiation
possible and the one most easily made."

Serrano and Antonio found it difficult to see the matter in that cheerful
light, and assured Sir Francis that they had not been commissioned by the
archduke to treat for his own withdrawal but for the surrender of the
town.  Hereupon high words and fierce discussion very naturally arose,
and at last, when a good deal of time had been spent in the sharp
encounter of wits, Vere proposed an adjournment of the discussion until
after supper; politely expressing the hope that the Spanish gentlemen
would be his guests.

The conversation had been from the beginning in French, as Vere, although
a master of the Spanish language, was desirous that the rest of the
company present should understand everything said at the interview.

The invitation to table was graciously accepted, and the Christmas eve
passed off more merrily than the preceding night had done, so far as
Vere's two guests were concerned.  Several distinguished officers were
present at the festive board: Captain Montesquieu de Roquette, Sir Horace
Vere, Captains St. Hilaire, Meetkerke, De Ryck, and others among them.
As it was strict fast for the Catholics that evening--while on the other
hand the English, still reckoning according to the old style, would not
keep Christmas until ten days later--the banquet consisted mainly of eggs
and fish, and the like meagre articles, in compliment to the guests.  It
was, however, as well furnished as could be expected in a beleaguered
town, out of whose harbour a winter gale had been for many weeks blowing
and preventing all ingress.  There was at least no lack of excellent
Bordeaux wine; while the servants waiting upon the table did not fail to
observe that Governor Serrano was not in all respects a model of the
temperance usually characteristic of his race.  They carefully counted
and afterwards related with admiration, not unmingled with horror, that
the veteran Spaniard drank fifty-two goblets of claret, and was emptying
his glass as fast as filled, although by no means neglecting the beer,
the quality of which he had tested the night before at the Half-moon.
Yet there seemed to be no perceptible effect produced upon him, save
perhaps that he grew a shade more grave and dignified with each
succeeding draught.  For while the banquet proceeded in this very genial
manner business was by no means neglected; the negotiations for the
surrender of the city being conducted on both sides with a fuddled
solemnity very edifying for the attendants to contemplate.

Vere complained that the archduke was unreasonable, for he claimed
nothing less from his antagonists than their all.  The commissioners
replied that all was no more than his own property.  It certainly could
not be thought unjust of him to demand his own, and all Flanders was his
by legal donation from his Majesty of Spain.  Vere replied that he had
never studied jurisprudence, and was not versed at all in that--science,
but he had always heard in England that possession was nine points of the
law.  Now it so happened that they, and not his Highness, were in
possession of Ostend, and it would be unreasonable to expect them to make
a present of it to any one.  The besiegers, he urged, had gained much
honour by their steady persistence amid so many dangers; difficulties,
and losses;--but winter had come, the weather was very bad, not a step of
progress had been made, and he was bold enough to express his opinion
that it would be far more sensible on the part of his Highness, after
such deeds of valour, to withdraw his diminished forces out of the
freezing and pestilential swamps before Ostend and go into comfortable
winter-quarters at Ghent or Bruges.  Enough had been done for glory, and
it must certainly now be manifest that he had no chance of taking the
city.

Serrano retorted that it was no secret to the besiegers that the garrison
had dwindled to a handful; that it was quite impossible for them to
defend their outer works any longer; that with the loss of the external
boulevard the defence of the place would be impossible, and that, on the
contrary, it was for the republicans to resign themselves to their fate.
They, too, had done enough for glory, and had nothing for it but to
retire into the centre of their ruined little nest, where they must
burrow until the enemy should have leisure to entirely unearth them,
which would be a piece of work very easily and rapidly accomplished.

This was called negotiation; and thus the winter's evening wore away,
until the Spaniards; heavy with fatigue and wine, were without much
difficulty persuaded to seek the couches prepared for them.

Next day the concourse of people around the city was Christmas, wonderful
to behold.  The rumour had spread through the, provinces, and was on the,
wing to all foreign countries, that Ostend had capitulated, and that the
commissioners were at that moment arranging the details.  The cardinal-
archduke, in complete Milanese armour, with a splendid feather-bush
waving from his casque and surrounded by his brilliant body-guard,
galloped to and fro outside the entrenchments, expecting every moment a
deputation to come forth, bearing the keys of the town.  The Infanta too,
magnificent in ruff and farthingale and brocaded petticoat, and attended
by a cavalcade of ladies of honour in gorgeous attire, pranced
impatiently about, awaiting the dramatic termination of a leaguer which
was becoming wearisome to besieger and besieged.  Not even on the famous
second of July of the previous year, when that princess was pleasing
herself with imaginations as to the deportment of Maurice of Nassau as a
captive, had her soul been so full of anticipated triumph as on this
Christmas morning.

Such a festive scene as was now presented in the neighbourhood of Ostend
had not been exhibited for many a long year in Flanders.  From the whole
country side came the peasants and burghers, men, women, and children, in
holiday attire.  It was like a kermiss or provincial fair.  Three
thousand people at least were roaming about in all direction, gaping with
wonder at the fortifications of the besieging army, so soon to be
superfluous, sliding, skating, waltzing on the ice, admiring jugglers,
dancing bears, puppet shows and merry-go-rounds, singing, and carousing
upon herrings, sausages, waffles, with mighty draughts of Flemish ale,
manifesting their exuberant joy that the thorn was nearly extracted from
the lion's paw, and awaiting with delight a blessed relief from that
operation.  Never was a merrier Christmas morning in Flanders.  There
should be an end now to the forays through the country of those red-
coated English pikemen, those hard-riding, hard-drinking troopers of
Germany and, Holland, with the French and Scotch arquebus men, and
terrible Zeeland sailors who had for years swept out of Ostend, at any
convenient opportunity, to harry the whole province.  And great was the
joy in Flanders.

Meantime within the city a different scene was enacting.  Those dignified
Spaniards--governor Serrano and Don Matteo Antonio--having slept off
their carouse, were prepared after breakfast next morning to resume the
interrupted negotiations.  But affairs were now to take an unexpected
turn.  In the night the wind had changed, and in the course of the
forenoon three Dutch vessels of war were descried in the offing, and soon
calmly sailed into the mouth of the Gullet.  The news was at once brought
to Vere's headquarters.  That general's plans had been crowned with
success even sooner than he expected.  There was no further object in
continuing the comedy of negotiation, for the ships now arriving seemed
crowded with troops.  Sir Francis accordingly threw off the mask, and
assuring his guests with extreme politeness that it had given him great
pleasure to make the acquaintance of such distinguished personages, he
thanked them cordially for their visit, but regretted that it would be no
longer in his power to entertain any propositions of a pacific nature.
The necessary reinforcements, which he had been so long expecting, had
at last reached him, and it would not yet be necessary for him to retire
into his ruined nest.  Military honour therefore would not allow him to
detain them any longer.  Should he ever be so hard pressed again he felt
sure that so magnanimous a prince as his Highness would extend to him all
due clemency and consideration.

The Spaniards; digesting as they best could the sauce of contumely with
which the gross treachery of the transaction was now seasoned, solemnly
withdrew, disdaining to express their spleen in words of idle menace.

They were escorted back through the lines, and at once made their report
at headquarters.  The festival had been dismally interrupted before it
was well begun.  The vessels were soon observed by friend and foe making
their way triumphantly up to the town where they soon dropped anchor at
the wharf of the inner Gullet, having only a couple of sailors wounded,
despite all the furious discharges of Bucquoy's batteries.  The holiday
makers dispersed, much discomfited, the English hostages returned to the
town, and the archduke shut himself up, growling and furious.  His
generals and counsellors, who had recommended the abandonment of his
carefully prepared assault, and acceptance of the perfidious propositions
to negotiate, by which so much golden time had been squandered, were for
several days excluded from his presence.

Meantime the army, disappointed, discontented, half-starved, unpaid,
passed their days and nights as before, in the sloppy trenches, while
deep and earnest were the complaints and the curses which succeeded to
the momentary exultation of Christmas eve.  The soldiers were more than
ever embittered against their august commander-in-chief, for they had
just enjoyed a signal opportunity of comparing the luxury and comfortable
magnificence of his Highness and the Infanta, and of contrasting it with
their own misery.  Moreover, it had long been exciting much indignation
in the ranks that veteran generals and colonels, in whom all men had
confidence, had been in great numbers superseded in order to make place
for court favourites, utterly without experience or talent.  Thus the
veterans; murmuring in the wet trenches.  The archduke meanwhile, in his
sullen retirement, brooded over a tragedy to follow the very successful
comedy of his antagonist.

It was not long delayed.  The assault which had been postponed in the
latter days of December was to be renewed before the end of the first
week of the new year.  Vere, through scouts and deserters, was aware of
the impending storm, and had made his arrangements in accordance with,
the very minute information which he had thus received.  The
reinforcements, so opportunely sent by the States, were not numerous
--only six hundred in all--but they were an earnest of fresh comrades to
follow.  Meantime they sufficed to fill the gaps in the ranks, and to
enable Vere to keep possession of the external line of fortifications,
including the all-important Porcupine.  Moreover, during the fictitious
negotiations, while the general had thus been holding--as he expressed
it--the wolf by both ears, the labor of repairing damages in dyke, moat,
and wall had not been for an instant neglected.

The morning of the 7th January, 1602, opened with a vigorous cannonade
from all the archduke's batteries, east, west, and south.  Auditor
Fleeting, counsellor and secretary of the city, aide-de-camp and right
hand of the commander-in-chief, a grim, grizzled, leathern-faced man of
fifty, steady under fire as a veteran arquebuseer, ready with his pen
as a counting-house clerk, and as fertile in resource as the most
experienced campaigner, was ever at the general's side.  At his
suggestion several houses had been demolished, to furnish materials in
wood and iron to stop the gaps as soon as made.  Especially about the
Sand Hill fort and the Porcupine a plentiful supply was collected, no
time having been lost in throwing up stockades, palisades, and every
other possible obstruction to the expected assailants.  Knowing perfectly
well where the brunt of the battle was to be, Vere had placed his brother
Sir Horace at the head of twelve picked companies of diverse nations in
the Sand Hill.  Four of the very best companies of the garrison were
stationed in the Porcupine, and ten more of the choicest in Fort Hell's
Mouth, under Colonel Meetkerke.  It must be recollected that the first of
these three works was the key to the fortifications of the old or outer
town.  The other two were very near it, and were the principal redoubts
which defended the most exposed and vulnerable portion of the new town on
the western side.  The Sand Hill, as its name imported, was the only
existing relic within the city's verge of the chain of downs once
encircling the whole place.  It had however been cannonaded so steadily
during the six months' siege as to have become almost ironclad--a mass of
metal gradually accumulating from the enemy's guns.  With the curtain
extending from it towards east and west it protected the old town quite
up to the little ancient brick church, one of the only two in Ostend.

All day long the cannon thundered--a bombardment such as had never before
been dreamed of in those days, two thousand shots having been distinctly
counted, by the burghers.  There was but languid response from the
besieged, who were reserving their strength.  At last, to the brief
winter's day succeeded a pitch-dark evening.  It was dead low tide at
seven.  At that hour the drums suddenly beat alarm along the whole line
of fortifications from the Gullet on the east to the old harbour on the
west, while through the mirky atmosphere sounded the trumpets of the
assault, the shouts of the Spanish and Italian commanders, and the fierce
responsive yells of their troops.  Sir Francis, having visited every
portion of the works, and satisfied himself that every man in the
garrison was under arms, and that all his arrangements had been
fulfilled, now sat on horseback, motionless as a statue, within the Sand
Hill.  Among the many serious and fictitious attacks now making he waited
calmly for the one great assault, even allowing some of the enemy to
scale the distant counterscarp of the external works towards the south,
which he had by design left insufficiently guarded.  It was but a brief
suspense, for in a few moments two thousand men had rushed through the
bed of the old harbour, out of which the tide had ebbed, and were
vigorously assailing the Sand Hill and the whole length of its curtain.
The impenetrable darkness made it impossible to count, but the noise and
the surging fury of the advance rendered it obvious that the critical
moment had arrived.  Suddenly a vivid illumination burst forth.  Great
pine torches, piles of tar-barrels, and heaps of other inflammable
material, which had been carefully arranged in Fort Porcupine, were now
all at once lighted by Vere's command.

As the lurid blaze flashed far and wide there started out of the gloom
not only the long lines of yellow jerkined pikemen and arquebuseers, with
their storm-hoods and scaling ladders, rushing swiftly towards the forts,
but beyond the broken sea dyke the reserved masses supporting the attack,
drawn up in solid clumps of spears, with their gay standards waving above
them, and with a strong force of cavalry in iron corslet and morion
stationed in the rear to urge on the infantry and prevent their faltering
in the night's work, became visible--phantom-like but perfectly distinct.

At least four thousand men were engaged in this chief attack, and the
light now permitted the besieged to direct their fire from cannon, demi-
cannon, culverin, and snaphance, with fatal effect.  The assailants,
thinned, straggling, but undismayed, closed up their ranks, and still
came fiercely on.  Never had Spaniards, Walloons, and Italians,
manifested greater contempt of death than on this occasion.  They knew
that the archduke and the infanta were waiting breathlessly in Fort St.
Albert for the news of that victory of which the feigned negotiations had
defrauded them at Christmas, and they felt perfectly confident of ending
both the siege and the forty years' war this January night.  But they had
reckoned without their wily English host.  As they came nearer--van, and
at last reserve--they dropped in great heaps under the steady fire of the
musketry--as Philip Flaming, looking on, exclaimed--like apples when the
autumn wind blows through the orchard.  And as the foremost still pressed
nearer and nearer, striving to clamber up the shattered counterscarp and
through every practicable breach, the English, Hollanders, and
Zeelanders, met them in the gap, not only at push of pike, but with their
long daggers and with flaming pitchhoops, and hurled them down to instant
death.

And thus around the Sand Hill, the Porcupine, and Hell's Mouth, the
battle raged nearly two hours long, without an inch of ground being
gained by the assailants.  The dead and dying were piled beneath the
walls, while still the reserves, goaded up to the mark by the cavalry,
mounted upon the bodies of their fallen comrades and strove to plant
their, ladders.  But now the tide was on the flood, the harbour was
filling, and cool Auditor Fleming, whom nothing escaped quietly asked
the general's permission to open the western' sluice.  It was obvious,
he observed, that the fury of the attack was over, and that the enemy
would soon be effecting a retreat before the water should have risen too
high.  He even pointed out many stragglers attempting to escape through
the already deepening shallows.  Vere's consent was at once given, the
flood-gate was opened, and the assailants such as still survived--panic-
struck in a moment, rushed wildly back through the old harbour towards
their camp.  It was too late.  The waters were out, and the contending
currents whirled the fugitives up and down through the submerged land,
and beyond the broken dyke, until great numbers of them were miserably
drowned in the haven, while others were washed out to sea.  Horses and
riders were borne off towards the Zealand coast, and several of their
corpses were picked up days afterwards in the neighbourhood of Flushing.

Meantime those who had effected a lodgment in the Polder, the Square, and
the other southern forts, found, after the chief assault had failed, that
they had gained nothing by their temporary triumph but the certainty of
being butchered.  Retreat was impossible, and no quarter was given.
Count Imbec, a noble of great wealth, offered his weight in gold for his
ransom, but was killed by a private soldier, who preferred his blood, or
doubted his solvency.  Durango, marshal of the camp, Don Alvarez de
Suarez, and Don Matteo Antonio, sergeant-major and quarter-master-
general, whose adventures as a hostage within the town on Christmas eve
have so recently been related, were also slain.

On the eastern side Bucquoy's attack was an entire failure.  His
arrangements were too slowly made, and before he could bring his men to
the assault the water was so high in the Gullet that they refused to lay
their pontoons and march to certain death.  Only at lowest ebb, and with
most exquisite skill in fording, would it have been possible to effect
anything like an earnest demonstration or a surprise.  Moreover some of
the garrison, giving themselves out as deserters, stole out of the
Spanish Half-moon, which had been purposely almost denuded of its
defenders, towards the enemy's entrenchments, and offered to lead a body
of Spaniards into that ravelin.  Bucquoy fell into the trap, so that the
detachment, after a victory as easily effected as that in the southern
forts, found themselves when the fight was over not the captors but the
caught.  A few attempted to escape and were driven into the sea; the rest
were massacred.

Fifteen hundred of the enemy's dead were counted and registered by
Auditor Fleming.  The whole number of the slain and drowned was reckoned
as high as two thousand, which was at least, a quarter of the whole
besieging army.  And so ended this winter night's assault, by which the
archduke had fondly hoped to avenge himself for Vere's perfidy, and to
terminate the war at a blow.  Only sixty of the garrison were killed, and
Sir Horace Vere was wounded.

The winter now set in with severe sleet, and snow, and rain, and furious
tempests lashing the sea over the works of besieger and besieged, and for
weeks together paralyzing all efforts of either army.  Eight weary months
the siege had lasted; the men in town and hostile camp, exposed to the
inclemency of the wintry trenches, sinking faster before the pestilence
which now swept impartially through all ranks than the soldiers of the
archduke had fallen at Nieuport, or in the recent assault on the Sand
Hill.  Of seven thousand hardly three thousand now remained in the
garrison.

Yet still the weary sausage making and wooden castle building went on
along the Gullet and around the old town.  The Bredene dyke crept on inch
by inch, but the steady ships of the republic came and went unharmed by
the batteries with which Bucquoy hoped to shut up the New Harbour.  The
archduke's works were pushed up nearer on the west, but, as yet, not one
practical advantage had been gained, and the siege had scarcely advanced
a hair's breadth since the 5th of July of the preceding year, when the
armies had first sat down before the place.

The stormy month of March had come, and Vere, being called to service in
the field for the coming season, transferred the command at Ostend to
Frederic van Dorp, a rugged, hard-headed, ill-favoured, stout-hearted
Zealand colonel, with the face of a bull-dog, and with the tenacious grip
of one.



ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Constitute themselves at once universal legatees
Crimes and cruelties such as Christians only could imagine
Human fat esteemed the sovereignst remedy (for wounds)
War was the normal and natural condition of mankind




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v74
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 75, 1602-1603



CHAPTER XL.

     Protraction of the siege of Ostend--Spanish invasion of Ireland--
     Prince Maurice again on the march--Siege of Grave--State of the
     archduke's army--Formidable mutiny--State of Europe--Portuguese
     expedition to Java--Foundation there of the first Batavian trading
     settlement--Exploits of Jacob Heemskerk--Capture of a Lisbon
     carrack--Progress of Dutch commerce--Oriental and Germanic republics
     --Commercial embassy from the King of Atsgen in Sumatra to the
     Netherlands--Surrender of Grave--Privateer work of Frederic Spinola
     --Destruction of Spinola's fleet by English and Dutch cruisers--
     Continuation of the siege of Ostend--Fearful hurricane and its
     effects--The attack--Capture of external forts--Encounter between
     Spinola and a Dutch squadron--Execution of prisoners by the
     archduke--Philip Fleming and his diary--Continuation of operations
     before Ostend--Spanish veterans still mutinous--Their capital
     besieged by Van den Berg--Maurice marches to their relief--
     Convention between the prince and the mutineers--Great commercial
     progress of the Dutch--Opposition to international commerce--
     Organization of the Universal East India Company.

It would be desirable to concentrate the chief events of the siege of
Ostend so that they might be presented to the reader's view in a single
mass.  But this is impossible.  The siege was essentially the war--as
already observed--and it was bidding fair to protract itself to such an
extent that a respect for chronology requires the attention to be
directed for a moment to other topics.

The invasion of Ireland under Aquila, so pompously heralded as almost to
suggest another grand armada, had sailed in the beginning of the winter,
and an army of six thousand men had been landed at Kinsale.  Rarely had
there been a better opportunity for the Celt to strike for his
independence.  Shane Mac Neil had an army on foot with which he felt
confident of exterminating the Saxon oppressor, even without the
assistance of his peninsular allies; while the queen's army, severely
drawn upon as it had been for the exigencies of Vere and the States,
might be supposed unable to cope with so formidable a combination.  Yet
Montjoy made short work of Aquila and Tyrone.  The invaders, shut up in
their meagre conquest, became the besieged instead of the assailants.
Tyrone made a feeble attempt to relieve his Spanish allies, but was soon
driven into his swamps, the peasants would not rise; in spite of
proclamations and golden mountains of promise, and Aquila was soon glad
enough to sign a capitulation by which he saved a portion of his army.
He then returned, in transports provided by the English general, a much
discomfited man, to Spain instead of converting Ireland into a province
of the universal empire.  He had not rescued Hibernia, as he stoutly
proclaimed at the outset his intention of doing, from the jaws of
the evil demon.

The States, not much wiser after the experience of Nieuport, were again
desirous that Maurice should march into Flanders, relieve Ostend, and
sweep the archduke into the sea.  As for Vere, he proposed that a great
army of cavalry and infantry should be sent into Ostend, while another
force equally powerful should take the field as soon as the season
permitted.  Where the men were to be levied, and whence the funds for
putting such formidable hosts in motion were to be derived, it was not
easy to say: "'Tis astonishing," said Lewis William, "that the evils
already suffered cannot open his eyes; but after all, 'tis no marvel.  An
old and good colonel, as I hold him to be, must go to school before he
can become a general, and we must beware of committing any second folly,
govern ourselves according to our means and the art of war, and leave the
rest to God."

Prince Maurice, however; yielding as usual to the persuasions or
importunities of those less sagacious than himself; and being also much
influenced by the advice of the English queen and the French king, after
reviewing the most splendid army that even he had ever equipped and set
in the field, crossed the Waal at Nymegen, and the Meuse at Mook, and
then moving leisurely along Meuse--side by way of Sambeck, Blitterswyck,
and Maasyk, came past St. Truyden to the neighbourhood of Thienen, in
Brabant.  Here he stood, in the heart of the enemy's country, and within
a day's march of Brussels.  The sanguine portion of his countrymen and
the more easily alarmed of the enemy already thought it would be an easy
military promenade for the stadholder to march through Brabant and
Flanders to the coast, defeat the Catholic forces before Ostend, raise
the weary siege of that place, dictate peace to the archduke, and return
in triumph to the Hague, before the end of the summer.

But the experienced Maurice too well knew the emptiness of such dreams.
He had a splendid army--eighteen thousand foot and five thousand horse--
of which Lewis William commanded the battalia, Vere the right, and Count
Ernest the left, with a train of two thousand baggage wagons, and a
considerable force of sutlers and camp-followers.  He moved so
deliberately, and with such excellent discipline, that his two wings
could with ease be expanded for black-mail or forage over a considerable
extent of country, and again folded together in case of sudden military
necessity.  But he had no intention of marching through Brussels, Ghent,
and Bruges, to the Flemish coast.  His old antagonist, the Admiral of
Arragon, lay near Thienen in an entrenched camp, with a force of at least
fifteen thousand men, while the archduke, leaving Rivas in command before
Ostend, hovered in the neighbourhood of Brussels, with as many troops as
could be spared from the various Flemish garrisons, ready to support the
admiral.

But Maurice tempted the admiral in vain with the chances of a general
action.  That warrior, remembering perhaps too distinctly his disasters
at Nieuport, or feeling conscious that his military genius was more fitly
displayed in burning towns and villages in neutral territory, robbing the
peasantry, plundering gentlemen's castles and murdering the proprietors,
than it was like to be in a pitched battle with the first general of the
age, remained sullenly within his entrenchments.  His position was too
strong and his force far too numerous to warrant an attack by the
stadholder upon his works.  After satisfying himself, therefore, that
there was no chance of an encounter in Brabant except at immense
disadvantage, Maurice rapidly counter-marched towards the lower Meuse,
and on the 18th July laid siege to Grave.  The position and importance of
this city have been thoroughly set before the reader in a former volumes
It is only necessary, therefore, to recal the fact that, besides being a
vital possession for the republic, the place was in law the private
property of the Orange family, having been a portion of the estate of
Count de Buren, afterwards redeemed on payment of a considerable sum of
money by his son-in-law, William the Silent, confirmed to him at the
pacification of Ghent, and only lost to his children by the disgraceful
conduct of Captain Hamart, which had cost that officer his head.  Maurice
was determined at least that the place should not now slip through his
fingers, and that the present siege should be a masterpiece.  His forts,
of which he had nearly fifty, were each regularly furnished with moat,
drawbridge, and bulwark.  His counterscarp and parapet, his galleries,
covered ways and mines, were as elaborate, massive, and artistically
finished as if he were building a city instead of besieging one.
Buzanval, the French envoy, amazed at the spectacle, protested that his
works "were rather worthy of the grand Emperor of the Turks than of, a
little commonwealth, which only existed through the disorder of its
enemies and the assistance of its friends;" but he admitted the utility
of the stadholder's proceedings to be very obvious.

While the prince calmly sat before Grave, awaiting the inexorable hour
for burghers and garrison to surrender, the great Francis Mendoza,
Admiral of Arragon, had been completing the arrangements for his
exchange.  A prisoner after the Nieuport battle, he had been assigned
by Maurice, as will be recollected, to his cousin, young Lewis Gunther,
whose brilliant services as commander of the cavalry had so much
contributed to the victory.  The amount of ransom for so eminent a
captive could not fail to be large, and accordingly the thrifty Lewis
William had congratulated his brother on being able, although so young,
thus to repair the fortunes of the family by his military industry to a
greater extent than had yet been accomplished by any of the race.
Subsequently, the admiral had been released on parole, the sum of his
ransom having been fixed at nearly one hundred thousand Flemish crowns.
By an agreement now made by the States, with consent of the Nassau
family, the prisoner was definitely released, on condition of effecting
the exchange of all prisoners of the republic, now held in durance by
Spain in any part of the world.  This was in lieu of the hundred thousand
crowns which were to be put into the impoverished coffers of Lewis
Gunther.  It may be imagined, as the hapless prisoners afterwards poured
in--not only from the peninsula, but from more distant regions, whither
they had been sent by their cruel taskmasters, some to relate their
sufferings in the horrible dungeons of Spain, where they had long been
expiating the crime of defending their fatherland, others to relate their
experiences as chained galley-slaves in the naval service of their
bitterest enemies, many with shorn heads and long beards like Turks, many
with crippled limbs, worn out with chains and blows, and the squalor of
disease and filth--that the hatred for Spain and Rome did not glow any
less fiercely within the republic, nor the hereditary love for the
Nassaus, to whose generosity these poor victims were indebted for their
deliverance, become fainter, in consequence of these revelations.  It was
at first vehemently disputed by many that the admiral could be exchanged
as a prisoner of war, in respect to the manifold murders and other crimes
which would seem to authorize his trial and chastisement by the tribunals
of the republic.  But it was decided by the States that the sacred aegis
of military law must be held to protect even so bloodstained a criminal
as he, and his release was accordingly effected.  Not long afterwards he
took his departure for Spain, where his reception was not enthusiastic.

From this epoch is to be dated a considerable reform in the laws
regulating the exchange of prisoners of war.--[Grotius]

While Maurice was occupied with the siege of Grave, and thus not only
menacing an important position, but spreading, danger and dismay over all
Brabant and Flanders, it was necessary for the archduke to detach so
large a portion of his armies to observe his indefatigable and scientific
enemy, as to much weaken the vigour of the operations before Ostend.
Moreover, the execrable administration of his finances, and the dismal
delays and sufferings of that siege; had brought about another mutiny--on
the whole, the most extensive, formidable, and methodical of all that had
hitherto occurred in the Spanish armies.

By midsummer, at least three thousand five hundred veterans, including a
thousand of excellent cavalry, the very best soldiers in the service, had
seized the city of Hoogstraaten.  Here they established themselves
securely, and strengthened the fortifications; levying contributions in
corn, cattle, and every other necessary, besides wine, beer, and pocket-
money, from the whole country round with exemplary regularity.  As usual,
disorder assumed the forms of absolute order.  Anarchy became the best
organized of governments; and it would have been difficult to find in the
world--outside the Dutch commonwealth--a single community where justice
appeared to be so promptly administered as in this temporary republic,
founded upon rebellion and theft.

For; although a brotherhood of thieves, it rigorously punished such of
its citizens as robbed for their own, not for the public good.  The
immense booty swept daily from the granges, castles; and villages of
Flanders was divided with the simplicity of early Christians, while the
success and steadiness of the operations paralyzed their sovereign, and
was of considerable advantage to the States.

Albert endeavoured in vain to negotiate with the rebels.  Nuncius
Frangipani went to them in person, but was received with calm derision.
Pious exhortations might turn the keys of Paradise, but gold alone, he
was informed, would unlock the gates of Hoogstraaten.  In an evil hour
the cardinal-archduke was tempted to try the effect of sacerdotal
thunder.  The ex-archbishop of Toledo could not doubt that the terrors of
the Church would make those brown veterans tremble who could confront so
tranquilly the spring-tides of the North Sea, and the batteries of Vere
and Nassau.  So he launched a manifesto, as highly spiced as a pamphlet
of Marnig, and as severe as a sentence of Torquemada.  Entirely against
the advice of the States-General of the obedient provinces, he denounced
the mutineers as outlaws and accursed.  He called on persons of every
degree to kill any of them in any way, at any time, or in any place,
promising that the slayer of a private soldier should receive a reward
of "ten crowns for each head" brought in, while for a subaltern officer's
head one hundred crowns were offered; for that of a superior officer two
hundred, and for that of the Eletto or chief magistrate, five hundred
crowns.  Should the slayer be himself a member of the mutiny, his crime
of rebellion was to be forgiven, and the price of murder duly paid.  All
judges, magistrates, and provost-marshals were ordered to make
inventories of the goods, moveable and immoveable, of the mutineers, and
of the clothing and other articles belonging to their wives and children,
all which property was to be brought in and deposited in the hands of the
proper functionaries of the archduke's camp, in order that it might be
duly incorporated into the domains of his Highness.

The mutineers were not frightened.  The ban was an anachronism.  If those
Spaniards and Italians had learned nothing by their much campaigning in
the land of Calvinism, they had at least unlearned their faith in bell,
book, and candle.  It happened, too, that among their numbers were to be
found pamphleteers as ready and as unscrupulous as the scribes of the
archduke.

So there soon came forth and was published to the world, in the name of
the Eletto and council of Hoogstraaten, a formal answer to the ban.

"If scolding and cursing be payment," said the magistrates of the mutiny,
"then we might give a receipt in full for our wages.  The ban is
sufficient in this respect; but as these curses give no food for our
bellies nor clothes for our backs, not preventing us, therefore, who have
been fighting so long for the honour and welfare of the archdukes from
starving with cold and hunger, we think a reply necessary in order to
make manifest how much reason these archdukes have for thundering forth
all this choler and fury, by which women and children may be frightened,
but at which no soldier will feel alarm.

"When it is stated," continued the mutineers, "that we have deserted our
banners just as an attempt was making by the archduke to relieve Grave,
we can only reply that the assertion proves how impossible it is to
practise arithmetic with disturbed brains.  Passion is a bad
schoolmistress for the memory, but, as good friends, we will recal to the
recollection of your Highness that it was not your Highness, but the
Admiral of Arragon, that commanded the relieving force before that city.

"'Tis very true that we summon your Highnesses, and levy upon your
provinces, in order to obtain means of living; for in what other quarter
should we make application.  Your Highnesses give us nothing except
promises; but soldiers are not chameleons, to live on such air.
According to every principle of law, creditors have a lien on the
property of their debtors.

"As to condemning to death as traitors and scoundrels those who don't
desire to be killed, and who have the means of killing such as attempt to
execute the sentence; this is hardly in accordance with the extraordinary
wisdom which has always characterized your Highnesses.

"As, to the confiscation of our goods, both moveable and immoveable, we
would simply make this observation:

"Our moveable goods are our swords alone, and they can only be moved by
ourselves.  They are our immoveable goods as well; for should any one but
ourselves undertake to move them, we assure your Highnesses that they
will prove too heavy to be handled.

"As to the official register and deposit ordained of the money, clothing,
and other property belonging to ourselves, our wives and children, the
work may be done without clerks of inventory.  Certainly, if the domains
of your Highnesses have no other sources of revenue than the proceeds of
this confiscation, wherewith to feed the ostrich-like digestions of those
about you, 'tis to be feared that ere long they will be in the same
condition as were ours, when we were obliged to come together in
Hoogstraaten to devise means to keep ourselves, our wives, and children
alive.  And at that time we were an unbreeched people, like the Indians--
saving your Highnesses' reverence--and the climate here is too cold for
such costume.  Your Highnesses, and your relatives the Emperor and King
of Spain, will hardly make your royal heads greasy with the fat of such
property as we possess, 'Twill also be a remarkable spectacle after you
have stripped our wives and children stark naked for the benefit of your
treasury, to see them sent in that condition, within three days
afterwards, out of the country, as the ban ordains.

"You order the ban to be executed against our children and our children's
children, but your Highness never learned this in the Bible, when you
were an archbishop, and when you expounded, or ought to have expounded,
the Holy Scriptures to your flock.  What theology teaches your Highness
to vent your wrath upon the innocent?

"Whenever the cause of discontent is taken away, the soldiers will become
obedient and cheerful.  All kings and princes may mirror themselves in
the bad government of your Highness, and may see how they fare who try to
carry on a war, while with their own hands they cut the sinews of war.
The great leaders of old--Cyrus, Alexander, Scipio, Caesar--were
accustomed, not to starve, but to enrich their soldiers.  What did
Alexander, when in an arid desert they brought, him a helmet full of
water?  He threw it on the sand, saying that there was only enough for
him, but not enough for his army.

"Your Highnesses have set ten crowns, and one hundred, and five hundred
crowns upon our heads, but never could find five hundred mites nor ten
mites to keep our souls and bodies together.

"Yet you have found means to live yourselves with pomp and luxury, far
exceeding that of the great Emperor Charles and much surpassing the
magnificence of your Highnesses' brothers, the emperor and the king."

Thus, and much more, the magistrates of the "Italian republic"--answering
their master's denunciations of vengeance, both in this world and the
next, with a humorous scorn very refreshing in that age of the world to
contemplate.  The expanding influence of the Dutch commonwealth was
already making itself felt even in the ranks of its most determined foes.

The mutineers had also made an agreement with the States-General, by
which they had secured permission, in case of need, to retire within the
territory of the republic.

Maurice had written to them from his camp before Grave, and at first they
were disposed to treat him with as little courtesy as they had shown the
Nuncius; for they put the prince's letter on a staff, and fired at it as
a mark, assuring the trumpeter who brought it that they would serve
him in the same manner should he venture thither again.  Very soon
afterwards, however, the Eletto and council, reproving the folly of their
subordinates, opened negotiations with the stadholder, who, with the
consent of the States, gave them preliminary permission to take refuge
under the guns of Bergenop-Zoom, should they by chance be hard pressed.

Thus throughout Europe a singular equilibrium of contending forces seemed
established.  Before Ostend, where the chief struggle between imperialism
and republicanism had been proceeding for more than a year with equal
vigour, there seemed no possibility of a result.  The sands drank up the
blood of the combatants on both sides, month after month, in summer; the
pestilence in town and camp mowed down Catholic and Protestant with
perfect impartiality during the winter, while the remorseless ocean swept
over all in its wrath, obliterating in an hour the patient toil of
months.

In Spain, in England, and Ireland; in Hungary, Germany, Sweden, and
Poland, men wrought industriously day by day and year by year, to destroy
each other, and to efface the products of human industry, and yet no
progress could fairly be registered.  The Turk was in Buda, on the right
bank of the Danube, and the Christian in Pest, on the left, while the
crescent; but lately supplanted by the cross, again waved in triumph over
Stuhlweissenberg, capital city of the Magyars.  The great Marshal Biron,
foiled in his stupendous treachery, had laid down his head upon the
block; the catastrophe following hard upon the madcap riot of Lord Essex
in the Strand and his tragic end.  The troublesome and restless
favourites of Henry and of Elizabeth had closed their stormy career, but
the designs of the great king and the great queen were growing wider and
wilder, more false and more fantastic than ever, as the evening shadows
of both were lengthening.

But it was not in Europe nor in Christendom: alone during that twilight
epoch of declining absolutism, regal and sacerdotal, and the coming
glimmer of freedom, religious and commercial, that the contrast between
the old and new civilizations was exhibiting itself.

The same fishermen and fighting men, whom we have but lately seen sailing
forth from Zeeland and Friesland to confront the dangers of either pole,
were now contending in the Indian seas with the Portuguese monopolists of
the tropics.

A century long, the generosity of the Roman pontiff in bestowing upon
others what was not his property had guaranteed to the nation of Vasco de
Gama one half at least of the valuable possessions which maritime genius,
unflinching valour, and boundless cruelty had won and kept.  But the
spirit of change was abroad in the world.  Potentates and merchants
under the equator had been sedulously taught that there were no other
white men on the planet but the Portuguese and their conquerors the
Spaniards, and that the Dutch--of whom they had recently heard, and the
portrait of whose great military chieftain they had seen after the news
of the Nieuport battle had made the circuit of the earth--were a mere mob
of pirates and savages inhabiting the obscurest of dens.  They were soon,
however, to be enabled to judge for themselves as to the power and the
merits of the various competitors for their trade.

Early in this year Andreas Hurtado de Mendoza with a stately fleet of
galleons and smaller vessels, more than five-and-twenty in all, was on
his way towards the island of Java to inflict summary vengeance upon
those oriental rulers who had dared to trade with men forbidden by his
Catholic Majesty and the Pope.

The city of Bantam was the first spot marked out for destruction, and it
so happened that a Dutch skipper, Wolfert Hermann by name, commanding
five trading vessels, in which were three hundred men, had just arrived
in those seas to continue the illicit commerce which had aroused the ire
of the Portuguese.  His whole force both of men and of guns was far
inferior to that of the flag-ship alone of Mendoza.  But he resolved to
make manifest to the Indians that the Batavians were not disposed to
relinquish their promising commercial relations with them, nor to turn
their backs upon their newly found friends in the hour of danger.  To the
profound astonishment of the Portuguese admiral the Dutchman with his
five little trading ships made an attack on the pompous armada, intending
to avert chastisement from the king of Bantam.  It was not possible for
Wolfert to cope at close quarters with his immensely superior adversary,
but his skill and nautical experience enabled him to play at what was
then considered long bowls with extraordinary effect.  The greater
lightness and mobility of his vessels made them more than a match, in
this kind of encounter, for the clumsy, top-heavy, and sluggish marine
castles in which Spain and Portugal then went forth to battle on the
ocean.  It seems almost like the irony of history, and yet it is the
literal fact, that the Dutch galleot of that day--hardly changed in two
and a half centuries since--"the bull-browed galleot butting through the
stream,"--[Oliver Wendell Holmes]--was then the model clipper,
conspicuous among all ships for its rapid sailing qualities and ease of
handling.  So much has the world moved, on sea and shore, since those
simple but heroic days.  And thus Wolfert's swift-going galleots circled
round and round the awkward, ponderous, and much-puzzled Portuguese
fleet, until by well-directed shots and skilful manoeuvring they had sunk
several ships, taken two, run others into the shallows, and, at last, put
the whole to confusion.  After several days of such fighting, Admiral
Mendoza fairly turned his back upon his insignificant opponent, and
abandoned his projects upon Java.  Bearing away for the Island of Amboyna
with the remainder of his fleet, he laid waste several of its villages
and odoriferous spice-fields, while Wolfert and his companions entered
Bantam in triumph, and were hailed as deliverers.  And thus on the
extreme western verge of this magnificent island was founded the first
trading settlement of the Batavian republic in the archipelago of the
equator--the foundation-stone of a great commercial empire which was to
encircle the earth.  Not many years later, at the distance, of a dozen
leagues from Bantam, a congenial swamp was fortunately discovered in a
land whose volcanic peaks rose two miles into the air, and here a town
duly laid out with canals and bridges, and trim gardens and stagnant
pools, was baptized by the ancient and well-beloved name of Good-Meadow
or Batavia, which it bears to this day.

Meantime Wolfert Hermann was not the only Hollander cruising in those
seas able to convince the Oriental mind that all Europeans save the
Portuguese were not pirates and savages, and that friendly intercourse
with other foreigners might be as profitable as slavery to the Spanish
crown.

Captain Nek made treaties of amity and commerce with the potentates of
Ternate, Tydor, and other Molucca islands.  The King of Candy on the
Island of Ceylon, lord of the odoriferous fields of cassia which perfume
those tropical seas, was glad to learn how to exchange the spices of the
equator for the thousand fabrics and products of western civilization
which found their great emporium in Holland.  Jacob Heemskerk, too, who
had so lately astonished the world by his exploits and discoveries during
his famous winter in Nova Zembla, was now seeking adventures and carrying
the flag and fame of the republic along the Indian and Chinese coasts.
The King of Johor on the Malayan peninsula entered into friendly
relations with him, being well pleased, like so many of those petty
rulers, to obtain protection against the Portuguese whom he had so long
hated and feared.  He informed Heemskerk of the arrival in the straits of
Malacca of an immense Lisbon carrack, laden with pearls and spices,
brocades and precious-stones, on its way to Europe, and suggested an
attack.  It is true that the roving Hollander merely commanded a couple
of the smallest galleots, with about a hundred and thirty men in the two.
But when was Jacob Heemskerk ever known to shrink from an encounter--
whether from single-handed combat with a polar bear, or from leading a
forlorn hope against a Spanish fort, or from assailing a Portuguese
armada.  The carrack, more than one thousand tons burthen, carried
seventeen guns, and at least eight times as many men as he commanded.
Nevertheless, after a combat of but brief duration Heemskerk was master
of the carrack: He spared the lives of his seven hundred prisoners, and
set them on shore before they should have time to discover to what a
handful of Dutchmen they had surrendered.  Then dividing about a million
florins' worth of booty among his men, who doubtless found such cruising
among the spice-islands more attractive than wintering at the North Pole,
he sailed in the carrack for Macao, where he found no difficulty in
convincing the authorities of the celestial empire that the friendship of
the Dutch republic was worth cultivating.  There was soon to be work in
other regions for the hardy Hollander--such as was to make the name of
Heemskerk a word to conjure with down to the latest posterity.  Meantime
he returned to his own country to take part in the great industrial
movements which were to make this year an epoch in commercial history.

The conquerors of Mendoza and deliverers of Bantam had however not paused
in their work.  From Java they sailed to Banda; and on those volcanic
islands of nutmegs and cloves made, in the name of their commonwealth,
a treaty with its republican antipodes.  For there was no king to be
found in that particular archipelago, and the two republics, the Oriental
and the Germanic, dealt with each other with direct and becoming
simplicity.  Their convention was in accordance with the commercial
ideas of the day, which assumed monopoly as the true basis of national
prosperity.  It was agreed that none but Dutchmen should ever purchase
the nutmegs of Banda, and that neither nation should harbour refugees
from the other.  Other articles, however; showed how much farther, the
practice of political and religious liberty had advanced than had any
theory of commercial freedom.  It was settled that each nation should
judge its own citizens according to its own laws, that neither should
interfere by force with the other in regard to religious matters, but
that God should be judge over them all.  Here at least was progress
beyond the system according to which the Holy Inquisition furnished the
only enginry of civilization.  The guardianship assumed by Holland over
these children of the sun was at least an improvement on the tyranny
which roasted them alive if they rejected religious dogmas which they
could not comprehend, and which proclaimed with fire, sword, and gibbet
that the Omnipotent especially forbade the nutmeg trade to all but the
subjects, of the most Catholic king.

In Atsgen or Achim, chief city of Sumatra, a treaty was likewise made
with the government of the place, and it was arranged that the king of
Atsgen should send over an embassy to the distant but friendly republic.
Thus he might judge whether the Hollanders were enemies of all the world,
as had been represented to him, or only of Spain; whether their knowledge
of the arts and sciences, and their position among the western nations
entitled them to respect, and made their friendship desirable; or whether
they were only worthy of the contempt which their royal and aristocratic
enemies delighted to heap upon their heads.  The envoys sailed from
Sumatra on board the same little fleet which, under the command of
Wolfert Hermann, had already done such signal service, and on their way
to Europe they had an opportunity of seeing how these republican sailors
could deal with their enemies on the ocean.

Off St. Helena an immense Portuguese carrack richly laden and powerfully
armed, was met, attacked, and overpowered by the little merchantmen with
their usual audacity and skill.  A magnificent booty was equitably
divided among the captors, the vanquished crew were set safely on shore;
and the Hollanders then pursued their home voyage without further
adventures.

The ambassadors; with an Arab interpreter, were duly presented to Prince
Maurice in the lines before the city of Grave.  Certainly no more
favourable opportunity could have been offered them for contrasting the
reality of military power, science, national vigour; and wealth, which
made the republic eminent among the nations, with the fiction of a horde
of insignificant and bloodthirsty savages which her enemies had made so
familiar at the antipodes.  Not only were the intrenchments bastions,
galleries, batteries, the discipline and equipment of the troops, a
miracle in the eyes of these newly arrived Oriental ambassadors, but they
had awakened the astonishment of Europe, already accustomed to such
spectacles.  Evidently the amity of the stadholder and his commonwealth
was a jewel of price, and the King of Achim would have been far more
barbarous than he had ever deemed the Dutchmen to be, had he not well
heeded the lesson which he had sent so far to learn.

The chief of the legation, Abdulzamar, died in Zeeland, and was buried
with honourable obsequies at Middleburg, a monument being raised to his
memory.  The other envoys returned to Sumatra, fully determined to
maintain close relations with the republic.

There had been other visitors in Maurice's lines before Grave at about
the same period.  Among others, Gaston Spinola, recently created by the
archduke Count of Bruay, had obtained permission to make a visit to a
wounded relative, then a captive in the republican camp, and was
hospitably entertained at the stadholder's table.  Maurice, with
soldierly bluntness, ridiculed the floating batteries, the castles on
wheels, the sausages, and other newly-invented machines, employed before
Ostend, and characterized them as rather fit to catch birds with than to
capture a city, defended by mighty armies and fleets.

"If the archduke has set his heart upon it, he had far better try to buy
Ostend," he observed.

"What is your price?"  asked the Italian; "will you take 200,000 ducats?"

"Certainly not less than a million and a half," was the reply; so highly
did Maurice rate the position and advantages of the city.  He would
venture to prophesy, he added, that the siege of Ostend would last as
long as the siege of Troy.

"Ostend is no Troy," said Spinola with a courtly flourish, "although
there are certainly not wanting an Austrian Agamemnon, a Dutch Hector,
and an Italian Achilles."  The last allusion was to the speaker's
namesake and kinsman, the Marquis Anibrose Spinola, of whom much was to
be heard in the world from that time forth.

Meantime, although so little progress had been made at Ostend, Maurice
had thoroughly done his work before Grave.  On the 18th September the
place surrendered, after sixty days' siege, upon the terms usually
granted by the stadholder.  The garrison was to go out with the honours
of war.  Those of the inhabitants who wished to leave were to leave;
those who preferred staying were to stay; rendering due allegiance to the
republic, and abstaining in public from the rites of the Roman Church,
without being exposed, however, to any inquiries as to their religious
opinions, or any interference within their households.

The work went slowly on before Ostend.  Much effect had been produced,
however, by the operations of the archduke's little naval force.  The
galley of that day, although a child's toy as compared with the wonders
of naval architecture of our own time, was an effective machine enough to
harass fishing and coasting vessels in creeks and estuaries, and along
the shores of Holland and Zeeland during tranquil weather.

The locomotive force of these vessels consisted of galley-slaves,
in which respect the Spaniards had an advantage over other nations;
for they had no scruples in putting prisoners of war into chains and upon
the benches of the rowers.  Humanity--"the law of Christian piety," in
the words of the noble Grotius--forbade the Hollanders from reducing
their captives to such horrible slavery, and they were obliged to content
themselves with condemned criminals, and with the few other wretches whom
abject poverty and the impossibility of earning other wages could induce
to accept the service.  And as in the maritime warfare of our own day,
the machinery--engines, wheels, and boilers--is the especial aim of the
enemy's artillery, so the chain-gang who rowed in the waist of the
galley, the living enginry, without which the vessel became a useless
tub, was as surely marked out for destruction whenever a sea-fight took
place.

The Hollanders did not very much favour this species of war-craft, both
by reason of the difficulty of procuring the gang, and because to a true
lover of the ocean and of naval warfare the galley was about as clumsy
and amphibious a production as could be hoped of human perverseness.
High where it should be low.  Exposed, flat, and fragile, where elevation
and strength were indispensable--encumbered and top-heavy where it should
be level and compact, weak in the waist, broad at stem and stern, awkward
in manoeuvre, helpless in rough weather, sluggish under sail, although
possessing the single advantage of being able to crawl over a smooth sea
when better and faster ships were made stationary by absolute calm, the
galley was no match for the Dutch galleot, either at close quarters or in
a breeze.

Nevertheless for a long time there had been a certain awe produced by the
possibility of some prodigious but unknown qualities in these outlandish
vessels, and already the Hollanders had tried their hand at constructing
them.  On a late occasion a galley of considerable size, built at Dort,
had rowed past the Spanish forts on the Scheld, gone up to Antwerp, and
coolly cut out from the very wharves of the city a Spanish galley of the
first class, besides seven war vessels of lesser dimensions, at first
gaining advantage by surprise, and then breaking down all opposition in a
brilliant little fight.  The noise of the encounter summoned the citizens
and garrison to the walls, only to witness the triumph achieved by Dutch
audacity, and to see the victors dropping rapidly down the river, laden
with booty and followed by their prizes.  Nor was the mortification of
these unwilling spectators diminished when the clear notes of a bugle on
board the Dutch galley brought to their ears the well-known melody of
"Wilhelmus of Nassau," once so dear to every, patriotic heart in Antwerp,
and perhaps causing many a renegade cheek on this occasion to tingle with
shame.

Frederic Spinola, a volunteer belonging to the great and wealthy Genoese
family of that name, had been performing a good deal of privateer work
with a small force of galleys which he kept under his command at Sluys.
He had succeeded in inflicting so much damage upon the smaller
merchantmen of the republic, and in maintaining so perpetual a panic in
calm weather among the seafaring multitudes of those regions, that he was
disposed to extend the scale of his operations.  On a visit to Spain he
had obtained permission from Government to employ in this service eight
great galleys, recently built on the Guadalquivir for the Royal Navy.
He was to man and equip them at his own expense, and was to be allowed
the whole of the booty that might result from his enterprise.  Early in
the autumn he set forth with his eight galleys on the voyage to Flanders,
but, off Cezimbra, on the Portuguese coast, unfortunately fell in with
Sir Robert Mansell, who; with a compact little squadron of English
frigates, was lying in wait for the homeward-bound India fleet on their
entrance to Lisbon.  An engagement took place, in which Spinola lost two
of his galleys.  His disaster might have been still greater, had not an
immense Indian carrack, laden with the richest merchandize, just then
hove in sight, to attract his conquerors with a hope of better prize-
money than could be expected from the most complete victory over him and
his fleet.

With the remainder of his vessels Spinola crept out of sight while the
English were ransacking the carrack.  On the 3rd of October he had
entered the channel with a force which, according to the ideas of that
day, was still formidable.  Each of his galleys was of two hundred and
fifty slave power, and carried, beside the chain-gang, four hundred
fighting men.  His flag-ship was called the St. Lewis; the names of the
other vessels being the St. Philip, the Morning Star, the St. John, the
Hyacinth, and the Padilla.  The Trinity and the Opportunity had been
destroyed off Cezimbra.  Now there happened to be cruising just then in
the channel, Captain Peter Mol, master of the Dutch war-ship Tiger, and
Captain Lubbertson, commanding the Pelican.  These two espied the Spanish
squadron, paddling at about dusk towards the English coast, and quickly
gave notice to Vice-Admiral John Kant, who in the States' ship Half-moon,
with three other war-galleots, was keeping watch in that neighbourhood.
It was dead calm as the night fell, and the galleys of Spinola, which had
crept close up to the Dover cliffs, were endeavouring to row their way
across in the darkness towards the Flemish coast, in the hope of putting
unobserved into the Gut of Sluys.  All went well with Spinola till the
moon rose; but, with the moon, sprang up a steady breeze, so that the
galleys lost all their advantage.  Nearly off Gravelines another States'
ship, the Mackerel, came in sight, which forthwith attacked the St:
Philip, pouring a broadside into her by which fifty men were killed.
Drawing off from this assailant, the galley found herself close to the
Dutch admiral in the Half-moon, who, with all sail set, bore straight
down upon her, struck her amidships with a mighty crash, carrying off her
mainmast and her poop, and then, extricating himself with difficulty from
the wreck, sent a tremendous volley of cannon-shot and lesser missiles
straight into the waist where sat the chain-gang.  A howl of pain and
terror rang through the air, while oars and benches, arms, legs, and
mutilated bodies, chained inexorably together, floated on the moonlit
waves.  An instant later, and another galleot bore down to complete the
work, striking with her iron prow the doomed St. Philip so straightly and
surely that she went down like a stone, carrying with her galley slaves,
sailors, and soldiers, besides all the treasure brought by Spinola for
the use of his fleet.

The Morning Star was the next galley attacked, Captain Sael, in a stout
galleot, driving at her under full sail, with the same accuracy and
solidity of shock as had been displayed in the encounter with the St.
Philip and with the same result.  The miserable, top-heavy monster galley
was struck between mainmast and stern, with a blow which carried away the
assailant's own bowsprit and fore-bulwarks, but which--completely
demolished the stem of the galley, and crushed out of existence the
greater portion of the live machinery sitting chained and rowing on the
benches.  And again, as the first enemy hauled off from its victim,
Admiral pant came up once more in the Half-moon, steered straight at the
floundering galley, and sent her with one crash to the bottom.  It was
not very scientific practice perhaps.  It was but simple butting, plain
sailing, good steering, and the firing of cannon at short pistol-shot.
But after all, the work of those unsophisticated Dutch skippers was done
very thoroughly, without flinching, and, as usual, at great odds of men
and guns.  Two more of the Spanish galleys were chased into the shallows
near Gravelines, where they went to pieces.  Another was wrecked near
Calais.  The galley which bore Frederic Spinola himself and his fortunes
succeeded in reaching Dunkirk, whence he made his way discomfited, to
tell the tale of his disaster to the archduke at Brussels.  During the
fight the Dutch admiral's boats had been active in picking up such of the
drowning crews, whether galley-slaves or soldiers, as it was possible to
save.  But not more than two hundred were thus rescued, while by far the
greater proportion of those on board, probably three thousand in number,
perished, and the whole fleet, by which so much injury was to have been
inflicted on Dutch commerce, was, save one damaged galley, destroyed. Yet
scarcely any lives were lost by the Hollanders, and it is certain that
the whole force in their fleet did not equal the crew of a single one of
the enemy's ships.  Neither Spinola nor the archduke seemed likely to
make much out of the contract.  Meantime, the Genoese volunteer kept
quiet in Sluy's, brooding over schemes to repair his losses and to renew
his forays on the indomitable Zeelanders.

Another winter had now closed in upon Ostend, while still the siege had
scarcely advanced an inch.  During the ten months of Governor Dorp's
administration, four thousand men had died of wounds or malady within the
town, and certainly twice as many in the trenches of the besieging force.
Still the patient Bucquoy went on, day after day, night after night,
month after month, planting his faggots and fascines, creeping forward
almost imperceptibly with his dyke, paying five florins each to the
soldiers who volunteered to bring the materials, and a double ducat to
each man employed in laying them.  So close were they under the fire of
the town; that a life was almost laid down for every ducat, but the
Gullet, which it was hoped to close, yawned as wide as ever, and the
problem how to reduce a city, open by sea to the whole world, remained
without solution.  On the last day of the year a splendid fleet of
transports arrived in the town, laden with whole droves of beeves and
flocks of sheep, besides wine and bread and beer enough to supply a
considerable city; so that market provisions in the beleaguered town
were cheaper than in any part of Europe.

Thus skilfully did the States-General and Prince Maurice watch from the
outside over Ostend, while the audacious but phlegmatic sea-captains
brought their cargoes unscathed through the Gullet, although Bucquoy's
batteries had now advanced to within seventy yards of the shore.

On the west side, the besiegers were slowly eating their way through the
old harbour towards the heart of the place.  Subterranean galleries,
patiently drained of their water, were met by counter-galleries leading
out from the town, and many were the desperate hand-to-hand encounters,
by dim lanterns, or in total darkness, beneath the ocean and beneath the
earth; Hollander, Spaniard, German, Englishman, Walloon, digging and
dying in the fatal trenches, as if there had been no graves at home.
Those insatiable sand-banks seemed ready to absorb all the gold and all
the life of Christendom.  But the monotony of that misery it is useless
to chronicle.  Hardly an event of these dreary days has been left
unrecorded by faithful diarists and industrious soldiers, but time has
swept us far away from them, and the world has rolled on to fresher
fields of carnage and ruin.  All winter long those unwearied,
intelligent, fierce, and cruel creatures toiled and fought in the
stagnant waters, and patiently burrowed in the earth.  It seemed that
if Ostend were ever lost it would be because at last entirely bitten
away and consumed.  When there was no Ostend left, it might be that
the archduke would triumph.

As there was always danger that the movements on the east side might be
at last successful, it was the command of Maurice that the labours to
construct still another harbour should go on in case the Gullet should
become useless, as the old haven had been since the beginning of the
siege.  And the working upon that newest harbour was as dangerous to the
Hollanders as Bucquoy's dike-building to the Spaniards, for the pioneers
and sappers were perpetually under fire from the batteries which the
count had at, last successfully established on the extremity of his work.
It was a piteous sight to see those patient delvers lay down their spades
and die, hour after hour, to be succeeded by their brethren only to share
their fate.  Yet still the harbour building progressed; for the republic
was determined that the city should be open to the sea so long as the
States had a stiver, or a ship, or a spade.

While this deadly industry went on, the more strictly military operations
were not pretermitted day nor night.  The Catholics were unwearied in
watching for a chance of attack, and the Hollanders stood on the ramparts
and in the trenches, straining eyes and ears through the perpetual icy
mists of that black winter to catch the sight and sound of a coming foe.
Especially the by-watches, as they were called, were enough to break down
constitutions of iron; for, all day and night, men were stationed in the
inundated regions, bound on pain of death to stand in the water and watch
for a possible movement of the enemy, until the waves should rise so high
as to make it necessary to swim.  Then, until the tide fell again, there
was brief repose.

And so the dreary winter faded away at last into chill and blustering
spring.  On the 13th of April a hurricane, such as had not occurred since
the siege began; raged across the ocean, deluging and shattering the
devoted town.  The waters rose over dyke and parapet, and the wind swept
from the streets and ramparts every living thing.  Not a soldier or
sailor could keep his feet, the chief tower of the church was blown into
the square, chimneys and windows crashed on all sides, and the elements
had their holiday, as if to prove how helpless a thing was man, however
fierce and determined, when the powers of Nature arose in their strength.
It was as if no siege existed, as if no hostile armies had been lying
nearly two years long close to each other, and losing no opportunity to
fly at each other's throats.  The strife of wind and ocean gave a respite
to human rage.

It was but a brief respite.  At nightfall there was a lull in the
tempest, and the garrison crept again to the ramparts.  Instantly the
departing roar of the winds and waters were succeeded by fainter but
still more threatening sounds, and the sentinels and the drums and
trumpets to rally the garrison, when the attack came.  The sleepless
Spaniards were already upon them.  In the Porcupine fort, a blaze of
wickerwork and building materials suddenly illuminated the gathering
gloom of night; and the loud cries of the assailants, who had succeeded
in kindling this fire by their missiles, proclaimed the fierceness of the
attack.  Governor Dorp was himself in the fort, straining every nerve to
extinguish the flames, and to hold this most important position.  He was
successful.  After a brief but bloody encounter the Spaniards were
repulsed with heavy loss.  All was quiet again, and the garrison in the
Porcupine were congratulating themselves on their victory when suddenly
the ubiquitous Philip Fleeting plunged, with a face of horror, into the
governor's quarters, informing him that the attack on the redoubt had
been a feint, and that the Spaniards were at that very moment swarming
all over the three external forts, called the South Square, the West
Square, and the Polder.  These points, which have been already described,
were most essential to the protection of the place, as without them the
whole counterscarp was in danger.  It was to save those exposed but vital
positions that Sir Francis Vere had resorted to the slippery device of
the last Christmas Eve but one.

Dorp refused to believe the intelligence.  The squares were well guarded,
the garrison ever alert.  Spaniards were not birds of prey to fly up
those perpendicular heights, and for beings without wings the thing was
impossible.  He followed Fleming through the darkness, and was soon
convinced that the impossible was true.  The precious squares were in the
hands of the enemy.  Nimble as monkeys, those yellow jerkined Italians,
Walloons, and Spaniards--stormhats on their heads and swords in their
teeth--had planted rope-ladders, swung themselves up the walls by
hundreds upon hundreds, while the fight had been going on at the
Porcupine, and were now rushing through the forts grinning defiance,
yelling and chattering with fierce triumph, and beating down all
opposition.  It was splendidly done.  The discomfited Dorp met small
bodies of his men, panic-struck, reeling out from their stronghold,
wounded, bleeding, shrieking for help and for orders.  It seemed as if
the Spaniards had dropped from the clouds.  The Dutch commandant did his
best to rally the fugitives, and to encourage those who had remained.
All night long the furious battle raged, every inch of ground being
contested; for both Catholics and Hollanders knew full well that this
triumph was worth more than all that had been gained for the archduke in
eighteen months of siege.  Pike to pike, breast to breast, they fought
through the dark April night; the last sobs of the hurricane dying
unheard, the red lanterns flitting to and fro, the fireworks hissing in
every direction of earth and air, the great wicker piles, heaped up with
pitch and rosin, flaming over a scene more like a dance of goblins than a
commonplace Christian massacre.  At least fifteen hundred were killed--
besiegers and besieged--during the storming of the forts and the
determined but unsuccessful attempt of the Hollanders to retake them.
And when at last the day had dawned, and the Spaniards could see the full
extent of their victory, they set themselves with--unusual alacrity to
killing such of the wounded and prisoners as were in their hands, while,
at the same time, they turned the guns of their newly acquired works upon
the main counterscarp of the town.

Yet the besieged--discomfited but undismayed lost not a moment in
strengthening their inner works, and in doing their best, day after day,
by sortie, cannonade, and every possible device, to prevent the foe from
obtaining full advantage of his success.  The triumph was merely a local
one, and the patient Hollanders soon proved to the enemy that the town
was not gained by carrying the three squares, but that every inch of the
place was to be contested as hotly as those little redoubts had been.
Ostend, after standing nearly two years of siege, was not to be carried
by storm.  A goodly slice of it had been pared off that April night, and
was now in possession of the archduke, but this was all.  Meantime the
underground work was resumed on both sides.

Frederic Spinola, notwithstanding the stunning defeat sustained by him
in the preceding October, had not lost heart while losing all his ships.
On the contrary, he had been busy during the winter in building other
galleys.  Accordingly, one fine morning in May, Counsellor Flooswyk,
being on board a war vessel convoying some empty transports from Ostend,
observed signs of mischief brewing as he sailed past the Gut of Sluys;
and forthwith gave notice of what he had seen to Admiral Joost de Moor,
commanding the blockading squadron.  The counsellor was right.  Frederic
Spinola meant mischief.  It was just before sunrise of a beautiful
summer's day.  The waves were smooth--not a breath of wind stirring--and
De Moor, who had four little war-ships of Holland, and was supported
besides by a famous vessel called the Black Galley of Zeeland, under
Captain Jacob Michelzoon, soon observed a movement from Sluys.

Over the flat and glassy surface of the sea, eight galleys of the largest
size were seen crawling slowly, like vast reptiles, towards his ..
position.  Four lesser vessels followed in the wake of the great galleys.
The sails of the admiral's little fleet flapped idly against the mast.
He could only placidly await the onset.  The Black Galley, however, moved
forward according to her kind; and was soon vigorously attacked by two
galleys of the enemy.  With all the force that five hundred rowers could
impart, these two huge vessels ran straight into the Zeeland ship, and
buried their iron prows in her sides.  Yet the Black Galley was made of
harder stuff than were those which had gone down in the channel the
previous autumn under the blows of John Kant.  Those on board her, at
least, were made of tougher material than were galley-slaves and land-
soldiers.  The ramming was certainly not like that of a thousand horse-
power of steam, and there was no very great display of science in the
encounter; yet Captain Jacob Michelzoon, with two enemy's ships thus
stuck to his sides, might well have given himself up for lost.  The
disproportion of ships and men was monstrous.  Beside the chain-gang,
each of Spinola's ships was manned by two hundred soldiers, while thirty-
six musketeers from the Flushing garrison were the only men-at-arms in De
Moor's whole squadron.  But those amphibious Zeelanders and Hollanders,
perfectly at home in the water, expert in handling vessels, and excellent
cannoneers, were more than a match for twenty times their number of
landsmen.  It was a very simple-minded, unsophisticated contest.  The
attempt to board the Black Galley was met with determined resistance, but
the Zeeland sailors clambered like cats upon the bowsprits of the Spanish
galleys, fighting with cutlass and handspike, while a broadside or two
was delivered with terrible effect into the benches of the chained and
wretched slaves.  Captain Michelzoon was killed, but his successor,
Lieutenant Hart, although severely wounded, swore that he would blow up
his ship with his own hands rather than surrender.  The decks of all the
vessels ran with blood, but at last the Black Galley succeeded in beating
off her assailants; the Zeelanders, by main force, breaking off the
enemy's bowsprits, so that the two ships of Spinola were glad to sheer
off, leaving their stings buried in the enemy's body.

Next, four galleys attacked the stout little galleot of Captain Logier,
and with a very similar result.  Their prows stuck fast in the bulwarks
of the ship, but the boarders soon found themselves the boarded, and,
after a brief contest, again the iron bowsprits snapped like pipe-stems,
and again the floundering and inexperienced Spaniards shrank away from
the terrible encounter which they had provoked.  Soon afterwards, Joost
de Moor was assailed by three galleys.  He received them, however, with
cannonade and musketry so warmly that they willingly obeyed a summons
from Spinola, and united with the flag-ship in one more tremendous onset
upon the Black Galley of Zeeland.  And it might have gone hard with that
devoted ship, already crippled in the previous encounter, had not Captain
Logier fortunately drifted with the current near enough to give her
assistance, while the other sailing ships lay becalmed and idle
spectators.  At last Spinola, conspicuous by his armour, and by
magnificent recklessness of danger, fell upon the deck of his galley,
torn to pieces with twenty-four wounds from a stone gun of the Black
Galley, while at nearly the same, moment a gentle breeze began in the
distance to ruffle the surface of the waters.  More than a thousand men
had fallen in Spinola's fleet, inclusive of the miserable slaves, who
were tossed overboard as often as wounds made them a cumbrous part of the
machinery, and the galleys, damaged, discomfited, laden with corpses and
dripping with blood, rowed off into Sluys as speedily as they could move,
without waiting until the coming wind should bring all the sailing ships
into the fight, together with such other vessels under Haultain as might
be cruising in the distance.  They succeeded in getting into the Gut of
Sluys, and so up to their harbour of refuge.  Meantime, baldheaded,
weather-beaten Joost de Moor--farther pursuit being impossible--piped all
hands on deck, where officers and men fell on their knees, shouting in
pious triumph the 34th Psalm: "I will bless the Lord at all times, His
praise shall continually be in my mouth .  .  .  .  .  O magnify the Lord
with me, and let us exalt His name together."  So rang forth the notes of
humble thanksgiving across the placid sea.  And assuredly those hardy
mariners, having gained a victory with their little vessels over twelve
ships and three thousand men--a numerical force of at least ten times
their number,--such as few but Dutchmen could have achieved; had a right
to give thanks to Him from whom all blessings flow.

Thus ended the career of Frederic Spinola, a wealthy, gallant, high-born,
brilliant youth, who might have earned distinction, and rendered
infinitely better service to the cause of Spain and the archdukes, had he
not persuaded himself that he had a talent for seamanship.  Certainly,
never was a more misplaced ambition, a more unlucky career.  Not even in
that age of rash adventure, when grandees became admirals and field-
marshals because they were grandees, had such incapacity been shown by
any restless patrician.  Frederic Spinola, at the age of thirty-two, a
landsman and a volunteer, thinking to measure himself on blue water with
such veterans as John Rant, Joost de Moor, and the other Dutchmen and
Zeelanders whom it was his fortune to meet, could hardly escape the doom
which so rapidly befel him.

On board the Black Galley Captain Michelznon, eleven of his officers, and
fifteen of his men were killed; Admiral de Moor was slightly wounded, and
had five of his men killed and twenty wounded; Captain Logier was wounded
in the foot, and lost fifteen killed and twelve wounded.

The number of those killed in Spinola's fleet has been placed as high
as fourteen hundred, including two hundred officers and gentlemen of
quality, besides the crowds of galley-slaves thrown overboard.  This was
perhaps an exaggeration.  The losses were, however, sufficient to put a
complete atop to the enterprise out of which the unfortunate Spinola had
conceived such extravagant hopes of fame and fortune.

The herring-smacks and other coasters, besides the transports passing to
and from Ostend, sailed thenceforth unmolested by any galleys from Sluys.
One unfortunate sloop, however, in moving out from the beleaguered city,
ran upon some shoals before getting out of the Gullet and thus fell a
prize to the besiegers.  She was laden with nothing more precious than
twelve wounded soldiers on their way to the hospitals at Flushing.
These prisoners were immediately hanged, at the express command of the
archduke, because they had been taken on the sea where, according to his
highness, there were no laws of war.

The stadholder, against his will--for Maurice was never cruel--felt
himself obliged to teach the cardinal better jurisprudence and better
humanity for the future.  In order to show him that there was but one
belligerent law on sea and on land, he ordered two hundred Spanish
prisoners within his lines to draw lots from an urn in which twelve of
the tickets were inscribed with the fatal word gibbet.  Eleven of the
twelve thus marked by ill luck were at once executed.  The twelfth, a
comely youth, was pardoned at the intercession of a young girl.  It is
not stated whether or not she became his wife.  It is also a fact worth
mentioning, as illustrating the recklessness engendered by a soldier's
life, that the man who drew the first blank sold it to one of his
comrades and plunged his hand again into the fatal urn.  Whether he
succeeded in drawing the gibbet at his second trial has not been
recorded.  When these executions had taken place in full view of the
enemy's camp, Maurice formally announced that for every prisoner
thenceforth put to death by the archduke two captives from his own army
should be hanged.  These stern reprisals, as usual, put an end to the
foul system of martial murder.

Throughout the year the war continued to be exclusively the siege of
Ostend.  Yet the fierce operations, recently recorded, having been
succeeded by a period of comparative languor, Governor Dorp at last
obtained permission to depart to repair his broken health.  He was
succeeded in command of the forces within the town by Charles Van der
Noot, colonel of the Zeeland regiment which had suffered so much in the
first act of the battle of Nieuport.  Previously to this exchange,
however, a day of solemn thanksgiving and prayer was set apart on the
anniversary of the beginning of the siege.  Since the 5th of July, 1601,
two years had been spent by the whole power of the enemy in the attempt
to reduce this miserable village, and the whole result thus far had been
the capture of three little external forts.  There seemed cause for
thanksgiving.

Philip Fleming, too, obtained a four weeks' holiday--the first in eleven
years--and went with his family outside the pestiferous and beleaguered
town.  He was soon to return to his multifarious duties as auditor,
secretary, and chronicler of the city, and unattached aide-de-camp to
the commander-in-chief, whoever that might be; and to perform his duty
with the same patient courage and sagacity that had marked him from the
beginning.  "An unlucky cannon-ball of the enemy," as he observes,
did some damage at this period to his diary, but it happened at a moment
when comparatively little was doing, so that the chasm was of less
consequence.

"And so I, Philip Fleming, auditor to the Council of War," he says with
homely pathos, "have been so continually employed as not to have obtained
leave in all these years to refresh, for a few days outside this town,
my troubled spirit after such perpetual work, intolerable cares, and
slavery, having had no other pleasure allotted me than with daily
sadness, weeping eyes, and heavy yearnings to tread the ramparts, and,
like a poor slave laden with fetters, to look at so many others sailing
out of the harbour in order to feast their souls in other provinces with
green fields and the goodly works of God.  And thus it has been until it
has nearly gone out of my memory how the fruits of the earth, growing
trees, and dumb beasts appear to mortal eye."

He then, with whimsical indignation, alludes to a certain author who
pleaded in excuse for the shortcomings of the history of the siege the
damage done to his manuscripts by a cannon-ball.  "Where the liar dreamt
of or invented his cannon-ball," he says, "I cannot tell, inasmuch as he
never saw the city of Ostend in his life; but the said cannon-ball, to my
great sorrrow, did come one afternoon through my office, shot from the
enemy's great battery, which very much damaged not his memoirs but mine;
taking off the legs and arms at the same time of three poor invalid
soldiers seated in the sun before my door and killing them on the spot,
and just missing my wife, then great with child, who stood by me with
faithfulness through all the sufferings of the bloody siege and presented
me twice during its continuance, by the help of Almighty God, with young
Amazons or daughters of war."

And so honest Philip Fleming went out for a little time to look at
the green trees and the dumb creatures feeding in the Dutch pastures.
Meantime the two armies--outside and within Ostend--went moiling on
in their monotonous work; steadily returning at intervals, as if by
instinct, to repair the ruin which a superior power would often inflict
in a half-hour on the results of laborious weeks.

In the open field the military operations were very trifling, the wager
of battle being by common consent fought out on the sands of Ostend, and
the necessities for attack and defence absorbing, the resources of each
combatant.  France, England, and Spain were holding a perpetual
diplomatic tournament to which our eyes must presently turn, and the
Sublime Realm of the Ottoman and the holy Roman Empire were in the
customary equilibrium of their eternal strife.

The mutiny of the veterans continued; the "Italian republic" giving the
archduke almost as much trouble, despite his ban and edicts and outlawry,
as the Dutch commonwealth itself.  For more than a twelvemonth the best
troops of the Spanish army had been thus established as a separate
empire, levying black-mail on the obedient provinces, hanging such of
their old officers as dared to remonstrate, and obeying their elected
chief magistrates with exemplary docility.

They had become a force of five thousand strong, cavalry and infantry
together, all steady, experienced veterans--the best and bravest soldiers
of Europe.  The least of them demanded two thousand florins as owed to
him by the King of Spain and the archduke.  The burghers of Bois-le-Duc
and other neighbouring towns in the obedient provinces kept watch and
ward, not knowing how soon the Spaniards might be upon them to reward
them for their obedience.  Not a peasant with provisions was permitted by
the mutineers to enter Bois-le-Duc, while the priests were summoned to
pay one year's income of all their property on pain of being burned
alive.  "Very much amazed are the poor priests at these proceedings,"
said Ernest Nassau, "and there is a terrible quantity of the vile race
within and around the city.  I hope one day to have the plucking of some
of their feathers myself."

The mutiny governed itself as a strict military democracy, and had caused
an official seal to be engraved, representing seven snakes entwined in
one, each thrusting forth a dangerous tongue, with the motto--

                         "tutto in ore
            E sua Eccelenza in nostro favore."

"His Excellency" meant Maurice of Nassau, with whom formal articles of
compact had been arranged.  It had become necessary for the archduke,
notwithstanding the steady drain of the siege of Ostend, to detach a
considerable army against this republic and to besiege them in their
capital of Hoogstraaten.  With seven thousand foot and three thousand
cavalry Frederic Van den Berg took the field against them in the latter
part of July.  Maurice, with nine thousand five hundred infantry and
three thousand horse, lay near Gertruydenberg.  When united with the
rebel "squadron," two thousand five hundred strong, he would dispose of
a force of fifteen thousand veterans, and he moved at once to relieve
the besieged mutineers.  His cousin Frederic, however, had no desire to
measure himself with the stadholder at such odds, and stole away from
him in the dark without beat of drum.  Maurice entered Hoogstraaten, was
received with rapture by the Spanish and Italian veterans, and excited
the astonishment of all by the coolness with which he entered into the
cage of these dangerous serpents--as they called themselves--handling
them, caressing them, and being fondled by them in return.  But the
veterans knew a soldier when they saw one, and their hearts warmed to
the prince--heretic though he were--more than they had ever done to the
unfrocked bishop who, after starving them for years, had doomed them to
destruction in this world and the next.

The stadholder was feasted and honoured by the mutineers during his brief
visit to Hoogatraaten, and concluded with them a convention, according to
which that town was to be restored to him, while they were to take
temporary possession of the city of Grave.  They were likewise to assist,
with all their strength, in his military operations until they should
make peace on their own terms with the archduke.  For two weeks after
such treaty they were not to fight against the States, and meantime,
though fighting on the republican side, they were to act as an
independent corps and in no wise to be merged in the stadholder's
forces.  So much and no more had resulted from the archduke's
excommunication of the best part of his army.  He had made a present
of those troops to the enemy.  He had also been employing a considerable
portion of his remaining forces in campaigning against their own
comrades.  While at Grave, the mutineers, or the "squadron" as they were
now called, were to be permitted to practise their own religious rites,
without offering however, any interference with the regular Protestant
worship of the place.  When they should give up Grave, Hoogstraaten was
to be restored to them if still in possession of the States and they were
to enter into no negotiations with the archduke except with full
knowledge of the stadholder.

There were no further military, operations of moment during the rest of
the year.

Much, more important, however, than siege, battle, or mutiny, to human
civilization, were the steady movements of the Dutch skippers and
merchants at this period.  The ears of Europe were stunned with the
clatter of destruction going on all over Christendom, and seeming the
only reasonable occupation of Christians; but the little republic; while
fighting so heroically against the concentrated powers of despotism in
the West, was most industriously building up a great empire in the East.
In the new era just dawning, production was to become almost as
honourable and potent, a principle as destruction.

The voyages among the spicy regions of the equator--so recently wrested
from their Catholic and Faithful Majesties by Dutch citizens who did not
believe in Borgia--and the little treaties made with petty princes and
commonwealths, who for the first time ware learning that there were
other white men in the world beside the Portuguese, had already led to
considerable results.  Before the close of, the previous year that great
commercial corporation had been founded--an empire within an empire;
a republic beneath a republic--a counting-house company which was to
organize armies, conquer kingdoms, build forts and cities, make war
and peace, disseminate and exchange among the nations of the earth the
various products of civilization, more perfectly than any agency hitherto
known, and bring the farthest disjoined branches of the human family
into closer, connection than had ever existed before.  That it was a
monopoly, offensive to true commercial principles, illiberal, unjust,
tyrannical; ignorant of the very rudiments of mercantile philosophy;
is plain enough.  For the sages of the world were but as clowns, at that
period, in economic science.

Was not the great financier of the age; Maximilian de Bethune, at that
very moment exhausting his intellect in devices for the prevention of all
international commerce even in Europe?  "The kingdom of France," he
groaned, "is stuffed full of the manufactures of our neighbours, and it
is incredible what a curse to us are these wares.  The import of all
foreign goods has now been forbidden under very great penalties."  As a
necessary corollary to this madhouse legislation an edict was issued,
prohibiting the export of gold and silver from France, on pain, not only
of confiscation of those precious metals, but of the whole fortune of
such as engaged in or winked at the traffic.  The king took a public oath
never to exempt the culprits from the punishment thus imposed, and, as
the thrifty Sully had obtained from the great king a private grant of all
those confiscations, and as he judiciously promised twenty-five per cent.
thereof to the informer, no doubt he filled his own purse while
impoverishing the exchequer.

The United States, not enjoying the blessings, of a paternal government,
against which they had been fighting almost half a century, could not be
expected to rival the stupendous folly of such political economy,
although certainly not emancipated from all the delusions of the age.

Nor are we to forget how very recently, and even dimly, the idea of
freedom in commerce has dawned upon nations, the freest of all in polity
and religion.  Certainly the vices and shortcomings of the commercial
system now inaugurated by the republic may be justly charged in great
part to the epoch, while her vast share in the expanding and upward
movement which civilization, under the auspices of self-government;
self-help, political freedom, free thought, and unshackled science,
was then to undertake--never more perhaps to be permanently checked
--must be justly ascribed to herself.

It was considered accordingly that the existence of so many private
companies and copartnerships trading to the East was injurious to the
interests of commerce.  Merchants arriving at the different Indian ports
would often find that their own countrymen had been too quick for them,
and that other fleets had got the wind out of their sails, that the
eastern markets had been stripped, and that prices had gone up to a
ruinous height, while on the other hand, in the Dutch cities, nutmegs and
cinnamon, brocades and indigo, were as plentiful as red herrings.  It was
hardly to be expected at that day to find this very triumph of successful
traffic considered otherwise than as a grave misfortune, demanding
interference on the part of the only free Government then existing in the
world.  That already free competition and individual enterprise, had made
such progress in enriching the Hollanders and the Javanese respectively
with a superfluity of useful or agreeable things, brought from the
farthest ends of the earth, seemed to the eyes of that day a condition
of things likely to end in a general catastrophe.  With a simplicity,
amazing only to those who are inclined to be vain of a superior wisdom--
not their own but that of their wisest contemporaries--one of the chief
reasons for establishing the East India Company was stated to be the
necessity of providing against low prices of Oriental productions in
Europe.

But national instinct is often wiser than what is supposed to be high
national statesmanship, and there can be no doubt that the true
foundation of the East India Company was the simple recognition of an
iron necessity.  Every merchant in Holland knew full well that the
Portuguese and Spaniards could never be driven out of their commercial
strongholds under the equator, except by a concentration of the private
strength and wealth, of the mercantile community.  The Government had
enough on its hands in disputing, inch by inch, at so prodigious an
expenditure of blood and treasure, the meagre territory with which nature
had endowed the little commonwealth.  Private organisation, self-help;
union of individual purses and individual brains, were to conquer an
empire at the antipodes if it were to be won at all.  By so doing, the
wealth of the nation and its power to maintain the great conflict with
the spirit of the past might be indefinitely increased, and the resources
of Spanish despotism proportionally diminished.  It was not to be
expected of Jacob Heemskerk, Wolfert Hermann, or Joris van Spilberg,
indomitable skippers though they were, that each, acting on his own
responsibility or on that of his supercargo, would succeed every day in
conquering a whole Spanish fleet and dividing a million or two of prize-
money among a few dozen sailors.  Better things even than this might be
done by wholesome and practical concentration on a more extended scale.

So the States-General granted a patent or charter to one great company
with what, for the time, was an enormous paid-up capital, in order that
the India trade might be made secure and the Spaniards steadily
confronted in what they had considered their most impregnable
possessions.  All former trading companies were invited to merge
themselves in the Universal East India Company, which, for twenty-one
years, should alone have the right to trade to the east of the Cape of
Good Hope and to sail through the Straits of Magellan.

The charter had been signed on 20th March, 1602, and was mainly to the
following effect.

The company was to pay twenty-five thousand florins to the States-General
for its privilege.  The whole capital was to be six million six hundred
thousand florins.  The chamber of Amsterdam was to have one half of the
whole interest, the chamber of Zeeland one fourth; the chambers of the
Meuse, namely, Delft, Rotterdam, and the north quarter; that is to say,
Hoorn and Enkhuizen, each a sixteenth.  All the chambers were to be
governed by the directors then serving, who however were to be allowed
to die out, down to the number of twenty for Amsterdam, twelve for
Zeeland, and seven for each of the other chambers.  To fill a vacancy
occurring among the directors, the remaining members of the board were
to nominate three candidates, from whom the estates of the province
should choose one.  Each director was obliged, to have an interest in the
company amounting to at least six thousand florins, except the directors
for Hoorn and Enkhuizen, of whom only three thousand should be required.
The general assembly of these chambers should consist of seventeen
directors, eight for Amsterdam, four for Zeeland, two for the Meuse, and
two for the north quarter; the seventeenth being added by turns from the
chambers of Zeeland, the Meuse, and the north quarter.  This assembly was
to be held six years at Amsterdam, and then two years in Zeeland.  The
ships were always to return to the port from which they had sailed.  All
the inhabitants of the provinces had the right, within a certain time, to
take shares in the company.  Any province or city subscribing for forty
thousand florins or upwards might appoint an agent to look after its
affairs.

The Company might make treaties with the Indian powers, in the name of
the States-General of the United Netherlands or of the supreme
authorities of the same, might build fortresses; appoint generals, and
levy troops, provided such troops took oaths of fidelity to the States,
or to the supreme authority, and to the Company.  No ships, artillery,
or other munitions of war belonging to the Company were to be used in
service of the country without permission of the Company.  The admiralty
was to have a certain proportion of the prizes conquered from the enemy.

The directors should not be liable in property or person for the debts
of the Company.  The generals of fleets returning home were to make
reports on the state of India to the States.

Notification; of the union of all India companies with this great
corporation was duly sent to the fleets cruising in those regions, where
it arrived in the course of the year 1603.

Meantime the first fleet of the Company, consisting of fourteen vessels
under command of Admiral Wybrand van Warwyk, sailed before the end of
1602, and was followed towards the close of 1603 by thirteen other ships,
under Stephen van der Hagen?

The equipment of these two fleets cost two million two hundred thousand
florins.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Bestowing upon others what was not his property
Four weeks' holiday--the first in eleven years
Idea of freedom in commerce has dawned upon nations
Impossible it is to practise arithmetic with disturbed brains
Passion is a bad schoolmistress for the memory
Prisoners were immediately hanged
Unlearned their faith in bell, book, and candle
World has rolled on to fresher fields of carnage and ruin



End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v75
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 76, 1603-1604



CHAPTER XLI.

     Death of Queen Elizabeth--Condition of Spain--Legations to James I.
     --Union of England and Scotland--Characteristics of the new monarch
     --The English Court and Government--Piratical practices of the
     English--Audience of the States' envoy with king James--Queen
     Elizabeth's scheme far remodelling Europe--Ambassador extraordinary
     from Henry IV. to James--De Rosny's strictures on the English
     people--Private interview of De Rosny with the States' envoy--De
     Rosny's audience of the king--Objects of his mission--Insinuations
     of the Duke of Northumberland--Invitation of the embassy to
     Greenwich--Promise of James to protect the Netherlands against
     Spain--Misgivings of Barneveld--Conference at Arundel House--Its
     unsatisfactory termination--Contempt of De Rosny for the English
     counsellors--Political aspect of Europe--De Rosny's disclosure to
     the king of the secret object of his mission--Agreement of James to
     the proposals of De Rosny--Ratification of the treaty of alliance--
     Return of De Rosny and suite to France--Arrival of the Spanish
     ambassador.

On the 24th of March, 1603, Queen Elizabeth died at Richmond, having
nearly completed her seventieth year.  The two halves of the little
island of Britain were at last politically adjoined to each other by the
personal union of the two crowns.

A foreigner, son of the woman executed by Elizabeth, succeeded to
Elizabeth's throne.  It was most natural that the Dutch republic and the
French king, the archdukes and his Catholic Majesty, should be filled
with anxiety as to the probable effect of this change of individuals upon
the fortunes of the war.

For this Dutch war of independence was the one absorbing and controlling
interest in Christendom.  Upon that vast, central, and, as men thought,
baleful constellation the fates of humanity, were dependent.  Around it
lesser political events were forced to gravitate, and, in accordance to
their relation to it, were bright or obscure.  It was inevitable that
those whose vocation it was to ponder the aspects of the political
firmament, the sages and high-priests who assumed to direct human action
and to foretell human destiny, should now be more than ever perplexed.

Spain, since the accession of Philip III. to his father's throne,
although rapidly declining in vital energy, had not yet disclosed its
decrepitude to the world.  Its boundless ambition survived as a political
tradition rather than a real passion, while contemporaries still trembled
at the vision of universal monarchy in which the successor of Charlemagne
and of Charles V. was supposed to indulge.

Meantime, no feebler nor more insignificant mortal existed on earth than
this dreaded sovereign.

Scarcely a hairdresser or lemonade-dealer in all Spain was less cognizant
of the political affairs of the kingdom than was its monarch, for
Philip's first care upon assuming the crown was virtually to abdicate
in favour of the man soon afterwards known as the Duke of Lerma.

It is therefore only by courtesy and for convenience that history
recognizes his existence at all, as surely no human being in the reign of
Philip III. requires less mention than Philip III. himself.

I reserve for a subsequent chapter such rapid glances at the interior
condition of that kingdom with which it seemed the destiny of the Dutch
republic to be perpetually at war, as may be necessary to illustrate the
leading characteristics of the third Philip's reign.

Meantime, as the great queen was no more, who was always too sagacious to
doubt that the Dutch cause was her own--however disposed she might be to
browbeat the Dutchmen--it seemed possible to Spain that the republic
might at last be deprived of its only remaining ally.  Tassis was
despatched as chief of a legation, precursory to a more stately embassy
to be confided to the Duke of Frias.  The archdukes sent the prince of
Arenberg, while from the United States came young Henry of Nassau,
associated with John of Olden-Barneveld, Falk, Brederode, and other
prominent statesmen of the commonwealth.  Ministers from Denmark and
Sweden, from the palatinate and from numerous other powers, small and
great, were also collected to greet the rising sun in united Britain,
while the, awkward Scotchman, who was now called upon to play that
prominent part in the world's tragi-comedy which had been so long and so
majestically sustained by the "Virgin Queen," already began to tremble at
the plaudits and the bustle which announced how much was expected of the
new performer.

There was indeed a new sovereign upon the throne.  That most regal spirit
which had well expressed so many of the highest characteristics of the
nation had fled.  Mankind, has long been familiar with the dark, closing
hours of the illustrious reign.  The great queen, moody, despairing,
dying, wrapt in profoundest thought, with eyes fixed upon the ground or
already gazing into infinity, was besought by the counsellors around her
to name the man to whom she chose that the crown should devolve.

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

When the King of France was named, she shook her head.  When Philip III.
was suggested, she made a still more significant sign of dissent.  When
the King of Scots was mentioned, she nodded her approval, and again
relapsed into silent meditation.

She died, and James was King of Great Britain and Ireland.  Cecil had
become his prime minister long before the queen's eyes were closed.  The
hard-featured, rickety, fidgety, shambling, learned, most preposterous
Scotchman hastened to take possession of the throne.  Never--could there
have been a more unfit place or unfit hour for such a man.

England, although so small in dimensions, so meager in population, so
deficient, compared to the leading nations of Europe, in material and
financial strength, had already her great future swelling in her heart.
Intellectually and morally she was taking the lead among the nations.
Even at that day she had produced much which neither she herself nor any
other nation seemed destined to surpass.

Yet this most redoubtable folk only numbered about three millions, one-
tenth of them inhabiting London.  With the Scots and Irish added they
amounted to less than five millions of souls, hardly a third as many as
the homogeneous and martial people of that dangerous neighbour France.

Ireland was always rebellious; a mere conquered province, hating her
tyrant England's laws, religion, and people; loving Spain, and believing
herself closely allied by blood as well as sympathy to that most Catholic
land.

Scotland, on the accession of James, hastened to take possession of
England.  Never in history had two races detested each other more
fervently.  The leeches and locusts of the north, as they were
universally designated in England, would soon have been swept forth
from the country, or have left it of their own accord, had not the king
employed all that he had of royal authority or of eloquent persuasion
to retain them on the soil.  Of union, save the personal union of the
sceptre, there was no thought.  As in Ireland there was hatred to England
and adoration for Spain; so in Scotland, France was beloved quite as much
as England was abhorred.  Who could have foretold, or even hoped, that
atoms so mutually repulsive would ever have coalesced into a sympathetic
and indissoluble whole?

Even the virtues of James were his worst enemies.  As generous as the
day, he gave away with reckless profusion anything and everything that he
could lay his hands upon.  It was soon to appear that the great queen's
most unlovely characteristic, her avarice; was a more blessed quality to
the nation she ruled than the ridiculous prodigality of James.

Two thousand gowns, of the most, expensive material, adorned with gold,
pearls, and other bravery--for Elizabeth was very generous to herself--
were found in the queen's wardrobe, after death.  These magnificent and
costly robes, not one of which had she vouchsafed to bestow upon or to
bequeath to any of her ladies of honour, were now presented by her
successor to a needy Scotch lord, who certainly did not intend to adorn
his own person therewith.  "The hat was ever held out," said a splenetic
observer, "and it was filled in overflowing measure by the new monarch."

In a very short period he had given away--mainly to Scotchmen--at least
two millions of crowns, in various articles of personal property.  Yet
England was very poor.

The empire, if so it could be called, hardly boasted a regular revenue of
more than two millions of dollars a year; less than that of a fortunate
individual or two, in our own epoch, both in Europe and America; and not
one-fifth part of the contemporary income of France.  The hundred
thousand dollars of Scotland's annual budget did not suffice to pay its
expenses, and Ireland was a constant charge upon the imperial exchequer.

It is astounding, however, to reflect upon the pomp, extravagance, and
inordinate pride which characterized the government and the court.

The expenses of James's household were at least five hundred thousand
crowns, or about one quarter of the whole revenue of the empire.  Henry
IV., with all his extravagance, did not spend more than one-tenth of the
public income of France upon himself and his court.

Certainly if England were destined to grow great it would be in despite
of its new monarch.  Hating the People, most intolerant in religion,
believing intensely in royal prerogative, thoroughly convinced of his
regal as well as his personal infallibility, loathing that inductive
method of thought which was already leading the English nation so proudly
on the road of intellectual advancement, shrinking from the love of free
inquiry, of free action, of daring adventure, which was to be the real
informing spirit of the great British nation; abhorring the Puritans--
that is to say, one-third of his subjects--in whose harsh, but lofty.
nature he felt instinctively that popular freedom was enfolded--even as
the overshadowing tree in the rigid husk--and sending them forth into the
far distant wilderness to wrestle with wild beasts and with savages more
ferocious than beasts; fearing and hating the Catholics as the sworn
enemies of his realm; his race, and himself, trampling on them as much as
he dared, forcing them into hypocrisy to save themselves from persecution
or at least pecuniary ruin--if they would worship God according to their
conscience; at deadly feud, therefore, on religious grounds, with much
more than half his subjects--Puritans or Papists--and yet himself a
Puritan in dogma and a Papist in Church government, if only the king
could be pope; not knowing, indeed, whether a Puritan, or a Jesuit whom
he called a Papist-Puritan, should be deemed the more disgusting or
dangerous animal; already preparing for his unfortunate successor a path
to the scaffold by employing all the pedantry, both theological and
philosophical at his command to bring parliaments into contempt, and to
place the royal prerogative on a level with Divinity; at the head of a
most martial, dauntless, and practical nation, trembling, with
unfortunate physical timidity, at the sight of a drawn sword; ever
scribbling or haranguing in Latin, French, or broad Scotch, when the
world was arming, it must always be a special wonder that one who might
have been a respectable; even a useful, pedagogue, should by the caprice
of destiny have been permitted, exactly at that epoch to be one of the
most contemptible and mischievous of kings.

But he had a most effective and energetic minister.  Even as in Spain and
in France at the same period, the administration of government was
essentially in-one pair of hands.

Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, ever since the termination of the
splendid triumvirate of his father and Walsingham, had been in reality
supreme.  The proud and terrible hunchback, who never forgave, nor forgot
to destroy, his enemies, had now triumphed over the last passion of the
doting queen.  Essex had gone to perdition.

Son of the great minister who had brought the mother of James to the
scaffold, Salisbury had already extorted forgiveness for that execution
from the feeble king.  Before Elizabeth was in her grave, he was already
as much the favourite of her successor as of herself, governing Scotland
as well as England, and being Prime Minister of Great Britain before
Great Britain existed.

Lord High Treasurer and First Secretary of State, he was now all in all
in the council.  The other great lords, highborn and highly titled as
they were and served at their banquets by hosts of lackeys on their
knees--Nottinghams, Northamptons, Suffolks--were, after all, ciphers or
at best, mere pensioners of Spain.  For all the venality of Europe was
not confined to the Continent.  Spain spent at least one hundred and
fifty thousand crowns annually among the leading courtiers of James while
his wife, Anne of Denmark, a Papist at heart, whose private boudoir was
filled with pictures and images of the Madonna and the saints, had
already received one hundred thousand dollars in solid cash from the
Spanish court, besides much jewelry, and other valuable things.  To
negotiate with Government in England was to bribe, even as at Paris or
Madrid.  Gold was the only passkey to justice, to preferment, or to
power.

Yet the foreign subsidies to the English court were, after all, of but
little avail at that epoch.  No man had influence but Cecil, and he was
too proud, too rich, too powerful to be bribed.   Alone with clean
fingers among courtiers and ministers, he had, however, accumulated a
larger fortune than any.  His annual income was estimated at two hundred
thousand crowns, and he had a vast floating capital, always well
employed.  Among other investments, he had placed half a million on
interest in Holland,' and it was to be expected, therefore, that he
should favour the cause of the republic, rebellious and upstart though it
were.

The pigmy, as the late queen had been fond of nicknaming him, was the
only giant in the Government.  Those crooked shoulders held up, without
flinching, the whole burden of the State.  Pale, handsome, anxious,
suffering, and intellectual of visage, with his indomitable spirit, ready
eloquence, and nervous energy, he easily asserted supremacy over all the
intriguers, foreign and domestic, the stipendiariea, the generals, the
admirals, the politicians, at court, as well as over the Scotch Solomon
who sat on the throne.

But most certainly, it was for the public good of Britain, that Europe
should be pacified.  It is very true that the piratical interest would
suffer, and this was a very considerable and influential branch of
business.  So long as war existed anywhere, the corsairs of England
sailed with the utmost effrontery from English ports, to prey upon the
commerce of friend and foe alike.  After a career of successful plunder,
it was not difficult for the rovers to return to their native land, and,
with the proceeds of their industry, to buy themselves positions of
importance, both social and political.  It was not the custom to consider
too curiously the source of the wealth.  If it was sufficient to dazzle
the eyes of the vulgar, it was pretty certain to prove the respectability
of the owner.

It was in vain that the envoys of the Dutch and Venetian republics sought
redress for the enormous damage inflicted on their commerce by English
pirates, and invoked the protection of public law.  It was always easy
for learned juris-consuls to prove such depredations to be consistent
with international usage and with sound morality.  Even at that period,
although England was in population and in wealth so insignificant, it
possessed a lofty, insular contempt for the opinions and the doctrines
of other nations, and expected, with perfect calmness, that her own
principles should be not only admitted, but spontaneously adored.

Yet the piratical interest was no longer the controlling one.  That city
on the Thames, which already numbered more than three hundred thousand
inhabitants, had discovered that more wealth was to be accumulated by her
bustling shopkeepers in the paths of legitimate industry than by a horde
of rovers over the seas, however adventurous and however protected by
Government.

As for France, she was already defending herself against piracy by what
at the period seemed a masterpiece of internal improvement.  The Seine,
the Loire, and the Rhone were soon to be united in one chain of
communication.  Thus merchandise might be water-borne from the channel to
the Mediterranean, without risking the five or six months' voyage by sea
then required from Havre to Marseilles, and exposure along the whole
coast to attack from the corsairs of England Spain and Barbary.

The envoys of the States-General had a brief audience of the new
sovereign, in which little more than phrases of compliment were
pronounced.

"We are here," said Barneveld, "between grief and joy.  We have lost her
whose benefits to us we can never describe in words, but we have found a
successor who is heir not only to her kingdom but to all her virtues."
And with this exordium the great Advocate plunged at once into the depths
of his subject, so far as was possible in an address of ceremony.  He
besought the king not to permit Spain, standing on the neck of the
provinces, to grasp from that elevation at other empires.  He reminded
James of his duty to save those of his own religion from the clutch of a
sanguinary superstition, to drive away those lurking satellites of the
Roman pontiff who considered Britain their lawful prey.  He implored him
to complete the work so worthily begun by Elizabeth.  If all those bound
by one interest should now, he urged, unite their efforts, the Spaniard,
deprived not only of the Netherlands, but, if he were not wise in time,
banished from the ocean and stripped of all his transmarine possessions,
would be obliged to consent to a peace founded on the only secure basis,
equality of strength.  The envoy concluded by beseeching the king for
assistance to Ostend, now besieged for two years long.

But James manifested small disposition to melt in the fervour of the
Advocate's eloquence.  He answered with a few cold commonplaces.
Benignant but extremely cautious, he professed goodwill enough to the
States but quite as much for Spain, a power with which, he observed, he
had never quarrelled, and from which he had received the most friendly
offices.  The archdukes, too, he asserted, had never been hostile to the
realm, but only to the Queen of England.  In brief, he was new to English
affairs, required time to look about him, but would not disguise that his
genius was literary, studious, and tranquil, and much more inclined to
peace than to war.

In truth, James had cause to look very sharply about him.  It required an
acute brain and steady nerves to understand and to control the whirl of
parties and the conflict of interests and intrigues, the chameleon
shiftings of character and colour, at this memorable epoch of transition
in the realm which he had just inherited.  There was a Scotch party,
favourable on the whole to France; there was a Spanish party, there was
an English party, and, more busy than all, there was a party--not Scotch,
nor French, nor English, nor Spanish--that un-dying party in all
commonwealths or kingdoms which ever fights for itself and for the
spoils.

France and Spain had made peace with each other at Vervins five years
before, and had been at war ever since.

Nothing could be plainer nor more cynical than the language exchanged
between the French monarch and the representative of Spain.  That Philip
III.--as the Spanish Government by a convenient fiction was always
called--was the head and front of the great Savoy-Biron conspiracy to
take Henry's life and dismember his kingdom, was hardly a stage secret.
Yet diplomatic relations were still preserved between the two countries,
and wonderful diplomatic interviews had certainly been taking place in
Paris.

Ambassador Tassis had walked with lofty port into Henry's cabinet,
disdaining to salute any of the princes of the blood or high
functionaries of state in the apartments through which he passed, and
with insolent defiance had called Henry to account for his dealing with
the Dutch rebels.

"Sire, the king my master finds it very strange," he said, "that you
still continue to assist his rebels in Holland, and that you shoot at his
troops on their way to the Netherlands.  If you don't abstain from such
infractions of his rights he prefers open war to being cheated by such a
pretended peace.  Hereupon I demand your reply."

"Mr. Ambassador," replied the king, "I find it still more strange that
your master is so impudent as to dare to make such complaints--he who is
daily making attempts upon my life and upon this State.  Even if I do
assist the Hollanders, what wrong is that to him?  It is an organized
commonwealth, powerful, neighbourly, acknowledging no subjection to him.
But your master is stirring up rebellion in my own kingdom, addressing
himself to the princes of my blood and my most notable officers, so that
I have been obliged to cut off the head of one of the most beloved of
them all.  By these unchristian proceedings he has obliged me to take
sides with the Hollanders, whom I know to be devoted to me; nor have I
done anything for them except to pay the debts I owed them.  I know
perfectly well that the king your master is the head of this conspiracy,
and that the troops of Naples were meditating an attack upon my kingdom.
I have two letters written by the hand of your master to Marshal Biron,
telling him to trust Fuentes as if it were himself, and it is notorious
that Fuentes has projected and managed all the attempts to assassinate
me.  Do you, think you have a child to deal with?  The late King of Spain
knew me pretty well.  If this one thinks himself wiser I shall let him
see who I am.  Do you want peace or war?  I am ready for either."

The ambassador, whose head had thus been so vigorously washed--as Henry
expressed it in recounting the interview afterwards to the Dutch envoy,
Dr. Aerssens--stammered some unintelligible excuses, and humbly begged
his Majesty not to be offended.  He then retired quite crest-fallen, and
took leave most politely of everybody as he went, down even to the very
grooms of the chambers.

"You must show your teeth to the Spaniard," said Henry to Aerssens, "if
you wish for a quiet life."

Here was unsophisticated diplomacy; for the politic Henry, who could
forgive assassins and conspirators, crowned or otherwise, when it suited
his purpose to be lenient, knew that it was on this occasion very prudent
to use the gift of language, not in order to conceal, but to express his
thoughts.

"I left the king as red as a turkey-cock," said Tassis, as soon as he got
home that morning, "and I was another turkey-cock.  We have been talking
a little bit of truth to each other."

In truth, it was impossible, as the world was then constituted, that
France and Spain, in spite of many secret sympathies, should not be
enemies; that France, England, and the Dutch commonwealth, although
cordially disliking each other, should not be allies.

Even before the death of Elizabeth a very remarkable interview had taken
place at Dover, in which the queen had secretly disclosed the great
thoughts with which that most imperial brain was filled just before its
boundless activity was to cease for ever.

She had wished for a personal interview with the French king, whose wit
and valour she had always heartily admired, Henry, on his part, while
unmercifully ridiculing that preterhuman vanity which he fed with
fantastic adulation, never failed to do justice to her genius, and had
been for a moment disposed to cross the channel, or even to hold council
with her on board ship midway between the two countries.  It was however
found impracticable to arrange any such meeting, and the gossips of the
day hinted that the great Henry, whose delight was in battle, and who had
never been known to shrink from danger on dry land, was appalled at the
idea of sea-sickness, and even dreaded the chance of being kidnapped by
the English pirates.

The corsairs who drove so profitable a business at that period by
plundering the merchantmen of their enemy, of their Dutch and French
allies, and of their own nation, would assuredly have been pleased with
such a prize.

The queen had confided to De Bethune that she had some thing to say to
the king which she could never reveal to other ears than his, but when
the proposed visit of Henry was abandoned, it was decided that his
confidential minister should slip across the channel before Elizabeth
returned to her palace at Greenwich.

De Bethune accordingly came incognito from Calais to Dover, in which port
he had a long and most confidential interview with the queen.  Then and
there the woman, nearly seventy years of age, who governed despotically
the half of a small island, while the other half was in the possession of
a man whose mother she had slain, and of a people who hated the English
more than they hated the Spaniards or the French--a queen with some three
millions of loyal but most turbulent subjects in one island, and with
about half-a-million ferocious rebels in another requiring usually an
army of twenty thousand disciplined soldiers to keep them in a kind of
subjugation, with a revenue fluctuating between eight hundred thousand
pounds sterling, and the half of that sum, and with a navy of a hundred
privateersmen--disclosed to the French envoy a vast plan for regulating
the polity and the religion of the civilized world, and for remodelling
the map of Europe.

There should be three religions, said Elizabeth--not counting the
dispensation from Mecca, about which Turk and Hun might be permitted to
continue their struggle on the crepuscular limits of civilization.
Everywhere else there should be toleration only for the churches of
Peter, of Luther, and of Calvin.  The house of Austria was to be humbled
--the one branch driven back to Spain and kept there, the other branch to
be deprived of the imperial crown, which was to be disposed of as in
times past by the votes of the princely electors.  There should be two
republics--the Swiss and the Dutch--each of those commonwealths to be
protected by France and England, and each to receive considerable parings
out of the possessions of Spain and the empire.

Finally, all Christendom was to be divided off into a certain number of
powers, almost exactly equal to each other; the weighing, measuring, and
counting, necessary to obtain this international equilibrium, being of
course the duty of the king and queen when they should sit some day
together at table.

Thus there were five points; sovereigns and politicians having always a
fondness for a neat summary in five or six points.  Number one, to
remodel the electoral system of the holy Roman empire.  Number two, to
establish the republic of the United Provinces.  Number three, to do as
much for Switzerland.  Number four, to partition Europe.  Number five, to
reduce all religions to three.  Nothing could be more majestic, no plan
fuller fraught with tranquillity for the rulers of mankind and their
subjects.  Thrice happy the people, having thus a couple of heads with
crowns upon them and brains within them to prescribe what was to be done
in this world and believed as to the next!

The illustrious successor of that great queen now stretches her benignant
sceptre over two hundred millions of subjects, and the political revenues
of her empire are more than a hundredfold those of Elizabeth; yet it
would hardly now be thought great statesmanship or sound imperial policy
for a British sovereign even to imagine the possibility of the five
points which filled the royal English mind at Dover.

But Henry was as much convinced as Elizabeth of the necessity and the
possibility of establishing the five points, and De Bethune had been
astonished at the exact similarity of the conclusion which those two
sovereign intellects had reached, even before they had been placed in
communion with each other.  The death of the queen had not caused any
change in the far-reaching designs of which the king now remained the
sole executor, and his first thought, on the accession of James, was
accordingly to despatch De Bethune, now created Marquis de Rosny, as
ambassador extraordinary to England, in order that the new sovereign
might be secretly but thoroughly instructed as to the scheme for
remodelling Christendom.

As Rosny was also charged with the duty of formally congratulating King
James, he proceeded upon his journey with remarkable pomp.  He was
accompanied by two hundred gentlemen of quality, specially attached to
his embassy--young city fops, as he himself described them, who were
out of their element whenever they left the pavement of Paris--and
by an equal number of valets, grooms, and cooks.  Such a retinue was
indispensable to enable an ambassador to transact the public business and
to maintain the public dignity in those days; unproductive consumption
being accounted most sagacious and noble.

Before reaching the English shore the marquis was involved in trouble.
Accepting the offer of the English vice-admiral lying off Calais, he
embarked with his suite in two English vessels, much to the
dissatisfaction of De Vic, vice-admiral of France, who was anxious to
convey the French ambassador in the war-ships of his country.  There had
been suspicion afloat as to the good understanding between England and
Spain, caused by the great courtesy recently shown to the Count of
Arenberg, and there was intense irritation among all the seafaring people
of France on account of the exploits of the English corsairs upon their
coast.  Rosny thought it best to begin his embassy by an act of
conciliation, but soon had cause to repent his decision.

In mid-channel they were met by De Vic's vessels with the French banner
displayed, at which sight the English commander was so wroth that he
forthwith ordered a broadside to be poured into the audacious foreigner;
--swearing with mighty oaths that none but the English flag should be
shown in those waters.  And thus, while conveying a French ambassador and
three hundred Frenchmen on a sacred mission to the British sovereign,
this redoubtable mariner of England prepared to do battle with the ships
of France.  It was with much difficulty and some prevarication that Rosny
appeased the strife, representing that the French flag had only been
raised in order that it might be dipped, in honour of the French
ambassador, as the ships passed each other.  The full-shotted broadside
was fired from fifty guns, but the English commander consented, at De
Rosny's representations, that it should be discharged wide of the mark.

A few shots, however, struck the side of one of the French vessels, and
at the same time, as Cardinal Richelieu afterwards remarked, pierced the
heart of every patriotic Frenchman.

The ambassador made a sign, which De Vic understood; to lower his flag
and to refrain from answering the fire.  Thus a battle between allies,
amid the most amazing circumstances, was avoided, but it may well be
imagined how long and how deeply the poison of the insult festered.

Such an incident could hardly predispose the ambassador in favour of the
nation he was about to visit, or strengthen his hope of laying, not only
the foundation of a perpetual friendship between the two crowns, but of
effecting the palingenesis of Europe.  Yet no doubt Sully--as the world
has so long learned to call him--was actuated by lofty sentiments in many
respects in advance of his age.  Although a brilliant and successful
campaigner in his youth, he detested war, and looked down with contempt
at political systems which had not yet invented anything better than
gunpowder for the arbitrament of international disputes.  Instead of war
being an occasional method of obtaining peace, it pained him to think
that peace seemed only a process for arriving at war.  Surely it was no
epigram in those days, but the simplest statement of commonplace fact,
that war was the normal condition of Christians.  Alas will it be
maintained that in the two and a half centuries which have since elapsed
the world has made much progress in a higher direction?  Is there yet any
appeal among the most civilized nations except to the logic of the
largest battalions and the eloquence of the biggest guns?

De Rosny came to be the harbinger of a political millennium, and he
heartily despised war.  The schemes, nevertheless, which were as much his
own as his master's, and which he was instructed to lay before the
English monarch as exclusively his own, would have required thirty years
of successful and tremendous warfare before they could have a beginning
of development.

It is not surprising that so philosophical a mind as his, while still
inclining to pacific designs, should have been led by what met his eyes
and ears to some rather severe generalizations.

"It is certain that the English hate us," he said, "and with a hatred so
strong and so general that one is tempted to place it among the natural
dispositions of this people.  Yet it is rather the effect of their pride
and their presumption; since there is no nation in Europe more haughty,
more disdainful, more besotted with the idea of its own excellence.  If
you were to take their word for it, mind and reason are only found with
them; they adore all their opinions and despise those of all other
nations; and it never occurs to them to listen to others, or to doubt
themselves .  .  .  .  .  Examine what are called with them maxims of
state; you will find nothing but the laws of pride itself, adopted
through arrogance or through indolence."

"Placed by nature amidst the tempestuous and variable ocean," he wrote to
his sovereign, "they are as shifting, as impetuous, as changeable as its
waves.  So self-contradictory and so inconsistent are their actions
almost in the same instant as to make it impossible that they should
proceed from the same persons and the same mind.  Agitated and urged by
their pride and arrogance alone, they take all their imaginations and
extravagances for truths and realities; the objects of their desires and
affections for inevitable events; not balancing and measuring those
desires with the actual condition of things, nor with the character of
the people with whom they have to deal."

When the ambassador arrived in London he was lodged at Arundel palace.
He at once became the cynosure of all indigenous parties and of
adventurous politicians from every part of Europe; few knowing how to
shape their course since the great familiar lustre had disappeared from
the English sky.

Rosny found the Scotch lords sufficiently favourable to France; the
English Catholic grandees, with all the Howards and the lord high admiral
at their head, excessively inclined to Spain, and a great English party
detesting both Spain and France with equal fervour and well enough
disposed to the United Provinces, not as hating that commonwealth less
but the two great powers more.

The ambassador had arrived with the five points, not in his portfolio but
in his heart, and they might after all be concentrated in one phrase--
Down with Austria, up with the Dutch republic.  On his first interview
with Cecil, who came to arrange for his audience with the king, he found
the secretary much disposed to conciliate both Spain and the empire, and
to leave the provinces to shift for themselves.

He spoke of Ostend as of a town not worth the pains taken to preserve it,
and of the India trade as an advantage of which a true policy required
that the United Provinces should be deprived.   Already the fine
commercial instinct of England had scented a most formidable rival
on the ocean.

As for the king, he had as yet declared himself for no party, while all
parties were disputing among each other for mastery over him.  James
found himself, in truth, as much, astray in English politics as he was a
foreigner upon English earth.  Suspecting every one, afraid of every one,
he was in mortal awe, most of all, of his wife, who being the daughter of
one Protestant sovereign and wife of another, and queen of a united realm
dependent for its very existence on antagonism to Spain and Rome, was
naturally inclined to Spanish politics and the Catholic faith.

The turbulent and intriguing Anne of Denmark was not at the moment in
London, but James was daily expecting and De Bethune dreading her
arrival.

The ambassador knew very well that, although the king talked big in her
absence about the forms which he intended to prescribe for her conduct,
he would take orders from her as soon as she arrived, refuse her nothing,
conceal nothing from her, and tremble before her as usual.

The king was not specially prejudiced in favour of the French monarch or
his ambassador, for he had been told that Henry had occasionally spoken
of him as captain of arts and doctor of arms, and that both the Marquis
de Rosny and his brother were known to have used highly disrespectful
language concerning him.

Before his audience, De Rosny received a private visit from Barneveld and
the deputies of the States-General, and was informed that since his
arrival they had been treated with more civility by the king.  Previously
he had refused to see them after the first official reception, had not
been willing to grant Count Henry of Nassau a private audience, and had
spoken publicly of the States as seditious rebels.

Oh the 21st June Barneveld had a long private interview with the
ambassador at Arundel palace, when he exerted all his eloquence to prove
the absolute necessity of an offensive and defensive alliance between
France and the United Provinces if the independence of the republic were
ever to be achieved.  Unless a French army took the field at once, Ostend
would certainly fall, he urged, and resistance to the Spaniards would
soon afterwards cease.

It is not probable that the Advocate felt in his heart so much despair as
his words indicated, but he was most anxious that Henry should openly
declare himself the protector of the young commonwealth, and not
indisposed perhaps to exaggerate the dangers, grave as they were without
doubt, by which its existence was menaced.

The ambassador however begged the Hollander to renounce any such hopes,
assuring him that the king had no intention of publicly and singly taking
upon his shoulders the whole burden of war with Spain, the fruits of
which would not be his to gather.  Certainly before there had been time
thoroughly to study the character and inclinations of the British monarch
it would be impossible for De Rosny to hold out any encouragement in this
regard.  He then asked Barneveld what he had been able to discover during
his residence in London as to the personal sentiments of James.

The Advocate replied that at first the king, yielding to his own natural
tendencies, and to the advice of his counsellors, had refused the Dutch
deputies every hope, but that subsequently reflecting, as it would seem,
that peace would cost England very dear if English inaction should cause
the Hollanders to fall again under the dominion of the Catholic king, or
to find their only deliverance in the protection of France, and beginning
to feel more acutely how much England had herself to fear from a power
like Spain, he had seemed to awake out of a profound sleep, and promised
to take these important affairs into consideration.

Subsequently he had fallen into a dreary abyss of indecision, where he
still remained.  It was certain however that he would form no resolution
without the concurrence of the King of France, whose ambassador he had
been so impatiently expecting, and whose proposition to him of a double
marriage between their respective children had given him much
satisfaction.

De Rosny felt sure that the Dutch statesmen were far too adroit to put
entire confidence in anything said by James, whether favourable or
detrimental to their cause.  He conjured Barneveld therefore, by the
welfare of his country, to conceal nothing from him in regard to the most
secret resolutions that might have been taken by the States in the event
of their being abandoned by England, or in case of their being
embarrassed by a sudden demand on the part of that power for the
cautionary towns offered to Elizabeth.

Barneveld, thus pressed, and considering the ambassador as the
confidential counsellor of a sovereign who was the republic's only
friend, no longer hesitated.  Making a merit to himself of imparting an
important secret, he said that the state-council of the commonwealth had
resolved to elude at any cost the restoration of the cautionary towns.

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

The 22nd of June arrived.  The marquis had ordered mourning suits for his
whole embassy and retinue, by particular command of his sovereign, who
wished to pay this public tribute to the memory of the great queen.

To his surprise and somewhat to his indignation, he was however informed
that no one, stranger or native, Scotchman or Englishman, had been
permitted to present himself to the king in black, that his appearance
there in mourning would be considered almost an affront, and that it was
a strictly enforced rule at court to abstain from any mention of
Elizabeth, and to affect an entire oblivion of her reign.

At the last moment, and only because convinced that he might otherwise
cause the impending negotiations utterly to fail, the ambassador
consented to attire himself, the hundred and twenty gentlemen selected
from his diplomatic family to accompany him on this occasion, and all his
servants, in gala costume.  The royal guards, with the Earl of Derby at
their head, came early in the afternoon to Arundel House to escort him
to the Thames, and were drawn up on the quay as the marquis and his
followers embarked in the splendid royal barges provided to convey
them to Greenwich.

On arriving at their destination they were met at the landing by the Earl
of Northumberland, and escorted with great pomp and through an infinite
multitude of spectators to the palace.  Such was the crowd, without and
within, of courtiers and common people, that it was a long time before
the marquis, preceded by his hundred and twenty gentlemen, reached the
hall of audience.

At last he arrived at the foot of the throne, when James arose and
descended eagerly two steps of the dais in order to greet the ambassador.
He would have descended them all had not one of the counsellors plucked
him by the sleeve, whispering that he had gone quite far enough.

"And if I honour this ambassador," cried James, in a loud voice, "more
than is usual, I don't intend that it shall serve as a precedent for
others.  I esteem and love him particularly, because of the affection
which I know he cherishes for me, of his firmness in our religion,
and of his fidelity to his master."

Much more that was personally flattering to the marquis was said thus
emphatically by James.  To all this the ambassador replied, not by a set
discourse, but only by a few words of compliment, expressing his
sovereign's regrets at the death of Queen Elizabeth, and his joy at the
accession of the new sovereign.  He then delivered his letters of
credence, and the complimentary conversation continued; the king
declaring that he had not left behind him in Scotland his passion for the
monarch of France, and that even had he found England at war with that
country on his accession he would have instantly concluded a peace with a
prince whom he so much venerated.

Thus talking, the king caused his guest to ascend with him to the
uppermost steps of the dais, babbling on very rapidly and skipping
abruptly from one subject to another.  De Rosny took occasion to express
his personal esteem and devotion, and was assured by the king in reply
that the slanders in regard to him which had reached the royal ears had
utterly failed of their effect.  It was obvious that they were the
invention of Spanish intriguers who wished to help that nation to
universal monarchy.  Then he launched forth into general and cordial
abuse of Spain, much to the satisfaction of Count Henry of Nassau, who
stood near enough to hear a good deal of the conversation, and of the
other Dutch deputies who were moving about, quite unknown, in the crowd.
He denounced very vigorously the malignity of the Spaniards in lighting
fires everywhere in their neighbours' possessions, protested that he
would always oppose their wicked designs, but spoke contemptuously of
their present king as too feeble of mind and body ever to comprehend
or to carry out the projects of his predecessors.

Among other gossip, James asked the envoy if he went to hear the
Protestant preaching in London.  Being answered in the affirmative,
he expressed surprise, having been told, he said, that it was Rosny's
intention to repudiate his religion as De Sancy had done, in order to
secure his fortunes.  The marquis protested that such a thought had
never entered his head, but intimated that the reports might come
from his familiar intercourse with the papal nuncius and many French
ecclesiastics.  The king asked if, when speaking with the nuncius, he
called the pope his Holiness, as by so doing he would greatly offend God,
in whom alone was holiness.  Rosny replied that he commonly used the
style prevalent at court, governing himself according to the rules
adopted in regard to pretenders to crowns and kingdoms which they thought
belonged to them, but the possession of which was in other hands,
conceding to them, in order not to offend them, the titles which they
claimed.

James shook his head portentously, and changed the subject.

The general tone of the royal-conversation was agreeable enough to the
ambassador, who eagerly alluded to the perfidious conduct of a Government
which, ever since concluding the peace of Vervins with Henry, had been
doing its best to promote sedition and territorial dismemberment in his
kingdom, and to assist all his open and his secret enemies.

James assented very emphatically, and the marquis felt convinced that a
resentment against Spain, expressed so publicly and so violently by
James, could hardly fail to, be sincere.  He began seriously to, hope
that his negotiations would be successful, and was for soaring at once
into the regions of high politics, when the king suddenly began to talk
of hunting.

"And so you sent half the stag I sent you; to Count Arenberg," said
James; "but he is very angry about it; thinking that you did so to show
how much more I make of you than I do of him.  And so I do; for I know
the difference between your king, my brother; and his masters who have
sent me an ambassador who can neither walk nor talk, and who asked me to
give him audience in a garden because he cannot go upstairs."

The king then alluded to Tassis, chief courier of his Catholic Majesty
and special envoy from Spain, asking whether the marquis had seen him on
his passage through France.

"Spain sends me a postillion-ambassador," said he, "that he may travel
the faster and attend to business by post."

It was obvious that James took a sincere satisfaction in abusing
everything relating to that country from its sovereign and the Duke
of Lerma downwards; but he knew very well that Velasco, constable of
Castile, had been already designated as ambassador, and would soon
be on his way to England.

De Rosny on the termination of his audience, was escorted in great state
by the Earl of Northumberland to the barges.

A few days later, the ambassador had another private audience, in which
the king expressed himself with apparent candour concerning the balance
of power.

Christendom, in his opinion, should belong in three equal shares to the
families of Stuart, Bourbon, and Habsburg; but personal ambition and the
force of events had given to the house of Austria more than its fair
third.  Sound policy therefore required a combination between France and
England, in order to reduce their copartner within proper limits.  This
was satisfactory as far as it went, and the ambassador complimented the
king on his wide views of policy and his lofty sentiments in regard to
human rights.

Warming with the subject, James held language very similar to that which
De Rosny and his master had used in their secret conferences, and took
the ground unequivocally that the secret war levied by Spain against
France and England, as exemplified in the Biron conspiracy, the assault
on Geneva, the aid of the Duke of Savoy, and in the perpetual fostering
of Jesuit intrigues, plots of assassination, and other conspiracies in
the British islands, justified a secret war on the part of Henry and
himself against Philip.

The ambassador would have been more deeply impressed with the royal
language had he felt more confidence in the royal character.

Highly applauding the sentiments expressed, and desiring to excite still
further the resentment of James against Spain, he painted a vivid picture
of the progress of that aggressive power in the past century.  She had
devoured Flanders, Burgundy, Granada, Navarre, Portugal, the German
Empire, Milan, Naples, and all the Indies.  If she had not swallowed
likewise both France and England those two crowns were indebted for their
preservation, after the firmness of Elizabeth and Henry, to the fortunate
incident of the revolt of the Netherlands.

De Rosny then proceeded to expound the necessity under which James
would soon find himself of carrying on open war with Spain, and of the
expediency of making preparations for the great struggle without loss
of time.

He therefore begged the king to concert with him some satisfactory
measure for the preservation of the United Provinces.

"But," said James, "what better assistance could we give the
Netherlanders than to divide their territory between the States and
Spain; agreeing at the same time to drive the Spaniard out altogether,
if he violates the conditions which we should guarantee."

This conclusion was not very satisfactory to De Rosny, who saw in the
bold language of the king--followed thus by the indication of a policy
that might last to the Greek Kalends, and permit Ostend, Dutch Flanders,
and even the republic to fall--nothing but that mixture of timidity,
conceit, and procrastination which marked the royal character.  He
pointed out to him accordingly that Spanish statesmanship could beat the
world in the art of delay, and of plucking the fruits of delay, and that
when the United Provinces had been once subjugated, the turn of England
would come.  It would be then too late for him to hope to preserve
himself by such measures as, taken now, would be most salutary.

A few days later the king invited De Rosny and the two hundred members of
his embassy to dine at Greenwich, and the excursion down the Thames took
place with the usual pomp.

The two hundred dined with the gentlemen of the court; while at the
king's table, on an elevated platform in the same hall, were no guests
but De Rosny, and the special envoy of France, Count Beaumont.

The furniture and decorations of the table were sumptuous, and the
attendants, to the surprise of the Frenchmen, went on their knees
whenever they offered wine or dishes to the king.  The conversation at
first was on general topics, such as the heat of the weather, which
happened to be remarkable, the pleasures of the chase, and the merits of
the sermon which, as it was Sunday, De Rosny had been invited to hear
before dinner in the royal chapel.

Soon afterwards, however, some allusion being made to the late queen,
James spoke of her with contempt.  He went so far as to say that, for a
long time before her death, he had governed the councils, of England; all
her ministers obeying and serving him much better than they did herself.
He then called for wine, and, stretching out his glass towards his two.
guests, drank to the health of the king and queen and royal family of
France.

De Rosny, replied by proposing the health of his august host, not
forgetting the queen and their children, upon which the king, putting his
lips close to the ambassador's ear, remarked that his next toast should
be in honour of the matrimonial union which was proposed between the
families of Britain and France.

This was the first allusion made by James to the alliance; and the
occasion did not strike the marquis as particularly appropriate to such a
topic.  He however replied in a whisper that he was rejoiced to hear this
language from the king, having always believed that there would be no
hesitation on his part between King Henry and the monarch of Spain, who,
as he was aware, had made a similar proposition.  James, expressing
surprise that his guest was so well informed, avowed that he had in fact
received the same offer of the Infanta for his son as had been made to
his Christian Majesty for the Dauphin.  What more convenient counters in
the great game of state than an infant prince and princess in each of the
three royal families to which Europe belonged!  To how many grave
political combinations were these unfortunate infants to give rise, and
how distant the period when great nations might no longer be tied to the
pinafores of children in the nursery!

After this little confidential interlude, James expressed in loud voice,
so that all might hear, his determination never to permit the subjugation
of the Netherlands by Spain.  Measures should be taken the very next day,
he promised, in concert with the ambassador, as to the aid to be given to
the States.  Upon the faith of this declaration De Rosny took from his
pocket the plan of a treaty, and forthwith, in the presence of all the
ministers, placed it in the hands of the king, who meantime had risen
from table.  The ambassador also took this occasion to speak publicly of
the English piracies upon French commerce while the two nations were at
peace.  The king, in reply, expressed his dissatisfaction at these
depredations and at the English admiral who attempted to defend what had
been done.

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

It was certain that the Constable of Castile was now to arrive very soon,
and the marquis had, meantime, obtained information on which he relied,
that this ambassador would come charged with very advantageous offers to
the English court.  Accounts had been got ready in council, of all the
moneys due to England by France and by the States, and it was thought
that these sums, payment of which was to be at once insisted upon,
together with the Spanish dollars set afloat in London, would prove
sufficient to buy up all resistance to the Spanish alliance.

Such being the nature of the information furnished to De Rosny, he did
not look forward with very high hopes to the issue of the conference
indicated by King James at the Greenwich dinner.  As, after all, he would
have to deal once more with Cecil, the master-spirit of the Spanish
party, it did not seem very probable that the king's whispered
professions of affection for France, his very loud denunciations of
Spanish ambition, and his promises of support to the struggling
provinces, would be brought into any substantial form for human
nourishment.  Whispers and big words, touching of glasses at splendid
banquets, and proposing of royal toasts, would not go far to help those
soldiers in Ostend, a few miles away, fighting two years long already for
a square half-mile of barren sand, in which seemed centred the world's
hopes of freedom.

Barneveld was inclined to take an even more gloomy view than that
entertained by the French ambassador.  He had, in truth, no reason to be
sanguine.  The honest republican envoys had brought no babies to offer in
marriage.  Their little commonwealth had only the merit of exchanging
buffets forty years long with a power which, after subjugating the
Netherlands, would have liked to annihilate France and England too,
and which, during that period, had done its best to destroy and dismember
both.  It had only struggled as no nation in the world's history had ever
done, for the great principle upon which the power and happiness of
England were ever to depend.  It was therefore not to be expected that
its representatives should be received with the distinction conferred
upon royal envoys.  Barneveld and his colleagues accordingly were not
invited, with two hundred noble hangers-on, to come down the Thames in
gorgeous array, and dine at Greenwich palace; but they were permitted to
mix in the gaping crowd of spectators, to see the fine folk, and to hear
a few words at a distance which fell from august lips.  This was not very
satisfactory, as Barneveld could rarely gain admittance to James or his
ministers.  De Rosny, however, was always glad to confer with him, and
was certainly capable of rendering justice both to his genius and to the
sacredness of his cause.  The Advocate, in a long conference with the
ambassador, thought it politic to paint the situation of the republic in
even more sombre colours than seemed to De Rosny justifiable.  He was,
indeed, the more struck with Barneveld's present despondency, because,
at a previous conference, a few days before, he had spoken almost with
contempt of the Spaniards, expressing the opinion that the mutinous and
disorganized condition of the archduke's army rendered the conquest of
Ostend improbable, and hinted at a plan, of which the world as yet knew
nothing, which would save that place, or at any rate would secure such
an advantage for the States as to more than counterbalance its possible
loss?  This very sanguine demeanour had rather puzzled those who had
conferred with the Advocate, although they were ere long destined to
understand his allusions, and it was certainly a contrast to his present
gloom.  He assured De Rosny that the Hollanders were becoming desperate,
and that they were capable of abandoning their country in mass, and
seeking an asylum beyond the seas?  The menace was borrowed from the
famous project conceived by William the Silent in darker days, and seemed
to the ambassador a present anachronism.

Obviously it was thought desirable to force the French policy to extreme
lengths, and Barneveld accordingly proposed that Henry should take the
burthen upon his shoulders of an open war with Spain, in the almost
certain event that England would make peace with that power.  De Rosny
calmly intimated to the Advocate that this was asking something entirely
beyond his power to grant, as the special object of his mission was to
form a plan of concerted action with England.

The cautionary towns being next mentioned, Barneveld stated that a demand
had been made upon Envoy Caron by Cecil for the delivery of those places
to the English Government, as England had resolved to make peace with
Spain.

The Advocate confided, however, to De Rosny that the States would
interpose difficulties, and that it would be long before the towns were
delivered.  This important information was given under the seal of
strictest secrecy, and was coupled with an inference that a war between
the republic and Britain would be the probable result, in which case the
States relied upon the alliance with France.  The ambassador replied that
in this untoward event the republic would have the sympathy of his royal
master, but that it would be out of the question for him to go to war
with Spain and England at the same time.

On the same afternoon there was a conference at Arundel House between the
Dutch deputies, the English counsellors, and De Rosny, when Barneveld
drew a most dismal picture of the situation; taking the ground that now
or never was the time for driving the Spaniards entirely out of the
Netherlands.  Cecil said in a general way that his Majesty felt a deep
interest in the cause of the provinces, and the French ambassador
summoned the Advocate, now that he was assured of the sympathy of two
great kings, to furnish some plan by which that sympathy might be turned
to account.  Barneveld, thinking figures more eloquent than rhetoric,
replied that the States, besides garrisons, had fifteen thousand
infantry and three thousand cavalry in the field, and fifty warships in
commission, with artillery and munitions in proportion, and that it would
be advisable for France and England to furnish an equal force, military
and naval, to the common cause.

De Rosny smiled at the extravagance of the proposition.  Cecil, again
taking refuge in commonplaces, observed that his master was disposed to
keep the peace with all his neighbours, but that, having due regard to
the circumstances, he was willing to draw a line between the wishes of
the States and his own, and would grant them a certain amount of succour
underhand.

Thereupon the Dutch deputies withdrew to confer.  De Rosny, who had no
faith in Cecil's sincerity--the suggestion being essentially the one
which he had himself desired--went meantime a little deeper into the
subject, and soon found that England, according to the Secretary of
State, had no idea of ruining herself for the sake of the provinces,
or of entering into any positive engagements in their behalf.  In case
Spain should make a direct attack upon the two kings who were to
constitute themselves protectors of Dutch liberty, it might be necessary
to take up arms.  The admission was on the whole superfluous, it not
being probable that Britain, even under a Stuart, would be converted to
the doctrine of non-resistance.  Yet in this case it was suggested by
Cecil that the chief reliance of his Government would be on the debts
owed by the Dutch and French respectively, which would then be forthwith
collected.

De Rosny was now convinced that Cecil was trifling with him, and
evidently intending to break off all practical negotiations.  He
concealed his annoyance, however, as well as he could, and simply
intimated that the first business of importance was to arrange for the
relief of Ostend; that eventualities, such as the possible attack by
Spain upon France and England, might for the moment be deferred, but that
if England thought it a safe policy to ruin Henry by throwing on his
shoulders the whole burthen of a war with the common enemy, she would
discover and deeply regret her fatal mistake.  The time was a very ill-
chosen one to summon France to pay old debts, and his Christian Majesty
had given his ambassador no instructions contemplating such
a liquidation.

It was the intention to discharge the sum annually, little by little,
but if England desired to exhaust the king by these peremptory demands,
it was an odious conduct, and very different from any that France had
ever pursued.

The English counsellors were not abashed by this rebuke, but became, on
the contrary, very indignant, avowing that if anything more was demanded
of them, England would entirely abandon the United Provinces.  "Cecil
made himself known to me in this conference," said De Rosny, "for
exactly what he was.  He made use only of double meanings and vague
propositions; feeling that reason was not on his side.  He was forced to
blush at his own self-contradictions, when, with a single word, I made
him feel the absurdity of his language.  Now, endeavouring to intimidate
me, he exaggerated the strength of England, and again he enlarged upon
the pretended offers made by Spain to that nation."

The secretary, desirous to sow discord between the Dutch deputies and the
ambassador, then observed that France ought to pay to England L50,000
upon the nail, which sum would be at once appropriated to the necessities
of the States.  "But what most enraged me," said De Rosny, "was to see
these ministers, who had come to me to state the intentions of their
king, thus impudently substitute their own; for I knew that he had
commanded them to do the very contrary to that which they did."

The conference ended with a suggestion by Cecil, that as France would
only undertake a war in conjunction with England, and as England would
only consent to this if paid by France and the States, the best thing for
the two kings to do would be to do nothing, but to continue to live in
friendship together, without troubling themselves about foreign
complications.

This was the purpose towards which the English counsellors had been
steadily tending, and these last words of Cecil seemed to the ambassador
the only sincere ones spoken by him in the whole conference.

"If I kept silence," said the ambassador, "it was not because I
acquiesced in their reasoning.  On the contrary, the manner in which they
had just revealed themselves, and avowed themselves in a certain sort
liars and impostors, had given me the most profound contempt for them.
I thought, however, that by heating myself and contending with them so
far from causing them to abandon a resolution which they had taken in
concert--I might even bring about a total rupture.  On the other hand,
matters remaining as they were, and a friendship existing between the
two kings, which might perhaps be cemented by a double marriage, a more
favourable occasion might present itself for negotiation.  I did not yet
despair of the success of my mission, because I believed that the king
had no part in the designs which his counsellors wished to carry out."

That the counsellors, then struggling for dominion over the new king and
his kingdom, understood the character of their sovereign better than did
the ambassador, future events were likely enough to prove.  That they
preferred peace to war, and the friendship of Spain to an alliance,
offensive and defensive, with France in favour of a republic which they
detested, is certain.  It is difficult, however, to understand why
they were "liars and impostors" because, in a conference with the
representative of France, they endeavoured to make their own opinions
of public policy valid rather than content themselves simply with being
the errand-bearers of the new king, whom they believed incapable of
being stirred to an honourable action.

The whole political atmosphere of Europe was mephitic with falsehood, and
certainly the gales which blew from the English court at the accession of
James were not fragrant, but De Rosny had himself come over from France
under false pretences.  He had been charged by his master to represent
Henry's childish scheme, which he thought so gigantic, for the
regeneration of Europe, as a project of his own, which he was determined
to bring to execution, even at the risk of infidelity to his sovereign,
and the first element in that whole policy was to carry on war underhand
against a power with which his master had just sworn to preserve peace.
In that age at least it was not safe for politicians to call each other
hard names.

The very next day De Rosny had a long private interview with James at
Greenwich.  Being urged to speak without reserve, the ambassador depicted
the privy counsellors to the king as false to his instructions, traitors
to the best interests of their country, the humble servants of Spain, and
most desirous to make their royal master the slave of that power, under
the name of its ally.  He expressed the opinion, accordingly, that James
would do better in obeying only the promptings of his own superior
wisdom, rather than the suggestions of the intriguers about him.  The
adroit De Rosny thus softly insinuated to the flattered monarch that the
designs of France were the fresh emanations of his own royal intellect.
It was the whim of James to imagine himself extremely like Henry of
Bourbon in character, and he affected to take the wittiest, bravest, most
adventurous, and most adroit knight-errant that ever won and wore a crown
as his perpetual model.

It was delightful, therefore, to find himself in company with his royal
brother; making and unmaking kings; destroying empires, altering the
whole face of Christendom, and, better than all, settling then and for
ever the theology of the whole world, without the trouble of moving from
his easy chair, or of incurring any personal danger.

He entered at once, with the natural tendency to suspicion of a timid
man, into the views presented by De Rosny as to the perfidy of his
counsellors.  He changed colour; and was visibly moved, as the ambassador
gave his version of the recent conference with Cecil and the other
ministers, and, being thus artfully stimulated, he was, prepared to
receive with much eagerness the portentous communications now to be made.

The ambassador, however, caused him to season his admiration until he had
taken a most solemn oath, by the sacrament of the Eucharist, never to
reveal a syllable of what he was about to hear.  This done, and the royal
curiosity excited almost beyond endurance, De Rosny began to, unfold.
the stupendous schemes which had been, concerted between Elizabeth and
Henry at Dover, and which formed the secret object of his present
embassy.  Feeling that the king was most malleable in the theological
part of his structure, the wily envoy struck his first blows in that
direction; telling him that his own interest in the religious, condition
of Europe, and especially in the firm establishment of the Protestant
faith, far surpassed in his mind all considerations of fortune, country,
or even of fidelity to his sovereign.  Thus far, political considerations
had kept Henry from joining in the great Catholic League, but it was
possible that a change might occur in his system, and the Protestant form
of worship, abandoned by its ancient protector, might disappear entirely
from France and from Europe.  De Rosny had, therefore, felt the necessity
of a new patron for the reformed religion in this great emergency, and
had naturally fixed his eyes on the puissant and sagacious prince who now
occupied, the British throne.  Now was the time, he urged, for James to
immortalize his name by becoming the arbiter of the destiny of Europe.
It would always seem his own design, although Henry was equally
interested in it with himself.  The plan was vast but simple,
and perfectly easy of execution.  There would be no difficulty in
constructing an all-powerful league of sovereigns for the destruction of
the house of Austria, the foundation-stones of which would of course be
France, Great Britain, and the United Provinces.  The double marriage
between the Bourbon and Stuart families would indissolubly unite the two
kingdoms, while interest and gratitude; a common hatred and a common
love, would bind the republic as firmly to the union.  Denmark and Sweden
were certainly to be relied upon, as well as all other Protestant
princes.  The ambitious and restless Duke of Savoy would be gained by
the offer of Lombardy and a kingly crown, notwithstanding his matrimonial
connection with Spain.  As for the German princes, they would come
greedily into the arrangement, as the league, rich in the spoils of the
Austrian house, would have Hungary, Bohemia, Silesia, Moravia, the
archduchies, and other splendid provinces to divide among them.

The pope would be bought up by a present, in fee-simple, of Naples, and
other comfortable bits of property, of which he was now only feudal lord.
Sicily would be an excellent sop for the haughty republic of Venice.
The Franche Comte; Alsace, Tirol, were naturally to be annexed to
Switzerland; Liege and the heritage of the Duke of Cleves and Juliers
to the Dutch commonwealth.

The King of France, who, according to De Rosny's solemn assertions, was
entirely ignorant of the whole scheme, would, however, be sure to embrace
it very heartily when James should propose it to him, and would be far
too disinterested to wish to keep any of the booty for himself.  A
similar self-denial was, of course, expected of James, the two great
kings satisfying themselves with the proud consciousness of having saved
society, rescued the world from the sceptre of an Austrian universal
monarchy, and regenerated European civilization for all future time.

The monarch listened with ravished ears, interposed here and there a
question or a doubt, but devoured every detail of the scheme, as the
ambassador slowly placed it before him.

De Rosny showed that the Spanish faction was not in reality so powerful
as the league which would be constructed for its overthrow.  It was not
so much a religious as a political frontier which separated the nations.
He undertook to prove this, but, after all, was obliged to demonstrate
that the defection of Henry from the Protestant cause had deprived him of
his natural allies, and given him no true friends in exchange for the old
ones.

Essentially the Catholics were ranged upon one side, and the Protestants
on the other, but both religions were necessary to Henry the Huguenot:
The bold free-thinker adroitly balanced himself upon each creed.  In
making use of a stern and conscientious Calvinist, like Maximilian de
Bethune, in his first assault upon the theological professor who now
stood in Elizabeth's place, he showed the exquisite tact which never
failed him.  Toleration for the two religions which had political power,
perfect intolerance for all others; despotic forms of polity, except for
two little republics which were to be smothered with protection and never
left out of leading strings, a thorough recasting of governments and
races, a palingenesis of Europe, a nominal partition of its hegemony
between France and England, which was to be in reality absorbed by
France, and the annihilation of Austrian power east and west, these were
the vast ideas with which that teeming Bourbon brain was filled.  It is
the instinct both of poetic and of servile minds to associate a sentiment
of grandeur with such fantastic dreams, but usually on condition that the
dreamer wears a crown.  When the regenerator of society appears with a
wisp of straw upon his head, unappreciative society is apt to send him
back to his cell.  There, at least, his capacity for mischief is limited.

If to do be as grand as to imagine what it were good to do, then the
Dutchmen in Hell's Mouth and the Porcupine fighting Universal Monarchy
inch by inch and pike to pike, or trying conclusions with the ice-bears
of Nova Zembla, or capturing whole Portuguese fleets in the Moluccas,
were effecting as great changes in the world, and doing perhaps as much
for the advancement of civilization, as James of the two Britains and
Henry of France and Navarre in those his less heroic days, were likely to
accomplish.  History has long known the results.

The ambassador did his work admirably.  The king embraced him in a
transport of enthusiasm, vowed by all that was most sacred to accept the
project in all its details, and exacted from the ambassador in his turn
an oath on the Eucharist never to reveal, except to his master, the
mighty secrets of their conference.

The interview had lasted four hours.  When it was concluded, James
summoned Cecil, and in presence of the ambassador and of some of the
counsellors, lectured him soundly on his presumption in disobeying the
royal commands in his recent negotiations with De Rosny.  He then
announced his decision to ally himself strictly with France against Spain
in consequence of the revelations just made to him, and of course to
espouse the cause of the United Provinces.  Telling the crest-fallen
Secretary of State to make the proper official communications on the
subject to the ambassadors of my lords the States-General,--thus giving
the envoys from the republic for the first time that pompous designation,
the king turned once more to the marquis with the exclamation, "Well, Mr.
Ambassador, this time I hope that you are satisfied with me?"

In the few days following De Rosny busied himself in drawing up a plan
of a treaty embodying all that had been agreed upon between Henry and
himself, and which he had just so faithfully rehearsed to James.  He felt
now some inconvenience from his own artfulness, and was in a measure
caught in his own trap.  Had he brought over a treaty in his pocket,
James would have signed it on the spot, so eager was he for the
regeneration of Europe.  It was necessary, however, to continue the
comedy a little longer, and the ambassador, having thought it necessary
to express many doubts whether his master could be induced to join in the
plot, and to approve what was really his own most cherished plan, could
now do no more than promise to use all his powers of persuasion unto that
end.

The project of a convention, which James swore most solemnly to sign,
whether it were sent to him in six weeks or six months, was accordingly
rapidly reduced to writing and approved.  It embodied, of course, most of
the provisions discussed in the last secret interview at Greenwich.  The
most practical portion of it undoubtedly related to the United Provinces,
and to the nature of assistance to be at once afforded to that
commonwealth, the only ally of the two kingdoms expressly mentioned in
the treaty.  England was to furnish troops, the number of which was not
specified, and France was to pay for them, partly out of her own funds,
partly out of the amount due by her to England.  It was, however,
understood, that this secret assistance should not be considered to
infringe the treaty of peace which already existed between Henry and the
Catholic king.  Due and detailed arrangements were made as to the manner
in which the allies were to assist each other, in case Spain, not
relishing this kind of neutrality, should think proper openly to attack
either great Britain or France, or both.

Unquestionably the Dutch republic was the only portion of Europe likely
to be substantially affected by these secret arrangements; for, after
all, it had not been found very easy to embody the splendid visions of
Henry, which had so dazzled the imagination of James in the dry clauses
of a protocol.

It was also characteristic enough of the crowned conspirators, that the
clause relating to the United Provinces provided that the allies would
either assist them in the attainment of their independence, or--if it
should be considered expedient to restore them to the domination of Spain
or the empire--would take such precautions and lay down such conditions
as would procure perfect tranquillity for them, and remove from the two
allied kings the fear of a too absolute government by the house of
Austria in those provinces.

It would be difficult to imagine a more impotent conclusion.  Those Dutch
rebels had not been fighting for tranquillity.  The tranquillity of the
rock amid raging waves--according to the device of the father of the
republic--they had indeed maintained; but to exchange their turbulent and
tragic existence, ever illumined by the great hope of freedom, for repose
under one despot guaranteed to them by two others, was certainly not
their aim.  They lacked the breadth of vision enjoyed by the regenerators
who sat upon mountain-tops.

They were fain to toil on in their own way.  Perhaps, however, the future
might show as large results from their work as from the schemes of those
who were to begin the humiliation of the Austrian house by converting its
ancient rebels into tranquil subjects.

The Marquis of Rosny, having distributed 60,000 crowns among the leading
politicians and distinguished personages at the English court, with ample
promises of future largess if they remained true to his master, took an
affectionate farewell of King James, and returned with his noble two
hundred to recount his triumphs to the impatient Henry.  The treaty was
soon afterwards duly signed and ratified by the high contracting parties.
It was, however, for future history to register its results on the fate
of pope, emperor, kings, potentates, and commonwealths, and to show the
changes it would work in the geography, religion, and polity of the
world.

The deputies from the States-General, satisfied with the practical
assistance promised them, soon afterwards took their departure with
comparative cheerfulness, having previously obtained the royal consent
to raise recruits in Scotland.  Meantime the great Constable of Castile,
ambassador from his Catholic Majesty, had arrived in London, and was
wroth at all that he saw and all that he suspected.  He, too, began to
scatter golden arguments with a lavish hand among the great lords and
statesmen of Britain,  but found that the financier of France had, on the
whole; got before him in the business, and was skilfully maintaining his
precedence from the other side of the channel.

But the end of these great diplomatic manoeuvres had not yet come.




CHAPTER XLII.

     Siege of Ostend--The Marquis Spinola made commander-in-chief of the
     besieging army--Discontent of the troops--General aspect of the
     operations--Gradual encroachment of the enemy.

The scene again shifts to Ostend.  The Spanish cabinet, wearied of the
slow progress of the siege, and not entirely satisfied with the generals,
now concluded almost without consent of the archdukes, one of the most
extraordinary jobs ever made, even in those jobbing days.  The Marquis
Spinola, elder brother of the ill-fated Frederic, and head of the
illustrious Genoese family of that name, undertook to furnish a large sum
of money which the wealth of his house and its connection with the great
money-lenders of Genoa enabled him to raise, on condition that he should
have supreme command of the operations against Ostend and of the foreign
armies in the Netherlands.  He was not a soldier, but he entered into a
contract, by his own personal exertions both on the exchange and in the
field, to reduce the city which had now resisted all the efforts of the
archduke for more than two years.  Certainly this was an experiment not
often hazarded in warfare.  The defence of Ostend was in the hands of the
best and moat seasoned fighting-men in Europe.  The operations were under
the constant supervision of the foremost captain of the age; for Maurice,
in consultation with the States-General, received almost daily reports
from the garrison, and regularly furnished advice and instructions as to
their proceedings.  He was moreover ever ready to take the field for a
relieving campaign.  Nothing was known of Spinola save that he was a
high-born and very wealthy patrician who had reached his thirty-fourth
year without achieving personal distinction of any kind, and who, during
the previous summer, like so many other nobles from all parts of Europe,
had thought it worth his while to drawl through a campaign or two in the
Low Countries.  It was the mode to do this, and it was rather a stigma
upon any young man of family not to have been an occasional looker on at
that perpetual military game.  His brother Frederic, as already narrated;
had tried his chance for fame and fortune in the naval service, and had
lost his life in the adventure without achieving the one or the other.
This was not a happy augury for the head of the family.  Frederic had
made an indifferent speculation.  What could the brother hope by taking
the field against Maurice of Nassau and Lewis William and the Baxes and
Meetkerkes?  Nevertheless the archduke eagerly accepted his services,
while the Infanta, fully confident of his success before he had ordered a
gun to be fired, protested that if Spinola did not take Ostend nobody
would ever take it.  There was also, strangely enough, a general feeling
through the republican ranks that the long-expected man had come.

Thus a raw volunteer, a man who had never drilled a hundred men, who had
never held an officer's commission in any army in the world, became, as
by the waving of a wand, a field-marshal and commander-in-chief at a
most critical moment in history, in the most conspicuous position in
Christendom, and in a great war, now narrowed down to a single spot of
earth, on which the eyes of the world were fixed, and the daily accounts
from which were longed for with palpitating anxiety.  What but failure
and disaster could be expected from such astounding policy?  Every
soldier in the Catholic forces--from grizzled veterans of half a century
who had commanded armies and achieved victories when this dainty young
Italian was in his cradle, down to the simple musketeer or rider who had
been campaigning for his daily bread ever since he could carry a piece or
mount a horse was furious with discontent or outraged pride.

Very naturally too, it was said that the position of the archdukes had
become preposterous.  It was obvious, notwithstanding the pilgrimages of
the Infanta to our Lady of Hall, to implore not only the fall of Ostend,
but the birth of a successor to their sovereignty, that her marriage
would for ever remain barren.  Spain was already acting upon this theory,
it was said, for the contract with Spinola was made, not at Brussels,
but at Madrid, and a foreign army of Spaniards and Italians, under the
supreme command of a Genoese adventurer, was now to occupy indefinitely
that Flanders which had been proclaimed an independent nation, and duly
bequeathed by its deceased proprietor to his daughter.

Ambrose Spinola, son of Philip, Marquis of Venafri, and his wife,
Polyxena Grimaldi, was not appalled by the murmurs of hardly suppressed
anger or public criticism.  A handsome, aristocratic personage, with an
intellectual, sad, but sympathetic face, fair hair and beard, and
imposing but attractive presence--the young volunteer, at the beginning
of October, made his first visit of inspection in the lines before
Ostend.  After studying the situation of affairs very thoroughly,
he decided that the operations on the Gullet or eastern side, including
Bucquoy's dike, with Pompey Targone's perambulatory castles and floating
batteries, were of secondary importance.  He doubted the probability of
closing up a harbour, now open to the whole world and protected by the
fleets of the first naval power of Europe, with wickerwork, sausages, and
bridges upon barrels.  His attention was at once concentrated on the
western side, and he was satisfied that only by hard fighting and steady
delving could he hope to master the place.  To gain Ostend he would be
obliged to devour it piecemeal as he went on.

Whatever else might be said of the new commander-in-chief, it was soon
apparent that, although a volunteer and a patrician, he was no milksop.
If he had been accustomed all his life to beds of down, he was as ready
now to lie in the trenches, with a cannon for his pillow, as the most
ironclad veteran in the ranks.  He seemed to require neither sleep nor
food, and his reckless habit of exposing himself to unnecessary danger
was the subject of frequent animadversion on the part both of the
archdukes and of the Spanish Government.

It was however in his case a wise temerity.  The veterans whom he
commanded needed no encouragement to daring deeds, but they required
conviction as to the valour and zeal of their new commander, and this
was afforded them in overflowing measure.

It is difficult to decide, after such a lapse of years, as to how much of
the long series of daily details out of which this famous siege was
compounded deserves to be recorded.  It is not probable that for military
history many of the incidents have retained vital importance.  The world
rang, at the beginning of the operations, with the skill and inventive
talent of Targone, Giustiniani, and other Italian engineers, artificers,
and pyrotechnists, and there were great expectations conceived of the
effects to be produced by their audacious and original devices.  But time
wore on.  Pompey's famous floating battery would not float, his moving
monster battery would not move.  With the one; the subtle Italian had
intended to close up the Gullet to the States' fleets.  It was to rest on
the bottom at low water at the harbour's mouth, to rise majestically with
the flood, and to be ever ready with a formidable broadside of fifty
pounders against all comers.  But the wild waves and tempests of the
North Sea soon swept the ponderous toy into space, before it had fired a
gun.  The gigantic chariot, on which a moveable fort was constructed, was
still more portentous upon paper than the battery.  It was directed
against that republican work, defending the Gullet, which was called in
derision the Spanish Half-moon.  It was to be drawn by forty horses, and
armed with no man knew how many great guns, with a mast a hundred and
fifty feet high in the centre of the fort, up and down which played
pulleys raising and lowering a drawbridge long enough to span the Gullet.

It was further provided with anchors, which were to be tossed over the
parapet of the doomed redoubt, while the assailants, thus grappled to the
enemy's work, were to dash over the bridge after having silenced the
opposing fire by means of their own peripatetic battery.

Unfortunately for the fame of Pompey, one of his many wheels was crushed
on the first attempt to drag the chariot to the scene of anticipated
triumph, the whole structure remained embedded in the sand, very much
askew; nor did all the mules and horses that could be harnessed to it
ever succeed in removing it an inch out of a position, which was anything
but triumphant.

It seemed probable enough therefore that, so far as depended on the
operations from the eastern side, the siege of Ostend, which had now
lasted two years and three months, might be protracted for two years and
three months longer.  Indeed, Spinola at once perceived that if the
archduke was ever to be put in possession of the place for which he had
professed himself ready to wait eighteen years, it would be well to leave
Bucquoy and Targone to build dykes and chariots and bury them on the east
at their leisure, while more energy was brought to bear upon the line of
fortifications of the west than had hitherto been employed.  There had
been shooting enough, bloodshed enough, suffering enough, but it was
amazing to see the slight progress made.  The occupation of what were
called the external Squares has been described.  This constituted the
whole result of the twenty-seven months' work.

The town itself--the small and very insignificant kernel which lay
enclosed in such a complicated series of wrappings and layers of
defences--seemed as far off as if it were suspended in the sky.
The old haven or canal, no longer navigable for ships, still served as
an admirable moat which the assailants had not yet succeeded in laying
entirely dry.  It protected the counterscarp, and was itself protected by
an exterior aeries of works, while behind the counterscarp was still
another ditch, not so broad nor deep as the canal, but a formidable
obstacle even after the counterscarp should be gained.  There were nearly
fifty forts and redoubts in these lines, of sufficient importance to have
names which in those days became household words, not only in the
Netherlands, but in Europe; the siege of Ostend being the one military
event of Christendom, so long as it lasted.  These names are of course as
much forgotten now as those of the bastions before Nineveh.  A very few
of them will suffice to indicate the general aspect of the operations.
On the extreme southwest of Ostend had been in peaceful times a polder--
the general term to designate a pasture out of which the sea-water had
been pumped--and the forts in that quarter were accordingly called by
that name, as Polder Half-moon, Polder Ravelin, or great and little
Polder Bulwark, as the case might be.  Farther on towards the west, the
north-west, and the north, and therefore towards the beach, were the West
Ravelin, West Bulwark, Moses's Table, the Porcupine, the Hell's Mouth,
the old church, and last and most important of all, the Sand Hill.  The
last-named work was protected by the Porcupine and Hell's Mouth, was the
key to the whole series of fortifications, and was connected by a curtain
with the old church, which was in the heart of the old town.

Spinola had assumed command in October, but the winter was already
closing in with its usual tempests and floods before there had been time
for him to produce much effect.  It seemed plain enough to the besieged
that the object of the enemy would be to work his way through the Polder,
and so gradually round to the Porcupine and the Sand Hill.  Precisely in
what directions his subterraneous passages might be tending, in what
particular spot of the thin crust upon which they all stood an explosion
might at any moment be expected, it was of course impossible to know.
They were sure that the process of mining was steadily progressing, and
Maurice sent orders to countermine under every bulwark, and to secretly
isolate every bastion, so that it would be necessary for Spinola to make
his way, fort by fort, and inch by inch.

Thus they struggled drearily about under ground, friend and foe, often as
much bewildered as wanderers in the catacombs.  To a dismal winter
succeeded a ferocious spring.  Both in February and March were westerly
storms, such as had not been recorded even on that tempest-swept coast
for twenty years, and so much damage was inflicted on the precious Sand
Hill and its curtain, that, had the enemy been aware of its plight, it is
probable that one determined assault might have put him in possession of
the place.  But Ostend was in charge of a most watchful governor, Peter
van Gieselles, who had succeeded Charles van der Noot at the close of the
year 1603.  A plain, lantern jawed, Dutch colonel; with close-cropped
hair, a long peaked beard, and an eye that looked as if it had never been
shut; always dressed in a shabby old jerkin with tarnished flowers upon
it, he took command with a stout but heavy heart, saying that the place
should never be surrendered by him, but that he should never live to see
the close of the siege.  He lost no time in repairing the damages of the
tempest, being ready to fight the west wind, the North Sea, and Spinola
at any moment, singly or conjoined.  He rebuilt the curtain of the Sand
Hill, added fresh batteries to the Porcupine and Hell's Mouth, and amused
and distracted the enemy with almost daily sorties and feints.  His
soldiers passed their days and nights up to the knees in mud and sludge
and sea-water, but they saw that their commander never spared himself,
and having a superfluity of food and drink, owing to the watchful care of
the States-General, who sent in fleets laden with provisions faster than
they could be consumed, they were cheerful and content.

On the 12th March there was a determined effort to carry the lesser
Polder Bulwark.  After a fierce and bloody action, the place was taken by
storm, and the first success in the game was registered for Spinola.  The
little fort was crammed full of dead, but such of the defenders as
survived were at last driven out of it, and forced to take refuge in the
next work.  Day after day the same bloody business was renewed, a mere
monotony of assaults, repulses, sallies, in which hardly an inch of
ground was gained on either side, except at the cost of a great pile of
corpses.  "Men will never know, nor can mortal pen ever describe," said
one who saw it all, "the ferocity and the pertinacity of both besiegers
and besieged."  On the 15th of March, Colonel Catrice, an accomplished
Walloon officer of engineers, commanding the approaches against the
Polder, was killed.  On the 21st March, as Peter Orieselles was taking
his scrambling dinner in company with Philip Fleming, there was a report
that the enemy was out again in force.  A good deal of progress had been
made during the previous weeks on the south-west and west, and more was
suspected than was actually known.  It was felt that the foe was steadily
nibbling his way up to the counterscarp.  Moreover, such was the
emulation among the Germans, Walloons, Italians, and Spaniards for
precedence in working across the canal, that a general assault and
universal explosion were considered at any instant possible.  The
governor sent Fleming to see if all was right in the Porcupine, while
he himself went to see if a new battery, which he had just established
to check the approaches of the enemy towards the Polder Half-moon and
Ravelin in a point very near the counterscarp, was doing its duty.
Being, as usual, anxious to reconnoitre with his own eyes, he jumped upon
the rampart.  But there were sharp-shooters in the enemy's trenches, and
they were familiar with the governor's rusty old doublet and haggard old
face.  Hardly had he climbed upon the breastwork when a ball pierced his
heart, and he fell dead without a groan.  There was a shout of triumph
from the outside, while the tidings soon spread sadness through the
garrison, for all loved and venerated the man.  Philip Fleming, so soon
as he learned the heavy news, lost no time in unavailing regrets, but
instantly sent a courier to Prince Maurice; meantime summoning a council
of superior officers, by whom Colonel John van Loon was provisionally
appointed commandant.

A stately, handsome man, a good officer, but without extensive
experience, he felt himself hardly equal to the immense responsibility of
the post, but yielding to the persuasions of his comrades, proceeded to
do his best.  His first care was to secure the all-important Porcupine,
towards which the enemy had been slowly crawling with his galleries and
trenches.  Four days after he had accepted the command he was anxiously
surveying that fortification, and endeavouring to obtain a view of the
enemy's works, when a cannon-ball struck him on the right leg, so that he
died the next day.  Plainly the post of commandant of Ostend was no
sinecure.  He was temporarily succeeded by Sergeant-Major Jacques de
Bievry, but the tumults and confusion incident upon this perpetual change
of head were becoming alarming.  The enemy gave the garrison no rest
night nor day, and it had long become evident that the young volunteer,
whose name was so potent on the Genoa Exchange, was not a man of straw
nor a dawdler, however the superseded veterans might grumble.  At any
rate the troops on either side were like to have their fill of work.

On the 2nd April the Polder Ravelin was carried by storm.  It was a most
bloody action.  Never were a few square feet of earth more recklessly
assailed, more resolutely maintained.  The garrison did not surrender
the place, but they all laid down their lives in its defence.  Scarcely
an individual of them all escaped, and the foe, who paid dearly with
heaps of dead and wounded for his prize, confessed that such serious work
as this had scarce been known before in any part of that great slaughter-
house, Flanders.

A few days later, Colonel Bievry, provisional commandant, was desperately
wounded in a sortie, and was carried off to Zeeland.  The States-General
now appointed Jacques van der Meer, Baron of Berendrecht, to the post of
honour and of danger.  A noble of Flanders, always devoted to the
republican cause; an experienced middle-aged officer, vigilant,
energetic, nervous; a slight wiry man, with a wizened little face, large
bright eyes, a meagre yellow beard, and thin sandy hair flowing down upon
his well-starched ruff, the new governor soon showed himself inferior to
none of his predecessors in audacity and alertness.  It is difficult to
imagine a more irritating position in many respects than that of
commander in such an extraordinary leaguer.  It was not a formal siege.
Famine, which ever impends over an invested place, and sickens the soul
with its nameless horrors, was not the great enemy to contend against
here.  Nor was there the hideous alternative between starving through
obstinate resistance or massacre on submission, which had been the lot of
so many Dutch garrisons in the earlier stages of the war.  Retreat by sea
was ever open to the Ostend garrison, and there was always an ample
supply of the best provisions and of all munitions of war.  But they had
been unceasingly exposed to two tremendous enemies.  During each winter
and spring the ocean often smote their bastions and bulwarks in an hour
of wrath till they fell together like children's toys, and it was always
at work, night and day, steadily lapping at the fragile foundations on
which all their structures stood.  Nor was it easy to give the requisite
attention to the devouring sea, because all the materials that could be
accumulated seemed necessary to repair the hourly damages inflicted by
their other restless foe.

Thus the day seemed to draw gradually but inexorably nearer when the
place would be, not captured, but consumed.  There was nothing for it,
so long as the States were determined to hold the spot, but to meet the
besieger at every point, above or below the earth, and sell every inch of
that little morsel of space at the highest price that brave men could
impose.

So Berendrecht, as vigilant and devoted as even Peter Gieselles had ever
been, now succeeded to the care of the Polders and the Porcupines, and
the Hell's Mouths; and all the other forts, whose quaint designations had
served, as usually is the case among soldiers, to amuse the honest
patriots in the midst of their toils and danger.  On the 18th April, the
enemy assailed the great western Ravelin, and after a sanguinary hand-to-
hand action, in which great numbers of officers and soldiers were lost on
both sides, he carried the fort; the Spaniards, Italians, Germans, and
Walloons vieing with each other in deeds of extraordinary daring, and
overcoming at last the resistance of the garrison.

This was an important success.  The foe had now worked his way with
galleries and ditches along the whole length of the counterscarp till he
was nearly up with the Porcupine, and it was obvious that in a few days
he would be master of the counterscarp itself.

A less resolute commander, at the head of less devoted troops, might
have felt that when that inevitable event should arrive all that honour
demanded would have been done, and that Spinola was entitled to his city.
Berendrecht simply decided that if the old counterscarp could no longer
be held it was time to build a new counterscarp.  This, too, had been
for some time the intention of Prince Maurice.  A plan for this work had
already been sent into the place, and a distinguished English engineer,
Ralph Dexter by name, arrived with some able assistants to carry it into
execution.  It having been estimated that the labour would take three
weeks of time, without more ado the inner line was carefully drawn,
cutting off with great nicety and precision about one half the whole
place.  Within this narrowed circle the same obstinate resistance was
to be offered as before, and the bastions and redoubts of the new
entrenchment were to be baptized with the same uncouth names which two
long years of terrible struggle had made so precious.  The work was very
laborious; for the line was drawn straight through the town, and whole
streets had to be demolished and the houses to their very foundations
shovelled away.  Moreover the men were forced to toil with spade in one
hand and matchlock in the other, ever ready to ascend from the ancient
dilapidated cellars in order to mount the deadly breach at any point in
the whole circumference of the place.

It became absolutely necessary therefore to send a sufficient force of
common workmen into the town to lighten the labours of the soldiers.
Moreover the thought, although whistled to the wind, would repeatedly
recur, that, after all, there must be a limit to these operations, and
that at last there would remain no longer any earth in which to find a
refuge.

The work of the new entrenchment went slowly on, but it was steadily
done.  Meantime they were comforted by hearing that the stadholder had
taken the field in Flanders, at the head of a considerable force, and
they lived in daily expectation of relief.  It will be necessary, at the
proper moment, to indicate the nature of Prince Maurice's operations.
For the present, it is better that the reader should confine his
attention within the walls of Ostend.

By the 11th May, the enemy had effected a lodgment in a corner of
the Porcupine, and already from that point might threaten the new
counterscarp before it should be completed.  At the same time he had
gnawed through to the West Bulwark, and was busily mining under the
Porcupine itself.  In this fort friend and foe now lay together, packed
like herrings, and profited by their proximity to each other to vary the
monotony of pike and anaphance with an occasional encounter of epistolary
wit.

Thus Spanish letters, tied to sticks, and tossed over into the next
entrenchment, were replied to by others, composed in four languages by
the literary man of Ostend, Auditor Fleming, and shot into the enemy's
trenches on cross-bow bolts.

On the 29th May, a long prepared mine was sprung beneath the Porcupine.
It did its work effectively, and the 29 May assailants did theirs no less
admirably, crowding into the breach with headlong ferocity, and after a
long and sanguinary struggle with immense lose on both sides, carrying
the precious and long-coveted work by storm.  Inch by inch the defenders
were thus slowly forced back toward their new entrenchment.  On the same
day, however, they inflicted a most bloody defeat upon the enemy in an
attempt to carry the great Polder.  He withdrew, leaving heaps of slain,
so that the account current for the day would have balanced itself, but
that the Porcupine, having changed hands, now bristled most formidably
against its ancient masters.  The daily 'slaughter had become sickening
to behold.  There were three thousand effective men in the garrison.
More could have been sent in to supply the steady depletion in the ranks,
but there was no room for more.  There was scarce space enough for the
living to stand to their work, or for the dead to lie in their graves.
And this was an advantage which could not fail to tell.  Of necessity the
besiegers would always very far outnumber the garrison, so that the final
success of their repeated assaults became daily more and more possible.

Yet on the 2nd June the enemy met not only with another signal defeat,
but also with a most bitter surprise.  On that day the mine which he had
been so long and so laboriously constructing beneath the great Polder
Bulwark was sprung with magnificent effect.  A breach, forty feet wide,
was made in this last stronghold of the old defences, and the soldiers
leaped into the crater almost before it had ceased to blaze, expecting
by one decisive storm to make themselves masters at last of all the
fortifications, and therefore of the town itself.  But as emerging
from the mine, they sprang exulting upon the shattered bulwark,
a transformation more like a sudden change in some holiday pantomime
than a new fact in this three years' most tragic siege presented itself
to their astonished eyes.  They had carried the last defence of the old
counterscarp, and behold--a new one, which they had never dreamed of,
bristling before their eyes, with a flanking battery turned directly upon
them.  The musketeers and pikemen, protected by their new works, now
thronged towards the assailants; giving them so hearty a welcome that
they reeled back, discomfited, after a brief but severe struggle, from
the spot of their anticipated triumph, leaving their dead and dying in
the breach.

Four days later, Berendrecht, with a picked party of English troops,
stole out for a reconnaissance, not wishing to trust other eyes than his
own in the imminent peril of the place.

The expedition was successful.  A few prisoners were taken, and valuable
information was obtained, but these advantages were counterbalanced by a
severe disaster.  The vigilant and devoted little governor, before
effecting his entrance into the sally port, was picked off by a
sharpshooter, and died the next day.  This seemed the necessary fate
of the commandants of Ostend, where the operations seemed more like a
pitched battle lasting three years than an ordinary siege.  Gieselles,
Van Loon, Bievry, and now Berendrecht, had successively fallen at the
post of duty since the beginning of the year.  Not one of them was more
sincerely deplored than Berendrecht.  His place was supplied by Colonel
Uytenhoove, a stalwart, hirsute, hard-fighting Dutchman, the descendant
of an ancient race, and seasoned in many a hard campaign.

The enemy now being occupied in escarping and furnishing with batteries
the positions he had gained, with the obvious intention of attacking the
new counterscarp, it was resolved to prepare for the possible loss of
this line of fortifications by establishing another and still narrower
one within it.

Half the little place had been shorn away by the first change.  Of the
half which was still in possession of the besieged about one-third was
now set off, and in this little corner of earth, close against the new
harbour, was set up their last refuge.  They called the new citadel
Little Troy, and announced, with pardonable bombast, that they would hold
out there as long as the ancient Trojans had defended Ilium.  With
perfect serenity the engineers set about their task with line, rule, and
level, measuring out the bulwarks and bastions, the miniature salients,
half-moons, and ditches, as neatly and methodically as if there were no
ceaseless cannonade in their ears, and as if the workmen were not at
every moment summoned to repel assaults upon the outward wall.  They.
sent careful drawings of Little Troy to Maurice and the States, and
received every encouragement to persevere, together with promises of
ultimate relief.

But there was one serious impediment to the contemplated construction of
the new earth-works.  They had no earth.  Nearly everything solid had
been already scooped away in the perpetual delving.  The sea-dykes had
been robbed of their material, so that the coming winter might find
besiegers and besieged all washed together into the German Ocean, and it
was hard digging and grubbing among the scanty cellarages of the
dilapidated houses.  But there were plenty of graves, filled with the
results of three years' hard fighting.  And now, not only were all the
cemeteries within the precincts shovelled and carted in mass to the inner
fortifications, but rewards being offered of ten stivers for each dead
body, great heaps of disinterred soldiers were piled into the new
ramparts.  Thus these warriors, after laying down their lives for the
cause of freedom, were made to do duty after death.  Whether it were just
or no thus to disturb the repose--if repose it could be called--of the
dead that they might once more protect the living, it can scarcely be
doubted that they took ample revenge on the already sufficiently polluted
atmosphere.

On the 17th June the foe sprang a mine under the western bulwark; close
to a countermine exploded by the garrison the day before.  The assailants
thronged as merrily as usual to the breach, and were met with customary
resolution by the besieged; Governor Uytenhoove, clad in complete armour,
leading his troops.  The enemy, after an hour's combat, was repulsed with
heavy loss, but the governor fell in the midst of the fight.  Instantly
he was seized by the legs by a party of his own men, some English
desperadoes among the number, who, shouting that the colonel was dead,
were about to render him the last offices by plundering his body.  The
ubiquitous Fleming, observing the scene, flew to the rescue and, with the
assistance of a few officers, drove off these energetic friends, and
taking off the governor's casque, discovered that he still breathed.
That he would soon have ceased to do so, had he been dragged much farther
in his harness over that jagged and precipitous pile of rubbish, was
certain.  He was desperately wounded, and of course incapacitated for his
post.  Thus, in that year, before the summer solstice, a fifth commandant
had fallen.

On the same day, simultaneously with this repulse in the West Bulwark,
the enemy made himself at last completely master of the Polder.  Here,
too, was a savage hand-to-hand combat with broadswords and pikes, and
when the pikes were broken, with great clubs and stakes pulled from the
fascines; but the besiegers were victorious, and the defenders sullenly
withdrew with their wounded to the inner entrenchments.

On the 27th June, Daniel de Hartaing, Lord of Marquette, was sent by the
States-General to take command in Ostend.  The colonel of the Walloon
regiment which had rendered such good service on the famous field of
Nieuport, the new governor, with his broad, brown, cheerful face, and
his Milan armour, was a familiar figure enough to the campaigners on
both sides in Flanders or Germany.

The stoutest heart might have sunk at the spectacle which the condition
of the town presented at his first inspection.  The States-General were
resolved to hold the place, at all hazards, and Marquette had come to do
their bidding, but it was difficult to find anything that could be called
a town.  The great heaps of rubbish, which had once been the outer walls,
were almost entirely in the possession of the foe, who had lodged himself
in all that remained of the defiant Porcupine, the Hell's Mouth, and
other redoubts, and now pointed from them at least fifty great guns
against their inner walls.  The old town, with its fortifications, was
completely honeycombed, riddled, knocked to pieces, and, although the
Sand Hill still held out, it was plain enough that its days were numbered
unless help should soon arrive.  In truth, it required a clear head and a
practised eye to discover among those confused masses of prostrate
masonry, piles of brick, upturned graves, and mounds of sand and rubbish,
anything like order and regularity.  Yet amid the chaos there was really
form and meaning to those who could read aright, and Marquette saw, as
well in the engineers' lines as in the indomitable spirit that looked out
of the grim faces of the garrison, that Ostend, so long as anything of it
existed in nature, could be held for the republic.  Their brethren had
not been firmer, when keeping their merry Christmas, seven years before,
under the North Pole, upon a pudding made of the gunner's cartridge
paste, or the Knights of the Invincible Lion in the horrid solitudes of
Tierra del Fuego, than were the defenders of this sandbank.

Whether the place were worth the cost or not, it was for my lords the
States-General to decide, not for Governor Marquette.  And the decision
of those "high and mighty" magistrates, to whom even Maurice of Nassau
bowed without a murmur, although often against his judgment, had been
plainly enough announced.

And so shiploads of deals and joists, bricks, nails, and fascines, with
requisite building materials, were sent daily in from Zeeland, in order
that Little Troy might be completed; and, with God's help, said the
garrison, the republic shall hold its own.

And now there were two months more of mining and countermining, of
assaults and repulses, of cannonading and hand-to-hand fights with pikes
and clubs.  Nearer and nearer, day by day, and inch by inch, the foe had
crawled up to the verge of their last refuge, and the walls of Little
Troy, founded upon fresh earth and dead men's bones, and shifting sands,
were beginning to quake under the guns of the inexorable volunteer from
Genoa.  Yet on the 27th August there was great rejoicing in the
beleaguered town.  Cannon thundered salutes, bonfires blazed, trumpets
rang jubilant blasts, and, if the church-bells sounded no merry peals, it
was because the only church in the place had been cut off in the last
slicing away by the engineers.  Hymns of thanksgiving ascended to heaven,
and the whole garrison fell on their knees, praying fervently to Almighty
God, with devout and grateful hearts.  It was not an ignoble spectacle to
see those veterans kneeling where there was scarce room to kneel, amid
ruin and desolation, to praise the Lord for his mercies.  But to explain
this general thanksgiving it is now necessary for a moment to go back.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Began to scatter golden arguments with a lavish hand
Certain number of powers, almost exactly equal to each other
Conceit, and procrastination which marked the royal character
Do you want peace or war?  I am ready for either
Eloquence of the biggest guns
Even the virtues of James were his worst enemies
Gold was the only passkey to justice
If to do be as grand as to imagine what it were good to do
It is certain that the English hate us (Sully)
Logic of the largest battalions
Made peace--and had been at war ever since
Nations tied to the pinafores of children in the nursery
Natural tendency to suspicion of a timid man
Not safe for politicians to call each other hard names
One of the most contemptible and mischievous of kings (James I)
Peace founded on the only secure basis, equality of strength
Peace seemed only a process for arriving at war
Repose under one despot guaranteed to them by two others
Requires less mention than Philip III himself
Rules adopted in regard to pretenders to crowns
Served at their banquets by hosts of lackeys on their knees
Take all their imaginations and extravagances for truths
The expenses of James's household
The pigmy, as the late queen had been fond of nicknaming him
To negotiate with Government in England was to bribe
Unproductive consumption being accounted most sagacious
War was the normal condition of Christians
We have been talking a little bit of truth to each other
What was to be done in this world and believed as to the next
You must show your teeth to the Spaniard




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v76
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 77, 1604-1605


CHAPTER XLIII.

     Policy of the King of France--Operations of Prince Maurice--Plans
     for a Flemish Campaign--Passage into Flanders--Fort St. Catharine--
     Flight of its garrison, and occupation by Maurice--Surrender of
     Ysendyke and Aardenburg--Skirmish at Stamper's Hook--Siege of Sluys
     by Prince Maurice--Ineffectual attempt of Spinola to relieve the
     town--Its capitulation and restoration to the States--Death of Lewis
     Gunther of Nassau--Operations at Ostend--Surrender of the garrison--
     Desolation of the scene after its evacuation.

The States-General had begun to forget the severe lesson taught them in
the Nieuport campaign.  Being determined to hold Ostend, they became very
impatient, in the early part of the present year, that Maurice should
once more invade Flanders, at the head of a relieving army, and drive the
archdukes from before the town.

They were much influenced in this policy by the persistent advice of the
French king.  To the importunities of their envoy at Paris, Henry had,
during the past eighteen months, replied by urging the States to invade
Flanders and seize its ports.  When they had thus something to place as
pledges in his hands, he might accede to their clamour and declare war
against Spain.  But he scarcely concealed his intention, in such case, to
annex both the obedient and the United Netherlands to his own dominions.
Meantime, before getting into the saddle, he chose to be guaranteed
against loss.  "Assure my lords the States that I love them," he said,
"and shall always do my best for them."  His affection for the territory
of my lords was even warmer than the sentiments he entertained for
themselves.  Moreover, he grudged the preliminary expenses which would be
necessary even should he ultimately make himself sovereign of the whole
country.  Rosny assured the envoy that he was mistaken in expecting a
declaration of war against Spain.  "Not that he does not think it useful
and necessary," said the minister, "but he wishes to have war and peace
both at once--peace because he wishes to make no retrenchments in his
pleasures of women, dogs, and buildings, and so war would be very
inopportune.  In three months he would be obliged to turn tail for want
of means (to use his own words), although I would furnish him funds
enough, if he would make the use of them that he ought."

The Queen of England, who, with all her parsimony and false pretences,
never doubted in her heart that perpetual hostility to Spain was the
chief bulwark of her throne, and that the republic was fighting her
battles as well as its own, had been ready to make such a lively war in
conjunction with France as would drive the Spaniard out of all the
Netherlands.  But Henry was not to be moved.  "I know that if I should
take her at her word," said he, "she would at once begin to screw me for
money.  She has one object, I another."  Villeroy had said plainly to
Aerssens, in regard to the prevalent system of Englishmen, Spaniards, and
Frenchmen being at war with each other, while the Governments might be
nominally at peace, "Let us take off our masks.  If the Spaniard has
designs against our State, has he not cause?  He knows the aid we are
giving you, and resents it.  If we should abstain, he would leave us in
peace.  If the Queen of England expects to draw us into a league, she is
mistaken.  Look to yourselves and be on your guard.  Richardot is
intriguing with Cecil.  You give the queen securities, fortresses, seats
in your council.  The king asks nothing but communication of your
projects."

In short, all the comfort that Aerssens had been able to derive from his
experiences at the French court in the autumn of 1602, was that the
republic could not be too suspicious both of England and France.  Rosny
especially he considered the most dangerous of all the politicians in
France.  His daughter was married to the Prince of Espinoy, whose 50,000
livres a year would be safer the more the archduke was strengthened.
"But for this he would be stiffer," said Aerssens.  Nevertheless there
were strong motives at work, pressing France towards the support of the
States.  There were strong political reasons, therefore, why they should
carry the war into Flanders, in conformity with the wishes of the king.

The stadholder, after much argument, yielded as usual to the authority
of the magistrates, without being convinced as to the sagacity of their
plans.  It was arranged that an army should make a descent upon the
Flemish coast in the early spring, and make a demonstration upon Sluys.
The effect of this movement, it was thought, would be to draw the enemy
out of his entrenchments, in which case it would be in the power of
Maurice to put an end at once to the siege.  It is unquestionable that
the better alternative, in the judgment of the prince, was to take
possession; if possible, of Sluys itself.  His preparations were,
however, made with a view to either event, and by the middle of April he
had collected at Willemstad a force of fifteen thousand foot and three
thousand horse.  As on the former memorable expedition, he now again
insisted that a considerable deputation of the States and of the States'
council should accompany the army.  His brother Henry, and his cousins
Lewis William, Lewis Gunther, and Ernest Casimir, were likewise with him,
as well as the Prince of Anhalt and other distinguished personages.

On the 25th April the army, having crossed the mouth of the West Scheld,
from Zeeland, in numberless vessels of all sizes and degrees, effected
their debarkation on the island of Cadzand.

In the course of two days they had taken possession of the little town,
and all the forts of that island, having made their entrance through what
was called the Black Channel.  Had they steered boldly through the Swint
or Sluys channel at once, it is probable that they might have proceeded
straight up to Sluy's, and taken the place by surprise.  Maurice's
habitual caution was, perhaps, on this occasion, a disadvantage to him,
but he would have violated the rules of war, and what seemed the dictates
of common sense, had he not secured a basis of operations, and a
possibility of retreat, before plunging with his army into the heart
of a hostile country.  The republic still shuddered at the possible
catastrophe of four years before, when circumstances had forced him to
take the heroic but dangerous resolution of sending off his ships from
Nieuport.  Before he had completed his arrangements for supplies on the
island of Cadzand, he learned from scouts and reconnoitring parties that
Spinola had sent a thousand infantry, besides five hundred cavalry, under
Trivulzio, to guard the passage across the Swint.  Maurice was thus on
the wrong side of the great channel by which Sluy's communicated with the
sea?

The town of Sluy's and its situation have been described in a former
chapter.  As a port, it was in those days considered a commodious and
important one, capable of holding five hundred ships.  As a town, it was
not so insignificant as geographical and historical changes have since
made it, and was certainly far superior to Ostend, even if Ostend had
not been almost battered out of existence.  It had spacious streets and
squares, and excellent fortifications in perfectly good condition.  It
was situate in a watery labyrinth, many slender streams from the interior
and several saltwater creeks being complicated around it, and then
flowing leisurely, in one deep sluggish channel, to the sea.  The wrath
of Leicester, when all his efforts to relieve the place had been baffled
by the superior skill of Alexander Farnese, has been depicted, and during
the seventeen years which had elapsed since its capture, the republic had
not ceased to deplore that disaster.  Obviously if the present expedition
could end in the restoration of Sluy's to its rightful owners, it would
be a remarkable success, even if Ostend should fall.  Sluy's and its
adjacent domains formed a natural portion of the Zeeland archipelago, the
geographical counterpart of Flushing.  With both branches of the stately
Scheld in its control, the republic would command the coast, and might
even dispense with Ostend, which, in the judgment of Maurice, was an
isolated and therefore not a desirable military possession.  The States-
General were of a different opinion.  They much desired to obtain Sluy's,
but they would not listen to the abandonment of Ostend.  It was expected
of the stadholder, therefore, that he should seize the one and protect
the other.  The task was a difficult one.  A less mathematical brain than
that of Maurice of Nassau would have reeled at the problem to be solved.
To master such a plexus of canals, estuaries, and dykes, of passages
through swamps, of fords at low water which were obliterated by flood-
tide; to take possession of a series of redoubts built on the only firm
points of land, with nothing but quaking morass over which to manoeuvre
troops or plant batteries against them, would be a difficult study, even
upon paper.  To accomplish it in the presence of a vigilant and anxious
foe seemed bewildering enough.

At first it was the intention of the stadholder, disappointed at learning
the occupation of the Swint, to content himself with fortifying Cadzand,
in view of future operations at some more favourable moment?  So meagre
a result would certainly not have given great satisfaction to the States,
nor added much to the military reputation of Maurice.  While he hesitated
between plunging without a clue into the watery maze around him, and
returning discomfited from the expedition on which such high hopes had
been built, a Flemish boor presented himself.  He offered to guide the
army around the east and south of Sluy's, and to point out passages where
it would be possible to cross the waters, which, through the care of
Spinola, now seemed to forbid access to the place.  Maurice lingered no
longer.  On the 28th April, led by the friendly boor, he advanced towards
Oostburg.  Next morning a small force of the enemy's infantry and cavalry
was seen, showing that there must be foothold in that direction.  He sent
out a few companies to skirmish with those troops, who fled after a very
brief action, and, in flying, showed their pursuers the road.  Maurice
marched in force, straight through the waters, on the track of the
retreating foe.  They endeavoured to rally at the fort of Coxie, which
stood upon and commanded a dyke, but the republicans were too quick for
them, and drove them out of the place."  The stadholder, thus obtaining
an unexpected passage into Flanders, conceived strong hopes of success,
despite the broken nature of the ground. Continuing to feel his way
cautiously through the wilderness of quagmire, he soon came upon a very
formidable obstacle.  The well-built and well-equipped redoubt of St.
Catharine rose frowning before him, overshadowing his path, and
completely prohibiting all further progress.  Plainly it would be
necessary to reduce this work at once, unless he were willing to abandon
his enterprise.  He sent back to Cadzand for artillery, but it was flood-
tide, the waters were out, and it was not till late in the afternoon that
nine pieces arrived.  The stadholder ordered a cannonade, less with the
hope of producing an impression by such inadequate means on so strong a
work, than with the intention of showing the enemy that he had brought
field-guns with him, and was not merely on an accidental foray.  At the
same time, having learned that the garrison, which was commanded by
Trivulzio, was composed of only a few regular troops, and a large force
of guerillas, he gave notice that such combatants were not entitled to
quarter, and that if captured they would be all put to the sword.  The
reply to this threat was not evacuation but defiance.  Especially a
volunteer ensign mounted upon a rampart, and danced about, waving his
flag gaily in the face of the assailants.  Maurice bitterly remarked to
his staff that such a man alone was enough to hold the fort.  As it was
obvious that the place would require a siege in form, and that it would
be almost impossible to establish batteries upon that quaking soil, where
there was no dry land for cavalry or artillery to move, Maurice ordered
the nine guns to be carried back to Cadzand that night, betaking himself,
much disappointed, in the same direction."  Yet it so happened that the
cannoneers, floundering through the bogs, made such an outcry--especially
when one of their guns became so bemired that it was difficult for them
to escape the disgrace of losing it--that the garrison, hearing a great
tumult, which they could not understand, fell into one of those panics to
which raw and irregular troops are liable.  Nothing would convince them
that fresh artillery had not arrived, that the terrible stadholder with
an immense force was not creating invincible batteries, and that they
should be all butchered in cold blood, according to proclamation, before
the dawn of day.  They therefore evacuated the place under cover of
the night, so that this absurd accident absolutely placed Maurice in
possession of the very fort--without striking a blow--which he was about
to abandon in despair, and which formed the first great obstacle to his
advance.

Having occupied St. Catharine's, he moved forward to Ysendyke, a strongly
fortified place three leagues to the eastward of Sluys and invested it in
form.  Meantime a great danger was impending over him.  A force of well-
disciplined troops, to the number of two thousand, dropped down in boats
from Sluy's to Cadzand, for the purpose of surprising the force left to
guard that important place.

The expedition was partially successful.  Six hundred landed; beating
down all opposition.  But a few Scotch companies held firm, and by hard
fighting were able at last to drive the invaders back to their sloops,
many of which were sunk in the affray, with all on board.  The rest
ignominiously retreated.  Had the enterprise been as well executed as it
was safely planned, it would have gone hard with the stadholder and his
army.  It is difficult to see in what way he could have extricated
himself from such a dilemma, being thus cut off from his supplies and his
fleet, and therefore from all possibility of carrying out his design or
effecting his escape to Zeeland.  Certainly thus far, fortune had
favoured his bold adventure.

He now sent his own trumpeter, Master Hans, to summon Ysendyke to a
surrender.  The answer was a bullet which went through the head of
unfortunate Master Hans.  Maurice, enraged at this barbarous violation of
the laws of war, drew his lines closer.  Next day the garrison, numbering
six hundred, mostly Italians, capitulated, and gave up the musketeer who
had murdered the trumpeter.

Two days later the army appeared before Aardenburg, a well-fortified
town four miles south of Sluys.  It surrendered disgracefully, without
striking a blow.  The place was a most important position for the
investment of Sluys.  Four or five miles further towards the west, two
nearly parallel streams, both navigable, called the Sweet and the Salt,
ran from Dam to Sluys.  It was a necessary but most delicate operation,
to tie up these two important arteries.  An expedition despatched in this
direction came upon Trivulzio with a strong force of cavalry, posted at a
pass called Stamper's Hook, which controlled the first of these streams.
The narrowness of the pathway gave the advantage to the Italian
commander.  A warm action took place, in which the republican cavalry
were worsted, and Paul Bax severely wounded.  Maurice coming up with the
infantry at a moment when the prospect was very black, turned defeat into
victory and completely routed the enemy, who fled from the precious
position with a loss of five hundred killed and three hundred prisoners,
eleven officers among them.  The Sweet was now in the stadholder's
possession.

Next day he marched against the Salt, at a pass where fourteen hundred
Spaniards were stationed.  Making very ostentatious preparations for an
attack upon this position, he suddenly fell backwards down the stream to
a point which he had discovered to be fordable at low water, and marched
his whole army through the stream while the skirmishing was going on a
few miles farther up.  The Spaniards, discovering their error, and
fearing to be cut off, scampered hastily away to Dam.  Both streams were
now in the control of the republican army, while the single fort of St.
Joris was all that was now interposed between Maurice and the much-
coveted Swint.  This redoubt, armed with nine guns, and provided with a
competent, garrison, was surrendered on the 23rd May.

The Swint, or great sea-channel of Sluys, being now completely in the
possession of the stadholder, he deliberately proceeded to lay out his
lines, to make his entrenched camp, and to invest his city with the
beautiful neatness which ever characterized his sieges.  A groan came
from the learned Lipsius, as he looked from the orthodox shades of
Louvain upon the progress of the heretic prince.

"Would that I were happier," he cried, "but things are not going on in
Flanders as I could wish.  How easy it would have been to save Sluys,
which we are now trying so hard to do, had we turned our attention
thither in time!  But now we have permitted the enemy to entrench and
fortify himself, and we are the less excusable because we know to our
cost how felicitously he fights with the spade, and that he builds works
like an ancient Roman .  .  .  .  .  Should we lose Sluys, which God
forbid, how much strength and encouragement will be acquired by the foe,
and by all who secretly or openly favour him!  Our neighbours are all
straining their eyes, as from a watch-tower, eager to see the result of
all these doings.  But what if they too should begin to move?  Where
should we be?  I pray God to have mercy on the Netherlanders, whom He has
been so many years chastising with heavy whips."

It was very true.  The man with the spade had been allowed to work too
long at his felicitous vocation.  There had been a successful effort made
to introduce reinforcements to the garrison.  Troops, to the number of
fifteen hundred, had been added to those already shut up there, but the
attempts to send in supplies were not so fortunate.  Maurice had
completely invested the town before the end of May, having undisputed
possession of the harbour and of all the neighbouring country.  He was
himself encamped on the west side of the Swint; Charles van der Noot
lying on the south.  The submerged meadows, stretching all around in the
vicinity of the haven, he had planted thickly with gunboats.  Scarcely a
bird or a fish could go into or out of the place.  Thus the stadholder
exhibited to the Spaniards who, fifteen miles off towards the west, had
been pounding and burrowing three years long before Ostend without
success, what he understood by a siege.

On the 22nd of May a day of solemn prayer and fasting was, by command of
Maurice, celebrated throughout the besieging camp.  In order that the day
should be strictly kept in penance, mortification, and thanksgiving, it
was ordered, on severe penalties, that neither the commissaries nor
sutlers should dispense any food whatever, throughout the twenty-four
hours.  Thus the commander-in-chief of the republic prepared his troops
for the work before them.

In the very last days of May the experiment was once more vigorously
tried to send in supplies.  A thousand galley-slaves, the remnant of
Frederic Spinola's unlucky naval forces, whose services were not likely
very soon to be required at sea, were sent out into the drowned land,
accompanied by five hundred infantry.  Simultaneously Count Berlaymont,
at the head of four thousand men, conveying a large supply of provisions
and munitions, started from Dam.  Maurice, apprised of the adventure,
sallied forth with two thousand troops to meet them.  Near Stamper's Hook
he came upon a detachment of Berlaymont's force, routed them, and took a
couple of hundred prisoners.  Learning from them that Berlaymont himself,
with the principal part of his force, had passed farther on, he started
off in pursuit; but, unfortunately taking a different path through the
watery wilderness from the one selected by the flying foe, he was not
able to prevent his retreat by a circuitous route to Dam.  From the
prisoners, especially from the galley-slaves, who had no reason for
disguising the condition of the place, he now learned that there were
plenty of troops in Sluys, but that there was already a great lack of
provisions.  They had lost rather than gained by their success in
introducing reinforcements without supplies.  Upon this information
Maurice now resolved to sit quietly down and starve out the garrison.
If Spinola, in consequence, should raise the siege of Ostend, in order
to relieve a better town, he was prepared to give him battle.  If the
marquis held fast to his special work, Sluys was sure to surrender.
This being the position of affairs, the deputies of the States-General
took their leave of the stadholder, and returned to the Hague.

Two months passed.  It was midsummer, and the famine in the beleaguered
town had become horrible.  The same hideous spectacle was exhibited as on
all occasions where thousands of human beings are penned together without
food.  They ate dogs, cats, and rats, the weeds from the churchyards, old
saddles, and old shoes, and, when all was gone, they began to eat each
other.  The small children diminished rapidly in numbers, while beacons
and signals of distress were fired day and night, that the obdurate
Spinola, only a few miles off, might at last move to their relief.

The archdukes too were beginning to doubt whether the bargain were a
good one.  To give a strong, new, well-fortified city, with the best of
harbours, in exchange for a heap of rubbish which had once been Ostend,
seemed unthrifty enough.  Moreover, they had not got Ostend, while sure
to lose Sluys.  At least the cardinal could no longer afford to dispense
with the service of his beat corps of veterans who had demanded their
wages so insolently, and who had laughed at his offer of excommunication
by way of payment so heartily.  Flinging away his pride, he accordingly
made a treaty with the mutinous "squadron" at Grave, granting an entire
pardon for all their offences, and promising full payment of their
arrears.  Until funds should be collected sufficient for this purpose,
they were to receive twelve stivers a day each foot-soldier, and twenty-
four stivers each cavalryman, and were to have the city of Roermond in
pledge.  The treaty was negotiated by Guerrera, commandant of Ghent
citadel, and by the Archbishop of Roermond, while three distinguished
hostages were placed in the keeping of the mutineers until the contract
should be faithfully executed: Guerrera himself, Count Fontenoy, son of
Marquis d'Havre, and Avalos, commander of a Spanish legion.  Thus, after
making a present of the services of these veterans for a twelvemonth to
the stadholder, and after employing a very important portion of his
remaining forces in a vain attempt to reduce their revolt, the archduke
had now been fain to purchase their submission by conceding all their
demands.  It would have been better economy perhaps to come to this
conclusion at an earlier day.

It would likewise have been more judicious, according to the lamentations
of Justus Lipsius, had the necessity of saving Sluys been thought of in
time.  Now that it was thoroughly enclosed, so that a mouse could scarce
creep through the lines, the archduke was feverish to send in a thousand
wagon loads of provisions.  Spinola, although in reality commander-in-
chief of a Spanish army, and not strictly subject to the orders of the
Flemish sovereigns, obeyed the appeal of the archduke, but he obeyed most
reluctantly.  Two-thirds of Ostend had been effaced, and it was hard to
turn even for a moment from the spot until all should have been
destroyed.

Leaving Rivas and Bucquoy to guard the entrenchments, and to keep
steadily to the work, Spinola took the field with a large force of all
arms, including the late mutineers and the troops of Count Trivulzio.
On the 8th August he appeared in the neighbourhood of the Salt and Sweet
streams, and exchanged a few cannon-shots with the republicans.  Next day
he made a desperate assault with three thousand men and some companies of
cavalry, upon Lewis William's quarters, where he had reason to believe
the lines were weakest.  He received from that most vigilant commander
a hearty welcome, however, and after a long skirmish was obliged to
withdraw, carrying off his dead and wounded, together with a few cart-
horses which had been found grazing outside the trenches.  Not satisfied
with these trophies or such results, he remained several days inactive,
and then suddenly whirled around Aardenburg with his whole army, directly
southward of Sluys, seized the forts of St. Catharine and St. Philip,
which had been left with very small garrisons, and then made a furious
attempt to break the lines at Oostburg, hoping to cross the fords at that
place, and thus push his way into the isle of Cadzand.  The resistance to
his progress was obstinate, the result for a time doubtful.  After severe
fighting however he crossed the waters of Oostburg in the face of the
enemy.  Maurice meantime had collected all his strength at the vital
position of Cadzand, hoping to deal, or at least to parry, a mortal blow.

On the 17th, on Cadzand dyke, between two redoubts, Spinola again met
Lewis William, who had been transferred to that important position.
A severe struggle ensued.  The Spaniards were in superior force, and
Lewis William, commanding the advance only of the States troops, was hard
pressed.  Moving always in the thickest of the fight, he would probably
have that day laid down his life, as so many of his race had done before
in the cause of the republic, had not Colonel van Dorp come to his
rescue, and so laid about him with a great broad sword, that the dyke was
kept until Maurice arrived with Eytzinga's Frisian regiment and other
reserves.  Van Dorp then fell covered with wounds.  Here was the decisive
combat.  The two commanders-in-chief met face to face for the first time,
and could Spinola have gained the position of Cadzand the fate of Maurice
must have been sealed.  But all his efforts were vain.  The stadholder,
by coolness and promptness, saved the day, and inflicted a bloody repulse
upon the Catholics.  Spinola had displayed excellent generalship, but it
is not surprising that the young volunteer should have failed upon his
first great field day to defeat Maurice of Nassau and his cousin Lewis
William.  He withdrew discomfited at last, leaving several hundred dead
upon the field, definitely renouncing all hope of relieving Sluys, and
retiring by way of Dam to his camp before Ostend.  Next day the town
capitulated.

The garrison were allowed to depart with the honours of war, and the same
terms were accorded to the inhabitants, both in secular and religious
matters, as were usual when Maurice re-occupied any portion of the
republic.  Between three and four thousand creatures, looking rather like
ghosts from the churchyards than living soldiers, marched out, with drums
beating, colours displayed, matches lighted, and bullet in mouth.  Sixty
of them fell dead before the dismal procession had passed out of the
gates.  Besides these troops were nearly fifteen hundred galley-slaves,
even more like shadows than the rest, as they had been regularly sent
forth during the latter days of the siege to browse upon soutenelle in
the submerged meadows, or to drown or starve if unable to find a
sufficient supply of that weed.  These unfortunate victims of Mahometan
and Christian tyranny were nearly all Turks, and by the care of the Dutch
Government were sent back by sea to their homes.  A few of them entered
the service of the States.

The evacuation of Sluys by Governor Serrano and his garrison was upon
the 20th August.  Next day the stadholder took possession, bestowing the
nominal government of the place upon his brother Frederic Henry.  The
atmosphere, naturally enough, was pestiferous, and young Count Lewis
Gunther of Nassau, who had so brilliantly led the cavalry on the famous
day of Nieuport, died of fever soon after entering the town infinitely
regretted by every one who wished well to the republic.

Thus an important portion of Zeeland was restored, to its natural owners.
A seaport which in those days was an excellent one, and more than a
compensation for the isolated fishing village already beleaguered for
upwards of three years, had been captured in three months.  The States-
General congratulated their stadholder on such prompt and efficient work,
while the garrison of Ostend, first learning the authentic news seven
days afterwards, although at a distance of only fourteen miles, had cause
to go upon their knees and sing praises to the Most High.

The question now arose as to the relief of Ostend.  Maurice was decidedly
opposed to any such scheme.  He had got a better Ostend in Slays, and he
saw no motive for spending money and blood in any further attempt to gain
possession of a ruin, which, even if conquered, could only with extreme
difficulty be held.  The States were of a diametrically opposite opinion.
They insisted that the stadholder, so soon he could complete his
preparations, should march straight upon Spinola's works and break up the
siege, even at the risk of a general action.  They were willing once more
to take the terrible chance of a defeat in Flanders.  Maurice, with a
heavy heart, bowed to their decision, showing by his conduct the very
spirit of a republican soldier, obeying the civil magistrate, even when
that obedience was like to bring disaster upon the commonwealth.  But
much was to be done before he could undertake this new adventure.

Meantime the garrison in Ostend were at their last gasp.  On being asked
by the States-General whether it was possible to hold out for twenty days
longer, Marquette called a council of officers, who decided that they
would do their best, but that it was impossible to fix a day or hour when
resistance must cease.  Obviously, however, the siege was in its extreme
old age.  The inevitable end was approaching.

Before the middle of September the enemy was thoroughly established in
possession of the new Hell's Mouth, the new Porcupine, and all the other
bastions of the new entrenchment.  On the 13th of that month the last
supreme effort was made, and the Sand Hill, that all-important redoubt,
which during these three dismal years had triumphantly resisted every
assault, was at last carried by storm.  The enemy had now gained
possession of the whole town except Little Troy.  The new harbour would
be theirs in a few hours, and as for Troy itself, those hastily and
flimsily constructed ramparts were not likely to justify the vaunts
uttered when they were thrown up nor to hold out many minutes before the
whole artillery of Spinola.  Plainly on this last morsel of the fatal
sandbank the word surrender must be spoken, unless the advancing trumpets
of Maurice should now be heard.  But there was no such welcome sound in
the air.  The weather was so persistently rainy and stormy that the roads
became impassable, and Maurice, although ready and intending to march
towards Spinola to offer him battle, was unable for some days to move.
Meantime a council, summoned by Marquette, of all the officers, decided
that Ostend must be abandoned now that Ostend had ceased to exist.

On the 20th September the Accord was signed with Spinola.  The garrison
were to march out with their arms.  They were to carry off four cannon
but no powder.  All clerical persons were to leave the place, with their
goods and chattels.  All prisoners taken on both sides during the siege
were to be released.  Burghers, sutlers, and others, to go whither they
would, undisturbed.  And thus the archdukes, after three years and
seventy-seven days of siege, obtained their prize.  Three thousand men,
in good health, marched out of little Troy with the honours of war.  The
officers were entertained by Spinola and his comrades at a magnificent
banquet, in recognition of the unexampled heroism with which the town had
been defended.  Subsequently the whole force marched to the headquarters
of the States' army in and about Sluys.  They were received by Prince
Maurice, who stood bareheaded and surrounded by his most distinguished
officers; to greet them and to shake them warmly by the hand.  Surely no
defeated garrison ever deserved more respect from friend or foe.

The Archduke Albert and the Infants Isabella entered the place
in triumph, if triumph it could be called.  It would be difficult to
imagine a more desolate scene.  The artillery of the first years of the
seventeenth century was not the terrible enginry of destruction that it
has become in the last third of the nineteenth, but a cannonade,
continued so steadily and so long, had done its work.  There were no
churches, no houses, no redoubts, no bastions, no walls, nothing but a
vague and confused mass of ruin.  Spinola conducted his imperial guests
along the edge of extinct volcanoes, amid upturned cemeteries, through
quagmires which once were moats, over huge mounds of sand, and vast
shapeless masses of bricks and masonry, which had been forts.  He
endeavoured to point out places where mines had been exploded, where
ravelins had been stormed, where the assailants had been successful, and
where they had been bloodily repulsed.  But it was all loathsome, hideous
rubbish.  There were no human habitations, no hovels, no casemates.  The
inhabitants had burrowed at last in the earth, like the dumb creatures of
the swamps and forests.  In every direction the dykes had burst, and the
sullen wash of the liberated waves, bearing hither and thither the
floating wreck of fascines and machinery, of planks and building
materials, sounded far and wide over what should have been dry land.  The
great ship channel, with the unconquered Half-moon upon one side and the
incomplete batteries and platforms of Bucquoy on the other, still
defiantly opened its passage to the sea, and the retiring fleets of the
garrison were white in the offing.  All around was the grey expanse of
stormy ocean, without a cape or a headland to break its monotony, as the
surges rolled mournfully in upon a desolation more dreary than their own.
The atmosphere was mirky and surcharged with rain, for the wild
equinoctial storm which had held Maurice spell-bound had been raging over
land and sea for many days.  At every step the unburied skulls of brave
soldiers who had died in the cause of freedom grinned their welcome to
the conquerors.  Isabella wept at the sight.  She had cause to weep.
Upon that miserable sandbank more than a hundred thousand men had laid
down their lives by her decree, in order that she and her husband might
at last take possession of a most barren prize.  This insignificant
fragment of a sovereignty which her wicked old father had presented to
her on his deathbed--a sovereignty which he had no more moral right or
actual power to confer than if it had been in the planet Saturn--had at
last been appropriated at the cost of all this misery.  It was of no
great value, although its acquisition had caused the expenditure of at
least eight millions of florins, divided in nearly equal proportions
between the two belligerents.  It was in vain that great immunities were
offered to those who would remain, or who would consent to settle in the
foul Golgotha.  The original population left the place in mass.  No human
creatures were left save the wife of a freebooter and her paramour, a
journeyman blacksmith.  This unsavoury couple, to whom entrance into the
purer atmosphere of Zeeland was denied, thenceforth shared with the
carrion crows the amenities of Ostend.




CHAPTER XLIV.

     Equation between the contending powers--Treaty of peace between King
     James and the archdukes and the King of Spain--Position of the
     Provinces--States envoy in England to be styled ambassador--Protest
     of the Spanish ambassador--Effect of James's peace-treaty on the
     people of England--Public rejoicings for the victory at Sluys--
     Spinola appointed commander-in-chief of the Spanish forces--
     Preparations for a campaign against the States--Seizure of Dutch
     cruisers--International discord--Destruction of Sarmiento's fleet by
     Admiral Haultain--Projected enterprise against Antwerp--Descent of
     Spinola on the Netherland frontier--Oldenzaal and Lingen taken--
     Movements of Prince Maurice--Encounter of the two armies--Panic of
     the Netherlanders--Consequent loss and disgrace--Wachtendonk and
     Cracow taken by Spinola--Spinola's reception in Spain--Effect of his
     victories--Results of the struggle between Freedom and Absolutism--
     Affairs in the East--Amboyna taken by Van der Hagen--Contest for
     possession of the Clove Islands--Commercial treaty between the
     States and the King of Ternate--Hostilities between the Kings of
     Ternate and Tydor--Expulsion of the Portuguese from the Moluccas--
     Du Terrail's attempted assault on Bergen-op-Zoom--Attack on the
     Dunkirk pirate fleet--Practice of executing prisoners captured at
     sea.

I have invited the reader's attention to the details of this famous siege
because it was not an episode, but almost the sum total, of the great war
during the period occupied by its events.  The equation between the
contending forces indicated the necessity of peace.  That equation seemed
for the time to have established itself over all Europe.  France had long
since withdrawn from the actual strife, and kept its idle thunders in a
concealed although ever threatening hand.  In the East the Pacha of Buda
had become Pacha of Pest.  Even Gran was soon to fall before the Turk,
whose advancing horse-tails might thus almost be descried from the walls
of Vienna.  Stephen Botschkay meantime had made himself master of
Transylvania, concluded peace with Ahmet, and laughed at the Emperor
Rudolph for denouncing him as a rebel.

Between Spain and England a far different result had been reached than
the one foreshadowed in the portentous colloquies between King James and
Maximilian de Bethune.  Those conferences have been purposely described
with some minuteness, in order that the difference often existing between
vast projects and diametrically opposed and very insignificant
conclusions might once more be exhibited.

In the summer of 1603 it had been firmly but mysteriously arranged
between the monarchs of France and Great Britain that the House of
Austria should be crushed, its territories parcelled out at the
discretion of those two potentates, the imperial crown taken from the
Habsburgs, the Spaniards driven out of the Netherlands, an alliance
offensive and defensive made with the Dutch republic, while the East and
West Indies were, to be wrested by main force of the allies, from Spain,
whose subjects were thenceforth to be for ever excluded from those
lucrative regions.  As for the Jesuits, who were to James as loathsome
as were the Puritans to Elizabeth, the British sovereign had implored the
ambassador of his royal brother, almost with tears, never to allow that
pestilential brood to regain an entrance into his dominions.

In the summer of 1604 King James made a treaty of peace and amity with
the archdukes and with the monarch of Spain, thus extending his friendly
relations with the doomed house of Austria.  The republic of the
Netherlands was left to fight her battles alone; her imaginary allies
looking down upon her struggle with benevolent indifference.  As for the
Indies, not a syllable of allusion in the treaty was permitted by Spain
to that sacred subject; the ambassador informing the British Government
that he gave them access to twelve kingdoms and two seas, while Spain
acquired by the treaty access only to two kingdoms and one sea.  The new
world, however, east or west, from the Antilles to the Moluccas, was the
private and indefeasible property of his Catholic Majesty.  On religious
matters, it was agreed that English residents in Spain should not be
compelled to go to mass, but that they should kneel in the street to the
Host unless they could get out of the ways. In regard to the Netherlands,
it was agreed by the two contracting powers that one should never assist
the rebels or enemies of the other.  With regard to the cities and
fortresses of Brill, Flushing, Rammekens, and other cautionary places,
where English garrisons were maintained, and which King James was bound
according to the contracts of Queen Elizabeth never to restore except to
those who had pledged them to the English crown--the king would uphold
those contracts.  He would, however, endeavour to make an arrangement
with the States by which they should agree within a certain period to
make their peace with Spain.  Should they refuse or fail, he would then
consider himself liberated from these previous engagements and free to
act concerning those cities in an honourable and reasonable manner, as
became a friendly king?  Meantime the garrisons should not in any way
assist the Hollanders in their hostilities with Spain.  English subjects
were forbidden to carry into Spain or the obedient Netherlands any
property or merchandize belonging to the Hollanders, or to make use of
Dutch vessels in their trade with Spain.  Both parties agreed to do their
best to bring about a pacification in the Netherlands.

No irony certainly could be more exquisite that this last-named article.
This was the end of that magnificent conception, the great Anglo-French
League against the house of Austria.  King James would combine his
efforts with King Philip to pacify the Netherlands.  The wolf and the
watchdog would unite to bring back the erring flock to the fold.
Meantime James would keep the cautionary towns in his clutches, not
permitting their garrisons or any of his subjects to assist the rebels on
sea or shore.  As for the Jesuits, their triumphant re-appearance in
France, and the demolition of the pyramid raised to their dishonour on
the site of the house where John Castel, who had stabbed Henry IV., had
resided, were events about to mark the opening year.  Plainly enough
Secretary Cecil had out-generalled the French party.

The secret treaty of Hampton Court, the result of the efforts of Rosny
and Olden-Barneveld in July of the previous year, was not likely to be
of much service in protecting the republic.  James meant to let the dead
treaties bury their dead, to live in peace with all the world, and to
marry his sons and daughters to Spanish Infantes and Infantas.  Meantime,
although he had sheathed the sword which Elizabeth had drawn against the
common enemy, and had no idea of fighting or spending money for the
States, he was willing that their diplomatic agent should be called
ambassador.  The faithful and much experienced Noel de Caron coveted that
distinction, and moved thereby the spleen of Henry's envoy at the Hague,
Buzanval, who probably would not have objected to the title himself.
"'Twill be a folly," he said, "for him to present himself on the pavement
as a prancing steed, and then be treated like a poor hack.  He has been
too long employed to put himself in such a plight.  But there are
lunatics everywhere and of all ages."

Never had the Advocate seemed so much discouraged.  Ostend had fallen,
and the defection of the British sovereign was an off-set for the
conquest of Sluys.  He was more urgent with the French Government for
assistance than he had ever been before.  "A million florins a year from
France," he said "joined to two millions raised in the provinces, would
enable them to carry on the war.  The ship was in good condition," he
added, "and fit for a long navigation without danger of shipwreck if
there were only biscuit enough on board."  Otherwise she was lost.
Before that time came he should quit the helm which he had been holding
the more resolutely since the peace of Vervins because the king had told
him, when concluding it, that if three years' respite should be given him
he would enter into the game afresh, and take again upon his shoulders
the burthen which inevitable necessity had made him throw down.  "But,"
added Olden-Barneveld, bitterly, "there is little hope of it now, after
his neglect of the many admirable occasions during the siege of Ostend."

So soon as the Spanish ambassador learned that Caron was to be
accepted into the same diplomatic rank as his own, he made an infinite
disturbance, protested moat loudly and passionately to the king at the
indignity done to his master by this concession to the representative of
a crew of traitors and rebels, and demanded in the name of the treaty
just concluded that Caron should be excluded in such capacity from all
access to court.

As James was nearly forty years of age, as the Hollanders had been
rebels ever since he was born, and as the King of Spain had exercised no
sovereignty over them within his memory, this was naturally asking too
much of him in the name of his new-born alliance with Spain.  So he
assumed a position of great dignity, notwithstanding the Constable's
clamour, and declared his purpose to give audience to the agents of the
States by whatever title they presented themselves before him.  In so
doing he followed the example, he said, of others who (a strange
admission on his part) were as wise as himself.  It was not for him to
censure the crimes and faults of the States, if such they had committed.
He had not been the cause of their revolt from Spanish authority, and it
was quite sufficient that he had stipulated to maintain neutrality
between the two belligerents's.  And with this the ambassador of his
Catholic Majesty, having obtained the substance of a very advantageous
treaty, was fain to abandon opposition to the shadowy title by which
James sought to indemnify the republic for his perfidy.

The treaty of peace with Spain gave no pleasure to the English public.
There was immense enthusiasm in London at the almost simultaneous fall of
Sluys, but it was impossible for the court to bring about a popular
demonstration of sympathy with the abandonment of the old ally and the
new-born affection for the ancient enemy.  "I can assure your
mightinesses," wrote Caron, "that no promulgation was ever received in
London with more sadness.  No mortal has shown the least satisfaction in
words or deeds, but, on the contrary, people have cried out openly, 'God
save our good neighbours the States of Holland and Zeeland, and grant
them victory!'  On Sunday, almost all the preachers gave thanks from
their pulpits for the victory which their good neighbours had gained at
Sluys, but would not say a word about the peace.  The people were
admonished to make bonfires, but you may be very sure not a bonfire was
to be seen.  But, in honour of the victory, all the vessels in St.
Catharine's Docks fired salutes at which the Spaniards were like to burst
with spite.  The English clap their hands and throw their caps in the air
when they hear anything published favourable to us, but, it must be
confessed, they are now taking very dismal views of affairs.  'Vox populi
vox Dei.'"

The rejoicing in Paris was scarcely less enthusiastic or apparently
less sincere than in London.  "The news of the surrender of Sluys," wrote
Aerasens, "is received with so much joy by small and great that one would
have said it was their own exploit.  His Majesty has made such
demonstrations in his actions and discourse that he has not only been
advised by his council to dissemble in the matter, but has undergone
reproaches from the pope's nuncius of having made a league with your
Mightinesses to the prejudice of the King of Spain.  His Majesty wishes
your Mightinesses prosperity with all his heart, yea so that he would
rather lose his right arm than see your Mightinesses in danger.  Be
assured that he means roundly, and we should pray God for his long life;
for I don't see that we can expect anything from these regions after his
death."

It was ere long to be seen, however, roundly as the king meant it, that
the republic was to come into grave peril without causing him to lose his
right arm, or even to wag his finger, save in reproach of their
Mightinesses.

The republic, being thus left to fight its battles alone, girded its
loins anew for the conflict.  During the remainder of the year 1604,
however, there were no military operations of consequence.  Both
belligerents needed a brief repose.

The siege of Ostend had not been a siege.  It was a long pitched battle
between the new system and the old, between absolutism and the spirit of
religious, political and mercantile freedom.  Absolutism had gained the
lists on which the long duel had been fought, but the republic had
meantime exchanged that war-blasted spot for a valuable and commodious
position.

It was certainly an advantage, as hostilities were necessarily to have
continued somewhere during all that period, that all the bloodshed and
desolation had been concentrated upon one insignificant locality, and one
more contiguous to the enemy's possessions than to those of the united
States.  It was very doubtful, however, whether all that money and blood
might not have been expended in some other manner more beneficial to the
cause of the archdukes.  At least it could hardly be maintained that they
took anything by the capitulation of Ostend but the most barren and
worthless of trophies.  Eleven old guns, partly broken, and a small
quantity of ammunition, were all the spoils of war found in the city
after its surrender.

The Marquis Spinola went to Spain.  On passing through Paris he was
received with immense enthusiasm by Henry IV., whose friendship for the
States, and whose desperate designs against the house of Austria, did not
prevent him from warmly congratulating the great Spanish general on his
victory.  It was a victory, said Henry, which he could himself have never
achieved, and, in recognition of so great a triumph, he presented Spinola
with a beautiful Thracian horse, valued at twelve hundred ducats.
Arriving in Spain, the conqueror found himself at once the object of the
open applause and the scarcely concealed hatred of the courtiers and
politicians.  He ardently desired to receive as his guerdon the rank of
grandee of Spain.  He met with a refusal.  To keep his hat on his head in
presence of the sovereign was the highest possible reward.  Should that
be bestowed upon him now, urged Lerma, what possible recompense could be
imagined for the great services which all felt confident that he was
about to render in the future?  He must continue to remove his hat in
the monarch's company. Meantime, if he wished the title of prince, with
considerable revenues attached to his principality, this was at his
disposal. It must be confessed that in a monarchy where the sentiment
of honour was supposed to be the foundation of the whole
structure there is something chivalrous and stimulating to the
imagination in this preference by the great general of a shadowy but
rare distinction to more substantial acquisitions.  Nevertheless, as the
grandeeship was refused, it is not recorded that he was displeased with
the principality.  Meantime there was a very busy intrigue to deprive him
of the command-in-chief of the Catholic forces in Flanders, and one so
nearly successful that Mexia, governor of Antwerp citadel, was actually
appointed in Spinola's stead.  It was only after long and anxious
conferences at Valladolid with the king and the Duke of Lerma, and after
repeated statements in letters from the archdukes that all their hopes of
victory depended on retaining the Genoese commander-in-chief, that the
matter was finally arranged.  Mexia received an annual pension of eight
thousand ducats, and to Spinola was assigned five hundred ducats monthly,
as commander-in-chief under the archduke, with an equal salary as agent
for the king's affairs in Flanders.

Early in the spring he returned to Brussels, having made fresh
preparations for the new campaign in which he was to measure himself
before the world against Maurice of Nassau.

Spinola had removed the thorn from the Belgic lion's foot: "Ostendae
erasit fatalis Spinola spinam."  And although it may be doubted whether
the relief was as thorough as had been hoped, yet a freedom of movement
had unquestionably been gained.  There was now at least what for a long
time had not existed, a possibility for imagining some new and perhaps
more effective course of campaigning.   The young Genoese commander-in-
chief returned from Spain early in May, with the Golden Fleece around his
neck, and with full powers from the Catholic king to lay out his work,
subject only to the approbation of the archduke.  It was not probable
that Albert, who now thoroughly admired and leaned upon the man of whom
he had for a time been disposed to be jealous, would interfere with his
liberty of action.  There had also been--thanks to Spinola's influence
with the cabinet at Madrid and the merchants of Genoa--much more energy
in recruiting and in providing the necessary sinews of war.  Moreover it
had been resolved to make the experiment of sending some of the new
levies by sea, instead of subjecting them all to the long and painful
overland march through Spain, Italy, and Germany.  A terzo of infantry
was on its way from Naples, and two more were expected from Milan, but it
was decided that the Spanish troops should be embarked on board a fleet
of transports, mainly German and English, and thus carried to the shores
of the obedient Netherlands.

The States-General got wind of these intentions, and set Vice-Admiral
Haultain upon the watch to defeat the scheme.  That well-seasoned mariner
accordingly, with a sufficient fleet of war-galleots, cruised thenceforth
with great assiduity in the chops of the channel.  Already the late
treaty between Spain and England had borne fruits of bitterness to the
republic.  The Spanish policy had for the time completely triumphed in
the council of James.  It was not surprising therefore that the partisans
of that policy should occasionally indulge in manifestations of
malevolence towards the upstart little commonwealth which had presumed
to enter into commercial rivalry with the British realm, and to assert a
place among the nations of the earth.  An order had just been issued by
the English Government that none of its subjects should engage in the
naval service of any foreign power.  This decree was a kind of corollary
to the Spanish treaty, was levelled directly against the Hollanders, and
became the pretext of intolerable arrogance, both towards their
merchantmen and their lesser war-vessels.  Admiral Monson, an especial
partisan of Spain, was indefatigable in exercising the right he claimed
of visiting foreign vessels off the English coast, in search of English
sailors violating the proclamation of neutrality.  On repeated occasions
prizes taken by Dutch cruisers from the Spaniards, and making their way
with small prize crews to the ports of the republic, were overhauled,
visited, and seized by the English admiral, who brought the vessels into
the harbours of his own country, liberated the crews, and handed ships
and cargoes over to the Spanish ambassador.  Thus prizes fairly gained by
nautical skill and hard fighting, off Spain, Portugal, Brazil, or even
more distant parts of the world, were confiscated almost in sight of
port, in utter disregard of public law or international decency.  The
States-General remonstrated with bitterness.  Their remonstrances were
answered by copious arguments, proving, of course, to the entire
satisfaction of the party who had done the wrong, that no practice could
be more completely in harmony with reason and justice.  Meantime the
Spanish ambassador sold the prizes, and appropriated the proceeds towards
carrying on the war against the republic; the Dutch sailors, thus set
ashore against their will and against law on the neutral coast of
England, being left to get home as they could, or to starve if they could
do no better.  As for the States, they had the legal arguments of their
late ally to console them for the loss of their ships.

Simultaneously with these events considerable levies of troops were made
in England by the archduke, in spite of all the efforts of the Dutch
ambassador to prevent this one-sided; neutrality, while at the other ends
of the world mercantile jealousy in both the Indies was fast combining
with other causes already rife to increase the international discord.
Out of all this fuel it was fated that a blaze of hatred between the two
leading powers of the new era, the United Kingdom and the United
Republic, should one day burst forth, which was to be fanned by passion,
prejudice, and a mistaken sentiment of patriotism and self-interest on
both sides, and which not all the bloodshed of more than one fierce war
could quench.  The traces of this savage sentiment are burnt deeply into
the literature, language, and traditions of both countries; and it is
strange enough that the epoch at which chronic wrangling and
international coolness changed into furious antipathy between the two
great Protestant powers of Europe--for great they already both were,
despite the paucity of their population and resources, as compared with
nations which were less influenced by the spirit of the age or had less
aptness in obeying its impulse--should be dated from the famous year of
Guy Fawkes.

Meantime the Spanish troops, embarked in eight merchant ships and a few
pinnaces, were slowly approaching their destination.  They had been
instructed, in case they found it impracticable to enter a Flemish port,
to make for the hospitable shores of England, the Spanish ambassador and
those whom he had bribed at the court of James having already provided
for their protection.  Off Dover Admiral Haultain got sight of
Sarmiento's little fleet.  He made short work with it.  Faithfully
carrying out the strenuous orders of the States-General, he captured some
of the ships, burned one, and ran others aground after a very brief
resistance.  Some of the soldiers and crews were picked up by English
vessels cruising in the neighbourhood and narrowly watching the conflict.
A few stragglers escaped by swimming, but by far, the greater proportion
of the newly-arrived troops were taken prisoners, tied together two and
two, and then, at a given signal from the admiral's ship, tossed into the
sea.

Not Peter Titelmann, nor Julian Romero, nor the Duke of Alva himself,
ever manifested greater alacrity in wholesale murder than was shown by
this admiral of the young republic in fulfilling the savage decrees of
the States-General.

Thus at least one-half of the legion perished.  The pursuit of the ships
was continued within English waters, when the guns of Dover Castle opened
vigorously upon the recent allies of England, in order to protect her
newly-found friends in their sore distress.  Doubtless in the fervour of
the work the Dutch admiral had violated the neutral coast of England, so
that the cannonade from the castle waw technically justified.  It was
however a biting satire upon the proposed Protestant league against Spain
and universal monarchy in behalf of the Dutch republic, that England was
already doing her best to save a Spanish legion and to sink a Dutch
fleet.  The infraction of English sovereignty was unquestionable if
judged by the more scrupulous theory of modern days, but it was well
remarked by the States-General, in answer to the remonstrances of James's
Government, that the Dutch admiral, knowing that the pirates of Dunkirk
roamed at will through English waters in search of their prey, might have
hoped for some indulgence of a similar character to the ships of the
republic.

Thus nearly the whole of the Spanish legion perished.  The soldiers who
escaped to the English coast passed the winter miserably in huts, which
they were allowed to construct on the sands, but nearly all, including
the lieutenant-colonel commanding, Pedro Cubiera, died of famine or of
wounds.   A few small vessels of the expedition succeeded in reaching the
Flemish coast, and landing a slight portion of the terzo.

The campaign of 1605 opened but languidly.  The strain upon the resources
of the Netherlands, thus unaided, was becoming severe, although there
is no doubt that, as the India traffic slowly developed itself, the
productive force of the commonwealth visibly increased, while the
thrifty habits of its citizens, and their comparative abstinence from
unproductive consumption, still enabled it to bear the tremendous burthen
of the war.  A new branch of domestic industry had grown out of the India
trade, great quantities of raw silk being now annually imported from the
East into Holland, to be wrought into brocades, tapestries, damasks,
velvets, satins, and other luxurious fabrics for European consumption.

It is a curious phenomenon in the history of industry that while at this
epoch Holland was the chief seat of silk manufactures, the great
financier of Henry IV. was congratulating his sovereign and himself that
natural causes had for ever prevented the culture or manufacture of silk
in France.  If such an industry were possible, he was sure that the
decline of martial spirit in France and an eternal dearth of good French
soldiers would be inevitable, and he even urged that the importation of
such luxurious fabrics should be sternly prohibited, in order to preserve
the moral health of the people.  The practical Hollanders were more
inclined to leave silk farthingales and brocaded petticoats to be dealt
with by thunderers from the pulpit or indignant fathers of families.
Meantime the States-General felt instinctively that the little
commonwealth grew richer, the more useful or agreeable things its
burghers could call into existence out of nothingness, to be exchanged
for the powder and bullets, timber and cordage, requisite for its eternal
fight with universal monarchy, and that the richer the burghers grew the
more capable they were of paying their taxes.  It was not the fault of
the States that the insane ambition of Spain and the archdukes compelled
them to exhaust themselves annually by the most unproductive consumption
that man is ever likely to devise, that of scientifically slaughtering
his brethren, because to practise economy in that regard would be to
cease to exist, or to accept the most intolerable form of slavery.

The forces put into the field in the spring of 1605 were but meagre.
There was also, as usual, much difference of opinion between Maurice and
Barneveld as to the most judicious manner of employing them, and as usual
the docile stadholder submitted his better judgment to the States.  It
can hardly be too much insisted upon that the high-born Maurice always
deported himself in fact, and as it were unconsciously, as the citizen
soldier of a little republic, even while personally invested with many of
the attributes of exalted rank, and even while regarded by many of his
leading fellow-citizens as the legitimate and predestined sovereign of
the newly-born state.

Early in the spring a great enterprise against Antwerp was projected.  It
failed utterly.  Maurice, at Bergen-op-Zoom, despatched seven thousand
troops up the Scheld, under command of Ernest Casimir.  The flotilla was
a long time getting under weigh, and instead of effecting a surprise, the
army, on reaching the walls of Antwerp, found the burghers and garrison
not in the least astonished, but on the contrary entirely prepared.
Ernest returned after a few insignificant skirmishes, having accomplished
nothing.

Maurice next spent a few days in reducing the castle of Wouda, not far
from Bergen, and then, transporting his army once more to the isle of
Cadzand, he established his headquarters at Watervliet, near Ysendyke.
Spinola followed him, having thrown a bridge across the Scheld.  Maurice
was disposed to reduce a fort, well called Patience, lying over against
the isle of Walcheren.  Spinola took up a position by which he defended
the place as with an impenetrable buckler.  A game of skill now began.
between these two adepts in the art of war, for already the volunteer had
taken rank among the highest professors of the new school.  It was the
object of Maurice, who knew himself on the whole outnumbered, to divine
his adversary's intentions.  Spinola was supposed to be aiming at Sluys,
at Grave, at Bergen-op-Zoom, possibly even at some more remote city, like
Rheinberg, while rumours as to his designs, flying directly from his
camp, were as thick as birds in the air.  They were let loose on purpose
by the artful Genoese, who all the time had a distinct and definite plan
which was not yet suspected.  The dilatoriness of the campaign was
exasperating.  It might be thought that the war was to last another half
century, from the excessive inertness of both parties.  The armies had
all gone into winter quarters in the previous November, Spinola had spent
nearly six months in Spain, midsummer had came and gone, and still
Maurice was at Watervliet, guessing at his adversary's first move.  On
the whole, he had inclined to suspect a design upon Rheinberg, and had
accordingly sent his brother Henry with a detachment to strengthen the
garrison of that place.  On the 1st of August however he learned that
Spinola had crossed the Meuse and the Rhine, with ten thousand foot and
three thousand horse, and that leaving Count Bucquoy with six thousand
foot and one thousand five hundred horse in the neighbourhood of the
Rhine, to guard a couple of redoubts which had been constructed for a
basis at Kaiserswerth, he was marching with all possible despatch towards
Friesland and Groningen.

The Catholic general had concealed his design in a masterly manner.  He
had detained Maurice in the isle of Cadzand, the States still dreaming of
a victorious invasion on their part of obedient Flanders, and the
stadholder hesitating to quit his position of inactive observation, lest
the moment his back was turned the rapid Spinola might whirl down upon
Sluys, that most precious and skilfully acquired possession of the
republic, when lo! his formidable antagonist was marching in force upon
what the prince well knew to be her most important and least guarded
frontier.

On the 8th August the Catholic general was before Olden-zaal which he
took in three days, and then advanced to Lingen.  Should that place fall
--and the city was known to be most inadequately garrisoned and supplied
--it would be easy for the foe to reduce Coeworden, and so seize the
famous pass over the Bourtanger Morass, march straight to Embden--then in
a state of municipal revolution on account of the chronic feuds between
its counts and the population, and therefore an easy prey--after which
all Friesland and Groningen would be at his mercy, and his road open to
Holland and Utrecht; in short, into the very bowels of the republic.

On the 4th August Maurice broke up his camp in Flanders, and leaving five
thousand men under Colonel Van der Noot, to guard the positions there,
advanced rapidly to Deventer, with the intention of saving Lingen.
It was too late.  That very important place had been culpably neglected.
The garrison consisted of but one cannoneer, and he had but one arm.
A burgher guard, numbering about three hundred, made such resistance as
they could, and the one-armed warrior fired a shot or two from a rusty
old demi-cannon. Such opposition to the accomplished Italian was
naturally not very effective.  On the 18th August the place capitulated.
Maurice, arriving at Deventer, and being now strengthened by his cousin
Lewis William with such garrison troops as could be collected, learned
the mortifying news with sentiments almost akin to despair.  It was now
to be a race for Coeworden, and the fleet-footed Spinola was a day's
march at least in advance of his competitor.  The key to the fatal morass
would soon be in his hands.  To the inexpressible joy of the stadholder,
the Genoese seemed suddenly struck with blindness.  The prize was almost
in his hands and he threw away all his advantages.  Instead of darting at
once upon Coeworden he paused for nearly a month, during which period he
seemed intoxicated with a success so rapidly achieved, and especially
with his adroitness in outwitting the great stadholder.  On the 14th
September he made a retrograde movement towards the Rhine, leaving two
thousand five hundred men in Lingen.  Maurice, giving profound thanks to
God for his enemy's infatuation, passed by Lingen, and having now, with
his cousin's reinforcements, a force of nine thousand foot and three
thousand horse, threw himself into Coeworden, strengthened and garrisoned
that vital fortress which Spinola would perhaps have taken as easily as
he had done Lingen, made all the neighbouring positions secure, and then
fell back towards Wesel on the Rhine, in order to watch his antagonist.
Spinola had established his headquarters at Ruhrort, a place where the
river Ruhr empties into the Rhine.  He had yielded to the remonstrances
of the Archbishop of Cologne, to whom Kaiserwerth belonged, and had
abandoned the forts which Bucquoy, under his directions, had constructed
at that place.

The two armies now gazed at each other, at a respectful distance, for a
fortnight longer, neither commander apparently having any very definite
purpose.  At last, Maurice having well reconnoitred his enemy, perceived
a weak point in his extended lines.  A considerable force of Italian
cavalry, with some infantry, was stationed at the village of Mulheim, on
the Ruhr, and apparently out of convenient supporting distance from
Spinola's main army.  The stadholder determined to deliver a sudden blow
upon this tender spot, break through the lines, and bring on a general
action by surprise.  Assembling his well-seasoned and veteran troopers in
force, he divided them into two formidable bands, one under the charge of
his young brother Frederic Henry, the other under that most brilliant of
cavalry officers, Marcellus Bax, hero of Turnhout and many another
well-fought field.

The river Ruhr was a wide but desultory stream, easily fordable in many
places.  On the opposite bank to Mulheim was the Castle of Brock, and
some hills of considerable elevation.  Bax was ordered to cross the river
and seize the castle and the heights, Count Henry to attack the enemy's
camp in front, while Maurice himself, following rapidly with the advance
of infantry and wagons, was to sustain the assault.

Marcellus Bax, rapid and dashing as usual, crossed the Ruhr, captured
Broek Castle with ease, and stood ready to prevent the retreat of the
Spaniards.  Taken by surprise in front, they would naturally seek refuge
on the other side of the river.  That stream was not difficult for
infantry, but as the banks were steep, cavalry could not easily extricate
themselves from the water, except at certain prepared landings.  Bax
waited however for some time in vain for the flying Spaniards.  It was
not destined that the stadholder should effect many surprises that year.
The troopers under Frederic Henry had made their approaches through an
intricate path, often missing their way, and in far more leisurely
fashion than was intended, so that outlying scouts had brought in
information of the coming attack.  As Count Henry approached the village,
Trivulzio's cavalry was found drawn up in battle array, formidable in
numbers, and most fully prepared for their visitors from Wesel.  The
party most astonished was that which came to surprise.  In an instant one
of those uncontrollable panics broke out to which even veterans are as
subject as to dysentery or scurvy.  The best cavalry of Maurice's army
turned their backs at the very sight of the foe, and galloped off much
faster than they had come.

Meantime, Marcellus Bax was assaulted, not only by his late handful of
antagonists, who had now rallied, but by troops from Mulheim, who began
to wade across the stream.  At that moment he was cheered by the sight of
Count Henry coming on with a very few of his troopers who had stood to
their colours.  A simultaneous charge from both banks at the enemy
floundering in the river was attempted.  It might have been brilliantly
successful, but the panic had crossed the river faster than the Spaniards
could do, and the whole splendid picked cavalry force of the republic,
commanded by the youngest son of William the Silent, and by the favourite
cavalry commander of her armies, was, after a hot but brief action, in
disgraceful and unreasonable flight.  The stadholder reached the bank of
that fatal stream only to witness this maddening spectacle, instead of
the swift and brilliant triumph which he was justified in expecting.  He
did his best to stem the retreating tide.  He called upon the veterans,
by the memory of Turnhout and Nieuport, and so many other victories, to
pause and redeem their name before it was too late.  He taunted them with
their frequent demands to be led to battle, and their expressed
impatience at enforced idleness.  He denounced them as valiant only for
plundering defenceless peasants, and as cowards against armed men; as
trusting more to their horses' heels than to their own right hands.  He
invoked curses upon them for deserting his young brother, who,
conspicuous among them by his gilded armour, the orange-plumes upon his
calque, and the bright orange-scarf across his shoulders, was now sorely
pressed in the struggling throng.

It was all in vain.  Could Maurice have thrown himself into the field,
he might, as in the crisis of the republic's fate at Nieuport, have once
more converted ruin into victory by the magic of his presence.  But the
river was between him and the battle, and he was an enforced spectator of
his country's disgrace.

For a few brief moments his demeanour, his taunts, and his supplications
had checked the flight of his troops.

A stand was made by a portion of the cavalry and a few detached but
fierce combats took place.  Count Frederic Henry was in imminent danger.
Leading a mere handful of his immediate retainers, he threw himself into
the thickest of the fight, with the characteristic audacity of his house.
A Spanish trooper aimed his carbine full at his face. It missed fire, and
Henry, having emptied his own pistol, was seized by the floating scarf
upon his breast by more than one enemy.  There was a brief struggle, and
death or capture seemed certain; when an unknown hand laid his nearest
antagonist low, and enabled him to escape from over powering numbers.
The soldier, whose devotion thus saved the career of the youngest
Orange-Nassau destined to be so long and so brilliant, from being cut off
so prematurely, was never again heard of, and doubtless perished in the
fray.

Meantime the brief sparkle of valour on the part of the States' troops
had already vanished. The adroit Spinola, hurrying personally to the
front, had caused such a clangor from all the drums and trumpets in Broek
and its neighbourhood to be made as to persuade the restive cavalry that
the whole force of the enemy was already upon them. The day was obviously
lost, and Maurice, with a heavy heart, now him self gave the signal to
retreat.  Drawing up the greater part of his infantry in solid mass upon
the banks to protect the passage, he sent a force to the opposite side,
Horace Vere being the first to wade the stream.   All that was then
possible to do was accomplished, and the panic flight converted into
orderly retreat, but it was a day of disaster and disgrace for the
republic.

About five hundred of the best States' cavalry were left dead on the
field, but the stain upon his almost unsullied flag was more cutting to
the stadholder's heart than the death of his veterans. The material
results were in truth almost even. The famous cavalry general, Count
Trivulzio, with at least three hundred Spaniards, fell in the combat,
but the glory of having defeated the best cavalry of Europe in a stricken
field and under the very eyes of the stadholder would have been
sufficient compensation to Spinola for much greater losses.

Maurice withdrew towards Wesel, sullen but not desponding.  His forces
were meagre, and although he had been out-generalled, out-marched, and
defeated in the open field, at least the Genoese had not planted the blow
which he had meditated in the very heart of the republic.

Autumn was now far advanced, and dripping with rain. The roads and fields
were fast becoming impassable sloughs, and no further large operations
could be expected in this campaign.  Yet the stadholder's cup was not
full, and he was destined to witness two more triumphs of his rival, now
fast becoming famous, before this year of disasters should close.  On the
27th October, Spinola took the city of Wachtendonk, after ten days'
siege, and on the 5th of November the strong place of Cracow.

Maurice was forced to see these positions captured almost under his eyes,
being now quite powerless to afford relief. His troops had dwindled by
sickness and necessary detachments for garrison-work to a comparatively,
insignificant force, and very soon afterwards both armies went into
winter quarters.

The States were excessively disappointed at the results of the year's
work, and deep if not loud were the reproaches cast upon the stadholder.
Certainly his military reputation had not been augmented by this
campaign.  He had lost many places, and had not gained an inch of ground
anywhere.  Already the lustre of Sluys, of Nieuport, and Turnhout were
growing dim, for Maurice had so accustomed the republic to victories that
his own past triumphs seemed now his greatest enemies.  Moreover he had
founded a school out of which apt pupils had already graduated, and it
would seem that the Genoese volunteer had rapidly profited by his
teachings as only a man endowed with exquisite military genius could have
done.

Yet, after all, it seems certain that, with the stadholder's limited
means, and with the awful consequences to the country of a total defeat
in the open field, the Fabian tactics, which he had now deliberately
adopted, were the most reasonable.  The invader of foreign domains, the
suppressor of great revolts, can indulge in the expensive luxury of
procrastination only at imminent peril.  For the defence, it is always
possible to conquer by delay, and it was perfectly understood between
Spinola and his ablest advisers at the Spanish court that the blows must
be struck thick and fast, and at the most vulnerable places, or that the
victory would be lost.

Time was the ally not of the Spanish invaders, who came from afar, but of
the Dutch burghers, who remained at home.  "Jam aut Nunquam," was the
motto upon the Italian's banners.

In proportion to the depression in the republic at the results of this
year's campaigning was the elation at the Spanish court.  Bad news and
false news had preceded the authentic intelligence of Spinola's
victories.  The English envoy had received unquestionable information
that the Catholic general had sustained an overwhelming defeat at the
close of the campaign, with a loss of three thousand five hundred men.

The tale was implicitly believed by king and cabinet, so that when,
very soon afterwards, the couriers arrived bringing official accounts of
the victory gained over the veteran cavalry of the States in the very
presence of the stadholder, followed by the crowning triumph of
Wachtendonk, the demonstrations of joy were all the more vivacious in
consequence of the previous gloom.  Spinola himself followed hard upon
the latest messengers, and was received with ovations.  Never, since the
days of Alexander Farnese, had a general at the Spanish court been more
cordially caressed or hated.  Had Philip the Prudent been still upon the
throne, he would have felt it his duty to make immediate arrangements for
poisoning him.  Certainly his plans and his popularity would have been
undermined in the most artistic manner.

But Philip III., more dangerous to rabbits than to generals, left the
Genoese to settle the plans of his next campaign with Lerma and his
parasites.

The subtle Spinola, having, in his despatches, ascribed the chief merit
of the victories to Louis Velasco, a Spaniard, while his own original
conception of transferring the war to Friesland was attributed by him
with magnificent effrontery to Lerma and to the king--who were probably
quite ignorant of the existence of that remote province--succeeded in
maintaining his favourable position at court, and was allowed, by what
was called the war-council, to manage matters nearly at his pleasure.

It is difficult however to understand how so much clamour should have
been made over such paltry triumphs.  All Europe rang with a cavalry
fight in which less than a thousand saddles on both sides had been
emptied, leading to no result, and with the capture of a couple of
insignificant towns, of which not one man in a thousand had ever heard.

Spinola had doubtless shown genius of a subtle and inventive order, and
his fortunate audacity in measuring himself, while a mere apprentice,
against the first military leader living had been crowned with wonderful
success.  He had nailed the stadholder fast to the island of Cadzand,
while he was perfecting his arrangements and building boats on the Rhine;
he had propounded riddles which Maurice had spent three of the best
campaigning months in idle efforts to guess, and when he at last moved,
he had swept to his mark with the swiftness and precision of a bird of
prey.  Yet the greatest of all qualities in a military commander, that of
deriving substantial fruits from victory instead of barren trophies, he
had not manifested.  If it had been a great stroke of art to seize reach
Deventer, it was an enormous blunder, worthy of a journeyman soldier, to
fail to seize the Bourtange marshes, and drive his sword into the fiery
vitals of the republic, thus placed at his mercy.

Meantime, while there had been all these rejoicings and tribulations at
the great doings on the Rhine and the shortcoming in Friesland, the real
operations of the war had been at the antipodes.

It is not a very unusual phenomenon in history that the events, upon
whose daily development the contemporary world hangs with most
palpitating interest, are far inferior in permanent influence upon the
general movement of humanity to a series of distant and apparently
commonplace transactions.

Empires are built up or undermined by the ceaseless industry of obscure
multitudes often slightly observed, or but dimly comprehended.

Battles and sieges, dreadful marches, eloquent debates, intricate
diplomacy--from time to time but only perhaps at rare intervals--have
decided or modified the destiny of nations, while very often the clash of
arms, the din of rhetoric, the whiz of political spindles, produce
nothing valuable for human consumption, and made the world no richer.

If the age of heroic and religious passion was rapidly fading away before
the gradual uprising of a politico-mercantile civilization--as it
certainly was--the most vital events, those in which the fate of coming
generations was most deeply involved, were those inspired by the spirit
of commercial-enterprise.

Nor can it be denied that there is often a genial and poetic essence even
among things practical or of almost vulgar exterior.  In those early
expeditions of the Hollanders to the flaming lands of the equator there
is a rhythm and romance of historical movement not less significant than
in their unexampled defence of fatherland and of the world's liberty
against the great despotism of the age.

Universal monarchy was baffled by the little republic, not within its own
populous cities only, or upon its own barren sands.  The long combat
between Freedom and Absolutism had now become as wide as the world.  The
greatest European states had been dragged by the iron chain of necessity
into a conflict from which they often struggled to escape, and on every
ocean, and on almost every foot of soil, where the footsteps of mankind
had as yet been imprinted, the fierce encounters were every day renewed.
In the east and the west, throughout that great vague new world, of which
geographers had hardly yet made a sketch, which comprised both the
Americas and something called the East Indies, and which Spain claimed
as her private property, those humbly born and energetic adventurers were
rapidly creating a symmetrical system out of most dismal chaos.

The King of Spain warned all nations from trespassing upon those outlying
possessions.

His edicts had not however prevented the English in moderate numbers, and
the Hollanders in steadily increasing swarms, from enlarging and making
profitable use of these new domains of the world's commerce.

The days were coming when the People was to have more to say than the
pope in regard to the disposition and arrangements of certain large
districts of this planet.  While the world-empire, which still excited so
much dismay, was yielding to constant corrosion, another empire, created
by well-directed toil and unflinching courage, was steadily rising out of
the depths.  It has often been thought amazing that the little republic
should so long and so triumphantly withstand the enormous forces brought
forward for her destruction.  It was not, however, so very surprising.
Foremost among nations, and in advance of the age, the republic had found
the strength which comes from the spirit of association.  On a wider
scale than ever before known, large masses of men, with their pecuniary
means, had been intelligently banded together to advance material
interests.  When it is remembered that, in addition to this force, the
whole commonwealth was inspired by the divine influence of liberty, her
power will no longer seem so wonderful.

A sinister event in the Isle of Ceylon had opened the series of
transactions in the East, and had cast a gloom over the public sentiment
at home.  The enterprising voyager, Sebald de Weerdt, one of the famous
brotherhood of the Invincible Lion which had wintered in the straits of
Magellan, had been murdered through the treachery of the King of Candy.
His countrymen had not taken vengeance on his assassins.  They were
perhaps too fearful of losing their growing trade in those lucrative
regions to take a becoming stand in that emergency.  They were also not
as yet sufficiently powerful there.

The East India Company had sent out in May of this year its third fleet
of eleven large ships, besides some smaller vessels, under the general
superintendence of Matelieff de Jonghe, one of the directors.  The
investments for the voyage amounted to more than nineteen hundred
thousand florins.

Meantime the preceding adventurers under Stephen van der Hagen, who had
sailed at the end of 1603, had been doing much thorough work.  A firm
league had been made with one of the chief potentates of Malabar,
enabling them to build forts and establish colonies in perpetual menace
of Goa, the great oriental capital of the Portuguese.  The return of the
ambassadors sent out from Astgen to Holland had filled not only the
island of Sumatra but the Moluccas, and all the adjacent regions, with
praises of the power, wealth, and high civilization of that distant
republic so long depicted by rivals as a nest of uncouth and sanguinary
savages.  The fleet now proceeded to Amboyna, a stronghold of the
Spanish-Portuguese, and the seat of a most lucrative trade.

On the arrival of those foreign well-armed ships under the guns of the
fortress, the governor sent to demand, with Castilian arrogance, who the
intruders were, and by whose authority and with what intent they presumed
to show themselves in those waters.  The reply was that they came in the
name and by the authority of their High Mightinesses the States-General,
and their stadholder the Prince of Orange; that they were sworn enemies
of the King of Spain and all his subjects, and that as to their intent,
this would soon be made apparent.  Whereupon, without much more ado, they
began a bombardment of the fort, which mounted thirty-six guns.  The
governor, as often happened in those regions, being less valiant against
determined European foes than towards the feebler oriental races on which
he had been accustomed to trample, succumbed with hardly an effort at
resistance.  The castle and town and whole island were surrendered to the
fleet, and thenceforth became virtually a colony of the republic with
which, nominally, treaties of alliance and defence were, negotiated.
Thence the fleet, after due possession had been taken of these new
domains, sailed partly to Bands and partly to two small but most
important islands of the Moluccas.

In that multitude of islands which make up the Eastern Archipelago there
were but five at that period where grew the clove--Ternate, Tydor,
Motiel, Makian, and Bacia.

Pepper and ginger, even nutmegs, cassia, and mace, were but vulgar drugs,
precious as they were already to the world and the world's commerce,
compared with this most magnificent spice.

It is wonderful to reflect upon the strange composition of man.  The
world had lived in former ages very comfortably without cloves.  But by
the beginning of the seventeenth century that odoriferous pistil had been
the cause of so many pitched battles and obstinate wars, of so much
vituperation, negotiation, and intriguing, that the world's destiny
seemed to have almost become dependent upon the growth of a particular
gillyflower.  Out of its sweetness had grown such bitterness among great
nations as not torrents of blood could wash away.  A commonplace
condiment enough it seems to us now, easily to be dispensed with, and not
worth purchasing at a thousand human lives or so the cargo, but it was
once the great prize to be struggled for by civilized nations.  From that
fervid earth, warmed from within by volcanic heat, and basking ever
beneath the equatorial sun, arose vapours as deadly to human life as the
fruits were exciting and delicious to human senses.  Yet the atmosphere
of pestiferous fragrance had attracted, rather than repelled.  The
poisonous delights of the climate, added to the perpetual and various
warfare for its productions, spread a strange fascination around those
fatal isles.

Especially Ternate and Tydor were objects of unending strife.
Chinese, Malays, Persians, Arabs, had struggled centuries long for their
possession; those races successively or simultaneously ruling these and
adjacent portions of the Archipelago.  The great geographical discoveries
at the close of the fifteenth century had however changed the aspect of
India and of the world.  The Portuguese adventurers found two rival
kings--in the two precious islands, and by ingeniously protecting one of
these potentates and poisoning the other, soon made themselves masters of
the field.  The clove trade was now entirely in the hands of the
strangers from the antipodes.  Goa became the great mart of the lucrative
traffic, and thither came Chinese, Arabs, Moors, and other oriental
traders to be supplied from the Portuguese monopoly: Two-thirds of the
spices however found their way directly to Europe.

Naturally enough, the Spaniards soon penetrated into these seas, and
claimed their portion of the spice trade. They insisted that the coveted
islands were included in their portion of the great Borgian grant.  As
there had hardly yet been time to make a trigonometrical survey of an
unknown world, so generously divided by the pope, there was no way of
settling disputed boundary questions save by apostolic blows.  These were
exchanged with much earnestness, year after year, between Spaniards,
Portuguese, and all who came in their way.  Especially the unfortunate
natives, and their kings most of all, came in for a full share.  At last
Charles V. sold out his share of the spice islands to his Portuguese
rival and co-proprietor, for three hundred and fifty thousand ducats.
The emperor's very active pursuits caused him to require ready money more
than cloves.  Yet John III.  had made an excellent bargain, and the
monopoly thenceforth brought him in at least two hundred thousand ducats
annually.  Goa became more flourishing, the natives more wretched,
the Portuguese more detested than ever.  Occasionally one of the royal
line of victims would consent to put a diadem upon his head, but the
coronation was usually the prelude to a dungeon or death.  The treaties
of alliance, which these unlucky potentates had formed with their
powerful invaders, were, as so often is the case, mere deeds to convey
themselves and their subjects into slavery.

Spain and Portugal becoming one, the slender weapon of defence which
these weak but subtle Orientals sometimes employed with success--the
international and commercial jealousy between their two oppressors--was
taken away.  It was therefore with joy that Zaida, who sat on the throne
of Ternate at the end of the sixteenth century, saw the sails of a Dutch
fleet arriving in his harbours.  Very soon negotiations were opened, and
the distant republic undertook to protect the Mahometan king against his
Catholic master.  The new friendship was founded upon trade monopoly, of
course, but at that period at least the islanders were treated with
justice and humanity by their republican allies.  The Dutch undertook to
liberate their friends from bondage, while the King of Ternate, panting
under Portuguese oppression, swore to have no traffic, no dealings of any
kind, with any other nation than Holland; not even with the English.  The
Dutch, they declared, were the liberators of themselves, of their
friends, and of the seas.

The international hatred, already germinating between England and
Holland, shot forth in these flaming regions like a tropical plant.  It
was carefully nurtured and tended by both peoples.  Freedom of commerce,
freedom of the seas, meant that none but the Dutch East India Company--
so soon as the Portuguese and Spaniards were driven out--should trade in
cloves and nutmegs.  Decrees to that effect were soon issued, under very
heavy penalties, by the States-General to the citizens of the republic
and to the world at large.  It was natural therefore that the English
traders should hail the appearance of the Dutch fleets with much less
enthusiasm than was shown by the King of Ternate.

On the other hand, the King of Tydor, persisting in his oriental hatred
towards the rival potentate in the other island, allowed the Portuguese
to build additional citadels, and generally to strengthen their positions
within his dominions.  Thus when Cornelius Sebastian, with his division
of Ver Hagen's fleet, arrived in the Moluccas in the summer of 1605, he
found plenty of work prepared for him.  The peace recently concluded by
James with Philip and the archdukes placed England in a position of
neutrality in the war now waging in the clove islands between Spain and
the republic's East India Company.  The English in those regions were not
slow to avail themselves of the advantage.  The Portuguese of Tydor
received from neutral sympathy a copious supply of powder and of
pamphlets.  The one explosive material enabled them to make a more
effective defence of their citadel against the Dutch fleet; the other
revealed to the Portuguese and their Mussulman allies that "the
Netherlanders could not exist without English protection, that they were
the scum of nations, and that if they should get possession of this clove
monopoly, their insolence would become intolerable."  Samples of polite
literature such as these, printed but not published, flew about in
volleys.  It was an age of pamphleteering, and neither the English nor
the Dutch were behind their contemporaries in the science of attack and
self-defence.  Nevertheless Cornelius Sebastian was not deterred by paper
pellets, nor by the guns of the citadel, from carrying out his purpose.
It was arranged with King Zaida that the islanders of Ternate should make
a demonstration against Tydor, being set across the strait in Dutch
vessels.  Sebastian, however, having little faith in oriental tenacity,
entrusted the real work of storming the fortress to his own soldiers and
sailors.  On a fine morning in May the assault was delivered in
magnificent style.  The resistance was obstinate; many of the assailants
fell, and Captain Mol, whom we have once before seen as master of the
Tiger, sinking the galleys of Frederic Spinola off the Gat of Sluys,
found himself at the head of only seven men within the interior defences
of the citadel.  A Spanish soldier, Torre by name, rushed upon him with a
spear.  Avoiding the blow, Mol grappled with his antagonist, and both
rolled to the ground.  A fortunate carbine-shot from one of the Dutch
captain's comrades went through the Spaniard's head.  Meantime the little
band, so insignificant in numbers, was driven out of the citadel.  Mol
fell to the ground with a shattered leg, and reproached his companions,
who sought to remove him, for neglecting their work in order to save his
life.  Let them take the fort, he implored them, and when that was done
they might find leisure to pick him up if they chose.  While he was
speaking the principal tower of the fortress blew up, and sixty of the
garrison were launched into the air.  A well-directed shot had set fire
to the magazine.  The assault was renewed with fresh numbers, and the
Dutch were soon masters of the place.  Never was a stronghold more
audaciously or more successfully stormed.  The garrison surrendered.
The women and children, fearing to be at the mercy of those who had been
depicted to them as cannibals, had already made their escape, and were
scrambling like squirrels among the volcanic cliffs.  Famine soon
compelled them to come down, however, when they experienced sufficiently
kind treatment, but were all deported in Dutch vessels to the Philippine
islands.  The conquerors not only spared the life of the King of Tydor,
but permitted him to retain his crown.  At his request the citadel was
razed to the ground.  It would have been better perhaps to let it stand,
and it was possible that in the heart of the vanquished potentate some
vengeance was lurking which might bear evil fruit at a later day.
Meantime the Portuguese were driven entirely out of the Moluccas,
save the island of Timos, where they still retained a not very
important citadel.

The East India Company was now in possession of the whole field.  The
Moluccas and the clove trade were its own, and the Dutch republic had
made manifest to the world that more potent instruments had now been
devised for parcelling out the new world than papal decrees, although
signed by the immaculate hand of a Borgia.

During the main operations already sketched in the Netherlands, and
during those vastly more important oriental movements to which the
reader's attention has just been called, a detached event or two
deserves notice.

Twice during the summer campaign of this year Du Terrail, an enterprising
French refugee in the service of the archdukes, had attempted to surprise
the important city of Bergen-op-Zoom.  On the 21st August the intended
assault had been discovered in time to prevent any very serious conflict
on, either side.  On the 20th September the experiment was renewed at an
hour after midnight.  Du Terrail, having arranged the attack at three
different points, had succeeded in forcing his way across the moat and
through one of the gates.  The trumpets of the foremost Spaniards already
sounded in, the streets.  It was pouring with rain; the town was pitch
dark.  But the energetic Paul Bax was governor of the place, a man who
was awake at any hour of the twenty-four, and who could see in the
darkest night.  He had already informed himself of the enemy's project,
and had strengthened his garrison by a large intermixture of the most
trustworthy burgher guards, so that the advance of Du Terrail at the
southern gate was already confronted by a determined band.  A fierce
battle began in the darkness.  Meantime Paul Bax, galloping through the
city, had aroused the whole population for the defence.  At the Steinberg
gate, where the chief assault had been prepared, Bax had caused great
fires of straw and pitch barrels to be lighted, so that the invaders,
instead of finding, as they expected, a profound gloom through the
streets, saw themselves approaching a brilliantly illuminated city, fully
prepared to give their uninvited guests a warm reception.  The garrison,
the townspeople, even the women, thronged to the ramparts, saluting the
Spaniards with a rain of bullets, paving-stones, and pitch hoops, and
with a storm of gibes and taunts.  They were asked why they allowed their
cardinal thus to send them to the cattle market, and whether Our Lady of
Hall, to whom Isabella was so fond of making pilgrimages, did not live
rather too far off to be of much use just then to her or to them.
Catholics and Protestants all stood shoulder to shoulder that night to
defend their firesides against the foreign foe, while mothers laid their
sleeping children on the ground that they might fill their cradles with
powder and ball, which they industriously brought to the soldiers.  The
less energetic women fell upon their knees in the street, and prayed
aloud through the anxious night.  The attack was splendidly repulsed.
As morning dawned the enemy withdrew, leaving one hundred dead outside
the walls or in the town, and carrying off thirty-eight wagon loads of
wounded.  Du Terrail made no further attempts that summer, although the
list of his surprises was not yet full.  He was a good engineer, and a
daring partisan officer.  He was also inspired by an especial animosity
to the States-General, who had refused the offer of his services before
he made application to the archdukes.

At sea there was no very important movement in European waters, save that
Lambert Heinrichzoon, commonly called Pretty Lambert, a Rotterdam
skipper, whom we have seen the sea-fights with Frederic Spinola, of the
Dunkirk pirate fleet, Adrian Dirkzoon.  It was a desperate fight.--Pretty
Lambent, sustained at a distance by Rear-Admiral Gerbrantzon, laid
himself yard-arm to yard-arm alongside the pirate vessel, boarded her,
and after beating down all resistance made prisoners such of the crew as
remained alive, and carried them into Rotterdam.  Next day they were
hanged, to the number of sixty.  A small number were pardoned on account
of their youth, and a few individuals who effected their escape when led
to the gallows, were not pursued.  The fact that the townspeople almost
connived at the escape of these desperadoes showed that there had been a
surfeit of hangings in Rotterdam.  It is moreover not easy to distinguish
with exactness the lines which in those days separated regular sea
belligerents, privateers, and pirates from each other.  It had been laid
down by the archdukes that there was no military law at sea, and that
sick soldiers captured on the water should be hanged.  Accordingly they
were hanged.  Admiral Fazardo, of the Spanish royal navy, not only
captured all the enemy's merchant vessels which came in his way, but
hanged, drowned, and burned alive every man found on board.  Admiral
Haultain, of the republican navy, had just been occupied in drowning a
whole regiment of Spanish soldiers, captured in English and German
transports.  The complaints brought against the English cruisers by the
Hollanders for capturing and confiscating their vessels, and banging,
maiming, and torturing their crews--not only when England was neutral,
but even when she was the ally of the republic--had been a standing topic
for diplomatic discussion, and almost a standing joke.  Why, therefore,
these Dunkirk sea-rovers should not on the same principle be allowed to
rush forth from their very convenient den to plunder friend and foe, burn
ships, and butcher the sailors at pleasure, seems difficult to
understand.  To expect from the inhabitants of this robbers' cave--
this "church on the downs"--a code of maritime law so much purer and
sterner than the system adopted by the English, the Spaniards, and the
Dutch, was hardly reasonable.  Certainly the Dunkirkers, who were mainly
Netherlanders--rebels to the republic and partisans of the Spanish crown
--did their best to destroy the herring fishery and to cut the throats of
the fishermen, but perhaps they received the halter more often than other
mariners who had quite as thoroughly deserved it.  And this at last
appeared the prevailing opinion in Rotterdam.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Abstinence from unproductive consumption
Defeated garrison ever deserved more respect from friend or foe
His own past triumphs seemed now his greatest enemies
Hundred thousand men had laid down their lives by her decree
John Castel, who had stabbed Henry IV.
Looking down upon her struggle with benevolent indifference
No retrenchments in his pleasures of women, dogs, and buildings
Sick soldiers captured on the water should be hanged
The small children diminished rapidly in numbers
When all was gone, they began to eat each other



End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v77
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 78, 1605-1607






CHAPTER XLV.

     Preparations for the campaign of 1606--Diminution of Maurice's
     popularity--Quarrel between the pope and the Venetian republic--
     Surprise of Sluys by Du Terrail--Dilatoriness of the republic's
     operations--Movements of Spinola--Influence of the weather on the
     military transactions of the year--Endeavours of Spinola to obtain
     possession of the Waal and Yssel--Surrender of Lochem to Spinola--
     Siege of Groll--Siege and loss of Rheinberg--Mutiny in the Catholic
     army--Recovery of Lochem by Maurice--Attempted recovery of Groll--
     Sudden appearance of the enemy--Withdrawal of the besieging army
     Close of the campaign--End of the war of independence--Motives of
     the Prince in his actions before Groll--Cruise of Admiral Haultain
     to the coast of Spain and Portugal--His encounter with the war--
     ships of Fazardo--Courageous conduct of the vice-admiral--Deaths of
     Justus Lipsius, Hohenlo, and Count John of Nassau.

After the close of the campaign of 1605 Spinola had gone once more to
Spain.  On his passage through Paris he had again been received with
distinguished favour by that warm ally of the Dutch republic, Henry IV.,
and on being questioned by that monarch as to his plans for the next
campaign had replied that he intended once more to cross the Rhine, and
invade Friesland.  Henry, convinced that the Genoese would of course not
tell him the truth on such an occasion, wrote accordingly to the States-
General that they might feel safe as to their eastern frontier.  Whatever
else might happen, Friesland and the regions adjacent would be safe next
year from attack.  The immediate future was to show whether the subtle
Italian had not compassed as neat a deception by telling the truth as
coarser politicians could do by falsehood.

Spinola found the royal finances in most dismal condition.  Three hundred
thousand dollars a month were the least estimate of the necessary
expenses for carrying on the Netherland war, a sum which could not
possibly be spared by Lerma, Uceda, the Marquis of the Seven Churches,
and other financiers then industriously occupied in draining dry the
exchequer for their own uses.  Once more the general aided his sovereign
with purse and credit, as well as with his sword.  Once more the exchange
at Genoa was glutted with the acceptances of Marquis Spinola.  Here at
least was a man of a nature not quite so depraved as that of the
parasites bred out of the corruption of a noble but dying commonwealth,
and doubtless it was with gentle contempt that the great favourite and
his friends looked at the military and financial enthusiasm of the
volunteer.  It was so much more sagacious to make a princely fortune than
to sacrifice one already inherited, in the service of one's country.

Spinola being thus ready not only to fight but to help to pay for the
fighting, found his plans of campaigns received with great benignity by
the king and his ministers.  Meantime there was much delay.  The enormous
labours thus devolved upon one pair of shoulders by the do-nothing king
and a mayor of the palace whose soul was absorbed by his own private
robberies, were almost too much for human strength.  On his return to the
Netherlands Spinola fell dangerously ill in Genoa.

Meantime, during his absence and the enforced idleness of the Catholic
armies, there was an opportunity for the republicans to act with
promptness and vigour.  They displayed neither quality.  Never had there
been so much sluggishness as in the preparations for the campaign of
1606.  The States' exchequer was lower than it had been for years.  The
republic was without friends.  Left to fight their battle for national
existence alone, the Hollanders found themselves perpetually subjected to
hostile censure from their late allies, and to friendly advice still more
intolerable.  There were many brave Englishmen and Frenchmen sharing in
the fatigues of the Dutch war of independence, but the governments of
Henry and of James were as protective, as severely virtuous, as
offensive, and, in their secret intrigues with the other belligerent, as
mischievous as it was possible for the best-intentioned neutrals to be.

The fame and the popularity of the stadholder had been diminished by the
results of the past campaign.  The States-General were disappointed,
dissatisfied, and inclined to censure very unreasonably the public
servant who had always obeyed their decrees with docility.  While Henry
IV. was rapidly transferring his admiration from Maurice to Spinola, the
disagreements at home between the Advocate and the Stadholder were
becoming portentous.

There was a want of means and of soldiers for the new campaign.  Certain
causes were operating in Europe to the disadvantage of both belligerents.
In the south, Venice had almost drawn her sword against the pope in her
settled resolution to put down the Jesuits and to clip the wings of the
church party, before, with bequests and donations, votive churches and
magnificent monasteries, four-fifths of the domains of the republic
should fall into mortmain, as was already the case in Brabant.

Naturally there was a contest between the ex-Huguenot, now eldest son of
the Church, and the most Catholic king, as to who should soonest defend
the pope.  Henry offered thorough protection to his Holiness, but only
under condition that he should have a monopoly of that protection.
He lifted his sword, but meantime it was doubtful whether the blow was to
descend upon Venice or upon Spain.  The Spanish levies, on their way to
the Netherlands, were detained in Italy by this new exigency.  The
States-General offered the sister republic their maritime assistance, and
notwithstanding their own immense difficulties, stood ready  to send a
fleet to the Mediterranean.  The offer was gratefully declined, and the
quarrel with the pope arranged, but the incident laid the foundation of
a lasting friendship between the only two important republics then
existing.  The issue of the Gunpowder Plot, at the close of the preceding
year, had confirmed James in his distaste for Jesuits, and had effected
that which all the eloquence of the States-General and their ambassador
had failed to accomplish, the prohibition of Spanish enlistments in his
kingdom.  Guido Fawkes had served under the archduke in Flanders.

Here then were delays additional to that caused by Spinola's illness.
On the other hand, the levies of the republic were for a season paralysed
by the altercation, soon afterwards adjusted, between Henry IV. and the
Duke of Bouillon, brother-in-law of the stadholder and of the Palatine,
and by the petty war between the Duke and Hanseatic city of Brunswick,
in which Ernest of Nassau was for a time employed.

During this period of almost suspended animation the war gave no signs of
life, except in a few spasmodic efforts on the part of the irrepressible
Du Terrail.  Early in the spring, not satisfied with his double and
disastrous repulse before Bergen-op-Zoom, that partisan now determined to
surprise Sluy's.  That an attack was impending became known to the
governor of that city, the experienced Colonel Van der Noot.  Not
dreaming, however, that any mortal--even the most audacious of Frenchmen
and adventurers--would ever think of carrying a city like Sluy's by
surprise, defended as it was by a splendid citadel and by a whole chain
of forts and water-batteries, and capable of withstanding three months
long, as it had so recently done, a siege in form by the acknowledged
master of the beleaguering science, the methodical governor event calmly
to bed one fine night in June.  His slumbers were disturbed before
morning by the sound of trumpets sounding Spanish melodies in the
streets, and by a, great uproar and shouting.  Springing out of bed, he
rushed half-dressed to the rescue.  Less vigilant than Paul Bax had been
the year before in Bergen, he found that Du Terrail had really effected a
surprise.  At the head of twelve hundred Walloons and Irishmen, that
enterprising officer had waded through the drowned land of Cadzand, with
the promised support of a body of infantry under Frederic Van den Berg,
from Damm, had stolen noiselessly by the forts of that island
unchallenged and unseen, had effected with petards a small breach through
the western gate of the city, and with a large number of his followers,
creeping two and two through the gap, had found himself for a time master
of Sluys.

The profound silence of the place had however somewhat discouraged the
intruders.  The whole population were as sound asleep as was the
excellent commandant, but the stillness in the deserted streets suggested
an ambush, and they moved stealthily forward, feeling their way with
caution towards the centre of the town.

It so happened, moreover, that the sacristan had forgotten to wind up the
great town clock.  The agreement with the party first entering and making
their way to the opposite end of the city, had been that at the striking
of a certain hour after midnight they should attack simultaneously and
with a great outcry all the guardhouses, so that the garrison might be
simultaneously butchered.  The clock never struck, the signal was never
given, and Du Terrail and his immediate comrades remained near the
western gate, suspicious and much perplexed.  The delay was fatal.  The
guard, the whole garrison, and the townspeople flew to arms, and half-
naked, but equipped with pike and musket, and led on by Van der Noot in
person, fell upon the intruders.  A panic took the place of previous
audacity in the breasts of Du Terrail's followers.  Thinking only of
escape, they found the gap by which they had crept into the town much
less convenient as a means of egress in the face of an infuriated
multitude.  Five hundred of them were put to death in a very few minutes.
Almost as many were drowned or suffocated in the marshes, as they
attempted to return by the road over which they had come.  A few
stragglers June, of the fifteen hundred were all that were left to tell
the tale.

It would seem scarcely worth while to chronicle such trivial incidents in
this great war--the all-absorbing drama of Christendom--were it not that
they were for the moment the whole war.  It might be thought that
hostilities were approaching their natural termination, and that the war
was dying of extreme old age, when the Quixotic pranks of a Du Terrail
occupied so large a part of European attention.

The winter had passed, another spring had come and gone, and Maurice had
in vain attempted to obtain sufficient means from the States to take the
field in force.  Henry, looking on from the outside, was becoming more
and more exasperated with the dilatoriness which prevented the republic
from profiting by the golden moments of Spinola's enforced absence.  Yet
the best that could be done seemed to be to take measures for defensive
operations.

Spinola never reached Brussels until the beginning of June, yet, during
all the good campaigning weather which had been fleeting away, not a blow
had been struck, nor a wholesome counsel taken by the stadholder or the
States.  It was midsummer before the armies were in the field.  The plans
of the Catholic general however then rapidly developed themselves.
Having assembled as large a force as had ever been under his command, he
now divided it into two nearly equal portions.  Bucquoy, with ten
thousand foot, twelve hundred cavalry, and twelve guns, arrived on the
18th July at Nook, on the Meuse.  Spinola, with eleven thousand infantry,
two thousand horse, and eight guns, crossed the Rhine at the old redoubts
of Ruhrort, and on the same 18th July took position at Goor, in
Overyssel.  The first plan of the commander-in-chief was to retrace
exactly his campaign of the previous year, even as he had with so much
frankness stated to Henry.  But the republic, although deserted by her
former friends, and looked upon askance by the monarch of Britain, and
by the most Christian king, had this year a most efficient ally in the
weather.  Jupiter Pluvius had descended from on high to the rescue of the
struggling commonwealth, and his decrees were omnipotent as to the course
of the campaign.  The seasons that year seemed all fused into one.  It
was difficult to tell on midsummer day whether it were midwinter, spring,
or autumn.  The rain came down day after day, week after week, as if the
contending armies and the very country which was to be invaded and
defended were to be all washed out of existence together.  Friesland
resolved itself into a vast quagmire; the roads became fluid, the rivers
lakes.  Spinola turned his face from the east, and proceeded to carry out
a second plan which he had long meditated, and even a more effective one,
in the west.

The Waal and the Yssel formed two sides of a great quadrilateral; and
furnished for the natural fortress, thus enclosed, two vast and admirable
moats.  Within lay Good-meadow and Foul-meadow--Bet-uwe and Vel-uwe--one,
the ancient Batavian island which from time immemorial had given its name
to the commonwealth, the other, the once dismal swamp which toil and
intelligence had in the course of centuries transformed into the wealthy
and flowery land of Gueldres.

Beyond, but in immediate proximity, lay the ancient episcopal city and
province of Utrecht, over which lay the road to the adjacent Holland and
Zeeland.  The very heart of the republic would be laid bare to the
conqueror's sword if he could once force the passage, and obtain the
control of these two protecting streams.  With Utrecht as his base, and
all Brabant and Flanders--obedient provinces--at his back, Spinola might
accomplish more in one season than Alva, Don John, and Alexander Farnese
had compassed in forty years, and destroy at a blow what was still called
the Netherland rebellion.  The passage of the rivers once effected, the
two enveloping wings would fold themselves together, and the conquest
would be made.

Thus reasoned the brilliant young general, and his projects, although
far-reaching, did not seem wild.  The first steps were, however, the most
important as well as the most difficult, and he had to reckon with a wary
and experienced antagonist.  Maurice had at last collected and reviewed
at Arnhem an army of nearly fifteen thousand men, and was now watching
closely from Doesburg and Deventer every movement of the foe.

Having been forced to a defensive campaign, in which he was not likely at
best to gain many additional laurels, he was the more determined to lay
down his own life, and sacrifice every man he could bring into the field,
before Spinola should march into the cherished domains of Utrecht and
Holland.  Meantime the rain, which had already exerted so much influence
on the military movements of the year, still maintained the supremacy
over human plans.  The Yssel and the Waal, always deep, broad, sluggish,
but dangerous rivers--the Rhine in its old age--were swollen into
enormous proportions, their currents flowing for the time with the vigour
of their far away youth.

Maurice had confided the defence of the Waal to Warner Du Bois, under
whose orders he placed a force of about seven thousand men, and whose
business it was to prevent Bucquoy's passage.  His own task was to baffle
Spinola.

Bucquoy's ambition was to cross the Waal at a point as near as possible
to the fork of that stream with the true Rhine, seize the important city
of Nymegen, and then give the hand to Spinola, so soon as he should be on
the other side of the Yssel.  At the village of Spardorp or Kekerdom, he
employed Pompeio Giustiniani to make a desperate effort, having secured a
large number of barges in which he embarked his troops.  As the boatmen
neared the opposite bank, however, they perceived that Warner Du Bois had
made effective preparations for their reception.  They lost heart, and,
on pretence that the current of the river was too rapid to allow them to
reach the point proposed for their landing, gradually dropped down the
stream, and, in spite of the remonstrances of the commanders, pushed
their way back to the shore which they had left.  From that time forth,
the States' troops, in efficient numbers, fringed the inner side of the
Waal, along the whole length of the Batavian island, while armed vessels
of the republic patrolled the stream itself.  In vain Count Bucquoy
watched an opportunity, either by surprise or by main strength, to effect
a crossing.  The Waal remained as impassable as if it were a dividing
ocean.

On the other side of the quadrilateral, Maurice's dispositions were as
effective as those of his lieutenant on the Waal.  The left shore of the
Yssel, along its whole length, from Arnhem and Doesburg quite up to Zwoll
and Campen, where the river empties itself into the Zuyder Zee, was now
sprinkled thickly with forts, hastily thrown up, but strong enough to
serve the temporary purpose of the stadholder.  In vain the fleet-footed
and audacious Spinola moved stealthily or fiercely to and fro, from one
point to another, seeking an opening through which to creep, or a weak
spot where he might dash himself against the chain.  The whole line was
securely guarded.  The swollen river, the redoubts, and the musketeers of
Maurice, protected the heart of the republic from the impending danger.

Wearied of this fruitless pacing up and down, Spinola, while apparently
intending an assault upon Deventer, and thus attracting his adversary's
attention to that important city, suddenly swerved to the right, and came
down upon Lochem.  The little town, with its very slender garrison,
surrendered at once.  It was not a great conquest, but it might possibly
be of use in the campaign.  It was taken before the stadholder could move
a step to its assistance, even had he deemed it prudent to leave Yssel-
side for an hour.  The summer was passing away, the rain was still
descending, and it was the 1st of August before Spinola left Lochem.
He then made a rapid movement to the north, between Zwoll and Hasselt,
endeavouring to cross the Blackwater, and seize Geelmuyden, on the Zuyder
Zee.  Had he succeeded, he might have turned Maurice's position.  But the
works in that direction had been entrusted to an experienced campaigner,
Warmelo, sheriff of Zalant, who received the impetuous Spinola and his
lieutenant, Count Solre, so warmly, that they reeled backwards at last,
after repeated assaults and great loss of men, and never more attempted
to cross the Yssel.

Obviously, the campaign had failed.  Utrecht and Holland were as far out
of the Catholic general's reach as the stars in the sky, but at least,
with his large armies, he could earn a few trophies, barren or
productive, as it might prove, before winter, uniting with the deluge,
should drive him from the field.

On the 3rd August, he laid siege to Groll (or Groenlo), a fortified town
of secondary importance in the country of Zutphen, and, squandering his
men with much recklessness, in his determination not to be baffled,
reduced the place in eleven days.  Here he paused for a breathing spell,
and then, renouncing all his schemes upon the inner defences of the
republic, withdrew once more to the Rhine and laid siege to Rheinberg.

This frontier place had been tossed to and fro so often between the
contending parties in the perpetual warfare, that its inhabitants must
have learned to consider themselves rather as a convenient circulating
medium for military operations than as burghers who had any part in the
ordinary business of life.  It had old-fashioned defences of stones
which, during the recent occupation by the States, had been much
improved, and had been strengthened with earthworks.

Before it was besieged, Maurice sent his brother Frederic Henry, with
some picked companies, into the place, so that the garrison amounted to
three thousand effective men.

The Prince de Soubise, brother of the Duc de Rohan, and other French
volunteers of quality, also threw themselves into the place, in order to
take lessons in the latest methods of attack and defence.  It was now
admitted that no more accomplished pupil of the stadholder in the
beleaguering art had appeared in Europe than his present formidable
adversary.  On this occasion, however, there was no great display of
science.  Maurice obstinately refused to move to the relief of the place,
despite all the efforts of a deputation of the States-General who visited
his camp in September, urging him strenuously to take the chances of a
stricken field.

Nothing could induce the stadholder, who held an observing position at
Wesel, with his back against the precious watery quadrilateral, to risk
the defence of those most vital lines of the Yssel and the Waal.  While
attempting to save Rheinberg, he felt it possible that he might lose
Nymegen, or even Utrecht.  The swift but wily Genoese was not to be
trifled with or lost sight of an instant.  The road to Holland might
still be opened, and the destiny of the republic might hang on the
consequences of a single false move.  That destiny, under God, was in his
hands alone, and no chance of winning laurels, even from his greatest
rival's head, could induce him to shrink from the path of duty, however
obscure it might seem.  There were a few brilliant assaults and sorties,
as in all sieges, the French volunteers especially distinguishing
themselves; but the place fell at the end of forty days.  The garrison
marched out with the honours of war.  In the modern practice, armies were
rarely captured in strongholds, nor were the defenders, together with the
population, butchered.

The loss, after a six weeks' siege, of Rheinberg, which six years before,
with far inferior fortifications, had held out a much longer time against
the States, was felt as a bitter disappointment throughout the republic.
Frederic Henry, on leaving the place, made a feeble and unsuccessful
demonstration against Yenlo, by which the general dissatisfaction was
not diminished.  Soon afterwards, the war became more languid than ever.
News arrived of a great crisis on the Genoa exchange.  A multitude of
merchants, involved in pecuniary transactions with Spinola, fell with
one tremendous crash.  The funds of the Catholic commander-in-chief were
already exhausted, his acceptances could no longer be negotiated.

His credit was becoming almost as bad as the king's own.  The inevitable
consequence of the want of cash and credit followed.  Mutiny, for the
first time in Spinola's administration, raised its head once more, and
stalked about defiant.  Six hundred veterans marched to Breda, and
offered their services to Justinus of Nassau.  The proposal was accepted.
Other bands, established their quarters in different places, chose their
Elettos and lesser officers, and enacted the scenes which have been so
often depicted in these pages.  The splendid army of Spinola melted like
April snow.  By the last week of October there hardly seemed a Catholic
army in the field.  The commander-in-chief had scattered such companies
as could still be relied upon in the villages of the friendly arch-
episcopate of Cologne, and had obtained, not by murders and blackmail--
according to the recent practice of the Admiral of Arragon, at whose grim
name the whole country-side still shuddered--but from the friendship of
the leading inhabitants and by honest loans, a sufficient sum to put
bread into the mouths of the troops still remaining faithful to him.

The opportunity had at last arrived for the stadholder to strike a blow
before the season closed.  Bankruptcy and mutiny had reduced his enemy to
impotence in the very season of his greatest probable success.  On the
24th October Maurice came before Lochem, which he recaptured in five
days.  Next in the order of Spinola's victories was Groll, which the
stadholder at once besieged.  He had almost fifteen thousand infantry and
three thousand horse.  A career of brief triumph before winter should
close in upon those damping fields, seemed now assured.  But the rain,
which during nearly the whole campaign had been his potent ally, had of
late been playing him false.  The swollen Yssel, during a brief period of
dry weather, had sunk so low in certain shallows as not to be navigable
for his transports, and after his trains of artillery and munitions had
been dragged wearily overland as far as Groll, the deluge had returned in
such force, that physical necessity as well as considerations of humanity
compelled him to defer his entrenching operations until the weather
should moderate.  As there seemed no further danger to be apprehended
from the broken, mutinous, and dispersed forces of the enemy, the siege
operations were conducted in a leisurely manner.  What was the
astonishment, therefore, among the soldiers, when a rumour flew about the
camp in the early days of November that the indomitable Spinola was again
advancing upon them!  It was perfectly true.  With extraordinary
perseverance he had gathered up six or seven thousand infantry and twelve
companies of horse--all the remnants of the splendid armies with which he
had taken the field at midsummer--and was now marching to the relief of
Groll, besieged as it was by a force at least doubly as numerous as his
own.  It was represented to the stadholder, however, that an impassable
morass lay between him and the enemy, and that there would therefore be
time enough to complete his entrenchments before Spinola could put his
foolhardy attempt into execution.  But the Catholic general, marching
faster than rumour itself, had crossed the impracticable swamp almost
before a spadeful of earth had been turned in the republican camp.  His
advance was in sight even while the incredulous were sneering at the
absurdity of his supposed project.  Informed by scouts of the weakest
point in the stadholder's extended lines, Spinola was directing himself
thither with beautiful precision.  Maurice hastily contracted both his
wings, and concentrated himself in the village of Lebel.  At last the
moment had come for a decisive struggle.  There could be little doubt of
the result.  All the advantage was with the republican army.  The
Catholics had arrived in front of the enemy fatigued by forced marches
through quagmires, in horrible weather, over roads deemed impassable.
The States' troops were fresh, posted on ground of their own choosing,
and partially entrenched.  To the astonishment, even to the horror of the
most eager portion of the army, the stadholder deliberately, and despite
the groans of his soldiers, refused the combat, and gave immediate orders
for raising the siege and abandoning the field.

On the 12th of November he broke up his camp and withdrew to a village
called Zelem.  On the same day the marquis, having relieved the city,
without paying the expected price, retired in another direction, and
established what was left of his army in the province of Munster.  The
campaign was closed.   And thus the great war which had run its stormy
course for nearly forty years, dribbled out of existence, sinking away
that rainy November in the dismal fens of Zutphen.  The long struggle for
independence had come, almost unperceived, to an end.

Peace had not arrived, but the work of the armies was over for many a
long year.  Freedom and independence were secured.  A deed or two, never
to be forgotten by Netherland hearts, was yet to be done on the ocean,
before the long and intricate negotiations for peace should begin, and
the weary people permit themselves to rejoice; but the prize was already
won.

Meantime, the conduct of Prince Maurice in these last days of the
campaign was the subject of biting censure by friend and foe.  The
military fame of Spinola throughout Europe grew apace; and the fame of
his great rival seemed to shrink in the same proportion.

Henry of France was especially indignant at what he considered the
shortcomings of the republic and of its chief.  Already, before the close
of the summer, the agent Aerssens had written from Paris that his Majesty
was very much displeased with Spinola's prosperity, ascribing it to the
want of good councils on the part of the States' Government that so fine
an army should lie idle so long, without making an attempt to relieve the
beleaguered places, so that Spinola felt assured of taking anything as
soon as he made his appearance.  "Your Mightinesses cannot believe,"
continued the agent, "what a trophy is made by the Spanish ministers out
of these little exploits, and they have so much address at this court,
that if such things continue they may produce still greater results."

In December he wrote that the king was so malcontent concerning the siege
of Groll as to make it impossible to answer him with arguments, that he
openly expressed regret at not having employed the money lent to the
States upon strengthening his own frontiers, so distrustful was he of
their capacity for managing affairs, and that he mentioned with disgust
statements received from his ambassador at Brussels and from the Duc de
Rohan, to the effect that Spinola had between five and six thousand men
only at the relief of Groll, against twelve thousand in the stadholder's
army.

The motives of the deeds and the omissions of the prince at this supreme
moment must be pondered with great caution.  The States-General had
doubtless been inclined for vigorous movements, and Olden-Barneveld, with
some of his colleagues, had visited the camp late in September to urge
the relief of Rheinberg.  Maurice was in daily correspondence with the
Government, and regularly demanded their advice, by which, on many former
occasions, he had bound himself, even when it was in conflict with his
own better judgment.

But throughout this campaign, the responsibility was entirely, almost
ostentatiously, thrown by the States-General upon their commander-in-
chief, and, as already indicated, their preparations in the spring and
early summer had been entirely inadequate.  Should he lose the army with
which he had so quietly but completely checked Spinola in all his really
important moves during the summer and autumn, he might despair of putting
another very soon into the field.  That his force in that November week
before Groll was numerically far superior to the enemy is certain, but he
had lost confidence in his cavalry since their bad behaviour at Mulheim
the previous year, and a very large proportion of his infantry was on the
sick-list at the moment of Spinola's approach.  "Lest the continual bad
weather should entirely consume the army," he said, "we are resolved,
within a day or two after we have removed the sick who are here in great
numbers, to break up, unless the enemy should give us occasion to make
some attempt upon him."

Maurice was the servant of a small republic, contending single-handed
against an empire still considered the most formidable power in the
world.  His cue was not necessarily to fight on all occasions; for delay
often fights better than an army against a foreign invader.  When a
battle and a victory were absolutely necessary we have seen the
magnificent calmness which at Nieuport secured triumph under the shadow
of death.  Had he accepted Spinola's challenge in November, he would
probably have defeated him and have taken Groll.  He might not, however,
have annihilated his adversary, who, even when worsted, would perhaps
have effected his escape.  The city was of small value to the republic.
The principal advantage of a victory would have been increased military
renown for himself.  Viewed in this light, there is something almost
sublime in the phlegmatic and perfectly republican composure with which
he disdained laurels, easily enough, as it would stem, to have been
acquired, and denied his soldiers the bloodshed and the suffering for
which they were clamouring.

And yet, after thoroughly weighing and measuring all these circumstances,
it is natural to regret that he did not on that occasion rise upon
Spinola and smite him to the earth.  The Lord had delivered him into
his hands.  The chances of his own defeat were small, its probable
consequences, should it occur, insignificant.  It is hardly conceivable
that he could have been so completely overthrown as to allow the Catholic
commander to do in November what he had tried all summer in vain to
accomplish, cross the Yssel and the Waal, with the dregs of his army, and
invade Holland and Zeeland in midwinter, over the prostrate bodies of
Maurice and all his forces.  On the other hand, that the stadholder would
have sent the enemy reeling back to his bogs, with hardly the semblance
of an army at his heels, was almost certain: The effect of such a blow
upon impending negotiations, and especially upon the impressible
imagination of Henry and the pedantic shrewdness of James, would have
been very valuable.  It was not surprising that the successful soldier
who sat on the French throne, and who had been ever ready to wager life
and crown on the results of a stricken field, should be loud in his
expressions of disapprobation and disgust.  Yet no man knew better than
the sagacious Gascon that fighting to win a crown, and to save a
republic, were two essentially different things.

In the early summer of this year Admiral Haultain, whom we lately saw
occupied with tossing Sarmiento's Spanish legion into the sea off the
harbour of Dover, had been despatched to the Spanish coast on a still
more important errand.  The outward bound Portuguese merchantmen and the
home returning fleets from America, which had been absent nearly two
years, might be fallen in with at any moment, in the latitude of 36-38
deg.  The admiral, having received orders, therefore, to cruise carefully
in those regions, sailed for the shores of Portugal with a squadron of
twenty-four war-ships.  His expedition was not very successful.  He
picked up a prize or two here and there, and his presence on the coast
prevented the merchant-fleet from sailing out of Lisbon for the East
Indies, the merchandise already on board being disembarked and the voyage
postponed to a more favourable opportunity.

He saw nothing, however, of the long-expected ships from the golden West
Indies--as Mexico, Peru, and Brazil were then indiscriminately called--
and after parting company with six of his own ships, which were dispersed
and damaged in a gale, and himself suffering from a dearth of provisions,
he was forced to return without much gain or glory.

In the month of September he was once more despatched on the same
service.  He had nineteen war-galleots of the first class, and two
yachts, well equipped and manned.  Vice-admiral of the fleet was Regnier
Klaaszoon (or Nicholson), of Amsterdam, a name which should always be
held fresh in remembrance, not only by mariners and Netherlanders, but
by all men whose pulses can beat in sympathy with practical heroism.

The admiral coasted deliberately along the shores of Spain and Portugal.
It seemed impossible that the golden fleets, which, as it was
ascertained, had not yet arrived, could now escape the vigilance of the
Dutch cruisers.  An occasional merchant-ship or small war-galley was met
from time to time and chased into the harbours.  A landing was here and
there effected and a few villages burned.  But these were not the prizes
nor the trophies sought.  On the 19th September a storm off the
Portuguese coast scattered the fleet; six of the best and largest ships
being permanently lost sight of and separated from the rest.  With the
other thirteen Haultain now cruised off Cape St. Vincent directly across
the ordinary path of the homeward-bound treasure ships.

On the 6th October many sails were descried in the distance, and the
longing eyes of the Hollanders were at last gratified with what was
supposed to be the great West India commercial squadrons.  The delusion
was brief.  Instead of innocent and richly Freighted merchantmen, the new
comers soon proved to be the war-ships of Admiral Dan Luis de Fazardo,
eighteen great galleons and eight galleys strong, besides lesser vessels
--the most formidable fleet that for years had floated in those waters.
There had been time for Admiral Haultain to hold but a very brief
consultation with his chief officers.  As it was manifest that the
Hollanders were enormously over-matched, it was decided to manoeuvre as
well as possible for the weather-gage, and then to fight or to effect an
escape, as might seem most expedient after fairly testing the strength of
the enemy.  It was blowing a fresh gale, and the Netherland fleet had as
much as they could stagger with under close-reefed topsails.  The war-
galleys, fit only for fair weather, were soon forced to take refuge under
the lee of the land, but the eighteen galleons, the most powerful vessels
then known to naval architecture, were bearing directly down, full before
the wind, upon the Dutch fleet.

It must be admitted that Admiral Haultain hardly displayed as much energy
now as he had done in the Straits of Dover against the unarmed transports
the year before.  His ships were soon scattered, right and left, and the
manoeuvres for the weather-gage resolved themselves into a general
scramble for escape.  Vice-Admiral Klaaszoon alone held firm, and met the
onset of the first comers of the Spanish fleet.  A fierce combat, yard-
arm to yard-arm, ensued.  Klaaszoon's mainmast went by the board, but
Haultain, with five ships, all that could be rallied, coming to the
rescue, the assailants for a moment withdrew.  Five Dutch vessels of
moderate strength were now in action against the eighteen great galleons
of Fazardo.  Certainly it was not an even game, but it might have been
played with more heart and better skill.  There was but a half-hour of
daylight left when Klaaszoon's crippled ship was again attacked.  This
time there was no attempt to offer him assistance; the rest of the Dutch
fleet crowding all the sails their masts would bear, and using all the
devices of their superior seamanship, not to harass the enemy, but to
steal as swiftly as possible out of his way.  Honestly confessing that
they dared not come into the fight, they bore away for dear life in every
direction.  Night came on, and the last that the fugitives knew of the
events off Cape St. Vincent was that stout Regnier Klaaszoon had been
seen at sunset in the midst of the Spanish fleet; the sound of his
broadsides saluting their ears as they escaped.

Left to himself, alone in a dismasted ship, the vice-admiral never
thought of yielding to the eighteen Spanish galleons.  To the repeated
summons of Don Luis Fazardo that he should surrender he remained
obstinately deaf.  Knowing that it was impossible for him to escape, and
fearing that he might blow up his vessel rather than surrender, the enemy
made no attempt to board.  Spanish chivalry was hardly more conspicuous
on this occasion than Dutch valour, as illustrated by Admiral Haultain.
Two whole days and nights Klaaszoon drifted about in his crippled ship,
exchanging broadsides with his antagonists, and with his colours flying
on the stump of his mast.  The fact would seem incredible, were it not
attested by perfectly trustworthy contemporary accounts.  At last his
hour seemed to have come.  His ship was sinking; a final demand for
surrender, with promise of quarter, was made.  Out of his whole crew but
sixty remained alive; many of them badly wounded.

He quietly announced to his officers and men his decision never to
surrender, in which all concurred.  They knelt together upon the deck,
and the admiral made a prayer, which all fervently joined.  With his own
hand Klaaszoon then lighted the powder magazine, and the ship was blown
into the air.  Two sailors, all that were left alive, were picked out of
the sea by the Spaniards and brought on board one of the vessels of the
fleet.  Desperately mutilated, those grim Dutchmen lived a few minutes to
tell the tale, and then died defiant on the enemy's deck.

Yet it was thought that a republic, which could produce men like Regnier
Klaaszoon and his comrades, could be subjected again to despotism, after
a war for independence of forty years, and that such sailors could be
forbidden to sail the eastern and western seas.  No epigrammatic phrase
has been preserved of this simple Regnier, the son of Nicholas.  He only
did what is sometimes talked about in phraseology more or less melo-
dramatic, and did it in a very plain way.

Such extreme deeds may have become so much less necessary in the world,
that to threaten them is apt to seem fantastic.  Exactly at that crisis
of history, however, and especially in view of the Dutch admiral
commanding having refused a combat of one to three, the speechless self-
devotion of the vice-admiral was better than three years of eloquent
arguments and a ship-load of diplomatic correspondence, such as were
already impending over the world.

Admiral Haultain returned with all his ships uninjured--the six missing
vessels having found their way at last safely back to the squadron--but
with a very great crack to his reputation.  It was urged very justly,
both by the States-General and the public, that if one ship under a
determined commander could fight the whole Spanish fleet two days and
nights, and sink unconquered at last, ten ships more might have put the
enemy to flight, or at least have saved the vice-admiral from
destruction.

But very few days after the incidents just described, the merchant fleet
which, instead of Don Luis Fazardo's war galleons, Admiral Haultain had
so longed to encounter, arrived safely at San Lucar.  It was the most
splendid treasure-fleet that had ever entered a Spanish port, and the
Dutch admiral's heart might well have danced for joy, had he chanced to
come a little later on the track.  There were fifty ships, under charge
of General Alonzo de Ochares Galindo and General Ganevaye.  They had on
board, according to the registers, 1,914,176 dollars worth of bullion for
the king, and 6,086,617 dollars for merchants, or 8,000,000 dollars in
all, besides rich cargoes of silk, cochineal, sarsaparilla, indigo,
Brazil wood, and hides; the result of two years of pressure upon
Peruvians, Mexicans, and Brazilians.  Never had Spanish finances been
at so low an ebb.  Never was so splendid an income more desirable.  The
king's share of the cargo was enough to pay half the arrearages due to
his mutinous troops; and for such housekeeping this was to be in funds.

There were no further exploits on land or sea that year.  There were,
however, deaths of three personages often mentioned in this history.  The
learned Justus Lipsius died in Louvain, a good editor and scholar, and as
sincere a Catholic at last as he had been alternately a bigoted Calvinist
and an earnest Lutheran.  His reputation was thought to have suffered by
his later publications, but the world at large was occupied with sterner
stuff than those classic productions, and left the final decision to
posterity.

A man of a different mould, the turbulent, high-born, hard fighting,
hard-drinking Hohenlo, died also this year, brother-in-law and military
guardian, subsequently rival and political and personal antagonist, of
Prince Maurice.  His daring deeds and his troublesome and mischievous
adventures have been recounted in these pages.  His name will be always
prominent in the history of the republic, to which he often rendered
splendid service, but he died, as he had lived, a glutton and a
melancholy sot.

The third remarkable personage who passed away was one whose name will be
remembered as long as the Netherlands have a history, old Count John of
Nassau, only surviving brother of William the Silent.  He had been ever
prominent and deeply interested in the great religious and political
movements of upper and lower Germany, and his services in the foundation
of the Dutch commonwealth were signal, and ever generously acknowledged.
At one period, as will be recollected, he was stadholder of Gelderland,
and he was ever ready with sword, purse, and counsel to aid in the great
struggle for independence.




CHAPTER XLVI.

     General desire for peace--Political aspect of Europe--Designs of the
     kings of England, France, and Spain concerning the United Provinces
     --Matrimonial schemes of Spain--Conference between the French
     ministers and the Dutch envoy--Confidential revelations--Henry's
     desire to annex the Netherlands to France--Discussion of the
     subject--Artifice of Barneveld--Impracticability of a compromise
     between the Provinces and Spain--Formation of a West India Company--
     Secret mission from the archdukes to the Hague--Reply of the States-
     General--Return of the archdukes' envoy--Arrangement of an eight
     months' armistice.

The general tendency towards a pacification in Europe at the close of the
year could hardly be mistaken.  The languor of fatigue, rather than any
sincere desire for peace seemed to make negotiations possible.  It was
not likely that great truths would yet be admitted, or that ruling
individuals or classes would recognise the rise of a new system out of
the rapidly dissolving elements of the one which had done its work.  War
was becoming more and more expensive, while commerce, as the world slowly
expanded itself, and manifested its unsuspected resources, was becoming
more and more lucrative.  It was not, perhaps, that men hated each other
less, but that they had for a time exhausted their power and their love
for slaughter.  Meanwhile new devices for injuring humanity and retarding
its civilization were revealing themselves out of that very intellectual
progress which ennobled the new era.  Although war might still be
regarded as the normal condition of the civilized world, it was possible
for the chosen ones to whom the earth and its fulness belonged, to
inflict general damage otherwise than by perpetual battles.

In the east, west, north, and south of Europe peace was thrusting itself
as it were uncalled for and unexpected upon the general attention.
Charles and his nephew Sigismund, and the false Demetrius, and the
intrigues of the Jesuits, had provided too much work for Sweden, Poland,
and Russia to leave those countries much leisure for mingling in the more
important business of Europe at this epoch, nor have their affairs much
direct connection with this history.  Venice, in its quarrels with the
Jesuits, had brought Spain, France, and all Italy into a dead lock, out
of which a compromise had been made not more satisfactory to the various
parties than compromises are apt to prove.  The Dutch republic still
maintained the position which it had assumed, a quarter of a century
before, of actual and legal independence; while Spain, on the other hand,
still striving after universal monarchy, had not, of course, abated one
jot of its pretensions to absolute dominion over its rebellious subjects
in the Netherlands.

The holy Roman and the sublime Ottoman empires had also drifted into
temporary peace; the exploits of the Persians and other Asiatic movements
having given Ahmed more work than was convenient on his eastern frontier,
while Stephen Botshkay had so completely got the better of Rudolph in
Transylvania as to make repose desirable.  So there was a treaty between
the great Turk and the great Christian on the basis of what each
possessed; Stephen Botshkay was recognized as prince of Transylvania with
part of Hungary, and, when taken off soon afterwards by family poison, he
recommended on his death-bed the closest union between Hungary and
Transylvania, as well as peace with the emperor, so long as it might be
compatible with the rights of the Magyars.

France and England, while suspecting each other, dreading each other, and
very sincerely hating each other, were drawn into intimate relations by
their common detestation of Spain, with which power both had now formal
treaties of alliance and friendship.  This was the result of their mighty
projects for humbling the house of Austria and annihilating its power.
England hated the Netherlands because of the injuries she had done them,
the many benefits she had conferred upon them, and more than all on
account of the daily increasing commercial rivalry between the two most
progressive states in Christendom, the two powers which, comparatively
weak as they were in territory, capital, and population, were most in
harmony with the spirit of the age.

The Government of England was more hostile than its people to the United
Provinces.  James never spoke of the Netherlanders but as upstarts and
rebels, whose success ought to be looked upon with horror by the Lord's
anointed everywhere.  He could not shut his eyes to the fact that, with
the republic destroyed, and a Spanish sacerdotal despotism established
in Holland and Zeeland, with Jesuit seminaries in full bloom in Amsterdam
and the Hague, his own rebels in Ireland might prove more troublesome
than ever, and gunpowder plots in London become common occurrences.

The Earl of Tyrone at that very moment was receiving enthusiastic
hospitality at the archduke's court, much to the disgust of the
Presbyterian sovereign of the United Kingdom, who nevertheless, despite
his cherished theology, was possessed with an unconquerable craving for a
close family alliance with the most Catholic king.  His ministers were
inclined to Spain, and the British Government was at heart favourable to
some kind of arrangement by which the Netherlands might be reduced to the
authority of their former master, in case no scheme could be carried
into, effect for acquiring a virtual sovereignty over those provinces by
the British crown.  Moreover, and most of all, the King of France being
supposed to contemplate the annexation of the Netherlands to his own
dominions, the jealousy excited by such ambition made it even possible
for James's Government to tolerate the idea of Dutch independence.  Thus
the court and cabinet of England were as full of contradictory hopes and
projects as a madman's brain.

The rivalry between the courts of England and France for the Spanish
marriages and by means of them to obtain ultimately the sovereignty
of all the Netherlands, was the key to most of the diplomacy and
interpalatial intrigue of the several first years of the century.  The
negotiations of Cornwallis at Madrid were almost simultaneous with the
schemes of Villeroy and Rosny at Paris.

A portion of the English Government, so soon as its treaty with Spain had
been signed, seemed secretly determined to do as much injury to the
republic as might lie in its power.  While at heart convinced that the
preservation of the Netherlands was necessary for England's safety, it
was difficult for James and the greater part of his advisers to overcome
their repugnance to the republic, and their jealousy of the great
commercial successes which the republic had achieved.

It was perfectly plain that a continuance of the war by England and the
Netherlands united would have very soon ended in the entire humiliation
of Spain.  Now that peace had been made, however, it was thought possible
that England might make a bargain with her late enemy for destroying the
existence and dividing the territory of her late ally.  Accordingly the
Spanish cabinet lost no time in propounding, under seal of secrecy, and
with even more mystery than was usually employed by the most Catholic
court, a scheme for the marriage of the Prince of Wales with the Infanta;
the bridal pair, when arrived at proper age, to be endowed with all the
Netherlands, both obedient and republican, in full sovereignty.  One
thing was necessary to the carrying out of this excellent plot, the
reduction of the republic into her ancient subjection to Spain before her
territory could be transferred to the future Princess of Wales.

It was proposed by the Spanish Government that England should undertake
this part of the job, and that King James for such service should receive
an annual pension of one million ducats a year.  It was also stipulated
that certain cities in the republican dominions should be pledged to him
as security for the regular payment of that stipend.  Sir Charles
Cornwallis, English ambassador in Spain, lent a most favourable ear to
these proposals, and James eagerly sanctioned them so soon as they were
secretly imparted to that monarch.  "The king here," said Cornwallis,
"hath need of the King of Great Britain's arm.  Our king .  .  .  hath
good occasion to use the help of the King of Spain's purse.  The
assistance of England to help that nation out of that quicksand of the
Low Countries, where so long they have struggled to tread themselves out,
and by proof find that deeper in, will be a sovereign medicine to the
malady of this estate.  The addition of a million of ducats to the
revenue of our sovereign will be a good help to his estate."

The Spanish Government had even the effrontery to offer the English envoy
a reward of two hundred thousand crowns if the negotiations should prove
successful.  Care was to be taken however that Great Britain, by this
accession of power, both present and in prospect, should not grow too
great, Spain reserving to herself certain strongholds and maritime
positions in the Netherlands, for the proper security of her European and
Indian commerce.

It was thought high time for the bloodshed to cease in the provinces; and
as England, by making a treaty of peace with Spain when Spain was at the
last gasp, had come to the rescue of that power, it was logical that she
should complete the friendly work by compelling the rebellious provinces
to awake from their dream of independence.  If the statesmen of Holland
believed in the possibility of that independence, the statesmen of
England knew better.  If the turbulent little republic was not at
last convinced that it had no right to create so much turmoil and
inconvenience for its neighbours and for Christendom in general in order
to maintain its existence, it should be taught its duty by the sovereigns
of Spain and Britain.

It was observed, however, that the more greedily James listened day after
day to the marriage propositions, the colder became the Spanish cabinet
in regard to that point, the more disposed to postpone those nuptials "to
God's providence and future event."

The high hopes founded on these secret stratagems were suddenly dashed to
the earth before the end of the year; the explosion of the Gunpowder Plot
blowing the castles in Spain into the air.

Of course the Spanish politicians vied with each other in expressions of
horror and indignation at the Plot, and the wicked contrivers thereof,
and suggested to Cornwallis that the King of France was probably at the
bottom of it.

They declined to give up Owen and Baldwin, however, and meantime the
negotiations for the marriage of the Prince of Wales and the Infanta, the
million ducats of yearly pension for the needy James, and the reduction
of the Dutch republic to its ancient slavery to Spain "under the eye and
arm of Britain," faded indefinitely away.  Salisbury indeed was always
too wise to believe in the possibility of the schemes with which James
and some of his other counsellors had been so much infatuated.

It was almost dramatic that these plottings between James and the
Catholic king against the life of the republic should have been signally
and almost simultaneously avenged by the conspiracy of Guido Fawkes.

On the other hand, Rosny had imparted to the Dutch envoy the schemes of
Henry and his ministers in regard to the same object, early in 1605.
"Spain is more tired of the war," said he to Aerssens, under seal of
absolute secrecy, "than you are yourselves.  She is now negotiating for a
marriage between the Dauphin and the Infanta, and means to give her the
United Provinces, as at present constituted, for a marriage portion.
Villeroy and Sillery believe the plan feasible, but demand all the
Netherlands together.  As for me I shall have faith in it if they send
their Infanta hither at once, or make a regular cession of the territory.
Do you believe that my lords the States will agree to the proposition?"

It would be certainly difficult to match in history the effrontery of
such a question.  The republican envoy was asked point blank whether his
country would resign her dearly gained liberty and give herself as a
dowry for Philip the Second's three-years-old grand daughter.  Aerssens
replied cautiously that he had never heard the matter discussed in the
provinces.  It had always been thought that the French king had no
pretensions to their territory, but had ever advocated their
independence.  He hinted that such a proposition was a mere apple of
discord thrown between two good allies by Spain.  Rosny admitted the
envoy's arguments, and said that his Majesty would do nothing without the
consent of the Dutch Government, and that he should probably be himself
sent ere long to the Hague to see if he could not obtain some little
recognition from the States.

Thus it was confidentially revealed to the agent of the republic that her
candid adviser and ally was hard at work, in conjunction with her ancient
enemy, to destroy her independence, annex her territory, and appropriate
to himself all the fruits of her great war, her commercial achievements,
and her vast sacrifices; while, as we have just seen, English politicians
at the same moment were attempting to accomplish the same feat for
England's supposed advantage.  All that was wished by Henry to begin with
was a little, a very little, recognition of his sovereignty.  "You will
do well to reflect on this delicate matter in time," wrote Aerssens to
the Advocate; "I know that the King of Spain is inclined to make this
offer, and that they are mad enough in this place to believe the thing
feasible.  For me, I reject all such talk until they have got the
Infanta--that is to say, until the Greek Kalends.  I am ashamed that they
should believe it here, and fearful that there is still more evil
concealed than I know of."

Towards the close of the year 1606 the French Government became still
more eager to carry out their plans of alliance and absorption.
Aerssens, who loved a political intrigue better than became a republican
envoy, was perfectly aware of Henry's schemes.  He was disposed to humour
them, in order to make sure of his military assistance, but with the
secret intention of seeing them frustrated by the determined opposition
of the States.

The French ministers, by command of their sovereign, were disposed to
deal very plainly.  They informed the Dutch diplomatist, with very little
circumlocution, that if the republic wished assistance from France she
was to pay a heavy price for it.  Not a pound of flesh only, but the
whole body corporate, was to be surrendered if its destruction was to be
averted by French arms.

"You know," said Sillery, "that princes in all their actions consider
their interests, and his Majesty has not so much affection for your
conservation as to induce him to resign his peaceful position.  Tell me,
I pray you, what would you do for his Majesty in case anything should be
done for you?  You were lately in Holland.  Do you think that they would
give themselves to the king if he assisted them?  Do you not believe that
Prince Maurice has designs on the sovereignty, and would prevent the
fulfilment of the king's hopes?  What will you do for us in return for
our assistance?"

Aerssens was somewhat perplexed, but he was cunning at fence.  "We will
do all we can," said he, "for any change is more supportable than the
yoke of Spain."

"What can you do then?" persisted Sillery.  "Give us your opinion in
plain French, I beg of you, and lay aside all passion; for we have both
the same object--your preservation.  Besides interest, his Majesty has
affection for you.  Let him only see some advantage for himself to induce
to assist you more powerfully.  Suppose you should give us what you have
and what you may acquire in Flanders with the promise to treat secretly
with us when the time comes.  Could you do that?"

The envoy replied that this would be tearing the commonwealth in pieces.
If places were given away, the jealousy of the English would be excited.
Certainly it would be no light matter to surrender Sluys, the fruit of
Maurice's skill and energy, the splendidly earned equivalent for the loss
of Ostend.  "As to Sluys and other places in Flanders," said Aerssens,
"I don't know if towns comprised in our Union could be transferred or
pledged without their own consent and that of the States.  Should such a
thing get wind we might be ruined.  Nevertheless I will write to learn
what his Majesty may hope."

"The people," returned Sillery, "need know nothing of this transfer; for
it might be made secretly by Prince Maurice, who could put the French
quietly into Sluys and other Flemish places.  Meantime you had best make
a journey to Holland to arrange matters so that the deputies, coming
hither, may be amply instructed in regard to Sluys, and no time be lost.
His Majesty is determined to help you if you know how to help
yourselves."

The two men then separated, Sillery enjoining it upon the envoy to see
the king next morning, "in order to explain to his Majesty, as he had
just been doing to himself, that this sovereignty could not be
transferred, without the consent of the whole people, nor the people
be consulted in secret."

"It is necessary therefore to be armed," continued Henry's minister very
significantly, "before aspiring to the sovereignty."

Thus there was a faint glimmer of appreciation at the French court of the
meaning of popular sovereignty.  It did not occur to the minister that
the right of giving consent was to be respected.  The little obstacle was
to be overcome by stratagem and by force.  Prince Maurice was to put
French garrisons stealthily into Sluys and other towns conquered by the
republic in Flanders.  Then the magnanimous ally was to rise at the right
moment and overcome all resistance by force of arms.  The plot was a good
one.  It is passing strange, however, that the character of the Nassaus
and of the Dutch nation should after the last fifty years have been still
so misunderstood.  It seemed in France possible that Maurice would thus
defile his honour and the Netherlanders barter their liberty, by
accepting a new tyrant in place of the one so long ago deposed.

"This is the marrow of our conference," said Aerssens to Barneveld,
reporting the interview, "and you may thus perceive whither are tending
the designs of his Majesty.  It seems that they are aspiring here to the
sovereignty, and all my letters have asserted the contrary.  If you will
examine a little more closely, however, you will find that there is no
contradiction.  This acquisition would be desirable for France if it
could be made peacefully.  As it can only be effected by war you may make
sure that it will not be attempted; for the great maxim and basis of this
kingdom is to preserve repose, and at the same time give such occupation
to the King of Spain that his means shall be consumed and his designs
frustrated.  All this will cease if we make peace.

"Thus in treating with the king we must observe two rules.  The first is
that we can maintain ourselves no longer unless powerfully assisted, and
that, the people inclining to peace, we shall be obliged to obey the
people.  Secondly, we must let no difficulty appear as to the desire
expressed by his Majesty to have the sovereignty of these provinces.
We ought to let him hope for it, but to make him understand that by
ordinary and legitimate means he cannot aspire to it.  We will make him
think that we have an equal desire with himself, and we shall thus take
from those evil-disposed counsellors the power to injure us who are
always persuading him that he is only making us great for ourselves, and
thus giving us the power to injure him.  In short, the king can hope
nothing from us overtly, and certainly nothing covertly.  By explaining
to him that we require the authorization of the people, and by showing
ourselves prompt to grant his request, he will be the very first to
prevent us from taking any steps, in order that his repose may not be
disturbed.  I know that France does not wish to go to war with Spain.
Let us then pretend that we wish to be under the dominion of France, and
that we will lead our people to that point if the king desires it, but
that it cannot be done secretly.  Believe me, he will not wish it on such
conditions, while we shall gain much by this course.  Would to God that
we could engage France in war with Spain.  All the utility would be ours;
and the accidents of arms would so press them to Spain, Italy, and other
places, that they would have little leisure to think of us.  Consider all
this and conceal it from Buzanval."

Buzanval, it is well known, was the French envoy at the Hague, and it
must be confessed that these schemes and paltry falsehoods on the part of
the Dutch agent were as contemptible as any of the plots contrived every
day in Paris or Madrid.  Such base coin as this was still circulating in
diplomacy as if fresh from the Machiavellian mint; but the republican
agent ought to have known that his Government had long ago refused to
pass it current.

Soon afterwards this grave matter was discussed at the Hague between
Henry's envoy and Barneveld.  It was a very delicate negotiation.  The
Advocate wished to secure the assistance of a powerful but most
unscrupulous ally, and at the same time to conceal his real intention to
frustrate the French design upon the independence of the republic.

Disingenuous and artful as his conduct unquestionably was, it may at
least be questioned whether in that age of deceit any other great
statesman would have been more frank.  If the comparatively weak
commonwealth, by openly and scornfully refusing all the insidious and
selfish propositions of the French king, had incurred that monarch's
wrath, it would have taken a noble position no doubt, but it would have
perhaps been utterly destroyed.  The Advocate considered himself
justified in using the artifices of war against a subtle and dangerous
enemy who wore the mask of a friend.  When the price demanded for
military protection was the voluntary abandonment of national
independence in favour of the protector, the man who guided the affairs
of the Netherlands did not hesitate to humour and to outwit the king who
strove to subjugate the republic.  At the same time--however one may be
disposed to censure the dissimulation from the standing-ground of a lofty
morality--it should not be forgotten that Barneveld never hinted at any
possible connivance on his part with an infraction of the laws.  Whatever
might be the result of time, of persuasion, of policy, he never led
Henry or his ministers to believe that the people of the Netherlands
could be deprived of their liberty by force or fraud.  He was willing to
play a political game, in which he felt himself inferior to no man,
trusting to his own skill and coolness for success.  If the tyrant were
defeated, and at the same time made to serve the cause of the free
commonwealth, the Advocate believed this to be fair play.

Knowing himself surrounded by gamblers and tricksters, he probably did
not consider himself to be cheating because he did not play his cards
upon the table.

So when Buzanval informed him early in October that the possession of
Sluys and other Flemish towns would not be sufficient for the king, but
that they must offer the sovereignty on even more favourable conditions
than had once been proposed to Henry III., the Advocate told him roundly
that my lords the States were not likely to give the provinces to any
man, but meant to maintain their freedom and their rights.  The envoy
replied that his Majesty would be able to gain more favour perhaps with
the common people of the country.

When it is remembered that the States had offered the sovereignty of the
provinces to Henry III., abjectly and as it were without any conditions
at all, the effrontery of Henry IV. may be measured, who claimed the same
sovereignty, after twenty years of republican independence, upon even
more favourable terms than those which his predecessor had rejected.

Barneveld, in order to mitigate the effect of his plump refusal of the
royal overtures, explained to Buzanval, what Buzanval very well knew,
that the times had now changed; that in those days, immediately after the
death of William the Silent, despair and disorder had reigned in the
provinces, "while that dainty delicacy--liberty--had not so long been
sweetly tickling the appetites of the people; that the English had not
then acquired their present footing in the country, nor the house of
Nassau the age, the credit, and authority to which it had subsequently
attained."

He then intimated--and here began the deception, which certainly did not
deceive Buzanval--that if things were handled in the right way, there was
little doubt as to the king's reaching the end proposed, but that all
depended on good management.  It was an error, he said, to suppose that
in one, two, or three months, eight provinces and their principal
members, to wit, forty good cities all enjoying liberty and equality,
could be induced to accept a foreign sovereign.

Such language was very like irony, and probably not too subtle to escape
the fine perception of the French envoy.

The first thing to be done, continued the Advocate, is to persuade the
provinces to aid the king with all their means to conquer the disunited
provinces--to dispose of the archdukes, in short, and to drive the
Spaniards from the soil--and then, little by little, to make it clear
that there could be no safety for the States except in reducing the whole
body of the Netherlands under the authority of the king.  Let his Majesty
begin by conquering and annexing to his crown the provinces nearest him,
and he would then be able to persuade the others to a reasonable
arrangement.

Whether the Advocate's general reply was really considered by Buzanval
as a grave sarcasm, politely veiled, may be a question.  That envoy,
however, spoke to his Government of the matter as surrounded with
difficulties, but not wholly desperate.  Barneveld was, he said, inclined
to doubt whether the archdukes would be able, before any negotiations
were begun, to comply with the demand which he had made upon them to have
a declaration in writing that the United Provinces were to be regarded as
a free people over whom they pretended to no authority.  If so, the
French king would at once be informed of the fact.  Meantime the envoy
expressed the safe opinion that, if Prince Maurice and the Advocate
together should take the matter of Henry's sovereignty in hand with zeal,
they might conduct the bark to the desired haven.  Surely this was an
'if' with much virtue in it.  And notwithstanding that he chose to
represent Barneveld as, rich, tired, at the end of his Latin, and willing
enough to drop his anchor in a snug harbour, in order to make his fortune
secure, it was obvious enough that Buzanval had small hope at heart of
seeing his master's purpose accomplished.

As to Prince Maurice, the envoy did not even affect to believe him
capable of being made use of, strenuous as the efforts of the French
Government in that direction had been.  "He has no private designs that
I can find out," said Buzanval, doing full justice to the straightforward
and sincere character of the prince.  "He asks no change for himself or
for his country."  The envoy added, as a matter of private opinion
however, that if an alteration were to be made in the constitution of
the provinces, Maurice would prefer that it should be made in favour
of France than of any other Government.

He lost no opportunity, moreover, of impressing it upon his Government
that if the sovereignty were to be secured for France at all, it could
only be done by observing great caution, and by concealing their desire
to swallow the republic of which they were professing themselves the
friends.  The jealousy of England was sure to be awakened if France
appeared too greedy at the beginning.  On the other hand, that power
"might be the more easily rocked into a profound sleep if France did not
show its appetite at the very beginning of the banquet."  That the policy
of France should be steadily but stealthily directed towards getting
possession of as many strong places as possible in the Netherlands had
long been his opinion.  "Since we don't mean to go to war," said he a
year before to Villeroy, "let us at least follow the example of the
English, who have known how to draw a profit out of the necessities of
this state.  Why should we not demand, or help ourselves to, a few good
cities.  Sluys, for example, would be a security for us, and of great
advantage."

Suspicion was rife on this subject at the court of Spain.  Certainly
it would be less humiliating to the Catholic crown to permit the
independence of its rebellious subjects than to see them incorporated
into the realms of either France or England.  It is not a very striking
indication of the capacity of great rulers to look far into the future
that both, France and England should now be hankering after the
sovereignty of those very provinces, the solemn offer of which by the
provinces themselves both France and England had peremptorily and almost
contemptuously refused.

In Spain itself the war was growing very wearisome.  Three hundred
thousand dollars a month could no longer be relied upon from the royal
exchequer, or from the American voyages, or from the kite-flying
operations of the merchant princes on the Genoa exchange.

A great fleet, to be sure, had recently arrived, splendidly laden, from
the West Indies, as already stated.  Pagan slaves, scourged to their
dreadful work, continued to supply to their Christian taskmasters the
hidden treasures of the New World in exchange for the blessings of the
Evangel as thus revealed; but these treasures could never fill the
perpetual sieve of the Netherland war, rapidly and conscientiously as
they were poured into it, year after year.

The want of funds in the royal exchequer left the soldiers in Flanders
unpaid, and as an inevitable result mutiny admirably organized and calmly
defiant was again established throughout the obedient provinces.  This
happened regularly once a year, so that it seemed almost as business-like
a proceeding for an Eletto to proclaim mutiny as for a sovereign to
declare martial law.  Should the whole army mutiny at once, what might
become of the kingdom of Spain?

Moreover, a very uneasy feeling was prevalent that, as formerly, the
Turks had crossed the Hellespont into Europe by means of a Genoese
alliance and Genoese galleys, so now the Moors were contemplating the
reconquest of Granada, and of their other ancient possessions in Spain,
with the aid of the Dutch republic and her powerful fleets.--[Grotius,
xv. 715]

The Dutch cruisers watched so carefully on the track of the homeward-
bound argosies, that the traffic was becoming more dangerous than
lucrative, particularly since the public law established by Admiral
Fazardo, that it was competent for naval commanders to hang, drown, or
burn the crews of the enemy's merchantmen.

The Portuguese were still more malcontent than the Spaniards.  They had
gained little by the absorption of their kingdom by Spain, save
participation in the war against the republic, the result of which had
been to strip them almost entirely of the conquests of Vasco de Gama and
his successors, and to close to them the ports of the Old World and the
New.

In the republic there was a party for peace, no doubt, but peace only
with independence.  As for a return to their original subjection to Spain
they were unanimously ready to accept forty years more of warfare rather
than to dream of such a proposition.  There were many who deliberately
preferred war to peace.  Bitter experience had impressed very deeply on
the Netherlanders the great precept that faith would never be kept with
heretics.  The present generation had therefore been taught from their
cradles to believe that the word peace in Spanish mouths simply meant the
Holy Inquisition.  It was not unnatural, too, perhaps, that a people who
had never known what it was to be at peace might feel, in regard to that
blessing, much as the blind or the deaf towards colour or music; as
something useful and agreeable, no doubt, but with which they might the
more cheerfully dispense, as peculiar circumstances had always kept them
in positive ignorance of its nature.  The instinct of commercial
greediness made the merchants of Holland and Zeeland, and especially
those of Amsterdam, dread the revival of Antwerp in case of peace, to the
imagined detriment of the great trading centres of the republic.  It was
felt also to be certain that Spain, in case of negotiations, would lay
down as an indispensable preliminary the abstinence on the part of the
Netherlanders from all intercourse with the Indies, East or West; and
although such a prohibition would be received by those republicans with
perfect contempt, yet the mere discussion of the subject moved their
spleen.  They had already driven the Portuguese out of a large portion of
the field in the east, and they were now preparing by means of the same
machinery to dispute the monopoly of the Spaniards in the west.  To talk
of excluding such a people as this from intercourse with any portion of
the Old World or the New was the mumbling of dotage; yet nothing could be
more certain than that such would be the pretensions of Spain.

As for the stadholder, his vocation was war, his greatness had been
derived from war, his genius had never turned itself to pacific pursuits.
Should a peace be negotiated, not only would his occupation be gone, but
he might even find himself hampered for means.  It was probable that his
large salaries, as captain and admiral-general of the forces of the
republic, would be seriously curtailed, in case his services in the field
were no longer demanded, while such secret hopes as he might entertain of
acquiring that sovereign power which Barneveld had been inclined to
favour, were more likely to be fulfilled if the war should be continued.
At the same time, if sovereignty were to be his at all, he was distinctly
opposed to such limitations of his authority as were to have been
proposed by the States to his father.  Rather than reign on those
conditions, he avowed that he would throw himself head foremost
from the great tower of Hague Castle.

Moreover, the prince was smarting under the consciousness of having lost
military reputation, however undeservedly, in the latter campaigns, and
might reasonably hope to gain new glory in the immediate future.  Thus,
while his great rival, Marquis Spinola, whose fame had grown to so
luxuriant a height in so brief a period, had many reasons to dread the
results of future campaigning, Maurice seemed to have personally much to
lose and nothing to hope for in peace.  Spinola was over head and ears in
debt.  In the past two years he had spent millions of florins out of his
own pocket.  His magnificent fortune and boundless credit were seriously
compromised.  He had found it an easier task to take Ostend and relieve
Grol than to bolster up the finances of Spain.

His acceptances were becoming as much a drug upon the exchanges of
Antwerp, Genoa, or Augsburg, as those of the most Catholic king or their
Highnesses the archdukes.  Ruin stared him in the face, notwithstanding
the deeds with which he had startled the world, and he was therefore
sincerely desirous of peace, provided, of course, that all those
advantages for which the war had been waged in vain could now be
secured by negotiation.

There had been, since the arrival of the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands,
just forty years of fighting.  Maurice and the war had been born in the
same year, and it would be difficult for him to comprehend that his whole
life's work had been a superfluous task, to be rubbed away now with a
sponge.  Yet that Spain, on the entrance to negotiations, would demand
of the provinces submission to her authority, re-establishment of the
Catholic religion, abstinence from Oriental or American commerce, and the
toleration of Spanish soldiers over all the Netherlands, seemed
indubitable.

It was equally unquestionable that the seven provinces would demand
recognition of their national independence by Spain, would refuse public
practice of the Roman religion within their domains, and would laugh to
scorn any proposed limitations to their participation in the world's
traffic.  As to the presence of Spanish troops on their soil, that was,
of course, an inconceivable idea.

Where, then, could even a loophole be found through which the possibility
of a compromise could be espied?  The ideas of the contending parties
were as much opposed to each other as fire and snow.  Nevertheless, the
great forces of the world seemed to have gradually settled into such an
equilibrium as to make the continuance of the war for the present
impossible.

Accordingly, the peace-party in Brussels had cautiously put forth its
tentacles late in 1606, and again in the early days of the new year.
Walrave van Wittenhorst and Doctor Gevaerts had been allowed to come to
the Hague, ostensibly on private business, but with secret commission
from the archdukes to feel and report concerning the political
atmosphere.  They found that it was a penal offence in the republic to
talk of peace or of truce.  They nevertheless suspected that there might
be a more sympathetic layer beneath the very chill surface which they
everywhere encountered.  Having intimated in the proper quarters that the
archdukes would be ready to receive or to appoint commissioners for peace
or armistice, if becoming propositions should be made, they were allowed
on the 10th of January, 1607, to make a communication to the States-
General.  They indulged in the usual cheap commonplaces on the effusion
of blood, the calamities of war, and the blessings of peace, and assured
the States of the very benignant disposition of their Highnesses at
Brussels.

The States-General, in their reply, seventeen days afterwards, remarking
that the archdukes persisted in their unfounded pretensions of authority
over them, took occasion to assure their Highnesses that they had no
chance to obtain such authority except by the sword.  Whether they
were like to accomplish much in that way the history of the past might
sufficiently indicate, while on the other hand the States would always
claim the right, and never renounce the hope, of recovering those
provinces which had belonged to their free commonwealth since the
union of Utrecht, and which force and fraud had torn away.

During twenty-five years that union had been confirmed as a free state by
solemn decrees, and many public acts and dealings with the mightiest
potentates of Europe, nor could any other answer now be made to the
archdukes than the one always given to his holy Roman Imperial Majesty,
and other princes, to wit, that no negotiations could be had with powers
making any pretensions in conflict with the solemn decrees and well-
maintained rights of the United Netherlands.

It was in this year that two words became more frequent in the mouths of
men than they had ever been before; two words which as the ages rolled on
were destined to exercise a wider influence over the affairs of this
planet than was yet dreamed of by any thinker in Christendom.  Those
words were America and Virginia.  Certainly both words were known before,
although India was the more general term for these auriferous regions of
the west, which, more than a century long, had been open to European
adventure, while the land, baptized in honour of the throned Vestal, had
been already made familiar to European ears by the exploits of Raleigh.
But it was not till 1607 that Jamestown was founded, that Captain John
Smith's adventures with Powhattan, "emperor of Virginia," and his
daughter the Princess Pocahontas, became fashionable topics in England,
that the English attempts to sail up the Chickahominy to the Pacific
Ocean--as abortive as those of the Netherlanders to sail across the North
Pole to Cathay--were creating scientific discussion in Europe, and that
the first cargo of imaginary gold dust was exported from the James River.

With the adventurous minds of England all aflame with enthusiasm for
those golden regions, with the thick-coming fancies for digging, washing,
refining the precious sands of Virginia rivers, it was certain that a
great rent was now to be made in the Borgian grant.  It was inevitable
that the rivalry of the Netherlanders should be excited by the
achievements and the marvellous tales of Englishmen beyond the Atlantic,
and that they too should claim their share of traffic with that golden
and magnificent Unknown which was called America.  The rivalry between
England and Holland, already so conspicuous in the spicy Archipelagos of
the east, was now to be extended over the silvery regions of the west.
The two leading commercial powers of the Old World were now to begin
their great struggle for supremacy in the western hemisphere.

A charter for what was called a West India Company was accordingly
granted by the States-General.  West India was understood to extend from
the French settlements in Newfoundland or Acadia, along the American
coast to the Straits of Magellan, and so around to the South Sea,
including the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, besides all of Africa lying
between the tropic of Cancer and the Cape of Good Hope.  At least, within
those limits the West India Company was to have monopoly of trade, all
other Netherlanders being warned off the precincts.  Nothing could be
more magnificent, nor more vague.

The charter was for thirty-six years.  The company was to maintain armies
and fleets, to build forts and cities, to carry on war, to make treaties
of peace and of commerce.  It was a small peripatetic republic of
merchants and mariners, evolved out of the mother republic--which had at
last established its position among the powers of Christendom--and it was
to begin its career full grown and in full armour.

The States-General were to furnish the company at starting with one
million of florins and with twenty ships of war.  The company was to add
twenty other ships.  The Government was to consist of four chambers of
directors.  One-half the capital was to be contributed by the chamber of
Amsterdam, one-quarter by that of Zeeland, one-eighth respectively by the
chambers of the Meuse and of North Holland.  The chambers of Amsterdam,
of Zeeland, of the Meuse, and of North Holland were to have respectively
thirty, eighteen, fifteen, and fifteen directors.  Of these seventy-
eight, one-third were to be replaced every sixth year by others, while
from the whole number seventeen persons were to be elected as a permanent
board of managers.  Dividends were to be made as soon as the earnings
amounted to ten per cent. on the capital.  Maritime judges were to decide
upon prizes, the proceeds of which were not to be divided for six years,
in order that war might be self-sustaining.  Afterwards, the treasury of
the United Provinces should receive one-tenth, Prince Maurice one-
thirtieth, and the merchant stockholders the remainder.  Governors and
generals were to take the oath of fidelity to the States-General.  The
merchandize of the company was to be perpetually free of taxation, so far
as regarded old duties, and exempt from war-taxes for the first twenty
years.

Very violent and conflicting were the opinions expressed throughout the
republic in regard to this project.  It was urged by those most in favour
of it that the chief sources of the greatness of Spain would be thus
transferred to the States-General; for there could be no doubt that the
Hollanders, unconquerable at sea, familiar with every ocean-path, and
whose hardy constitutions defied danger and privation and the extremes of
heat and cold, would easily supplant the more delicately organized
adventurers from Southern Europe, already enervated by the exhausting
climate of America.  Moreover, it was idle for Spain to attempt the
defence of so vast a portion of the world.  Every tribe over which she
had exercised sway would furnish as many allies for the Dutch company as
it numbered men; for to obey and to hate the tyrannical Spaniard were
one.  The republic would acquire, in reality, the grandeur which with
Spain was but an empty boast, would have the glory of transferring the
great war beyond the limits of home into those far distant possessions,
where the enemy deemed himself most secure, and would teach the true
religion to savages sunk in their own superstitions, and still further
depraved by the imported idolatries of Rome.  Commerce was now world-
wide, and the time had come for the Netherlanders, to whom the ocean
belonged, to tear out from the pompous list of the Catholic king's titles
his appellation of Lord of the Seas.

There were others, however, whose language was not so sanguine.  They
spoke with a shiver of the inhabitants of America, who hated all men,
simply because they were men, or who had never manifested any love for
their species except as an article of food.  To convert such cannibals to
Christianity and Calvinism would be a hopeless endeavour, and meanwhile
the Spaniards were masters of the country.  The attempt to blockade half
the globe with forty galleots was insane; for, although the enemy had not
occupied the whole territory, he commanded every harbour and position of
vantage.  Men, scarcely able to defend inch by inch the meagre little
sandbanks of their fatherland, who should now go forth in hopes to
conquer the world, were but walking in their sleep.  They would awake to
the consciousness of ruin.

Thus men in the United Provinces spake of America.  Especially Barneveld
had been supposed to be prominent among the opponents of the new Company,
on the ground that the more violently commercial ambition excited itself
towards wider and wilder fields of adventure, the fainter grew
inclinations for peace.  The Advocate, who was all but omnipotent in
Holland and Zeeland, subsequently denied the imputation of hostility to
the new corporation, but the establishment of the West India Company,
although chartered, was postponed.

The archdukes had not been discouraged by the result of their first
attempts at negotiation, for Wittenhorst had reported a disposition
towards peace as prevalent in the rebellious provinces, so far as he had
contrived, during his brief mission, to feel the public pulse.

On the 6th February, 1607, Werner Cruwel, an insolvent tradesman of
Brussels, and a relative of Recorder Aerssens, father of the envoy at
Paris, made his appearance very unexpectedly at the house of his kinsman
at the Hague.  Sitting at the dinner-table, but neither eating nor
drinking, he was asked by his host what troubled him.  He replied that
he had a load on his breast.  Aerssens begged him, if it was his recent
bankruptcy that oppressed him, to use philosophy and patience.  The
merchant answered that he who confessed well was absolved well.  He then
took from his pocket-book a letter from President Richardot, and said he
would reveal what he had to say after dinner.  The cloth being removed,
and the wife and children of Aerssens having left the room, Cruwel
disclosed that he had been sent by Richardot and Father Neyen on a secret
mission.  The recorder, much amazed and troubled, refused to utter a
word, save to ask if Cruwel would object to confer with the Advocate.
The merchant expressing himself as ready for such an interview, the
recorder, although it was late, immediately sent a message to the great
statesman.  Barneveld was in bed and asleep, but was aroused to receive
the communication of Aerssens.  "We live in such a calumnious time," said
the recorder, "that many people believe that you and I know more of the
recent mission of Wittenhorst than we admit.  You had best interrogate
Cruwel in the presence of witnesses.  I know not the man's humour, but it
seems to me since his failure, that, in spite of his shy and lumpish
manner, he is false and cunning."

The result was a secret interview, on the 8th February, between Prince
Maurice, Barneveld, and the recorder, in which Cruwel was permitted to
state the object of his mission.  He then produced a short memorandum,
signed by Spinola and by Father Neyen, to the effect that the archdukes
were willing to treat for a truce of ten or twelve years, on the sole
condition that the States would abstain from the India navigation.  He
exhibited also another paper, signed only by Neyen, in which that friar
proposed to come secretly to the Hague, no one in Brussels to know of the
visit save the archdukes and Spinola; and all in the United Provinces to
be equally ignorant except the prince, the Advocate, and the recorder.
Cruwel was then informed that if Neyen expected to discuss such grave
matters with the prince, he must first send in a written proposal that
could go on all fours and deserve attention.  A week afterwards Cruwel
came back with a paper in which Neyen declared himself authorized by the
archdukes to treat with the States on the basis of their liberty and
independence, and to ask what they would give in return for so great a
concession as this renunciation of all right to "the so-called United
Provinces."

This being a step in advance, it was decided to permit the visit of
Neyen.  It was, however, the recorded opinion of the distinguished
personages to whom the proposal was made that it was a trick and a
deception.  The archdukes would, no doubt, it was said, nominally
recognise the provinces as a free State, but without really meaning it.
Meantime, they would do their best to corrupt the Government and to renew
the war after the republic had by this means been separated from its
friends.

John Neyen, father commissary of the Franciscans, who had thus invited
himself to the momentous conference, was a very smooth Flemish friar, who
seemed admirably adapted, for various reasons, to glide into the rebel
country and into the hearts of the rebels.  He was a Netherlander, born
at Antwerp, when Antwerp was a portion of the united commonwealth, of a
father who had been in the confidential service of William the Silent.
He was eloquent in the Dutch language, and knew the character of the
Dutch people.  He had lived much at court, both in Madrid and Brussels,
and was familiar with the ways of kings and courtiers.  He was a holy
man, incapable of a thought of worldly advancement for himself, but he
was a master of the logic often thought most conclusive in those days;
no man insinuating golden arguments more adroitly than he into half-
reluctant palms.  Blessed with a visage of more than Flemish frankness,
he had in reality a most wily and unscrupulous disposition.  Insensible
to contumely, and incapable of accepting a rebuff, he could wind back to
his purpose when less supple negotiators would have been crushed.

He was described by his admirers as uniting the wisdom of the serpent
with the guilelessness of the dove.  Who better than he then, in this
double capacity, to coil himself around the rebellion, and to carry the
olive-branch in his mouth?

On the 25th February the monk, disguised in the dress of a burgher,
arrived at Ryswick, a village a mile and a half from the Hague.  He was
accompanied on the journey by Cruwel, and they gave themselves out as
travelling tradesmen.  After nightfall, a carriage having been sent to
the hostelry, according to secret agreement, by Recorder Aerssens, John
Neyen was brought to the Hague.  The friar, as he was driven on through
these hostile regions, was somewhat startled, on looking out, to find
himself accompanied by two mounted musketeers on each side of the
carriage, but they proved to have been intended as a protective escort.
He was brought to the recorder's house, whence, after some delay, he was
conveyed to the palace.  Here he was received by an unknown and silent
attendant, who took him by the hand and led him through entirely deserted
corridors and halls.  Not a human being was seen nor a sound heard until
his conductor at last reached the door of an inner apartment through
which he ushered him, without speaking a syllable.  The monk then found
himself in the presence of two personages, seated at a table covered with
books and papers.  One was in military undress, with an air about him of
habitual command, a fair-complexioned man of middle age, inclining to
baldness, rather stout, with a large blue eye, regular features, and a
mouse-coloured beard.  The other was in the velvet cloak and grave
habiliments of a civil functionary, apparently sixty years of age, with a
massive features, and a shaggy beard.  The soldier was Maurice of Nassau,
the statesman was John of Olden-Barneveld.

Both rose as the friar entered, and greeted him with cordiality.

"But," said the prince, "how did you dare to enter the Hague, relying
only on the word of a Beggar?"

"Who would not confide," replied Neyen, "in the word of so exalted, so
respectable a Beggar as you, O most excellent prince?"

With these facetious words began the negotiations through which an
earnest attempt was at last to be made for terminating a seemingly
immortal war.  The conversation, thus begun, rolled amicably and
informally along.  The monk produced letters from the archdukes, in
which, as he stated, the truly royal soul of the writers shone
conspicuously forth.  Without a thought for their own advantage, he
observed, and moved only by a contemplation of the tears shed by so many
thousands of beings reduced to extreme misery, their Highnesses, although
they were such exalted princes, cared nothing for what would be said by
the kings of Europe and all the potentates of the universe about their
excessive indulgence."

"What indulgence do you speak of?"  asked the stadholder.

"Does that seem a trifling indulgence," replied John Neyen, "that they
are willing to abandon the right which they inherited from their
ancestors over these provinces, to allow it so easily to slip from their
fingers, to declare these people to be free, over whom, as their subjects
refusing the yoke, they have carried on war so long?"

"It is our right hands that have gained this liberty," said Maurice, "not
the archdukes that have granted it.  It has been acquired by our
treasure, poured forth how freely! by the price of our blood, by so many
thousands of souls sent to their account.  Alas, how dear a price have
we paid for it!  All the potentates of Christendom, save the King of
Spain alone, with his relatives the archdukes, have assented to our
independence.  In treating for peace we ask no gift of freedom from the
archdukes.  We claim to be regarded by them as what we are--free men.
If they are unwilling to consider us as such, let them subject us to
their dominion if they can.  And as we have hitherto done, we shall
contend more fiercely for liberty than for life."

With this, the tired monk was dismissed to sleep off the effects of his
journey and of the protracted discussion, being warmly recommended to the
captain of the citadel, by whom he was treated with every possible
consideration.

Several days of private discussion ensued between Neyen and the leading
personages of the republic.  The emissary was looked upon with great
distrust.  All schemes of substantial negotiation were regarded by the
public as visions, while the monk on his part felt the need of all his
tact and temper to wind his way out of the labyrinth into which he felt
that he had perhaps too heedlessly entered.  A false movement on his part
would involve himself and his masters in a hopeless maze of suspicion,
and make a pacific result impossible.

At length, it having been agreed to refer the matter to the States-
General, Recorder Aerssens waited upon Neyen to demand his credentials
for negotiation.  He replied that he had been forbidden to deliver his
papers, but that he was willing to exhibit them to the States-General.

He came accordingly to that assembly, and was respectfully received.
All the deputies rose, and he was placed in a seat near the presiding
officer.  Olden-Barneveld then in a few words told him why he had been
summoned.  The monk begged that a want of courtesy might not be imputed
to him, as he had been sent to negotiate with three individuals, not with
a great assembly.

Thus already the troublesome effect of publicity upon diplomacy was
manifesting itself.  The many-headed, many-tongued republic was a
difficult creature to manage, adroit as the negotiator had proved himself
to be in gliding through the cabinets and council-chambers of princes and
dealing with the important personages found there.

The power was, however, produced, and handed around the assembly, the
signature and seals being duly inspected by the members.  Neyen was then
asked if he had anything to say in public.  He replied in the negative,
adding only a few vague commonplaces about the effusion of blood and the
desire of the archdukes for the good of mankind.  He was then dismissed.

A few days afterwards a committee of five from the States-General, of
which Barneveld was chairman, conferred with Neyen.  He was informed that
the paper exhibited by him was in many respects objectionable, and that
they had therefore drawn up a form which he was requested to lay before
the archdukes for their guidance in making out a new power.  He was asked
also whether the king of Spain was a party to these proposals for
negotiation.  The monk answered that he was not informed of the fact,
but that he considered it highly probable.

John Neyen then departed for Brussels with the form prescribed by the
States-General in his pocket.  Nothing could exceed the indignation with
which the royalists and Catholics at the court of the archdukes were
inspired by the extreme arrogance and obstinacy thus manifested by the
rebellious heretics.  That the offer on the part of their master to
negotiate should be received by them with cavils, and almost with
contempt, was as great an offence as their original revolt.  That the
servant should dare to prescribe a form for the sovereign to copy seemed
to prove that the world was coming to an end.  But it was ever thus with
the vulgar, said the courtiers and church dignitaries, debating these
matters.  The insanity of plebeians was always enormous, and never more
so than when fortune for a moment smiled.  Full of arrogance and temerity
when affairs were prosperous, plunged in abject cowardice when dangers
and reverses came--such was the People--such it must ever be.

Thus blustered the priests and the parasites surrounding the archduke,
nor need their sentiments amaze us.  Could those honest priests and
parasites have ever dreamed, before the birth of this upstart republic,
that merchants, manufacturers, and farmers, mechanics and advocates--the
People, in short--should presume to meddle with affairs of state?  Their
vocation had been long ago prescribed--to dig and to draw, to brew and to
bake, to bear burdens in peace and to fill bloody graves in war--what
better lot could they desire?

Meantime their superiors, especially endowed with wisdom by the
Omnipotent, would direct trade and commerce, conduct war and diplomacy,
make treaties, impose taxes, fill their own pockets, and govern the
universe.  Was not this reasonable and according to the elemental laws?
If the beasts of the field had been suddenly gifted with speech, and had
constituted themselves into a free commonwealth for the management of
public affairs, they would hardly have caused more profound astonishment
at Brussels and Madrid than had been excited by the proceedings of the
rebellious Dutchmen.

Yet it surely might have been suggested, when the lament of the courtiers
over the abjectness of the People in adversity was so emphatic, that Dorp
and Van Loon, Berendrecht and Gieselles, with the men under their
command, who had disputed every inch of Little Troy for three years and
three months, and had covered those fatal sands with a hundred thousand
corpses, had not been giving of late such evidence of the People's
cowardice in reverses as theory required.  The siege of Ostend had been
finished only three years before, and it is strange that its lessons
should so soon have been forgotten.

It was thought best, however, to dissemble.  Diplomacy in those days--
certainly the diplomacy of Spain and Rome--meant simply dissimulation.
Moreover, that solid apothegm, 'haereticis non servanda fides,' the most
serviceable anchor ever forged for true believers, was always ready to be
thrown out, should storm or quicksand threaten, during the intricate
voyage to be now undertaken.

John Neyen soon returned to the Hague, having persuaded his masters
that it was best to affect compliance with the preliminary demand of
the States.  During the discussions in regard to peace, it would not be
dangerous to treat with the rebel provinces as with free states, over
which the archdukes pretended to no authority, because--so it was
secretly argued--this was to be understood with a sense of similitude.
"We will negotiate with them as if they were free," said the greyfriar to
the archduke and his counsellors, "but not with the signification of true
and legitimate liberty.  They have laid down in their formula that we are
to pretend to no authority over them.  Very well.  For the time being we
will pretend that we do not pretend to any such authority.  To negotiate
with them as if they were free will not make them free.  It is no
recognition by us that they are free.  Their liberty could never be
acquired by their rebellion.  This is so manifest that neither the king
nor the archdukes can lose any of their rights over the United Provinces,
even should they make this declaration."

Thus the hair-sputters at Brussels--spinning a web that should be stout
enough to entrap the noisy, blundering republicans at the Hague, yet so
delicate as to go through the finest dialectical needle.  Time was to
show whether subtilty or bluntness was the best diplomatic material.

The monk brought with him three separate instruments or powers, to be
used according to his discretion.  Admitted to the assembly of the
States-General, he produced number one.

It was instantly rejected.  He then offered number two, with the same
result.  He now declared himself offended, not on his own account, but
for the sake of his masters, and asked leave to retire from the assembly,
leaving with them the papers which had been so benignantly drawn up, and
which deserved to be more carefully studied.

The States, on their parts, were sincerely and vehemently indignant.
What did all this mean, it was demanded, this producing one set of
propositions after another?  Why did the archdukes not declare their
intentions openly and at once?  Let the States depart each to the several
provinces, and let John Neyen be instantly sent out of the country.  Was
it thought to bait a trap for the ingenuous Netherlanders, and catch them
little by little, like so many wild animals?  This was not the way the
States dealt with the archdukes.  What they meant they put in front--
first, last, and always.  Now and in the future they said and they would
say exactly what they wished, candidly and seriously.  Those who pursued
another course would never come into negotiation with them.

The monk felt that he had excited a wrath which it would be difficult
to assuage.  He already perceived the difference between a real and an
affected indignation, and tried to devise some soothing remedy.  Early
next morning he sent a petition in writing to the States for leave to
make an explanation to the assembly.  Barneveld and Recorder Aerssens, in
consequence, came to him immediately, and heaped invectives upon his head
for his duplicity.

Evidently it was a different matter dealing with this many-headed roaring
beast, calling itself a republic, from managing the supple politicians
with whom he was more familiar.  The noise and publicity of these
transactions were already somewhat appalling to the smooth friar who was
accustomed to negotiate in comfortable secrecy.  He now vehemently
protested that never man was more sincere than he, and implored for time
to send to Brussels for another power.  It is true that number three was
still in his portfolio, but he had seen so much indignation on the
production of number two as to feel sure that the fury of the States
would know no bounds should he now confess that he had come provided with
a third.

It was agreed accordingly to wait eight days, in which period he might
send for and receive the new power already in his possession.  These
little tricks were considered masterly diplomacy in those days, and by
this kind of negotiators; and such was the way in which it was proposed
to terminate a half century of warfare.

     [The narrative is the monk's own, as preserved by his admirer,
     the Jesuit Gallucci, (ubi sup.)]

The friar wrote to his masters, not of course to ask for a new power, but
to dilate on the difficulties to be anticipated in procuring that which
the losing party is always most bent upon in circumstances like these,
and which was most ardently desired by the archdukes--an armistice.  He
described Prince Maurice as sternly opposed to such a measure, believing
that temporary cessation of hostilities was apt to be attended with
mischievous familiarity between the opposing camps, with relaxation of
discipline, desertion, and various kinds of treachery, and that there was
no better path to peace than that which was trampled by contending hosts.

Seven days passed, and then Neyen informed the States that he had at last
received a power which he hoped would prove satisfactory.  Being admitted
accordingly to the assembly, he delivered an eloquent eulogy upon the
sincerity of the archdukes, who, with perhaps too little regard for their
own dignity and authority, had thus, for the sake of the public good, so
benignantly conceded what the States had demanded.

Barneveld, on receiving the new power, handed to Neyen a draught of an
agreement which he was to study at his leisure, and in which he might
suggest alterations.  At the same time it was demanded that within three
months the written consent of the King of Spain to the proposed
negotiations should be produced.  The Franciscan objected that it did
not comport with the dignity of the archdukes to suppose the consent of
any other sovereign needful to confirm their acts.  Barneveld insisted
with much vehemence on the necessity of this condition.  It was perfectly
notorious, he said, that the armies commanded by the archdukes were
subject to the King of Spain, and were called royal armies.  Prince
Maurice observed that all prisoners taken by him had uniformly called
themselves soldiers of the Crown, not of the archdukes, nor of Marquis
Spinola.

Barneveld added that the royal power over the armies in the Netherlands
and over the obedient provinces was proved by the fact that all
commanders of regiments, all governors of fortresses, especially of
Antwerp, Ghent, Cambray, and the like, were appointed by the King of
Spain.  These were royal citadels with royal garrisons.  That without the
knowledge and consent of the King of Spain it would be impossible to
declare the United Provinces free, was obvious; for in the cession by
Philip II. of all the Netherlands it was provided that, without the
consent of the king, no part of that territory could be ceded, and this
on pain of forfeiting all the sovereignty.  To treat without the king
was therefore impossible.

The Franciscan denied that because the sovereigns of Spain sent funds and
auxiliary troops to Flanders, and appointed military commanders there of
various degrees, the authority of the archdukes was any the less supreme.
Philip II. had sent funds and troops to sustain the League, but he was
not King of France.

Barneveld probably thought it not worth his while to reply that Philip,
with those funds and those troops, had done his best to become King of
France, and that his failure proved nothing for the argument either way.

Neyen then returned once more to Brussels, observing as he took leave
that the decision of the archdukes as to the king's consent was very
doubtful, although he was sure that the best thing for all parties
would be to agree to an armistice out of hand.

This, however, was far from being the opinion of the States or the
stadholder.

After conferring with his masters, the monk came down by agreement from
Antwerp to the Dutch ships which lay in the, Scheld before Fort Lillo.
On board one of these, Dirk van der Does had been stationed with a
special commission from the States to compare documents.  It was
expressly ordered that in these preliminary negotiations neither party
was to go on shore.  On a comparison of the agreement brought by Neyen
from Brussels with the draught furnished by Barneveld, of which Van der
Does had a copy, so many discrepancies appeared that the document of the
archdukes was at once rejected.  But of course the monk had a number two,
and this, after some trouble, was made to agree with the prescribed form.
Brother John then, acting upon what he considered the soundest of
principles--that no job was so difficult as not to be accomplished with
the help of the precious metals--offered his fellow negotiator a valuable
gold chain as a present from the archdukes.  Dirk van der Does accepted
the chain, but gave notice of the fact to his Government.

The monk now became urgent to accompany his friend to the Hague, but this
had been expressly forbidden by the States.  Neyen felt sure, he said,
of being able by arguments, which he could present by word of mouth, to
overcome the opposition to the armistice were he once more to be admitted
to the assembly.  Van der Does had already much overstaid his appointed
time, bound to the spot, as it were, by the golden chain thrown around
him by the excellent friar, and he now, in violation of orders, wrote to
the Hague for leave to comply with this request.  Pending the answer, the
persuasive Neyen convinced him, much against his will, that they might
both go together as far as Delft.  To Delft they accordingly went; but,
within half a league of that place, met a courier with strict orders that
the monk was at once to return to Brussels.  Brother John was in great
agitation.  Should he go back, the whole negotiation might come to
nought; should he go on, he might be clapped into prison as a spy.  Being
conscious, however, that his services as a spy were intended to be the
most valuable part of his mission, he resolved to proceed in that
capacity.  So he persuaded his friend Dirk to hide him in the hold of a
canal-boat.  Van der Does was in great trepidation himself, but on
reaching the Hague and giving up his gold chain to Barneveld, he made his
peace, and obtained leave for the trembling but audacious friar to come
out of his hiding-place.

Appearing once more before the States-General on the afternoon of 7th
May,  Neyen urged with much eloquence the propriety of an immediate
armistice both by sea and land, insisting that it would be a sanguinary
farce to establish a cessation of hostilities upon one element while
blood and treasure were profusely flowing on the oceans.  There were
potent reasons for this earnestness on the part of the monk to procure a
truce to maritime operations, as very soon was to be made evident to the
world.  Meantime, on this renewed visit, the negotiator expressed himself
as no longer doubtful in regard to the propriety of requesting the
Spanish king's consent to the proposed negotiations.  That consent,
however, would in his opinion depend upon the earnestness now to be
manifested by the States in establishing the armistice by sea and land,
and upon their promptness in recalling the fleets now infesting the coast
of Spain.  No immediate answer was given to these representations, but
Neyen was requested to draw up his argument in writing, in order that it
might be duly pondered by the States of the separate provinces.

The radical defect of the Dutch constitution--the independent sovereignty
claimed by each one of the provinces composing the confederation, each of
those provinces on its part being composed of cities, each again claiming
something very like sovereignty for itself--could not fail to be
manifested whenever, great negotiations with foreign powers were to be
undertaken.  To obtain the unanimous consent of seven independent little
republics was a work of difficulty, requiring immense expenditure of time
in comparatively unimportant contingencies.  How intolerable might become
the obstructions, the dissensions, and the delays, now that a series of
momentous and world-wide transactions was beginning, on the issue of
which the admission of a new commonwealth into the family of nations,
the international connections of all the great powers of Christendom,
the commerce of the world, and the peace of Europe depended.

Yet there was no help for it but to make the best present use of the
institutions which time and great events had bestowed upon the young
republic, leaving to a more convenient season the task of remodelling the
law.  Meanwhile, with men who knew their own minds, who meant to speak
the truth, and who were resolved to gather in at last the harvest
honestly and bravely gained by nearly a half-century of hard fighting, it
would be hard for a legion of friars, with their heads full of quirks and
their wallets full of bills of exchange, to carry the day for despotism.

Barneveld was sincerely desirous of peace.  He was well aware that his
province of Holland, where he was an intellectual autocrat, was
staggering under the burden of one half the expenses of the whole
republic.  He knew that Holland in the course of the last nine years,
notwithstanding the constantly heightened rate of impost on all objects
of ordinary consumption, was twenty-six millions of florins behindhand,
and that she had reason therefore to wish for peace.  The great Advocate,
than whom no statesman in Europe could more accurately scan the world's
horizon, was convinced that the propitious moment for honourable
straightforward negotiations to secure peace, independence, and free
commerce, free religion and free government, had come, and he had
succeeded in winning the reluctant Maurice into a partial adoption,
at least, of his opinions.

The Franciscan remained at Delft, waiting, by direction of the States,
for an answer to his propositions, and doing his best according to the
instructions of his own Government to espy the condition and sentiments
of the enemy.  Becoming anxious after the lapse of a fortnight, he wrote
to Barneveld.  In reply the Advocate twice sent a secret messenger,
urging, him to be patient, assuring him that the affair was working well;
that the opposition to peace came chiefly from Zeeland and from certain
parties in Amsterdam vehemently opposed to peace or truce; but that the
rest of Holland was decidedly in favour of the negotiations.

A few days passed, and Neyen was again summoned before the assembly.
Barneveld now informed him that the Dutch fleet would be recalled from
the coast of Spain so soon as the consent of his Catholic Majesty to
the negotiations arrived, but that it would be necessary to confine the
cessation of naval warfare within certain local limits.  Both these
conditions were strenuously opposed by the Franciscan, who urged that
the consent of the Spanish king was certain, but that this new
proposition to localize the maritime armistice would prove to be fraught
with endless difficulties and dangers.  Barneveld and the States
remaining firm, however, and giving him a formal communication of their
decision in writing, Neyen had nothing for it but to wend his way back
rather malcontent to Brussels.

It needed but a brief deliberation at the court of the archdukes to bring
about the desired arrangement.  The desire for an armistice, especially
for a cessation of hostilities by sea, had been marvellously stimulated
by an event to be narrated in the next chapter.  Meantime, more than the
first three months of the year had been passed in these secret
preliminary transactions, and so softly had the stealthy friar sped to
and fro between Brussels and the Hague, that when at last the armistice
was announced it broke forth like a sudden flash of fine weather in the
midst of a raging storm.  No one at the archduke's court knew of the
mysterious negotiations save the monk himself, Spinola, Richardot,
Verreycken, the chief auditor, and one or two others.  The great Belgian
nobles, from whom everything had been concealed, were very wroth, but the
Belgian public was as much delighted as amazed at the prospects of peace.
In the United Provinces opinions were conflicting, but doubtless joy and
confidence were the prevailing emotions.

Towards the middle of April the armistice was publicly announced.  It was
to last for eight months from the 4th of May.  During this period no
citadels were to be besieged, no camps brought near a city, no new
fortifications built, and all troops were to be kept carefully within
walls.  Meantime commissioners were to be appointed by the archdukes to
confer with an equal number of deputies of the United Provinces for peace
or for a truce of ten, fifteen, or twenty years, on the express ground
that the archdukes regarded the United Provinces as free countries, over
which their Highnesses pretended to no authority.

The armistice on land was absolute.  On sea, hostilities were to cease in
the German Ocean and in the channel between England and France, while it
was also provided that the Netherland fleet should, within a certain
period, be recalled from the Spanish coast.

A day of public fast, humiliation, thanksgiving, and prayer was ordered
throughout the republic for the 9th of May, in order to propitiate the
favour of Heaven on the great work to be undertaken; and, as a further
precaution, Prince Maurice ordered all garrisons in the strong places to
be doubled, lest the slippery enemy should take advantage of too much
confidence reposed in his good faith.  The preachers throughout the
commonwealth, each according to his individual bias, improved the
occasion by denouncing the Spaniard from their pulpits and inflaming the
popular hatred against the ancient enemy, or by dilating on the blessings
of peace and the horrors of war.  The peace party and the war party, the
believers in Barneveld and the especial adherents of Prince Maurice,
seemed to divide the land in nearly equal portions.

While the Netherlands, both rebellious and obedient, were filled with
these various emotions, the other countries of Europe were profoundly
amazed at the sudden revelation.  It was on the whole regarded as a
confession of impotence on the part of Spain that the archdukes should
now prepare to send envoys to the revolted provinces as to a free and
independent people.  Universal monarchy, brought to such a pass as this,
was hardly what had been expected after the tremendous designs and the
grandiloquent language on which the world had so long been feeding as its
daily bread.  The spectacle of anointed monarchs thus far humbling
themselves to the people of rebellion dictating terms, instead of
writhing in dust at the foot of the throne--was something new in history.
The heavens and earth might soon be expected to pass away, now that such
a catastrophe was occurring.

The King of France had also been kept in ignorance of these events.  It
was impossible, however, that the negotiations could go forward without
his consent and formal participation.  Accordingly on receiving the news
he appointed an especial mission to the Hague--President Jeannin and De
Russy, besides his regular resident ambassador Buzanval.  Meantime
startling news reached the republic in the early days of May.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

A penal offence in the republic to talk of peace or of truce
Accepting a new tyrant in place of the one so long ago deposed
As if they were free will not make them free
As neat a deception by telling the truth
Cargo of imaginary gold dust was exported from the James River
Delay often fights better than an army against a foreign invader
Diplomacy of Spain and Rome--meant simply dissimulation
Draw a profit out of the necessities of this state
England hated the Netherlands
Friendly advice still more intolerable
Haereticis non servanda fides
He who confessed well was absolved well
Insensible to contumely, and incapable of accepting a rebuff
Languor of fatigue, rather than any sincere desire for peace
Much as the blind or the deaf towards colour or music
Subtle and dangerous enemy who wore the mask of a friend
Word peace in Spanish mouths simply meant the Holy Inquisition




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v78
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 79, 1607



CHAPTER XLVII.

     A Dutch fleet under Heemskerk sent to the coast of Spain and
     Portugal--Encounter with the Spanish war fleet under D'Avila--Death
     of both commanders-in-chief--Victory of the Netherlanders--Massacre
     of the Spaniards.

The States-General had not been inclined to be tranquil under the check
which Admiral Haultain had received upon the coast of Spain in the autumn
of 1606.  The deed of terrible self-devotion by which Klaaszoon and his
comrades had in that crisis saved the reputation of the republic, had
proved that her fleets needed only skilful handling and determined
leaders to conquer their enemy in the Western seas as certainly as they
had done in the archipelagos of the East.  And there was one pre-eminent
naval commander, still in the very prime of life, but seasoned by an
experience at the poles and in the tropics such as few mariners in that
early but expanding maritime epoch could boast.  Jacob van Heemskerk,
unlike many of the navigators and ocean warriors who had made and were
destined to make the Orange flag of the United Provinces illustrious over
the world, was not of humble parentage.  Sprung of an ancient, knightly
race, which had frequently distinguished itself in his native province of
Holland, he had followed the seas almost from his cradle.  By turns a
commercial voyager, an explorer, a privateer's-man, or an admiral of war-
fleets, in days when sharp distinctions between the merchant service and
the public service, corsairs' work and cruisers' work, did not exist, he
had ever proved himself equal to any emergency--a man incapable of
fatigue, of perplexity, or of fear.  We have followed his career during
that awful winter in Nova Zembla, where, with such unflinching cheerful
heroism, he sustained the courage of his comrades--the first band of
scientific martyrs that had ever braved the dangers and demanded the
secrets of those arctic regions.  His glorious name--as those of so many
of his comrades and countrymen--has been rudely torn from cape,
promontory, island, and continent, once illustrated by courage and
suffering, but the noble record will ever remain.

Subsequently he had much navigated the Indian ocean; his latest
achievement having been, with two hundred men, in a couple of yachts,
to capture an immense Portuguese carrack, mounting thirty guns, and
manned with eight hundred sailors, and to bring back a prodigious booty
for the exchequer of the republic.  A man with delicate features, large
brown eyes, a thin high nose, fair hair and beard, and a soft, gentle
expression, he concealed, under a quiet exterior, and on ordinary
occasions a very plain and pacific costume, a most daring nature,
and an indomitable ambition for military and naval distinction.

He was the man of all others in the commonwealth to lead any new
enterprise that audacity could conceive against the hereditary enemy.

The public and the States-General were anxious to retrace the track of
Haultain, and to efface the memory of his inglorious return from the
Spanish coast.  The sailors of Holland and Zeeland were indignant that
the richly freighted fleets of the two Indies had been allowed to slip so
easily through their fingers.  The great East India Corporation was
importunate with Government that such blunders should not be repeated,
and that the armaments known to be preparing in the Portuguese ports,
the homeward-bound fleets that might be looked for at any moment off the
peninsular coast, and the Spanish cruisers which were again preparing to
molest the merchant fleets of the Company, should be dealt with
effectively and in season.

Twenty-six vessels of small size but of good sailing qualities, according
to the idea of the epoch, were provided, together with four tenders.  Of
this fleet the command was offered to Jacob van Heemskerk.  He accepted
with alacrity, expressing with his usual quiet self-confidence the hope
that, living or dead, his fatherland would have cause to thank him.
Inspired only by the love of glory, he asked for no remuneration for his
services save thirteen per cent. of the booty, after half a million
florins should have been paid into the public treasury.  It was hardly
probable that this would prove a large share of prize money, while
considerable victories alone could entitle him to receive a stiver.

The expedition sailed in the early days of April for the coast of Spain
and Portugal, the admiral having full discretion to do anything that
might in his judgment redound to the advantage of the republic.  Next in
command was the vice-admiral of Zeeland, Laurenz Alteras.  Another famous
seaman in the fleet was Captain Henry Janszoon of Amsterdam, commonly
called Long Harry, while the weather-beaten and well-beloved Admiral
Lambert, familiarly styled by his countrymen "Pretty Lambert," some of
whose achievements have already been recorded in these pages, was the
comrade of all others upon whom Heemskerk most depended.  After the 10th
April the admiral, lying off and on near the mouth of the Tagus, sent a
lugger in trading disguise to reconnoitre that river.  He ascertained by
his spies, sent in this and subsequently in other directions, as well as
by occasional merchantmen spoken with at sea, that the Portuguese fleet
for India would not be ready to sail for many weeks; that no valuable
argosies were yet to be looked for from America, but that a great war-
fleet, comprising many galleons of the largest size, was at that very
moment cruising in the Straits of Gibraltar.  Such of the Netherland
traders as were returning from the Levant, as well as those designing to
enter the Mediterranean, were likely to fall prizes to this formidable
enemy.  The heart of Jacob Heemskerk danced for joy.  He had come forth
for glory, not for booty, and here was what he had scarcely dared to hope
for--a powerful antagonist instead of peaceful, scarcely resisting, but
richly-laden merchantmen.  The accounts received were so accurate as to
assure him that the Gibraltar fleet was far superior to his own in size
of vessels, weight of metal, and number of combatants.  The circumstances
only increased his eagerness.  The more he was over-matched, the greater
would be the honour of victory, and he steered for the straits, tacking
to and fro in the teeth of a strong head-wind.

On the morning of the 25th April he was in the narrowest part of the
mountain-channel, and learned that the whole Spanish fleet was in the Bay
of Gibraltar.

The marble pillar of Hercules rose before him.  Heemskerk was of a poetic
temperament, and his imagination was inflamed by the spectacle which met
his eyes.  Geographical position, splendour of natural scenery, immortal
fable, and romantic history, had combined to throw a spell over that
region.  It seemed marked out for perpetual illustration by human valour.
The deeds by which, many generations later, those localities were to
become identified with the fame of a splendid empire--then only the most
energetic rival of the young republic, but destined under infinitely
better geographical conditions to follow on her track of empire, and with
far more prodigious results--were still in the womb of futurity.  But St.
Vincent, Trafalgar, Gibraltar--words which were one day to stir the
English heart, and to conjure heroic English shapes from the depths so
long as history endures--were capes and promontories already familiar to
legend and romance.

Those Netherlanders had come forth from their slender little fatherland
to offer battle at last within his own harbours and under his own
fortresses to the despot who aspired to universal monarchy, and who
claimed the lordship of the seas.  The Hollanders and Zeelanders had
gained victories on the German Ocean, in the Channel, throughout the
Indies, but now they were to measure strength with the ancient enemy in
this most conspicuous theatre, and before the eyes of Christendom.  It
was on this famous spot that the ancient demigod had torn asunder by main
strength the continents of Europe and Africa.  There stood the opposite
fragments of the riven mountain-chain, Calpe and Abyla, gazing at each
other, in eternal separation, across the gulf, emblems of those two
antagonistic races which the terrible hand of Destiny has so ominously
disjoined.  Nine centuries before, the African king, Moses son of Nuzir,
and his lieutenant, Tarik son of Abdallah, had crossed that strait and
burned the ships which brought them.  Black Africa had conquered a
portion of whiter Europe, and laid the foundation of the deadly mutual
repugnance which nine hundred years of bloodshed had heightened into
insanity of hatred.  Tarik had taken the town and mountain, Carteia and
Calpe, and given to both his own name.  Gib-al-Tarik, the cliff of Tarik,
they are called to this day.

Within the two horns of that beautiful bay, and protected by the fortress
on the precipitous rock, lay the Spanish fleet at anchor.  There were ten
galleons of the largest size, besides lesser war-vessels and carracks,
in all twenty-one sail.  The admiral commanding was Don Juan Alvarez
d'Avila, a veteran who had fought at Lepanto under Don John of Austria.
His son was captain of his flag-ship, the St. Augustine.  The vice-
admiral's galleon was called 'Our Lady of La Vega,' the rear-admiral's
was the 'Mother of God,' and all the other ships were baptized by the
holy names deemed most appropriate, in the Spanish service, to deeds of
carnage.

On the other hand, the nomenclature of the Dutch ships suggested a
menagerie.  There was the Tiger, the Sea Dog, the Griffin, the Red Lion,
the Golden Lion, the Black Bear, the White Bear; these, with the AEolus
and the Morning Star, were the leading vessels of the little fleet.

On first attaining a distant view of the enemy, Heemskerk summoned all
the captains on board his flag-ship, the AEolus, and addressed them in a
few stirring words.

"It is difficult," he said, "for Netherlanders not to conquer on salt
water.  Our fathers have gained many a victory in distant seas, but it is
for us to tear from the enemy's list of titles his arrogant appellation
of Monarch of the Ocean.  Here, on the verge of two continents, Europe is
watching our deeds, while the Moors of Africa are to learn for the first
time in what estimation they are to hold the Batavian republic.  Remember
that you have no choice between triumph and destruction.  I have led you
into a position whence escape is impossible--and I ask of none of you
more than I am prepared to do myself--whither I am sure that you will
follow.  The enemy's ships are far superior to ours in bulk; but remember
that their excessive size makes them difficult to handle and easier to
hit, while our own vessels are entirely within control.  Their decks are
swarming with men, and thus there will be more certainty that our shot
will take effect.  Remember, too, that we are all sailors, accustomed
from our cradles to the ocean; while yonder Spaniards are mainly soldiers
and landsmen, qualmish at the smell of bilgewater, and sickening at the
roll of the waves.  This day begins a long list of naval victories, which
will make our fatherland for ever illustrious, or lay the foundation of
an honourable peace, by placing, through our triumph, in the hands of the
States-General, the power of dictating its terms."

His comrades long remembered the enthusiasm which flashed from the man,
usually so gentle and composed in demeanour, so simple in attire.  Clad
in complete armour, with the orange-plumes waving from his casque and
the orange-scarf across his breast, he stood there in front of the
mainmast of the AEolus, the very embodiment of an ancient Viking.

He then briefly announced his plan of attack.  It was of antique
simplicity.  He would lay his own ship alongside that of the Spanish
admiral.  Pretty Lambert in the Tiger was to grapple with her on the
other side.  Vice-admiral Alteras and Captain Bras were to attack the
enemy's vice-admiral in the same way.  Thus, two by two, the little
Netherland ships were to come into closest quarters with each one of the
great galleons.  Heemskerk would himself lead the way, and all were to
follow, as closely as possible, in his wake.  The oath to stand by each
other was then solemnly renewed, and a parting health was drunk.  The
captains then returned to their ships.

As the Lepanto warrior, Don Juan d'Avila, saw the little vessels slowly
moving towards him, he summoned a Hollander whom he had on board, one
Skipper Gevaerts of a captured Dutch trading bark, and asked him whether
those ships in the distance were Netherlanders.

"Not a doubt of it," replied the skipper.

The admiral then asked him what their purpose could possibly be, in
venturing so near Gibraltar.

"Either I am entirely mistaken in my countrymen," answered Gevaerta, "or
they are coming for the express purpose of offering you battle."

The Spaniard laughed loud and long.  The idea that those puny vessels
could be bent on such a purpose seemed to him irresistibly comic, and he
promised his prisoner, with much condescension, that the St. Augustine
alone should sink the whole fleet.

Gevaerts, having his own ideas on the subject, but not being called upon
to express them, thanked the admiral for his urbanity, and respectfully
withdrew.

At least four thousand soldiers were in D'Avila's ships, besides seamen.
there were seven hundred in the St. Augustine, four hundred and fifty in
Our Lady of Vega, and so on in proportion.  There were also one or two
hundred noble volunteers who came thronging on board, scenting the battle
from afar, and desirous of having a hand in the destruction of the
insolent Dutchmen.

It was about one in the afternoon.  There was not much wind, but the
Hollanders, slowly drifting on the eternal river that pours from the
Atlantic into the Mediterranean, were now very near.  All hands had been
piped on board every one of the ships, all had gone down on their knees
in humble prayer, and the loving cup had then been passed around.

Heemskerk, leading the way towards the Spanish admiral, ordered the
gunners of the bolus not to fire until the vessels struck each other.
"Wait till you hear it crack," he said, adding a promise of a hundred
florins to the man who should pull down the admiral's flag.  Avila,
notwithstanding his previous merriment, thought it best, for the moment,
to avoid the coming collision.  Leaving to other galleons, which he
interposed between himself and the enemy, the task of summarily sinking
the Dutch fleet, he cut the cable of the St.  Augustine and drifted
farther into the bay.  Heemskerk, not allowing himself to be foiled in
his purpose, steered past two or three galleons, and came crashing
against the admiral.  Almost simultaneously, Pretty Lambert laid himself
along her quarter on the other side.  The St. Augustine fired into the
AEolus as she approached, but without doing much damage.  The Dutch
admiral, as he was coming in contact, discharged his forward guns, and
poured an effective volley of musketry into his antagonist.

The St. Augustine fired again, straight across the centre of the bolus,
at a few yards' distance.  A cannon-ball took off the head of a sailor,
standing near Heemskerk, and carried away the admiral's leg, close to the
body.  He fell on deck, and, knowing himself to be mortally wounded,
implored the next in command on board, Captain Verhoef, to fight his ship
to the last, and to conceal his death from the rest of the fleet.  Then
prophesying a glorious victory for republic, and piously commending his
soul to his Maker, he soon breathed his last.  A cloak was thrown over
him, and the battle raged.  The few who were aware that the noble
Heemskerk was gone, burned to avenge his death, and to obey the dying
commands of their beloved chief.  The rest of the Hollanders believed
themselves under his directing influence, and fought as if his eyes were
upon them.  Thus the spirit of the departed hero still watched over and
guided the battle.

The AEolus now fired a broadside into her antagonist, making fearful
havoc, and killing Admiral D'Avila.  The commanders-in-chief of both
contending fleets had thus fallen at the very beginning of the battle.
While the St. Augustine was engaged in deadly encounter, yardarm and
yardarm, with the AEolus and the Tiger, Vice-admiral Alteras had,
however, not carried out his part of the plan.  Before he could succeed
in laying himself alongside of the Spanish vice-admiral, he had been
attacked by two galleons.  Three other Dutch ships, however, attacked the
vice-admiral, and, after an obstinate combat, silenced all her batteries
and set her on fire.  Her conquerors were then obliged to draw off rather
hastily, and to occupy themselves for a time in extinguishing their own
burning sails, which had taken fire from the close contact with their
enemy.  Our Lady of Vega, all ablaze from top-gallant-mast to
quarterdeck, floated helplessly about, a spectre of flame, her guns going
off wildly, and her crew dashing themselves into the sea, in order to
escape by drowning from a fiery death.  She was consumed to the water's
edge.

Meantime, Vice-admiral Alteras had successively defeated both his
antagonists; drifting in with them until almost under the guns of the
fortress, but never leaving them until, by his superior gunnery and
seamanship, he had sunk one of them, and driven the other a helpless
wreck on shore.

Long Harry, while Alteras had been thus employed, had engaged another
great galleon, and set her on fire.  She, too, was thoroughly burned to
her hulk; but Admiral Harry was killed.

By this time, although it was early of an April afternoon, and heavy
clouds of smoke, enveloping the combatants pent together in so small a
space, seemed to make an atmosphere of midnight, as the flames of the
burning galleons died away.  There was a difficulty, too, in bringing all
the Netherland ships into action--several of the smaller ones having been
purposely stationed by Heemskerk on the edge of the bay to prevent the
possible escape of any of the Spaniards.  While some of these distant
ships were crowding sail, in order to come to closer quarters, now that
the day seemed going against the Spaniards, a tremendous explosion
suddenly shook the air.  One of the largest galleons, engaged in combat
with a couple of Dutch vessels, had received a hot shot full in her
powder magazine, and blew up with all on board.  The blazing fragments
drifted about among the other ships, and two more were soon on fire,
their guns going off and their magazines exploding.  The rock of
Gibraltar seemed to reel.  To the murky darkness succeeded the
intolerable glare of a new and vast conflagration.  The scene in that
narrow roadstead was now almost infernal.  It seemed, said an eye-
witness, as if heaven and earth were passing away.  A hopeless panic
seized the Spaniards.  The battle was over.  The St. Augustine still lay
in the deadly embrace of her antagonists, but all the other galleons were
sunk or burned.  Several of the lesser war-ships had also been destroyed.
It was nearly sunset.  The St. Augustine at last ran up a white flag, but
it was not observed in the fierceness of the last moments of combat; the
men from the bolus and the Tiger making a simultaneous rush on board the
vanquished foe.

The fight was done, but the massacre was at its beginning.  The
trumpeter, of Captain Kleinsorg clambered like a monkey up the mast of
the St. Augustine, hauled down the admiral's flag, the last which was
still waving, and gained the hundred florins.  The ship was full of dead
and dying; but a brutal, infamous butchery now took place.  Some
Netherland prisoners were found in the hold, who related that two
messengers had been successively despatched to take their lives, as they
lay there in chains, and that each had been shot, as he made his way
towards the execution of the orders.

This information did not chill the ardour of their victorious countrymen.
No quarter was given.  Such of the victims as succeeded in throwing
themselves overboard, out of the St.  Augustine, or any of the burning or
sinking ships, were pursued by the Netherlanders, who rowed about among
them in boats, shooting, stabbing, and drowning their victims by
hundreds.  It was a sickening spectacle.  The bay, said those who were
there, seemed sown with corpses.  Probably two or three thousand were
thus put to death, or had met their fate before.  Had the chivalrous
Heemskerk lived, it is possible that he might have stopped the massacre.
But the thought of the grief which would fill the commonwealth when the
news should arrive of his death--thus turning the joy of the great
triumph into lamentations--increased the animosity of his comrades.
Moreover, in ransacking the Spanish admiral's ship, all his papers had
been found, among them many secret instructions from Government signed
"the King;" ordering most inhuman persecutions, not only of the
Netherlanders, but of all who should in any way assist them, at sea or
ashore.  Recent examples of the thorough manner in which the royal
admirals could carry out these bloody instructions had been furnished by
the hangings, burnings, and drownings of Fazardo.  But the barbarous
ferocity of the Dutch on this occasion might have taught a lesson even to
the comrades of Alva.

The fleet of Avila was entirely destroyed.  The hulk of the St.
Augustine drifted ashore, having been abandoned by the victors, and was
set on fire by a few Spaniards who had concealed themselves on board,
lest she might fall again into the enemy's hands.

The battle had lasted from half-past three until sunset.  The Dutch
vessels remained all the next day on the scene of their triumph.  The
townspeople were discerned, packing up their goods, and speeding panic-
struck into the interior.  Had Heemskerk survived he would doubtless have
taken Gibraltar--fortress and town--and perhaps Cadiz, such was the
consternation along the whole coast.

But his gallant spirit no longer directed the fleet.  Bent rather upon
plunder than glory, the ships now dispersed in search of prizes towards
the Azores, the Canaries, or along the Portuguese coast; having first
made a brief visit to Tetuan, where they were rapturously received by the
Bey.

The Hollanders lost no ships, and but one hundred seamen were killed.
Two vessels were despatched homeward directly, one with sixty wounded
sailors, the other with the embalmed body of the fallen Heemskerk.  The
hero was honoured with a magnificent funeral in Amsterdam at the public
expense--the first instance in the history of the republic--and his name
was enrolled on the most precious page of her records.

     [The chief authorities for this remarkable battle are Meteren, 547,
     548.  Grotius, xvi. 731-738.  Wagenaar, ix. 251-258.]




CHAPTER XLVIII.

     Internal condition of Spain--Character of the people--Influence of
     the Inquisition--Population and Revenue--Incomes of Church and
     Government--Degradation of Labour--Expulsion of the Moors and its
     consequences--Venality the special characteristic of Spanish polity
     --Maxims of the foreign polity of Spain--The Spanish army and navy--
     Insolvent state of the Government--The Duke of Lerma--His position
     in the State--Origin of his power--System of bribery and
     trafficking--Philip III. His character--Domestic life of the king
     and queen.


A glance at the interior condition of Spain, now that there had been more
than nine years of a new reign, should no longer be deferred.
Spain was still superstitiously regarded as the leading power of the
world, although foiled in all its fantastic and gigantic schemes.  It was
still supposed, according to current dogma, to share with the Ottoman
empire the dominion of the earth.  A series of fortunate marriages having
united many of the richest and fairest portions of Europe under a single
sceptre, it was popularly believed in a period when men were not much
given as yet to examine very deeply the principles of human governments
or the causes of national greatness, that an aggregation of powers which
had resulted from preposterous laws of succession really constituted a
mighty empire, founded by genius and valour.

The Spanish people, endowed with an acute and exuberant genius, which had
exhibited itself in many paths of literature, science, and art; with a
singular aptitude for military adventure, organization, and achievement;
with a great variety, in short, of splendid and ennobling qualities; had
been, for a long succession of years, accursed with almost the very worst
political institutions known to history.  The depth of their misery and
of their degradation was hardly yet known to themselves, and this was
perhaps the most hideous proof of the tyranny of which they had been the
victims.  To the outward world, the hollow fabric, out of which the whole
pith and strength had been slowly gnawed away, was imposing and
majestic still.  But the priest, the soldier, and the courtier had been
busy too long, and had done their work too thoroughly, to leave much hope
of arresting the universal decay.

Nor did there seem any probability that the attempt would be made.

It is always difficult to reform wide-spread abuses, even when they are
acknowledged to exist, but when gigantic vices are proudly pointed to as
the noblest of institutions and as the very foundations of the state,
there seems nothing for the patriot to long for but the deluge.

It was acknowledged that the Spanish population--having a very large
admixture of those races which, because not Catholic at heart, were
stigmatized as miscreants, heretics, pagans, and, generally, as accursed-
-was by nature singularly prone to religious innovation.
Had it not been for the Holy Inquisition, it was the opinion of acute
and thoughtful observers in the beginning of the seventeenth century,
that the infamous heresies of Luther, Calvin, and the rest, would have
long before taken possession of the land.  To that most blessed
establishment it was owing that Spain had not polluted itself in the
filth and ordure of the Reformation, and had been spared the horrible
fate which had befallen large portions of Germany, France, Britain, and
other barbarous northern nations.  It was conscientiously and thankfully
believed in Spain, two centuries ago, that the state had been saved from
political and moral ruin by that admirable machine which detected
heretics with unerring accuracy, burned them when detected, and consigned
their descendants to political incapacity and social infamy to the
remotest generation.

As the awful consequences of religious freedom, men pointed with a
shudder to the condition of nations already speeding on the road to ruin,
from which the two peninsulas at least had been saved.  Yet the British
empire, with the American republic still an embryo in its bosom, France,
North Germany, and other great powers, had hardly then begun their
headlong career.  Whether the road of religious liberty was leading
exactly to political ruin, the coming centuries were to judge.

Enough has been said in former chapters for the characterization of
Philip II.  and his polity.  But there had now been nearly ten years of
another reign.  The system, inaugurated by Charles and perfected by his
son, had reached its last expression under Philip III.

The evil done by father and son lived and bore plentiful fruit in the
epoch of the grandson.  And this is inevitable in history.  No generation
is long-lived enough to reap the harvest, whether of good or evil, which
it sows.

Philip II.  had been indefatigable in evil, a thorough believer in his
supernatural mission as despot, not entirely without capacity for
affairs, personally absorbed by the routine of his bureau.

He was a king, as he understood the meaning of the kingly office.  His
policy was continued after his death; but there was no longer a king.
That important regulator to the governmental machinery was wanting.  How
its place was supplied will soon appear.

Meantime the organic functions were performed very much in the old way.
There was, at least, no lack of priests or courtiers.

Spain at this epoch had probably less than twelve millions of
inhabitants, although the statistics of those days cannot be relied upon
with accuracy.  The whole revenue of the state was nominally sixteen or
seventeen millions of dollars, but the greater portion of that income was
pledged for many coming years to the merchants of Genoa.  All the little
royal devices for increasing the budget by debasing the coin of the
realm, by issuing millions of copper tokens, by lowering the promised
rate of interest on Government loans, by formally repudiating both
interest and principal, had been tried, both in this and the preceding
reign, with the usual success.  An inconvertible paper currency,
stimulating industry and improving morals by converting beneficent
commerce into baleful gambling--that fatal invention did not then exist.
Meantime, the legitimate trader and innocent citizen were harassed, and
the general public endangered, as much as the limited machinery of the
epoch permitted.

The available, unpledged revenue of the kingdom hardly amounted to five
millions of dollars a-year.  The regular annual income of the church was
at least six millions.  The whole personal property of the nation was
estimated in a very clumsy and unsatisfactory way, no doubt--at sixty
millions of dollars.  Thus the income of the priesthood was ten per cent.
of the whole funded estate of the country, and at least a million a year
more than the income of the Government.  Could a more biting epigram be
made upon the condition to which the nation had been reduced?

Labour was more degraded than ever.  The industrious classes, if such
could be said to exist, were esteemed every day more and more infamous.
Merchants, shopkeepers, mechanics, were reptiles, as vilely, esteemed as
Jews, Moors, Protestants, or Pagans.  Acquiring wealth by any kind of
production was dishonourable.  A grandee who should permit himself to
sell the wool from his boundless sheep-walks disgraced his caste, and was
accounted as low as a merchant.  To create was the business of slaves and
miscreants: to destroy was the distinguishing attribute of Christians and
nobles.  To cheat, to pick, and to steal, on the most minute and the most
gigantic scale--these were also among the dearest privileges of the
exalted classes.  No merchandize was polluting save the produce of honest
industry.  To sell places in church and state, the army, the navy, and
the sacred tribunals of law, to take bribes from rich and poor, high and
low; in sums infinitesimal or enormous, to pillage the exchequer in,
every imaginable form, to dispose of titles of honour, orders of
chivalry, posts in municipal council, at auction; to barter influence,
audiences, official interviews against money cynically paid down in
rascal counters--all this was esteemed consistent with patrician dignity.

The ministers, ecclesiastics, and those about court, obtaining a monopoly
of such trade, left the business of production and circulation to their
inferiors, while, as has already been sufficiently indicated, religious
fanaticism and a pride of race, which nearly amounted to idiocy, had
generated a scorn for labour even among the lowest orders.  As a natural
consequence, commerce and the mechanical arts fell almost exclusively
into the hands of foreigners--Italians, English, and French--who resorted
in yearly increasing numbers to Spain for the purpose of enriching.
themselves by the industry which the natives despised.

The capital thus acquired was at regular intervals removed from the
country to other lands, where wealth resulting from traffic or
manufactures was not accounted infamous.

Moreover, as the soil of the country was held by a few great proprietors
--an immense portion in the dead-hand of an insatiate and ever-grasping
church, and much of the remainder in vast entailed estates--it was nearly
impossible for the masses of the people to become owners of any portion
of the land.  To be an agricultural day-labourer at less than a beggar's
wage could hardly be a tempting pursuit for a proud and indolent race.
It was no wonder therefore that the business of the brigand, the
smuggler, the professional mendicant became from year to year more
attractive and more overdone; while an ever-thickening swarm of priests,
friars, and nuns of every order, engendered out of a corrupt and decaying
society, increasing the general indolence, immorality, and unproductive
consumption, and frightfully diminishing the productive force of the
country, fed like locusts upon what was left in the unhappy land.
"To shirk labour, infinite numbers become priests and friars,"
said, a good Catholic, in the year 1608--[Gir. Soranzo].

Before the end of the reign of Philip III. the peninsula, which might
have been the granary of the world, did not produce food enough for its
own population.  Corn became a regular article of import into Spain, and
would have come in larger quantities than it did had the industry of the
country furnished sufficient material to exchange for necessary food.

And as if it had been an object of ambition with the priests and
courtiers who then ruled a noble country, to make at exactly this epoch
the most startling manifestation of human fatuity that the world had ever
seen, it was now resolved by government to expel by armed force nearly
the whole stock of intelligent and experienced labour, agricultural and
mechanical, from the country.  It is unnecessary to dwell long upon an
event which, if it were not so familiarly known to mankind, would seem
almost incredible.  But the expulsion of the Moors is, alas! no
exaggerated and imaginary satire, but a monument of wickedness and
insanity such as is not often seen in human history.

Already, in the very first years of the century, John Ribera, archbishop
of Valencia, had recommended and urged the scheme.

It was too gigantic a project to be carried into execution at once, but
it was slowly matured by the aid of other ecclesiastics.  At last there
were indications, both human and divine, that the expulsion of these
miscreants could no longer be deferred.  It was rumoured and believed
that a general conspiracy existed among the Moors to rise upon the
Government, to institute a general massacre, and, with the assistance of
their allies and relatives on the Barbary coast, to re-establish the
empire of the infidels.

A convoy of eighty ass-loads of oil on the way to Madrid had halted at a
wayside inn.  A few flasks were stolen, and those who consumed it were
made sick.  Some of the thieves even died, or were said to have died, in
consequence.   Instantly the rumour flew from mouth to mouth, from town
to town, that the royal family, the court, the whole capital, all Spain,
were to be poisoned with that oil.  If such were the scheme it was
certainly a less ingenious one than the famous plot by which the Spanish
Government was suspected but a few years before to have so nearly
succeeded in blowing the king, peers, and commons of England into the
air.

The proof of Moorish guilt was deemed all-sufficient, especially as it
was supported by supernatural evidence of the most portentous and
convincing kind.  For several days together a dark cloud, tinged with
blood-red, had been seen to hang over Valencia.

In the neighbourhood of Daroca, a din of, drums and trumpets and the
clang of arms had been heard in the sky, just as a procession went out
of a monastery.

At Valencia the image of the Virgin had shed tears.  In another place her
statue had been discovered in a state of profuse perspiration.

What more conclusive indications could be required as to the guilt of the
Moors?  What other means devised for saving crown, church, and kingdom
from destruction but to expel the whole mass of unbelievers from the soil
which they had too long profaned?

Archbishop Ribera was fully sustained by the Archbishop of Toledo, and
the whole ecclesiastical body received energetic support from Government.

Ribera had solemnly announced that the Moors were so greedy of money,
so determined to keep it, and so occupied with pursuits most apt for
acquiring it, that they had come to be the sponge of Spanish wealth.  The
best proof of this, continued the reverend sage, was that, inhabiting in
general poor little villages and sterile tracts of country, paying to the
lords of the manor one third of the crops, and being overladen with
special taxes imposed only upon them, they nevertheless became rich,
while the Christians, cultivating the most fertile land, were in abject
poverty.

It seems almost incredible that this should not be satire.  Certainly
the most delicate irony could not portray the vicious institutions under
which the magnificent territory and noble people of Spain were thus
doomed to ruin more subtly end forcibly than was done by the honest
brutality of this churchman.  The careful tillage, the beautiful system
of irrigation by aqueduct and canal, the scientific processes by which
these "accursed" had caused the wilderness to bloom with cotton, sugar,
and every kind of fruit and grain; the untiring industry, exquisite
ingenuity, and cultivated taste by which the merchants, manufacturers,
and mechanics, guilty of a darker complexion than that of the peninsular
Goths, had enriched their native land with splendid fabrics in cloth,
paper, leather, silk, tapestry, and by so doing had acquired fortunes
for themselves, despite iniquitous taxation, religious persecution, and
social contumely--all these were crimes against a race of idlers, steeped
to the lips in sloth which imagined itself to be pride.

The industrious, the intelligent, the wealthy, were denounced as
criminals, and hunted to death or into exile as vermin, while the Lermas,
the Ucedas, and the rest of the brood of cormorants, settled more thickly
than ever around their prey.

Meantime, Government declared that the piece of four maravedis should be
worth eight maravedis; the piece of two maravedis being fixed at four.
Thus the specie of the kingdom was to be doubled, and by means of this
enlightened legislation, Spain, after destroying agriculture, commerce,
and manufacture, was to maintain great armies and navies, and establish
universal monarchy.

This measure, which a wiser churchman than Ribera, Cardinal Richelieu,
afterwards declared the most audacious and barbarous ever recorded by
history, was carried out with great regularity of organization.  It was
ordained that the Moors should be collected at three indicated points,
whence they were not to move on pain of death, until duly escorted by
troops to the ports of embarkation.  The children under the age of four
years were retained, of course without their parents, from whom they were
forever separated.  With admirable forethought, too, the priests took
measures, as they supposed, that the arts of refining sugar, irrigating
the rice-fields, constructing canals and aqueducts, besides many other
useful branches of agricultural and mechanical business, should not die
out with the intellectual, accomplished, and industrious race, alone
competent to practise them, which was now sent forth to die.  A very
small number, not more than six in each hundred, were accordingly
reserved to instruct other inhabitants of Spain in those useful arts
which they were now more than ever encouraged to despise.

Five hundred thousand full-grown human beings, as energetic, ingenious,
accomplished, as any then existing in the world, were thus thrust forth
into the deserts beyond sea, as if Spain had been overstocked with
skilled labour; and as if its native production had already outgrown the
world's power of consumption.

Had an equal number of mendicant monks, with the two archbishops who had
contrived this deed at their head, been exported instead of the Moors,
the future of Spain might have been a more fortunate one than it was
likely to prove.  The event was in itself perhaps of temporary advantage
to the Dutch republic, as the poverty and general misery, aggravated by
this disastrous policy, rendered the acknowledgment of the States'
independence by Spain almost a matter of necessity.

It is superfluous to enter into any farther disquisiton as to the various
branches of the royal revenue.  They remained essentially the same as
during the preceding reign, and have been elaborately set forth in a
previous chapter.  The gradual drying up of resources in all the wide-
spread and heterogeneous territories subject to the Spanish sceptre is
the striking phenomenon of the present epoch.  The distribution of such
wealth as was still created followed the same laws which had long
prevailed, while the decay and national paralysis, of which the
prognostics could hardly be mistaken, were a natural result of the
system.

The six archbishops had now grown to eleven, and still received gigantic
revenues; the income of the Archbishop of Toledo, including the fund of
one hundred thousand destined for repairing the cathedral, being
estimated at three hundred thousand dollars a year, that of the
Archbishop of Seville and the others varying from one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars to fifty thousand.  The sixty-three bishops perhaps
averaged fifty thousand a year each, and there were eight more in Italy.

The commanderies of chivalry, two hundred at least in number, were
likewise enormously profitable.  Some of them were worth thirty thousand
a year; the aggregate annual value being from one-and-a-half to two
millions, and all in Lerma's gift, upon his own terms.

Chivalry, that noblest of ideals, without which, in some shape or
another, the world would be a desert and a sty; which included within
itself many of the noblest virtues which can adorn mankind--generosity,
self-denial, chastity, frugality, patience, protection to the feeble, the
downtrodden, and the oppressed; the love of daring adventure, devotion to
a pure religion and a lofty purpose, most admirably pathetic, even when
in the eyes of the vulgar most fantastic--had been the proudest and most
poetical of Spanish characteristics, never to be entirely uprooted from
the national heart.

Alas! what was there in the commanderies of Calatrava, Alcantara,
Santiago, and all the rest of those knightly orders, as then existing, to
respond to the noble sentiments on which all were supposed to be founded?
Institutions for making money, for pillaging the poor of their hard-
earned pittance, trafficked in by greedy ministers and needy courtiers
with a shamelessness which had long ceased to blush at vices however
gross, at venality however mean.

Venality was in truth the prominent characteristic of the Spanish polity
at this epoch.  Everything political or ecclesiastical, from highest to
lowest, was matter of merchandize.

It was the autocrat, governing king and kingdom, who disposed of
episcopal mitres, cardinals' hats, commanders' crosses, the offices of
regidores or municipal magistrates in all the cities, farmings of
revenues, collectorships of taxes, at prices fixed by himself.

It was never known that the pope refused to confirm the ecclesiastical
nominations which were made by the Spanish court.

The nuncius had the privilege of dispensing the small cures from thirty
dollars a year downwards, of which the number was enormous.  Many of
these were capable, in careful hands, of becoming ten times as valuable
as their nominal estimate, and the business in them became in consequence
very extensive and lucrative.  They were often disposed of for the
benefit of servants and the hangers-on of noble families, to laymen, to
women, children, to babes unborn.

When such was the most thriving industry in the land, was it wonderful
that the poor of high and low degree were anxious in ever-increasing
swarms to effect their entrance into convent, monastery, and church, and
that trade, agriculture, and manufactures languished?

The foreign polity of the court remained as it had been established by
Philip II.

Its maxims were very simple.  To do unto your neighbour all possible
harm, and to foster the greatness of Spain by sowing discord and
maintaining civil war in all other nations, was the fundamental precept.
To bribe and corrupt the servants of other potentates, to maintain a
regular paid bode of adherents in foreign lands, ever ready to engage in
schemes of assassination, conspiracy, sedition, and rebellion against the
legitimate authority, to make mankind miserable, so far as it was in the
power of human force or craft to produce wretchedness, were objects still
faithfully pursued.

They had not yet led to the entire destruction of other realms and their
submission to the single sceptre of Spain, nor had they developed the
resources, material or moral, of a mighty empire so thoroughly as might
have been done perhaps by a less insidious policy, but they had never
been abandoned.

It was a steady object of policy to keep such potentates of Italy as
were not already under the dominion of the Spanish crown in a state
of internecine feud with each other and of virtual dependence on the
powerful kingdom.  The same policy pursued in France, of fomenting civil
war by subsidy, force, and chicane, during a long succession of years in
order to reduce that magnificent realm under the sceptre of Philip, has
been described in detail.  The chronic rebellion of Ireland against the
English crown had been assisted and inflamed in every possible mode, the
system being considered as entirely justified by the aid and comfort
afforded by the queen to the Dutch rebels.

It was a natural result of the system according to which kingdoms and
provinces with the populations dwelling therein were transferable like
real estate by means of marriage-settlements, entails, and testaments,
that the proprietorship of most of the great realms in Christendom was
matter of fierce legal dispute.  Lawsuits, which in chancery could last
for centuries before a settlement of the various claims was made, might
have infinitely enriched the gentlemen of the long robe and reduced all
the parties to beggary, had there been any tribunal but the battle-field
to decide among the august litigants.  Thus the King of Great Britain
claimed the legal proprietorship and sovereignty of Brittany, Normandy,
Anjou, Gascony, Calais, and Boulogne in France, besides the whole kingdom
by right of conquest.  The French king claimed to be rightful heir of
Castile, Biscay, Guipuscoa, Arragon, Navarre, nearly all the Spanish
peninsula in short, including the whole of Portugal and the Balearic
islands to boot.  The King of Spain claimed, as we have seen often
enough, not only Brittany but all France as his lawful inheritance.
Such was the virtue of the prevalent doctrine of proprietorship.  Every
potentate was defrauded of his rights, and every potentate was a criminal
usurper.  As for the people, it would have excited a smile of superior
wisdom on regal, legal, or sacerdotal lips, had it been suggested that by
any possibility the governed could have a voice or a thought in regard to
the rulers whom God in His grace had raised up to be their proprietors
and masters.

The army of Spain was sunk far below the standard at which it had been
kept when it seemed fit to conquer and govern the world.  Neither by
Spain nor Italy could those audacious, disciplined, and obedient legions
be furnished, at which the enemies of the mighty despot trembled from one
extremity of earth to the other.  Peculation, bankruptcy, and mutiny had
done their work at last.  We have recently had occasion to observe the
conduct of the veterans in Flanders at critical epochs.  At this moment,
seventy thousand soldiers were on the muster and pay roll of the army
serving in those provinces, while not thirty thousand men existed in the
flesh.

The navy was sunk to fifteen or twenty old galleys, battered, dismantled,
unseaworthy, and a few armed ships for convoying the East and West
Indiamen to and from their destinations.

The general poverty was so great that it was often absolutely impossible
to purchase food for the royal household.  "If you ask me," said a cool
observer, "how this great show of empire is maintained, when the funds
are so small, I answer that it is done by not paying at all."  The
Government was shamelessly, hopelessly bankrupt.  The noble band of
courtiers were growing enormously rich.  The state was a carcase which
unclean vultures were picking to the bones.

The foremost man in the land--the autocrat, the absolute master in State
and Church--was the Duke of Lerma.

Very rarely in human history has an individual attained to such unlimited
power under a monarchy, without actually placing the crown upon his own
head.  Mayors of the palace, in the days of the do-nothing kings, wielded
nothing like the imperial control which was firmly held by this great
favourite.  Yet he was a man of very moderate capacity and limited
acquirements, neither soldier, lawyer, nor priest.

The duke was past sixty years of age, a tall, stately, handsome man,
of noble presence and urbane manner.  Born of the patrician house of
Sandoval, he possessed, on the accession of Philip, an inherited income
of ten or twelve thousand dollars.  He had now, including what he had
bestowed on his son, a funded revenue of seven hundred thousand a year.
He had besides, in cash, jewels, and furniture, an estimated capital of
six millions.  All this he had accumulated in ten years of service, as
prime minister, chief equerry, and first valet of the chamber to the
king.

The tenure of his authority was the ascendancy of a firm character over a
very weak one.  At this moment he was doubtless the most absolute ruler
in Christendom, and Philip III. the most submissive and uncomplaining of
his subjects.

The origin of his power was well known.  During the reign of Philip II.,
the prince, treated with great severity by his father, was looked upon
with contempt by every one about court.  He was allowed to take no part
in affairs, and, having heard of the awful tragedy of his eldest half-
brother, enacted ten years before his own birth, he had no inclination to
confront the wrath of that terrible parent and sovereign before whom all
Spain trembled.  Nothing could have been more humble, more effaced, more
obscure, than his existence as prince.  The Marquis of Denia, his
chamberlain, alone was kind to him, furnished him with small sums of
money, and accompanied him on the shooting excursions in which his father
occasionally permitted him to indulge.  But even these little attentions
were looked upon with jealousy by the king; so that the marquis was sent
into honourable exile from court as governor of Valencia.  It was hoped
that absence would wean the prince of his affection for the kind
chamberlain.  The calculation was erroneous.  No sooner were the eyes of
Philip II. closed in death than the new king made haste to send for
Denia, who was at once created Duke of Lerma, declared of the privy
council, and appointed master of the horse and first gentleman of the
bed-chamber.  From that moment the favourite became supreme.  He was
entirely without education, possessed little experience in affairs of
state, and had led the life of a commonplace idler and voluptuary until
past the age of fifty.  Nevertheless he had a shrewd mother-wit, tact in
dealing with men, aptitude to take advantage of events.  He had
directness of purpose, firmness of will, and always knew his own
mind.  From the beginning of his political career unto its end, he
conscientiously and without swerving pursued a single aim.  This was to
rob the exchequer by every possible mode and at every instant of his
life.  Never was a more masterly financier in this respect.  With a
single eye to his own interests, he preserved a magnificent unity in all
his actions.  The result had been to make him in ten years the richest
subject in the world, as well as the most absolute ruler.

He enriched his family, as a matter of course.  His son was already made
Duke of Uceda, possessed enormous wealth, and was supposed by those who
had vision in the affairs of court to be the only individual ever likely
to endanger the power of the father.  Others thought that the young
duke's natural dulness would make it impossible for him to supplant the
omnipotent favourite.  The end was not yet, and time was to show which
class of speculators was in the right.  Meantime the whole family was
united and happy.  The sons and daughters had intermarried with the
Infantados, and other most powerful and wealthy families of grandees.
The uncle, Sandoval, had been created by Lerma a cardinal and archbishop
of Toledo; the king's own schoolmaster being removed from that dignity,
and disgraced and banished from court for having spoken disrespectfully
of the favourite.  The duke had reserved for himself twenty thousand a
year from the revenues of the archbishopric, as a moderate price for thus
conducting himself as became a dutiful nephew.  He had ejected Rodrigo de
Vasquez from his post as president of the council.  As a more conclusive
proof of his unlimited sway than any other of his acts had been, he had
actually unseated and banished the inquisitor-general, Don Pietro Porto
Carrero, and supplanted him in that dread office, before which even
anointed sovereigns trembled, by one of his own creatures.

In the discharge of his various functions, the duke and all his family
were domesticated in the royal palace, so that he was at no charges for
housekeeping.  His apartments there were more sumptuous than those of the
king and queen.  He had removed from court the Dutchess of Candia, sister
of the great Constable of Castile, who had been for a time in attendance
on the queen, and whose possible influence he chose to destroy in the
bud.  Her place as mistress of the robes was supplied by his sister, the
Countess of Lemos; while his wife, the terrible Duchess of Lerma, was
constantly with the queen, who trembled at her frown.  Thus the royal
pair were completely beleaguered, surrounded, and isolated from all
except the Lermas.  When the duke conferred with the king, the doors
were always double locked.

In his capacity as first valet it was the duke's duty to bring the king's
shirt in the morning, to see to his wardrobe and his bed, and to supply
him with ideas for the day.  The king depended upon him entirely and
abjectly, was miserable when separated from him four-and-twenty hours,
thought with the duke's thoughts and saw with the duke's eyes.  He was
permitted to know nothing of state affairs, save such portions as were
communicated to him by Lerma.  The people thought their monarch
bewitched, so much did he tremble before the favourite, and so
unscrupulously did the duke appropriate for his own benefit and that of
his creatures everything that he could lay his hands upon.  It would have
needed little to bring about a revolution, such was the universal hatred
felt for the minister, and the contempt openly expressed for the king.

The duke never went to the council.  All papers and documents relating to
business were sent to his apartments.  Such matters as he chose to pass
upon, such decrees as he thought proper to issue, were then taken by him
to the king, who signed them with perfect docility.  As time went on,
this amount of business grew too onerous for the royal hand, or this
amount of participation by the king in affairs of state came to be
esteemed superfluous and inconvenient by the duke, and his own signature
was accordingly declared to be equivalent to that of the sovereign's
sign-manual.  It is doubtful whether such a degradation of the royal
prerogative had ever been heard of before in a Christian monarch.

It may be imagined that this system of government was not of a nature to
expedite business, however swiftly it might fill the duke's coffers.
High officers of state, foreign ambassadors, all men in short charged
with important affairs, were obliged to dance attendance for weeks and
months on the one man whose hands grasped all the business of the
kingdom, while many departed in despair without being able to secure a
single audience.  It was entirely a matter of trade.  It was necessary to
bribe in succession all the creatures of the duke before getting near
enough to headquarters to bribe the duke himself.  Never were such
itching palms.  To do business at court required the purse of Fortunatus.
There was no deception in the matter.  Everything was frank and above
board in that age of chivalry.  Ambassadors wrote to their sovereigns
that there was no hope of making treaties or of accomplishing any
negotiation except by purchasing the favour of the autocrat; and Lerma's
price was always high.  At one period the republic of Venice wished to
put a stop to the depredations by Spanish pirates upon Venetian commerce,
but the subject could not even be approached by the envoy until he had
expended far more than could be afforded out of his meagre salary in
buying an interview.

When it is remembered that with this foremost power in the world affairs
of greater or less importance were perpetually to be transacted by the
representatives of other nations as well as by native subjects of every
degree; that all these affairs were to pass through the hands of Lerma,
and that those hands had ever to be filled with coin, the stupendous
opulence of the one man can be easily understood.  Whether the foremost
power of the world, thus governed, were likely to continue the foremost
power, could hardly seem doubtful to those accustomed to use their reason
in judging of the things of this world.

Meantime the duke continued to transact business; to sell his interviews
and his interest; to traffic in cardinals' hats, bishops' mitres, judges'
ermine, civic and magisterial votes in all offices, high or humble, of
church, army, or state.

He possessed the art of remembering, or appearing to remember, the
matters of business which had been communicated to him.  When a
negotiator, of whatever degree, had the good fortune to reach the
presence, he found the duke to all appearance mindful of the particular
affair which led to the interview, and fully absorbed by its importance.
There were men who, trusting to the affability shown by the great
favourite, and to the handsome price paid down in cash for that urbanity,
had been known to go away from their interview believing that their
business was likely to be accomplished, until the lapse of time revealed
to them the wildness of their dream.

The duke perhaps never manifested his omnipotence on a more striking
scale than when by his own fiat he removed the court and the seat of
government to Valladolid, and kept it there six years long.  This was
declared by disinterested observers to be not only contrary to common
sense, but even beyond the bounds of possibility.  At Madrid the king had
splendid palaces, and in its neighbourhood beautiful country residences,
a pure atmosphere, and the facility of changing the air at will.  At
Valladolid there were no conveniences of any kind, no sufficient palace,
no summer villa, no park, nothing but an unwholesome climate.  But most
of the duke's estates were in that vicinity, and it was desirable for him
to overlook them in person.  Moreover, he wished to get rid of the
possible influence over the king of the Empress Dowager Maria, widow of
Maximilian II. and aunt and grandmother of Philip III.  The minister
could hardly drive this exalted personage from court, so easily as he had
banished the ex-Archbishop of Toledo, the Inquisitor General, the Duchess
of Candia, besides a multitude of lesser note.  So he did the next best
thing, and banished the court from the empress, who was not likely to put
up with the inconveniences of Valladolid for the sake of outrivalling the
duke.  This Babylonian captivity lasted until Madrid was nearly ruined,
until the desolation of the capital, the moans of the trades-people, the
curses of the poor, and the grumblings of the courtiers, finally produced
an effect even upon the arbitrary Lerma.  He then accordingly re-
emigrated, with king and Government, to Madrid, and caused it to be
published that he had at last overcome the sovereign's repugnance to the
old capital, and had persuaded him to abandon Valladolid.

There was but one man who might perhaps from his position have competed
with the influence of Lerma.  This was the king's father-confessor, whom
Philip wished--although of course his wish was not gratified--to make a
member of the council of state.  The monarch, while submitting in
everything secular to the duke's decrees, had a feeble determination to
consult and to be guided by his confessor in all matters of conscience.
As it was easy to suggest that high affairs of state, the duties of
government, the interests of a great people, were matters not entirely
foreign to the conscience of anointed kings, an opening to power might
have seemed easy to an astute and ambitious churchman.  But the Dominican
who kept Philip's conscience, Gasparo de Cordova by name, was,
fortunately for the favourite, of a very tender paste, easily moulded to
the duke's purpose.  Dull and ignorant enough, he was not so stupid as to
doubt that, should he whisper any suggestions or criticisms in regard to
the minister's proceedings, the king would betray him and he would lose
his office.  The cautious friar accordingly held his peace and his place,
and there was none to dispute the sway of the autocrat.

What need to dilate further upon such a minister and upon such a system
of government?  To bribe and to be bribed, to maintain stipendiaries in
every foreign Government, to place the greatness of the empire upon the
weakness, distraction, and misery of other nations, to stimulate civil
war, revolts of nobles and citizens against authority; separation of
provinces, religious discontents in every land of Christendom--such were
the simple rules ever faithfully enforced.

The other members of what was called the council were insignificant.

Philip III., on arriving at the throne, had been heard to observe that
the day of simple esquires and persons of low condition was past, and
that the turn of great nobles had come.  It had been his father's policy
to hold the grandees in subjection, and to govern by means of ministers
who were little more than clerks, generally of humble origin; keeping the
reins in his own hands.  Such great personages as he did employ, like
Alva, Don John of Austria, and Farnese, were sure at last to excite his
jealousy and to incur his hatred.  Forty-three years of this kind of work
had brought Spain to the condition in which the third Philip found it.
The new king thought to have found a remedy in discarding the clerks, and
calling in the aid of dukes.  Philip II. was at least a king.  The very
first act of Philip III. at his father's death was to abdicate.

It was, however, found necessary to retain some members of the former
Government.  Fuentes, the best soldier and accounted the most dangerous
man in the empire, was indeed kept in retirement as governor of Milan,
while Cristoval di Mora, who had enjoyed much of the late king's
confidence, was removed to Portugal as viceroy.  But Don John of
Idiaquez, who had really been the most efficient of the old
administration, still remained in the council.  Without the subordinate
aid of his experience in the routine of business, it would have been
difficult for the favourite to manage the great machine with his single
hand.  But there was no disposition on the part of the ancient minister
to oppose the new order of things.  A cautious, caustic, dry old
functionary, talking more with his shoulders than with his tongue,
determined never to commit himself, or to risk shipwreck by venturing
again into deeper waters than those of the harbour in which he now hoped
for repose, Idiaquez knew that his day of action was past.  Content to be
confidential clerk to the despot duke, as he had been faithful secretary
to the despot king, he was the despair of courtiers and envoys who came
to pump, after having endeavoured to fill an inexhaustible cistern.  Thus
he proved, on the whole, a useful and comfortable man, not to the
country, but to its autocrat.

Of the Count of Chinchon, who at one time was supposed to have court
influence because a dabbler in architecture, much consulted during the
building of the Escorial by Philip II. until the auditing of his accounts
brought him into temporary disgrace, and the Marquises of Velada,
Villalonga, and other ministers, it is not necessary to speak.  There was
one man in the council, however, who was of great importance, wielding a
mighty authority in subordination to the duke.  This was Don Pietro de
Franqueza.  An emancipated slave, as his name indicated, and subsequently
the body-servant of Lerma, he had been created by that minister secretary
of the privy council.  He possessed some of the virtues of the slave,
such as docility and attachment to the hand that had fed and scourged
him, and many vices of both slave and freedman.  He did much of the work
which it would have been difficult for the duke to accomplish in person,
received his fees, sold and dispensed his interviews, distributed his
bribes.  In so doing, as might be supposed, he did not neglect his own
interest.  It was a matter of notoriety, no man knowing it better than
the king, that no business, foreign or domestic, could be conducted or
even begun at court without large preliminary fees to the secretary of
the council, his wife, and his children.  He had, in consequence, already
accumulated an enormous fortune.  His annual income, when it was stated,
excited amazement.  He was insolent and overbearing to all comers until
his dues had been paid, when he became at once obliging, supple, and
comparatively efficient.  Through him alone lay the path to the duke's
sanctuary.

The nominal sovereign, Philip III., was thirty years of age.  A very
little man, with pink cheeks, flaxen hair, and yellow beard, with a
melancholy expression of eye, and protruding under lip and jaw, he was
now comparatively alert and vigorous in constitution, although for the
first seven years of his life it had been doubtful whether he would live
from week to week.  He had been afflicted during that period with a
chronic itch or leprosy, which had undermined his strength, but which
had almost entirely disappeared as he advanced in life.

He was below mediocrity in mind, and had received scarcely any education.
He had been taught to utter a few phrases, more or less intelligible, in
French, Italian, and Flemish, but was quite incapable of sustaining a
conversation in either of those languages.  When a child, he had learned
and subsequently forgotten the rudiments of the Latin grammar.

These acquirements, together with the catechism and the offices of the
Church, made up his whole stock of erudition.  That he was devout as a
monk of the middle ages, conforming daily and hourly to religious
ceremonies, need scarcely be stated.  It was not probable that the son of
Philip II. would be a delinquent to church observances.  He was not
deficient in courage, rode well, was fond of hunting, kept close to the
staghounds, and confronted, spear in hand, the wild-boar with coolness
and success.  He was fond of tennis, but his especial passion and chief
accomplishment was dancing.  He liked to be praised for his proficiency
in this art, and was never happier than when gravely leading out the
queen or his daughter, then four or five years of age--for he never
danced with any one else--to perform a stately bolero.

He never drank wine, but, on the other hand, was an enormous eater; so
that, like his father in youth, he was perpetually suffering from
stomach-ache as the effect of his gluttony.  He was devotedly attached to
his queen, and had never known, nor hardly looked at, any other woman.
He had no vice but gambling, in which he indulged to a great extent, very
often sitting up all night at cards.  This passion of the king's was much
encouraged by Lerma, for obvious reasons.  Philip had been known to lose
thirty thousand dollars at a sitting, and always to some one of the
family or dependents of the duke, who of course divided with them the
spoils.  At one time the Count of Pelbes, nephew of Lerma, had won two
hundred thousand dollars in a very few nights from his sovereign.

For the rest, Philip had few peculiarities or foibles.  He was not
revengeful, nor arrogant, nor malignant.  He was kind and affectionate to
his wife and children, and did his best to be obedient to the Duke of
Lerma.  Occasionally he liked to grant audiences, but there were few to
request them.  It was ridiculous and pathetic at the same time to see the
poor king, as was very frequently the case, standing at a solemn green
table till his little legs were tired, waiting to transact business with
applicants who never came; while ushers, chamberlains, and valets were
rushing up and down the corridors, bawling for all persons so disposed to
come and have an audience of their monarch.  Meantime, the doors of the
great duke's apartments in the same palace would be beleaguered by an
army of courtiers, envoys, and contractors, who had paid solid gold for
admission, and who were often sent away grumbling and despairing without
entering the sacred precincts.

As time wore on, the king, too much rebuked for attempting to meddle in
state affairs, became solitary and almost morose, moping about in the
woods by himself, losing satisfaction in his little dancing and ball-
playing diversions, but never forgetting his affection for the queen
nor the hours for his four daily substantial repasts of meats and pastry.
It would be unnecessary and almost cruel to dwell so long upon a picture
of what was after all not much better than human imbecility, were it not
that humanity is, a more sacred thing than royalty.  A satire upon such
an embodiment of kingship is impossible, the simple and truthful
characteristics being more effective than fiction or exaggeration.  It
would be unjust to exhume a private character after the lapse of two
centuries merely to excite derision, but if history be not powerless to
instruct, it certainly cannot be unprofitable to ponder the merits of a
system which, after bestowing upon the world forty-three years of Philip
the tyrant, had now followed them up with a decade of Philip the
simpleton.

In one respect the reigning sovereign was in advance of his age.  In his
devotion to the Madonna he claimed the same miraculous origin for her
mother as for herself.  When the prayer "O Sancta Maria sine labe
originali concepta" was chanted, he would exclaim with emotion that the
words embodied his devoutest aspirations.  He had frequent interviews
with doctors of divinity on the subject, and instructed many bishops to
urge upon the pope the necessity of proclaiming the virginity of the
Virgin's mother.  Could he secure this darling object of his ambition,
he professed himself ready to make a pilgrimage on foot to Rome.  The
pilgrimage was never made, for it may well be imagined that Lerma would
forbid any such adventurous scheme.  Meantime, the duke continued to
govern the empire and to fill his coffers, and the king to shoot rabbits.

The queen was a few years younger than her husband, and far from
beautiful.  Indeed, the lower portion of her face was almost deformed.
She was graceful, however, in her movements, and pleasing and gentle in
manner.  She adored the king, looking up to him with reverence as the
greatest and wisest of beings.  To please him she had upon her marriage
given up drinking wine, which, for a German, was considered a great
sacrifice.  She recompensed herself, as the king did, by eating to an
extent which, according to contemporary accounts, excited amazement.
Thus there was perfect sympathy between the two in the important article
of diet.  She had also learned to play at cards, in order to take a hand
with him at any moment, feebly hoping that an occasional game for love
might rescue the king from that frantic passion by which his health was
shattered and so many courtiers were enriched.

Not being deficient in perception, the queen was quite aware of the
greediness of all who surrounded the palace.  She had spirit enough
too to feel the galling tyranny to which the king was subjected.  That
the people hated the omnipotent favourite, and believed the king to be
under the influence of sorcery, she was well aware.  She had even a dim
notion that the administration of the empire was not the wisest nor the
noblest that could be devised for the first power in Christendom.  But
considerations of high politics scarcely troubled her mind.  Of a People
she had perhaps never heard, but she felt that the king was oppressed.
She knew that he was helpless, and that she was herself his only friend.
But of what avail were her timid little flutterings of indignation and
resistance?  So pure and fragile a creature could accomplish little good
for king or people.  Perpetually guarded and surrounded by the Countess
of Lemos and the Duchess of Lerma, she lived in mortal awe of both.  As
to the duke himself, she trembled at his very name.  On her first
attempts to speak with Philip on political matters--to hint at the
unscrupulous character of his government, to arouse him to the necessity
of striking for a little more liberty and for at least a trifling
influence in the state--the poor little king instantly betrayed her to
the favourite and she was severely punished.  The duke took the monarch
off at once on a long journey, leaving her alone for weeks long with the
terrible duchess and countess.  Never before had she been separated for
a day from her husband, it having been the king's uniform custom to take
her with him in all his expeditions.  Her ambition to interfere was thus
effectually cured.  The duke forbade her thenceforth ever to speak of
politics to her husband in public or in private--not even in bed--and the
king was closely questioned whether these orders had been obeyed.  She
submitted without a struggle.  She saw how completely her happiness was
at Lerma's mercy.  She had no one to consult with, having none but
Spanish people about her, except her German father-confessor, whom,
as a great favour, and after a severe struggle, she had beep allowed to
retain, as otherwise her ignorance of the national language would have
made it impossible for her to confess her little sins.  Moreover her
brothers, the archdukes at Gratz, were in receipt of considerable annual
stipends from the Spanish exchequer, and the duke threatened to stop
those pensions at once should the queen prove refractory.  It is painful
to dwell any longer on the abject servitude in which the king and queen
were kept.  The two were at least happy in each other's society, and were
blessed with mutual affection, with pretty and engaging children, and
with a similarity of tastes.  It is impossible to imagine anything more
stately, more devout, more regular, more innocent, more utterly dismal
and insipid, than the lives of this wedded pair.

This interior view of the court and council of Spain will suffice to
explain why, despite the languor and hesitations with which the
transactions were managed, the inevitable tendency was towards a peace.
The inevitable slowness, secrecy, and tergiversations were due to the
dignity of the Spanish court, and in harmony with its most sacred
traditions.

But what profit could the Duke of Lerma expect by the continuance of the
Dutch war, and who in Spain was to be consulted except the Duke of Lerma?





ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

A man incapable of fatigue, of perplexity, or of fear
Converting beneficent commerce into baleful gambling
Gigantic vices are proudly pointed to as the noblest
No generation is long-lived enough to reap the harvest
Proclaiming the virginity of the Virgin's mother
Steeped to the lips in sloth which imagined itself to be pride
To shirk labour, infinite numbers become priests and friars




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v79
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 80, 1607



CHAPTER XLIX.

     Peace deliberations in Spain--Unpopularity of the project--
     Disaffection of the courtiers--Complaints against Spinola--
     Conference of the Catholic party--Position of Henry IV. towards the
     republic--State of France Further peace negotiations--Desire of King
     James of England for the restoration of the States to Spain--Arrival
     of the French commissioners President Jeannin before the States-
     General--Dangers of a truce with Spain--Dutch legation to England--
     Arrival of Lewis Verreyken at the Hague with Philip's ratification--
     Rejection of the Spanish treaty--Withdrawal of the Dutch fleet from
     the Peninsula--The peace project denounced by the party of Prince
     Maurice--Opposition of Maurice to the plans of Barneveld--Amended
     ratification presented to the States-General--Discussion of the
     conditions--Determination to conclude a peace--Indian trade--
     Exploits of Admiral Matelieff in the Malay peninsula--He lays siege
     to Malacca--Victory over the Spanish fleet--Endeavour to open a
     trade with China--Return of Matelieff to Holland.

The Marquis Spinola had informed the Spanish Government that if 300,000
dollars a month could be furnished, the war might be continued, but that
otherwise it would be better to treat upon the basis of 'uti possidetis,'
and according to the terms proposed by the States-General.  He had
further intimated his opinion that, instead of waiting for the king's
consent, it more comported with the king's dignity for the archdukes to
enter into negotiations, to make a preliminary and brief armistice with
the enemy, and then to solicit the royal approval of what had been done.

In reply, the king--that is to say the man who thought, wrote, and signed
in behalf of the king--had plaintively observed that among evils the
vulgar rule was to submit to the least.  Although, therefore, to grant to
the Netherland rebels not only peace and liberty, but to concede to them
whatever they had obtained by violence and the most abominable outrages,
was the worst possible example to all princes; yet as the enormous sum
necessary for carrying on the war was not to be had, even by attempting
to scrape it together from every corner of the earth, he agreed with the
opinion of the archdukes that it was better to put an end to this eternal
and exhausting war by peace or truce, even under severe conditions.  That
the business had thus far proceeded without consulting him, was publicly
known, and he expressed approval of the present movements towards a peace
or a long truce, assuring Spinola that such a result would be as grateful
to him as if the war had been brought to a successful issue.

When the Marquis sent formal notice of the armistice to Spain there were
many complaints at court.  Men said that the measure was beneath the
king's dignity, and contrary to his interests.  It was a cessation of
arms under iniquitous conditions, accorded to a people formerly subject
and now rebellious.  Such a truce was more fatal than any conflict, than
any amount of slaughter.  During this long and dreadful war, the king had
suffered no disaster so terrible as this, and the courtiers now declared
openly that the archduke was the cause of the royal and national
humiliation.  Having no children, nor hope of any, he desired only to
live in tranquillity and selfish indulgence, like the indolent priest
that he was, not caring what detriment or dishonour might accrue to the
crown after his life was over.

Thus murmured the parasites and the plunderers within the dominions of
the do-nothing Philip, denouncing the first serious effort to put an end
to a war which the laws of nature had proved to be hopeless on the part
of Spain.

Spinola too, who had spent millions of his own money, who had plunged
himself into debt and discredit, while attempting to sustain the
financial reputation of the king, who had by his brilliant services in
the field revived the ancient glory of the Spanish arms, and who now saw
himself exposed with empty coffers to a vast mutiny, which was likely to
make his future movements as paralytic as those of his immediate
predecessors--Spinola, already hated because he was an Italian, because
he was of a mercantile family, and because he had been successful, was
now as much the object of contumely with the courtiers as with the
archduke himself.

The splendid victory of Heemskerk had struck the government with dismay
and diffused a panic along the coast.  The mercantile fleets, destined
for either India, dared not venture forth so long as the terrible Dutch
cruisers, which had just annihilated a splendid Spanish fleet, commanded
by a veteran of Lepanto, and under the very guns of Gibraltar, were
supposed to be hovering off the Peninsula.  Very naturally, therefore,
there was discontent in Spain that the cessation of hostilities had not
originally been arranged for sea as well as land, and men said openly at
court that Spinola ought to have his head cut off for agreeing to such an
armistice.  Quite as reasonably, however, it was now felt to be necessary
to effect as soon as possible the recal of this very inconvenient Dutch
fleet from the coast of Spain.

The complaints were so incessant against Spinola that it was determined
to send Don Diego d'Ybarra to Brussels, charged with a general
superintendence of the royal interests in the present confused condition
of affairs.  He was especially instructed to convey to Spinola the most
vehement reproaches in regard to the terms of the armistice, and to
insist upon the cessation of naval hostilities, and the withdrawal of the
cruisers.

Spinola, on his part, was exceedingly irritated that the arrangements
which he had so carefully made with the archduke at Brussels should
be so contumaciously assailed, and even disavowed, at Madrid.  He was
especially irritated that Ybarra should now be sent as his censor and
overseer, and that Fuentes should have received orders to levy seven
thousand troops in the Milanese for Flanders, the arrival of which
reinforcements would excite suspicion, and probably break off
negotiations.

He accordingly sent his private secretary Biraga, posthaste to Spain with
two letters.  In number one he implored his Majesty that Ybarra might not
be sent to Brussels.  If this request were granted, number two was to be
burned.  Otherwise, number two was to be delivered, and it contained a
request to be relieved from all further employment in the king's service.
The marquis was already feeling the same effects of success as had been
experienced by Alexander Farnese, Don John of Austria, and other
strenuous maintainers of the royal authority in Flanders.  He was railed
against, suspected, spied upon, put under guardianship, according to the
good old traditions of the Spanish court.  Public disgrace or secret
poison might well be expected by him, as the natural guerdons of his
eminent deeds.

Biraga also took with him the draught of the form in which the king's
consent to the armistice and pending negotiations was desired, and he was
particularly directed to urge that not one letter or comma should be
altered, in order that no pretext might be afforded to the suspicious
Netherlanders for a rupture.

In private letters to his own superintendent Strata, to Don John of
Idiaquez, to the Duke of Lerma, and to Stephen Ybarra, Spinola enlarged
upon the indignity about to be offered him, remonstrated vehemently
against the wrong and stupidity of the proposed policy, and expressed his
reliance upon the efforts of these friends of his to prevent its
consummation.  He intimated to Idiaquez that a new deliberation would be
necessary to effect the withdrawal of the Dutch fleet--a condition not
inserted in the original armistice--but that within the three months
allowed for the royal ratification there would be time enough to procure
the consent of the States to that measure.  If the king really desired to
continue the war, he had but to alter a single comma in the draught, and,
out of that comma, the stadholder's party would be certain to manufacture
for him as long a war as he could possibly wish.

In a subsequent letter to the king, Spinola observed that he was well
aware of the indignation created in Spain by the cessation of land
hostilities without the recal of the fleet, but that nevertheless John
Neyen had confidentially represented to the archdukes the royal assent
as almost certain.  As to the mission of Ybarra, the marquis reminded
his master that the responsibility and general superintendence of the
negotiations had been almost forced upon him.  Certainly he had not
solicited them.  If another agent were now interposed, it was an
advertisement to the world that the business had been badly managed.
If the king wished a rupture, he had but to lift his finger or his pen;
but to appoint another commissioner was an unfit reward for his faithful
service.  He was in the king's hands.  If his reputation were now to be
destroyed, it was all over with him and his affairs.  The man, whom
mortals had once believed incapable, would be esteemed incapable until
the end of his days.

It was too late to prevent the mission of Ybarra, who, immediately after
his arrival in Brussels, began to urge in the king's name that the words
in which the provinces had been declared free by the archdukes might be
expunged.  What could be more childish than such diplomacy?  What greater
proof could be given of the incapacity of the Spanish court to learn the
lesson which forty years had been teaching?  Spinola again wrote a most
earnest remonstrance to the king, assuring him that this was simply to
break off the negotiation.  It was ridiculous to suppose, he said, that
concessions already made by the archdukes, ratification of which on the
part of the king had been guaranteed, could now be annulled.  Those
acquainted with Netherland obstinacy knew better.  The very possibility
of the king's refusal excited the scorn of the States-General.

Ybarra went about, too, prating to the archdukes and to others of
supplies to be sent from Spain sufficient to carry on the war for many
years, and of fresh troops to be forwarded immediately by Fuentes.  As
four millions of crowns a year were known to be required for any
tolerable campaigning, such empty vaunts as these were preposterous.  The
king knew full well, said Spinola, and had admitted the fact in his
letters, that this enormous sum could not be furnished.  Moreover, the
war cost the Netherlanders far less in proportion.  They had river
transportation, by which they effected as much in two days as the
Catholic army could do in a fortnight, so that every siege was managed
with far greater rapidity and less cost by the rebels than by their
opponents.  As to sending troops from Milan, he had already stated that
their arrival would have a fatal effect.  The minds of the people were
full of suspicion.  Every passing rumour excited a prodigious sensation,
and the war party was already gaining the upper hand.  Spinola warned the
king, in the most solemn manner, that if the golden opportunity were now
neglected the war would be eternal.  This, he said, was more certain than
certain.  For himself, he had strained every nerve, and would continue to
do his best in the interest of peace.  If calamity must come, he at least
would be held blameless.

Such vehement remonstrances from so eminent a source produced the needful
effect.  Royal letters were immediately sent, placing full powers of
treating in the hands of the marquis, and sending him a ratification of
the archduke's agreement.  Government moreover expressed boundless
confidence in Spinola, and deprecated the idea that Ybarra's mission was
in derogation of his authority.  He had been sent, it was stated, only to
procure that indispensable preliminary to negotiations, the withdrawal of
the Dutch fleet, but as this had now been granted, Ybarra was already
recalled.

Spinola now determined to send the swift and sure-footed friar, who had
made himself so useful in opening the path to discussion, on a secret
mission to Spain.  Ybarra objected; especially because it would be
necessary for him to go through France, where he would be closely
questioned by the king.  It would be equally dangerous, he said,
for the Franciscan in that case to tell the truth or to conceal it.
But Spinola replied that a poor monk like him could steal through France
undiscovered.  Moreover, he should be disguised as a footman, travelling
in the service of Aurelio Spinola, a relative of the marquis, then
proceeding to Madrid.  Even should Henry hear of his presence and send
for him, was it to be supposed that so practised a hand would not easily
parry the strokes of the French king--accomplished fencer as he
undoubtedly was?  After stealing into and out of Holland as he had so
recently done, there was nothing that might not be expected of him.  So
the wily friar put on the Spinola livery, and, without impediment,
accompanied Don Aurelio to Madrid.

Meantime, the French commissioners--Pierre Jeannin, Buzanval, regular
resident at the Hague, and De Russy, who was destined to succeed that
diplomatist--had arrived in Holland.

The great drama of negotiation, which was now to follow the forty years'
tragedy, involved the interests and absorbed the attention of the great
Christian powers.  Although serious enough in its substance and its
probable consequences, its aspect was that of a solemn comedy.  There was
a secret disposition on the part of each leading personage--with a few
exceptions--to make dupes of all the rest.  Perhaps this was a necessary
result of statesmanship, as it had usually been taught at that epoch.

Paul V., who had succeeded Clement VIII. in 1605, with the brief
interlude of the twenty-six days of Leo XI.'s pontificate, was zealous,
as might be supposed, to check the dangerous growth of the pestilential
little republic of the north.  His diplomatic agents, Millino at Madrid,
Barberini at Paris, and the accomplished Bentivoglio, who had just been
appointed to the nunciatura at Brussels, were indefatigable in their
efforts to suppress the heresy and the insolent liberty of which the
upstart commonwealth was the embodiment.

Especially Barberini exerted all the powers at his command to bring about
a good understanding between the kings of France and Spain.  He pictured
to Henry, in darkest colours, the blight that would come over religion
and civilization if the progress of the rebellious Netherlands could not
be arrested.  The United Provinces were becoming dangerous, if they
remained free, not only to the French kingdom, but to the very existence
of monarchy throughout the world.

No potentate was ever more interested, so it was urged, than Henry IV.
to bring down the pride of the Dutch rebels.  There was always sympathy
of thought and action between the Huguenots of France and their co-
religionists in Holland.  They were all believers alike in Calvinism--
a sect inimical not less to temporal monarchies than to the sovereign
primacy of the Church--and the tendency and purposes of the French rebels
were already sufficiently manifest in their efforts, by means of the so-
called cities of security, to erect a state within a state; to introduce,
in short, a Dutch republic into France.

A sovereign remedy for the disease of liberty, now threatening to become
epidemic in Europe, would be found in a marriage between the second son
of the King of Spain and a daughter of France.  As the archdukes were
childless, it might be easily arranged that this youthful couple should
succeed them--the result of which would of course be the reduction of all
the Netherlands to their ancient obedience.

It has already been seen, and will become still farther apparent, that
nostrums like this were to be recommended in other directions.  Meantime,
Jeannin and his colleagues made their appearance at the Hague.

If there were a living politician in Europe capable of dealing with
Barneveld on even terms, it was no doubt President Jeannin.  An ancient
Leaguer, an especial adherent of the Duke of Mayenne, he had been deep in
all the various plots and counter-plots of the Guises, and often employed
by the extinct confederacy in various important intrigues.  Being
secretly sent to Spain to solicit help for the League after the disasters
of Ivry and Arques, he found Philip II. so sincerely imbued with the
notion that France was a mere province of Spain, and so entirely bent
upon securing the heritage of the Infanta to that large property, as to
convince him that the maintenance of the Roman religion was with that
monarch only a secondary condition.  Aid and assistance for the
confederacy were difficult of attainment, unless coupled with the
guarantee of the Infanta's rights to reign in France.

The Guise faction being inspired solely by religious motives of the
loftiest kind, were naturally dissatisfied with the lukewarmness of
his most Catholic Majesty.  When therefore the discomfited Mayenne
subsequently concluded his bargain with the conqueror of Ivry, it was a
matter of course that Jeannin should also make his peace with the
successful Huguenot, now become eldest son of the Church.  He was very
soon taken into especial favour by Henry, who recognised his sagacity,
and who knew his hands to be far cleaner than those of the more exalted
Leaguers with whom he had dealt.  The "good old fellow," as Henry
familiarly called him, had not filled his pockets either in serving or
when deserting the League.  Placed in control of the exchequer at a later
period, he was never accused of robbery or peculation.  He was a hard-
working, not overpaid, very intelligent public functionary.  He was made
president of the parliament, or supreme tribunal of Burgundy, and
minister of state, and was recognised as one of the ablest jurists and
most skilful politicians in the kingdom.  An elderly man, with a tall,
serene forehead, a large dark eye and a long grey beard, he presented an
image of vast wisdom and reverend probity.  He possessed--an especial
treasure for a statesman in that plotting age--a singularly honest
visage.  Never was that face more guileless, never was his heart more
completely worn upon his sleeve, than when he was harbouring the deepest
or most dangerous designs.  Such was the "good fellow," whom that skilful
reader of men, Henry of France, had sent to represent his interests and
his opinions at the approaching conferences.  What were those opinions?
Paul V. and his legates Barberini, Millino, and the rest, were well
enough aware of the secret strings of the king's policy, and knew how to
touch them with skill.  Of all things past, Henry perhaps most regretted
that not he, but the last and most wretched of the Valois line, was
sovereign of France when the States-General came to Paris with that
offer of sovereignty which had been so contumaciously refused.

If the object were attainable, the ex-chief of the Huguenots still
meant to be king of the Netherlands as sincerely as Philip II. had
ever intended to be monarch of France.  But Henry was too accurate
a calculator of chances, and had bustled too much in the world of
realities, to exhaust his strength in striving, year after year, for
a manifest impossibility.  The enthusiast, who had passed away at last
from the dreams of the Escorial into the land of shadows, had spent a
lifetime, and melted the wealth of an empire; but universal monarchy had
never come forth from his crucible.  The French king, although possessed
likewise of an almost boundless faculty for ambitious visions, was
capable of distinguishing cloud-land from substantial empire.
Jeannin, as his envoy, would at any rate not reveal his master's secret
aspirations to those with whom he came to deal, as openly as Philip had
once unveiled himself to Jeannin.

There could be no doubt that peace at this epoch was the real interest of
France.  That kingdom was beginning to flourish again, owing to the very
considerable administrative genius of Bethune, an accomplished financier
according to the lights of the age, and still more by reason of the
general impoverishment of the great feudal houses and of the clergy.
The result of the almost interminable series of civil and religious wars
had been to cause a general redistribution of property.  Capital was
mainly in the hands of the middle and lower classes, and the consequence
of this general circulation of wealth through all the channels of society
was precisely what might have been expected, an increase of enterprise
and of productive industry in various branches.  Although the financial
wisdom of the age was doing its best to impede commerce, to prevent the
influx of foreign wares, to prohibit the outflow of specie--in obedience
to the universal superstition, which was destined to survive so many
centuries, that gold and silver alone constituted wealth--while,
at the same time, in deference to the idiotic principle of sumptuary
legislation, it was vigorously opposing mulberry culture, silk
manufactures, and other creations of luxury, which, in spite of the
hostility of government sages, were destined from that time forward to
become better mines of wealth for the kingdom than the Indies had been
for Spain, yet on the whole the arts of peace were in the ascendant in
France.

The king, although an unscrupulous, self-seeking despot and the coarsest
of voluptuaries, was at least a man of genius.  He had also too much
shrewd mother-wit to pursue such schemes as experience had shown to
possess no reality.  The talisman "Espoir," emblazoned on his shield, had
led him to so much that it was natural for him at times to think all
things possible.

But he knew how to renounce as well as how to dare.  He had abandoned his
hope to be declared Prince of Wales and successor to the English crown,
which he had cherished for a brief period, at the epoch of the Essex
conspiracy; he had forgotten his magnificent dream of placing the crown
of the holy German empire upon his head, and if he still secretly
resolved to annex the Netherlands to his realms, and to destroy his
excellent ally, the usurping, rebellious, and heretic Dutch republic,
he had craft enough to work towards his aim in the dark, and the common
sense to know that by now throwing down the mask he would be for ever
baffled of his purpose.

The history of France, during the last three-quarters of a century, had
made almost every Frenchman, old enough to bear arms, an accomplished
soldier.  Henry boasted that the kingdom could put three hundred thousand
veterans into the field--a high figure, when it is recollected that its
population certainly did not exceed fifteen millions.  No man however
was better aware than he, that in spite, of the apparent pacification
of parties, the three hundred thousand would not be all on one side, even
in case of a foreign war.  There were at least four thousand great feudal
lords as faithful to the Huguenot faith and cause as he had been false to
both; many of them still wealthy, notwithstanding the general ruin which
had swept over the high nobility, and all of them with vast influence and
a splendid following, both among the lesser gentry and the men of lower
rank.

Although he kept a Jesuit priest ever at his elbow, and did his best
to persuade the world and perhaps himself that he had become a devout
Catholic, in consequence of those memorable five hours' instruction from
the Bishop of Bourges, and that there was no hope for France save in
its return to the bosom of the Church, he was yet too politic and too
farseeing to doubt that for him to oppress the Protestants would
be not only suicidal, but, what was worse in his eyes, ridiculous.

He knew, too, that with thirty or forty thousand fighting-men in the
field, with seven hundred and forty churches in the various provinces for
their places of worship, with all the best fortresses in France in their
possession, with leaders like Rohan, Lesdiguieres, Bouillon, and many
others, and with the most virtuous, self-denying, Christian government,
established and maintained by themselves, it would be madness for him
and his dynasty to deny the Protestants their political and religious
liberty, or to attempt a crusade against their brethren in the
Netherlands.

France was far more powerful than Spain, although the world had not yet
recognised the fact.  Yet it would have been difficult for both united to
crush the new commonwealth, however paradoxical such a proposition seemed
to contemporaries.

Sully was conscientiously in favour of peace, and Sully was the one great
minister of France.  Not a Lerma, certainly; for France was not Spain,
nor was Henry IV. a Philip III.  The Huguenot duke was an inferior
financier to his Spanish contemporary, if it were the height of financial
skill for a minister to exhaust the resources of a great kingdom in
order to fill his own pocket.  Sully certainly did not neglect his own
interests, for be had accumulated a fortune of at least seventy thousand
dollars a year, besides a cash capital estimated at a million and a half.
But while enriching himself, he had wonderfully improved the condition of
the royal treasury.  He had reformed many abuses and opened many new
sources of income.  He had, of course, not accomplished the whole Augean
task of purification.  He was a vigorous Huguenot, but no Hercules, and
demigods might have shrunk appalled at the filthy mass of corruption
which great European kingdoms everywhere presented to the reformer's eye.
Compared to the Spanish Government, that of France might almost have been
considered virtuous, yet even there everything was venal.

To negotiate was to bribe right and left, and at every step.  All the
ministers and great functionaries received presents, as a matter of
course, and it was necessary to pave the pathway even of their ante-
chambers with gold.

The king was fully aware of the practice, but winked at it, because
his servants, thus paid enormous sums by the public and by foreign
Governments, were less importunate for rewards and salaries from himself.

One man in the kingdom was said to have clean hands, the venerable and
sagacious chancellor, Pomponne de Bellievre.  His wife, however, was less
scrupulous, and readily disposed of influence and court-favour for a
price, without the knowledge, so it was thought, of the great judge.

Jeannin, too, was esteemed a man of personal integrity, ancient Leaguer
and tricky politician though he were.

Highest offices of magistracy and judicature, Church and State, were
objects of a traffic almost as shameless as in Spain.  The ermine was
sold at auction, mitres were objects of public barter, Church preferments
were bestowed upon female children in their cradles.  Yet there was hope
in France, notwithstanding that the Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis, the
foundation of the liberties of the Gallican Church, had been annulled by
Francis, who had divided the seamless garment of Church patronage with
Leo.

Those four thousand great Huguenot lords, those thirty thousand hard-
fighting weavers, and blacksmiths, and other plebeians, those seven
hundred and forty churches, those very substantial fortresses in every
province of the kingdom, were better facts than the Holy Inquisition to
preserve a great nation from sinking into the slough of political
extinction.

Henry was most anxious that Sully should convert himself to the ancient
Church, and the gossips of the day told each other that the duke had
named his price for his conversion.  To be made high constable of France,
it was said would melt the resolve of the stiff Huguenot.  To any other
inducement or blandishment he was adamant.  Whatever truth may have been
in such chatter, it is certain that the duke never gratified his master's
darling desire.

Yet it was for no lack of attempts and intrigues on the part of the king,
although it is not probable that he would have ever consented to bestow
that august and coveted dignity upon a Bethune.

The king did his best by intrigue, by calumny, by talebearing, by
inventions, to set the Huguenots against each other, and to excite the
mutual jealousy of all his most trusted adherents, whether Protestant or
Catholic.  The most good-humoured, the least vindictive, the most
ungrateful, the falsest of mankind, he made it his policy, as well as his
pastime, to repeat, with any amount of embroidery that his most florid
fancy could devise, every idle story or calumny that could possibly
create bitter feeling and make mischief among those who surrounded him.
Being aware that this propensity was thoroughly understood, he only
multiplied fictions, so cunningly mingled with truths, as to leave his
hearers quite unable to know what to believe and what to doubt.  By
such arts, force being impossible, he hoped one day to sever the band
which held the conventicles together, and to reduce Protestantism to
insignificance.  He would have cut off the head of D'Aubigne or Duplessis
Mornay to gain an object, and have not only pardoned but caressed and
rewarded Biron when reeking from the conspiracy against his own life and
crown, had he been willing to confess and ask pardon for his stupendous
crime.  He hated vindictive men almost as much as he despised those who
were grateful.

He was therefore far from preferring Sully to Villeroy or Jeannin, but he
was perfectly aware that, in financial matters at least, the duke was his
best friend and an important pillar of the state.

The minister had succeeded in raising the annual revenue of France
to nearly eleven millions of dollars, and in reducing the annual
expenditures to a little more than ten millions.  To have a balance on
the right side of the public ledger was a feat less easily accomplished
in those days even than in our own.  Could the duke have restrained his
sovereign's reckless extravagance in buildings, parks, hunting
establishments, and harems, he might have accomplished even greater
miracles.  He lectured the king roundly, as a parent might remonstrate
with a prodigal son, but it was impossible even for a Sully to rescue
that hoary-headed and most indomitable youth from wantonness and riotous
living.  The civil-list of the king amounted to more than one-tenth of
the whole revenue.

On the whole, however, it was clear, as France was then constituted and
administered, that a general peace would be, for the time at least, most
conducive to its interests, and Henry and his great minister were
sincerely desirous of bringing about that result.

Preliminaries for a negotiation which should terminate this mighty war
were now accordingly to be laid down at the Hague.  Yet it would seem
rather difficult to effect a compromise.  Besides the powers less
interested, but which nevertheless sent representatives to watch the
proceedings--such as Sweden, Denmark, Brandenburg, the Elector Palatine
--there were Spain, France, England, the republic, and the archdukes.

Spain knew very well that she could not continue the war; but she hoped
by some quibbling recognition of an impossible independence to recover
that authority over her ancient vassals which the sword had for the time
struck down.  Distraction in councils, personal rivalries, the well-
known incapacity of a people to govern itself, commercial greediness,
provincial hatreds, envies and jealousies, would soon reduce that jumble
of cities and villages, which aped the airs of sovereignty, into
insignificance and confusion.  Adroit management would easily re-assert
afterwards the sovereignty of the Lord's anointed.  That a republic of
freemen, a federation of independent states, could take its place among
the nations did not deserve a serious thought.

Spain in her heart preferred therefore to treat.  It was however
indispensable that the Netherlands should reestablish the Catholic
religion throughout the land, should abstain then and for ever from all
insolent pretences to trade with India or America, and should punish such
of their citizens as attempted to make voyages to the one or the other.
With these trifling exceptions, the court of Madrid would look with
favour on propositions made in behalf of the rebels.

France, as we have seen, secretly aspired to the sovereignty of all the
Netherlands, if it could be had.  She was also extremely in favour of
excluding the Hollanders from the Indies, East and West.  The king, fired
with the achievements of the republic at sea, and admiring their great
schemes for founding empires at the antipodes by means of commercial
corporations, was very desirous of appropriating to his own benefit the
experience, the audacity, the perseverance, the skill and the capital of
their merchants and mariners.  He secretly instructed his commissioners,
therefore, and repeatedly urged it upon them, to do their best to procure
the renunciation, on the part of the republic, of the Indian trade,
and to contrive the transplantation into France of the mighty trading
companies, so successfully established in Holland and Zeeland.

The plot thus to deprive the provinces of their India trade was supposed
by the statesmen of the republic to have been formed in connivance with
Spain.  That power, finding itself half pushed from its seat of power in
the East by the "grand and infallible society created by the United
Provinces,"--[Memoir of Aerssens, ubi sup]--would be but too happy to
make use of this French intrigue in order to force the intruding Dutch
navy from its conquests.

Olden-Barneveld, too politic to offend the powerful and treacherous ally
by a flat refusal, said that the king's friendship was more precious than
the India trade.  At the same time he warned the French Government that,
if they ruined the Dutch East India Company, "neither France nor any
other nation would ever put its nose into India again."

James of England, too, flattered himself that he could win for England
that sovereignty of the Netherlands which England as well as France had
so decidedly refused.  The marriage of Prince Henry with the Spanish
Infanta was the bait, steadily dangled before him by the politicians of
the Spanish court, and he deluded himself with the thought that the
Catholic king, on the death of the childless archdukes, would make his
son and daughter-in-law a present of the obedient Netherlands.  He
already had some of the most important places in the United Netherlands-
the famous cautionary towns in his grasp, and it should go hard but he
would twist that possession into a sovereignty over the whole land.  As
for recognising the rebel provinces as an independent sovereignty, that
was most abhorrent to him.  Such a tampering with the great principles of
Government was an offence against all crowned heads, a crime in which he
was unwilling to participate.

His instinct against rebellion seemed like second sight.  The king might
almost be imagined to have foreseen in the dim future those memorable
months in which the proudest triumph of the Dutch commonwealth was to be
registered before the forum of Christendom at the congress of Westphalia,
and in which the solemn trial and execution of his own son and successor,
with the transformation of the monarchy of the Tudors and Stuarts into a
British republic, were simultaneously to startle the world.  But it
hardly needed the gift of prophecy to inspire James with a fear of
revolutions.

He was secretly desirous therefore, sustained by Salisbury and his other
advisers, of effecting the restoration of the provinces to the dominion
of his most Catholic Majesty.  It was of course the interest of England
that the Netherland rebels should renounce the India trade.  So would
James be spared the expense and trouble of war; so would the great
doctrines of divine right be upheld; so would the way be paved towards
the ultimate absorption of the Netherlands by England.  Whether his
theological expositions would find as attentive pupils when the pope's
authority had been reestablished over all his neighbours; whether the
Catholic rebels in Ireland would become more tranquil by the subjugation
of the Protestant rebels in Holland; whether the principles of Guy Fawkes
might not find more effective application, with no bulwark beyond the
seas against the incursion of such practitioners--all this he did not
perhaps sufficiently ponder.

Thus far had the discursive mind of James wandered from the position
which it occupied at the epoch of Maximilian de Bethune's memorable
embassy to England.

The archdukes were disposed to quiet.  On them fell the burthen of the
war.  Their little sovereignty, where--if they could only be allowed
to expend the money squeezed from the obedient provinces in court
diversions, stately architecture, splendid encouragement of the fine
arts, and luxurious living, surrounded by a train of great nobles, fit
to command regiments in the field or assist in the counsels of state, but
chiefly occupied in putting dishes on the court table, handing ewers and
napkins to their Highnesses, or in still more menial offices--so much
enjoyment might be had, was reduced to a mere parade ground for Spanish
soldiery.  It was ridiculous, said the politicians of Madrid, to suppose
that a great empire like Spain would not be continually at war in one
direction or another, and would not perpetually require the use of large
armies.  Where then could there be a better mustering place for their
forces than those very provinces, so easy of access, so opulent, so
conveniently situate in the neighbourhood of Spain's most insolent
enemies?  It was all very fine for the archduke, who knew nothing of war,
they declared, who had no hope of children, who longed only for a life
of inglorious ease, such as he could have had as archbishop, to prate of
peace and thus to compromise the dignity of the realm.  On the contrary
by making proper use of the Netherlands, the repose and grandeur of the
monarchy would be secured, even should the war become eternal.

This prospect, not agreeable certainly for the archdukes or their
subjects, was but little admired outside the Spanish court.

Such then were the sentiments of the archdukes, and such the schemes and
visions of Spain, France, and England.  On two or three points, those
great powers were mainly, if unconsciously, agreed.  The Netherlands
should not be sovereign; they should renounce the India navigation; they
should consent to the re-establishment of the Catholic religion.

On the other hand, the States-General knew their own minds, and made not
the slightest secret of their intentions.

They would be sovereign, they would not renounce the India trade, they
would not agree to the re-establishment of the Catholic religion.

Could the issue of the proposed negotiations be thought hopeful, or was
another half century of warfare impending?

On the 28th May the French commissioners came before the States-General.

There had been many wild rumours flying through the provinces in regard
to the king's secret designs upon the republic, especially since the
visit made to the Hague a twelvemonth before by Francis Aerssens, States'
resident at the French court.  That diplomatist, as we know, had been
secretly commissioned by Henry to feel the public pulse in regard to the
sovereignty, so far as that could be done by very private and delicate
fingering.  Although only two or three personages had been dealt with--
the suggestions being made as the private views of the ambassadors only
--there had been much gossip on the subject, not only in the Netherlands,
but at the English and Spanish courts.  Throughout the commonwealth there
was a belief that Henry wished to make himself king of the country.

As this happened to be the fact, it was natural that the President,
according to the statecraft of his school, should deny it at once, and
with an air of gentle melancholy.

Wearing therefore his most ingenuous expression, Jeannin addressed the
assembly.

He assured the States that the king had never forgotten how much
assistance he had received from them when he was struggling to conquer
the kingdom legally belonging to him, and at a time when they too were
fighting in their own country for their very existence.

The king thought that he had given so many proofs of his sincere
friendship as to make doubt impossible; but he had found the contrary,
for the States had accorded an armistice, and listened to overtures of
peace, without deigning to consult him on the subject.  They had proved,
by beginning and concluding so important a transaction without his
knowledge, that they regarded him with suspicion, and had no respect for
his name.  Whence came the causes of that suspicion it was difficult to
imagine, unless from certain false rumours of propositions said to have
been put forward in his behalf, although he had never authorised anyone
to make them, by which men had been induced to believe that he aspired to
the sovereignty of the provinces.

"This falsehood," continued the candid President, "has cut our king to
the heart, wounding him more deeply than anything else could have done.
To make the armistice without his knowledge showed merely your contempt
for him, and your want of faith in him.  But he blamed not the action in
itself, since you deemed it for your good, and God grant that you may not
have been deceived.  But to pretend that his Majesty wished to grow great
at your expense, this was to do a wrong to his reputation, to his good
faith, and to the desire which he has always shown to secure the
prosperity of your state."  Much more spoke Jeannin, in this vein,
assuring the assembly that those abominable falsehoods proceeded from
the enemies of the king, and were designed expressly to sow discord and
suspicion in the provinces.  The reader, already aware of the minute and
detailed arrangements made by Henry and his ministers for obtaining the
sovereignty of the United Provinces and destroying their liberties, will
know how to appreciate the eloquence of the ingenuous President.

After the usual commonplaces concerning the royal desire to protect his
allies against wrong and oppression, and to advance their interests, the
President suggested that the States should forthwith communicate the
pending deliberations to all the kings and princes who had favoured their
cause, and especially to the King of England, who had so thoroughly
proved his desire to promote their welfare.

As Jeannin had been secretly directed to pave the way by all possible
means for the king's sovereignty over the provinces; as he was not long
afterwards to receive explicit instructions to expend as much money as
might be necessary in bribing Prince Maurice, Count Lewis William,
Barneveld and his son, together with such others as might seem worth
purchasing, in order to assist Henry in becoming monarch of their
country; and as the English king was at that moment represented in
Henry's private letters to the commissioners as actually loathing the
liberty, power, and prosperity of the provinces, it must be conceded that
the President had acquitted himself very handsomely in his first oration.

Such was the virtue of his honest face.

Barneveld answered with generalities and commonplaces.  No man knew
better than the Advocate the exact position of affairs; no man had more
profoundly fathomed the present purposes of the French king; no man had
more acutely scanned his character.  But he knew the critical position of
the commonwealth.  He knew that, although the public revenue might be
raised by extraordinary and spasmodic exertion to nearly a million
sterling, a larger income than had ever been at the disposition of the
great Queen of England, the annual deficit might be six millions of
florins--more than half the revenue--if the war continued, and that there
was necessity of peace, could the substantial objects of the war be now
obtained.  He was well aware too of the subtle and scheming brain which
lay hid beneath that reverend brow of the President, although he felt
capable of coping with him in debate or intrigue.  Doubtless he was
inspired with as much ardour for the intellectual conflict as Henry
might have experienced on some great field-day with Alexander Farnese.

On this occasion, however, Barneveld preferred to glide gently over the
rumours concerning Henry's schemes.  Those reports had doubtless
emanated, he said, from the enemies of Netherland prosperity.  The
private conclusion of the armistice he defended on the ground of
necessity, and of temporary financial embarrassment, and he promised
that deputies should at once be appointed to confer with the royal
commissioners in regard to the whole subject.

In private, he assured Jeannin that the communications of Aerssens had
only been discussed in secret, and had not been confided to more than
three or four persons.

The Advocate, although the leader of the peace party, was by no means
over anxious for peace.

The object of much insane obloquy, because disposed to secure that
blessing for his country on the basis of freedom and independence, he was
not disposed to trust in the sincerity of the archdukes, or the Spanish
court, or the French king.  "Timeo Danaos etiam dona ferentes," he had
lately said to Aerssens.  Knowing that the resistance of the Netherlands
had been forty years long the bulwark of Europe against the designs of
the Spaniard for universal empire, he believed the republic justified in
expecting the support of the leading powers in the negotiations now
proposed.  "Had it not been for the opposition of these provinces," he
said, "he might, in the opinion of the wisest, have long ago been monarch
of all Europe, with small expense of men, money, or credit."  He was far
from believing therefore that Spain, which had sacrificed, according to
his estimate, three hundred thousand soldiers and two hundred million
ducats in vain endeavours to destroy the resistance of the United
Provinces, was now ready to lay aside her vengeance and submit to a
sincere peace.  Rather he thought to see "the lambkins, now frisking so
innocently about the commonwealth, suddenly transform themselves into
lions and wolves."  It would be a fatal error, he said, to precipitate
the dear fatherland into the net of a simulated negotiation, from unwise
impatience for peace.  The Netherlanders were a simple, truthful people
and could hope for no advantage in dealing with Spanish friars, nor
discover all the danger and deceit lurking beneath their fair words.
Thus the man, whom his enemies perpetually accused of being bought by
the enemy, of wishing peace at any price, of wishing to bring back the
Catholic party and ecclesiastical influence to the Netherlands, was
vigorously denouncing a precipitate peace, and warning his countrymen
of the danger of premature negotiations.

"As one can hardly know the purity and value of gold," he said, "without
testing it, so it is much more difficult to distinguish a false peace
from a genuine one; for one can never touch it nor taste it; and one
learns the difference when one is cheated and lost.  Ignorant people
think peace negotiations as simple as a private lawsuit.  Many sensible
persons even think that; the enemy once recognising us for a free,
sovereign state, we shall be in the same position as England and France,
which powers have lately made peace with the archdukes and with Spain.
But we shall find a mighty difference.  Moreover, in those kingdoms the
Spanish king has since the peace been ever busy corrupting their officers
of state and their subjects, and exciting rebellion and murder within
their realms, as all the world must confess.  And the English merchants
complain that they have suffered more injustice, violence, and wrong from
the Spaniards since the peace than they did during the war."

The Advocate also reminded his countrymen that the archduke, being a
vassal of Spain, could not bind that power by his own signature, and that
there was no proof that the king would renounce his pretended rights to
the provinces.  If he affected to do so, it would only be to put the
republic to sleep.  He referred, with much significance, to the late
proceedings of the Admiral of Arragon at Emmerich, who refused to release
that city according to his plighted word, saying roundly that whatever he
might sign and seal one day he would not hesitate absolutely to violate
on the next if the king's service was thereby to be benefited.

With such people, who had always learned law-doctors and ghostly
confessors to strengthen and to absolve them, they could never expect
anything but broken faith and contempt for treaties however solemnly
ratified.

Should an armistice be agreed upon and negotiations begun, the Advocate
urged that the work of corruption and bribery would not be a moment
delayed, and although the Netherlanders were above all nations a true and
faithful race, it could hardly be hoped that no individuals would be
gained over by the enemy.

"For the whole country," said Barneveld, "would swarm with Jesuits,
priests, and monks, with calumnies and corruptions--the machinery by
which the enemy is wont to produce discord, relying for success upon the
well-known maxim of Philip of Macedon, who considered no city impregnable
into which he could send an ass laden with gold."

The Advocate was charged too with being unfriendly to the India trade,
especially to the West India Company.

He took the opportunity, however, to enlarge with emphasis and eloquence
upon that traffic as constituting the very lifeblood of the country.

"The commerce with the East Indies is going on so prosperously," he said,
"that not only our own inhabitants but all strangers are amazed.  The
West India Company is sufficiently prepared, and will cost the
commonwealth so little, that the investment will be inconsiderable in
comparison with the profits.  And all our dangers and difficulties have
nearly vanished since the magnificent victory of Gibraltar, by which the
enemy's ships, artillery, and sailors have been annihilated, and proof
afforded that the Spanish galleys are not so terrible as they pretend to
be.  By means of this trade to both the Indies, matters will soon be
brought into such condition that the Spaniards will be driven out of all
those regions and deprived of their traffic.  Thus will the great wolf's
teeth be pulled out, and we need have no farther fear of his biting
again.  Then we may hope for a firm and assured peace, and may keep the
Indies, with the whole navigation thereon depending, for ourselves,
sharing it freely and in common with our allies."

Certainly no statesman could more strongly depict the dangers of a
pusillanimous treaty, and the splendid future of the republic, if she
held fast to her resolve for political independence, free religion, and
free trade, than did the great Advocate at this momentous epoch of
European history.

Had he really dreamed of surrendering the republic to Spain, that
republic whose resistance ever since the middle of the previous century
had been all that had saved Europe, in the opinion of learned and
experienced thinkers, from the universal empire of Spain--had the
calumnies, or even a thousandth part of the calumnies, against him been
true--how different might have been the history of human liberty!

Soon afterwards, in accordance with the suggestions of the French king
and with their own previous intentions, a special legation was despatched
by the States to England, in order to notify the approaching conferences
to the sovereign of that country, and to invite his participation in the
proceedings.

The States' envoys were graciously received by James, who soon appointed
Richard Spencer and Ralph Winwood as commissioners to the Hague, duly
instructed to assist at the deliberations, and especially to keep a sharp
watch upon French intrigues.  There were also missions and invitations to
Denmark and to the Electors Palatine and of Brandenburg, the two latter
potentates having, during the past three years, assisted the States with
a hundred thousand florins annually.

The news of the great victory at Gibraltar had reached the Netherlands
almost simultaneously with the arrival of the French commissioners.
It was thought probable that John Neyen had received the weighty
intelligence some days earlier, and the intense eagerness of the
archdukes and of the Spanish Government to procure the recal of the Dutch
fleet was thus satisfactorily explained.  Very naturally this magnificent
success, clouded though it was by the death of the hero to whom it was
due, increased the confidence of the States in the justice of their cause
and the strength of their position.

Once more, it is not entirely idle to consider the effect of scientific
progress on the march of human affairs, as so often exemplified in
history.  Whether that half-century of continuous war would have been
possible with the artillery, means of locomotion, and other machinery of
destruction and communication now so terribly familiar to the world, can
hardly be a question.  The preterhuman prolixity of negotiation which
appals us in the days when steam and electricity had not yet annihilated
time and space, ought also to be obsolete.  At a period when the news
of a great victory was thirty days on its travels from Gibraltar to
Flushing, aged counsellors justified themselves in a solemn consumption
of time such as might have exasperated Jared or Methuselah in his
boyhood.  Men fought as if war was the normal condition of humanity, and
negotiated as if they were all immortal.  But has the art political kept
pace with the advancement of physical science?  If history be valuable
for the examples it furnishes both for imitation and avoidance, then the
process by which these peace conferences were initiated and conducted may
be wholesome food for reflection.

John Neyen, who, since his secret transactions already described at the
Hague and Fort Lillo, had been speeding back and forth between Brussels,
London, and Madrid, had once more returned to the Netherlands, and had
been permitted to reside privately at Delft until the king's ratification
should arrive from Spain.

While thus established, the industrious friar had occupied his leisure in
studying the situation of affairs.  Especially he had felt inclined to
renew some of those little commercial speculations which had recently
proved so comfortable in the case of Dirk van der Does.  Recorder
Cornelius Aerssens came frequently to visit him, with the private consent
of the Government, and it at once struck the friar that Cornelius would
be a judicious investment.  So he informed the recorder that the
archdukes had been much touched with his adroitness and zeal in
facilitating the entrance of their secret agent into the presence of the
Prince and the Advocate.  Cruwel, in whose company the disguised Neyen
had made his first journey to the Hague, was a near relative of Aerssena,
The honest monk accordingly, in recognition of past and expected
services, begged one day the recorder's acceptance of a bill, drawn by
Marquis Spinola on Henry Beckman, merchant of Amsterdam, for eighty
thousand ducats.  He also produced a diamond ring, valued at ten thousand
florins, which he ventured to think worthy the acceptance of Madame
Aerssens.  Furthermore, he declared himself ready to pay fifteen thousand
crowns in cash, on account of the bill, whenever it might be, desired,
and observed that the archdukes had ordered the house which the recorder
had formerly occupied in Brussels to be reconveyed to him.  Other good
things were in store, it was delicately hinted, as soon as they had been
earned.

Aerssens expressed his thanks for the house, which, he said, legally
belonged to him according to the terms of the surrender of Brussels.
He hesitated in regard to the rest, but decided finally to accept the
bill of exchange and the diamond, apprising Prince Maurice and Olden-
Barneveld of the fact, however, on his return to the Hague.  Being
subsequently summoned by Neyen to accept the fifteen thousand crowns,
he felt embarrassed at the compromising position in which he had placed
himself.  He decided accordingly to make a public statement of the affair
to the States-General.  This was done, and the States placed the ring and
the bill in the hands of their treasurer, Joris de Bie.

The recorder never got the eighty thousand ducats, nor his wife the
diamond; but although there had been no duplicity on his part, he got
plenty of slander.  His evil genius had prompted him, not to listen
seriously to the temptings of the monk, but to deal with him on his own
terms.  He was obliged to justify himself against public suspicion with
explanations and pamphlets, but some taint of the calumny stuck by him
to the last.

Meantime, the three months allotted for the reception of Philip's
ratification had nearly expired.  In March, the royal Government had
expressly consented that the archdukes should treat with the rebels on
the ground of their independence.  In June that royal permission had been
withdrawn, exactly because the independence could never be acknowledged.
Albert, naturally enough indignant at such double-dealing, wrote to the
king that his disapprobation was incomprehensible, as the concession of
independence had been made by direct command of Philip.  "I am much
amazed," he said, "that, having treated with the islanders on condition
of leaving them free, by express order of your Majesty (which you must
doubtless very well remember), your Majesty now reproves my conduct, and
declares your dissatisfaction."  At last, on the 23rd July, Spinola
requested a safe conduct for Louis Verreyken, auditor of the council at
Brussels, to come to the Hague.

On the 23rd of July that functionary accordingly arrived.  He came before
Prince Maurice and fifty deputies of the States-General, and exhibited
the document.  At the same time he urged them, now that the long-desired
ratification had been produced, to fulfil at once their promise, and to
recal their fleet from the coast of Spain.

Verreyken was requested to withdraw while the instrument was examined.
When recalled, he was informed that the States had the most staight-
forward intention to negotiate, but that the royal document did not at
all answer their expectation.  As few of the delegates could read
Spanish, it would first of all be necessary to cause it to be translated.

When that was done they would be able to express their opinion concerning
it and come to a decision in regard to the recal of the fleet.  This
ended the proceedings on that occasion.

Next day Prince Maurice invited Verreyken and others to dine.  After
dinner the stadholder informed him that the answer of the States might
soon be expected; at the same time expressing his regret that the king
should have sent such an instrument.  It was very necessary, said the
prince, to have plain speaking, and he, for one, had never believed that
the king would send a proper ratification.  The one exhibited was not at
all to the purpose.  The king was expected to express himself as clearly
as the archdukes had done in their instrument.  He must agree to treat
with the States-General as with people entirely free, over whom he
claimed no authority.  If the king should refuse to make this public
declaration, the States would at once break off all negotiations.

Three days afterwards, seven deputies conferred with Verreyken.
Barneveld, as spokesman, declared that, so far as the provinces were
concerned, the path was plain and open to an honest, ingenuous, lasting
peace, but that the manner of dealing on the other side was artificial
and provocative of suspicion.  A most important line, which had been
placed by the States at the very beginning of the form suggested by them,
was wanting in the ratification now received.  This hardly seemed an
accidental omission.  The whole document was constrained and defective.
It was necessary to deal with Netherlanders in clear and simple language.
The basis of any possible negotiation was that the provinces were to be
treated with as and called entirely free.  Unless this was done
negotiations were impossible.  The States-General were not so unskilled
in affairs as to be ignorant that the king and the archdukes were quite
capable, at a future day, of declaring themselves untrammelled by any
conditions.  They would boast that conventions with rebels and pledges to
heretics were alike invalid.  If Verreyken had brought no better document
than the one presented, he had better go at once.  His stay in the
provinces was superfluous.

At a subsequent interview Barneveld informed Verreyken that the king's
confirmation had been unanimously rejected by the States-General as
deficient both in form and substance.  He added that the people of the
provinces were growing very lukewarm in regard to peace, that Prince
Maurice opposed it, that many persons regretted the length to which the
negotiations had already gone.  Difficult as it seemed to be to recede,
the archdukes might be certain that a complete rupture was imminent.

All these private conversations of Barneveld, who was known to be the
chief of the peace party, were duly reported by Verreyken in secret notes
to the archduke and to Spinola.  Of course they produced their effect.
It surely might have been seen that the tricks and shifts of an
antiquated diplomacy were entirely out of place if any wholesome result
were desired.  But the habit of dissimulation was inveterate.  That the
man who cannot dissemble is unfit to reign, was perhaps the only one of
his father's golden rules which Philip III. could thoroughly comprehend,
even if it be assumed that the monarch was at all consulted in regard to
this most important transaction of his life.  Verreyken and the friar
knew very well when they brought the document that it would be spurned by
the States, and yet they were also thoroughly aware that it was the
king's interest to, begin the negotiations as soon as possible.  When
thus privately and solemnly assured by the Advocate that they were really
wasting their time by being the bearers of these royal evasions, they
learned therefore nothing positively new, but were able to assure their
employers that to thoroughly disgust the peace party was not precisely
the mode of terminating the war.

Verreyken now received public and formal notification that a new
instrument must be procured from the king.  In the ratification which had
been sent, that monarch spoke of the archdukes as princes and sovereign
proprietors of all the Netherlands.  The clause by which, according to
the form prescribed by the States, and already adopted by the archdukes,
the United Provinces were described as free countries over which no
authority was claimed had been calmly omitted, as if, by such a
subterfuge, the independence of the republic could be winked out
of existence.  Furthermore, it was objected that the document was in
Spanish, that it was upon paper instead of parchment, that it was not
sealed with the great, but with the little seal, and that it was
subscribed.

"I the King."  This signature might be very appropriate for decrees
issued by a monarch to his vassals, but could not be rightly appended,
it was urged, to an instrument addressed to a foreign power.  Potentates,
treating with the States-General of the United Provinces, were expected
to sign their names.

Whatever may be thought of the technical requirements in regard to the
parchment, the signature, and the seal, it would be difficult to
characterize too strongly the polity of the Spanish Government in the
most essential point.  To seek relief from the necessity of recognising-
at least in the sense of similitude, according to the subtlety of
Bentivoglio--the freedom of the provinces, simply by running the pen
through the most important line of a most important document, was
diplomacy in its dotage.  Had not Marquis Spinola, a man who could use
his brains and his pen as well as his sword, expressly implored the
politicians of Madrid not to change even a comma in the form of
ratification which he sent to Spain?

Verreyken, placed face to face with plain-spoken, straightforward,
strong-minded men, felt the dreary absurdity of the position.  He
could only stammer a ridiculous excuse about the clause, having been
accidentally left out by a copying secretary.  To represent so important
an omission as a clerical error was almost as great an absurdity as the
original device; but it was necessary for Verreyken to say something.

He promised, however, that the form prescribed by the States should
be again transmitted to Madrid, and expressed confidence that the
ratification would now be sent as desired.  Meantime he trusted that
the fleet would be at once recalled.

This at once created a stormy debate which lasted many days, both within
the walls of the House of Assembly and out of doors.  Prince Maurice
bitterly denounced the proposition, and asserted the necessity rather of
sending out more ships than of permitting their cruisers to return.  It
was well known that the Spanish Government, since the destruction of
Avila's fleet, had been straining every nerve to procure and equip other
war-vessels, and that even the Duke of Lerma had offered a small portion
of his immense plunderings to the crown in aid of naval armaments.

On the other hand, Barneveld urged that the States, in the preliminary
armistice, had already agreed to send no munitions nor reinforcements to
the fleet already cruising on the coasts of the peninsula.  It would be
better, therefore, to recal those ships than to leave them where they
could not be victualled nor strengthened without a violation of good
faith.

These opinions prevailed, and on the 9th August, Verreyken was summoned
before the Assembly, and informed by Barneveld that the States had
decided to withdraw the fleet, and to declare invalid all prizes made
six weeks after that date.

This was done, it was said, out of respect to the archdukes, to whom no
blame was imputed for the negligence displayed in regard to the
ratification.  Furthermore, the auditor was requested to inform his
masters that the documents brought from Spain were not satisfactory, and
he was furnished with a draught, made both in Latin and French.  With
this form, it was added, the king was to comply within six weeks, if he
desired to proceed further in negotiations with the States.

Verreyken thanked the States-General, made the best of promises, and
courteously withdrew.

Next day, however, just as his preparations for departure had been made,
he was once more summoned before the Assembly to meet with a somewhat
disagreeable surprise.  Barneveld, speaking as usual in behalf of the
States-General, publicly produced Spinola's bill of exchange for eighty
thousand ducats, the diamond ring intended for Madame Aerssens, and the
gold chain given to Dirk van der Does, and expressed the feelings of the
republican Government in regard to those barefaced attempts of Friar John
at bribery and corruption, in very scornful language?  Netherlanders were
not to be bought--so the agent of Spain and of the archdukes was
informed--and, even if the citizens were venal, it would be necessary
in a popular Government to buy up the whole nation.  "It is not in our
commonwealth as in despotisms," said the Advocate, "where affairs of
state are directed by the nod of two or three individuals, while the
rest of the inhabitants are a mob of slaves.  By turns, we all govern
and are governed.  This great council, this senate--should it seem not
sufficiently fortified against your presents-could easily be enlarged.
Here is your chain, your ring, your banker's draught.  Take them all back
to your masters.  Such gifts are not necessary to ensure a just peace,
while to accept them would be a crime against liberty, which we are
incapable of committing."

Verreyken, astonished and abashed, could answer little save to mutter a
few words about the greediness of monks, who, judging everyone else by
themselves, thought no one inaccessible to a bribe.  He protested the
innocence of the archdukes in the matter, who had given no directions to
bribe, and who were quite ignorant that the attempt had been made.

He did not explain by whose authority the chain, the ring, and the
draught upon Beckman had been furnished to the friar.

Meantime that ecclesiastic was cheerfully wending his way to Spain in
search of the new ratification, leaving his colleague vicariously to
bide the pelting of the republican storm, and to return somewhat
weather-beaten to Brussels.

During the suspension, thus ridiculously and gratuitously caused, of
preliminaries which had already lasted the better portion of a year,
party-spirit was rising day by day higher, and spreading more widely
throughout the provinces.  Opinions and sentiments were now sharply
defined and loudly announced.  The clergy, from a thousand pulpits,
thundered against the peace, exposing the insidious practices, the
faithless promises, the monkish corruptions, by which the attempt was
making to reduce the free republic once more into vassalage to Spain.
The people everywhere listened eagerly and applauded.  Especially the
mariners, cordwainers, smiths, ship-chandlers, boatmen, the tapestry
weavers, lace-manufacturers, shopkeepers, and, above all, the India
merchants and stockholders in the great commercial companies for the East
and West, lifted up their voices for war.  This was the party of Prince
Maurice, who made no secret of his sentiments, and opposed, publicly and
privately, the resumption of negotiations.  Doubtless his adherents were
the most numerous portion of the population.

Barneveld, however, was omnipotent with the municipal governments, and
although many individuals in those bodies were deeply interested in the
India navigation and the great corporations, the Advocate turned them as
usual around his finger.

Ever since the memorable day of Nieuport there had been no love lost
between the stadholder and the Advocate.  They had been nominally
reconciled to each other, and had, until lately, acted with tolerable
harmony, but each was thoroughly conscious of the divergence of their
respective aims.

Exactly at this period the long-smothered resentment of Maurice against
his old preceptor, counsellor, and, as he believed, betrayer, flamed
forth anew.  He was indignant that a man, so infinitely beneath him in
degree, should thus dare to cross his plans, to hazard, as he believed,
the best interests of the state, and to interfere with the course of his
legitimate ambition.  There was more glory for a great soldier to earn in
future battle-fields, a higher position before the world to be won.  He
had a right by birth, by personal and family service, to claim admittance
among the monarchs of Europe.  The pistol of Balthasar Gerard had alone
prevented the elevation of his father to the sovereignty of the
provinces.  The patents, wanting only a few formalities, were still in
possession of the son.  As the war went on--and nothing but blind belief
in Spanish treachery could cause the acceptance of a peace which would be
found to mean slavery--there was no height to which he might not climb.
With the return of peace and submission, his occupation would be gone,
obscurity and poverty the sole recompense for his life long services and
the sacrifices of his family.  The memory of the secret movements twice
made but a few years before to elevate him to the sovereignty, and which
he believed to have been baffled by the Advocate, doubtless rankled in
his breast.  He did not forget that when the subject had been discussed
by the favourers of the scheme in Barneveld's own house, Barneveld
himself had prophesied that one day or another "the rights would burst
out which his Excellency had to become prince of the provinces, on
strength of the signed and sealed documents addressed to the late Prince
of Orange; that he had further alluded to the efforts then on foot to
make him Duke of Gelderland; adding with a sneer, that Zeeland was all
agog on the subject, while in that province there were individuals very
desirous of becoming children of Zebedee."

Barneveld, on his part, although accustomed to speak in public of his
Excellency Prince Maurice in terms of profoundest respect, did not fail
to communicate in influential quarters his fears that the prince was
inspired by excessive ambition, and that he desired to protract the war,
not for the good of the commonwealth, but for the attainment of greater
power in the state.  The envoys of France, expressly instructed on that
subject by the king, whose purposes would be frustrated if the ill-blood
between these eminent personages could not be healed, did their best to
bring about a better understanding, but with hardly more than an apparent
success.

Once more there were stories flying about that the stadholder had called
the Advocate liar, and that he had struck him or offered to strike him--
tales as void of truth, doubtless, as those so rife after the battle of
Nieuport, but which indicated the exasperation which existed.

When the news of the rejection of the King's ratification reached Madrid,
the indignation of the royal conscience-keepers was vehement.

That the potentate of so large a portion of the universe should be
treated by those lately his subjects with less respect than that due from
equals to equals, seemed intolerable.  So thoroughly inspired, however,
was the king by the love of religion and the public good--as he informed
Marquis Spinola by letter--and so intense was his desire for the
termination of that disastrous war, that he did not hesitate indulgently
to grant what had been so obstinately demanded.  Little was to be
expected, he said, from the stubbornness of the provinces, and from their
extraordinary manner of transacting business, but looking, nevertheless,
only to divine duty, and preferring its dictates to a selfish regard for
his own interests, he had resolved to concede that liberty to the
provinces which had been so importunately claimed.  He however imposed
the condition that the States should permit free and public exercise of
the Catholic religion throughout their territories, and that so long as
such worship was unobstructed, so long and no longer should the liberty
now conceded to the provinces endure.

"Thus did this excellent prince," says an eloquent Jesuit, "prefer
obedience to the Church before subjection to himself, and insist that
those, whom he emancipated from his own dominions, should still be loyal
to the sovereignty of the Pope."

Friar John, who had brought the last intelligence from the Netherlands,
might have found it difficult, if consulted, to inform the king how many
bills of exchange would be necessary to force this wonderful condition on
the Government of the provinces.  That the republic should accept that
liberty as a boon which she had won with the red right hand, and should
establish within her domains as many agents for Spanish reaction as
there were Roman priests, monks, and Jesuits to be found, was not very
probable.  It was not thus nor then that the great lesson of religious
equality and liberty for all men--the inevitable result of the Dutch
revolt--was to be expounded.  The insertion of such a condition in the
preamble to a treaty with a foreign power would have been a desertion on
the part of the Netherlands of the very principle of religious or civil
freedom.

The monk, however, had convinced the Spanish Government that in six
months after peace had been made the States would gladly accept the
dominion of Spain once more, or, at the very least, would annex
themselves to the obedient Netherlands under the sceptre of the
archdukes.

Secondly, he assured the duke that they would publicly and totally
renounce all connection with France.

Thirdly, he pledged himself that the exercise of the Catholic religion
would be as free as that of any other creed.

And the duke of Lerma believed it all: such and no greater was his
capacity for understanding the course of events which he imagined himself
to be directing.  Certainly Friar John did not believe what he said.

"Master Monk is not quite so sure of his stick as he pretends to be,"
said Secretary-of-State Villeroy.  Of course, no one knew better the
absurdity of those assurances than Master Monk himself.

"It may be that he has held such language," said Jeannin, "in order to
accomplish his object in Spain.  But 'tis all dreaming and moonshine,
which one should laugh at rather than treat seriously.  These people here
mean to be sovereign for ever and will make no peace except on that
condition.  This grandeur and vanity have entered so deeply into their
brains that they will be torn into little pieces rather than give it up."

Spinola, as acute a politician as he was a brilliant commander, at once
demonstrated to his Government the impotence of such senile attempts.
No definite agreements could be made, he wrote, except by a general
convention.  Before a treaty of peace, no permission would be given by
the States to the public exercise of the Catholic religion, for fear of
giving offence to what were called the Protestant powers.  Unless they
saw the proper ratification they would enter into no negotiations at all.
When the negotiations had produced a treaty, the Catholic worship might
be demanded.  Thus peace might be made, and the desired conditions
secured, or all parties would remain as they had been.

The Spanish Government replied by sending a double form of ratification.
It would not have been the Spanish Government, had one simple,
straightforward document been sent.  Plenty of letters came at the same
time, triumphantly refuting the objections and arguments of the States-
General.  To sign "Yo el Rey" had been the custom of the king's ancestors
in dealing with foreign powers.  Thus had Philip II. signed the treaty of
Vervins.  Thus had the reigning king confirmed the treaty of Vervins.
Thus had he signed the recent treaty with England as well as other
conventions with other potentates.  If the French envoys at the Hague
said the contrary they erred from ignorance or from baser reasons.  The
provinces could not be declared free until Catholic worship was conceded.
The donations must be mutual and simultaneous and the States would gain a
much more stable and diuturnal liberty, founded not upon a simple
declaration, but lawfully granted them as a compensation for a just and
pious work performed.  To this end the king sent ratification number one
in which his sentiments were fully expressed.  If, however, the provinces
were resolved not to defer the declaration so ardently desired and to
refuse all negotiation until they had received it, then ratification
number two, therewith sent and drawn up in the required form, might be
used.  It was, however, to be exhibited but not delivered.  The provinces
would then see the clemency with which they were treated by the king, and
all the world might know that it was not his fault if peace were not
made.

Thus the politicians of Madrid; speaking in the name of their august
sovereign and signing "Yo el Rey" for him without troubling him even to
look at the documents.

When these letters arrived, the time fixed by the States for accepting
the ratification had run out, and their patience was well-nigh exhausted.
The archduke held council with Spinola, Verreyken, Richardot, and others,
and it was agreed that ratification number two, in which the Catholic
worship was not mentioned, should be forthwith sent to the States.
Certainly no other conclusion could have been reached, and it was
fortunate that a lucid interval in the deliberations of the 'lunati ceat'
Madrid had furnished the archduke with an alternative.  Had it been
otherwise and had number one been presented, with all the accompanying
illustrations, the same dismal comedy might have gone on indefinitely
until the Dutchmen hissed it away and returned to their tragic business
once more.

On the 25th October, Friar John and Verreyken came before the States-
General, more than a hundred members being present, besides Prince
Maurice and Count Lewis William.

The monk stated that he had faithfully represented to his Majesty at
Madrid the sincere, straightforward, and undissembling proceedings of
their lordships in these negotiations.  He had also explained the
constitution of their Government and had succeeded in obtaining from his
royal Majesty the desired ratification, after due deliberation with the
council.  This would now give the assurance of a firm and durable peace,
continued Neyen, even if his Majesty should come one day to die--being
mortal.  Otherwise, there might be inconveniences to fear.  Now, however,
the document was complete in all its parts, so far as regarded what was
principal and essential, and in conformity with the form transmitted by
the States-General.  "God the Omnipotent knows," proceeded the friar,
"how sincere is my intention in this treaty of peace as a means of
delivering the Netherlands from the miseries of war, as your lordships
will perceive by the form of the agreement, explaining itself and making
manifest its pure and undissembling intentions, promising nothing and
engaging to nothing which will not be effectually performed.  This would
not be the case if his Majesty were proceeding by finesse or deception.
The ratification might be nakedly produced as demanded, without any other
explanation.  But his Majesty, acting in good faith, has now declared his
last determination in order to avoid anything that might be disputed at
some future day, as your lordships will see more amply when the auditor
has exhibited the document."

When the friar had finished Verreyken spoke.

He reminded them of the proofs already given by the archdukes of their
sincere desire to change the long and sanguinary war into a good and
assured peace.  Their lordships the States had seen how liberally,
sincerely, and roundly their Highnesses had agreed to all demands and had
procured the ratification of his Majesty, even although nothing had been
proposed in that regard at the beginning of the negotiations.

He then produced the original document, together with two copies, one in
French the other in Flemish, to be carefully collated by the States.

"It is true," said the auditor, "that the original is not made out in
Latin nor in French as your lordships demanded, but in Spanish, and in
the same form and style as used by his Majesty in treating with all the
kings, potentates, and republics of Christendom.  To tell you the truth,
it has seemed strange that there should be a wish to make so great and
puissant a king change his style, such demand being contrary to all
reason and equity, and more so as his Majesty is content with the style
which your lordships have been pleased to adopt."

The ratification was then exhibited.

It set forth that Don Philip, by grace of God King of Castile, Leon,
Arragon, the Two Sicilies, Portugal, Navarre, and of fourteen or fifteen
other European realms duly enumerated; King of the Eastern and Western
Indies and of the continents on terra firma adjacent, King of Jerusalem,
Archduke of Antioch, Duke of Burgundy, and King of the Ocean, having seen
that the archdukes were content to treat with the States-General of the
United Provinces in quality of, and as holding them for, countries,
provinces, and free states over which they pretended to no authority;
either by way of a perpetual peace or for a truce or suspension of arms
for twelve, fifteen, or twenty years, at the choice of the said States,
and knowing that the said most serene archdukes had promised to deliver
the king's ratification; had, after ripe deliberation with his council,
and out of his certain wisdom and absolute royal power, made the present
declarations, similar to the one made by the archdukes, for the
accomplishment of the said promise so far as it concerned him:

"And we principally declare," continued the King of Spain, Jerusalem,
America, India, and the Ocean, "that we are content that in our name, and
on our part, shall be treated with the said States in the quality of, and
as held by us for, free countries, provinces, and states, over which we
make no pretensions.  Thus we approve and ratify every point of the said
agreement, promising on faith and word of a king to guard and accomplish
it as entirely as if we had consented to it from the beginning."

"But we declare," said the king, in conclusion, "that if the treaty for a
peace or a truce of many years, by which the pretensions of both parties
are to be arranged--as well in the matter of religion as all the surplus
--shall not be concluded, then this ratification shall be of no effect
and as if it never had been made and, in virtue of it, we are not to lose
a single point of our right, nor the United Provinces to acquire one, but
things are to remain, so far as regards the rights of the two parties,
exactly as they what to each shall seem best."

Such were the much superfluous verbiage lopped away--which had been
signed "I the King" at Madrid on the 18th September, and the two copies
of which were presented to the States-General on the 25th October, the
commissioners retaining the original.

The papers were accepted, with a few general commonplaces by Barneveld
meaning nothing, and an answer was promised after a brief delay.

A committee of seven, headed by the Advocate as chairman and spokesman,
held a conference with the ambassadors of France and England, at four
o'clock in the afternoon of the same day and another at ten o'clock next
morning.

The States were not very well pleased with the ratification.  What
especially moved their discontent was the concluding clause, according to
which it was intimated that if the pretensions of Spain in regard to
religion were not fulfilled in the final treaty, the ratification was
waste-paper and the king would continue to claim all his rights.

How much more loudly would they have vociferated, could they have looked
into Friar John's wallet and have seen ratification number one!  Then
they would have learned that, after nearly a year of what was called
negotiation, the king had still meant to demand the restoration of the
Catholic worship before he would even begin to entertain the little
fiction that the provinces were free.

As to the signature, the paper, and the Spanish language, those were
minor matters.  Indeed, it is difficult to say why the King of Spain
should not issue a formal document in Spanish.  It is doubtful whether,
had he taken a fancy to read it, he could have understood it in any other
tongue.  Moreover, Spanish would seem the natural language for Spanish
state-papers.  Had he, as King of Jerusalem, America, or India, chosen
the Hebrew, Aztec, or Sanscrit, in his negotiations with the United
Provinces, there might have been more cause for dissatisfaction.

Jeannin, who was of course the leading spirit among the foreign
members of the conference, advised the acceptance of the ratification.
Notwithstanding the technical objections to its form, he urged that in
substance it was in sufficient conformity to the draught furnished by the
States.  Nothing could be worse, in his opinion, for the provinces than
to remain any longer suspended between peace and war.  They would do
well, therefore, to enter upon negotiations so soon as they had agreed
among themselves upon three points.

They must fix the great indispensable terms which they meant to hold,
and from which no arguments would ever induce them to recede.  Thus they
would save valuable time and be spared much frivolous discourse.

Next, they ought to establish a good interior government.

Thirdly, they should at once arrange their alliances and treaties with
foreign powers, in order to render the peace to be negotiated a durable
one.

As to the first and second of these points, the Netherlanders needed no
prompter.  They had long ago settled the conditions without which they
would make no treaty at all, and certainly it was not the States-General
that had thus far been frivolously consuming time.

As to the form of government, defective though it was, the leaders of the
republic knew very well in whose interests such sly allusions to their
domestic affairs were repeatedly ventured by the French envoys.  In
regard to treaties with foreign powers it was, of course, most desirable
for the republic to obtain the formal alliance of France and England.
Jeannin and his colleagues were ready to sign such a treaty, offensive
and defensive, at once, but they found it impossible to induce the
English ambassadors, with whom there was a conference on the 26th
October, to come into any written engagement on the subject.  They
expressed approbation of the plan individually and in words, but
deemed it best to avoid any protocol, by which their sovereign could
be implicated in a promise.  Should the negotiations for peace be broken
off, it would be time enough to make a treaty to protect the provinces.
Meantime, they ought to content themselves with the general assurance,
already given them, that in case of war the monarchs of France and
England would not abandon them, but would provide for their safety,
either by succour or in some other way, so that they would be placed out
of danger.

Such promises were vague without being magnificent, and, as James had
never yet lifted his finger to assist the provinces, while indulging them
frequently with oracular advice, it could hardly be expected that either
the French envoys or the States-General would reckon very confidently on
assistance from Great Britain, should war be renewed with Spain.

On the whole, it was agreed to draw up a paper briefly stating the
opinion of the French and English plenipotentiaries that the provinces
would do well to accept the ratification.

The committee of the States, with Barneveld as chairman, expressed
acquiescence, but urged that they could not approve the clause in that
document concerning religion.  It looked as if the King of Spain wished
to force them to consent by treaty that the Catholic religion should be
re-established in their country.  As they were free and sovereign,
however, and so recognised by himself, it was not for him to meddle
with such matters.  They foresaw that this clause would create
difficulties when the whole matter should be referred to the separate
provinces, and that it would, perhaps, cause the entire rejection of the
ratification.

The envoys, through the voice of Jeannin, remonstrated against such a
course.  After all, the objectionable clause, it was urged, should be
considered only as a demand which the king was competent to make and it
was not reasonable, they said, for the States to shut his mouth and
prevent him from proposing what he thought good to propose.

On the other hand, they were not obliged to acquiesce in the proposition.
In truth, it would be more expedient that the States themselves should
grant this grace to the Catholics, thus earning their gratitude, rather
than that it should be inserted in the treaty.

A day or two later there was an interview between the French envoys and
Count Lewis William, for whose sage, dispassionate, and upright character
they had all a great respect.  It was their object--in obedience to the
repeated instructions of the French king--to make use of his great
influence over Prince Maurice in favour of peace.  It would be better,
they urged, that the stadholder should act more in harmony with the
States than he had done of late, and should reflect that, the
ratification being good, there was really no means of preventing a peace,
except in case the King of Spain should refuse the conditions necessary
for securing it.  The prince would have more power by joining with the
States than in opposing them.  Count Lewis expressed sympathy with these
views, but feared that Maurice would prefer that the ratification should
not be accepted until the states of the separate provinces had been
heard; feeling convinced that several of those bodies would reject that
instrument on account of the clause relating to religion.

Jeannin replied that such a course would introduce great discord into
the provinces, to the profit of the enemy, and that the King of France
himself--so far from being likely to wish the ratification rejected
because of the clause--would never favour the rupture of negotiations
if it came on account of religion.  He had always instructed them to use
their efforts to prevent any division among the States, as sure to lead
to their ruin.  He would certainly desire the same stipulation as the one
made by the King of Spain, and would support rather than oppose the
demand thus made, in order to content the Catholics.  To be sure, he
would prefer that the States should wisely make this provision of their
own accord rather than on the requisition of Spain, but a rupture of the
pending negotiations from the cause suggested would be painful to him and
very damaging to his character at Rome.

On the 2nd November the States-General gave their formal answer to the
commissioners, in regard to the ratification.

That instrument, they observed, not only did not agree with the form as
promised by the archdukes in language and style, but also in regard to
the seal, and to the insertion and omission of several words.  On this
account, and especially by reason of the concluding clause, there might
be inferred the annulment of the solemn promise made in the body of the
instrument.  The said king and archdukes knew very well that these
States-General of free countries and provinces, over which the king and
archdukes pretended to no authority, were competent to maintain order in
all things regarding the good constitution and government of their land
and its inhabitants.  On this subject, nothing could be pretended or
proposed on the part of the king and archdukes without, violation of
formal and solemn promises.

"Nevertheless," continued the States-General, "in order not to retard a
good work, already begun, for the purpose of bringing the United
Provinces out of a long and bloody war into a Christian and assured
peace, the letters of ratification will be received in respect that
they contain the declaration, on part of both the king and the archdukes,
that they will treat for a peace or a truce of many years with the
States-General of the United Provinces, in quality of, and as holding
them to be, free countries, provinces, and states, over which they make
no pretensions."

It was further intimated, however, that the ratification was only
received for reference to the estates of each of the provinces, and it
was promised that, within six weeks, the commissioners should be informed
whether the provinces would consent or refuse to treat.  It was moreover
declared that, neither at that moment nor at any future time, could any
point in the letters of ratification be accepted which, directly or
indirectly, might be interpreted as against that essential declaration
and promise in regard to the freedom of the provinces.  In case the
decision should be taken to enter into negotiation upon the basis of that
ratification, or any other that might meantime arrive from Spain, then
firm confidence was expressed by the States that, neither on the part of
the king nor that of the archdukes would there be proposed or pretended,
in contravention of that promise, any point touching the good
constitution, welfare, state, or government of the United Provinces,
and of the inhabitants.  The hope was furthermore expressed that, within
ten days after the reception of the consent of the States to treat,
commissioners would be sent by the archdukes to the Hague, fully
authorised and instructed to declare, roundly their intentions, in order
to make short work of the whole business.  In that case, the States would
duly authorize and instruct commissioners to act in their behalf.

Thus in the answer especial warning was given against any possible
attempt to interfere with the religious question.  The phraseology could
not be mistaken.

At this stage of the proceedings, the States demanded that the original
instrument of ratification should be deposited with them.  The two
commissioners declared that they were without power to consent to this.
Hereupon the Assembly became violent, and many members denounced the
refusal as equivalent to breaking off the negotiations.  Everything
indicated, so it was urged, a desire on the Spanish side to spin delays
out of delays, and, meantime, to invent daily some new trap for
deception.  Such was the vehemence upon this point that the industrious
Franciscan posted back to Brussels, and returned with the archduke's
permission to deliver the document.  Three conditions, however, were laid
down.  The States must give a receipt for the ratification.  They must
say in that receipt that the archdukes, in obtaining the paper from
Spain, had fulfilled their original promise.  If peace should not be
made, they were to return the document.

When these conditions were announced, the indignation of the republican
Government at the trifling of their opponents was fiercer than ever.  The
discrepancies between the form prescribed and the ratification obtained
had always been very difficult of digestion, but, although willing to
pass them by, the States stoutly refused to accept the document on these
conditions.

Tooth and nail Verreyken and Neyen fought out the contest and were
worsted.  Once more the nimble friar sped back and forth between the
Hague and his employer's palace, and at last, after tremendous
discussions in cabinet council, the conditions were abandoned.

"Nobody can decide," says the Jesuit historian, "which was greater--the
obstinacy of the federal Government in screwing out of the opposite party
everything it deemed necessary, or the indulgence of the archdukes in
making every possible concession."

Had these solemn tricksters of an antiquated school perceived that, in
dealing with men who meant what they said and said what they meant, all
these little dilatory devices were superfluous, perhaps the wholesome
result might have sooner been reached.  In a contest of diplomacy against
time it generally happens that time is the winner, and on this occasion,
time and the republic were fighting on the same side.

On the 13th December the States-General re-assembled at the Hague, the
separate provinces having in the interval given fresh instructions to
their representatives.  It was now decided that no treaty should be made,
unless the freedom of the commonwealth was recognized in phraseology
which, after consultation with the foreign ambassadors, should be deemed
satisfactory.  Farther it was agreed that, neither in ecclesiastical nor
secular matters, should any conditions be accepted which could be
detrimental to freedom.  In case the enemy should strive for the
contrary, the world would be convinced that he alone was responsible for
the failure of the peace negotiations.  Then, with the support of other
powers friendly to the republic, hostilities could be resumed in such a
manner as to ensure a favourable issue for an upright cause.

The armistice, begun on the 4th of May, was running to an end, and it was
now renewed at the instance of the States.  That Government, moreover, on
the 23rd December formally notified to the archdukes that, trusting to
their declarations, and to the statements of Neyen and Verreyken, it was
willing to hold conferences for peace.  Their Highnesses were accordingly
invited to appoint seven or eight commissioners at once, on the same
terms as formally indicated.

The original understanding had been that no envoys but Netherlanders
should come from Brussels for these negotiations.

Barneveld and the peace party, however, were desirous that Spinola, who
was known to be friendly to a pacific result, should be permitted to form
part of the mission.  Accordingly the letters, publicly drawn up in the
Assembly, adhered to the original arrangement, but Barneveld, with the
privity of other leading personages, although without the knowledge of
Maurice, Lewis William, and the State-Council, secretly enclosed a little
note in the principal despatch to Neyen and Verreyken.  In this billet
it was intimated that, notwithstanding the prohibition in regard to
foreigners, the States were willing--it having been proposed that one or
two who were not Netherlanders should be sent--that a single Spaniard,
provided he were not one of the principal military commanders, should
make part of the embassy.

The phraseology had a double meaning.  Spinola was certainly the chief
military commander, but he was not a Spaniard.  This eminent personage
might be supposed to have thus received permission to come to the
Netherlands, despite all that had been urged by the war-party against the
danger incurred, in case of a renewal of hostilities, by admitting so
clear-sighted an enemy into the heart of the republic.  Moreover, the
terms of the secret note would authorize the appointment of another
foreigner--even a Spaniard--while the crafty president Richardot might
creep into the commission, on the ground that, being a Burgundian, he
might fairly call himself a Netherlander.

And all this happened.

Thus, after a whole year of parley, in which the States-General had held
firmly to their original position, while the Spanish Government had crept
up inch by inch, and through countless windings and subterfuges, to the
point on which they might have all stood together at first, and thus have
saved a twelvemonth, it was finally settled that peace conferences should
begin.

Barneveld had carried the day.  Maurice and his cousin Lewis William had
uniformly, deliberately, but not factiously, used all their influence
against any negotiations.  The prince had all along loudly expressed his
conviction that neither the archdukes nor Spain would ever be brought to
an honourable peace.  The most to be expected of them was a truce of
twelve or fifteen years, to which his consent at least should never be
given, and during which cessation of hostilities, should it be accorded,
every imaginable effort would be made to regain by intrigue what the king
had lost by the sword.   As for the King of England and his counsellors,
Maurice always denounced them as more Spanish than Spaniards, as doing
their best to put themselves on the most intimate terms with his Catholic
Majesty, and as secretly desirous--insane policy as it seemed--of forcing
the Netherlands back again under the sceptre of that monarch.

He had at first been supported in his position by the French ambassadors,
who had felt or affected disinclination for peace, but who had
subsequently, thrown the whole of their own and their master's influence
on the side of Barneveld.  They had done their best--and from time to
time they had been successful--to effect at least a superficial
reconciliation between those two influential personages.  They had
employed all the arguments at their disposal to bring the prince over to
the peace party.  Especially they had made use of the 'argumentum ad
crumenam,' which that veteran broker in politics, Jeannin, had found so
effective in times past with the great lords of the League.  But Maurice
showed himself so proof against the golden inducements suggested by the
President that he and his king both arrived at the conclusion that there
were secret motives at work, and that Maurice was not dazzled by the
brilliant prospects held out to him by Henry, only because his eyes were
stedfastly fixed upon some unknown but splendid advantage, to be gained
through other combinations.  It was naturally difficult for Henry to
imagine the possibility of a man, playing a first part in the world's
theatre, being influenced by so weak a motive as conviction.

Lewis William too--that "grave and wise young man," as Lord Leicester
used to call him twenty years before--remained steadily on the side of
the prince.  Both in private conversation and in long speeches to the
States-General, he maintained that the Spanish court was incapable of
sincere negotiations with the commonwealth, that to break faith with
heretics and rebels would always prove the foundation of its whole
policy, and that to deceive them by pretences of a truce or a treaty, and
to triumph afterwards over the results of its fraud, was to be expected
as a matter of course.

Sooner would the face of nature be changed than the cardinal maxim of
Catholic statesmanship be abandoned.

But the influence of the Nassaus, of the province of Zeeland,
of the clergy, and of the war-party in general, had been overbalanced by
Barneveld and the city corporations, aided by the strenuous exertions of
the French ambassadors.

The decision of the States-General was received with sincere joy at
Brussels.  The archdukes had something to hope from peace, and little but
disaster and ruin to themselves from a continuance of the war.  Spinola
too was unaffectedly in favour of negotiations.  He took the ground that
the foreign enemies of Spain, as well as her pretended friends, agreed in
wishing her to go on with the war, and that this ought to open her eyes
as to the expediency of peace.  While there was a general satisfaction in
Europe that the steady exhaustion of her strength in this eternal contest
made her daily less and less formidable to other nations, there were on
the other hand puerile complaints at court that the conditions prescribed
by impious and insolent rebels to their sovereign were derogatory to the
dignity of monarchy.  The spectacle of Spain sending ambassadors to the
Hague to treat for peace, on the basis of Netherland independence, would
be a humiliation such as had never been exhibited before.  That the
haughty confederation should be allowed thus to accomplish its ends, to
trample down all resistance to its dictation, and to defy the whole world
by its insults to the Church and to the sacred principle, of monarchy,
was most galling to Spanish pride.  Spinola, as a son of Italy, and not
inspired by the fervent hatred to Protestantism which was indigenous to
the other peninsula, steadily resisted those arguments.  None knew better
than he the sternness of the stuff out of which that republic was made,
and he felt that now or never was the time to treat, even as, five years
before, 'jam ant nunquam' had been inscribed on his banner outside
Ostend.  But he protested that his friends gave him even harder work than
his enemies had ever done, and he stoutly maintained that a peace against
which all the rivals of Spain seemed to have conspired from fear of
seeing her tranquil and disembarrassed, must be advantageous to Spain.
The genial and quick-wined Genoese could not see and hear all the secret
letters and private conversations of Henry and James and their
ambassadors, and he may be pardoned for supposing that, notwithstanding
all the crooked and incomprehensible politics of Greenwich and Paris, the
serious object of both England and France was to prolong the war.  In his
most private correspondence he expressed great doubts as to a favourable
issue to the pending conferences, but avowed his determination that if
they should fail it would be from no want of earnest effort on his part
to make them succeed.  It should never be said that he preferred his own
private advantage to the duty of serving the best interests of the crown.

Meantime the India trade, which was to form the great bone of contention
in the impending conferences, had not been practically neglected of late
by the enterprising Hollanders.  Peter Verhoeff, fresh from the victory
of Gibraltar, towards which he had personally so much contributed by the
splendid manner in which he had handled the AEolus after the death of
Admiral Heemskerk, was placed in command of a fleet to the East Indies,
which was to sail early in the spring.

Admiral Matelieff, who had been cruising in those seas during the three
years past, was now on his way home.  His exploits had been worthy the
growing fame of the republican navy.  In the summer of 1606 he had laid
siege to the town and fortress of Malacca, constructed by the Portuguese
at the southmost extremity of the Malay peninsula.  Andreas Hurtado de
Mendoza commanded the position, with a force of three thousand men, among
whom were many Indians.  The King or Sultan of Johore, at the south-
eastern extremity of the peninsula, remained faithful to his Dutch
allies, and accepted the proposition of Matelieff to take part in the
hostilities now begun.  The admiral's fleet consisted of eleven small
ships, with fourteen hundred men.  It was not exactly a military
expedition.  To the sailors of each ship were assigned certain shares of
the general profits, and as it was obvious that more money was likely to
be gained by trade with the natives, or by the capture of such stray
carracks and other, merchantmen of the enemy as were frequently to be met
in these regions, the men were not particularly eager to take part in
sieges of towns or battles with cruisers.  Matelieff, however, had
sufficient influence over his comrades to inflame their zeal on this
occasion for the fame of the republic, and to induce them to give the
Indian princes and the native soldiery a lesson in Batavian warfare.

A landing was effected on the peninsula, the sailors and guns were
disembarked, and an imposing auxiliary force, sent, according to promise,
after much delay, by the Sultan of Johore, proceeded to invest Malacca.
The ground proved wet, swampy, and impracticable for trenches, galleries,
covered ways, and all the other machinery of a regular siege.  Matelieff
was not a soldier nor a naval commander by profession, but a merchant-
skipper, like so many other heroes whose achievements were to be the
permanent glory of their fatherland.  He would not, however, have been a
Netherlander had he not learned something of the science which Prince
Maurice had so long been teaching, not only to his own countrymen but
to the whole world.  So moveable turrets, constructed of the spice-trees
which grew in rank luxuriance all around, were filled with earth and
stones, and advanced towards the fort.  Had the natives been as docile to
learn as the Hollanders were eager to teach a few easy lessons in the
military art, the doom of Andreas Hurtado de Mendoza would have been
sealed.  But the great truths which those youthful pedants, Maurice and
Lewis William, had extracted twenty years before from the works of the
Emperor Leo and earlier pagans, amid the jeers of veterans, were not easy
to transplant to the Malayan peninsula.

It soon proved that those white-turbaned, loose-garmented, supple
jointed, highly-picturesque troops of the sultan were not likely to
distinguish themselves for anything but wonderful rapidity in retreat.
Not only did they shrink from any advance towards the distant forts, but
they were incapable of abiding an attack within or behind their towers,
and, at every random shot from the enemy's works, they threw down their
arms and fled from their stations in dismay.  It was obvious enough that
the conquest and subjugation of such feeble warriors by the Portuguese
and Spaniards were hardly to be considered brilliant national trophies.
They had fallen an easy prey to the first European invader.  They had no
discipline, no obedience, no courage; and Matelieff soon found that to
attempt a scientific siege with such auxiliaries against a well-
constructed stone fortress, garrisoned with three thousand troops,
under an experienced Spanish soldier, was but midsummer madness.

Fevers and horrible malaria, bred by the blazing sun of the equator out
of those pestilential jungles, poisoned the atmosphere.  His handful of
troops, amounting to not much more than a hundred men to each of his
ships, might melt away before his eyes.  Nevertheless, although it was
impossible for him to carry the place by regular approach, he would not
abandon the hope of reducing it by famine.  During four months long,
accordingly, he kept every avenue by land or sea securely invested.  In
August, however, the Spanish viceroy of India, Don Alphonso de Castro,
made his appearance on the scene.  Coming from Goa with a splendid fleet,
numbering fourteen great galleons, four galleys, and sixteen smaller
vessels, manned by three thousand seven hundred Portuguese and other
Europeans, and an equal number of native troops, he had at first directed
his course towards Atchen, on the north-west point of Sumatra.  Here,
with the magnificent arrogance which Spanish and Portuguese viceroys were
accustomed to manifest towards the natives of either India, he summoned
the king to surrender his strongholds, to assist in constructing a
fortress for the use of his conquerors, to deliver up all the
Netherlanders within his domains, and to pay the expenses of the
expedition which had thus been sent to chastise him.  But the King of
Atchen had not sent ambassadors into the camp of Prince Maurice before
the city of Grave in vain.  He had learned that there were other white
skins besides the Spaniards at the antipodes, and that the republic whose
achievements in arts and arms were conspicuous trophies of Western
civilization, was not, as it had been represented to him, a mere nest of
pirates.  He had learned to prefer an alliance with Holland to slavery
under Spain.  Moreover, he had Dutch engineers and architects in his
service, and a well-constructed system of Dutch fortifications around his
capital.  To the summons to surrender himself and his allies he returned
a defiant answer.  The viceroy ordered an attack upon the city.  One fort
was taken.  From before the next he was repulsed with great loss.  The
Sumatrans had derived more profit from intercourse with Europeans than
the inhabitants of Johore or the Moluccas had done.  De Castro abandoned
the siege.  He had received intelligence of the dangerous situation of
Malacca, and moved down upon the place with his whole fleet.  Admiral
Matelieff, apprised by scouts of his approach, behaved with the readiness
and coolness of a veteran campaigner.  Before De Castro could arrive in
the roadstead of Malacca, he had withdrawn all his troops from their
positions, got all his artillery reshipped, and was standing out in the
straits, awaiting the enemy.

On the 17th August, the two fleets, so vastly disproportionate in number,
size, equipment, and military force--eighteen galleons and galleys, with
four or five thousand fighting men, against eleven small vessels and
twelve or fourteen hundred sailors--met in that narrow sea.  The action
lasted all day.  It was neither spirited nor sanguinary.  It ought to
have been within the power of the Spaniard to crush his diminutive
adversary.  It might have seemed a sufficient triumph for Matelieff to
manoeuvre himself out of harm's way.  No vessel on either side was
boarded, not one surrendered, but two on each side were set on fire and
destroyed.  Eight of the Dutchmen were killed--not a very sanguinary
result after a day's encounter with so imposing an armada.  De Castro's
losses were much greater, but still the battle was an insignificant one,
and neither fleet gained a victory.  Night put an end to the cannonading,
and the Spaniards withdrew to Malacca, while Matelieff bore away to
Johore.  The siege of Malacca was relieved, and the Netherlanders now
occupied themselves with the defence of the feeble sovereign at the other
point of the peninsula.

Matelieff lay at Johore a month, repairing damages and laying in
supplies.  While still at the place, he received information that a large
part of the Spanish armada had sailed from Malacca.  Several of his own
crew, who had lost their shares in the adventure by the burning of the
ships to which they belonged in the action of 17th August, were reluctant
and almost mutinous when their admiral now proposed to them a sudden
assault on the portion of the Spanish fleet still remaining within reach.
They had not come forth for barren glory, many protested, but in search
of fortune; they were not elated by the meagre result of the expedition.
Matelieff succeeded, however, at last in inspiring all the men of his
command with an enthusiasm superior to sordid appeals, and made a few
malcontents.  On the 21st September, he sailed to Malacca, and late in
the afternoon again attacked the Spaniards.  Their fleet consisted of
seven great galleons and three galleys lying in a circle before the town.
The outermost ship, called the St. Nicholas, was boarded by men from
three of the Dutch galleots with sudden and irresistible fury.  There was
a brief but most terrible action, the Netherlanders seeming endowed with
superhuman vigour.  So great was the panic that there was hardly an
effort at defence, and within less than an hour nearly every Spaniard on
board the St. Nicholas had been put to the sword.  The rest of the armada
engaged the Dutch fleet with spirit, but one of the great galleons was
soon set on fire and burned to the water's edge.  Another, dismasted and
crippled, struck her flag, and all that remained would probably have been
surrendered or destroyed had not the sudden darkness of a tropical
nightfall put an end to the combat at set of sun.  Next morning another
galleon, in a shattered and sinking condition, was taken possession of
and found filled with dead and dying.  The rest of the Spanish ships made
their escape into the harbour of Malacca.  Matelieff stood off and on in
the straits for a day or two, hesitating for fear of shallows to follow
into the roadstead.  Before he could take a decision, he had the
satisfaction of seeing the enemy, panic-struck, save him any further
trouble.  Not waiting for another attack, the Spaniards set fire to every
one of their ships, and retired into their fortress, while Matelieff and
his men enjoyed the great conflagration as idle spectators.  Thus the
enterprising Dutch admiral had destroyed ten great war-ships of the
enemy, and, strange to relate, had scarcely lost one man of his whole
squadron.  Rarely had a more complete triumph been achieved on the water
than in this battle in the straits of Malacca.  Matelieff had gained much
glory but very little booty.  He was also encumbered with a great number
of prisoners.

These he sent to Don Alphonso, exchanging them for a very few
Netherlanders then in Spanish hands, at the rate of two hundred Spaniards
for ten Dutchmen--thus showing that he held either the enemy very cheap,
or his own countrymen very dear.  The captured ships he burned as useless
to him, but retained twenty-four pieces of artillery.

It was known to Matelieff that the Spanish viceroy had received
instructions to inflict chastisement on all the oriental potentates and
their subjects who had presumed of late to trade and to form alliances
with the Netherlanders.  Johore, Achem, Paham, Patane, Amboyna, and
Bantam, were the most probable points of attack.  Johore had now been
effectually defended, Achem had protected itself.  The Dutch fleet
proceeded at first to Bantams for refreshment, and from this point
Matelieff sent three of his ships back to Holland.  With the six
remaining to him, he sailed for the Moluccas, having heard of various
changes which had taken place in that important archipelago.  Pausing at
the great emporium of nutmegs and all-spice, Amboyna, he took measures
for strengthening the fortifications of the place, which was well
governed by Frederick Houtman, and then proceeded to Ternate and Tidor.

During the absence of the Netherlanders, after the events on those
islands recorded in a previous chapter, the Spaniards had swept down upon
them from the Philippines with a fleet of thirty-seven ships, and had
taken captive the Sultan of Ternate; while the potentate of Tidor, who
had been left by Stephen van der Hagen in possession of his territories
on condition of fidelity to the Dutch, was easily induced to throw aside
the mask, and to renew his servitude to Spain.  Thus both the coveted
clove-islands had relapsed into the control of the enemy.  Matelieff
found it dangerous, on account of quicksands and shallows, to land on
Tydore, but he took very energetic measures to recover possession of
Ternate.  On the southern side of the island, the Spaniards had built a
fort and a town.  The Dutch admiral disembarked upon the northern side,
and, with assistance of the natives, succeeded in throwing up substantial
fortifications at a village called Malaya.  The son of the former sultan,
who was a Spanish prisoner at the Philippines, was now formally inducted
into his father's sovereignty, and Matelieff established at Malaya for
his protection a garrison of forty-five Hollanders and a navy of four
small yachts.  Such were the slender means with which Oriental empires
were founded in those days by the stout-hearted adventurers of the little
Batavian republic.

With this miniature army and navy, and by means of his alliance with the
distant commonwealth, of whose power this handful of men was a symbol,
the King of Ternate was thenceforth to hold his own against the rival
potentate on the other island, supported by the Spanish king.  The same
convention of commerce and amity was made with the Ternatians as the one
which Stephen van der Hagen had formerly concluded with the Bandians; and
it was agreed that the potentate should be included in any treaty of
peace that might be made between the republic and Spain.

Matelieff, with three ships and a cutter, now sailed for China, but lost
his time in endeavouring to open trade with the Celestial empire.  The
dilatory mandarins drove him at last out of all patience, and, on turning
his prows once more southward, he had nearly brought his long expedition
to a disastrous termination.  Six well-armed, well-equipped Portuguese
galleons sailed out of Macao to assail him.  It was not Matelieff's
instinct to turn his back on a foe, however formidable, but on this
occasion discretion conquered instinct.  His three ships were out of
repair; he had a deficiency of powder; he was in every respect unprepared
for a combat; and he reflected upon the unfavourable impression which
would be made on the Chinese mind should the Hollanders, upon their first
appearance in the flowery regions, be vanquished by the Portuguese.  He
avoided an encounter, therefore, and, by skilful seamanship, eluded all
attempts of the foe at pursuit.  Returning to Ternate, he had the
satisfaction to find that during his absence the doughty little garrison
of Malaya had triumphantly defeated the Spaniards in an assault on the
fortifications of the little town.  On the other hand, the King of
Johore, panic-struck on the departure of his Dutch protectors, had burned
his own capital, and had betaken himself with all his court into the
jungle.

Commending the one and rebuking the other potentate, the admiral provided
assistance for both, some Dutch trading, vessels having meantime arrived
in the archipelago.  Matelieff now set sail for Holland, taking with him
some ambassadors from the King of Siam and five ships well laden with
spice.  On his return he read a report of his adventures to the States-
General, and received the warm commendations of their High Mightinesses.
Before his departure from the tropics, Paul van Kaarden, with eight war-
ships, had reached Bantam.  On his arrival in Holland the fleet of Peter
ver Hoef was busily fitting out for another great expedition to the East.
This was the nation which Spanish courtiers thought to exclude for ever
from commerce with India and America, because the Pope a century before
had divided half the globe between Ferdinand the Catholic and Emmanuel
the Fortunate.

It may be supposed that the results of Matelieff's voyage were likely to
influence the pending negotiations for peace.



ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

A sovereign remedy for the disease of liberty
All the ministers and great functionaries received presents
Because he had been successful (hated)
But the habit of dissimulation was inveterate
By turns, we all govern and are governed
Contempt for treaties however solemnly ratified
Despised those who were grateful
Idiotic principle of sumptuary legislation
Indulging them frequently with oracular advice
Justified themselves in a solemn consumption of time
Man who cannot dissemble is unfit to reign
Men fought as if war was the normal condition of humanity
Men who meant what they said and said what they meant
Negotiated as if they were all immortal
Philip of Macedon, who considered no city impregnable
To negotiate was to bribe right and left, and at every step
Unwise impatience for peace




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v80
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 81, 1608



CHAPTER L.

     Movements of the Emperor Rudolph--Marquis Spinola's reception at the
     Hague--Meeting of Spinola and Prince Maurice--Treaty of the Republic
     with the French Government--The Spanish commissioners before the
     States-General--Beginning of negotiations--Stormy discussions--Real
     object of Spain in the negotiations--Question of the India trade--
     Abandonment of the peace project--Negotiations for a truce--
     Prolongation of the armistice--Further delays--Treaty of the States
     with England--Proposals of the Spanish ambassadors to Henry of
     France and to James of England--Friar Neyen at the court of Spain--
     Spanish procrastination--Decision of Philip on the conditions of
     peace--Further conference at the Hague--Answer of the States-General
     to the proposals of the Spanish Government--General rupture.

Towards the close of the year 1607 a very feeble demonstration was made
in the direction of the Dutch republic by the very feeble Emperor of
Germany.  Rudolph, awaking as it might be from a trance, or descending
for a moment from his star-gazing tower and his astrological pursuits to
observe the movements of political spheres, suddenly discovered that the
Netherlands were no longer revolving in their preordained orbit.  Those
provinces had been supposed to form part of one great system, deriving
light and heat from the central imperial sun.  It was time therefore to
put an end to these perturbations.  The emperor accordingly, as if he had
not enough on his hands at that precise moment with the Hungarians,
Transylvanians, Bohemian protestants, his brother Matthias and the Grand
Turk, addressed a letter to the States of Holland, Zeeland, and the
provinces confederated with them.

Reminding them of the care ever taken by himself and his father to hear
all their petitions, and to obtain for them a good peace, he observed
that he had just heard of their contemplated negotiations with King
Philip and Archduke Albert, and of their desire to be declared free
states and peoples.  He was amazed, he said, that they should not have
given him notice of so important an affair, inasmuch as all the United
Provinces belonged to and were fiefs of the holy Roman Empire.  They were
warned, therefore, to undertake nothing that might be opposed to the
feudal law except with his full knowledge.  This letter was dated the 9th
of October.  The States took time to deliberate, and returned no answer
until after the new year.

On the 2nd of January, 1608, they informed the emperor that they could
never have guessed of his requiring notification as to the approaching
conferences.  They had not imagined that the archduke would keep them a
secret from his brother, or the king from his uncle-cousin.  Otherwise,
the States would have sent due notice to his Majesty.  They well
remembered, they said, the appeals made by the provinces to the emperor
from time to time, at the imperial diets, for help against the tyranny of
the Spaniards.  They well remembered, too, that no help was ever given
them in response to those appeals.  They had not forgotten either the
famous Cologne negotiations for peace in presence of the imperial envoys,
in consequence of which the enemy had carried on war against them with
greater ferocity than before.  At that epoch they had made use of an
extreme remedy for an intolerable evil, and had solemnly renounced
allegiance to the king.  Since that epoch a whole generation of mankind
had passed away, and many kings and potentates had recognised their
freedom, obtained for just cause and maintained by the armed hand.
After a long and bloody war, Albert and Philip had at last been brought
to acknowledge the provinces as free countries over which they pretended
to no right, as might be seen by the letters of both, copies of which
were forwarded to the emperor.  Full confidence was now expressed,
therefore, that the emperor and all Germany would look with favour on
such a God-fearing transaction, by which an end would be put to so
terrible a war.  Thus the States-General; replying with gentle scorn to
the antiquated claim of sovereignty on the part of imperial majesty.
Duly authenticated by citations of investitures, indulgences, and
concordates, engrossed on yellowest parchment, sealed with reddest
sealing-wax, and reposing in a thousand pigeon-holes in mustiest
archives, no claim could be more solemn or stately.  Unfortunately,
however, rebel pikes and matchlocks, during the past forty years, had
made too many rents in those sacred parchments to leave much hope of
their ever being pieced handsomely together again.  As to the historical
theory of imperial enfeoffment, the States thought it more delicate to
glide smoothly and silently over the whole matter.  It would have been
base to acknowledge and impolite to refute the claim.

It is as well to imitate this reserve.  It is enough simply to remind the
reader that although so late as the time of Charles V., the provinces had
been declared constituent parts of the empire, liable to its burthens,
and entitled to its protection; the Netherlanders being practical people,
and deeming burthens and protection correlative, had declined the burthen
because always deprived of the protection.

And now, after a year spent in clearing away the mountains of dust which
impeded the pathway to peace, and which one honest vigorous human breath
might at once have blown into space, the envoys of the archduke set forth
towards the Hague.

Marquis Spinola, Don Juan de Mancicidor, private secretary to the King of
Spain, President Richardot, Auditor Verreyken, and Brother John Neyen--
a Genoese, a Spaniard, a Burgundian, a Fleming, and a Franciscan friar
--travelling in great state, with a long train of carriages, horses,
lackeys, cooks, and secretaries, by way of Breda, Bergen-op-Zoom,

Dort, Rotterdam, and Delft, and being received in each town and village
through which they passed with great demonstrations of respect and
cordial welcome, arrived at last within a mile of the Hague.

It was the dead of winter, and of the severest winter that had occurred
for many years.  Every river, estuary, canal was frozen hard.  All
Holland was one broad level sheet of ice, over which the journey had been
made in sledges.  On the last day of January Prince Maurice, accompanied
by Lewes William, and by eight state coaches filled with distinguished
personages, left the Hague and halted at the Hoorn bridge, about midway
between Ryswyk and the capital.  The prince had replied to the first
request of the States that he should go forward to meet Spinola, by
saying that he would do so willingly if it were to give him battle;
otherwise not.  Olden-Barneveld urged upon him however that, as servant
of the republic, he was bound to do what the States commanded, as a
matter involving the dignity of the nation.  In consequence of this
remonstrance Maurice consented to go, but he went unwillingly.  The
advancing procession of the Spanish ambassadors was already in sight.
Far and wide in whatever direction the eye could sweep, the white surface
of the landscape was blackened with human beings.  It seemed as if the
whole population of the Netherlands had assembled, in mass meeting, to
witness the pacific interview between those two great chieftains who had
never before stood face to face except upon the battle-field.

In carriages, in donkey carts, upon horseback, in sledges, on skates,
upon foot-men, women, and children, gentle and simple, Protestants,
Catholics, Gomarites, Armenians, anabaptists, country squires in buff and
bandaleer, city magistrates and merchants in furs and velvet, artisans,
boatmen, and peasants, with their wives and daughters in well-starched
ruff and tremendous head-gear--they came thronging in countless
multitudes, those honest Hollanders, cheering and throwing up their caps
in honour of the chieftain whose military genius had caused so much
disaster to their country.  This uproarious demonstration of welcome on
the part of the multitude moved the spleen of many who were old enough to
remember the horrors of Spanish warfare within their borders.  "Thus
unreflecting, gaping, boorish, are nearly all the common people of these
provinces," said a contemporary, describing the scene, and forgetting
that both high and low, according to his own account, made up the mass of
spectators on that winter's day.  Moreover it seems difficult to
understand why the Hollanders should not have indulged a legitimate
curiosity, and made a holiday on this memorable occasion.  Spinola was
not entering their capital in triumph, a Spanish army was not marching
--as it might have done had the course of events been different--over the
protective rivers and marshes of the fatherland, now changed by the
exceptional cold into solid highways for invasion.  On the contrary, the
arrival of the great enemy within their gates, with the olive-branch
instead of the sword in his hand, was a victory not for Spain but for the
republic.  It was known throughout the land that he was commissioned by
the king and the archdukes to treat for peace with the States-General of
the United Provinces as with the representatives of a free and
independent nation, utterly beyond any foreign control.

Was not this opening of a cheerful and pacific prospect, after a half
century's fight for liberty, a fair cause for rejoicing?

The Spanish commissioners arrived at the Hoorn bridge, Spinola alighted
from his coach, Prince Maurice stepped forward into the road to greet
him.  Then the two eminent soldiers, whose names had of late been so
familiar in the mouths of men, shook hands and embraced with heroic
cordiality, while a mighty shout went up from the multitude around.  It
was a stately and dramatic spectacle, that peaceful meeting of the rival
leaders in a war which had begun before either of them was born.  The
bystanders observed, or thought that they observed, signs of great
emotion on the faces of both.  It has also been recorded that each
addressed the other in epigrammatic sentences of compliment.  "God is my
witness," Maurice was supposed to have said, "that the arrival of these
honourable negotiators is most grateful to me.  Time, whose daughter is
truth, will show the faith to be given to my words."

"This fortunate day," replied Spinola, "has filled full the measure of my
hopes and wishes, and taken from me the faculty of ever wishing for
anything again.  I trust in divine clemency that an opportunity may be
given to show my gratitude, and to make a fit return for the humanity
thus shown me by the most excellent prince that the sun shines upon."

With this both got into the stadholder's carriage, Spinola being placed
on Maurice's right hand.  Their conversation during their brief drive to
the capital, followed by their long retinue, and by the enthusiastic and
vociferating crowd, has not been chronicled.  It is also highly probable
that the second-rate theatrical dialogue which the Jesuit historian,
writing from Spinola's private papers, has preserved for posterity, was
rather what seemed to his imagination appropriate for the occasion than a
faithful shorthand report of anything really uttered.  A few commonplace
phrases of welcome, with a remark or two perhaps on the unexampled
severity of the frost, seem more likely to have formed the substance of
that brief conversation.

A couple of trumpeters of Spinola went braying through the streets of the
village capital, heralding their master's approach with superfluous
noise, and exciting the disgust of the quieter portion of the burghers.
At last however the envoys and their train were all comfortably housed.
The Marquis, President Richardot, and Secretary Mancicidor, were
established at a new mansion on the Vyverberg, belonging to Goswyn
Menskens.  The rest of the legation were lodged at the house of
Wassenaer.

It soon became plain that the ways of life and the style housekeeping
habitual to great officers of the Spanish crown were very different from
the thrifty manners and customs of Dutch republicans.  It was so long
since anything like royal pomp and circumstance had been seen in their
borders that the exhibition, now made, excited astonishment.  It was a
land where every child went to school, where almost every individual
inhabitant could read and write, where even the middle classes were
proficients in mathematics and the classics, and could speak two or more
modern languages; where the whole nation, with but few exceptions, were
producers of material or intellectual wealth, and where comparatively
little of unproductive consumption prevailed.  Those self-governing and
self-sustaining municipalities had almost forgotten the existence of the
magnificent nothings so dear to the hearts of kings.

Spinola's house was open day and night.  The gorgeous plate, gigantic
candelabra, mighty ewers, shields and layers of silver and gold, which
decorated his tables and sideboards, amazed the gaping crowd.  He dined
and supped in state every day, and the public were admitted to gaze upon
his banquets as if he had been a monarch.  It seemed, said those homely
republicans, as if "a silver christening were going on every day in his
house."

There were even grave remonstrances made to the magistracy and to, the
States-General against the effect of such ostentatious and immoral
proceedings upon the popular mind, and suggestions that at least the
doors should be shut, so that the scandal might be confined to Spinola's
own household.  But the republican authorities deciding, not without
wisdom, that the spectacle ought to serve rather as a wholesome warning
than as a contaminating example, declined any inquisitorial interference
with the housekeeping of the Spanish ambassadors.

Before the negotiations began, a treaty had been made between the
republic and the French Government, by which it was stipulated that every
effort should be made by both contracting parties to bring about an
honourable and assured peace between the United Provinces, Spain, and the
archdukes.  In case of the continuance of the war, however, it was agreed
that France should assist the States with ten thousand men, while in case
at any time, during the continuance of the league, France should be
attacked by a foreign enemy, she should receive from her ally five
thousand auxiliary troops, or their equivalent in maritime assistance.
This convention was thought by other powers to be so profitable to the
Netherlands as to excite general uneasiness and suspicion.

The States would have gladly signed a similar agreement with England, but
nothing was to be done with that Government until an old-standing dispute
in regard to the cloth trade had been arranged.  Middelburg had the
exclusive right of deposit for the cloths imported from England.  This
monopoly for Zealand being naturally not very palatable to Amsterdam and
other cities of Holland, the States-General had at last authorized the
merchant-adventurers engaged in this traffic to deposit their goods in
any city of the United Provinces.   The course of trade had been to
import the raw cloth from England, to dress and dye it in the
Netherlands, and then to re-export it to England.  Latterly, however,
some dyers and clothiers emigrating from the provinces to that country,
had obtained a monopoly from James for practising their art in his
dominions.  In consequence of this arrangement the exportation of undyed
cloths had been forbidden.  This prohibition had caused irritation both
in the kingdom and the republic, had necessarily deranged the natural
course of trade and manufacture, and had now prevented for the time any
conclusion of an alliance offensive and defensive between the countries,
even if political sentiment had made such a league possible.  The States-
General had recourse to the usual expedient by which bad legislation on
one side was countervailed by equally bad legislation on the other.  The
exportation of undyed English cloths being forbidden by England, the
importation of dyed English cloths was now prohibited by the Netherlands.
The international cloth trade stopped.  This embargo became at last so
detestable to all parties that concession was made by the crown for a
limited export of raw cloths.  The concession was soon widened by custom
into a general exportation, the royal Government looking through its
fingers at the open infraction of its own laws, while the natural laws of
trade before long re-established the old equilibrium.  Meantime the ill-
feeling produced by this dissension delayed any cordial political
arrangement between the countries.

On the 5th of February the Spanish commissioners came for the first time
before the States-General, assembled to the number of a hundred and
thirty, in their palace at the Hague.

The first meeting was merely one of mutual compliment, President
Richardot, on behalf of his colleagues, expressing gratitude for the
cordial welcome which had been manifested to the envoys on their journey
through so many towns of the United Provinces.  They had been received,
he said, not as enemies with whom an almost perpetual war had been waged,
but as friends, confederates, and allies.  A warmer reception they could
never have hoped for nor desired.

Two special commissioners were now appointed by the States-General to
negotiate with the envoys.  These were count Lewis William and Brederode.
With these delegates at large were associated seven others, one from each
province.  Barneveld of course represented Holland; Maldere, Zeeland;
Berk, Utrecht; Hillama, Friesland; Bloat, Overyssel; Koender van Helpen,
Groningen; Cornelius Vail Gend, Gelderland.

The negotiations began at once.  The archdukes had empowered the five
envoys to deal in their name and in that of the King of Spain.  Philip
had authorized the archdukes to take this course by an instrument dated
10th January.

In this paper he called the archdukes hereditary sovereigns of the
Netherlands.

It was agreed that the various points of negotiation should be taken up
in regular order; but the first question of all that presented itself was
whether the conferences should be for a truce or, a peace.

The secret object of Spain was for a truce of years.  Thus she thought to
save her dignity, to reserve her rights of re-conquest, to replenish her
treasury, and to repair her military strength.  Barneveld and his party,
comprising a large majority of the States-General, were for peace.
Prince Maurice, having done his utmost to oppose negotiations for peace,
was, for still stronger reasons, determined to avoid falling into what he
considered the ambush of a truce.  The French ambassadors were also for
peace.  The Spanish envoys accordingly concealed their real designs, and
all parties began discussions for the purpose of establishing a permanent
peace.

This preliminary being settled, Barneveld asked the Spaniards if they had
full powers to treat with the States as with a free nation, and if they
recognised them as such.

"The most ample power," was the reply; "and we are content to treat with
you even if you should choose to call yourself a kingdom."

"By what right then are the archdukes called by the king hereditary
sovereigns of the Netherlands, and why do they append the seals of the
seven United Provinces to this document?" asked the Advocate, taking up
from the table the full power of Albert and Isabella and putting his
finger on the seals."

"By the same right," replied President Richardot, "that the King of
France calls himself King of Navarre, that the King of Great Britain
calls himself King of France, that the King of Spain calls himself King
of Jerusalem."

Nothing could be more logical, nothing more historically accurate.
But those plain-spoken republicans saw no advantage in beginning a
negotiation for peace on the basis of their independence by permitting
the archduke to call himself their sovereign, and to seal solemn state
papers with their signet.  It might seem picturesque to genealogical
minds, it might be soothing to royal vanity, that paste counterfeits
should be substituted for vanished jewels.  It would be cruelty to
destroy the mock glitter without cause.  But there was cause.  On this
occasion the sham was dangerous.  James Stuart might call himself King of
France.  He was not more likely to take practical possession of that
kingdom than of the mountains in the moon.  Henry of Bourbon was not at
present contemplating an invasion of the hereditary possessions of the
house of Albret.  It was a matter of indifference to the Netherlands
whether Philip III. were crowned in Jerusalem that very day, or the week
afterwards, or never.  It was very important however that the United
Provinces should have it thoroughly recognised that they were a free and
independent republic, nor could that recognition be complete so long as
any human being in the whole world called himself their master, and
signed with their seals of state.  "'Tis absurd," said the Hollanders,
"to use the names and arms of our provinces.  We have as yet no precedent
to prove that you consider the United Provinces as lost, and name and
arms to be but wind."  Barneveld reminded them that they had all
expressed the most straightforward intention, and that the father
commissary especially had pledged his very soul for the sincerity of the
king and the archdukes.  "We ourselves never wished and never could
deceive any one," continued the Advocate, "and it is also very difficult
for others to deceive us."

This being the universal sentiment of the Netherlanders, it was thought
proper to express it in respectful but vigorous language.  This was done
and the session was terminated.  Tile Spanish envoys, knowing very well
that neither the king nor the archduke regarded the retention of the
titles and seals of all the seventeen Netherlands as an empty show, but
that a secret and solid claim lurked beneath that usurpation, were very
indignant.  They however dissembled their wrath from the States'
commissioners.  They were unwilling that the negotiations should be
broken up at the very first session, and they felt that neither Prince
Maurice nor Barneveld was to be trifled with upon this point.  But they
were loud and magnificent in their demonstrations when they came to talk
the matter over with the ambassadors of France and England.  It was most
portentous, they thought, to the cause of monarchy and good government
all over the world, that these republicans, not content to deal with
kings and princes on a footing of equality, should presume to dictate to
them as to inferiors.  Having passed through rebellion to liberty, they
were now proceeding to trample upon the most hallowed customs and rites.
What would become of royalty, if in the same breath it should not only
renounce the substance, but even put away the symbols of authority.  This
insolence of the people was not more dangerous to the king and the
archdukes than it was to every potentate in the universe.  It was a
sacred duty to resist such insults.  Sage Jeannin did his best to pacify
the vehemence of the commissioners.  He represented to them that foreign
titles borne by anointed kings were only ensigns of historical
possessions which they had for ever renounced; but that it might become
one day the pleasure of Spain, or lie in the power of Spain, to vindicate
her ancient rights to the provinces.

Hence the anxiety of the States was but natural.  The old Leaguer and
political campaigner knew very well, moreover, that at least one half of
Richardot's noble wrath was feigned.  The commissioners would probably
renounce the title and the seven seals, but in so doing would drive a
hard bargain.  For an empty phrase and a pennyworth of wax they would
extort a heavy price.  And this was what occurred.  The commissioners
agreed to write for fresh instructions to Brussels.  A reply came in due
time from the archdukes, in which they signified their willingness to
abandon the title of sovereigns over all the Netherlands, and to abstain
from using their signet.  In exchange for this concession they merely
demanded from the States-General a formal abandonment of the navigation
to both the Indies.  This was all.  The archdukes granted liberty to the
republic.  The republic would renounce its commerce with more than half
the world.

The scorn of the States' commissioners at this proposition can be
imagined, and it became difficult indeed for them to speak on the subject
in decorous language.  Because the archdukes were willing to give up
something which was not their property, the republic was voluntarily to
open its veins and drain its very life-blood at the bidding of a foreign
potentate.  She was to fling away all the trophies of Heemskerk and
Sebalt de Weerd, of Balthasar de Cordes, Van der Hagen, Matelieff, and
Verhoeff; she was to abdicate the position which she had already acquired
of mistress of the seas, and she was to deprive herself for ever of that
daily increasing ocean commerce which was rapidly converting a cluster of
puny, half-submerged provinces into a mighty empire.  Of a certainty the
Spanish court at this new epoch was an astounding anachronism.  In its
view Pope Alexander VI. still lived and reigned.

Liberty was not a boon conferred upon the Netherlanders by their defeated
enemy.  It had been gained by their own right hands; by the blood, and
the gold, and the sweat of two generations.  If it were the king's to
give, let him try once more if he could take it away.  Such were the
opinions and emotions of the Dutchmen, expressed in as courteous language
as they could find.

"It would be a political heresy," said Barneveld to the Spanish
commissioners at this session, "if my lords the States should by contract
banish their citizens out of two-thirds of the world, both land and sea."

"'Tis strange," replied the Spaniards, "that you wish to have more than
other powers--kings or republics--who never make any such pretensions.
The Indies, East and West, are our house, privately possessed by us for
more than a hundred years, and no one has a right to come into it without
our permission.  This is not banishment, but a custom to which all other
nations submit.  We give you your sovereignty before all the world,
quitting all claims upon it.  We know very well that you deny receiving
it from us; but to give you a quit claim, and to permit free trade
besides, would be a little more than you have a right to expect."

Was it not well for the cause of liberty, commercial intercourse, and
advancement of the human intellect, that there was this obstinate little
republic in the world, refusing to tolerate that to which all other great
powers of the earth submitted; that there was one nation determined not
to acknowledge three-quarters of the world, including America and India,
as the private mansion of the King of Spain, to be locked against the
rest of the human race?

The next session of the negotiators after the arrival of this
communication from the archdukes was a stormy one.  The India trade
was the sole subject of discussion.  As the States were firmly resolved
never to relinquish that navigation which in truth was one of their most
practical and valuable possessions, and as the royal commissioners were
as solemnly determined that it should never be conceded, it may be
imagined how much breath, how much foolscap paper, was wasted.

In truth, the negotiation for peace had been a vile mockery from the
beginning.  Spain had no real intention of abdicating her claim to the
United Provinces.

At the very moment when the commissioners were categorically making that
concession in Brussels, and claiming such a price for it, Hoboken, the
archduke's diplomatic representative in London, was earnestly assuring
King James that neither his master nor Philip had the remotest notion of
renouncing their sovereignty over all the Netherlands.  What had been
said and written to that effect was merely a device, he asserted, to
bring about a temporary truce.  During the interval of imaginary freedom
it was certain that the provinces would fall into such dire confusion
that it would be easier for Spain to effect their re-conquest, after a
brief delay for repairing her own strength, than it would be by
continuing the present war without any cessation.

The Spanish ambassador at Vienna too on his part assured the Emperor
Rudolph that his master was resolved never to abdicate the sovereignty
of the provinces.  The negotiations then going on, he said, were simply
intended to extort from the States a renunciation of the India trade and
their consent to the re-introduction of the Catholic religion throughout
their territories.

Something of all this was known and much more suspected at the Hague;
the conviction therefore that no faith would be kept with rebels and
heretics, whatever might be said or written, gained strength every day.
That these delusive negotiations with the Hollanders were not likely to
be so successful as the comedy enacted twenty years before at Bourbourg,
for the amusement of Queen Elizabeth and her diplomatists while the
tragedy of the Armada was preparing, might be safely prophesied.
Richardot was as effective as ever in the part which he had so often
played, but Spinola laboured under the disadvantage of being a far
honester man than Alexander Farnese.  Far from equal to that famous
chieftain in the management of a great military campaign, it is certain
that he was infinitely inferior to him in genteel comedy.  Whether
Maurice and Lewis William, Barneveld and Brederode, were to do better in
the parts formerly assigned to John Rogers, Valentine Dale, Comptroller
Croft, and their colleagues, remained to be seen.

On the 15th of February, at the fifth conference of the commissioners,
the first pitched battle on the India trade was fought.  Thereafter the
combat was almost every day renewed.  Exactly, as a year before, the
news of Heemskerk's victory at Gibraltar had made the king and the
archdukes eager to obtain an armistice with the rebels both by land and
sea, so now the report of Matelieff's recent achievements in the Indian
ocean was increasing their anxiety to exclude the Netherlanders from the
regions which they were rapidly making their own.

As we look back upon the negotiations, after the lapse of two centuries
and a half, it becomes difficult to suppress our amazement at those
scenes of solemn trickery and superhuman pride.  It is not necessary to
follow, step by step, the proceedings at each daily conference, but it is
impossible for me not to detain the reader for yet a season longer with
those transactions, and especially to invite him to ponder the valuable
lesson which in their entirety they convey.

No higher themes could possibly be laid before statesmen to discuss.
Questions of political self-government, religious liberty, national
independence, divine Right, rebellious Power, freedom of commerce,
supremacy of the seas, omnipotence claimed by the old world over the
destiny of what was called the new, were importunately demanding
solution.  All that most influenced human passion, or stirred human
reason to its depths--at that memorable point of time when two great
epochs seemed to be sweeping against each other in elemental conflict--
was to be dealt with.  The emancipated currents of human thought, the
steady tide of ancient dogma, were mingling in wrath.  There are times of
paroxysm in which Nature seems to effect more in a moment, whether
intellectually or materially, than at other periods during a lapse of
years.  The shock of forces, long preparing and long delayed, is apt at
last to make itself sensible to those neglectful of gradual but vital
changes.  Yet there are always ears that are deaf to the most portentous
din.

Thus, after that half century of war, the policy of Spain was still
serenely planting itself on the position occupied before the outbreak of
the revolt.  The commonwealth, solidly established by a free people,
already one of the most energetic and thriving among governments, a
recognised member of  the great international family, was now gravely
expected to purchase from its ancient tyrant the independence which it
had long possessed, while the price demanded for the free papers was not
only extravagant, but would be disgraceful to an emancipated slave.
Holland was not likely at that turning point in her history, and in the
world's history, to be false to herself and to the great principles of
public law.  It was good for the cause of humanity that the republic
should reappear at that epoch.  It was wholesome for Europe that there
should be just then a plain self-governing people, able to speak homely
and important truths.  It was healthy for the moral and political
atmosphere--in those days and in the time to come--that a fresh breeze
from that little sea-born commonwealth should sweep away some of the
ancient fog through which a few very feeble and very crooked mortals had
so long loomed forth like giants and gods.

To vindicate the laws of nations and of nature; to make a noble effort
for reducing to a system--conforming, at least approximately, to divine
reason--the chaotic elements of war and peace; to recal the great facts
that earth, sea, and sky ought to belong to mankind, and not to an
accidental and very limited selection of the species was not an unworthy
task for a people which had made such unexampled sacrifice for liberty
and right.

Accordingly, at the conference on the 15th February, the Spanish
commissioners categorically summoned the States to desist entirely from
the trade to either India, exactly as before the war.  To enforce this
prohibition, they said, was the principal reason why Philip desired
peace.  To obtain their freedom was surely well worth renunciation of
this traffic; the more so, because their trade with Spain, which was so
much shorter and safer, was now to be re-opened.  If they had been able
to keep that commerce, it was suggested, they would have never talked
about the Indies.  The commissioners added, that this boon had not been
conceded to France nor England, by the treaties of Vervins and London,
and that the States therefore could not find it strange that it should be
refused to them.

The States' commissioners stoutly replied that commerce was open to all
the world, that trade was free by the great law of nature, and that
neither France, England, nor the United Provinces, were to receive edicts
on this great subject from Spain and Portugal.  It was absurd to
circumscribe commercial intercourse at the very moment of exchanging
war for peace.  To recognise the liberty of the States upon paper,
and to attempt the imposition of servitude in reality, was a manifest
contradiction.  The ocean was free to all nations.  It had not been
enclosed by Spain with a rail-fence.

The debate grew more stormy every hour.  Spinola expressed great
indignation that the Netherlanders should be so obstinate upon this
point.  The tall, spare President arose in wrath from his seat at the
council-board, loudly protesting that the King of Spain would never
renounce his sovereignty over the provinces until they had forsworn the
India trade; and with this menace stalked out of the room.

The States' commissioners were not frightened.  Barneveld was at least a
match for Richardot, and it was better, after all, that the cards should
be played upon the table.  Subsequent meetings were quite as violent as
the first, the country was agitated far and wide, the prospects of
pacification dwindled to a speck in the remote horizon.  Arguments at
the Board of Conference, debates in the States-General, pamphlets by
merchants and advocates--especially several emanating from the East India
Company--handled the great topic from every point of view, and it became
more and more evident that Spain could not be more resolute to prohibit
than the republic to claim the trade.

It was an absolute necessity, so it was urged, for the Hollanders to
resist the tyrannical dominion of the Spaniards.  But this would be
impossible for them, should they rely on the slender natural resources
of their own land.  Not a sixth part of the population could be nourished
from the soil.  The ocean was their inheritance, their birthright, their
empire.  It was necessary that Spain should understand this first, last,
and always.  She ought to comprehend, too, that her recognition of Dutch
independence was not a gift, but the acknowledgment of a fact.  Without
that acknowledgment peace was impossible.  If peace were to be
established, it was not to be bought by either party.  Each gave and each
received, and certainly Spain was in no condition to dictate the terms of
a sale.  Peace, without freedom of commerce, would be merely war without
killing, and therefore without result.  The Netherlanders, who in the
middle of the previous century had risen against unjust taxation and
arbitrary laws, had not grown so vile as to accept from a vanquished foe
what they had spurned from their prince.  To be exiled from the ocean was
an unimaginable position for the republic.  Moreover, to retire from the
Indies would be to abandon her Oriental allies, and would be a dishonour
as well us a disaster.  Her good faith, never yet contaminated, would be
stained, were she now to desert the distant peoples and potentates with
whom she had formed treaties of friendship and commerce, and hand them
over to the vengeance of the Spaniards and Portuguese.

And what a trade it was which the United Provinces were thus called upon
to renounce!  The foreign commerce of no other nation could be compared
in magnitude to that of their commonwealth.  Twenty ships traded
regularly to Guinea, eighty to the Cape de Verd Islands, twenty to
America, and forty to the East Indies.  Ten thousand sailors, who gained
their living in this traffic, would be thrown out of employment, if the
States should now listen to the Spanish propositions.

It was well known too that the profits of the East India Company had
vastly increased of late, and were augmenting with every year.  The trade
with Cambay, Malabar, Ceylon, Koromandel, and Queda, had scarcely begun,
yet was already most promising.  Should the Hollanders only obtain a
footing in China, they felt confident of making their way through the
South Seas and across the pole to India.  Thus the search for a great
commercial highway between Cathay, Europe, and the New World, which had
been baffled in the arctic regions, should be crowned with success at the
antarctic, while it was deemed certain that there were many lands,
lighted by the Southern Cross, awaiting the footsteps of the fortunate
European discoverer.  What was a coasting-trade with Spain compared with
this boundless career of adventure?  Now that the world's commerce, since
the discovery of America and the passage around the Cape of Good Hope,
had become oceanic and universal, was the nation which took the lead on
blue water to go back to the creeping land-locked navigation of the
ancient Greeks and Phoenicians?  If the East India Company, in whose womb
was empire, were now destroyed, it would perish with its offspring for
ever.  There would be no regeneration at a future day.  The Company's
ships too were a navy in themselves, as apt for war as for trade.  This
the Spaniards and Portuguese had already learned to their cost. The
merchant-traders to Spain would be always in the power of Spain, and at
any favourable moment might be seized by Spain.  The Spanish monopoly in
the East and West was the great source of Spanish power, the chief cause
of the contempt with, which the Spanish monarchy looked down upon other
nations.  Let those widely expanded wings be clipped, and Spain would
fall from her dizzy height.  To know what the States ought to refuse the
enemy, it was only necessary to observe what he strenuously demanded, to
ponder the avowed reason why he desired peace.  The enemy was doing his
best to damage the commonwealth; the States were merely anxious to
prevent injury to themselves and to all the world; to vindicate for
themselves, and for all men, the common use of ocean, land, and sky.

A nation which strove to shut up the seas, and to acquire a monopoly
of the world's trade, was a pirate, an enemy of mankind.  She was as
deserving of censure as those who created universal misery in time
of famine, by buying up all the corn in order to enrich themselves.
According to the principles of the ancients, it was legitimate to make
war upon such States as closed their own ports to foreign intercourse.
Still more just was it, therefore, to carry arms against a nation which
closed the ports of other people.

The dispute about the India navigation could be settled in a moment, if
Spain would but keep her word.  She had acknowledged the great fact of
independence, which could not be gainsaid.  Let each party to the
negotiation, therefore keep that which it already possessed.  Let neither
attempt to prescribe to the other--both being free and independent
States--any regulations about interior or foreign trade.

Thus reasoned the States-General, the East India directors, the great
majority of the population of the provinces, upon one great topic of
discussion.  A small minority only attempted to defend the policy of
renouncing the India trade as a branch of industry, in which a certain
class, and that only in the maritime provinces, was interested.  It is
certainly no slight indication of the liberty of thought, of speech, and
of the press, enjoyed at that epoch in the Netherlands and nowhere else
to anything like the same extent--that such opinions, on a subject deemed
vital to the very existence of the republic, were freely published and
listened to with toleration, if not with respect.  Even the enlightened
mind of Grotius was troubled with terrors as to the effect on the public
mind at this crisis of anonymous pamphlets concerning political affairs.
But in this regard it must be admitted that Grotius was not in advance of
his age, although fully conceding that press-laws were inconsistent with
human liberty.

Maurice and Barneveld were equally strenuous in maintaining the India
trade; the prince, because he hoped that resistance to Spain upon this
point would cause the negotiations to be broken off, the Advocate in the
belief that firmness on the part of the States would induce the royal
commissioners to yield.

The States-General were not likely to be deficient in firmness.  They
felt that the republic was exactly on the point of wresting the control
of the East from the hands of the Portuguese, and they were not inclined
to throw away the harvest of their previous labours just as it was
ripening.  Ten thousand persons at least, besides the sailors employed,
were directly interested in the traffic, most of whom possessed great
influence in the commonwealth, and would cause great domestic dissension
should they now be sacrificed to Spain.  To keep the India trade was the
best guarantee for the future possession of the traffic to Spain; for the
Spanish Government would never venture an embargo upon the direct
intercourse between the provinces and its own dominions, for fear
of vengeance in the East.  On the other hand, by denouncing oceanic
commerce, they would soon find themselves without a navy at all, and
their peaceful coasting ships would be at the mercy of Spain or of any
power possessing that maritime energy which would have been killed in the
republic.  By abandoning the ocean, the young commonwealth would sink
into sloth, and become the just object of contempt to the world.  It
would cease to be an independent power, and deserve to fall a prey to any
enterprising neighbour.

Even Villeroy admitted the common belief to be, that if the India trade
were abandoned "the States would melt away like snow in the sun."  He
would not, on that account, however, counsel to the States obstinacy upon
the subject, if Spain refused peace or truce except on condition of their
exclusion from the traffic.  Jeannin, Villeroy, and their master; Isaac
le Maire and Peter Plancius, could have told the reason why if they had
chosen.

Early in March a triple proposition was made by the States'
commissioners.  Spain might take her choice to make peace on the basis of
free trade; to make peace, leaving everything beyond the Tropic of Cancer
to the chance of war; or to make peace in regard to all other than the
tropical regions, concluding for those only a truce during a definite
number of years.

The Spaniards rejected decidedly two of these suggestions.  Of course
they would not concede freedom of the sea.  They considered the mixture
of peace and war a monstrous conception.  They were, however, willing to
favour peace for Europe and truce in the tropics, provided the States
bound themselves; on the expiration of the limited period, to abandon the
Indian and American trade for ever.  And to this proposition the States
of course were deaf.  And thus they went on spinning around, day after
day, in the same vicious circle, without more hope of progress than
squirrels in a cage.

Barneveld, always overbearing with friend or foe, and often violent, was
not disposed to make preposterous concessions, notwithstanding his eager
desire for peace.  "The might of the States-General," said he, "is so
great, thank God, that they need not yield so much to the King of Spain
as seems to be expected, nor cover themselves with dishonour."

"And do you think yourselves more mighty than the Kings of England and
France?" cried Richardot in a great rage, "for they never dared to make
any attempt upon the Indies, East or West."

"We are willing to leave the king in his own quarters," was the reply,
"and we expect him to leave us in ours."

"You had better take a sheet of paper at once," said Richardot, "write
down exactly what you wish, and order us to agree to it all without
discussion."

"We demand nothing that is unreasonable in these negotiations," was the
firm rejoinder, "and expect that nothing unjust will be required of us."

It was now suggested by the States' commissioners that a peace; with free
navigation, might be concluded for Europe, and a truce for other parts of
the world, without any stipulations as to what should take place on its
termination.  This was hardly anything new, but it served as a theme for
more intellectual buffeting.  Hard words were freely exchanged during
several hours; and all parties lost their temper.  At last the Spaniards
left the conference-chamber in a rage.  Just as they were going,
Barneveld asked them whether he should make a protocol of the session
for the States-General, and whether it was desirable in future to resume
the discussion.

"Let every one do exactly as he likes," replied Spinola, wrathfully, as
he moved to the door.

Friar John, always plausible, whispered a few soothing words in the ear
of the marquis, adding aloud, so that the commissioners might hear,
"Night brings counsel."  These words he spoke in Latin.

"He who wishes to get everything is apt to lose everything," cried, out
Maldere, the Zeeland deputy, in Spanish, to the departing commissioners.

"Take that to yourselves," rejoined Richardot, very fiercely; "you may be
sure that it will be your case."'

So ended that interview.

Directly afterwards there was a conference between the States'
commissioners and the French envoys.

Jeannin employed all his powers of argument: and persuasion to influence
the Netherlanders against a rupture of the negotiations because of the
India trade.  It would be better to abandon that commerce, so he urged,
than to give up the hope of peace.  The commissioners failed to see the
logic or to melt at the eloquence of his discourse.  They would have been
still less inclined, if that were possible, to move from their position,
had they known of the secret conferences which Jeannin had just been
holding with Isaac le Maire of Amsterdam, and other merchants practically
familiar with the India trade.  Carrying out the French king's plan to
rob the republic of that lucrative traffic, and to transplant it, by
means of experienced Hollanders, into France, the president, while openly
siding with the States, as their most disinterested friend, was secretly
doing all in his power to destroy the very foundation of their
commonwealth.

Isaac le Maire came over from Amsterdam in a mysterious manner, almost in
disguise.  Had his nocturnal dealings with the French minister been
known, he would have been rudely dealt with by the East India Company.
He was a native of Tournay, not a sincere republican therefore, was very
strongly affected to France, and declared that all his former fellow-
townsmen, and many more, had the fleur-de-lys stamped on their hearts.
If peace should be made without stipulation in favour of the East India
Company, he, with his three brothers, would do what they could to
transfer that corporation to France.  All the details of such a
prospective arrangement were thoroughly discussed, and it was intimated
that the king would be expected to take shares in the enterprise.
Jeannin had also repeated conferences on the same subject with the great
cosmographer Plancius.  It may be well understood, therefore, that the
minister of Henry IV. was not very ardent to encourage the States in
their resolve to oppose peace or truce, except with concession of the
India trade.

The States preferred that the negotiations should come to nought on the
religious ground rather than on account of the India trade.  The
provinces were nearly unanimous as to the prohibition of the Catholic
worship, not from bigotry for their own or hatred of other creeds, but
from larger views of what was then called tolerance, and from practical
regard for the necessities of the State.  To permit the old worship, not
from a sense of justice but as an article of bargain with a foreign
power, was not only to abase the government of the States but to convert
every sincere Catholic throughout the republic into a grateful adherent
of Philip and the archdukes.  It was deliberately to place a lever, to be
used in all future time, for the overthrow of their political structure.

In this the whole population was interested, while the India navigation,
although vital to the well-being of the nation, was not yet universally
recognised as so supremely important, and was declared by a narrow-minded
minority to concern the provinces of Holland and Zeeland alone.

All were silently agreed, therefore, to defer the religious question to
the last.

Especially, commercial greed induced the States to keep a firm clutch on
the great river on which the once splendid city of Antwerp stood.  Ever
since that commercial metropolis had succumbed to Farnese, the republic
had maintained the lower forts, by means of which, and of Flushing at the
river's mouth, Antwerp was kept in a state of suspended animation.  To
open the navigation of the Scheld, to permit free approach to Antwerp,
would, according to the narrow notions of the Amsterdam merchants, be
destructive to their own flourishing trade.

In vain did Richardot, in one well-fought conference, do his best to
obtain concessions on this important point.  The States' commissioners
were as deaf as the Spaniards had been on the India question.  Richardot,
no longer loud and furious, began to cry.  With tears running down his
cheeks,  he besought the Netherlanders not to insist so strenuously upon
all their points, and to remember that concessions were mutually
necessary, if an amicable arrangement were to be framed.  The chances for
peace were promising.  "Let not a blight be thrown over all our hopes,"
he exclaimed, "by too great pertinacity on either side.  Above all, let
not the States dictate terms as to a captive or conquered king, but
propose such conditions as a benevolent but powerful sovereign could
accept."

These adjurations might be considered admirable, if it had been possible
for the royal commissioners to point to a single mustard-seed of
concession ever vouchsafed by them to the republic.

Meantime the month of March had passed.  Nothing had been accomplished,
but it was agreed to prolong the armistice through April and May.

The negotiations having feebly dribbled off into almost absolute
extinction, Friar John was once more set in motion, and despatched to
Madrid.  He was sent to get fresh instructions from Philip, and he
promised, on departing, to return in forty days.  He hoped as his reward,
he said, to be made bishop of Utrecht.  "That will be a little above your
calibre," replied Barneveld.  Forty days was easily said, and the States
consented to the additional delay.

During his absence there was much tedious discussion of minor matters,
such as staple rights of wine and cloths, regulations of boundaries,
removal of restrictions on trade and navigation, passports, sequestered
estates, and the like; all of which were subordinate to the all-important
subjects of India and Religion, those two most tender topics growing so
much more tender the more they were handled as to cause at last a shiver
whenever they were approached.  Nevertheless both were to be dealt with,
or the negotiations would fall to the ground.

The States felt convinced that they would fall to the ground, that they
had fallen to the ground, and they at least would not stoop to pick them
up again.

The forty days passed away, but the friar never returned.  April and May
came and went, and again the armistice expired by its own limitation.
The war party was disgusted with the solemn trifling, Maurice was
exasperated beyond endurance, Barneveld and the peace men began to find
immense difficulty in confronting the gathering storm.

The prince, with difficulty, consented to a prolongation of the armistice
for two months longer; resolute to resume hostilities should no accord be
made before the end of July.  The Advocate, with much earnestness, and
with more violence than was habitual with him, insisted on protracting
the temporary truce until the end of the year.  The debates in the
States-General and the state-council were vehement; passion rose to
fever-heat, but the stadholder, although often half beside himself with
rage, ended by submitting once more to the will of Barneveld.

This was the easier, as the Advocate at last proposed an agreement which
seemed to Maurice and Lewis William even better than their own original
suggestion.  It was arranged that the armistice should be prolonged until
the end of the year, but it was at the same time stipulated that unless
the negotiations had reached a definite result before the 1st of August,
they should be forthwith broken off.

Thus a period of enforced calm--a kind of vacation, as if these great
soldiers and grey-beards had been a troop of idle school-boys--was now
established, without the slightest reason.

President Jeannin took occasion to make a journey to Paris, leaving the
Hague on the 20th June.

During his absence a treaty of the States with England, similar in its
terms to the one recently concluded between the republic and France, but
only providing for half the number of auxiliary troops arranged for in
the French convention, was signed at the Hague.  The English
plenipotentiaries, Vinwood and Spencer, wished to delay the exchange of
signatures under the pending negotiations with Spain and the archdukes
were brought to a close, as King James was most desirous at that epoch to
keep on good terms with his Catholic Majesty.  The States were so urgent,
however, to bring at least this matter to a termination, and the English
so anxious lest France should gain still greater influence than she now
enjoyed in the provinces, that they at last gave way.  It was further
stipulated in the convention that the debt of the States to England, then
amounting to L815,408 sterling, should be settled by annual payments of
L60,000; to begin with the expected peace.

Besides this debt to the English Government, the States-General owed nine
millions of florins (L900,000), and the separate provinces altogether
eighteen millions (L1,800,000).  In short, there would be a deficiency
of at least three hundred thousand florins a month if the war went on,
although every imaginable device had already been employed for increasing
the revenue from taxation. It must be admitted therefore, that the
Barneveld party were not to be severely censured for their desire to
bring about an honourable peace.

That Jeannin was well aware of the disposition prevailing throughout a
great part of the commonwealth is certain.  It is equally certain that he
represented to his sovereign, while at Paris, that the demand upon his
exchequer by the States, in case of the resumption of hostilities, would
be more considerable than ever.  Immense was the pressure put upon Henry
by the Spanish court, during the summer, to induce him to abandon his
allies.  Very complicated were the nets thrown out to entangle the wary
old politician in "the grey jacket and with the heart of gold," as he was
fond of designating himself, into an alliance with Philip and the
archdukes.

Don Pedro de Toledo, at the head of a magnificent embassy, arrived in
Paris with projects of arranging single, double, or triple marriages
between the respective nurseries of France and Spain.  The Infanta might
marry with a French prince, and have all the Netherlands for her dower,
so soon as the childless archdukes should have departed this life.
Or an Infante might espouse a daughter of France with the same heritage
assigned to the young couple.

Such proposals, duly set forth in sonorous Spanish by the Constable of
Castile, failed to produce a very soothing effect on Henry's delicate
ear.  He had seen and heard enough of gaining thrones by Spanish
marriages.  Had not the very crown on his own head, which he had won with
foot in stirrup and lance in rest, been hawked about for years, appended
to the wedding ring of the Spanish Infanta?  It might become convenient
to him at some later day, to form a family alliance with the house of
Austria, although he would not excite suspicion in the United Provinces
by openly accepting it then.  But to wait for the shoes of Albert and
Isabella, and until the Dutch republic had been absorbed into the
obedient Netherlands by his assistance, was not a very flattering
prospect for a son or daughter of France.  The ex-Huguenot and
indomitable campaigner in the field or in politics was for more drastic
measures.  Should the right moment come, he knew well enough how to
strike, and could appropriate the provinces, obedient or disobedient,
without assistance from the Spanish babies.

Don Pedro took little by his propositions.  The king stoutly declared
that the Netherlands were very near to his heart, and that he would never
abandon them on any consideration.  So near, indeed, that he meant to
bring them still nearer, but this was not then suspected by the Spanish
court; Henry, the while, repelling as a personal insult to himself the
request that he should secretly labour to reduce the United Provinces
under subjection to the archdukes.  It had even been proposed that he
should sign a secret convention to that effect, and there were those
about the court who were not ill-disposed for such a combination.
The king was, however, far too adroit to be caught in any such trap.
The marriage proposals in themselves he did not dislike, but Jeannin
and he were both of a mind that they should be kept entirely secret.

Don Pedro, on the contrary, for obvious reasons, was for making the
transactions ostentatiously public, and, as a guarantee of his master's
good faith in regard to the heritage of the Netherlands, he proposed that
every portion of the republic, thenceforth to be conquered by the allies,
should be confided to hands in which Henry and the archdukes would have
equal confidence.

But these artifices were too trivial to produce much effect.  Henry
remained true, in his way, to the States-General, and Don Pedro was much
laughed at in Paris, although the public scarcely knew wherefore.

These intrigues had not been conducted so mysteriously but that Barneveld
was aware of what was going on.  Both before Jeannin's departure from the
Hague in June, and on his return in the middle of August, he catechised
him very closely on the subject.  The old Leaguer was too deep, however,
to be thoroughly pumped, even by so practised a hand as the Advocate's,
so that more was suspected than at the time was accurately known.

As, at the memorable epoch of the accession of the King of Scots to the
throne of Elizabeth, Maximilian de Bethune had flattered the new monarch
with the prospect of a double marriage, so now Don Fernando Girono had
been sent on solemn mission to England, in order to offer the same
infants to James which Don Pedro was placing at the disposition of Henry.

The British sovereign, as secretly fascinated by the idea of a Spanish
family alliance as he had ever been by the proposals of the Marquis de
Rosny for the French marriages, listened with eagerness.  Money was
scattered as profusely among the English courtiers by Don Fernando as had
been done by De Bethune four years before.  The bribes were accepted, and
often by the very personages who knew the colour of Bourbon money, but
the ducats were scarcely earned.  Girono, thus urging on the English
Government the necessity of deserting the republic and cementing a
cordial, personal, and political understanding between James and Philip,
effected but little.  It soon became thoroughly understood in England
that the same bargaining was going on simultaneously in France.  As it
was evident that the Spanish children could not be disposed of in both
markets at the same time, it was plain to the dullest comprehension that
either the brokerage of Toledo or of Girono was a sham, and that a policy
erected upon such flimsy foundations would soon be washed away.

It is certain, however, that James, while affecting friendship for the
States, and signing with them the league of mutual assistance, was
secretly longing to nibble the bait dangled before him by Girono, and was
especially determined to prevent, if possible, the plans of Toledo.

Meantime, brother John Neyen was dealing with Philip and the Duke of
Lerma, in Spain.

The friar strenuously urged upon the favourite and the rest of the royal
advisers the necessity of prompt action with the States.  This needed not
interfere with an unlimited amount of deception.  It was necessary to
bring the negotiations to a definite agreement.  It would be by no means
requisite, however, to hold to that agreement whenever a convenient
opportunity for breaking it should present itself.  The first object of
Spanish policy, argued honest John, should be to get the weapons out of
the rebels' hands.  The Netherlanders ought to be encouraged to return to
their usual pursuits of commerce and manufactures, whence they derived
their support, and to disband their military and naval forces.  Their
sailors and traders should be treated kindly in Spain, instead of being
indulged as heretofore with no hospitality save that of the Holy
Inquisition and its dungeons.  Let their minds be disarmed of all
suspicion.  Now the whole population of the provinces had been convinced
that Spain, in affecting to treat, was secretly devising means to re-
impose her ancient yoke upon their necks.

Time went by in Aranjuez and Madrid.  The forty days, promised as the
period of Neyen's absence, were soon gone; but what were forty days, or
forty times forty, at the Spanish court?  The friar, who, whatever his
faults, was anything but an idler, chafed at a procrastination which
seemed the more stupendous to him, coming fresh as he did from a busy
people who knew the value of time.  In the anguish of his soul he went to
Rodrigo Calderon, of the privy council, and implored his influence with
Government to procure leave for him to depart.  Calderon, in urbane but
decisive terms, assured him that this would be impossible before the king
should return to Madrid.  The monk then went to Idiaquez, who was in
favour of his proceeding at once to the Netherlands, but who on being
informed that Calderon was of a different opinion, gave up the point.
More distressed than ever, Neyen implored Prada's assistance, but Prada
plunged him into still deeper despair.  His Majesty, said that
counsellor, with matchless effrontery, was studying the propositions of
the States-General, and all the papers in the negotiation, line by line,
comma by comma.  There were many animadversions to make, many counter
suggestions to offer.  The king was pondering the whole subject most
diligently.  When those lucubrations were finished, the royal decision,
aided by the wisdom of the privy council, would be duly communicated to
the archdukes.

To wait for an answer to the propositions of the suspicious States-
General until Philip III.  had mastered the subject in detail, was a
prospect too dreary even for the equable soul of Brother John.  Dismayed
at the position in which he found himself, he did his best to ferret out
the reasons for the preposterous delay; not being willing to be paid off
in allusions to the royal investigations.  He was still further appalled
at last by discovering that the delay was absolutely for the delay's
sake.  It was considered inconsistent with the dignity of the Government
not to delay.  The court and cabinet had quite made up their minds as to
the answer to be made to the last propositions of the rebels, but to make
it known at once was entirely out of the question.  In the previous year
his Majesty's administration, so it was now confessed with shame, had
acted with almost indecent haste.  That everything had been conceded to
the confederated provinces was the--common talk of Europe.  Let the time-
honoured, inveterate custom of Spain in grave affairs to proceed slowly,
and therefore surely, be in future observed.  A proper self-respect
required the king to keep the universe in suspense for a still longer
period upon the royal will and the decision of the royal council.

Were the affairs of the mighty Spanish empire so subordinate to the
convenience of that portion of it called the Netherlands that no time was
to be lost before settling their affairs?

Such dismal frivolity, such palsied pride, seems scarcely credible; but
more than all this has been carefully recorded in the letters of the
friar.

If it were precipitation to spend the whole year 1607 in forming a single
phrase; to wit, that the archdukes and the king would treat with the
United Provinces as with countries to which they made no pretensions; and
to spend the best part of another year in futile efforts to recal that
phrase; if all this had been recklessness and haste, then, surely, the
most sluggish canal in Holland was a raging cataract, and the march of a
glacier electric speed.

Midsummer had arrived.  The period in which peace was to be made or
abandoned altogether had passed.  Jeannin had returned from his visit to
Paris; the Danish envoys, sent to watch the negotiations, had left the
Hague, utterly disgusted with a puppet-show, all the strings of which,
they protested, were pulled from the Louvre.  Brother John, exasperated
by the superhuman delays, fell sick of a fever at Burgos, and was sent,
on his recovery, to the court at Valladolid to be made ill again by the
same cause, and still there came no sound from the Government of Spain.

At last the silence was broken.  Something that was called the voice of
the king reached the ears of the archduke.  Long had he wrestled in
prayer on this great subject, said Philip III., fervently had he besought
the Omnipotent for light.  He had now persuaded himself that he should
not fulfil his duty to God, nor satisfy his own strong desire for
maintaining the Catholic faith, nor preserve his self-respect, if he now
conceded his supreme right to the Confederated Provinces at any other
price than the uncontrolled exercise, within their borders, of the
Catholic religion.  He wished, therefore, as obedient son of the Church
and Defender of the Faith, to fulfil this primary duty, untrammelled by
any human consideration, by any profit that might induce him towards a
contrary course.  That which he had on other occasions more than once
signified he now confirmed.  His mind was fixed; this was his last and
immutable determination, that if the confederates should permit the free
and public exercise of the Catholic, Roman, Apostolic religion to all
such as wished to live and die in it, for this cause so grateful to God,
and for no other reason, he also would permit to them that supreme right
over the provinces, and that authority which now belonged to himself.
Natives and residents of those countries should enjoy liberty, just so
long as the exercise of the Catholic religion flourished there, and not
one day nor hour longer.

Philip then proceeded flatly to refuse the India navigation, giving
reasons very satisfactory to himself why the provinces ought cheerfully
to abstain from that traffic.  If the confederates, in consequence of the
conditions thus definitely announced, moved by their innate pride and
obstinacy, and relying on the assistance of their allies, should break
off the negotiations, then it would be desirable to adopt the plan
proposed by Jeannin to Richardot, and conclude a truce for five or six
years.  The king expressed his own decided preference for a truce rather
than a peace, and his conviction that Jeannin had made the suggestion by
command of his sovereign.

The negotiators stood exactly where they did when Friar John, disguised
as a merchant, first made his bow to the Prince and Barneveld in the
palace at the Hague.

The archduke, on receiving at last this peremptory letter from the king,
had nothing for it but to issue instructions accordingly to the
plenipotentiaries at the Hague.  A decisive conference between those
diplomatists and the States' commissioners took place immediately
afterwards.

It was on the 20th August.

Although it had been agreed on the 1st May to break off negotiations on
the ensuing 1st of August, should no result be reached, yet three weeks
beyond that period had been suffered to elapse, under a tacit agreement
to wait a little longer for the return of the friar.  President Jeannin,
too, had gone to Paris on the 20th June, to receive new and important
instructions; verbal and written, from his sovereign, and during his
absence it had not been thought expedient to transact much business.
Jeannin returned to the Hague on the 15th of August, and, as definite
instructions from king and archduke had now arrived, there seemed no
possibility of avoiding an explanation.

The Spanish envoys accordingly, with much gravity, and as if they had
been propounding some cheerful novelty, announced to the assembled
commissioners that all reports hitherto flying about as to the Spanish
king's intentions were false.

His Majesty had no intention of refusing to give up the sovereignty of
the provinces.  On the contrary, they were instructed to concede that
sovereignty freely and frankly to my lords the States-General--a pearl
and a precious jewel, the like of which no prince had ever given away
before.  Yet the king desired neither gold nor silver, neither cities nor
anything else of value in exchange.  He asked only for that which was
indispensable to the tranquillity of his conscience before God, to wit,
the re-establishment in those countries of the Catholic Apostolic Roman
religion.  This there could surely be no reasons for refusing.  They owed
it as a return for the generosity of the king, they owed it to their own
relatives, they owed it to the memory of their ancestors, not to show
greater animosity to the ancient religion than to the new and pernicious
sect of Anabaptists, born into the world for the express purpose of
destroying empires; they owed it to their many fellow-citizens, who would
otherwise be driven into exile, because deprived of that which is dearest
to humanity.

In regard to the East India navigation, inasmuch as the provinces had no
right whatever to it, and as no other prince but the sovereign of Spain
had any pretensions to it, his Majesty expected that the States would at
once desist from it.

This was the magnificent result of twenty months of diplomacy.  As the
king's father had long ago flung away the pearl and precious jewel which
the son now made a merit of selling to its proprietors at the price of
their life's blood--the world's commerce--it is difficult to imagine that
Richardot, while communicating thin preposterous ultimatum, could have
kept his countenance.  But there were case-hardened politicians on both
sides.  The proposition was made and received with becoming seriousness,
and it was decided by the States' commissioners to make no answer at all
on that occasion.  They simply promised to render their report to the
States-General, who doubtless would make short work with the matter.

They made their report and it occasioned a tumult.  Every member present
joined in a general chorus of wrathful denunciation.  The Spanish
commissioners were infamous swindlers, it was loudly asserted.  There
should be no more dealings with them at all.  Spain was a power only to
be treated with on the battle-field.  In the tempest of general rage no
one would listen to argument, no one asked which would be the weaker,
which the stronger party, what resources for the renewed warfare could be
founds or who would be the allies of the republic.  Hatred, warlike fury
and scorn at the duplicity with which they had been treated, washed every
more politic sentiment away, and metamorphosed that body of burghers as
in an instant.  The negotiations should be broken off, not on one point,
but on all points, and nothing was left but to prepare instantly for war.
Three days later, after the French and  English ambassadors, as well as
Prince Maurice and Count Lewis William, had been duly consulted,
comparative calm was restored, and a decisive answer was unanimously
voted by the States-General.  The proposition of the commissioners was
simply declared to be in direct violation of the sovereignty and freedom
of the country, and it was announced that, if it should be persisted in,
the whole negotiation might be considered as broken off.  A formal answer
to the royal propositions would be communicated likewise to the envoys of
foreign powers, in order that the royal commissioners might be placed
completely in the wrong.

On the 25th August an elaborate response was accordingly delivered in
writing by the States' commissioners to those of the archdukes and king,
it being at the same time declared by Barneveld and his colleagues that
their functions were ended, and that this document, emanating from the
States-General, was a sovereign resolution, not a diplomatic note.

The contents of this paper may be inferred from all that has been
previously narrated.  The republic knew its own mind, and had always
expressed itself with distinctness.  The Spanish Government having at
last been brought to disclose its intentions, there was an end to the
negotiations for peace.  The rupture was formally announced.





ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Night brings counsel
This obstinate little republic
Triple marriages between the respective nurseries
Usual expedient by which bad legislation on one side countered



End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v81
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 82, 1608


CHAPTER LI.

     Designs of Henry IV.--New marriage project between France and Spain
     Formal proposition of negotiating for a truce between the States and
     Spain--Exertions of Prince Maurice to counteract the designs of
     Barneveld--Strife between the two parties in the republic--Animosity
     of the people against Barneveld--Return of the Spanish
     commissioners--Further trifling--Dismissal of the commissioners--
     Close of the negotiations--Accidental discovery of the secret
     instructions of the archdukes to the commissioners--Opposing
     factions in the republic--Oration of President Jeannin before the
     States-General--Comparison between the Dutch and Swiss republics--
     Calumnies against the Advocate--Ambassador Lambert in France--
     Henry's letter to Prince Maurice--Reconciliation of Maurice and
     Barneveld--Agreement of the States to accept a truce.

President Jeannin had long been prepared for this result.  It was also by
no means distasteful to him.  A peace would not have accorded with the
ulterior and secretly cherished schemes of his sovereign, and during his
visit to Paris, he had succeeded in persuading Henry that a truce would
be far the most advantageous solution of the question, so far as his
interests were concerned.

For it had been precisely during that midsummer vacation of the President
at Paris that Henry had completed his plot against the liberty of the
republic, of which he professed himself the only friend.  Another phase
of Spanish marriage-making had excited his ever scheming and insidious
brain.  It had been proposed that the second son of the Spanish king
should espouse one of Henry's daughters.

The papal Nuncius asked what benefit the King of Spain would receive for
his share, in case of the marriage.  The French king replied by plainly
declaring to the Nuncius that the United States should abstain from and
renounce all navigation to and commerce with the Indies, and should
permit public exercise of the Catholic religion.  If they refused, would
incontinently abandon them to their fate.  More than this, he said, could
not honestly be expected of him.

Surely this was enough.  Honestly or dishonestly, what more could Spain
expect of the republic's best ally, than that he should use all his
efforts to bring her back into Spanish subjection, should deprive her of
commerce with three-quarters of the world, and compel her to re-establish
the religion which she believed, at that period, to be incompatible with
her constitutional liberties?  It is difficult to imagine a more
profligate or heartless course than the one pursued at this juncture
by Henry.  Secretly, he was intriguing, upon the very soil of the
Netherlands, to filch from them that splendid commerce which was the
wonder of the age, which had been invented and created by Dutch
navigators and men of science, which was the very foundation of their
State, and without which they could not exist, in order that he might
appropriate it to himself, and transfer the East India Company to France;
while at Paris he was solemnly engaging himself in a partnership with
their ancient and deadly enemy to rob them of their precious and nobly
gained liberty.  Was better proof ever afforded that God alone can
protect us against those whom we trust?  Who was most dangerous to the
United Provinces during those memorable peace negotiations, Spain the
avowed enemy, or France the friend?

The little republic had but her own sword, her own brain, and her own
purse to rely upon.  Elizabeth was dead, and James loved Spain better
than he did the Netherlands, and quiet better than Spain.  "I have told
you often," said Caron, "and I say it once more, the Spaniard is lucky
that he has such a peaceable king as this to deal with in England."

The details of the new marriage project were arranged at Paris between
the Nuncius, the Spanish ambassador, Don Pedro de Toledo, the diplomatic
agent of the archdukes, and Henry's ministers, precisely as if there had
been no negotiations going on between the States and Spain.  Yet the
French king was supposed to be the nearest friend of the States, and was
consulted by them on every occasion, while his most intimate and trusted
counsellor, the ingenuous Jeannin, whose open brow was stamped with
sincerity, was privy to all their most secret deliberations.

But the statesman thus dealing with the Hollanders under such a mask of
friendly candour, knew perfectly well the reason why his Government
preferred a truce to a peace.  During a prolonged truce, the two royal
children would grow old enough for the consummation of marriage, and the
States--so it was hoped--would be corrupted and cajoled into renouncing
their liberty.  All the Netherlands would be then formed into a
secundogeniture for Spain, and the first sovereign would be the husband
of a French princess.  Even as an object of ambition, the prize to be
secured by so much procrastination and so much treachery was paltry.

When the Spanish commissioners came to the French and English ambassadors
accordingly, complaining of the abrupt and peremptory tone of the States'
reply, the suggestion of conferences for truce, in place of fruitless
peace negotiations, was made at once, and of course favourably received.
It was soon afterwards laid before the States-General.  To this end, in
truth, Richardot and his colleagues had long been secretly tending.
Moreover, the subject had been thoroughly but secretly discussed long
before between Jeannin and Barneveld.

The French and English ambassadors, accordingly, on the 27th August, came
before the States-General, and made a formal proposition for the opening
of negotiations for a truce.  They advised the adoption of this course in
the strongest manner.  "Let the truce be made with you," they said, "as
with free States, over which the king and the archdukes have no
pretensions, with the understanding that, during the time of the truce
you are to have free commerce as well to the Indies as to Spain and the
obedient Netherlands, and to every part of the Spanish dominions; that
you are to retain all that you possess at present, and that such other
conditions are to be added as you may find it reasonable to impose.
During this period of leisure you will have time to put your affairs in
order, to pay your debts, and to reform your Government, and if you
remain united, the truce will change into an absolute peace."

Maurice was more indignant when the new scheme was brought to his notice
than he had ever been before, and used more violent language in opposing
a truce than he had been used to employ when striving against a peace.
To be treated with, as with a free State, and to receive permission to
trade with the outside world until the truce should expire, seemed to him
a sorry result for the republic to accept.

The state-council declared, by way of answer to the foreign ambassadors,
that the principal points and conditions which had been solemnly fixed,
before the States had consented to begin the negotiations, had been
disputed with infinite effrontery and shamelessness by the enemy.  The
pure and perfect sovereignty notoriously included religion and navigation
to any part of the world; and the republic would never consent to any
discussion of truce unless these points were confirmed beforehand with
the Spanish king's signature and seal.

This resolution of the council--a body which stood much under the
influence of the Nassaus--was adopted next day by the States-General, and
duly communicated to the friendly ambassadors.

The foreign commissioners, when apprised of this decision, begged for six
weeks' time; in order to be able to hear from Madrid.

Even the peace party was disgusted with this impertinence.  Maurice
boiled over with wrath.  The ambassadors recommended compliance with.
the proposal.  Their advice was discussed in the States-General, eighty
members being present, besides Maurice and Lewis William.  The stadholder
made a violent and indignant speech.

He was justified in his vehemence.  Nothing could exceed the perfidy of
their great ally.

"I know that the King of France calculates thus"--wrote Aerssens at that
moment from Paris--"'If the truce lasts seven years, my son will be old
enough to accomplish the proposed marriage, and they will be obliged to
fulfil their present offers.  Otherwise; I would break the truce in the
Netherlands, and my own peace with them, in order to take from the
Spaniard by force what he led me to hope from alliance.'  Thus it is,"
continued the States' envoy, "that his Majesty condescends to propose,
to us a truce, which may have a double interpretation, according to the
disposition of the strongest, and thus our commonwealth will be kept in
perpetual disquiet, without knowing whether it is sovereign or not.  Nor
will it be sovereign unless it shall so please our neighbour, who by this
means will always keep his foot upon our throat."

"To treat with the States as if they were free," said Henry to the
Nuncius soon afterwards, "is not to make them free.  This clause does no
prejudice to the rights of the King of Spain, except for the time of the
truce."  Aerssens taxed the king with having said this.  His Majesty
flatly denied it.  The republican envoy bluntly adduced the testimony of
the ambassadors of Venice and of Wirtemberg.  The king flew into a rage
on seeing that his secrets had been divulged, and burst out with these
words: "What you demand is not reasonable.  You wish the king of Spain to
renounce his rights in order to arrive at a truce.  You wish to dictate
the law to him.  If you had just gained four battles over him, you could
not demand more.  I have always held you for sovereigns, because I am
your friend, but if you would judge by equity and justice, you are not
sovereigns.  It is not reasonable that the king of Spain should quit the
sovereignty for always, and you ought to be satisfied with having it so
long as the treaty shall last."

Here was playing at sovereignty with a vengeance.  Sovereignty was a
rattle for the States to amuse themselves with, until the royal infants,
French and Spanish, should be grown old enough to take the sovereignty
for good.  Truly this was indeed keeping the republic under the king's
heel to be crushed at his pleasure, as Aerssens, with just bitterness,
exclaimed.

Two days were passed at the Hague in vehement debate.  The deputies of
Zeeland withdrew.  The deputies from Holland were divided, but, on the
whole, it was agreed to listen to propositions of truce, provided the
freedom of the United Provinces--not under conditions nor during a
certain period, but simply and for all time--should be recognised
beforehand.

It was further decided on the 14th September to wait until the end of the
month for the answer from Spain.

After the 1st of October it was distinctly intimated to the Spanish
commissioners that they must at once leave the country unless the king
had then acknowledged the absolute independence of the provinces.

A suggestion which had been made by these diplomatists to prolong the
actually existing armistice into a truce of seven years, a step which
they professed themselves willing to take upon their own responsibility,
had been scornfully rejected by the States.  It was already carrying them
far enough away, they said, to take them away from a peace to a truce,
which was something far less secure than a peace, but the continuance of
this floating, uncertain armistice would be the most dangerous insecurity
of all.  This would be going from firm land to slippery ice, and from
slippery ice into the water.  By such a process, they would have neither
war nor peace--neither liberty of government nor freedom of commerce--and
they unanimously refused to listen to any such schemes.

During the fortnight which followed this provisional consent of the
States, the prince redoubled his efforts to counteract the Barneveld
party.

He was determined, so far as in him lay, that the United Netherlands
should never fall back under the dominion of Spain.  He had long
maintained the impossibility of effecting their thorough independence
except by continuing the war, and had only with reluctance acquiesced in
the arguments of the French ambassadors in favour of peace negotiations.
As to the truce, he vehemently assured those envoys that it was but a
trap.  How could the Netherlanders know who their friends might be when
the truce should have expired, and under what unfavourable auspices they
might not be compelled to resume hostilities?

As if he had been actually present at the council boards in Madrid and
Valladolid, or had been reading the secret letters of Friar John to
Spinola, he affirmed that the only object of Spain was to recruit her
strength and improve her finances, now entirely exhausted.  He believed,
on the other hand, that the people of the provinces, after they should
have once become accustomed to repose; would shrink from exchanging their
lucrative pursuits for war, and would prefer to fall back under the yoke
of Spain.  During the truce they would object to the furnishing of
necessary contributions for garrison expenses, and the result would be
that the most important cities and strongholds, especially those on the
frontier, which were mainly inhabited by Catholics, would become
insecure.  Being hostile to a Government which only controlled them by
force, they would with difficulty be kept in check by diminished
garrisons, unless they should obtain liberty of Catholic worship.

It is a dismal proof of the inability of a leading mind, after half a
century's war, to comprehend the true lesson of the war--that toleration
of the Roman religion seemed to Maurice an entirely inadmissible idea.
The prince could not rise to the height on which his illustrious father
had stood; and those about him, who encouraged him in his hostility to
Catholicism, denounced Barneveld and Arminius as no better than traitors
and atheists.  In the eyes of the extreme party, the mighty war had been
waged, not to liberate human thought, but to enforce predestination; and
heretics to Calvinism were as offensive in their eyes as Jews and
Saracens had ever been to Torquemada.

The reasons were unanswerable for the refusal of the States to bind
themselves to a foreign sovereign in regard to the interior
administration of their commonwealth; but that diversity of religious
worship should be considered incompatible with the health of the young
republic--that the men who had so bravely fought the Spanish Inquisition
should now claim their own right of inquisition into the human
conscience--this was almost enough to create despair as to the
possibility of the world's progress.  The seed of intellectual
advancement is slow in ripening, and it is almost invariably the case
that the generation which plants--often but half conscious of the
mightiness of its work--is not the generation which reaps the harvest.
But all mankind at last inherits what is sown in the blood and tears of a
few.  That Government, whether regal or democratic, should dare to thrust
itself between man and his Maker--that the State, not with interfering in
a thousand superfluous ways with the freedom of individual human action
in the business of life, should combine with the Church to reduce human
thought to slavery in regard to the sacred interests of eternity, was one
day to be esteemed a blasphemous presumption in lands which deserved to
call themselves free.  But that hour had not yet come.

"If the garrisons should be weakened," said the prince, "nothing could be
expected from the political fidelity of the town populations in question,
unless they should be allowed the exercise of their own religion.  But
the States could hardly be disposed  to grant this voluntarily, for fear
of injuring the general insecurity and violating the laws of the
commonwealth, built as it is upon a foundation which cannot suffer this
diversity in the public exercise of religion.  Already," continued
Maurice, "there are the seeds of dissension in the provinces and in the
cities, sure to ripen in the idleness and repose of peace to an open
division.  This would give the enemy a means of intriguing with and
corrupting those who are already wickedly inclined."

Thus in the year 1608, the head of the Dutch republic, the son of William
the Silent, seemed to express himself in favour of continuing a horrible
war, not to maintain the political independence of his country, but to
prevent Catholics from acquiring the right of publicly worshipping God
according to the dictates of their conscience.

Yet it would be unjust to the prince, whose patriotism was as pure and
unsullied as his sword, to confound his motives with his end.  He was
firmly convinced that liberty of religious worship, to be acquired during
the truce, would inevitably cause the United Provinces to fall once more
under the Spanish yoke.  The French ambassador, with whom he conferred
every day, never doubted his sincerity.  Gelderland, Friesland,
Overyssel, Groningen, and Utrecht, five provinces out of the united
seven, the prince declared to be chiefly inhabited by Catholics.  They
had only entered the union, he said, because compelled by force.  They
could only be kept in the union by force, unless allowed freedom of
religion.  His inference from such a lamentable state of affairs was, not
that the experiment of religious worship should be tried, but that the
garrisons throughout the five provinces ought to be redoubled, and the
war with Spain indefinitely waged.  The President was likewise of opinion
that "a revolt of these five provinces against the union might be at any
moment expected, ill disposed as they were to recognise a sovereignty
which abolished their religion."  Being himself a Catholic, however, it
was not unnatural that he should make a different deduction from that of
the prince, and warmly recommend, not more garrisons, but more liberty of
worship.

Thus the very men who were ready to dare all, and to sacrifice all in
behalf of their country, really believed themselves providing for the
imperishable security of the commonwealth by placing it on the narrow
basis of religious intolerance.

Maurice, not satisfied with making these vehement arguments against the
truce in his conferences with the envoys of the French and British
sovereigns, employed the brief interval yet to elapse before definitely
breaking off or resuming the conferences with the Spanish commissioners
in making vigorous appeals to the country.

"The weal or woe of the United Provinces for all time," he said, "is
depending on the present transactions."  Weigh well the reasons we urge,
and make use of those which seem to you convincing.  You know that the
foe, according to his old deceitful manner, laid down very specious
conditions at the beginning, in order to induce my lords the States-
General to treat.

"If the king and the archdudes sincerely mean to relinquish absolutely
their pretensions to these provinces, they can certainly have no
difficulty in finding honest and convenient words to express their
intention.  As they are seeking other phrases than the usual and
straightforward ones, they give certain proof that they mean to keep back
from us the substance.  They are trying to cheat us with dark, dubious,
loosely-screwed terms, which secure nothing and bind to nothing.  If it
be wise to trust the welfare of our State to ambiguous words, you can
judge according to your own discretion.

"Recognition of our sovereignty is the foundation-stone of these
negotiations.

"Let every man be assured that, with such mighty enemies, we can do
nothing by halves.  We cannot afford to retract, mutilate, or moderate
our original determination.  He who swerves from the straight road at the
beginning is lost; he who stumbles at the first step is apt to fall down
the whole staircase.  If, on account of imaginable necessity, we postpone
that most vital point, the assurance of our freedom, we shall very easily
allow less important points to pass muster, and at last come tamely into
the path of reconciliation.  That was exactly the danger which our
ancestors in similar negotiations always feared, and against which we too
have always done our best to guard ourselves.

"Wherefore, if the preservation of our beloved fatherland is dear to you,
I exhort you to maintain that great fundamental resolution, at all times
and against all men, even if this should cause the departure of the
enemy's commissioners.  What can you expect from them but evil fruit?"

He then advised all the estates and magistracies which he was addressing
to instruct their deputies, at the approaching session of the States-
General, to hold on to the first article of the often-cited preliminary
resolution without allowing one syllable to be altered.  Otherwise
nothing could save the commonwealth from dire and notorious confusion.
Above all, he entreated them to act in entire harmony and confidence with
himself and his cousin, even as they had ever done with his illustrious
father.

Certainly the prince fully deserved the confidence of the States, as well
for his own signal services and chivalrous self-devotion, as for the
unexampled sacrifices and achievements of William the Silent.  His words
had the true patriotic ring of his father's frequent and eloquent
appeals; and I have not hesitated to give these extracts from his
discourse, because comparatively few of such utterances of Maurice have
been preserved, and because it gives a vivid impression of the condition
of the republic and the state of parties at that momentous epoch.  It was
not merely the fate of the United Netherlands and the question of peace
or war between the little republic and its hereditary enemy that were
upon the issue.  The peace of all Christendom, the most considerable
material interests of civilization, and the highest political and moral
principles that can influence human action, were involved in those
negotiations.

There were not wanting many to impeach the purity of the stadholder's
motives.  As admiral or captain-general, he received high salaries,
besides a tenth part of all prize-money gained at sea by the fleets,
or of ransom and blackmail on land by the armies of the republic.  His
profession, his ambition, his delights, were those of a soldier.  As a
soldier in a great war, he was more necessary to his countrymen than he
could expect to be as a statesman in time of peace.  But nothing ever
appeared in public or in private, which threw a reasonable suspicion upon
his lofty patriotism.  Peace he had always believed to be difficult of
attainment.  It had now been proved impossible.  A truce he honestly
considered a pitfall of destruction, and he denounced it, as we have
seen, in the language of energetic conviction.  He never alluded to his
pecuniary losses in case peace should be made.  His disinterested
patriotism was the frequent subject of comment in the most secret letters
of the French ambassadors to the king.  He had repeatedly refused
enormous offers if he would forsake the cause of the republic.  The King
of France was ever ready to tempt him with bribes, such as had proved
most efficacious with men as highly born and as highly placed as a cadet
of the house of Orange-Nassau.  But there is no record that Jeannin
assailed him at this crisis with such temptations, although it has not
been pretended that the prince was obdurate to the influence of Mammon
when that deity could be openly approached.

That Maurice loved power, pelf, and war, can hardly be denied.  That he
had a mounting ambition; that he thought a monarchy founded upon the
historical institutions and charters of the provinces might be better
than the burgher-aristocracy which, under the lead of Barneveld, was
establishing itself in the country; that he knew no candidate so eligible
for such a throne as his father's son, all this is highly probable and
scarcely surprising.  But that such sentiments or aspirations caused him
to swerve the ninth part of a hair from what he considered the direct
path of duty; that he determined to fight out the great fight with Spain
and Rome until the States were free in form, in name, and in fact; only
that he might then usurp a sovereignty which would otherwise revert to
Philip of Spain or be snatched by Henry of Navarre--of all this there is
no proof whatever.

The language of Lewis William to the provinces under his government was
quite as vigorous as the appeals of Maurice.

During the brief interval remaining before the commissioners should
comply with the demands of the States or take their departure, the press
throughout the Netherlands was most active.  Pamphlets fell thick as
hail.  The peace party and the war party contended with each other,
over all the territory of the provinces, as vigorously as the troops
of Fuentes or Bucquoy had ever battled with the columns of Bax and
Meetkerke.  The types of Blaauw and Plantin were as effective during the
brief armistice, as pike and arquebus in the field, but unfortunately
they were used by Netherlanders against each other.  As a matter of
course, each party impeached the motives as well as the actions of its
antagonist.  The adherents of the Advocate accused the stadholder of
desiring the continuance of the war for personal aims.  They averred that
six thousand men for guarding the rivers would be necessary, in addition
to the forty-five thousand men, now kept constantly on foot.  They placed
the requisite monthly expenses, if  hostilities were resumed, at 800,000
florins, while they pointed to the 27,000,000 of debt over and above the
8,000,000 due to the British crown, as a burthen under which the republic
could scarcely stagger much longer.  Such figures seem modest enough, as
the price of a war of independence.

Familiar with the gigantic budgets of our own day, we listen with
something like wonder, now that two centuries and a half have passed,
to the fierce denunciations by the war party of these figures as wilful
fictions.  Science has made in that interval such gigantic strides.  The
awful intellect of man may at last make war impossible for his physical
strength.  He can forge but cannot wield the hammer of Thor; nor has
Science yet discovered the philosopher's stone.  Without it, what
exchequer can accept chronic warfare and escape bankruptcy?  After what
has been witnessed in these latest days, the sieges and battles of that
distant epoch seem like the fights of pigmies and cranes.  Already an
eighty years' war, such as once was waged, has become inconceivable.  Let
two more centuries pass away, and perhaps a three weeks' campaign may
exhaust an empire.

Meantime the war of words continued.  A proclamation with penalties was
issued by the States against the epidemic plague of pamphlets or "blue-
books," as those publications were called in Holland, but with little
result.  It was not deemed consistent with liberty by those republicans
to put chains on the press because its utterances might occasionally be
distasteful to magistrates.  The writers, printers, and sellers of the
"blue-books" remained unpunished and snapped their fingers at the
placard.

We have seen the strenuous exertions of the Nassaus and their adherents
by public appeals and private conversation to defeat all schemes of
truce.  The people were stirred by the eloquence of the two stadholders.
They were stung to fury against Spain and against Barneveld by the
waspish effusions of the daily press.  The magistrates remained calm,
and took part by considerable majorities with Barneveld.  That statesman,
while exercising almost autocratic influence in the estates, became more
and more odious to the humbler classes, to the Nassaus, and especially
to the Calvinist clergy.  He was denounced, as a papist, an atheist,
a traitor, because striving for an honourable peace with the foe, and
because admitting the possibility of more than one road to the kingdom of
Heaven.  To doubt the infallibility of Calvin was as heinous a crime, in
the eyes of his accusers, as to kneel to the host.  Peter Titelmann, half
a century earlier, dripping with the blood of a thousand martyrs, seemed
hardly a more loathsome object to all Netherlanders than the Advocate now
appeared to his political enemies, thus daring to preach religious
toleration, and boasting of, humble ignorance as the safest creed.
Alas! we must always have something to persecute, and individual man is
never so convinced of his own wisdom as when dealing with subjects beyond
human comprehension.

Unfortunately, however, while the great Advocate was clear in his
conscience he had scarcely clean hands.  He had very recently accepted a
present of twenty thousand florins from the King of France.  That this
was a bribe by which his services were to be purchased for a cause not in
harmony with his own convictions it would be unjust to say.  We of a
later generation, who have had the advantage of looking through the
portfolio of President Jeannin, and of learning the secret intentions of
that diplomatist and of his master, can fully understand however that
there was more than sufficient cause at the time for suspecting the
purity of the great Advocate's conduct.  We are perfectly aware that the
secret instructions of Henry gave his plenipotentiaries almost unlimited
power to buy up as many influential personages in the Netherlands as
could be purchased.  So they would assist in making the king master of
the United Provinces at the proper moment there was scarcely any price
that he was not willing to pay.

Especially Prince Maurice, his cousin, and the Advocate of Holland, were
to be secured by life pensions, property, offices, and dignities, all
which Jeannin might offer to an almost unlimited amount, if by such means
those great personages could possibly be induced to perform the king's
work.

There is no record that the president ever held out such baits at this
epoch to the prince.  There could never be a doubt however in any one's
mind that if the political chief of the Orange-Nassau house ever wished
to make himself the instrument by which France should supplant Spain in
the tyranny of the Netherlands, he might always name his own price.
Jeannin never insulted him with any such trading propositions.  As for
Barneveld, he avowed long years afterwards that he had accepted the
twenty thousand florins, and that the king had expressly exacted secrecy
in regard to the transaction.  He declared however that the money was a
reward for public services rendered by him to the French Government ten
years before, in the course of his mission to France at the time of the
peace of Vervins.  The reward had been promised in 1598, and the pledge
was fulfilled in 1608.  In accepting wages fairly earned, however, he
protested that he had bound himself to no dishonourable service, and that
he had never exchanged a word with Jeannin or with any man in regard to
securing for Henry the sovereignty of the Netherlands.

His friends moreover maintained in his defence that there were no laws in
the Netherlands forbidding citizens to accept presents or pensions from
foreign powers.  Such an excuse was as bad as the accusation.  Woe to the
republic whose citizens require laws to prevent them from becoming
stipendiaries of foreign potentates!  If public virtue, the only
foundation of republican institutions, be so far washed away that laws in
this regard are necessary to save it from complete destruction, then
already the republic is impossible.  Many who bore illustrious names, and
occupied the highest social positions at, that day in France, England,
and the obedient provinces, were as venal as cattle at a fair.  Philip
and Henry had bought them over and over again, whenever either was rich
enough to purchase and strong enough to enforce the terms of sale.
Bribes were taken with both hands in overflowing measure; the difficulty
was only in obtaining the work for the wage.

But it would have been humiliating beyond expression had the new
commonwealth, after passing through the fiery furnace of its great war,
proved no purer than leading monarchies at a most corrupt epoch.  It was
no wonder therefore that men sought to wipe off the stain from the
reputation of Barneveld, and it is at least a solace that there was no
proof of his ever rendering, or ever having agreed to render, services
inconsistent with his convictions as to the best interests of the
commonwealth.  It is sufficiently grave that he knew the colour of the
king's money, and that in a momentous crisis of history he accepted a
reward for former professional services, and that the broker in the
transaction, President Jeannin, seriously charged him by Henry's orders
to keep the matter secret.  It would be still more dismal if Jeannin, in
his private letters, had ever intimated to Villeroy or his master that he
considered it a mercantile transaction, or if any effort had ever been
made by the Advocate to help Henry to the Batavian throne.  This however
is not the case.

In truth, neither Maurice nor Barneveld was likely to assist the French
king in his intrigues against the independence of their fatherland.  Both
had higher objects of ambition than to become the humble and well-paid
servants of a foreign potentate.  The stadholder doubtless dreamed of a
crown which might have been his father's, and which his own illustrious
services might be supposed to have earned for himself.  If that tempting
prize were more likely to be gained by a continuance of the war, it is
none the less certain that he considered peace, and still more truce, as
fatal to the independence of the provinces.

The Advocate, on the other hand, loved his country well.  Perhaps he
loved power even better.  To govern the city magistracies of Holland,
through them the provincial estates; and through them again the States-
General of the whole commonwealth; as first citizen of a republic to
wield; the powers of a king; as statesman, diplomatist, and financier, to
create a mighty empire out of those slender and but recently emancipated
provinces of Spain, was a more flattering prospect for a man of large
intellect, iron will, and infinite resources, than to sink into the
contemptible position of stipendiary to a foreign master.  He foresaw
change, growth, transformation in the existing condition of things.
Those great corporations the East and West India Companies were already
producing a new organism out of the political and commercial chaos which
had been so long brooding over civilization.  Visions of an imperial zone
extending from the little Batavian island around the earth, a chain of
forts and factories dotting the newly-discovered and yet undiscovered
points of vantage, on island or promontory, in every sea; a watery,
nebulous, yet most substantial empire--not fantastic, but practical--not
picturesque and mediaeval, but modern and lucrative--a world-wide
commonwealth with a half-submerged metropolis, which should rule the
ocean with its own fleets and, like Venice and Florence, job its land
wars with mercenary armies--all these dreams were not the cloudy pageant
of a poet but the practical schemes of a great creative mind.  They were
destined to become reality.  Had the geographical conditions been
originally more favourable than they were, had Nature been less a
stepmother to the metropolis of the rising Batavian realm, the creation
might have been more durable.  Barneveld, and the men who acted with him,
comprehended their age, and with slender materials were prepared to do
great things.  They did not look very far perhaps into futurity, but they
saw the vast changes already taking place, and felt the throb of forces
actually at work.

The days were gone when the iron-clad man on horseback conquered a
kingdom with his single hand.  Doubtless there is more of poetry and
romance in his deeds than in the achievements of the counting-house
aristocracy, the hierarchy of joint-stock corporations that was taking
the lead in the world's affairs.  Enlarged views of the social compact
and of human liberty, as compared with those which later generations
ought to take, standing upon the graves, heaped up mountains high, of
their predecessors, could hardly be expected of them.  But they knew how
to do the work before them.  They had been able to smite a foreign and
sacerdotal tyranny into the dust at the expense of more blood and more
treasure, and with sacrifices continued through a longer cycle of years,
than had ever been recorded by history.

Thus the Advocate believed that the chief fruits of the war--political
independence, religious liberty, commercial expansion--could be now
secured by diplomacy, and that a truce could be so handled as to become
equivalent to a peace.  He required no bribes therefore to labour for
that which he believed to be for his own interests and for those of the
country.

First citizen of Holland, perpetual chairman of a board of ambitious
shopkeepers who purposed to dictate laws to the world from their
counting-house table, with an unerring eye for the interests of the
commonwealth and his own, with much vision, extraordinary eloquence,
and a magnificent will, he is as good a sample of a great burgher--an
imposing not a heroic figure--as the times had seen.

A vast stride had been taken in the world's progress.  Even monopoly was
freedom compared to the sloth and ignorance of an earlier epoch and of
other lands, and although the days were still far distant when the earth
was to belong to mankind, yet the modern republic was leading, half
unconsciously, to a period of wider liberty of government, commerce, and
above all of thought.

Meantime, the period assigned for the departure of the Spanish
commissioners, unless they brought a satisfactory communication from the
king, was rapidly approaching.

On the 24th September Verreyken returned from Brussels, but it was soon
known that he came empty handed.  He informed the French and English
ambassadors that the archdukes, on their own responsibility, now
suggested the conclusion of a truce of seven years for Europe only.  This
was to be negotiated with the States-General as with free people, over
whom no pretensions of authority were made, and the hope was expressed
that the king would give his consent to this arrangement.

The ambassadors naturally refused to carry the message to the States.  To
make themselves the mouthpieces of such childish suggestions was to bring
themselves and their masters into contempt.  There had been trifling
enough, and even Jeannin saw that the storm of indignation about to burst
forth would be irresistible.  There was no need of any attempt on the
part of the commissioners to prolong their stay if this was the result of
the fifteen days' grace which had so reluctantly been conceded to them.
To express a hope that the king might perhaps give his future approval to
a proceeding for which his signed and sealed consent had been exacted as
an indispensable preliminary, was carrying effrontery further than had
yet been attempted in these amazing negotiations.

Prince Maurice once more addressed the cities of Holland, giving vent to
his wrath in language with which there was now more sympathy than there
had been before.  "Verreyken has come back," he said, "not with a
signature, but with a hope.  The longer the enemy remains in the country
the more he goes back from what he had originally promised.  He is
seeking for nothing more than, in this cheating way and in this pretence
of waiting for the king's consent--which we have been expecting now for
more than eighteen months--to continue the ruinous armistice.  Thus he
keeps the country in a perpetual uncertainty, the only possible
consequence of which is our complete destruction.  We adjure you
therefore to send a resolution in conformity with our late address, in
order that through these tricks and snares the fatherland may not fall
into the clutch of the enemy, and thus into eternal and intolerable
slavery.  God save us all from such a fate!"

Neither Barneveld nor Jeannin attempted to struggle against the almost
general indignation.  The deputies of Zeeland withdrew from the assembly
of the States-General, protesting that they would never appear there
again so long as the Spanish commissioners remained in the country.  The
door was opened wide, and it was plain that those functionaries must take
their departure.  Pride would not allow them to ask permission of the
States to remain, although they intimated to the ambassadors their
intense desire to linger for ten or twelve days longer.  This was
obviously inadmissible, and on the 30th September they appeared before
the Assembly to take leave.

There were but three of them, the Genoese, the Spaniard, and the
Burgundian--Spinola, Mancicidor; and Richardot.  Of the two
Netherlanders, brother John was still in Spain, and Verreyken found it
convenient that day to have a lame leg.

President Richardot, standing majestically before the States-General,
with his robes wrapped around his tall, spare form, made a solemn
farewell speech of mingled sorrow, pity, and the resentment of injured
innocence.  They had come to the Hague, he said, sent by the King of
Spain and the archdukes to treat for a good and substantial peace,
according to the honest intention of his Majesty and their Highnesses.
To this end they had sincerely and faithfully dealt with the gentlemen
deputed for that purpose by their High Mightinesses the States, doing
everything they could think of to further the cause of peace.  They
lamented that the issue had not been such as they had hoped,
notwithstanding that the king and archdukes had so far derogated
from their reputation as to send their commissioners into the United
Netherlands, it having been easy enough to arrange for negotiations on
other soil.  It had been their wish thus to prove to the world how
straightforward were their intentions by not requiring the States to send
deputies to them.  They had accorded the first point in the negotiations,
touching the free state of the country.  Their High Mightinesses had
taken offence upon the second, regarding the restoration of religion in
the United Provinces.  Thereupon the father commissary had gone to Spain,
and had remained longer than was agreeable.  Nevertheless, they had
meantime treated of other points.  Coming back at last to the point of
religion, the States-General had taken a resolution, and had given them
their dismissal, without being willing to hear a word more, or to make a
single proposition of moderation or accommodation.

He could not refrain from saying that the commissioners had been treated
roughly.  Their High Mightinesses had fixed the time for their dismissal
more precisely than one would do with a servant who was discharged for
misconduct; for the lackey, if he asked for it, would be allowed at least
a day longer to pack his trunk for the journey.  They protested before
God and the assembly of the States that the king and princes had meant
most sincerely, and had dealt with all roundness and sincerity.  They at
least remained innocent of all the disasters and calamities to come from
the war.

"As for myself," said Richardot, "I am no prophet, nor the son of a
prophet; yet I will venture the prediction to you, my lords the States-
General, that you will bitterly rue it that you did not embrace the peace
thus presented, and which you might have had.  The blood which is
destined to flow, now that you have scorned our plan of reconciliation,
will be not on our heads but your own."

Barneveld replied by temperately but firmly repelling the charges brought
against the States in this artful oration of the president.  They had
proceeded in the most straightforward manner, never permitting themselves
to enter into negotiations except on the preliminary condition that their
freedom should be once for all conceded and recognised.  "You and you
only," he continued, "are to bear the blame that peace has not been
concluded; you who have not been willing or not been able to keep your
promises.  One might, with better reason, hold you guilty of all the
bloodshed; you whose edicts, bloodier and more savage than war itself,
long, ago forced these provinces into the inevitable necessity of waging
war; you whose cruelty, but yesterday exercised on the crews of
defenceless and innocent merchantmen and fishing-vessels,
has been fully exhibited to the world."

Spinola's countenance betrayed much emotion as he listened to the
exchange of bitter recriminations which took place on this farewell
colloquy.  It was obvious that the brave and accomplished soldier
honestly lamented the failure of the attempt to end the war.

But the rupture was absolute.  The marquis and the president dined that
day with Prince Maurice, by whom they were afterwards courteously
accompanied a part of the way on their journey to Brussels.

Thus ended the comedy which had lasted nearly two years.  The dismal
leave-taking, as the curtain fell, was not as, entertaining to the public
outside as the dramatic meeting between Maurice and Spinola had been at
the opening scene near Ryswyk.  There was no populace to throw up their
hats for the departing guests.  From the winter's night in which the
subtle Franciscan had first stolen into the prince's cabinet down to this
autumn evening, not a step of real progress could be recorded as the
result of the intolerable quantity of speech-making and quill-driving.
There were boat-loads of documents, protocols, and notes, drowsy and
stagnant as the canals on which they were floated off towards their tombs
in the various archives.  Peace to the dust which we have not wantonly
disturbed, believing it to be wholesome for the cause of human progress
that the art of ruling the world by doing nothing, as practised some
centuries since, should once and again be exhibited.

Not in vain do we listen to those long-bearded, venerable, very tedious
old presidents, advocates, and friars of orders gray, in their high
ruffs, taffety robes or gowns of frieze, as they squeak and gibber,
for a fleeting moment, to a world which knew them not.  It is something
to learn that grave statesmen, kings, generals, and presidents could
negotiate for two years long; and that the only result should be the
distinction between a conjunction, a preposition, and an adverb.  That
the provinces should be held as free States, not for free States--that
they should be free in similitude, not in substance--thus much and no
more had been accomplished.

And now to all appearance every chance of negotiation was gone.  The
half-century war, after this brief breathing space, was to be renewed
for another century or so, and more furiously than ever.  So thought the
public.  So meant Prince Maurice.  Richardot and Jeannin knew better.

The departure of the commissioners was recorded upon the register of the
resolutions of Holland, with the ominous note: "God grant that they may
not have sown, evil seed here; the effects of which will one day be
visible in the ruin of this commonwealth."

Hardly were the backs of the commissioners turned, before the
indefatigable Jeannin was ready with his scheme for repatching the
rupture.  He was at first anxious that the deputies of Zeeland should be
summoned again, now that the country was rid of the Spaniards.  Prince
Maurice, however, was wrathful when the president began to talk once more
of truce.  The proposition, he said, was simply the expression of a
wish to destroy the State.  Holland and Zeeland would never agree to any
such measure, and they would find means to compel the other provinces to
follow their example.  If there were but three or four cities in the
whole country to reject the truce, he would, with their assistance alone,
defend the freedom of the republic, or at least die an honourable death
in its defence.  This at least would be better than after a few months to
become slaves of Spain.  Such a result was the object of those who began
this work, but he would resist it at the peril of his life.

A singular incident now seemed to justify the wrath of the stadholder,
and to be likely to strengthen his party.  Young Count John of Nassau
happened to take possession of the apartments in Goswyn Meursken's
hostelry at the Hague, just vacated by Richardot.  In the drawer of a
writing-table was found a document, evidently left there by the
president.  This paper was handed by Count John to his cousin, Frederic
Henry, who at once delivered it to his brother Maurice.  The prince
produced it in the assembly of the States-General, members from each
province were furnished with a copy of it within two or three hours,
and it was soon afterwards printed, and published.  The document, being
nothing less than the original secret instructions of the archdukes to
their commissioners, was naturally read with intense interest by the
States-General, by the foreign envoys, and by the general public.

It appeared, from an inspection of the paper, that the commissioners had
been told that, if they should find the French, English, and Danish
ambassadors desirous of being present at the negotiations for the treaty,
they were to exclude them from all direct participation in the
proceedings.  They were to do this however so sweetly and courteously
that it would be impossible for those diplomats to take offence or to
imagine themselves distrusted.  On the contrary, the States-General were
to be informed that their communication in private on the general subject
with the ambassadors was approved by the archdukes, because they believed
the sovereigns of France, England, and Denmark, their sincere and
affectionate friends.  The commissioners were instructed to domesticate
themselves as much as possible with President Jeannin and to manifest the
utmost confidence in his good intentions.  They were to take the same
course with the English envoys, but in more general terms, and were very
discreetly to communicate to them whatever they already knew, and, on the
other hand, carefully to conceal from them all that was still a secret.

They were distinctly told to make the point of the Catholic religion
first and foremost in the negotiations; the arguments showing the
indispensable necessity of securing its public exercise in the United
Provinces being drawn up with considerable detail.  They were to insist
that the republic should absolutely renounce the trade with the East and
West Indies, and should pledge itself to chastise such of its citizens as
might dare to undertake those voyages, as disturbers of the peace and
enemies of the public repose, whether they went to the Indies in person
or associated themselves with men of other nations for that purpose,
under any pretext whatever.  When these points, together with many
matters of detail less difficult of adjustment, had been satisfactorily
settled, the commissioners were to suggest measures of union for the
common defence between the united and the obedient Provinces.  This
matter was to be broached very gently.  "In the sweetest terms possible,"
it was to be hinted that the whole body of the Netherlanders could
protect itself against every enemy, but if dismembered as it was about
to be, neither the one portion nor the ocher would be safe.  The
commissioners were therefore to request the offer of some proposition
from the States-General for the common defence.  In case they remained
silent, however, then the commissioners were to declare that the
archdukes had no wish to speak of sovereignty over the United Provinces,
however limited.  "Having once given them that morsel to swallow," said
their Highnesses, "we have nothing of the kind in our thoughts.  But if
they reflect, it is possible that they may see fit to take us for
protectors."

The scheme was to be managed with great discreetness and delicacy, and
accomplished by hook or by crook, if the means could be found.  "You need
not be scrupulous as to the form or law of protection, provided the name
of protector can be obtained," continued the archdukes.

At least the greatest pains were to be taken that the two sections of the
Netherlands might remain friends.  "We are in great danger unless we rely
upon each other," it was urged.  "But touch this chord very gently, lest
the French and English hearing of it suspect some design to injure them.
At least we may each mutually agree to chastise such of our respective
subjects as may venture to make any alliance with the enemies of the
other."

It was much disputed whether these instructions had been left purposely
or by accident in the table-drawer.  Jeannin could not make up his mind
whether it was a trick or not, and the vociferous lamentations of
Richardot upon his misfortunes made little impression upon his mind.
He had small confidence in any austerity of principle on the part of his
former fellow-leaguer that would prevent him from leaving the document by
stealth, and then protesting that he had been foully wronged by its
coming to light.  On the whole, he was inclined to think, however,
that the paper had been stolen from him.

Barneveld, after much inquiry, was convinced that it had been left in the
drawer by accident.

Richardot himself manifested rage and dismay when he found that a paper,
left by chance in his lodgings, had been published by the States.  Such a
proceeding was a violation, he exclaimed, of the laws of hospitality.
With equal justice, he declared it to be an offence against the religious
respect due to ambassadors, whose persons and property were sacred in
foreign countries.  "Decency required the States," he said, "to send the
document back to him, instead of showing it as a trophy, and he was ready
to die of shame and vexation at the unlucky incident."

Few honourable men will disagree with him in these complaints, although
many contemporaries obstinately refused to believe that the crafty and
experienced diplomatist could have so carelessly left about his most
important archives.  He was generally thought by those who had most dealt
with him, to prefer, on principle, a crooked path to a straight one.
"'Tis a mischievous old monkey," said Villeroy on another occasion, "that
likes always to turn its tail instead of going directly to the purpose."
The archduke, however, was very indulgent to his plenipotentiary.  "My
good master,"  said the, president, "so soon as he learned the loss of
that accursed paper, benignantly consoled, instead of chastising me; and,
after having looked over the draught, was glad that the accident had
happened; for thus his sincerity had been proved, and those who sought
profit by the trick had been confounded."  On the other hand, what good
could it do to the cause of peace, that these wonderful instructions
should be published throughout the republic?  They might almost seem a
fiction, invented by the war party to inspire a general disgust for any
further negotiation.  Every loyal Netherlander would necessarily be
qualmish at the word peace, now that the whole design of the Spanish
party was disclosed.

The public exercise of the Roman religion was now known to be the
indispensable condition--first, last, and always--to any possible peace.
Every citizen of the republic was to be whipped out of the East and West
Indies, should he dare to show his face in those regions.  The States-
General, while swallowing the crumb of sovereignty vouchsafed by the
archdukes, were to accept them as protectors, in order not to fall
a prey to the enemies whom they imagined to be their friends.

What could be more hopeless than such negotiations?  What more dreary
than the perpetual efforts of two lines to approach each other which were
mathematically incapable of meeting?  That the young republic, conscious
of her daily growing strength, should now seek refuge from her nobly won
independence in the protectorate of Albert, who was himself the vassal of
Philip, was an idea almost inconceivable to the Dutch mind.  Yet so
impossible was it for the archdukes to put themselves into human
relations with this new and popular Government, that in the inmost
recesses of their breasts they actually believed themselves, when making
the offer, to be performing a noble act of Christian charity.

The efforts of Jeannin and of the English ambassador were now
unremitting, and thoroughly seconded by Barneveld.  Maurice was almost
at daggers drawn, not only with the Advocate but with the foreign envoys.
Sir Ralph Winwood, who had, in virtue of the old treaty arrangements with
England, a seat in the state-council at the Hague, and who was a man of a
somewhat rough and insolent deportment, took occasion at a session of
that body, when the prince was present, to urge the necessity of at once
resuming the ruptured negotiations.  The King of Great Britain; he said,
only recommended a course which he was himself always ready to pursue.
Hostilities which were necessary, and no others, were just.  Such, and
such only, could be favoured by God or by pious kings.  But wars were not
necessary which could be honourably avoided.  A truce was not to be
despised, by which religious liberty and commerce were secured, and it
was not the part of wisdom to plunge into all the horrors of immediate
war in order to escape distant and problematical dangers; that might
arise when the truce should come to an end.  If a truce were now made,
the kings of both France and England would be guarantees for its faithful
observance.  They would take care that no wrong or affront was offered
to the States-General.

Maurice replied, with a sneer, to these sententious commonplaces
derived at second-hand from King James that great kings were often very
indifferent to injuries sustained by their friends.  Moreover, there was
an eminent sovereign, he continued, who was even very patient under
affronts directly offered to himself.  It was not very long since a
horrible plot had been discovered to murder the King of England, with his
wife, his children, and all the great personages of the realm.  That this
great crime had been attempted under the immediate instigation of the
King of Spain was notorious to the whole world, and certainly no secret
to King James.  Yet his Britannic Majesty had made haste to exonerate the
great criminal from all complicity in the crime; and had ever since been
fawning upon the Catholic king, and hankering for a family alliance with
him.  Conduct like this the prince denounced in plain terms as cringing
and cowardly, and expressed the opinion that guarantees of Dutch
independence from such a monarch could hardly be thought very valuable.

These were terrible words for the representative of James to have hurled
in his face in full council by the foremost personage of the republic
Winwood fell into a furious passion, and of course there was a violent
scene, with much subsequent protesting and protocolling.

The British king insisted that the prince should make public amends for
the insult, and Maurice firmly refused to do anything of the kind.  The
matter was subsequently arranged by some amicable concessions made by the
prince in a private letter to James, but there remained for the time a
abate of alienation between England and the republic, at which the French
sincerely rejoiced.  The incident, however, sufficiently shows the point
of exasperation which the prince had reached, for, although choleric, he
was a reasonable man, and it was only because the whole course of the
negotiations had offended his sense of honour and of right that he had at
last been driven quite beyond self-control.

On the 13th of October, the envoys of France, England, Denmark, and
of the Elector Palatine, the Elector of Brandeburg, and other German
princes, came before the States-General.

Jeannin, in the name of all these foreign ministers, made a speech warmly
recommending the truce.

He repelled the insinuation that the measure proposed had been brought
about by the artifices of the enemy, and was therefore odious.  On the
contrary, it was originated by himself and the other good friends of the
republic.

In his opinion, the terms of the suggested truce contained sufficient
guarantees for the liberty of the provinces, not only during the truce,
but for ever.

No stronger recognition of their independence could be expected than
the one given.  It was entirely without example, argued the president,
that in similar changes brought about by force of arms, sovereigns after
having been despoiled of their states have been compelled to abandon
their rights shamefully by a public confession, unless they had
absolutely fallen into the hands of their enemies and were completely
at their mercy.  "Yet the princes who made this great concession,"
continued Jeannin, "are not lying vanquished at your feet, nor reduced
by dire necessity to yield what they have yielded."

He reminded the assembly that the Swiss enjoyed at that moment their
liberty in virtue of a simple truce, without ever having obtained from
their former sovereign a declaration such as was now offered to the
United Provinces.

The president argued, moreover, with much force and acuteness that
it was beneath the dignity of the States, and inconsistent with their
consciousness of strength, to lay so much stress on the phraseology by
which their liberty was recognised.  That freedom had been won by the
sword, and would be maintained against all the world by the sword.

"In truth," said the orator, "you do wrong to your liberty by calling it
so often in doubt, and in claiming with so much contentious anxiety from
your enemies a title-deed for your independence.  You hold it by your own
public decree.  In virtue of that decree, confirmed by the success of
your arms, you have enjoyed it long.  Nor could anything obtained from
your enemies be of use to you if those same arms with which you gained
your liberty could not still preserve it for you."

Therefore, in the opinion of the president, this persistence in demanding
a more explicit and unlimited recognition of independence was only a
pretext for continuing the war, ingeniously used by those who hated
peace.

Addressing himself more particularly to the celebrated circular letter of
Prince Maurice against the truce, the president maintained that the
liberty of the republic was as much acknowledged in the proposed articles
as if the words "for ever" had been added.  "To acknowledge liberty is an
act which, by its very nature, admits of no conditions," he observed,
with considerable force.

The president proceeded to say that in the original negotiations the
qualifications obtained had seemed to him enough.  As there was an ardent
desire, however, on the part of many for a more explicit phraseology, as
something necessary to the public safety, he had thought it worth
attempting.

"We all rejoiced when you obtained it," continued Jeannin, "but not
when they agreed to renounce the names, titles, and arms of the United
Provinces; for that seemed to us shameful for them beyond all example.
That princes should make concessions so entirely unworthy of their
grandeur, excited at once our suspicion, for we could not imagine the
cause of an offer so specious. We have since found out the reason."

The archdukes being unable, accordingly, to obtain for the truce those
specious conditions which Spain had originally pretended to yield, it was
the opinion of the old diplomatist that the king should be permitted to
wear the paste substitutes about which so many idle words had been
wasted.

It would be better, he thought, for the States to be contented with what
was precious and substantial, and not to lose the occasion of making a
good treaty of truce, which was sure to be converted with time into an
absolute peace.

"It is certain," he said, "that the princes with whom you are treating
will never go to law with you to get an exposition of the article in
question.  After the truce has expired, they will go to war with you if
you like, but they will not trouble themselves to declare whether they
are fighting you as rebels or as enemies, nor will it very much signify.
If their arms are successful, they will give you no explanations.  If you
are the conquerors, they will receive none.  The fortune of war will be
the supreme judge to decide the dispute; not the words of a treaty.
Those words are always interpreted to the disadvantage of the weak and
the vanquished, although they may be so perfectly clear that no man could
doubt them; never to the prejudice of those who have proved the validity
of their rights by the strength of their arms."

This honest, straightforward cynicism, coming from the lips of one
of the most experienced diplomatists of Europe, was difficult to gainsay.
Speaking as one having authority, the president told the States-General
in full assembly, that there was no law in Christendom, as between
nations, but the good old fist-law, the code of brute force.

Two centuries and a half have rolled by since that oration was
pronounced, and the world has made immense progress in science during
that period.  But there is still room for improvement in this regard in
the law of nations.  Certainly there is now a little more reluctance to
come so nakedly before the world.  But has the cause of modesty or
humanity gained very much by the decorous fig-leaves of modern diplomacy?

The president alluded also to the ungrounded fears that bribery and
corruption would be able to effect much, during the truce, towards the
reduction of the provinces under their repudiated sovereign.  After all,
it was difficult to buy up a whole people.  In a commonwealth, where the
People was sovereign, and the persons of the magistrates ever changing,
those little comfortable commercial operations could not be managed so
easily as in civilized realms like France and England.  The old Leaguer
thought with pensive regret, no doubt, of the hard, but still profitable
bargains by which the Guises and Mayennes and Mercoeurs, and a few
hundred of their noble adherents, had been brought over to the cause
of the king.  He sighed at the more recent memories of the Marquis de
Rosny's embassy in England, and his largess scattered broadcast among the
great English lords.  It would be of little use he foresaw--although the
instructions of Henry were in his portfolio, giving him almost unlimited
powers to buy up everybody in the Netherlands that could be bought--to
attempt that kind of traffic on a large scale in the Netherlands.

Those republicans were greedy enough about the navigation to the East and
West Indies, and were very litigious about the claim of Spain to put up
railings around the Ocean as her private lake, but they were less keen
than were their more polished contemporaries for the trade in human
souls.

"When we consider, "said Jeannin, "the constitution of your State, and
that to corrupt a few people among you does no good at all, because the,
frequent change of magistracies takes away the means of gaining over many
of them at the same time, capable by a long duration of their power to
conduct an intrigue against the commonwealth, this fear must appear
wholly vain."

And then the old Leaguer, who had always refused bribes himself, although
he had negotiated much bribery of others, warmed into sincere eloquence
as he spoke of the simple virtues on which the little republic, as should
be the case with all republics, was founded.  He did homage to the Dutch
love of liberty.

"Remember," he said, "the love of liberty which is engraved in the hearts
of all your inhabitants, and that there are few persons now living who
were born in the days of the ancient subjection, or who have not been
nourished and brought up for so long a time in liberty that they have a
horror for the very name of servitude.  You will then feel that there is
not one man in your commonwealth who would wish or dare to open his mouth
to bring you back to subjection, without being in danger of instant
punishment as a traitor to his country."

He again reminded his hearers that the Swiss had concluded a long and
perilous war with their ancient masters by a simple truce, during which
they had established so good a government that they were never more
attacked.  Honest republican principles, and readiness at any moment to
defend dearly won liberties, had combined with geographical advantages
to secure the national independence of Switzerland.

Jeannin paid full tribute to the maritime supremacy of the republic.

"You may have as much good fortune," he said, "as the Swiss, if you are
wise.  You have the ocean at your side, great navigable rivers enclosing
you in every direction, a multitude of ships, with sailors, pilots, and
seafaring men of every description, who are the very best soldiers in
battles at sea to be found in Christendom.  With these you will preserve
your military vigour and your habits of navigation, the long voyages to
which you are accustomed continuing as usual.  And such is the kind of
soldiers you require.  As for auxiliaries, should you need them you know
where to find them."

The president implored the States-General accordingly to pay no attention
to the writings which were circulated among the people to prejudice them
against the truce.

This was aimed directly at the stadholder, who had been making so many
direct personal appeals to the people, and who was now the more incensed,
recognising the taunt of the president as an arrow taken from Barneveld's
quiver.  There had long ceased to be any communication between the Prince
and the Advocate, and Maurice made no secret of his bitter animosity both
to Barneveld and to Jeannin.

He hesitated on no occasion to denounce the Advocate as travelling
straight on the road to Spain, and although he was not aware of the
twenty thousand florins recently presented by the French king, he had
accustomed himself, with the enormous exaggeration of party spirit, to
look upon the first statesman of his country and of Europe as a traitor
to the republic and a tool of the archdukes.  As we look back upon those
passionate days, we cannot but be appalled at the depths to which
theological hatred could descend.

On the very morning after the session of the assembly in which Jeannin
had been making his great speech, and denouncing the practice of secret
and incendiary publication, three remarkable letters were found on the
doorstep of a house in the Hague.  One was addressed to the States-
General, another to the Mates of Holland, and a third to the burgomaster
of Amsterdam.  In all these documents, the Advocate was denounced as an
infamous traitor, who was secretly intriguing to bring about a truce for
the purpose of handing over the commonwealth to the enemy.  A shameful
death, it was added, would be his fitting reward.

These letters were read in the Assembly of the States-General, and
created great wrath among the friends of Barneveld.  Even Maurice
expressed indignation, and favoured a search for the anonymous author, in
order that he might be severely punished.

It seems strange enough that anonymous letters picked up in the street
should have been deemed a worthy theme of discussion before their High
Mightinesses the States-General.  Moreover, it was raining pamphlets and
libels against Barneveld and his supporters every day, and the stories
which grave burghers and pious elders went about telling to each other,
and to everybody who would listen to them, about the Advocate's
depravity, were wonderful to hear.

At the end of September, just before the Spanish commissioners left the
Hague, a sledge of the kind used in the Dutch cities as drays stopped
before Barneveld's front-door one fine morning, and deposited several
large baskets, filled with money, sent by the envoys for defraying
certain expenses of forage, hire of servants, and the like, incurred by
them during their sojourn at the Hague, and disbursed by the States.  The
sledge, with its contents, was at once sent by order of the Advocate,
under guidance of Commissary John Spronsen, to the Receiver-General of
the republic.

Yet men wagged their beards dismally as they whispered this fresh proof
of Barneveld's venality.  As if Spinola and his colleagues were such
blunderers in bribing as to send bushel baskets full of Spanish dollars
on a sledge, in broad daylight, to the house of a great statesman whom
they meant to purchase, expecting doubtless a receipt in full to be
brought back by the drayman!  Well might the Advocate say at a later
moment, in the bitterness of his spirit, that his enemies, not satisfied
with piercing his heart with their false, injurious and honour-filching
libels and stories, were determined to break it.  "He begged God
Almighty," he said, "to be merciful to him, and to judge righteously
between him and them."

Party spirit has rarely run higher in any commonwealth than in Holland
during these memorable debates concerning a truce.  Yet the leaders both
of the war party and the truce party were doubtless pure, determined
patriots, seeking their country's good with all their souls and strength.

Maurice answered the discourse of Jeannin by a second and very elaborate
letter.  In this circular, addressed to the magistracies of Holland, he
urged his countrymen once more with arguments already employed by him,
and in more strenuous language than ever, to beware of a truce even more
than of a peace, and warned them not to swerve by a hair's breadth from
the formula in regard to the sovereignty agreed upon at the very
beginning of the negotiations.  To this document was appended a paper
of considerations, drawn up by Maurice and Lewis William, in refutation,
point by point, of all the arguments of President Jeannin in his late
discourse.

It is not necessary to do more than allude to these documents, which were
marked by the close reasoning and fiery spirit which characterized all
the appeals of the prince and his cousin at this period, because the time
had now come which comes to all controversies when argument is exhausted
and either action or compromise begins.

Meantime, Barneveld, stung almost to madness by the poisonous though
ephemeral libels which buzzed so perpetually about him, had at last
resolved to retire from the public service.  He had been so steadily
denounced as being burthensome to his superiors in birth by the power
which he had acquired, and to have shot up so far above the heads of his
equals; that he felt disposed to withdraw from a field where his presence
was becoming odious.

His enemies, of course, considered this determination a trick by which
he merely wished to prove to the country how indispensable he was, and
to gain a fresh lease of his almost unlimited power by the alarm which
his proposed abdication would produce.  Certainly, however, if it were a
trick, and he were not indispensable, it was easy enough to prove it and
to punish him by taking him at his word.

On the morning after the anonymous letters had been found in the street
he came into the House of Assembly and made a short speech.  He spoke
simply of his thirty-one years of service, during which he believed
himself to have done his best for the good of the fatherland and for
the welfare of the house of Nassau.  He had been ready thus to go on
to the end, but he saw himself environed by enemies, and felt that his
usefulness had been destroyed.  He wished, therefore, in the interest of
the country, not from any fear for himself, to withdraw from the storm,
and for a time at least to remain in retirement.  The displeasure and
hatred of the great were nothing new to him, he said.  He had never
shrunk from peril when he could serve his fatherland; for against all
calumnies and all accidents he had worn the armour of a quiet conscience.
But he now saw that the truce, in itself an unpleasant affair, was made
still more odious by the hatred felt towards him.  He begged the
provinces, therefore, to select another servant less hated than
himself to provide for the public welfare.

Having said these few words with the dignity which was natural to him he
calmly walked out of the Assembly House.

The personal friends of Barneveld and the whole truce party were in
consternation.  Even the enemies of the Advocate shrank appalled at the
prospect of losing the services of the foremost statesman of the
commonwealth at this critical juncture.  There was a brief and animated
discussion as soon as his back was turned.  Its result was the
appointment of a committee of five to wait upon Barneveld and solemnly to
request him to reconsider his decision.  Their efforts were successful.
After a satisfactory interview with the committee he resumed his
functions with greater authority than ever.  Of course there were not
wanting many to whisper that the whole proceeding had been a comedy, and
that Barneveld would have been more embarrassed than he had ever been in
his life had his resignation been seriously accepted.  But this is easy
to say, and is always said, whenever a statesman who feels himself
aggrieved, yet knows himself useful, lays dawn his office.  The Advocate
had been the mark of unceasing and infamous calumnies.  He had incurred
the deadly hatred of the highest placed, the most powerful, and the most
popular man in the commonwealth.  He had more than once been obliged to
listen to opprobrious language from the prince, and it was even whispered
that he had been threatened with personal violence.  That Maurice was
perpetually denouncing him in public and private, as a traitor, a papist,
a Spanish partisan, was notorious.  He had just been held up to the
States of the union and of his own province by unknown voices as a
criminal worthy of death.  Was it to be wondered at that a man of sixty,
who had passed his youth, manhood, and old age in the service of the
republic, and was recognised by all as the ablest, the most experienced,
the most indefatigable of her statesmen, should be seriously desirous of
abandoning an office which might well seem to him rather a pillory than a
post of honour?

"As for neighbour Barneveld," said recorder Aerssens, little dreaming of
the foul witness he was to bear against that neighbour at a terrible
moment to come, "I do what I can and wish to help him with my blood.  He
is more courageous than I.  I should have sunk long ago, had I been
obliged to stand against such tempests.  The Lord God will, I hope, help
him and direct his understanding for the good of all Christendom, and for
his own honour.  If he can steer this ship into a safe harbour we ought
to raise a golden statue of him.  I should like to contribute my mite to
it.  He deserves twice much honour, despite all his enemies, of whom he
has many rather from envy than from reason.  May the Lord keep him in
health, or it will go hardly with us all."

Thus spoke some of his grateful countrymen when the Advocate was
contending at a momentous crisis with storms threatening to overwhelm
the republic.  Alas! where is the golden statue?

He believed that the truce was the most advantageous measure that the
country could adopt.  He believed this with quite as much sincerity as
Maurice held to his conviction that war was the only policy.  In the
secret letter of the French ambassador there is not a trace of suspicion
as to his fidelity to the commonwealth, not the shadow of proof of the
ridiculous accusation that he wished to reduce the provinces to the
dominion of Spain.  Jeannin, who had no motive for concealment in his
confidential correspondence with his sovereign, always rendered
unequivocal homage to the purity and patriotism of the Advocate and the
Prince.

He returned to the States-General and to the discharge of his functions
as Advocate-General of Holland.  His policy for the time was destined to
be triumphant, his influence more extensive than ever.  But the end of
these calumnies and anonymous charges was not yet.

Meantime the opposition to the truce was confined to the States of
Zeeland and two cities of Holland.  Those cities were very important
ones, Amsterdam and Delft, but they were already wavering in their
opposition.  Zeeland stoutly maintained that the treaty of Utrecht
forbade a decision of the question of peace and war except by a unanimous
vote of the whole confederacy.  The other five provinces and the friends
of the truce began with great vehemence to declare that the question at
issue was now changed.  It was no longer to be decided whether there
should be truce or war with Spain, but whether a single member of the
confederacy could dictate its law to the other six States.  Zeeland, on
her part, talked loudly of seceding from the union, and setting up for an
independent, sovereign commonwealth.  She would hardly have been a very
powerful one, with her half-dozen cities, one prelate, one nobleman, her
hundred thousand burghers at most, bustling and warlike as they were, and
her few thousand mariners, although the most terrible fighting men that
had ever sailed on blue water.  She was destined ere long to abandon her
doughty resolution of leaving her sister provinces to their fate.

Maurice had not slackened in his opposition to the truce, despite the
renewed vigour with which Barneveld pressed the measure since his return
to the public councils.  The prince was firmly convinced that the kings
of France and England would assist the republic in the war with Spain so
soon as it should be renewed.  His policy had been therefore to force the
hand of those sovereigns, especially that of Henry, and to induce him to
send more stringent instructions to Jeannin than those with which he
believed him to be furnished.  He had accordingly despatched a secret
emissary to the French king, supplied with confidential and explicit
instructions.  This agent was a Captain Lambert.  Whether it was "Pretty
Lambert," "Dandy Lambert"--the vice-admiral who had so much distinguished
himself at the great victory of Gibraltar--does not distinctly appear.
If it were so, that hard-hitting mariner would seem to have gone into
action with the French Government as energetically as he had done
eighteen months before, when, as master of the Tiger, he laid himself
aboard the Spanish admiral and helped send the St. Augustine to the
bottom.  He seemed indisposed to mince matters in diplomacy.  He
intimated to the king and his ministers that Jeannin and his colleagues
were pushing the truce at the Hague much further and faster than his
Majesty could possibly approve, and that they were obviously exceeding
their instructions.  Jeannin, who was formerly so much honoured and
cherished throughout the republic, was now looked upon askance because
of his intimacy with Barneveld and his partisans.  He assured the king
that nearly all the cities of Holland, and the whole of Zeeland, were
entirely agreed with Maurice, who would rather die than consent to the
proposed truce.  The other provinces, added Lambert, would be obliged,
will ye nill ye, to receive the law from Holland and Zeeland.  Maurice,
without assistance from France or any other power, would give Spain and
the archdukes as much exercise as they could take for the next fifty
years before he would give up, and had declared that he would rather die
sword in hand than basely betray his country by consenting to such a
truce.  As for Barneveld, he was already discovering the blunders which
he had made, and was trying to curry favour with Maurice.  Barneveld and
both the Aprasens were traitors to the State, had become the objects of
general hatred and contempt, and were in great danger of losing their
lives, or at least of being expelled from office.

Here was altogether too much zeal on the part of Pretty Lambert; a
quality which, not for the first time, was thus proved to be less useful
in diplomatic conferences than in a sea-fight.  Maurice was obliged to
disavow his envoy, and to declare that his secret instructions had never
authorized him to hold such language.  But the mischief was done.  The
combustion in the French cabinet was terrible.  The Dutch admiral had
thrown hot shot into the powder-magazine of his friends, and had done no
more good by such tactics than might be supposed.  Such diplomacy was
denounced as a mere mixture of "indiscretion and impudence."  Henry was
very wroth, and forthwith indited an imperious letter to his cousin
Maurice.

"Lambert's talk to me by your orders," said the king, "has not less
astonished than scandalized me.  I now learn the new resolution which
you have taken, and I observe that you have begun to entertain suspicions
as to my will and my counsels on account of the proposition of truce."

Henry's standing orders to Jeannin, as we know, were to offer Maurice a
pension of almost unlimited amount, together with ample rewards to all
such of his adherents as could be purchased, provided they would bring
about the incorporation of the United Provinces into France.  He was
therefore full of indignation that the purity of his intentions and the
sincerity of his wish for the independence of the republic could be
called in question.

"People have dared to maliciously invent," he continued, "that I am the
enemy of the repose and the liberty of the United Provinces, and that I
was afraid lest they should acquire the freedom which had been offered
them by their enemies, because I derived a profit from their war, and
intended in time to deprive them of their liberty.  Yet these falsehoods
and jealousies have not been contradicted by you nor by anyone else,
although you know that the proofs of my sincerity and good faith have
been entirely without reproach or example.  You knew what was said,
written, and published everywhere, and I confess that when I knew this
malice, and that you had not taken offence at it, I was much amazed and
very malcontent."

Queen Elizabeth, in her most waspish moods, had not often lectured the
States-General more roundly than Henry now lectured his cousin Maurice.

The king once more alluded to the secret emissary's violent talk, which
had so much excited his indignation.

"If by weakness and want of means," he said, "you are forced to abandon
to your enemies one portion of your country in order to defend the other-
as Lambert tells me you are resolved to do, rather than agree to the
truce without recognition of your sovereignty for ever--I pray you to
consider how many accidents and reproaches may befal you.  Do you suppose
that any ally of the States, or of your family, would risk his reputation
and his realms in such a game, which would seem to be rather begun in
passion and despair than required by reason or necessity?"

Here certainly was plain speaking enough, and Maurice could no longer
expect the king for his partner, should he decide to risk once more the
bloody hazard of the die.

But Henry was determined to leave no shade of doubt on the subject.

"Lambert tells me," he said, "that you would rather perish with arms in
your hands than fall shamefully into inevitable ruin by accepting truce.
I have been and am of a contrary opinion.  Perhaps I am mistaken, not
knowing as well as you do the constitution of your country and the wishes
of your people.  But I know the general affairs of Christendom better
than you do, and I can therefore judge more soundly on the whole matter
than you can, and I know that the truce, established and guaranteed as
proposed, will bring you more happiness than you can derive from war."

Thus the king, in the sweeping, slashing way with which he could handle
an argument as well as a sword, strode forward in conscious strength,
cutting down right and left all opposition to his will.  He was
determined, once for all, to show the stadholder and his adherents that
the friendship of a great king was not to be had by a little republic on
easy terms, nor every day.  Above all, the Prince of Nassau was not to
send a loud-talking, free and easy Dutch sea-captain to dictate terms to
the King of France and Navarre.  "Lambert tells me"--and Maurice might
well wish that Pretty Lambert had been sunk in the bay of Gibraltar,
Tiger and all, before he had been sent on this diplomatic errand,
"Lambert tells me," continued his Majesty, "that you and the States-
General would rather that I should remain neutral, and let you make war
in your own fashion, than that I should do anything more to push on this
truce.  My cousin, it would be very easy for me, and perhaps more
advantageous for me and my kingdom than you think, if I could give you
this satisfaction, whatever might be the result.  If I chose to follow
this counsel, I am, thanks be to God, in such condition, that I have no
neighbour who is not as much in need of me as I can be of him, and who is
not glad to seek for and to preserve my friendship.  If they should all
conspire against me moreover, I can by myself, and with no assistance but
heaven's, which never failed me yet, wrestle with them altogether, and
fling them all, as some of my royal predecessors have done.  Know then,
that I do not favour war nor truce for the United Provinces because of
any need I may have of the one or the other for the defence of my own
sceptre.  The counsels and the succours, which you have so largely
received from me, were given because of my consideration for the good of
the States, and of yourself in particular, whom I have always favoured
and cherished, as I have done others of your house on many occasions."

The king concluded his lecture by saying, that after his ambassadors had
fulfilled their promise, and had spoken the last word of their master at
the Hague, he should leave Maurice and the States to do as they liked.

"But I desire," he said, "that you and the States should not do that
wrong to yourselves or to me as to doubt the integrity of my counsels nor
the actions of my ambassadors: I am an honest man and a prince of my
word, and not ignorant of the things of this world.  Neither the States
nor you, with your adherents, can permit my honour to be compromised
without tarnishing your own, and without being branded for ingratitude.
I say not this in order to reproach you for the past nor to make you
despair of the future, but to defend the truth.  I expect, therefore,
that you will not fall into this fault, knowing you as I do.  I pay more
heed to what you said in your letter than in all Lambert's fine talk,
and you will find out that nobody wishes your prosperity and that of
the States more sincerely than I do, or can be more useful to you
than I can."

     [I have abbreviated this remarkable letter, but of course the text
     of the passages cited is literally given.  J.L.M.]

There could be but little doubt in the mind of Prince Maurice, after this
letter had been well pondered, that Barneveld had won the game, and that
the peace party had triumphed.

To resume the war, with the French king not merely neutral but angry and
covertly hostile, and with the sovereign of Great Britain an almost open
enemy in the garb of an ally, might well seem a desperate course.

And Maurice, although strongly opposed to the truce, and confident in his
opinions at this crisis, was not a desperado.

He saw at once the necessity of dismounting from the high horse upon
which, it must be confessed, he had been inclined for more rough-riding
of late than the situation warranted.  Peace was unattainable, war was
impossible, truce was inevitable; Barneveld was master of the field.

The prince acquiesced in the result which the letter from the French king
so plainly indicated.  He was, however, more incensed than ever against
Barneveld; for he felt himself not only checkmated but humiliated by the
Advocate, and believed him a traitor, who was selling the republic to
Spain.  It was long since the two had exchanged a word.

Maurice now declared, on more than one occasion, that it was useless for
him any longer to attempt opposition to the policy of truce.  The States
must travel on the road which they had chosen, but it should not be under
his guidance, and he renounced all responsibility for the issue.

Dreading disunion, however, more than ought else that could befal the
republic, he now did his best to bring about the return of Zeeland to the
federal councils.  He was successful.  The deputies from that province
reappeared in the States-General on the 11th November.  They were still
earnest, however, in their opposition to the truce, and warmly
maintained, in obedience to instructions, that the Union of Utrecht
forbade the conclusion of a treaty except by unanimous consent of the
Seven Provinces.  They were very fierce in their remonstrances, and again
talked loudly of secession.

After consultation with Barneveld, the French envoys now thought it their
duty to take the recalcitrant Zeelanders in hand; Maurice having, as it
were, withdrawn from the contest.

On the 18th November, accordingly, Jeannin once more came very solemnly
before the States-General, accompanied by his diplomatic colleagues.

He showed the impossibility of any arrangement, except by the submission
of Zeeland to a vote of the majority.  "It is certain," he said, "that
six provinces will never be willing to be conquered by a single one, nor
permit her to assert that, according to a fundamental law of the
commonwealth, her dissent can prevent the others from forming a definite
conclusion.

"It is not for us," continued the president, "who are strangers in your
republic, to interpret your laws, but common sense teaches us that, if
such a law exist, it could only have been made in order to forbid a
surrender.

"If any one wishes to expound it otherwise, to him we would reply,
in the words of an ancient Roman, who said of a law which seemed to him
pernicious, that at least the tablet upon which it was inscribed, if it
could not be destroyed, should be hidden out of sight.  Thus at least the
citizens might escape observing it, when it was plain that it would cause
detriment to the republic, and they might then put in its place the most
ancient of all laws, 'salus populi suprema lex.'"

The president, having suggested this ingenious expedient of the antique
Roman for getting rid of a constitutional provision by hiding the
statute-book, proceeded to give very practical reasons for setting, up
the supreme law of the people's safety on this occasion.  And, certainly,
that magnificent common-place, which has saved and ruined so many States,
the most effective weapon in the political arsenal, whether wielded by
tyrants or champions of freedom, was not unreasonably recommended at this
crisis to the States in their contest with the refractory Zeelanders.
It was easy to talk big, but after all it would be difficult for that
doughty little sandbank, notwithstanding the indomitable energy which it
had so often shown by land and sea, to do battle by itself with the whole
Spanish empire.  Nor was it quite consistent with republican principles
that the other six provinces should be plunged once more into war, when
they had agreed to accept peace and independence instead, only that
Zeeland should have its way.

The orator went on to show the absurdity, in his opinion, of permitting
one province to continue the war, when all seven united had not the means
to do it without the assistance of their allies.  He pointed out, too,
the immense blunders that would be made, should it be thought that the
Kings of France and England were so much interested in saving the
provinces from perdition as to feel obliged in any event to render them
assistance.

"Beware of committing an irreparable fault," he said, "on so insecure a
foundation.  You are deceiving yourselves: And, in order that there may
be no doubt on the subject, we declare to you by express command that if
your adversaries refuse the truce, according to the articles presented to
you by us, it is the intention of our kings to assist you with armies and
subsidies, not only as during the past, but more powerfully than before.
If, on the contrary, the rupture comes from your side, and you despise
the advice they are giving you, you have no succour to expect from
them.  The refusal of conditions so honourable and advantageous to your
commonwealth will render the war a useless one, and they are determined
to do nothing to bring the reproach upon themselves."

The president then intimated; not without adroitness, that the republic
was placing herself in a proud position by accepting the truce, and that
Spain was abasing herself by giving her consent to it.  The world was
surprised that the States should hesitate at all.

There was much more of scholastic dissertation in the president's
address, but enough has been given to show its very peremptory character.

If the war was to go on it was to be waged mainly by Zeeland alone.  This
was now plain beyond all peradventure.  The other provinces had resolved
to accept the proposed treaty.  The cities of Delft and Amsterdam, which
had stood out so long among the estates of Holland, soon renounced their
opposition.  Prince Maurice, with praiseworthy patriotism, reconciled
himself with the inevitable, and now that the great majority had spoken,
began to use his influence with the factious minority.

On the day after Jeannin's speech he made a visit to the French
ambassadors.  After there had been some little discussion among them,
Barneveld made his appearance.  His visit seemed an accidental one, but
it had been previously arranged with the envoys.

The general conversation went on a little longer, when the Advocate,
frankly turning to the Prince, spoke of the pain which he felt at the
schism between them.  He defended himself with honest warmth against the
rumours circulated, in which he was accused of being a Spanish partisan.
His whole life had been spent in fighting Spain, and he was now more
determined than ever in his hostility to that monarchy.  He sincerely
believed that by the truce now proposed all the solid advantages of the
war would be secured, and that such a result was a triumphant one for the
republic.  He was also most desirous of being restored to the friendship
and good opinion of the house of Nassau; having proved during his whole
life his sincere attachment to their interests--a sentiment never more
lively in his breast than at that moment.

This advance was graciously met by the stadholder, and the two
distinguished personages were, for the time at least, reconciled.

It was further debated as to the number of troops that it be advisable
for the States to maintain during the truce and Barneveld expressed his
decided opinion that thirty thousand men, at least, would be required.
This opinion gave the prince at least as much pleasure as did the
personal devotion expressed by the Advocate, and he now stated his
intention of working with the peace party.

The great result was now certain.  Delft and Amsterdam withdrew from
their opposition to the treaty, so that Holland was unanimous before the
year closed; Zeeland, yielding to the influence of Maurice, likewise gave
in her adhesion to the truce.

The details of the mode in which the final arrangement was made are not
especially interesting.  The discussion was fairly at an end.  The
subject had been picked to the bones.  It was agreed that the French
ambassadors should go over the frontier, and hold a preliminary interview
with the Spanish commissioners at Antwerp.

The armistice was to be continued by brief and repeated renewals, until
it should be superseded by the truce of years:

Meantime, Archduke Albert sent his father confessor, Inigo Brizuela, to
Spain, in order to make the treaty posed by Jeannin palatable to the
king?

The priest was to set forth to Philip, as only a ghostly confessor
could do with full effect, that he need not trouble himself about the
recognition by the proposed treaty of the independence of the United
Provinces.  Ambiguous words had been purposely made use of in this
regard, he was to explain, so that not only the foreign ambassadors were
of opinion that the rights of Spain were not curtailed, but the emptiness
of the imaginary recognition of Dutch freedom had been proved by the
sharp criticism of the States.

It is true that Richardot, in the name of the archduke, had three months
before promised the consent of the king, as having already been obtained.
But Richardot knew very well when he made the statement that it was
false.  The archduke, in subsequent correspondence with the ambassadors
in December, repeated the pledge.  Yet, not only had the king not given
that consent, but he had expressly refused it by a courier sent in
November.

Philip, now convinced by Brother Inigo that while agreeing to treat with
the States-General as with a free commonwealth, over which he pretended
to no authority, he really meant that he was dealing with vassals over
whom his authority was to be resumed when it suited his convenience, at
last gave his consent to the, proposed treaty.  The royal decision was,
however, kept for a time concealed, in order that the States might become
more malleable.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

A truce he honestly considered a pitfall of destruction
Alas! we must always have something to persecute
Argument is exhausted and either action or compromise begins
Beware of a truce even more than of a peace
Could handle an argument as well as a sword
God alone can protect us against those whom we trust
Humble ignorance as the safest creed
Man is never so convinced of his own wisdom
Peace was unattainable, war was impossible, truce was inevitable
Readiness at any moment to defend dearly won liberties
Such an excuse was as bad as the accusation
The art of ruling the world by doing nothing
To doubt the infallibility of Calvin was as heinous a crime
What exchequer can accept chronic warfare and escape bankruptcy
Words are always interpreted to the disadvantage of the weak




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v82
by John Lothrop Motley






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, Volume 83, 1609





CHAPTER LII.

     Vote of the States-General on the groundwork of the treaty--
     Meeting of the plenipotentiaries for arrangement of the truce--
     Signing of the twelve years' truce--Its purport--The negotiations
     concluded--Ratification by the States-General, the Archdukes, and
     the King of Spain--Question of toleration--Appeal of President
     Jeannin on behalf of the Catholics--Religious liberty the fruit of
     the war--Internal arrangements of the States under the rule of
     peace--Deaths of John Duke of Cleves and Jacob Arminius--Doctrines
     of Arminius and Gomarus--Theological warfare--Twenty years' truce
     between the Turkish and Roman empires--Ferdinand of Styria--
     Religious peace--Prospects of the future.

On the 11th January, 1609, the States-General decided by unanimous vote
that the first point in the treaty should be not otherwise fixed than,
thus:--

"That the archdukes--to superfluity--declare, as well in their own name
as in that of the King of Spain, their willingness to treat with the
lords States of the United Provinces in the capacity of, and as holding
them for, free countries, provinces, and states, over which they have no
claim, and that they are making a treaty with them in those said names
and qualities."

It was also resolved not to permit that any ecclesiastical or secular
matters, conflicting with the above-mentioned freedom, should be
proposed; nor that any delay should be sought for, by reason of the
India navigation or any other point.

In case anything to the contrary should be attempted by the king or the
archdukes, and the deliberations protracted in consequence more than
eight days, it was further decided by unanimous vote that the
negotiations should at once be broken off, and the war forthwith renewed,
with the help, if possible, of the kings, princes, and states, friends of
the good cause.

This vigorous vote was entirely the work of Barneveld, the man whom his
enemies dared to denounce as the partisan of Spain, and to hold up as a
traitor deserving of death.  It was entirely within his knowledge that a
considerable party in the provinces had grown so weary of the war, and so
much alarmed at the prospect of the negotiations for truce coming to
nought, as to be ready to go into a treaty without a recognition of
the independence of the States.  This base faction was thought to be
instigated by the English Government, intriguing secretly with President
Richardot.  The Advocate, acting in full sympathy with Jeannin,
frustrated the effects of the manoeuvre by obtaining all the votes
of Holland and Zeeland for this supreme resolution.  The other five
provinces dared to make no further effort in that direction against
the two controlling states of the republic.

It was now agreed that the French and English ambassadors should delay
going to Antwerp until informed of the arrival in that city of Spinola
and his colleagues; and that they should then proceed thither, taking
with them the main points of the treaty, as laid down by themselves, and
accepted with slight alterations by the States.

When the Spanish commissioners had signed these points the
plenipotentiaries were to come to Antwerp in order to settle other
matters of less vital import.  Meantime, the States-General were to be
summoned to assemble in Bergen-op-Zoom, that they might be ready to deal
with difficulties, should any arise.

The first meeting took place on the 10th February, 1609.  The first
objection to the draught was made by the Spaniards.  It was about words
and wind.  They liked not the title of high and puissant lords which was
given to the States-General, and they proposed to turn the difficulty by
abstaining from giving any qualifications whatever, either to the
archdukes or the republican authorities.  The States refused to lower
these ensigns of their new-born power.  It was, however, at last agreed
that, instead of high and mighty, they should be called illustrious and
serene.

This point being comfortably adjusted, the next and most important one
was accepted by the Spaniards.  The independence of the States was
recognised according to the prescribed form.  Then came the great bone of
contention, over which there had been such persistent wrangling--the
India trade.

The Spanish Government had almost registered a vow in heaven that the
word India should not be mentioned in the treaty.  It was no less certain
that India was stamped upon the very heart of the republic, and could not
be torn from it while life remained.  The subtle diplomatists now
invented a phrase in which the word should not appear, while the thing
itself should be granted.  The Spaniards, after much altercation, at last
consented.

By the end of February, most of the plenipotentiaries thought it safe to
request the appearance of the States-General at Bergen-op-Zoom.

Jeannin, not altogether satisfied, however, with the language of the
Spaniards in regard to India, raised doubts as to the propriety of
issuing the summons.  Putting on his most reverend and artless expression
of countenance, he assured Richardot that he had just received a despatch
from the Hague, to the effect that the India point would, in all
probability, cause the States at that very moment to break off the
negotiations.  It was surely premature, therefore, to invite them to
Bergen.  The despatch from the Hague was a neat fiction on the part of
the president, but it worked admirably.  The other president, himself
quite as ready at inventions as Jeannin could possibly be, was
nevertheless taken in; the two ex-leaguers being, on the whole, fully
a match for each other in the art of intrigue.  Richardot, somewhat
alarmed, insisted that the States should send their plenipotentiaries to
Antwerp as soon as possible.  He would answer for it that they would not
go away again without settling upon the treaty.  The commissioners were
forbidden, by express order from Spain, to name the Indies in writing,
but they would solemnly declare, by word of mouth, that the States should
have full liberty to trade to those countries; the King of Spain having
no intention of interfering with such traffic during the period of the
truce.

The commissioners came to Antwerp.  The States-General assembled at
Bergen.  On the 9th April, 1609, the truce for twelve years was signed.
This was its purport:

The preamble recited that the most serene princes and archdukes, Albert
and Isabella Clara Eugenic, had made, on the 24th April, 1607, a truce
and cessation of arms for eight months with the illustrious lords the
States-General of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, in quality of,
and as holding them for, states, provinces, and free countries, over
which they pretended to nothing; which truce was ratified by his Catholic
Majesty, as to that which concerned him, by letters patent of 18th
September, 1607; and that, moreover, a special power had been given to
the archdukes on the 10th January, 1608, to enable them in the king's
name as well as their own to do everything that they might think proper
to bring about a peace or a truce of many years.

It then briefly recited the rupture of the negotiations for peace, and
the subsequent, proposition, originated by the foreign ambassadors, to
renew the conference for the purpose of concluding a truce.  The articles
of the treaty thus agreed upon were:

That the archdukes declared, as well in their own name as that of the
king, that they were content to treat with the lords the States-General
of the United Provinces in quality of, and as holding them for,
countries, provinces, and free states, over which they pretended
to nothing, and to, make with them a truce on certain following
conditions--to wit:

That the truce should be good, firm, loyal, inviolable, and for the term
of twelve years, during which time there was to be cessation of all acts
of hostility between the king, archdukes, and States-General, as well by
sea and other waters as by land, in all their kingdoms, countries, lands,
and lordships, and for all their subjects and inhabitants of whatever
quality and condition, without exception of places or of persons.

That each party should remain seized of their respective possessions,
and be not troubled therein during the truce.

That the subjects and inhabitants of the respective countries should
preserve amity and good correspondence during the truce, without
referring to past offences, and should freely and securely entertain
communication and traffic with each other by land and sea.  This
provision, however, was to be expressly understood as limited by the king
to the kingdoms and countries possessed by him in Europe, and in other
places and seas where the subjects of other kings and princes, his
friends and allies, have amicable traffic.  In regard, however, to
places, cities, ports, and harbours which he possessed outside of those
limits, the States and their subjects were to exercise no traffic,
without express permission of the king.  They could, however, if they
chose, trade with the countries of all other princes, potentates, and
peoples who were willing to permit it; even outside those limits, without
any hindrance by the king;

That the truce should begin in regard to those distant countries after a
year from date, unless actual notification could be sooner served there
on those concerned;

That the subjects of the United Provinces should have the same liberty
and privilege within the States of the king and archdukes as had been
accorded to the subjects of the by the King of Great Britain, according
to the last treaty made with that sovereign;

That letters of marque and reprisal should not be granted during the
truce, except for special cause, and in cases permitted by the laws and
imperial constitutions, and according to the rules therein prescribed;

That those who had retired into neutral territory during the war were
also to enjoy the benefit of the truce, and could reside wherever they
liked without being deprived of their property;

That the treaty should be ratified by the archdukes and the States-
General within four days.  As to the ratification of the king, the
archdukes were bound to deliver it in good and due form within three
months, in order that the lords the States-General, their subjects and
inhabitants, might enjoy effectively the fruits of the treaty;

That the treaty should be published everywhere immediately after the
ratification of the archdukes and States-General.

This document was signed by the ambassadors of the Kings of France and
Great Britain, as mediators, and then by the deputies of the archdukes,
and afterwards by those of the lords the States-General.

There were thirty-eight articles in all, but the chief provisions
have been indicated.  The other clauses, relating to boundaries,
confiscations, regulations of duties, frontier fortifications,
the estates of the Nassau family, and other sequestrated property,
have no abiding interest.

There was also a secret and special treaty which was demanded of the King
of Spain by the States-General, and by him accorded.

This secret treaty consisted of a single clause.  That clause was made up
of a brief preamble and of a promise.  The preamble recited textually
article fourth of the public treaty relative to the India trade.  The
promise was to this effect.

For the period of the truce the Spanish commissioners pledged the faith
of the king and of his successors that his Majesty would cause no
impediment, whether by sea or land, to the States nor their subjects,
in the traffic that thereafter might be made in the countries of all
princes, potentates, and peoples who might permit the same, in whatever
place it might be, even without the limits designated, and everywhere
else, nor similarly to those carrying on such traffic with them, and that
the king and his successors would faithfully carry into effect everything
thus laid, down, so that the said traffic should be free and secure,
consenting even, in order that the clause might be the more authentic,
that it should be considered as inserted in the principal treaty, and as
making part thereof.

It will be perceived that the first article of all, and the last or
secret article, contained the whole marrow of the treaty.  It may be well
understood, therefore, with what wry faces the Spanish plenipotentiaries
ultimately signed the document.

After two years and a quarter of dreary negotiation, the republic had
carried all its points, without swerving a hair's breadth from the
principles laid down in the beginning.  The only concession made was that
the treaty was for a truce of twelve years, and not for peace.  But as
after all, in those days, an interval of twelve years might be almost
considered an eternity of peace, and as calling a peace perpetual can
never make it so, the difference was rather one of phraseology than of
fact.

On the other hand, the States had extorted from their former sovereign a
recognition of their independence.

They had secured the India trade.

They had not conceded Catholic worship.

Mankind were amazed at this result--an event hitherto unknown in
history.  When before had a sovereign acknowledged the independence of
his rebellious subjects, and signed a treaty with them as with equals?
When before had Spain, expressly or by implication, admitted that the
East and West Indies were not her private property, and that navigators
to those regions, from other countries than her own, were not to be
chastised as trespassers and freebooters?

Yet the liberty of the Netherlands was acknowledged in terms which
convinced the world that it was thenceforth an established fact.  And
India was as plainly expressed by the omission of the word, as if it had
been engrossed in large capitals in Article IV.

The King's Government might seek solace in syntax.  They might triumph in
Cardinal Bentivoglio's subtleties, and persuade themselves that to treat
with the republic as a free nation was not to hold it for a free nation
then and for ever.  But the whole world knew that the republic really was
free, and that it had treated, face to face, with its former sovereign,
exactly as the Kings of France or Great Britain, or the Grand Turk, might
treat with him.  The new commonwealth had taken its place among the
nations of the earth.  Other princes and potentates made not the
slightest difficulty in recognising it for an independent power and
entering into treaties and alliances with it as with any other realm.

To the republic the substantial blessing of liberty: to his Catholic
Majesty the grammatical quirk.  When the twelve years should expire,
Spain might reconquer the United Provinces if she could; relying upon the
great truth that an adverb was not a preposition.  And France or Great
Britain might attempt the same thing if either felt strong enough for the
purpose.  Did as plausible a pretext as that ever fail to a state
ambitious of absorbing its neighbours?

Jeannin was right enough in urging that this famous clause of recognition
ought to satisfy both parties.  If the United Provinces, he said,
happened not to have the best muskets and cannons on their side when it
should once more come to blows, small help would they derive from verbal
bulwarks and advantages in the text of treaties.

Richardot consoled himself with his quibbles; for quibbles were his daily
bread. "Thank God our truce is made," said he, "and we have only lost the
sovereignty for twelve years, if after that we have the means or the will
to resume the war--whatever Don Pedro de Toledo may say."

Barneveld, on his part, was devoutly and soberly pleased with the result.
"To-day we have concluded our negotiations for the truce," he wrote to
Aerssens.  "We must pray to the Lord God, and we must do our highest duty
that our work may redound to his honour and glory, and to the nation's
welfare.  It is certain that men will make their criticisms upon it
according to their humours.  But those who love their country, and all
honest people who know the condition of the land, will say that it is
well done."

Thus modestly, religiously, and sincerely spoke a statesman, who felt
that he had accomplished a great work, and that he had indeed brought the
commonwealth through the tempest at last.

The republic had secured the India trade.  On this point the negotiators
had taken refuge in that most useful figure of speech for hard-pressed
diplomatists and law-makers--the ellipsis.  They had left out the word
India, and his Catholic Majesty might persuade himself that by such
omission a hemisphere had actually been taken away from the Dutch
merchants and navigators.  But the whole world saw that Article IV.
really contained both the East and West Indies.  It hardly needed the
secret clause to make assurance doubly sure.

President Richardot was facetiously wont to observe that this point in
the treaty was so obscure that he did not understand it himself.  But he
knew better.  He understood it very well.  The world understood it very
well.  The United Provinces had throughout the negotiations ridiculde the
idea of being excluded from any part of the old world or, the new by
reason of the Borgian grant.  All the commissioners knew that the war
would be renewed if any attempt were to be seriously made to put up those
famous railings around the ocean, of which the Dutch diplomatists spoke
in such bitter scorn.  The Spanish plenipotentiaries, therefore, had
insisted that the word itself should be left out, and that the republic
should be forbidden access to territories subject to the crown of Spain.
So the Hollanders were thenceforth to deal directly with the kings of
Sumatra and the Moluccas, and the republics of Banda, and all the rich
commonwealths and principalities of nutmegs; cloves, and indigo, unless,
as grew every day more improbable, the Spaniards and Portuguese could
exclude them from that traffic by main force.   And the Orange flag of
the republic was to float with equal facility over all America, from the
Isle of Manhattan to the shores of Brazil and the Straits of Magellan,
provided Philip had not ships and soldiers to vindicate with the sword
that sovereignty which Spanish swords and Spanish genius had once
acquired.

As for the Catholic worship, the future was to prove that liberty for the
old religion and for all forms of religion was a blessing more surely to
flow from the enlightened public sentiment of a free people emerging out
of the most tremendous war for liberty ever waged, than from the
stipulations of a treaty with a foreign power.

It was characteristic enough of the parties engaged in the great
political drama that the republic now requested from France and Great
Britain a written recognition of its independence, and that both France
and England refused.

It was strange that the new commonwealth, in the very moment of extorting
her freedom from the ancient tyranny, should be so unconscious of her
strength as to think free papers from neutral powers a boon.  As if the
sign-manual of James and Henry were a better guarantee than the trophies
of the Nassaus, of Heemskerk, of Matelieff, and of Olden-Barneveld!

It was not strange that the two sovereigns should decline the
proposition; for we well know the secret aspirations of each, and it
was natural that they should be unwilling to sign a formal quit-claim,
however improbable it might be that those dreams should ever become
a reality.

Both powers, however, united in a guarantee of the truce.

This was signed on the 17th June, and stipulated that, without their
knowledge and consent, the States should make no treaty during the period
of truce with the King of Spain or the archdukes.  On the other hand, in
case of an infraction of the truce by the enemy, the two kings agreed to
lend assistance to the States in the manner provided--by the treaties
concluded with the republic previously to the negotiation of the truce.

The treaty had been at once ratified by the States-General, assembled for
the purpose with an extraordinary number of deputies at Bergen-op-Zoom.
It was also ratified without delay by the archdukes.  The delivery of the
confirmation by his Catholic Majesty had been promised within three
months after the signatures of the plenipotentiaries.

It would however have been altogether inconsistent with the dignity and
the traditions of the Spanish court to fulfil this stipulation.  It was
not to be expected that "I the King" could be written either by the
monarch himself, or by his alter ego the Duke of Lerma, in so short a
time as a quarter of a year.

Several weeks accordingly went by after the expiration of the stated
period.  The ratification did not come, and the Netherlanders began to
be once more indignant.  Before the storm had risen very high, however,
the despatches arrived.  The king's signature was ante-dated 7th April,
being thus brought within the term of three months, and was a thorough
confirmation of what had been done by his plenipotentiaries.

His Majesty, however, expressed a hope that during the truce the States
would treat their Catholic subjects with kindness.

Certainly no exception could be taken to so reasonable an intimation as
this.  President Jeannin, too, just before his departure, handed in to
the States-General an eloquent appeal on behalf of the Catholics of the
Netherlands; a paper which was not immediately made public.

"Consider the great number of Catholics," he said, "in your territory,
both in the cities and the country.  Remember that they have worked with
you; spent their property, have been exposed to the same dangers, and
have always kept their fidelity to the commonwealth inviolate as long as
the war endured, never complaining that they did not enjoy liberty of
religious worship, believing that you had thus, ordained because the
public safety required such guaranty.  But they always promised
themselves, should the end of the war be happy, and should you be placed
in the enjoyment of entire freedom, that they too would have some part in
this good fortune, even as they had been sharers in the inconveniences,
the expenses, and the perils of the war.

"But those cannot be said to share in any enjoyment from whom has been
taken the power of serving God according to the religion in which they
were brought up.  On the contrary, no slavery is more intolerable nor
more exasperates the mind than such restraint.  You know this well, my
lords States; you know too that it was the principal, the most puissant
cause that made you fly to arms and scorn all dangers, in order to effect
your deliverance from this servitude.  You know that it has excited
similar movements in various parts of Christendom, and even in the
kingdom of France, with such fortunate success everywhere as to make it
appear that God had so willed it, in order to prove that religion ought
to be taught and inspired by the movements which come from the Holy
Ghost, and not by the force of man.  Thus kings and princes should be
induced by the evils and ruin which they and their subjects have suffered
from this cause, as by a sentiment of their own interest, to take more
care than has hitherto been taken to practise in good earnest those
remedies which were wont to be used at a time when the church was in
its greatest piety, in order to correct the abuses and errors which the
corruption of mankind had tried to introduce as being the true and sole
means of uniting all Christians in one and the same creed."

Surely the world had made progress in these forty years of war.  Was it
not something to gain for humanity, for intellectual advancement, for
liberty of thought, for the true interests of religion, that a Roman
Catholic, an ex-leaguer, a trusted representative of the immediate
successor of Charles IX. and Henry III., could stand up on the blood-
stained soil of the Netherlands and plead for liberty of conscience
for all mankind?

"Those cannot be said to share in, any enjoyment from whom has been taken
the power of serving God according to the religion in which they have
been brought up.  No slavery is more intolerable nor more exasperating to
the mind than such restraint."

Most true, O excellent president!  No axiom in mathematics is more
certain than this simple statement.  To prove its truth William the
Silent had lived and died.  To prove it a falsehood, emperors, and kings,
and priests, had issued bans, and curses, and damnable decrees.  To root
it out they had butchered, drowned, shot, strangled, poisoned, tortured,
roasted alive, buried alive, starved, and driven mad, thousands and tens
of thousands of their fellow creatures.  And behold there had been almost
a century of this work, and yet the great truth was not rooted out after
all; and the devil-worshippers, who had sought at the outset of the great
war to establish the Holy Inquisition in the Netherlands upon the ruins
of religious and political liberty, were overthrown at last and driven
back into the pit.  It was progress; it was worth all the blood and
treasure which had been spilled, that, instead of the Holy Inquisition,
there was now holy liberty of thought.

That there should have been a party, that there should have been an
individual here and there, after the great victory was won, to oppose the
doctrine which the Catholic president now so nobly advocated, would be
enough to cause every believer in progress to hide his face in the dust,
did we not know that the march of events was destined to trample such
opposition out of existence, and had not history proved to us that the
great lesson of the war was not to be rendered nought by the efforts of a
few fanatics.  Religious liberty was the ripened and consummate fruit,
and it could not but be gathered.

"Consider too," continued the president, "how much injury your refusal,
if you give it, will cause to those of your religion in the places where
they are the weakest, and where they are every day imploring with tears
and lamentations the grace of those Catholic sovereigns to whom they are
subject, to enable them to enjoy the same religious liberty which our
king is now demanding in favour of the Catholics among you.  Do not cause
it to come again into the minds of those sovereigns and their peoples,
whom an inconsiderate zeal has often driven into violence and ferocity
against protestants, that a war to compel the weakest to follow the
religion of the strongest is just and lawful."

Had not something been gained for the world when this language was held
by a Catholic on the very spot where less than a half century before the
whole population of the Netherlands, men, women, and children, had been
condemned to death by a foreign tyrant, for the simple reason that it was
just, legal, and a Christian duty to punish the weak for refusing to
follow the religion of the strong?

"As for the perils which some affect to fear," said Jeannin, further, "if
this liberty of worship is accorded, experience teaches us every day that
diversity of religion is not the cause of the ruin of states, and that a
government does not cease to be good, nor its subjects to live in peace
and friend ship with one another, rendering due obedience to the laws and
to their, rulers as well as if they had all been of the same religion,
without having another thought, save for the preservation of the dignity
and grandeur of the state in which God had caused them to be born.  The
danger is not in the permission, but in the prohibition of religious
liberty."

All this seems commonplace enough to us on the western side of the
Atlantic, in the middle of the nineteenth century, but it would have been
rank blasphemy in New England in the middle of the seventeenth, many
years after Jeannin spoke.  It was a horrible sound, too, in the ears of
some of his audience.

To the pretence so often urged by the Catholic persecutors, and now set
up by their Calvinistic imitators; that those who still clung to the old
religion were at liberty to depart from the land, the president replied
with dignified scorn.

"With what justice," he asked, "can you drive into, exile people who have
committed no offence, and who have helped to conquer the very country
from which you would now banish them?  If you do drive them away, you
will make solitudes in your commonwealth, which will, be the cause of
evils such as I prefer that you should reflect upon without my declaring
them now.  Although these reasons," he continued, "would seem sufficient
to induce you to accord the free and public exercise of the Catholic
religion, the king, not hoping as much as that, because aware that you
are not disposed to go so far, is content to request only this grace in
behalf of the Catholics, that you will tolerate them, and suffer them to
have some exercise of their religion within their own households, without
interference or inquiry on that account, and without execution of the
rigorous decrees heretofore enforced against them."

Certainly if such wholesome, moderate, and modest counsels as these had
been rejected, it would have been sound doctrine to proclaim that the
world did not move.  And there were individuals enough, even an
influential party, prepared to oppose them for both technical and
practical reasons.  And the cause of intolerance derived much warmth
and comfort at this juncture from that great luminary of theology and
political philosophy, the King of Great Britain.  Direful and solemn were
the warnings uttered by James to the republic against permitting the old
religion, or any religion save his own religion, to obtain the slightest
foothold within her borders.

"Let the religion be taught and preached in its parity throughout your
provinces without the least mixture," said Sir Ralph Winwood, in the name
of his sovereign.

"On this foundation the justice of your cause is built.  There is but one
verity.  Those who are willing to tolerate any religion, whatever it may
be, and try to make you believe that liberty for both is necessary in
your commonwealth, are paving the way towards atheism."

Such were the counsels of King James to the united States of the
Netherlands against harbouring Catholics.  A few years later he was
casting forth Calvinists from his own dominions as if they had been
lepers; and they went forth on their weary pilgrimage to the howling
wilderness of North America, those exiled Calvinists, to build a greater
republic than had ever been dreamed of before on this planet; and they
went forth, not to preach, but in their turn to denounce toleration and
to hang heretics.  "He who would tolerate another religion that his own
may be tolerated, would if need be, hang God's bible at the devil's
girdle."  So spoke an early Massachusetts pilgrim, in the very spirit,
almost the very words of the royal persecutor; who had driven him into
outer darkness beyond the seas.  He had not learned the lesson of the
mighty movement in which he was a pioneer, any more than Gomarus or
Uytenbogaart had comprehended why the Dutch republic had risen.

Yet the founders of the two commonwealths, the United States of the
seventeenth and of the nineteenth centuries, although many of them
fiercely intolerant, through a natural instinct of resistance, not only
to the oppressor but to the creed of the oppressor, had been breaking out
the way, not to atheism, as King James believed, but to the only garden
in which Christianity can perennially flourish--religious liberty.

Those most ardent and zealous path-finders may be forgiven, in view of
the inestimable benefits conferred by them upon humanity, that they did
not travel on their own road.  It should be sufficient for us, if we make
due use of their great imperishable work ourselves; and if we never cease
rendering thanks to the Omnipotent, that there is at least one great
nation on the globe where the words toleration and dissenter have no
meaning whatever.

For the Dutch fanatics of the reformed church, at the moment of the
truce, to attempt to reverse the course of events, and to shut off the
mighty movement of the great revolt from its destined expanse, was as
hopeless a dream as to drive back the Rhine, as it reached the ocean,
into the narrow channel of the Rheinwald glacier whence it sprang.

The republic became the refuge for the oppressed of all nations, where
Jews and Gentiles, Catholics, Calvinists, and Anabaptistis, prayed after
their own manner to the same God and Father.  It was too much, however,
to hope that passions which had been so fiercely bubbling during fifty
years would subside at once, and that the most intense religious hatreds
that ever existed would exhale with the proclamation of truce.  The march
of humanity is rarely rapid enough to keep pace with the leaders in its
most sublime movements, and it often happens that its chieftains are
dwarfed in the estimation of the contemporaneous vulgar, by the very
distance at which they precede their unconscious followers.  But even if
the progress of the human mind towards the truth is fated to be a spiral
one, as if to remind us that mankind is of the earth, earthy--a worm in
the dust while inhabiting this lower sphere--it is at least a consolation
to reflect upon the gradual advancement of the intellect from age to age.

The spirit of Torquemada, of Charles, of Philip, of Titelmann, is even
now not extinct on this globe, but there are counter forces at work,
which must ultimately blast it into insignificance.  At the moment of the
great truce, that evil spirit was not exorcised from the human breast,
but the number of its victims and the intensity of its influence had
already miraculously diminished.

The truce was made and announced all over the Netherlands by the ringing
of bells, the happy discharge of innocent artillery, by illuminations, by
Te Deums in all the churches.  Papist and Presbyterian fell on their
knees in every grand cathedral or humblest village church, to thank God
that what had seemed the eternal butchery was over.  The inhabitants of
the united and of the obedient Netherlands rushed across the frontiers
into a fraternal embrace; like the meeting of many waters when the flood-
gates are lifted.  It was pity that the foreign sovereignty, established
at Brussels, could not then and there have been for ever swept away, and
self-government and beneficent union extended over all the seventeen
Netherlands, Walloon and Flemish, Catholic and reformed.  But it hardly
needs a word to show that the course of events had created a deeper chasm
between the two sections than the gravest physical catastrophe could have
produced.  The opposing cliffs which religious hatred had rent asunder,
and between which it seemed destined to flow for ever, seemed very close,
and yet eternally separated.

The great war had established the republic; and apparently doomed the
obedient Netherlands to perpetual servitude.

There were many details of minor importance to be settled between the
various governments involved in these great transactions; but this
history draws to its predestined close, and it is necessary to glide
rapidly over matters which rather belong to a later epoch than the one
now under consideration.

The treaty between the republic and the government of Great Britain,
according to which each was to assist the other in case of war with four
thousand troops and twenty ships of war, was confirmed in the treaty of
truce.  The debt of the United Provinces to the Crown of England was
definitely reckoned at 8,184,080 florins, and it was settled by the truce
that 200,000 florins should be paid semi-annually, to begin with the year
1611, until the whole debt should be discharged.

The army establishment of the republic was fixed during the truce at
thirty thousand infantry and three thousand horse.  This was a reduction
from the war footing of fifteen thousand men.  Of the force retained,
four thousand were a French legion maintained by the king, two thousand
other French at the expense of the States, and distributed among other
troops, two thousand Scotch, three thousand English, three thousand
Germans.  The rest were native Netherlanders, among whom, however, were
very few Hollanders and Zeelanders, from which races the navy, both
public and mercantile, was almost wholly supplied.

The revenue of the United Provinces was estimated at between seven and
eight millions of florins.

It is superfluous to call attention again to the wonderful smallness of
the means, the minuteness of the physical enginry, as compared with more
modern manifestations, especially in our own land and epoch, by which so
stupendous a result had been reached.  In the midst of an age in which
regal and sacerdotal despotism had seemed as omnipotent and irreversible
as the elemental laws of the universe, the republic had been reproduced.
A commonwealth of sand-banks, lagoons, and meadows, less than fourteen
thousand square miles in extent, had done battle, for nearly half a
century, with the greatest of existing powers, a realm whose territory
was nearly a third of the globe, and which claimed universal monarchy.
And this had been done with an army averaging forty-six thousand men,
half of them foreigners hired by the job, and by a sea-faring population,
volunteering into ships of every class and denomination, from a fly-boat
to a galleot of war.

And when the republic had won its independence, after this almost eternal
warfare, it owed four or five millions of dollars, and had sometimes an
annual revenue of nearly that amount.

It was estimated by Barneveld, at the conclusion of the truce, that the
interest on the public debt of Spain was about thrice the amount of the
yearly income of the republic, and it was characteristic of the financial
ideas of the period, that fears were entertained lest a total repudiation
of that burthen by the Spanish Government would enable it to resume the
war against the provinces with redoubled energy.

The annual salary of Prince Maurice, who was to see his chief occupation
gone by the cessation of the war, was fixed by the States at 120,000
florins.  It was agreed, that in case of his marriage he should receive
a further yearly sum of 25,000 florins, and this addition was soon
afterwards voted to him outright, it being obvious that the prince would
remain all his days a bachelor.

Count Frederic Henry likewise received a military salary of 25,000
florins, while the emoluments of Lewis William were placed at 36,000
florins a year.

It must be admitted that the republic was grateful.  70,000 dollars a
year, in the seventeenth century, not only for life, but to be inherited
afterwards by his younger brother, Frederic Henry, was surely a
munificent sum to be accorded from the puny exchequer of the States-
General to the chief magistrate of the nation.

The mighty transatlantic republic, with its population of thirty or forty
millions, and its revenue of five hundred millions of dollars, pays
25,000 dollars annually for its president during his four years of
office, and this in the second half of the nineteenth century, when a
dollar is worth scarcely one-fifth of its value two hundred and fifty
years ago.

Surely here is improvement, both in the capacity to produce and in the
power to save.

In the year 1609, died John, the last sovereign of Cleves and Juliers,
and Jacob Arminius, Doctor of Divinity at Leyden.  It would be difficult
to imagine two more entirely dissimilar individuals of the human family
than this lunatic duke and that theological professor.  And yet, perhaps,
the two names, more concisely than those of any other mortals, might
serve as an index to the ghastly chronicle over which a coming generation
was to shudder.  The death of the duke was at first thought likely to
break off the negotiations for truce.  The States-General at once
declared that they would permit no movements on the part of the Spanish
party to seize the inheritance in behalf of the Catholic claimants.
Prince Maurice, nothing loth to make use of so well-timed an event in
order to cut for ever the tangled skein at the Hague, was for marching
forthwith into the duchies.

But the archdukes gave such unequivocal assurances of abstaining from
interference, and the desire for peace was so strong both in the obedient
and in the United Provinces, that the question of the duchies was
postponed.  It was to serve as both torch and fuel for one of the longest
and most hideous tragedies that had ever disgraced humanity.  A thirty
years' war of demons was, after a brief interval, to succeed the forty
years' struggle between slaves and masters, which had just ended in the
recognition of Dutch independence.

The gentle Arminius was in his grave, but a bloody harvest was fast
ripening from the seeds which he had sown.  That evil story must find its
place in the melancholy chapter where the fortunes of the Dutch republic
are blended with the grim chronicle of the thirty years' war.  Until the
time arrives for retracing the course of those united transactions to
their final termination in the peace of Westphalia, it is premature to
characterize an epoch which, at the moment with which we are now
occupied, had not fairly begun.

The Gomarites accused the Arminians of being more lax than Papists, and
of filling the soul of man with vilest arrogance and confidence in good
works; while the Arminians complained that the God of the Gomarites was
an unjust God, himself the origin of sin.

The disputes on these themes had been perpetual in the provinces ever
since the early days of the Reformation.  Of late, however, the acrimony
of theological conflict had been growing day by day more intense.  It was
the eternal struggle of religious dogma to get possession of the State,
and to make use of political forces in order to put fetters on the human
soul; to condemn it to slavery where most it requires freedom.

The conflict between Gomarus and Arminius proceeded with such ferocity
in Leyden, that, since the days of the memorable siege, to which the
university owed its origin, men's minds had never been roused to such
feverish anxiety: The theological cannonades, which thundered daily from
the college buildings and caused all Holland to quake, seemed more
appalling to the burghers than the enginry of Valdez and Boisot had ever
seemed to their fathers.

The Gomarite doctrine gained most favour with the clergy, the Arminian
creed with the municipal magistracies.  The magistrates claimed that
decisions concerning religious matters belonged to the supreme authority.
The Gomarites contended that sacred matters should be referred to synods
of the clergy.  Here was the germ of a conflict which might one day shake
the republic to its foundations.

Barneveld, the great leader of the municipal, party, who loved political
power quite as well as he loved his country; was naturally a chieftain of
the Arminians; for church, matters were no more separated from political
matters in the commonwealth at that moment than they were in the cabinets
of Henry, James, or Philip.

It was inevitable therefore that the war party should pour upon his head
more than seven vials of theological wrath.  The religious doctrines
which he espoused were, odious not only because they were deemed vile in
themselves but because he believed in them.

Arminianism was regarded as a new and horrible epidemic, daily gaining
ground, and threatening to destroy the whole population.  Men deliberated
concerning the best means to cut off communication with the infected
regions, and to extirpate the plague even by desperate and heroic
remedies, as men in later days take measures against the cholera or the
rinderpest.

Theological hatred was surely not extinct in the Netherlands.  It was a
consolation, however, that its influence was rendered less noxious by the
vastly increased strength of principles long dormant in the atmosphere.
Anna van der Hoven, buried alive in Brussels, simply because her
Calvinistic creed was a crime in the eyes of the monks who murdered her,
was the last victim to purely religious persecution.  If there were one
day to be still a tragedy or two in the Netherlands it was inevitable
that theological hatred would be obliged to combine with political party
spirit in its most condensed form before any deadly effect could be
produced.

Thus the year 1609 is a memorable one in the world's history.  It forms a
great landmark in human progress.  It witnessed the recognition of a
republic, powerful in itself, and whose example was destined to be most
influential upon the career of two mighty commonwealths of the future.
The British empire, just expanding for wider flight than it had hitherto
essayed, and about to pass through a series of vast revolutions,
gathering strength of wing as it emerged from cloud after cloud; and the
American republic, whose frail and obscure beginnings at that very
instant of time scarcely attracted a passing attention from the
contemporaneous world--both these political organisms, to which so much
of mankind's future liberties had been entrusted, were deeply indebted to
the earlier self-governing commonwealth.

The Dutch republic was the first free nation to put a girdle of
empire around the earth.  It had courage, enterprise, intelligence,
perseverance, faith in itself, the instinct of self-government and self-
help, hatred of tyranny, the disposition to domineer, aggressiveness,
greediness, inquisitiveness, insolence, the love of science, of liberty,
and of money--all this in unlimited extent.  It had one great defect, it
had no country.  Upon that meagre standing ground its hand had moved the
world with an impulse to be felt through all the ages, but there was not
soil enough in those fourteen thousand, square miles to form the
metropolis of the magnificent empire which the genius of liberty had
created beyond the seas.

That the political institutions bequeathed by the United States of the
seventeenth century have been vastly improved, both in theory and
practice, by the United States of the nineteenth, no American is likely
to gainsay.  That the elder Republic showed us also what to avoid, and
was a living example of the perils besetting a Confederacy which dared
not become a Union, is a lesson which we might take closely to heart.

But the year 1609 was not only memorable as marking an epoch in Dutch
history.  It was the beginning of a great and universal pause.  The world
had need of rest.  Disintegration had been going on too rapidly, and it
was absolutely necessary that there should be a new birth, if
civilization were not to vanish.

A twenty years' truce between the Turkish and Holy Roman empires was
nearly simultaneous with the twelve years' truce between Spain and the
United Provinces.  The Emperor Rudolph having refused to ratify the
treaty which his brother Matthias had made, was in consequence partially
discrowned.  The same archduke who, thirty years before, had slipped away
from Vienna in his nightgown; with his face blackened, to outwit and
outgeneral William the Silent at Brussels, was now--more successful in
his manoeuvres against his imperial brother.  Standing at the head of his
army in battle array, in the open fields before the walls of Prague, he
received--from the unfortunate Rudolph the crown and regalia of Hungary,
and was by solemn treaty declared sovereign of that ancient and
chivalrous kingdom.

His triumphal entrance into Vienna succeeded, where, surrounded by great
nobles and burghers, with his brother Maximilian at his side, with
immense pomp and with flowers strewn before his feet, he ratified that
truce with Ahmed which Rudolph had rejected.  Three months later he was
crowned at Pressburg, having first accepted the conditions proposed by
the estates of Hungary.  Foremost among these was the provision that the
exercise of the reformed religion should be free in all the cities and
villages beneath his sceptre, and that every man in the kingdom was to
worship God according to his conscience.

In the following March, at the very moment accordingly when the
conclusive negotiations were fast ripening at Antwerp, Matthias granted
religious peace for Austria likewise.  Great was the indignation of his
nephew Leopold, the nuncius, and the Spanish ambassador in consequence,
by each and all of whom the revolutionary mischief-maker, with his
brother's crown on his head, was threatened with excommunication.

As for Ferdinand of Styria, his wrath may well be imagined.  He refused
religious peace in his dominions with scorn ineffable.  Not Gomarus in
Leyden could have shrunk from Arminianism with more intense horror than
that with which the archduke at Gratz recoiled from any form of
Protestantism.  He wrote to his brother-in-law the King of Spain and to
other potentates--as if the very soul of Philip II. were alive within
him--that he would rather have a country without inhabitants than with a
single protestant on its soil.  He strongly urged upon his Catholic
Majesty--as if such urging were necessary at the Spanish court--the
necessity of extirpating heresy, root and branch.

Here was one man at least who knew what he meant, and on whom the dread
lessons of fifty years of bloodshed had been lost.  Magnificent was the
contempt which this pupil of the Jesuits felt for any little progress
made by the world since the days of Torquemada.  In Ferdinand's view Alva
was a Christian hero, scarcely second to Godfrey of Bouillon, Philip II.
a sainted martyr, while the Dutch republic had never been born.

And Ferdinand was one day to sit on the throne of the holy Roman Empire.
Might not a shudder come over the souls of men as coming events vaguely
shaped themselves to prophetic eyes?

Meantime there was religious peace in Hungary, in Austria, in Bohemia, in
France, in Great Britain, in the Netherlands.  The hangman's hands were
for a period at rest, so far as theology had need of them.  Butchery in
the name of Christ was suspended throughout Christendom.  The Cross and
the Crescent, Santiago and the Orange banner, were for a season in
repose.

There was a vast lull between two mighty storms.  The forty years' war
was in the past, the thirty years' war in the not far distant future.




CHAPTER LIII.

CONCLUSION.

Forth-three years had passed since the memorable April morning in which
the great nobles of the, Netherlands presented their "Request" to the
Regent Margaret at Brussels.

They had requested that the holy Spanish Inquisition might not be
established on their soil to the suppression of all their political and
religious institutions.

The war which those high-born "beggars" had then kindled, little knowing
what they were doing, had now come to a close, and the successor of
Philip II., instead of planting the Inquisition in the provinces, had
recognised them as an independent, sovereign, protestant republic.

In the ratification which he had just signed of the treaty of truce the
most Catholic king had in his turn made a Request.  He had asked the
States-General to deal kindly with their Catholic subjects.

That request was not answered with the age and faggot; with the avenging
sword of mercenary legions.  On the contrary, it was destined to be
granted.  The world had gained something in forty-three years.  It had at
least begun to learn that the hangman is not the most appropriate teacher
of religion.

During the period of apparent chaos with which this history of the great
revolt has been occupied, there had in truth been a great reorganization,
a perfected new birth.  The republic had once more appeared in the world.

Its main characteristics have been indicated in the course of the
narrative, for it was a polity which gradually unfolded itself out of the
decay and change of previous organisms.

It was, as it were, in their own despite and unwittingly that the United
Provinces became a republic at all.

In vain, after originally declaring their independence of the ancient
tyrant, had they attempted to annex themselves to France and to England.
The sovereignty had been spurned.  The magnificent prize which France for
centuries since has so persistently coveted, and the attainment of which
has been a cardinal point of her perpetual policy--the Low Countries and
the banks of the Rhine--was deliberately laid at her feet, and as
deliberately refused.

It was the secret hope of the present monarch to repair the loss which
the kingdom had suffered through the imbecility of his two immediate
predecessors.  But a great nation cannot with impunity permit itself to
be despotically governed for thirty years by lunatics.  It was not for
the Bearnese, with all his valour, his wit, and his duplicity, to obtain
the prize which Charles IX. and Henry III. had thrown away.  Yet to make
himself sovereign of the Netherlands was his guiding but most secret
thought during all the wearisome and tortuous negotiations which preceded
the truce; nor did he abandon the great hope with the signature of the
treaty of 1609.

Maurice of Nassau too was a formidable rival to Henry.  The stadholder-
prince was no republican.  He was a good patriot, a noble soldier, an
honest man.  But his father had been offered the sovereignty of Holland
and Zeeland, and the pistol of Balthasar Gerard had alone, in all human
probability, prevented the great prince from becoming constitutional
monarch of all the Netherlands, Batavian and Belgic.

Maurice himself asserted that not only had he been offered a million of
dollars, and large estates besides in Germany, if he would leave the
provinces to their fate, but that the archdukes had offered, would he
join his fortunes with theirs, to place him in a higher position over all
the Netherlands than he had ever enjoyed in the United Provinces, and
that they had even unequivocally offered him the sovereignty over the
whole land.

Maurice was a man of truth, and we have no right to dispute the accuracy
of the extraordinary statement.  He must however have reflected upon the
offer once made by the Prince of Darkness from the mountain top, and have
asked himself by what machinery the archdukes proposed to place him in
possession of such a kingdom.

There had, however, been serious question among leading Dutch
statesmen of making him constitutional, hereditary monarch of the United
Netherlands.  As late as 1602 a secret conference was held at the house
of Olden-Barneveld, in which the Advocate had himself urged the claims of
the prince to the sovereignty, and reminded his guests that the signed
and sealed documents--with the concurrence of the Amsterdam municipality
alone lacking--by which William the Silent had been invited to assume the
crown were still in the possession of his son.

Nothing came of these deliberations.  It was agreed that to stir in the
matter at that moment would be premature, and that the pursuit by Maurice
of the monarchy in the circumstances then existing would not only over-
burthen him with expense, but make him a more conspicuous mark than ever
for the assassin.  It is certain that the prince manifested no undue
anxiety at any period in regard to those transactions.

Subsequently, as Olden-Barneveld's personal power increased, and as the
negotiations for peace became more and more likely to prove successful,
the Advocate lost all relish for placing his great rival on a throne.
The whole project, with the documents and secret schemes therewith
connected, became mere alms for oblivion.  Barneveld himself, although of
comparatively humble birth and station, was likely with time to exercise
more real power in the State than either Henry or Maurice; and thus while
there were three individuals who in different ways aspired to supreme
power, the republic, notwithstanding, asserted and established itself.

Freedom of government and freedom, of religion were, on the whole,
assisted by this triple antagonism.  The prince, so soon as war was
over, hated the Advocate and his daily increasing power more and more.
He allied himself more closely than ever with the Gomarites and the
clerical party in general, and did his best to inflame the persecuting
spirit, already existing in the provinces, against the Catholics and the
later sects of Protestants.

Jeannin warned him that "by thus howling with the priests" he would be
suspected of more desperately ambitious designs than he perhaps really
cherished.

On the other hand, Barneveld was accused of a willingness to wink at the
introduction, privately and quietly, of the Roman Catholic worship.  That
this was the deadliest of sins, there was no doubt whatever in the minds
of his revilers.  When it was added that he was suspected of the Arminian
leprosy, and that he could tolerate the thought that a virtuous man or
woman, not predestined from all time for salvation, could possibly find
the way to heaven, language becomes powerless to stigmatize his
depravity.  Whatever the punishment impending over his head in this world
or the next, it is certain that the cause of human freedom was not
destined on the whole to lose ground through the life-work of Barneveld.

A champion of liberties rather than of liberty, he defended his
fatherland with heart and soul against the stranger; yet the government
of that fatherland was, in his judgments to be transferred from the hand
of the foreigner, not to the self-governing people, but to the provincial
corporations.  For the People he had no respect, and perhaps little
affection.  He often spoke of popular rights with contempt.  Of popular
sovereignty he had no conception.  His patriotism, like his ambition, was
provincial.  Yet his perceptions as to eternal necessity in all healthy
governments taught him that comprehensible relations between the state
and the population were needful to the very existence of a free
commonwealth.  The United Provinces, he maintained, were not a republic,
but a league of seven provinces very loosely hung together, a mere
provisional organization for which it was not then possible to substitute
anything better.  He expressed this opinion with deep regret, just as the
war of independence was closing, and added his conviction that, without
some well-ordered government, no republic could stand.

Yet, as time wore on, the Advocate was destined to acquiesce more and
more in this defective constitution.  A settled theory there was none,
and it would have been difficult legally and historically to establish
the central sovereignty of the States-General as matter of right.

Thus Barneveld, who was anything but a democrat, became, almost
unwittingly, the champion of the least venerable or imposing of all
forms of aristocracy--an oligarchy of traders who imagined themselves
patricians.  Corporate rights, not popular liberty, seemed, in his view,
the precious gains made by such a prodigious expenditure of time, money,
and blood.  Although such acquisitions were practically a vast addition
to the stock of human freedom then existing in the world, yet torrents of
blood and millions of treasure were to be wasted in the coming centuries
before mankind was to convince itself that a republic is only to be made
powerful and perpetual by placing itself upon the basis of popular right
rather than on that of municipal privilege.

The singular docility of the Dutch people, combined with the simplicity,
honesty, and practical sagacity of the earlier burgher patricians, made
the defects of the system tolerable for a longer period than might have
been expected; nor was it until theological dissensions had gathered to
such intensity as to set the whole commonwealth aflame that the grave
defects in the political structure could be fairly estimated.

It would be anticipating a dark chapter in the history of the United
Provinces were the reader's attention now to be called to those fearful
convulsions.  The greatest reserve is therefore necessary at present in
alluding to the subject.

It was not to be expected that an imperious, energetic but somewhat
limited nature like that of Barneveld should at that epoch thoroughly
comprehend the meaning of religious freedom.  William the Silent alone
seems to have risen to that height.  A conscientious Calvinist himself,
the father of his country would have been glad to see Protestant and
Papist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Anabaptist living together in harmony
and political equality.  This was not to be.  The soul of the immortal
prince could not inspire the hearts of his contemporaries.  That
Barneveld was disposed to a breadth of religious sympathy unusual in
those days, seems certain.  It was inevitable, too, that the mild
doctrines of Arminius should be more in harmony with such a character
than were the fierce dogmas of Calvin.  But the struggle, either to force
Arminianism upon the Church which considered itself the established one
in the Netherlands, or to expel the Calvinists from it, had not yet
begun; although the seeds of religious persecution of Protestants by
Protestants had already been sown broadcast.

The day was not far distant when the very Calvinists, to whom, more than
to any other class of men, the political liberties of Holland, England,
and America are due, were to be hunted out of churches into farm-houses,
suburban hovels, and canal-boats by the arm of provincial sovereignty and
in the name of state-rights, as pitilessly as the early reformers had
been driven out of cathedrals in the name of emperor and pope; and when
even those refuges for conscientious worship were to be denied by the
dominant sect.  And the day was to come, too, when the Calvinists,
regaining ascendency in their turn, were to hunt the heterodox as they
had themselves been hunted; and this, at the very moment when their
fellow Calvinists of England were driven by the Church of that kingdom
into the American wilderness.

Toleration--that intolerable term of insult to all who love liberty--had
not yet been discovered.  It had scarcely occurred to Arminian or
Presbyterian that civil authority and ecclesiastical doctrine could be
divorced from each other.  As the individual sovereignty of the seven
states established itself more and more securely, the right of provincial
power to dictate religious dogmas, and to superintend the popular
conscience, was exercised with a placid arrogance which papal
infallibility could scarcely exceed.  The alternation was only between
the sects, each in its turn becoming orthodox, and therefore persecuting.
The lessened intensity of persecution however, which priesthood and
authority were now allowed to exercise, marked the gains secured.

Yet while we censure--as we have a right to do from the point of view
which we have gained after centuries--the crimes committed by bigotry
against liberty, we should be false, to our faith in human progress did
we not acknowledge our debt of gratitude to the hot gospellers of Holland
and England.

The doctrine of predestination, the consciousness of being chosen
soldiers of Christ, inspired those puritans, who founded the
commonwealths of England, of Holland, and of America, with a contempt
of toil, danger, and death which enabled them to accomplish things
almost supernatural.

No uncouthness of phraseology, no unlovely austerity of deportment,
could, except to vulgar minds, make that sublime enthusiasm ridiculous,
which on either side the ocean ever confronted tyranny with dauntless
front, and welcomed death on battle-field, scaffold, or rack with perfect
composure.

The early puritan at least believed.  The very intensity of his belief
made him--all unconsciously to himself, and narrowed as was his view of
his position--the great instrument by which the widest human liberty was
to be gained for all mankind.

The elected favourite of the King of kings feared the power of no earthly
king.  Accepting in rapture the decrees of a supernatural tyranny, he
rose on mighty wings above the reach of human wrath.  Prostrating himself
before a God of vengeance, of jealousy, and of injustice, be naturally
imitated the attributes which he believed to be divine.  It was
inevitable, therefore, that Barneveld, and those who thought with him,
when they should attempt to force the children of Belial into the company
of the elect and to drive the faithful out of their own churches, should
be detested as bitterly as papists had ever been.

Had Barneveld's intellect been broad enough to imagine in a great
republic the separation of Church and State, he would deserve a tenderer
sympathy, but he would have been far in advance of his age.  It is not
cheerful to see so powerful an intellect and so patriotic a character
daring to entrust the relations between man and his Maker to the decree
of a trading corporation.  But alas! the world was to wait for centuries
until it should learn that the State can best defend religion by letting
it alone, and that the political arm is apt to wither with palsy when it
attempts to control the human conscience.

It is not entirely the commonwealth of the United Netherlands that is of
importance in the epoch which I have endeavoured to illustrate.  History
can have neither value nor charm for those who are not impressed with a
conviction of its continuity.

More than ever during the period which we call modern history has this
idea of the continuousness of our race, and especially of the inhabitants
of Europe and America, become almost oppressive to the imagination.
There is a sense of immortality even upon earth when we see the
succession of heritages in the domains of science, of intellectual and
material wealth by which mankind, generation after generation, is
enriching itself.

If this progress be a dream, if mankind be describing a limited circle
instead of advancing towards the infinite; then no study can be more
contemptible than the study of history.

Few strides more gigantic have been taken in the march of humanity than
those by which a parcel of outlying provinces in the north of Europe
exchanged slavery to a foreign despotism and to the Holy Inquisition
for the position of a self-governing commonwealth, in the, front rank of
contemporary powers, and in many respects the foremost of the world.  It
is impossible to calculate the amount of benefit tendered to civilization
by the example of the Dutch republic.  It has been a model which has been
imitated, in many respects, by great nations.  It has even been valuable
in its very defects; indicating to the patient observer many errors most
important to avoid.

Therefore, had the little republic sunk for ever in the sea so soon as
the treaty of peace had been signed at Antwerp, its career would have
been prolific of good for all succeeding time.

Exactly at the moment when a splendid but decaying despotism, founded
upon wrong--upon oppression of the human body and the immortal soul, upon
slavery, in short, of the worst kind--was awaking from its insane dream
of universal empire to a consciousness of its own decay, the new republic
was recognised among the nations.

It would hardly be incorrect to describe the Holland of the beginning
of the seventeenth century as the exact reverse of Spain.  In, the
commonwealth labour was most honourable; in the kingdom it was vile.
In the north to be idle was accounted and punished as a crime.  In the
southern peninsula, to be contaminated with mechanical, mercantile,
commercial, manufacturing pursuits, was to be accursed.  Labour was for
slaves, and at last the mere spectacle of labour became so offensive that
even the slaves were expelled from the land.  To work was as degrading in
the south as to beg or to steal was esteemed unworthy of humanity in the
north.  To think a man's thought upon high matters of religion and
government, and through a thousand errors to pursue the truth; with the
aid of the Most High and with the best use of human reason, was a
privilege secured by the commonwealth, at the expense of two generations
of continuous bloodshed.  To lie fettered, soul and body, at the feet of
authority wielded by a priesthood in its last stage of corruption, and
monarchy almost reduced to imbecility, was the lot of the chivalrous,
genial; but much oppressed Spaniard.

The pictures painted of the republic by shrewd and caustic observers, not
inclined by nature or craft to portray freedom in too engaging colours,
seem, when contrasted with those revealed of Spain, almost like
enthusiastic fantasies of an ideal commonwealth.

During the last twenty years of the great war the material prosperity of
the Netherlands had wonderfully increased.  They had, become the first
commercial nation in the world.  They had acquired the supremacy of the
seas.  The population of Amsterdam had in twenty years increased from
seventy thousand to a hundred and thirty thousand, and was destined to be
again more than doubled in the coming decade.  The population of Antwerp
had sunk almost as rapidly as that of its rival had increased; having
lessened by fifty thousand during the same period.  The commercial
capital of the obedient provinces, having already lost much of its famous
traffic by the great changes in the commercial current of the world, was
unable to compete with the cities of the United Provinces in the vast
trade which the geographical discoveries of the preceding century had
opened to civilization.  Freedom of thought and action were denied, and
without such liberty it was impossible for oceanic commerce to thrive.
Moreover, the possession by the Hollanders of the Scheld forts below
Antwerp, and of Flushing at the river's mouth, suffocated the ancient
city, and would of itself have been sufficient to paralyze all its
efforts.

In Antwerp the exchange, where once thousands of the great merchants of
the earth held their daily financial parliament, now echoed to the
solitary footfall of the passing stranger.  Ships lay rotting at the
quays; brambles grow in the commercial streets.  In Amsterdam the city
had been enlarged by two-thirds, and those who swarmed thither to seek
their fortunes could not wait for the streets to be laid out and houses
to be built, but established themselves in the environs, building
themselves hovels and temporary residences, although certain to find
their encampments swept away with the steady expanse of the city.  As
much land as could be covered by a man's foot was worth a ducat in gold.

In every branch of human industry these republicans took the lead.  On
that scrap of solid ground, rescued by human energy from the ocean, were
the most fertile pastures in the world.  On those pastures grazed the
most famous cattle in the world.  An ox often weighed more than two
thousand pounds.   The cows produced two and three calves at a time, the
sheep four and five lambs.  In a single village four thousand kine were
counted.  Butter and cheese were exported to the annual value of a
million, salted provisions to an incredible extent.  The farmers were
industrious, thriving, and independent.  It is an amusing illustration of
the agricultural thrift and republican simplicity of this people that on
one occasion a farmer proposed to Prince Maurice that he should marry his
daughter, promising with her a dowry of a hundred thousand florins.

The mechanical ingenuity of the Netherlanders, already celebrated by
Julius Caesar and by Tacitus, had lost nothing of its ancient fame.  The
contemporary world confessed that in many fabrics the Hollanders were at
the head of mankind.  Dutch linen, manufactured of the flax grown on
their own fields or imported from the obedient provinces, was esteemed a
fitting present for kings to make and to receive.  The name of the
country had passed into the literature of England as synonymous with the
delicate fabric itself.  The Venetians confessed themselves equalled, if
not outdone, by the crystal workers and sugar refiners of the northern
republic.  The tapestries of Arras--the name of which Walloon city had
become a household word of luxury in all modern languages--were now
transplanted to the soil of freedom, more congenial to the advancement of
art.  Brocades of the precious metals; splendid satins and velvets;
serges and homely fustians; laces of thread and silk; the finer and
coarser manufactures of clay and porcelain; iron, steel, and all useful
fabrics for the building and outfitting of ships; substantial broadcloths
manufactured of wool imported from Scotland--all this was but a portion
of the industrial production of the provinces.

They supplied the deficiency of coal, not then an article readily
obtained by commerce, with other remains of antediluvian forests long
since buried in the sea, and now recovered from its depths and made
useful and portable by untiring industry.  Peat was not only the fuel
for the fireside, but for the extensive fabrics of the country, and its
advantages so much excited the admiration of the Venetian envoys that
they sent home samples of it, in the hope that the lagunes of Venice
might prove as prolific of this indispensable article as the polders of
Holland.

But the foundation of the national wealth, the source of the apparently
fabulous power by which the republic had at last overthrown her gigantic
antagonist, was the ocean.  The republic was sea-born and sea-sustained.

She had nearly one hundred thousand sailors, and three thousand ships.
The sailors were the boldest, the best disciplined, and the most
experienced in the-world, whether for peaceable seafaring or ocean
warfare.  The ships were capable of furnishing from out of their number
in time of need the most numerous and the best appointed navy then known
to mankind.

The republic had the carrying trade for all nations.  Feeling its very
existence dependent upon commerce, it had strode centuries in advance of
the contemporary world in the liberation of trade.  But two or three per
cent. ad valorem was levied upon imports; foreign goods however being
subject, as well as internal products, to heavy imposts in the way of
both direct and indirect taxation.

Every article of necessity or luxury known was to be purchased in
profusion and at reasonable prices in the warehouses of Holland.

A swarm of river vessels and fly-boats were coming daily through the
rivers of Germany, France and the Netherlands, laden with the
agricultural products and the choice manufactures of central and western
Europe.  Wine and oil, and delicate fabrics in thread and wool, came from
France, but no silks, velvets, nor satins; for the great Sully had
succeeded in persuading his master that the white mulberry would not grow
in his kingdom, and that silk manufactures were an impossible dream for
France.  Nearly a thousand ships were constantly employed in the Baltic
trade.   The forests of Holland were almost as extensive as those which
grew on Norwegian hills, but they were submerged.  The foundation of a
single mansion required a grove, and wood was extensively used in the
superstructure.  The houses, built of a framework of substantial timber,
and filled in with brick or rubble, were raised almost as rapidly as
tents, during the prodigious expansion of industry towards the end of the
war.  From the realms of the Osterlings, or shores of the Baltic, came
daily fleets laden with wheat and other grains so that even in time of
famine the granaries of the republic were overflowing, and ready to
dispense the material of life to the outer world.

Eight hundred vessels of lesser size but compact build were perpetually
fishing for herrings on the northern coasts.  These hardy mariners, the
militia of the sea, who had learned in their life of hardship and daring
the art of destroying Spanish and Portuguese armadas, and confronting the
dangers of either pole, passed a long season on the deep.  Commercial
voyagers as well as fishermen, they salted their fish as soon as taken
from the sea, and transported them to the various ports of Europe, thus
reducing their herrings into specie before their return, and proving that
a fishery in such hands was worth more than the mines of Mexico and Peru.

It is customary to speak of the natural resources of a country as
furnishing a guarantee of material prosperity.  But here was a republic
almost without natural resources, which had yet supplied by human
intelligence and thrift what a niggard nature had denied.  Spain was
overflowing with unlimited treasure, and had possessed half the world in
fee; and Spain was bankrupt, decaying, sinking into universal pauperism.
Holland, with freedom of thought, of commerce, of speech, of action,
placed itself, by intellectual power alone, in the front rank of
civilization.

From Cathay, from the tropical coasts of Africa, and from farthest Ind,
came every drug, spice, or plant, every valuable jewel, every costly
fabric, that human ingenuity had discovered or created.  The Spaniards,
maintaining a frail tenure upon a portion of those prolific regions,
gathered their spice harvests at the point of the sword, and were
frequently unable to prevent their northern rivals from ravaging such
fields as they had not yet been able to appropriate.

Certainly this conduct of the Hollanders was barbarism and supreme
selfishness, if judged by the sounder political economy of our time.
Yet it should never be forgotten that the contest between Spain and
Holland in those distant regions, as everywhere else, was war to the
knife between superstition and freedom, between the spirits of progress
and of dogma.  Hard blows and foul blows were struck in such a fight, and
humanity, although gaining at last immense results, had much to suffer
and much to learn ere the day was won.

But Spain was nearly beaten out of those eastern regions, and the very
fact that the naval supremacy of the republic placed her ancient tyrant
at her mercy was the main reason for Spain to conclude the treaty of
truce.  Lest she should lose the India trade entirely, Spain consented to
the treaty article by which, without mentioning the word, she conceded
the thing.  It was almost pathetic to witness, as we have witnessed, this
despotism in its dotage, mumbling so long over the formal concession to
her conqueror of a portion of that India trade which would have been
entirely wrested from herself had the war continued.  And of this Spain
was at heart entirely convinced.  Thus the Portuguese, once the lords and
masters, as they had been the European discoverers, of those prolific
regions and of the ocean highways which led to them, now came with
docility to the republic which they had once affected to despise,
and purchased the cloves and the allspice, the nutmegs and the cinnamon,
of which they had held the monopoly; or waited with patience until the
untiring Hollanders should bring the precious wares to the peninsula
ports.

A Dutch Indianian would make her voyage to the antipodes and her return
in less time than was spent by a Portuguese or a Spaniard in the outward
voyage.  To accomplish such an enterprise in two years was accounted a
wonder of rapidity, and when it is remembered that inland navigation
through France by canal and river from the North Sea to the Mediterranean
was considered both speedier and safer, because the sea voyage between
the same points might last four or five months, it must be admitted that
two years occupied in passing from one end of the earth to the other and
back again might well seem a miracle.

The republic was among the wealthiest and the most powerful of organized
States.  Her population might be estimated at three millions and a half,
about equal to that of England at the same period.  But she was richer
than England.  Nowhere in the world was so large a production in
proportion to the numbers of a people.  Nowhere were so few unproductive
consumers.  Every one was at work.  Vagabonds, idlers, and do-nothings,
such as must be in every community, were caught up by the authorities and
made to earn their bread.  The devil's pillow, idleness, was smoothed for
no portion of the population.

There were no beggars, few paupers, no insolently luxurious and
ostentatiously idle class.  The modesty, thrift, and simple elegance of
the housekeeping, even among the wealthy, was noted by travellers with
surprise.  It will be remembered with how much amused wonder, followed by
something like contempt, the, magnificent household of Spinola, during
his embassy at the Hague, was surveyed by the honest burghers of Holland.
The authorities showed their wisdom in permitting the absurd exhibition,
as an example of what should be shunned, in spite of grave remonstrances
from many of the citizens.  Drunken Helotism is not the only form of
erring humanity capable of reading lessons to a republic.

There had been monasteries, convents, ecclesiastical establishments of
all kinds in the country, before the great war between Holland and the
Inquisition.  These had, as a matter of course, been confiscated as the
strife went on.  The buildings, farms, and funds, once the property of
the Church, had not, however, been seized upon, as in other Protestant
lands, by rapacious monarchs, and distributed among great nobles
according to royal caprice.  Monarchs might give the revenue of a
suppressed convent to a cook, as reward for a successful pudding; the
surface of Britain and the continent might be covered with abbeys and
monasteries now converted into lordly palaces--passing thus from the dead
hand of the Church into the idle and unproductive palm of the noble; but
the ancient ecclesiastical establishments of the free Netherlands were
changed into eleemosynary institutions, admirably organized and
administered with wisdom and economy, where orphans of the poor, widows
of those slain in the battles for freedom by land and sea, and the aged
and the infirm, who had deserved well of the republic in the days of
their strength, were educated or cherished at the expense of the public,
thus endowed from the spoils of the Church.

In Spain, monasteries upon monasteries were rising day by day, as if
there were not yet receptacles enough for monks and priests, while
thousands upon thousands of Spaniards were pressing into the ranks of
the priesthood, and almost forcing themselves into monasteries, that
they might be privileged to beg, because ashamed to work.  In the
United Netherlands the confiscated convents, with their revenues,
were appropriated for the good of those who were too young or too old to
labour, and too poor to maintain themselves without work.  Need men look
further than to this simple fact to learn why Spain was decaying while
the republic was rising?

The ordinary budget of the United Provinces was about equal to that of
England, varying not much from four millions of florins, or four hundred
thousand pounds.  But the extraordinary revenue was comparatively without
limits, and there had been years, during the war, when the citizens had
taxed themselves as highly as fifty per cent. on each individual income,
and doubled the receipts of the exchequer.  The budget was proposed once
a year, by the council of state, and voted by the States-General, who
assigned the quota of each province; that of Holland being always one-
half of the whole, that of Zeeland sixteen per cent., and that of the
other five of course in lesser proportions.  The revenue was collected
in the separate provinces, one-third of the whole being retained for
provincial expenses, and the balance paid into the general treasury.
There was a public debt, the annual interest of which amounted to 200,000
florins.  During the war, money had been borrowed at as high a rate as
thirty-six per cent., but at the conclusion of hostilities the States
could borrow at six per cent., and the whole debt was funded on that
basis.  Taxation was enormously heavy, but patriotism caused it to be
borne with cheerfulness, and productive industry made it comparatively
light.  Rents were charged twenty-five per cent.  A hundred per cent. was
levied upon beer, wine, meat, salt, spirits.  Other articles of necessity
and luxury were almost as severely taxed.  It is not easy to enumerate
the tax-list, scarcely anything foreign or domestic being exempted, while
the grave error was often committed of taxing the same article, in
different forms, four, five, and six times.

The people virtually taxed themselves, although the superstition
concerning the State, as something distinct from and superior to the
people, was to linger long and work infinite mischief among those seven
republics which were never destined to be welded theoretically and
legally into a union.  The sacredness of corporations had succeeded,
in a measure, to the divinity which hedges kings.  Nevertheless, those
corporations were so numerous as to be effectively open to a far larger
proportion of the population than, in those days, had ever dreamed before
of participating in the Government.  The magistracies were in general
unpaid and little coveted, being regarded as a burthen and a
responsibility rather than an object of ambition.  The jurisconsults,
called pensionaries, who assisted the municipal authorities, received,
however, a modest salary, never exceeding 1500 florins a year.

These numerous bodies, provincial and municipal, elected themselves
themselves by supplying their own vacancies.  The magistrates were
appointed by the stadholder, on a double or triple nomination from the
municipal board.  This was not impartial suffrage nor manhood suffrage.
The germ of a hateful burgher-oligarchy was in the system, but, as
compared with Spain, where municipal magistracies were sold by the crown
at public auction; or with France, where every office in church, law,
magistrature, or court was an object of merchandise disposed of in open
market, the system was purity itself, and marked a great advance in the
science of government.

It should never be forgotten, moreover, that while the presidents
and judges of the highest courts of judicature in other civilized lands
were at the mercy of an irresponsible sovereign, and held office--even
although it had been paid for in solid specie--at his pleasure, the
supreme justices of the high courts of appeal at the Hague were nominated
by a senate, and confirmed by a stadholder, and that they exercised their
functions for life, or so long as they conducted themselves virtuously in
their high office--'quamdiu se bene gesserint.'

If one of the great objects of a civilized community is to secure to all
men their own--'ut sua tenerent'--surely it must be admitted that the
republic was in advance of all contemporary States in the laying down of
this vital principle, the independence of judges.

As to the army and navy of the United Provinces, enough has been said,
in earlier chapters of these volumes, to indicate the improvements
introduced by Prince Maurice, and now carried to the highest point of
perfection ever attained in that period.  There is no doubt whatever,
that for discipline, experience, equipment, effectiveness of movement,
and general organization, the army of the republic was the model army of
Europe.  It amounted to but thirty thousand infantry and two thousand
five hundred cavalry, but this number was a large one for a standing army
at the beginning of the seventeenth century.  It was composed of a
variety of materials, Hollanders, Walloons, Flemings, Scotch, English,
Irish, Germans, but all welded together into a machine of perfect
regularity.  The private foot-soldier received twelve florins for a so-
called month of forty-two days, the drummer and corporal eighteen, the
lieutenant fifty-two, and the captain one hundred and fifty florins.
Prompt payment was made every week.  Obedience was implicit; mutiny, such
as was of periodical recurrence in the archduke's army, entirely unknown.
The slightest theft was punished with the gallows, and there was
therefore no thieving.

The most accurate and critical observers confessed, almost against their
will, that no army in Europe could compare with the troops of the States.
As to the famous regiments of Sicily, and the ancient legions of Naples
and Milan, a distinguished Venetian envoy, who had seen all the camps and
courts of Christendom, and was certainly not disposed to overrate the
Hollanders at the expense of the Italians, if any rivalry between them
had been possible, declared that every private soldier in the republic
was fit to be a captain in any Italian army; while, on the other hand,
there was scarcely an Italian captain who would be accepted as a private
in any company of the States.  So low had the once famous soldiery of
Alva, Don John, and Alexander Farnese descended.

The cavalry of the republic was even more perfectly organized than was
the infantry.  "I want words to describe its perfection," said Contarini.
The pay was very high, and very prompt.  A captain received four hundred
florins a month (of forty-two days), a lieutenant one hundred and eighty
florins, and other officers and privates in proportion.  These rates
would be very high in our own day.  When allowance is made for the
difference in the value of money at the respective epochs, the salaries
are prodigious; but the thrifty republic found its account in paying well
and paying regularly the champions on whom so much depended, and by whom
such splendid services had been rendered.

While the soldiers in the pay of Queen Elizabeth were crawling to her
palace gates to die of starvation before her eyes; while the veterans of
Spain and of Italy had organized themselves into a permanent military,
mutinous republic, on the soil of the so-called obedient Netherland,
because they were left by their masters without clothing or food; the
cavalry and infantry of the Dutch commonwealth, thanks to the organizing
spirit and the wholesome thrift of the burgher authorities, were
contented, obedient, well fed, well clothed, and well paid; devoted to
their Government, and ever ready to die in its defence.

Nor was it only on the regular army that reliance was placed.  On the
contrary, every able-bodied man in the country was liable to be called
upon to serve, at any moment, in the militia.  All were trained to arms,
and provided with arms, and there had been years during this perpetual
war in which one man out of three of the whole male population was ready
to be mustered at any moment into the field.

Even more could be said in praise of the navy than has been stated of the
armies of the republic; for the contemporary accounts of foreigners, and
of foreigners who were apt to be satirical, rather than enthusiastic,
when describing the institutions, leading personages, and customs of
other countries, seemed ever to speak of the United Provinces in terms of
eulogy.  In commerce, as in war, the naval supremacy of the republic was
indisputable.  It was easy for the States to place two thousand vessels
of war in commission, if necessary, of tonnage varying from four hundred
to twelve hundred tons, to man them with the hardiest and boldest sailors
in the world, and to despatch them with promptness to any quarter of the
globe.

It was recognised as nearly impossible to compel a war-vessel of the
republic to surrender.  Hardly an instance was on her naval record of
submission, even to far superior force, while it was filled with the
tragic but heroic histories of commanders who had blown their ships,
with every man on board, into the air, rather than strike their flag.
Such was the character, and such the capacity of the sea-born republic.

That republic had serious and radical defects, but the design remained to
be imitated and improved upon, centuries afterwards.  The history of the
rise and progress of the Dutch republic is a leading chapter in the
history of human liberty.

The great misfortune of the commonwealth of the United Provinces, next to
the slenderness of its geographical proportions, was the fact that it was
without a centre and without a head, and therefore not a nation capable
of unlimited vitality.  There were seven states.  Each claimed to be
sovereign.  The pretension on the part of several of them was ridiculous.
Overyssel, for example, contributed two and three-quarters per cent. of
the general budget.  It was a swamp of twelve hundred square miles in
extent, with some heath-spots interspered, and it numbered perhaps a
hundred thousand inhabitants.  The doughty Count of Embden alone could
have swallowed up such sovereignty, have annexed all the buckwheat
patches and cranberry marshes of Overyssel to his own meagre territories,
and nobody the wiser.

Zeeland, as we have seen, was disposed at a critical moment to set up
its independent sovereignty.  Zeeland, far more important than Overyssel,
had a revenue of perhaps five hundred thousand dollars,--rather a slender
budget for an independent republic, wedged in as it was by the most
powerful empires of the earth, and half drowned by the ocean, from which
it had scarcely emerged.

There was therefore no popular representation, and on the other hand no
executive head.  As sovereignty must be exercised in some way, however,
in all living commonwealths, and as a low degree of vitality was
certainly not the defect of those bustling provinces, the supreme
functions had now fallen into the hands of Holland.

While William the Silent lived, the management of war, foreign affairs,
and finance, for the revolted provinces, was in his control.  He was
aided by two council boards, but the circumstances of history and the
character of the man had invested him with an inevitable dictatorship.

After his death, at least after Leicester's time, the powers of the
state-council, the head of which, Prince Maurice, was almost always
absent at the wars, fell into comparative disuse.  The great functions
of the confederacy passed into the possession of the States-General.
That body now came to sit permanently at the Hague.  The number of its
members, deputies from the seven provinces-envoys from those seven
immortal and soulless sovereigns--was not large.  The extraordinary
assembly held at Bergen-op-Zoom for confirmation of the truce was
estimated by, Bentivoglio at eight hundred.  Bentivoglio, who was on the
spot, being then nuncius at Brussels, ought to have been able to count
them, yet it is very certain that the number was grossly exaggerated.

At any rate the usual assembly at the Hague rarely amounted to one
hundred members.  The presidency was changed once a week, the envoy of
each province taking his turn as chairman.

Olden-Barneveld, as member for Holland, was always present in the diet.
As Advocate-General of the leading province, and keeper of its great
seal, more especially as possessor of the governing intellect of the
whole commonwealth, be led the administration of Holland, and as the
estates of Holland contributed more than half of the whole budget of
the confederacy, it was a natural consequence of the actual supremacy of
that province, and of the vast legal hand political experience of the
Advocate, that Holland should, govern the confederacy, and that Barneveld
should govern Holland.

The States-General remained virtually supreme, receiving envoys from all
the great powers, sending abroad their diplomatic representatives, to
whom the title and rank of ambassador was freely accorded, and dealing
in a decorous and dignified way with all European affairs.  The ability
of the republican statesmen was as fully recognised all over the earth,
as was the genius of their generals and great naval commanders.

The People did not exist; but this was merely because, in theory, the
People had not been invented.  It was exactly because there was a People
--an energetic and intelligent People--that the republic was possible.

No scheme had yet been devised for laying down in primary assemblies
a fundamental national law, for distributing the various functions
of governmental power among selected servants, for appointing
representatives according to population or property, and for holding
all trustees responsible at reasonable intervals to the nation itself.

Thus government was involved, fold within fold, in successive and
concentric municipal layers.  The States-General were the outer husk,
of which the separate town-council was the kernel or bulb.  Yet the
number of these executive and legislative boards was so large, and the
whole population comparatively so slender, as to cause the original
inconveniences from so incomplete a system to be rather theoretic than
practical.  In point of fact, almost as large a variety of individuals
served the State as would perhaps have been the case under a more
philosophically arranged democracy.  The difficulty was rather in
obtaining a candidate for the post than in distributing the posts
among candidates.

Men were occupied with their own affairs.  In proportion to their
numbers, they were more productive of wealth than any other nation then
existing.  An excellent reason why the people were so, well governed, so
productive, and so enterprising, was the simple fact that they were an
educated people.  There was hardly a Netherlander--man, woman, or child--
that could not read and write.  The school was the common property of the
people, paid for among the municipal expenses.  In the cities, as well as
in the rural districts, there were not only common schools but classical
schools.  In the burgher families it was rare to find boys who had not
been taught Latin, or girls unacquainted with French.  Capacity to write
and speak several modern languages was very common, and there were many
individuals in every city, neither professors nor pedants, who had made
remarkable progress in science and classical literature.  The position,
too, of women in the commonwealth proved a high degree of civilization.
They are described as virtuous, well-educated, energetic, sovereigns
in their households, and accustomed to direct all the business at home.
"It would be ridiculous," said Donato, "to see a man occupying himself
with domestic house-keeping.  The women do it all, and command
absolutely."  The Hollanders, so rebellious against Church and
King, accepted with meekness the despotism of woman.

The great movement of emancipation from political and ecclesiastical
tyranny had brought with it a general advancement of the human intellect.
The foundation of the Leyden university in memory of the heroism
displayed by the burghers during the siege was as noble a monument
as had ever been raised by a free people jealous of its fame.  And the
scientific lustre of the university well sustained the nobility of its
origin.  The proudest nation on earth might be more proud of a seat of
learning, founded thus amidst carnage and tears, whence so much of
profound learning and brilliant literature had already been diffused.
The classical labours of Joseph Scaliger, Heinsius father and son the
elder Dousa, almost as famous with his pen in Latin poetry as his sword
had made him in the vernacular chronicle; of Dousa the son, whom Grotius
called "the crown and flower of all good learning, too soon snatched
away by envious death, than whom no man more skilled in poetry, more
consummate in acquaintance with ancient science and literature, had ever
lived;" of Hugo Grotius himself, who at the age of fifteen had taken his
doctor's degree at Leyden who as a member of Olden-Barneveld's important
legation to France and England very soon afterwards had excited the
astonishment of Henry IV. and Elizabeth, who had already distinguished
himself by editions of classic poets, and by original poems and dramas in
Latin, and was already, although but twenty-six years of age; laying the
foundation of that magnificent reputation as a jurist, a philosopher, a
historian, and a statesman, which was to be one of the enduring glories
of humanity, all these were the precious possessions of the high school
of Leyden.

The still more modern university of Franeker, founded amid the din
of perpetual warfare in Friesland, could at least boast the name of
Arminius, whose theological writings and whose expansive views were
destined to exert such influence over his contemporaries and posterity.

The great history of Hoofd, in which the splendid pictures and the
impassioned drama of the great war of independence were to be preserved
for his countrymen through all time, was not yet written.  It was soon
afterwards, however, to form not only a chief source of accurate
information as to the great events themselves, but a model of style
never since surpassed by any prose writer in either branch of the
German tongue.

Had Hoofd written for a wider audience, it would be difficult to name a
contemporary author of any nation whose work would have been more
profoundly studied or more generally admired.

But the great war had not waited to be chronicled by the classic and
impassioned Hoofd.  Already there were thorough and exhaustive narrators
of what was instinctively felt to be one of the most pregnant episodes of
human history.  Bor of Utrecht, a miracle of industry, of learning, of
unwearied perseverance, was already engaged in the production of those
vast folios in which nearly all the great transactions of the forty
years' war were conscientiously portrayed, with a comprehensiveness of
material and an impartiality of statement, such as might seem almost
impossible for a contemporary writer.  Immersed in attentive study and
profound contemplation, he seemed to lift his tranquil head from time to
time over the wild ocean of those troublous times, and to survey with
accuracy without being swayed or appalled by the tempest.  There was
something almost sublime in his steady, unimpassioned gaze.

Emanuel van Meteren, too, a plain Protestant merchant of Antwerp and
Amsterdam, wrote an admirable history of the war and of his own times,
full of precious details, especially rich in statistics--a branch of
science which he almost invented--which still, remains as one of the
leading authorities, not only for scholars, but for the general reader.

Reyd and Burgundius, the one the Calvinist private secretary of Lewis
William, the other a warm Catholic partisan, both made invaluable
contemporaneous contributions to the history of the war.

The trophies already secured by the Netherlanders in every department of
the fine arts, as well as the splendour which was to enrich the coming
epoch, are too familiar to the world to need more than a passing
allusion.

But it was especially in physical science that the republic was taking a
leading part in the great intellectual march of the nations.

The very necessities of its geographical position had forced it to pre-
eminence in hydraulics and hydrostatics.  It had learned to transform
water into dry land with a perfection attained by no nation before or
since.  The wonders of its submarine horticulture were the despair of all
gardeners in the world.

And as in this gentlest of arts, so also in the dread science of war, the
republic had been the instructor of mankind.

The youthful Maurice and his cousin Lewis William had so restored
and improved the decayed intelligence of antique strategy, that the
greybeards of Europe became docile pupils in their school.  The
mathematical teacher of Prince Maurice amazed the contemporary world with
his combinations and mechanical inventions; the flying chariots of Simon
Stevinua seeming products of magical art.

Yet the character of the Dutch intellect was averse to sorcery.  The
small but mighty nation, which had emancipated itself from the tyranny of
Philip and of the Holy Inquisition, was foremost to shake off the fetters
of superstition.  Out of Holland came the first voice to rebuke one of
the hideous delusions of the age.  While grave magistrates and sages of
other lands were exorcising the devil by murdering his supposed victims,
John Wier, a physician of Grave, boldly denounced the demon which had
taken possession, not of the wizards, but of the judges.

The age was lunatic and sick, and it was fitting that the race which had
done so much for the physical and intellectual emancipation of the world,
should have been the first to apply a remedy for this monstrous madness.
Englishmen and their descendants were drowning and hanging witches in New
England, long after John Wier had rebuked and denounced the belief in
witchcraft.

It was a Zeelander, too; who placed the instrument in the hand of Galileo
by which that daring genius traced the movements of the universe, and
who, by another wondrous invention, enabled future discoverers to study
the infinite life which lies all around us, hidden not by its remoteness
but it's minuteness.  Zacharias Jansens of Middelburg, in 1590, invented
both the telescope and the microscope.

The wonder-man of Alkmaar, Cornelius Drebbel, who performed such
astounding feats for the amusement of Rudolph of Germany and James of
Britain, is also supposed to have invented the thermometer and the
barometer.  But this claim has been disputed.  The inventions of Jansens
are proved.

Willebrod Snellius, mathematical professor of Leyden, introduced the true
method of measuring the degrees of longitude and latitude, and Huygens,
who had seen his manuscripts, asserted that Snellius had invented, before
Descartes, the doctrine of refraction.

But it was especially to that noble band of heroes and martyrs, the great
navigators and geographical discoverers of the republic, that science is
above all indebted.

Nothing is more sublime in human story than the endurance and audacity
with which those pioneers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
confronted the nameless horrors of either pole, in the interests of
commerce, and for the direct purpose of enlarging the bounds of the human
intellect.

The achievements, the sufferings, and the triumphs of Barendz and Cordes,
Heemskerk, Van der Hagen, and many others, have been slightly indicated
in these pages.  The contributions to botany, mineralogy, geometry,
geography, and zoology, of Linschoten, Plancius, Wagenaar, and Houtmann,
and so many other explorers of pole and tropic, can hardly be overrated.

The Netherlanders had wrung their original fatherland out of the grasp of
the ocean.  They had confronted for centuries the wrath of that ancient
tyrant, ever ready to seize the prey of which he had been defrauded.

They had waged fiercer and more perpetual battle with a tyranny more
cruel than the tempest, with an ancient superstition more hungry than the
sea.  It was inevitable that a race, thus invigorated by the ocean,
cradled to freedom by their conflicts with its power, and hardened almost
to invincibility by their struggle against human despotism, should be
foremost among the nations in the development of political, religious,
and commercial freedom.

The writer now takes an affectionate farewell of those who have followed
him with an indulgent sympathy as he has attempted to trace the origin
and the eventful course of the Dutch commonwealth.  If by his labours
a generous love has been fostered for that blessing, without which
everything that this earth can afford is worthless--freedom of thought,
of speech, and of life--his highest wish has been fulfilled.



ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

About equal to that of England at the same period
An unjust God, himself the origin of sin
Butchery in the name of Christ was suspended
Calling a peace perpetual can never make it so
Chieftains are dwarfed in the estimation of followers
Each in its turn becoming orthodox, and therefore persecuting
Exorcising the devil by murdering his supposed victims
Foremost to shake off the fetters of superstition
God of vengeance, of jealousy, and of injustice
Gomarites accused the Arminians of being more lax than Papists
Hangman is not the most appropriate teacher of religion
He often spoke of popular rights with contempt
John Wier, a physician of Grave
Necessity of extirpating heresy, root and branch
Nowhere were so few unproductive consumers
Paving the way towards atheism (by toleration)
Privileged to beg, because ashamed to work
Religious persecution of Protestants by Protestants
So unconscious of her strength
State can best defend religion by letting it alone
Taxed themselves as highly as fifty per cent
The People had not been invented
The slightest theft was punished with the gallows
Tolerate another religion that his own may be tolerated
Toleration--that intolerable term of insult
War to compel the weakest to follow the religion of the strongest



End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v83
by John Lothrop Motley






ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS, ENTIRE 1600-09 UNITED NETHERLANDS:

A penal offence in the republic to talk of peace or of truce
A sovereign remedy for the disease of liberty
A man incapable of fatigue, of perplexity, or of fear
A truce he honestly considered a pitfall of destruction
About equal to that of England at the same period
Abstinence from unproductive consumption
Accepting a new tyrant in place of the one so long ago deposed
Alas! we must always have something to persecute
Alas! the benighted victims of superstition hugged their chains
All the ministers and great functionaries received presents
An unjust God, himself the origin of sin
Argument is exhausted and either action or compromise begins
As if they were free will not make them free
As neat a deception by telling the truth
Because he had been successful (hated)
Began to scatter golden arguments with a lavish hand
Bestowing upon others what was not his property
Beware of a truce even more than of a peace
But the habit of dissimulation was inveterate
Butchery in the name of Christ was suspended
By turns, we all govern and are governed
Calling a peace perpetual can never make it so
Cargo of imaginary gold dust was exported from the James River
Certain number of powers, almost exactly equal to each other
Chieftains are dwarfed in the estimation of followers
Conceit, and procrastination which marked the royal character
Constitute themselves at once universal legatees
Contempt for treaties however solemnly ratified
Converting beneficent commerce into baleful gambling
Could handle an argument as well as a sword
Crimes and cruelties such as Christians only could imagine
Culpable audacity and exaggerated prudence
Defeated garrison ever deserved more respect from friend or foe
Delay often fights better than an army against a foreign invader
Despised those who were grateful
Diplomacy of Spain and Rome--meant simply dissimulation
Do you want peace or war?  I am ready for either
Draw a profit out of the necessities of this state
Each in its turn becoming orthodox, and therefore persecuting
Eloquence of the biggest guns
England hated the Netherlands
Even the virtues of James were his worst enemies
Exorcising the devil by murdering his supposed victims
Foremost to shake off the fetters of superstition
Four weeks' holiday--the first in eleven years
Friendly advice still more intolerable
Gigantic vices are proudly pointed to as the noblest
God alone can protect us against those whom we trust
God of vengeance, of jealousy, and of injustice
Gold was the only passkey to justice
Gomarites accused the Arminians of being more lax than Papists
Haereticis non servanda fides
Hangman is not the most appropriate teacher of religion
He often spoke of popular rights with contempt
He who confessed well was absolved well
His own past triumphs seemed now his greatest enemies
Human fat esteemed the sovereignst remedy (for wounds)
Humble ignorance as the safest creed
Hundred thousand men had laid down their lives by her decree
Idea of freedom in commerce has dawned upon nations
Idiotic principle of sumptuary legislation
If to do be as grand as to imagine what it were good to do
Impossible it is to practise arithmetic with disturbed brains
Indulging them frequently with oracular advice
Insensible to contumely, and incapable of accepting a rebuff
It is certain that the English hate us (Sully)
John Castel, who had stabbed Henry IV.
John Wier, a physician of Grave
Justified themselves in a solemn consumption of time
Languor of fatigue, rather than any sincere desire for peace
Logic of the largest battalions
Looking down upon her struggle with benevolent indifference
Made peace--and had been at war ever since
Man is never so convinced of his own wisdom
Man who cannot dissemble is unfit to reign
Men who meant what they said and said what they meant
Men fought as if war was the normal condition of humanity
Much as the blind or the deaf towards colour or music
Nations tied to the pinafores of children in the nursery
Natural tendency to suspicion of a timid man
Necessity of extirpating heresy, root and branch
Negotiated as if they were all immortal
Night brings counsel
No retrenchments in his pleasures of women, dogs, and buildings
No generation is long-lived enough to reap the harvest
Not safe for politicians to call each other hard names
Nowhere were so few unproductive consumers
One of the most contemptible and mischievous of kings (James I)
Passion is a bad schoolmistress for the memory
Paving the way towards atheism (by toleration)
Peace seemed only a process for arriving at war
Peace founded on the only secure basis, equality of strength
Peace was unattainable, war was impossible, truce was inevitable
Philip of Macedon, who considered no city impregnable
Prisoners were immediately hanged
Privileged to beg, because ashamed to work
Proclaiming the virginity of the Virgin's mother
Readiness at any moment to defend dearly won liberties
Religious persecution of Protestants by Protestants
Repose under one despot guaranteed to them by two others
Requires less mention than Philip III himself
Rules adopted in regard to pretenders to crowns
Served at their banquets by hosts of lackeys on their knees
Sick soldiers captured on the water should be hanged
So unconscious of her strength
State can best defend religion by letting it alone
Steeped to the lips in sloth which imagined itself to be pride
Subtle and dangerous enemy who wore the mask of a friend
Such an excuse was as bad as the accusation
Take all their imaginations and extravagances for truths
Taxed themselves as highly as fifty per cent
The art of ruling the world by doing nothing
The slightest theft was punished with the gallows
The wisest statesmen are prone to blunder in affairs of war
The pigmy, as the late queen had been fond of nicknaming him
The expenses of James's household
The People had not been invented
The small children diminished rapidly in numbers
This obstinate little republic
To shirk labour, infinite numbers become priests and friars
To negotiate was to bribe right and left, and at every step
To doubt the infallibility of Calvin was as heinous a crime
To negotiate with Government in England was to bribe
Tolerate another religion that his own may be tolerated
Toleration--that intolerable term of insult
Triple marriages between the respective nurseries
Unlearned their faith in bell, book, and candle
Unproductive consumption being accounted most sagacious
Unwise impatience for peace
Usual expedient by which bad legislation on one side countered
War was the normal and natural condition of mankind
War was the normal condition of Christians
War to compel the weakest to follow the religion of the strongest
We have been talking a little bit of truth to each other
What was to be done in this world and believed as to the next
What exchequer can accept chronic warfare and escape bankruptcy
When all was gone, they began to eat each other
Word peace in Spanish mouths simply meant the Holy Inquisition
Words are always interpreted to the disadvantage of the weak
World has rolled on to fresher fields of carnage and ruin
You must show your teeth to the Spaniard




End of this Project Gutenberg Etext Entire 1600-09 United Netherlands
by John Lothrop Motley






ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS 1584-1609, COMPLETE

A hard bargain when both parties are losers
A penal offence in the republic to talk of peace or of truce
A despot really keeps no accounts, nor need to do so
A free commonwealth--was thought an absurdity
A burnt cat fears the fire
A pusillanimous peace, always possible at any period
A man incapable of fatigue, of perplexity, or of fear
A sovereign remedy for the disease of liberty
A truce he honestly considered a pitfall of destruction
Able men should be by design and of purpose suppressed
About equal to that of England at the same period
Abstinence from unproductive consumption
Accepting a new tyrant in place of the one so long ago deposed
Accustomed to the faded gallantries
Act of Uniformity required Papists to assist
Alas! we must always have something to persecute
Alas! the benighted victims of superstition hugged their chains
Alexander's exuberant discretion
All fellow-worms together
All business has been transacted with open doors
All Italy was in his hands
All the ministers and great functionaries received presents
Allow her to seek a profit from his misfortune
An unjust God, himself the origin of sin
Anarchy which was deemed inseparable from a non-regal form
Anatomical study of what has ceased to exist
And thus this gentle and heroic spirit took its flight
Are wont to hang their piety on the bell-rope
Argument is exhausted and either action or compromise begins
Arminianism
Artillery
As logical as men in their cups are prone to be
As if they were free will not make them free
As neat a deception by telling the truth
As lieve see the Spanish as the Calvinistic inquisition
At length the twig was becoming the tree
Auction sales of judicial ermine
Baiting his hook a little to his appetite
Beacons in the upward path of mankind
Because he had been successful (hated)
Been already crimination and recrimination more than enough
Began to scatter golden arguments with a lavish hand
Being the true religion, proved by so many testimonies
Beneficent and charitable purposes (War)
Bestowing upon others what was not his property
Beware of a truce even more than of a peace
Bomb-shells were not often used although known for a century
Bungling diplomatists and credulous dotards
Burning of Servetus at Geneva
But the habit of dissimulation was inveterate
Butchery in the name of Christ was suspended
By turns, we all govern and are governed
Calling a peace perpetual can never make it so
Canker of a long peace
Cargo of imaginary gold dust was exported from the James River
Casting up the matter "as pinchingly as possibly might be"
Certain number of powers, almost exactly equal to each other
Certainly it was worth an eighty years' war
Chief seafaring nations of the world were already protestant
Chieftains are dwarfed in the estimation of followers
Children who had never set foot on the shore
Chronicle of events must not be anticipated
College of "peace-makers," who wrangled more than all
Conceding it subsequently, after much contestation
Conceit, and procrastination which marked the royal character
Condemned first and inquired upon after
Conformity of Governments to the principles of justice
Considerable reason, even if there were but little justice
Constant vigilance is the price of liberty
Constitute themselves at once universal legatees
Contempt for treaties however solemnly ratified
Continuing to believe himself invincible and infallible
Converting beneficent commerce into baleful gambling
Could do a little more than what was possible
Could handle an argument as well as a sword
Courage and semblance of cheerfulness, with despair in his heart
Court fatigue, to scorn pleasure
Crimes and cruelties such as Christians only could imagine
Culpable audacity and exaggerated prudence
Deal with his enemy as if sure to become his friend
Decline a bribe or interfere with the private sale of places
Defeated garrison ever deserved more respect from friend or foe
Defect of enjoying the flattery, of his inferiors in station
Delay often fights better than an army against a foreign invader
Demanding peace and bread at any price
Despised those who were grateful
Diplomacy of Spain and Rome--meant simply dissimulation
Diplomatic adroitness consists mainly in the power to deceive
Disciple of Simon Stevinus
Dismay of our friends and the gratification of our enemies
Disordered, and unknit state needs no shaking, but propping
Disposed to throat-cutting by the ministers of the Gospel
Divine right of kings
Do you want peace or war?  I am ready for either
Done nothing so long as aught remained to do
Draw a profit out of the necessities of this state
During this, whole war, we have never seen the like
Each in its turn becoming orthodox, and therefore persecuting
Eat their own children than to forego one high mass
Elizabeth, though convicted, could always confute
Elizabeth (had not) the faintest idea of religious freedom
Eloquence of the biggest guns
England hated the Netherlands
Englishmen and Hollanders preparing to cut each other's throats
Enmity between Lutherans and Calvinists
Even the virtues of James were his worst enemies
Even to grant it slowly is to deny it utterly
Ever met disaster with so cheerful a smile
Every one sees what you seem, few perceive what you are
Evil is coming, the sooner it arrives the better
Evil has the advantage of rapidly assuming many shapes
Exorcising the devil by murdering his supposed victims
Faction has rarely worn a more mischievous aspect
Famous fowl in every pot
Fed on bear's liver, were nearly poisoned to death
Fellow worms had been writhing for half a century in the dust
Find our destruction in our immoderate desire for peace
Fitter to obey than to command
Five great rivers hold the Netherland territory in their coils
Fled from the land of oppression to the land of liberty
Fool who useth not wit because he hath it not
For his humanity towards the conquered garrisons (censured)
For us, looking back upon the Past, which was then the Future
Forbidding the wearing of mourning at all
Foremost to shake off the fetters of superstition
Four weeks' holiday--the first in eleven years
French seem madmen, and are wise
Friendly advice still more intolerable
Full of precedents and declamatory commonplaces
Future world as laid down by rival priesthoods
German Highland and the German Netherland
German-Lutheran sixteenth-century idea of religious freedom
Gigantic vices are proudly pointed to as the noblest
God of vengeance, of jealousy, and of injustice
God alone can protect us against those whom we trust
God of wrath who had decreed the extermination of all unbeliever
God, whose cause it was, would be pleased to give good weather
Gold was the only passkey to justice
Gomarites accused the Arminians of being more lax than Papists
Guilty of no other crime than adhesion to the Catholic faith
Had industry been honoured instead of being despised
Haereticis non servanda fides
Hanging of Mary Dyer at Boston
Hangman is not the most appropriate teacher of religion
Hard at work, pouring sand through their sieves
Hardly an inch of French soil that had not two possessors
Hardly a distinguished family in Spain not placed in mourning
He often spoke of popular rights with contempt
He did his work, but he had not his reward
He who confessed well was absolved well
He spent more time at table than the Bearnese in sleep
He sat a great while at a time.  He had a genius for sitting
Henry the Huguenot as the champion of the Council of Trent
Her teeth black, her bosom white and liberally exposed (Eliz.)
Heretics to the English Church were persecuted
Hibernian mode of expressing himself
High officers were doing the work of private, soldiers
Highest were not necessarily the least slimy
His invectives were, however, much stronger than his arguments
His own past triumphs seemed now his greatest enemies
His insolence intolerable
His inordinate arrogance
Historical scepticism may shut its eyes to evidence
History is but made up of a few scattered fragments
History is a continuous whole of which we see only fragments
Holland was afraid to give a part, although offering the whole
Holy institution called the Inquisition
Honor good patriots, and to support them in venial errors
Hugo Grotius
Human fat esteemed the sovereignst remedy (for wounds)
Humanizing effect of science upon the barbarism of war
Humble ignorance as the safest creed
Humility which was but the cloak to his pride
Hundred thousand men had laid down their lives by her decree
I will never live, to see the end of my poverty
I am a king that will be ever known not to fear any but God
I did never see any man behave himself as he did
Idea of freedom in commerce has dawned upon nations
Idiotic principle of sumptuary legislation
Idle, listless, dice-playing, begging, filching vagabonds
If to do be as grand as to imagine what it were good to do
Ignorance is the real enslaver of mankind
Imagining that they held the world's destiny in their hands
Imposed upon the multitudes, with whom words were things
Impossible it was to invent terms of adulation too gross
Impossible it is to practise arithmetic with disturbed brains
In times of civil war, to be neutral is to be nothing
Individuals walking in advance of their age
Indulging them frequently with oracular advice
Inevitable fate of talking castles and listening ladies
Infamy of diplomacy, when diplomacy is unaccompanied by honesty
Infinite capacity for pecuniary absorption
Inhabited by the savage tribes called Samoyedes
Innocent generation, to atone for the sins of their forefathers
Inquisitors enough; but there were no light vessels in The Armada
Insensible to contumely, and incapable of accepting a rebuff
Intelligence, science, and industry were accounted degrading
Intentions of a government which did not know its own intentions
Intolerable tendency to puns
Invaluable gift which no human being can acquire, authority
Invincible Armada had not only been vanquished but annihilated
It is certain that the English hate us (Sully)
John Castel, who had stabbed Henry IV.
John Wier, a physician of Grave
Justified themselves in a solemn consumption of time
King had issued a general repudiation of his debts
King was often to be something much less or much worse
Labour was esteemed dishonourable
Languor of fatigue, rather than any sincere desire for peace
Leading motive with all was supposed to be religion
Life of nations and which we call the Past
Little army of Maurice was becoming the model for Europe
Logic of the largest battalions
Longer they delay it, the less easy will they find it
Look for a sharp war, or a miserable peace
Looking down upon her struggle with benevolent indifference
Lord was better pleased with adverbs than nouns
Loud, nasal, dictatorial tone, not at all agreeable
Loving only the persons who flattered him
Luxury had blunted the fine instincts of patriotism
Made peace--and had been at war ever since
Magnificent hopefulness
Make sheep of yourselves, and the wolf will eat you
Man is never so convinced of his own wisdom
Man had no rights at all  He was property
Man who cannot dissemble is unfit to reign
Maritime heretics
Matter that men may rather pray for than hope for
Matters little by what name a government is called
Meet around a green table except as fencers in the field
Men who meant what they said and said what they meant
Men fought as if war was the normal condition of humanity
Mendacity may always obtain over innocence and credulity
Military virtue in the support of an infamous cause
Mistakes might occur from occasional deviations into sincerity
Mondragon was now ninety-two years old
Moral nature, undergoes less change than might be hoped
More catholic than the pope
Much as the blind or the deaf towards colour or music
Myself seeing of it methinketh that I dream
Names history has often found it convenient to mark its epochs
National character, not the work of a few individuals
Nations tied to the pinafores of children in the nursery
Natural tendency to suspicion of a timid man
Necessity of kingship
Necessity of extirpating heresy, root and branch
Negotiated as if they were all immortal
Neighbour's blazing roof was likely soon to fire their own
Never did statesmen know better how not to do
Never peace well made, he observed, without a mighty war
New Years Day in England, 11th January by the New Style
Night brings counsel
Nine syllables that which could be more forcibly expressed in on
No retrenchments in his pleasures of women, dogs, and buildings
No generation is long-lived enough to reap the harvest
Nor is the spirit of the age to be pleaded in defence
Not many more than two hundred Catholics were executed
Not a friend of giving details larger than my ascertained facts
Not distinguished for their docility
Not of the genus Reptilia, and could neither creep nor crouch
Not safe for politicians to call each other hard names
Nothing cheap, said a citizen bitterly, but sermons
Nothing could equal Alexander's fidelity, but his perfidy
Nowhere were so few unproductive consumers
Obscure were thought capable of dying natural deaths
Octogenarian was past work and past mischief
Often necessary to be blind and deaf
One-third of Philip's effective navy was thus destroyed
One could neither cry nor laugh within the Spanish dominions
One of the most contemptible and mischievous of kings (James I)
Only citadel against a tyrant and a conqueror was distrust
Oration, fertile in rhetoric and barren in facts
Others that do nothing, do all, and have all the thanks
Passion is a bad schoolmistress for the memory
Past was once the Present, and once the Future
Patriotism seemed an unimaginable idea
Pauper client who dreamed of justice at the hands of law
Paving the way towards atheism (by toleration)
Peace and quietness is brought into a most dangerous estate
Peace seemed only a process for arriving at war
Peace founded on the only secure basis, equality of strength
Peace would be destruction
Peace-at-any-price party
Peace was unattainable, war was impossible, truce was inevitable
Philip II. gave the world work enough
Philip of Macedon, who considered no city impregnable
Picturesqueness of crime
Placid unconsciousness on his part of defeat
Plea of infallibility and of authority soon becomes ridiculous
Portion of these revenues savoured much of black-mail
Possible to do, only because we see that it has been done
Pray here for satiety, (said Cecil) than ever think of variety
Prisoners were immediately hanged
Privileged to beg, because ashamed to work
Proceeds of his permission to eat meat on Fridays
Proclaiming the virginity of the Virgin's mother
Rarely able to command, having never learned to obey
Readiness at any moment to defend dearly won liberties
Rebuked him for his obedience
Religion was rapidly ceasing to be the line of demarcation
Religion was not to be changed like a shirt
Religious persecution of Protestants by Protestants
Repentance, as usual, had come many hours too late
Repose under one despot guaranteed to them by two others
Repose in the other world, "Repos ailleurs"
Repudiation of national debts was never heard of before
Requires less mention than Philip III himself
Resolved thenceforth to adopt a system of ignorance
Respect for differences in religious opinions
Rich enough to be worth robbing
Righteous to kill their own children
Road to Paris lay through the gates of Rome
Round game of deception, in which nobody was deceived
Royal plans should be enforced adequately or abandoned entirely
Rules adopted in regard to pretenders to crowns
Sacked and drowned ten infant princes
Sacrificed by the Queen for faithfully obeying her orders
Sages of every generation, read the future like a printed scroll
Security is dangerous
Seeking protection for and against the people
Seem as if born to make the idea of royalty ridiculous
Seems but a change of masks, of costume, of phraseology
Self-assertion--the healthful but not engaging attribute
Selling the privilege of eating eggs upon fast-days
Sentiment of Christian self-complacency
Served at their banquets by hosts of lackeys on their knees
Sewers which have ever run beneath decorous Christendom
She relieth on a hope that will deceive her
Shift the mantle of religion from one shoulder to the other
Shutting the stable-door when the steed is stolen
Sick soldiers captured on the water should be hanged
Simple truth was highest skill
Sixteen of their best ships had been sacrificed
Slain four hundred and ten men with his own hand
So often degenerated into tyranny (Calvinism)
So unconscious of her strength
Soldiers enough to animate the good and terrify the bad
Some rude lessons from that vigorous little commonwealth
Spain was governed by an established terrorism
Spaniards seem wise, and are madmen
Sparing and war have no affinity together
Stake or gallows (for) heretics to transubstantiation
State can best defend religion by letting it alone
States were justified in their almost unlimited distrust
Steeped to the lips in sloth which imagined itself to be pride
Strangled his nineteen brothers on his accession
Strength does a falsehood acquire in determined and skilful hand
String of homely proverbs worthy of Sancho Panza
Subtle and dangerous enemy who wore the mask of a friend
Succeeded so well, and had been requited so ill
Such an excuse was as bad as the accusation
Such a crime as this had never been conceived (bankruptcy)
Sure bind, sure find
Sword in hand is the best pen to write the conditions of peace
Take all their imaginations and extravagances for truths
Taxed themselves as highly as fifty per cent
Tension now gave place to exhaustion
That crowned criminal, Philip the Second
That unholy trinity--Force; Dogma, and Ignorance
The very word toleration was to sound like an insult
The blaze of a hundred and fifty burning vessels
The expenses of James's household
The worst were encouraged with their good success
The history of the Netherlands is history of liberty
The great ocean was but a Spanish lake
The divine speciality of a few transitory mortals
The sapling was to become the tree
The nation which deliberately carves itself in pieces
The most thriving branch of national industry (Smuggler)
The record of our race is essentially unwritten
The busy devil of petty economy
The small children diminished rapidly in numbers
The People had not been invented
The Alcoran was less cruel than the Inquisition
The wisest statesmen are prone to blunder in affairs of war
The art of ruling the world by doing nothing
The slightest theft was punished with the gallows
The pigmy, as the late queen had been fond of nicknaming him
Their existence depended on war
There are few inventions in morals
There was apathy where there should have been enthusiasm
There is no man fitter for that purpose than myself
They were always to deceive every one, upon every occasion
They had come to disbelieve in the mystery of kingcraft
They liked not such divine right nor such gentle-mindedness
They chose to compel no man's conscience
Thirty-three per cent. interest was paid (per month)
Thirty thousand masses should be said for his soul
This obstinate little republic
Those who argue against a foregone conclusion
Thought that all was too little for him
Three hundred and upwards are hanged annually in London
Three or four hundred petty sovereigns (of Germany)
Tis pity he is not an Englishman
To negotiate with Government in England was to bribe
To negotiate was to bribe right and left, and at every step
To work, ever to work, was the primary law of his nature
To attack England it was necessary to take the road of Ireland
To shirk labour, infinite numbers become priests and friars
To doubt the infallibility of Calvin was as heinous a crime
Toil and sacrifices of those who have preceded us
Tolerate another religion that his own may be tolerated
Tolerating religious liberty had never entered his mind
Toleration--that intolerable term of insult
Torturing, hanging, embowelling of men, women, and children
Tranquil insolence
Tranquillity rather of paralysis than of health
Triple marriages between the respective nurseries
Trust her sword, not her enemy's word
Twas pity, he said, that both should be heretics
Under the name of religion (so many crimes)
Undue anxiety for impartiality
Universal suffrage was not dreamed of at that day
Unlearned their faith in bell, book, and candle
Unproductive consumption being accounted most sagacious
Unproductive consumption was alarmingly increasing
Unwise impatience for peace
Upon their knees, served the queen with wine
Upper and lower millstones of royal wrath and loyal subserviency
Use of the spade
Usual expedient by which bad legislation on one side countered
Utter want of adaptation of his means to his ends
Utter disproportions between the king's means and aims
Uttering of my choler doth little ease my grief or help my case
Valour on the one side and discretion on the other
Waiting the pleasure of a capricious and despotic woman
Walk up and down the earth and destroy his fellow-creatures
War was the normal and natural condition of mankind
War to compel the weakest to follow the religion of the strongest
War was the normal condition of Christians
Wasting time fruitlessly is sharpening the knife for himself
We have the reputation of being a good housewife
We must all die once
We mustn't tickle ourselves to make ourselves laugh
We have been talking a little bit of truth to each other
We were sold by their negligence who are now angry with us
Wealthy Papists could obtain immunity by an enormous fine
Weapons
Weary of place without power
What exchequer can accept chronic warfare and escape bankruptcy
What was to be done in this world and believed as to the next
When persons of merit suffer without cause
When all was gone, they began to eat each other
Whether murders or stratagems, as if they were acts of virtue
While one's friends urge moderation
Who the "people" exactly were
Whole revenue was pledged to pay the interest, on his debts
Wish to sell us the bear-skin before they have killed the bear
With something of feline and feminine duplicity
Word peace in Spanish mouths simply meant the Holy Inquisition
Words are always interpreted to the disadvantage of the weak
World has rolled on to fresher fields of carnage and ruin
Worn nor caused to be worn the collar of the serf
Wrath of bigots on both sides
Wrath of that injured personage as he read such libellous truths
Write so illegibly or express himself so awkwardly
You must show your teeth to the Spaniard





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